HC Deb 21 June 1955 vol 542 cc1269-80

9.59 p.m.

Mr. Arthur Lewis (West Ham, North)

I desire to raise on the Adjournment a matter affecting thousands of men and women who, through no fault of their own, now find themselves unable to gain admittance to any housing list throughout the length and breadth of this country. Mr. Speaker, you will know that, particularly in the East End of London and in some of our more overcrowded cities, there were a number of people who, unfortunately, were bombed out during the last war, some not only on one, two or three ocasions, but on as many occasions as six and seven.

I want to raise with the Minister what I suggest is the present unfair position now confronting these people because of the wide variance there is in the method of placing them on the respective council priority housing lists. As the position is at the moment, there is no uniformity between councils in London, metropolitan London and, for that matter, the rest of the country. We find that some local borough councils—

It being Ten o'clock, the Motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. R. Allan.]

Mr. Lewis

—make it a rule, as does my local authority, that the applicant must be the husband and not the wife and that the man must have been a resident of the borough before the war. More than one-third of West Ham's housing accommodation was completely destroyed in the blitz, and the local authority has some 14,000 people on its priority housing list. It is understandable that it does not want to add to that list by accepting people who come into the borough in order to be near their work or because they want to live in London. It is obvious that it does not want to add to a list which it finds almost impossible to fulfil at the moment. Some other boroughs have a rule that an applicant must have lived for a certain period in the vicinity of the borough prior to the date of application to be placed upon the list. Because of these wide variations in the method of getting on housing lists, thousands of people in urgent need are unable to get their names on any list at all.

I am pleased to see my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton (Mr. Sorensen) present. Leyton is a neighbouring borough to West Ham. I have many constituents who were formerly resident in Leyton, and I have no doubt that my hon. Friend has many constituents who were formerly resident in West Ham. Some of my constituents were accepted for the Leyton list and have patiently been awaiting their turn to be rehoused.

Leyton now finds that it has a very grave problem because it is almost built up, and the local authority proposes—it does so quite rightly, and I do not query this—to say that from a certain date it cannot accept upon its list any applicant who is not now resident in the borough. Hence, a number of my constituents who have been waiting patiently for 10 or 12 years, and in some instances for 15 years, are now told that they must apply to the council in whose area they are living. When they apply to the West Ham local authority they are told, "We are sorry, but as you were not resident in the borough at the outbreak of the war, you must go back to Leyton." When such matters are taken up with the Minister, the Minister says, "I know about these cases. I am very sorry, but I cannot, and will not, interfere with the powers of allocation of the local authority."

I could quote thousands of such cases. I have supplied the Minister with particulars of a constituent who was on the East Ham housing list for 12 years. He was bombed out at East Ham. During the heavy blitz days he did the best he could and got one small room in West Ham, hoping that it would be only temporary accommodation. His family has gradually grown bigger, and he and his wife and his four children are eating, sleeping and living in one small box room. He has patiently waited saying, "It cannot be much longer. I will still put up with the great inconvenience and hope that one day my turn will come."

This unfortunate man, who is an ex-Service man, eventually got a letter from the East Ham local authority which said: "As we are now built up, we are sorry to say that we can only place on our waiting list people who are now resident in the borough of East Ham, and, therefore, you will have to go to your own local authority." This man went to the local authority in the area where he is now living, but they said, "We are sorry, but we cannot accept you on our list because you were not resident in the borough at the outbreak of war."

This state of affairs is aggravated because other councils have entirely different schemes. I have sent the Minister the case of a man who was on the priority list for five years. The council then found—through no fault of the individual applicant, but through some mistake or some difficulty on the council's part—that the man had been inadvertently or wrongly placed on the list. The council wrote to the man and said, "We are sorry, we see you have been placed on our list wrongly. You should not have been there. We are now informing you that you have been taken off the list and you must now apply to wherever you were living previously."

