HC Deb 18 December 1967 vol 756 cc1030-58

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

8.39 p.m.

Mr. Gordon Campbell (Moray and Nairn)

I wish to raise tonight the question of the sale of Council houses in Scotland. As you will know, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I have been applying since October for this debate and I am glad that I have at last been successful in the Ballot. It gives me an opportunity before the Recess to persuade the Secretary of State for Scotland to change an attitude which he seems to have adopted only since February this year. Cases have have arisen in my constituency to which I will refer later. No doubt similar cases have arisen and are arising elsewhere in Scotland.

As I understand the position in Scotland, the Secretary of State's approval is required before a local authority can sell a house which has been let for general needs purposes. If this is not the position, no doubt the Minister of State will tell us. I recognise that this Government could not be expected to give their approval to mass sales of Council houses. They have made it clear that it is their party policy to oppose such sales of houses in very large numbers. I entirely understand the Government taking a negative view and rejecting any proposals of that kind in Scotland.

What I want to find out from the Government tonight is whether they are opposed to any sale of a Council house now in a place where there is a housing list with applicants waiting for Council houses. I had hoped that the Government would be prepared to consider the circumstances of individual cases and decide whether to give permission. It appears that the Government have changed their policy since earlier this year.

Up till February of this year the Secretary of State has given his approval to the selling of Council houses in my constituency and in the particular burgh whose cases I will mention shortly. The last case was as recent as last February. I claim that there are situations in which the sale of a house can be of advantage to both the Council and the tenant and can, at the same time, help the local housing Situation and, therefore, be an advantage to those who are on the waiting list. Applicants on the waiting list can gain rather than lose from such a transaction.

Such a house cannot be available for reletting, unless the Council evicts the sitting tenant. Money from the sale can contribute towards new housing. The Council is relieved, in the case of older houses, of maintenance and repair, which can amount to a considerable sum. In the cases which I am considering, I would expect the sale price to be an economic price. I am not dealing with any case where a house is being given away at a nominal price. I am concerned with cases where an economic price is being asked.

A house is also a home. If a family has lived in it for 20 years or so, will a Council evict the family, for example if a wife is widowed and the children have grown up and departed? In almost every case, a Council will not evict in those circumstances. The House knows many other examples where families have been good tenants and paid their rates well and, either because their children have grown up or because of misfortune, the person occupying the house, or the couple, may be over-housed.

Sometimes the Council suggests that they move to a smaller house, and this is happily carried out. That still hardly affects the position of the stock of houses as a whole. They are still in a Council house, and Councils are understandably reluctant to evict such people from Council houses because, as I have said, the house is a home, especially when the family have lived in it for so long.

I come now to the cases in my constituency. I wish to make clear at the outset that politics, as I think the Minister knows, do not arise in my constituency on this matter at all. There are no political labels attached to local government in Moray and Nairn. The candidates stand as individuals and, when they are councillors in Council, the Councils themselves have no politics and there are no majorities or minorities.

The cases to which I refer tonight have arisen in the Burgh of Lossiemouth, but a principle is involved which could apply, and may be applying, anywhere else in Scotland. Fifteen years ago, the town Council of Lossiemouth earmarked 32 old houses for sale, houses which had all been built before 1930. During the fifteen years, 22 of those houses have been sold, the sale of the last one having been authorised by the Secretary of State, as I said, in February last. Since then, however, the Secretary of State has refused approval for the sale of three more, and this apparent change is now preventing the Council from carrying out its policy in regard to those older houses.

The Council has not changed its policy. Its policy has been perfectly clear, and the Council has been pursuing it as appropriate moments came for the sale of these houses. It has restricted its offers of sale for these houses to its tenants or to people on the housing waiting list; it has not made the houses available to other persons.

The position of the tenants is of concern to me also because tenants can be adversely affected by the Secretary of State's attitude. In one of the houses a widow has lived for more than 30 years. She was willing to buy the house, which, incidentally, is only two doors away from the one in respect of which the Secretary of State gave approval last February. Her house is not available for letting to any applicant on the housing list, and the Council would not, surely, evict her in the circumstances.

On 14th December a year ago, in answer to a Question, the Secretary of State stated that he would give his consent in future only in very special cases, but it seems now that he is withholding his consent in cases for which it would previously have been expected. Perhaps the Minister of State can tell us more about it, but that is how I understand the position.

Lossiemouth town Council is operating the policy which it thought best for the whole Community it serves. The ratepayers, tenants and applicants on the housing list are all likely to benefit from the sale of these houses in appropriate circumstances. The Council is pressing on with its own building programme which will make the main contribution to meeting the housing needs of die burgh.

Anomalies arise from a Situation of this kind. One is that, without having to seek the Secretary of State's permission, the town council is able to sell some newly-built houses, houses built only within the last year or two and which have never been occupied. It has done this as pert of a road widening scheme. Because these houses have never been let, the Secretary of State's approval for their sale is not required. So we have a Situation in which, while the Council can sell new empty houses and advertise them for sale without any trouble, the Secretary of State is stopping the sale of old houses to the sitting tenants, the present occupants. This must be an anomaly.

The second anomaly to which I draw attention is what is happening in England and especially in Birmingham. According to newspaper reports, Birmingham is selling Council houses at the rate of about 50 a month, but the Minister of Housing in England and Wales is not intervening. In The Times of 14th November, the Minister of Housing was reported as saying that he did not think that the situation required him to step in or use his powers. In Scotland we have the Secretary of State apparently being dictatorial in a field entirely within Scottish administration, nothing to do with Whitehall, or the Treasury, or anything like that, while the equivalent Minister in England is not intervening in the sale of Council houses on a considerably larger scale.

