§ 3.15 p.m.
§ Lord Pitt of Hampstead rose to call attention to the deplorable state of the nation's housing stock, particularly that of post-war housing, and to the measures necessary to deal with the problem; and to move for Papers.
§ The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. I regard this subject as of the utmost importance, and it is my view that it is one which has been seriously neglected during the last few years. The Government's English housing conditions survey of 1981 showed that there were 1,116,000 dwellings which were unfit to live in, and a further 1,312,000 in need of repairs, each costing £4,500 or more. It is estimated that there are 1.1 million dwellings, both fit and unfit, requiring repairs costing more than £7,000 per dwelling. There are 1.48 million dwellings lacking basic amenities; and overall it is estimated that there are 4.3 million dwellings in serious disrepair. The Association of Metropolitan Authorities estimates that each year 40,000 dwellings become unfit and 100,000 dwellings deteriorate into serious disrepair. It is estimated that the cost of bringing the stock into good repair may be about £30 billion.
§ The number of unfit dwellings has remained at over 1 million for 15 years. I also wish to point out that the £4,500 figure for repairs represents a 44 per cent. increase on the figure in the 1976 Government survey. Thus, despite the payment of over 1 million renovation grants between 1971 and 1981, and the clearance or closure of nearly half a million dwellings, unfitness has remained at the same level, and the rate of deterioration of the stock continues to add to the number of properties in serious disrepair.
§ The rate of clearance of houses in England has now fallen below 20,000 a year, and at that rate it will take 900 years to replace the stock. In the year to June 1982, 71,000 families in England were classified as homeless, and since that figure does not include single people who are homeless and who have no statutory right to be housed under the Homeless Persons Act, and those deemed to be intentionally homeless, as well as the thousands who turn for advice to various housing advice centres, the degree of homelessness is very much greater than the figure would suggest. There are over 1 million people on local authority waiting lists.
699§ Now let us take a look at the situation in London. where there are 241,000 homes which are unfit for human habitation. There are 478,000 houses in serious disrepair and 219,000 houses which lack basic amenities. We are talking about London, the nation's capital. In total, one dwelling in four in London is unsatisfactory; that is, some 640,000 houses. About 130,000 householders and their families live in overcrowded conditions and nearly 200,000 share their accommodation with another household, many of them involuntarily. There were 20,000 families accepted as homeless in the year 1982–83—I ask your Lordships to remember that the year I quoted for England was to June 1982, which is the latest figure I have, but the year for London is 1982–83—and ¼million applicants for local authority waiting lists. Again, in the year 1982–83, over 90,000 new applicants were received on the waiting lists held by the London boroughs. Research in the London borough of Brent has indicated that only about 6 per cent. of families on the waiting lists have incomes which would enable them to buy their own homes, and the figure rose to no more than 22 per cent. under the best possible shared ownership arrangement.
§ As for post-war housing, to which I draw special attention in my Motion, the majority of post-war problems occur in the public sector housing stock, the bulk of it related to non-traditional housing built before 1960 and system-built housing of post-1960. These are the buildings that have led to the problems associated with tower blocks and other high-rise dwellings. My noble friend Lord Dean of Beswick has taken a great personal interest in this problem and I shall leave him to deal with it when he addresses your Lordships.
§ I am sure your Lordships will agree that the picture I have painted is a grim one. It faces us with a challenge which it is our duty to meet. The obvious solution is to allocate more resources to the preservation, renovation and renewal of our housing stock. Unfortunately, the Government seem to take the opposite view. Investment in housing, as indicated by housing investment programmes, has fallen—not risen—by 45 per cent. since 1979–80 and housing starts have fallen from 225,000 in 1979 to 193,000 in 1982. I should like to remind your Lordships that in 1977 the then Government indicated in their survey that we needed to build 300,000 houses per year. So your Lordships can see how far short we are.
§ But that is not the worst of the picture. The latest estimate suggests that there are 400,000 unemployed workers in the construction industry. Research at the Building Research Establishment suggests that, for every 1,000 additional homes built, up to 1,500 jobs could result in construction and in the economy as a whole. and that for every 1,000 houses renovated up to 700 jobs could be created by the same process. So the allocation of additional resources to the building and renovating of houses can be a powerful stimulus to the economy, and can help in the reduction of unemployment, at the same time as providing much needed accommodation for the people. Yet on 17th November the Environment Secretary announced further cuts in the housing capital programme for 1984–85.
700§ The continuing cuts in the housing programme can only spell misery for the people; misery for those stuck in Victorian terraces with private landlords, who are sometimes unwilling and often unable to repair or improve their properties; misery for people living in the estimated 180,000 houses in multiple occupation in England and Wales, including some 77,000 retired pensioners. We do well to remember that no fewer than 550 people were killed as a result of fires in multiple occupied houses in the four years 1978–81, and that the risk of death or serious injury in these fire traps is 10 times higher than in self-contained homes.
§ Then there is misery for the estimated 1½ million retired owner-occupiers living in ageing property on very low incomes. They need help. There is misery, too, for the untold thousands of tenants living in damp, cold and often unsafe conditions in the system-built disasters of the 1960s, which councils simply cannot afford to demolish and replace or to repair, or to strip, on anything like the scale that is necessary, of the huge amounts of asbestos that have recently been discovered.
