9.28 p.m.
The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Gerald Kaufman))
I join other hon. Members in congratulating the hon. Members for Romford (Mr. Neubert) and Bexleyheath (Mr. Townsend) on their maiden speeches.
The hon. Member for Romford made a speech which was both graceful and unduly modest. We look forward to hearing him again and greatly value the comments that he made about our colleague Dick Leonard whom we greatly miss and look forward to seeing back here for Romford or for somewhere else.
It would appear that the hon. Member for Bexleyheath, as well as having a great deal of information about housing at his disposal, will be able to contribute to the amusement of the House. We valued both his wisdom and his humour. He, too, paid tribute to the Member whom he succeeded—in this instance, the Leader of the Opposition. The hon. Gentleman is not to blame if at times his panegyric sounded like an obituary. [column 155]
I thank the right hon. Lady the Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher) for her kind words about myself, and I know that the House will share both her regret and mine that my hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Construction is too unwell to be here to wind up the debate. The House will be aware that my hon. Friend played a major part in the preparation of the Bill. He cares passionately about this subject. It is a great deprivation for him not to be able to speak in this debate, but it is an even greater deprivation for the House that it is unable to benefit from his immense knowledge of the subject and his even greater concern.
I should like to declare my own interest in the matter that we are debating tonight, which is that if the Bill when enacted works as it should, my constituency of Ardwick will benefit from its provisions. When the previous Bill was introduced in February I welcomed it, but I also criticised it. I used the very phrase which the hon. Member for Hornsey (Mr. Rossi) attributed to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. I said that it was a missed opportunity, and I do not withdraw what I said then.
The Bill as we have introduced it tonight is already an improvement on the previous measure, but I am the first to say that it is still open to criticism as an incomplete measure. Basically, though far from totally, as the hon. Members for Bodmin (Mr. Tyler) and Caernarvon (Mr. Wigley) would point out if I did not, it is aimed at dealing with the problems of the inner cities, and those problems are immense and often disheartening. The problems coagulate around bad housing and bad landlords, and my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Cunningham) is not totally amiss when he draws the attention of the House to the bad landlords who abound in the inner cities and other areas.
The problems of the inner cities revolve, too, around an environment which offers no hope to the people who have to live in it, who have to live among vacant crofts and spaces bespattered with rubbish and reeking of health hazards, who are surrounded by noise and a lack [column 156]of amenity, whose children have too few play spaces—and a lack of play spaces which sometimes lead to the tragic deaths of small children who try to create their own adventure playgrounds by crawling over railway lines and getting drowned in clay pits—who suffer from infestations of vermin, who week after week and month after month have no sight of anything that is green, soft or attractive, and who can be said to live under the sign “Surrender hope all ye who enter here” .
My right hon. Friend and my hon. Friend were right when, on the last occasion, they said that a total approach is needed to provide an environment that will ensure that there is for these people in the inner cities and elsewhere the ability and the opportunity to grasp educational and job chances without which they cannot grow up and be able to live the kind of lives that are lived in the suburbs and many other parts of the country.
That total approach was missing from the Housing and Planning Bill, and that is why we criticised it then, despite its undoubted merits. As my right hon. Friend said, we should have liked to make a completely fresh appraisal of this entire problem and to bring in a totally new Bill, but the choice was between that, which would have involved a delay of many months if not longer, and introducing the original Housing and Planning Bill with some changes and bringing in along the way certain amendments that will make changes to it, some of them fundamental.
I thought it a little churlish of the hon. Member for Hornsey to rebuke us for not announcing all our amendments today. I should have thought that it was a courtesy to foreshadow these amendments at all. Other Governments, including Conservative Governments, have introduced amendments later without forshadowing them on Second Reading. We are busy drafting those amendments now. It ill becomes him to rebuke us for letting the House know as much about them as we can and to say that the Secretary of State, who had the Bill to recount, should also have taken up a good deal of time by dealing with the proposed amendments. If the House does not wish to listen to our amendments, I can miss out that section of my speech.
[column 157]Mr. Rossi
The hon. Member said that I was complaining that the Government had not announced in this debate what amendments they propose to make in Committee. I obviously was not doing that. I was calling the Secretary of State to task—rightly, I believe, and I would do so on another occasion—for saying to the House, “There are changes that we shall make to the Bill which I will not tell you now but which you will hear at the end of the debate when you will not be able to discuss them.”
