New Labour. It’s a bit rubbish. Here’s an editorial piece for the next SR with some genuinely awful figures on the the number of council houses being built.

“By 2010 we will ensure that all social tenants benefit from a decent, warm home with modern facilities.” That’s what the Labour Party Manifesto said in 2005. How many council houses do you think were built in 2005? Half a million? One hundred thousand? No. Two hundred and thirty nine. That’s 239 without any missing zeroes or decimal points. To be fair to New Labour that’s a big rise from the 192 council houses built in 2001/2. These figures come from the government’s own publication Housing Statistics 2006. By contrast 1657 houses were constructed during John Major’s government in 1996. These numbers pale into insignificance compared with the 14,015 homes built by councils in 1990, or the 74,835 completed in 1980.

Campaign group Defend Council Housing (DCH) says that there are 1.6 million people on council house waiting lists. New Labour has turned its back on them. The private sector, that’s what the rest of us call property developers, construction companies and speculators, was allowed to build 191,722 houses in 2005. Virtually none of these would have been available or affordable for the working class families and the vulnerable people on the council waiting lists. They have to make do with expensive privately rented accommodation, overcrowded homes or staying with friends and relatives. Even New Labour’s preferred option, the “registered social landlords” (RSLs) were only able to build 19,600 homes. These RSLs are often staffed by former senior local government staff who see them as a way of quickly increasing their salary by switching over to what is really a branch of the private sector.

It’s sometimes said of New Labour that it is the reformist party that no longer makes reforms that benefit working class people. Ten years into a Labour government its housing policy is strong evidence that this is true. Blair gave the buffoonish John Prescott responsibility for housing to show what a low priority it was. His government oversaw the continuing sale of council homes and stock transfer programmes to give away council housing to New Labour supporters in the RSLs. New Labour is unlikely to meet its manifesto promise either. The Audit Commission has said that many councils are likely to miss the government’s target to meet new standards for “decent” homes by 2010.

In recent weeks Brown has been hinting that he has an ‘open mind’ about the fourth option for council housing, as an alternative to transfer, arm’s-length management and the private finance initiative. This is the solution developed by DCH and includes improving all existing council homes and estates, starting a new council house building programme and ensuring sufficient funds to maintain all council homes in future years. Though Brown qualified his remarks later by saying at a GMB conference that “he would look at ‘new means through which they can build houses’” It turns out, according to the magazine Inside Housing that all the deputy Labour leadership contenders support the fourth option. So they should. Their party conference has voted to support it three years in a row. The odd thing is that even though most of them were in government Blair was favouring the property speculators and disregarding Labour voters on the waiting lists.

Contrast the malign neglect of working class families to the care lavished on the the robbers barons of the private equity companies. You pay less tax on capital gains than on income. Go to work five or six days a week and you can pay 40 per cent tax. Buy companies, sack workers, devastate their pension funds and you pay as little as 5 per cent tax on an income of millions of pounds. The GMB says a total of 96 insolvent pension funds in the rescue schemes set up by the government have direct links to private equity owners. Even some of the private equity bosses are worried about the effect on their public image. Though this does not stop them evading tax completely by declaring themselves non-resident in Britain.

What does new Labour have to say about this? Brown’s long-time henchman Ed Balls said “private equity is an important part of the UK financial services sector and can play an important wider economic role creating jobs and developing companies.”

All these inequalities and injustices have developed and got worse during Brown’s time as Chancellor of the Exchequer. It’s certain that little will change when he becomes prime minister.