LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND DEVELOPMENT

HC Deb 27 July 1971 vol 822 cc397-434

1.21 a.m.

Mr. James Wellbeloved (Erith and Crayford)

The gravity of the situation in Scotland, which the Government have created by their economic policies and their failure to act to deal with the consequences of them, may appear somewhat to dampen interest in the debate upon which we are now entering, under Class VI, Vole 16, but, although the matters which I wish to raise are of small significance compared with the serious situation in Scotland, they are of considerable importance to my constituents and to many council and private tenants throughout the country.

There is serious need for investigation and research into the problem of under-occupation of both council houses and private property, whether rented or owner-occupied. A great contribution could be made towards solving our housing problem if we could encourage the full use of existing property. This could be done if the facts were ascertained. To this end, I suggest, the Government should consider making available to local authorities grants of funds so that they could conduct research in their local areas. When the size of the problem was ascertained, finance should then be forthcoming from the Government to enable the local authorities to deal with the problem.

There are many council properties under-occupied because of changes in family size. Children have moved on, have married perhaps and bought their own houses, and the fathers and mothers remain in three-bedroom or sometimes four-bedroom houses. The same state of affairs prevails in private property, both rented and owner-occupied.

I should be the last to suggest that anything should be done other than to try to encourage, with proper financial assistance, a voluntary transfer to more suitable accommodation by those who wish to avail themselves of smaller and more easily managed homes. But I urge the Minister to consider instituting some research into the problem, for out of it could come a considerable easing of the housing shortage.

The other matter which needs investigating relates to the White Paper "Fair Deal for Housing.". On page 5, in paragraph 18, the Government state that selective employment tax added £120 or more to the cost of building an ordinary family house. Now that S.E.T. has been halved there should be a reduction in the cost of construction. The Under-Secretary ought to do some detailed research by the end of the year and find out what has been the result of the halving of the tax. This is £80 or more which ought to have been taken off the cost of the average three-bedroom house. The Government should be able to tell us whether the industry has used this reduction to bring down prices or whether it has used it to increase its profits. This can only be done on the basis of properly evaluated research into the industry. The Minister has a duty to find out the facts rather than stamp round the country making political speeches about the benefits springing from the reduction in S.E.T. Many of us suspect that the reduction will lead to an increase in profitability for the speculative builders.

Mr. Ronald Brown (Shoreditch and Finsbury)

Will my hon. Friend bear in mind that when the Government were in opposition it was a favourite cry of theirs that because of S.E.T. the price of housing had rocketed? He is quite right to put this argument and ask for a categoric assurance that prices will fall.

Mr. Wellbeloved

I am sure the Minister will be prepared to give that categoric assurance. We would not be prepared to accept it unless it was backed by proper research. We have long since learned that we can put whatever weight we wish upon statements made by this Government.

One of the charges falling upon local authorities is the cost of advertising for staff. It has been estimated that this costs local authorities in England and Wales over £5 million a year. This is an unnecessary burden on the ratepayer. There should be a study to determine whether the Department of the Environment could set up a computer to deal with this so that names of those wishing to change their jobs in local government could be fed into the computer and matched with vacancies. This would save a considerable part of the £5 million. In local government papers week after week I see bigger and better advertisements, paid for out of the rates, for staff poaching from one authority to another. We may not be able to stop staff poaching but we should study whether we could find a more economic way of dealing with local government recruitment and advertising. I hope the hon. Gentleman will consider that proposal.

The House will not be surprised that I speak now of the urgent and vital need for an inquiry into the Thamesmead development in my constituency. This development is to provide homes for 60,000 Londoners. A large number of homes have already been built and are occupied. When the scheme was conceived in 1966, the total cost was estimated to be about £30 million. It has been revised upwards and is now more than £43 million, a dramatic increase. The difficulty in dealing with this serious situation is that one is unable to obtain reliable information. One cannot get it from the G.L.C. and the Department is reluctant to give information in reply to questions in this House. My questions to the hon. Gentleman have been of no avail in getting the essential information that the public are entitled to have in respect of what many fear is a growing financial scandal at Thamesmead.

Mr. Ronald Brown

In the inner London boroughs, many of us—I am particularly concerned with my constituency in this respect—have been trying to get people transferred to Thamesmead from bad housing conditions but now our councils are not allowed to nominate people to Thamesmead unless they are in receipt of gross earnings of more than £40 a week and are, therefore, prepared to pay economic rents.

Mr. Wellbeloved

I am aware of the difficulty that the G.L.C. is experiencing in finding tenants able to afford the excessive rents at Thamesmead. These high rents are based upon the scandalously high cost of the development. Stage one of the development was constructed outside the requirements of the Government's cost yardsticks; stage two, as far as I can ascertain, was not entirely outside them but there was some arrangement between the G.L.C. and the Government; now I am informed that stage three will be within the cost yardsticks but will have tacked on certain extras in respect of difficulties in construction on the site which have been experienced.

The most reliable estimate of costs for stages one and two, expressed as an average cost per unit of accommodation, is in excess of £12,000. This is why my hon. Friend the Member for Shoreditch and Finsbury (Mr. Ronald Brown) has found that his constituents are unable to be allocated such properties unless they have an income of more than £40 a week, because with a lower income they are not able to afford rents which are based on such high costs of construction.

If that figure of £12,000 is not correct, the G.L.C. or the Government must state the true financial position in documented form so that people may study it and make their own estimate, for no one will rely on a figure just given by the authorities and not substantiated by documents, because for stage three, after all the teething troubles of the site have been overcome, the cost will still be in excess of £9,000 per unit of accommodation and garage. These are very high costs for this type of accommodation, and they are resulting in very high rents, which in turn are creating social problems among the people sent to live at Thamesmead.

I am given to understand that the Government subsidy per unit of accommodation averages in excess of £300. These are extraordinarily high figures, and on this sort of evidence it is clear that there should be a full inquiry into the costs and financing of Thamesmead. Most of the land on which the development has taken place has been acquired from the Ministry of Defence by the G.L.C. for less than £7,000 per acre. While substantial sums have had to be spent, because of the nature of the site, to bring it up to a standard suitable for construction, even in the earlier stages the total figure was only about £21,000 per acre. Even with that figure, even if it has increased by 100 per cent., the total cost, including bringing the site to a suitable standard, would still be only £42,000 per acre—and I doubt whether costs have increased so much—and that would still be cheap land compared with many other sites in the G.L.C. area.

Another problem concerns the industrialised building factory which has been constructed on the site and which is producing slabs for the high rise buildings. I frequently get reports from people who have worked in the factory about some of the things going on there. Some of the slabs found during construction to be faulty are broken up at the weekend when there are not many people about to see what is going on. The industialised building factory itself could do with a little research into and study of its activities.

Rain penetration of brand new buildings in Thamesmead is another matter crying out for an urgent inquiry. Even with this extremely expensive construction and these almost impossibly high rents, tenants are finding within a few weeks of moving into brand new properties that they have the problem of rain penetration. This is a scandalous situation, and the Minister should be prepared to spend some of the money allocated in the Vote for research and inquiry on conducting an urgent inquiry into the construction and any design faults which may be responsible for this rain penetration.

Mr. Clinton Davis (Hackney, Central)

Before my hon. Friend concludes his remarks on that aspect, will be indicate what success the tenants have in communicating to the authority concerned their complaints concerning that and other deficiencies in these properties? There is a widespread belief, which I am sure is well founded in London, that the way in which that communication can be made is riddled with defects.

