HC Deb 28 June 1989 vol 155 cc966-7
9. Mr. Simon Hughes

To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will make a statement on the level of rent and rate arrears in London.

Mr. Gummer

At 1 April 1988, the rent and rate arrears of London authorities amounted to £350 million—just under half the total for England. Arrears ranged from less than 5 per cent. of the annual rent and rates due for such authorities as Hillingdon and Barking and Dagenham, to some 20 per cent. or more for Brent, Lambeth and Southwark. High arrears can be attributed only to the boroughs' poor management. It is for authorities to see that rent and rates are collected, but the measures that I announced last Monday should encourage greater financial discipline.

Mr. Hughes

Does the Minister recognise, as many authorities including Tory authorities do, that the massive increases in rent arrears result, substantially, from the Government's £650 million housing benefit cuts last year? Does the Minister accept that, as the Government's policy unfolds next year, with the poll tax and rent increases, the tenants who pay their rents regularly will be picking up the tab for the barrage of Government policies that, increasingly, penalise the poor?

Mr. Gummer

That cannot possibly be true, because if it were, the rent and rate arrears in the Labour-run authorities of Hillingdon, Dagenham and Barking would be similar to those in Labour-run Brent, Lambeth and Southwark, but they are not. Arrears in Brent are bad because, until recently, it did not even have a list of its tenants and the keys to its council houses were being sold in Nigeria. It is not surprising that it cannot collect the rents.

Mr. Bowis

Are not the biggest lists for rent arrears, rate arrears and squatted properties in London in the Labour-run boroughs? Are not such boroughs cheating on the homeless and on those who desperately need repairs to their homes? Is it not high time for those who, loyally and legally, pay their rates and rents to have some recompense from such dissolute councils?

Mr. Gummer

My hon. Friend is right. If rents are not collected, other people have to pay for them, whether they are the ratepayers or other tenants. In those authorities that already do not subsidise their rent from ratepayers, the other tenants have already been contributing. Some boroughs do not collect the rents because their system of rent collection is extremely inefficient, and they have no intention of collecting it. When a borough has on its arrears committee a councillor who is herself in considerable arrears, it is not surprising that people do not pay their rents.

Dr. Cunningham

I believe that the Minister is aware that the leaders of Brent borough council in particular recognise the force of what he is saying and have made it clear to him that they are making strenuous new efforts to resolve the problems of rent arrears, as they should be doing. Will the Minister reflect again on the answer that he has just given to the hon. Member for Battersea (Mr. Bowis), who was asking for protection for tenants who pay their rents? Is the hon. Gentleman aware, as the Minister is because he announced it, that the Government are planning additionally to place burdens on those tenants by making them pay for that shortfall?

Mr. Gummer

The hon. Gentleman should look carefully at the programme that was announced by Brent. I have done some work on the more detailed programme produced by the Labour-controlled London borough of Southwark. If it proceeds with its new tougher policy, it should have started before the Spanish Armada had arrived if it wanted to collect its rent arrears by today. The borough will collect only a tiny proportion—£78,000 a year—of rent arrears of £37 million.

Mrs. Ann Taylor

Treat this seriously.

Mr. Gummer

It is all right for the hon. Lady, but the people who pay for those rent arrears are the tenants and the ratepayers who pay their rents and rates. Why should the tenants of Barking and Dagenham pay for the inefficency of the Labour council in Southwark? Why should the tenants of Hillingdon pay for the inefficiency of the Labour party in Brent? We must have an efficient system, and if Brent collected its rents the paying tenants would not have to suffer. Because of the Opposition's rottweiler tendency, they are determined not to listen to the facts—[Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker

Order. It is very unseemly to make animal noises.

Mr. Gummer

Because the Opposition do not want to hear the facts—which are that the tenants and the ratepayers who pay their rent and rates have to carry the cost of those who do not—the rottweiler tendency wins again.