Michael Meacher - Labour's Future

Today the House of Commons debated housing, and in particular the acute lack of social affordable housing almost everywhere in the country. There are three main problems. One is that the demand for such housing far exceeds the Government’s present plans to provide it. Second, it is unrealistic to rely on the private sector to provide the decent, secure homes that people on lower incomes need at prices they can afford, nor is there evidence that the Housing Associations are rising to the challenge to fill the gap. And thirdly, there is nowhere near enough funding for local authorities to maintain and repair their existing stock, let alone build the new houses desperately needed.

It is good that the Government is proposing to raise the number of houses built per year from 200,000 to 240,000, to reach a total of 3 million new houses built by 2020. But the current baseline is only around 170,000 a year, and that number is anyway likely to fall for some years ahead because of the sub-prime market crisis and the credit crunch. Moreover, the numbers of specifically social and affordable houses needed is estimated to be an extra 50-70,000 a year, rather more than the 30,000 proposed by the Government, if the large backlog of homelessness and poor or unsatisfactory housing for low-income households is to be cleared within a reasonable period.

In the current economic climate there is no way that the private sector can remotely fill the gap. Nor indeed would it be wise for them to try to do so anyway. A Parliamentary Answer I received in November revealed that there are already more than 200,000 households who have taken out mortgages with a house price-to-income ratio in excess of 6:1, including 38,000 in excess of 10:1. We are already in danger of generating our own sub-prime market disaster in this country too, not just in the US, and we should certainly not risk making the present downturn any worse. Besides, there is probably a fifth of the population who have such low incomes and such uncertain employment prospects that they will never be able under present circumstances reliably to afford to buy and maintain a home.

For them what is clearly needed is good-quality secure public housing at rents which they can genuinely afford. And that is the message which the current levels of unmet housing demand are crying out to be heard. There were 1.6 million households on Council waiting lists in 2006, and the number is probably nearer 2 million today. In Oldham the number on the Council waiting list is now 12,000; yet the total Council housing stock in Oldham is now only about 12,500 – down from some 27,000 homes twenty years ago. In addition, across the country there are nearly 100,000 households who are homeless in temporary accommodation, including several hundred in Oldham.

Yet despite the pressure cooker conditions now prevailing in public rented housing, the demand to stay in Council housing, and to have more Council housing, could not be clearer. No less than 2 ½ million existing Council tenants in nearly 200 areas across the country have still opted in transfer ballots to remain as Council tenants even though they have been told that if they don’t vote for either stock transfer to a private landlord or to a housing association or to an arm’s length management organisation (First Choice Homes in Oldham), they will be denied funding for proper repairs and maintenance. Tenants know they will not get from private landlords or even housing associations the same security, socially affordable rents (at least till now) and a publicly accountable Council to complain to if things go wrong.

That’s why it’s now so vital that the Management and Maintenance Allowances and the Major Repairs Allowances which Councils get from the Government should be paid to all Councils (even where the tenants in a ballot have declined to shift) and that they are pitched at an adequate level. At present they are fixed far below this level. A report from the Government itself, issued this month, says that current allowances “undercut basic investment needs by 43% over 30 years”. That is a staggering admission – that the funding provided for Council housing is little more than half of what is basically needed.

It is this huge shortfall in allowances which is driving Councils to privatise their homes, even against the wishes of their tenants. It means also of course that many local authorities can’t meet the Government’s Decent Homes Standard and that many others who may be meeting it now will be unable to sustain this standard in the longer term.

At present, the net funding trail is, perversely, going in the opposite direction. Council rents are actually rising faster in order to close the gap with private rents in the locality, though ideologically that seems to be turning the whole purpose of Council housing on its head. And Council rents are even rising higher than expenditure so that tenants will actually be paying a tax to the Treasury this year of some £180 millions, and a Parliamentary Answer of 18 December even suggested that this would rise to nearly £1 billion by 2022. This is on top of the £1.5 billions already being taken each year from Council Housing Revenue Accounts, ostensibly to repay historic debt, though since tenants don’t own the asset, it is difficult to see why they should be burdened with servicing the debt.

