A reshuffle that beggars belief

Posted: November 14, 2023 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Leasehold, Private renting | Tags: DLUHC, Rachel Maclean |Leave a comment

Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.

History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.

I’m not sure what Karl Marx would have made of the sixth housing minister in two years and the 16^th in 13 years but it seems safe to say he would have run out of comparisons long ago.

The sacking of Rachel Maclean on Monday beggars belief not so much in itself – after nine months she was a relative veteran in the role – but in its timing.

Because the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) has not just one but two important pieces of legislation on its immediate agenda.

As she tweeted herself, she was due to start piloting the first of these, the Renters (Reform) Bill, through its committee stage in the House of Commons today (Tuesday).

I’ve been asked to step down from my role as Housing Minister. Disappointed and was looking forward to introducing the Renters Reform Bill to Committee tomorrow and later the Leasehold and Freehold Bill. It has been a privilege to hold the position and I wish my successor well.

— Rachel Maclean (@redditchrachel) November 13, 2023

The Bill delivers on the 2019 Conservative manifesto pledge of scrapping Section 21 and represents a delicate balancing act between the interests of landlords and tenants.

You might have thought, then, that it would benefit from a minister who knows her brief and is sufficiently across the detail to debate it with the opposition, both on the Labour side and among her own backbenchers. You might – but not Rishi Sunak.

The second is of course the Leasehold and Freehold Bill, the result of fraught negotiations between DLUHC and Downing Street that will tackle some, but not all, of the problems faced by leaseholders.

Time is short for the Bill if it is to stand a chance of it becoming law before the next election and a minister who knows their stuff is again vital.

So it was little surprise to see housing minister Michael Gove retweeting supportive comments from business secretary Kemi Badenoch about their ex-colleague.

When you’ve written about housing for as long as I have and watched ministers come and go and come and go they tend to start to blur into one.

The memorable ones tend to have had mad ideas or done bad things so perhaps it’s good that I can remember comparatively little about Rachel Maclean.

There was that embarrassing episode where she seemed not to know the difference between social and affordable housing in an interview with Inside Housing.

And that was that weird fringe meeting at the Conservative conference where she said that private renters are not all ‘weed-smoking bad people, in gangs and crack dens and everything else and smashing up the neighbourhood’.

But otherwise she seems to have been one of the politicians who understood that housing is a way for the Conservatives to appeal to young voters and a strong supporter of the reforms of private renting and leasehold.

None of that matters, though, when it comes to reshuffles. It’s unclear what she had done to offend Number 10 but (pure speculation on my part) I wonder if her sacking was an attempt to put Michael Gove in his place.

Over the weekend, the BBC reported that he and pensions secretary Mel Stride had written to the prime minister and chancellor calling for the restoration of Local Housing Allowance in next week’s Autumn Statement.

After rumours that Number 10 was struggling to find anyone who wanted to be the new housing minister, as I’m writing this on Monday afternoon it seems that local government minister Lee Rowley will step up for a second spell in the post.

His first, under the short-lived regime of Liz Truss, lasted for just 49 days. Perhaps my memory really is playing up and this government has had so many housing ministers that they have been forced to start going round again.

That does at least mean Michael Gove will have a side-kick who knows the department and will be aware of at least some of the issues.

So it’s welcome to yet another new housing minister. The best advice that I can offer Lee Rowley is to make sure he wears a belt and braces on his first appearance in the Commons because it would be no surprise to see him stand up and find his trousers falling down around his ankles.

As Marx forgot to say, housing ministers repeat themselves and so does farce.  

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