HC Deb 10 November 1982 vol 31 cc536-8
10. Mr. Guy Barnett

asked the Secretary of State for the Environment when he intends to give details of the level of council house rent increases devised by the Government in 1983–84.

17. Mr. Winnick

asked the Secretary of State for the Environment whether he expects local authorities to increase council house rents in 1983; and, if so, by what amount.

Mr. Heseltine

I issued the statutory consultation paper to local authorities on Monday of this week, proposing that housing subsidy for 1983–84 should be calculated on the basis of an 85p increase in the local contribution. Actual rent increases are a matter for decision by individual authorities.

Mr. Barnett

Is it not shameful that after three and a half years in office, during which time average council house rents have more than doubled, the Government should even contemplate the possibility of further increases? Ought not the Secretary of State to be thinking in terms of a rent freeze?

Mr. Heseltine

The hon. Gentleman will remember that the Labour Government believed that keeping rents broadly in line with the rate of inflation was a reasonable policy.

Mr. Winnick

Is the Secretary of State aware that council tenants throughout the country are thoroughly fed up with being punished by the exorbitant rent increases of the past three years? Is it not a fact that council house rents have increased by more than double the increase in the retail prices index in the same period?

Mr. Heseltine

I am sure that the hon. Member is aware that the standards of maintenance on council estates—arising from the fact that capital projects were cut in half by the Labour Government—presented real difficulties, which we have had to put right. Now that we are in a position to get a better balance, we can ensure that council tenants gain from the fall in inflation.

Mr. Squire

Will my right hon. Friend join me in condemning the scaremongering tactics of the Labour Party, which, in the past two weeks, has circulated rumours about prospective excessive rent rises, which have caused unnatural and unfair concern to many people?

Mr. Heseltine

I understand why my hon. Friend raises the matter. It is not for me to apologise to the House for the shameless behaviour of the right hon. Member for Manchester, Ardwick (Mr. Kaufman), who cynically trudged round the country telling people that there would be a £2 a week council house rent increase. That was mainly to help the Labour Party in the by-elections—and what disastrous results it achieved.

Mr. Kaufman

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that we are gratified to have scared him off the £2 increase that was proposed in his document? Is he further aware that even an 85p increase is twice as high as the Government's 3½ per cent. pay limit? As-no thanks to the Government—home-owners are at last to have mortgage interest payments reduced for the first time to below the level that the Government inherited from Labour, is it not unjust that council tenants are to have a 134 per cent. rent increase-five times as much as rents went up under Labour?

Mr. Heseltine

I think that we now understand the difficulty into which the right hon. Gentleman has got himself. The document to which he refers is a local authority document, and the figures in it were chosen by the local authorities. As those figures were not endorsed in any way by my Department, will he now have the grace to admit that the information on which he based his whole scaring attitude was phoney and that he has misled every council tenant in the land?

Mr. Kaufman

These were the right hon. Gentleman's proposals, and he knows it. If the Prime Minister had not got into a panic, preparing for the general election, it would have been a £2 increase.

Mr. Heseltine

I must tell the right hon. Gentleman that the proposals are not mine. It was his failure to understand that fact that caused him to indulge in this scare technique.

Mr. Greenway

Did my right hon. Friend hear the Labour Party talking about rent increases of 134 per cent. over three and a half years, when the Labour-controlled Greater London Council increased rates by 97 per cent. in less than a year? Does he think that it is moral for the Labour Party to advocate rent freezes at the expense of the ratepayers?

Mr. Heseltine

I sympathise with my hon. Friend, but it is not just a matter of rent freezes at the expense of ratepayers; it is rent freezes at the expense of appalling housing conditions for people who live on council estates.

Mr. Kaufman

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I am sure that the Secretary of State would not wish to mislead the House about the document to which I referred. It has on it the words "Department of the Environment 18 June".

Mr. Heseltine

May I reply to that point, Mr. Speaker.

The assumptions in that document were produced by the local authority associations as a set of hypothetical calculations. They were their assumptions, not ours.

Mr. Freeson

Bearing in mind the additional burden that high rates have on rents for council tenants and, indeed, many other house occupants, will the Secretary of State advise local authorities to use significant proportions of their capital receipts—to which he referred this afternoon—to reduce the rates burden; and possibly rents, too?

Mr. Heseltine

The right hon. Gentleman has a deep knowledge of these matters, but I am not sure how capital receipts could be used in that way. He was in the Department of the Environment long enough to know that the rules broadly divide the capital and current account programmes. I do not think that that has changed significantly in a way that would make his proposals possible.