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take punitive action against those, whether in the public or the private sector, who deliberately and wantonly leave properties empty and allow them to become derelict eyesores and breeding grounds for vermin. Such houses are often festering, dangerous, broken- backed properties. Instead, they could provide somewhere for people to live. These are simply and clearly home truths, with which I hope that the Minister will agree. I hope that he will address some of the points that I have raised tonight.10.31 pm
Mr. Ken Hargreaves (Hyndburn) : I am grateful to the hon. Member for Liverpool, Mossley Hill (Mr. Alton) for allowing me to take part in this short debate. The position in Liverpool that he described is a scandal. The Labour council is a disaster for all the people of Liverpool. But it is especially disastrous for the poorest members of the Liverpool community, many of whom are trying to bring up children in bed-and-breakfast accommodation where family life is impossible. That that can be allowed to happen is bad enough, but that it can be allowed to happen when there are more than 5,000 empty council properties in Liverpool is disgraceful. It shows that the Labour council in Liverpool does not care or is completely incompetent--or both. Whichever it is, the position is a disaster for many Liverpool families who deserve better.
Unfortunately, under a Labour-controlled council, the position in Liverpool will not improve unless my hon. Friend the Minister intervenes. Therefore, I ask him to examine closely the Empty Property and Community Aid Bill, which I introduced in 1988, with the support of the hon. Member for Mossley Hill. The Bill would help Liverpool enormously because it would ensure the maximum possible use of houses left empty for many years.
The mere existence of large numbers of empty properties is evidence that new initiatives are needed. The Bill would require local authorities to register all empty residential property and provide the Secretary of State for the Environment with an annual statement of their strategy for bringing back into use any empty properties that they own. Councils would be obliged to allow community groups such as housing associations and other voluntary bodies to use empty properties in their possession for housing homeless families unless the council can give a good reason why the properties should remain empty.
Clearly, there can be no reason why 5,000 properties in Liverpool should be empty. If the Empty Property and Community Aid Bill were law now, thousands of Liverpool families would have had the opportunity to be rehoused, an opportunity now denied them by the incompetence of the Labour-controlled council.
10.34 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Tim Yeo) : I congratulate the hon. Member for Liverpool, Mossley Hil(Mr. Alton) on obtaining this opportune debate at a time when, once again, Liverpool is the focus of national attention. The voters of Walton are now confronted with the real face--or should I say faces--of the Labour party. The Labour party has sought to obscure one of those faces for the past two years. The hon. Gentleman rightly condemned the Labour party's past policy in the city.
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I share the aims of the Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn (Mr. Hargreaves).The Government entirely reject the figures from Shelter which the hon. Member for Mossley Hill quoted. They are a gross exaggeration and are almost entirely without foundation in terms of the relationship that they bear to the true numbers of homeless. I agree that we must make much better use of the existing housing stock. The existence of so many vacant properties, particularly those in the hands of local authorities, is nothing short of a national scandal. It must be addressed as a matter of urgency. As the hon. Member for Mossley Hill said, at the last count there were 100,000 empty council houses in the country of which more than 5,000 were in Liverpool. That is deeply disturbing. It is all the more unsatisfactory against the background of large numbers of empty properties in the private sector to which the hon. Member for Mossley Hill also referred.
That situation has been brought about largely by decades of hostility to the private landlord. Alas, that hostility, even though it is expressed by the Opposition alone, is enough to deter the majority of private landlords from risking the future security of their property by letting it in case of retrospective changes in legislation.
Almost 9 per cent. of the dwellings in the public sector in Liverpool are now vacant. Almost 6,000 properties are now lying vacant and are deteriorating. The reckless policies and the gross mismanagement of the Militant administration in the mid-1980s must take the main share of the blame for that state of affairs. That state of affairs has even been acknowledged by the former leader of the Liverpool Labour group, Mr. Coombes. After his resignation, he described the Labour-run council as
"the worst landlord in Liverpool, probably in the country". He went on to acknowledge that
"The council's problems are not down to resources."
Even when the Liberals were in control of Liverpool council in the early 1980s they failed to tackle the difficulties that the city then faced. The hon. Member for Mossley Hill has already admitted that he was chairman of the housing committee for part of that time.
Mr. Alton : I was chairman in the 1970s.
Mr. Yeo : I beg the hon. Gentleman's pardon.
The policy of total municipalisation as the answer to long-standing problems of disrepair has had a further damaging impact on the state of affairs in Liverpool.
In the 1980s, the Government urged the council to follow a pluralist approach of repairing and renewing existing stock, and, where necessary, of providing new housing for rent and sale. The city council not only disregarded that advice at the time, but set out on a deliberate policy of municipal new build. By doing so it spent disastrously beyond its means and created enduring difficulties for its successors and the people of Liverpool.
If any evidence is needed of the utter folly of expecting a monopoly local authority landlord to offer an effective response to the housing needs of a great city, one need look no further than Liverpool. The council pursued that policy through the late 1980s, and that exacerbated the difficulties already faced by the city and created a financial albatross that now inhibits the efforts of the city council. It will continue to do so for some time.