The amendment to the Housing Bill I moved tonight in the Commons is about justice for tenants which is long overdue. I moved it because at every surgery I hold in Oldham I am distressed, hurt and angry that usually half the constituents attending have come because their housing situation has become intolerable, and yet I know that in current circumstances I can do nothing. What is desperately needed is that a major Council house-building programme should now urgently be re-started, and if the Government cannot afford that in the present financial climate, then local authorities should be permitted to borrow the necessary funds on the open market against the collateral of their existing housing stock. It is because I believe this so passionately that I voted against the Government tonight along with 27 other Labour colleagues.

Posted by Michael Meacher at 09:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Planning Bill, up for second reading in Parliament today, gives business exactly what it wants – de-regulation of the current planning system in order to prioritise economic growth over environmental, social and democratic objectives.

The Bill sets out that new National Planning Statements will be drawn up for an array of major developments – nuclear power and nuclear waste facilities, coal-fired power stations, airport expansions, major road schemes, and large waste incinerators. These Statements will pre-determine such issues as the need for, the safety of, and even the location of some projects, and will have more weight than any other statement of national, regional or local policy.

Then a new body, the Infrastructure Planning Commission, will decide on major project proposals in accordance with the National Policy Statements. The decisions of this new quango will be final, with Ministers no longer able to take decisions in this area. In other words, it removes all direct democratic accountability.

The public will also lose the right to be heard and to cross-examine witnesses in public inquiries. Instead, the Commission will decide whether individuals can give evidence, and in what way. But no questions can be asked about whether the project is really needed, or whether it’s safe, or where it’s located. Most people would describe this process as a complete bureaucratic stitch-up.

Even more extraordinarily, it is proposed in the case of major infrastructure projects that the community consultation will be carried out by the developer himself! As though the promoter of the development will seriously examine alternative development options!

The removal of the needs test will hugely favour supermarkets like Tesco and Wall Mart in getting more out-of-town supermarkets. If we didn’t already pick up the Government’s biases over the planning system, the Planning White Paper says that it aims to “promote competition and consumer choice, and not unduly or disproportionately constrain the market”.

The Government justifies all this by saying it is necessary to make it easier to get these major infrastructure projects through in order to tackle climate change. But the opposite is true, because these are precisely the projects that increase carbon emissions and increase pollution in the first place. The real way to tackle climate change is a massive increase in renewables and decentralised low/no carbon energy systems while phasing out fossil fuels.

These ‘reforms’ are fundamentally anti-democratic because they remove the need for the developer to consult and to gain consent. The public will not even have a right to be heard when far-reaching policy is being drawn up in the National Policy Statements, let alone when decisions are made on the ground. There will be no trust in this new process if people’s involvement is at the discretion of unaccountable bodies with (appropriately) ugly titles like the Infrastructure Planning Commission.

Ominously, this introduction of faceless grey bureaucratic quangos is paralleled by a similar device in the Government’s recent Housing Bill – OFTENANT, who will replace elected local Councils in setting criteria for allocating tenancies, determining rents, deciding how far housing need will be met and in what way, dealing with tenants’ complaints, and even regulating anti-social behaviour on housing estates.

Doing deals behind-the-scenes with the vested interests involved in big infrastructure projects is yet another example of this Government giving priority to corporate power over the public interest. That’s what we would expect of the Tories, not of Labour.

Posted by Michael Meacher at 01:22 PM | Permalink

After three decades of neglect and 1,634,000 households stranded on council waiting lists by 2005 (probably nearer 2 million by now), a house-building programme is finally getting under way. But it is nowhere near enough.

Investment in public housing has plummeted from 6.1% of government spending in 1981 to just 1.6% in 2005. What this means is that in current price terms the government is now spending £22bn less a year on public housing than it was spending at the end of the 1970s. Added to that the rent-setting formula for council housing has now been changed from the formula known as "pooled historic cost" to one that is partly related to the value of owner-occupied housing in the area. Rents have climbed steeply as a result. Those in council housing cannot hope to buy their way out in the private sector when the ratio of mortgage loans to income can be as much 8 or even 10:1.

A small increase in housing output will not necessarily stabilise, let alone bring down, house prices when the flow of house purchase lending, now at the staggering level of nearly £1tn a year, is rising so much faster. If extra house-building increases the stock by 1-2% a year, which the housing and regeneration bill - given its second reading yesterday - aims to achieve, while at the same time the credit available to buy it increases by, say, 5% or more a year, house prices won't fall.

