Cohesion can include choice

I notice that the select committee looking at social cohesion has suggested that choice-based lettings make the promotion of social cohesion more difficult. We all sympathise with this position, but isn't this view a bit paternalistic and patronising?

The whole point of the choice agenda is that people can choose where they want to live – whether we like their choice or not – not where we choose to put them. Evidence shows that when people have more choice about where they want to live, it tends to create more sustainable communities.

But if we follow the suggestion of the select committee to its practical conclusion, we will have to start influencing people to move to areas that wouldn't be their first choice, to suit local targets around social cohesion. How would that be a step forward from the old points-based system of allocation?

It seems to me that the select committee suffers from the same two problems that housing staff have been accused of in the past: an unwillingness to relinquish control and a view that they know better than the customer.