I understand that the position in England is that a general consent was given some time ago by the Minister of Housing in a circular to local authorities, so that at present they do not need to apply to the Minister in each case, but of course, the Minister could rescind that and take back powers if he wished and alter the Situation so that he could intervene as the Secretary of State is doing in Scotland.

I recognise that the Secretary of State may wish to impose conditions on a sale and that is perfectly reasonable. I have mentioned the purchase price. I accept at once that when the Secretary of State has given his approval to the sale of Council houses he will wish to satisfy him-self that the price is sensible and economic. Where there is a housing shortage it would be perfectly reasonable for him to insist that the Council should retain rights over the house for a period of years, say, five years. This would ensure that there could be no question of abuse, such as quick resale at a profit by the person who had bought the house, or some curious anomaly arising as a result of a sudden and unforeseen death of the tenant.

If the Secretary of State wished to make such conditions which were not automatically in the proposals which Councils were putting to him, I would say that those were reasonable conditions which most Councils would be prepared to consider and probably accept. But there may be other conditions about which the Minister of State might tell us and which the Government might wish to include in any arrangement for the sale of individual Council houses in this way. Those, too, I would have thought would be reasonable and could be included.

The Chief way to meet the housing shortage, as has been said on both sides of the House many times, is by building. Instead of waiting for a tenant to die or leave, surely it is better, if the circum-stances are right and the tenant is willing, to obtain the money from the sale of a house and use it to increase the building Programme. This is especially true at a time of financial stringency, such as the present, when, as we have heard again only today from the Prime Minister, Government expenditure is to be further restricted and when the public is being encouraged to save. Councils should not be forbidden from selling Council houses, but at the same time they should not be compelled to sell them. This is a subject in which reasonable discretion should be given to local authorities to do what they consider to be best.

The tenants in the cases that I have looked into are upset by the Government's decision and the change of policy. In addition, Lossiemouth Town Council, which has no political colour, feels that its views are either not fully understood by the Government are not properly considered. I understand that it is seeking further discussions with the Government, and I hope that a Minister at the Scottish Office will arrange that they take place.

In the case of Lossiemouth, there is no question of mass sales of Council houses. It is a straightforward matter of administration and examining the pros and cons of particular transactions for all concerned. Consent should not be withheld from a proposal by a Council unless the Government proves to it that there is a valid objection, and that has not been done in the cases I have mentioned, especially as the Government previously gave their approval to similar sales up to February.

The refusals in these cases, where there seemed to be advantages to all concerned, make one wonder whether in any Situation where the Secretary of State's approval is required such consent will now be given. The impression has been created that the Government will not now approve of any such proposals. The Minister of State indicates dissent. I am glad, but that is certainly the impression. I hope that the Minister will say tonight that the Government will reconsider the Position. There could possibly have been misunderstanding at St. Andrew's House about the council's purposes and plans, but I understand that all the relevant facts and information about the proposed sales have been provided by it.

As he indicated dissent when I said that the impression had been created that there was now a general prohibition on such sales, will the Minister tell us tonight the circumstances in which a sale would be authorised? I hope that he can give us examples of cases where the circumstances would be right in the Government's view for a sale to be authorised. That would greatly help Councils like Lossiemouth with such proposals and plans.

The refusals in those cases have raised doubts and considerable anxiety amongst tenants, besides giving the Council a more difficult task in its housing programme. On behalf of my constituents who are tenants, ratepayers, councillors, and applicants on the housing list, I ask the Scottish Office Ministers to reconsider carefully these cases and the policy decision which seems to have been taken about a year ago.

The Minister accepted an Amendment which I moved a short time ago to a Scottish Bill, having changed his mind between the Committee stage and our consideration of it tonight. I hope that similarly he will be prepared to reconsider this question. In any case, I hope that the Secretary of State will keep an open mind and will still be ready to listen fully to the details of particular cases, where proposals are put forward for the sale of Council houses, and to the arguments in favour of such sales.

9.0 p.m.

Mr. William Small (Glasgow, Scotstoun)

I listened to the hon. Member for Moray and Nairn (Mr. G. Campbell) with scepticism. He is a prominent spokesman of the Tory Party on broader horizons and into this narrow subject of the sale of Council houses in Lossiemouth he managed to bring Birmingham, over the Border. There may be discretionary features among local authorities, but the generality of his speech surprised me.

The hon. Gentleman's case is that he wants the houses sold at an economic price. But an economic price is arrived at on scarcity value as between a willing seller and a willing buyer. Of course, to satisfy the general public, he should have added the philosophy of admission of the Press to the sale as well. Is the sale to be by auction? After all, this is public property subsidised by public money. Is it to be a private contract between a sitting tenant and the Council at an agreed price? If so, one does not get the economic price. Nor is there access by the Press, and local authority accounts are shown in the generality in such cases.

Mr. G. Campbell

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman was here— [HON. MEMBERS: "He was."] Then he has misunderstood what I said. I mentioned Birmingham simply to show the anomaly that one Minister in the Government is not intervening there, where a considerable number of sales are taking place, whereas, in Scotland, another Minister who has been authorising sales stopped authorising them only a few months ago.

Mr. Small

I probably misinterpreted the hon. Gentleman. But I am sure that he was giving general support to the sale of Council houses as policy. He referred to Lossiemouth Council as being nonpolitical, but to me that means that it is a non-Labour Council. However, we need not go into semantics. The argument is about who is to represent the tenant.

The Situation is that the hon. Gentleman is advocating a policy for the Tory Party. Does he carry his party with him? If that is his standing in the Tory Party, I am surprised at the lack of support for him on the benches opposite. One assumes always that, when a Front Bench spokesman for any party speaks in the House, he has the support of his back benches. It is one of the weaknesses of his argument that he apparently has no back-bench support.

