HOUSING (Hansard, 30 April 1970)

§ Q2. Mr. Winnick
asked the Prime Minister what requests he has received to receive deputations on housing.

§ The Prime Minister
I have received two or three such requests mainly from tenants' associations.

§ Mr. Winnick
What action do the Government intend to take over those local authorities which refuse to carry out their house building responsibilities? Is my right hon. Friend aware that many private tenants fear that their security of tenure and protection will disappear if the Tories are returned? Rachmanism could come back to Britain.

§ The Prime Minister
On the first question, I have nothing to add to the answers given by myself and my right hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Local Government about local authorities which are failing to carry forward their housing programmes as they should be doing.
On the second question, I have expressed anxieties about the programme of the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition, particularly with regard to the Rent Act. I was pleased to see that the Opposition housing spokesman said that it is now Conservative policy—should the matter ever arise—to accept our Rent Act, including the standards of fair rent laid down by us, and not to return to the Tory Rent Act which the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition, when Chief Whip, forced through the House.

§ Mr. Peyton
Would the Prime Minister welcome an opportunity to explain to a deputation how it is that if the Government's promises or pledges, call them what one will, had been kept between 1965 and 1970 more than another 300,000 houses would have been built?

§ The Prime Minister
I have answered that question before in the House. The hon. Gentleman cannot get away from the fact that we have built 2 million houses in our period of Government, which is about 25 per cent. more than our predecessors did even in their last five years.

§ Mr. John Fraser
Would my right hon. Friend be willing to receive a deputation from the Borough of Bexley, which started no local authority housing in 1969, and had one of the lowest under-construction programmes of the London boroughs? Perhaps my right hon. Friend would be able to tell the deputation how it could get someone to lead its borough, never mind lead a party.

§ The Prime Minister
I feel that if there were to be such a deputation it should be received by my right hon. Friend the Minister of Housing and Local Government, who would no doubt reply appropriately to its anxieties. It may be that in Bexley there is perhaps a feeling that there might be a Conservative Government, and they probably feel that they must get ahead of the situation because local authorities all 1451 over the country will be unable to build council houses under the Tory proposed subsidy policy.

§ Dame Irene Ward
May I ask the Prime Minister whether, in his reply to the original Question, he included the request of Dr. Reid, the Deputy Chairman of the Northern Economic Planning Council? When he saw the Prime Minister he drew attention to the fact that certain action was needed by the Government in relation to housing in Northumberland.

§ The Prime Minister
I am grateful to the hon. Lady. She has written to me about this, and I hope to let her have a reply because there is a Press report which is somewhat at variance with what I said to her in the House. Unfortunately, Dr. Reid has been abroad since then and I have not been able to check with him the accuracy of what he said. As I and others who were at the meeting recall he, as acting Chairman of the Planning Council, did not raise the question of help for housebuilding but referred to the construction industry in a different context. I hope to be able to satisfy the hon. Lady on the question she has raised by writing to her as soon as Dr. Reid returns.

§ Mr. Maudling
In view of the Prime Minister's quite erroneous remarks about our housing policy, may I ask whether it is not a fact that he inherited from us a housing programme rapidly advancing and that he will bequeath to us a housing programme rapidly falling?

§ The Prime Minister
We inherited an advance in one year, an election year, after 12 years in which that figure was not reached. We shall not hand over anything to the right hon. Gentleman, nor do we intend to, because he will not be there.
The right hon. Gentleman seemed to think that I had not understood the Opposition's subsidy policy. I know that the right hon. Gentleman is a declared maverick on nearly all Conservative policies and that he likes to dissociate from time to time, whether on investment grants or whatever else it may be. I was assuming that the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition was speaking on behalf of his party, and 1452 even of his right hon. Friend, when he gave assent to an estimate that the present record level of housing subsidies of £130 million would be cut by £100 million if the Conservatives got in. The right hon. Gentleman can calculate what that would mean for council housing.

§ Mr. Pavitt
Can my right hon. Friend do anything about the sordid Tory political manoeuvring in the town halls of the country and especially of my constituency? For example, last year 1,900 starts of housing units were to be made and we had only 24, and this year once again they have been cut back to less than 300. Is it not obvious that the hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Peyton) is using this kind of action to arrive at the national figure?

§ The Prime Minister
As to the decision of Conservative councils, which we were told on high authority three years ago was being orchestrated from Tory Central Office, I have nothing to add to what my right hon. Friend the Minister of Housing and Local Government has said on these questions. As to the broader aspect of what I think my hon. Friend called squalid or sordid manoeuvring by the Tories, I will in due course give my attention to the question whether anything further might be done about that.

§ Mr. Heath
Will the Prime Minister now acknowledge the facts, which are that under Conservative housing policy local authorities will be able to build houses for the disabled and the elderly, for slum clearance, and for those who cannot afford the full rent? Will he explain why he believes that subsidies should be given to people who do not require them?

§ The Prime Minister
In answer to the first part of the right hon. Gentleman's question, local authorities are free now to build the houses needed for the disabled, for slum clearance and for the other categories to which he referred. Many Tory authorities are cutting down on their building in these respects, despite the fact that we are giving a record amount of help to them to get on with the job, and despite the fact that they can borrow for this purpose at 4 per cent., under legislation passed by this House.
1453 With regard to the second part of the question, in which the right hon. Gentleman referred to the non-priority categories of the Selsdon Park policy— [Interruption.]—the right hon. Gentleman has referred to his policies, and these should be noted.

An Hon. Member
Get on with it.

§ The Prime Minister
I will when hon. Gentlemen are listening. It is clear from the right hon. Gentleman's own pronouncements—[Interruption.] The right hon. Gentleman asked me about the Conservative Party's policy. I have at last got him up; I must be allowed to enjoy it.
The right hon. Gentleman asked about subsidies for general housing need. What I am saying is that they are not to be equated, as he puts it, with people who do not require them. The right hon. Gentleman knows this to be the fact. What he is saying is that there will be no provision of subsidies.

An Hon. Member
You are saying it.

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. Let us leave it to the protagonists.

§ The Prime Minister
The right hon. Gentleman is saying that there would be no provision of subsidies either for overcrowding or for general housing need, because if he cuts the subsidy from £130 million to £30 million there will not be a penny left over for those purposes.

§ Mr. Heath
First, the Prime Minister is making up the figures for himself. Second, it is our declared policy that under us local authorities should be able to build for people in need. What I am asking the Prime Minister is: how does he justify giving subsidies to people who do not require them? Will he now answer that single, simple question?

§ The Prime Minister
Yes, Sir. I will first answer the first part of the right hon. Gentleman's question.

An Hon. Member
What about the second part?

§ The Prime Minister
I will answer both parts of the right hon. Gentleman's question, whether that is convenient to him or not.
1454 The right hon. Gentleman suggested that I invented these figures. If he is now saying that he has not said them, if he is now saying that he has not confirmed the figure of £100 million cuts, I shall be delighted to let him have the evidence, as on the last occasion he denied that the Tories in 1955 said that they would not introduce a Rent Act—[Interruption.] Oh, yes. If the right hon. Gentleman makes assertions in his questions of alleged facts which are not true I reserve the right to reply to them. He was wrong then, and he is wrong again today.
With regard to the second part of the question—why do I justify general housing subsidies?—I do it on the basis that it has been the policy of every Housing Ministry in this country since 1924. The right hon. Gentleman wants to cut housing back to the level before 1924.