Some opponents of a controversial west London redevelopment scheme have long claimed that its political backers are motivated partly by electoral mathematics. Are they right?
The housing and redevelopment policies of the Conservative flagship Hammersmith and Fulham (H&F) council first came to my attention in July 2009 due a campaign launched by a local Labour MP Andy Slaughter. Responding to the council's core strategy options document and its proposals for constructing what it called Decent Neighbourhoods and armed with the yield from a Freedom of Information request, he accused H&F of "using the language of social cleansing" and of planning "social engineering on a grand scale."
Slaughter has continued to accuse the council of using housing policy to alter the social complexion of the area to the political advantage of the Conservatives, and the administration has continued to strongly deny such claims. However, Slaughter has long cited a Conservative Home article from February 2009 co-written by the then leader of the council Stephen Greenhalgh as further evidence to back his claim that, as he put it to me for an article I wrote in March about opposition to the Earls Court project, the council has "set out to gerrymander the electorate by reducing the amount of social housing in the borough and increasing the amount of high-value, mostly investment property."
The Conservative Home article is well worth reading. It is headlined "Proposals for radical reform of social housing," and sets out the key arguments of a pamphlet on the subject that would be published that April, written by Greenhalgh and his fellow Conservative John Moss, a chartered surveyor and regeneration specialist.
Moss also co-wrote the Conservative Home article, which articulates with some skill a version of the argument that social housing is, as Greenhalgh and Moss put it, "warehousing poverty in the core of our great cities," and should be broken up, partly in order to tackle social ills including educational underachievement, poor health and crime. It is an argument that has gained significant purchase in recent years and not only among Conservatives, although it fits very neatly with David Cameron's Big Society rhetoric which, at that time, was emerging as a theme of the pre-2010 general election period.
However, the first six paragraphs of the Greenhalgh-Moss Conservative Home article were not concerned with the policy practicalities and claimed social benefits of the reforms they advocated, but the electoral implications of high levels of social housing for some potentially future Conservative MPs. It begins:
On the day of the first Opposition social housing debate for three years, we ask here whether this is the time to reform social housing. It may not be an issue for the current intake of Conservative MPs at this time, but it will become an issue for many new MPs elected from target marginals which have far higher levels of social housing.
The article then quoted from "Figures supplied to Greg Hands MP from the Commons Library." Hands represents the constituency of Chelsea and Fulham. Greenhalgh and Moss pointed out that, "Some key targets have huge percentages." The first on their list was Hammersmith, the then newly created marginal seat that Slaughter was due to contest (and won). They went on to point out that, "Whilst Conservatives are at a high point in local government, we still have a mountain to climb in our inner cities," and asked, "Why is this?"
They continued:
The current state and levels of social housing in our inner cities may provide part of the answer.
And they elaborated:
Today social housing has become welfare housing where both a dependency culture and a culture of entitlement predominate. Two thirds of social tenants of working age are unemployed and only 22% are in full time employment. 50% of social housing is located in the most deprived 20% of the country. Competition revolves around drawing welfare support and taking something out of the system. Conservative principles of freedom, self-reliance and personal responsibility run counter to this culture. Calling for the state to provide a "hand up instead of a hand out" is unlikely to resonate.
They then presented some statistics which, they wrote, "might help explain the consequences of this for the Conservative party." These statistics were:
Twenty Boroughs (excluding the City) have less than 25% social housing. Thirteen Councils are Conservative controlled, two are run by Conservative minority administrations, there is one Conservative/Lib-Dem coalition, three Lib-Dem run and one Lib-Dem/Labour run.
The remaining twelve Boroughs have more than 30% social housing. Eight are Labour controlled, one Lib-Dem, two Lib-Dem/Conservative coalitions and just one, Hammersmith & Fulham, Conservative run."
Only from this point in the article does the public policy case for social housing reform start to be made.
I wrote to both Stephen Greenhalgh – now the head of Boris Johnson's policing and crime office – and John Moss, inviting them to refute Andy Slaughter's charge that their article betrayed a covert gerrymandering agenda informing their call for social housing policy reform – a charge anticipated by the authors in the article itself, where they write of "the risk of a political backlash which has stymied the debate over social housing reform." (They listed Dame Shirley Porter among, "historical figures who must shoulder much of the blame for this.")
I put it to them that beginning an argument for the radical reform of social housing by detailing the electoral disadvantages of the status quo for Conservative Party politicians seemed incongruous, and that setting out their reform proposals – which envisage practically all social housing being done away with and its occupants dispersing into the private rented sector – against that backdrop seemed to suggest a link in between those proposals and improving Tory electoral prospects. Finally, I invited them to explain to me why those who accuse them of having an electoral motive for wanting less social housing, particularly in marginal electoral areas, are wrong.
I also wrote to Greg Hands, asking him to tell me why he had asked the Commons library for the statistics about social housing levels in parliamentary constituencies. I've yet to receive a reply from Hands, but both Greenhlagh and Moss have got back to me. Greenhalgh referred me to a recent article he wrote for Estates Gazette, in which he again argues his case in favour of the Earls Court project - a major redevelopment proposal which H&F says would maintain existing social housing numbers in that part of the borough but would also see the construction of many time more new homes for private sale in a very expensive part of London. Moss replied at greater length. Here's the bulk of what he wrote:
When we wrote the article we expected the Conservatives to win a majority in the coming General Election, returning MPs in seats where there were higher percentages of social housing than in those seats Conservative MPs then largely represented. Our aim was to highlight to those campaigning in those seats we hoped to win why social housing policy was important to them and to argue for reforms which would increase opportunities for social tenants and start to tackle the evident levels of deprivation in areas with heavier concentrations of social homes.
I would refer you to pages 16 and 17 of our pamphlet, where we specifically bemoaned the fact that the overt politicisation of housing policy by Herbert Morrison, ("Build the Tories out of London") and Shirley Porter, ("Building Stable Communities"), had led to a reluctance among politicians to discuss reform. This has simply perpetuated the poor outcomes suffered by many people living in social housing, so thoroughly exposed by the Hills report and referred to many times by Sir Robin Wales among others. The sad fact is that those who suffer most from those poor outcomes are almost wholly disengaged from the political process, irrespective of how they might vote.
I'm pleased to see that some of our recommendations have been followed, specifically the end of the HRA subsidy system and the extension of greater powers to Local Authorities to build new homes, both to rent and for low-cost home ownership. We need more homes and more affordable homes and as Hackney, Greenwich, Lambeth and Southwark Councils have all recognised, large scale estate regeneration is one of the best ways for Local Authorities to deliver this using assets they control, rather than relying on a private development market which is largely stalled.
Earls Court may be the largest and most ambitious such scheme in London, but at its core is the same desire to build more homes and to create more jobs for local people. That it succeeds where many other such schemes have failed; in delivering an increase in affordable homes and in ensuring all re-located tenants get to stay local, is a credit to the team that are delivering it.
Does Slaughter's case stack up or has it been dismissed? You decide.
London politics
London
Housing
Regeneration
Dave Hill
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