I was phoned by the PM programme on Radio 4 at 4.40pm this afternoon and asked what I thought about requisitioning property for the people of North Kensington to live in following the Grenfell Tower fire.
I should add, this is not a subject I usually talk about but in a few minutes, and off the cuff, I clearly persuaded the producer that I was the right person to debate it on air at 5.45. So, I set off for BBC Cambridge and whilst waiting with headphones on bashed out this note to develop my thinking:
I was up against Andrew Lilico, an economist with the profoundly neoliberal Institute for Economic Affairs.
I was given the chance to talk first and made the point that what we were discussing was at the core of the politics of Grenfell Tower: do people or property come first. Of course I offered a balanced view.
Lilico used words like 'hard left' and 'people have housing benefits' and managed, quite extraordinarily, to make Theresa May sound like a model of compassionate empathy. I had to do little more than let him implode whilst being reasonable.
You can listen from about 49 minutes here.
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Hi Richard,
Really deeply disturbed by this. I’m watching thugs in black balaclavas. People demanding that empty properties owned by absentee owners (ie foreigners) should be seized.
It all looks and sounds like the kind of rhetoric I used to hear from the far right.
There has been a failure of the state. A failure of government. A failure which goes back over years. Scapegoating a group of mainly foreign property owners for this failure doesn’t solve anything.
This isn’t putting people before property. It’s finding someone to be scapegoated to avoid facing the real problems.
Respectfully, don’t talk nonsense
Sorry. Was there a particular bit that you don’t agree with? Or is it just an angry get lost?
There aren’t people with balaclavas out there
There is a politician making a serious point
There were plenty of black balaclavas on display in the protests over the last few days. Often in combination with SWP placards.
Taking over properties belonging to foreign absentee investors and using them to house local people has been a popular policy on the far right for years. Nick Griffin used to suggest it. It sounds pretty similar to proposals made by Marine Le Pen over the last few years too.
Oh come on – the SWP always turn up
Stop being stupid and thinking everyone agrees with them or that they have any influence
They haven’t
And I support a policy of using empty property for an emergency
That and taxing the hell out of empty property elsewhere – because empty property is a crime
As is the money laundering which has paid for far too much of it
But maybe you’ll ignore that
Don’t know why this is so heated! I’m not an apologist for money launderers and I don’t know why on earth you think I am!
There are lots of really sensible policies that could be implemented to improve how the property market works, reduce money laundering, and reduce the number of empty homes.
But this is a bad policy which somehow has jumped from the far right to the left without anyone thinking it through. It muddies the waters and makes real property market reform harder not easier
And we shouldn’t be so blase about the appearance of the SWP boot boys. We wouldn’t be so relaxed about the EDL would we?
It’s not a bizarre policy
It’s how in an emergency you keep 120 families near their homes and support networks when that is what they so obviously need
It’s not a choice: it’s a necessity
And I do not see it as a long term solution to the housing crisis
And the law to do it already appears to exist to me – as I said on air
I’m not a right winger. I’m a left winger.
I’m not a troll. I am just someone who doesn’t agree with you. I really like your work, but I honestly think you are wrong here, and I don’t think you appreciate how big a mistake it is.
I don’t work for Kensington and Chelsea or any local authority. I don’t work for any public sector organisation.
I did work for the NHS, DH, DWP for a couple of decades, and have plenty of experience of managing public services, dealing with major incidents, and implementing public policy. I think you are a bit glib to dismiss that experience.
This is a terrible idea, which distracts from the real work which needs to happen. It increases fear and anxiety, and plays into the hands of people who want to stir up trouble
You all seem to have got very angry with me, because of who you think I am, and because I want to challenge a consensus which seems to be developing around a daft idea with it’s origins in right wing politics.
Please consider for a moment that I might not be a horrid right wing bogeyman!
I have
And you are still wrong
And are singing the right wing’s tune
Please think again – because your attitude is patronising and misplaced
Hi Richard,
It’s a great blog, and I will continue to read, but the debate on the comments is pretty poor stuff.