The hon. Gentleman referred to restricted sales. On what principle would this be applied? Would they be sales of casual vacancies? Or would it be the nomination of the tenant that his house should not go back into the pool? How would one arrive at the decision? Would it be by the desire of the tenant to buy the house? The hon. Gentleman has not satisfied us about the criteria on which to make this a policy.

If it were to be by private contract between a sitting tenant and the local authority, it would become a dangerous line to follow. It would be dangerous to those on the housing list, who would see their opportunities for housing being usurped. I have never felt that housing was a social Service. I have always argued that it is a public Service available to those who need it, and to reduce the pool of houses available is a dangerous road to travel in the light of the requirements of the Community at the moment.

Nor did the hon. Gentleman indicate whether the houses he has in mind would be older houses or new stock. In any case, such a policy would not guarantee security of tenure for the rest of the family involved. There is security of tenure at the moment. When a tenant dies the house goes to the oldest unmarried member of the family.

That is the general run and rule of local authority administration. It goes to the eldest unmarried member of the tenant's family, who is protected by the local authority. What is the nature of the succession? Does it go back for sale, orfor redistribution for economic reasons? The hon. Member must recognize—indeed, he said—that a house, be it a Council house or not, becomes a home, and so security of tenure to a family is very important indeed. Under the law of succession at present operating under municipal administration, it is the eldest unmarried member of the tenant's family who generally gets the gift of the tenancy. There will not be the same protection if houses are brought within the category of sale and private contract.

I hope that the Minister will resist the introduction of that into local authority administration of housing in Scotland.

9.6 p.m.

Mr. John Robertson (Paisley)

I have the same difficulty as my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Scotstoun (Mr. Small) in knowing just exactly what the case was which the hon. Member for Moray and Nairn (Mr. G. Campbell) was making. If he had confined himself to Lossiemouth we would have been in some difficulty in speaking in this Adjournment debate at all, but, of his own choosing, he sought to extend the argument beyond Lossiemouth and to the rest of the country, as a general principle affecting all Scottish local authorities.

I felt, too, that the hon. Member might have helped the House a great deal if he had told us something about the Lossiemouth housing list, the number of houses Lossiemouth has built and the number of people who want houses to let. That would have assisted the House in knowing whether or not he had a good argument.

Mr. G. Campbell

I could have made an exceedingly long speech on this subject, but I can certainly supply that information. The number of people on the housing list was 170 the last time I heard.

Mr. Robertson

That tells us one side of the problem—how many houses are to let in Lossiemouth.

I remember one hon. Gentleman on that side of the House, when he was sitting on this, the Government, side arguing very eloquently and with a great deal of force that what we needed in Scotland was houses to let. We remember how hon. and right hon. Members opposite would solve the housing problem in 1961, how they solved it again in 1962, how they solved it again in 1963! The housing lists have never disappeared—even when they told us the Problem was solved. I remember one of the hon. Gentleman's hon. Friends speaking from the Government Front Bench saying that in Paisley the housing problem was solved. Afterwards, he changed his mind and said it was in Hamilton. In fact, the only place where they solved the problem was in their own minds. They wanted to get rid of it. Then they came with a Bill to encourage people to build houses for renting because, they said, that was where the lack was.

Does the hon. Gentleman not realise that, if he sells off the older Council houses, then, in order to meet the rating bill, he will have to increase the rents of the houses that are left? Does he not remember himself arguing that the only way we could count the subsidy being paid for houses was to take the whole stock of houses—to take the pre-war houses as well as the post-war houses, put them all together, in order to calculate an adequate subsidy?

If a local authority sells off all its pre-war houses and has only post-war houses left, it will have to fix rents on them which people cannot afford to pay or the cost will have to be borne on the rates. The economic rent of a pre-war house will never meet the cost of building a new Council house today. What could be expected from a pre-war house? Many such houses would be over-priced at £2,500, whereas it costs between £3,000 and £4,000 to build a new house. The problem cannot be solved by selling existing Council houses. We have argued this one out often in the past, and I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman should attempt to raise it again now.

The hon. Gentleman has not really studied the problem. What is needed in Scotland more than anything today is houses to let, even in Hamilton and Paisley. The number of people who come asking for my help to get a house to rent is fantastic. It is one of my major tasks in my surgery, and I know that my hon. Friends all find the same problem. I suggest that it is the major housing problem in Lossiemouth, too. If people can afford to buy up-to-date Council houses at economic prices, I suggest that they can get private enterprise builders to build similar houses for the same money.

I agree that a problem arises here in that it is more expensive to build a house in Scotland than it is in the South-East of England. The most expensive house in Britain is the private enterprise-built house in Scotland. It is a problem which we have tried to tackle over the years, and I agree that it is difficult. Nevertheless, when one considers the economic price of an up-to-date Council house, anyone who can afford to buy that kind of house can afford to buy a house built by a private enterprise builder. That is the way to increase the housing—not selling off Stocks of houses for rent. The only thing achieved by doing that is to remove the hope of people on the housing list of getting a decent house in which to live.

I agree that Glasgow has a terrible housing problem, but the worst houses in Scotland are not in Glasgow. They can be found in the little towns and villages in the countryside. These small burghs, particularly in the rural areas, need to get down to the job of building decent houses for their populations. That is the first priority, and it is that with which the hon. Member for Moray and Nairn should be concerning himself.

I do not know whether there has been a new policy from the Scottish Office about restricting the sale of houses. I have never heard complaints from the two Councils with which I am familiar, that of the area in which I live and that of the area which I represent. Their complaint is that they cannot get enough money to build houses to let.

The hon. Gentleman should read his own speeches made in the Scottish Grand Committee three years ago. Perhaps, then, he might convience himself that he was right then and is wrong this time.

