Housing (Hansard, 22 February 1983)

§ Mr. Joseph Dean (Leeds, West)

I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make provision for people living in industrialised and semi-industrialised built housing. My purpose in introducing the Bill is to try to give justice to a section of the community who, through no fault of theirs, are in difficulty because of the accommodation they occupy and the financial burden that it imposes upon them. I am, of course, referring to those described in the Bill who live in industrialised and semi-industrialised built accommodation.

Some examples will show the size and nature of the problem. Day by day, week by week, increasing evidence emerges that this policy has been an almost total failure. Huge sums of money are needed to correct it. It is grossly unfair to expect council house tenants in general to meet that expense by suffering substantial rent increases over long periods. Of the total of about 5£5 million units of public sector accommodation, almost 1 million have been built by industrialised or semi-industrialised systems. How did that happen? To increase public sector housing production, successive Governments promoted, approved and tailored the subsidy system to encourage local authorities to adopt systems that have proved to be disastrous.

One example is the Hunslet Grange development, in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, South (Mr. Rees), which was built 14 years ago at a cost of about £5 million. Remedial costs of £1.5 million during those 14 years bring the total cost to more than £6 million. The decision has now been taken to demolish the property because it is no longer lettable and is structurally dangerous. That leaves an outstanding loan of £4.76 million or, in replacement terms, £863,000 a year from the Leeds city council housing revenue account. That means a 22p a week increase on every council house rent in Leeds for the next 40 years. Those figures do not take into account repayment costs.

Almost every other local authority with a large housing stock has inherited similar problems, including Hull, Sheffield and Manchester, which, in using the Bison and Camus systems, have a problem at least two and a half times greater than that of Leeds.

I warned the Minister in an Adjournment debate in June last year that the problems in the properties that I have mentioned, which are all deck access flats, were but the tip of an iceberg that was surfacing quickly, and that the low-rise system-built dwellings would follow sooner or later. A conservative estimate of the money required to deal with the problem is a minimum of £3,000 million. I have mentioned that figure at least twice in the Chamber. The Minister has chosen not to say whether it is wrong, but it is significant that he has not pointed an arrow in its direction.

The low-rise type industrialised and semi-industrialised systems are now deteriorating as fast as the others. The Minister has taken action to deal with the problems of those who have bought council-owned Airey houses. I do not know why the Minister has been so selective in deciding that only those who have bought Airey houses from local authorities shall receive assistance for remedial treatment. However, another group that must be charged 805 for its culpability in foisting this disaster on the nation during the past 15 to 20 years are the builders who sponsored, designed and orchestrated the sale of those houses to local authorities.

It is an absolute obscenity that council tenants who have no say in the type of accommodation that is built, and young couples who are not yet in council houses but who in future may be council house tenants, will be called on, unless action is taken, to finance the removal and replacement of these monstrosities, which were not the result of their actions. In the Bill I hope to relate some of the responsibilities to the private sector which, as I said, built, sponsored and promoted the systems.

I realise that it is out of order for me to ask for Government finance in a ten-minute Bill, but this is a national problem. It could be said that, since 1 million units will eventually have to be disgorged from our housing system, the slum clearance programme over the past 20 years has been an abject failure. In some respects, it can be said that the cure has almost killed the patient.