§ Housing is the other one of our three priorities for action in our first year. Immediately on taking office, my right hon. Friend introduced a freeze for all residential rents. This will add about £70 million to housing subsidies in 1974–75 and this has been allowed for. It will reduce the increase in the retail price index by 0.7 per cent. over the year. But the main aim must be to increase house building.
§ The figures in the last public expenditure White Paper provided for an annual rate of house building by local authorities of no more than about 60,000 in England. In fact, even before the Budget it was clear that local authorities were planning to go beyond this and we adjusted the figures accordingly. But this is not enough at a time when the number of the homeless is increasing week by 299 week and waiting lists are growing. My right hon. Friends will therefore encourage local authorities to make an immediate further increase in their programmes.
§ Meanwhile, in the private sector there are at least 30,000 houses completed, or virtually completed, which have not been sold. We shall therefore, as an emergency measure, encourage local authorities to buy these houses where they are of the right standard and can be acquired at reasonable prices and are in the right places to meet urgent housing needs.
§ We have made clear our belief that, particularly in the worst areas of stress, the development of municipal ownership is essential. But this programme cannot have quite so high a priority as the steps I have already described, which are designed to add significantly and quickly to the stock of housing. We shall therefore be discussing with local authorities the priorities they should follow in the immediate future before long-term programmes can be drawn up.
§ The new provision which I am making in 1974–75 for these programmes of house building and acquisitions is of the order of £200 million. Taking into account the expansion already proposed by local authorities, I expect the addition to the previously published expenditure figures for these programmes to be as much as £350 million.