Mr. Wellbeloved

That is so. The Greater London Council suffers, of course, from the disability of being very remote. This, again, is a matter on which the Under-Secretary might consider it worth spending money to undertake a study in depth.

I can tell my hon. Friend that for the residents of Thamesmead the only effective method of communication with the local authority concerning rain penetration was to display in their windows notices calling attention to it. As this is a scheme which many people from all over the world are invited to view, the G.L.C. has rightly had to start paying attention, at long last, to a study of the matter.

I have indicated a number of matters on which research and inquiry would be worth while. I hope that the Under-Secretary will consider them. He may not be able to answer all the points tonight, but I hope that he will be able to tell the House a great deal about the Thamesmead development, its financing and its cost and what he intends to do about this scandalous situation. I hope he will announce that he will hold an inquiry into the scheme.

1.42 a.m.

Mr. Ronald Brown (Shoreditch and Finsbury)

I, too, wish to speak to Class VI, Vote 16, Subhead J, with its expenditure of £1,415,000 for 1971–72. I want to look at the need for surveys, research, studies and inquiries on the basis of office building in particular. I do this because we have tried hard for some time to elicit from the Government answers to questions.

I can understand my right hon. and hon. Friends from Scotland, with their petulance, feeling gravely upset at the rather unseemly exchanges which occurred in the preceding debate when they argued that they were not getting truthful answers from the Government. When one puts down Questions on office building to the Government, one gets similar short shrift from them.

One of our biggest problems in London is the difficulty of siting office buildings, primarily because so many empty office buildings are already available. It does not matter how one puts down Questions to Ministers. I put down a Question on 31st March to ascertain the superficial area of office building remaining empty up to and including 31st December, 1970. I illustrated the Inner London area so that the Minister would be in a position to discuss in detail with me the reasons why such a vast amount of empty office space was available.

One can go through my constituency any day of the week and hire 20,000 ft. super office space without even dropping a hat. At the same time, a vast amount of new building is going up on the Barbican site. Hundreds of thousands of square feet of office space are being made available in an area which already has a surfeit of that type of accommodation. An intelligent Government would want to know the present availability of empty office space so as to be able to programme what additional space was needed.

In a debate on homeless families on 15th July, the Minister said that he would seek from the boroughs information about land not zoned for housing purposes but able to be adequately used for that purpose. It all sounded very good; but I had received a reply on 31st March that the Minister just did not have a clue about office space, it suggested that the Department did not have the information, but that if I searched around on my own I might get it from the local authorities. Such a silly answer does not bring the best out of hon. Members who are trying to get information on behalf of their constituents. Two months later he said that he had asked local authorities if they had land which, though not zoned for housing could be used for housing. I took him to mean land zoned for office and commercial development. My hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South (Mrs. Lena Jeger) got a similar reply to a similar question—"We in the Department do not know, but you can get it for yourself if you look for it."

I therefore hope that some of this £1,400,000 will be spent by the Department on finding out something about office building in London. The Greater London Council is now being recommended to scrap any control on office building, and to encourage even more building of that type. I cannot believe that the Department is so insensitive to our problems in inner London that it will not act to get information about present availability of office space.

There has been a deplorable failure on the part of the Department, first, in not having the information; secondly, in not desiring to know; and, third, in being discourteous in its answers to hon. Members seeking to know about how areas in their constituencies can be improved.

The Department could also use some of that £1,400,000 on finding out something about housing starts. Housing starts make an interesting story. One has a lot of trouble getting information, because the Department acts on the basis that the Minister has already told my hon. Friend the Member for Salford, East (Mr. Frank Allaun) that he will not give that information.

I tried very hard to put down a Question, but the Minister's reply was that he did not keep such figures; if I wanted them I must find out for myself. On 31st March I asked for the total number of housing schemes for which he had given loan sanction, the number of dwellings involved in each, and the dates on which building was to begin. Under the Table Office rules I was not permitted to ask for starts. I had to phrase my Question in such a way as to encourage the Minister to be a little more helpful to me, so that I could tell my constituents a bit more about the Government's ideas. All that he said was that the figures were not available. I was very angry. I do not have to be told by the Minister that I can look at housing statistics. As one of those who gave information at one time for such statistics, I know how fraudulent they are in the sense that they can never be up to date or give the information that is really wanted. They are out of date by the time they are published. They are an assessment of what the local authority thinks it will be able to do at some time in the future. My Questions were questions of fact as to how many starts the hon. Gentleman had authorised and how many had been made.

We could have accepted the hon. Gentleman's answer to some extent if he had not been willing and able to give figures of starts in the debate on 15th July, when he said: Housing starts in London for the first five months of this year rose from under 12,000 to nearly 16,000."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 15th July, 1971; Vol. 821, c. 799.] The figures do not concern me particularly at present. What concerns me is the wilful refusal to give answers and the imputation that the Department does not have statistics, and then the discovery on 15th July that it not only had them but was prepared to publish them when it suited it just three months later. That is a deplorable way of running a country. When the Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry said just now that when Ministers give us an answer we should accept it, I thought of this debate. In view of what has happened, I feel that the doubts of my hon. Friends about the wisdom and veracity of the information given by the Government were only too well founded. Unless the Department changes its ways I shall have to joint the growing army of doubters. I hope that some of the money under consideration will be spent on ensuring that the Department can find out the number of starts.

Mr. Clinton Davies

On the question of research and statistics, is my hon. Friend aware that I and other hon. Members recently asked questions about the estimate the Department could make of the number and proportion of tenants in Outer London, Inner London and the London Borough of Hackney who were not paying controlled rents and who would have to pay fair rents pursuant to the White Paper? Is my hon. Friend aware that the Minister indicated in his reply that there were about 300,000 uncontrolled tenancies in the Greater London Council area but that it was not possible to provide separate estimates for Inner and Outer London or for individual London boroughs? Is not this a travesty when one has regard to the effect that the proposed legislation will have on constituencies such as mine and my hon. Friend's?

Mr. Brown

That is absolutely true. I can only hope that we can persuade the Minister to look seriously at this matter.

I have spoken about starts about which, it is said, there is no information in the Department or information which it will give only when it suits the Department to give it. I tried to get some information about housing waiting lists. As chairman of a very large housing authority for many years, I had to struggle at a time when the Conservative Government reduced subsidies to zero. I met every possible obstacle from the Conservative Government of that time. One of the basic elements which I had to know about was the housing waiting lists. I recall the discussions and arguments about its realism. Members of the Conservative opposition on my local authority asked me month after month whether I was satisfied that I knew enough about the waiting list and whether I was aware that they knew that Mrs. Jones was on the Greater London Council's waiting list and our waiting list and was probably on some other authority's list and therefore the number on the list could be divided by three because every applicant on our list was probably on two other lists? I always tried to be courteous to the Conservative Party members and so I searched in order to satisfy myself that I understood the position concerning the housing waiting list.

I put a Question to the Minister asking him whether he would tabulate the waiting lists of families registered in the inner London area, but again the Table Office refused me the right to table my Question on the basis that on 25th November the Minister had answered my hon. Friend the Member for Salford, East to the effect that the information was not available. Now we are blocked from putting down Questions about the waiting list because the Minister chose to say in an answer that he had no figures and, apparently, was not interested in them.

