Housing Minister Seeks Advice from Shadow

Housing minister Grant Shapps has written to his Labour counterpart asking for policy ideas. In parliament shadow housing minister Alison Seabeck said it was ‘surprising’ that Mr Shapps had written to her during the summer recess to ‘seek my guidance and ideas from Labour’s policy thinking’. Ms Seabeck was cut off by the speaker, who asked her to ‘come straight away to a question’, but later told Inside Housing the letter was sent privately by Mr Shapps. ‘Despite pointing out that he had shadowed four of the last nine housing ministers he was asking me to have policy in place within the first 10 months of being in office,’ she said.