The former Labour leader Ed Miliband has called on Jeremy Corbyn to adopt a more radical plan to solve the housing crisis, as he launched a national campaign to win backing for the biggest programme of council and social housing in English history.

Miliband is calling on the public and party leaders to rally behind a vision of building 3.1m new social homes in the next 20 years, while conceding that it could push down house prices

The target is contained in a report by an independent social housing commission, convened by the housing charity Shelter, and is higher than the Labour leadership’s vision of a million in the next decade.

Miliband said of Corbyn and the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell: “They need to do more. We want these proposals to be adopted.” Labour responded that its plans were just as ambitious, at least over the next decade.

The campaign, launched on Tuesday in central London, is also being backed by the former Conservative party chair Lady Warsi who called on the chancellor, Philip Hammond, to consider their argument that the negative impact on people’s lives of the housing crisis warrants spending an estimated £225bn on social housing, which they estimate would pay for itself in reduced housing benefit payments and other economic benefits within 40 years.

So far, the government has responded that it is spending £11bn over the next decade on affordable homes, although this includes more expensive homes than social housing.

John Healey, the shadow housing secretary, said: “This welcome report … shows just how far the Conservatives are falling short. It’s now time for Conservative ministers to back our plans if they’re serious about fixing the housing crisis.”

Warsi revealed that when she started working with Miliband as part of the social housing commission established by the housing charity Shelter in the wake of the Grenfell Tower disaster, she believed the market would provide the solution to the housing crisis.

She is convinced of the need for a massive public spending programme, saying that “the figures stack up” in favour of a massive housebuilding programme that could save billions in housing benefit.

Lord O’Neill, the former economic secretary to the Treasury, who was part of the commission, said tackling the housing problem was also at the centre of improving the productivity of the UK economy, which he described as a greater threat to the country than a hard Brexit.

Miliband was a minister in the Labour government at a time when social housebuilding was as low as it had been under the previous Tory administration.

“We were too late to the emerging housing crisis that was happening and there was a bit of an ideological inheritance that councils shouldn’t really be in the business of building homes any more,” he said. “We didn’t do enough to challenge that whole assumption. We should have done more.”

The campaign will be supported by Shelter, which is focusing this year on the need for more and better managed social housing. To succeed at government level it will first have to find space in a Brexit-dominated agenda and then overcome entrenched political ideology about the role of social housing as little more than a safety net. Politicians are also likely to be concerned at any proposal that would cause house prices to fall.

“If we are to avoid runaway prices of eight times multiple earnings then this needs to be done,” said Miliband, adding: “Yes, it might well lead to a slowing of house prices.”

He said there could be a fall in some areas and that would be a “good thing”.