Mr. Kaufman
I am sure that my right hon. Friend, who is notorious as an indifferent orator, will value the hon. Member's advice on how to construct his speeches. As I say, we shall introduce some amendments in Committee and the final Bill will be a great improvement on that which the House has been debating today. But I will not conceal that it will still not meet in full our ideals and aspirations. We shall have to come back to this subject again in the life of this Parliament, the next Parliament or some other Parliament in the series in which this party will have a majority. In doing so, we shall take full account of the views of the House as well as of local authorities, housing societies and other organisations.
In the longer term, the Government will also be seeking to apply the lessons of the Six Towns Studies and the work done on Guidelines to Urban Management. We shall also want to draw on the experience of the Shelter Neighbourhood Action Project in the Granby ward of Liverpool. All this work demonstrates the importance of improving and co-ordinating action on the selective policies we have on social provision in areas of stress. Nowhere is the need for a comprehensive and co-ordinated approach more evident than in urban renewal. This remains, despite steady progress over the past several years, an enormous challenge. Meanwhile, as my right hon. Friend said, we have prepared these amendments, which will strengthen the Bill and widen its scope.
I hope that the House will forgive me if I do not cover all the points raised. The hon. Member for Hampstead (Mr. Finsberg) said that we were certain to have a Report stage. If I were to cover everything which has been said in the [column 158]debate, we should have the Committee stage now.
The hon. Member for Hornsey, somewhat to my surprise although not totally to my disappointment, expressed apprehension about the security-of-tenure legislation. One of the reasons why the Bill is not in the complete form that we could have wished is that this Department has a number of Bills in preparation in tandem. That on security of tenure is one of them, which is why we could not single-mindedly devote our drafting resources to this Bill alone, and that is why it is incomplete.
We have been trying, among other things, to work out safeguards for owner-occupiers, to whom the hon. Gentleman drew attention. While accepting what he says about owner-occupiers' problems, I would point out that he gave us a good example in the constituent he mentioned of a landlord who behaves capriciously towards his tenants.
The right hon. Member for Finchley, in her exordium before she came to the points of substance with which I shall try to deal, was trying to exhort us to build fewer council houses. I shall have to dissatisfy her. We cannot accept that recommendation. I was also a little surprised to hear her rebuke, as it appeared to us, about the reduction in the extent in the private sector of unfurnished dwellings which she implied took place more under Labour Governments than under Conservative Governments.
It is a fact that the percentage decline in unfurnished private landlord dwellings has been progressively greater under a Conservative Government than under a Labour Government. From 1951 to 1956 it was 2 per cent. per annum. From 1956 to 1961 it was 2½ per cent. From 1961 to 1965 it was 3 per cent., gradually rising under the Conservatives. Then, in roughly the period of the previous Labour Government, from 1965 to 1969, it stabilised at 3 per cent. In the following period, taking up most of the period of office of the previous Government, from 1969 to 1973, it jumped to about 4 per cent. The current rate is probably about 5 per cent.—for which, I hope, the right hon. Lady will not hold us responsible. It is no wonder that it was the previous Government, in their [column 159]White Paper, who said that the decline in the private rented sector was irreversible. They were able to do nothing to reverse it. Indeed, it speeded up under them.
The right hon. Lady expressed apprehension about Clause 6. I was a little surprised about that. As her hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey, who is well acquainted with the contents of the Bill, will know, Clause 6 is identical in wording with the Clause 6 as it was in the previous Bill. It looks exactly the same, except that in the printing of our Bill we have been able to save a line through closer printing.
Mrs. Thatcher
I am well aware, and the hon. Gentleman will remember, that my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West (Mr. Channon) said that he too was having doubts about the very clause that he had introduced. I am reinforcing those doubts in no uncertain way.
Mr. Kaufman
That was after the jocular intervention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. The right hon. Lady is pointing out that the then Minister for Housing and Construction was expressing doubts on the Second Reading of his Bill, yet we are apparently not allowed to do that on the Second Reading of our Bill.
The right hon. Lady seemed to suggest that Clause 6, which empowers the Housing Corporation to acquire the securities of any corporate bodies, is open to abuse in that it could be a device for nationalising the construction industry. That is an attractive thought, but I should like to think that if the construction industry were to be nationalised we would find a more effective way of doing it. But as it is, there are some built-in safeguards. The financial limits to be imposed on the corporation by Clause 7, a limit of £400 million or such greater amount not exceeding £750 million as the House may approve following the laying of an order, clearly do not give much room for the corporation to acquire securities, given that its task is to lend to housing associations; and as a subsidiary of the corporation may carry out only the activities that the parent body is empowered to do, the scope for acquisitions is narrow. The provisions of the clause are common to public authorities [column 160]and nationalised industries. Their presence is not in the least sinister. Without such powers as are proposed in Clause 6, circumscribed as they are, the legitimate interests of the corporation, for example, to foster a consortium of housing associations or to raise private finance, could be seriously damaged.