All you are doing is telling me off for having a different opinion to you.
And when I don’t take my telling off like I should you call me a right winger and a troll.
I’m neither! 🙂
Bye!
I debated
And you kept referring to balaclavas
That is Daily Mail stuff
I rightly treated it with contempt
Let it lie Richard.
I’m not a Daily Mail reader, or a right wing troll. I’m a former senior public servant who has managed major incidents.
There is no reason to treat me or anyone with contempt just because I raise stuff that people would rather not talk about.
Jon
Let it lie?
Take your word because you’ve been a ‘senior public servant’ that you’re right?
Go to hell! That’s what Jersey told me.
I assure you, I ignored them (and the U.K. Treasury) for very good reason
If you really think that we should listen to you for that reason I have to say you’re wrong
If you offered a cogent argument I’d listen
But candidly I wouldn’t trust your judgement with a £5 note based on what you’ve said here
Richard
Hello Jon
It does appear as though you are either deliberately framing the situation to be that of a fascist takeover or that you have been convinced by fear-mongering that has been all too present in recent times when it comes to protests. These aren’t thugs they are your distressed fellow countrymen and you’d be better understanding their position and respecting their right to protest than pigeonholing them as criminals.
The issue with absentee owners is not that they are foreign. It is that a fraction of these empty properties are temporarily needed to deal with a crisis. The reason that the nationality of these property owners is being brought up is far from the xenophobia you are crassly implying. It is that these are portfolio properties of overseas property investors. Meaning the temporary use of the property will have little to no impact on them or their properties.
Picture if you will for a moment this… You own a house in Japan. You only bought as an investment. You have never personally visited it and instead you had it valued by your realtor. You it bought in a property bundle alongside other buildings so you had a spread of investments. You live in luxury here in the UK. Now picture that Japan suffers a disaster in the area of this house. They need to temporarily house some victims. They are willing to pay for the tax, the rent and the bills. What justifies you to deny that victim a temporary accommodation?
The current alternative (put forward by tmay) is to send these families to Birmingham and Manchester which is particularly awful as they are still confirming the deaths of their loved ones and neighbours. If we could quickly house them in the local area then there stresses may be reduced as they still have their community around them. This is a very close community we are talking about.
You are correct in saying this is a failure of state and a failure of government… I would simply argue that in one of the most difficult cities in the world to find affordable housing it is a failure of state that we are allowing property to remain empty even during a time of emergency.
It is like Richard has said people come before property. That is why the law allows exactly this kind of discussed and consensual requisitioning. This is not a left idea or a right idea. This is not an authoritarian idea or a libertarian idea. It is a simple pragmatic response to a bad situation that is at the governments disposal to use and they (the conservative government) have refused to take that route.
p.s. It is worth noting that it is probable that they don’t want to take that route because they know it wont sit well with some of their core voters. Which to me is dreadful as they should consider the needs of these people to be more important than their self image. Putting the countries needs before your own is what national leadership is. The fact that so many of the conservative front bench have been so unwilling to do so is a clear sign to me that there are no leaders amongst them.
Hi Barney/Richard,
I really haven’t been scared by fear-mongering, nor am I an apologist for money launderers. I don’t know why it is that either of you think that?
I managed a major incident like this a few years back. A nursing home fire.
The numbers were smaller (c.10 fatalities, iirc) but the issues were the same – large numbers of people who needed help to rebuild their lives, all of whom were vulnerable. We had to start with the basics, from clean underwear to medication, through to permanent accommodation. It was tough but we were able to rehouse everyone effectively. A small number did chose to move out of the area, to be nearer to family.
We didn’t requisition any properties, because that would have been a totally bonkers idea.
Even the basics – identifying which properties were genuinely empty, making sure that the owners weren’t just on holiday and due back soon, gaining access to them, getting the right legal advice, assessing which properties were suitable to re-house people, matching the properties to people, making adaptations where necessary, agreeing compensation with owners – would have taken months, if not years.
