http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspap...402810,00.html
Quote:
PLANS to give more than a million housing association tenants the right to buy their homes have opened up Cabinet divisions between Alan Milburn and John Prescott.
The dispute threatens to revive Labour’s bitter ideological battles about the policy, pioneered by the Conservative Party in the 1980s, of selling off council houses to tenants at discounted prices.
Mr Milburn, Labour’s general election and policy co- ordinator, wants the right-to-buy policy extended to housing association tenants now excluded from the scheme. He has used a series of speeches in recent weeks to praise the Tory policy, arguing that property ownership is the route to greater social mobility, personal opportunity and equality.
But the Deputy Prime Minister, who is responsible for housing policy and is said to be increasingly irritated by Mr Milburn’s invasion of his territory, is resisting the idea. He has described the policy, which has resulted in more than 1.6 million house sales since 1980, as a “£19 billion disinvestment” in public housing.
|
The Tory/Labour merger continues.
I tend to agree with Alan Milburn on this point, although I think that the current discounts are far too generous. The difference between houses that people own and Housing Association homes is very striking around here. People take much better care of their own property.
14-12-2004, 04:36 AM
New plan for one million "to buy" homes splits Lab
Linear Mode