The right hon. Member for Finchley also asked about what we were doing to assist housing associations in their undoubted difficulties following the introduction of the rent freeze. Paragraphs 12 and 13 of Schedule 10 propose to slow down the rate of withdrawal of subsidies from housing associations under the Housing Finance Act, and this will be worth at least £1 million to housing associations in 1974–75. This represents some compensation to them for the loss of rental income. My right hon. Friend is keeping the situation under review to see whether it may be possible or desirable to go even further.
My hon. Friend the Member for Salford, East (Mr. Allaun) asked about compensation terms under municipalisation. I ask him to accept that this is something of which, in the light of what he has put to us, we obviously must take very great account. But within this limited measure that we are proposing today it is not as relevant as it will be when we get on to the large-scale municipalisation and we will have to look at the question very carefully indeed. I hope that my hon. Friend will accept that as an interim reply.
Mr. Allaun
Certainly, as long as it is not taken as a precedent that the terms granted now should be equally generous later on.
Mr. Kaufman
I am sure that what my hon. Friend has said is now on the record. My hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Mr. Douglas-Mann) raised a number of points. He said that the grants conditions in Clause 67 should be made mandatory rather than kept in the present discretionary form. They will be made mandatory for all grants in housing action and controlled areas, which means that the level of furnished rents can be controlled. This fact, together with the security of tenure for such dwellings, will mean that little discernible advantage will remain to compel a landlord to switch a tenancy from unfurnished to furnished [column 161]and I hope that that will comfort my hon. Friend.
I can assure him that we shall examine sympathetically the case from Camden to which he referred. There is no legal or administrative requirement that the Parker Morris standard should be reached after improvement. New building is a very different matter.
My hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Blenkinsop) raised the question of the participation of tenants. There will be detailed and careful arrangements for consultation with residents both in housing action areas and general improvement areas, but it is considered inappropriate to lay down the procedure for that in legislation. These matters will be dealt with administratively. For example, one of the matters which will be taken into account by the Secretary of State when considering general improvement area declaration will be the adequacy of local authority proposals for further dialogues with residents as the scheme moves forward.
I hope that the House will forgive me if I do not now proceed with other points which have been made since I should like to deal with the amendments we are hoping to table. If I have time I shall return to points which have been raised and which I have not yet had the opportunity to answer. One of the most important and key amendments we shall introduce will deal with the situation of housing stress, which is not confined to prospective housing action areas.
It is essential in Greater London and the other Inner City areas to prevent housing stress from rippling over into areas adjoining housing action areas and it is necessary also to prevent landlords from anticipating the declaration of housing action areas and transferring the problem to neighbouring areas. We therefore intend to empower local authorities to designate additional areas in a new category the name of which we have not yet decided upon. It will be a category where special safeguards will be provided. These will be areas of housing stress or areas with a potential for general improvement. We shall provide two powers, the first being the wider power of acquisition by local authorities provided in Clause 41. The second will be the substitute we have worked out for the first refusal option [column 162]to which my right hon. Friend drew attention, a system of notification of property transaction and notices to quit.
These new areas, the new safeguard areas as they may be called, would have to adjoin a housing action area or a general improvement area. The procedure for declaring them would be the same as for declaring a housing action area, including the provision for the Secretary of State to give guidance about identifying the areas and to rescind them where they are considered unreasonable. I trust that the right hon. Member for Finchley will accept that these new provisions will increase the flexibility which she so welcomed in her Government's Bill and in our Mark II Bill.
These proposals would pave the way for dealing with the inner cities on a wider basis, including the neighbourhood approach which so many hon. Members on both sides of the House have recommended as the right kind of approach. Further, we believe that the grant for external works provided for in Clauses 43 and 44 is too limited in scope and does not provide adequately for improving conditions in, as distinct from improving individual properties within, housing action areas.
We shall then propose to extend the grant so that expenditure of a capital nature designed to improve living conditions in housing action areas other than the provision, improvement and repair of housing will be eligible for assistance by local authorities. The aggregate Exchequer contribution in respect of the local authority's expenditure in giving such assistance in a housing action area would be one half of the expenditure up to a maximum, over the life of the area, of £50 times the number of all dwellings in the area, and not just those improved to an intermediate standard, which is what the Bill provides for at present.
We also propose to take a power to vary by order the sum of £50 not only generally but also for particular descriptions of authorities or areas. That will enable different treatment to be given to different regions. These alterations to the grant envisaged by the previous administration would help to widen the concept of housing action areas and make the treatment of such areas more relevant to the range of conditions which need to be [column 163]tackled in areas of bad housing in different parts of England and Wales.
