Housing Need (Hansard, 26 March 1996)

§ 5. Mr. Betts
To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what estimate he has made of the backlog of unmet housing need. [20940]

§ The Minister for Local Government, Housing and Urban Regeneration (Mr. David Curry)
The Government are considering what further work could yield meaningful figures on unmet housing need, following the Environment Select Committee's report on this question.

§ Mr. Betts
Surely the Minister is aware of a number of assessments of housing need, including one by his former chief economic adviser, Dr. Holman, to the effect that about 100,000 houses a year should be built in the social rented sector. How then can he justify allowing the number of starts in that sector to fall to its lowest level since the war, with a 42 per cent. cut in public investment in housing since 1992? Is it that the Minister no longer takes his own advisers seriously; or that he does not take housing need seriously; or that every priority has now been cast aside in the desperate search for tax cuts before the general election?

§ Mr. Curry
When the hon. Gentleman makes comments like that, I certainly do not take him seriously. He has been involved in housing, so he will know that evaluating housing need is a complex task, involving many projections—for instance, of household formation. He will know that the adviser, Dr. Holman, to whom he refers admits that many of his figures are based on extrapolations. It is genuinely difficult to estimate figures. Following the Select Committee's report, I have undertaken to do further work to see whether it is possible to come up with a more effective, meaningful figure for housing need.
What matters is not new starts but the number of tenancies created. That is the real measure of availability of such housing, and it is what we intend to pursue.

§ Sir Irvine Patnick
When does my hon. Friend propose to take action on councils such as the one that used to be led by the hon. Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Betts)—Sheffield council, which takes seven weeks to re-let council houses, which does not 820 collect its council house rents, and which does not collect its council taxes? Sheffield has been given more money in its education standard spending assessment this year, more money for community care, more money in revenue support grant and more money from business rates. Yet its knee-jerk reaction is always to say, like Oliver Twist, "Please, may we have some more?" But the word "please" is never heard.

§ Mr. Curry
My hon. Friend is right. The performance indicators recently published demonstrate what councils are really doing to deliver their statutory duties. If they are not collecting rents or filling void properties, they are letting down the people in their communities who depend on them. Efficiency is not just a question of self-satisfaction; it is about helping people get the services they deserve.

§ Mr. Sutcliffe
Have not the Government betrayed thousands of homeless people because of their political dogma, as they will not allow councils to use capital receipts to build affordable social housing? When will the Government do something about homelessness?

§ Mr. Curry
First, the hon. Gentleman knows full well that the allegation that housing receipts are sitting there unused is nonsense. He will also know that that is Labour's only housing policy. It was fascinating that, a couple of weeks ago, there was the great Labour party shindig at the Queen Elizabeth II centre and everyone was saying, "Now, at last, we shall have some inkling of Labour's housing policy," but we heard only pieties, platitudes and pomposity, and nobody is any the wiser.

§ Mr. Betts
In view of the unsatisfactory nature of that reply, I shall seek to raise the matter on the Adjournment.