• WE have a fourth Tory chancellor in as many months, and while shredding the prime minister’s policies, complicit in a decade of austerity, Jeremy Hunt has the audacity to talk about “compassionate Conservative government”.

In their lurch to right-wing, trickle down, dream wonderland, the mask slipped for a moment. They have shown their true colours and whose side they are on, forced, kicking, and screaming, in to humiliating U-turns on their unfunded tax cuts for the rich.

And, yet again, hardworking people are being asked to pay the price through another round of austerity as I predicted on these pages in July, (More austerity is on the way , July 15).

For now, though, I want to turn to a recently closed consultation bubbling away in the undergrowth of incompetence made in Downing Street, on what cap should be introduced from May 2023 for rent increases for social housing tenants.

Social housing subsidies was ended by the coalition government in 2011. Today’s government – however long it may last – asks if the increase in social rents should be capped at 3 per cent, 5 per cent, or 7 per cent.

This is nothing but a cynical political trap, particularly for local authorities, from a government behaving like a fish out of water, gasping for its last breath.

If they had any shred of decency, they would restore a one-off subsidy in line with inflation to cover for millions of pounds of extra burdens placed on non-profit housing providers.

We need to comply with extra fire safety requirements following the Grenfell Tower disaster, and pay for eye-watering extra inflationary costs being incurred in the building maintenance sector now. Anything less would be cruel, and result in severe service cuts in housing budgets for our residents in May next year.

Compensating energy giants who are making sky-rocketing extra profits, refusing to offer the same support to non-profit housing providers, and not applying the same rent-cap for tenants in the private rented sector, are all political choices.

Perhaps this has something to do with the number of Conservative buy-to-let landlords, possibly with shares in oil and fracking giants, who also sit on the green benches in parliament.

This is where true Tory compassion lies, and people can see through the hypocrisy and are no longer in a forgiving mood!

CLLR MERIC APAK
Cabinet Member for Better Homes