The point about "Fair Deal for Housing" was that those in most need would get all that was going. But the Department apparently is not interested in knowing anything about the waiting list. It does not know the size of the problem or where it is. It does not know the migration of families seeking an authority which was building its property so that they would have a much better chance of being rehoused, which might indicate the drifting of families from one area to another; of people being pushed out of furnished accommodation in one London borough and arriving in another to go on the waiting list but having to wait during the two-year moratorium placed on them whereby if they move from the Finsbury part of my constituency, having been on the waiting list of Islington borough council for six years, into the Shoreditch part, a couple of yards across the road, they have to wait two years because in Shoreditch they come under the London Borough of Hackney. They have already come off the Borough of Islington's housing list because technically they have moved out of Islington.

This absurdity goes on, yet the Minister says "I do not want to know of the problem and I have no intention of finding out." It is extraordinary that in endeavouring to play his part in solving the problem, he wilfully refuses, as part of his departmental work, to understand the total housing needs in regard to the waiting list in the London boroughs.

I suggest that the Minister uses some of the £1,400,000 earmarked under this heading to commission a study to find out how many families are on the London waiting lists. This will show him the size of the problem; it will bring home to him the misery and hopelessness of many families in this situation. If he would like to know the figure in Islington, I can tell him that there are 9,000 to 10,000 such families; there is a similar figure for Hackney. I suggest he finds out more accurately than that the situation in all the inner London boroughs which are desperately trying to find a solution to their problems.

I also offer the Minister the figures in respect of homeless families. I have done my best to elicit this information, but I have not, of course, the information of the hon. Gentleman's Department, which I understand is the largest Department in the whole governmental structure. However, that Department does not know the number of homeless families in London. I can tell the Government that in Lambeth some 1,159 people are homeless, in Islington there are 1,135 homeless families, and in Hackney 920.

I have many other such figures I could give the Minister. But this sort of job should not be the responsibility of a Member of Parliament. It should be the job of the Department. The hon. Gentleman should use some of the £1,400,000 in this Vote to inform himself on these vast problems facing the inner London areas so that he may take remedial action.

I should like to deal with the rent rebate scheme which was set out in the recent White Paper. This envisages a mandatory rent rebate scheme for all authorities in England and Wales. During the debate on the fair rent principle one hon. Gentleman opposite let the cat out of the bag by suggesting that the period in which rent rebate is paid in arrear should be similar to the period in respect of rate rebate. It was suggested that it would be unreasonable for employers to be asked to provide information on rent rebate on a five-weekly basis as against a six-monthly basis for rate rebate. Nowhere in the White Paper is it envisaged that the local authority would have to obtain from employers verification of a tenant's gross earnings. I have run a rebate scheme over many years, and I am proud of the fact we have never had recourse to employers. It is offensive. I cannot see any reason for it.

Let us consider the case of a young man, possibly a junior executive, who is not earning sufficient at the moment for a building society to give him a loan. As a result, for a short period he is obliged to live in a council house until he establishes himself or can find premises more to his taste. It may be that he cannot even afford the economic rent which the council will be forced by the Government to charge him. If he applies for a rebate, he will have to ask his employer to fill in a form on his behalf. That is quite outrageous. There is no mention of this in the White Paper, but, as I say, an hon. Gentleman opposite let the cat out of the bag.

I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us whether it is the intention under the Government's mandatory scheme that local authorities will have to go to employers of council tenants in order to get verification every five weeks. If that is the idea, we should be told, so that we can inform council tenants in our constituencies what to expect when the terms of the White Paper are translated into legislation.

Before the Minister was in a position to introduce this mandatory scheme, I should have expected him to tell us the cost of running such a scheme. Those of us who have run schemes could tell him. But I am getting a little tired of supplying his Department with information that I should be getting from him.

Such a survey would tell the hon. Gentleman that, the greater the number who are entitled to rent rebate, the greater is the number of staff required to keep the necessary records. The bigger the records, the more one changes, the more frequently one ensures that a person receiving rebate is not receiving too much or too little, the more staff one requires to do it and the greater the cost on the scheme and, therefore, the less one saves.

With a modest scheme in the old days, on the basis of a fair rent and not the economic rent which now purports to be a fair rent, roughly one-seventh of an authority's tenants would have received rebate. One knows what the cost of doing that was. The Minister has chosen to argue the contrary case. He says that he will set economic rents. But they cannot be called "fair" rents. That must be nailed once and for all. If it were a fair rent under the 1965 Rent Act, every tenant would have the same rights as a tenant under that Act.

Recently, I tabled five Questions to the Minister asking for an assurance that council tenants will be treated in exactly the same way as any private tenant under the 1965 Act, to ensure that the fair rent is seen to be fair. I raised a series of issues. I argued that a tenant should be consulted about his rent. I argued that he should be entitled to have a friend at court, his surveyor, his lawyer, or his architect, as he is under the 1965 Act. I asked whether there would be an opportunity for a council tenant to have this paid for out of public funds. I went through all these arguments, which are an integral part of the 1965 Rent Act. All that I got was an answer, lumping all those Questions together, saying that it was anticipated that there would be an administrative procedure. I take it from that reply that the answer was "No" to each of those Questions.

The Government are putting forward a fraudulent issue. They do not mean a fair rent as prescribed in the 1965 Act; they are talking about a rent which will be set by the local authority with no reference to the tenant. This will then be audited by some peculiar body, known as the chairman of assessment committees, or some such group, again with no reference to the tenant. Then the figure is fixed for three years, and the only change to be made will be in an upward direction for the following three years. Therefore, the tenant will at no stage be in a position, as he would be under the 1965 Act, of getting a rent which is seen to be fair between himself and his landlord.

I urge the Minister to drop this nonsense. Whenever the Government are pushed into a corner on this kind of issue, they turn round and say that it was my right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, East (Mr. Crossman) who introduced the fair rent scheme and that if it is good enough for the private sector it should be good enough for the public sector. I remind the Minister that they are not equal issues. Therefore, let us stop trying to equate the new system which he suggests is the same as that which was brought about by the 1965 Rent Act. Clearly they are not the same.

Under the scheme, it is likely, hazarding a guess, that 65 to 75 per cent. of tenants on any council estate will be in receipt of rent rebate. I may be wrong. I ask the Minister to tell me, from the statistics in his Department, how many tenants he anticipates will be in receipt of rent rebate when the rents are up to the economic rent, or the rent which will be assesed by this peculiar committee. I cannot believe that the hon. Gentleman is in a position to say. "We have not done that exercise". Speaking as one with experience of local government and responsibility for introducing a rent rebate scheme, I point out that one of the first things I had to do was to try to discover the financial implications and to know, in equity, what was to happen between one tenant and another. Therefore, I refuse to believe that the Department has not got the information.

Mr. Clinton Davis

Is my hon. Friend aware that, in reply to a number of Questions which I put down for written answer today, the Minister for Housing and Construction said that he was unable to make the kind of estimates for which my hon. Friend is asking "since"—he says this somewhat synthetically, I think— they depend on so many variables such as the character of the dwellings for which fair rents are to be determined, the rate of progression of those rents and the incomes and family circumstances of the tenants. Yet, was he not able to put forward some demonstrably bogus figures in the White Paper suggesting that many people would be better off?

Mr. Brown

Precisely. My hon. Friend has, as usual, put his finger on the nub of the issue. I hope that the Minister will take this matter seriously. I have said before that I do not think that he is serious about it.

