Brown’s cabinet reshuffle proves that housing as priority is thing of the past

9 June 2009

Proof, if it was needed, of just how low housing is now on the Prime Minister’s agenda came last week with the appointment of John Healey as housing minister.

That is not to cast Healey’s abilities into question but the figures speak for themselves. Healey, MP for Wentworth, is the ninth MP to hold that office since Labour came to power in 1997 and the fourth since Gordon Brown moved into Tony Blair’s Downing Street home.

The first three, in the infamous words of one of the holders of that office, amounted to no more than the PM’s “female window dressing”. I am of course paying homage to Caroline Flint’s recent letter of resignation from her ministerial position in the Foreign Office.

Had she used the word feminine rather than female, her judgement might have been called into question bearing in mind that her predecessor as housing minister until January 2008 had been Yvette Cooper, and she in turn was succeeded by Margaret Beckett in October of that year.

At least Healey has a chance of holding office for perhaps a month or two longer but if things get any worse for the hapless Brown, his stay could be even shorter.

Coopers track record in housing wasn’t that auspicious, especially if you take her track record on introducing home information packs into account.

And there were those who thought that she took the extension of home ownership too seriously. I’m thinking here of an article that appeared in Socialist Worker back in December 2007, long before the Telegraph exposed the MPs’ expenses scandal.

This accused her of taking her aim of wanting “to widen access to homeowners and help more people build up their assets”, too literally and went on to describe how she and her husband Ed Balls (the man who was almost chancellor) had exploited House of Commons expenses rules to buy a £655,000 house in north London by declaring it their second home, while retaining a weekend cottage in the North.

Flint’s time with the housing portfolio was a tad more limited but her profile was a little higher and sometimes for the wrong reasons.

Her big media gaffe was back in May last year when she was photographed going into 10 Downing Street with a briefing paper predicting that house prices would fall between 5% and 10% but Brown didn’t throw her into the Foreign Office wilderness until last October when he persuaded Labour Party treasure Margaret Beckett to become housing minister.

Beckett, bless her, like Cooper, has been fingered by the media for being imaginative with her use of expenses though others may argue that she was demonstrating her financial capability, an important skill for a housing minister. In her case, she was named in April as claiming at least £106,000 in second home allowances while living in a grace and favour home and renting her London flat.

That is of course by the way.

Just why Beckett was willing to return from the political wilderness for a junior ministerial role is rather odd, especially after Brown had earlier cast her aside as foreign secretary in favour of the young David Milliband but there again why did Sir Alan Sugar, the man who gave us Amstrad Computers and now fronts Apprentice accept the Prime Minister’s invitation to become enterprise tsar?

Actually, the question is purely rhetorical and it’s a bit like asking why did Healey accept the post of housing minister with just a matter of months left to have an impact. Certainly Brown’s stated target of building three million homes by 2020 now looks as discredited as everything else he has aspired to.

The saving grace in the decision to appoint Healey is that he is already firmly ensconced in the Department for Communities and Local Government where as minister of state he was responsible for the government’s recovery strategy following the summer floods of 2007. And as private secretary to the Chancellor (1999) and financial secretary to the Treasury (2005) he has the right credentials for the job and is a Brown man to boot.