We are starting to see a pattern in the announcements that Andy Burnham has made over his first few weeks as Prime Minister. He makes a promise that’s full of belief and righteousness, and then has to follow that up with a policy where the detail contains an admission that he hadn’t fully thought this one through.
Most notably, we’ve had the ‘end rough sleeping’ pledge, which, on contact with reality, turned into a plan for everyone to get a ‘route out of rough sleeping by Christmas’. This week, we saw the difference between Burnham’s argument that new affordable housing funding should be ‘dedicated to council housing’, and the reality.
This week, we saw the difference between Burnham’s argument that new affordable housing funding should be ‘dedicated to council housing’, and the reality
Housing Secretary Angela Rayner announced the first wave of funding for affordable homes – something Keir Starmer had actually set off when he was prime minister. What’s different now is that more of the homes are to be social housing. When Starmer’s government agreed the Social and Affordable Homes Programme (SAHP), it was more focused on the overall supply of housing, particularly private homes. But Burnham has long been much more focused on council housing, and argued when campaigning for his seat in Makerfield that the money should be ‘dedicated to council homes… I’m saying council homes because control matters’.
That doesn’t mean just council homes, but council homes rather than social housing run by housing associations. For those who don’t appreciate why this distinction matters, housing associations – charitable organisations which are not considered public bodies – are often seen as privatisation by stealth by the left of the Labour party.
The line ‘control matters’ is important, too, because the tradition that Burnham seems to be trying to appeal to here is one that believes councils are much more likely to make benign decisions than social landlords. It is not clear where the evidence comes for from this belief, but that’s the case in many areas of policymaking.
Anyway, the announcement lumps council and housing association control back in together. And it actually only sees three councils outside London being named as ‘strategic partners’ for the first wave of the SAHP money, which is £10 billion in total. Just 60 per cent of the SAHP funding will be for social rents. The rest are housing associations. Burnham’s rejoinder to any accusations that he’s already abandoning his commitment to council housing is that the government is also giving £46 million to local authorities over the next three years to help them develop their own capacity to build new homes. His housing minister Matthew Pennycook denied that it was a U-turn when he did the morning broadcast round, insisting: ‘Andy Burnham said he wanted to see more money spent on house-building. That’s exactly what we’re doing.’
It’s just that, as with the pledge to ‘end rough sleeping’ that turned into a pledge to give everyone ‘a route out of rough sleeping’, things turned out to be rather more complicated in government than during campaigning.
Now, making a pledge in primary colours that ends up having rather more to it in the detail isn’t unique to Burnham. It’s how effective politicians win both arguments and elections. But the question here is not whether Burnham is a good campaigner who knows how to make an argument for something – he undoubtedly is – but whether he himself knows that he’s going to end up with something far paler.
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