Posted November 28, 2013
The following article appeared in the London Evening Standard on 11th November:
Published: 11 November 2013
Updated: 13:34, 11 November 2013
Labour should “apologise” for its poor record of building social housing, the party’s own London housing spokesman has said.
Tom Copley said it galled him that Margaret Thatcher’s government built more council flats and houses in a single year than Tony Blair and Gordon Brown managed over 13 years in power.
His remarks were attacked as too “bleak” by one of Labour leader Ed Miliband’s top lieutenants. But the Coalition Government’s housing minister said Mr Copley was right and called on Mr Miliband to say sorry.
At a conference organised by think tank the Centre for Labour and Social Studies, Mr Copley spoke about his role as Labour’s housing spokesman on the London Assembly.
He said: “As a Labour politician one of the things that really galls me is that there’s this statistic that more council homes were built in the last year of Thatcher’s government than were built in the 13 years of Labour government, and that’s something I think as a Labour Party we need to apologise for.” Official figures show only 6,330 council houses were completed from 1998 to 2010, compared with 17,710 in 1990 alone, which was Baroness Thatcher’s final year as prime minister. In one Labour year, 2004, the number fell to just 130 council homes completed.
Mr Copley called on his party not to “repeat this mistake”. He said Labour should allow councils to borrow more for social housing without it counting as a rise in the national debt, to fund a mass house-building programme. But at the same event, Mr Miliband’s Commons aide Karen Buck, MP for Westminster North, said Labour’s record “wasn’t as bleak and hopeless as some critics would have us believe”.
Conservative housing minister Kris Hopkins, said: “Labour failed an entire generation by not building enough houses but Ed Miliband has been too weak to apologise.”
Waltham Forest Lib Dem Group Leader Councillor Bob Sullivan said:
“It is about time that the truth came out. We have heard a lot of Labour Party propaganda rubbishing the achievements of the Coalition Government may be the Labour Party should now apologise for letting down the Country by not building enough homes in the 13 years of Labour Government.”