HC Deb 21 June 1979 vol 968 cc1642-50

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Wakeham.]

10.29 p.m.

Mr. J. D. Dormand (Easington)

I think that the Minister is aware of the general problem that I intend to raise, but for the sake of thoroughness I shall go over the whole ground in the quarter of an hour or so at my disposal.

The northern part of my constituency consists of a number of villages and the new town of Peterlee. I mention that in preface because Peterlee is the focal point of this part of my constituency. It provides housing accommodation now for almost 30,000 people. It provides many of the jobs for this part of the area, and it certainly provides most of the social and recreational facilities. Some years ago it was almost impossible to obtain a house outside the town of Peterlee. I hope that that gives the setting for the main point that I shall later develop.

The problem that I raise is that many houses—as many as 4,000, it has been estimated—through faulty design, poor construction and, I understand, inferior materials are now virtually unfit for habitation. I need not tell the Minister that that causes great inconvenience and discomfort to the tenants. It also means that there has been great expenditure by those living in the houses so affected. Thousands of pounds have been spent.

I am not concerned with an inquest. Perhaps there is a story to be told and written about the circumstances that have arisen, but my main purpose is to ensure that the houses are put right before the onset of next winter.

The amount involved—the Minister will be hearing about it shortly from the Easington district council if he has not heard already—is about £15 million. There has been much in the North-Eastern press about the matter as well as broadcasts on television and radio. I have heard £40 million mentioned, but £15 million seems a realistic assessment. I concede that that is a considerable sum, but it must be put into context. It is small in relation to the problems.

It will come as no surprise to the Minister to know that I dealt with his predecessor for several months. My hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich (Mr. Barnett) could not have been more helpful or sympathetic. I have to say that, too, for the staff of his office. I do not think that I am revealing any secret when I say that the Labour Government had come to a conclusion prior to the general election. The council would have received an adequate grant to cover most of the work. It is most unfortunate in more ways than one that we now have a new Government.

I hope that there will be continuity of thinking. There has been some delay because the former Government sought the views of the Association of District Councils. As we know, the houses in the new towns were taken over by the district councils on 1 April 1978. The houses are now their responsibility. It was inevitable that some councils would object to the condition of some of the houses.

It was proper and understandable that the Government of the day should consider the picture as a whole. It is important that the then Minister did not preclude any local authority from submitting proposals and claims for financial assistance unilaterally. Easington district council did that and did it extremely well.

I have been worried for some time about the response of the Department of the Environment, which laid down certain conditions in response to the representations that have been made by the ADC. It is important that the conditions should be placed on the record. Therefore, I shall quote the second paragraph of the letter dated 19 March 1979 from the Department to the secretary of the new towns committee of the Association of District Councils. It states: We have considered the Association's representations but I think I should make it clear at the outset that there are certain categories of work which we cannot regard as eligible for grant. These are as follows: (a) matters covered by byelaws or building regulations current when the buildings were approved; (b) renewal or replacement to outworn or outdated items of equipment or services; (c) any form of improvement; (d) normal maintenance. All these are, in our view, clearly outside the scope of Section 10 grant. On the surface that seems reasonable, but when councils have discussed detail they have found that it is capable of the widest interpretation and might result in no local authority receiving anything. In other words, the Department would not pay out a penny to help in what are, frankly, quite critical circumstances.

At this point I would support the Association of District Councils by saying two things—first, that the removal of basic design faults should be admitted in all cases and, secondly, that where dwellings are unsatisfactory by reason of faulty construction or bad workmanship this should be a proper subject for claim. I submit to the Minister that that is a fair compromise on the kind of conditions that were laid down and that were based on the paragraph I have just read.

My main plea is that this is a special case. I do not pretend that there are not similar problems in other new towns; that is manifestly so. However, I challenge the Minister to name one new town which has this problem on this scale. I look forward to hearing his comments on that challenge.

The evidence was prepared in great detail by Easington district council and submitted to the Minister. I am not sure whether he has yet had time to consider it in detail. I see that he is shaking his head. Frankly, it is such a huge file that I can understand that, as a new boy at the Department—if I may phrase it in that way—he will have had many other things to do, but it is essential reading. He will see the purport of my case embodied in those documents.

In the circumstances it simply is not possible for the local authority to provide this amount of money. I cannot overstress—I hope that the Minister will pay attention to this—that the work must be completed this winter. We who live in the North-East have winters such as are not experienced in any other part of the country. Last winter we were snowbound when in the South the sun was shining. I live up there and I know exactly what it is like. The tenants of these houses in this new town simply cannot endure another winter such as the last one in the sort of conditions that I am talking about tonight. The need is urgent, the case desperate and, in my estimation, unanswerable.

