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Empty Homes
3.31 pm
Mr. Alistair Burt (Bury, North) : I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to enable residential property, unoccupied for a specified period and not offered for sale or let, to be transferred from the ownership of public landlords to the ownership of housing associations ; to amend the law to provide incentives to private landlords to let empty residential property ; and for connected purposes.
There can be few hon. Members whose constituency work is untouched by the rising tide of homelessness. In my constituency experience, the number of people looking for accommodation from the local authority and from other public authorities has increased markedly in recent years.
It is easy to be judgmental and to seek to fix blame, but the honest answer is that the causes of the rise in the number of homeless families are many and it is not always easy to attach blame. Experience seems to confirm that marital breakdown and family break-up are the largest factors behind the increase in homeless applications to public sector housing bodies. It is easy to understand why. A married couple with two young children drift apart ; automatically, one housing unit becomes two. The party with the children, usually the mother-- [Interruption.]
Mr. Speaker : Order. I know that hon. Members are waiting for the next debate, but they should listen to the submissions of the hon. Member for Bury, North (Mr. Burt).
Mr. Burt : The party with the children, usually the mother, either remarries or finds another partner. All too often, sadly, there are problems between step-parents and children, and the children seek to leave as soon as they become old enough. The number of housing units represented by that one family becomes two, three, four or even more. Children-- sometime barely 16 or 17--drift to larger cities, and the damage is done.
Whatever the causes of the breakdown and the pressure on those who seek to house the homeless, it is not merely enough to analyse or to lay blame--all that can be done must be done--and my Bill points a finger at something that may be responsible, empty properties. The figures for the number of empty properties throughout this country are simply staggering. On the latest figures, this year 145, 000 households were accepted as homeless. On 1 April 1990, there were 99,352 empty council properties, of which almost a quarter--23,000--had been empty for more than a year. Similar figures for housing associations suggest that more than 21,000 of their properties are vacant. Central Government have some 31,000 vacant properties that belong to the Department of Health, the Ministry of Defence and the Home Office. But the private sector has more than 500,000 properties vacant. In my area of the north-west, 83,245 properties of all types are vacant.
I do not doubt for a moment that my hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Planning, whose personal commitment to housing the homeless cannot be questioned by anyone in the House, is making strenuous efforts to tackle the problem.
Recently a number of measures have been introduced by the Government that are likely to assist. Changes to the Rent Acts are designed to provide incentives for landlords in the private sector to rent more property. Those changes
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have ended the fears that have been associated with private renting for too long. Specific grants have recently been made to local authorities and housing associations, particularly in London and the south-east. The Government also believe that the ending of ring fencing in housing revenue accounts and the introduction of performance indicators will improve the accountability of managements. However, I do not believe that those measures, good though they are, are good enough. [ Hon. Members :-- "Hear hear."] I knew that that point was significant, but perhaps not that significant.I believe that the measures that the Government have introduced, good though they are, could be further improved. The Bill seeks to introduce a number of other measures. First, on the public sector, the Bill proposes that housing associations should be empowered to take over empty properties from the public sector, either from local councils or the Government. Secondly, the Bill would require the compiling of a register of empty property in all areas, which is necessary to identify what is empty and why. Thirdly, the Bill proposes a mixture of penalties and incentives in relation to private property. On incentives, it is possible that some further changes in the tax regime would make private renting more attractive. I believe that it is possible for housing associations to do more on management to deal with some of the difficulties and hassles. [Interruption.]
Mr. Speaker : Order. The hon. Gentleman is making a submission to the House, but it is difficult even for me to hear what it is.
Mr. Burt : Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I believe that it is also possible for housing associations to work more closely with private landlords to relieve them of some of the difficulties of management. There is also a large unexplored sector comprising of flats above shops that could be put to more use. If those measures and the steps already taken by the Government were not enough, the Bill would also seek to give housing associations and possibly, in limited circumstances, local authorities a similar power to that in the public sector to take over empty private property for a time for use for housing. That step would be drastic and would have to be subject to extremely strict controls. The property would need to have been empty for some time and it would need to be proved before a court that the landlord had no further intention of bringing the property into use within a reasonable time. That provision might encourage a great deal more private property back into use without its powers being used. Homelessness is not an easy problem to cure. The vast majority of people who work with the homeless--I am indebted to the empty property unit at Shelter for helping me to prepare the Bill--are stretched to the limit by circumstances beyond their control. All available means must be used to ensure that families, especially those including children, get the best possible chance of accommodation and move away from the hostels and bed-and -breakfast accommodation that absorb far too many financial resources and provide no living beyond existence for those forced to make use of them.
