Fact or fiction

The Conservative Party has lovingly tended to the benighted folk of the United Kingdom for the last 12 years. Keen to ignite aspiration in all aspects of public life, the canny Tories have noticed that lots of people live in homes, so haven’t been shy in coming up with lots of awesome policies in that arena. Here are five of them – well, four, as one’s a lie!

In the days before Brexit, Covid and Will Smith slapping that bloke, the Tories cooked up a fine plan to charge council housing tenants earning £30,000 a year market or near market rents. Amazingly, the idea was very poorly thought through. Critics pointed out that social landlords didn’t have the power to compel tenants into revealing their salaries, while others noted that the scheme could encourage some to reduce hours and so on to avoid hitting the threshold. Gavin Barwell, the then housing minister, quietly binned the plan in late 2016.

The Tories then had another terrific idea: build 200,000 homes and sell them at a 20% discount to young people desperately trying to get on the housing ladder. Astonishingly, the plot somehow went horribly wrong, as it was abandoned in 2020 without a single home being built – BUT £173m was spent on land to site the fantasy properties. With the Conservatives famously being the party of thrift and sound budgetary planning, the fiscal flop is a small blemish on an otherwise spotless economic record.

The Tories and their Lib Dem enablers finally wrested the country from Labour’s paws in 2010, and soon set about a series of extremely popular and inspirational policies, often festooned upon the population via the lips of political rock stars such as Iain Duncan Smith and Lord Freud. One of these cherished strategies was the so-called bedroom tax, which saw social housing tenants deemed to be under-occupying their properties docked up to 25% of their housing benefit. Naysayers and victims alike complained that the scheme was ill-judged, unfair, ridiculous and cruel. But the government stuck to its guns, and, despite the odd courtroom battle, the policy continues to bring equilibrium to Britain’s spare rooms to this day.

In 2011, the Tories first of many housing ministers, Grant Shapps (or whatever he’s called) announced plans to offer tenants “a Cashback deal worth billions to take control of their own homes”. Shapps chirped that the UK’s social landlords spend an average of £1,000 per property annually fixing problems (though current evidence suggests in many cases significantly less than that’s being spent), so what if tenants did the jobs themselves and then claimed it back; for example, by carrying out their own DIY, or commissioning it locally and pocketing any savings made? Yet another amazing idea, virtually impervious to disaster.

Though he lasted only three weeks in the job, particularly transient housing minister Mark Jones revealed plans for his “homes zones” during 2014’s Conservative Party conference in Swindon. The scheme involved earmarking certain areas for the exclusive use of housing social tenants. Literally physically ringfenced with vast fences, these zones would contain homes, factories, and basic medical and educational facilities. Jones boasted that his blueprints for an encampment in Cumbria would “provide suitable living conditions for 55 million unskilled workers in a square mile of currently infertile wasteland”. The internees were also to be furnished with “a communal television, a soccer pitch, a chips and beer hall, and dormitories” to help them relax during fortnightly periods of “reflection and introspection that will offer spiritual release while rewarding a growing sense of self-worth”. Sadly for Jones, then communities secretary Eric Pickles slammed the idea, complaining that keeping the inhabitants within the boundaries of their zones would be “too costly”. Jones was shuffled out of the cabinet two weeks later.

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