It is impossible to embark upon a mandatory rent rebate scheme without having the information for which I have asked. No local government officer, no treasurer, will believe the hon. Gentleman if he says that he has not got it. Are we to understand that he has undertaken to contribute in the transitional subsidy 90 per cent. of the cost of rent allowances without knowing how much it will cost the Exchequer? Are we to understand that he will deprive local authorities of the freedom to act as they wish and force them to operate a predetermined scheme which he has not tested or the viability of which he has not proved? As the scheme has not ben tested, it is little short of scandalous that if the hon. Gentleman has issued propaganda to the effect that vast numbers of people will be better off and that nobody will be in need.

A computer is able to cope with an enormous amount of variables. Problems created by the varying time taken to go from the present rent levels to the new rent level which cause difficulty for a human brain are easy for a computer. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman should ask his hon. Friend who deals with technology to assist him. The local authorities will lend him time on a computer to work out what it will cost. He is burdening the local authorities with the cost of rent rebates. Local authorities are entitled to ask him how much it will cost, because it is the ratepayer who will pay.

The facts should be explained to a council tenant, who is a ratepayer whose rents are deliberately being raised to an economic level, whose rates will be increased to pay for a scheme about which the Minister knows nothing, and who is a taxpayer who will have to pay the 90 per cent. which the Minister says the Government will pay. The council tenant is the only person who will come in for a complete financial hiding. His rents will rise to the maximum. His rates will rise to pay for the rebate scheme. His taxes will rise to pay for transitional subsidies. The Minister's hon. Friend who is buying his £25,000 house will not have his rent increased; he may have his rates and taxes increased like the council house tenant, but not his rent.

It is outrageous that the Minister appears to have no information about what the rent rebate scheme will involve. I hope that I am wrong and that the hon. Gentleman will be able to tell me what studies have been carried out and what assessments have been made of the number of tenants who are likely to be on rebate and of the cost in terms of the rate fund and of the transitional subsidy. Further, if there is too great a time lag between the date of recompense and the initial assessment' the amount of money overpaid will be so great that many tenants will be in debt and the total indebtedness of authorities will be very high. What is this figure likely to be, even working on a five-weekly basis? Perhaps the Minister will tell us how much of the £1,400,000 put down for research and services will be covered by this work on rent rebate schemes in his new deal for council tenants.

I come to the issue of open spaces. I have raised this before and I do not apologise for raising it again because in London it is one of the most disgraceful stories we have ever had. Class VI, 16 A.5. provides £400,000 in grants for public open spaces. I do not know what the Minister has in mind for that £400,000. He will recall my drawing his attention to the only three open spaces planned for my constituency. There is Shepherdess Walk, Shoreditch Park and Haggerston Park. But we have no open spaces at present in my constituency—no trees, no grass, nothing. We have a society of people who are warehoused at a density of 200 persons to the acre, as distinct from the desirable areas outside London where the figure is 50 persons or fewer to the acre, where the streets are all tree-lined and grassed and are very desirable to live in.

That warehousing density was agreed to by the planning authority on the clear understanding that open spaces would be provided. But they have never been provided by the authority responsible for doing so. The authority has made some rather lethargic steps to try to establish them. I have been pressing them hard for seven years but they have been loth to do it for a variety of reasons, and I understand that. The Conservatives on the Greater London Council are not seized of the argument for providing open spaces. They cannot get money out of them, so why should they bother to spend the ratepayers' money, as they delicately put it, on providing open spaces in Shoreditch and Finsbury?

On 1st April, the Minister knew that the scheme proposed was fraudulent. The figures given by the G.L.C. to the London Boroughs Association were, I think, fraudulent. It was not given any figures to begin with. I submitted figures that I knew were not correct, and the G.L.C. was finally persuaded to produce figures.

The figures it produced were the same as the ones I had offered it. The Minister has accepted them as being the sort of financial parameters associated with the transfer of open spaces on 1st April. He knew that he was bound to correct the situation in my constituency over the delay in the provision of these spaces. I have been in constant contact with the Greater London Council and the London Borough of Hackney.

I put down a question to the Department. I received a silly answer which said that the Minister of State was not aware of any delay. When I wrote to the G.L.C. and the London Borough of Hackney they were both aware of the delay and apologised. But he can only have got the information from one or the other. Yet he answers me in the House in a way which can only be called absolutely untrue. It was improper of him to say that he did not know of any delay when any inquiry of the G.L.C. or Hackney would have brought the same answer as I got.

One of the excuses which were given was that responsibility had been transferred from the G.L.C. to Hackney. Hackney did not want it, but the Minister said, "When we give freedom to local authorities, you do as you are told." When Hackney said that the cost would be enormous, the Minister said, "That does not matter: you will have it and we will not even let the House of Commons debate it."

The Shepherdess Walk site for an open space in my constituency has been under a compulsory purchase order since 1965 but it has still not been provided. Now Hackney must find new homes for the people living there, demolish the old homes and then meet the initial cost and the annual maintenance. Perhaps the Minister can say how much that will cost. When I was part of the team negotiating with the G.L.C., I argued that it was a very expensive job. The G.L.C. never told us what it would cost. It would only give an average maintenance cost per acre, and I did not believe the figure anyway.

The cost is so high that Hackney cannot do the work, yet the Minister has deliberately transferred this responsibility, and tells me that he is not aware of any delay. I hope that part of the Vote will be spent on finding out the cost of providing, for example, the Shepherdess Walk open space. I believe that I am entitled to that information from the Minister, since neither the G.L.C. nor Hackney can give me this information.

The stupid result of it all is that my constituents have to live in deplorable housing conditions, in homes which are being designated as unfit by the medical officer of health, yet the Minister sits in placid happiness, thinking that he can forget about it and leave my constituents to sweat it out.

I hope that we shall have some frank answers from the hon. Gentleman tonight. I have a great deal more to say, but I realise that the hour is late and I do not wish to detain the House. I want the Minister to take a little time to answer what I have put to him. We have waited a long time to question him, and we look forward to having an indication of his view on these matters and the setting up of research and survey groups in such areas as the ones to which I have drawn attention.

There is a pressing need for something to be done. My constituents have a right to expect the Government to show some sense of urgency.

2.31 a.m.

Mr. Clinton Davis (Hackney, Central)

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Crayford (Mr. Well-beloved) on initiating this debate and showing how essential it is that the Government should re-examine the research services which are available to deal with the matters which he raised—Thames-mead and the rest—and, likewise, the matters raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Shoreditch and Finsbury (Mr. Ronald Brown), who put many searching questions to the Minister about problems affecting his constituency and, since we are neighbours, my constituency, too. I hope that his plea for a degree of frankness on the part of the Minister when he replies will be accepted.

The Minister has entirely failed to provide satisfactory answers to questions which we are entitled to put about the implementation of the proposals in the White Paper regarding fair rents and rent rebates. I have already alluded to the unsatisfactory answer which I have received. It is a facile answer, and, if the figures in the White Paper bear any credence at all, it is irreconcilable with the Government's ability to produce those figures. The real reason is that the provision of this information is disagreeable to them, because they want to produce bogus figures in order to hoodwink council tenants into believing that they will be better off, though we know that the vast majority will have swingeing rent increases. So they take refuge in the argument that they cannot make the estimates which my hon. Friend the Member for Shoreditch and Finsbury has rightly demanded because they depend on so many variables such as the character of the dwellings for which fair rents can be determined, the rate of progression of those rents, and the incomes and family circumstances of the tenants.

That argument has been totally exploded by my hon. Friend's searching analysis of the matter. As he said, the Government should have access to computers to enable them to overcome such problems.

Mr. Ronald Brown

Will my hon. Friend examine a little more closely the answer which he has received? The Minister said that it is impossible for his Department to give the facts because of the variations between individual properties. What does that imply for the Borough of Hackney, with 25,000 properties to examine? Are we to understand that every flat will be separately examined so as to enable the tenant to have his say about its condition?

