HC Deb 27 January 1953 vol 510 cc823-4
25. Mr. Simmons

asked the Minister of Housing and Local Government if he will circularise local housing authorities on the necessity of a points scheme to govern the allocation of housing accommodation and the dangers of allocation by individual councillors.

Mr. H. Macmillan

I am sending the hon. Member a copy of a circular and its enclosure in which these questions are dealt with.

Mr. Simmons

Is the Minister concerned about the proper use of £769 per house, which, he has already told us, goes on Government subsidy to housing, and would he regard it as a good use of that money to house two old age pensioners in a three-bedroom house and to refuse a house to a five-children family, with triplets newly born, which has been done by the Seisdon Rural District Council, which has no points scheme?

Mr. Macmillan

Of course, I realise the anxieties of the hon. Gentleman, but it would not be at all satisfactory if the housing arrangements and allocations were made by a centralised Department in Whitehall. It is, broadly, more satisfactory that it should be carried out by the local authorities responsible. The only method is to issue general guidance to them, which we do, and I think that generally speaking, although no doubt they may make mistakes, like other public bodies, that method works and is the only way in which a thing of this kind could work. I do not, therefore, propose to alter it.

Mr. Lewis

May I apologise, Mr. Speaker, for not being in my place to ask Question No. 12, and ask the Minister whether he is not aware of the difficulties under the present system, whereby people who were bombed out and now live in another area, or who have had to move from their normal place of residence, cannot get on to any housing list because some councils have a pre-1939 residential qualification and some have a residential qualification over, say, the last two or three years? We have, therefore, the anomalous position of many hundreds of thousands of genuine cases who cannot get on to any housing list at all. Will not the Minister look at this position?

Mr. Macmillan

I understand the problem, but it is a difficult one to deal with within the general structure.