Why I have joined the labour party

A few weeks ago I joined the Labour Party. On the political spectrum, I have always been somewhere between Labour and the Green Party. There are large portions of both  their recent manifestos that I agree with, but a few things in each that I don't.

I have been involved, in a very small way, with both parties previously, but have never fully committed to either. This is partly due to uncertainty about which to opt for, partly because there were elements of their policies that I disagreed with, and partly because I was not motivated or political enough to commit.

After the 2015 general election, I vowed to become more politically aware and more politically active. That's why I started this blog in the first place and why I have been listening to podcasts on weekly basis, reading more political articles online and in newspapers, and sharing more political posts on the Facebook.

This year's general election was a revelation for me. For the first time, I felt a connection with one of the leaders who stood a realistic chance of becoming Prime Minister. There had been party leaders I connected with previously, such as Caroline Lucas, and potential Prime Ministers who I liked, such as Ed Miliband (who I like even more now he's a bit freer and a bit more amusing) but never a potential Prime Minister who I felt a connection with and who I felt was believable and honest.

I appreciate that there are elements of Labour party policy (such as renewal of Trident) and also parts of Corbyn's own beliefs (such as the abandonment of HS2 and to a lesser extent, the abandonment of the monarchy) that I might not agree with. However, I think it is highly unlikely that I will agree on everything with anybody, and the world would be a very boring place if that were so.

And so, I have, along with a large number of other people, taken the step to become a member of the Labour party.

I know that Corbyn as a leader isn't to everyone's tastes, both inside and outside of the party. However, his views are much closer to my own than any previous government in my lifetime. He also seems like one of the most honest and down to earth politicians currently around.

I remember the excitement when Tony Blair and New Labour won the 1997 election. I was just too young to vote at that point, but I felt that perhaps a fundamental change had happened in the country. I was born in the year that Margaret Thatcher came into power and so my whole life to that point had been under a Conservative government.

Things did change, however perhaps not as much as I had expected. New Labour were very much a centrist government and so I feel that I have lived my whole life under a right wing or centrist government that doesn't represent me. I'd love for us to elect a left-wing government that resonates with more of my views, along with those of many of my friends and peers.

I hope that the surge in Labour party members (a party which is funded by its members rather than large donors like the Conservative party) helps to make a difference and helps to make that happen, and that I will be able to play a part in it, however small that may be.

A letter to my MP on public sector pay increases

Dear Mr Collins,

I am writing to you as a response to the vote on the Labour amendment to the Queen’s speech which was voted down this past week.

I am aware that I may not have the same views as you on several matters, and public sector pay increases may be one of them. I therefore appreciate that when votes such as this come up in the House of Commons, they might not result in the outcome that I would desire.

However, I find the reaction of several Conservatives when the result of the vote was announced to be unacceptable. Were you one of the MPs who cheered the outcome of the vote? Do you think it is appropriate for your colleagues to do so?

What the MPs were cheering was a vote to deny a pay increase to some of the most important people in our society. Doctors, nurses, firemen, policemen – those who care for our health and our safety – are among those being denied increases. I fear that if their salaries continue to decline in real terms, that we will struggle to find people to fill these vital professions.

I can understand that the Conservative party has different views on the issue to myself, but literally cheering when you are denying these people a pay rise seems cruel and heartless.

I have calculated how an unqualified nurse’s pay would have changed since 2010, when the policy of austerity was first introduced. At that point, NHS say the nurse’s salary would have been £17,000. Since that time, they would have had a pay increase of 1% every year from 2012, meaning their salary would now be £18,046, a cumulative increase of 6.2%.

Inflation in the years from 2010 to 2017 (with an average figure used for the months of 2017 to date) has been 3.3%, 4.5%, 2.8%, 2.6%, 1.5%, 0.0%, 0.7% and 2.4%. Had the nurse’s salary kept up with inflation, it would be £20,258 now, so the nurse would be £2,212 or 12.3% worse off in real terms. This shortfall is, I imagine, the reason why we have been hearing stories of nurses having to use food banks.