People just haven’t thought this through properly. The idea that civil authorities should divert resources away from actually helping people on some political wild goose chase is bonkers.
I ran public services in an era when we only had the traditional national and local media to deal with, and we were able to prioritise the actual work – communicating to the next of kin, speaking to relatives, identifying whether people were able to make their own housing choices or if they needed family or advocates to help them.
Instead civil authorities are spending their time dealing with the pungent mix of conspiracy theories, attention seeking minor celebrities, bossy people with petitions, politicians with axes to grind, spin doctors stirring up trouble, people riding hobby horses. A huge mess of bad ideas, crap policy, some well intentioned, some rather less so.
All of this has played out on the streets. There is a huge and obvious difference between angry scared residents and thuggish political activists in black balaclavas. You do local people a huge injustice by blurring the difference between them.
We apparently now live in a society where the interaction of traditional media and social media allow us to demand that we should be allowed to determine the response to a major incident. Insisting that the Authorities should listen to us, answer our questions rather than deal with the next of kin or people made homeless.
It’s not helping. It’s making things worse. The best thing that could happen right now to help resolve the situation would be for well meaning people to just shut up and let the authorities get on with it.
I have elderly Asian relatives, who live in London. They are genuinely scared that if they go and visit their relatives in other parts of the country someones going to sequestrate their house. The similarities between Corbyn’s suggestion and the noisy rhetoric from the far right isn’t lost on them…..
We are going to look back on the last few days as a real low point in public debate in this country
What can I say?
I guess one thing will do and that is if you really think rehousing an old people’s home is the same as rehousing families then you are deeply mistaken
I am bored by your repeated right wing trolling bout black balaclavas when you are the threat we need to worry about
You don’t happen to work for Kensington & Chelsea by any chance and are trying to cover up their incompetence?
Hello Jon,
You haven’t exactly taken on board the key aspects of the policy in your analysis of it you’ve just doubled down on what you had already said. And since you say you haven’t been convinced by the fear-mongering then I can only that this is a deliberate misrepresentation.
I respect that you have worked as a civil servant however surely you should know that your elderly asian friends have no risk of having their homes taken. No one has suggested anything like that. They would be the residents of that home. We wouldn’t need to go looking for homes as there are more than enough properties listed that are uninhabited. So no it wouldn’t take months or years. This isn’t a forceful procedure and the law doesn’t allow it to be.
It wouldn’t cost civil authorities much further time at all as there are already charitable agencies willing to work alongside on this issue. Also do you not think that a similar amount of time is being used currently by sending these victims to manchester?
You’ve attempted to judge others when you yourself are acting paranoid by insisting that this is some kind of political manoeuvre. This discussion is about using what is available to address a crisis at hand and stopping what is currently happening with the victims. Surely we can agree that action should be swift in response to tragedy?
As for this nonsense about protesters being thuggish and how you can apparently know by looking if someone is a thug with negative intentions there is a wonderful word in the english language that describes that effect… ‘Prejudice’. People have a right to protest and protesters shouldn’t be treat like criminals for vocalising their opinion.
Honestly with all your crass links to authoritarianism you should know how the far right has treat protestors. The Civil Rights protestors were called thugs. Greenpeace were called thugs. The striking minors were called thugs. The people who protested after Hillsborough were called thugs. The million man march against the war in Iraq were called thugs. The people protesting recent issues like fracking, the x3 of student fees, and many more have been called thugs. It is an attempt to distance the public from protest and dehumanise those who use their right to protest. Protestors are the public and yes you cannot separate protests and politics but nor can you separate people from politics.
I think that’s all I’ll have to say on this. It very much feels like talking to a brick wall.
Regards
Barney
Thanks Barney
You have more patience than me
Dear Richard
Your argument is exemplary. I implore you, do not waste time arguing with the likes of Chadwick, he is a troll and facts will have no impact on his mindset.
