Council Houses: Construction Policy (Hansard, 21 April 1982)

§ Lord Molloy
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.

§ Lord Bellwin
My Lords, it is for individual local authorities to decide how much they spend on council house building and how much on other ways of helping those in housing need. As I am sure the noble Lord will agree, waiting lists are a far from accurate indicator of housing need, but one way of helping to reduce waiting lists is to enourage people to buy their own homes under the various low cost home ownership schemes which the Government are promoting.

§ Lord Molloy
My Lords, is the noble Lord the Minister aware that recent figures reveal that we have now reached the lowest level of house building for 543 nearly 60 years? Is this not a crass absurdity when one notes the number of unemployed skilled craftsmen from the construction and building industry? Would the noble Lord not further agree that there is certainly a need for the housing list system to be more accurate and to give proper assistance to local authorities so that their planning can be made a reality? None of these will come true unless the Government change their policy and stop harassing local authorities in regard to building homes, but rather help them in providing them.

§ Lord Bellwin
My Lords, as to the question of waiting lists and their validity, and what the Government should do to help them become more realistic, clearly this is something that one can think about, but I doubt very much whether local authorities will welcome any intervention by Government to do that. I am glad that through his Question the noble Lord, Lord Molloy (who I know has much experience in this field) recognises the point that I made in my original Answer: that waiting lists are not the accurate guide that some would think they are.
As to the noble Lord's other point about building, I will have to refer him to the general housing scene as such and point out that there is now available to local government, if they wish to use it, money for building council houses or for doing whatever else they consider is right in their individual authorities, to an extent that has not been readily available for a long time. For example, I understand that the total resources available for 1982–83 are one-third above the estimated outturn expenditure in 1981–82.
What must really concern us in housing is that there is provision generally of the types of accommodation needed. This is where the emphasis must be placed—on sheltered housing, on one and two bedroomed units —because there is an imbalance in our housing stock which those who understand this subject, as the noble Lord does, consider to be a matter of great concern; just as there is concern about the state of housing and the need to repair and improve it, and the need to bring back into an occupational state the thousands of empty houses which exist. This is all part of the whole housing debate.

§ Baroness Birk
My Lords, interested though I was by the Minister's gracious little speech about housing, may I ask whether he is aware (when he talks about the waiting lists and agrees with my noble friend Lord Molloy that they are not always accurate) that the AMA has estimated the shortage of dwellings by taking not just the waiting list but also the number of houses which are in short supply and the number of people who are really in need, as being 362,000 in 1981? At the present rate of performance, this shortage will rise to 500,000 in 1986. Is the noble Lord the Minister further aware, as I am sure he is, that in spite of what he was saying generally about housing imbalance, council housing cannot really be expanded when, according to the Government's expenditure White Paper, there will be a 20 per cent. housing cut between 1982–83 and 1983–84?

§ Lord Bellwin
My Lords, I do not know whether the 544 figures which the noble Baroness quotes from the AMA are right or wrong. What I do know is that I cannot see why a debate on housing should be confined to council housing.

§ Baroness Birk
Because the Question was, my Lords.

§ Lord Bellwin
I think it should be on housing as a whole. In any case, the question of the total housing scene is surely something that must be of concern in any question on building. It is not just building that is the answer to our problems. How can we be so obsessed with the number of council houses as part of the housing problem when we refuse, as the noble Baroness did in her question, to address ourselves to the other points I made, on the condition of houses throughout the country and the empty dwellings which there are?

§ Baroness Birk
My Lords, with great respect, may I draw the noble Lord's attention to the fact that the Question related to council houses. I was keeping to the Question.

§ Lord Orr-Ewing
My Lords, will my noble friend confirm that there are large numbers of council houses which have been empty for more than a year? Am I right in thinking that 4,000 of these empty houses are in the GLC area? Is it not essential, where there is an urgent housing shortage, that these empty houses should be brought back to profitable and satisfactory occupation?

§ Lord Bellwin
My Lords, the total number of empty houses throughout the country is many, many thousands. As to the exact number in any one area, clearly I cannot know at this particular moment in time. However, I am glad that my noble friend has raised the point because it confirms what I myself was trying to say; that this must be a matter of great concern.

§ Lord Molloy
My Lords, it is not true to say that we on this side of the House—or the Labour Benches anyway—are obsessed with council housing. What concerns us gravely is those people who can only afford to rent a home. If we in this Chamber all accept that the basis of a decent society is the provision of a decent home, then the Government want to shift themselves and give aid to local authorities (and not just to half of them) to build homes, so that we can set forth on the royal road to progressively building a good society in which people are housed decently and can realise their own dignity.

§ Lord Bellwin
My Lords, if the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, and those who think as he does, were so concerned about those who wish to rent their homes, then I suggest they would have adopted in the past and will adopt in the future a different attitude from that which they have adopted in respect of the private rented sector.

§ Lord Glenamara
My Lords, is the noble Lord, Lord Bellwin, aware that he has answered every possible question on housing except that on the Order Paper? 545 Is he aware that the simple fact remains that large numbers of our fellow men depend upon council houses, and that council house building is now at the lowest level for more than half a century? What are the Government going to do about that situation?

§ Lord Bellwin
My Lords, to simply talk of numbers is to ignore the fact that in terms of total aggregate throughout the country today there is a surplus of houses over households. That is something that one must face up to if one wants to look at housing as a whole.

§ Lord Pitt of Hampstead
My Lords, is the noble Lord the Minister aware that the statement he has just made was made in 1956, and that it is still not true? It is true only in an aggregate form. The question of distribution and the question of the areas in which houses are required is much more important than the aggregate.

§ Lord Bellwin
My Lords, I need no reminding that there are situations in individual areas which require attention and dealing with in a way different from other areas. That does not take away from the fact that what I have said about the totality of housing is correct.