Housing Waiting Lists

HC Deb 05 December 1988 vol 143 cc1-3

1. Mr. Alan W. Williams

To ask the Secretary of State for Wales if he will give the number of people on the housing waiting list in (1) Carmarthen district and (2) Wales for 1979 and at the latest available date.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. Ian Grist)

Information on the number of people on housing waiting lists is not held centrally.

Mr. Williams

Why will the Government not provide us with that information? Are they covering up and deliberately withholding embarrassing information? Does the Minister agree with the housing organisations SHAC and Shelter that the estimated number of homeless people in Wales has doubled since 1979, and that more than 6,000 families and single people are now homeless?

Is the Minister aware that 2,000 people are on the housing waiting list in the Carmarthen district? The Government's policies do not allow the district council to build houses even though it wants to do so. Why are the Government so heartless and irresponsible towards the homeless?

Mr. Grist

The hon. Gentleman does the Government an injustice with his first question. The figures are produced by different authorities in different ways and are not comparable. That has been so for a long time. Indeed, local authorities prefer to produce their own figures in their own way.

During the past two years 61 local authority houses and 398 private houses have been built in the Carmarthen district, compared with 35 and 187 respectively during the last two years of the Labour Government.

Mr. Gwilym Jones

What estimates does my hon. Friend have for additional rented accommodation that will come on to the housing market as a result of the new Housing Act?

Mr. Grist

We expect that a great deal of money will be made available through various means—for example, pension funds, insurance companies, housing associations and others—to expand the private and public rented sectors for socially rented housing.

Mr. Anderson

Is it not daft that no central figures are available so that the Welsh Office can assess the overall need? Will the Minister consider with some humility the figures for Swansea, where more than 4,000 people are on the waiting list—a three-year high—where there has been no new build because of Government policies and where there is a reducing housing stock because of council house sales? Is he aware that increasing numbers of people are falling behind with their mortgage payments and are having their houses repossessed? They look to the council to provide them with houses, but it cannot do so. What advice does the Minister give the council in those circumstances?

Mr. Grist

The hon. Gentleman should be aware that there is new build in his city. His council should find the means to use flexibly the powers that other councils use for new build. It is not true that there has been a fall in the housing stock because of the right to buy? The housing stock remains exactly where it was—it just happens to be owned by people who were previously its tenants. They have a stake in the hon. Gentleman's city that they never had before.