Mr. Davis

These are mysteries which I do not have the sagacity to solve. The Under-Secretary ought to be frank and deal positively with this point.

There is a need for much clearer analysis and study to be undertaken by the Department of the Environment into some of the problems in the private rented sector, particularly in London, which give rise to real distress. I am not satisfied that the Francis Committee, which was supposed to have investigated in depth some of the scandals affecting the private rented sector, accomplished very much. Its approach, with respect, was somewhat synthetic over some of the problems I shall raise.

It is not altogether fair to blame the Francis Committee because the job of ferreting out these difficulties and scandals is primarily the responsibility of the Department. Given greater facilities for research and analysis, the Government would be alerted to some of these problems much earlier. They would therefore be in a position to introduce early legislation. They would not have to wait for inquiries such as Milner Holland to highlight matters which every councillor in inner London could have told them about.

Mr. Ronald Brown

And did.

Mr. Davis

And did. It took a Labour Government, two or three years later, to introduce some legislation which relieved a great deal of distress and anxiety occasioned to many tenants as a result of the operation of the 1957 Rent Act. This facility for research would enable local authorities to take action and alert local people to dubious practices undertaken in the locality. That would avert some of the consequences falling on to the shoulders of the local authorities.

I illustrate this argument by reference to one device employed by certain unscrupulous property owners to avoid the 1968 Rent Act, a device which unhappily started in my borough and which has occurred with great frequency there and apparently elsewhere. I refer to the scandal of deferred purchase. It is remarkable that the productivity of these unscrupulous property owners and dealers in circumventing the Act can only be matched by accountants and financial consultants in mitigating, as they call it, tax burdens. This device was worked out by a gentleman who started his operations in Hackney—at least he claims the authorship of this device. He has moved elsewhere. He may have moved his operations into wider spheres. That gentleman is a Mr. William Bach, whose offices are in Tottenham, although he is primarily concerned with developments in the Hackney area. He has a web of companies and firms: Horace Smith and Co. Ltd., Radcross Investment Co. Ltd., Symod Investment Co. Ltd., and Distinctive Builders Merchants Ltd. It is through these companies that the scandal of deferred purchase has been operated.

Unfortunately, it was not the local authority which highlighted what was happening. I do not think that it could be argued that it was unaware of what was happening, and I think that it was its bounden duty to inform the Department at the time of the practice. I am not sure that it fulfilled that duty adequately. It was the Sunday Times of 26th July, 1970, which drew attention to the practice in an article entitled, Exposed: a new Rent Act loophole". It was one of the "Insight" articles. It referred to the property empire of Mr. William Bach. I want to pay tribute to the Sunday Times for exposing that gentleman, although it is not enough simply to expose him. It is vitally im- portant that the Government take legislative action.

Last July, following that article and the calls which were made at my advice bureau by a number of my constituents, I raised the matter in a letter to the Secretary of State. His reply indicated that the matter was under study by the Francis Committee, which was considering the Sunday Times article. It said: There can be no question of amending the Act until the Committee's report has been received and studied. At that time, the Government took refuge in the Francis Committee by suggesting that anything related to the Rent Act would have to await the outcome of the inquiry. But we have now had the Francis Committee Report and we still have no indication from the Government as to when they propose to introduce legislation to deal with this and other dubious devices. I do not regard the Francis Report as a panacea for all our problems and I am far from satisfied that the Government have any intention of dealing with these devices.

What is deferred purchase as understood and practised by Mr. Bach? It is an ingenious and possible legal circumvention of the Rent Act. Instead of renting flats he—and others like him—purports to sell them on 99-year leases. Then he permits the prospective purchasers to delay completion for anything up to two years. Sometimes, indeed, that period is exceeded. The purchasers are allowed into possession before completion. In the interim, the occupiers—the "purchasers"—pay interest on the purchase price. He uses the National Conditions of Sale, 17th edition, in order to negotiate the deal, but these recommend an interest rate of 5 per cent., and that is one place where he varies the situation, because he charges between 17 and 23 per cent. The interest rates are, generally speaking, approximately double the amount that would be the fair rent in respect of the properties concerned if they came to be dealt with by the rent officer or the rent assessment committee under the Act.

Mr. Bach is on to a very substantial profit at the expense of a number of unwary people who suffer a great deal of uncertainty and anxiety as a result of these activities. From the inquiries I have made, from the calls made at my advice bureau, and from the inquiries which have been made by the Sunday Times, it is clear that Mr. Bach selects his victims very prudently indeed from his own point of view. In the main they are simple, gullible people in desperate need of housing accommodation, and more often than not they are immigrants. He persuades them to enter into a contract, but the purchaser cannot pay. He has no mortgage and, therefore, he occupies as a licensee or tenant at will, and he has no rights whatever under the Rent Act.

Yet the curious thing is that many of the people to whom I have spoken and many of those seen by the Sunday Times reporters were under the belief that they were not purchasers but tenants. They had no understanding of what they had agreed to, according to Mr. Bach's documentation, such as it was. It is my view, on looking at the facts, that he has deliberately nourished and cultivated these mistaken beliefs on the part of the "tenants". There is frequently a reluctance on his part to require completion, even after the two-year delay has expired. Still the occupier goes on paying interest.

The deception was nicely highlighted in the article in the Sunday Times. I propose to read only one paragraph which is very relevant indeed: On 5th June this year, a West Indian woman went with a friend to Bach's offices in St. Ann's Road. She wanted to rent a flat. Bach said he had one. When she was presented with papers to sign, however, she protested that there appeared to be an agreement to purchase. Bach reassured her. 'Never mind about that.' he said, 'it is simply for my protection, so you can't take me to the Rent Officer.' It also meant, he said, that he could not evict her. That, of course, was untrue. She signed the agreement; and is now the bewildered 'contractual purchaser' of a 99-year lease. Some of these people, not many, have gone to court, but because, in a sense, the burden of proof was upon them as plaintiffs, Mr. Bach was able to get away with it.

I am not convinced that the practices in which he has indulged have been free from deception; that is not the evidence as it has been presented to me. The extent of this gentleman's operations is difficult to gauge. He says that he owns 200 houses. If that is right, it would be interesting to know in how many he has developed these operations.

I know that a number of families have been evicted, and I suspect that many more have been caused untold unhappiness. I believe that there are many who find it inordinately difficult to pay these substantial payments by way of interest to Mr. Bach or his companies. How many there are so affected is a matter of some speculation. What I thought very interesting was that when I wrote to Mr. Bach in September, 1970, he replied fairly promptly to say, among other things: I must say that the article has had the reverse effect on my business to that intended by the Sunday Times as I have now many old regulated tenants requesting to be allowed to purchase on delayed completions so that they could obtain the benefit of the 1969 Finance Act and get tax relief on their interest payments as against no relief on rent payments, and have also had new applicants seeking the same arrangement. That indicates his grotesque indifference to fact and reality. To argue that the sort of people he is dealing with are affected by those considerations is making his whole position utterly nonsensical. It is an affront to us that he suggests that he is performing a sort of social service by these activities. The point I am making in this regard is that the extent of these operations is not known, as it should be, and I believe that a great deal more research should be undertaken by the Department of the Environment into this and other matters to which I shall presently refer.

This abuse was dealt with by the Francis Committee at page 113 of its Report. It is interesting that the Francis Committee had to seek information from the Department about the extent of the practice. I do not think that it got the sort of reply upon which a positive report could be based, because I do not think that the Department really knew.