What is really needed is a return nearer to historic levels of housing investment and a construction drive targeted at decent-quality council housing made available at rents related to the cost of construction and completely decoupled from ballooning prices in the private sector.

The government's aspirations are not ambitious enough. It proposes 200,000 new homes a year to 2016 (last year's total was 169,000), then 240,000 a year to 2020 - 3 million in all. But new household formation alone is now running at 220,000 a year, and if the accumulated unmet housing need of the half-million or more households living in overcrowded, bad quality or damp housing is to be dealt with within a 10-year programme, then at least an extra 270,000 homes a year is now required.

More pressing still, the government is proposing to build an extra 15,000 social rented homes a year, nearly all through housing associations. Council housing still remains largely taboo, since the Blair government only built an average 300 council houses a year compared with the 14,000 built even at the end of Thatcher's reign in 1990. But the latest surveys show that at least a further 20,000 social homes for rent are needed each year over and above the extra 15,000 in order to meet what is called "urgent newly arising" need and to halve, as the government intends, the numbers who are homeless or in temporary accommodation (currently 101,000). To achieve this, local authorities should now be allowed to borrow on the open market, as housing associations can, against the security of their existing housing stock. At present local authorities are forbidden to do so.

Less appealing in the new housing bill is the proposal to create an unaccountable regulator which would transfer key responsibilities away from elected ministers. This new quango will have control over such sensitive issues as the criteria for allocating accommodation, the nature of housing demand to be addressed, the extent to which demand is to supplied, the terms of tenancies, the levels of rent, procedures for addressing tenants' complaints, and even anti-social behaviour. After stock transfer, RSLs, ALMOs and right to buy have shifted half of council housing away from local government, this latest move could now go a long way to removing all the rest out of local democratic control.

Worse, profitmaking companies are to be allowed for the first time to register as social landlords under a lighter burden of regulation. And for the first time means-testing is to be included in the definition of social housing. This abandons one of fundamental founding principles of council housing which was to provide high-quality housing for all sections of society, not housing of last resort for those who can't afford anything better. Only 30 years ago, according to Professor John Hills, 20% of the richest tenth lived in social housing. Now, if this bill goes through, council estates will further concentrate deprivation and council housing will be further stigmatised when what the government ought to be doing is to promote council housing as a tenure of choice for those who wish it.

From

Posted by Michael Meacher at 11:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Extract from my contribution [scroll down to 3.09pm] to the Queen’s Speech debate, 14 November 2007

I believe the Government urgently needs some commanding themes by which its distinctive vision can be clearly understood. I want to propose three.

The first is democratisation which the PM himself adumbrated in his first statement to Parliament. But it has to stretch a great deal further than simply giving Parliament a vote before the country goes to war. Parliament needs real new powers on a much broader front – electing Select Committee members, ratifying (or not) Cabinet nominations made by the PM, approving (or not) the membership and terms of reference of Committees of Inquiry proposed by the PM, and setting up our own Parliamentary Commissions to investigate matters (like extraordinary rendition) when the Government itself refuses to do so.

But it isn’t just in Parliament where there’s a democratic deficit. A far bigger one now exists outside. Power has become so centralised over the last 30 years and the regulatory authorities so enfeebled that so far from regulating corporate power, the biggest businesses have increasingly co-opted the power of the State for themselves for their own commercial ends. The current loosening of controls over major power station, airport and incinerator developments, the failure to regulate unhealthy food advertising because of objections from the food industry despite the epidemic of obesity, the withdrawal of the SFO investigation into corruption allegations against BAE, and the relaxation of the gaming laws to permit a flood of gambling casinos are just a few recent examples.

Accountability today has all but vanished. Perhaps the most telling case is Northern Rock. It is now costing taxpayers £23bn in loans, plus a £2bn interest charge – almost equal to the entire annual defence budget – yet nobody is held responsible. The Bank of England, the Financial Services Authority and the Treasury are all blaming each other. What action is being taken, and by whom, to face up to the fundamental mistakes made that led up to this crisis, including the reckless lending practices of the chief executive of Northern Rock as well as the flawed structure of regulation put in place a decade ago? Why wasn’t Northern Rock temporarily taken into public ownership, as was done in the case of the secondary banking crisis in 1974, in order to avoid a run on the bank and to retain depositors’ confidence without this colossal haemorrhage of public funds? The answer to that of course is that the neo-liberal agenda of privatisation, de-regulation and unfettered markets is still, unaccountably, being imposed above everything else, even at phenomenal cost to the taxpayer so that public ownership, even temporarily, is ruled out.