Further, we wish to steer local authorities towards a policy of improvement rather than clearance wherever it is possible and makes sense. My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Dean) rightly said that improvement is no substitute for clearance where clearance is necessary. What worries us in the Department of the Environment is that some authorities may regard clearance as necessary when it is not only unnecessary but harmful. Meanwhile, while clearance has to continue on any large scale, we believe that the clearance procedures must be as swift, just and flexible as possible. I know that my hon. Friend the Minister of State who is responsible for urban affairs cares greatly about this matter. In pursuing our objectives we shall bring forward proposals on three aspects of the clearance system.
With the ever-increasing emphasis on rehabilitation, more and more local authorities are directing their minds to improvement rather than to clearance. Some now want to improve houses that are already in the pipeline for clearance, only to find that once they have bought property under Part III of the Housing Act 1957 there is no legislative loophole and that they must clear the houses.
A particular difficulty arises in the case of buildings of architectural or historic interest. At present it is possible for an unfit house to be included in a Part III order that brings with it a statutory order to demolish, and subsequently for it to be included in a statutory list ass worthy of preservation, which means that it can be demolished only with specific consent. That is an absurdity that has arisen in my constituency within the past few days.
We therefore propose that provision should be made for an authority to change its mind and to improve rather than demolish. That can be achieved by empowering authorities to make an order for confirmation by the Secretary of State releasing them from the requirement to demolish, and revoking the earlier compulsory purchase order when they are satisfied that owners will themselves rehabilitate. We shall be bringing forward proposals to that end. [column 164]
Next, we propose to make certain changes to the system whereby if a house has been included in a Part III order requiring its demolition, the Secretary of State may direct the making of a well-maintained payment to the owner or tenant as appropriate. The present procedure results in some people who are entitled to receive a payment failing to do so.
The changes that we intend to make will have the effect of ensuring that such payments are made in all cases considered by the local authority to be justified without the individual owners or tenants first having to qualify. We propose to simplify clearance procedures. Where an owner of a group of individual houses is keen to arrange for demolition and to redevelop the site himself, and where the authority has no need to acquire the land for its own purposes, that will continue to be possible under Part II of the 1957 Act.
But we intend to repeal the provisions relating to clearance orders which require owners of unfit houses, following the declaration of a clearance area under the Housing Act 1957, to demolish their property while retaining ownership of the land. In 1972 clearance orders accounted for only 4 per cent. of houses cleared under Part III and each clearance order averaged only eight houses.
In future, where the properties concerned are not in multiple ownership it will generally be in the public interest that the authority should acquire the land so as to secure speedy and systematic clearance, subsequently putting the site to good public use or disposing of it for redevelopment. A collection of small unsightly cleared sites in multiple and in increasingly uncertain ownerships is no good to anyone. Therefore, in future only local authorities will be allowed to buy houses in Part III areas.
We hope that these changes will eliminate some of the worst excesses and exploitation of the present system. I will give two examples of the kinds of abuse which have continued under the present system and to which some of my hon. Friends, in particular my hon. Friends the Members for St. Pancras, North (Mr. Stallard) and for Islington, South and Finsbury have often drawn attention. [column 165]
A recent study carried out by my Department has shown that in a representative sample of properties improved with the help of grants in inner London in the first quarter of 1972 about 65 per cent. of the original households had moved out either before or during the improvement, the vast majority of those affected being tenants. This situation cannot be tolerated, and the Bill takes steps to deal with it.
Again, I have recently heard of a case in London where a four-storey house in single ownership, with a rateable value of over £1,000 and which already had two bathrooms, two internal WCs and other modern amenities, was given the maximum grant towards an elaborate improvement scheme costing over £6,000 to enlarge the sitting room and to provide a children's playroom and a conservatory. Again, this is an intolerable misuse of public funds, and the Bill will stop it.
This Bill will advance us some way towards our goal of providing an opportunity of a decent life for those trapped in the psychological and environmental quagmire which inner cities are for hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens who deserve something far better out of life, who deserve conditions of the kind which we have in the House—and if we have them, we ought not to be satisfied until all our constituents have them as well.
The Bill, an imperfect measure as we all acknowledge it to be, will advance us some way, and because of that we put it forward with modesty and no more. We are very conscious that it does not go nearly far enough. This administration will not rest until all our fellow citizens have the chance to realise the aspirations which they demand for themselves and which we, too, demand on their behalf.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read a Second time.
Bill committed to a Standing Committee pursuant to Standing Order No. 40 (Committal of Bills.)