HC Deb 16 March 1994 vol 239 cc871-2
9. Lady Olga Maitland

To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what plans he has to make housing waiting lists more effective.

The Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. John Selwyn Gummer)

Our consultation paper proposes a single local waiting list so that social housing is allocated as fairly as possible.

Lady Olga Maitland

I thank my right hon. Friend for his reply. Will he confirm that, under the proposals, there will be adequate measures to take care of the most vulnerable members of our society?

Mr. Gummer

Certainly, I would not have introduced the consultation paper unless that was an absolute, basic fact.

Mr. Hardy

With millions of people in need of decent homes and scores, if not hundreds, of thousands of construction workers unemployed, is not the best answer to the length of housing waiting lists to build affordable low-cost housing for people to live in and to provide the jobs that mean that construction workers do not have to go abroad to make a living?

Mr. Gummer

That is why we have already exceeded the target on which we fought the previous election. If the hon. Gentleman is suggesting that we should spend more, perhaps he has not talked the matter over with his hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw), because that sounds to me like another promise to spend more money if the Labour party were elected.

Mr. David Nicholson

I agree with my right hon. Friend that we must clamp down on abuses in the housing waiting list system, but will he take the advice that my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Lady Olga Maitland) put to him—young women with children should not be put at risk as a result of these measures? Will he also concentrate on continuing to revive the private rented sector and, therefore, take care that none of those measures damages the Government's rent-a-room initiative?

Mr. Gummer

I quite agree with my hon. Friend's first point, which is why we want equal access to the waiting list on the ground of need, instead of the present system. I agree that, as far as possible, we should revive the private rented sector, as we want as many homes as possible, particularly to provide for those who are without decent accommodation.