By the way I read your site regularly, have recommended it to others and love your work!
The only reason for arguing with trolls is it prepares you for Andrew Lilico on Radio 4
Hi Richard
didn’t catch it live but listened to the podcast. Well done lucid, succinct and to the point. Andrew Lilico will not be having a good evening; weak arguments and smug superiority. I’m hopeful there is a sea change in the air.
I was told he was not smiling after the interview
I was….
Excellent interview Richard, to my inexpert ear Mr Lilicos arguement came across as somewhat desperate and partisan and actually without any concrete solution to the problem at hand. He seemed more intent on just kicking the can down the road than anything else.
Keep up the good work, there is a feeling even out here in “builders land” that the tories and austerity is a busted flush. People who just a couple of weeks ago considered Mr Corbyn a joke now take him very seriously indeed.
Whoda thought?
Desp
Hi Desp
Warm greetings from Northumberland to Cactusville! For Richard we have both a long passion for practical implementation of renewable energy and Desp swapped his plumbing experience for my microprocessor experience to minimise energy usage in my home some years ago.
Sounds like a deal to me!
thanks Richard!
poor Mr Sillico was nearly hyperventilating with anxiety!
I wonder if when he buys his children toys as presents he insists that they remain in their packaging to preserve their value and are placed in a display cabinet for his children to view as required,
there’s nowt stranger than Tories!
Richard, I am very sympathetic to your argument but let us be aware that these are among the most expensive properties in Britain. Even at Compulsory Purchase Order rates, we’re talking £hundreds of millions, right? And as you say, we have to adhere to the law and notify the owners etc. The thing is as you know these people can afford really, really good lawyers who will probably end up suing the local council and winning. Then what? The local authority council will lose badly and it won’t be the rich suffering, it’ll be the poor who need assistance. I voted for Corbyn and want a Labour government, but that doesn’t stop me from seeing that Corbyn sometimes plays a populist game. I think you won the moral and intellectual argument against Lilico easily, I just wonder if going down this road might not prove counter-productive?
What are they going to sue for?
The law as it stands is here http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2004/36/pdfs/ukpga_20040036_en.pdf
Grenfell Tower qualifies as an emergency
s22 (3) (b) does not require compensation be paid
I suggest it is
But there is no legal recourse
I made clear that accountability is key
And an emergency has to exist
This in that case is appropriate
I am not suggesting it is in any other
I really can’t see the problem
Fair enough, I just have horrid visions of the swift, suffocating legal embrace of me learned friends…..note your link to the law as is, but these shysters would find some precedent, I fear.
It was the difference between human heartedness and hardheartedness.
I presume the compensation would be market rent for the property?
I think so
But a reasonable view would be needed on that
I listened to this. I was expecting a reasoned counter argument by lilico
But he seemed far more concerned with smearing anybody suggesting this as a marxist nut job. Personally I think the proposal is entirely reasonable as a short term measure. Nobody has suggested that this be done without adequate compensation. Quite why the BBC thinks that getting somebody to talk against the proposal from an extreme right wing “think tank” constitutes balance is beyond me. There maybe be good practical reasons why such a proposal wouldnt work and that would be a balanced and interesting debate, but all I heard from Lilico was a semi hysterical ideological rant.
It was fairly difficult to think how to respond
I thought he’d made a fool of himself so I carried on with my argument
“Nobody has suggested that this be done without adequate compensation.”
As far as I am aware Corbyn has made no mention of compensation whatsoever, let alone adequate compensation.
The other issue is whether Grenfell Tower would qualify as “Part” or “region” of the UK as required by s19(1)(a) of the CCA 2004. “Part” of the UK would mean England, Wales etc., “region” would mean “London”, “Yorkshire and the Humber, “East of England”. I doubt that a single tower block would be regarded by a Court as a “region” or “Part” of the UK.