And what action is the Government going to take over the mania for securitisation, collateralised debt obligations and all the other opaque and dodgy financial derivatives which have so dramatically and comprehensively destabilised the markets? Despite all its de-regulatory instincts, does the Government now acknowledge that stricter regulation of financial markets is now necessary if the frenzy for newfangled financial instruments, which are actually designed to be deceptive over risk and value, is to be curbed?

Equally, at the other end of society, the checks and balances against the arbitrary use of power have all but evaporated. Civil liberties have been drastically eroded, and the introduction of ID cards and 2-months detention without charge, both of which I deplore, are still being mooted. Workers who have been in their jobs less than two years can still be arbitrarily dismissed without any rights, and temporary and agency workers remain an exploited underclass – mainly at the behest of the CBI which this Government should be much stronger in resisting. Accountability, or indeed any redress, against alleged misdemeanours by the police, judges, banks, private utilities or big corporations is almost non-existent. Today powerlessness is widely felt to be endemic throughout society, and it will require an awful lot more than focus groups or citizens’ juries to put it right.

Continue reading "A real vision for Labour" »

Posted by Michael Meacher at 08:16 PM | Permalink

Some useful proposals – though the devil may lie in the detail, not yet revealed – but disappointing on the vision and no razzmatazz of new ideas for a new leader, largely because Gordon Brown has already been leading on the domestic policy agenda for the past ten years and now has nothing much new to say.

It’s good that after two decades of neglect of social housing amidst the triumphalist ideology of private ownership, the national scandal of housing need is now at least being noticed. Council waiting lists are now above 1 ½ million and there are over 100,000 homeless, yet only 100 Council homes were built last year (down from 13,000 a year at the end of the Thatcher era). The housing stock is only growing by some 185,000 a year at present, yet the number of new households being formed each year is about 220,000. We are still going backwards. Building an extra 40,000 homes a year, as the Government proposes, is clearly nowhere near enough to meet the yawning gap of housing need. And how many of the 40,000 will be social housing anyway? And why are local authorities still not being allowed to build more Council houses themselves if they wish, borrowing against the security of their own existing housing stock?

Changes to the planning system, as is proposed, might seem sensible when some planning decisions have clearly taken far too long. The 8 years spent on the Heathrow Terminal 5 decision is usually quoted here (though much of that was accounted for by the time spent on Ministers’ desks after the planning report was submitted). But today’s proposals are motivated by very different criteria. National Policy Statements will be drawn up which will enable an array of major developments – nuclear power and nuclear waste facilities, coal-fired power stations, airport expansions, major road schemes, and large waste incinerators – to be put through without the public having a say on whether they are needed or safe, or where they are to be located. This rather conflicts with Brown’s stated wish to bring more democracy into public decisions.

A Climate Change Bill is very welcome, but again its contents leave a lot to be desired. It promises a review of progress in cutting carbon emissions every 5 years which is far too lax when the UK is way off track to meet the Government’s objectives. Clearly annual targets, published and enforceable, are urgently needed. Moreover, air travel and shipping emissions are omitted, even though they are the fastest rising sources of emissions. Nor are mere targets sufficient anyway when other Government policies, notably a tripling of airport capacity by 2030, are diametrically opposed.

Democratisation has also been one of Gordon’s ostensible goals, which is also desperately needed. But it has to stretch a great deal further than simply giving Parliament a vote before the country goes to war – a concession which after the Iraq debacle would probably be inevitable anyway. Parliament needs real new power on a much broader front – electing Select Committee members rather than letting the Whips use the patronage to gain a wider acquiescence, ratifying (or not) Cabinet nominations made by the PM, approving (or not) the membership and terms of reference of Committees of Inquiry proposed by the PM, and setting up their own Parliamentary Commissions to investigate controversial issues (e.g. extraordinary rendition) when the Government refuses to do so. Nor can the idea of greater democracy cut much ice when the Government is still intending to pursue the ID cards folly and, even worse, extend the 28-days detention without charge in defiance of the 800 year old habeas corpus.

