David Cameron’s crackdown on immigrants’ access to social housing is to be announced, on Monday, with a lavish amount of inference and connotation. You won’t hear the words “deserving” or “undeserving”, but they’ll be lurking round the edges all the same.
The new plan, he will say, will stop “any expectation” new migrants “can expect” the British taxpayer to “give them a home on arrival”. It will stop someone “turning up” and “immediately gaining access” to social housing. Let’s reorganise the system, he will apparently be saying, in terms of merit. But we are unlikely to hear him actually articulate the phrase, because this plan of his will do precisely the opposite.
The new proposals will make a social housing applicant from another country wait two to five years before going on a waiting list, regardless of how much they need it. In short, the plan is to take material need (the normal measure of whether or not someone deserves social housing) out of the equation.
That’s why the announcement will rely so heavily on suggestion – a social housing process that is quick and easy – which you can “turn up” to – an immigrant who is “expecting” things (people who “expect” things always expect more than they deserve).
But getting social housing is always a long and difficult process, and often more so for immigrants. A Labour source told the Guardian that:
many councils already used existing powers to limit the access of immigrants to social housing.
The source said that 95% of immigrants lived in private rented accommodation, often of low quality. The greater problem was that employers often lured immigrants to this country by offering them places in low-grade houses, charging them extortionate rent, and then paying them unreasonably low wages that undercut the rate for local workers.
The plan will have an exception – Britons who have had to move for family or work reasons – but as Gaby Hisliff tweeted earlier today:
suspect the idea councils could make exceptions for Brits with genuine reason to move’ll be far more complicated in practice than it sounds
— Gaby Hinsliff (@gabyhinsliff) March 24, 2013
The Bishop of Dudley puts it best in today’s Observer:
The tone of the current debate suggests that it is better for 10 people with a legitimate reason for coming to this country to be refused entry than for one person to get in who has no good cause. It is wholly disproportionate as a response. It is especially galling in Holy Week, when Christians are remembering how Jesus himself became the scapegoat in a political battle, to see politicians vying with each other in just such a process.
He adds:
Studies show that the vast majority of new arrivals to the UK enhance and enrich our society, both economically and culturally. The true threats to our national wellbeing lie not with those who come to visit or make their lives here but with the increasing gap between the rich and poor among us.
But the extra appeal almost misses the point. Our welfare system should not be there to provide only for those who we think will “enrich our society”, but for those who deserve it – which simply means those who need it most.
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