Mr. G. Campbell

The hon. Gentleman is probably thinking of the speeches of other hon. Members. When I was Under-Secretary, I was dealing with this Situation on very few occasions. I spoke from the Front Bench during the Committee stage of a United Kingdom Housing Bill, but not in the Scottish Grand Committee.

Mr. Robertson

On the occasion to which I have referred, the hon. Gentleman was not speaking from the Front Bench. He was speaking from the back benches in support of his Front Bench. If he cares to exercise his mind, I am sure that he will remember the occasion.

9.15 p.m.

Mr. Hugh D. Brown (Glasgow, Provan)

There is something of an anti-climax about the atmosphere in the House this evening. This is understandable. For the life of me I cannot see how I can possibly relate the sale of Council houses to arms for South Africa or some of the economic problems that night be facing us. Nevertheless, we are indebted to the hon. Member for Moray and Nairn (Mr. G. Campbell) for raising this subject. It is too bad that the Minister of State will have to reply to a few points which perhaps he did not anticipate. But life has to go on, despite arms for South Africa.

I want to express a point of view, which I think is shared by most hon. Members from Glasgow, on the sale of Council houses. There is something in the argument about the selling of Council houses. We cannot afford to take a doctrinaire attitude and say that under no circumstances could we justify the sale of Council houses. The hon. Member for Moray and Nairn is probably quite reasonable in his attitude to this problem, considering that he is referring to a small burgh which does not, as far as I know, have any major problems of any kind. However, when one comes to the big cities and the larger towns in Scotland the sale of Council houses becomes a different proposition, and it certainly becomes a political issue.

I am not against owner-occupation, and this is basically what the argument is about. In some way it is to encourage the expansion of owner-occupation. It presumes that someone who buys a house acquires virtues and attitudes towards the property which he did not possess when it was a Council house. Either that, or he must be getting a bargain. If he is getting a bargain, it must presumably be at public expense. There-fore, I cannot see the contribution that it makes to solving the housing problem, and to the extent that it might encourage discussion in the House and elsewhere and tend to make it a major political issue, that would be unfortunate.

What would happen if an authority like Glasgow decided that it would be wise to sell Council houses? It has not even got the land to indulge in co-operative housing associations or to give private enterprise the opportunity of building for sale inside the city. Inevitably, if there were a sale of Council houses, one would be driven into two positions. The first would be to indulge in some kind of priority System, in the sense of giving priority to categories such as teachers or policemen. There is a good case for that. But the second would be that one would be dictated to by the group for which a case could be made out for allowing it to buy houses. It would dictate where it wanted to buy houses. In other words, it completely alters the whole attitude to housing of one establishes priority categories and on top of that gives them some greater advantage in where the house they want to buy might be.

It is a lot of old rubbish to talk about the rights of the sitting tenant who might want to buy a house. There is security of tenure. There is not a local authority in the country, to my knowledge, which has ever acted in any spirit of vindictiveness and evicted any successor to someone who had lived in the house for years. Therefore, I do not see any force in this argument.

I must admit that I am concerned about the financial arguments that always bother us in housing. I have discovered, since coming here, that if one dare suggest that certain areas have peculiar Problems one is accused of being parochial. But it is true that the Scottish Office is not facing up to the social inequalities that arise from the shortage of land in Scotland. I think that this is the biggest Charge.

In Glasgow, we have been confronted with the problem of out-county estates, with a burden on the exporting Community. It is not our fault that there is overcrowding in Glasgow. I am deeply disappointed and disturbed at the attitude of the Scottish Office in not being able to break away from the concept that it is always the fault of the city, or the town— and this can apply to Paisley or to any other large burgh which is reaching the stage of needing to export people—that it has too many people in houses which should have been condemned long ago. The greater the financial burden that is placed on exporting authorities, the greater will be the pressure from Tories and all sorts of independents to encourage the sale of Council houses to relieve the financial burden.

I would like the Minister to look seriously at where we are going in Scotland. We are going to create large areas which will be deprived of the so-called benefits of a mixed Community. The Scottish Office allows the sale of houses in new towns. Why does it not allow the sale of houses in other areas? If there are special problems, why not admit them? Why should not we be more selective, and, instead of concentrating so much on the total number of houses being built in Scotland—I know that we must have some regard for this—think more in terms of where we are building, and the kind of houses that we are building?

We should look, not just at the problems of Lossiemouth, but at the whole structure of housing finance in Scotland. We need to look at the rents of controlled properties. We need to look at the whole rent structure in Scotland. We should not tinker with financial inducements to try to get private enterprise to do a job which I am certain it will not do, or will be unwilling to do. If we are to have bold and imaginative government, we must grasp some of the nettles in housing finance, and not always follow the hon. Gentlemen opposite, even though this may mean saying to burghs like Lossiemouth, "You will not get an allocation of money for housing finance unless you can prove there is a need".

Mr. G. Campbell

The hon. Gentleman knows Lossiemouth, and his father-in-law, who was a Member here, knew it well. The hon. Gentleman is entirely in agreement with me—I do not know whether he was here at the beginning of my speech —when he says that Councils do not evict the proper successors of tenants. For this reason, the sale of a house does not take away a house from someone on the housing list. My other point is that a number of houses involved in Lossiemouth, now 10, is only H per cent. of the total. There is no question of the mass sale of Council houses. It is just a small number.

Mr. Brown

I do not propose to follow the hon. Gentleman into the detailed Problems of Lossiemouth, but it is obvious that it does not have a housing problem of any significance in the sense of housing need in the Community. This is the only point that I was making.