I accept the risk
But in plain Eglush common law it us
Corbyn did mention compensation and brought up, amongst other things, compulsory purchases. That was a very swift interview on Peston. I don’t know why people on this thread seem to advocate dragging their feet over empty property. This is an emergency and this is real people’s grief and emotional turmoil measured against foreign investors and oligarchs. Any economical argument to keep these properties empty reeks of self interest and lacks any sense of humanity. It would be a temporary measure.
Lilico came across as overly defensive and tetchy; like a drink driver insisting to a traffic cop that he is OK.
Back in the day late 1990’s the council could lease a property directly of a private landlord. Look after the property repairs etc and then at the end of the lease return said property to the owner. Of course this was something the owner wanted to do.
It meant they were getting an income. The council had control of a property. Someone in need had a roof over their head.
In early 2000 all this stopped. Some leases are still happening however its harder now to lease your property to a council.
I feel this is one of the causes of the housing crisis in the UK certainly England today.
With changes to tax and the continue increase of property prices less property will be making its way onto the buy to let system. So I feel the crisis at the moment will become a disaster in the 20 years.
Good stuff. I stumbled upon this by Lilico last week and shared it with several of your regular contributors. They all thought it was a spoof until they reached the final paras https://capx.co/all-that-matters-now-is-stopping-corbyn/
I think it is fair to say he is in a fringe
I’d recommend CapX as useful reading to understand what the more extreme end of neoliberal thinking is worried about. Lilico is a regular contributor and his radio interview sounds typical. In the past they’d have been ignored by all but the fringe of the Tories. Not any more
I agree re CapX
I subscribe
It is my understanding that the people affected all are now housed (in accommodation that the state is paying for if they don’t have an alternative they prefer). If this were not the case, then I am sure we would have heard about it by now.
In which case the proposal to requisition private property is unnecessary. It would also be bureaucratic, slow and costly. You would need to send round an army of officials with clipboards who would presumably knock on doors at night to ascertain who was residing at a given time. You would then have to do the same two nights later to make sure the owner wasn’t temporarily away. You would have to give due notice to the owner. In reality you would have to agree compensation. You would almost certainly face legal challenges from the wealthy owners.
There may well be a sensible debate to be had around empty houses and the need to build more houses. But this policy amply illustrates the problem with Corbyn. He is good at highlighting problems, but awful at coming up with solutions.
A hotel room is not a home
You are making up the fact that a solution has been found
It hasn’t
So Corbyn is right. On ideas he usually has been
You start with hotels. Then you get a team of clerks in the Housing Office to work their way through what properties are available on the council list, and then on the private market. Then you approach landlords to request if they have properties which could be taken over. Medium term you refurbish empty property that is not up to standard and long term you have a proper housing policy.
We are nowhere near the stage where requisitions are necessary – which would, in any event, be far more costly if market rent were to paid on multi-million pound homes (which you accept above would have to be the case).
The council waiting list is five years
With respect, if you really think it’s this easy you are a fool
Why would visits by people with clipboards be required, when empty properties are presumably registered as such with the local authority, to take advantage of the reduced council tax bill such a status attracts?
Just for the record, there is no reduced council tax on empty properties. In Kensington and Chelsea, empty properties pay 150% council tax
https://www.rbkc.gov.uk/council-tax/council-tax-empty-properties
Remember Jon Chadwick the British government policy of requistioning the cast iron railings in front of people’s houses during the Second World War because of an emergency? No doubt you would have chained yourself to one of those railings and ultimately probably been pelted with rotten fruit and eggs for being a Nazi sympathiser or simply just a rather self-centered individual without a moral compass.
When I was a child I lived in one half of a requisitioned private house in this country for eight years. The house was not a grand country house but an ordinary terrace house in an industrial city. Requisitioning was seen as a sensible solution to a problem of a shortage of housing. The government had given local authorities the power to requisition as many houses and rooms as were needed.