So after 5, 7, or 10 years of patiently waiting he found that he had to go to the Woolwich Borough Council, which said, "Ah, yes, but we are sorry. We have a scheme whereby you must have been resident in the borough for at least three consecutive years up to the date of your application." So he must have at least three years' residence in Woolwich before he can get on the Woolwich list. He cannot get into Woolwich because no accommodation is available, and so he cannot get on the Woolwich list. He comes off the East Ham list, cannot get on the West Ham list and cannot get on the Woolwich list.

Then there is the great London County Council, which is doing a truly magnificent job of rehousing. Everyone agrees that around London we can see great housing estates. I am not criticising any local authority. I fully understand and appreciate their difficulties, but I ask the Minister to try to appreciate the difficulties and tragedies confronting these families. The L.C.C. had a scheme during the war whereby serving men who were working or living in the London County Council area before joining the Services could go on the London County Council list. A number of my constituents were in that position and were accepted onto that list.

As good ex-Service men, they patiently waited, but subsequently the L.C.C.—and here I make no comment, because the council obviously knew the facts and understood the reason for doing it—suddenly decided that that scheme would be altered and the men were informed that, as they did not live or work in the L.C.C. area, they could not stay on the L.C.C. list. When the Minister has replied to some of these cases, having taken up the matter with the local authority concerned, he has said that the applicants have been placed on the councils' general waiting lists.

That is not really good enough, because a general waiting list is generally a list where the council has lost count of the numbers. Councils usually have an urgent priority list which may have thousands on it, and to clear that list alone will take years. To say that applicants are on the general list is of no help or assistance, particularly in one case which I have quoted of a man formerly living in Leyton who applied and was accepted for the urgent list. After years of patiently waiting he was informed by the Borough of Leyton that he could not be placed on the waiting list at Leyton because he did not now live in the borough. This man, wife and four children live in damp insanitary accommodation. The wife suffers from tuberculosis, and I am told that she has lost four of her sisters through this awful complaint. But here she is. She has to stay in this one damp room with her family. The local authority says that it cannot do anything to rehouse her. When the husband went back to the area in which he was formerly resident, he was told that the local authority there could not do anything for him.

This position is aggravated by the fact that some authorities accept the husband as the applicant and others accept the wife. Hence, one can have the position, for instance, where a girl has grown up and lived with her father and mother in a borough where probably the family has lived for as long as fifty or sixty years. Because she happens to marry a man from, say, Scotland, Ireland or Wales, the local authority says, "Sorry, we cannot accept you on our list because your husband comes from somewhere else."

Is not it a ridiculous position for a local authority to say to a man who works in the London docks that he must go for rehousing to Wales because, perhaps because of war work or for some other reason, he was sent there during the war and stayed for 3, 4 or 5 years doing war work? That man has come back to his normal job and he wants to get accommodation near to his work.

I am not suggesting to the Minister what the answer is. All I say is that there should be some reasonable procedure laid down which should be followed by the local authorities generally. It should be possible to say to these people who are not on any list either that they can elect to choose which authority should rehouse them or that the authority should be asked to agree, if need be, that the Minister should be the arbitrator to say who should and who should not accept this applicant. I am not pleading that all those in urgent need in West Ham should go to Leyton, and I am not suggesting that all those in Leyton should come to West Ham, but there should be some reasonable scheme whereby these people can be sure that eventually their urgent needs will be dealt with in accordance with the schemes operated by the various local authorities.

I am at a loss to know why the Minister does not try to help in these matters in some way. He has had from me, and I am sure that he has had the same sort of thing from other hon. Mem- bers, details of hundreds of cases such as this. We are not pleading for those who are not in urgent need. We are not pleading for people who have not waited patiently, some for as long as 10, 12 or 15 years. It must be possible for the Minister at least to say that as from a certain date any family which can prove that, through no fault of their own, they cannot gain admission to a priority housing list, shall have the matter taken up either with the local authority where they were or are living or where their job may be.

The local authority should be asked to consider the circumstances, not in preference to anyone on the list—I am not asking for that—and not to give them priority over all other applicants in urgent need, but at least to give them the same opportunity of having their position considered on its merits according to the urgency of their need and the general priority or points scheme which the local authority may operate. If the Minister could do that, I think it would be helpful to many hon. Members on both sides of the House and to many borough councils.

