§ Mr. Austin Mitchellasked the Secretary of State for the Environment whether he will bring up to date the information on council house rents in his answer to the hon. Member for Great Grimsby on 1 December 1982, Official Report, columns 208–9.
§ Sir George YoungFollowing are the figures corresponding to those for 1972 to 1982 given in my reply to the hon. Member on 1 December 1982:
Rent component weight (out of 1,000) Percentage increase in year to January of which, local authority rent approximately in rent component in Retail Prices Index 1983 36 32 11.0 4.9 1984 35 31 4.8 5.1 1985 31 28 7.2 5.0 1986 29 26 7.4 5.5 The weights are based on information obtained from the "family expenditure survey" and represent total rent payments by the households covered by the index, net of standard housing benefits except where households are also in receipt of housing benefit supplement, averaged over all index households not only those living in rented accommodation. For consistency, other forms of housing benefit have been treated as income, as supplementary benefit was before it, and therefore have not affected the retail prices index. The current weight for rents of 29 out of 1,000, was based on an estimated average weekly expenditure of about £5.40 in January 1986.