Hodgeson's choice

Extraordinary article by Margaret Hodge in yesterday's Observer on council housing. With, one might venture, an eye to certain sections of her Barking consituency, she proposes that 'indigenous' families be given priority over immigrant families, even when their need is greater:

We prioritise the needs of an individual migrant family over the entitlement others feel they have. So a recently arrived family with four or five children living in a damp and overcrowded, privately rented flat with the children suffering from asthma will usually get priority over a family with less housing need who have lived in the area for three generations and are stuck at home with the grandparents.

We should look at policies where the legitimate sense of entitlement felt by the indigenous family overrides the legitimate need demonstrated by the new migrants.

So it seems that the concrete needs of the asthmatic immigrant children should take second place to the felt entitlement of the 'indigenous' family. Heartwarming. Where might this logic take us? Will the wheezing tots be denied inhalers on the basis of their recent arrival on our shores? Should 'native' children be given first choice of books from the school library?

In any case, as some of the comments on the article pointed out, it is based on a dishonest premise: that recently arrived economic migrants are taking up all available council housing. In fact, as a quick browse of Barking and Dagenham housing policy shows, there already considerable restrictions of the kind Hodge proposes. Those who are under immigration control, do not have a 'local connection' to the area, or are not 'habitually resident' in the UK are not presently eligible for council housing. One might think that a government minister would know better than to recycle tired old BNP propaganda, but then again, maybe not