To some extent it would settle itself on the numbers that would come in or out of a particular area. By that I mean, to take by own authority as an example, that there are obviously a number of applicants on the West Ham list who were living in the borough at the outbreak of war, and who are now living at Basildon, Braintree or Leyton, but who have to be put on the West Ham list. Were it known that they would be rehoused by one of the other authorities the lists could be reduced pro tanto.

I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton is anxious to speak about the general position, and I willingly sit down in order to allow him to do so. I am not attacking any local authority scheme, nor am I attacking the Minister. I am asking that these poor people, who are in dire need and who are living in most appallingly insanitary conditions, should be able to know that, sometime or other, they will be rehoused; and that they may be admitted to at least one local authority's housing scheme.

10.17 p.m.

Mr. R. W. Sorensen (Leyton)

I am obliged to my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Lewis) for raising this matter. As the Minister is aware, I have put several Questions dealing with the problems which my hon. Friend has raised, and I endorse all that he has said. Hon. Members, particularly those living in urban areas, know of scores of tragic cases which have been brought to their notice.

I live on the edge of my constituency, and almost every day a man or woman attends at my study to explain their troubles. I have to say that I have no power or authority in the matter, and that it rests entirely with the local authority. Sometimes they come to me as a last resort and I say that I will inquire into the matter, but I know that it does not rest with me.

Surely the Minister can induce local authorities to have a conference with a view perhaps to selecting from their areas particularly difficult cases of people well down on their housing list, or who, it may be, are high on the list, but stand no chance of getting accommodation because—as is the case in my area—the area is mostly built over? Could it not be that, irrespective of the place of habitation or any disqualification, such cases might be selected and dealt with as a pool, and a decision made about them by four or five contiguous local authorities?

I know that we must not override the local authorities. We must respect their autonomy. I believe that the Minister might do something, however, to induce contiguous local authorities to transcend their own jealously guarded preserves and to consider the human side of this problem with other authorities with a view to meeting in some measure the needs of these urgent and tragic cases.

10.19 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (Mr. W. F. Deedes)

The hon. Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Lewis) and the hon. Member for Leyton (Mr. Sorensen) are both concerned with a category of homeless persons who, though happily a little less numerous than at one time, are still among the most acute and deserving cases of housing needs. I recognise that the problem in the constituency of the hon. Member for West Ham, North is acute, because of the heritage of war and so on.

In fact, these people are not only homeless, they are "stateless persons," in the domestic sense of the word, and therein is the main difficulty and the heart of this problem.

Mr. Sorensen

They are hopeless too.

Mr. Deedes

There are no differences between us as to the nature of the problem, and of the need to alleviate it by all practicable means. The only possible ground for difference between the two hon. Gentlemen and myself is what those practicable means should be.

One word about my right hon. Friend's position in regard to this problem. I do not have to tell the hon. Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Lewis) that my right hon. Friend has no powers of compulsion in housing matters of this kind: he knows that. My right hon. Friend has no powers beyond the statutory provisions of the various housing Acts, of which the 1936 Act is the most specific, and in Section 83 of which it is laid down that the general management, regulation and control of houses provided by a local authority … shall be vested in and exercised by the authority. I think that that is widely accepted.

My right hon. Friend can guide, advise, persuade and even recommend, but he cannot compel. I think that there is always a tendency for us all to believe in local government autonomy and in the independence of the local council until it does not do something which we wish it to do, and then the Minister is asked to intervene decisively.

It may be felt that my right hon. Friend should send out a circular of guidance on the matter. That is certainly within his prerogative, but I should say that the complaint is often not that too few but that too many circulars are sent out. Local authorities get a great deal of advice and guidance in these matters, and we have to be careful not to overload them.

May I now say what has been done to bring home this problem to local authorities, and the measures which could be taken to meet it? The Central Housing Advisory Committee, which was appointed nearly 20 years ago, has done—and there is recent practical evidence of this—some very useful work in this field. Indeed, it has had a special Committee investigating aspects of the very problem which the hon. Gentleman has raised tonight.