And what is not in the Queen’s Speech is perhaps even more important than what is. There’s nothing about redressing the centralisation of power which is such an indictment of the current state of Britain. There’s nothing about redressing the grotesque inequality of income and wealth – nor was there is in the Pre-Budget Report a month ago. And there’s nothing about restoring the ethos of public service which has taken such a battering under Blair – indeed it’s taking a further hit currently with the huge cutbacks in BBC funding which threaten public service broadcasting. Et tu, Gordon?

Posted by Michael Meacher at 11:22 AM | Permalink

Yes, the new Housing Green Paper does promise 70,000 affordable houses a year to be built by 2010-11, including 45,000 social homes, and that is more than double the (very low) number built in 2004. But that still leaves a lot of key questions still unanswered:

How many of these will be Council houses, under the democratic control of local authorities? The Government won't say. Yvette Cooper, the Housing Minister, made clear they still hanker after other forms of tenure - RSLs (housing associations), ALMOs (arms length management organisations), shared equity ownership - anything but local authority housing. In recent years a miniscule 100 houses have been built a year by local authorities because of central government cold-shouldering the idea, despite the fact that homelessness and Council waiting lists have doubled.

There is still no commitment to the Fourth Option (i.e. that Council tenants will not be blackmailed into agreeing to transfer to a private landlord or an RSL or an ALMO under the threat that otherwise repairs and improvements to their Council houses will not be carried out).

There is real doubt whether the Government's figures stack up. They've promised £8bn for investment in more affordable housing by 2016, but the Local Government Association thinks half as much again will be needed.

Making new homes from 2016 all zero-carbon and setting out bids for 5 new eco-homes of up to 20,000 homes each is good. But these 100,000 homes are less than 0.5% of the housing stock. What plans for reducing carbon emissions and radically improving energy efficiency in the other 99.5%?

Posted by Michael Meacher at 10:22 AM | Permalink

Once again, at least at the outset, the new Brown regime has made a significant and very welcome shift in policy in deciding (what was blindingly and painfully obvious to everyone for the last 10 years) that we desperately need a massive boost to the housebuilding programme, particularly council housing.

Blair would have none of it because ideologically he was wholly opposed to Council housing, even using blackmail to force people out of it – either you transfer to a private landlord or a housing association or an ALMO, or you can rot in your Council house because the Government won’t pay for any repairs or improvements if you stay with the Council. A scorched earth policy otherwise known as blocking the housing fourth option.

The result has been one of the biggest scandals of the Blair era. Homelessness doubled, household on waiting lists rose from 1 million in 1999 to 1.7 million in 2006. Incredibly, this is far worse than under Thatcher.

At the end of the Thatcher period in 1990, the Tories were still building just over 14,000 Council houses a year. By 2000 Council house building had fallen to – just 87 a year.

In 10 years under Thatcher 400,000 Council houses were built. In 10 years under Blair it was down to just 4,000 – 1% of the Tory total.

Gordon Brown’s commitment to raise the overall level of house-building by 40,000 a year by 2016 is therefore very welcome. But there are caveats, and we should look at the small print. 2016 is nine years away, which could mean an increase of only 4-5,000 houses per year through that period – hardly an adequate answer to today’s cry of anguish and despair over housing deprivation.

And exactly how many of the 240,000 houses now planned to be built per year by 2016 will be for Council housing? At least a quarter of the population simply cannot afford home ownership, and up to a quarter therefore of all new house-build should be low-cost rent-affordable housing for them. It’s a little too early to cheer yet.

Posted by Michael Meacher at 06:52 PM | Permalink

(This is from a DCH email, please forward to people who will sign the petition.)

Defend Council Housing has posted a ‘Fourth Option’ for council housing E-Petition on the 10 Downing Street website.

The DCH petition calls on the Prime Minister to “provide the 'Fourth Option' of direct investment in council housing… bring all homes up to at least the government's Decent Homes Standard by 2010 and also build a new generation of decent, affordable and secure council homes for rent”.

The ‘Fourth Option’ is supported by a broad coalition of organisations representing council tenants, the TUC and all major trade unions, councillors and MPs across all the main parties (see early day motion Funding Decent Council Housing).

The petition was launched as the well respected Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee joins in criticising government’s dogmatic obsession with private market solutions to the growing housing crisis.

