Shapps’ fiddling won’t solve the real crisis

With unemployment at its highest for nearly 20 years it’s good to see Grant Shapps tackling the problem head on even though it’s not even his day job to do so. He recently announced the launch of Home Swap Direct which, if you’ll forgive my cynicism, sounds like one of those dodgy finance schemes where a man in an ill-fitting shiny suit comes and takes ownership of your property in return for a handful of loose change so that you can afford to eat and put your two-bar electric fire on in your twilight years.

But no, this is aimed at people in social housing who find a job in another area and will allow them to swap their house with similar tenants anywhere in the country! How marvellous! Except you can do that already but let’s not dwell on the vacuity of politician’s announcements else this blog would never end). Ignoring that little fact, Shapps reckons it’s “A system that effectively encourages people to focus on their problems”. What does he think an unemployed person currently does? Sit around all day flipping cards into their top hat? (The cabinet all wear one when they’re not on the telly, so why shouldn’t everyone?)

At the same time as this groundbreaking initiative, he is introducing the right for local authorities to define their own priorities in housing allocation, without any thought that one policy might well cancel out the other. Whilst you may fit your current location’s priorities, you may not fit those of the locality to which you wish to move.

What if you got your current property based on the number of children you have, but now your eldest has moved out? What if you were a single parent when you got your current property but are now married? Government policy is meant to be all about improving people’s circumstances (honestly it is!), but if yours have improved you might find yourself ineligible to swap to another area because you’re not the kind of person they currently wish to house. And that’s after you’ve managed to persuade another tenant to move your area where unfortunately there are no jobs.

Both of these initiatives (if that’s not over-egging the pudding and if ever I saw a pudding I’d like to egg it’s Grant Shapps’) have an underlying belief that bureaucracy is the cause of the problem, not lack of jobs or lack of social housing. Just where are these areas of underemployment and high council house numbers that people can now opt to move to? I’m thinking it must be Westminster, given the work that doesn’t get done there and the high number of properties being paid for by the taxpayer.

You have to wonder why he’s gone to the trouble of inventing this apparent ‘barrier’ to employment. Maybe, if there are enough poor people being housed in Pickford removal lorries and stuck in motorway traffic jams up and down the country on the days when jobseekers and housing stock are counted, then two of the government’s grouse will be blasted with one blunderbuss. Given enough poor people living in perpetuity on the road networks in an endless pursuit of non-existent jobs, it could also prove the need for high-speed rail links all over the country not just London to Manchester. Well done Mr Shapps: a cunning stunt.

What is encouraging is that someone has remembered that governments are responsible for council houses – I wonder how long it will take for someone else to work out that instead of rearranging the deckchairs on the SS Crisis, they might address housing, unemployment, and the poverty caused by extortionate private rents simply by building a couple of million of them.

• Recent posts by Keren include Why we should worry about electoral reform and The age of nihilistic selfishness