I have a great regard for the Minister's industry and energy in going round the country, but I have come to the conclusion that we cannot please everybody all the time. Not even my hon. Friend can do that. Therefore, if we are to get this imaginative break-through, we must tackle the land question. The amount of land available around Glasgow is almost a scandal. In Milngavie there are two estates under private ownership. They are not even being cultivated. They are not being put to any useful purpose whatsoever. I can find nothing in our three years of Government to show that we are going to be tough with landowners who are holding land. We do not want to use all of it for housing, but certainly far too much of it is being secured by auction by private enterprise. If we had a little more action in this regard, we would get much more support our our policies in the country.

9.25 p.m.

Mr. Alex Eadie (Midlothian)

I do not want to develop the arguments put forward by some of my hon. Friends. I was in some difficulty in listening to the hon. Member for Moray and Nairn (Mr. G. Campbell), who ranged from the specific to the general. If he had rested his case on the specific some of us would have been hard put to cross swords with him, but he went on to talk in general terms. He may have talked with some authority about Lossiemouth, but I question which he can talk with the same authority about the general Situation, because week in and week out, my mail is full of letters from people who need houses and should have them.

The sale of Council houses would in no way solve their problem. To talk of the sale of Council houses as if it offered a part-way Solution to the housing problem is wrong. The hon. Member should have another look at the problem. I received a letter today from a constituent who will be evicted this month because the factory where he has been working has closed down and the owners want the house in which he is living. It is a tied house, and two or three people are involved.

We must deal with need. Hon. Members opposite, when talking about housing, become obsessed with finance, believing that if we can solve some of the financial problems we can wave a magic wand and solve the housing problem. It is not a question of finance; it is a question of need. The individual is entitled to a house because he needs a house; it does not depend on whether he can afford to buy a house—a Council house or a privately-built house.

For many years I was chairman of a county housing committee, and during that time I worked with two or three medical officers for the county. They had no politics, but without exception they argued that housing was an investment for the well-being of the Community, and that industry and the Community always got a sound return from the provision of houses for rent. The question of houses to buy did not enter into the matter, because the vast majority of the people could never afford to buy a house.

In many areas we have seen the well-being of a Community uplifted by the Provision of proper housing. We have always argued about the provision of new schools being a sound investment and a necessary capital investment, for better education, yet in the very areas where those schools have been built the housing is a real disgrace to the Community. Some of the best days of my life as a housing convenor were spent ordering the bulldozing of miners' rows and the building in their place of proper housing, an investment which showed a return for the Community and industry.

The hon. Member for Moray and Nairn may not have done the Lossiemouth local authority a disservice tonight, but he may have done a disservice to Scottish local authorities generally when he spoke about such cases as an old lady living in a house which was too big for her. He must know that most local authorities operate a voluntary decanting system which works very well. The hon. Gentleman came near advocating a compulsory system—

Mr. G. Campbell

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman did not hear what I said— that, in that Situation, local authorities normally try to move a person to a smaller house. But I pointed out that this does not make a house available to someone on the housing list. A person would simply move from a larger to a smaller house.

Mr. Eadie

I accept what the hon. Gentleman says, but the logic of his argument was close to advocating a com- pulsory decanting system. I have crossed swords in the Grand Committee with the hon. Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Edward M. Taylor), who also came close to advocating a compulsory policy.

It would be a sad day for Scotland if we gave any hint of encouragement to local authorities for such a system, because the social consequences would be tremendous. I agree that local authorities try to solve this problem with compassion and understanding. This relates not only to Council houses. Sometimes, a house or land has to be acquired because development is being held back. If an aged couple live there and alternative accommodation cannot be provided, it is common for most local authorities, even at gross inconvenience, to grant them a life undertaking.

The hon. Member has not advanced his case for the mass sale of Council houses. I do not know the position in Lossiemouth; his case may have been stronger if he had dealt with the specific rather than the general.

Mr. G. Campbell

Everything I said this evening was prefaced by the remark that I was not raising tonight the question of the mass sale of Council houses, but the particular questions which had arisen of the sale of individual houses. I said (hat I accepted that this Government would be opposed to mass sales and I therefore did not raise that question.

Mr. Eadie

The hon. Gentleman's speech ranged very wide, and if there was any doubt about my point, some of my hon. Friends have tried to make precisely the same point. The hon. Gentleman may have intended to deal with specific instances, but I suggest that he reads the report of his speech tomorrow, when he will discover that, in ranging so far, he gave the impression, at least to those on this side, that he was talking generally about the sale of Council houses.

9.35 p.m.

Mr. Gregor Mackenzie (Rutherglen)

The House will be grateful to the hon. Member for Moray and Nairn (Mr. G. Campbell) for initiating this debate. Although he has initiated it in the rather limited sense of Lossiemouth, as the principal Opposition spokesman on housing, we must take his speech seriously and consider it carefully, although I wonder whether he is flying something of a kite.

The problem of the sale of houses has interested me for a long time. My first entry into representative Office occurred as the result of the Labour landslide in Glasgow in 1952, on this very issue. The electors of that city—and most people in the West of Scotland were in agreement with them—considered that Council houses should not be sold, and at that time the Labour Party in Glasgow secured one of its biggest majorities.

The interesting point about that election campaign was the dishonesty of the Conservative spokesmen. The Conservative Party had for a long time taken a strong stand—and the same applies today—on rents. It has always advocated that there should be economic, realistic—or what other form of words one chooses to call them—rents. But when an opportunity presented itself for the Conservative Party, in the biggest of all local authorities in Scotland, to do something about it, it shirked the issue by trying to persuade the electors there that to solve the problem by that means would really not solve it in the long run. The result was that the Conservative Party was unable to persuade the electors that all the social difficulties of the area would be solved by selling Council houses.