What was the remedy to be employed? The Francis Committee believed that local action might be taken in the sense that the people affected by these arrangements should become involved in litigation if at all possible. It said, secondly, that local authorities might consider bringing prosecutions to test the position on the ground that people of this sort, Mr. Bach and others, were failing to comply with the statutory obligation under the Rent Act of a landlord towards the tenant of providing, for instance, a rent book. Although that might to some extent test the situation, certainly the penalty would not be serious and it would not deter Mr. Bach. The argument here, however, is concerned primarily not with penalties but with testing the situation in law. As far as I am aware, local authorities have refrained from taking action of that kind. Presumably they believe that there would be a great difficulty in establishing to the satisfaction of a criminal court that a criminal offence was involved.

The Francis Committee by and large thought that legislation should not be invoked because the existing law was satisfactory and that purchasers or tenants, whatever one might call them, could take a civil remedy themselves. I am not satisfied that that is right, because a large number of people who are entitled to certain remedies under the Rent Act are unaware of those remedies and the redress that they could obtain. That was why the Government spent a good deal of money on advertising the basic provisions of the Rent Act during the past year, but I do not think that it has made a great impact. It has not really improved the knowledge of many people—the unwary, the gullible—of what the Rent Act is all about and what their entitlements are.

But I can also say in this regard that when we had the scandal of the 22-year lease—and, incidentally, Mr. Bach claims the authorship of that idea, too—which was a device that got round the Rent Act, the only way in which it could be cured was by legislation, and this was done by a Labour Government. It is my belief that it is only by legislation that an effective cure of this abuse can be achieved, but it would be helpful if, in the interim, the Department made quite sure that local authorities alerted people to the very real hazards of getting engaged in the dubious operations of people like Bach, who are only out to deceive and swindle these very poor people who are in such great housing need.

Another abuse with which it is important to deal was raised not long ago in a debate by the hon. Gentleman the Member for the Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Tugendhat)—the bogus schedule of dilapidations. Attention was drawn to this abuse initially by the Evening News. We have no knowledge of how widespread this abuse is. The case raised, to his credit, by the hon. Member occurred in Westminster, but is the abuse very much more widespread than that? Where else is it occurring? What is its incidence?

The Minister, replying to that debate, thought that effective action could be taken under the Theft Act. He will correct me if I am wrong in my recollection. He suggested that some criminal remedy was available. I have looked at the Theft Act, and if he was, as I assume, referring to Section 21, that Section deals with blackmail. It provides: A person is guilty of blackmail if, with a view to gain for himself or another or with intent to cause loss to another, he makes any unwarranted demand with menaces; and for this purpose a demand with menaces is unwarranted unless the person making it does so in the belief— (a) that he has reasonable grounds for making the demand; and (b) that the use of the menaces is a proper means of reinforcing the demand. I am a lawyer, and I believe that in these particular instances it would be very difficult to sustain a prosecution under Section 21 of the Theft Act. The defence inevitably would be that the property owner had been advised by his surveyors to present the particular schedule of dilapidations; that they might have been wrong or in error, but he would have acted, so he would allege, in good faith on the basis set out by his own advisers. I do not think that a prosecution could get off the ground. I regret to say that, because I think that this is an abuse which ought to be remedied and for which there should be prosecution, but there is not much point in prosecuting unless the prosecution has a real prospect of success.

So I ask the Minister to deal with the matter, though perhaps not tonight, because although I have discussed it with him it might not be possible or convenient for him to deal with legal argument now. Perhaps, therefore, he will write to me or find some way of investigating the position.

There is another abuse which to my own personal knowledge causes a great deal of anxiety amongst tenants. That is the abuse of the pseudo-furnished tenancy, which was also dealt with in the Francis Report. I am not sure of its extent, but, both professionally and in my capacity as a Member of Parliament, I have been approached by many people who have not known whether their premises were furnished or unfurnished when a few sticks and bits are in their flat. It is sometimes very difficult even for a court to determine. That abuse can be cured only if furnished and unfurnished tenancies are dealt with on a similar basis.

The Minister for Housing and Construction has conceded that a tenant at present may not know whether to go to the rent officer or the rent tribunal. If he goes to the rent officer and it turns out, in an action for a declaration before the county court, that the tenancy in question was furnished, he may well have lost his rights, because the notice to quit has expired, and he will be without defence to a claim for possession. But if he goes to the rent tribunal he may well have chosen the wrong course. It is the view not only of lawyers but of most London magistrates who have studied the problem that it cannot be cured unless furnished and unfurnished tenancies are put on a comparable basis.

I turn to the question of harassment. It is remarkable that the figures for prosecutions and successful prosecutions in the London area are as low as they are. These are the figures given in answer to a Question by my hon. Friend the Member for Paddington, North (Mr. Latham): in the Metropolitan Police District in 1967 there were 96 prosecutions and 55 convictions: in 1968 there were 88 prosecutions and 42 convictions; in 1969 there were 96 prosecutions and 67 convictions; and in 1970 there were 54 prosecutions and 39 convictions. At no time in the whole of the metropolitan district have the local authorities concerned been able to reach the figure of 100. It is remarkable. I can hardly believe that those figures represent the totality of the problem. There are reticent local authorities who are disinclined to prosecute. I know that in many instances witnesses are intimidated—we find it extremely difficult to provide proof of that—and will not come forward because of their fears.

Other local authorities, although willing to institute proceedings, find that there is grave doubt about whether the prosecutions will succeed. The reason is that harassment is not always overt action by an unscrupulous landlord to make life intolerable for a tenant. It is not simply a question of the use of bully boys. Such cases can perhaps be proved, leaving aside the element of intimidation. There is the subtle and systematic process of harassment that goes on day in and day out. My hon. Friend the Member for Shoreditch and Finsbury and I, representing parts of the Borough of Hackney, know that this goes on. The landlord makes a great deal of noise, for example. It is not easy to prove, because the tenant does not bring in independent witnesses to establish that that is happening. If he does, the landlord soon gets to know of it and does not make the noise at that time; or if he gets part of the property vacant, and his real design is to get vacant possession of the whole, he will, quite deliberately, bring in some undesirable tenants who he knows will, and perhaps he even encourages them to do so, make life impossible for tenants who have lived in the house and whom he wants to get out. This goes on in every Inner London borough, and I am sure that it is known to the Department. But there is a real problem in adducing the evidence. We want to know how widespread is the incidence of these scandals, and this calls for much more detailed research.

What has happened to all the advertisements pursuant to the Rent Act which we had from the Ministry in the last 12 months? What has been the success of that campaign? What is to be the future campaign, how much is to be spent, and how? Are local authorities to be consulted—they were not consulted last time—in order to determine the best method of promoting advertising campaigns? These are matters of vital concern. If they are not dealt with, and if the Government are not frank and honest in their answers to the questions posed by my hon. Friend the Member for Shoreditch and Finsbury, there will be a tidal wave of discontent among not only council tenants but private tenants. If the Government are genuine in their anxiety to present the facts, they will not hesitate to present them.

There is no greater affront to a civilised society than the squalor, abuse and unscrupulous activity which goes on in the private housing sector. We have no real conception of the social cost of the enterprises of unscrupulous landlords or property owners. We have no way of measuring the anxiety and misery which their clever devices cause. What each one of us who represents an inner London constituency does know is that our "surgeries" are crowded week in and week out with people who are having to live in squalor, and some of whom are having to face the results of these activities. I hope that this debate will have caused some advertisement of what is happening in London and, much more important, will encourage the Government to be less complacent and to decide in the very near future to take firm action against these unscrupulous people, because it is only firm action that they understand and respect.

