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Housing Bill

Volume 270: debated on Monday 29 January 1996

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Order for Second Reading read.

Before I call the Secretary of State, I must announce that speeches between 7 pm and 9 pm will have to be limited to 10 minutes.

3.35 pm

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

When we published our housing White Paper last summer, we made clear our continuing commitment to a decent home for every family. We said that we remained committed to meeting that objective in the face of the social and economic changes and the environmental concerns that place new and increasing demands on government.

The Housing Bill extends opportunity. It will mean that more housing association tenants will have the opportunity to buy their own homes, that leaseholders will have stronger and more accessible protection, and that council tenants will have the opportunity to vote for new types of social landlords, who can bring in private money to improve their estates.

Conservative Members have shown that housing issues can be approached with imagination. We have not simply fallen back on the tired old policies of building municipal estates: "Never mind the quality; measure the quantity; count the cost". The Conservative party brought in the right to buy—1.3 million households in England wanted that right, and took the opportunity that was given to them. Each day, 200 households go on wanting that right. The Labour party voted against that opportunity.

We are also the party that brought in private finance alongside public money to improve our council estates. We brought in competition to provide housing, with housing associations competing to provide it at the best price. That means better housing at a cheaper price, and more of it than would otherwise have been the case. We brought in new rights for tenants, and gave them a greater say in how their estates are run.

The Labour party says that it wants those things, but it voted solidly against every one of them. It says one thing and does another.

I agree with absolutely everything that my right hon. Friend said about our housing policy, but I should like to press him on one point, which I may have missed. In the housing White Paper, we proposed to legislate to allow profit-making companies and other bodies to compete for the grants available to those in social housing. Will my right hon. Friend explain whether that is in the Bill, or whether we are planning to introduce it later?

We have said that the needs of leaseholders are more important in the immediate term, and we have to deal with them. We are therefore producing a separate Bill that covers that issue, which I hope will soon be introduced. There is no question of dropping it. However, decisions on leasehold problems, particularly in London and the south coast resorts, are so serious that they should be taken immediately. That is therefore covered in the Bill.

I shall come back to the hon. Gentleman, because I have one or two things to say to him in particular.

We published our White Paper last summer and have now introduced the Bill. The Opposition, of course, did not publish their own policy document, despite the many promises that they would do so, and that it would be bigger, better and certainly more expensive than ours. They leaked ours in order to pretend that they had one. When they were pressed about it at the Housing Corporation conference in February 1995—I stress that date—the hon. Member for Greenwich (Mr. Raynsford) said:
"A new approach is called for and over the next few months Frank Dobson and I will be working up detailed housing policy proposals which the Labour party will be publishing later this"—
that is, last—
"year."
We are less than three weeks away from the anniversary of that statement. When will we get Labour's housing policy? Why has it taken so long? Has the hon. Member for Greenwich been unable to get the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) to understand it? Has the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras—having taken some time to understand the policy—not been able to get his Treasury team to agree to it?

Or is it merely that Labour does not have a clue as to what it would do if anybody was ever silly enough to ask it to take charge? Does Labour want to stick with saying and never doing? The hon. Member for Greenwich said that he was going to produce a policy in a few months. That was good enough to allow him to get away with it in front of an audience, but it is not good enough for the people of Britain who want to know what Labour would do.

I have taken some time to look at the one piece of Labour policy that I have discovered so far—that, somehow or other, Labour would release the accumulated receipts so that they could be spent. That is the one thing that Labour has said, but it has not explained until recently what that would mean. It would mean not that a Labour Government would allow councils to spend their receipts, but that some councils would be allowed to spend other councils' receipts.

We have now discovered that, carefully hidden in Labour's policy, is a proposal that the arrangement of phasing would mean that the Labour council in the Wyre, for example, would be asked to spend its receipts in, let us say, Gateshead. So when a council leader says, "We will release the receipts," he thinks that the receipts will be released for the people of the Wyre, Bracknell Forest, Dacorum or any of the other places that are temporarily in Labour control. That is what the councils think, but Labour would actually give permission for those receipts to be spent somewhere else.

Labour's policy has been rumbled. Inside Housing, a newspaper not entirely in favour of the Conservative cause, asked what would happen to the interest that is now going to the local authority that has the receipts when those receipts are spent. The newspaper said that, if there were a Labour Government, councils could refuse to use billions of pounds of capital receipts unless they got an extra subsidy from the Labour Government to pay for the interest they were losing.

Hidden in the only bit of Labour policy that works in the minds of the public is the fact that it would, in absolute truth, hold back receipts from councils to make sure that it could subsidise the spendthrift by nationalising the receipts of those councils which have done their job properly.

Does the right hon. Gentleman accept—as he must, since he has no evidence to the contrary—that everything he has said in the past five minutes is absolutely untrue, and that he has made it all up?

No. The hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well that Labour would not allow the leafy suburbs to spend the money, because that would be the only way in which it would he able to provide the extra money for the councils to which it wants to give money. That is precisely what Labour intends to do. The housing press has revealed precisely what Labour did not want to be admitted or publicised. It is no wonder that the hon. Gentleman was so quick on to his feet—he knows that he has been rumbled.

My question was exactly that, Madam Speaker. Can the Secretary of State answer three simple questions? Will the Bill mean any significant increase in the number of houses for rent; will it mean any significant reduction in the rents of people in housing association properties, as those associations are losing their grant by a greater amount every year; and will it mean any relief for those who have bought their properties from local authorities, particularly in council tower blocks, and who face maintenance, service and capital charges of up to £28,000, which some of them cannot afford?

The first question is dealt with in the Finance Bill, as the hon. Gentleman knows. The second is not part of this Bill, because it is part of others, and the third is one of the issues that we have already taken into account and on which we have taken action.

One of the key arguments about the Bill is that an alternative way exists, which is related centrally to capital receipts. That is why it is crucial for us to deal with that issue at the beginning, and it is why I gave way to the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes). I wanted to have the opportunity to tell the House what his party said about his policy. He has said:
"Liberal Democrats have no ideological attachment to public or private housing."
That means, according to the party's Whips Office, that the Liberal Democrats' weaknesses are as follows, first,
"we haven't got a particularly strong or new line on housing."
Secondly, it states:
"our intention to phase out MIRAS will cripple mortgage payers and exacerbate negative equity"—
the very point that the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey had the cheek to question me on a moment ago. So the Liberal Democrats admit that their policy would make the present situation worse.

Lastly, the Liberal Whips state:
"our policy on helping home owners suffering from negative equity"—
which is what the hon. Gentleman asked about—
"is expensive and ill-thought out".
That is what the Liberal party says about its policy, and I must thank the hon. Gentleman for giving me the chance to mention it, in case he did not have the opportunity to do so.

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

In one moment.

The Government are facing up to the real issues. We are asking the hard questions, and giving the tough answers that need to be given. We are facing the challenge to set up fair systems that help those who need it most, concentrating our resources effectively, and helping those who can house themselves to do so affordably. We are giving them rights and responsibilities.

To ensure that that will continue, we are introducing a second Bill, which will include measures to improve construction contracts and reform renovation grants. That Bill will be widely welcomed.

Before I give way, I want to explain what I want to do in the hon. Gentleman's constituency. We need to ensure that we have a fair way of allocating the housing we have for social purposes. We want not several queues but one waiting list, with people judged according to their need. That is what the system is meant to do.

Some people have temporary needs, and others long-term needs. The allocation of long-term social housing should depend on long-term needs, and not merely on people's short-term needs. People on the waiting lists for council and housing association housing need to know that they are being treated fairly.

At the moment there is a problem. Some people who need housing are in the right category, and others are not but are in greater need. All the Bill does is to ensure that people are judged according to their needs. To each according to his need—or is that another philosophy that the Labour party has thrown out? That is what the Bill is intended to do, as any sane person would recognise.

I will give way first to the hon. Member for Thurrock (Mr. Mackinlay), as he rose first.

When the Secretary of State has finished his swashbuckling fun of knocking the Labour and Liberal parties, will he address the criticism made by the Roman Catholic bishops of England and Wales, who have referred to the Bill as "ill-timed", and drawn hon. Members' attention to our Christian obligation to have regard for families and the disadvantaged? The bishops regard the Bill, especially part VII, as repugnant. What does he have to say to those caring people with a pastoral role, who have no political axe to grind, who consider the Bill to be unacceptable and uncaring?

I would point to the guidance notes that were produced last Thursday. They said that the categories to which the Roman Catholic bishops drew attention are the very categories that will be at the top of the list for the measurements of need. We have met every single criticism that the bishops put forward. The only thing that was ill-timed was the fact that they did not wait for the guidance notes so that they could see that what they had feared was untrue. Those who misled the bishops had better explain to them why they did so.

We particularly included a provision that concern should be taken for married couples who have waited to have children because the conditions in which they lived were unsuitable for having them. I am sure that His Eminence and the Roman Catholic archbishops and bishops will be pleased at that attitude which, for the first time, is expressed in our documentation.

The Bill provides for a single waiting list route into social housing, but with the first priority for the most vulnerable.

I ought to get on a little further, but I shall come back to the hon. Lady because I am always willing to hear from the Liberal party, given what it has said about its own housing policy.

At the same time that we bring up to date the criteria for the allocation of long-term social housing, we are keeping an effective safety net for homeless households. Families and vulnerable people who are unintentionally homeless would be given a minimum of one year's accommodation, with further help where needed. In many areas, one year will be more than enough for a household with real needs to get permanent accommodation allocated through the waiting list, but it is much more sensible to give people immediate help—the help that is available—and then try to assess what the best help is in the circumstances of those people. Any sane person would accept that.

I shall give way to the hon. Member for Hampstead and Highgate (Ms Jackson), because she rose first.

How can the Bill, which will create a longer waiting list, deal with the basic need, which is the gross lack of decent, affordable housing? Will the Minister define what an "unreal need" is for a family without a home?

A family without a home gets a greater advantage if its homelessness is statutory and categorisable than does a family with appalling accommodation, which is in a much worse position. The second family would not get a home. The first family gets a home first simply because it is in the right category. I am merely saying that we should judge cases by need.

The hon. Member for Hampstead and Highgate says that we have a longer waiting list; that is not true. We have a waiting list based upon the principle of need instead of one based upon those who are lucky enough, if that is the right word, to be in the right category. Such families always beat others, who may be in worse conditions, on local authority housing waiting lists. If she would leave her doctrine aside and look at the facts of need, she would find that what we say is right. She will never oppose the system once it is in operation, because she will see that it works properly.

At present, a family with priority need, which will often be a family with children, is entitled to rehousing as a homeless family. Such families still have the great trauma of having to move home, and, especially, of their children having to change schools, but will the Secretary of State confirm that, under the new legislation, they would have to move once to temporary accommodation, and, with no choice at all, have to move home for a second time within 12 months? Will he confirm that that will not only cause housing disruption but education, social and every other sort of disruption?

That is not true. If a family was in the circumstances described by the hon. Gentleman, it could be moved directly into permanent accommodation. The hon. Gentleman has got it wrong. As always, he has been reading his own propaganda, not the statements of the Government.

Does my right hon. Friend agree that all local authorities should be obliged to provide the temporary accommodation required within their own area? Will he bear in mind problems experienced in places like Southend-on-Sea, where for many years other authorities have had the habit of putting their homeless families into temporary accommodation, making Southend's problems worse?

Under the Bill, local authorities will be able to refer people to their local authority of origin, which is one of the issues that my hon. Friend is concerned about. I hope that he agrees that, if we are to deal with need, we must ensure that people get the accommodation they need.

While some people find that decision difficult. to make right at the beginning, others have acute immediate needs that may not continue for long. Still others have an immediate need for permanent accommodation, which is clear to their local authority. As the hon. Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Betts) would wish, such people can be accorded that permanent accommodation. We must be concerned for homeless people, not for some theory of homelessness put forward by the Opposition.

No. The hon. Member for Christchurch (Mrs. Maddock) asked me to give way, and I promised that she would be next. I wish to proceed with a couple more paragraphs of my speech, after which the hon. Gentleman will have plenty of time to intervene.

Our consultation paper on allocations, published last Thursday, shows our intention to have a fair system that encourages local authorities to stand back and ask who really needs long-term housing, who really needs short-term help, and how they can use existing housing to the best advantage. They can therefore meet the requirement of the hon. Member for Hampstead and Highgate. A better use of housing enables more people to be decently housed, which is an important part of what we seek to do.

I shall give way to the hon. Member for Christchurch in a moment, and then come back to the hon. Gentleman.

Order. Did the hon. Gentleman say that the Secretary of State had misled the House? No Minister or Back Bencher misleads the House. Will he withdraw that remark, so that we may proceed with the debate?

I withdraw the remark, Madam Speaker, but it would appear that what the Secretary of State said is at variance with the Bill.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I am sure that, at some stage, the Secretary of State will allow him to intervene. Am I to understand that the Secretary of State is allowing the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mrs. Maddock) to intervene?

Will the Secretary of State explain his thinking on regulations? Like me, many hon. Members object to Ministers having the power to put measures into practice through regulations. We saw what happened in the case of the Child Support Agency. I do not expect an overnight change, but should not the Bill at least show the criteria that the Secretary of State will use?

Why is the consultation paper going out when we are about to discuss the Bill in Committee? We will not have responses on some of the matters that we are supposed to discuss in Committee.

I am concerned that everything should be properly discussed. If the hon. Lady wants better and further particulars on anything, I should be pleased to provide them. That is why I published before Second Reading the proposed criteria in the form of guidance, which we are discussing with local authorities. There is therefore no difference between us on wishing to obtain as much information as possible.

May I say to the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras that I enjoy having a rough and tough discussion, but I do not wish to mislead the House. Let me therefore go through precisely what I was asked. If a local authority has a homeless family, with no roof over its head and in real difficulty, it can move it into any accommodation available. There is no question of children having to change schools, because it will be perfectly possible for the local authority to find the right accommodation and move the family into it permanently in the shortest possible time.

I do not suggest for a moment that the right hon. Gentleman is trying to mislead the House, but what he has just said appears to be at variance with clause 161, which says:

"A local housing authority shall not perform any such duty…by providing accommodation"—
for homeless people—
"other than—
  • (a) accommodation in a hostel…or
  • (b) accommodation leased to the authority"—
  • again, that would be temporary accommodation—
    "for more than two years".

    The fact is that we are talking about a particular example of someone who is in desperate need. The hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras tried to suggest that people in desperate need of housing would not receive permanent accommodation, but would be stuck in temporary accommodation.

    I say quite clearly that, as soon as that need is discovered, the local authority will provide permanent accommodation if it is available. That is precisely what is occurring. The hon. Gentleman does not understand the situation, and he has not read the legislation properly. [Interruption.]

    The hon. Member for North-West Durham (Ms Armstrong) may laugh, but the Labour party has no policy with which to respond. Although the hon. Lady is new to the Opposition Front Bench, she must know that the issue is clear: accommodation will be available immediately for people with no roof over their heads, if they are suitable applicants for permanent accommodation and they reach the top of the waiting list in that sense. They will receive accommodation because their need is greater than that of someone else.

    The House now sees what Labour's policy would mean: if a family was on top of the waiting list but it was less needy than another family on that list, it would be housed before the family in greater need. We now see what Labour Members believe in: if people are in the correct category, they will receive housing, and people in need will not receive housing.

    We believe that families in need should be moved into permanent accommodation as rapidly as possible. That is surely the right way to go. The Labour party is wrong, because it wants to allocate housing according to category and not according to people's needs. It does not care about people's needs; it simply wants people to be in the correct category. The Labour party is not prepared to provide even temporary accommodation to those who are in immediate need, because it wants to stick to categories. That is why the Labour party is wrong.

    I must proceed, but I shall return to my hon. Friend in a moment.

    The hon. Member for North-West Durham has got it wrong; she wants to stick to categories—no doubt that is another example of the "stakeholder" concept. The Bill allows us to house people according to their need, which must be the right way to go.

    I now turn to the question whether council tenants should have the same landlord, regardless of whether that is what they want. We believe that the Bill should allow council tenants to choose new landlords who can unlock the capital that is tied up in council houses and inject private investment, along with public money, in order to improve housing. The new landlords, such as local housing companies, will be not-for-profit bodies regulated by the Housing Corporation. They will be backed by an estates renewal challenge fund worth some £314 million over the next three years. That money will be used to improve many bad estates, if the council tenants choose to have a new landlord. They will make that choice; it will not be imposed upon them.

    I want to know whether the Labour party will support that measure. It seems a very good way of unlocking capital, which would otherwise not be available, in order to improve those estates.

    Does that not contradict what the Secretary of State said a few moments ago, as it does not necessarily mean that those houses most in need of improvement will receive the money for that work?

    That has nothing to do with the allocations. I am talking about bad, rundown council estates which will be able to raise their standards of housing. Is the hon. Member saying that we should not raise the standards of the worst council estates—which are so bad largely because they have been controlled by Labour authorities which have allowed them to run down, year in, year out, for party political purposes in many cases? There is also the question of extending the measure.

    No: I shall continue my remarks so that the hon. Gentleman may listen and learn about the additional opportunities that the Bill will provide for the public.

    The Bill provides a further opportunity to offer people a real choice between renting and ownership. It will give purchase grants to those who live in housing association accommodation, so that they will have the right to buy. It will be a valuable extension of opportunity and people's right to own.

    I shall be looking very carefully to see whether the Opposition are in favour of extending the right to buy in that way, or whether they refuse it. That will tell us whether they really believe in the right to buy, or whether they merely accept it as convenient for electoral purposes. So far, they have voted against every extension of the right to buy. They do not want people to own; they want them to be governed by the tenancy clauses of local authority housing.

    The only area in which we consider it better for people not to have the right to buy is the small village, where alternative accommodation is difficult to find. People have often given the land and been granted special planning permission. As we want land to be offered, we feel that that is the right course of action.

    No, I have already given way to the hon. Lady.

    Some freeholders use their powers in a wholly unacceptable way and abuse their responsibilities. Many Members have material that shows that to be categorical.

