Homelessness (Hansard, 4 March 1987)

§ 8. Mr. Patchett
asked the Secretary of State for the Environment what is his latest estimate of the number of homeless persons in England.

§ 12. Mr. Dubs
asked the Secretary of State for the Environment what is his estimate of the number of homeless single people in London; and how many of these are estimated to be sleeping rough.

§ Mr. Ridley
In the year ending 30 September 1986, local authorities in England accepted responsibility for 101,280 formerly homeless households, and found them accommodation.
I am concerned that a number of people are sleeping rough in London. But as they do not qualify under the homelessness legislation, there are no soundly based figures on their numbers, nor on the number of homeless single people.

§ Mr. Patchett
Does the Secretary of State recognise that the lining of the pockets of landlords and hoteliers is not the answer to this problem? Does he not think that it would be better to give the money to local authorities to build homes? does he recognise that the Government's policies on the homeless merely exacerbate the problem?

§ Mr. Ridley
The hon. Gentleman has not quite got it right. Half of those who are accepted as homeless are put into permanent local authority housing immediately. For the rest, a very large amount of empty local authority housing could be used if only authorities would manage it efficiently. I agree that there is a problem while people who are accepted as homeless must be put into temporary accommodation until permanent accommodation can be found. We have produced extra resources for the Housing Corporation to try to assist in the stress areas.

§ Mr. Dubs
May I put it to the Secretary of State that in London many single people can neither afford to buy nor to pay private sector rents and that as they are being completely missed out by local authorities, especially by Tory-controlled Wandsworth, they have no alternative but to sleep rough or to find somebody else's floor to sleep on? Is it right that a whole generation of single people should be left out of the housing market altogether, with no prospects for the future?

§ Mr. Ridley
The hon. Gentleman knows that most such people would be eligible for housing benefit, so it is not a question of not being able to afford the rent. He also knows that, as I have said, there are about 750,000 more houses in this country than there are households.

§ Mr. Dubs
Not in London.

§ Mr. Ridley
It may conceivably be a good idea for such people to go to somewhere where there is a home, rather than to sleep rough in London.

§ Mr. Hill
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the whole problem started with the well-intentioned private Member's Bill, introduced by the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Ross), the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977, in which it was visualised that we could provide homes for everyone who cared to move to another area? Has that not created a vast problem? Does he have in mind any way in which that Act could be reviewed because it promises too much and creates terrible problems for local authorities, especially in the south?

§ Mr. Ridley
I do not think that any quarter of the House feels that the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act should be repealed. It makes it clear that it is those who have a local residence qualification to whom the local authority has an obligation, if they are accepted as 867 homeless. However, there is a great deal of acceptance of people who do not have the proper residence qualification and that is making the problem worse in those scarcity areas.

§ Mr. Greenway
Is my right hon. Friend aware that his comments are absolutely right and that in Ealing the 50 homeless families on the list which the new hard-left council inherited from the previous Conservative council last May at a cost of £300,000 a year have now been swamped by 500, who have been drawn on to the list by the abolition of residence points? That means that local people have no chance at all and that people are sucked on to the list from all over the country and the world. That list is expected to number 1,000 next May, at a cost of £5 million. Is that not ridiculous?

§ Mr. Ridley
I am sure that my hon. Friend's figures are correct, although I have no confirmation of them here. May I add that if such councils spent less money on nonsensical and irresponsible things — heavens knows they are charging high enough rates—they could afford to house their own people. They should stop wasting money on nuclear-free zones, gays and lesbians and such things.

§ Dr. Cunningham
Can we have less of the crass and insensitive stupidity of the Secretary of State for the Environment? Should people who are without work take the advice of the chairman of the Conservative party and go looking for jobs, or take his advice and go elsewhere looking for homes? Are the Government so incompetent that they cannot give people decent houses and the opportunity of a job?

§ Mr. Ridley
It is crass and incompetent of the hon. Gentleman not to realise that it is better to find a home where one is empty, than to sleep out on the pavement if one does not have to. Housing is the responsibility of councils. In London, where the Labour party is running so many councils inefficiently, the Audit Commission has stated that about £20 million a year is wasted on totally frivolous national issues and spending of the sort that I have mentioned. That £20 million a year would easily solve the problem of London's homeless if those councils got their priorities right.

§ Mr. Meadowcroft
Will the Secretary of State accept that no Member of this House wants to keep a single house empty for a moment longer than is necessary, but that that will not necessarily do much to help the problem of homelessness? In the borough of Tower Hamlets the officers estimate that one fifth of the amount that is allowed under rate capping must be spent on the homeless, because of the mismatch of the empty properties with the needs of the homeless.

§ Mr. Ridley
Why does the borough of Tower Hamlets have six mini town halls, six town clerks, six sets of administrators, and six lots of bureaucrats? If it had spent all that money on housing the homeless, it might have got somewhere.