Labour Missteps

The inability of the Labour government to define what it means by ‘working people’ is staggering. Many of us thought that it was a code for working class whatever in turn that meant. Over the weekend we found that a cabinet minister earning over £150,000 a year was ‘working people’ but not hard working self-employed tradesmen or company owners who brought in significant less such as £20,000 a year. This lack of understanding does not bode well for future government policy.

One of the other instances where the government has lost the plot has been over the winter fuel payments. Without having done a proper impact assessment, the Labour government has cut an important grant at the same time energy tariffs were going up by 10%. This particular piece of financial incompetence was driven by a desire to be tough, but it is too easy to do so on a vulnerable part of society which already fails to claim the benefits it is entitled to.

The other extreme from hitting pensioners is the impending disaster of increasing housing allocations for local councils. Government targets have been increased by around 80% and in most cases councils cannot meet these numbers. This results in developers being able to put forward applications which have to be waived through irrespective of the lack of infrastructure or suitability. Now we all know that we need more houses homes, but we already have over a million houses which have had planning permission but have not been built. Market absorption is where developers will only build where the local housing market will meet the developers’ price. Developers also want to deliver houses which produce the most profit and not those we require. We therefore have a shortage of smaller one or two-bedroom homes but lots of larger palatial builds which we cannot afford.

Where do we go from here? In both cases local councils, who often bear the brunt of London's decisions, have expressed their concerns and exasperation. Labour will be in power for another four years so it is our responsibility to challenge constructively.

Cllr Luigi Gregori

Lib Dem Parliamentary Spokesperson