As a comparison, MPs salaries in 2010 – when you were first elected – was £65,738. It is soon to rise to £76,011. This is a cumulative increase of 15.6%, significantly higher than the nurse’s 6.2%.

To apply inflation to MPs salaries, you would now be at £78,337 – a difference of £2,326. So in absolute terms, the shortfall against inflation is only slightly different to that of the nurse but in relative terms, it is only 3.1% behind inflation, compared to the nurse’s salary which is 12.3% behind inflation.

I am aware that independent bodies advise on these increases and so it is largely outside of your control. The power to award public pay increases is within the control of parliament. When your government continues denying those in the public sector an increase and making them fall significantly behind inflation is in my opinion cruel in its own right, but when those voting for it are being rewarded much closer to inflation and earning substantially more than the median wage, it becomes ethically questionable.

I was hoping you could explain to me why you voted against this amendment to allow my partner as well as several of my friends in your constituency a pay increase, whether you think it is appropriate for elected representatives to cheer when denying pay increases to their constituents, and whether you think it is morally defensible for MPs to continue to deny them the proposed increase when your own salaries are increasing at a higher rate.

Yours sincerely,

Stewart Cork

Labour and their perceived economic incompetence

Labour have, historically, been portrayed as party of economic incompetence. The note left by Liam Byrne in 2010 clearly didn't help matters. But it wasn't just this. For some reason, the fact that they seem to care more about the workers than about big businesses has always led some people to think that they will be unable to run the economy.

The smartest thing that they have done in this election campaign is to have a fully costed manifesto. Every penny that will be spent is balanced with every penny that will come in. And yet, they are still being attacked on their economic competence.

Diane Abbott didn't help things when getting her numbers in a twist, but the man currently in charge of all of the government's money, chancellor of the exchequer Philip Hammond did a very similar thing and was not criticised in anywhere near as strong terms as Abbott was.

The Conservatives have still tried to attack Labour's numbers and their economic ability, despite there being very few numbers of their own in the Conservative manifesto. One of the few that is in there is the fact that they will get rid of free school dinners give each child 7p for breakfast every day, the equivalent of a few cornflakes without any milk. Literally snatching food away from them in the same way that Maggie Thatcher snatched kids milk back in the 1980s.

They have come up with a catchphrase of the "magic money tree," despite the fact that there is a nice neat little table explaining where all the money will be coming from without any mention of fauna. They are clearly leaning on the lingering perception that the public have no confidence in how Labour will handle the country's finances. They could criticise each of the measures but they have instead elected to just play on voter's emotions.

They then attack the missing spend on nationalising energy companies, train companies, royal mail. This is a bit of a misnomer. The Labour manifesto clearly budgets for all revenue income and expenditure. Any company would then budget for capital spend separately as you would not expect it to pay for itself at the time of purchase.

All of these nationalisation projects would be accounted for separately as they are investment projects. When a business is looking a similar project, such as an acquisition, they would be looking at the future income streams of the company they are intending to purchase and when that would be paid back.

They would use technical accounting concepts such as net present value (NPV) which works out using the cost of borrowing money and the expected future cash flows whether it is a worthwhile investment.

Where there is a difference in the cost of acquisition over the cost of the company's assets, this is put on the balance sheet as an intangible item known as goodwill. This would be things such as the customer base, reputation, staff qualifications or anything else that can't be quantified exactly. This goodwill would then be depreciated each year. This means that a portion of the additional cost of these intangible items will be charged against income each year. This is a basic concept of accounting known as the accruals concept which involves making sure that the money you make and the cost of making that money are matched off against each other.

So the reason why this isn't in Labour's costings is because it is outside of the annual spend that they have detailed. You could still try to claim that it is missing, however to include it would have given away how much they are willing to spend on the acquisition of these companies (as Theresa May has said with regards to the EU, she doesn't want to show her hand as it is a poor negotiating tactic) but also because it would have required a full set of calculations that would have probably only been understood by those with accounting experience. There are also large number of assumptions which would need to be made.

Let's look at an example. We will take Royal Mail as it is fully traded on the London Stock Exchange and easy to get data for.