I do not wish to delay the House. I have only four questions to ask. The first is whether or not this is the best way to solve the admitted difficulty of financing the building of more houses by local authorities. The second is to discover whether there is a shortage of houses for sale. The third is to know whether or not there is a demand from occupiers to buy the houses in which they live. The fourth, and most important, is the effect that such a Solution would have on the thousands of people in Scotland who are waiting for Council houses.

When considering the question of Council house finance, there seems to be an unseemly interest sometimes in the whole subject. Although we are basically interested in it, some people seem to think that this is the be all and end all of local authority affairs; that local authorities must provide this one Service and do nothing else. They are not always aware that, to build more houses, local authorities must be concerned with providing the labour and obtaining the materials and resources.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has said that if local authorities feel that they have a problem, then, it being a local problem, it is up to them to do what they think is necessary; that if they wish to introduce a realistic rent structure, local democracy being what it is, they have the right to do that. In other words, it is up to them to determine these matters for themselves.

It is our Obligation, as the representatives of the people, to persuade the Government about our housing difficulties. Recent legislation has been of considerable value to local authorities which find difficulty in financing their housebuilding programmes because of the cost of land, the increased cost of multistorey building and problems associated with modern house development, particularly when they are faced with a great deal of slum clearance, as is the case in West of Scotland constituencies.

At the heart of this matter is the question whether or not there is a shortage of houses for sale. The hon. Member for Moray and Nairn is aware that, in the past, I have pointed out that it is right and proper that people who aspire to own their own homes should be able to do so. This is, of course, a matter of personal choice. Many people put it as their first priority. Indeed, many make it their one ambition and are prepared to go without many things so as to own their own homes. I own my own home. That was one of my ambitions and it is now achieved, at least partly.

I used to look at the Glasgow Herald with great regularity. On several days of the week there were long columns of all the houses available in Glasgow, in Rutherglen—all over Scotland—for those wanting to buy their own houses. A great range was offered, from "Single ends", as we call them, right up to houses with 10, 11 or 12 rooms and kitchen. There is, therefore, no shortage of houses for those who want to buy them.

When we were returned in 1964 many people greatly feared that we would put a stop to the building of private houses. I now ask my hon. Friend the Minister of State whether that is the case. If my memory serves me aright, in October of this year 600 houses were completed for sale in Scotland, and about 9,600 houses for sale were under construction by private agencies. That seems to be in excess of the private housing figure we had a few years ago. This argument really hinges on demand, but the demand is at present being met.

I have never thought that it was any part of the business of local authorities to build houses for sale to private persons. Their job, quite clearly, is to build houses for those who have the greatest need for them. There are dozens of other excellent agencies which build houses for sale. I therefore appeal to my hon. Friend, though I do not think that I have any great need to do so, as I am sure that his mind is already persuaded, to bear in mind that if the policy of selling Council houses is accepted a great many people will drop right down the waiting list. As I say, it is no part of the business of local authorities to compete with private builders in providing houses for sale in this way, nor should they interfere in this business.

9.42 p.m.

The Minister of State, Scottish Office (Dr. J. Dickson Mabon)

I certainly re-call the occasion to which my hon. Friend the Member for Rutherglen (Mr. Gregor Mackenzie) referred when he was first elected to the Glasgow Corporation. There was a great battle in 1952 about whether Council houses should be sold.

The hon. Member for Moray and Nairn (Mr. G. Campbell) referred to Birmingham, but it is interesting to reflect that in the recent municipal elections in Glasgow, the leader of the Progressives—the rival to the Labour Party, which is in control there—and the leader of the Labour Party issued a Statement on the right before the poll saying that, which-ever party won the election, neither would operate the mass sale of Council houses nor, except in the most special and urgent corcumstances, ever seek to dispose of a Council house.

The reason given by the leader of the Progressive Party for his Statement was that about 80,000 people were on the waiting list. It is interesting to compare the Performance in Glasgow with that in Birmingham.

I do not know exactly how many houses these are in Glasgow, but I would guess that there must be about 320,000. If there are 80,000 families short of a home and 320,000 houses it means, roughly speaking, that 80 per cent. of Glasgow's people are properly housed— that is assuming that all the houses are good, which they are not. However, taking crude figures, and assuming that all the houses are good houses, and not slums or substandard, 80 per cent. of Glasgow's population is properly housed. If that is a fair figure, we can take it as some measure of what is happenning in other communities in Scotland.

I turn now to Lossiemouth. I am sorry that my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Provan (Mr. Hugh D. Brown) spoke as he did. He obviously could not have heard the figures properly, because the hon. Member for Moray and Nairn admitted that 170 families—families, not persons—in Lossiemouth were waiting for houses. I am glad that my hon. Friend misheard the figure. As a result, perhaps he will withdraw what he said earlier. If there are 171 families in the queue for housing, and I calculate that there are something like 1,800 houses in Lossiemouth, it means that 90 per cent. of the people of Lossiemouth have houses and 10 per cent. do not. That is the real measure of the problem. In this crude analysis, one ought to take into consideration the number of houses in Lossiemouth and see how many of them are substandard.

I do not want to go into all the figures, but we are not averse to discussing with a local authority any particular or peculiar circumstances affecting any tenant, and it is not the policy of the Secretary of State to say that we are absolutely against the sale of any Council house. We have said that there will have to be very special circumstances before the Secretary of State will consent.

We have arranged with the Provost of Lossiemouth that my noble Friend Lord Hughes will discuss these particular circumstances with him in detail. However, the hon. Member for Moray and Nairn must be fair and remember that when he gave notice to you, Mr. Speaker, that he would initiate this Adjournment debate, he was not acknowledging one of the points which I made. It is that it is within the discretion of the town Council to give the widow whom he mentioned the assurance which she wanted in respect of her daughter and two grandchildren.

