ROOF Blog

Tenants, MPs, local councillors and trade unionists from across Britain will come together on March 19 at the Defend Council Housing (DCH) national conference to defend the future of council housing and demand that politicians listen to council tenants in the run up to the general election. DCH campaigns against ‘privatisation’ and for direct investment to provide decent, affordable, secure and accountable housing. The conference will discuss proposals for the future funding of council housing and hear from local campaigns fighting to insist Government meets its commitment to bring all housing up to a decent standard with no strings attached.

MPs would be banned from receiving taxpayers’ money to pay the mortgage interest on their second homes, under proposals to be published next week.

Sir Christopher Kelly, the chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, has briefed opposition party leaders about his report, which says that in future MPs will have to rent, not buy, their second home if they wish to receive taxpayer support.

Kelly is also to make it more difficult for MPs living in the south-east to claim for a second home, so more of them will have to commute to and from parliament.

It is possible he will rule that MPs living within a 60-minute commuting radius will not be able to claim for a second home, joining the small group of London MPs that are already banned from receiving a second home allowance.

Previously MPs could claim as much as £24,000 a year in mortgage interest payments on their second home, often allowing them to live in homes which were much larger than they required.

The government is in talks with property developers about the introduction of a local authority backed bond scheme aimed to finance stalled regeneration projects. Under the proposals a bond would be underwritten by the government and sold to investors. The borrowed money would be used to pay for basic infrastructure on mothballed sites which will allow building work to begin. Local councils and MPs have also backed the demand following a parliamentary inquiry.

Squatters have taken over the home of married Labour MPs Ann and Alan Keen, who have recently come under fire for claiming hundreds of thousands of pounds in expenses on a second home located a few miles away. The squatters said they moved in after a neighbour said the house had been empty for more than a year, and say they have the support of local residents. The BBC say they have obtained a letter from the local council telling the couple that ‘urgent action’ is required from them to explain why their main house is unoccupied.

Ahead of today’s debate in the Commons, party leaders have agreed to proposals for interim changes to MPs’ expenses. Mortgage interest and rent claims will be capped at £1,250 a month, claims for furniture, cleaning and stamp duty will be banned, and they will not be allowed to flip the designation of their second home. An independent review of allowances is expected by autumn.

MPs representing seats in outer London will be stopped from claiming the full £24,000 second home allowance from next year and all claims, no matter how small, will have to be supported by receipts, MPs voted in a Commons debate last night. Parliamentarians will also have to declare details of their earnings from second jobs and how much time they work on these jobs, and will no longer be responsible for employing staff directly. The changes are interim reforms pending a report from the chairman of the committee on standards in public life, Sir Christopher Kelly.