I will simplify this rather than doing a full in depth accounting analysis in an attempt to make sure that all readers can understand this.

Their profit for the financial year to the end of March 2017 was £273m. As of today (5th June 2017), the market capitalisation of the Royal Mail is £4,391m. Market capitalisation is simply the number of shares multiplied by the current price per share. This gets you the value of the company. So if Labour wanted to buy the Royal Mail, they would need to spend £4.4 billion pounds in order to buy out all the current shareholders.

For the sake of argument, let's assume that Royal Mail will make a profit of £273m per year, adjusted for inflation, which the Bank of England suggests will be 2.8% next year. We will assume inflation stays at the same rate for the future. Therefore profits next year will be £273m x 102.8% = £281m. The year after, they would be £281m x 102.8% = £289m etc.

The government probably doesn't have £4.4 billion lying around to buy up the shares, so they would need to borrow the money. Again, for the sake of argument, let's assume that the government can borrow at the Bank of England base rate which currently stands at 0.25%. This is unlikely, but to be able to do any calculations, we will assume this is so. The government would then owe an additional 0.25% of the total outstanding loan value each year, which would be added onto the total borrowing. For ease of calculation, let's assume that the government borrows this all on the last day of 2017 and repayments start in 2018.

Let's assume that the government pays back £200m per year.

Under these assumptions, as can be seen in the table below, the loan would be entirely paid off by the end of 2040 and in addition to this, Royal Mail would be adding funds to the UK purse every year (as the profit each year is above the £200m repayments) which could then be spent on other things. After 2040, all Royal Mail profits would be able to be reinvested into other services as there would no longer be interest payments.

We can increase the rate of borrowing and see what happens. If we raise it to 2% but retain the same rate of payments (£200m per year) then we are still adding additional funds to the UK purse. The only difference is that the loan isn't fully paid off until the end of 2047.

So we can see that as long as we can keep the repayments less than the expected profit that any of these industries make, and as long as we can secure enough borrowing to acquire all the organisations that we wish to nationalise, then it could become both profitable to the country as well as the fact that we could control prices for consumers and also the quality of the product.

Obviously this will increase the national debt, however you have to spend money to make money. Many of us borrow money to buy mortgages on our house. Most companies have to borrow start up capital. It is no different to this. In fact it is better, because unlike a start up business which is likely to lose money in its first year, we know that Royal Mail, Southern Rail (£29.3m in 2015), British Gas (£553m in 2016) and the like are all profitable and will provide a return on their investment.

Increasing the national debt is not in itself a bad thing, as long as when you increase it you have a plan to pay it back. Nationalisation includes a built in plan to pay back this money and also to make a profit.

The Labour government see this as a long term investment, unlike the Conservative government who have a history of selling parts of our national infrastructure off to private investors for a short term income gain but losing the long term benefit of the income stream.

Who Am I Voting For? A poem about the election

I'm not voting for me,
I've got enough cash
But I know each of us are just a few steps away
From falling in the trash.

So I'm voting for those who have fallen
And those yet to fall.
I'm voting for my countrymen, one and all.
Not just the men but the women too,
Including all of those who have suffered abuse
And are now being asked to prove
That their child was born as a result of rape.
What are we, apes?

No, we are human beings
But we seem to forget that others have feelings.
We seem to believe they're not deserving of aid
Just because of how much they get paid.
I'm voting for those on zero hours contracts

Who never know how much they'll get in their pay check,
Living day to day, unsure if they can make the rent.

I'm voting for those in the public sector
Whose pay has been frozen for several years.
I’m voting for those who the government reduce to tears
Or even worse – those who have died
After being told they are fit for work
Or, from stress, committed suicide.

I'm voting for the overworked teachers
Who spend their own money on materials, so the kids can learn
Even though they don’t have money to burn.

I'm voting for the tired nurse
Who works extra hours at the end of her shift
And I’m voting for those who need treatment
But for months have been on the waiting list.

I'm voting for those without a home to call their own
Those who the council are unable to home
Who live on the streets or on a friend’s floor
Or told who are told to relocate to another town.

I’m voting for the student who isn’t sure
If university is something that they can afford.