In its fifth Report entitled "Residential Qualifications," which was published and circulated to all local authorities only a few weeks ago, it produced the fruits of a most thorough investigation into the very problem about which the hon. Gentleman has been speaking tonight. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman has read that Report, but I hope that he has. I think I need read only one paragraph from it to show how very fully seized was the Committee of exactly the point which has been the central theme of the hon. Gentleman's speech. It is paragraph 9 of Part I of the Report, which says: Early in our investigation cases were brought to our notice where families had been unable to gain admission to the housing waiting list of any local authority. Originally resident in one district they had moved to another—perhaps because the head of the family had changed his employment and wished to live nearer to his work. They had been refused admission to the waiting-list of their new local authority because they did not satisfy the residential requirements demanded from applicants. Their former local authority had in the meanwhile removed their name from their list because they were no longer resident in the district. For housing purposes they had become 'stateless persons.' I think the hon. Gentleman will agree that that sums up the nature of the problem. To be a little more specific—

Mr. Lewis

That is true, but there is the other point which I mentioned where the names of some of these families are now being removed from the list, not because they have left the area, but simply because the local authorities are removing them from the list.

Mr. Deedes

There is a limit to what I can read out as an example, but that matter is also dealt with in the Report.

I should like to draw attention to three out of a list of 21 specific recommendations made by the Committee. The first is the general summing up: There are some families who are unable to get on to any local authority housing list because they do not possess the residential qualification required by their present local authority and they have lost their claim on their previous local authorities. The next is: Any system of admission to the waiting-list based on residence at a fixed date should be abolished. That is a specific recommendation. The next, which bears on the point made towards the end of the hon. Member's speech, reads: Lack of uniformity in the residential qualifications imposed by neighbouring authorities creates difficulties; adjoining authorities in the big centres of population are urged to discuss with each other how best to bring their practice into line. I think that that exactly meets the point which the hon. Member had in mind.

The hon. Member for Leyton suggested a joint conference, or some such form of co-operation, between the local authorities concerned. That would meet with nothing but approval and support from my right hon. Friend but it is really not a matter in which he can properly intervene or take the initiative for summoning such a conference. That initiative must lie with the authorities themselves.

Let it be quite clear what has happened. This Report has been drawn up with the full authority of a very expert subcommittee, the authority of which is, I think, recognised by all local authorities. It has been circulated to all of them and we are doing what we can to call their attention to its contents. That is what we consider to be proper guidance in this sphere, where the local authority has, as I have already stressed, a certain quite inviolable independence; and there is the Report which, in many respects, really meets the points which the hon. Gentleman has been raising.

The hon. Member asked whether my right hon. Friend could not ask these local authorities, in particular cases, to take particular action. My right hon. Friend is always willing to ask local authorities for details of cases where it is alleged there has been unfair treatment. In cases where specific inquiries are asked for—and the hon. Gentleman has made four or five requests in recent months—inquiries have been made. While we can do it, more often than not the hon. Member concerned with the local authority can do as much as my right hon. Friend.

Armed with this Report, I hope that the hon. Member may be able to do even more. I think that the publicity which he has given by his speech tonight may find an echo even outside his own particular part of London. There are other districts; this problem is not confined to that part of London. I hope that this debate may serve to prick the consciences of any housing authorities there may be who come within the orbit of the hon. Member's remarks.

Mr. Sorensen

Surely the hon. Gentleman will agree that if he himself tried to take the initiative with a number of contiguous bodies more attention would be paid by them.

Mr. Deedes

That may be perfectly true, but I know that the hon. Member appreciates that my right hon. Friend has to bear in mind the statutory obligations on the local authorities, and what his own relations should properly be with those authorities.

Mr. Lewis

I am very appreciative of the kind and sympathetic manner in which the Parliamentary Secretary has replied. I only hope that when dealing with these cases in and around the boroughs the various local authorities will try to emulate his sympathetic understanding.

The Question having been proposed at Ten o'clock, and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at half-past Ten o'clock.