If we bring empty properties back into use, that will provide an excellent opportunity for the future. I wish the Government proposals that deal with the problem well,
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but I urge the Government to consider some of the proposals advanced in the Bill, which I have pleasure to put before the House. Question put and agreed to.Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Alistair Burt, Mr. Robert G. Hughes, Mr. Ken Hargreaves, Mr. Jim Lester, Mr. Matthew Taylor, Mr. Simon Hughes and Mr. David Sumberg.
Written Question 124
Mr. Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) : On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Have you had any request from the Prime Minister to answer written question 124 orally? It asks the Prime Minister
"whether he has any plans to assist former Prime Ministers with their office and secretarial expenses."
I feel that the House should be notified about the matter before the debate today begins. It might have been appropriate to question the Prime Minister on whether he has any such plans.
Mr. Speaker : I am sure that the whole House will read the answer when it is available.
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Confidence in Her Majesty's Government
Mr. Speaker : Before we start the debate on the motion, I invite the House to look at the motion on the Order Paper today. As hon. Members will see, it is not a general no confidence motion. It relates specifically to the poll tax. The debate should go no wider than that.
I have not selected either of the amendments on the Order Paper.
Sir Norman Fowler (Sutton Coldfield) : On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I apologise for delaying the House, but for weeks past--or days past--we have had promises from Opposition spokesmen that this no confidence debate-- [Interruption.]
Mr. Speaker : Order. I must hear what the point of order is. Sir Norman Fowler rose--[Interruption.]
Mr. Speaker : Order. Will the right hon. Gentleman sit down, please? I must hear what the point of order is.
Sir Norman Fowler : Opposition spokesmen promised that they intended to give the House an opportunity to debate a range of issues. With respect, may I ask you, Mr. Speaker, to review the decision that you have just announced and allow issues other than the single one you mentioned to be debated?
Mr. Speaker : That is not within my discretion. We must debate the motion on the Order Paper.
The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. John MacGregor) : Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. May I ask you for some clarification? It has certainly been clear from all that we have heard from the Labour party recently and, indeed, in a radio discussion in which I participated with the hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) this morning-- [Interruption.] I am coming to the point of order. The hon. Member for Copeland made it clear that the purpose of the debate this afternoon was to discuss a range of policies-- [Interruption.]
Mr. Speaker : Order. How can I possibly hear what is being said if hon. Members bray in this manner?
Mr. MacGregor : From what the hon. Gentleman said this morning, it was clearly the Opposition's intention to range widely in the debate. Would it be in order to debate not only the community charge on its own but the issues of local government finance which are clearly relevant to the community charge and local government in general? That is important. As the Opposition have failed to frame the no confidence motion which they intended, is it not clear that they are unable not only to develop coherent and clear policies but to frame a motion of the sort that they wanted?
Mr. Speaker : The whole House knows that under Standing Orders we have to debate the motions on the Order Paper. It will, of course, be in order to draw attention to the finances of local government within the context of the poll tax.
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3.44 pmMr. Neil Kinnock (Islwyn) : I beg to move,
That this House has no confidence in Her Majesty's Government in the light of its inability to rectify the damage done to the British people by the poll tax.
You may be absolutely certain, Mr. Speaker, that I shall stick to the subject about which the Government wish to hear least--the poll tax. On future occasions, before the general election, doubtlessly due to the incompetence of the Government, there will be other reasons for tabling other motions of no confidence in the Government.
We have tabled the motion, first, because it is the Government who have got Britain into the poll tax mess, and, secondly, because it is now certain that the Government will never get Britain out of it. In his statement last Thursday, the Secretary of State for the Environment said that the Government proposed a tax with
"a single bill for each household comprising two essential elements, the number of adults living there and the value of the property assessing values, on a capital or a rental basis".--[ Official Report, 21 March 1991 ; Vol. 188, c. 404.]
As soon as he said that, it was clear that the poll tax was still alive-- alive and kicking the British people.