All of my hon. Friends have underlined the fact that, although there is no statutory security of tenure comparable to that under the Rent Act, in practice local authorities give favourable consideration to local authority tenants and their successors, by which I mean not just their successors in law but their successors in morality and the humane consideration of a family's circumstances.

My hon. Friend the Member for Rutherglen argued the case about the existence of houses for sale, and one of the things that I said to the hon. Member for Moray and Nairn was that people in Lossiemouth who have bought Council houses ought to have been encouraged to buy houses for sale which had been built by local builders or unsubsidised houses bought by the local authority. The party opposite has never been keen on local authorities building houses for sale. Nevertheless, I take it that the hon. Gentleman would not be averse to the local authority building houses and selling them in the peculiar circumstances of Lossiemouth.

Miss Margaret Herbison (Lanarkshire, North)

My hon. Friend has made reference to security of tenure. Might it not be the case that to keep a house within the control of the local authority would give greater security of tenure to a daughter who stayed at home with her parents than she would have if her parents bought the house and willed it to a son who had not lived in it for a long time? Those of us who represent constituencies like my own of Lanarkshire, North know that, until the law was changed, it was very difficult for a woman who was left without a home.

Dr. Dickson Mabon

My right hon. Friend has a good point. Testacy does not always lead to justice being done. Sometimes a local authority committee is more just than the relatives of such a person. However, I will not develop that further at the moment, because I want to go on to the matter of houses for sale.

There are no houses being built for sale in Lossiemouth. There is a site of 20 acres which is owned by a private builder who cannot develop it until the necessary sewerage Services are provided. I take the point that there are private builders in Scotland who keep their own land banks and will not release land because they themselves are not ready to embark upon speculative building. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has deplored the practice on many occasions. We have warned private builders that they must not keep land out of public circulation which is necessary for the building of houses for sale. We in St. Andrew's House have worked very hard with the private builders over the last two years to identify areas in Scotland which can be used for building houses for sale. There are many reasons why houses are more expensive in Scotland than they are in most parts of England, and one of these reasons includes the fact that we do not have a proper flow of houses on to the market for sale in Scotland.

Mr. Hogh D. Brown

I do not have time to make any party issues. Can the Scottish Office find out on which land options are held by private enterprise, because this seems to be the real stumbling block?

Dr. Dickson Mabon

The Land Commission is enjoined to help us here. Much work has been done on this. It is very easy to talk in general terms, but when one gets down to specific terms and specific areas, it becomes rather difficult. Some local authorities resent—I can understand why—land being zoned for housing and then being identified as housing for sale when there is an un-satisfied need for houses to let still in the locality. There must be a balance.

I agree that Glasgow has no choice but to go on as it is. There may have been a time when it had a choice, but the circumstances became such, by reason of what the Tories did, that Glasgow had Hobson's choice in the matter. That is why, in the out-county estates, we hope that out of every three houses built at least one will be for sale and the others will be available for letting, as we hope will be the case at Erskine and in other parts.

I assert right away that the position in Scotland has always been, under both Labour and Conservative Governments, quite different from that in England, Scottish local authorities have had to seek the Secretary of State's consent to each individual sale. There is no general consent to sell houses such as exists in England and Wales. This being so, it is presumably the way in which individual requests for sales of houses have been dealt with that is worrying the hon. Member for Moray and Nairn. I give him this undertaking. The meeting with my hon. Friend Lord Hughes will be held. We will see what transpires from it. It does not always follow, because the Secretary of State refuses, that he is being dictatorial, whether it be a Tory or a Labour Secretary of State. The Secretary of State may be right in the matter which is in dispute. That is why it is important to view all the circumstances rather than just a few of them. It is not sufficient to hear only one side of the case.

The hon. Gentleman asked why there was a change of policy in February, 1967. There was not a change of policy. What happened was this. The previous Government—I think that the hon. Gentleman was Under-Secretary of State for Scotland at the time—late in 1963 or early in 1964 —I do not know when—gave Edinburgh a general dispensation with regard to the sale of Council houses. For that reason, many undertakings there had been entered into and had to be honoured when we came into office. As a consequence of that, there seemed to be some misunderstanding about the practice in Scotland, judged by the number of people asking us whether or not we in our turn had changed the policy in relation to Scotland as a whole. That was not true, either of us or of the previous Government. The previous Government had changed it only in relation to Edinburgh.

The figures are interesting. Since we came to office, we have, on average, approved the sale of 39 Council houses a year in three years. Edinburgh in 1965 accounted for 27 of the 42 sanctioned in the whole of Scotland, and in 1966 Edinburgh accounted for 32 of the total of 57 sanctioned for the whole of Scotland. These were as a consequence for the general dispensation which hon. Members opposite allowed Edinburgh in 1964. We could not go back on them, because agreements had been entered into, and they had to be honoured. In terms of numbers, from 1951 to 1964 the Tory Party sanctioned the sale of 21 Council houses a year in Scotland, on the average, out of the great stock of Council houses held.

Therefore, the hon. Member for Moray and Nairn is embarking on dangerous ground for himself, as the record shows, when he seemingly advocates the sale of Council houses. This is why I was so glad when he rose at once to contradict one of my hon. Friends who accused him of urging the mass sale of Council houses. I remind him that that is not the policy of his party in England.

Mr. G. Campbell

I said that in this debate I was not raising the question of the mass sale of Council houses. I am raising the question of cases of the kind which have come up this year in Lossiemouth, and which would, no doubt, occur in other places. As regards the record of what happened in years past, I think that hon. Members on both sides have made clear that the matter of home ownership has developed recently because the Situation has changed and many more people are interested in owning their own homes now than was the case ten years ago.

