Waiting Lists (Hansard, 9 March 1950)

HC Deb 09 March 1950 vol 472 cc457-65 457

§ 28. Miss Irene Ward
asked the Minister of Health the total number of applications for houses on the lists of local authorities on 28th February.

§ 32. Mr. Martin Lindsay
asked the Minister of Health if he has now received from local authorities the information regarding waiting lists for houses asked for in his Circular 171/48.

§ 38. Mr. Derek Walker-Smith
asked the Minister of Health in what form he proposes to publish information given by local authorities in response to his Circular 171/48; and what steps it is proposed to take to keep the said information under review and up to date.

§ 41. Wing-Commander Bullus
asked the Minister of Health what is the total number of families on the housing waiting lists of local authorities in England and Wales for the latest available date; and what are the comparative figures for September, 1945.

§ Mr. Bevan
With permission, I will answer Questions No. 28, 32, 38 and 41 together and, as the reply is rather long, circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

§ Miss Ward
May I ask the right hon. Gentleman why this apparently legitimate information was not made available before the General Election?

§ Mr. Bevan
Perhaps the hon. Lady will await the official answer.

§ Mr. Lindsay
While waiting patiently, may I ask whether the right hon. Gentleman will tell us, shortly, (a) whether he has the information yet; (b) if not, when he hopes to get it?

§ Mr. Bevan
Perhaps the hon. Member will look at the answer in the OFFICIAL REPORT. Next Monday the House will have an opportunity of discussing the matter.

§ Mr. R. S. Hudson
Will the answer that is to be circulated contain the figures asked for?

§ Mr. Bevan
Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will have a look at the OFFICIAL REPORT when it appears?

§ Mr. Michael Astor
Has the Minister read the answer himself yet?

458

§ Mr. Bevan
As hon. Members are to discuss the matter next Monday they might perhaps digest the OFFICIAL REPORT first.

§ Mr. Lindsay
Mr. Speaker, the right hon. Gentleman asked permission to circulate the answer in the OFFICIAL REPORT. As I am one of the questioners I do not give permission. I should like to have the answer in full now, in view of the gross discourtesy of the Minister when I asked him merely for a short answer as to whether he had the information and, if not, when he would have it.

§ Mr. Bevan
Permission is asked from the Chair and not from the House.

Hon. Members
No.

§ Mr. Lindsay
May I ask for your Ruling, Mr. Speaker, as to whether that is correct—whether permission is asked from the Chair or from the House.

§ Mr. Rankin
Further to that point of Order. I should like to ask for your guidance, Mr. Speaker, on this aspect of the matter: was not the hon. Member for Solihull (Mr. Lindsay) too late in making his decision? [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] Yes, I think so.

§ Mr. Speaker
I am still rather left in the dark. I understand that the hon. Member asked whether the Minister of Health had this information before or after the election. Is that correct?

§ Mr. Lindsay
With respect, if I may explain, Sir, I am one of the questioners who asked whether certain information was available. The Minister says that we must await his official reply. I asked him only a short question as to whether, when we see the reply, it will contain the fact that information is available, or not. The right hon. Gentleman gave me a very discourteous reply. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] I now ask you, Mr. Speaker, if you will be good enough to rule whether the permission for which he asked is the permission of the House or of the Chair, because if the permission has to be the permission of the House, then, so far as I am concerned, I am not willing to give it.

Several Hon. Members
rose—

§ Miss Ward
On a point of Order.

459

§ Mr. Speaker
It is impossible for me to judge if everybody gets up and talks at the same time. How am I to understand what is happening? To tell the honest truth, I am now in such a muddle that I do not know what Ruling I can give. To tell the honest truth I do not intend to give one at all.

§ Mr. R. A. Butler
On a point of Order. An hon. Member on this side of the House has put a perfectly serious point, and it is this: when a Minister wants to circulate in the OFFICIAL REPORT an answer to a question he asks permission before he can circulate that answer, instead of giving it orally. The question at issue is whether that permission has to be on the part of the hon. Members concerned, or of the hon. Member concerned, or on the part of the Chair. It is that point which has been put to you seriously, despite the hubbub to which you have been subjected.

§ Mr. Bevan
Further to that point of Order—

Hon. Members
Order.

§ Mr. Speaker
If hon Members call out "Order" how can I listen to the Minister? I want to hear what the Minister has to say, too.

