FOR THOSE concerned with homelessness and poor housing last year's Budget meant their worst nightmares coming true.
Chancellor. Kenneth Clarke. an nounced new Housing Benefit Regulations designed to cut €130 million from the overall bill. From October 1997 all single people under 60 will sessed cost of shared accommoda. rent officers will also have increasing powers to cut back rents.
One immediate consequence has been private landlords organisations already issuing advice to memoers not to let to people claiming housing Not only could this mean more jobless people becomin? homeless but also increasing numbers of low-paid workers as well. Those that have the option will be thrown back on the family.
A new report by the homeless or'Crisis' shows a dramatic all in the average life expectancy o and 1995 it fell by five years from 47 to ta. Ine average in the populaton. as a whole is 76.
As if all this were not enough grants for building new properties uve been severely slashed. The cut in government grant to the Housing Corporation saw a gigantic fall from (1.06 billion this year to 4650 ml lion for 1997/8.
This means a reduction in the approved development programme or housing associations of 38.9% -the biggest percentage cut to date and far worse than was expected. ine Flousing corporaton staring budget was also cut even though before the announcement staff were already working massive amounts of overtime to keep pace with work Credit approvals - the amounts to finance new housing - fell by (253m to (499m.
Only €70 million has been committed to the Estates' Renewal Challenge fund over the next three years. Just before Christmas the gov. Housing Investment Programme (HIP) allocated to different councils. by 35% and five London councils lost more than 5096. The North East of England saw a reduction of 30%.A.
While Labour's spokesperson Nick Raynsford has been scathing in his attacks on the Houng minister. David Curry, for his failure to dethe New Labour programme prom"Labour will increase investment in social housinz. Raynsford pledges. We will do so both by the phased release of capital receipts and by increasing private investment through partnership' But in housing as in other areas of social need Labour pledges no new resources. poses both Raynsford's attacks on Blair's condemnation of the Tory changes in homeless legislation as empty rhetoric.
As John Perry, Policy Director of the Chartered Institute of Housing. explains "Ironically the I billion cut in the rousing investment pro gramme) is equal to the likely housing in any one year through re. easing capital receipts from the *If Gordon Brown will not take action on the cuts then his party's cherished capital receipts policy will only take us back to square one" starved of cash.
Dorrell has even produced an extra hand-out of 56 million to delay high-profile hospital cuts and closures in Merton Sutton and Wandsworth, where Tory marginal seats are at stake. Elsewhere, health authorities are being urged behind the scenes to borrow money against next year's allocations to defer high-profile cuts until after the general But as more Trusts resort to banning non-emergency admissions and search for other cost reductions to balance their books, and yet another winter cold snap and flu epidemic expose the pitiful inadequacy of hospital bed provision and staff. ing levels, there are harder times Unless Labour wins the clection and pumps in extra money, NHS spending is set to fall in real terms in 1998/9 and stand still the year Chris Smith's eloquent silence on these vital issues has been coupled with his ideological capitulation to the Tory market reforms.
After collapsing on carlier pro posals to sweep away the internal market, abandoning suggestions of scrapping Trust boards, and emFinance Initiative as a means to build new (privately-owned) NHS hospitals, Labour has now come full circle and embraced the basic principle of GP fundholding, although this would be carried out through 'commissioning groups of GPs rather than individual practices.
The half-baked Labour proposals renresent the worst of all op tions. They will antagonise the most self interested and determined advocates of GP Fundholding the Gi's who revel in the incqualtties of the two-tier system — while ignoring professional and other support staff working in primary care, and press-ganging other unattempts to pretend there are no real disagreements between us and the Tories on health policy, and that in some mysterious way he can gain credibility by claiming to be like Labour". (Labour's Chris Smith, December 1996)
Labour's capitulation to the notion of the market comes as its contradications and inequalities are increasingly discredited.
The last few months have seen health authorities grappling with the wasteful charade of services fragmented between competing cash-strapped Trusts, and increasing pressure to merge Trusts into larger units.
In South West London, South Derbyshire and Lincolnshire, for the merger of Trusts to cut bureaucracy and avert cuts in patient care: in Oxfordshire, health bosses facing a [7m shortfall have taken the initiative and proposed a sweeping package of mergers to halve the numoct of 1 rusts With rare exceptions, therefore, despite Smith's spluttering, incoherent attempts to deny it, Labour policy has become a pale echo of Unless a further rapid U-turn is more embarrassing repetition of the to a second successive election in which the NHS is ignored as an clectoral asset by a clueless Labour