    I have here a document that I shall certainly place in the Library of the House. It was produced by a management company seeking to frighten leaseholders out of their rights. That is wholly unacceptable, and I do not believe that we should allow it to continue. That is why I have found room in the Bill to address such behaviour, although it meant displacing a matter that my hon. Friend the Minister of State and I look forward to bringing before the House.

    Has my right hon. Friend considered also the scam used by freeholders who charge long leaseholders exorbitant insurance premiums and take the commission on those insurances? Will he accept any changes to the Bill to prevent that being taken into account when the value of the freehold is assessed?

    It is important that we look carefully at any suggestions on that complicated matter. My hon. Friend will he pleased to know that the arrangements in the Bill will cover the issue he raises, but if he thinks that we can do better, I am certainly prepared to listen to him.

    I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. The amendments to the Bill that he has promised will be extremely welcome to leaseholders in London, particularly those who are suffering badly from the depredations of rogue landlords. One of their greatest problems is the exorbitant cost of enforcing their rights against their freeholders. Will my right hon. Friend ensure that any amendments to the Bill are easily and cheaply enforceable, and that the present rights of leaseholders under the leasehold reform legislation are also cheaper to uphold?

    I thank my hon. Friend for that. I have suggested that we discuss and consult on our proposal that those matters could be taken out of the hands of the courts and brought before the tribunal. It would be cheaper and easier, and would enable the chairman of the tribunal, who is often a professionally qualified valuer, to use his professional ability—which a judge cannot do. That would help considerably, and I hope that consultation will show it to be the generally accepted view.

    Most freeholders behave in a perfectly honourable manner. I am concerned about freeholders such as Bebington and Associates, who write threatening letters. I would also mention the solicitors who support them, and the professional people who claim that their behaviour should be allowed. I hope that we shall have an united view at least on this matter. Those people should not be allowed either to damage the leaseholders or to write down the qualities of good freeholders, many of whom do their job as it ought to be done, and who are as angry as anybody else about how certain operators have acted.

    I have been listening carefully to the right hon. Gentleman—particularly to his remarks about need. How will he decide the categories? What advice will he give housing allocation officers in respect of people who are living in overcrowded or sub-standard conditions, or who have been on the waiting list a long time? We and the public want the answer.

    The hon. Gentleman will be pleased that, last Thursday, we published the proposed guidelines, a copy of which is in the Library. They bring together all the categories in the legislation, so that the needs of each family can be considered at the same time and on the same basis. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will like that arrangement, and will have no difficulty with it. It is not for me to say which category comes before another. It is for me to say the matters that a local authority must take into account. I believe that the hon. Gentleman will find that the guidance is acceptable, and he will not need to worry about that.

    One matter that divides us, and I am sorry that it does, is that Labour still wants two categories of allocation for need instead of one. Labour will not, even for the shortest possible moment, allow a homeless family to wait while the best way to provide for its need is decided. Instead of saying that that is reasonable, as most people would say, Labour always makes the sort of argument used by the hon. Member for Attercliffe—that a family of two parents and two children would have to stay in temporary accommodation, change schools and then change again. That is not so, as I told the House.

    Because the time spent in temporary accommodation in circumstances of the extreme kind that the hon. Gentleman cited is bound to be short. If such a family comes to the top of the needs list, it will be accommodated. The hon. Gentleman is suggesting that the family should be rehoused in advance of people who have more need.

    No—I want to continue.

    I wish to talk about something else in which the hon. Member for Christchurch is very interested—houses in multiple occupation. We are most concerned that standards in some parts of the private rented sector need to be improved. Some of the worst conditions are found in houses in multiple occupancy—the so-called HMOs. They are typically bedsitters or bed-and-breakfast hostels. Local authorities already have powers to require safety and amenity standards to be met, but the Bill goes further. It strengthens local authority powers to register HMOs and to control conditions. If buildings are unsatisfactory, local authorities can close them down.

    There are particular concerns in many seaside areas. Former hotels and guest houses have become what are sometimes called benefit hostels. Where they are badly managed or there are too many of them, that can have a serious effect. Considerable nuisance is often caused, and sometimes real danger. Such wholesale changes can alter the character of an area, and damage, for example, the tourist industry on which the area specifically depends.

    I propose to bring forward amendments to strengthen the Bill's powers further. I propose to allow local authorities to close down HMOs without compensation if they are being run in a way that causes nuisance or annoyance to the neighbourhood. I propose also to allow authorities to prevent new HMOs from opening if to allow additional HMOs would be detrimental to the area. That means that we will cover the whole range of public concerns about buildings that were not meant for the purpose to which they are now being put.

    I am grateful to my right hon. Friend and to the Prime Minister for the way in which they have listened to representations from those of us who represent seaside resorts. What my right hon. Friend has just announced will go a long way to meeting the requirements.

    Will my right hon. Friend clarify one point? Until now, local authorities have sometimes found serving notice on anybody difficult, because the "anybody" is not clearly defined. Will my right hon. Friend ensure that it is clearly possible to identify, and if necessary disbar, the manager of such a property, so that it can be closed down and that person can be prevented from running one again?

    It will certainly be possible under the proposals to close down properties immediately without compensation. I hope that, in the discussion of how registration might work, we can cover the other aspects that my hon. Friend suggests. We need a simple and straightforward system, not one that is too complex and bureaucratic, and one that delivers the goods on safety and the other concerns that I have outlined.

    Does my right hon. Friend agree that students form the single category that would be most affected by the proposals? There are huge numbers of students in big cities, and Leeds now has more than 10,000. I welcome my right hon. Friend's appreciation of the fact that, for years, many students have lived in unsafe and poorly maintained accommodation—although, of course, some landlords are fine.

    There is legitimate concern that landlords might have to re-register only every five years. Can my right hon. Friend use his discretion and require more frequent registration? To cover the cost, a fee could be charged for it, as it is for an MOT licence.

    I am happy to consider my hon. Friend's suggestion. I am trying to achieve a balance between too complex a system which would be too unwieldy to operate, and one which is not sufficiently strong. I hope that we have got the right balance, but if my hon. Friend thinks that there are ways in which we can improve it, I shall certainly consider them.

    My right hon. Friend will know how welcome the proposals he has just announced will be in Blackpool and other seaside towns. Will he instruct his officials to monitor carefully the operation of those new powers, not only in the Bill but in the further amendments?

    There is concern that, in seaside resorts with Labour or Liberal Democrat or Lib-Lab authorities, councillors are reluctant to operate the powers that are already in existence. There are especial concerns, which have been expressed to me by residents' and hoteliers' associations, about the strong links between Labour councillors and some of the unscrupulous landlords. Will my right hon. Friend ask his officials to investigate?

    The Bill will give local authorities the powers to operate sensibly. The reason we have made the changes in the Bill on giving homes according to need is that we want local authorities to make those decisions themselves. It will be the local authority's fault if people in the categories that have been so far trumpeted abroad find themselves in temporary accommodation for a long time. It will be local authorities that will be in a position to carry out that part of the Bill.

    We will monitor the situation carefully, but local authorities should be in the driving seat, and local authorities should not be deprived of the powers they now have over their receipts, as the Labour party wishes. I shall be interested to see how the Labour party will explain that.

    No, I will give way to the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley), and then I will come back.

    The Secretary of State may recall that, during the passage of the Housing Act 1988, the issues he is raising now were raised then as serious matters for concern—not least the activities of Mr. Hoogstraten. The Secretary of State will also recall that we raised the same concerns that he has mentioned today about freeholders and leaseholders. Why has it taken the Government eight years even to begin to think about acting on those matters, when they rejected our amendments at the time of the passage of the 1988 Act?

    The amendments were not as the hon. Gentleman put them forward. The Government are meeting present needs clearly and directly. I am pleased that there is agreement on those matters on both sides of the House. I hope that the Opposition parties will help us to get the Bill through fast, so that, first, we will be able to ensure that families in real need get their homes. Secondly, we will be able to ensure that houses in multiple occupation are covered by better legislation than at the moment. Thirdly, we shall be able to ensure that leaseholders have protection, which they do not have now. All these things can be achieved if the Labour party drops its dogmatic opposition to the Bill and supports us in what we are doing. We shall watch the Opposition and press them. We look forward to hearing what the Labour party's policy is in a few moments.

    May I welcome the changes that my right hon. Friend has mentioned? They will be generally welcomed in Bournemouth.

    How do the changes, together with the proposals in the original measure, respond to the problems being experienced by local authorities because of a lack of definition of what is a hotel, a hostel or a house in multiple occupation? Lack of definition effectively prevents local authorities from applying the controls that they already have. In responding to problems concerning HMOs, will there be a clear definition in a schedule to enable local authorities better to respond to the changes that my right hon. Friend has announced?

    There will be a clear definition in the Bill. It will probably appear in a schedule. It will make the position as clear as can be. I am sure that my hon. Friend will agree that it is not an easy area in which to introduce provisions and definitions. I have no doubt that there will be discussion in Committee.

    No. I must get on.

    The conduct of tenants who are already in place is a matter of considerable concern. We felt that a natural approach would be, first, to ensure that local authorities that so desired would be able to grant a probationary or introductory tenancy of a year to see how the tenant settled down and how others considered that he or she had settled down. It is not an unreasonable idea.

    I am sorry that the Labour-controlled Association of District Councils is opposed to that. It is a great mistake. The Labour party is supposed to be in favour of taking action. Unfortunately, is opposes the simple mechanism that we propose. It is opposed by Labour authority after authority. It will be helpful if individuals have the opportunity to see how they settle down in a new tenancy. It will be for local authorities to decide whether that is what they wish to do. I would recommend them to adopt that approach, but the decision is entirely for local authorities. I want to give them the opportunity to make a decision.

    Neighbour nuisance damages many people's lives. Hon. Members on both sides of the House are aware of that from surgery experience. We are giving landlords effective powers against a minority who do not accept responsibility. We need especially to protect social tenants, who may have little choice when it comes to their neighbours. It is a real issue, especially for our older constituents.

    Our proposals have been developed in consultation with local authorities. We have taken account especially of recommendations contained in the ADC's report. We have also taken on board recommendations from elsewhere. We have tried to arrive at as common a view as possible. I am sorry that a measure which I think would be important has not gained the support of the ADC.

    My right hon. Friend will be aware that, even in an area such as Taunton, there are noise problems affecting tenants and owner-occupiers. Those problems are greatly increased in many inner cities. Those suffering from noise abuse are often afraid to complain. I know of instances in which there have been reprisals against those who have complained. Will my right hon. Friend ensure that measures are taken to preserve the secrecy or confidentiality of those who complain, so that the proposed measures may be successfully implemented?

    That will be, I am sure, the concern of local authorities that wish to implement the proposals. I shall give them every encouragement to take the matter on board. If my hon. Friend has any ideas on how we might extend the proposals, I should very much like to be informed of them.

    No. I must bring my remarks to an end.

    The Bill is designed to extend opportunity. It is designed also to ensure that the resources available to help those in need are applied to those most in need. I say again to the Labour party that, if we are to accept—this has been the position under all Governments—that there are never enough resources to meet every need, we must decide which comes first. That has been the most contentious issue.

    We have at the moment a system in which some people get to the top of the list by category, thereby overtaking those who by need should be at the top of the list. The way to overcome that is to ensure the most rapid transition for those in real need from not having a home to having a permanent home, and not to have a system whose automaticity means that one shoves down the list those who most deserve and need accommodation.

    The Labour party should answer a simple question. Is it prepared to continue to allow people in lesser need to get permanent accommodation, and thereby push those in real need further down the list? That is what the Labour party proposes. That situation is wholly contrary to any proper assessment of the use of resources and to compassion for those who really need our help.

    When the Labour party looks at the arrangements in the Bill and sees the powers of local authorities in association with them, it will discover that the fears that it has raised are unfounded, and that this is a sensible way forward. It is also a question of ensuring that people who can buy their homes are allowed to do so, particularly in future housing association building.

    The Bill gives people the opportunity to protect themselves against a freeholder who abuses the system. We want to protect people in houses in multiple occupation much more effectively than we have until now, and we want to ensure that HMOs can no longer be concentrated in a way that does damage to everyone concerned. Lastly, we are concerned to see that the opportunities, which until now have been much more restricted, are expanded.

    This is a proper policy, based on a White Paper that has had a great deal of discussion, argument and consultation. It is noticeable that neither the Labour party nor the Liberal Democrats have a policy with which to counter the Bill. It is for the House to demand that, in their criticisms, they sketch out the policy for which we have waited month after month, since the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras promised that we would have it. Today, we are waiting to hear what it is.

    4.26 pm

    The people of this country are racked with insecurity: people feel insecure in their jobs; people who need a hospital bed or an ambulance are no longer secure in the knowledge that they will get the attention that they need when they need it; old people feel insecure about their pensions; and millions of people of all ages feel insecure on the streets where they live.

    The Government are doing nothing to combat the insecurity that they have inflicted on the people. Instead, they revel in it. Cabinet Ministers clearly welcome it. The Government preach insecurity. They are not hypocritical; they practise it. [Laughter.] Nowhere is their policy of making people insecure more obvious than when it comes to people's homes. Insecurity affects every part of the country, including the constituencies of the giggling oafs on Conservative Benches. It affects all sorts of families—owner-occupiers, leaseholders, council tenants, housing association tenants, private tenants. Above all, it affects the homeless, the families who have no place of their own.

    Measured against the huge crisis of housing insecurity, the Bill is not just useless, but worse than useless. The proposals in it will make matters worse for many families. It ignores the problems of owner-occupiers. It only tinkers with the problems of leaseholders and of people who live in houses in multiple occupation.

    The Government are not just complacent; they are nasty and mean-spirited as well. The Bill weakens the position of private tenants and attacks homeless families. It contributes nothing to the building of more houses for the thousands of families with nowhere decent to live. It is no good the Secretary of State trying to blame other people for all that. He cannot shift the blame for the present housing crisis. It is no use him trying to blame Labour councils for everything. The Government have been in power for 16 years. It is time that they accepted responsibility for what they have done. It is their record at which the public are looking. Labour councils, for instance, are not to blame for the plight of owner-occupiers; nor is it the fault of that other old Tory scapegoat, the previous Labour Government.

    Why should this Minister, this Government or this party take any lectures from the push-me-pull-you Labour party, which says one thing and does another? Hackney council has 2,000 empty houses even as we. speak.

    I shall not defend Hackney council's indefensible housing record. Apparently, however, Conservative Members will defend the indefensible record of Departments whose housing "empties" grotesquely exceed that number. The number of empty Department of Transport houses, for instance, has increased by 16 per cent., and the figures for the Ministry of Defence and the Welsh Office have increased by 15 per cent. and 44 per cent. respectively. Meanwhile, as the Minister for Local Government, Housing and Urban Regeneration himself said in a press statement, the number of empty council houses has fallen.

    I shall return to that issue. Now, however, I want to talk about the Government's record on owner-occupation, and compare it with that of the previous Labour Government. Under the previous Labour Government, housing repossessions were running at 3,000 a year, and falling; under the present Government, 50,000 families a year are losing their homes. There are now 17 repossessions for every one that took place under Labour; the Tory record on repossessions is 17 times worse than Labour's.

    Under the previous Labour Government, fewer than 10,000 families were in serious mortgage arrears. Today, the figure is 250,000. There are 25 families in serious arrears for every one under the Labour Government; the Tory record on mortgage arrears is 25 times worse than Labour's.

    On top of that, the present Government have inflicted negative equity on the nation. More than 1,100,000 families now live in homes that are worth less than their mortgages. Negative equity is most common in the south-east, where it affects 434,000 families. It affects 185,000 families in London, and 159,000 in the south-west. However, it also affects 27,000 families in Yorkshire, 51,000 in the north-west, 63,000 in the west midlands and 99,000 in the east midlands.

    Not yet.

    I cannot give a comparable figure for negative equity under Labour, because it did not exist under Labour. It did not exist as a fact, and it did not even exist as a phrase.

    Does the hon. Gentleman not admit that it would be pretty difficult to bring about negative equity with inflation at 28 per cent.? He is merely saying that, under Labour, inflation was so high that there was never any possibility of such circumstances.

    Apparently, the Secretary of State is now claiming credit for negative equity. I never thought that we would get him to do that.

    In fact, the Government have had to invent the phrase "negative equity" to describe the circumstances into which they have dragged innumerable families. It is said that necessity is the mother of invention. It was necessary to invent the phrase, so the Government invented it. The Tories engineered a property boom in order to win a general election, and when they turned the boom into bust, they left the victims in the lurch. There is nothing in the Bill to help owner-occupiers: they are still left in the lurch.

    The hon. Gentleman has talked a good deal about what he calls negative equity. Will he now clearly give his party's position? How much more money would a Labour Government spend to resolve the problem that the hon. Gentleman describes as negative equity?

    The main thing that is necessary—[HoN. MEMBERS: "Answer."] At the beginning of my speech, I spoke of the insecurity that racks everyone in the country. It is mainly job insecurity. The Government's economic incompetence has caused negative equity, and all the other problems suffered by owner-occupiers.

    The Tory party claims to be the party of owner-occupiers, but it is not: it is the party of repossessions, of mortgage arrears and of negative equity. But it is worse than that because, on housing, as on tax, it is the party of election lies and broken election promises. During the 1992 election, the Prime Minister said:
    "We are going to make life easier for people buying their own home."
    That added his personal touch to the Tory election manifesto—and Conservative Members were all elected on it—which stated:
    "We will maintain mortgage tax relief."
    Since then, all these Tories, led by the Prime Minister, have cut mortgage tax relief twice, cut mortgage help to people who lose their jobs in six different ways on four separate occasions—

    No, I shall not.

    The Tories have also cut mandatory home renovation grants for owner-occupiers. No wonder Mrs. Thatcher said—so it must be true:
    "You can imagine my horror when the Government that succeeded me cut mortgage tax relief. It is not fair on all the young people who bought"—
    their house—
    "in the knowledge it was there".
    We could not ask for a clearer statement of the breach of an election promise.

