HC Deb 18 December 1996 vol 287 cc937-8
6. Mrs. Fyfe

To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland how many local authority new dwellings were completed in 1995. [8137]

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Raymond S. Robertson)

Just under 400.

Mrs. Fyfe

Does the Minister realise that, in Glasgow alone, the number of homeless applicants on the waiting list is more than 2,000? Is not that just one of the many scandalous aspects of the Government's housing policy? Does he agree with today's leader in The Herald in Glasgow, which describes our housing system as rotten to the core and in urgent need of reform?

Mr. Robertson

I agree that our housing system is in urgent need of reform. That is why I have spent the past year and a half encouraging local authorities, such as the one in her constituency, to remove themselves from being direct providers of housing and to transfer their housing stock to housing associations and housing companies.

I hope that the hon. Lady's council, like all others in Scotland, will address the number of vacant properties they have, which amount to 2.5 per cent. of Scotland's entire council housing stock.

Mr. Menzies Campbell

Does the Minister accept that the problem of homelessness is not confined to urban areas? Rural homelessness is an increasing problem. The former Dunfermline, Kirkcaldy and North East Fife district council sold 40 per cent. of its local authority stock and performed the best in Scotland, yet it was not allowed to apply the proceeds from that sale to the problem of homelessness in its area. Why will the Government not adopt a much more flexible approach to the use of council house sales receipts?

Mr. Robertson

Is the hon. and learned Gentleman aware that £4 billion-worth of housing debt has to be repaid? That has gone up by 6 per cent. in the past year alone. If he and his hon. Friends are not willing to protect council tenants, I assure him that we most definitely are.

Mr. Chisholm

Does the Minister accept that the dreadful new build figure that he gave will be even worse next year with the 30 per cent. cut in council housing budgets and that the number of housing association starts next year will be slashed from 4,000 to 1,500 due to the 25 per cent. cut in their budgets? Does he realise that renovation of cold, damp houses will be similarly curtailed, at great cost to people's health and NHS budgets? How can the Government seriously claim that they make health a priority when they promote ill health in that way and waste more and more money each year on NHS bureaucracy, as today's annual health statistics make abundantly clear?

Mr. Robertson

Despite all the rumblings and mutterings from Opposition spokesmen on housing since my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State made his statement, no one has ever said that, if Labour were in our position, it would not require local authorities to make the debt repayments that we require. Perhaps one of them would like to indicate, by nodding or shaking his head, whether Labour would go along with that policy.

As always on such matters, they see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil; they will not say anything at all. The Opposition criticise us for doing something, but they will not even say whether they would go along with it or cancel it. I hope that every council tenant in Scotland appreciates the fact that, although the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Leith (Mr. Chisholm) comes to the Dispatch Box and says one thing, he apparently has not a clue what he would do if he were ever given the privilege of being a Minister.