Contribution
As someone who lived in social housing and whose eldest daughter was a squatter in Brixton and who got into social housing through squatting empty buildings and being involved in the squatting movement in the 1970s, I am very interested in using resources that are never used correctly. In the early days of the Big Issue, when we set out on the road not only to get people off the streets but to get them into housing, we found that one of the big stumbling blocks, under every Government, including the wonderful Government in which the noble Lord, Lord Young, then Sir George Young, was Minister of Housing, was that there were so many legal reasons why we could not grab hold of the thousands of empty units of social housing that could be used for social good.
When we move forward 35 years—because it was our 35th anniversary last week—we come to the realisation that we have this absolutely brilliant means of helping the Government to meet their target of providing as many people as possible with social housing, but the stumbling block is planning, local authorities and ownership. There is a plethora of reasons why we cannot just say, “Here is a person in need”, or a family in need, “and here is a property in need”, in the sense that it is empty, it is vacant, it is not carrying out any social purpose, and melding them together. There are so many impediments to this actually happening.
When the Big Issue started, 35 years ago, we were very involved in the empty homes movement because we could see, not just from our own experience, that this was a completely wasted resource and that society should grasp it and do two things. One is to house people, and the other is to get rid of waste, get rid of redundant property, and get rid of the idea that there were people out there who, as much as they needed housing, could not use the opportunity to take over these properties. In the early days, the Big Issue was a pain in the rear. We were doing things and occupying places, we were shouting and we were demonstrating in Parliament Square and all sorts of things—but very little has changed, if you look at the problem. Whatever Government come in, they always tell you why they cannot achieve the simple thing of putting need with resources.
I will be campaigning at the various conferences at the end of the month and into next month to do something very simple around the problem of social housing. We know that, over the past 40 years, nearly 2 million houses have been removed from the social sector and sold on, because Margaret Thatcher and her acolytes wanted to spread middle-class values and property ownership into the working classes. I agree with that. I hate the idea that we still have a working class, 35 years after the Big Issue and 80 years after I was born in the slums of Notting Hill, where everybody seemed working class. I am disappointed that we have not dismantled our class system.
I can see why this Government and many others, including Tony Blair’s, have not done that. By the way, the idea of people buying their social homes was not a Conservative one. I had an argument with the present Lord Speaker, and he upbraided me when I said that this started in Callaghan’s Cabinet, which looked at the idea of buying social housing and was doing a big event—and we, as a Marxist-Engelist-Leninist-Trotskyist group, did our best to stop that Labour Government becoming too Conservative.
The point is that we have a problem, and I would love any help that we can get in bringing together need and resource. What can we do? Forgive me, but, while I love this Labour Government and Andy Burnham, who I have known on and off over the years, along with the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor—they are all brilliant, and we are all singing off the same hymn sheet—they all point to what happened to the last Government and the one before that and the one before that and say that there are imponderable reasons why we cannot just put need with resource.
I should say that, last night, I was out celebrating, and I did not get back to my hotel until about 5 am. I was celebrating that my son, who works with me, is going off to India, and celebrating my daughter. It was a wonderful opportunity, but I will not take up too much of our time with that. But here I am, to ask what we can sensibly do—and cut the blether and the impediments—to match need and resources. There are so many resources available in this country. I believe that one of the problems for every Government is that they have never been able to step back and do a social audit of the advantages and disadvantages in society, and grasp the opportunity. I am calling for us to get behind the idea that there is enormous resource, but every Government always put their hands in the air and say that they cannot do it, or can do only a limited amount about it. Let us end that and solve this problem. Need and resources—put them together.