The Spectator’s Notes | 7 January 2006

In their New Year newspaper advertisement in the Sunday Telegraph, the Conservatives say, ‘The right test for our policies is how they help the least well-off in society, not the rich.’ That is a good approach, but will it be invariably applied? For example, the clearest way that the rich are privileged in modern Britain is not through the tax system, which even now penalises them more than the poor, but through the planning acts. Because it is extremely hard to build new houses anywhere, particularly in beautiful places, the price of existing houses rises all the time, particularly the price of large and beautiful houses. This gives a vast advantage to those who bought their houses a long time ago, or who inherited them, or who are rich for other reasons, and it makes life extremely difficult for the least well-off. But there is nothing more sacred to Tory constituency associations, particularly in the south, than the idea that no new house-building should take place.