Bed-and-Breakfast Accommodation (Hansard, 12 June 1991)

§ 13. Miss Lestor
To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment how many school-age children are in bed-and-breakfast accommodation.

§ Mr. Yeo
This information is not available centrally, but it is estimated that about 65 per cent. of households accepted as homeless last year and found other permanent or temporary accommodation contained dependent children. The Government's homelessness initiative is intended to help local authorities in London and the south-east to secure more permanent housing as an alternative to using bed-and-breakfast and other temporary accommodation for homeless families.

§ Miss Lestor
If the Minister is saying that the Government do not collect the statistics nationally, it is about time that they did. Research undertaken by Kim Greener at Brunel university has shown that 140,000 school-age children are now in bed-and-breakfast accommodation. Is the Minister aware that those children suffer nutritionally because there are no proper cooking facilities in the accommodation and that that affects their educational attainment, because a hungry or malnourished child cannot learn properly? It is about time that the Government reversed their housing policy, because the selling of council houses has meant that all the council houses that could house large families have gone. 903 Many of the families concerned have been in bed-and-breakfast accommodation for 18 months and their children are suffering to a degree that should not be permitted.

§ Mr. Yeo
I am astonished at the hon. Lady's question. Our figures show that there are about 11,000 or 12,000 families in bed-and-breakfast accommodation. Unless each family has 12 children, the figure of 140,000 clearly bears no relation to reality. I was also interested to hear the hon. Lady say that the Labour party would abandon the policy of selling council houses.
We have never suggested that bed-and-breakfast accommodation was a satisfactory form of housing, even on a temporary basis. I am glad to say that the figures show that the sharp increase in the use of bed-and-breakfast accommodation some years ago has now come to an end and that today the number of families in bed-and-breakfast accomodation represents only a tiny fraction of the number of empty properties held by local authorities. The vast majority of such authorities are under Labour control and the price of the disastrous and incompetent management of the housing stock by Labour-controlled local authorities is paid every day by homeless families and their children.

§ Mr. Leighton
Why are there so many thousands of children in bed-and-breakfast accommodation when there is so much underused accommodation available? Was not the market supposed to bring supply and demand into balance? As the Secretary of State is so well supplied in this respect and has several large houses, should not the Minister speak to the right hon. Gentleman and invite him to make a personal contribution to the solution of this grave problem?

§ Mr. Yeo
That was yet another questioner who shows the Labour party's deep underlying hostility to home ownership. Not only could every homeless family in bed-and-breakfast accommodation be accommodated in a tiny fraction of the empty local authority properties, but every single family in the country currently in temporary housing could be accommodated as well, and there would still be 40,000 properties left over.