David Curry

Public policy think tanks are the crucial nourishment of political parties. They particularly matter to the opposition because they generate the ideas from which political programmes are born. The Institute of Economic Affairs, the Adam Smith Institute and the Centre for Policy Studies (founded by Mrs Thatcher and Keith Joseph in 1974) were key suppliers of the liberal market ideas that generated "Thatcherism". The Labour Party was interested in new models of policy delivery, especially in its "Third Way" period. Bright young men from Labour-friendly think tanks were recruited into the No 10 Policy Unit after the 1997 election or became political advisers to ministers. Demos and the Foreign Policy Centre were aimed at the New Labour marketplace and even the dear old Fabian Society began to stir from beneath the raiment of the Webbs.

The latest person to tread this familiar path is perhaps the most influential of the lot: Matthew Taylor is director of the Institute for Public Policy Research. He has been signed up for three days a week and is, I rather suspect, still wondering whether the move is a seriously good idea. The IPPR has gained a solid reputation across the political spectrum for ideas grounded in practical considerations but with enough lateral thinking to strike the imagination. Its latest publication has certainly struck the imagination and its subject is right at the heart of the political debate. But if ever there was a prescription that every political antennae tells you to distance yourself from, this pamphlet is it.

The pamphlet is called Housing, Equality and Choice and it has been written by Chris Holmes, the IPPR's visiting research fellow. I used to have quite a lot of dealings with Chris when I was housing minister and he was director of Shelter. It is true to say that if I had to issue the invitations to my last dinner on earth I doubt if I would turn instinctively to Chris as a bon viveur (John Gummer would certainly get an invitation). But I respected the dogged, unremitting persistence with which he pegged away for his cause.

Gordon Brown has made the characteristics of the British housing market an issue in the assessment of Britain's possible euro membership. He has commissioned studies on housing supply and on mortgage lending, notably the case for fixed-rate lending. Commentators have been rather dismissive of this, arguing that the government needed to pay much more attention to fiscal measures to stabilise the market. Nobody can say that Holmes has dodged the challenge. He argues for a reduction in the £255,000 threshold on inheritance tax, the imposition of capital gains tax on house sales, higher stamp duty, heavier council tax on more expensive properties, and full council tax rates on second homes. On the social housing front, Holmes wants to give the mayor of London power to buy up homes for social letting, to stop right-to-buy sales and reinforced powers for local authorities to promote development.

The first thing to say is that quite a lot of the Holmes prescription is already government policy. Brown has ramped up stamp duty; the local government act provides for the rebanding of council tax (the Evening Standard is already forecasting the £3000 council tax for London); the right to buy has been trimmed back; housebuilding targets are being imposed on local authorities; councils are being given powers to take over empty properties to house social tenants. Special bodies are being set up to deliver the new houses in the communities plan. In other words housing policy is becoming much more interventionist.

At the same time Housing Corporation working parties are beavering away at how to get more social tenants into sustainable home ownership. Housing associations have woken up to the fact that the government thinks they have grown lazy and complacent and are fighting a rearguard action against opening up the social housing grant to private developers.

But attack inheritance tax? Gordon Brown, in his Budget speech, excused himself for lifting the threshold only £5000 by pointing out that only around one in eight properties worth £255,000 actually paid the tax because so many people put their properties into trusts (something else Holmes has his eye on). I cannot imagine anything more likely to outrage the Daily Mail (which exists to feed the outrage of Middle Britain, increasingly at the government) than to hit at the sacred right to transmit property.

This is one idea whose time has not come. Politics rules, OK!