    The pre-election campaign contained another of the Prime Minister's flights of fancy. On "Desert Island Discs" in January 1992, presumably dreaming of a Thatcher-free zone, he fantasised:

    "We've stopped, if you recall, the repossessions just before Christmas".
    Since the Prime Minister said that, more than 200,000 families have had their homes repossessed. The rate is running at 50,000 a year.

    One in 10 homeless families are the victims of repossession. I say to Conservative Members: no wonder the boss of the house-building company Persimmon Homes said:

    "Home ownership is no longer the cornerstone of the Conservative Party. They are kicking us in the teeth".
    I point out to Conservative Members that that was from the boss of a company which, up to now, has donated money to the Tory party.

    I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for eventually giving way. Is it his party's intention to restore mortgage tax relief to previous levels?

    Until we hear from the Government what their intention is, we will not say. I understood that the hon. Gentleman had some experience of the problems of the housing market. Probably, we will not want lectures from him.

    The Conservative Government cannot claim to be the party of tenants. It has been the party of enormous rent rises, which have placed a massive burden on the taxpayer. Under the Government, average council rents are six times as high as they were under Labour. In the past five years, they have risen by three times the rate of inflation.

    Certainly not.

    Over the same five years, when the retail prices index rose by 27 per cent., housing association rents rose by 85 per cent. Rent rises in the private sector have been steeper still and, as a result, the cost to the taxpayer of housing benefits has gone up from £4 billion to £10 billion.

    So the Tories have done nothing for owner-occupiers and they have driven up rents for tenants. When it comes to homelessness, however, they are even worse—the Tories really are the party of homelessness. Under them, the number of homeless families has doubled.

    No, I shall not give way to either of the hon. Gentlemen.

    Hundreds of thousands of other families have been left in overcrowded and unsatisfactory homes. The Tories claim to be the party of the family—you agree with that, do you? Thank you.

    Order. I remind the hon. Gentleman of the conventions in the House.

    I am sure that you believe in the family, Madam Deputy Speaker.

    Under this Government, homeless parents have been forced to try to bring up their families in circumstances that would be unacceptable to every hon. Member, and all that comes after 16 years of the Tory Government and 16 years of Tory housing policy. Last year, more than 120,000 families were officially accepted as homeless. To meet their needs, plus the needs of all the other families who are on council housing waiting lists, to which the Secretary of State referred, last year the Government committed councils to building just 404 council homes. That is one new home for every 301 homeless families. In the last year of the previous Labour Government, councils started to build 54,000 new homes. That means that under Labour they were building 135 new homes for every one that is being built today and that the Tory record on house building for people in need is 135 times worse than that of Labour.

    Like repossessions, negative equity and mortgage arrears, homelessness and the lack of new homes are found all over the country. In London, Labour was building 415 new homes for every one that is being built today. We were building 9,128 new homes, while last year the Tories managed 22 in London. That number in a whole year would not provide enough space for the people who will sleep in cardboard boxes in the Strand this very night.

    Homeless families are not the only people who are looking for homes. To put the Tories' building record into perspective, against the 22 houses that they built, 28,000 families were accepted as homeless in London last year.

    My hon. Friend makes an excellent point about the needs of inner-city families, especially those on housing estates. Does he agree that the Secretary of State is in danger of being labelled as the King Canute of housing, because he will be overwhelmed by the rising tide of crime in such estates, and problem families? He and his right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary have done nothing about that, but Labour has produced a policy on those problems, which we have had in Coventry.

    I fear that my hon. Friend may be giving the Secretary of State more credit than he deserves. As I understand the story, King Canute attempted to demonstrate to creepy courtiers that he could not turn back the tide. I rather suspect that the Secretary of State thinks that he can.

    We have exceeded our manifesto commitment to build 150,000 houses since being elected. Will the hon. Gentleman say precisely whether he would build more or fewer than that, and by how much he would subsidise public housing?

    The Government have not built them. [Interruption.] Under the Government, the combined construction of houses by councils and housing associations—which I think some Conservative Members believe has entirely made up for the cut in council house building—is half what it was in 1979. The Government have halved building and doubled homelessness, and some of us think that there is a connection between the two.

    The hon. Gentleman has been asked whether he would spend more or less on house building, whether he would provide more or less money to aid those with negative equity and whether he would spend more or less on tax relief for mortgage payments. He has failed to answer any of those questions. If he wishes to criticise the Government, he must tell us whether he would spend more in each of those areas. If he will not, then he must shut up.

    When we put our manifesto to the people before the general election, those matters will be spelt out. We do not like making promises that would be broken—unlike Conservative Members who made promises about tax and housing and then threw them away, pretending that they had not been made. I shall give the right hon. Gentleman more detailed figures. In the last five years of the previous Labour Government, the building of what some people call social housing averaged 134,000 houses a year. Under this Government, the total built by housing associations, local authorities and new towns is 34,000. That means that, on average, there are 100,000 a year fewer over a five-year period.

    No, I will not give way to the hon. Gentleman. I have told him that, so he might as well sit down.

    I have told the hon. Gentleman that I will not give way at the moment. If he behaves himself and is civil, I might give way to him later.

    In Yorkshire, under a Labour Government 6,300 new council homes were being built. The latest figure is just 24—not 24,000, just 24 houses. More than 11,000 people are homeless in Yorkshire. In the north-west, Labour was building 8,600 homes, but under the Tories the total is just three houses for the whole of Yorkshire to meet the needs of the massive total of 18,000 homeless people.

    No. I have explained to the hon. Gentleman that if he behaves in a civil manner, he might get a look in.

    Order. The hon. Gentleman knows the rules and he must abide by them.

    In the south-east outside London, 11,000 homes were being built under Labour. Last year, the Tories managed just 47. There are 18,000 homeless families in the south-east.

    The hon. Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Clifton-Brown) asked about subsidies for social rented housing. Housing revenue accounts are ring-fenced, and by and large the only subsidy for council housing is housing benefit. The average council rent is £36 a week and the total housing benefit bill for tenants, who make up 30 per cent. of the population, is £5.3 billion. By contrast, the Government are spending £3.6 billion, paying an average of £69 a week to the private rented sector—

    Order. [Interruption.] Order. The hon. Lady will not catch my eye if she refuses to accept that when I stand, she must sit down. Her conduct is not good enough.

    I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. As I have said, under this regime, shall we say, over a five-year period, the cost to the taxpayer of housing benefit has gone up from £4 billion to £10 billion. That is the wrong way to go about it. Faced with record numbers of homeless families and other families who want to rent somewhere decent to live, a Government with any common sense would build some houses for them. That would be good for people who would be able to move in and good for building workers and the people who supply the building industry. For instance, it would be good for people who make bricks in Bedfordshire, and for those who make carpets in Kidderminster, central heating boilers in Belper and electrical fittings in Basildon. But we cannot really expect common sense from the Government and instead there is in the Bill Tory mean-mindedness and a lurch to the right.

    Instead of helping the victims of their policies, the Government are blaming them. Faced with enormous queues for council and housing association homes, the Government are not trying to shorten the queues by building more homes. Instead they propose just to rearrange the queues and hope that, by that process, the people who are affected will start blaming one another and that attention might also be distracted from the Tory record.

    The hon. Gentleman keeps on quoting the new houses built under Labour in 1979. I was one of the chairmen of housing on the Greater London council. May I give the hon. Gentleman an example of the new housing that he is talking about? There were 300 perfectly good houses knocked down and 303 houses built—an extra three houses, not 303 houses. His figures are completely and utterly wrong. We saw social manipulation, not extra houses.

    If that was the quality of thought brought to the Tory side of housing on the GLC, no wonder the Tories were slung out.

    Instead of finding families somewhere decent to live, the Government propose to force them to live in perpetual insecurity; to live for ever in sub-standard temporary homes, badgered and bullied by bureaucrats and landlords. That is what the so-called party of the family intends for thousands of families. What will that do for the health of families, for the job prospects of the parents, for the relationships between the parents and between the parents and their children, and for the education prospects of the children?

    Ministers claim that their housing policies have worked and that their benefit policies have worked, but it is not true; it is not like that. If one wants to find something that epitomises all that is worst about the Government, one need go no further than Westminster. I should make it clear that the Tories must take the blame for whatever happens in Westminster. Like the rest of the country, Westminster has a Tory Government, with Tory housing policies and Tory benefit policies, but unlike almost all of the rest of the country, it has a Tory council, with a Tory housing policy and a Tory environmental health policy.

    What do we find in that demi-paradise? We find the Clarendon Court hotel, which used to be a luxury hotel. Now it is rotten, rundown, insanitary, and a bed-and-breakfast hotel for homeless families. It is occupied by 158 households, and they are living in squalor. The landlords will not be living in squalor. They are being paid £750,000—£14,000 of taxpayers' money a week—in Tory Government housing benefit by Tory Westminster council. The company that owns the hotel cannot be traced. It is believed to be a foreign company, so for all I know, it might be one of those foreign companies that make secret donations to the Tory party.

    Living in that insecure and insanitary dump are 158 households. They each live in a bedsitting room and share kitchen facilities. A professional report says that a typical bedsitter in the place is infested with cockroaches and the windows are dangerous. The occupants have to use an electric plug at floor level for the kettle. They share the use of a communal kitchen 40 yd away from their bedsitter, and they share it with the occupants of 47 other bedsitters. The 48 have access to just three electric cookers, with a total of 12 electric rings. Only six of the rings are working—six rings for cooking, for the residents of 48 rooms. The kitchen, like the bedsitter, is infested with cockroaches. The surfaces are worn, damaged, chipped and insanitary.

    That is the place—what about the people? I shall briefly describe just one family who have been forced by the Tory Government and the Tory council to live in such squalor. The family consists of a father, a mother, a son aged four and a daughter aged three. Those of us who have children should remember the circumstances in which we were living when our children were toddlers of four and three years old. The father has had a serious operation on his head—[Laughter.] What a funny chap he is to some Conservative Members. Doctors say that the father needs a clean atmosphere, free from dust and dirt. He will never get that at the Clarendon Court hotel.

    It is not hard for Labour Members—even some Conservative Members—to imagine the effects of such squalor on the people who live in that hotel. In case some people find it difficult to understand, however—it is clear that one or two hon. Members do—I shall read from two medical reports that describe what it is like to live in bed-and-breakfast accommodation. The first report says:
    "Even if hotel accommodation is in good order"—
    clearly, the Clarendon Court hotel is not—
    "it is rarely appropriate for the needs of young children. It is difficult to maintain hygiene while washing, eating and sleeping in one overcrowded room. High levels of gastroenteritis, skin disorders and chest infections have been reported. Kitchen facilities are often absent or inadequate, so people are forced to rely on food from cafés and take-aways which is expensive and may be nutritionally unsatisfactory. The stress of hotel life undermines parents' relationships with each other and their children. Normal child development is impaired through lack of space for safe play and exploration. High rates of accidents to children have been reported, probably due to a combination of lack of space and hazards such as kettles at floor level."
    A further medical report spelled out the consequences of such squalor. It said:
    "Risk to health in bed and breakfast…is well above that of the domiciled population. These risks stem from shared, or lack of, amenities, overcrowding and unsafe properties. Infection, accidents, malnutrition, sleep disturbances, low birth weight babies, eating problems, behavioural problems, depression and even death can result".
    Those reports refer to circumstances about two and a half miles away from the House. It is shameful.

    Faced with the likely consequences of the squalor of the Clarendon Court hotel, Westminster council has done next to nothing to help—except hand over housing benefit to the tune of £14,000 a week. It is not the fault of the Labour party, the trade unions or anybody else; it is the responsibility of a Tory Government, a Tory council, and in all probability a Tory landlord.

    The Housing Bill does not propose to do anything to improve the living conditions of those families. Nor does it propose anything to help them get somewhere better to live—quite the reverse. The Bill is likely to force them to stay there longer. That is because the Government are lurching to the right.

    One of the lurchers is standing up now.

    It is no good Ministers trying to deny what is happening. The Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977, which the Government want to update, was a private Member's Bill supported by both the then Labour Government and Mr. Peter Walker, a former Environment Secretary and subsequently a Cabinet Minister under Mrs. Thatcher. The Bill was opposed only by right-wing Tories, who have lobbied against it ever since.

    As a result of that lobbying, the law was reviewed in the early 1980s by the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine), now the Deputy Prime Minister. It was reviewed again in the late 1980s by the late Nicholas Ridley, while Mrs. Thatcher was still Prime Minister. On each occasion, it was decided to leave the law alone. That is not for this Government—they want to toughen up a law for the homeless that even Mrs. Thatcher thought was harsh enough.

    The Tory lurch to the right is also the reason why the Government are changing the law to put private tenants at a disadvantage—both when they are looking for somewhere to live and if they get into arrears with their rent. From now on, the law will assume that every tenancy is a shorthold tenancy, and landlords will be able to evict tenants who get just two months behind with the rent. There is not much hope of extra security there.

    Then there is the case of leaseholders. The Government claimed when they introduced the previous housing Bill that they had protected leaseholders, but they had not. Dishonest, unscrupulous landowners, managing agents, lawyers and a whole host of shark-like, so-called professionals have continued to exploit leaseholders. Now the Government are proposing further changes. As usual, they are a bit too late and certainly too little. They do not go far enough; they do not give leaseholders the right to manage, which is what is really needed and what the leaseholders are looking for.

    We have further evidence of the Government's wish to centralise all power into their own hands. They propose to decide on the housing allocation policies of all local authorities. So housing allocation priorities in Wakefield, Wigan and Warrington will be laid down by the Secretary of State, who represents Suffolk, Coastal, instead of by local councillors who know their area and have to answer to the electors for their decisions.

    The Government have decided that they know best, so the next question is: what housing allocation policies will they pursue? Will they be those pursued by Tory Westminster city council, whose Tory councillors allocate homeless families to asbestos-ridden blocks, and who, according to the district auditor—not me—have unlawfully squandered £29 million of public money allocating houses for party political advantage? Is that what the Secretary of State has in mind for when he takes his new powers? To the best of my knowledge, he has never criticised Westminster council's allocation or priorities. We can therefore reasonably assume that they are the sort of priorities that he wants to introduce in every other part of the country.

    The Government claim to be the party of law and order. They are nothing of the sort. All over the country, Labour councils have been taking action, and trying to take action, to combat and reduce anti-social behaviour, not only on council estates but everywhere, but have received precious little help from the Government.

    When the Labour party introduced proposals, some of which are incorporated in the Bill, the Prime Minister said:
    "we have taken action on that problem. Nothing in the proposals from the Labour party adds to that action; they are merely window dressing on Labour's part."
    On the same day, the Home Secretary said to my hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw):
    "the hon. Gentleman knows full well that the proposals that he announced this week add nothing to those measures which are already part of our law and those which we have announced already. If we take the two together, all that we have is a bit of pretence of precisely the kind that we have come to expect from the Labour party on this and on other matters."—[Official Report, 22 June 1995; Vol. 262, c. 469–72.]
    The Secretary of State says that he is now introducing in the Bill some of the very measures that my hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn was proposing and which the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister denounced in their usual knee-jerk manner.

    The Government have given precious little help to councils that have been pushing to improve matters and to combat anti-social behaviour. The Labour party has been pressing for changes in the law, and the Bill includes some of those changes. However, it is typical of the Government that they are not introducing all the necessary changes. None of the changes relates to witness protection, rules of evidence or court delays, and the Government are not prepared to extend the scope of injunctions to cover visitors to council estates as well as the tenants.

    Of course, the Government have a long history of making exaggerated claims for all sorts of housing schemes that turn out not to work. No one has mentioned it, and it has not been in any press releases, but the Government have quietly dropped an idea thought up by the late Nicholas Ridley and the current Chief Secretary to the Treasury.

    I must say that I always had doubts about a scheme affecting council tenants that had been devised by the son of Viscount Ridley and the son of Earl Waldegrave—how right I was. It was the tenants choice scheme, which was designed to bring about the wholesale privatisation of council housing. Tenants were to be asked to vote on whether to get a private landlord. The voting system was rigged, so that those who did not vote and empty flats counted as a yes vote.

    Despite those strange electoral arrangements, eight years later, fewer than 1,000 tenants have opted for a private landlord, and more than 900 of them were tenants of Westminster city council who were desperate to escape its clutches. In the whole of the rest of the country, fewer than 100 tenants availed themselves of the Ridley-Waldegrave choice. That scheme has, however, been costing between £500,000 and £1 million a year to advertise and administer—for the sake of argument, let us say £6 million over the past eight years. It is a further Tory waste of taxpayers' money.

    My hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich (Mr. Raynsford) and other colleagues will be dealing with other aspects of the Housing Bill. They will work hard to improve it in Committee, but they will have a hard task, because the Bill ignores the realities that face tens of thousands of British families. Above all, instead of reducing insecurity, the Bill adds to it. That is why we shall vote against it tonight.

    Our approach to housing is based on the belief that every family should have somewhere decent to live and should be able to afford to live there. A decent, secure home is vital to family life. Without it, a family's health suffers; without it, grown-ups find it hard to hold down a job; without it, children find it hard to do well at school; without it, family relationships are soured and family breakdown becomes more likely.

    Everyone recognises that it will take a long time and a lot of hard work to ensure that everyone in Britain has somewhere decent to live. The people know that this Government will not do what is necessary. They also know that they need a Labour Government, even to make a start.

    5.3 pm

    The hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) and I share, pleasurably, parliamentary responsibility for Covent Garden, which spans our constituency boundaries. In the past, we have shared the different experience, although not simultaneously, of being councillors for the London borough of Camden where, indeed, in its previous Hampstead embodiment, my noble mother—to coin a phrase—was for many years the chairman of housing.

    The fact that Camden and Westminster have different housing policies may explain why I did not agree wholly and precisely with everything that the hon. Gentleman said in what I would describe as a characteristically provocative speech. There are moments when I am relieved that there are china shops left standing in his constituency.