The prime minister of this government was Mr Churchill….hardly a raving leftie!
Well done. You came across as highly articulate, informed and reasonable. Lilico was uninformed and unreasonable. He hadn’t understood (bothered to understand) Corbyn’s point, and he certainly didn’t take on your points. He even implicitly admitted that he didn’t have much idea what Corbyn had said when he suggested Corbyn was demanding permanent confiscation of properties and then back-tracked by saying that he wasn’t sure about it. He was highly emotive: immediately stating that the idea was immoral, when the rational course would have been to state what he thought was being suggested and then arguing for its being immoral. Lilico’s similarly emotive stuff about “picking on random people who happen to live nearby” betrayed a total lack of understanding for the former residents of Grenfell Tower or for the importance of their being able to stay in the locale.
His use of rhetorical devices in order to “win” the argument was reminiscent of the standard technique of opponents of tax justice: keep repeating the mantra “politics of envy”.
Every Local Authority is duty bound to have Emergency Planning Teams and workable plans in place to deal with Emergencies such as this; I wonder just how Councils many actually consider the Rehoming of victims of emergencies??
If the law is there to do it then I can’t see the problem – some land banked properties might have been empty for years. The “owner” might not even know the property is being used until months afterwards. Didn’t we requisition lots of ships and their crews for the Falklands war?
“Didn’t we requisition lots of ships and their crews for the Falklands war?”
We did, and it cost an absolute fortune. Go and have a look at how much it took to requisition and restore the QE2.
And, however awful this event was, the national security is not at stake, nor is there a shortage of alternatives available to house the victims. There are plenty of alternatives which I have outlined elsewhere.
Go on then – publish a list of 120 houses secure for several years available now
And I mean, secure for several years
No six month roll overs please
That’s a disingenuous argument. National security wasn’t at stake then. No Argentinian commandos were landing on the Cornwall coast. It was a vanity exercise by a Prime Minister who was well behind in the polls. She took a gamble and won, unlike May. But lives were lost unnecessarily. Okay Galtieri went, but that was a by-product. And it doesn’t matter how much it costs. Money comes before the spiritual and emotional welfare of your poorest citizens? So compassion is redundant?
“Go on then — publish a list of 120 houses secure for several years available now
And I mean, secure for several years”
You are being ridiculous now. It is not my job to do that, it is the council’s, and I have already outlined how they should go about it.
On the PM programme you said this would be for 2 or 3 years, now you are saying “several years”.
Having seen your level of debate on this and the other thread, you are one of the worst debaters I have ever seen.
Bye.
Respectfully you made the claim and said you could solve the problem. And now you can’t. Nor can the council. That is because it is clear that they don’t exist and your argument is based on a dogmatic and foolish fantasy that I have called out.
I don’t have a lot of time for foolish dogmatists. It shows. I make no apologies. All you do us cause harm and I am happy to say so.
The opposite to all property held in common is not what we have now, it is all property held by one person.
Clearly the concentration of property in ever fewer hands is as equally unacceptable as the complete elimination of private property. Any movement towards one extreme needs to be controlled as does a movement towards the other.
The neocons always posit a Maoist extreme whilst conveniently ignoring that there are two (extremist)ends to a spectrum.
As you say property rights are contingent upon the laws made by the society in which they are held and those laws must be used to ensure, as far as possible,fairness.
Loved the interview.
Thank you
This is a profoundly sad case. But at times you have to laugh at people who think a quick interventionist abolition of rights is needed because the existing market systems cannot provide, and who also say market rents should be paid to the property owners. That the same thoughts might be inconsistent does not occur to people.
There is a property market in K&C, and everywhere other LA, and around 50 rental contracts and 10 new build completions per English borough per week are signed. Those are right to a first order.
And what would’ve impact of 120 new families be on demand?
Should everyone pay a lot more rent because of Grenfell Tower?
Or should requisitions prevent profiteering?
