HC Deb 20 January 1954 vol 522 cc1145-9

10.20 p.m.

The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. James Stuart)

I beg to move, in page 3, line 32, at the end, to insert: or being a structure made available to the local authority under the provisions of the Housing (Temporary Accommodation) Act, 1944. I do not wish to show any disrespect to the House, but I do not think it will be necessary for me to take up much time on the Amendments on the Order Paper, because they are quite simple.

With regard to this Amendment, the position is that after the Committee stage of this Bill we discovered that the definition of local authority houses did not include the temporary prefabricated houses, and it is the sole intention of this Amendment that those temporary prefabricated houses should be treated in precisely the same way as other local authority houses. I think that was the general intention of hon. Members, and I hope that they will be prepared to agree to this Amendment.

Mr. James McInnes (Glasgow, Central)

I think that the House would like to hear some argument advanced by the right hon. Gentleman as to why he has decided to include temporary houses in this Bill, because there are many other types of local authority houses, apart from temporary ones and those erected by local authorities. There are houses which the local authorities purchase and houses which they take over after they have been abandoned by the owners, but neither of these types is included in the provisions of the Bill.

Clause 4, as it originally stood, provided that for the purpose of calculating equalisation grants, local authorities, instead of taking the actual rateable value of their houses, should accept a notional or an average rateable value. The object of substituting a notional or average rateable value in place of the actual rateable value was obviously designed to remove an existing anomaly, namely, that a local authority which charged low rents for its houses was obviously able to obtain a much higher equalisation grant, and it was considered that that was very unfair to local authorities who charged a much higher rent.

At that time we all assumed—at least, I certainly did—that the purpose of the amending Bill was to include all local authority houses, from whatever source they emanated. I understood that all houses owned and controlled by a local authority would come under the Bill. That was not so, and during the Committee stage the Government decided to move an Amendment to their own Bill in an attempt to define what constituted a local authority house. For the purpose of equalisation grants the provision was confined to houses erected by local authorities and nothing else.

The Lord Advocate, when moving that Amendment, was challenged by me on the question of whether or not the Bill should include all houses, irrespective of the means by which they came into the possession of local authorities. I had particularly in mind the fact that thousands of houses must inevitably come into the possession of local authorities as the result of the Repairs and Rents Bill. Local authorities will be asked to take those houses over.

The Government are not disposed to include these houses in the Bill because they think the rents of these houses are far too low, and if they were to be included certain local authorities would be prejudiced, and so they now propose a further Amendment to include in the Bill temporary houses. Naturally, I ask why.

I discovered from a document issued by the Department that the rents of temporary houses in Scotland are much higher than those for the ordinary local authority houses. The publication indicates that the average rental of local authority houses in Scotland is £23 16s. 1d., but that the average rental for a temporary house is £24 13s. 3d. I am satisfied that the Government are deliberately including temporary houses to save themselves from expending more from the equalisation fund.

I think the position is anything but justified. It is just another method of reducing the expenditure that the Government will incur through the equalisation grant. I ask the right hon. Gentleman to reconsider this matter. It is being grossly unfair to the local authorities.

Only a few months ago the right hon. Gentleman almost congratulated himself on being able to extract from the Exchequer a further £2 million for the Scottish Equalisation Grant Fund. Here is evidence tonight of an attempt to cut down that grant expenditure to Scottish local authorities. I ask the right hon. Gentleman to be honest with the House and himself, and withdraw this Amendment.

Mr. J. Stuart

It is correct, as the hon. Member for Glasgow, Central (Mr. McInnes) has just said, that we did make an Amendment in Committee to exclude certain houses, but it was not our intention to exclude these temporary prefabricated houses. These temporary houses are technically not structures erected by local authorities. They are made, technically, by me, although not by me in person, I admit, and are made available to local authorities on agreed terms.

I think that this is a perfectly reasonable Amendment. I think it is clearly right, because there is really no difference, in so far as local authorities are concerned, between these two classes of houses. The local authorities are dealing with both these temporary houses and the houses which they themselves are responsible for erecting locally, and it was certainly not our intention in Committee to exclude these temporary houses. I hope, therefore, that the House will agree with the Amendment.

Mr. Thomas Fraser (Hamilton)

I do not want to delay the House, but I think it should be made clear that the Cunningham Committee, on whose recommendations the Bill is based, said not a word about these temporary houses. It is quite clear that the recommendation in favour of a notional rateable value instead of an actual ratable value for determining the rateable value on which equalisation grant should be based had very much in mind that the existing system of using rateable value as a yardstick to measure need was an incentive to local authorities in receipt of Exchequer equalisation grant to keep the rents of their local authority houses low.

But most of the local authorities in Scotland who have these temporary houses are not engaged in any manipulation of the rents of those houses. The Secretary of State was again wrong when he said that technically they were provided by him. In fact, they were provided by the Ministry of Works, and the Act made it clear that the local authorities would pay the rent of £26 to the Ministry of Works. The recommendation was that the local authorities would charge the £26 rent to the tenants. Most of the local authorities in Scotland did so.

One or two authorities charged a lesser rent. One in particular charged £19, because its permanent brick houses were let at a rent of £22 and £24 and the authority thought it would be monstrous to charge a higher rent for prefabricated temporary houses. But this little addition to the Bill does not make much difference to any local authority in Scotland. It should be made clear, however, that there is no justification for it whatever, and no justification for the recommendations of the Cunningham Committee which was the basis for the Bill in the first place.

Amendment agreed to.