I'm voting for those less fortunate than myself,
I’m voting for those who will never see wealth.
Because in the future it may be me,
And I want to live in a caring society.

I'm voting for those who feel they were lied to
By politicians of all colours, red orange or blue.

I'm voting for hope.
I'm voting for change.
 I'm voting for a man who will do what he says.

The future of housing

A month ago, I wrote a post detailing how the conservatives have been destroying social housing.

As a follow up, I thought I would look at the housing policies contained in the manifestos of the two main parties and give my thoughts on them.

For a handy summary, see page 8 of my friend's manifesto summary.

Let's start with the Conservative's manifesto.

Aim to eliminate rough sleeping by 2027

"To achieve this we will set up a new homelessness reduction taskforce that will focus on prevention and affordable housing, and we will pilot a Housing First approach to tackle rough sleeping."

I have no idea what this means other than that they're going to employ some people to try to stop people living on the streets. I'm not sure how useful this will be. When people end up on the streets, they may have been failed by the support systems. Another support system would be good, but we could just invest more in the current systems. Affordable housing is malleable term, as I discussed in my last post on housing. This is largely just a sticking plaster, trying to eliminate the symptoms of the problem rather than the causes (e.g. unaffordable housing, low paid work, income inequality etc).

Ban letting agent fees

This - or a form of it - appears in the Tory, Labour and LibDem manifestos, so I think it's safe to say it's getting done. It's a good idea in principle. Letting agents charge through the roof for upfront fees and checks which can be a barrier to some people acquiring suitable accommodation. My worry with this is whether the agents will not want to lose out and so will load fees onto monthly rent which might cause landlords to increase the rent they are asking for, which may have a knock on effect on average rental prices.

Modernise home buying process so it is less costly

There is little detail on this, so I'm not sure what they plan to do. The fees when you buy a house are valuation fees, surveyors fees, estate agent fees and solicitors fees. I'm not sure which off these the government really feels they have control over. The only thing they could really do to help purchasers would be to remove the VAT on these fees.

Improve protection for renters

They will encourage landlords to offer longer tenancies. There is absolutely no detail on how they will do this. Some landlords are restricted on the length of tenancy they can offer by their mortgage lender, so it might be that the government would need to start there. However, 93% of landlords (who own 81% of UK rental properties) only own one property. This is the situation I am in because I have moved in with my partner and rented out my property. Landlords in this situation may not want to be locked into a long term tenancy as they may need to sell their property when their family needs to move to a larger home.

Deliver 2015 commitment to deliver one million homes by 2020 and another half million by 2022

Whilst there is some contention about the current rate of housebuilding (partly due to measuring it on starts and completions), the figure for 2015/16 is somewhere between 140,000 and 164,000. We would need to be producing homes at a rate of 200,000 a year for the first five years and then 250,000 a year for the next two in order to hit this commitment. We are currently significantly short of this number.

The issues with increasing this number are multiple. Firstly, there needs to be the funding available. Many housing associations are struggling due to rental cuts as I mentioned before.

There needs to be the land available. Unquestionably, there is enough land in the UK to build this number of houses, however getting started on it is tricker. Some companies have been land banking (holding onto land until the value rises), and some land is designated green land which is always contentious when you attempt to build there. Living near a proposed garden town, I have seen a lot of local resistance to building.

There needs to be adequate infrastructure - roads, rail links, doctors, schools etc. If you attempt to build in an area without the infrastructure in place or at least planned, then you will create more problems than you solve.

Finally, and most importantly, we do not have enough labour to increase the number as significantly as promised. The construction industry would need to recruit significantly more workers in order to keep up with demand. Previously, it has also relied on workers from inside the EU, and when we leave in a couple of years time, this might put further demands on the workforce.

Give councils power to intervene where developers don't act on planning permission

This is a good idea. I don't know why they've not done it before. It seems like a quick win.

Build new fixed-term social housing which will be sold privately after 10-15

Yes to more social housing but no to making it be sold! Seriously, the government hasn't learnt that they have not been replacing social housing at the rate it is being sold off under the right to buy. This is a stop gap solution which will exacerbate the problem for the next generation. Keep social housing as social housing. The Conservatives talk about not wanting to burden the future generations with debt, but they are happy to burden them with other problems.

