When the Labour minister Margaret Hodge said that long-term British residents should be given higher priority for social housing than recent immigrants, she knew that she was entering dangerous territory. “In our open, tolerant country, there are… few issues that remain taboo,” she began her Observer article. “But, motivated by the fear of both legitimising racism and encouraging the extreme right, migration is one.”
The response to the piece proved that she was right. Shelter’s chief executive Adam Sampson said, “These comments perpetuate the myth that social homes are given to new immigrants coming to the UK at the expense of the indigenous population.” Ken Livingstone weighed in, saying, “Hodge’s suggestion that housing allocation should be based not on need but factors like length of residence would be catastrophic for community relations.”
The recurring theme of the criticisms was that Hodge’s words were fuelling racism and creating social tensions. However, in all the uproar, there was little clarity about the issue of principle Hodge was raising: should public services be delivered solely according to need, or should entitlement be based at least partly on how much one has contributed to the society providing those services? Call the latter view the “priority principle.”
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