§ Mr. Bevan
It is perfectly customary in the House of Commons for a Minister to hand to Mr. Speaker a list of Questions he proposes to answer consecutively, or that he proposes to answer in the OFFICIAL REPORT. That has been done on this occasion, as it has been[Interruption] —on others. The answer [...]! intend to circulate in the OFFICIAL REPORT would take the whole of the rest of Question Time. [An HON. MEMBER: "There is not much left."] Mr. Speaker has ruled on several occasions that Ministers ought not to make long answers to Questions. This is a perfectly normal procedure.

§ Mr. Butler
With respect, Sir, we must press this point. If a Minister can decide on his own—

§ Mr. Bevan
He cannot.

§ Mr. Butler
—whether he answers orally, or circulates the answer in the OFFICIAL REPORT, it will be possible, in the case of a Minister who does not want to answer oral Questions, for the whole 460 system of oral questioning in this House to fall into desuetude. Therefore, I think it is of first-class importance that we should receive from you, Mr. Speaker, a Ruling, that if an hon. Member is unwilling to have the answer circulated in the OFFICIAL REPORT the Minister should give that answer orally, as he constitutionally must.

§ Mr. Driberg
Is it not the case that ID the past a number of us have tried already the same perfectly legitimate old trick that the hon. Member for Solihull (Mr. Lindsay) is trying, and that you, Mr. Speaker, and your predecessor, have ruled the very opposite—that the permission sought by the Minister is given by the House through the Chair?

§ Earl Winterton
No.

§ Mr. Driberg
Yes.

§ Mr. Speaker
I am still in rather a muddle. I gather—if I am right—that the hon. Member's original Question on the Order Paper and his supplementary question were more or less the same, and that his original Question was whether the Minister "had now received" the information and that his supplementary question was whether it had been received. I think that the Minister answered the supplementary by saying that if the hon. Member would look at what the Minister is circulating he would find the answer there. That is the Minister's answer, for which the Minister is responsible, and I cannot direct him to answer if he does not think himself responsible for doing so.

§ Mr. Butler
With due respect, Mr. Speaker, that is not an answer to my question. We are quite ready to submit to your judgment—as, with respect, we must do—whether the permission which the Minister has to obtain is the permission of the Chair. In our opinion—and we submit this to your judgment—the permission which has to be obtained by the Minister before he evades the oral answer by circulating the answer in the OFFICIAL REPORT must be the permission of the Member or Members concerned. That is the simple point my hon. Friend desires to put.

§ Mr. S. Silverman
Since the Minister, as a matter of Order, is not obliged to answer any Questions at all, does it not 461 follow that the permission must be the Chair's and not that of hon. Members?

§ Mr. Bevan
Exactly.

§ Miss Ward
May I ask, Mr. Speaker, whether you would consider this matter at your leisure and give the House your answer in due course?

Hon. Members
No.

§ Mr. Speaker
I am still not quite clear as to the point, and I am sorry about that; I do not see what was wrong. I do not see what was the original objection of the hon. Member.

§ Earl Winterton
In view of the great importance of the question put by my right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. R. A. Butler), which is the question of what is the meaning of the phrase "With the hon. Member's permission," may I respectfully ask you, Mr. Speaker, whether, if you are not prepared to give a Ruling now, you will give a considered Ruling tomorrow? We on this side of the House attach the greatest importance to this question. It goes to the very root of the rights of this House.

§ The Lord President of the Council (Mr. Herbert Morrison)
May I say that we attach importance to this matter as well?

§ Mr. Speaker
I will have the matter considered and give a Ruling.

§ Following is the answer:

§ The Government have been considering whether they can usefully publish any further information about the extent of the demand and need for houses. In the White Paper issued by their predecessors in 1945 it was estimated that at that time some three-quarters-of-a-million dwellings were needed "to afford a separate dwelling for every family which desires to have one," and that a further half-million houses were needed "to remove houses already condemned as unfit and to abate overcrowding condemned since 1935."

§ The estimated increase of population in Great Britain since the beginning of 1945 is about 1,400,000, which on an average of, say, 31 persons per household, would require some further 400,000 homes. Statistical information as to the 462 increase in the number of separate families is not available. From the time when the post-war housing programme was launched in 1945 the efforts of local authorities were concentrated primarily on the provision of homes for families who were without a separate home of their own and who had expressed a desire to have one. Towards the end of 1948 over 800,000 additional homes had been provided, and on the basis of the estimates made in 1945 and with the knowledge that housing demand was not evenly spread throughout the country it would have been expected that in many districts the demand from families without a separate home of their own would have been substantially met and that these authorities would in the near future be able to turn to the task of abating overcrowding and the removal of unfit houses.