Let's move on to the Labour manifesto.

Build 100,000 more council and housing association homes for genuinely affordable rent or sale

What I like best about this is that it suggests they are going to redefine the term affordable that the government keeps redefining in order to make it actually means what it says again.

They have pledged to create a new Department for Housing which will aim to tackle the crisis by improving the number, standards and affordability of homes, prioritising brownfield sites. A department for housing is a great idea and is long overdue.

Powers for councils to build the homes the communities need

This is a good idea in principle, as councils will be able to more easily understand local demands. I'm worried that if it turns into a situation with councils forcing home building on local communities that this will cause conflict. Our local council have been pushing ahead with house building plans despite lots of local opposition who claim council abuse of their powers, and I can only see it getting worse if these powers increase.

Suspend right to buy until councils prove they can replace them like for like

This is great. This would mean that the number of social homes is maintained whilst allowing people to get a foot on the housing ladder. This was a conservative promise which has been broken.

One main problem with selling off social housing without replacing it in the local area is social cleansing, which has been most pronounced in London as councils have been trying to move residents to Birmingham.

Labour's policy would ensure that people can stay in the community where they live, where they children go to school, where their friends and families and support networks are.

I think the only downside might be residents who want to buy but where the council isn't able to build, but I'm sure there are solutions to that.

Inflation cap on rent rises and three year tenancies as the norm

I am in favour of an inflation cap. This will help people retain their tenancies rather than having landlords impose high rent inflation on them and force them out of their home. Three year tenancies I am a little more torn on. There are instances when this is not right for either the landlord or the tenant. Some people will only want to be in a certain place for a short length of time. As long as there are adequate ways to terminate the tenancy earlier, this should be a good policy.

Ban letting agents fees for tenants

This was discussed earlier as the Conservatives have also promised this.

Plan to end rough sleeping within the parliament 

There seems to be a good plan behind this. They will make available 4,000 additional homes reserved for people with a history of rough sleeping. They have pledged to reverse the Tory cuts to welfare which have forced some people into homelessness. They will be safe guarding homeless hostels and supported housing which has suffered under this government.

They also pledge to deal with the causes rather than just the effect which was discussed in the Conservative manifesto, which means they are offering a more long-term solution to the problem.

How much extra tax will I pay under labour?

The answers is probably none.

After the media sent out conflicting scaremongering messages about the pledges in the Labour manifesto, I decided to look into it myself.

The current rates on income tax are 20% for earnings between £11,500 and £45,000, 40% for earnings between £45,000 and £150,000 and 45% for earnings above that.

If you earn £11,500 or less, you will pay no income tax at all. If you earn £11,501, you don't suddenly start paying 20% on all £11,501. You will just pay it on earnings above £11,500, i.e. on £1. So you would just pay 20p tax.

This is something that seems to confuse some people. You pay a percentage on everything you earn that falls within that band.

The proposal in the Labour manifesto is that the banding for the 45% tax rate will begin at £80,000 rather than £150,000 and there will be a new 50% tax rate for any income above £123,000.

I have created a chart below which shows these changes. The max tax for the band and max additional tax are the important numbers. If you earn up to £11,500, you can see that the maximum tax for the band is £0 and this is the same under both the current and proposed tax rates.

If you earn between £80,000 and £123,000, the current maximum tax you could pay (if you earn at the top of the band) is £37,899 per year. Under the new system, this will increase to £40,049, an increase of £2,150.

So for the majority of people, there will be no additional tax. Their proposed changes are intended to only affect 5% of the workforce who earn over £80,000. The current workforce stands at 31.95 million, so 5% works out to be around 1.6 million people. This sounds like a lot and the press have been using this number to attempt to make their readership angry about it.

However, it is important to remember this is only for the top 5% of earners. If we look at a list of salaries by profession, we can see the sorts of people who will be affected by this. The list is from 2015 so is slightly out of date. We can see that those professions where the average salary is over £80,000 include Chief Executives and Senior Professionals, brokers, aircraft pilots and flight engineers, marketing directors and sales directors.