    The hon. Gentleman's attack on Westminster council contained a long passage about Clarendon Court hotel. What he said would have caused any hon. Member to make inquiries, within the proper constituency conventions, even if, as in my case, the matter had not previously been brought to my attention, for reasons which I am sure he will understand. He did his case less good and made it less convincing with his charge that councillors in Westminster had been putting homeless people in asbestos-ridden property when he knows that the words he used would be potentially actionable outside the House.

    That is something to which Westminster councillors will no doubt look forward.

    Six days ago, Madam Deputy Speaker, you were very kind to call me as one of the few Back Benchers to speak on the benefit regulations for asylum seekers. Given that I was called such a short time ago, I am particularly conscious that I must not trample on the time of other hon. Members in this debate, not least because of the rationing that will occur later.

    My interest is a constituency one. I have not sought to verify whether each and every clause in the Bill—a description of which, incidentally, would owe more to a pantechnicon than to a portmanteau—relates to my constituency precisely, but it would not surprise me. I shall, however, concentrate on a limited number of issues.

    First, although I have absorbed a great deal of briefing from interested parties hostile to the amendments to existing homelessness provisions, I am not convinced that, in an environment such as Westminster's, amendment was inappropriate. The number of homeless people who have been permanently rehoused in Westminster has steadily climbed from just under 900 in 1990–91 to nearly 1,250 in 1994–95, with one blip in the middle when it went up to nearly 1,300.

    During the same period, the number of category A cases that required rehousing and were rehoused fell from just under 200 in 1990–91 to 119 at its lowest, although I acknowledge that, last year, the number went back up to 138. With those trends, in terms of absolute numbers and their respective directions, it is not surprising that, in the most recent month of relevant statistics, the average wait for a category A rehousing case in Westminster was more than three times that of the homeless wait for permanent housing. The Westminster figures afford a poor climate for the case for the homeless to be accepted by those with much deeper roots in the community.

    Briefing that I received from various lobbies implied that one quarter to one third of accommodation was going to homeless families. In Westminster, in the five years that I was citing, the figure has always been in excess of 50 per cent. and, in two years, it was more than 60 per cent. Incidentally, some of those homeless, whose handling will be changed by the Bill, will appear on the waiting list—a waiting list on which the prospects have been improved.

    The second matter to which I should like to allude is the major role that has been played in Westminster by the Peabody Trust and similar bodies. A great city requires a significant amount of low-income housing near its centre in order to provide homes for those who will run many of its city services on comparatively low incomes.

    I have historically been critical of the Peabody Trust in private for changing its priorities to the disadvantage of those reared on Peabody estates and who, in my view, conferred genuine and helpful stability in an inner-city community. However, I can now pay public tribute to at least a partial change in emphasis on its part. I am genuinely concerned that the Government should listen in Committee to the practical problems of those who manage social estates in central London, including those which have been admirably created in the past quarter of a century by organisations such as the Soho Housing Association.

    Everyone thinks that, in my constituency, it is the City of London that has businesses but no residents, yet in the WI postal district alone, the number of businesses equals the number of households. That confers special problems on medium-sized organisations with dispersed properties that have a critical role to play in inner-city housing provision. I am particularly concerned that the extra legal and administrative costs associated with leaseholders should not adversely affect rents for tenants.

    The very nature of Westminster brings me back to the homeless. Clause 155 offers real potential for assistance, provided the word "district" in line 9—which is noticeably spelt with a lowercase "d"—genuinely offers some flexibility and does not limit an authority to its own boundaries. Westminster in particular is an authority whose nature of housing would make that specifically unhelpful, but I recognise that the matter will be examined again in Committee. Likewise, while introductory tenancies may not be welcomed everywhere, they would be helpful in Westminster as an extra weapon in the armoury.

    On a different subject, I am glad, in the interests of effective legislation, that the Government have revisited the issue of leasehold reform. I too have had constituency cases like those that have animated my hon. Friend the Member for Fulham (Mr. Carrington).

    I am conscious that the majority role that owner-occupiers now play in the housing market—which I welcome—potentially reduces the attention that is paid to the rest of the community. This can have untoward effects, and I do not blame the lobbies for trying to redress the balance—or for the vehemence with which they argue the case. Whether that is the best way in which to achieve their several objectives is for them.

    While I support the main thrust of the Bill, I hope that the House and the Government will listen carefully to the case that is put for the homeless, who are also my constituents, as we study its detail and small print. The Bill will warrant close study in Committee, and it would be a particular service to those affected by it if sensible and strategic approaches to the relevance and importance of different parts of the Bill were to take precedence over more familiar tactical enthusiasms.

    5.11 pm

    I want to do two things that have not been done so far in the debate. First, I want to make it clear that we can solve housing problems only by spending more money. We can alter systems and arrangements between tenancies and owner-occupation, but unless we are prepared to spend more money we will not solve the problems.

    I hear the hon. Gentleman's comment—all I would say at this stage is that it needs to be a substantial amount. It is no good shouting across the Chamber. The question that should be exercising the House is, "How can we find that money and persuade people to spend it on housing?" Unless that is done, there will be difficulties.

    Secondly, I want to praise the Government. I was delighted that, nine months ago, they published figures showing how many houses they believe are needed. Such figures were last published in 1977. It is regrettable that Ministers refused to update them for a long time. I believe that, if we are to persuade people to spend more money, we must have a clear estimate of housing need.

    I warmly welcome the fact that the Government have published the figures. Some hon. Members will be aware that the Environment Committee is now examining them. There can he many arguments about such figures. As the Committee has not published a report, I shall say simply that the majority of the evidence suggests that the Government have underestimated the need, but whether we accept the Government's figures or other—slightly higher—ones, the real challenge is how to achieve the totals in the next few years. Finding 1.7 million new homes in the next 10 years and—on the Government's own estimate—an average of 60,000 new social houses a year will be a substantial challenge. I praise the Government for publicising the figures, but we must think carefully about how we will find the money to meet the targets.

    We must ensure that we look after the existing housing stock, and do not allow any existing houses to deteriorate. When I look around my constituency, I see clear examples of what first a Labour Government, and then a Conservative Government, did to turn houses that were built at the turn of the century and in the early part of this century into little palaces in which people could live. Reddish has benefited from being a housing action area. It now has first-class accommodation, and people are proud to live in their houses.

    What worries me is that all that has been done in that part of Reddish could have been repeated in three or four other areas of my constituency; unless we are prepared to put more money into urban renewal, we will run the risk of allowing many areas of attractive old housing to continue to deteriorate. The country cannot afford that, and I deeply regret that the Bill does not propose to improve urban renewal.

    The hon. Gentleman has made much of resources, and he could refer, as did the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson), to the vast number of houses that were built in the 1960s and 1970s but, over 15 to 20 years, did not many of those houses become unsuitable and unfit to live in? Did not they require vast repairs at vast expense?

    Of course, but I am trying to illustrate that the lessons were learnt—certainly in my constituency—not just by a Conservative Government, but by a Labour Government. They appreciated that good urban renewal meant that, instead of continuing a clearance programme, it was possible to rehabilitate houses. That has been done successfully during the past 20 years, and it has been a real success story in a pocket of my constituency. My complaint is that it has not happened in many other areas.

    I want now to mention what are, allegedly, unpopular estates. In my view, many estates are unpopular because there is a lack of resources for good housing management, not because they are inherently bad. The failure to accept that money has to be spent on the management and on the maintenance of communal areas has often led to deterioration.

    I want also to refer to problem tenants. I welcome the fact that the Government are suggesting that there might be ways of dealing with the issue, but the House must consider the matter carefully. Evicting a tenant—or not renewing a short lease—is one thing, but we must ask what happens to those tenants, particularly if they have children. One solution that was adopted recently was slowly to push the problem tenant around until he ended up on what was called a sink estate.

    If we are trying—rightly—to get rid of sink estates, we must ask where such tenants are to go. Furthermore, what will happen to their children? There are measures to remove next door neighbours who are causing a nuisance, but unless we decide what should happen to them, we shall simply create problems. We might not even be able to allow the evictions to take place.

    The hon. Member for Taunton (Mr. Nicholson) said that certain properties that were built in the 1960s are now unsuitable. The ones that particularly concern me are bedsits. There was an assumption that elderly people would be happy with a bedsit. Many of them were in the 1960s, but that is no longer the case. Unless we have a positive policy for converting bedsits, a problem that has developed in parts of my constituency will become widespread.

    If there is a vacancy in a bedsit and no elderly person wants to take it, as the Government rightly put pressure on the local authority to ensure that vacancies are filled, the authority puts someone in—very often someone who has come out of a long-stay hospital or who has psychiatric or alcohol problems. We would find it difficult enough to have such a person living next door and we might attempt vigorously to stop them making life hell, but it would be intolerable for an elderly person. We must spend money on dealing with some of those bedsits.

    Another problem that I find alarming, and which came to the attention of the Select Committee on the Environment during its inquiry, concerns tenants who have bought council properties. I understand why the Government pushed the right to buy and encouraged many tenants to buy their properties. What I find unacceptable is the fact that building societies, which were originally keen to lend such tenants money to buy their properties and, in some cases, were happy to lend to a second buyer when the tenant sold the property on, are making it difficult for the prospective third owner to get a mortgage.

    Building societies cannot afford to red-line former council estates and say that mortgages are not available. I would not mind if they had been honest and said that they never wanted that type of business, but having rushed in and encouraged people to become owner-occupiers in such areas, it is unacceptable for them to say no now. We need some quick action from the building societies, which ought to spend more time looking to their original principles and encouraging people to buy homes, rather than turning themselves into banks.

    Finally—to keep my remarks brief—the Government are promising to deal with the problem of bed-and-breakfast accommodation. They say that local authorities will have the right to close down such establishments quickly. Authorities often have powers now, but they have to pick up the cost of using them. If an establishment is closed, and 20 families are immediately put out on the street, the authority has to find them somewhere else to go. When the medical officers had strong powers in local authorities, they could say, "Get on and do it", and pick up the consequences. Now, no one is strong enough to tell local authorities, "You've got to do this. It's your statutory duty." As a result, councils will waver and worry whether they can afford to do something.

    To my Front-Bench spokesmen I simply say that it is all right to complain about some of the measures in the Bill, but I want to know—soon—how we will persuade people that we have to spend more money on housing. It will be one of the crucial issues at the next election. It is no good merely listing the problems. We have to be clear that we are going to find the money and we must not raise people's expectations and then leave them disillusioned.

    5.22 pm

    I welcome the Bill. It makes a substantial contribution to housing welfare and the sooner it is implemented, the better.

    In the spirit of Nolan, I must declare two interests before I go any further. I am a consultant to a building society and to a firm of solicitors and parliamentary agents. My remarks do not relate to matters that, so far as I am aware, impinge on the activities of either of those organisations. I have not been asked by the clients of that firm or by either of those organisations to make any representations during the passage of the Bill.

    In building confidence in the lettings sector and in generating new partnerships, the Bill creates opportunities in housing on which we can build in the spirit that we have been building for the past 15 years. I want to focus my remarks on parts V, VI and VII. We have all had many people come to our surgeries to tell us about their difficulties with neighbours. Life being what it is, neighbours often find it difficult to get on with each other. Sometimes, however, people who live on council estates are asked to bear wholly unreasonable and untenable difficulties. Part V allows local authorities to deal with such difficulties and we should welcome and support it.

    The Bill goes beyond that and helps people who have suffered domestic violence inflicted by a spouse, who has remained in occupation of the former matrimonial home while the family has been driven out. It seems wholly unreasonable that the accommodation should be left under-occupied and used by the perpetrator of such violence while the family is homeless. The Bill will allow the new ground to be used to remove the perpetrator of domestic violence from the accommodation that the family formerly occupied.

    While I associate myself with the hon. Gentleman's remarks about the welcome provisions in the Bill, is he not concerned that owner-occupiers and the tenants of private landlords living in sold council houses are increasingly causing problems on some of our estates? Would not the Bill be improved if such people were included, and should not the local authority take action to deal with the behaviour of such a category of person?

    Owner-occupation is a totally different question. Turning people out of the house that they own on the basis that they are perpetrating a nuisance must be a different area of law. It is a tortious liability and must be treated in the courts as such, rather than as a contractual breach of obligation between landlord and tenant, which can properly be dealt with in a housing Bill. The hon. Lady is widening the Bill outside the scope of its long title. Technically, that issue is not before us today, and it could not be dealt with in the manner that she suggested.

    Increasingly, on many council estates and former council estates and in many housing association areas, one part or sometimes the whole estate gains a bad reputation for tenants who are frequently a nuisance. They drive out the better tenants. Sometimes, credit is not advanced because of the address, and yet the majority of the estates' tenants are respectable, reasonable and proper people who are afforded difficulties because of a few neighbours, who gradually concentrate in an area as the better tenants move elsewhere. The Bill will give us an opportunity to avoid that sink estate or bad road labelling, which so often affects parts of our towns and cities.

    We also ought to welcome the introduction of a probationary tenancy, which will give people an opportunity to take on, responsibly, the obligation of tenancy with their local authority or social housing association landlord. Tenants will understand that a tenancy contains obligations and is not given for them to despoil, but contains rights and responsibilities and must be treated as such.

    The hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Mr. Bennett) asked what would happen to the people who were removed from accommodation because of the grounds of possession given in part V. Clearly, if such people fall within the appropriate needs groups, they must be given alternative temporary accommodation. It will probably be very different from the property that they occupied. Some Opposition Members suggest that they will be treated in the same way as homeless people, a matter with which parts VI and VII deal. The housing stock is inevitably finite, whether one takes the view of the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish that 1,700,000 houses or social units should be built in the next 10 years or accepts a figure of perhaps a quarter of that, which might be regarded as the other end of the spectrum.

    I talked about 1.7 million extra homes, not social housing units. I accept that the figure for social housing units should be between 60,000 and 100,000 per year, which is nothing like the figure that the hon. Gentleman gave.

    I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that clarification of his position, but it makes no difference to my point. Whatever one accepts as being the parameters of the argument about the need for the development of social housing, whether it be 40,000 or 100,000 units a year, the fact is that the stock is finite. There will always be considerable demand on it and no Government will ever be able to ensure the construction of enough units to meet all the demand.

    I greatly enjoyed the speech of the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Mr. Bennett). Does my hon. Friend agree with the hon. Gentleman's concluding remarks that the Labour party Front-Bench spokesmen have no policy on the subject?

    That was clear from the inability of the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson), who is no longer in his place, to answer any of the key interventions from Conservative Members. It is clear that the Labour party mouths arguments and criticisms against policies but rarely advances constructive comments. Finding a policy in the modern Labour party is like looking for a needle in the proverbial haystack: there is a lot of straw, but few constructive points to help us to know where it stands.

    As the housing stock is finite, it is essential that it should be put to its best use. That is the aim of the Bill, in conjunction with the guidelines on assisting local authorities in allocating accommodation issued last Thursday. I had the deepest suspicion, when I heard his remarks, that the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras had not read those guidelines.

    I remind the House of the arguments that were circulating at the time of the introduction of the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977. I was involved in local government then and I remember the deep resentment that was felt about Parliament telling local government how it should go about its business in allocating housing accommodation.

    We were very angry. We thought, "We know the needs of our areas and the criteria that should apply to those who approach us for housing. We will allocate our housing stock according to the needs, as we perceive them, of our communities. We do not expect people from Westminster, by legislation or order, to tell us how we are to allocate our accommodation. If homeless people arrive in our area and we consider that they have appropriate claims on our resources, we will allocate accommodation as we think it best to do so." Local authorities everywhere devised skilful and carefully thought-out allocation policies.

    Does the hon. Gentleman favour the Minister telling local authorities how they should allocate their properties to homeless families? That will be the result of the Bill. Is he aware that today, whatever happened in 1977, nearly every local authority in the country does not support what the Government propose in the Bill?

    We are constantly told that almost all local authorities are under the control of the Labour or Liberal parties. It is interesting that hon. Members who led the criticism of the changes in 1977 and their successors today are suddenly changing their position and opposing the terms of the Bill. It is amazing that they have altered their position from that which they occupied, perfectly correctly, 18 years ago. I remind the hon. Lady that the draft guidance on allocation lays out the skeleton of direction to local government about the way in which accommodation should be allocated. The great advantage of the new regime is that it will allow local authorities, taking those points, to allocate housing according to the needs of the people who apply to them. Clearly, more flexibility is being introduced into allocation policies than has been possible under the 1977 Act.

    Under the Bill, local authorities will not be able to give permanent and secure accommodation to homeless families. They will be able to give accommodation for no more than two out of three years before a family has to move on. That requirement on local authorities is exactly opposite to what the hon. Gentleman said about local authorities having freedom to operate. Will he confirm that when he had a responsible position in the Association of District Councils, on no occasion when he served on delegations to Housing Ministers did he argue for changes of the sort contained in the Bill?

    Although I was not on the council of the ADC in 1977, I can assure the hon. Gentleman that I made representations in the early 1980s, when I was on the council of the association, for changes that I thought would be appropriate. I spoke to Ministers about that and these proposals substantially reflect that.

    It is clear that the hon. Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Betts) has not properly read the allocation document. I accept that it is a consultation document and not yet sat in concrete, but it gives the very flexibility to which I have been referring. Homeless families who, under the current definition, are entitled to be housed, could still be housed by a local authority if it considered that the family met the other criteria set out in the paper. As I understand the Bill, there is no automatic referral. No doubt, my hon. Friend the Minister will be able to confirm that.

    Successive Opposition speakers are making a great mistake. The Bill does not state that a homeless person must automatically go into temporary accommodation. It says that the local authority must try to ensure that that happens, but it can still allocate that family into permanent accommodation if it wishes to, considers it appropriate and has the stock available. Let me draw hon. Members' attention to paragraph 32 of the draft guidance, which says that where continuity of schooling or care is important
    "it will be desirable to give higher priority to providing settled accommodation for households in such tenancies containing young children or a vulnerable adult."
    The document itself proposes that, in those circumstances, accommodation should be made available.

