Still working what to do about a really nasty little article in the Evening Standard.  Not about me, thank God – I’ve yet to be properly worked over by the press (only a matter of time, I suspect).  But about an old colleague/friend/mentor/employer of mine, Ruth Runciman.

 
Ruth is fab.   And I don’t say that just because she gave me my first campaigning job back in 1989, at the Prison Reform Trust where she was Vice-Chair.  But because, despite her status and her achievements, she has always stayed true to her cause.  There are not too many titled policy-shapers who you would regularly find staffing a Citizen’s Advice Bureau in one of the country’s most oppressive prisons.
 
But neither her grasp of policy or her demonstrable commitment are enough for the Standard.  Her sin is to be prepared to argue that we should have an evidence-based approach to drugs policy.  Accordingly, she has helped to establish a Commission (and here I should declare an interest – I am myself a Commissioner) to look at UK drugs policy to perform just that task – inject some sense of cool, realistic analysis into what is working and what is not.
 
Which is surely the point.  What is needed here is not personal excoriation of individuals.  What is needed is a calm debate about where we should be taking one of the most important, and difficult, areas of our social policy.  And that aim is ill-served by ignorant and shallow journalism.

So now we know.  Yvette Cooper’s announcement in the Commons yesterday set out the Government’s plans: we get our 50,000 new social homes a year, but not until two years later than we asked for. 
 
Well, frankly, we’ll settle for that, as our adverts in the Guardian and Mirror today make clear.  In campaigning, you always know that you’re going to end up disappointed.  You set out the target that needs to be hit, structure the arguments you need to make, and construct the most plausible and convincing case you can, but you rarely expect total victory.  Campaigning is about what should be done.  Politics is about what can be done.
 
So we feel pleased, not disappointed.  The win has been three years in the making, and the credit for it lies as much with those who were there at the beginning – in our case the launch of the Million Children Campaign – as with those of us who are still here at the end.  It just so happened that when I went into the pub last night for a celebratory half, I found sitting there some of the moving spirits behind the campaign who had chosen that night for a bit of a reunion (Facebook has a lot to answer for), so I was able to say thanks to them in person.  But there are lot of you out there who have supported us over the past three or so years who deserve the same.
 
So thank you too.

Given the nature of what I do, much more of my time is spent on platforms than in audiences, talking than listening.  Not only does that mean that I have to endure the sound of my own voice (always far worse for me even than for the audience).  It also means that I have little opportunity simply to sit back and soak up other people’s wisdom.
 
Often that is a blessing.  To be honest, there are few speakers who are entertaining, and fewer too who ever make you think.  But listening yesterday to Anne Power talking at a Shelter seminar about the environmental impact of housebuilding was both fascinating and hugely educational.  As a quick tutorial in the key environmental issues being faced by this country and the ways in which housing should respond, it was one of the most intellectually fertile hours I have spent in many a long month.
 
Because this is clearly going to be one of the most important challenges we face.  Not simply because we have to ensure that the three million new houses Gordon Brown has said will be delivered are themselves environmentally sustainable: carbon neutral, sited in brownfield rather than greenfield areas, supported by suitable infrastructure.  But because there is a huge need to address the issue of the environmental quality of the existing housing stock, most of which requires extensive (and expensive) refitting if it is to reach the same standards as the new houses that are being planned.
 
And that is not all.  Global warming also potentially creates huge challenges for us.  Flooding, rising sea levels, coastal erosion, unpredictable weather patterns: housing has to respond to all of these.  And if the Stern report is right, and the next 20 years brings human migration on an unprecedented scale, demand for housing will rise even more quickly than it has in the past two decades.

Seminar on the future of social housing with the Smith Institute, Brown’s favourite think-tank, to mark the publication of their new monograph.  As usual, I find that my role is largely a defensive one – to remind the proponents of reform that social housing has an over-riding social purpose which must be preserved.  There is no point in considering clever ways of delivering more supply or better efficiencies if the price is to introduce changes which will undermine the core principles of stability and affordability which are so critical to vulnerable tenants.
 
But it was one of those meetings where context dominated over content.  Latest word is the Green Paper is to be published on Monday, when Ministers will also announce their social housebuilding numbers.  Everything we talked about this morning was mere playing with ideas: the real stuff would come next week.
 
At the same time, though, the debates we were having were perhaps more important.  Brown’s three million houses are all very well, but we need at least 750,000-1,000,000 of them to be socially rented.  And if we are to get that many, we need to find ways of levering in more private investment from developers or investors such as pension funds.  This is not the 1950s: no Government is likely to fund all that direct from the Treasury.
 
In Shelter, we have got used to marking our progress via Government spending reviews.  If the debate about how to balance reform with preserving the social principles of the system can be brought to a creative conclusion, we may be able to look forward to the next decade without worrying about how we squeeze more resources out of the Treasury.

So, we know where we’re trying to get to.  Now we just need to hear how big is the first step.
 
Wednesday’s speech was, it goes without saying, really good news.  The overall housebuilding target raised from 200,000 to 240,000.  More public land being freed up.  Commitments to implement planning changes.  Housing’s position at the top of the political agenda again reconfirmed.
 
But for the people who are in desperate need, what we have to see is a commitment to funding new social homes as part of the Comprehensive Spending Review.  We have been arguing – you may already have heard this once or twice - that the figure we need to see is 20,000 extra a year over the next three years.  Word on the street is that, rather than wait until October when the CSR results will be announced, the Prime Minister will tell us next week what the settlement for housing is.
 
Good or not so good – bad is now pretty much out of the question in the current climate – we will then have some thinking to do.  Our expectations have now been raised.  240,000 houses a year is a big leap.  If we are to deliver that number, and if – say – a third of them are to be social rented homes, the challenge of getting there is going to be huge.  The next few months will not be a time for sitting back and basking in the palpable success of our campaigning.  We will now have to work out how we, Government, and the industry are going to make it happen.