Housing Waiting Lists (Hansard, 10 June 1981)

§ 8. Mr. Frank Allaun
asked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will introduce new measures to meet the housing needs of the 1.3 million families on local authority housing waiting lists.

§ Mr. Stanley
The Government have already introduced a comprehensive range of measures to secure better use of the existing rented stock in both the public and private sectors, to promote low cost home ownership and to give local authorities the maximum discretion in using their capital allocations and capital receipts to meet the housing needs of their areas. I hope that local authorities will make full use of the measures that have been introduced.

§ Mr. Allaun
That is no good. Is not the answer to remove the financial straitjacket on local authorities? Is it not damned nonsense to talk about cutting public expenditure when the Government are increasing it by £5,000 per man per year as the dole queues grow? Does the Minister accept the figure of 428,380 unemployed in the building and related trades, such as brick, glass and timber, and that even that figure is increasing as the supply of council housing is cut?

§ Mr. Stanley
In his original question the hon. Member referred to the figure of 1.3 million families on local authority housing waiting lists. I draw his attention to the findings of the national dwelling and housing survey, carried out in 1977 by the Government that he supported, which showed that half of all persons registered on waiting lists were already in council accommodation. That suggests some scepticism about the sort of figures that he has been using. If he is anxious to help local authorities to get additional accommodation made available, I warmly commend him to urge all local authorities, and particularly Labour-controlled local authorities, to sell their vacant land and their vacant houses, to speed up the sale of council houses to sitting tenants, and to prevail on his right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Ardwick (Mr. Kaufman) to stop wrecking shortholds.

§ Sir Albert Costain
Does not the Minister consider that the question put by the hon. Member for Salford, East (Mr. Allaun) is absurd in the light of the fact that Labour Members continually ask for new measures and that, when the Government bring in the new measure of shorthold tenancies, Labour Members oppose it? Will the Minister accept that up to 100,000 landlords would be glad to let their houses but that the official Opposition are so vindictive and spiteful that they threaten that if landlords are foolish enough to let their houses the Opposition will ensure that they pay for it?

§ Mr. Stanley
My hon. Friend is entirely right. It is totally inconsistent of the Opposition, on the one hand, to criticise the Government because there is insufficient rented accommodation in the public sector while trying, on the other hand, to wreck the provision of rented accommodation in the private sector.

§ Mr. Jay
Is it not quite natural that the worst figure for housing starts for 50 years should be recorded under the worst Government for 50 years?

§ Mr. Stanley
As the right hon. Gentleman may have heard if he was here at the beginning of questions, although he refers to a particular figure for starts, last year the largest number of local authority dwellings were improved since 1973.

§ Mr. Garel-Jones
Will my hon. Friend point out to the hon. Member for Salford, East (Mr. Allaun) and the more obtuse of his colleagues that the 1.3 million families to which he referred did not arrive on the waiting list in May 1979? Will my hon. Friend tell the House what was the figure on the waiting list before the Government took office?

§ Mr. Stanley
The previous Labour Government took the same view on this issue as the present Government, which is that, in seeking information from local authorities, waiting lists were a very unreliable indicator of the housing need. Therefore, when the original housing investment programme system was created by the previous Administration, waiting list information was not one of the items sought from local authorities.

§ Mrs. Ann Taylor
As the Minister is so keen to divert attention from the building programme towards improvements, will he give an assurance that improvements this year will be as high as last year? Instead of looking at so-called new initiatives, will he go back to the old-fashioned policy and start to promote the building of houses?

§ Mr. Stanley
As the hon. Lady will be aware, the balance between new building and improvement this year will depend on the decisions taken by local authorities and not on decisions taken by Ministers.
As she refers to local initiatives and building, she may like to know that there is a very considerable response from local authorities to the Government's low cost home ownership programme. On the latest indications that we have, 105 authorities are making land sales for housing, 80 authorities have building-for-sale schemes on their own land, 59 have improvement-for-sale schemes, and 63 authorities are selling homes unimproved. About two-thirds of all local authorities are responding to the Government's initiatives.