Yet another housing minister? It’ll alienate young professionals
The political churn of ministers is doing nothing to solve the housing crisis, and it’s the young who are suffering, writes Henry Hill.
So farewell then, Rachel Maclean. The government is now set to have its 16th housing minister since 2010, and seventh in just the last two years.
It’s a remarkably slapdash way to treat what is a critically important portfolio. The housing crisis is one of the biggest structural challenges facing the country: it devours people’s incomes, restricts labour mobility, and thwarts family formation.
Politically, it is also one of the biggest factors behind the increasing total alienation of younger voters (and here “younger” means aged 40 or less) from the Tories. New generations are being denied the chance to acquire property and have children, two big steps on the average voter’s traditional journey rightwards as they get older.
And as young professionals on good salaries are crammed into house shares well into their thirties, or hunt for accommodation miles from their work and family, those who do manage to get on the ladder are mortgaged to the hilt – and very vulnerable to inflation shocks and rising interest rates.
Yet despite the existential importance of housing to the Conservative Party’s medium-term future, it has to date been unable to shake off the immediate need to pander to its base, the bulk of whom bought their homes decades ago and own them outright.
Even now, it clearly isn’t a priority. Not only did Rishi Sunak make scant mention of housing in his speech to the Conservative Party Conference in October, but reportedly spent much of yesterday afternoon struggling to find anyone to replace Maclean, which puts paid to any faint hope that her departure was to make room for someone with a mission for the role.
At least with little more than a year to go until the last possible date of the next election her successor, Lee Rowley, stands a decent chance of matching her nine months in post, which is more than her four predecessors managed.
However this chopping and changing, unfortunate as it is, should be understood as more a symptom of the Conservatives’ dysfunction on housing than a cause.
Whilst an individual minister can make a big difference to policy if left in place long enough – one thinks of Nick Gibb, finally stepping down after serving as schools minister for most of the period since 2010 – they can only do so with backing from the top.
And on housing and planning reform, that backing simply hasn’t been there. Even after winning an historic majority in 2019, Boris Johnson allowed himself to be spooked by his backbenchers and jettison Robert Jenrick’s proposals, and eventually Jenrick himself.
Nor has housing ever been made the full focus of a cabinet-level position. It briefly graced the title of the unwieldy Ministry of Housing, Communities, and Local Government (MHCLG), before being absorbed into Michael Gove’s sprawling empire at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC).
Gove is an able and energetic reformer, he proved as much as education secretary. But it’s hard to imagine a minister who could simultaneously discharge his current responsibilities – which include tackling the housing crisis, addressing the north/south divide, and strengthening the Union – very well.
Or indeed even stay on top of the brief: in June, Gove ordered officials to review new building regulations restricting the size of windows; those regulations had been drawn up and approved by his own department, apparently without his realising.
Unless the government discovers a sudden, improbable zeal for slashing planning barriers by ministerial fiat, the new housing minister will not have much of a chance to make a dent on the crisis. Perhaps instead they will simply hammer Labour on the Green Belt and hope they can turn out the old homeowner vote, one last time.