HC Deb 23 March 1978 vol 946 cc1721-3
4. Mr. Frank Allaun

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what expenditure on defence and housing, respectively, has been for each of the years since and including 1970, expressed as a percentage of gross domestic product.

The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Joel Barnett)

With permission, I will circulate a table showing this information in the Official Report.

Mr. Allaun

Is my right hon. Friend aware that the cost of a single Tornado warplane would provide new houses for 700 families? In preparing his Budget, will he consider sympathetically the urgent plea of the Labour Party and the TUC that at least the serious cuts in housing of the past two years should be fully restored?

Mr. Barnett

I note what my hon. Friend says and appreciate his concern, which I share, about the need to improve housing for so many people who are badly off in many parts of the country. But it is not true to say that housing expenditure has declined. Under this Government, despite the cut-backs we have had to make, it has risen substantially.

Mr. Pattie

Would the right hon. Gentleman care to remind his hon. Friend of the Chancellor's words when he was Secretary of State for Defence, when he told the House on 5th March 1969 that if we cut our defence expenditure to the level at which our defence was imperilled we should have no houses, no hospitals and no schools, but only cinders?

Mr. Barnett

My right hon. Friend makes many wise statements and has done for many years, including the last four, and I would not wish to disagree with them.

Mr. Kilroy-Silk

Does my right hon. Friend accept that a reallocation of resources to housing as suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for Salford, East (Mr. Allaun) would be of considerable benefit to regions such as Merseyside which suffer from an inadequate housing stock and a large number of unemployed construction workers? Will he therefore urge my right hon. Friend the Chancellor to ensure that far more resources are put into the construction industry?

Mr. Barnett

I appreciate my hon. Friend's concern, but within a given level of public expenditure one must have a balance of priorities as between housing construction, social services, health and many other areas of expenditure, even if the expenditure in total were much larger than at present. There must be a balance between all the strong demands that are constantly being urged upon me.

Mr. Michael Morris

While it may be true that expenditure on housing has gone up, is it not a fact that the number of houses produced is smaller? Would not the right hon. Gentleman's time be better spent looking at the district auditors' reports criticising Labour councils for having a large number of empty council properties?

Mr. Barnett

I would not be prepared to criticise Labour councils so much as Conservative councils which in areas of great need of council housing are not building it.

Following is the information:

Expenditure on Defence and on Housing, Public and Private Sectors, expressed as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product, for the calendar years 1970 to 1976.

Year Defence

%

 Housing

%
1970 … … … … 4.8 11.8
1971 … … … … 4.8 12.0
1972 … … … … 4.8 12.5
1973 … … … … 4.7 12.7
1974 … … … … 5.0 13.7
1975 … … … … 5.0 14.0
1976 … … … … 5.0 13.8