HC Deb 15 February 1984 vol 54 cc257-8
11. Mr. Allen Adams

asked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will consider reimbursing from Government funds those people who have incurred survey fees as a prerequisite to a local authority housing improvement grant, who now find that no such grant is available.

Mr. Ancram

Expenditure on fees may at present be included in the total expense that local authorities decide to approve for any improvement grant application where approvals are not given. There has never been, nor can there be now, any Government reimbursement of survey fees.

Mr. Adams

Will the Minister stop waffling like a demented sponge on this issue? Is he aware that last year many ordinary home-owners, probably many of them traditional Conservative voters, went in good faith to their local surveyor and asked him to survey their property on the basis that they would get a home improvement grant? Out of the blue an iron curtain came down and they did not get the grant. Is the Minister aware that these people, many of them elderly and many of them traditional Conservatives, are now out of pocket by £400–£500? The House is entitled to ask whether the Government intend to do anything about that. Do they intend to reimburse these people in any way? Secondly—[HON. MEMBERS: "Too long."] — if, out of the goodness of their heart, the Government reinstate home improvement grants next year, will these people have to pay a second time?

Mr. Ancram

I shall have to ask the hon. Gentleman to give me a lesson in demented sponges behind the iron curtain after, rather than during, Question Time. He must be careful what he says, because there was never an automatic or absolute entitlement to grant, and to suggest that there was is to distort the facts. The figures speak for themselves. In three years—last year, this year and next year — £350 million will have been spent on improvement grants in Scotland, and that is a record of which the Government can rightly be proud.