From the Government who brought us the poll tax to replace the rates we have a new epic--the poll tax and the rates. The best that they have been able to suggest is a head tax combined in some way with a roof tax, topped up by 17.5 per cent. VAT and wrapped in the cotton wool of consultation. The reason for the device of consultation is the same reason as for putting forward the mixed poll tax and property tax. It is not to do with the defence or advance of the national interest ; it is to try to keep the conflicting factions in the Conservative party and the Cabinet together with some appeasement for each of them.
In the Conservative party now, some want wholesale property tax, some want to keep the poll tax and some want to increase VAT to 20 per cent. or more and finance all of local government services from that. What they would do about accountability, God only knows. Therefore, the Government, faced with those factions, have tried to come up with something that will meet the needs and desires of every Tory fragment.
Apart from right hon. and hon. Members who applaud the Prime Minister now just as they applauded the introduction of the poll tax, who can be reassured when the final shape of the new tax mixture is so deliberately vague? In the Tory party and the country, who can be content that Conservative candidates will have to go into the local elections on 2 May with no knowledge of whether they are supporting a poll tax, a property tax or a mixed tax? It appears that they will have to fight those local elections on a manifesto entitled, "Wait and See" and under the slogan, "Don't ask us, we're only the Government".
In this whole tangle, there are assiduous attempts to blame the entire poll tax mess solely on the previous Prime Minister. Had the poll tax been introduced by a singular dictatorial flourish, it would be possible to give some credence to the idea that only the right hon. Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher) was guilty, but it was not quite like that, was it? Everyone will have some understanding and sympathy with the irritation and resentment that the former Prime Minister must rightly feel when she hears
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colleagues who sat with her around the Cabinet table or on Cabinet committees now trying to give the impression that they were against the poll tax all the time, really.The present Prime Minister was Chancellor of the Exchequer and Chief Secretary to the Treasury. He says that he was "bounced" into the poll tax. Frankly, that says rather more about the right hon. Gentleman's character than about the right hon. Lady. Others--the present Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and the Secretaries of State for Wales, for Health and for Employment--were all local government Ministers serving their time introducing the poll tax.
The Secretary of State for Transport was the Scottish Secretary, the Home Secretary was the Environment Secretary, and the present chairman of the Conservative party was the Secretary of State for the Environment when the poll tax was inflicted on England and Wales. We are at the first anniversary of the time when the right hon. Gentleman said :
"The Community Charge is here to stay Maybe one day we'll have people breaking the law and painting on the sides of buildings Up with the Community Charge ! Down with the rates'".
Does that sound like a man being bounced ?
In April last year--we are just a week away from the first anniversary of this--the Prime Minister said that the poll tax would be "a very much fairer and more acceptable system"
I do not think that that sounds like someone in the Cabinet being dragged unwillingly and unwittingly into supporting the poll tax. Some 12 months later, the British people can draw their own conclusions about those and other members of Her Majesty's Government. Either those Minister were all innocent but gullible and did not know the truth about the poll tax, or the more ugly conclusion can be drawn : they did know the truth but a mixture of deference and ambition made dishonest men of them. Either way--gullible or guilty--they should not be sitting here now.
Miss Emma Nicholson (Totteridge and Devon, West) : Does not the right hon. Gentleman agree that his proposal for the replacement of the community charge which involves the centralisation of computer records to allow the information on every citizen of the United Kingdom to be available is real dictatorship ?
Mr. Kinnock : I shall send a copy of our proposals to the hon. Lady, who will see that they contain no proposition more centralising than that of the rates system that we intend to reintroduce.
The Government ploughed on with the poll tax despite the advice coming from hundreds of Tory councillors, ssmall businesses, a variety of independent sources and those supporting them that the poll tax was wrong and could never work. They got rid of the right hon. Member for Finchley. They had a review, and then a review of the review. They introduced the poll tax capping criteria that caught some Tory councils. The whole squandering sequence cost £400 million to set up, £300 million a year to maintain, £6 billion to try to mitigate and £1.5 billion a year because of revenue lost from the 7.5 million people who could not pay their poll tax. Now, on top of that, they are to spend £4.25 billion in VAT- -and still the turmoil goes on.