The influential committee of MPs make clear that the significant amounts of public subsidy Ministers have poured into a never ending list of home ownership initiatives are neither value for money or making any contribution to tackling the growing housing crisis. The committee questions the effectiveness of the Communities & Local Government's schemes for helping low income households to own their own home.

The MPs find that: the CLG does not know how the schemes affect local housing markets; it is "unclear" whether the assistance is helping to recruit and retain key workers; and housing waiting list controls are poor, meaning that three quarters of those gaining assistance have incomes above £25,000.

Defend Council Housing today welcomed the report from the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee on ‘Low Cost Home Ownership Assistance’. Alan Walter, DCH chair, said:

“All the evidence shows that the quickest and most effective way of tackling growing housing need in 21st Century Britain would be for government to invest in improving existing and build a new generation of first class council (public) housing.

Ministers should drop their dogmatic insistence on privatisation and the private market. Subsidies for home ownership don’t create one extra home for those who need them – it just increases profits for lenders and developers and pushes more people into debt.

Pouring public subsidy into home ownership schemes only inflates house prices and doesn’t benefit those on low incomes.

Nearly 3 million council tenants want the ‘Fourth Option’ of direct investment in council housing and if local authorities were once again given the ability to build new council homes they could provide decent, affordable, secure and accountable housing for the 1.6 million households on council housing waiting lists.”

Read latest twelve page DCH newspaper (published March 24)

Posted by Michael Meacher at 09:42 AM | Permalink

Posted by Michael Meacher at 09:24 AM | Permalink

(From the Independent)

Labour leadership contender answers your questions, such as 'Why not sell your flats to help fight against poverty?' & 'What's your guilty pleasure?'
Published: 05 March 2007

Are you a socialist? What does that mean today? MIKE WOODBRIDGE, Brighton

Yes, I am. A socialist believes that while the market has its proper place, the fundamental principles underpinning society should be equity, social justice, equality of opportunity, and democratic accountability. Even where the market is a dominant force, socialists believe it should be regulated to ensure high environmental, social and labour standards.

Why, as a socialist, do you own so many houses? GARY BROWNE, Glasgow

As I have regularly stated in the register of Members' interests, I own four flats. I have saved throughout my life, and put my savings into property. I don't think [that] is contrary to socialism.

Given your views on poverty, why not sell some of your houses and give the money to charity? Or are you just another hypocritical politician? V AHMAD, Birmingham

I already give a significant amount to charity . I agree there is an urgent need to build much more social, affordable housing but selling my flats which are already occupied would not contribute one iota to that.

Isn't it delusional of you to challenge Gordon Brown for the Labour leadership? MAURICE BURKE, Birmingham

No. There should be a contest because only an election enables us to debate the real policy issues. I also believe that members of the Labour Party should have the right to choose their own leaders. I believe, too, that as New Labour, of which Gordon Brown is perhaps the main architect, has moved continually ever further to the right, the mainstream majority of the party has been left disenfranchised and without a voice. It is not sensible to assume the results of any election before the electors have had a chance to deliver their opinion which may sometimes come as rather a shock to the chattering classes. Not too many people I guess expected David Cameron to come from behind and win the Tory Party leadership.

Don't you think Gordon offers Labour the best hope of winning the next election? VALERIE EVANS, Cardiff

Have you seen the last two polls? Both put the Tories 11 per cent ahead, and one poll found that if Gordon was leader, the Tories would be 13 per cent ahead.

I am a Labour supporter, but I despair that Gordon Brown has been such a coward over the war, talks nonsense on 'Britishness' and seems so in love with Rupert Murdoch that he will hand the next election to Cameron. Do you agree - and if not, which bits do you disagree with and why? DAVE FISCHER, Sheffield

Cameron has certainly, at this stage at least, improved the Tories' poll ratings, but not, I think, for the reasons you give.

A majority on the Labour left support John McDonnell and see your campaign as a spoiler which will only split the vote and stop a contest. Will you stand down if John has more nominations when Blair resigns? SUSAN PRESS, Calder Valley

There is no evidence whatever that a majority of people on the Labour Party left and the affiliated trade union movement support John McDonnell for leader. I have a great deal of respect for John, but I don't believe he can get the necessary 45 nominations, whereas I believe I can. I am not splitting the vote, but rather giving the centre-left the chance, to run a candidate who can pass the nominations threshold. But I do agree that whichever of the two of us has the larger number of nominations, the other should stand down when Tony Blair resigns.

