Labour's parallel universes - Part 2 - London

Saturday 9 February was the second of two all-member consultations about the Labour manifesto for the forthcoming Mayoral and Greater London Assembly elections on 1 May 2008. A beautiful morning tempted me onto my bike to cycle down to the Lilian Bayliss Technology School at Vauxhall, in the London Borough of Lambeth.

London members' links with the London Labour Party are through an elaborate delegate structure, which most are probably unaware of. So it was good to have an opportunity to feed in ideas about policy for the next four years.

Mayor Livingstone gave us a primer about the issues of interest to Londoners in the wake of major improvements in the London's standing as a world-city, its transport infrastructure and success attracting the Olympics. Genuine affordable housing in London is an issue which members in my Constituency Labour Party, the Cities of London and Westminster, are concerned about. The Mayor has strategic planning powers which can help determine how many affordable homes get built each year in London. The target is 50%. It's not being achieved. That's no reflection on Ken and his team. All he can do is help shape the market for housing development, and on developments for more than 500 homes call them in, even of a local borough has given approval.

I was glad to hear him talking about the issue in its political context, lest we forget. The Tories under Thatcher stopped council's building homes for rent at the beginning of the 1980s and then reduced the available social housing stock even further by selling off the most marketable stock through the 'right-to-buy'.

Under the 50% rule the supply of affordable housing in London has risen. But not by enough. Plus questions of affordability are now very real. I suggested that one way to tackle that would to tighten up the targets and look for 50% new housing to be for social rent, up from the current target of 35% of new build for social rent. Those methods of influencing the market will take time to feed through. In the meantime Ken's been working on a plan to improve access to shared-equity. The current threshold is a joint income of £70K. Nice if you are getting it. But beyond the reach of most young couples.

Expect an announcement soon.

Boris Johnson, the Conservative Party candidate wants to abolish the 50% target for affordable homes and leave it to the market. Given the rise in London's population expected over the next 10 to 15 years, that might help prop up property prices. But it won't help those wanting to live and work here, especially younger voters.

After an exhaustive Q&A session, there was time to split into breakout groups on key topics. I joined the one that included housing to reinforce the need for a social rent target of 50%. But that had to wait a debate about the London living wage. Quite right. The real problem with that policy, endorsed by the London Labour biennial conference in late 2006, is that no Labour-controlled borough has backed Ken and the GLA yet. At £5.52 an hour the national minimum wage for adults is £1.68 an hour lower than the London living wage, now set at £7.20. A campaign is called for to encourage one of the Labour-controlled boroughs to lead the way. 

The results of the consultations will be fed into the London Labour regional board.

The deadline for further submissions whether individual or collective is 18 February.

When 1 May dawns and the polling stations open, voters will have three votes - one for Mayor, one for a GLA constituency member, and one for the Party list. The only way to keep the BNP off the GLA is to persuade more to vote in the first place and use all three votes for Labour's candidates.

For that Ken freely admitted we need a party machine. For me that means more active members, NOW. If you are based in London, did you know about the Manifesto consultation? Let, me know.

In the third and final installment in this series on Labour's parallel universes - Brown's government.