    Will my hon. Friend ignore the hon. Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Betts), who foisted the world student games on the ratepayers of Sheffield and whose authority has one of the worst records in the country on empty council houses?

    I am obliged for that helpful intervention.

    I have heard cries from Opposition Members that the young and the old do not receive appropriately favourable attention from housing authorities when they have particular problems that should be acknowledged. The allocation policy gives a list of potential items which should be considered in rehousing, which will apply to the young and the old as well as to families. We have that flexibility. I repeat that point because it seems to have escaped many Opposition Members who do not want to take note of it. We have the flexibility to deal with those problems where the local authority considers it appropriate to do so. The council will decide whether family X, which is homeless, should be accommodated or whether someone else should be accommodated using its inevitably limited resources.

    Local authorities are at present free to house homeless families in temporary accommodation—as they often do, especially outside London—when they need to make further inquiries about the circumstances of the family concerned. However, at present, local authorities have the discretion to take into account homelessness as a factor in their housing policies. That discretion will be tempered by the proposals. If so, why do we need these provisions? Should we not leave local authorities to decide their housing allocation policies? We need more homes—

    Order. This is the second time that the hon. Lady has started to make a speech rather than a short intervention.

    Local authorities will have that freedom within the broad framework of the allocation policies proposed in the consultation document, and it is up to them to rise to the challenge offered.

    May I make a couple of observations to my hon. Friend the Minister for Local Government, Housing and Urban Regeneration on the consultation paper on allocation? It is important that the accommodation that local authorities seek to make available to homeless families through recommendation rather than direct housing provision is seen to be affordable and of reasonable size and condition for the homeless occupants. Local authorities must not simply hand over a list of names and addresses of property that is available; they must give proper guidance to those who need it and follow up that guidance. They must also ensure that rejections by private sector landlords to whom reference has been made by the housing authority are not simply taken as the end of the story but lead to homeless families being given continuing and further support by the housing authority.

    I hope that this initiative will lead to the final disposal of bed-and-breakfast accommodation as a housing alternative. The Government have made great strides in that area, and should be congratulated on what they have done. I hope that we see more moves in that direction as local housing authorities use references within the private sector or other social housing landlords to provide temporary accommodation.

    I am conscious that many other hon. Members wish to speak in this debate and it would not be fair for me to say more, except to underline that this thoroughly good Bill needs to be implemented as soon as possible.

    5.41 pm

    Some parts of the Bill are to be welcomed, but the overwhelming view of people involved in housing provision, whether in the local government or voluntary sector, is that the Bill does nothing to tackle the root cause of long waiting lists, rising homelessness and increased insecurity in housing. The root cause is the lack of product to meet the ever-increasing demand, which hon. Members on both sides of the House have discussed. Once again, the Government are abdicating their responsibility. The Secretary of State spent much of his speech discussing everything but what the Government would do about the problem.

    Part II of the Bill gives local authorities the power to set up compulsory registration schemes for houses in multiple occupancy. Those are long overdue but none the less welcome. Liberal Democrats would like the Government to go much further and place on councils a legal duty to enforce minimum standards on housing in multiple occupancy. We shall discuss that matter in Committee. Despite the fact that the Government enable councils to charge for setting up such registration schemes, we are, as usual, concerned about how local authorities will find the finance to do that.

    The Secretary of State discussed leaseholds. He criticised other parties for not coming forward with their policies. He has proposed a Bill that he will amend and we still do not know what will happen to leasehold properties. We all agree that something must be done because we have been heavily lobbied by people experiencing problems and the Minister discussed those this afternoon.

    We are concerned about chapter I of part III, which proposes to reduce the amount of time that private tenants can be in arrears before their landlords can evict them. It is another blow to private tenants, many of whom are already reeling from the Government's housing benefit changes. If we look closer, we see that the Government's proposals do not add up. They encourage private landlords by making it easier for them to evict tenants, yet they cut housing benefit from every direction. Landlords are being sent conflicting messages. Tenants are being hit on every side, and insecurity will be the order of the day. Tenants on housing benefit can easily run up eight weeks' arrears with no delay on their part.

    I should be interested to know whether the Minister or anyone else in the Department of the Environment has ever sat through a housing benefit review board case. If they had, they would realise how difficult it will be to make the Government's proposal work. Many housing benefit departments are already struggling to cope with the changes and are way behind with payments. Moreover, tenants trying to obtain housing benefit must often acquire information and pieces of paper from a wide area, including the Benefits Agency and the Department of Social Security. The Bill will make the private rented sector extremely difficult for all tenants, yet the Government are to inflict that measure on homeless families.

    I also welcome the requirement for local authorities to advise people about housing and homelessness. I hope that, during the passage of the Bill, we shall receive clearer information on how the Government expect that to happen. Many of us are concerned that people should have independent advice.

    I also welcome most of part V. Local authorities need additional powers to deal with anti-social tenants on their estates. Liberal Democrats make three proposals: first, we need better resource, prevention and conciliation measures; secondly, we need tougher tenancy contracts to ensure that tenants are aware of what their contracts mean in practice and how they will be enforced; and, thirdly, the law needs to be changed to make it easier for local authorities to pursue anti-social tenants. The Association of District Councils has been requesting that for some time. I hope that chapters II and III of part V will fit the bill.

    If tenants are being extremely difficult to their neighbours, they must be housed elsewhere and helped to ensure that they keep their tenancy going. 'That will happen only in extreme cases, but people cannot be allowed to get away with making other people's lives a misery.

    The Secretary of State presented no evidence that probationary tenancies will work. The pilot projects are still going on. I do not know whether we shall have the evidence from those before the Bill completes its passage. Introductory tenancies will lead to a two-tier system with no real advantages.

    I am also concerned about the blanket granting to housing association tenants of the automatic right to buy their homes. Liberal Democrats do not oppose home ownership or allowing people in the social rented sector to buy their homes. Housing associations should allow their tenants to buy their homes if they can afford to do so, if the homes can easily be replaced and if it is in the local community's interest. We are not unsympathetic to the idea of providing them with grants to do so, and most of the councillors with whom I have discussed this matter share my view that the effects of the voluntary purchase grants scheme will benefit many individuals and many areas.

    However, I believe that the Government's mania for a right to buy has led them to produce proposals which are badly flawed. We have heard this afternoon about the exemption for communities of fewer than 3,000 people but, like many other provisions, that is not on the face of the Bill. There is great concern that the Government are using criteria that are too crude. I hope that the matter will be considered in Committee and that other criteria will be brought to the fore.

    This morning I received a communication from East Dorset district council in my area. It is very concerned that there will be little money left after the house sales. Although the councils may keep the money that is raised from the sales, by the time they have rearranged loans and so on, less than 50 per cent. of the money will be available to them to build replacement properties.

    The Bill also introduces new and far-reaching changes for the Housing Corporation and they will need fairly detailed scrutiny in Committee. There is a strong case for reforming the corporation as it will be assuming extra powers. We welcome particularly the appointment of a housing ombudsman because, if housing companies are to be the new landlords—it appears that this time we shall not have landlords who simply want to make a profit—we must have decent regulation.

    I turn now to the heart of the Bill: the changes in the allocation of social housing and the consequent changes in local authorities' duties to the homeless in parts VI and VII of the Bill. In the light of my experience as a member of a large housing authority for almost 10 years and as a Member of Parliament for a constituency with two different types of local authorities, I find it difficult to swallow the Minister's attitude that the Government's proposals are perfectly reasonable and perfectly sensible.

    I have shared platforms with the Secretary of State and, to hear him speak about the proposals, one would think that they are uncontroversial. Sometimes one would think that there is no need for housing legislation. One gets the impression that all is sweetness and light and that there is nothing wrong in the housing sector that a little fine tuning will not solve. We heard that sentiment expressed again this afternoon.

    That view runs completely contrary to the views of everyone who is involved in the housing world—be it professional organisations, the voluntary sector, local authorities or housing associations throughout the land. When the Government were first elected in 1979, they claimed housing to be a top priority. They promised council tenants the right to buy, more choice in the private rented sector and greater mobility through the property-owning democracy.

    Some 17 years later, we are witnessing housing problems which affect individuals and communities as never before. No one is immune—as home owners who took out large mortgages in the 1980s and who are now facing employment difficulties will testify. Some 19 years ago, the late Stephen Ross, a Liberal Member of Parliament—for the benefit of the hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Mr. Thomason), I supported Mr. Ross then and I still support his actions at that time—introduced the Housing (Homeless Persons) Bill, which enjoyed all-party support. Perhaps the trigger for that legislation was the screening of the television documentary "Cathy Come Home", which alerted many people to the scandal of homelessness on our streets and the dreadful problems that people face when they are left without a home.

    In introducing the legislation, Stephen Ross explained very eloquently why homeless families need secure tenancies rather than temporary accommodation, which forces people to move continually from place to place. He said:
    "In 1948 it was believed that a short stay in some kind of temporary accommodation would be adequate to tide people over…That may have been so then, but the nature of homelessness today is certainly not like that…The need of most homeless people is a permanent solution to their problem which they have been unable to arrange for themselves."—[Official Report, 18 February 1977; Vol. 926, c. 898]
    I shall now cite some figures—I make no apologies for doing so, as the Government seem to turn a blind eye when it comes to statistics. In 1977, local authorities in England accepted that more than 31,000 households were homeless. That was regarded as a scandal at the time. For the 12 months to the end of September last year, there were more than 124,000 acceptances. In 1977, slightly more than 4,500 properties were repossessed by mortgage lenders. In the year to June 1995, the comparable figure was almost 50,000.

    The problems in housing are deeper now than at any time since the immediate post-war period—there is insecurity, disrepair and homelessness. Yet unlike in the 1940s and 1950s, this Government do not seem to have the political will to tackle the root problem: the simple lack of rented housing which people can afford. Since 1979, Government investment capital in housing has fallen from £6.4 billion to less than £3 billion.

    I shall ask the hon. Lady the same question as I asked the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson). We have met our manifesto commitment to build more than 150,000 houses since we were elected in 1992, but the hon. Lady criticises the Government's policy. In the unlikely event that the Liberal Democrats were elected to power, how many houses would they build each year and how much would they spend on the social housing sector?

    I supported the Government two years ago when they forecast how many houses they would build and how much money they would spend. However, I would not have reneged on that promise: we would have gone on to build those properties. If the hon. Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Clifton-Brown) is patient, I shall comment later on how we would pay for social housing.

    In 1977, more than 162,000 public sector homes were completed across Britain. We will be lucky if the figure reaches 50,000 this year. For the past four years, social housing output has averaged only 60,000—which is at the bottom end of the Government's estimate of need, ranging from 60,000 to 100,000. The situation will be even worse next year. According to the Budget outcome, the Government have halved their expenditure on housing in the past two years. They have estimated that there will be 51,000 new social lettings—which is 9,000 fewer than the Government's lowest estimate of housing need.

    The Government seem to be alone in estimating housing need at 60,000. Even the former chief housing economist at the Department of the Environment—who until 1994 was the official Government expert on such matters—now thinks that the Government have got it wrong. Is the Minister saying that everyone but the Government has got it wrong? It seems incredible that it is almost 20 years since the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977 was enacted, but apparently no lessons have been learnt about tackling the long-term problems of homelessness.

    The Government continue to take a short-term approach. They are driven by an obsession with the headline figure of the public sector borrowing requirement to the exclusion of almost any consideration of the long-term benefits of investment in good-quality housing. The Government have hit the safety net for home owners and for private tenants and they now intend to hit the safety net for the homeless.

    The review of access to social housing was not, of itself, a bad idea—and under different circumstances I might have welcomed it. However, it was clear from the context in which it was announced that it was less about tackling the housing crisis than about reinforcing Ministers' prejudices. Those prejudices include the belief that local authorities are bad, that home ownership is the only answer, and of course we have all heard about "back to basics". It is time that the Government stopped looking for scapegoats for those problems and started to look for solutions.

    It was brought home to me very clearly before Christmas what damage the Government have done by attempting to scapegoat groups of people. A charity in my area, which provides assistance and accommodation for young homeless people, conducted an appeal before Christmas. It found hate mail in its appeal envelopes, reflecting politicians' often repeated claim that all young homeless people are wastrels. It is not so, but that is what happens when one maligns groups of people.

    If the Bill succeeds, it will be the final undoing of the 1977 legislation. Last summer's judgment by the other place in the Awua case has not altered the way in which most local authorities deal with homeless families. The Government's proposals most certainly will.

    The Bill represents a golden opportunity to move forwards, not backwards, from the 1977 Act, but it appears that that opportunity will be lost. Liberal Democrats will fight tooth and nail to defend the Act that Stephen Ross took through the House with all-party support.

    We are waiting with mounting impatience for the hon. Lady to say just what the Liberal Democrats would do about the housing programme. They have already pledged to increase taxation by 1 p to pay for more spending on education. By how much would they increase taxation to spend more money on social housing?

    The provision of housing is not a matter of revenue budgets and taxation.

    The Government's proposals to encourage the use of short-term tenancies in the private rented sector for housing homeless people make bad financial sense and would be bad for families. There is no substitute for a stable, affordable home. Instability damages children's education. Using the relatively expensive private rented sector will increase the Government's housing benefit bill and make it harder for homeless people to take work without losing benefit.

    The prohibition on a local authority housing a homeless household in its own property for more than two out of three years is quite astonishing. When the Secretary of State was asked about the problem of families having to move, he said that it would not happen, but the Bill will make it inevitable.

    It might be helpful if I clarify the matter before the hon. Lady takes it any further. A local authority can provide temporary accommodation in its own housing for more than two years. If a family present themselves as homeless, they will be given temporary accommodation in a property owned by the local authority or a housing association, or one in the private rented sector. If that family then fulfil the criteria in the allocations policy—I suspect that the hon. Lady has not read our allocations policy, otherwise she would not have made implications about the moral prejudices that informed it—they can then be housed permanently and very rapidly, possibly in the same property.

    We shall have to differ on our interpretation of the Bill. The Bill makes it clear that a tenant could be asked to move after two years in local authority housing.

    It is quite amazing that the Government avoid stating anywhere in the Bill or in the consultation paper that homelessness is a factor in housing need. Insanitary housing, unsatisfactory housing conditions and people living in conditions of temporary or insecure tenure are among the proposed criteria for housing registers, yet the most severe and obvious form of housing need—homelessness—is conspicuous by its absence. I have yet to hear a good reason why we shall be debating regulations when we will have almost completed considering the Bill in Committee.

    Clauses 145 and 146 are particularly draconian as they exclude a person seeking political asylum in the United Kingdom from any local authority assistance, however temporary. Apparently that includes advice or information on housing. We recently debated the effects of excluding asylum seekers from housing benefit, so the Minister should be in no doubt about my views and those of my colleagues. I remind him that we are talking about those who seek asylum officially—not illegal immigrants or people who fail to be granted asylum, but people who are waiting for the Government to process their appeals. The Government could reduce costs by dealing with those appeals more quickly.

    What angers me most is the Government's complete abdication of responsibility for the current shortage of social housing, which has reached crisis level. I am angered by the sight of Ministers, who are responsible for the underfunding of housing and have reneged on promises even since I have been in the House, trying to pin the blame for the waiting lists on homeless families.

    The Government are fond of talking about the marketplace. We are discussing a product for which demand greatly outstrips supply. A normal response would be to increase supply, but the Housing Bill will reduce the supply to those in most need.

    We have heard much from the Government about the values by which people live in society. The Minister will know as well as I do that that is exactly what prompted the enormous write-in by members of the Methodist Church, who have written to me, to him and to the hon. Member for Greenwich (Mr. Raynsford). I know that many of them will be as disappointed as I am by the lost opportunities in the Bill.

    The elements of the Bill that I have welcomed should be part of a housing policy that recognises the importance of investment in housing. We spend £1.5 billion on treating people who suffer ill health because they live in cold, damp homes. There is massive unemployment in the construction industry and that represents considerable cost to the nation. More investment in housing would save the money that is being spent on those people. Most people agree that the capital receipts that are sitting in council coffers should be invested in housing, although there may be differences on how to go about it.

    First, we need a change in attitude to public accounting that recognises the difference between revenue and capital spending and the value of long-term capital investment in infrastructure, as in the rest of Europe. Secondly, the Government need to recognise the importance of safety nets, whether people are renting or buying, so that fewer people are in severe housing need. We also need a mortgage benefit.

    Earlier in the debate, we were asked what we would do about mortgage income tax relief. As we have said for many years, we would do away with it, but we would introduce a mortgage benefit to provide direct assistance to those who need it most.

    If the Minister were to incorporate some of those suggestions into the Housing Bill, he would get more bouquets and fewer brickbats. We have the opportunity to improve the Bill in Committee. I mentioned earlier that Members have received communications from the Methodist Church. I am still receiving them and I picked up another bundle on my way to the Chamber. One of them echoes what I have been saying for some time. It says:
    "Homelessness is a scandal. The Government must take responsibility."

    6.7 pm

    First, I wish to declare an interest as set out in the Register of Members' Interests. I am chairman of Home Rent 16 to 23 plc, which rents out private rented property, although my speech will bear no relation to that sector. I am also a trustee of Big Issue Action, the charitable foundation set up by The Big Issue magazine to help those who are homeless on our streets.

    I am sorry that the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) has left the Chamber. Having heard his speech, I felt that he might have benefited from listening to others. I imagine, however, that he has left the Chamber to shave off his beard, having read all those reports in the weekend press that, in order to get advancement in the Labour party these days, one has to shave off one's beard. Having heard his speech today, I regret that, however much he shaves off, it will not make him more credible.

    The hon. Gentleman had the opportunity to answer many questions this afternoon, and he chose to ignore them all. He was asked, "How many pounds?"—which I thought was rather rude. My guess would be about 18 stone.

    Time and again, the hon. Gentleman ignored questions that he was invited to answer. He was asked how much more money Labour would spend on housing, and whether Labour would make a commitment to bring back MIRAS in the way that it used to operate. The hon. Gentleman was asked how many more houses Labour would build. He did not even make an attempt to answer, but dodged or ignored the issues.

