Home is not where the Tory heart lies

THE FRIDAY THING: IF the Government had given any indication that it had a sense of humour, we might be able to laugh out loud at the idea council tenants will have to move out of their homes or pay extra if they aren’t using all their bedrooms.

We might even be able to titter at the notion that people who don’t have a job should be prepared to work for nothing (a modern version of slave labour, but without the long sea cruise, rowing and occasional torture).

For the Government the tactic of putting people to work for nothing is a double success.

At a stroke, it increases the number of people in work (distorting the figures, of course) and putting them in jobs where they don’t get paid but which, we are assured, will lead to lucrative full-time employment in the future.

And then there’s the “Size Criteria”, which give some clipboard carrier the right to decide folk are living in a house too big for their needs.

So they will either have to pack up and leave or pay an extra 14 per cent rent for one room and 25 per cent if they have two unused, or presumably partly-used, bedrooms.

Many people currently living in social housing do so because they can’t afford anything else and downsizing in some cases — those with a teenage daughter and a teenage son, for instance — is not practical.

A case can of course be made for moving tenants with spare rooms out of houses so families living in homes too small can move in. But the pay-up or face eviction strategy needs to have elements of common sense and compassion.

We are, after all, talking about homes; not just houses, bricks and mortar.