http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=488668&in_page_id=1770

Nearly one in 12 council homes goes to a foreigner, according to
official figures.

More than 300,000 taxpayer-funded properties are allocated to foreign
nationals - eight per cent of all social housing in Britain.

Ministers had previously said that around 200,000 such homes were
occupied by non-Britons. 

Many of the foreigners accommodated in homes run by local councils or
state-funded housing associations are thought to be recent arrivals.

The cost of providing properties for non-Britons is put at £19billion -
equivalent to all the money collected in council tax last year. 

The allocation of housing has alienated some communities.

Culture Minister Margaret Hodge, MP for Barking in East London,
complained in May that migrant families were being given priority for
homes over those with a "legitimate sense of entitlement".

A month later the Communities Department published a report which warned
that housing policies should take into account the needs and fears of
established populations.

Tory MP James Clappison, whose requests led to the release of the
housing figures, said yesterday: "The present Government has presided
over a significant increase in migration, in no small measure as a
direct result of its migration policies.

"However, it has not taken into account the impact their policies are
having on housing and public services.

"We need to examine very carefully the pressures migration is placing on
social housing in the same way as it is creating general housing demand
with a third of demand attributable to migration."

The figures on foreign tenants were contained in a housing survey
published earlier this month by the Department for Communities and Local
Government.

Officials had, however, made no attempt to highlight the issue of
foreigners.

The survey, carried out in 19,000 homes last year, asked for the first
time about the nationality of the head of the household.

It found 309,000 non-British families in 3,864,000 state-subsidised
houses and flats.

Some 173,000 heads of household in council and housing association homes
were under 40. Only four per cent of owner occupiers were found to be
non-British citizens.

A quarter of privately-rented homes were occupied by foreigners, the
survey said.

A Communities Department spokesman said the figure included British
citizens with dual nationality who chose to identify themselves as
foreigners in the survey.

He added: "Seventeen per cent of UK and Irish householders live in
social housing but only one and a half per cent of all households are
foreign national social renters.

"Contrary to popular belief, more foreign nationals own their own homes
than live in social housing."

Around 1.5million people are thought to be in the queue for social
housing.

Robert Whelan, of the Civitas thinktank, said: "Housing has the
potential to be the flashpoint for an outbreak of resentment towards
immigrants. Of everything provided by the welfare state, homes are the
most valuable.

"People feel deeply the unfairness of giving valuable resources to
people who have not contributed to the welfare state."

The £19billion figure is based on a statement from ministers earlier
this year that the average subsidy for a social housing unit over its
useful lifetime is £62,000. Homes typically cost £133,000 to build and
maintain over their life cycle with rent covering £71,000 of the cost.

• Foreigners cannot be denied access to social housing under existing
rules.

Councils and housing associations allocate taxpayersubsidised homes only
on the basis of need.

This system has been in place since the 1980s when waiting lists were
phased out.

The rules on need apply to everyone, British citizen or otherwise.
Councils give top priority to the homeless or those with large families.

Joblessness and poverty also count in the favour of a would-be tenant.
Young single mothers almost always qualify for a home.

Critics say the system can favour criminals, released prisoners and drug
addicts, thereby explaining the decline in the condition of social
housing estates.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2196028,00.html

One of Britain's leading black police officers is to demand that more
people from ethnic minorities must be stopped and searched if the fight
against inner-city gun and knife crime is to succeed.

In a speech that will reignite one of the most contentious issues in
British policing, the president of the National Black Police Association
will dramatically call for an increase in the policing strategy in black
communities. It marks a U-turn by the association, which has previously
questioned the high proportion of black people stopped and searched by
police.

 Speaking at the group's annual conference, Keith Jarrett will ask
Police Minister Tony McNulty and Sir Ian Blair, Commissioner of the
Metropolitan Police, to consider escalating stop-and-searches among
black people to reduce the number of shootings that have claimed the
lives of another two teenagers in the past week.

The disputed use of stop-and-search has arguably caused more conflict
than any other modern policing tactic and first achieved national
notoriety during the Eighties, when it was blamed for precipitating
inner-city race riots. Black people are four times more likely to be
stopped than white people, according to Scotland Yard's figures, which
continues to give rise to charges of police racism.

Jarrett admitted he was braced for a negative backlash during his
headline speech in Bristol last Wednesday. It is the first time that a
senior black officer has called for an increase in stop-and-search among
the black community.

Traditionally the association, which has 8,000 members ranging from
senior figures such as Tarique Ghaffur, assistant commissioner in the
Metropolitan police, to backroom staff, has pointed to the 'alarming'
and disproportionate numbers of black people who are stopped and
searched.

Jarrett told The Observer: 'From the return that I am getting from a lot
of black people, they want to stop these killings, these knife crimes,
and if it means their sons and daughters are going to be inconvenienced
by being stopped by the police, so be it. I'm hoping we go down that
road. I am going to be pressing him [Blair] to increase stop-and-search.
It's not going to go down very well with my audience, many of whom are
going to be black. We have talked about disproportionate use of
stop-and-search in the past, but what I am proposing is quite the
reverse. The black community is telling me that we have to have a look
at this.' Controversially, Jarrett said he would not oppose a random use
of stop-and-search when officers had 'reasonable suspicion' an offence
had been committed. He argued that, as long as officers used the powers
courteously and responsibly, many within the black community would
accept it as a necessary evil. He added that the toll of shootings and
knife crime meant that deep-seated misgivings over the policing strategy
were being increasingly outweighed by fears over mounting violence.

The backlash was led last night by Liberal Democrats' home affairs
spokesman Nick Clegg, who said stop-and-search only 'increased community
tensions and distrust in the police'.

He added: 'Effective policing depends on good intelligence and smart
ways of fostering community co-operation. This suggestion points us in
exactly the opposite direction and risks repeating all the worst
mistakes of the past'.

Although widely viewed by senior officers as an effective policing tool,
stop-and-search use was blamed for the 1985 Handsworth riots in
Birmingham which erupted after the arrest of a black man. Its
predecessor, the discredited 'sus law' which empowered the police to
arrest any person they suspected of loitering with intent to commit an
arrestable offence, was abolished after its widespread use against young
black men sparked the 1981 Brixton riots.

In the wake of the south London uprising, new rules for stop-and-search
determined that officers required 'reasonable suspicion' that an offence
had been committed. Yet its use against the black community has
continued to attract claims of racism.

Publication of the Macpherson Report in February 1999 into the murder of
the teenager Stephen Lawrence, which found that police were
institutionally racist, condemned the use of stop-and-search. Racial
equality watchdogs have also threatened the police with legal action
over stop-and-search, claiming its use has single-handedly poisoned
relations with ethnic minorities.

Until Jarrett's speech this week, senior black and Asian officers
publicly agreed that stop-and-search risked criminalising and alienating
ethnic minorities. Last year Ghaffur warned that counter-terrorism laws,
including an increased incidence of stop-and-search, had indirectly
discriminated against Asians.