Guardian News and Media/London


Johnson: slams council plans
Boris Johnson, the Conservative mayor of London, has slammed councils that are moving housing benefit claimants out of the capital, saying he will not have “Kosovo-style social cleansing” of the poor in London.
Johnson, who is seeking re-election in May, spoke out after revelations that a number of councils are being forced to look to areas like Stoke, Derby and Nottingham to provide accommodation for claimants in their backyard.
Pressed on the issue on a mayoral debate hosted by ITV on Tuesday night, Johnson indicated he would intervene as he laid out his opposition to anyone being moved who has connections in their local area either through work or their children’s schooling, while backing housing benefit reforms in principle.
“On the housing benefit problem I think it’s also common ground you have to reform housing benefit but what I was able to do if you may remember when the reform was first proposed, I said I wouldn’t have the Kosovo-style social cleansing because of it and we will not have that.
“We are going to make sure that people who need to stay near their place of work, whose kids are in the local school, let me tell you directly is that the idea of persuading Londoners or helping Londoners to migrate the city is wrong.”
As part of its welfare reforms, the government has introduced caps on housing benefit of £250 a week for a one-bedroom flat and £400 for a four-bedroom property. With the government housing benefit cuts starting in January, many councils are wrestling with rising numbers of people finding they cannot afford central London accommodation.
Tory-led councils such as Hillingdon, Croydon and Westminster are among the London boroughs who have admitted either placing claimants outside the capital or saying they were preparing to do so.
Johnson agreed with his Labour rival Ken Livingstone that the long term solution was more affordable homes in the city. “Where Ken is right what we need to do is accelerate our programme of house building of new homes for Londoners. We have done record numbers in this mayoralty...what we want to do now is create homes for London.”
Livingstone said London was seeing people “displaced from their neighbourhood, from their friends, from their families because of the housing benefit cap that’s come in”. He went on: “The government has got it wrong. Up until Thatcher there was a cap on rents. To cap the benefits and to allow landlords to keep jacking up the rent is wrong - that’s why we will bring in a mayoral letting agency.”
“We’ve got to commit ourselves to building about half a million homes over the next decade.”