3.8 a.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Paul Channon)

The peg for this debate has been the alleged need for further research into the various matters raised by the three hon. Members who have spoken in it. I have come prepared to tell the House, at some length if necessary, some of the details of the research programmes of the Department. However, it would probably help the House more if I were to concentrate on answering some of the questions raised in the debate. I hope that I shall be forgiven if I leave out some questions or if I am not in a position to answer others now. If I omit to deal with points about which I can give further information, I shall endeavour to get in touch with hon. Members or perhaps they will get in touch with me, because I have no wish to shirk the questions put in the debate.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Erith and Crayford (Mr. Wellbeloved) on initiating this debate and on the ingenious way in which he managed to deal with so many issues in his interesting remarks. However, I wish first to answer the comments of the hon. Member for Hackney, Central (Mr. Clinton Davis). I reject the suggestion that the Government are complacent about any of the abuses that the hon. Gentleman has alleged take place in regard to the Rent Acts. My right hon. Friend has made clear time and again that we are determined to do what we can to stamp out any abuses in the working of the Rent Acts.

I am not sure that I accept the suggestion of the need for further research. The hon. Gentleman may not have a very high view of the Francis Committee Report, which I regard as an extremely valuable work, but nobody will deny that it represents a most massive volume of research. The Committee has reported only in the last few months, and the Government are engaged in reviewing all its recommendations. My right hon. Friend has already announced a number of the Government's conclusions on some of the recommendations. We are now engaged in a detailed study of all the recommendations and suggestions in the report, and I shall make sure that the hon. Gentleman's remarks are further studied by my right hon. Friend.

The hon. Gentleman also raised the question of the bogus schedule of dilapidations. The House may recall that in the debate on London housing last week I made the situation clear: This is already an offence under the criminal law."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 15th July, 1971; Vol. 821, c. 795.] The hon. Member for Hackney, Central, who has much greater legal experience than I, said that it was done under the Theft Act. I can find no reference to the Theft Act.

Mr. Clinton Davis

I apologise to the hon. Gentleman. That was my impression of what he said. I withdraw the remark if that was not the Act to which he was alluding.

Mr. Channon

In case the hon. Gentleman's remarks on this subject are given publicity, I shall be sorry if the impression gets abroad that this is not an offence under the criminal law if it clearly is. It would be in everybody's interest to set out the provisions under which it is an offence, or is believed by us to be an offence. It would be helpful if the hon. Gentleman would put down a Question for Written Answer so that we may attempt to make the matter clear.

If there are any difficulties of law, it might be better that the matter should be publicly known. My advice—and I am not a lawyer—is that this is already an offence under criminal law. I do not have any evidence that it is very widespread. Allegations have been made that this is happening in Pimlico, but I do not think that is a matter on which I should comment.

I am sure all hon. Members would wish to congratulate the Evening News on its series of articles and also my hon. Friend the Member for the Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Tugendhat) on his action in raising this matter. There are also a number of civil remedies open to people who are in this situation, but it is clear that the matter is also a criminal offence.

The hon. Gentleman also raised the question of harassment. The best evidence on this matter is to be found in the Francis Committee's Report, which went into the matter with great care. I think the best statement on this matter is to be found on page 109: speaking of harassment and unlawful eviction, the report says: We think there is little evidence of either outside the stress areas. In the stress areas, they are to be found mainly in multi-occupied houses where the landlord lives on the premises, and usually in furnished houses. The actual extent of harassment and unlawful eviction is difficult to assess but it is probably of significant proportions in the stress areas among furnished tenants …". On the other hand, it goes on to say that the complaints made to provincial police forces in the last couple of years have been few, whereas in London the complaints made to the Metropolitan Police numbered 1,104 in 1969 and 1,279 in 1970, though it is true that many more complaints have been made direct to local authorities. Where there is evidence of harassment, it is right for local authorities to prosecute, and they do in many cases.

One of the conclusions in the Francis Report on which the Government have made policy statements has been that we intend to increase the penalties for harassment and illegal eviction. The penalties are very low at present. The Francis Committee recommends that they be increased, and the Government consider that it is well worth doing.

The problem of deferred purchase is an important one. We have all read the article in the Sunday Times. Again, I make no comment on the validity of the argument; nor is it appropriate for me to comment on its accuracy or on the remarks which the hon. Gentleman made about people in this House.

The hon. Gentleman said on 15th July that the scandal of deferred purchase had affected a large number of people in his constituency. If that is the case, it is his duty to bring any instances which come to his notice either to the attention of the local authority or to that of my right hon. Friend, though preferably that of the local authority. I understand that, despite his having said what he did, the hon. Gentleman has brought no cases to the attention of his local council. If he has brought some, I hope that he will continue to do so.

Mr. Clinton Davis

The short answer is that the local authority is aware of all the cases that have come to my attention.

Mr. Channon

I am glad to hear that, and I am sure that it is extremely helpful.

There are two methods of tackling the problem of deferred purchase, and the hon. Gentleman fairly quoted from that section of the Francis Committee's Report dealing with evasions. The Committee itself recommended two alternative courses. As it stands, the law is capable of dealing with such a transaction, if it is an offence. The Francis Committee pointed out that in cases where an abuse of the Rent Act takes place, a single successful court case very often can dispose of an abuse very quickly.

The Francis Committee said: The quickest way of disposing of any abuse … would be a court decision that the 'contracts to purchase' … are mere devices to evade the Rent Act, and are not genuine contracts but are intended only to effect a transfer of possession in return for a payment which is really rent. No local authority has brought a criminal case on these grounds, but I am advised that a criminal case on the grounds of deferred purchase would be very likely to succeed.

If there is a loophole in the Rent Acts and it is not a criminal offence, my right hon. Friend will have to consider the matter in his review of the Rent Acts, in the light of the Francis Committee Report. At the moment, I am advised that it is a criminal offence.

There is also a civil remedy. I must be careful what I say——

Mr. Clinton Davis

With respect, the point that the Francis Committee made was that the deferred purchase itself was necessarily a criminal offence, but that the validity of the contract could be tested only by determining whether a rent book should be provided. It was a device to ascertain the law.

Mr. Channon

The best thing that I can do is to refer hon. Members interested in the problem to the last paragraph on page 114 and the opening paragraph on page 115. There are a number of possible courses which might be preferable: for example, failing to provide a rent book or charging a premium for the grant of a protected tenancy.

Civil litigation can also be initiated by a party to one of the agreements. There is a civil case pending in the courts—I will not go into the details—in which I understand that this point is likely to be tested. It would be unwise for me to deal with that matter now, but it is important and we shall have to watch it very carefully.

The hon. Members for Hackney, Central, Shoreditch and Finsbury (Mr. Ronald Brown), and Erith and Crayford, asked about the proposals for rent rebates. I cannot give them a great deal more information tonight. There is a section in "Fair Deal For Housing" devoted to rent rebates. Hon. Members will see from that that the rent rebate scheme is, by most people's standards, more generous than any similar schemes which have been operated in the past in most parts of the country. I think that the scheme will be widely welcomed.

