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§ Mrs. Ann Winterton (Congleton)As many hon. Members are aware, the country's main national homelessness charity, Shelter, recently organised a promotional event, Shelter Week, through which it sought to boost awareness of its work and to encourage support and involvement by our constituents. I was asked to record a taped message of support for the promotional campaign and I was delighted to do what I could in a limited way to assist. As a result of that involvement, I decided to seek an opportunity to put on record a number of important points of detail and of principle in an effort to assist in moving the issue of homelessness further up the public, political and parliamentary agenda.
My starting point is simple. In a well organised and affluent society such as ours, it is a tragedy in personal, social and economic terms that homelessness continues to be a major problem. I am anxious to do all that I can to encourage the establishment of a new consensus in finding practical solutions. The more I look at the situation, the more I am convinced that real and lasting solutions will be found only when the problem is tackled by a genuine partnership between national and local government, housing associations, charities, campaigning organisations and individuals.
It is against that background that we need, first, to appreciate the sheer scale of the problem, which persists despite the commitment and determination of successive housing Ministers. In February, Shelter published a report which showed that it is helping a record number of homeless and badly housed people—it helped 64,000 households last year—through its national network of housing aid centres which are supported by central and local government grants as well as, of course, by charitable donations. The report also clearly demonstrated how crucial a decent home is to stable family life and how homelessness causes great individual misery and leads to increasing burdens on the taxpayer.
In 1993, some 139,790 households in England were accepted as homeless under the law, although many more sought assistance under the legislation and were not accepted. Although there has been a welcome decline in the number of people accepted as homeless since 1992, research by Shelter published last year showed that many authorities believe that the reduction in numbers was due to a temporary increase in the supply of housing association homes following measures in the 1992 autumn statement.
There remains considerable concern that homelessness will increase once again as the housing association development programme of homes to rent is reduced next year. The output by housing associations of new or rehabilitated homes to rent will be less than a third of what many experts agree is required. The Minister may be interested to learn that the Housing Corporation's assessment of housing needs concluded that about 100,000 low cost homes a year would be needed for the decade up to 2001. Perhaps he will take the opportunity provided by this debate to say whether he agrees with that assessment and what research his Department has carried out on the subject.
It is not just that the number of new homes coming on to the market has been reduced. The volume of new lettings of council and housing association homes has 312 remained relatively static and in many areas the size or type of housing most commonly available to re-let is all too rarely appropriate for those in most urgent need. The success of the right-to-buy scheme, which I whole-heartedly support, has had the practical effect of allowing 1.5 million council houses to be sold, removing them for ever from the system.
The private rented sector is often financially beyond the means of many people, especially the very young, who cannot afford the necessary deposit or rent in advance. In short, in some areas there is not enough decent housing available at affordable rents. One of the largest factors in the homelessness equation—the breakdown of traditional family life—must also be confronted.
Liberal divorce laws, the encouragement of teenage sexual activity and single parenthood, and the general undermining of the family unit—by which I mean the husband and wife and their children bound together by marriage—by taxation and other legislation, have been major contributors to changes in our country's demography. Those changes have led to less stable homes and more fragmentation. Successive Governments cannot ignore their responsibility for those social changes.
There is much evidence of disrepair in the existing housing stock. One in six homes needs urgent repairs costing more than £1,000, and they include more than 2 million owner-occupied homes. Some of those who own their homes continue to face real problems of negative equity, although, thankfully, that problem is less acute in the part of the world that I represent in Cheshire. The problem has been exacerbated by rising interest rates and the fears created by the decision of the Secretary of State for Social Security substantially to reduce income support for mortgage interest payments. That move has prompted the Council of Mortgage Lenders, the Building Societies Association, the House-Builders Federation and the Manufacturing and Construction Industries Alliance to warn of an increase in the number of repossessions next year.
My hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton), who is the chairman of the Manufacturing and Construction Industries Alliance, told the House just a few days ago that, thus far, the house building industry is certainly not participating in the more general economic upturn that we all agree is taking place. That view will be shared by many. Unless the Treasury takes steps to encourage greater confidence in the housing market, there is every prospect that home ownership—participation in the property-owning democracy—will no longer be such a popular option as it has been in the immediate past.
One of my greatest concerns is the effect on family life, on the development of children and thus on the future of our society, of placing too many families in relatively insecure temporary accommodation. I remain concerned that too many local authorities place too many such families in bed-and-breakfast accommodation at an extremely high cost to the public purse. Living in such accommodation is surely bad for the health, education and welfare of families, especially those containing young people. Shelter is to be congratulated on at least highlighting the problems and pressing instead for resources for investment in good quality housing.