§ The Government must re-think their approach to the housing problem. If there cannot be more money allocated to housing, then the present amount must be redistributed. The Treasury has recently estimated that £2,150 million was forgone in mortgage tax relief in 1982–83 and since there are more mortgages in 1983–84 the figure will be higher. If that figure is added to the £2,522 million housing investment allowed for 1984–85. it will provide a handsome sum with which to tackle the housing problem.
§ I am not suggesting an immediate abolition of mortgage tax relief. However, I am suggesting that mortgage tax relief should be regarded as part of housing expenditure; that, in that form, the expenditure is not going to the area of greatest need and that there should be some reform which will allow the expenditure to go where it is most needed.
§ In a short debate like this—I had not realised that there would be so few speakers or I might have gone into the subject further—it is not possible to go into details. But I hope that the Government will take this one on board, for it seems to me incredible that, with housing needs as they are, the Government insisted in the last Budget on raising the level of mortgage tax relief to £30,000. It ought to have been reduced from the level at which it stood and restricted in its distribution, the resulting resources being used for home improvements, which is where they are needed. Instead, the Government have done the direct opposite.
§ I notice that I have used up my 15 minutes, so I shall come to a halt. However, let me end by saying that I was very impressed by the arrangements recently made between the Greater London Council and the Abbey National Building Society for work in this field. I hope that the Government will take on board this aspect and seek to extend co-operation between local authorities and the building societies in order to increase the resources available for the work.
§ As I said at the beginning, to me this issue is of the utmost importance. I implore the Government to treat it as seriously as it deserves. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.
701§ 3.31 p.m.
§ Lord ByersMy Lords, the House is indeed indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Pitt of Hampstead, for giving us the opportunity to discuss this urgent problem of housing. The House will also look forward to hearing the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Cornwallis.
In this short debate I want to put forward just a few complementary propositions on the housing problem. The noble Lord, Lord Pitt of Hampstead, has given us the figures. However we measure it, our housing problem is vast. I am not going to repeat the figures, but in addition to the totals, the stock itself is in an appalling state and is getting worse. The picture which has been painted by the noble Lord represents, in terms of human suffering and deprivation, something which we simply cannot shrug off. That situation was well described by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scarman, in the early pages of his excellent report on the disorders in Brixton. In the report he states:
The general picture of housing provision both in Lambeth as a whole and Brixton in particular is one of considerable stress".That wording was well selected, for housing was identified as an important factor in creating the climate in which disorders are likely to take place.The noble and learned Lord pointed out that the national dwelling and housing survey of 1977–78 showed a shortage of about 20,000 dwellings in Lambeth when compared with the number of households requiring a separate dwelling. The council's waiting list was then 18,000, 12,000 households lived in overcrowded conditions, and a further 8,000-plus lacked one or more amenities. That was the background to the climate in which the disorders took place.
This is a frightening social problem, made worse, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scarman, points out, by local authority indecision—and, he could have added, avoidable delays in local authority procedures and systems. This is not an isolated case. It is replicated all over the country. But I say without hesitation that we cannot afford a social policy of this kind which breeds hopelessness and despair and puts the whole basis of our society at risk.
The second proposition is that this is no time for the Government to cut down the allocation of money for housing—money both for building new houses and for rehabilitation. It must be totally wrong-headed, for both social and economic reasons, to reduce cash in this field. At the very least, such a policy will accelerate the decline and decay of the inner cities when so many of us are trying to help with their improvement. It is not an easy job. The Daily Telegraph of Friday last, 25th November, reported that the Treasury was cutting nearly £450 million—a reduction of 20 per cent.—from its contribution to the amount which councils in England and Wales will be able to spend on housing next year. That really is lunacy. Far from the allocation being reduced, there should be positive plans for increasing the amount spent on housing by local authorities, central Government and the private sector if we are to make any impression on the backlog which has been building up in recent years.
What is more, each year that we fail to make adequate provision means that the bill becomes more costly, and our money provides less. This must be the 702 height of stupidity and short-sightedness. The money must be spent wisely and not wasted—as it has been, I am afraid, by Labour and Conservative councils and Governments—on high-rise blocks, mid-rise blocks, deck access blocks and walk-up blocks, all of which have proved to be quite disastrous. Many of these mistakes could have been avoided, or at least not repeated, if at the design stage the future tenants had been properly consulted as to their wishes and needs.
The third complementary proposition is that increased capital spending on house construction and rehabilitation makes excellent economic sense when a country is in recession, not only because it helps the unemployment situation, as the noble Lord, Lord Pitt of Hampstead, said, but also because selective capital investment stimulates the demand for goods manufactured in British factories. This helps our order books. New demand is set up for steel, bricks, cement, glass, porcelain ware, furnishings, furniture, and all the other items which go to make up new or rehabilitated housing.
The first proposition, therefore, is that bad housing causes severe social stress, which can lead to violence and disorders; but even if it does not, it should not be tolerated in a civilised society. The second proposition is that the longer there is inadequate provision for tackling building and rehabilitation, the more it will cost in the future. The third proposition is that the spending of capital on housing should be increased, and not reduced, as an aid to increasing the order books of British manufacturers. This is no new proposal. We have put it forward on numerous occasions since at least 1980. Over that period, prices have risen by 25 per cent. This alone should illuminate the need for bringing a new dimension into our social and economic priorities.