Good Morning Britain descends into chaos as fuming Labour MP skewered

Good Morning Britain‘s Ed Balls and Susanna Reid clashed with Housing Minister Steve Reed as he appeared on the ITV breakfast show. Although they began the chat discussing the Peter Mandelson vetting scandal they also asked the serving MP about the apparent support for the Green Party in the upcoming local elections. “They’re ahead of Labour because they’re talking about the policies people want to hear. Don’t you need to take a leaf out of Zack Polanski‘s book in London and get onto this Green Party agenda,” Balls asked.

Reed disagreed saying: “I’ve knocked on hundreds of doors… over recent weeks, because the elections are coming…and what people are saying to me is they want this government to be talking about issues like housing, the cost of living, crisis, energy bills… We’re building more council homes. Last year, over 10,000 built. That’s the biggest for over 35 years since records began. When Zack Polanski launched his party’s manifesto, he said they were in favour of house building. In fact, the Greens have blocked over 40,000 homes being built, 13,000 of those affordable,” he told the presenters.

He continued with his point. “And at the end of my road there’s a council house, a block being built by Lambeth Council. The Greens campaigned against it, chained themselves together to try and stop the building happening and then when the council tenants moved in, they came to shout abuse at them. That is not a party that wants to build homes. Polanski says one thing but the greens on the ground do the polar opposite,” he said.

Reid interjected: “I presume that was, I mean, I don’t know the case, but I presume that was for environmental reasons.”

Reed dismissed this idea. “It wasn’t, Susanna. It was an existing estate that was being improved so people living in run down homes, and they’re being moved into better homes, where the greens were against it,” he said forcing her to acknowledge she didn’t know the case.

They then clashed further over renters rights as Reid asked about a possible rent freeze. He explained the worry was that this would lead to landlords increasing rents hugely for new leases as landlords would worry they couldn’t put it up once new tenants were in situ.

“…Even though superficially it sounds like a good idea in Scotland, when…they brought it in there…it led to a massive increase in rent and a reduction of homes that were available to rent,” he said…”We’ve always said we wouldn’t do it…I saw a headline in one of the newspapers. I didn’t read it, but no, I ruled it out in the chamber of the House of Commons a couple of week’s ago.

“There’s a lot of things you’re not reading right now. Steve,” Reid admonished him in a sly dig about the Mandelson scandal. “I don’t have time,” he snapped back. “I come on a lot of your shows. I’ve got an actual job to do in the department down the road as well.

“Perhaps more reading of due diligence reports might help the government in the meantime,” she responded pithily.

“I’m reading a lot of reports on how we get houses built and how we protect renters and give them more rights…this Friday,” he replied.