Housing

George Osborne will take to the Dispatch Box at 12:30pm today to deliver this year’s Autumn Statement — a mini-budget on the Treasury’s latest plans for spending and taxation. The Chancellor will also announce the results of the Spending Review, which will outline the cuts to departmental expenditure required to clear the deficit before 2020. Here’s what we already know about the Chancellor's big announcements today. ‘The biggest housebuilding programme since the 1970s’: Today’s FT reports that housing will be a key component of the Autumn Statement, with the Chancellor promising to build 400,000 new homes in England and shifting public subsidies from renting to buying.

The Housing and Planning Bill gets its second reading in the House of Commons this afternoon, and though Labour has been making angry noises about it, it won’t encounter as many problems as it might have done. This might ultimately be a bad thing for the Tories, though. The rebellion that won’t happen would have been on the right-to-buy for housing associations, which the Tories put in their manifesto, but which a number of their own MPs were deeply worried about. Housing associations were so worried about the impact of the government legislating to force them to sell off their homes that they made a voluntary offer to ministers to design their own scheme so that the government didn’t need to legislate.

The Liberal Democrats’ autumn conference rolls to a close today with Tim Farron's keynote address. In light of the party’s humiliating performance in May’s general election, the overwhelming theme of the Bournemouth gathering has been one of comfort and reconciliation. Unlike Labour’s conference next week, which is likely to have more self-loathing overtones, Farron is focusing on the positive side of the Lib Dem years in government and Nick Clegg’s leadership. In his speech today, the new Lib Dem leader will deny it was all a mistake: We are proud of what we did in Government.  Proud of our record and proud of our party.

PMQs today was interesting for all sorts of reasons. But one answer to a question which may have a longer-lasting impact than all the new politics stuff (which though quite welcome did feel a bit like someone making a show of going to the gym in January) may have completely escaped most people’s attention. It was this, from David Cameron in response to Jeremy Corbyn’s question about cutting rents: ‘What I would say to Steven, and to all those who are working in housing associations and doing a good job, is that for years in our country there was something of a merry-go-round. Rents went up, housing benefit went up, and so taxes had to go up to pay for that.

Labour MPs are in no mood to fake it. At Jeremy Corbyn’s first meeting with the Parliamentary Labour Party, there was no cheer as he entered the room, no raucous applause when he stood up to speak. Instead, all that could be heard outside in the corridor was a few rounds of mild, polite applause. For a new leader, this is quite unprecedented. Corbyn’s message was that he had three priorities as leader: housing, the elections in Scotland and Wales next year and a Labour government in 2020. He also tried to stress that he wanted to be an inclusive leader, emphasising that he didn’t want any change to party selection rules. In an attempt to reassure MPs, he said that Labour under him would not be against individual achievement and aspiration.

New communities secretary Greg Clark has the least enviable job in the cabinet: justifying the policy of extending the right-to-buy to housing association tenants. The policy, hastily put together in the early stages of the election campaign, was roundly condemned from across the political spectrum. Dominic Lawson, not a noted socialist, for example pointed out that unlike council homes the state does not own housing association properties and therefore has no right to sell them. It will, in effect, require compulsory purchase – and for the purpose of private gain. After 24 hours in the sunshine, the right-to-buy policy was hardly mentioned by the Conservatives for the rest of the election campaign.

The general election campaign has entered the final stretch and each day between now and polling day, we'll be producing a short lunchtime podcast looking at the day's campaign developments. Today, Fraser Nelson, James Forsyth, Isabel Hardman and I discuss Labour's new housing pledges, the 5,000 small businesses backing the Tories, the hysterical talk of the SNP threat — as well as the unfathomable state of the opinion polls.

Economists have for some time spoken of a ‘great inversion’ of London, whereby property price hikes in inner London, often linked to gentrification, has made suburbia comparatively more affordable. These changes, marked in the five years since David Cameron became Prime Minister, could have a profound effect on how the general election result pans out in the city. This is especially the case given the ability of such changes to affect the social and demographic makeup of London, as people from poorer backgrounds, the young and ethnic minorities are more likely to be susceptible to price increases in the private rental market.