    It is clear that Labour's approach is to be tough on policies and tough on the causes of policies—something that even the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Mr. Bennett) pointed out. It is unfortunate that the only serious part of the hon. Gentleman's speech bore no relation to the Bill. If he had taken the trouble to read the Bill, he would have realised that it directly addresses his concerns about parts of Westminster.

    Does my hon. Friend agree that the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) was honest about one question directed at him? He could not defend the fact that Labour-controlled Hackney council has 2,000 empty council houses. Was that not honest of the hon. Gentleman?

    Of course—as honest as I would expect him to be over such a question—but no doubt he wanted to brush it aside for fear that others of my hon. Friends would ask about the number of empty houses in virtually every Labour metropolitan authority. The hon. Gentleman would have been too embarrassed to deal with such questions, so he decided to leave the Chamber.

    How does the hon. Gentleman square his remarks with the situation in Birmingham, which has about 1,800 empty council houses or 1.5 per cent. of the property stock, which is a normal minimum—but 16,800 empty houses in the private sector, which is the result of Government housing policy? How would the hon. Gentleman deal with that problem?

    If the hon. Lady had bothered to listen to previous debates, she would know that one of my constant themes is the number of empty houses in the private rented sector. There is a difference when it is a matter of an individual keeping his or her home empty. It may be a second home or have been inherited from a parent. Private sector homes are empty for many reasons.

    A local authority has an absolute obligation to use its resources sensibly and constructively. For Birmingham to keep 1,800 houses empty is a scandalous disgrace, and reflects badly on the city council. It has chosen to keep 1,800 people in temporary accommodation when they could have been rehoused in fixed-term council property. The hon. Lady's remarks only draw attention to the shame that is cast on the city of Birmingham.

    I have given way to an intervention about the Birmingham situation once, and I do not want the hon. Gentleman to dig himself into a bigger hole. I notice that the hon. Gentleman has shaved off his moustache, so clearly he is desperately seeking to crawl back

    I thank the hon. Gentleman, and I assure him that my moustache is still there. Is he aware that the former Housing Minister complimented Birmingham city council on its housing policies, not once but several times? As a housing management authority, that city council has been complimented by this Government.

    If—as the hon. Lady said—there are 1,800 empty local authority houses in Birmingham, 1,800 families or household units are being denied access to that accommodation. That figure is far too high, and more should be done to bring those homes back into use.

    I refer to two of the most important aspects of the Bill. I welcome the extension of the right to buy to housing association tenants, which will enable money that is tied up in association properties to be recycled, to increase the supply of association properties.

    I welcome also the Government's decision to re-examine the impact of that policy in rural areas. There would have been concern in my constituency, which is widely rural, if that policy had applied throughout the country, regardless of the size of the rural communities affected. I am pleased that the Government took note of recommendations and decided that the policy should apply only to populations of more than 3,000.

    I urge the Government to resist appeals to raise that limit to populations of 5,000 or more. A community of 3,000 people is sizeable and will have a reasonable amount of housing stock that one could expect to be recycled. If that figure were exceeded, people in reasonably sized towns would be denied the right to buy their housing association property. I urge the Government not to go down that road.

    I am disappointed that the Bill omits the original proposal to allow private companies to bid for housing association grant. I take on board my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State's remark that that provision will return shortly. I seek from my hon. Friend the Minister a reassurance when he winds up that the policy has only been postponed, not cancelled. Many people would be able to build social housing of extremely good quality at a reasonable price. They could take the risk for themselves to build more houses.

    The Bill would enable people who are currently homeless or on housing waiting lists to be properly treated. I approach that issue in my capacity as joint chairman for the past three years of the all-party group on homelessness. The group has examined the issue carefully on a number of occasions. Differing views have been expressed, but we have listened to advice. I commend the constructive way in which Shelter, under Chris Holmes, has put its case, and has sought to avoid political discussion and to concentrate on real concerns.

    People who express such concerns do not always consider both sides of the argument. Many of my surgery cases and much of my postbag centre on housing issues. I had a surgery case on Friday of a married couple in rented accommodation who are terrified of their neighbours because of their criminal activities. That couple have been No. 1 on two separate housing lists in the borough for more than one year, but every time a house becomes available it has not gone to them, however deeply distressing their circumstances, because others have had an urgent need to be rehoused.

    Equally sad are cases of young married couples, when one of them is obliged to live with parents and the other with in-laws. They postpone having a family, because, being responsible, they do not want to start one before getting their own home—yet see other people, probably in far better circumstances, leaping to the head of the queue.

    My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The debate has often focused on single mothers who benefit, but another surgery case involved a single mother living at her parents' home, with her six-year-old daughter sharing her bedroom. She had lived in those circumstances for five years, and for that time was No. 1 on the village housing waiting list. If that single mother's parents had said to her, "We're kicking you out and making you homeless," she would have been rehoused immediately. As that young woman decided to do what she thought was right, and her parents supported her, she has been penalised. The Bill is designed to assist in such cases.

    The hon. Gentleman cited a serious problem, but is not the real problem the lack of provision rather than the size or quality of the waiting list? Should not the Bill home in on more social homes for rent?

    I will respond to that point, but first I will mention another recent constituency case, in which—as my hon. Friend mentioned—the person wants to move in with his partner. They are both in council accommodation, so if they were allowed to move in together, they would free up one council property, and the availability of the stock would be increased. His ranking on the list is high, but because people jump above him to a suitable house, neither of those people can move out and free that house for somebody else. Surely more attention should be given to those who have patiently waited their turn. Their rights should be looked after as well.

    There is also a fundamental point of principle. Many people who are homeless have an urgent, short-term housing need. By allocating them temporary accommodation for 12 months, we could see whether they needed short-term or long-term housing. People may have a short-term housing need for only a few months, but they are allocated a council house which will be there for 20, 30 or 40 years. It is right, as laid down in the Bill, to consider everybody's housing needs together, so that the allocation of houses can be made according to overall need.

    I am following the hon. Gentleman's argument with care. Would he care to comment on the fact that, among all the housing organisations, the Government are alone in thinking that the Bill will help? Has he seen the advertisement in The Times this morning, which is signed by, among many other housing organisations, the chairman of the National Housing Forum, Councillor Graham Facks-Martin, who is the last remaining Conservative councillor in the North Cornwall district? I believe the hon. Gentleman met Councillor Facks-Martin on his visit to Cornwall. Why does the hon. Gentleman feel that the Government are the only people who have got the right answer, when the broad alliance of organisations have not?

    The hon. Gentleman has a short memory. Every policy that the Government have put forward in the past 16 years has been opposed tooth and nail by Opposition parties and their outside advisers, but many of our policies have later been adopted—the Labour party has moved on, and the Liberal Democrats have moved in different directions. The Opposition parties have accepted what the Government have done in many areas as the only sensible way forward, although they may have opposed it a few years ago. One of the difficulties of being in government, with which the hon. Gentleman will never have to deal, is that sometimes one has to take difficult decisions, and do what one thinks is right. The constituents about whom I have spoken, who have lost out because of the existing legislation, will welcome the Bill, and many other people feel the same.

    Will the hon. Gentleman return to the question that my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Sutcliffe) asked him? My hon. Friend suggested that the problem was not the allocation of houses, but the fact that there were too few houses to allocate. Does the hon. Gentleman not believe that there should be more houses available to rent in his constituency?

    In answer to the Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Sutcliffe), I said that I would come to that point. I wanted to hear the hon. Gentleman's point, because, for some years, he controlled the city of Sheffield. My constituency is on the outskirts of Sheffield, and one reason why property prices were so high in my constituency is because so many people wanted to move out of Sheffield under his leadership of the council.

    There is nothing in the Bill about removing homeless people's right to help. Indeed, I would suggest that many of the Bill's proposals will improve the type of help available. For example, if a single mother is allocated a flat in a high-rise block on the wrong side of town, where she knows nobody, at a stage in her life when she is most vulnerable and most needs support, that is entirely the wrong way to help her and her child. We should be trying to find the most appropriate form of accommodation for her, which may be with other single mothers or staying at home with her parents. The first way to help single mothers should not be to give them flats on their own, because that often results in their being in a more difficult situation, in which they cannot bring up their children as well as they would wish.

    I shall now deal with the point that has been made in a couple of interventions. Some people argue that the problems have arisen only because of the lack of homes. In 1979, there were 2 million fewer houses than there are now. We have therefore seen a significant increase in the number of houses available. That increase has been well above the increase in the population in that period.

    The biggest change has been in the number of people who are living on their own. In 1971, there were 3 million single-person households, and they made up one fifth of all households. In 1991, that figure had risen to 5 million single people, or one quarter of all households. By 2011, the expectation is that there will be 8 million single-person households, or one third of all households.

    We must question whether it is the responsibility of the taxpayer to build more houses every year simply to take account of people's desire to have a different life style from that of their elders. All of us had parents who started life in rented accommodation, and, as they could, bought their own homes so that they could have more space. We must ask ourselves whether it is right that the taxpayer should be funding young people's desire to leave home earlier in their lives rather than stay at home, as many people did in the past.

    I am very close to the end of my speech, and I do not intend to detain the House further.

    I hope that, in his response to the debate, the hon. Member for Greenwich (Mr. Raynsford) will return to a point that his hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras made to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State about spending capital receipts.

    The Secretary of State was absolutely right when he replied that, under Labour, that would be a way of moving capital receipts and housing money from one part of the country to another. If that will not be the case, I would like an absolute assurance—a 100 per cent. guarantee—that a Labour Government would allow the money that has been raised in High Peak and Derbyshire Dales, which are both prosperous areas, to remain in those areas and be spent there. If not, the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras inadvertently said something that he did not mean. I hope that the hon. Member for Greenwich will give that clear guarantee.

    There is no doubt that recent homelessness figures have been very worrying, but those figures have peaked and have since been declining. For example, local authority homelessness acceptances peaked in 1991, and the figure has now dropped by some 20 per cent. The number of homeless households in temporary accommodation also peaked in 1991, and has dropped by two thirds for those in bed and breakfast. Of course, progress can still be made.

    There is no point the hon. Gentleman making that contrast between the figures. They are now coming down. He would do more credit to himself and his party by accepting the reality of the situation, rather than the biggest scare story.

    We must tackle the problems of today and the future, rather than those of the past. The Bill is clearly part of the solution, and I hope that the House will give it a Second Reading tonight.

    6.27 pm

    I wish to concentrate on the homelessness provisions in the Bill, which I think are deeply worrying. I am worried because of what I have observed as a member of the council in Newham in east London since 1984, and as a member of the housing committee throughout that time.

    After I was elected in June 1984, I was appointed to a sub-committee that was directed to address the problem of homelessness in Newham. At that time, the only temporary housing option for homeless people was bed-and-breakfast accommodation. I remember that we had about 30 families in bed and breakfast in November 1984. We were worried by that large number, and we were determined to ensure that every one of those families would be in a permanent home in time for Christmas.

    Twelve years on, it seems amazing that we could even have contemplated that idealism. That sort of caring at Christmas must surely belong to another era, but it was only 12 years ago. We managed it—by Christmas 1984 there was not one homeless family in bed and breakfast in Newham. Well, those days of innocence did not last very long. A couple of years later, we had 600 families in bed-and-breakfast accommodation. The costs were immense, and the council's budget process became a matter of cutting services in order to fund the mushrooming bed-and-breakfast bill.

    Cuts in services were not the only damage caused. I vividly remember visiting, in 1986, a bed-and-breakfast hotel in central London which the council was using. Other hon. Members have described the abject misery of a family living in a single room, perhaps with just a wash basin and a gas ring, and eking out an existence for a year or more.

    We found an alternative by leasing homes from their owners for temporary accommodation. The Government introduced restrictions to make that as difficult as possible, but it was a means of providing reasonable accommodation, less costly than bed and breakfast, for families waiting for permanent homes to become available.

    Homelessness is a desperate plight for a family to endure. Indeed, it destroys families. Until now, at least there has been the assurance that a secure and permanent home would ultimately be available where a family could put down roots, recover from its ordeal and develop as a family should. Unfortunately, that is what the Bill, if implemented, would abolish.

    We know that homelessness is deeply disruptive. Families are moved from one temporary home to another. Over the weekend, I spoke to a social worker about the consequences of that movement. Children are barely settled in one school before they are precipitately moved to another. The ordeal is then repeated. Mothers are shifted from families, friends and support to wherever temporary accommodation happens to be. They are then shifted again.

    That is happening to those who are already the most disadvantaged families in our communities. What chance do they have after they have been through that experience a few times? The purpose behind the Bill is to make that shifting, transient way of living not merely a temporary feature of people's lives while homeless but a permanent way of life.

    If implemented, the Bill would lead to a class of children who would grow up never knowing what it is to have a secure home. That is a chilling prospect. We understand from recent debates that we all want everyone to have a stake in our society. The Bill would take us in exactly the opposite direction. It would rob people of the dignity of a secure home. I know many council tenants in Newham who still enjoy the dignity of a secure council home. They are able to criticise and make complaints to the local councillor, as they do, when things are not right. Their children will not be so fortunate.

    What will happen? Under the proposals set out in the Bill, a local authority will have discharged its obligations to a homeless family if it has placed it in a shorthold tenancy of a minimum of one year. Beyond the year, the family can be evicted at any time with two months' notice. The family can never be certain that it will be able to live in the same place for more than another two months.

    If, for example, there is finally an upturn in the housing market and landlords are able to start selling property, a landlord will have to give only two months' notice to a tenant on a shorthold tenancy. The tenant will then have to quit the property and become homeless again. The loss of security for an enormous number of people—taking people's housing stake away from them—is the Bill's major feature.

    How can a secure family home be built if at any time that home could be lost at two months' notice? That could happen with a shorthold tenancy.

    Which local authority takes responsibility when a family becomes homeless at the end of a 12-month shorthold tenancy in which the family was placed as a result of homelessness? Is it the placing local authority or the authority where the shorthold tenancy is located? That is not clear at present.

    Which authority pays the housing benefit? If, as I understand, it is the Government's intention that the placing authority retains responsibility, will that remain the position if the shorthold tenancy lasts for longer than a year, for 15 or 18 months, two years or 10 years? At what point does the receiving authority take on responsibility?

    A disturbing by-product of the Bill is the incentive that will be created for unscrupulous local authorities—there are a few—to export their homeless families to other areas, so that those areas, or authorities, pick up the cost of education, social services, and ultimately, at the end of the shorthold tenancy, that of rehousing.

    Homelessness re-created by the ending of shorthold tenancies is not merely a remote possibility. By 1992, 5 per cent. of all households accepted for permanent rehousing by local authorities were homeless as a result of a shorthold tenancy ending, according to the statistical bulletin issued by the Department of the Environment. By 1995, the proportion had doubled to 10 per cent. It is the third most significant cause of homelessness.

    A third of households had become homeless because parents or others were unable to carry on accommodating them. A further 20 per cent. became homeless because of relationship breakdown with a partner. Of this group, 10 per cent. became homeless because a shorthold tenancy had come to an end.

    In the most recent figures, for the third quarter of 1995–96, there was an increase to 12 per cent. The trend is clear: the ending of shorthold tenancies is already a major factor in creating homelessness. It is rapidly becoming more and more significant. If the Bill is enacted, the factor will become much more significant.

    We can see the revolving door starting to spin. It is that of temporary accommodation to shorthold tenancy to homelessness. The process continues. How is it possible to keep a family together under such pressure? Where is the Government's support for the family? Who will pay the price of disrupted childhoods, under-achievement at school and family breakdown that the Bill's revolving door to homelessness will create?

    I do not object to shorthold tenancies for those who wish to rent accommodation for a limited period. Indeed, a shorthold tenancy is ideal in those circumstances. The damage is done, however, when shorthold tenancies, as proposed in the Bill, become the compulsory and sole housing solution. That is what is wrong.

    We should be concentrating all our energies on creating more affordable rented homes where people can enjoy secure tenancies. Since 1979, construction of social housing has halved. It is no coincidence that the number of homeless acceptances has more than doubled in the same period. In 1979, there were more social housing construction starts than homeless acceptances. In 1994, there were nearly four times as many homeless acceptances as social housing construction starts. The problems will worsen while that imbalance remains.

    The Bill will divide the pie, which is far too small, in a different and less efficient way. The losers will be those who are already the least well off. That cannot be right.

    6.36 pm

    I welcome the Bill. I welcome the general provisions that will help the private rented sector. I welcome also the provisions that will herald a clampdown on disruptive and noisy tenants. In addition, I welcome the greater powers that will be available to the Housing Corporation. All these proposed measures will be of great benefit to my constituency.

    I reserve my greatest welcome to the measures that apply to badly run Department of Social Security hostels. There will be great rejoicing in my constituency following the announcement made by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. My constituency is well known to hon. Members on both sides of the House. It is a decent family resort, whose future depends upon tourism.

    I had not heard much about DSS hostels until February 1993, when my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Waterson) asked me whether I had had any problems with them. I see that my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Atkinson) is acknowledging the same experience. My hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne first raised the matter by means of an Adjournment debate in February 1993. I told him that I had not heard of any problems in my constituency but, by amazing coincidence, the following Saturday an old lady came into my surgery and told me about her experiences with a former hotel adjacent to her flat that had become a hostel. Her experiences were pretty dreadful.

    As spring turned into summer, the trickle of complaints that I had been receiving turned into a torrent. My postbag began to swell. People would stop me in the streets of Scarborough to ask me whether there was anything that I could do to help. Mounting concern was expressed by the borough council, the hoteliers association and the police. I canvassed colleagues in the House and, as a result, my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, North (Mr. Elletson) and I decided to commission a national survey. It was the most comprehensive report that had ever been carried out on English and Welsh tourist resorts and the way in which they have been affected by badly run DSS hostels. We consulted the housing, tourism and environmental departments of nearly every single coastal resort. We spoke with the forces of law and order. We asked national tourist organisations what their experiences had been. We questioned local hoteliers associations. We conferred with the Department of the Environment, the Department of National Heritage and the Department of Social Security. We consulted leisure companies whose interests lay in tourism.

