Why are you just picking on Caroline Flint?

Every minister makes announcements without checking with the NEC first.

I suspect if someone like Jon Cruddas were a minister and he made an announcement about re-nationalising housing association housing without 'consulting', you'd have no complaints.

I'm wondering how Flint's Fabian Society statement

"Obviously, just ten days into the job, I've been asking more questions than offering answers today."

got morphed into the proposal

"Up to a million people in social housing, including those on council estates, should be expected to actively seek work as a condition of their tenancy, the new housing minister, Caroline Flint, proposes today."

in the Guardian story by Patrick Wintour on the very same day. Bloody spinners again, or facing two directions?

One problem is that our policy-making process is so complex - and so clouded in secrecy - that it is quite possible that these ideas HAVE been floated in regional policy forums and drifted around the national policy forum, etc. (I know we know they haven't really - but they could have done in theory).  Okay - they never appeared in a final policy document, published by the NPF, but such documents tend to be very light on actual policy anyway - in terms of actual schemes, procedures or political beef.

A minister would no doubt point to the constitutional point that a government cannot be bound by party policy-making and must be free to make policy that represents the country rather than the opinion of any 'faction'.  However, it would be nice if Labour Party policy was an occasional guide to government policy!!!

Having said that, the Green Paper, policy document on housing and employment states:

'These policies will strengthen the link between housing and employment support, particularly at the point of entry into social housing. Jobcentre Plus will play a key role in enhancing links with housing organisations, including exploring ways of providing access to employment information in housing offices and improving referral processes between housing and Jobcentre Plus services. We intend that pilots to test these approaches will begin in 2008.'

So perhaps we are being too hard on Caroline Flint?  (She's presumably too new to the job to have been instrumental in this?)  And did this go through the party procedures Peter is talking about?  In which case, what did some of the more sensible members of that process make of it?  I know without the context of Caroline Flint's comments it would be far from clear what was actually being proposed.  But her comments certainly shed some light on it!

Michael Crick reports that Flint's kite-flying went down extremely badly with her MP colleagues. His take is "If ministerial careers depended on their popularity amongst Labour backbenchers, then Gordon Brown's new housing minister Caroline Flint would be in deep, deep trouble." A good lesson methinks.

To day in my local paper arguments have stared after people have started building a shanty town on open land old sheds are being built, and people are using a river to wash and clean themselves a large hole is used as a toilet, the people doing this are from Poland in the main, the council has ordered them off the land without offering them a home, they are legally here.

This I feel will become a more serious problem unless something is done.

I suppose you can add to this by throwing out people, but of course they have to live somewhere. It's been noted in my area we are having about 75 new immigrants a week in my area, and the job markets is now almost full taken up jobs are down to six or seven a week these jobs are mostly highly qualified or within Care.

Do we open up land for people to build a shanty town, as I said the council cannot house 75 people a week we are at saturation point.