GETTING a council house is all but impossible for hundreds of thousands of British families who have been paying into the pot of the welfare state for many years.
So how does our political class think it is going to go down when people find out that some families recently arrived from Afghanistan are being lined up to get not one council house, but two?
This was my big take-out from a statement that Defence Minister Johnny Mercer gave to Parliament this week, updating MPs on efforts to resettle thousands of Afghan nationals in the UK.
Many of these families are headed by someone who worked for the British during the long and unsuccessful war against the Taliban in the aftermath of 9/11. So it is not unreasonable to think they are owed a debt of gratitude.
But after 18 months some 8,000 Afghans are still in being put up in hotels, at the cost of £1m per day to the British taxpayer, something Mercer correctly stated was “unacceptable and unsustainable”.
“Long-term residency in hotels has prevented some Afghans from properly putting down roots, committing to employment and integrating into communities,” he added. In other words some are refusing to work and pay their own bills when they could do.
Several hundred of the families have turned down housing offers too, preferring to stay on in hotels in the hope that permanent housing in their favoured locations will eventually be made available to them.
