ABSTRACT
At the General Election of 7 June 2001 the Labour Party secured a second consecutive term in office by winning 413 seats and gaining a majority of 167 over all other parties. However, in housing-as in other areas of policy such as education and health-Labour had gone to the electorate still grappling with a situation not entirely of its own making, but one that it had largely inherited in 1997 from the former Conservative administration. Under the Thatcher and Major governments, Conservative housing policy-between 1979 and 1997-had dramatically reduced the amount of public expenditure on housing; brought about a marked reduction in capital investment and housebuilding in the public sector; replaced local authorities by housing associations as the major providers of new social housing and-through privatisation and the transfer of housing stocksubstantially decreased the supply of local authority dwellings; raised rents ahead of average earnings in both the social and the private rented sectors; imposed an increased burden on mortgagors; left owner-occupiers with a considerably increased risk of repossession and presided over a marked increase in homelessness (Table 1.1). How Labour, under Tony Blair’s leadership, subsequently addressed these and other housing issues between 1997 and 2001 undoubtedly had some impact on its electoral performance in 2001, even though greater attention was given at the hustings to other areas of policy.