Until Monday of this week, we were being told that 18 million people would benefit from the Government's
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community charge reduction scheme, then the figure became 8 million--although it came from the Minister of State, who usually gets things wrong--and then it became 16 million. When there are such variations, it is obviously necessary for everyone to have a clear description of how their reductions are being worked out. Therefore, I was glad that this morning the Department of the Environment provided the public with an explanation, reported by Mr. Timmins of The Independent. According to the Department of the Environment, the calculation will be as follows :"You take two times the reduced community charge, minus, in brackets, the old rateable value plus one £52 threshold for a couple, two for three people and so on. The result is divided by two, three or four, depending on the number of adults in the household. That gives you the amount of reduction each. That is taken away from the reduced community charge to work out what people actually pay." The Independent also states :
"Those who have moved this financial year will now qualify--although not if they move again next year."
Nothing could be clearer than that! I am sure that, if the Department of the Environment has got anything wrong, the Prime Minister will rectify any errors when he speaks later.
Meanwhile, the costs of the poll tax system go on piling up--£18 million a day. We have a panic decision to scrap existing poll tax bills and issue revised ones. That of itself will cost the taxpayers of Britain another £200 million. After all that, what we have not got from all the cost and chaos of the poll tax system is a single additional home help. We have not got a single extra police officer, not an extra teacher, not an extra road repair--and that is not even taking into account the fact that the Government inflicted the community charge but they stopped community care. There is nothing better in any of the vital services as a consequence of having this preposterously expensive and unjust system.
Mr. Bill Walker (Tayside, North) : Do I understand the right hon. Gentleman to say that, during the period of the community charge in Scotland, there has been no increase in the number of local government employees? If so, it is not true.
Mr. Kinnock : Of course there has been a huge increase in local government employees--to run the poll tax.
Tragically, it is not just that the people have not got more as a consequence of paying the extra costs of the poll tax and the poll tax system : it is the fact that they have actually got less. Tory authorities all over the country are cutting education, social services and highways maintenance in an effort to avoid capping. Every other kind of local authority is having to do the same. As today's figures show, crime is at the highest level in our history. But Mr. David Owen, the chairman of the Association of Chief Police Officers, has to report that six major urban areas in Britain face the loss of 1,700 police officers--a result of the poll tax capping system. None of that will change with the £140 poll tax cut that some will get. In Tory authorities, Labour authorities and authorities with no overall control all across Britain, spending levels are still set at the same figures. The supply of essential services about which the Prime Minister professes to care so much recently will continue to shrink.
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Even in the midst of their relief at the reduction of £140 that some will get in their poll tax bills, the British people know where the money is coming from. They know that it is coming from themselves. They know that they are being made to pay for the Government's errors and hypocrisies in the poll tax system. In their claim, as we have heard it over the last week since the Budget, to be using something called Government funds to mitigate the poll tax, the Government are acting like the bank robbers who return part of their loot to try to reduce their overdrafts.But I suppose that, in imposing higher VAT, the Government are at least honouring one principle of the poll tax, the cardinal orthodoxy, the centrepiece of the whole edifice--the principle that everyone should pay something. Everyone certainly will. Every pensioner will pay over the counter for the Government's poll tax fiasco. Every family buying a pair of trainers for their teenage children will pay. Every washing machine repair, every car repair, every home improvement will carry the extra charge--the poll tax VAT surcharge. Everyone must pay something, the Government say. We heard the Chancellor of the Exchequer saying it again to Mr. Walden on Sunday. He said :
"What we have maintained is the principle that everybody ought to contribute towards the cost of local government, the so-called principle of universality."
The Chancellor cannot have known that at the very time, Sunday lunchtime, that he was reasserting that fundamental immutable principle to Mr. Walden on television the Secretary of State for the Environment was telling Mr. Dimbleby on television, not that "everybody" should pay, but that "most" should pay. As The Times newspaper judged on Monday,
"The glaring contrast
between them
"shows the extent of the fudge which lay behind Mr. Heseltine's statement."
Sir Anthony Grant (Cambridgeshire, South-West) : The implication of what the right hon. Gentleman is saying is that, under his party's proposals, there would be a great improvement, and an increase in the services which, by implication, would be through an increase in the revenue support grant from his party. If so, will he tell us--I think that it would be reasonable for him to do so and I am sure that he has worked it out--what tax increases would achieve that?
Mr. Kinnock : For 12 years we have been telling, together with many others-- [Interruption.]