There is no sign whatever that either of the Labour candidates in the Walton by-election have learnt that lesson. The real Labour candidate, as so-called, Lesley
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Mahmood, served as an official Labour councillor. How can we expect Labour candidates to learn that lesson when the Labour party leadership is still wedded to the idea of meeting every housing need by pouring more and more money into local authority hands regardless of how it is spent ? When it comes to housing policy, the Labour party is still living in the 1950s.The Government consider that in renewing the fabric of social housing we must provide choice and diversity of tenure. Tenants must have a measure of control over their environment and living conditions. Problems can often be solved simply through better management, especially where the greater involvement of tenants can be achieved. It is no coincidence that there are no estate management boards in Liverpool, despite its appalling problems.
The strategy developed by Labour for running Liverpool's housing in the mid -1908s involved channelling huge resources into a limited number of areas and leaving the remainder of the stock to deteriorate. Liverpool's record of managing and maintaining the great majority of its stock in recent years has been abysmal. Its rent policy has been equally disastrous, with no increases for almost eight years up to last year. The result has exacerbated the maintenance problems. Despite those low rents, it has failed to collect no less than £23 million. Furthermore, the council has deliberately chosen to work against the grain of Government policy, ignoring the role of housing associations as the main providers of new social housing and rejecting the enormous potential offered by the private sector.
The Government have responded in a number of ways. We are allocating large sums under our estate action programme to enable properties to be refurbished and reoccupied. Since the more moderate Labour administration of Councillor Harry Rimmer came to power, a large number of properties on five estates are being dealt with through the allocation of more than £35 million from the estate action programme.
As with other estate action programmes, that involves the residents of the estates in close discussions with the city council over the way in which their homes can be repaired. I am pleased to say that residents are responding enthusiastically. Even the city council is now keen to press ahead, although its financial difficulties, the result of putting into practice socialist dogma in the mid-1980s, is limiting its response.
The leader of the council, Harry Rimmer, has taken an initiative in conjunction with the chairman of the Housing Corporation, Sir Christopher Benson. The so-called Rimmer-Benson initiative proposed collaboration with several volume private house builders who would refurbish or convert blocks of vacant housing. The improved houses or flats would then either be sold or transferred to housing association ownership for rent, or rented within the private sector. There may also be opportunities for the involvement of housing co-operatives. That would address directly the problem of the many vacant properties in Liverpool.
Officials from my Department are working with Liverpool city council and the Housing Corporation to prepare a detailed assessment of the possibilities. I expect a report to go to my hon. Friend the Minister of State soon.
A further initiative offers prospects of improved housing. Hon. Members will know of the Government's policy on housing action trusts. It is based on the
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successful renovation of the Stockbridge village in Merseyside. The recent agreement by residents to a HAT in Hull has stimulated Liverpool to consider whether it, too, could benefit from a similar venture, taking advantage of Government finanical resources and involving the support of the residents, other housing agencies and the private sector. The city is examining the possibilities in detail and we expect to hear from it soon. I hope that it takes advantage of this opportunity.Merseyside has a strong tradition of activity and innovation in provision by housing associations, for both new build and refurbished properties. There are many excellent housing association schemes, some on former local authority sites and others on sites provided by the private sector. The Government have maintained a high level of funding to the housing associations, both to the main approved development programme and through the Merseyside special allocation instituted by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State some years ago.
As for private sector housing, the proportion of vacant dwellings in Liverpool is about 6 per cent. above the national average. I am glad to say that builders and developers have not deserted Merseyside during the economic downturn. Indeed, house prices have remained firm during the past couple of years. The range of housing available is impressive and includes a good proportion of cheap starter homes. In addition, I am glad to say that some builders have taken a strong interest in the refurbishment of derelict non-residential buildings close to the centre of the city. I commend the house builders and developers who are prepared to take the risks attached to such ventures. The signs are that they are justified and that there is demand for refurbished properties close to the city centre. I hope that when the city council comes to put in its bid to my right hon. Friend to be a pacemaker authority under the city challenge it will consider the prospects for refurbishment and redevelopment of existing semi -derelict
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or derelict properties in the pacemaker area. I am sure that there are prospects of residential units for social housing, extra accommodation for students and better quality housing for city centre workers. Such a step would help to bring back the population to the centre--a step which we all hope will be taken.I am more confident about the prospects for dealing with the problems of vacant dwellings in Liverpool now that the controlling Labour group has seen the wisdom of the Government's approach to these matters and is showing signs of being prepared to work with, not against, the grain of our policies. I look forward over the next two or three years to a partnership between central and local government, the private sector and the housing association movement, together with the community, to sort out this severe problem of empty properties in Liverpool.
I was interested to hear the hon. Gentleman refer to his proposals for tackling empty properties and his suggestion that private landlords might be dealt with in what sounded like a somewhat punitive way in extreme cases. I am not attracted by that concept. There are already enough disincentives for the prospective private landlord without threatening further action against him. What we need is more carrot and less stick. That is a better way to get private homes for rent and why the Government have recently launched another initiative to promote the involvement of housing associations in the management of private property, with the aim of encouraging landlords to consider letting to homeless families and individuals. I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising this important issue at an opportune time. I am not pessimistic about the future. I have explained that there are several initiatives which will help to improve housing in Liverpool and to decrease the number of vacant dwellings. All these initiatives have an excellent chance of success, provided that the city council does not return to its bad old ways. Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at sixteen minutes to Eleven o'clock.
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