In a bid to prop up the banks and construction industry, prime minister Brown and chancellor Darling yesterday promoted a £1.6bn housing rescue package.
This included a year’s freeze on charging stamp duty on properties priced below £175,000, at a cost of £600m to the Treasury.
Other measures are interest-free five year loans of up to 30% of a property’s price for first time buyers of new homes in England; and more powers for councils and housing associations to be able to pay off debt for homeowners who can no longer afford mortgage payments, and then charge rent.
Vally Wilson, secretary of the South-East London Council of Action, which is fighting the privatisation of Aylesbury and Heygate council estates, told News Line: ‘It’s not going to stop homelessness.
‘There are huge waiting lists because the council housing stock is shrinking and shrinking while the government hands over money to the privateers.
‘The working class are continuing to suffer, and are now being forced to pay higher and higher rents because they are being driven to housing associations.’
He added: ‘The government is helping the privateers and not working-class people and people on lower incomes.
‘Instead of pumping money into the housing estates and doing them up, they’re pumping millions into the private sector.’
All Trades Unions Alliance national secretary Dave Wiltshire said: ‘This government is just about propping up the banks.
‘The answer to the housing crisis is to nationalise the banks and building societies and provide cheap mortgages, alongside a mass council housing building programme.
‘This will provide housing at affordable rents and jobs for thousands of construction workers at trade union rates of pay.’
A spokeswoman for UNISON, said: ‘We need to have more housing brought back into council stock. The councils need to be responsible for housing people.’
Construction union UCATT called on the government to demand that house builders directly employ staff and train apprentices, in return for the assistance they are receiving.
UCATT said: ‘Rather than employ staff directly, major house builders appear to be increasingly determined to use falsely self-employed workers and/or operate through sub-contractors.’
In 2006/7 the last year for which figures are available there were 15 fatalities in the housebuilding sector, a doubling in the number of deaths from 2005/6.
UCATT believes that the majority of the deaths are caused by casualisation and a willingness to cut corners with regard to health and safety.
UCATT general secretary Alan Ritchie said ‘questions need to be asked of an industry that keeps killing its workforce’.
• The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) warned yesterday that the UK economy will fall into recession this year.
The OECD predicts the UK economy will shrink at an annual rate of 0.3% in the third quarter, and by 0.4% in the fourth.
The pound has hit a record low against the euro and a two-year low against the dollar amid fresh fears of a UK recession.
Sterling hit 81.21 pence against the euro on Monday, before trading at 81.14 pence. In later trade sterling slipped below $1.80, the lowest since April 2006. By the end of European trade on Monday, one pound was buying $1.8011.