You are not talking about your average Joe.

As well as the newspapers using the tax rises to turn the public against the Labour party, the Conservatives have plain lied about what the tax rises are. The tweet below was sent earlier this week. Whilst we have seen that just over a million people will be affected, the tweet uses the word "millions" which suggests that many more people will be affected than actually would be.

It also says that they will be increasing the basic rate of income tax to 25p. 25p in every pound would be an effective tax rate of 25% and as we've seen, this is not any part of the proposal and is an outright lie.

It is this sort of electioneering (along with the £350 million for the NHS bus pledge) which make the public disillusioned with politics and politicians.

It is my #publicduty to tell you about the destruction of social housing at the hands of the Conservatives

I have been thinking about writing this for quite some time. The recent #publicduty hashtag on Twitter has prompted me to do so as I love a good bandwagon.

I have worked for a housing association for around two and a half years. In that short time, I have seen the systematic reduction of social housing, using aggressive tactics to decrease the number of houses available for social tenant and making it more difficult for individuals to get and maintain social housing tenancies.

What is social housing?

Let me start by explaining what social housing is, as I didn't understand fully when I started working in the sector. Around half of social housing is what most people would know as council housing. The other half is housing through other social landlords, the majority of which are housing associations.

Social housing is characterised by one thing - it is available at less than the market rent. The average social rent in England is £82 per week. Whereas the median market rent in England is £650, which equates to around  £151, which is almost twice as much.

Why is social housing needed?

The reasons that people need social housing are varied. The classic stereotype is that people who live in social housing are unemployed benefit scroungers. Around 3.3 million in social housing claim housing benefit. This is out of a total of 4.1 million who live in social housing, so around 80% of social housing tenants claim housing benefit.

There are a number of reasons why people would need to claim benefit. The most obvious is that their income is not enough to allow them to live on whilst paying their rent. To counter the stereotype, it is important to now that only 8% of those living in social housing are unemployed. Others who living in social housing may be retired, disabled, carers or simply in low paid work which does not allow them to sustain their tenancy without financial assistance.

At some point, all of us may have the need for, or know others who have the need for social housing.

Why is social housing in danger?

There have been several attacks on the numbers of social housing numbers and social housing tenants since the coalition came into government in 2010. I will outline what I think are the key ones which have resulted in many people struggling to get or maintain a tenancy.

Affordable Rent

One of the first things that the coalition government did in terms of housing was to introduce what they termed Affordable Rent. They encouraged councils and housing associations to convert housing from social housing to affordable rent homes when they came up for re-let. As a result of this, the amount of stock in social housing has reduced.

Affordable Rent can be up to 80% of market rates. According to Shelter, The average is 71% compared to social tenancies which are generally around 50% of market rent. Tenancies are also less secure than social rented tenancies.

As a result of all of this, those in need of it are more likely to struggle to find somewhere they can afford at a social rent. They will then most likely have to look at affordable rent or private tenancies which they will potentially struggle to afford. As they have less security in their tenancy, they are more likely to be evicted if they fall into arrears.

Over 170 tenants were evicted every day in 2015, which is 53% higher than when the coalition government took over in 2010. There has also been an increase of 24% in Scotland since that point.

Right to Buy

The Conservatives have always placed a focus on home ownership. Originally brought in by Maggie Thatcher's government, the Right to Buy (RTB) was brought in to allow tenants to buy their council house under certain circumstances.

Whilst on the face of it, this looks like a good idea, it has had lots of repercussions that are bad for those in need of social housing. 40% of council homes sold under RTB are now being rented out in the private sector.

So instead of allowing people to own their own homes, it allowed them to become private landlords. It had the double effect of reducing the number of housing units available for social tenants and increasing the supply of the expensive private rented sector. Fewer social homes were therefore available for the same number of people who needed them.

The Conservatives pledged to extend RTB to housing association tenants in their 2015 manifesto. This met with resistance from housing associations because of the problem of reducing social housing stock as it did with the original RTB. Under pressure to comply, several housing associations grouped together to offer a voluntary RTB scheme to allow them to retain some control over the situation.