Why not use that photo of you on Blackpool beach (very Daniel Craig) for your campaign posters? CONOR MURPHY, Reading

Good try. At least it shows I'm healthy.

Do you think Blair should stand down now?STEVE HARRISON, Bolton

The sooner he stands down, the better.

Why did you vote in favour of the invasion of Iraq?DEAN PALMER, Norwich

I made the biggest mistake of my political life when I supported the war, on the grounds that the Prime Minister repeatedly gave chapter and verse about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction and assured us that if only we knew all the intelligence available to him, we would have no doubts about the necessity for this action. I still find it deeply disturbing for democracy that a prime minister can so massage and fabricate the evidence in order to push through a preconceived war plan.

Do you think Blair lied to his MPs and lied to the country over Iraq?JEFF TERRY, Dundee

I think the highly selective manipulation of such evidence as there was, together with the highly prejudicial use to which it was put, was deeply dishonest.

You claim you were misled that Saddam had a WMD programme. Yet you say the West has no right to tell Iran not to develop nuclear weapons. Aren't you being rather inconsistent over Iraq and Iran?JIM ROLAND, London NW11

No, these are two quite separate arguments. Yes, we were certainly misled over Saddam's alleged WMD programme. While we should try to prevent Iranian nuclear weapons by negotiation and UN sanctions, we cannot say that nuclear weapons are indispensable for our own security, and then say Iran does not need them for their own security, especially when Iran (unlike the West) is surrounded by seven states which are nuclear-armed and some very hostile.

Do you truly believe that the US government knew about 9/11 but failed to prevent it?CHRIS QUIGLEY, by email

Clearly the US government did not know the precise time and location of the al-Qa'ida attack, but equally clearly there was a great deal of intelligence beforehand which, for whatever reason, it seems that they did not follow up.

You have suggested that the US government knew about the 9/11 attacks (which is pretty obvious I reckon, but fair play to you nonetheless). How complicit do you believe the UK Government was in 7/7? PAUL HUGHES, by email

Not at all.

Do you also believe that the FBI shot John F Kennedy, that Princess Diana was murdered and the US government has covered up the landing of aliens?BEN TROTTER, Cirencester

No. Such allegations are cheap and rather silly.

What steps will you propose to counter global warming? DR GEORGE BLAIR, by email

We should rapidly increase our use of renewable sources of energy (windpower, solar, and micro-generation in people's homes). We should require the airline industry, like every other industry, to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions each year. We should increase vehicle excise duty sharply for gas-guzzling cars and use the proceeds to subsidise bus and rail, and smaller-engine cars. We should give each family a carbon entitlement which then has to be reduced each year.

How often have you flown in the past 12 months? FIONA MILLS, Edinburgh

Not at all.

You criticise the 'Westminster bubble' but said you spent the last two months talking to MPs about your campaign. Does this not show you have the same disrespect for people's views as the rest of the Westminster bubble? MARSHA JANE THOMPSON, by email

I said that when people around the country come to vote, they may well take a quite different view of things from the inward-looking Westminster scene, and should be listened to. But I also extensively canvassed my colleagues in the Parliamentary Labour Party because they alone are the ones who make the nominations.

Why did it take you so long to announce your intention to stand for the Labour leadership when John McDonnell has been campaigning up and down the country for months?MAX MITCHELL, by email

I have been told that John McDonnell announced his candidature without consulting his colleagues. I thought it right first to consult extensively to confirm that my candidature would have the necessary range of support.

What are your guilty pleasures (apart from homeowning)?ALICE SHERWOOD, Tadworth

Wouldn't you like to know! Dropping childish comments in the waste paper basket is one of them.

You always look a bit boring. Are you? ROB JACKSON, by email

No. Why? Are you?

Posted by Michael Meacher at 12:28 PM | Permalink

One aspect of the Government’s drive to ‘reform’ public services has gone little noticed. It isn’t only in health and education that the private sector is being given a preferential role. The same pressures are now being exerted against Council tenants to force them out of local authority housing.

Continue reading "Council tenants have rights" »

Posted by Michael Meacher at 06:43 AM | Permalink