A recent report by the Standing Conference on Public Health estimated that homelessness and poor housing conditions were adding a staggering £2 billion a year to health care costs. More than 50,000 families live in 313 temporary accommodation in which disrepair, overcrowding, shared cooking and sanitary facilities, and lack of space for children's play and study lead to higher rates of infection, depression, anxiety and behavioural problems in children, and an increased number of injuries sustained through accidents. Surely it is not, therefore, a case of being unable to afford the resources to tackle the problem; rather it is illogical and counter-productive to allow those problems to continue further.
I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will indicate a willingness to agree that all changes in housing policy and benefit arrangements should be assessed against the test of whether they will increase or decrease the number of families in unsuitable bed-and-breakfast accommodation. A classic example of just what can go wrong when bringing forward changes in housing policy is revealed when we consider how the funds saved by reducing housing subsidies to housing associations and councils has been offset by more current and future spending on housing benefit as a result of higher rents. Higher rents also contribute to higher wage demands and thus fuel the inflationary spiral.
A recent survey found that 94 per cent. of the public believe that homeless people should be found homes, although that may he slightly idealistic in some ways. We need to build on that consensus to find a real, lasting and practical solution to the problem. We need an adequate supply of affordable homes for people who need them, and those in the greatest need are the homeless.
In addition, we need an owner-occupied sector which is secure and not just a route into homelessness for some people. We need a housing system that offers mobility, flexibility and real choice. Surely we, the Government, charities and individuals need to do everything that we can to extend measures which help people to keep their homes, and to ensure stability in family life, of which housing is an essential part.
I hope that, if nothing else, this short debate has provided the opportunity for my hon. Friend the Minister to respond constructively to what I have said, to avoid polemics, and to rise to the challenge for the Government to redouble their efforts to tackle a problem. In a relatively wealthy, well run society such as ours, there can be little excuse for the continuation of that problem.
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Robert B. Jones)The principal aim of the Government's housing policy is that a decent home should be within reach of every family. Relieving homelessness is an important part of our housing policy. Figures collected for my Department each quarter by local authorities show that fewer and fewer households are becoming homeless and requiring local authority help to obtain accommodation.
For the past two and a half years, there has been a reduction every quarter in the year-on-year numbers of households accepted for rehousing under homelessness legislation. The figures show that the Government have been successful in encouraging authorities to move away from using bed and breakfast hotels as temporary accommodation for homeless households. The number of homeless applicants living in bed and breakfast accommodation at the end of September 1994 was only about a third of the number three years previously.
314 A number of authorities use short-term leases of privately rented accommodation as a better alternative to provide good quality temporary accommodation for homeless households. To help authorities to continue to provide that accommodation, we shall shortly be laying regulations which will extend for up to a further two years the period for which such leases can be held without the cost scoring as capital expenditure.
Our policies are dealing with the needs of people sleeping rough. The Government's six-year £180 million rough sleepers initiative in central London is widely regarded as having had considerable success in reducing the number of people sleeping on the streets of the capital. A count by voluntary agencies last November found about 290 people sleeping rough in central London, a reduction on estimates of more than 1,000 before the initiative began in 1990. Independent research into the first three years of the initiative also showed that several thousand people had been helped to find accommodation through the initiative, and that many more had been prevented from becoming homeless in the first place.
Many of the people who remain on the streets of central London are the "hard core" of rough sleepers who may have slept out for a number of years. They may suffer from alcohol or drug abuse, or they may have mental health problems. The needs of those people can best be met by focused co-operation by health authorities, social services departments, housing authorities and voluntary sector agencies. We have to accept, however, that some long-term rough sleepers will be resistant to offers of accommodation and that it may take time to persuade them to come inside.
My ministerial colleagues and I have paid a number of visits to projects for single homeless people in central London, managed by excellent voluntary sector organisations such as Centrepoint, St. Mungo's, Crisis and the Salvation Army. Many of those are funded by the Department. One cannot fail to be impressed by the way in which those agencies seek to provide assistance for individuals who would otherwise sleep rough.
By March 1996, the rough sleepers initiative will have provided about 5,000 places in a range of permanent and temporary accommodation, as well as outreach and resettlement workers who contact people sleeping on the sheets and help them to start a new life away from the streets. The initiative has shown how voluntary and statutory agencies can work together towards the relief of single homelessness.
Outside central London, it is the responsibility of local authorities to consider the needs of people sleeping rough as part of their overall housing strategy. I commend to local authorities the model of co-operation between statutory and voluntary agencies developed under the rough sleepers initiative. For our part, the Government pay grants under section 73 of the Housing Act 1985 to voluntary agencies which provide direct and practical help for single homeless people. In 1994-95, £6.8 million has been made available to more than 150 projects.
