Brown suffers backbench revolt over council housing

Prime minister Gordon Brown faced a backbench revolt yesterday after 28 Labour rebels supported an amendment to a housing bill calling for more council house building and repair.

Michael Meacher, Labour MP for Oldham West said that demand for affordable housing "far exceeds" government targets and that it was "unrealistic" to rely on the private sector to build the homes.

He added that in the current economic conditions there was no chance that private firms would meet the governments target of building three million homes by 2020.

The government moved to assuage MPs by offering to produce a code of practiceon ballots in which council tenants vote on whether to transfer council houses to housing associations, amid criticism that councils bombard tenants with "loaded" information in order to offload property off their books.

However, a vote on the amendment to provide more resources for council house building and repair was rejected.