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Transparent government - 21 May 2008

Posted by Paul Collins 1 comment

Oh dear. What a week for the government. Fresh from a shocking mauling in the local elections in England and Wales; a defeat in the London mayoral election which put uber-Tory Boris Johnson into City Hall for the next five years; and a wave of attacks in the press and political biographies on the character and competence of Gordon Brown, our political leaders have scored a spectacular own goal in possibly the simplest way of all.

Arriving for a Cabinet meeting at Downing Street, housing minister Caroline Flint strode purposefully past the assembled press and photographers clutching her briefing notes in a transparent plastic folder, and in plain sight. Newspapers being what they are, the photographs were blown up and reconstructed to reveal the full details of what the minister would be telling her colleagues.

Now, there is no issue here with the documents being kept secret, of that they revealed anything about the UK housing economy that we didn’t already know. What it did manage to highlight, however, was the gap between what the government is saying to us about the state of the housing market in the UK, and what is being discussed behind the closed doors of the Cabinet meeting room.

In public, ministers are confident that the housing market in the UK will not suffer too much from the downturn in the economy, and that the past strength and resilience of the property industry will continue. In private, it appears, a different story is being told. The briefing document the Minister was carrying outlines a five to ten per cent drop in house prices this year, and also advises colleagues that the much-lauded government house building plan revealed last year to create millions of new homes across the country to cater for our growing communities is already behind schedule. For a plan that is due to come to fruition in 2020, it’s impressive to fall behind so early, but by the same token, there is still time to catch up.

Revealing the dossier was an unfortunate gaffe, but not a terminal one – it caused more amusement and embarrassment than harm.

Perhaps the most disturbing part of the document was a line near the end, underlined in pen, saying, ‘We need to be on the side of the people.’

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Comments

1. Castle Properties - May 27, 2008

We are residential Estate and Letting Agents in Cheltenham Glos. I can confirm that the government don't seem to have a clue. Of course the state of the economy has had a drastic effect on the housing market! Agents are swamped with property but no one is buying! Our rental section is swamped with people who can't buy or can no longer afford their mortgages. Logic dictates with the price of fuel as it is construction feel the pinch machines etc need fuel, they are laying off workers unemployment is rising as a result and now food, people can no longer afford what they could a few years back, in short when it turns into a buyers market as it is now then prices start to fall and they will fall thick an fast. We feel it is going to take a long time to get our House prices back on track. Castle Properties Cheltenham

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