If he has not done so already, the Minister will be getting a request from Easington district council to receive a deputation. I know that he is a sympathetic man and I hope that he will readily agree to meet the deputation. In an Adjournment debate of this kind it is not possible to do more than outline the main points of the case. The detailed submissions, which I concede are necessary to convince a Department and a Minister, can be made only in a face-to-face meeting with the councillors and officers present. I hope that he will receive that request within the next few days.

I conclude by congratulating the Minister on his appointment. It is an onerous and an important one. There is a great deal of important work to be done. When the hon. Gentleman was an Opposition Back Bencher, only about six weeks ago, he had an enviable reputation. He was regarded as able and as knowledgeable, particularly in local government affairs. But, above all, he was regarded as being very flexible in debates—I mean this sincerely—and very humane. What I am worried about is that now that he is in the clutches of the Iron Lady he might not be so flexible and humane.

I urge the hon. Gentleman not to accept the doctrinaire policy that the present Government have already adopted, and have made widely known, of indiscriminate cutting of public expenditure regardless of the merits of the case. In the short time that I have had, I hope that I have convinced the hon. Gentleman that, at the very least, my case is worthy of very substantial and immediate investigation.

A decent home is a fundamental requirement of civilised living. I hope that the Minister will respond to my plea and respond very quickly on what we in our area regard as a most important matter.

10.41 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg)

I start by thanking the hon. Member for Easington (Mr. Dormand) for his kind words. I shall do my best to make certain that they do not influence the reply that I am about to give him.

The hon. Member is perfectly right in saying that no new town has experienced the problem on the same scale. I have not read the entire file—also a perfectly fair comment of the hon. Member—but I have read more than enough to be able, I hope, to give the hon. Member an answer that may not leave him too dissatisfied.

The House, certainly, and the hon. Member's constituents will be grateful to him for raising this subject tonight, because, as he rightly said, people value decent housing. It was, after all, an important plank in the programme that we put to the country and which contributed significantly to the massive endorsement of our policies that we received from the electorate just seven weeks ago.

It is right to pay tribute to what the Peterlee development corporation has done. I can assure the hon. Member that the comparatively small cuts that we have made should have little, if any, effect upon Peterlee's industrial programme this year. The corporation deserves great credit for its outstanding success, with the resultant increase of 1,000 jobs in the past two years.

I turn to the hon. Member's representations on behalf of Easington for financial aid for remedial work needed to the estates that the council took over last year from the Peterlee development corporation—assistance additional to the fairly substantial tapering grant that the authority is receiving already from the Department under section 10 of the New Towns (Amendment) Act 1976.

The hon. Member asked that the Government should stand by "a commitment" by the previous Administration to pay additional grant. Let me first examine exactly what that "commitment" was. The only details of the Labour Government's offer were set out in a letter sent to the Association of District Councils on 19 March. That letter did not in any way specify the level of assistance, the proportion of expenditure to be met by grant, nor indeed did it state at all clearly the nature of the work that might qualify for aid. However, the letter did spell out the kind of work that would not rank for grant, as the hon. Member has very rightly reminded the House. It was not a very forthcoming letter after so long a period of gestation.

But my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, in the debate on the Address, has already drawn attention to many instances of indecision and inaction on important matters of housing policy by the former Government Ministers during their recent tenure of office.

Having pressed the previous Government for so long—as I gather that the hon. Gentleman admitted at the end of March during a BBC television discussion in the North-East—he could perhaps be forgiven had his mind turned to that particular issue on the occasion of my right hon. Friend's speech during the debate on the Address.

While inviting claims within prescribed and constricted rules, the Department's letter to the ADC went on to stress the favourable outstanding loan debt terms on which the new town's housing had been transferred to the local authorities. Those terms reflected what was called the "warts and all" basis of the general settlement. That was the clear intention of the 1976 Act. The hon. Gentleman knows that better than I, because he was a Whip at that time.

On 26 June 1976 on the occasion of the Bill's Third Reading, the right hon. Member for Deptford (Mr. Silkin) told the House that the transfer terms for the first generation new towns would: enable the local authorities to increase their housing stock at capital costs of from one-third to one-half of the true capital cost." [Official Report, 26 June 1976; Vol. 913, c. 627.] For Easington, the total acquisition costs of the Peterlee housing amounted to just under £2,900 per dwelling, which is a derisory sum by today's standards. That low price reflects the fact that much of the Peterlee housing was built more than 15 years ago. I do not think that if any of us bought for less than £3,000 a house more than 15 years old we should expect it to be "as new".

At this stage let me put the Hon. Gentleman out of his misery. When we took office we made it clear that as far as we were able we would honour genuine commitments that may have been entered into by our predecessors. As I explained, I have considerable doubts about the true meaning and extent of the offer that was given to the ADC. The qualifications read out by the hon. Gentleman and to which reference was made make that clear.

