Leading article: The wrong priorities

There was an unexpected treat from Gordon Brown for middle-class voters in the debate following Wednesday's Queen's Speech: state help to stem the rising tide of home repossessions. The Prime Minister announced a taxpayer-backed scheme to allow homeowners made redundant to defer payment of some of their mortgage interest payments for two years. Yet as is so often the case with Mr Brown's surprise announcements, the plan is unravelling under scrutiny.

Soon after the revelation, the Housing minister Margaret Beckett said she expected the scheme to help only about 9,000 people, rather than the tens of thousands implied by the Prime Minister at the despatch box. And now the commercial banks, which we were told by the Prime Minister had signed up to the scheme, seem to know remarkably little about its specifics. This package is beginning to look worryingly half-baked.

It is not hard to guess why. There is a hefty dose of politics involved in this whole business. Mr Brown is desperate to be seen to be acting to slow the repossessions rate, which is projected next year to reach the heights of the 1991 recession. A dramatic announcement was also needed to distract attention from a thin Queen's Speech. This announcement was all about wrong-footing the opposition. The details were evidently left to be hammered out at later date.

There is something to be said for Government action to alleviate the pain of repossessions. There are few forces more effective in destroying economic confidence than tens of thousands of people being made redundant and forced out of their homes. A sudden glut of distressed sales also makes it more likely that the housing market will overshoot on the downside. It should be noted too that the banks themselves have little to gain from a sudden jump in repossessions.

But the trouble with Mr Brown's intervention is that it promised more than it seems able to deliver. And the confusion about who will be eligible for help is undermining the confidence boost that a properly thought-through scheme could have brought. That is what happens when political calculation is privileged over economic logic. Not for the first time, the Prime Minister has got his priorities wrong.