Mr. Kinnock : For 12 years, together with many others, we have been telling the Government--[ Hon. Members-- : "Answer."] It was a very good question and I shall give a very good answer in my own way. We have been telling the Conservative party that it should not have been making the cuts that it has made in central Government funding for essential services. Conservative councillors have been telling them the same.
Last Tuesday, there was a deathbed repentance, and the Government reversed the policy of 12 years and started to make a provision. The answer to the question, "How much extra tax will we have to charge?" is, "Nothing at all." [Interruption.]
Mr. Speaker : Order. I ask the House to calm down.
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Mr. Kinnock : I think that Tory Members may be trying to make up for 12 years of past sin. We have no sins to make up for. When the Secretary of State for the Environment says that most people should pay, in this subtle shift of the cardinal principle, it seems that "most" is very broad. When the Secretary of State for the Environment was asked whether nurses, students and others on low incomes will have to pay the new double tax, he said :"the sort of coverage that we've got today will be carried into the new system. We intend the incidence of liability to remain where it is."
How will that "incidence of liability" be recorded? Perhaps the Prime Minister can tell us this afternoon. After all, he did tell us--he told me last Tuesday--that "all" questions on the poll tax would be answered
"by the end of this week."--[ Official Report, 19 March 1991 ; Vol. 188, c. 158.]
That was last week. He did not keep that pledge, due, I am sure, to circumstances totally beyond his control. So let him now give the answers that he promised.
First, will there be a register in his new system? The Secretary of State said on Thursday evening, "We may not need a register." A little later he said :
"we shall not need a register. I have made that clear." On the same evening, the Secretary of State for Scotland said : "Clearly, there will have to be some kind of register".--[ Official Report, 21 March 1991 ; Vol. 188, c. 422, 474.]
Will the Prime Minister, as the supreme arbiter that we are told he is, answer the register question now?
Secondly, will the Prime Minister tell us what is to be the legal liability in the two-tax, one-bill system that the Government want to foist upon every household in the country? The Secretary of State for the Environment was asked :
"Is one person in a household going to be legally liable?" He said : "It doesn't follow." If that is the case, may I ask the Prime Minister, will everyone in the household be legally liable? Surely someone has to be legally liable : who will it be? Surely the question of legal liability does not have to await consultation. It should be a basic matter of principle, and I am sure that the Prime Minister can tell us the answer this afternoon.
Thirdly, will the 20 per cent. rule remain? Surely the Prime Minister can answer that straightforward question. Will it remain, or will he follow Labour party policy again--act the magpie again--and get rid of the 20 per cent. rule as we shall do? Fourthly, what will be the balance between the poll tax element and the property tax element in the new tax scheme? In Southport last Saturday, the Prime Minister said that "the principles" of the new tax should be based "First, on the number of people in each household. Second, on the value of the property people live in".
Will the Prime Minister tell us precisely where he stands in the full arc from the poll tax to the rates, in the spectrum of division in his party?
Mr. Tim Smith (Beaconsfield) : Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Kinnock : I shall give way in a moment.
A few weeks ago, the Prime Minister said :
"I think I am clear in my own mind which way we are going on the Poll Tax".
Why does he not tell us what he thinks he is clear about, or even what he thinks that he thinks he is clear about?
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Will he be the father of the son of poll tax, or the father of the daughter of the rates--or will he just sit there having twins? Does the Prime Minister realise that, if he keeps a personal charge element in the two-tax system, it will be the poll tax in another form? Everyone else knows that, and the stain will never leave the Conservative party. The Secretary of State for the Environment says that these are matters of detail, and that no one should worry about the number of gainers and the number of losers. He told the Conservative Central Council in Southport last Friday :"I think that this Party should raise its sights from the narrow focus of who gains what, when, and in what circumstances, and understand the excitement of what we are doing as a political party."
To paraphrase the Duke of Wellington, I do not know if it excites them, but it makes me ecstatic.
It may not matter to the Secretary of State for the Environment and the Prime Minister how many gainers and losers there are, but all over the country people are worried to distraction about how they will cope with their poll tax bills. To their credit, even a good many Conservative Members recognise that. The only way in which to relieve that anxiety is to do the sensible thing and scrap the poll tax now. The Secretary of State could do it by returning to a rating system made fairer by a proper system of rebates. That would save £300 million a year on operating costs alone.
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