HC Deb 23 June 1976 vol 913 cc1576-9
4. Mr. Skinner

asked the Secretary of State for the Environment what are the most recent house building figures both in the public and private sectors.

Mr. Shore

House building figures for the period January to April 1976 show that in the public sector starts were up by 23 per cent. on the same period of 1975 and completions by 11 per cent. On the same comparison in the private sector, starts and completions were up by 22 per cent. and 6 per cent., respectively. This is encouraging progress and indicates that the improvement we achieved last year is being maintained.

Mr. Skinner

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the figures are a far cry from the halcyon days in 1968, when we built the record total of 413,000 houses? Does he further agree that the £175 million planned reduction for the current financial year, according to the White Paper, is now showing the first signs of its effect in terms of the reduced number of houses being built? Is it not ironical that this is happening in a week in which the IMF bosses and the United States bankers are prevailing upon the Chancellor of the Exchequer to spend even less money this year, next year and the year after, which will result in even fewer houses being built for the homeless when we have bricklayers on the dole?

Mr. Shore

Although in numerical terms we are a long way from what my hon. Friend described as the halcyon days of 1968, when I think we achieved the record post-war target for new house building, the figures show a situation far distant from the abysmal state of the housing programme that was reached in the last year of the Conservative Government. I do not under-estimate the importance of new house building in any sense, but in the 1970s, as opposed to the 1960s, we should consider the total provision for housing, including, for example, a proper emphasis on renovating and improving houses just as much as the building of new houses.

Mr. Michael Latham

Will the right hon. Gentleman now give the figures that he did not give a moment ago? Does he agree that public sector housing starts between February and April of this year fell by 12 per cent. compared with the previous three months?

Mr. Shore

I do not think that that is right. Further, if it is right, too much importance should not be attached to it. As one who has spent a very long time dealing with statistics in different Departments, I learned a long time ago that one must look sensibly and realistically at trends. The more significant fact is that over the period concerned, compared with the same period last year, there is this very obvious and welcome improvement.

Mr. Hardy

My right hon. Friend gave the latest figures in comparison with the position a year ago. Will he publish in the Official Report a comparison of the latest figures with those which were available when the present Government took office in March 1974? Further, will he comment on the fact that the Conservative Party housing policies seem to threaten a very disastrous slow-down in house building and perhaps even in house improvement?

Mr. Shore

I shall certainly do my best to oblige my hon. Friend by making available the information for which he asks in the first part of his question.

On the second part, during the period that preceded the recent local authority elections, there was a very conspicuous absentee item from the Opposition Front Bench propaganda, in that its Members had virtually nothing to say about the necessity for improving the number of houses available.

Mr. Peter Walker

In view of the fact that there are 200,000 construction workers unemployed, will the Secretary of State say what stress he has placed upon house improvements, and whether this year he expects the number of house improvement grants to be one-third or one-quarter of what they were in 1973?

Mr. Shore

In that year, as the right hon. Gentleman will well recall, there was an enormous number of improvement grants, some of which, I think we would all agree, were necessary and valuable, but a great many of which, certainly in a period of public expenditure restraint, were very difficult to justify. We therefore very properly took measures to cut back on the lavish provision that was made not against any test of need but for people who wanted second homes and all kinds of things at that time.

I think that the present level of improvements is not entirely satisfactory, and if I can find ways of helping this within the general context of the house building programme I shall be pleased to do so.

Mr. Thorne

How can the Secretary of State possibly justify cut-backs in housing construction, in the light of yearly statements at Labour Party jamborees about how Labour would really get to grips with Britain's housing problem?

Mr. Shore

My hon. Friend asks me how I can justify cut-backs in housing expenditure. Oddly enough, I have not had to make any justification of cut-backs in housing expenditure, first, because they have not been proposed and, secondly, because they have not taken place.

Mr. Rossi

With regard to the very selective figures that the Secretary of State chose to give the House a moment ago, is he not aware that his own Department, in its Press release, while stating that monthly figures are variable, said that special attention should be paid to quarterly figures, and that those quarterly figures show a 12 per cent. decline in public sector starts?

Why is the right hon. Gentleman so complacent about those figures? Does he not agree that the alibi given by his right hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Construction—that this was due to Tory authorities coming into power—does not hold water, because this decline started three months before those elections?

Mr. Shore

The hon. Gentleman is getting a little over-excited about this. I find it very difficult to accept the allegation that my figures were selective. I was asked about the present state of play in recent house building. I gave the House the detailed figures for starts and completions for the first four months of this year. I am not sure what else I am expected to do. If hon. Gentlemen on the Opposition Benches want to put down more pertinent and relevant Questions, which may help their propaganda, they must do the necessary work to enable them to achieve this result. I do not accept the hon. Gentleman's criticisms. I have no reason to believe that any short-term decline has set in in relation to the trends of house building which I have already reported to the House.