1700 Hrs GMT
London
Tuesday 30 June 2009
The information has been published on BBC online in the last hours as well.
EAST LONDON PRESS was the only East London media group to condemn Harry Cohen when we reported his blasé response to questions about his expenses claims. As reported by a national Sunday tabloid, it was Harry Cohen who boasted that he and other MPs had been EFFECTIVELY licensed to make as much money as they could do under the bogus expenses pretext...
Muhammad Khan has been on the list for 10 years, and is still waiting. It took Funmi Fabemi three. For Linda Barrett, who was brought up in a council home, there was never any hope.
Social housing is at a premium in Tower Hamlets, east London, where white, Asian, African and eastern European people live cheek by jowl.
Barrett, 51, a primary schoolteacher, believes the policy of giving priority to local people may have come too late. "I think there's a lot to be said for it. I was brought up in a council property in the area. But I didn't have a hope of getting on the list when I married."
She and her husband were forced to buy under a shared ownership scheme to stay in the area. "It makes you feel a bit sidelined really because there have always been the newcomers to the area. We have always had refugees and it has been difficult for those of us born here to stay here."
All of her schoolfriends have had to move away, she said.
"I am slightly cynical about it. If I'm honest, I think it is just Gordon Brownreacting because he is terrified of his position with the election.
"The trouble is, in this area everybody thinks that everybody else is getting what they are entitled to."
Among the myriad street stalls of Bethnal Green high street, the teacher, the trader and the caterer all agree that social housing is a big issue.
"Ten years. That's how long I've been on the list," said Khan, a 35-year-old father of two from Pakistan who lives with his family in a cramped private flat. "Will it help me? Who knows?" he said from behind his bedding stall.
"Thirteen-and-a-half years, that's how long one of my customers has been waiting," said the Asian owner of the local pound store.
Some see it as a move that will favour the indigenous, white East Ender. "That's my initial impression," said Brenda Bukenyna, 30, a link worker helping rehabilitate ex-offenders.
"But I suppose it might also help the ordinary working-class person who has lived here for a long time and just cannot afford rented accommodation."
Fabemi, 43, from Nigeria, believes Africans already have a hard time getting on the list. It took her three years as a 21-year-old single mother before she was given a flat. But she broadly welcomed the move. "If it means it is fairer for everyone, then I'm in favour
The claim that immigrants jump the queue for council houses will be exposed as a myth next week by an exhaustive national survey.
It will undermine Gordon Brown's promise to let local authorities give "more priority" to people with local links in the allocation of empty properties. His move was widely seen yesterday as a response to the suspicion – successfully exploited in last month's local and European elections by the British National Party – that white families were losing out to new arrivals in obtaining council or housing association homes.
The policy, echoing Mr Brown's ill-fated "British jobs for British workers" slogan, brought warnings from the opposition and immigration groups that the Prime Minister was allowing the BNP to set the political agenda.
The Independent has learned that a two-year investigation has failed to uncover "queue jumping" by immigrants and will describe the belief in its existence as a popular prejudice.
The inquiry – based on analysis of authority housing allocation and interviews with housing association managers – was set up two years ago by Trevor Phillips, the chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and the Local Government Association. Its conclusions will be set out next week. Mr Phillips conceded at the time the inquiry was established that there was a widespread public belief that migrants received unfair advantages.
But research last year discovered 90 per cent of people in council properties were born in Britain. New arrivals in the country represented 2 per cent of the general population, but less than 3 per cent of those in social housing.
New migrants tended to end up in private rented accommodation because many of them, such as Poles and other east and central Europeans, were not eligible for council accommodation as they have not been working in this country long enough to qualify for it. Many lived in difficult-to-let former local authority properties that had been sold, which could have fuelled suspicions that newcomers were being favourably treated.
