by Mike McNabb
Housing minister Caroline Flint has arrived. With a metaphorical 41-gun salute she has given Labour's increasingly hard line on disadvantaged people an edge of serrated steel.
In a statement out of the Norman Tebbit school of liberalism she believes that jobless social housing tenants should be "actively seeking work" or lose their home.
She expressed surprise that more than half of this group of tenants were without paid work and that nearly three-quarters of under-25s who lived in these properties were similarly unemployed.
This from a minister whose portfolio until 24 January included employment.
Most want to work
As Flint is obviously on a learning curve in her new post, perhaps it needs to be pointed out that, although it is true that, as in life generally, some tenants are idle, most would like to earn a half-decent living.
We hear much about over-50s finding it difficult to find employment after they lose their jobs. The jaw-dropping news for Flint is that younger, less academically inclined people - and there is a connection between some social housing and educational underachievement - have similar problems. It will not be long in this competitive jobs market before applicants will need a degree to perform the most menial of tasks. If you have only a few GCSEs, forget it.
Benefits trap
Of course, there are jobs. But many are paid at the minimum wage and many are part time. Although the pay is low, the earnings are often enough to raise the employee above the benefits threshold, leaving them worse off than if they had remained jobless.
So what will happen? Flint's plan implies that, unless the tenant is actively seeking work, they will be kicked out of their home.
Where to?
Are not local authorities obliged to, dare we say it, actively seek housing for homeless people? That could be some workload if the problem is as ingrained as Flint seems to think.
Gaining qualifications
Perhaps in a search for solutions, Flint should take a look at what is happening in Yorkshire and Humberside where her own constituency is based.
There tenants are not being evicted for not having a job, but, for the past five years, local housing associations have been providing training to 16,600 people and have helped 2,800 young people to gain formal qualifications.
What a good idea.
More information
One possible solution to the problem of those who don't work, or won't work, is to reinstate National Service in the armed forces.
Given that because of the demands made on the latter by our politicians, they are now understrength and over expended. A period of 3 years compulsory service for all those over the age of 18 and under 35, who are medically and mentally fit, would serve a number of purposes apart from filling the army's manpower shortage. Not the least of which would be providing those who are thus recruited with a sense of purpose, resonsibility, achievement and discipline, together with respect for their comrades. In doing so it would remove the boredom and aimless squandering of their current lifestyle.
I have no doubt that such a solution would find favour with Norman Tebbit, but is likely to raise cries of anguish from libertarians and civil liberty groups. What both those groups forget, or are unaware of, is that during the 1950s when conscription was in force. many ex Borstal and 'approved school' graduates served with honour and distinction in both the Malayan and Korean wars. Whilst it is true that many of those in common with others intially hated the discipline and attempted to rebel against it, they quickly discovered that to do so only made their life more uncomfortable and so they settled into the routine.
As someone who had the privilege of assisting many of those young men in changing their attitudes, I have fond memories of the majority of them 'confessing' that their time in service had enabled them to value their life and time, in ways that incarceration had never achieved.
In any case we know that the Minister's proposals to evict them are like so many other 'initiatives' announced and re-announced, nothing more than hot air soundbites, which as you rightly point out is virtually unenforceable, and would probably contraven the Human Rights act.