A government department spent more than nine months fighting demands to release emails dealing with allegations that former housing minister Grant Shapps had misused housing statistics in several statements, according to Inside Housing.
The Communities and Local Government department released the emails after a ruling by the Information Commissioner at the end of March.The emails show the considerable amount of effort that officials put in to defending Mr Shapps.
The saga began after shadow housing minster Jack Dromey complained to Andrew Dilnot, chair of the UK Statistics Authority, about Mr Shapps’ use of various housing figures in June 2012.
A Labour Party official asked the CLG for its internal correspondence about the matter in July 2012. The CLG refused to release the information several times so the complainant took the matter to the commissioner in September. The commissioner told CLG on 26 March that it had 35 days to release the data.
Mr Dromey had contested several of Mr Shapps’ statements including that the affordable rent programme and right to buy replacements will enable the coalition to build 270,000 affordable homes ‘far more than the previous administation built over 13 years’.
In the emails, an official conceded that it was ‘fairer’ to compare the 270,000 figure with 556,610 affordable new builds and acquistions delivered between 1997/8 and 2009/10 than with the 250,760 housing association and council completions in that time. The official added: ‘This is all a bit complicated but I don’t feel we can offer a strong rebuttal on this.’
In Mr Dilnot’s reply to Mr Dromey, he said: ‘If the figures quoted in the minister’s oral answer are correct, fewer affordable homes will be provided under current plans than in the longer, 13-year period from 1997 to 2010. However there is clearly some uncertainty associated with these estimates.’
Mr Dromey had also complained about Mr Shapps’ statement that there was a net loss of 45,000 or 200,000 homes in the 13 years of the previous Labour Government; Mr Dromey said there was an increase of 2 million homes. Mr Dilnot said there were figures for additional affordable homes but they did not take account of losses. Official estimates for social rented homes showed a reduction of 421,000 in the period but that did not take account of affordable housing outside the social housing category.
Mr Dromey complained that it was ‘confusing’ for Mr Shapps to quote the CLG’s rough sleeping figures alongside statistics on foreign rough sleepers collated by charity Broadway’s Chain database. But Mr Dilnot accepted that ‘ministers often want to present published statistical information in ways that best serve their political ends’.
Mr Dromey also complained that Mr Shapps had said house building starts had risen 25 per cent since 2009, in the midst of the credit crisis, rather than making a comparison with the previous year. In response Mr Dilnot said the year had ‘clearly been carefully chosen, but this is not unusual in the context of a political debate’.
Finally Mr Shapps had said that a self-build home typically cost about £150,000 but Mr Dromey said the National Self Build Association’s website found the cost was far higher and an investigation by Channel 4’s Factcheck blog had dubbed the claim ‘patently untrue’. Mr Dilnot said there were no official statistics on the costs of self-building.
The emails from officials said the figure excluded land costs but also admitted that ‘it is not possible to provide a breakdown of the average cost of a self-build homes nationally’ because of the wide variation in build costs.