I am sorry that the hon. Member for Shoreditch and Finsbury in a long speech—I am not sure that his hon. Friends will appreciate the fact that he spoke for nearly an hour and probably made it more difficult for them to get into debates later tonight; that is a matter for the hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends to sort out—was so polemical about the matter, as if rent rebate schemes had never been heard of before. The hon. Gentleman knows that all but one of the local authorities in London have operated such schemes. This is not a wide, strange, brave new world into which the Government are asking local authorities to move. Many authorities have operated rent rebate schemes. Our evidence is that about 60 per cent. of local authorities throughout the country operate rent rebate schemes. Therefore, about 40 per cent. of local authorities have no rent rebate schemes at all.

That is not a situation which hon. Members on both sides of the House could possibly think is satisfactory. Indeed, the Labour Government thought it proper to advise local authorities that there should be reasonable rent rebate schemes. I think it comes ill from the hon. Member for Shoreditch and Finsbury to say that this is a reprehensible and terrible new area to enter.

Mr. Ronald Brown

rose——

Mr. Channon

I may be slightly misrepresenting the hon. Gentleman. I do not mean to infer that he is against the idea of rent rebate schemes. However, he made heavy weather about it. I have other comments to make to the hon. Gentleman, but if he wishes to interrupt I will give way to him.

Mr. Brown

I was asking whether any researches had been undertaken to find out whether the proportion of tenants who will be expected to take up the rebate will be higher than the figure which would have been expected under normal circumstances. Now that the rent level will be so much higher——

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Miss Harvie Anderson)

Order. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will remember the length of the speech which he has already made and will appreciate that a number of hon. Members are still waiting to raise subjects which are important to them.

Mr. Channon

I take the hon. Gentleman's point. The hon. Member for Hackney, Central has already pointed out the virtual impossibility of giving the varying formulae and conditions which are applied. It is impossible to estimate how many people will qualify for rent rebate. The important point, which hon. Gentlemen have failed to dent in recent debates, is that for the first time in our history we shall have a scheme under which any tenant of unfurnished premises, whether in the private or the public sector, will be able to get a rent rebate or allowance to enable him to meet the cost of his rent if he cannot afford it. It is a step forward of tremendous consequence in housing and in the social sphere and one which is widely welcomed outside the House, even if there are carping critics inside the House who, I am sure, bitterly regret that they did not do it themselves.

I will consider all the points that the hon. Gentleman raised and see whether I can give him further information. It is a little hard for him to speak for about 10 minutes in criticism of our not having a full list of every local authority's housing list in the Department. It has been the practice of all Governments not to collect such information, because it is considered to be meaningless. I do not recall when the Labour Party was in government the hon. Gentleman criticising his right hon. Friends for not assembling that information. What was so acceptable when the hon. Gentleman's right hon. Friends were in power suddenly becomes reprehensible now that we are in power.

I ask the House to consider whether it should take these arguments seriously or whether they are not almost wasting the time of the House, particularly when there are so many other subjects to deal with.

No doubt it is the hon. Gentleman's policy to pretend that these will not be fair rents. No doubt he and his colleagues are bitterly ashamed of introducing a fair rent in the private sector but providing no rebate or allowance for those who could not pay it. No doubt the hon. Gentleman is bitterly jealous of a Government which have introduced fair rents in the public and private sectors and rebates and allowances for those who cannot pay.

These are fair rents. There will be details to be worked out in the application because of different circumstances. The principle of the fair rent will apply in the public and the private sectors. That, too, in spite of the hon. Gentleman's strictures, has been widely welcomed outside the House.

I do not think that the arguments that the hon. Gentleman has advanced cut any ice whatsoever outside the House.

They cut no ice in London, which will benefit so particularly from the proposals announced by my right hon. Friend last week. Any hon. Member representing an Inner London constituency should examine his conscience before criticising the Government's proposals, which are designed so much to help the Inner London boroughs, as my right hon. Friend was able to prove during the recent debate.

The hon. Member for Erith and Crayford has raised the question of Thames-mead over many years. He probably knows more about Thamesmead than any man alive. I do not agree with all his conclusions about it and I am not sure that I can answer all the questions he asked. I will study what he has said. The hon. Gentleman said that the costs will be too high and the conditions are not good enough. One reason why the hon. Gentleman is frightened about the costs is that he thinks that rents will be too high because of the costs. That assumption is completely out of date because, with the introduction of the fair rent scheme, the cost of the rents that will be paid at Thamesmead, as indeed for any other local authority dwelling, will be fair rents. They will not be based upon the cost, whether high or low, of any building scheme. It will no longer be any good for the hon. Gentleman to say that it has cost so much money to put up Thamesmead that the rents will have to be so high that it is ghastly for his constituents. These people will be assessed to fair rents in the same way as all other local authority tenants.

Mr. Wellbeloved

That is not my main argument. My main argument is that, because of the circumstances surrounding this development, the public expenditure is not realistically related to the number of units being constructed. I fear for the number of people who will ultimately be re-housed if the average unit cost is £12,000. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman can defend such an average cost.

Mr. Channon

Fortunately, I am not in a position where I shall have to defend that proposition. I will dispose of the rents point, as I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will not wish to return to it, as it has no validity in the future. Of course Thamesmead is a very difficult, low-lying, marshy site. It was the hon. Gentleman's colleagues on the G.L.C. who decided to build on the site. They did so in the full knowledge of the difficulties of the site. Anyone who has visited the site, as the hon. Gentleman has and as I have had the pleasure of doing, will know that it is a very difficult one. The hon. Gentleman, who is deeply concerned about the problem of London housing, as all hon. Members are, must face the fact that Thamesmead will make an invaluable contribution to meeting London's desperate housing shortage. Not many of his hon. Friends would agree with him if he is arguing that we should not go ahead with Thamesmead.

Mr. Wellbeloved

I am not arguing.

Mr. Channon

I am glad to hear that because for years the hon. Member has been arguing that it is too expensive and a great waste of public money. The logical conclusion of his arguments is that we should stop the scheme. It is making a valuable contribution to meeting the problem of London's housing shortage, and I believe we should go ahead with it. I challenge the hon. Member to say we should not.

Mr. Wellbeloved

I respond to the challenge. That is precisely the point I am not making. I do not say we should abandon it. I challenged the Government to hold an inquiry into the scheme in order that it could proceed on a sounder financial basis, and this is the question the Minister is avoiding.

Mr. Channon

I have not come to it yet. I am glad to have it from the hon. Member that he wishes the scheme to go ahead, because that is not the impression which leaps to mind when reading his speeches.

It is impossible to give the overall cost of Thamesmead at this stage. But preliminary application by the G.L.C. for subsidy purposes on the erection costs of stage one has been considered. The application suggests a tentative figure, which I cannot be held to in the future, £6,000 per dwelling, as eligible for housing subsidy. That is a far cry from the hon. Member's £12,000. I will look at the other detailed points he raised and if there is further information that I can give him I will attempt to do so.

I am not sure I can tell the hon. Member a great deal more tonight except on the point of condensation. He will have read the new bulletin on research by my Department in the past few months which will be of benefit to a tenant who is unfortunate enough to meet this ghastly problem. I know the main point he raised was rain penetration, and that is largely a matter for the G.L.C., which is well aware of his views. It would not be fair to other hon. Members to take up any more time on this debate. We shall have other housing debates with the Housing Bill, and we can discuss detailed points then.

We are introducing for the first time in this country an original reform of housing which should have been done long ago. It will divert the subsidy to the areas and the people most in need. Those who oppose it will be saying in effect that they do not like a subsidy system concentrated on the people and the areas most in need. If they wish to take that stance, they may do so, but I do not think that the country will support them.