    After several months' work, we were able to present the report to the Prime Minister, at the end of January 1994. It makes distressing reading, for in it is a catalogue of drunkenness, assault, drug dealing, drug abuse, muggings, social security fraud, thieving, organised crime, appalling language, fighting, damage to property— [Interruption.] Opposition Members may think that this is funny, but they should come to Scarborough and Blackpool and see for themselves instead of making glib comments. We have not heard one policy from them this afternoon. I shall give way to the hon. Members for North-West Durham (Ms Armstrong) or for Greenwich (Mr. Raynsford) if they want me to.

    We also included in the report a request that consideration be given to changing the "use class orders", to oblige hostels to apply for planning permission in future. I acknowledge with grateful thanks the role that my hon. Friend the Minister for Local Government, Housing and Urban Regeneration played in helping us to secure that objective. In March 1994, we won the backing of the Prime Minister for planning permission regulations.

    In addition, the Prime Minister promised to look carefully at the case for the licensing of existing hostels. The case for a licensing scheme was cast into hideous focus by the Richmond fire, which took place in May 1994. I awoke in the early hours of the morning to be told of the grim tragedy that had overwhelmed my constituency, when a tiny baby and a young woman were killed in that terrible fire. I pay particular tribute to the firefighters who, by their efforts, saved many more lives while putting at risk their own. It remains a source of bitter regret to me that in the meantime I have not been able to stop North Yorkshire county council from sacking those same firefighters and throwing them on to the scrap heap.

    Twenty long months have passed since then, and the evidence that had been gathered through the eyes and ears of my constituents can now be supplemented by hard facts, which I present to the House tonight for the first time. It was Parliament that decided, in the form of housing benefit, to pay for the accommodation of young people who leave home at 16. It should come as no surprise that some young people decide to drift to Scarborough, Blackpool, Eastbourne and Bournemouth. Indeed, they are encouraged to do so by advertisements. This particular advertisement was for Reynolds Court hotel, in Eastbourne. It reads:
    "D.S.S. welcome. Eastbourne hotel just off seafront. Breakfast, evening meal and weekly linen service provided. TV lounges, pool tables etc. Immediate occupation with no deposit required."
    In Norfolk, another advertisement appeared in a famous housing magazine, which went as follows:
    "Peace and quiet. Spectacular ocean views. Magnificent countryside. North Norfolk coast. Cromer/Sheringham. Why be homeless in the city? Accommodation now for up to 80 people in lovely furnished single, double or family rooms. Rooms are sited in shared houses on the cliffs or coming soon is a large former hotel on the seafront"—
    presumably with satellite television and in-house movie channel included.
    "All assistance given with forms for housing benefit which will cover most of your rent. Spend your time taking it easy or learning a new skill from the many courses available locally.
    Act now. You choose. Stay homeless in the city or get a life."
    That advertisement speaks for itself.

    I commend the actions of Scarborough borough council, whose extremely professional approach to the problem has helped to keep the problems caused by badly run DSS hostels within relative limits. It was the first to use its existing powers of registration. That is why we know that in Scarborough there are 560 DSS hostels. It conducted a survey of the Westville hotel, a well-known DSS hostel—fortunately, it has closed down—in a picturesque little square near Scarborough station. Out of 18 tenants, only five had previous addresses in Scarborough. The rest had come from Wakefield, Leeds, South Shields, Hull, Pontefract, "no fixed abode" and Her Majesty's prison. In other words, two thirds had come from conurbations out of town.

    Throughout the campaign, no Member of Parliament representing a seaside constituency had asked for Government restrictions on where people should move or where they can make a living for themselves, but why should small towns such as Scarborough, Blackpool and Bournemouth take more of their fair share of the homeless, when there are empty council houses in Labour-controlled authorities from one end of the country to the other? Even more important, why should a married couple in Scarborough, Blackpool, Bournemouth or Eastbourne, who have been waiting patiently for years for a council house, perhaps for a secure roof over their head before they start a family, go to the back of the housing queue because of some teenage priority waltzing into town? That is wrong.

    The drift to the coast can be confirmed in the increase in housing benefit payments. In the four years to 1994, housing benefit payments in Middlesbrough, which is near Scarborough, increased by 30 per cent., whereas in Scarborough the increase was 58 per cent. In Manchester, the increase was only 19 per cent., whereas in Blackpool it was 60 per cent. In Glasgow, the increase was only 18 per cent., but in Margate it was 64 per cent. In Bristol, the increase was a meatier 45 per cent., but in Weston-super-Mare, which is in the same area, it was 70 per cent. In Liverpool, the increase was 29 per cent. In Newquay, it was 80 per cent. Those figures speak for themselves.

    There was also an increase in the number of people signing on. In the five years to 1994, the number signing on in Scarborough increased by 62 per cent. In Weston-super-Mare, the increase was 103 per cent. In Margate, the increase was 124 per cent. In Southend, it was 169 per cent. In Eastbourne, it was 196 per cent., and in Worthing, it was 235 per cent. Those are not anecdotal figures, as some in Whitehall would have us believe. There are undue concentrations of unemployed young people drifting to the coast, where there is little or virtually no chance of getting a job. It is unfair to ask resorts to shoulder more than their fair share.

    The most unbearable manifestation is the badly run DSS hostel, usually owned or managed by unscrupulous landlords. They are the real fat cats, with their noses firmly in the housing benefit trough. They are the landlords who cram unfortunate tenants like sardines into their hotels. They are the landlords whom I want to drive into the sea and out of business for ever. The badly run DSS hostels can be small former guest houses with five or six tenants, or they can be large former hotels with up to 100 tenants. The effect of just one badly run DSS hostel can be devastating in a town such as Scarborough.

    These are just a few of the complaints that I have received from the Scarborough Hotels Association in the past 12 months. Opposition Members must listen very carefully before they vote against the Bill. The complaints included loud music, children crying and screaming, fights and violence, windows smashed, rubbish in hotel gardens, smelly drains, using the garden as a toilet, men holding a dog out of a window, damage to crescent gardens, repairing cars in the street, children being injected with hypodermic needles, guests being accosted, violence in the local store, abuse to guests and hoteliers, obscene suggestions to lady guests, and, finally, guests leaving the hotels, never to return. That is where the problem lies, as it sets up a cycle of despair, a vicious circle, because the hotelier who lives next door does not get any guests the next year, so he in turn has to convert his premises into a DSS hostel, thus establishing the cycle of despair in towns such as Scarborough.

    Badly run DSS hostels are often the centre of organised crime and violence. We do not get many murders in Scarborough, but in 1994 we had three, and two of those were directly attributable to badly run DSS hostels. The national crime figures are even worse. They paint an ugly picture that points to drug-crazed youths stealing to feed their vile habits. In the four years to 1994, the national average of convictions for shoplifting increased across the country by 8 per cent., but in coastal resorts, the increase was 47 per cent. The national average for theft from cars increased by 9 per cent., but in coastal resorts, the increase was 30 per cent. The national average for trafficking in drugs increased by quite a terrible 71 per cent., but in the resorts the increase was 101 per cent.

    As usual, the devil is in the detail when we look at the figures, because convictions for trafficking in drugs in Eastbourne increased by 81 per cent. In Worthing, they increased by 100 per cent. In Ramsgate, they increased by 165 per cent. and in Scarborough, they increased by a staggering 350 per cent.

    These badly run DSS ghettos are no seasonal feature of our cold English winters. They are a permanent and profoundly corrosive feature of life at the seaside. Anyone who imagined for a moment that Members of Parliament such as my hon. Friends the Members for Blackpool, North, for Bournemouth, East, for North Thanet (Mr. Gale) arid myself would sit idly back and watch the British tourism industry die a slow and agonising death because of such places would be sadly mistaken.

    That is why that group of hon. Members representing British resorts—Tories to a man—are grateful for the support that has been given by our hon. Friend the Minister. That is why we are glad that we have made a sufficiently good case for a tougher scheme, allowing local authorities to cut the cancer out of badly run DSS hostels and thus to arrest the decay that has already eaten at the fringes of our great tourism industry. Some of England's finest jewels will thereby be preserved for generations to come.

    Order. I remind hon. Members that Madam Speaker has placed a 10-minute limit on speeches between 7 pm and 9 pm.

    6.50 pm

    Those who read the speech of the hon. Member for Scarborough (Mr. Sykes) in Hansard will note the effect of 17 years of Tory government. The hon. Gentleman spoke of an increase in crime, of people being driven by unemployment to the coast in an attempt to find jobs and of a rise in homelessness. Indeed, he treated us to a catalogue of failures, and I am sure that the Labour party in Scarborough will latch on to it. The hon. Gentleman's speech emphasised the need for the fair and proper legislation that is not provided in the Bill that we are discussing.

    Housing is a major social problem. In my constituency it is paramount, in both the rented and the owner-occupied sectors. For years, the Government have done little to help those with housing problems. Part I of the Bill supposedly deals with the social rented sector, but in fact it deals only with the Housing Corporation, giving it new powers over housing associations, but no accountability to anyone except the Secretary of State. I consider that part of the Bill cruel and dishonest. It does not allow local authorities to build social housing, although they are expert at doing so and have a long history of social housing management.

    The Bill offers no help to the 250,000 people who bought their homes from the social rented sector, and now find themselves in the negative equity trap. It also contains no measures to help the 1,000 families a week who become homeless when their homes are repossessed, although that has a devastating effect on family life. In many instances, such suffering is caused by redundancy or a business collapse. The Bill does nothing to help home owners, or to restore confidence in the housing market. Many people expected it to help tackle the underlying problems facing our housing stock, but nothing has been done to increase investment in either the public or the private sector. The Government still prevent councils from investing capital receipts in social rented housing.

    Clauses 15 and 16 refer to the right to buy for housing association tenants. The National Federation of Housing Associations has no objection to its tenants purchasing their homes, and the Government are currently introducing a voluntary scheme that is acceptable to housing associations. In the past, the NFHA has argued that associations should be allowed to sell houses to tenants in particular circumstances, but housing associations fear that they too could experience the devastation experienced by local authorities, given the shortage of houses available at an affordable rent.

    The Bill is so inflexible that it may well result in fewer houses in the rented sector, causing greater hardship to people who need social housing. Houses in the social rented sector are already in short supply, and unless the houses that are sold are replaced, the number will be further reduced. The NFHA has told the Minister of its fears relating to the selling of certain houses in certain areas, or houses that were built with agreed terms. It has also described the problems of replacing those houses for rent, and the restriction of future agreements with providers of help.

    In the past, people have donated money or land to housing associations with the firm intention that it be used for the specific purpose of providing low-cost rented homes for those most in need. If the Government legislate for the sale of houses that were built with a minimum amount of public money, there will be fewer such donations.

    That is not true. We have made it clear that, where properties have been built and land donated, there is no question of housing authorities being obliged to put the houses up for sale. As for existing properties, housing associations must opt into the scheme in any event: there is no question of their being compelled to put the properties on the market. As I am sure the hon. Gentleman will appreciate, I am very sensitive to those issues, and we have gone a long way to meet the NFHA.

    I appreciate the Minister's intervention. In Committee, however, there will be more pressure on him to give such assurances, and to ensure that they are contained in the Bill rather than in a consultative document.

    The Bill has been criticised by various people and organisations with housing interests, but everyone's concerns have been dramatically heightened by the changes in the law relating to homelessness, which constitute an attack on the most vulnerable people. If the Bill is not amended, some homeless people will never be able to obtain permanent homes from local authorities. Local authorities' duties to help the homeless will be restricted to the provision of a minimum of one year's temporary accommodation. Moreover, if there is suitable alternative accommodation within the local authority area, an authority will not be responsible for housing the homeless. Both local authorities and the NFHA want that part of the Bill to be withdrawn.

    The present homelessness legislation provides an important and improved safety net for homeless families and other vulnerable homeless people, allowing them to obtain a permanent home and start to build a stable family life. If homeless people are offered only temporary accommodation, there is every danger that they will constantly be moved around, which will have a tremendous effect on family life. That will have a major impact on stable communities. It will no doubt have a lasting effect on the children of homeless families, who could be moving from school to school every time the family has to move. That part of the Bill should be withdrawn because of the inhuman approach to homeless people.

    I recommend to the Minister the proposals by Wakefield metropolitan district council's housing department. In co-operation with the county council's housing association—the Chantry housing association—it is providing homes for homeless people. They are taking over empty properties and improving those properties together. The housing association is making a substantial contribution to the proposals. That will also help some of those unlucky home owners caught in the negative equity trap. The end will soon be in sight for them to be able to sell their properties.

    I suggest that the Minister take note of the programme. The housing department press release states:
    "Properties need to be in good, general repair to be eligible for the…scheme. They must be self-contained with their own bathroom, have a fixed form of heating in living rooms and bedrooms and meet a number of basic safety requirements. Owners remain responsible for maintenance during the leasing period which would normally be three years."
    Without the legislation that is being proposed, local authorities and housing associations are providing accommodation for homeless people. If the Minister had more confidence in the work of those who have experience in providing social housing, and if there were more confidence in local authorities and local housing associations, there would be no need for such legislation.

    The Bill is a bad Bill. If amendments are not accepted to provide more openness in regard to the quango of the Housing Corporation, there will be a lack of confidence. If there are no amendments to help and to provide for home owners and homeless people, there will be a greater deterioration in the provision of social housing. To allow more freedom to local authorities to provide houses would be a substantial step in the right direction. We need such an amendment to the Bill.

    If changes are not made to the Bill, Labour Members must oppose it and assure people who need help with housing that the next Government, in which my hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich (Mr. Raynsford) will serve as Minister with responsibility for housing, will ensure that such people will be given priority, and that democracy will apply to housing issues. If changes are not made to the Bill to meet some of the points raised by Labour Members, we should oppose it.

    7.3 pm

    It is a great shame that Labour Members have chosen, in their destructive way, to oppose the Bill and to announce that they will vote against its principle at the end of this Second Reading debate. It seeks to extend choice in housing. It seeks to extend the stakeholder principle, but Labour Members want to throw it away. As soon as we have a practical illustration of how their policies could be implemented, they want to vote against it. Two sets of standards are being operated by Labour Members. Today, we will see them being operated once again, when they will kick in the teeth people who are trying to get a hold of a stake in society.

    Besides extending a stakeholder's rights through housing ownership and through opportunities for private and social renting, the Bill would extend fairness and justice throughout our housing system—principles to which Labour Members should pay a bit more attention rather than sniggering and sighing when they are mentioned. Conservative Members get just as angry about housing issues as Labour Members. We are all constituency Members of Parliament. Most of us sit in our surgeries on Fridays or Saturdays and listen to hard cases about housing.

    It is wrong to take individual cases and build laws on them alone: we have to examine what is happening over the whole sector. The present housing allocation system, for example, operates against the interests of people who are being responsible and who have genuine housing needs—they are outcasts from that system. I hope, therefore, that Labour Members will think again about their objections to the principle of the Bill.

    The right-to-buy measures are particularly welcome. It is wrong that, if two people are on the housing list, in places one and two, and go along for their allocation of housing, the first one can be allocated a local authority house and gradually develop the right to buy, but the second can be allocated a housing association house and be denied the right to buy. Both properties are developed with taxpayers' money, from public funds. One person gets the right to buy; the other is denied it.

    I am pleased that the Government have listened to the pleadings of Conservative Members that there should be some justice, and that people who occupy social housing that is provided from public funds should have the right to buy. That is a great step forward and puts right a great wrong.

    I am especially pleased that housing associations will be able to re-use funds thus realised and provide new social housing in their areas. Some Conservative Members who are great supporters of the housing association movement have been disappointed by its allowing itself to become sub-agents of local authorities in housing. Although that matter is not dealt with in the Bill, I hope that my right hon. Friends in the Government will reconsider the way in which housing associations operate, because they could be far more flexible towards specialist groups and in meeting specialist housing needs.

    One of things that most frustrates me as a constituency Member of Parliament is that people who thoroughly deserve and need to be rehoused fall through the net of local authority rules on housing. For example, on Friday night a woman came to see me who has privately rented a one-bedroom flat for 17 years. She is a single mother with an 11-year-old daughter. She has been on Enfield borough council's housing list for 17 years. She lives opposite a tower block where vacancies frequently arise, but she has always been denied a place in two-bedroom accommodation.

    The mother has been told by the now Labour-controlled authority that it is acceptable for her to share a bedroom with her 11-year-old daughter. [Interruption.] The Labour Whip, the hon. Member for Motherwell, North (Dr. Reid), believes that that is acceptable.

    The hon. Lady believes that it is acceptable for the 11-year-old daughter to be forced for ever to share with her mother.

    The local authority will not allocate accommodation to the mother because, every time there is an allocation, the property goes either to people with an emergency medical need or to people on the homeless list. The Bill's housing allocation changes are therefore to be greatly praised.

    No. We have no time, while there is a 10-minute limit on speeches, for one of the hon. Gentleman's rambling interventions.

    The leasehold reforms in the Bill are especially welcome. There is room here for agreement even with the hon. Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Betts), who appears to take a Stalinist view on most housing matters—perhaps he agrees with what we are trying to do on leasehold reform. The Bill deals with unscrupulous landlords who have found ingenious loopholes to exploit in the present law. Perhaps they divide freeholds between related companies to avoid the right of leaseholders to buy, or do not tell leaseholders when freeholds are transformed, or put in outrageous demands for service charges that are unjustified by the work that has been done, or send grotesquely inflated bills for work that should not have been undertaken. The Evening Standard has been especially good at exposing what has been happening. A company called Linkproud has been operating with Empress Estates throughout London in a most outrageous way. The Bill seeks to tackle such practices and to give leaseholders some real power over unscrupulous freeholders.

