Top
story: Gaps widen as value of housing stock soars
Hello
– it’s Warren Murray reading the news this morning.
The
total value of all the houses in the UK has passed the £6tn
mark for the first time, according to research by Halifax. If
you are into hypothetical comparisons, we could pay off
Britain’s national debt four times over if everyone sold
up.
In
2007 Halifax estimated the UK’s housing stock was worth £4tn.
The value of homes in London is now more than all the houses
in Scotland, Wales and the north of England combined. In the
south, the biggest gainers have been the buy-to-let set of
landlords and second home owners. The average rate of
owner-occupation across the UK is 63%, but it is just 48% in
London.
The
report highlights the struggle of younger people to get on the
property ladder. Under 35-year-olds own just 3.3% of the UK’s
net property wealth, while the over-55s hold 63.3%. More
figures and their implications in Patrick Collinson’s full
story.
*
* *
From
‘go whistle’ to ‘where do we sign’ – A Brexit divorce
bill of £50bn is close to being settled. The total
liability may be £89bn or more, but that will be pared down by
leaving behind things like the fridge, kettle and toaster in
Brussels. Theresa May will meet the European commission
president, Jean-Claude Juncker, on Monday and fingers are
crossed that he will decide there has been “sufficient
progress” on the financial settlement for trade talks to
advance. The EU appears
to be firmly in the driving seat of negotiations as
Britain’s red lines are rubbed out one by one, writes Dan
Roberts, our Brexit policy editor. Meanwhile, with anger still
simmering and David Davis facing censure for hoarding
secrets from MPs about Brexit’s economic impact, our
editorial argues that leavers can’t have it both ways by championing
the British parliament’s sovereignty while letting a
frontbencher flout the rules.
*
* *
Kim
missile – North Korea has test-fired a ballistic
missile that it claims
can strike anywhere on the US mainland. The rocket, which
the regime called the Hwasong-15, reached 4,500km (2,790
miles) above the Earth, more than 10 times higher than the
international space station. It came down off the west coast
of Japan nearly 1,000km from its launch site of Sain Ni, North
Korea. The launch is a rebuff to Russia, which suggested only
the previous day that Kim Jong-un’s regime was showing
sufficient restraint for the US and South Korea to consider
scaling down their military exercises in return for the North
freezing missile and nuclear tests. Experts say the night-time
launch mirrors how the missile would be used in war, while the
use of a mobile launcher is also significant: “We can’t
threaten to take out a missile on a launch pad if there is no
launch pad and we don’t know where it’s coming from,” said
Mira Rapp-Hooper from Yale.
*
* *
Not
too taxing a discussion – It doesn’t sound like much
happened when Theresa May met leaders of Britain’s tax-haven
overseas territories yesterday. In the wake of the Paradise
Papers leak, they were basically asked politely to “show
what more can be done” about tax avoidance, and told that
being more transparent would make them look good. It falls
well short of proposals championed by David Cameron under
which notorious jurisdictions like Bermuda and the British
Virgin Islands would have to publish registers of the real
owners of shell companies. A cross-party group of MPs wants
May to set a deadline for territories to do so, and Labour’s
Margaret Hodge says the PM should legislate if they refuse.
“It is our tax havens that are completely central to much of
the tax avoidance, evasion and financial crime uncovered,”
Hodge said.
*
* *
Left
fuming – Dirty air around schools is blighting
children’s health and learning as cars pile up outside every
morning and afternoon, says George Monbiot. “The government
should introduce a duty on councils to impose parking bans
around schools at arrival and departure times,” he says.
“Without this intervention, headteachers all over the country
have to take
on the issue one car at a time.” Monbiot highlights the
health hazards, ecological disastrousness and outright
physical danger of having so many cars coming and going
outside schools – as well as exploring the social politics:
“It’s also about being seen in your new car. Some parents, by
the time they’ve found a place to park, could have walked back
and forth three times.”
Lunchtime
read: Plight of lifelong ‘illegal’ Britons
The
appalling case of a grandmother being put
on the brink of deportation 50 years after she moved to
Britain has shed light on the innocent victims of Theresa
May’s “hostile
environment” for illegal immigrants. Paulette Wilson
arrived at the age of 10 from Jamaica when there was no need
to apply formally for leave to remain (so she has no paperwork
about it). Now aged 61, the former cook worked and paid
national insurance contributions for decades. | 
The total value of all houses in the UK has surged
past £6tn. Photograph: Roger Bamber/Alamy
