A grey area

Amid the hurly-burly you may have missed a report the other day from the Office for National Statistics on birth rates in England and Wales. We have, and have had for some time, a child deficit. Women aren’t having enough babies to replace the existing population. That doesn’t mean the population will fall – yet – since people are living longer than they used to and numbers are topped up by immigration. But it does mean this society is ageing, with dramatic effects in the long run on the shape and composition of households.

Nothing new in that, you might say. Except during an election season, a period when great national choices are being made, you might hope for some debate, even recognition that society is changing and that the changes must impact mightily on public policies and the fiscal balance. The parties will say, doubtless, that they have specific policies for pensions or old age care. But there’s not much sense, from any quarter, of a vision of what it’s going to be like living in this greying country and how we should resolve the inevitable conflicts between age groups.

Ageing is a diffuse, deep issue, one below the radar of conventional politics. Housing, similarly. In a more rational, more reflective world we should be thinking about the physical shape of social change, about how and where our children and our grandparents are to be housed.

In this election, a key document ought to be Kate Barker’s report for the Treasury on housing supply and the parties should be vying with one another about how best to unblock provision.

Barker wasn’t, let’s remind ourselves, some Labour stooge, but a kosher business economist. All she did was some basic arithmetic. House prices are rising out of kilter with other prices and relative to house prices in other countries and the reason has to be lack of supply. Yet, so far, the parties have largely seen fit to ignore the subject – all parties that is, including the Liberal Democrats. Labour will say that the Communities Plan, though devised before Barker, is effectively its response.

And it’s true that if chancellor Gordon Brown were to replace prime minister Tony Blair (assuming Labour wins the election) housing’s prominence would rise. But elections are times when you minimise attention to policies that hurt and put all your emphasis on feel-good policies that ostensibly benefit everyone.

The truth is that housing policy hurts. Getting anywhere near the Barker figures for expansion in housing supply would involve treading on several sets of corns – taxpayers’, existing homeowners’ in certain areas, greenies’.

Listen to the silence of the Tories on the issue. You might have thought among the bonfire of regulations and controls they are promising would be decreasing restraints on development, to free land so a private sector solution to Barker could flourish. But the one set of regulations that the Tories turn out to be enthusiastic about is planning regulations. Tory policies would effectively tighten planning restraint on housing development under the pretext of making decisions more local. That’s pretty much the Liberal Democrats’ position, too.

There has been talk lately about “dog whistle” issues. Parties send out subliminal messages and the electorate identify with them – it’s what Conservative leader Michael Howard is supposed to have done on abortion and immigration.

Housing ought to be a megaphone issue. Big, collective decisions need to be made about land use. But, so far it seems, it will be marginal – shoved into the drawer marked too difficult, too long-term.