§ 7. Mr. William Hamiltonasked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will make a statement on the progress of the house building programme; and what is the estimated number of completions in the current calendar year.
§ Mr. YoungerAt the end of September nearly 45,000 houses were under construction, the highest number since the end of 1970. In addition, some 23,000 public sector houses were approved awaiting start; and over 22,000 houses were completed by all agencies. The private sector continued to expand; completions in the first nine months of 1973 were higher than for the comparable period in any previous year.
Progress for the remainder of the year depends on many factors, but we expect house building to benefit from the temporary standstill on some other work.
§ Mr. HamiltonDoes the hon. Gentleman think that the total number of completions in 1973 will be greater than the average of more than 41,000 in the last four years of the Labour Government? Will he give an assurance that there will be a total completion figure of 40,000 this year, and does he recognise that the figure of 72,000 in the public sector was about 20 per cent. less than during the last year of the Labour Government? Part of the reason for that is the completely unrealistic nature of the cost yardstick. That is what is preventing many local authorities from getting on with building the houses that are so urgently needed. When will the Minister make a statement about them?
§ Mr. YoungerI have at least learned one thing from the previous Labour Government, and that is that it is totally unproductive to make forecasts because under that Government, at any rate, they turned out to be merely words and paper, and not houses.
My answer to the hon. Gentleman's main question is that the right housing policy for a Government to pursue is that which best suits the needs of the people who want to live in the houses. The reason why we are putting extra concentration on matters such as house improvement and getting a better standard of houses is precisely that that is what people in Scotland want, and we are giving it to them.
§ Mr. Bruce-GardyneCan my hon. Friend tell the House, in order to get these matters into perspective, how many of the houses built under the régime of the previous administration are now standing vacant because they were built in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and were of the wrong type?
§ Mr. YoungerI shall deal with that in detail when I answer a later Question. I should hesitate to make a blanket criticism of houses built under the previous administration, but there is a certain amount of truth in what my hon. Friend says. There is no longer any point in a Government simply building any type of house anywhere, because if they do people will not be prepared to live in them.
§ Mr. RossSurely the Question to which we shall come later deals with the over- 1236 all position of unlet and empty houses. Surely the hon. Gentleman can answer right away the question put to him by his hon. Friend. Are any of the houses which were built during the last six years lying empty and unlet because people do not want to live in them?
§ Mr. YoungerThe right hon. Gentleman will not need to be a very perceptive viewer of the scene to understand that if people have the choice between new houses and older houses, they will normally take the chance of living in the new ones.
§ Mr. YoungerI do not know whether it is in order, Mr. Speaker, for the Kilmarnock male voice choir to be entertaining us this afternoon. All I am trying to point out is that one can only pass judgment on the houses built for the needs of the people in a particular area if local authorities are absolutely free and have every encouragement to build every house for which there is a need.