More than 60 per cent of new migrants were in private rented accommodation, another 18 per cent were buying their own homes and only 11 per cent were in council property, compared with 17 per cent among the general population. Announcing the construction of 110,000 homes to rent or buy over the next two years, Mr Brown told MPs yesterday that the Government was "enabling local authorities to give more priority to local people whose names have been on waiting-lists for far too long".
Downing Street insisted the move was aimed at giving more flexibility to councils. But David Cameron, the Tory leader, warned that ministers risked inflaming tensions with rhetoric designed to react to the BNP's successes. He said: "Government ministers should be very, very careful with the language that they use, that this 'local homes for local people' does not become another 'British jobs for British workers', which I think did a huge amount of damage to the Prime Minister's credibility and helped to build up parties that none of us want to build up."
Mr Cameron said he suspected the Government of deliberately putting potentially inflammatory rhetoric before firm, calm action.
Keith Best, chief executive of the Immigration Advisory Service, said: "The Government is playing to a particular constituency. It won't have escaped the Government's notice that the hard right has been spreading mischief around people to indicate that immigrants are taking their homes and jobs."
Three years ago Margaret Hodge, the MP for Barking in east London, sparked uproar after she called for council house allocation to be linked to length of residence in Britain, citizenship and national insurance contributions. "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," she said.
Lester, of course, was lost to the racing scene for a year after being jailed for tax fraud.
And when he came out he was further humiliated by being stripped of his OBE.
More medals may soon be making a return journey as claims of Army heroism in Afghanistan are investigated.
If porkies have been told, those involved will rightly lose their awards.
So why can't we apply this rule to the House of Lords?
It's a disgrace that men and women can keep the titles Lord and Lady for life regardless of what they do.
Home Secretary ... Jacqui Smith
Look at Labour's Baroness Uddin and the £100,000 she's claimed on an empty flat.
She was a local councillor and Tony Blair crony whom he put in the Lords after she failed to be picked as a Labour candidate.
She lives in a taxpayer-subsidised east London house while claiming her main home is a flat in Kent.
Except that until rumbled by The Sunday Times she appears never to have lived in the Kent property.
But by registering her main home as outside London, she qualifies for lavish Lords allowances. When she realised reporters were on her tail, she dashed over to the Kent property - where neighbours had never once set eyes on her - and furniture and workmen started arriving in a frenzy of activity.
"Lady" Uddin makes £29,000 a year like this. Along with other goodies like free food and free travel, she's had £359,000 from us between 2001 and this year.
She swans around the deprived streets of Tower Hamlets - one of Britain's poorest boroughs - in a flash BMW 4x4 for which the list price new is almost £60,000.
These allowances are a gigantic scam. How do Labour expect to stop benefit fraud on poor estates when their own representatives are up to their ermined ears in fraud?
If it is a crime for a jobless brickie to fiddle housing benefit, then it should be an even greater crime for a Lord or Lady to be chiselling the taxpayer. Labour don't realise the extent of public anger over the Westminster gravy train. Tell you what, "Lady" Uddin. You insist the Kent address is your main home even though nobody has ever seen you there.
Prove it by letting us see your utility and council tax bills from that address. And if it's your main home, how come you aren't registered to vote there?
Her "Ladyship" is not alone in her ducking and diving. It's par for the course at Westminster. We need a House of Lords to keep the Commons in check. Those in it ought to command respect.
But Labour have stuffed it with duds and crawlers who see their titles as official permission to rob the taxpayer.
I bet you once Labour lose the election, we'll see "Lady" Jacqui Smith and "Lord" Prescott lapping up the cream.
Fraud has become so institutionalised under Labour that peers and ministers don't see these scams as a crime, just their "entitlement".
A police and Parliamentary investigation has been demanded into "Lady" Uddin's allowances.
If it turns out that the Kent address has not been her main home she should hand the money back and suffer the same indignity as Lester Piggott by losing her title and paying the price in prison.
But I fear it's a racing certainty that won't happen.
DO you agree with Fergus? Have your say below.
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whilst speaking the truth is admirable we all know nothing will change these alledged fraudsters - t...