When chancellor Gordon Brown announced in last year's budget that there would be a housing Green Paper it was clear that housing benefit was the main target in his sights.
In his budget red book last year there were only a few paragraphs on housing reform, but within those words there were several attacks on housing benefit.
It was claimed to "exacerbate" problems in housing policy, it meant tenants have "little interest in rents", it "pushes up the welfare bill", it was a "major disincentive to taking a job" and it was "extremely complex".
More than a year later the actual Green Paper bears little relation to the chancellor's build up. Environment ministers have managed to stuff the paper with reams of housing policy proposals, but discussion about structural change to housing benefit is brief and has been relegated to the long term.
Once again it seems ministers have concluded that it is too difficult to reform.
Former welfare reform minister Frank Field is scathing about the government's lack of ambition. "I think we should have had major housing benefit reform at the beginning of the Parliament."
He claims the proposals in the Green Paper only tackle the symptoms not the disease. Over a cup of tea in the House of Commons he says: "It's like trying to deal with tuberculosis before the introduction of antibiotics. They are all minor changes which will take the sweat off the brow of the patient, but none of it can make much difference."
Field also points out the lack of progress the government has made generally on housing reform. "It's surprising that it has taken this long to come up with. I resigned a year and a half ago, and I cannot see much difference in the Green Paper from what we were discussing then. What has been happening in the meantime?"
It could all have been very different, under Field's big plans for housing benefit. He wanted to scrap it completely by bringing forward the cash that was projected to be spent on the benefit and handing it over to tenants.
He says: "During the parliament, housing benefit would cost an extra £3 billion which would have meant we could have increased housing benefit payments by a quarter for everyone."
Under the system existing tenants would have been given the extra cash as a lump sum to be used as they pleased. He explained that if tenants could find cheaper homes they could keep even more money, and so the idea would help drive rents down.
New tenants would be given a flat rate allowance worth the average housing benefit payment for their region.
Field says: "People would have a real interest in bargaining. If you want to find cheaper accommodation you keep the extra money so there's a real incentive to start working a market system."
But the plan was vetoed by the Treasury. Field's section on housing benefit was removed at the last minute from the welfare reform Green Paper. "It showed we were not going to do welfare reform as I understood it," he says.
Field points out that, left unreformed, housing benefit "feeds the upward movement of rents". And he predicts that despite "Delphic phrases in the Green Paper about fairness" rents will still have to go up.
Field is also dismissive of housing minister Nick Raynsford's claim that on rent his paper will succeed where Beveridge failed. "Poor old Beveridge would be spinning round."
The Birkenhead MP adds: "In my constituency some people are forced into properties where no one in their right mind would actually go and live. If the Green Paper is serious are we actually going to see minus rents?"
The Green Paper is clear that such an unthinkable prospect will not be introduced. It says that changes to rents will only be gradual so that they don't frighten off lenders from the housing sector. Jeopardising the private cash raised by housing associations is now seen as one of the big obstacles to reform of rents and benefit.
But Field claims talk of the success of private finance in housing is a "great myth".
He adds: "We ought not kid ourselves that this is some kind of magic solution. It's only private money in the short term, they are going to get public money in the end. We should put taxpayers" money up front rather than trying to disguise that it's going to be taxpayers' money later on."
Field reckons the other big obstacle to radical housing benefit reform is Gordon Brown and in particular his obsession with tax credits.
"The chancellor doesn't want other major reforms going through which prevent or replace the need for tax credits, that's the power struggle. We are not going to get any other reforms until the chancellor feels he's in a position to bring forward his housing tax credit proposals."
Field's comments give an insight into the kind of pressure environment ministers have faced latterly with the Treasury, but first with Field himself.
They also demonstrate that however difficult and challenging the Green Paper may be for councils and housing associations, it dwarfs the upheaval that there might have been.
Source
Housing Today
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