As well as specific action to prevent and relieve homelessness, the Government are pursuing wider policies aimed at expanding the housing options available to everyone. Eighty per cent. of respondents to surveys said that they would prefer to own their own homes. There can no doubting our success in expanding owner-occupation. The right to buy for council tenants has brought home ownership to more than 1.6 million 315 families in Great Britain. We are widening the choice for tenants who want to become home owners. The local authority cash incentive schemes and the Housing Corporation's incentive schemes for tenants have helped a further 21,000 people to buy homes. Those schemes have the additional benefit of freeing council or housing association dwellings to house more families in greatest need.
We shall continue to give high priority to bringing the option of owner-occupation within the reach of more people. Since house prices and interest rates are both low, home ownership is more affordable than it has been for years, so now is a good time for people to think about buying.
We recognise, of course, that not everyone will be able to afford to buy a home outright, particularly young people, so our policies also deal with the demand for rented accommodation. In particular, we are keen to expand the role played by the private rented sector in offering accommodation to people in housing need. It is a mistake to assume that private rented accommodation will, by definition, he inadequate. For many families, it is the right and most flexible answer. With several hundred thousand vacant private sector homes in England, scope exists for bringing more homes into private renting to help meet housing demand.
We have introduced a number of initiatives to achieve that. For example, housing associations have become involved in the management of private rented stock. Acting as managing agents, they have brought benefits to tenants, through the provision of a high level of service and security, and to landlords by providing a high quality, hassle-free intermediary. To build on this initiative, a new scheme—HAMA Plus—has been introduced. It will provide an additional £5 million in 1994-95 to housing associations providing management services to bring empty properties back into shape and back into use. Housing associations have also been central to the flats-over-shops initiative, which not only brings unused space back into use but brings new life to abandoned areas of our high streets.
Local authorities themselves have also done a great deal. A number have introduced imaginative schemes to encourage local landlords to co-operate with them in housing families and others in need. One approach that is achieving impressive results is the introduction of rent and deposit guarantee schemes. They give landlords the reassurances that they may require to house low-income tenants and can dramatically increase the chances of such households gaining access to rented accommodation.
There is now some evidence of an increase in private lettings. The number has grown from just over 1.6 million in 1988 to just under 2 million at the end of 1993. It is important that we continue to reinforce that trend in recognition of the vital role that a healthy private sector can play in meeting housing need. But the social rented 316 sector also has, and will continue to have, a role to play in providing long-term, settled housing for families who need help.
It is difficult to estimate the need for social housing at national level because it depends on how need is defined and short-term fluctuations in factors affecting access to owner-occupation, such as house prices and interest rates. However, many publicly quoted estimates of 100,000 homes a year seem to us to be overstated.
We are investing significant sums of money in social housing. Public resources to housing associations—the main providers of new low-cost housing for rent and for sale—are more than £1.5 billion this year, enabling some 60,000 new lettings to be provided. That will bring the total over the three years to 31 March 1995 to more than 180,000, an all-time high level of housing association provision and about 27,000 more homes than we promised in the 1992 Conservative manifesto. Over the next three years—1995–96 to 1997–98—we expect Housing Corporation and local authority expenditure together, and the private finance that they will attract, to produce a further 180,000 new lettings.
If local authorities are to make the best use of those new lettings and the existing stock, they need fair and rational systems for allocating their housing and their nominations for housing association tenancies. The courts' interpretation of the current homelessness legislation has made that impossible in some areas. At present, households who happen to apply for assistance under the homelessness legislation are automatically placed on a fast track for housing allocations, irrespective of whether they have the greatest need for long-term social housing. Meanwhile, families in need on the housing waiting list are left standing. For that reason, we are committed to reform.
Our proposals would separate the allocation of long-term tenancies from the provision of immediate assistance to the homeless. Quite simply, those who have the greatest need for long-term social housing should get the highest priority, whether or not they have been accepted as homeless by the local authority. At the same time, we are committed to retaining an effective safety net for homeless families and vulnerable people to ensure that those groups have access to suitable accommodation.
The relentless growth in the number of households in this country has presented a formidable challenge for our policies on housing throughout the Government's period in office. I am pleased to say that those policies have withstood the test and are succeeding in dealing with homelessness and increasing the supply of dwellings. We have also expanded the housing options available, so that more people than ever before have the opportunity to own their own homes.
§ Sitting suspended.
2.30 pm§ On resuming:—
§ It being half past Two o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, pursuant to Order [19 December].