    One group of leaseholders will be listening carefully to Conservative Members on the topic of leasehold and freehold reform. They are the people who bought local authority properties in tower blocks and in system-built blocks. Some of the descriptions of unscrupulous landlords could be applied to some local authorities, which have inflicted inflated and unjustified bills and outrageous behaviour on right-to-buy leaseholders. I hope that, in his winding-up speech, my hon. Friend the Minister will assure us that the proposed provisions for freeholders will apply also to local authority freeholders. That would go some way towards helping those who are trapped, in difficult circumstances, in leasehold properties in tower blocks.

    I welcome some of the Bill's detailed proposals, such as the proposed action to end forfeiture proceedings until service charges have been properly confirmed. The absolute right, to be given to leaseholders, to buy their freehold is also important. We must take the gloves off in the battle against freeholders, and the Bill does just that. I hope that, in Committee, hon. Members will stand up for the rights of existing tenants and for those in real housing need who have slipped through the present system. We should not give in to the Opposition, who extrapolate one sectional interest and use it to attack the Government.

    It was quite clear that the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) had not read the Bill—some of his comments about it were blatantly wrong. As has been said, the hon. Gentleman went perilously close to misleading the House. I am sure that, in his wildest dreams, he would not want to do that. I recommend to Opposition Members that, in future, they spend their weekends more productively by reading legislation before they dare to speak about it in the House.

    7.11 pm

    The fundamental cause of our housing problems is the lack of affordable accommodation. That is why more people than ever are homeless and begging in the streets. It is why there are more people than ever in temporary or bed-and-breakfast accommodation. It is also why the Government are desperately fiddling about with a rationing system for homelessness and entry to the housing queue. Rationing occurs when there is a shortage, but the Government do not acknowledge that and they are not trying to solve the basic problem.

    It has not been said today that, in England and Wales, with a population of about 50 million, fewer houses are being built in the public rented sector than are being built in Northern Ireland, which has a population of 1.5 million. We could have an interesting debate about why the Government think that it is necessary to build more social housing in Northern Ireland but do not apply the same criteria to the rest of the United Kingdom.

    The second underlying problem is that the Government have done nothing to help low-income home owners. The Bill will not help them either. Conservative Members have asked how we would pay for such help, but until we address the issue of the reform of housing finance we will not be able to get that one right. The housing finance system is inequitable and inefficient. Does anyone seriously believe that £10 billion a year on housing benefit, much of which goes to landlords who do not need it, is a good way to subsidise housing? The Government started to recognise that when they reformed mortgage interest relief—by cutting it. They did it in the worst possible way because they gave no help to low-income mortgage holders, which is what they ought to have done. That is why some people are still in mortgage difficulties.

    Conservative Members who ask about financing should remember that about one in nine homeless applications to local authorities come from people who have had their houses repossessed. The mortgage company or bank gets the house and can sell it; the local authority puts the family into bed-and-breakfast or temporary accommodation for which we, the people, pay. As a result, the family suffers incredible stress while the house sits empty awaiting sale in a depressed housing market which it depresses still further.

    Before the last election, we suggested to the Government a mortgage rescue scheme that was designed to help such people. I had it costed by the Council of Mortgage Lenders. At that time, the chief executive of the council was a member of the Tory party and had been a Tory candidate at an election. He accepted that the package was cost free, but the Government refused to accept it.

    The Secretary of State outlined his proposals for freeholders and the hon. Member for Edmonton (Dr. Twinn) said that it was time we took the gloves off. We said that, and tabled amendments to that effect, in Committee on the Bill that became the Housing Act 1988. Conservatives voted them down. The Secretary of State says that he wants to get tough on landlords who are not fulfilling their obligations to people in houses in multiple occupation. We have known about that for years. We twice put down amendments to the 1988 Bill to deal with that, especially in the context of seaside towns about which the Secretary of State also spoke, but Conservative Members voted them down. It is only now that the consequences of their actions in relation to what became the 1988 Act are beginning to be felt. They must face the fact that they have failed to act on such problems.

    The issue of empty properties is dealt with only as an aside in the Bill, but we have heard about it from Conservative Members. For the past 16 years, the Government have consistently been the worst offenders on empty properties. Even now, in the Biggin hill area, they are dumping Government homes on the public market for sale. There is much negative equity in that area, and their action will depress the housing market even further. They could save money by transferring those houses to housing associations or local authorities, which could deal with the queue about which the hon. Member for Edmonton complained. That is a way in which to address the problem of rationing that the Government have created.

    Local authorities and housing associations are much more effective at letting properties than the private sector or the Government. Hackney has been mentioned as a bad example. I am the first to accept that, in the past, Hackney's management has not been good. However, a year or two ago, Hackney's voids were about 5.3 per cent. They are now down to about 3 per cent., but only if the tower blocks that the Government have said must be knocked down are taken out of the calculation. The Government are giving money to have them knocked down.

    We are in a febrile political atmosphere, but I should have thought that even in this pre-election bonanza period we could still get some cross-party agreement that, by and large, it is desirable to take tenants out of high-rise flats before they are demolished. I have given the reason for the Hackney figures being so high; we should focus on that as well.

    My advice to the Government is simple: stop selling Government-owned empty properties, start handing them over to housing associations and councils and start dealing with the rationing that the hon. Member for Edmonton does not like. Conservative Members complain about the right to buy in rural areas in certain circumstances. I wish that the hon. Member for High Peak (Mr. Hendry) were in his place. The right to buy, matched by a duty to replace and a housing finance system that enabled councils and housing associations to replace homes that were sold, is a good policy. A housing policy that consists of a right to buy but does not enable replacement of the homes that have been sold is a disaster, but that is what the Government have given us over the years. Now, suddenly, the hon. Member for High Peak and some other Conservative Members have begun to complain because they fear that too many houses might be sold in rural areas. Exactly the same problem has been hitting us in urban areas for donkeys years. If we could have replaced the houses that were sold, we would not have the queues of today and there would not be 2,000 or 3,000 people in areas such as mine living in emergency accommodation.

    The problem is primarily the Government's. Yes, one or two people abuse the system and keep their council houses when they should get rid of them—there are examples of that in my constituency—but the core problem lies with the Government for it is they who have failed to provide the mechanism by which the houses that are sold can be replaced so that more houses can be made available in the rented sector.

    What is the fundamental problem? A housing finance regime that allows all the money to be allocated in housing benefit instead of recognising that we need to return to a system—as the Duke of Edinburgh's report, with which just about everyone agreed, rightly said some years ago—of subsidising bricks and mortar, at least in part.

    There is no sense in giving, as we do at the moment, housing benefit subsidy to a landlord who is in prison for harassing tenants. The Deputy Prime Minister has the audacity to say that the Labour party is on the side of villains. I have never heard of any Labour policy that argues that taxpayers' money should be used to subsidise people who are in prison—which is what the Government are doing now. It is a disgrace, we know that it is, and it should be brought to an end. If we are to do that, we must reform housing finance and recognise the rights of tenants.

    I welcome the introduction of an ombudsman. We proposed that, too, during the Committee stage of what became the 1988 Act, and the Government rejected it. I am in favour of enabling the Housing Corporation to step in when bad management occurs in housing associations or councils, and to take other action to transfer accommodation from such landlords.

    Why will the Government not introduce something similar in the private rented sector? Why should we not be able to strike off a bad landlord in the private rented sector who has been harassing tenants? Why do we send them to prison at enormous cost, subsidise them while they are there, and allow them to let the house and receive yet more subsidy when they are released? That is subsidising the villains. That is being on the side of the villains.

    Most private landlords are good. Why do we not introduce something adventurous and flexible for a change? I would be quite prepared to subsidise private landlords in exchange for guarantees about good management—another suggestion that I made many years ago. If they failed to deliver good management, they would be struck off. That is the key to housing policy. We should stop worrying about ownership and concentrate on quality.

    7.21 pm

    I welcome the majority of measures in the Bill. I especially welcome the further modest encouragement and incentives that it provides for the private rented sector. I am conscious that, in my constituency, many houses are under-occupied, often by elderly people who would welcome a tenant or two. Too often, however, they hear horror stories from people who have experienced bad tenants, so they dare not take the risk.

    The Bill provides for quicker eviction of tenants who do not pay their rent and makes the advantages of shorthold more widely available so that landlords may be assured of the agreed period of tenancy. I hope that more potential small and inexperienced landlords and landladies will have the confidence to make their spare rooms available to those who are seeking accommodation.

    I welcome, too, the redressing of the balance in the duty of local authorities to house local people who need accommodation, so that those who are born and bred locally, rather than those who become homeless away from their home town, are favoured. That will give more hope to local people on the waiting list, who see complete outsiders being housed before them. As my hon. Friend the Minister for Local Government, Housing and Urban Regeneration confirmed, that proposal in no way removes the safety net for homeless people.

    The Bill aims to help local authorities to respond more effectively to the immense problems posed by houses in multiple occupation. There is no doubt about the need for stronger powers. The lives of my constituents who live in the neighbourhoods of some of the properties of a well-known local provider of bedsits, Mr. Dave Wells, are a continual misery, as my postbag testifies.

    The behaviour of tenants, of course, cannot be directly blamed on the landlord or the owner of the property, but landlords must demonstrate the responsibility to ensure that the neighbours enjoy a right of privacy and are free from the tenants' noise and nuisance. Unfortunately, as my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton (Mr. Nicholson) said, people dare not complain for fear of threats and retaliation from those against whom they are complaining. Tenants are also entitled to a reasonable standard of accommodation that is safe and free from damp and rot and crumbling walls, which is certainly not the case in some of Mr. Wells' properties, as I have seen for myself.

    Until my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State's speech this afternoon, I feared that the Bill would prove inadequate to deal with houses in multiple occupation. That fear results from the change of use of buildings from hotels and guest houses to bedsit hostels, primarily aimed at benefit claimants, which has occurred in my authority and others in tourist areas, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough (Mr. Sykes) so vividly referred.

    Such hotels are bought and converted into multiple units to house a maximum number of tenants. It has become big business for commercial landlords, who advertise in the inner cities and in the Republic of Ireland that those on benefit should claim in a more attractive area. As my hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough said, some of those hostels have a reputation for being places of drug-related, drink-related and crime-related behaviour. As well as being offensive to local residents, the hostels very quickly lead to neighbouring hotels, especially those that cater for young families and coach parties, losing business, and the entire tourist area becomes threatened by a vicious cycle of decline and decay.

    It is now clear that the planning controls introduced almost two years ago to address that problem are not working because of a lack of precise definition of a hotel, a hostel and an HMO. In any case, the controls cannot be applied retrospectively.

    The new powers that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State announced today will allow local authorities to close down hostels without compensation in response to legitimate complaints from people in the neighbourhood. I welcome that, as I am sure does my local authority in Bournemouth.

    The Bill does not, however, give local authorities what I believe they need to be able to respond effectively to the problem of HMOs once and for all. We need a licensing scheme, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough referred, which local authorities can opt for, depending on the severity of the problem in their area. It would require not only that the property be fit and proper, but that its owner be a fit and proper person to run or manage the property.

    The Government have decided that such a scheme would be too costly and bureaucratic. I do not agree. A licensing scheme need not be universal. It could be limited to local authorities such as mine and those in other seaside resorts such as Blackpool and Scarborough, which are pressing for it as the only way in which to protect their tourist areas.

    And Morecambe, as my hon. Friend says. The scheme would be no different from that which applies to rest and retirement homes for the elderly, which are run by a licensee whose licence is subject to periodic renewal.

    I urge my hon. Friend the Minister for Local Government, Housing and Urban Regeneration to give further thought to the need for a voluntary licensing scheme that local authorities could use when they experienced particular problems with HMOs, which a registration scheme, such as that in the Bill, will not address.

    7.28 pm

    In June last year, the Chartered Institute of Housing published a report entitled "A Point to Prove" which examined cities such as Sheffield and my own town of Birmingham. It demonstrated the direct relationship between poor housing conditions, the crises in education and health and the problem of rising crime. It also demonstrated that repossessions, negative equity and rough sleeping were symptoms of the much wider housing crisis that is facing Britain.

    With Government estimates showing that there will be about 3.5 million new households in England alone in the next 10 years, the institute calculated that around 120,000 new homes would be required each year in the social rented sector. Against that background, the Government have a great opportunity with the Bill to deal with those issues and to do something about an experience that I am sure every hon. Member encounters every week at his advice desk.

    Unfortunately, neither the Bill nor the White Paper that foreshadowed it begins to tackle the problems. I welcome some parts of the Bill, albeit with some qualification. It is good that some progress is being made in relation to anti-social behaviour, but many more and different actions could be taken as well. It is also good that efforts are being made in relation to leasehold reform and houses in multiple occupation. I agree, however, with the hon. Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Atkinson) that much more needs to be done in those spheres, and that we particularly need to examine the issue of a proper licensing scheme.

    Against that, however, other aspects of the Bill are downright odious, such as weakening tenants' protection from eviction and restricting housing authorities' duty to provide accommodation for the homeless. I am still waiting for Ministers to provide a definition of which homeless families they think it appropriate to put into temporary accommodation and throw out of that accommodation later. We have given examples of possible families, but they have said, "It's not them." Sooner or later, Ministers will have to say which homeless families are appropriate for temporary accommodation. If they cannot say which families are appropriate, Ministers will have to question why that particular provision is necessary.

    The Bill will have a particularly severe effect on young people. In my constituency, the south Birmingham young homeless project has already shown how the Bill, combined with the changes in housing benefit regulation, would do much to prevent young, single, homeless people under the age of 25 gaining access to secure and affordable housing.

    The most striking feature of the Bill is perhaps its utter irrelevance to solving the central problem, which is the shortage of affordable homes. There is a desperate need to increase housing investment. In the west midlands, the number of homeless people in 1979 was only 6,360. By 1994, that figure had risen to 16,800. In 1979, 8,103 council, new town and housing association dwellings were started; in 1994, less than half that number were started. In the four years between 1990 and 1994, the number of mortgage possession actions rocketed in that one region.

    On one level, Ministers seem to think that the shortage of affordable homes is an issue—at least they appeared to acknowledge that in what they said about the right to buy for housing associations. Why do they not follow through with the same logic when it comes to local authorities and do something to release the capital receipts that are necessary to take action against the housing shortage?

    Obviously, we have become used to the Government's prejudice against local authorities. However, they must recognise that housing associations are also suffering under the financial policies that have been imposed on them by the Government. Housing associations reckon that we need about 90,000 new social housing units a year from now on. In the coming year, however, there will barely be 50,000.

    The housing crisis in Britain is not just about building new homes, as important as that is; it is also a question of repairing existing homes. Because of my advice bureaux in Birmingham, I know exactly what that means. Each year, Ministers require local authorities to understate what they need to invest in home repair and, each year, Ministers then under-allocate according to that understated request. To put right its housing stock, Birmingham's real requirement is about £200 million per year, but it is not allowed to ask for that money. This year, less than £40 million has been allocated to it in terms of borrowing approval.

    Let me tell the House what that means in human terms. At my advice bureau last week, I received two delegations of residents who live in tower blocks in my constituency. One delegation was from a block called Kempsey house, in Bartley Green, and the other was from three tower blocks off Long Nuke road in the Weoley ward. The conditions in which they have to live were summed up in a recent letter sent by a local Labour councillor to the local housing department after a visit to those blocks. He said:
    "I am concerned about the appalling dampness in the flats in David Cox Tower in Long Nuke Road. Spending a winter in these blocks means a winter of misery. The heating is totally inadequate, the insulation in a pre-cast concrete building is hopelessly inadequate and undoubtedly contributes to massive condensation. The general dampness that results from this is injurious to the people who live there. Of particular concern is the health of the young children. To start life in the atmosphere that pervades these flats throughout the winter and spring is dangerous and contributes to these children being prone to bronchial and other diseases to the chest. Many of the people in the flats are on low incomes and get into awful financial problems because of the cost of electric heating in one room only. It costs them a fortune to fight what is frankly a losing battle."
    That councillor went on to describe the situation of one resident as follows:
    "Her bedroom is, at the moment, impossible to live in. I would say it is positively dangerous to sleep in because it is so damp. I put my hand on the boarded area that obviously houses a metal downpipe and that was wringing wet. I could see water dripping off the ceiling and the whole window wall was very damp. The carpet was damp and wet in sections. Clothes in wardrobes and chest of drawers quickly become damp and attract mould so they cannot be left in the room".
    The residents in such blocks are not well off. However, in order to make up some of the shortfall in housing investment that the Government have allowed, tenants in Birmingham last year agreed to a £2 a week rent increase in order to begin a programme to fit UPVC window replacements and to install central heating. This year, however, Government policies will make the problem worse. Is the Minister going to deal with the problems that proposed changes to rent rebate subsidy will cause? In Birmingham, the proposed changes will mean that any rent increase above £1.17 will entail the council losing Government housing subsidy.

    The system is complicated—they always are—but the impact is real enough. If the housing revenue account is to be balanced, something that would have required a rent increase of about £2 a week under last year's rules, will—if the Government's proposals go ahead—require Birmingham council tenants to pay an extra £10 a week in rent. Tenants will not be able to afford that, and the consequence is likely to be cuts in the window and central heating replacement programme. That means that people in my constituency will continue to live in cold and damp surroundings. That is the real impact of the Government's housing policy, but it is not even mentioned in the Bill.

    The craziest thing of all is that the Government's attempts to save money end up costing money. The extra burden on the national health service because of asthma alone, which is induced or aggravated by poor housing, is estimated to cost £437 million every year. Where housing is poor, criminal activity is high. Wealthy homes are not the most likely to be burgled. The poorest council tenants are more than four times more likely to be burgled than those in affluent suburbs.

    When all political parties are stressing their wish to improve standards in education, how can we ignore the impact that poor-quality and insecure housing is bound to have on children's performance at school? How can we ignore the impact that constant changes in housing have on those children? Those changes are likely to happen because of the changes in regulations regarding housing the homeless and temporary accommodation.

    Faced with all that, why do the Government refuse to take action? I should like to conclude with a quotation from Peter Ambrose, who is the director of Urban and Regional Research, in Sussex. He said:
    "Poor housing affects over ten million people"—

    Madam Deputy Speaker
    (Dame Janet Fookes)