The UK is facing a housing crisis that could be solved simply by stemming mass immigration. UK Communities Secretary Sajid Javid said however that the government should instead borrow £50 billion to fund a massive home building programme.
Javid, in fact, blamed the housing crisis on elderly white Britons and not mass immigration. In a speech he said older people should not be allowed to get in the way of the construction of homes for the youth “crying out for help with housing”.
More than 217 000 homes were built last year but the Chancellor, Phillip Hammond told the Sunday Times: “I’m clear that we need to get to 300 000 units a year if we are going to start to tackle the affordability problem with the additions coming in areas of high demand.”
But he rejected Javid’s notion of spending even such vast sums of money on a housing shortage caused by immigration.
During the much-anticipated tabling of the housing white paper which is aimed at solving the crisis, Javid rejected out of hand the idea that cutting immigration would help solve problems after the issue was raised by Tory MP Peter Bone.
He instead blamed the aged for the shortage.”Two thirds of housing demand has got nothing to do with immigration, it’s to do with natural population growth, in particular people living longer,” Javid said.
David Miliband has meanwhile urged Britain to take in 4 or 5 times the number of refugees that it currently does.
The former labour Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs from 2007 to 2010, had to resign from Parliament after voters rejected him. He has since taken up the richly-paid position as President and CEO of the International Rescue Committee in New York City, a pro-immigration body.
He said: “British development aid is top quality, delivered at scale, really making a difference. But the idea that we can then not welcome refugees to our own community, I think, is a big mistake.
“I know from my own constituency – at the moment, six refugees per parliamentary constituency are allowed into the UK every year. No one is going to persuade me that South Shields is going to be overwhelmed by having six refugees every year.
“So if the question is, could Britain – through David Cameron and then Theresa May – be doing more to welcome refugees here as well as have effective overseas aid? The answer would be ‘yes’.”
Miliband who lost his bid for the Labour leadership, got the Brexit referendum outcome wrong and also predicted Trump would lose.