HC Deb 02 April 1990 vol 170 cc436-7W
Mr. Shersby

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department by what method the police arbitration tribunal recommended that rent allowance should be updated in the 29 police forces in England and Wales where rent allowances were last reviewed in 1988; and how this method differed from the existing method of notional rental values.

Mr. Peter Lloyd

It is not clear whether the tribunal ever addressed the question of forces in England and Wales which were due for an uprating and the recommendation from the Police Negotiating Board is apparently defective on this point. My right hon. and learned Friend is prepared, however, to accept that both bodies probably intended to endorse updating by an index partly based on the Building Societies Association's index of house prices and partly taken from the housing costs element of the index of retail prices. Rates increases were to be added.

Under the existing system force maximum limits of rent allowance are based on the district valuer's assessment of what a typical police house in the force area would fetch if let on the open market, plus rates.

Mr. Shersby

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what estimate he has made of the cost(a) of uprating rent allowance in the 29 police forces whose rent allowance was last reviewed in 1988 by the agreed index recommended by the police arbitration tribunal and (b) by the movement in the retail prices index since their force maximum limit was last reviewed.

Mr. Peter Lloyd

Only the broadest estimates are possible because the situation is a hypothetical one with wide regional variations. On the assumption, however, that the index agreed by the Police Negotiating Board would produce increases of the same order as those produced by the rent allowance reviews held in 1989, the likely cost would be at least £55 million in England and Wales. On the basis that the rise in the retail prices index might be 13.7 per cent. indexation on that basis is estimated to be likely to cost about £26.4 million a year in England and Wales.

Mr. Shersby

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what estimate he has made of the cost of uprating police force housing allowance by employing a formula consisting of the movement in the housing costs element of the retail prices index and the movement in housing costs in an area as expressed in the building societies index for each of the next two years; and by how much less he estimates the allowance will be uprated by relating it only to the total movement in the retail prices index.

Mr. Peter Lloyd

None. There is no basis on which to make a realistic comparison of the likely performance of these indices over the next two years.