§ The information published locally by local authorities as to the numbers of applicants did not, however, support this view. It was, therefore, considered that an attempt should be made to see whether a reliable estimate could be made of the present effective demand for houses. Local authorities were accordingly asked in November, 1948, to sift their records of housing applications and to inform the Ministry of Health how many of their applicants still desired accommodation. As a result of this review there has in many districts been a substantial reduction in the number of applicants, a considerable proportion of those on the lists not replying to the inquiries addressed to them or stating that they had found their own accommodation. Moreover the examination centrally of the returns has shown that quite a large number of applicants are on the lists of more than one authority, thereby inflating both the total number of applicants and the real numbers for the districts concerned.

§ With 1,500 local authorities it is inevitable that there should be much variation in the administrative arrangements for dealing with applications made to them, a matter which is by statute vested in the individual authorities. As the reports came in it became apparent that some authorities admit applications to their lists only after inquiry and keep their lists under regular review: others, having accepted applications without inquiry, have no regular arrangements 463 for reviewing the lists as a whole, but bring under review only those cases at the top of the list who come under consideration as houses become available for letting. Between these two extremes there is a wide variety of practice. The request to the local authorities was couched in as simple a form as possible to avoid undue expenditure of labour and in order to meet the wishes of the associations of local authorities. Examination of the replies has shown that the form was not sufficient to iron out these differences in the administrative arrangements made by different local authorities. For this reason and also because of the amount of duplication, the information derived gives an erroneous picture of the effective total demand and also of its distribution between the various local authorities.

§ It is, of course, open to individual local authorities to give such information as they think fit in regard to the situation in their own area; in any such statements the local authority can indicate the basis of their information and the nature of the arrangements made in the particular district for the initial and periodical review of applications. An attempt to link these variations into a single series of central statistics would, however, as already indicated, produce distorted and unreliable figures. It has, therefore, been decided that it would be misleading to publish any figures centrally as a result of the request made to local authorities.

§ Two conclusions emerge, however, from the attempt which was thus made to obtain a picture of the situation:

(1) After making every allowance for variations in the local arrangements for classifying and reviewing applications, the original estimate which was made during the war has in post-war circumstances turned out to have been a substantial under-estimate of the true position. At the time it was necessarily based on national statistics of a very general character and not on local analyses and no allowance could be made for changes in social and economic conditions after the war.
(2) The number of applications which have been accepted by local authorities from families requiring a new home and which are still outstanding will call for the continuance 464 of the housing programme at the highest rate that is possible, having regard to the other claims on the national resources, in order to enable a separate home to be offered to each family who desire to have one.

§ The experience both of the estimate published in 1945 and of the sifting of applications in 1949 confirm that global estimates cannot usefully be made except by means of detailed local analysis prepared on a standard basis and made according to an uniform procedure in all areas. Such an analysis will have to cover both the occupancy and the condition of existing houses: it will have to show the extent of overcrowding, the number of unfit houses, and the extent of the need both for repairs and for improvement. It can, of course, be secured only by a comprehensive survey of their area by each local authority with appropriate arrangements for keeping the result of the survey up to date. My Department are undertaking preliminary consultations with the associations of local authorities as to the form which such a survey should take in order to secure the best results.

§ When these arrangements have been completed and the necessary forms of record have been settled, they will be made available to local authorities, in order that they may be used in connection with the current administrative work of their staffs. The actual execution of such a survey in each district will depend on the availability of local resources, and it will no doubt be possible both to start and to complete such surveys more expeditiously in some districts than in others.

§ It must, however, be made clear that the execution of these surveys will take a considerable time and involve a heavy burden on the staffs of local authorities. It will not be possible to require this work to be undertaken at a time when these staffs are heavily engaged on other urgent tasks and when there is a pressing need for economy in local government manpower. Some information bearing on these points will become available through the census of population. The timing for the initiation of the detailed housing surveys will have to be considered by the Government in consultation with the associations of local authorities with due regard to these considerations 465 and a further statement will be made before action is taken to launch the surveys. I am authorised by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to say that similar action is contemplated in Scotland.