In spite of Anatole Kaletsky's cunning plan to extricate Gordon Brown from New Labour’s all too obvious malaise, the Chancellor of the Exchequer is a man with substantial, serious, previous form.  It was always going to be a very hard, almost impossible task to put clear, blue water between him and the failed policies of New Labour and his erstwhile co-conspirator, Mr Tony Blair.  A reinvigorated Official Opposition is not about to let him slip off the hook, for a start.  Worse (for Mr Brown, but not for us) like all good, old fashioned villains he managed, to use the vernacular, to “stitch himself up” in an interview, whilst trying to be clever.

Mr Brown was “verballed” during an interview by Lally Weymouth of the Washington Post on 14^th May 2006.  He was trying to convince the Americans that he was a regular sort of guy,  just like Blair, a man they could do business with.

“If you become Prime Minister, what will be the main difference between you and Blair?” 

asked the interviewer.

 “It's not so much that the method will be so different as the challenges…”

replied Mr Brown.

Well that’s fairly clear, then – we shall receive more of the same.  When asked,

“What do you think of the war in Iraq?”

Mr Brown replied,

 “I was a supporter of the war in Iraq.”

And so the interview continues.

It has been a favoured myth of the pro-Brown lobby that their hero really never had anything to do with the worst excesses or mistakes of “Blairism” or its methods and much has been made of the differences of opinion, constant battles of will and “feuding”.  In fact it has been plain all along that Gordon Brown was Blair’s willing accomplice in the New Labour project.  The evidence is overwhelming.  Any defence just won’t wash. The public are no longer blinded because the scales have fallen from their eyes.  We have it from the horse’s mouth.

As cross-party opposition to the imposition of the Home Information Packs (“HIPs”) scheme begins to grow, the press is becoming increasingly aware of its weaknesses and the misinformation upon which the whole HIPs edifice is built.  What appeared to have a hopeless cause when I posted my first article concerning the issue is proving to be anything but.

In her article in The Times entitled “Don't be fooled by a pack of lies” on 27^th May 2006 Alice Miles reports,

 “Estate agents hate the HIP. Chartered surveyors hate it — understandably, as it takes their business away. Building societies, mortgage lenders and lawyers are dubious about it. Various professionals claim that it will slow the market; that those being trained to carry out the tick-box home condition reports are “people like taxi drivers”, as one put it to me this week; that not enough of these inspectors are being trained; and that, although the minister claims that 40 per cent of sales that fall through do so because of problems thrown up by the survey weeks into the process, the figure is in fact 12 per cent: in other words, the HIP wouldn’t make any difference in nine out of ten sale collapses” (my emphasis.)

Ms Miles continues,

 “But the central argument against the HIP is that if mortgage companies and buyers are not able to rely legally upon the home condition report, and have some form of legal redress if it turns out to be inaccurate, then they will still have to pay to have their own surveys carried out. This would mean that the Government had introduced a new layer of complication and expense to the process rather than simplifying it. At the moment, in law, usually only the person who pays for a survey can rely upon it.”

In an earlier report in The Times on 18^th May 2006 entitled “Home Information Packs branded as 'ridiculous'”, Rebecca O' Connor reported the views of  The Building Societies Association (BSA) which is calling for the packs, which will cost home sellers as much as £1,000 each, to be made voluntary when they are introduced in June 2007.

Building Society chief executives say that HIPs will be costly and will not achieve the Government's objectives to reassure buyers or speed up housing transactions. Ms O'Connor reports that Adrian Coles, director general of the BSA, said at the Association's annual conference in Manchester:

“People's homes represent their most important asset. As such it is imperative that they can have confidence that there will not be any unexpected fluctuations in the market”

and

 “It is ridiculous that someone selling their home without a HIP will be punished by a fine. If people feel that HIPS will be of benefit, they will opt to have one without the need for compulsion.”

The Law Society, which is endeavouring to be supportive of the HIPs project[1], is more specific about unsavoury facts involving cost and criminal penalties for non compliance. Anyone marketing their property for sale after 1 June 2007 faces a fine of £200 per day if they do not provide potential buyers with a HIP. The Law Society also estimates that the true cost of producing HIPs, which will be borne by the seller alone, could range from £600-£3,000, depending on the size of the property, far more than the “modest” sum the Government would have had us believe.

New research shows most people are totally ignorant of the biggest ever shake-up of the property market which is only one year away.  Sixty four percent of people questioned by ICM have never heard of the term "home information pack" (HIP). To deal with this lack of awareness, The Law Society has created a question and answer page on its Website, which can be found here .  I have updated my webpage concerning HIPs which can be accessed here.

It is to be hoped that once the general public comes to realise what is being foisted upon them, the howl of righteous indignation will be too loud for this Government to ignore.