Dr. Dickson Mabon

I agree that people now are in a better position to purchase their own houses than they were ten years ago. Albeit that circumstances are difficult today, they are in a much better position than they were ten years ago. I give the hon. Gentleman that. I am only sorry that his party did not do as much as we have done in a short time to try to help private builders in Scotland to get up to the level of building which we need.

We are nowhere near England in this respect. We still have a long way to go before we are building. proportionately, as many private houses for sale as are built in England. That is not the fault of the present Government. It is the fault of past circumstances plus the difficulties facing private builders. It is noteworthy that we are not advocating the building of more private houses for sale at the expense of Council houses. We are trying to enlarge the number in both sectors.

The hon. Gentleman interrupted me at the point when I was responding to his first question about an apparent change of policy. In fact, a change was made by his own Government in respect of Edinburgh in 1964, and the consequence of that was the rise in the sale of houses in Edinburgh, which affected the total in Scotland in the way I have described. But even that is very small.

The hon. Gentleman's next point—

Mr. G Campbell rose—

Dr. Dickson Mabon

All right. I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on having a real field day with his Adjournment debate. His interventions are becoming almost as long as his Adjournment speech would have been in the ordinary way.

Mr. G. Campbell

The change of policy about which I was concerned was the apparent change in February this year. The Secretary of State authorised the last sale in Lossiemouth at that time, and it was a very similar case to the subsequent three which were refused. Why has there been this change? Since he has been in office, he has authorised the sale of other similar houses in Lossiemouth.

Dr. Dickson Mabon

That is, I suggest, an argumentum ad locum. It relates entirely to the position in Lossiemouth. On 14th December, 1966, the Secretary of State said: In Scotland's present housing position, I am against this "— that is, the sale of Council houses— as a general policy, but I consent to it in very special cases."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 14th December, 1966; Vol. 738, c. 79.] The hon. Gentleman must not argue that, because there has been a special case to which assent was given in one year, we must in logic assent to all cases in the particular burgh in any subsequent year. That would be nonsense, and I am glad that the hon. Gentleman agrees. It means that we have to argue each case on its merits. Admittedly, it is logical and sensible to take a previous example and try to argue from there, but the hon. Gentleman cannot say that, because we assented to one in the burgh, we should assent to them all.

My hon. Friends have made the case in terms of housing need. This is the first point. One does not sell Council houses where there is a clear need for houses to let. We have adhered rigidly to that approach throughout the time we have been in office. A house sold is a house lost to the general pool of rented housing. It is well known that the ability of local authorities to meet needs over the years depends as much, or more, on a regular supply of relettings as it does on the building of new houses.

The hon. Gentleman argued that to sell a house to a sitting tenant makes no difference, but merely relieves the authority of the obligation to maintain and subsidise the house. That is to look at the Situation in close blinkers, and very unbusinesslike blinkers, too. It may be true in regard to one house at one time, but that house will at some point in the future fall vacant and be available for another family in need of rented accommodation. If it has been sold, that other family must be accommodated in a newly built house.

Even in the case of an individual house, the sale may not bring a financial gain to the local authority. As my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley (Mr. John Robertson) pointed out, many older local authority houses built when costs were low are not a financial burden on the housing revenue account. It may, indeed, be said that some of the rents are higher than the historic cost actually Warrants.

Because of this the sale of a substantial number of older houses and their replacement by houses to let could have the effect of unnecessarily increasing the rents of remaining houses, or adding to the rate burden, or both, so that the sale of Council houses generally—

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. Fitch.]

Dr. Dickson Mabon

—could end by being a Charge on the ratepayer and a Charge on every person living in a Council house.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Rutherglen that we have increased the output of houses for sale. One has only to look at the recent figures for housebuilding to see that this year we are enjoying a very good year. So far, we have built more than 34,000 houses, so that with the total for this month we should have a very good Output this year. The breakdown of that figure shows an appreciable rise in the number of houses in the private owner sector. I should like to see this increase much more than has been the case so far.

Small burghs like Lossiemouth should lake account of the position of slums and the fact that, following the Culling-worth Report, we are considering how slum clearance legislation is being operated and how it might be improved. Everyone knows that a large part of slum clearance legislation is discretionary in the eyes of burgh or county surveyors who want more precise definitions. If there is any change in the law, as has been advocated, many so-called substandard houses which are discretionary substandard houses will become statutory slums, thus increasing the number of houses presently officially called slums.

We have also to consider management Problems. To sell some houses in different parts of a block while others are occupied by tenants would be very unfair not only to the housing management committee, but to individuals. There must be some regard:o all the circumstances, not only of the family wanting to buy the house, but of those nearby who would be affected.

The hon. Member for Moray and Nairn advocated selling at an economic price, but he is asking a lot of people v/hen he says that they should buy Council houses at an economic price, that is council houses which have been occupied for, say, 20 years and not just those very old houses which are 40 years old or more. We have encouraged local authorities to build as many houses as they can purchase.

All who have spoken tonight, including the hon. Member, have clearly shown that the mass sale of Council houses in Scotland would be crazy, crazy from the general social point of view and crazy from the financial point of view, and a great mistake in trying to encourage people properly to own their own houses, which is the right of everyone. If that is the choice of most people, we should try to give them as much assistance to that end as we can. But it is clear that none of us is in favour of the mass sale of Council houses, as is happening already in some of the larger English towns.

Secondly, it is clear that we are not shutting our minds to the prospect of individual circumstances leading to the possibility of houses in particular places being sold at particular times for particular reasons. Both parties when in Office have so far exercised this right in Scotland very sparingly, but I hope that it will be agreed that they have done so fairly. We shall try in this and in other cases to do the same.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at four minutes past Ten o'clock.