I will ask the Department to give fresh consideration to the points that the hon. Gentleman has made and reopen discussions with ADC strictly on the basis of the earlier limited proposal made to it. That does not mean that the local authority claims will by any means be met in full. It follows that any additional works put in hand following the discussions will have to be fully contained within the overall new town's local authority housing programme That means compensating savings elsewhere.

Mr. Dormand

Will the Minister assure me that the reappraisal will be set in hand immediately, for the reason that I gave?

Mr. Finsberg

It is more complicated than that, but I shall try to help the hon. Gentleman. I said that there would have to be compensating savings elsewhere. In connection with the letter that the hon. Gentleman says that Easington is sending to the Department, if Easington has now written asking for a deputation to be received, that will obviously be carefully taken into account. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will feel that there would be little purpose in seeing that deputation while the general negotiations for the ADC take place.

I suggest that the council re-examines its own claim and resubmits it within those items for which the Department has already said that grant would be payable. That means that it must exclude the items where the Department has said that grant would not be payable. I put it in that rather convoluted way because I want the hon. Gentleman to understand that I am trying to be as flexible as I can within the terms of correspondence already sent by one of his colleagues. Obviously I have not been able to see the background notes to that particular saga.

I mentioned earlier the price. It is right to say something else about the transfer of new town houses, which may be of assistance to the House. We have never been against the principle of housing transfer for local authorities. What has happened in the hon. Gentleman's constituency shows that there is bipartisan support on that.

However, the sooner new towns become ordinary towns the better. The hon. Gentleman and I are not divided on that point. The Conservative Party has made that point of view clear on many occasions. At every stage during the debates on the 1976 Act we argued that tenants in the public sector aspire to own their own homes. There are many such tenants in the new towns, as there are in every local authority area. Those tenants are capable of buying at once and should be given the opportunity to do so. My hon. Friends the Members for Basildon (Mr. Proctor), for Northampton, North (Mr. Marlow) and Northampton, South (Mr. Morris), for Peterborough (Dr. Mawhinney), for Hertford and Stevenage (Mr. Wells) and for Welwyn and Hatfield (Mr. Murphy) are indebted to the Labour Government for not having learnt that lesson.

The Department will gladly consider any evidence that the local authority can put before us. Easington is not the only new town with this problem. Therefore, negotiations must continue with the Association of District Councils. However, I am not clear about the Labour Government's former intentions. I do not know how far down the path of additional grants they were prepared to go. The documentation available to me is not clear and the generous terms on which the housing was handed over clouds the issue.

I repeat what the hon. Gentleman has said about the wording of the letter that was sent to the ADC in March. By its reply, the ADC understood that letter. The letter stated that the four categories could not be covered. Flexible though I would like the situation to be, I do not believe that it would be possible to reopen the categories. It is self-evident that they should not be covered by a fresh examination.

That does not mean that other matters cannot be covered. I cannot tell the hon. Gentleman how quickly a decision will be reached. If Easington's letter gives us the information that we seek we shall hold talks with the ADC in parallel. When a formula has been agreed with the ADC we shall examine urgently the problems of the authority that the hon. Gentleman has raised.

I hope that the hon. Gentleman believes that the Government will examine the matter sympathetically—not just because he has raised it in a manner the House expects, in that he has given the facts as fully as possible, but because, if possible, we want people not to suffer the conditions that he described, of a bad winter like that of last year. It was not only the North-East that suffered from heavy snow; some of my friends in East Anglia were snowed up for five days. They did not find it helpful to have a friendly wave from above by the "Minister for Snow" flying in a helicopter. That did not produce the sunshine.

I do not believe that I can give the hon. Gentleman more information on the point. I hope that he will use his influence in the matter. Easington council, like every other local authority, has been given wide powers in advance of the "right to buy" legislation that we intend to introduce. The authorities can sell the houses they control at generous discounts below the current market value. Sales of the former Peterlee houses to tenants who wish to buy their homes, even at a discount, would be financially advantageous to the council—given the amount it paid for the dwellings and its need to finance remedial work elsewhere.

I urge the council strongly to exercise its sales power to the full, in its own interests, as well as in the interests of its tenants. If it does not, the only people who will suffer are the tenants. We have inherited inflation from the hon. Gentleman's Government and if he does not use his considerable charm and influence on his local authority the tenants will suffer because of the authority's dogma.

If the hon. Gentleman still feels, after the ADC negotiations and after we have been able to consider a formula that might apply to Easington, that a deputation is needed, I shall be delighted to receive it. I hope, however, that by that time we shall have cleared the way and he will not feel it necessary to bring a deputation.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at five minutes to Eleven o'clock.