Mrs. JegerWith your permission, Mr. Speaker, I beg leave to present a humble Petition, signed by 10,000 citizens of the Metropolitan Borough of St. Pancras. The Petition states that there are over 5,000 of our citizens in desperate need of rehousing on the council's waiting list and that there are many more not on that list who are living in conditions which are increasingly desperate and difficult.
The Petitioners feel that the Rent Bill and other legislation will make the position of those citizens more helpless and more difficult.
Your Petitioners therefore humbly pray: that those obstacles should be removed which stand in the way of the council's desire to expand and speed up its housing programme to provide reasonable homes at rents that people who most need die homes can afford. That legislation be passed to provide (a) adequate subsidies for all council building; (b) money at low rates of interest for the council's housing programme; (c) powers for the council to requisition empty properties. That the protection at present afforded to tenants by the Rent Restriction Acts should continue.And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray, etc.I beg you, Mr. Speaker, to instruct the Clerk of the House to read this Petition to the House.
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The CLERK OF THE HOUSEread the Petition, which was as follows:
To the Honourable the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Parliament assembled.
The Humble Petition of citizens of the Metropolitan Borough of St. Pancras in the County of London.
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Sheweth: —
That whereas your Petitioners believe that the right to a home at a reasonable rent should be one of the social rights of every family, yet in the Borough of St. Pancras more than 5,000 families are still now registered with the Metropolitan Borough Council as in need of rehousing, and many of these are living in desperate conditions. Thousands more not on the waiting list who live in old, decaying houses are in urgent need of rehousing. Young married couples have no hope for a place of their own other than a council flat.
The borough council's programme offers, for the vast majority of these people, the only possibility of a home.
§ Your Petitioners therefore humbly pray:
§ (1) that those obstacles should be removed which stand in the way of the council's desire to expand and speed up its housing programme to provide reasonable homes at rents that people who most need the homes can afford.
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(2) That legislation be passed to provide: —
(a) adequate subsidies for all council building; (b) money at low rates of interest for the council's housing programme; (c) powers for the council to requisition empty properties.
§ (3) That the protection at present afforded to tenants by the Rent Restriction Acts should continue.
§ And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray, etc.