Very politely, you are either a) calling b) unable to consider consequences c) blinded by dogma or d) all three.
I heard nothing but a reasonable case for a humane course of action – you got all the key points in like compensation etc. Well done.
Far from sounding like a Left wing reactionary in fact.
Lilico on the other hand sounded as though he was going to burst into tears at the ‘beastliness’ of what was after all just a suggestion to put some under-used assets to good use.
This to me illustrates why our housing crisis is so screwed up – the asset use of property put before its use value (a roof over someone’s head – especially at times like this.
But again – where was the Army? Some of them could have got involved in order to help. I thought of the soldiers at Chelsea Barracks but when I looked it up I found that the site had been turned into (guess what?) a high end housing development (with some provision for ‘affordable housing’ – in one of the most expensive areas in London).
It all smacks of a lack of joined up thinking to me.
It smacks more of out and out greed to me.
[…] comments on requisitioning property in Kensington proved both popular and controversial yesterday so I am pleased to have been pointed in the […]
hi richard
I heard the last part of the interview on my way to the supermarket last night. Absolutely inspired by your comments and logic. It uncovered the differences between socialism and capitalism. The fire and its aftermath revealed to us in an overt way that capitalism is immoral at its roots and that people are used as fodder to make money for the wealthy.
Lisa
That was the point I meant to get across
I am glad if it worked
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” When seeking examples of the wisdom of Upton Sinclair’s observation, this performance by Andrew Lilico should be at the top of the list.
Hi Richard,
Listened to you last night and thought that you made mincemeat of the other guy. Absolutely right about the difference between socialism and capitalism. Capitalism has created the mess at Grenfell Tower and its only fair that those who have benefited from the past liberalism should be the ones tat the forefront of putting it right
Jon Chadwick
You seem to be stuck in a paradigm where the left is good and the right is bad and there are no grey areas on any policies. Have a look at any Green party manifesto and any neo-fascist party manifesto and you’ll see many of the same ideas when it comes to economic policy. Who has stolen ideas from whom? If the left came up with them first they’re good, but if the right did they’re automatically bad?
People need to separate social policies from economic policies. Left parties are great on social issues and far right parties are generally medieval; but on economic issues there’s much more of an overlap on the Venn diagram. I voted Green in GE2015, joined Labour before JCs second leadership election. I read all the manifestos, and UKIP had some policies that I would actually support. Are they bad policies because UKIP promote them? Even if they are progressive?
Have to hand it to you, Mr Murphy. You must have nerves of steel. Being aware of some of the foreigners own but don’t occupy properties in Kensington & Chelsea, vigorously advocating on the radio the requisitioning of some Russian oligarch’s mansion in town is not a course of action I’d embark on lightly.
Well done sir!
To make emergency regulations under the Civil Contingencies Act, you need to satisfy the conditions in section 21: there must be an emergency – an event or situation which threatens serious damage to human welfare in the United Kingdom or in a Part or region – which is arguable at best – and then making regulations must be necessary and the need must be urgent – two high tests, again arguable at best – and the proposed regulations must be proportionate and consistent with the Human Rights Act (which would include the land owner’s rights under Protocol One). I’m sure it would be expedient to confiscate empty properties for public use by ministerial fiat with no compensation, but it hardly seems necessary or proportionate, and respecting human rights law suggests that compensation would have to be paid. Are there really no other options?
Incidentally, the De Keyser case – mentioned in the Supreme Court hearing on Article 50 – was about the amount of compensation payable after the hotel was requisitioned for use during the First Word War.
I did read all that and had no doubt that the tests were met
What strikes me most is that this is the case for requisitioning property for the people from Grenfell Tower. It feels like the burden of argument is on those wanting to requision.
I’d love go through a mirror and see the case AGAINST requisitioning the property. That man on the radio was rather arm wavey if you ask me, and didn’t seem to say much of substande. I didn’t feel he made a case against the idea, more just tried to shut down any sort of reasoned discussion about it.