The housing minister is still not a Cabinet position despite all the election posturing and the shambles over who had been appointed.
Yesterday in London, the 150-strong audience at the Great Housing Debate effectively said: “No, Prime Minister.”
Members said the decision to snub the housing minister was wrong, and that housing needs a seat at the top table.
The Tories made housing one of their six key election promises.
News that Brandon Lewis had after all been re-appointed in his housing and planning role broke as the well-attended debate – organised by PR firm Wriglesworth – got under way.
Only one member of the audience, David Salusbury, former chairman of the National Landlords Association, voted against making the housing minister’s job a Cabinet role – and that was on the basis that the Cabinet was already too large.
Until yesterday, it had been believed that Mark Francois had become housing minister. This was apparently due to a mistake by civil servants at the Department for Communities and Local Government who said Francois had assumed responsibility for housing.
In fact Francois had been appointed as a CLG minister, with his duties yet to be announced.
Yesterday, Lewis tweeted to his 14,000 followers that he was “delighted to be continuing as Housing & Planning Minister”.
He later tweeted: “I will be focusing on delivering homes, ensuring those who aspire to their own home can do so. Delivering homes we need, where we need them.”
A spokesperson for Number Ten said: “Greg Clark as DCLG’s secretary of state will be present at cabinet, and given housing will be a central part of his department’s portfolio I think it’s fair to say this issue will be covered.
“Ministers are able to attend cabinet on a specific basis if their issues come up – so it’s not to say that if housing was a particular topic during a cabinet meeting that the housing minister wouldn’t be invited along. Clearly that’s on a case-by-case basis though.”
Yesterday’s annual Great Housing Debate also suggested that too much is being done to help first-time buyers on the basis of concerns that too much is being done to stimulate demand and not enough to address supply.
There was also unanimity in the room that there should be no rent controls.
There was near-unanimity as to whether the election result was good or bad for the market.
Everyone said it was good, with the single exception of Henry Pryor. His view is that the result was a “good night for home owners but a bad night for housing”.
Despite some of the headlines on this, the article itself makes clear that it was a civil service blunder over the appointment announcements. It has seemed to me for some time that the DCLG officials are part of the problem, they rarely impress when they comment or speak on housing, and seem to have little understanding of the property market. This also leaves them vulnerable to the likes of Generation Rent, and they seem to swallow their propaganda without troubling to verify some of the dubious statements and statistics, and advise ministers accordingly. Brandon Lewis will have his work cut out just sorting that lot!
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Couldn’t agree more…..the dept. has been woefully short of ability for some time now. Whether the post is made cabinet or not, the dept. shortcomings will still be there.
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“Brandon Lewis will have his work cut out just sorting that lot!”
I agree; in the run up to this election, the whole 5 years, it has become increasingly evident how broken the system is. When I proposed Kevin Hollindrake for the role I was deadly serious. The department needs someone who understands the industry, not a socket puppet for the civil servants and their dangerous combination of naivety and influenced agenda.
Unless there is a minister capable of understanding the whole picture and is free from influence things will not change. Whether in cabinet or not , a housing minister ought to be capable of fielding the knowledge and experience of the industry. The current system is to simply ignore anyone or anything that challenges the fragility of their position..
Perhaps Brandon Lewis ought to start afresh with good intentions; a good place to start would be to refer Stella Creasy’s anti agency crusade [executed in a manner befitting an aggrieved student union] to the parliamentary ombudsman. Such petulant lack of decorum from an MP simply brings the whole governance of the country into disrepute and to ignore her or her actions simply reinforces the notion that MP’s think they are somehow better than the population they are supposed to serve.
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