Long-term thinking won’t help private renters
The housing minister, James Brokenshire, wants to improve the private rented sector. Good. He seeks to extend the minimum period of tenancy to three years. Bad.
All sensible discussion of rented housing has to balance the needs of both sides. The tenant must not be exploited. The landlord must not lose his incentive.
The figures show that 80 per cent of private tenants currently have contracts of six or 12 months. Mr Brokenshire says it is “deeply unfair” when tenants have to “uproot their lives” at short notice. Surely this is true only if they are suffering from a contract which was not entered into freely? Short notice can be convenient for both sides.
Essentially, this is a question of supply. If that entire 80 per cent of short-lease renting is abolished, does Mr Brokenshire seriously think that all, or even most, of it will be extended to three years? That defies reality. The result can only be that a high proportion of landlords – especially the small landlords – will pull out. That will greatly increase housing shortage.
A strong private rented sector is a good thing. Renting suits a great many people at some periods in their lives. The problem today is the difficulty of moving from renting to ownership. This too is a blockage of supply. Planning discourages house-building and forces up its price. The Government could remedy this, but still hesitates.
When it was reported that the recent anti-brexit march in London was attended by 100,000 people, I did not believe it. Not because such a large number for such a cause is incredible – even though those who want to get on with Brexit heavily outnumber those who wish to prevent it. My reasoning was simply that 100,000 was the organisers’ count, and organisers’ numbers almost always exaggerate. The only big march I have ever known which took real care to count numbers was the Countryside Alliance Liberty and Livelihood march in 2002, in which an astonishing 404,000 people were individually tallied.
Traditionally, the media have relied on comparing organisers’ numbers with police estimates. Police figures are invariably lower, sometimes less than half those claimed. So I rang the Metropolitan Police to seek their estimate of the Remainer march.
They told me, quite crossly, that they did not keep such figures these days, and clearly wanted me off the phone. I persisted, however, and asked for a statement of what the policy on the subject really was, and why.
Two days later, a much politer police spokesman got back to me. She said that the police did not want to reveal “exact sources” of crowd information. I said that I was not asking for sources, only for the overall estimates. Why were these not available?
The answer came back that only the organisers keep such figures because “It is their event/demonstration and they would have oversight of numbers”. It was the police’s “new standard procedure not to provide such numbers”, she added. I suspected an evasion here: perhaps the police don’t want aggro about figures from protest organisations. But it would be a dereliction of duty if the police did not have private estimates of how many people they are dealing with. They need to know the scale of what they are up against. The public should be told too.
Anyway, this “new standard procedure” is having a curious effect. The main reason, after all, why anyone holds a demonstration is to show strength of numbers. If the organisers know that they have only to claim a figure for the police to accept it and everyone to report it, that is what they will tend to do.
For the next Remainer demo, I recommend they claim a million marchers, knowing that the Met will nod benignly. Only thus can they pretend to represent the many not the few.
As we mark the 70th anniversary of the NHS, there is renewed discussion of Nigel Lawson’s view that the health service is “the closest thing the English have to a religion”. Most seem to think that we are right to adore and glorify it.
It is a marked feature of modern times, however, that religion has come under renewed attack. Critics have pointed out that priesthoods use their authority to protect their own interests and cover up their own failings. The endless saga of child abuse is the most striking example. It reveals not only individual iniquity, but institutions putting reputation before truth.
If the NHS really is a religion, it should come under the same scrutiny. Its orders of priesthood should be questioned – the self-serving British Medical Association, for example, and other health trade unions; or the ever-mightier host of administrators, who make the papal Curia look open and transparent. In our fervent piety, we constantly refer to nurses as “angels”. Might it not be time to compare this holy image with the more mixed picture one sees in actual hospitals? Might it not be right to remember mid-staffs or Gosport, as well as acts of sanctity?
A real religion makes truth-claims that last for eternity. In the NHS, nothing lasts that long (except the queues in A&E). As it says in the psalm, threescore years and ten are enough; after that is but “labour and sorrow”. At 70, the NHS is beginning to look like the God that failed.