Exclusive: Proposals to be put forward next month will favour UK citizens, but experts say they are likely to be illegal or unworkable
The plan is designed in part to bolster Rishi Sunak’s reputation for being tough on immigration. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian
Downing Street wants to give UK families higher priority for social housing in a controversial scheme that will be badged as “British homes for British workers”, the Guardian can reveal.
Officials will launch a consultation in the coming weeks into how they can give British citizens faster access to social housing, a move designed in part to bolster Rishi Sunak’s reputation for being tough on immigration.
But the move has prompted anger from some in government, who warn it could further fuel support for the rightwing Reform UK party. Housing experts say it is likely to be either illegal or unworkable, or both.
Polly Neate, chief executive of the housing charity Shelter, said: “This policy amounts to nothing more than scapegoating at its worst. It is unnecessary, unenforceable and unjust. Not only does it ignore the fact that there are already stringent rules so only UK citizens or those with settled status can access homes for social rent, but it blames a group of people for a housing emergency that they did not create.”
comment by dizzy: It appears that Tory scum are keen to not only to support apartheid but also want to introduce it to UK. At the very least they are keen to benefit from racism. You get the same siht if you vote for the same cnuts.
The Tories and Labour competing over hardline immigration policies only helps to mainstream far-right ideas
Rishi Sunak conducts a press conference in December 2023 | James Manning (WPA Pool)/Getty Images
Standing at a lectern with the familiar slogan, “STOP THE BOATS”, Rishi Sunak evoked the “will of the people” as the so-called Rwanda Bill made its fractious passage through the Commons last week.
The prime minister’s summoning of “the people” to push through an inhumane and unpopular policy smacks of the misuse of populism that we have come to associate with this government. The insistence that stopping people seeking asylum is “an urgent national issue” deliberately ignores that the priority issues for the British public remain the cost of living and the NHS.
We have seen both main political parties eagerly trading punches for the prize of who can appear most punitive on blocking people seeking asylum. Not only does this stale consensus manufacture a sense of crisis that is a distortion of public opinion, but it also pretends it has nothing to do with racism. And yet whether it’s warning about a “hurricane” or “invasion” of migrants and the failures of multiculturalism, or condemning Britain’s “immigration dependency”, the messaging relies on innuendo and euphemism that stoke racial tensions.
The Runnymede Trust, where I am the interim co-CEO, has today published a report warning of the dangers of this rotten politics that helps mainstream far-right, racist political ideas. Political debate on immigration, based on racialised ideas of who is welcome and who belongs, has become the norm. Whether directly or indirectly, historic and contemporary migration policies are predicated on the exclusion of people of colour. As exemplified by the Windrush scandal, this cheap politics has a high cost – and it is people of colour, regardless of their citizenship status, who bear the ugly consequences.
These toxic anti-migrant policies are coupled with a sustained assault on our democratic infrastructure. In 2022, the government passed the Elections Act, which made it a requirement that voters present ID at polling stations. There was strong opposition about the impact on people of colour. The first UK elections to use them – the May 2023 local elections – confirmed these fears. The Electoral Commission reported about 14,000 people were turned away, and that people of colour and disabled people were most likely to be impacted. The commission predicts 800,000 people could be blocked from voting at the next general election – an incredible price to pay when there were just six cases of voter fraud in 2019.
It’s not just legislation, but also through rhetoric that politicians have persistently attacked the right to protest. Indeed, former home secretary Suella Braverman labelled pro-Palestine marches “hate marches” and compared them with wicked vexation to Black Lives Matter protests – both causes which have high levels of support among communities of colour.
And dare I even mention the ‘culture war’ and the injuries it has inflicted on the strength of civil society? In recent years we have seen the vilification of organisations across the arts, heritage, charity sector and our higher education spaces. The targets have often been those that have dared to embark on progressive racial justice work, who have been demonised with the absurd inversion of the term ‘woke’.
The fact it is the likes of Braverman and her replacement James Cleverly – ministers of colour – who have designed and executed these policies, shows diversity at the top does not protect against racist impact, nor does it mean people in those positions won’t have divergent or indeed opposing political interests to those with whom they may share some points of affinity.
The politics of representation may prioritise superficial visibility, but we mustn’t forget people in positions of power have always designed and inflicted policies that have harmed those they are deemed to share some interest with.
As we prepare for the 2024 general election, we must act to stop the rot of our democracy. Pandering to far-right politics by creating a crisis around small boats and invoking the “will of the people” to implement punitive and racist policies while ignoring the needs of the very people they invoke is unacceptable. On every count, it is people of colour that lose.
Image of the Green Party’s Carla Denyer on BBC Question Time.
Responding to this year’s poverty report from the Joeseph Rowntree Foundation, which says that it is now 20 years and six prime ministers since there was a sustained fall in poverty, co-leader of the Green Party, Carla Denyer, said:
“This latest report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation makes for grim reading. Over one in five people in the UK were living in poverty in 2021/22. That’s almost 14 and a half million people, with over eight million working-age adults and over four million children.
“For years, successive UK governments have allowed poverty to become entrenched and for inequality to widen. The super-rich have seen their incomes soar during a time of increased hardship for millions of people.
“It doesn’t have to be this way. Poverty is a political choice.
“There are things that can be done quickly to address the sickening levels of poverty in our society. For example, the Green Party would increase Universal Credit by £40 per week and abolish the two-child benefit cap. A wealth tax on the super-rich, along with tax reforms such as changes to Capital Gains Tax and abolishing “non dom status,” could pay for these and other measures to reduce poverty.
“As Labour finalises its manifesto, there’s little indication that they will make the right political choices to help the millions enduring grinding poverty. Which is why we so desperately need a group of Green MPs in parliament after the next general election to put pressure on Labour to do the right thing.”
The revelations will undermine the Tory government’s claim that tax cuts are the way to turn around the economy
Treasury officials warned Rishi Sunak in late 2022 that tax cuts would have a ‘low impact’ on boosting economic growth, and yet despite this advice, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt and the Tory government continue to prioritise tax cuts in a bid to boost the economy.
Treasury documents seen by Bloomberg reveal that incoming Prime Minister Sunak was told that ‘increasing high-skilled immigration and changing planning rules to build more homes would both have a “high impact” on the economy with a “low” fiscal cost.”
The revelations will undermine the Tory government’s claim that tax cuts are the way to turn around the economy, with Hunt planning tax cuts in the annual budget in March. Despite the advice of experts, Sunak and Hunt are placing tax cuts at the heart of the Tory election campaign.
The leader of the UK’s top teachers’ union has ripped into the Government for its “absolute failure” to properly fund schools, following further revelations into the state of Britain’s crumbling classrooms.
Schools across the country have been struggling to cope with urgent building repairs and mounting maintenance costs, BBC Panorama has been exposing, with schools unable to claim extra money for repairs to tackle leaks and cold.
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Commenting on the latest investigation into the state of British school buildings, Daniel Kebede, who became General Secretary of the National Education Union last year, stressed that the failings lay firmly at the feet of the Government.
Kebede wrote on X: “Make no mistake this is absolute failure from government.
Make no mistake this is absolute failure from government. Their own "Office for Government Property" state it requires £7bn to maintain the school estate.
This government spends a 1/3 of that…
Our children absolutely deserve better than this. We need a government that views… https://t.co/y5xgVioMIq
