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item0048B 782, 783
782
11 August 2003
 More housebuilding
in the Thames Gateway
Few people,
indeed
few politicians, appreciate the depth of the house-construction crisis that
has struck this country. As a former housebuilder myself (Managing
Director within Bovis Homes, then Barratts - see biography) I have long been
close to the housing market. The housebuilding business remains the most
challenging, exciting business I have ever undertaken, and I still miss its
challenges and satisfactions.
As a country, the UK has
a national stock of 21m dwellings, although we do not know precisely what
proportion of the stock is usable, in structural, geographical and social
terms. That stock accommodates 59,000,000 people, therefore an average
occupancy of just under three-per-dwelling. It is common ground that
the population is likely to rise to 63m over the next 15/20 years, and that
will require an
additional 1.5m dwellings
- the majority of which will be required in London and the South-East.
Yet we are building
less than 200,000 houses per year - just 170,000 last
year, overwhelmingly in the private owner-occupied sector. There is no new
"Council house-building", and our systems for building housing for rent
through housing associations are very fragile indeed, complex and
unproductive.
This spells
disaster. And the greatest burdens will fall, as ever, on
the lowest-income households, who have the longest commuting requirements,
who
are forced out of convenient markets by wealthier residents, and find the
costs of accommodation the hardest to bear. We are building anew at
the rate of less than one-per-cent of our total
stock each year. Therefore it would take us more than
100 years merely to replace the current stock - let alone expand it by
1,500,000 dwellings.
We should be building at least 300,000 houses
every year, to meeting the impending requirement - if we are to avoid
further immiseration, social exclusion, and class tensions.
So the 300,000 houses planned for the Thames
Gateway make a minor contribution to this massive requirement. Much
more needs to be done -
-
By re-defining the Green Belt
to give more
people the chance to live within easy commuting distance of London while
enjoying a good semi-rural environment - the Government should follow the
example of the landed gentry and create large country parks (though public,
rather than private, in legal status) facilitating the development of
housing around and near such parks and improving the quality of life for
hundreds of thousands of Londoners;
-
By encouraging the
formation of new housing-for-rent companies along French lines, with tax incentives to enter and remain in the
private-rented market, and a commitment to produce 100,000 new rented
dwellings per year.
If we, the senior generation,
do not use our
insights to solve this problem - and quickly - we will bequeath to our
children a poisoned chalice of social division and resentment, huge and
growing wealth divides, increasing tensions and crime in a consumer society, and growing insecurity.
We
must govern for all our people, and strive
to give all our people a proper
place in the economic sun.
-
It's a matter of universal, and
mutual,
respect.
Do you share my concern about the
impending housing disaster? If so drop me a line
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783
11
August
2003
 Expanding
Prison Usage
I am dismayed
by
Labour's unprincipled penal strategy, with first Straw and then Blunkett bereft
of new ideas, merely depositing more and more of our fellow-citizens in
prison, to fester untrained and disregarded.
I am not a
starry-eyed ol' liberal, who believes that everyone is very nice really,
merely misunderstood.
I do accept
that for a variety of reasons it may be necessary to lock up a
fellow-citizen in prison, as the only way of holding the ring of civic
order. There is a complex interplay of tensions between victim
and criminal, between law-enforcers and law-breakers, between the collective
and the individual. And sometimes, just sometimes, imprisonment is the
best way to do that.
But it ought to be
a last resort. Every kind of alternative should be
tried first, while demonstrating as clearly as possible society's
disapproval of offending behaviour. I would go so far as to say that,
with the exception of the worst crimes against the person, imprisonment
should never be the first option - retribution, probation,
further education, training, tagging, surveillance, weekend detention, hard
community service - all these should be tried, with short detention terms
assigned for the failure to comply with the non-custodial programmes.
Prolonged incarceration should be a long-stop, an ultimate last resort.
And young adults (under 18) should not be imprisoned at all, unless
briefly for non-compliance with a non-custodial programme. For
their malefaction is our failure, and it is vital that their sense of
self-respect and self-worth in not destroyed by us, in the course of their
maturation.
Our very disciplinary measures, for the
enforcement of societal norms through the criminal law, should reflect our
respect for the sovereignty of the individual spirit. No attempt
should be made to break that spirit, however wrong the conduct may have
been.
-
It's a matter of
reciprocal
respect.
My fury and
disappointment endures, with the failure of my Labour
Government to reject private prison contracting.
I feel strongly about this. This is for me the
ultimate betrayal, by a Government, of its own citizens. It is a stain
upon the honour of Labour - and a stain which should be removed. The
illiberal American State pioneered the abandonment of its own citizens to
private contractors, and the Tories shamefully followed suit.
It was a profound error of judgment by Labour
to collude in this wrongful conspiracy. I am keenly aware that the
Home Office and the Prison Officers Association did not reach the highest
standards of public service, and the challenge of improving the Prison
Service in the 1980s was a real and present one. But it should have
been met, and should still be met, by the development of a "custodial public
service" of high quality and a dedicated public service ethos.
- As between State and citizen,
it's a matter
of
respect.
What do you think? Drop me a
line
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