This new RTB is offering discounts of over £100,000 if you meet certain conditions. The way that this is being funded is by forcing councils to sell their own housing stock in order to reimburse the housing associations. This could result in the sale of 23,500 council homes per year, according to Shelter.

Whilst housing associations are being compensated in full, and expected to use the money to fund replacements on a one for one basis. There are problems with this which include the time it takes to build a replacement home, and also the availability of land in the area in which the home is sold. In overcrowded areas, it is unlikely that a home will be built anywhere near the one sold and this could result in social cleansing. The fact is that one for one replacement isn't working.

What the voluntary right to buy is accomplishing is removing two homes from the social housing sector for every one sold, with a promise that one of those two will be replaced in the near future. This results in a decline in social housing stock, meaning more bad news for those on the housing waiting lists.

Section 106

Section 106 agreements are part of almost every planning applications for large housing schemes. This meant that a certain percentage of every scheme had to be set aside for affordable housing. This generally meant that there was a large number of Affordable Rent units being built. However, changes to regulation meant that Shared Ownership properties were being classed as affordable. Shared Ownership properties are effectively part-purchase, part rent properties. They are great for helping people to get on the housing ladder. They are not great for helping those in need of social housing. The term affordable effectively becomes meaningless. The percentage of new social housing was reduced, resulting in further delays for anyone on the waiting list.

Rent reductions

In the 2015 Budget Statement, George Osborne announced a 1% rent reduction for those in social housing. This sounds like a great idea. If a tenant is paying their social rent, they will be slightly better off. If a tenant has housing benefit, the government will have less of a welfare burden.

If you scrape the surface of this, you will see what is also happening is that housing associations are getting less income. They are therefore not able to build as many new homes as they would have previously been able to. An estimate at the time was that 14,000 fewer homes would be built annually.

The policy was intended as a vote winner, attempting to attract those in social housing (generally not the Conservatives target demographic). The impact of reduced housing benefit is relatively minimal for the government, yet relatively significant for housing associations.

The result of the policy is fewer houses being built in the social housing sector, and possibly housing associations needing to remove properties from the social sector in order to make them financially viable. Genesis said that it was no longer feasible for them to build social housing, and others may follow.

All of this again increases waiting lists.

Welfare reforms

Another vote winner is the benefit cap. This was introduced as an upper limit on the benefits that individuals could receive during the year. This played well with some sections of the electorate, as those on benefits have been demonised in the certain sections of the media who call them scroungers.

The level of the cap is entirely arbitrary. It doesn't take into accounts the needs of individuals, and has left many struggling. After other benefits are taken into account, such as child benefit or disability benefit, many are left with a reduced amount left for their housing. A recent Panorama found that some people are being given just 50p per week housing benefit. This puts people at risk of falling into arrears, losing their tenancy and potentially becoming homeless.

Fit for human habitation law

This is not specifically for social housing but an important point that I want to raise. I use the word law but in reality this is a law that doesn't exist. Conservative MPs voted down an amendment to the Housing and Planning Bill which would have seen a law meaning that homes had to meet minimum basic standards before they could be rented out. 72 of the MPs who voted down the amendment receive an income of over £10,000 from properties each year. This suggests that they are happy to receive money from homes which are not habitable for human beings.

Conclusion

The changes in policy have been hitting social housing hard. Collectively they have resulted in fewer homes being available for social housing rent. This means that those in need of it are going to struggle more to find something that they can afford. Waiting lists go up. People become more desperate.

They are more likely to need to look at market rents which they may not be able to maintain and might end up evicted, and it will be easier to evict them as their tenancies in the private rented sector will be less secure.

A lot of these policies are vote winners, designed to attract certain demographics of the electorate with no thought for the consequences on individuals. As can be seen for the fit for human habitation amendment being voted down, the Conservatives don't care what conditions you have to live in.

It is a systematic attack on the people who are least likely to vote for the Conservatives in an attempt to gain votes from the middle ground. And human beings are suffering because of it.