The Lawson Scandal And now that mortgage. I think what
worries me most about the Lawson Affair—infinitely more than the handful of abusive letters, and more even than the occasional mildly obscene anony- mous telephone call to my wife—is that this country should have reached so parochial a pass that one man buying one house makes major front-page news.
But what of the merits of the case? The argu- ments against the Kensington and Chelsea Borough Council granting me a well-secured mortgage of £20,000, before Mr. Callaghan's clamp-down, are worth examining simply for the light they shed on popular—and not exclusively left-wing—attitudes. It is claimed first, that the Council ought to have used the money instead for five loans of £4,000. But the Royal Borough wasn't faced with that choice. It had over £1 million to lend—more than enough to go round. Rationing at a time of shortage is one thing. But here we are being solemnly told that ration- ing is a good in itself --even when there is no shortage at all. Of course, you can't get a mort- gage of any kind from the Council now. But that's because the Chancellor stopped it, not me.
Then it is said that the money should have been spent on rehousing the homeless. Yet once it is accepted that there is more to housing policy than having one's heart in the right place, it is plain that this is a further non sequitur. Rehousing is a social service, the cost of which has to be met out of the rates. Making a commercial, un- subsidised. mortgage loan, so far from costing the Council anything. actually makes a profit for the often hard-pressed ratepayers.
But my favourite indictment comes in the official statement by the Kensington and Chelsea Labour party. 'The Council should not be in competition with other mortgage and financing agencies such as building societies and insurance companies,' these worthies declared; 'the favourable rate of interest made available by local authority home loans, we believe, is designed to help that section of the community which cannot obtain finance horn those other agencies.'
Well. well. It's news to me that the Labour party now regards 6: per cent as 'a favourable rate.' Mr. G. Brown, please note. And has Powellism so swept the country that even the Kensington and Chelsea Labour party is con- vinced that public enterprise has no business competing with private enterprise? In fact, I used the public sector only because the private sector, in the shape of our Victorian and only semi-commercial building society movement, is (to coin a phrase) failing the nation. You just can't win.
NIGEL LAWN
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