Over the past few months an issue that has received scant political attention over the past few decades became the most emotive issue not only in Westminster, but across the land. It sparked a petition of nearly a quarter of a million; organisations ranging from Campaign to Protect Rural England to the National Federation of Builders voiced their disquiet; the genial decentralisation minister Greg Clark was mauled in the Commons; and it united editorials from the Independent to the Telegraph. Housing had become a divisive issue. Rattled ministers labelled dissenters ‘Trotskyite’, ‘nihilistic’ and ‘semi-hysterical’. But why had this issue caused such discontent, after years of lurking just beneath the political radar? And why should Labour even care?

Housing policy impacts on people’s everyday lives like health or education, but it has occupied a marginal space in political discourse. Not since Thatcher enabled council tenants to buy their home has housing policy been a touchstone issue. This is perverse when millions of people are in housing need. But with limited exceptions, the political establishment is silent.

Labour’s record on housing while in government was largely lamentable. The party oversaw the collapse of Britain’s social housing programme. Successive cabinets simply weren’t interested and the result was self-evident. Housing waiting lists rose 72 per cent under Labour to just under two million. The political fallout was toxic. People living in the most deprived areas became twice as likely to be a waiting list for social housing, and these households were four times more likely to be homeless and in priority need of housing. Labour had failed to provide for the poorest in society.

The most disturbing aspect of this failure of political leadership was the confusion of the housing crisis with immigration. This left a void for the British National party who exploited the resulting resentment, fomenting myths about allocation policies and explicitly blaming immigrants for the housing shortage.

It took the arrival of John Healey as housing minister, appointed less than a year before the general election, for a Labour minister to truly grasp how critical the issue had become. But he was the fourth person to hold the job in less than two years, and the ninth housing minister since Labour came to power. It spoke volumes about how much the party cared about housing as a pressing policy concern.

Housing was first identified by Beveridge as one of the ‘five giant wants’ for future governments to attack. High quality, affordable homes are one of the most basic and crucial elements of a decent standard of living. We spend terrifyingly little time reflecting on the homes we live in, why they are built the way they are, how their spatial arrangements shape our lives, from relationships to crime, to our health and to access to labour markets. But one thing is for sure: we need more of them.

The National Planning Policy Framework unveiled by the government on Tuesday represents the largest overhaul of planning in the UK since Attlee’s government of 1945. In its first ever full term in office, Labour built a million homes. For sure, the need was greater. But it was reflective not only of the urgency of the issue, but the determination of a Labour government to do something about it. To provide a home for all was, intrinsically, a socialist value. When next in power, Labour would do well to remember that.

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David Talbot is a political consultant, tweets @_davetalbot and writes the weekly The Week Ahead column on Progress

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Photo: Dom Stocqueler