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Oral Answers to Questions
ENVIRONMENT
House Building
1. Mr. Sheerman: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what steps he is taking to stimulate the building of houses suitable for tenants or buyers on lower incomes. [17876]
The Minister for Local Government, Housing and Urban Regeneration (Mr. David Curry): My Department has a housing programme of £6.7 billion this year, which goes mainly to provide new social lettings, to renovate existing housing, and to help finance rent rebates for council tenants. We also finance a number of low-cost home ownership programmes.
Mr. Sheerman: Is that not an appallingly complacent answer from a Minister who knows that in 1979 local councils built 75,600 houses, whereas last year they built just 1,600? Is it not a matter of shame for both the hon. Gentleman and the Government that there are tens of thousands homeless people throughout the country and that people are living in degrading and squalid conditions? Is it not time the Government liberated councils to build the homes that people deserve?
Mr. Curry: Why is the hon. Gentleman so obsessed with houses being built by councils? What is the difference between a house built by a council, one built by a housing association and one built by the private sector? It shows the Labour party's obsession with state ownership and state development. One of the greatest achievements, among others, of this Government has been to put housing associations in the front line in the development of new homes. That is infinitely better and more flexible than house building by councils.
Dr. Spink: Will my hon. Friend confirm that there are about 800, 000 empty houses in this country and that councils, especially those under Labour control, have a responsibility to bring them into use? Would that not help those on low incomes?
Mr. Curry: It is true that there is a large number of empty homes in both the public and the private sectors. We have a housing partnership programme aimed at bringing them into use. It is also true that, if we could get more of them into use, that would make a significant dent in some of the housing problems.
Mr. Raynsford: Why will the Minister not admit to the true state of housing in Britain today, with house sales last month 14 per cent. down on 1994, 1.25 million home owners trapped in negative equity, repossessions running at 1,000 a week--50,000 a year--councils to all intents and purposes stopped from building new housing, and housing association budgets cut for two years running, thereby reducing the combined output of rented housing by councils and housing associations to the lowest levels since the second world war? Is it not clear that the Government have failed the nation and that they have lost
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the confidence of house builders, tenants and home owners alike, and that they should now make way for a Labour Government who will take housing seriously?Right to Buy
2. Mr. Congdon: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment how many homes have been sold under right to buy legislation. [17905]
The Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. John Gummer): In England, more than 1.23 million homes have been sold under the right to buy. The figure for Great Britain as a whole is more than 1.6 million.
Mr. Congdon: I welcome those figures. Given the success of providing the right to buy to so many people--with the benefits evident throughout the country both in the physical improvements on council estates and in the wider mix of tenures--will my right hon. Friend consider extending the scheme to all housing association tenants, which is a particular issue in London?
Mr. Gummer: My hon. Friend is right to say how much the initiative has been welcomed. Under one or other of the schemes, 235 homes a day in Britain are being bought by tenants who are turning themselves into home owners. That is a remarkable achievement and wholly contrary to the rather pathetic comments of the hon. Member for Greenwich (Mr. Raynsford). However, we want to improve on that number and I am looking carefully at ways to extend the initiative to other people.
Mr. Soley: Is the Secretary of State aware that the total raised from council house sales is about £25 billion--close to the total amount raised from all other privatisations? Instead of frittering that money away, why do the Government not invest it in housing? It was the original plan of the housing spokesman of the Tory party to reinvest in housing, but the Government did not do so. As a result, we have homeless children begging in our streets. Is the Secretary of State not ashamed of that?
Mr. Gummer: Far from frittering it away, the first use of that money was to pay back the debts incurred to build the housing in the first place. The second use was to build other houses. The third use was for other local authority purposes. The concept that the money has been frittered away can be accurate only if the local authorities, many of which are controlled by the Labour party, frittered it away: it was their money and they have spent it.
As a result of the Government's policy on homelessness, fewer than a third of the number of people who were sleeping rough on the streets of London a few years ago do so now. That is the result of spending £129 million on the homeless. The hon. Gentleman ought to get his facts right.
Mr. Beggs: Does the Secretary of State agree that, under the right- to-buy legislation, many more families have a new pride in the ownership of their property, and that the improvements which they make give new confidence and interest in improvements to those living in neighbouring properties? Does he agree that, at this
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time, many more families should consider the advantage to them which would be gained by applying to buy the property which they rent at present?Mr. Gummer: My hon. Friend is absolutely right in expressing that view of home ownership. It is precisely what the Government have sought to do. Of course, all the 235 families per day who buy their own homes would not have had the chance to do so if the Labour party had been in control. Labour opposed the right to buy at every point and many Labour candidates put the right to buy in their manifestos as something that they would like to stop.
Contaminated Land
3. Mr. Dowd: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what plans he has to ensure that the owners of contaminated land make that information available to the public. [17906]
The Minister for the Environment and Countryside (Mr. Robert Atkins): The contaminated land provisions in part II of the Environment Bill include proposals for local authorities to inspect their areas to identify contaminated land, to assess the seriousness of the contamination using guidelines to be set out by the Secretary of State, and taking into account the advice of the Environment Agency, to decide what should be done by way of remediation.
Mr. Dowd: Does the Secretary of State agree that if green-field and green-belt sites are to be protected from development, we need better to use brown-field and redevelopment sites, and that gaining public confidence in that redevelopment by fully disclosing information is instrumental in achieving that? Leaving aside the Government's historic bias towards commercial interests over the public interest, are the Government so unworthy of trust that they are unprepared to trust the people with the information?
Mr. Atkins: I share the hon. Gentleman's desire to bring contaminated or brown land back into the development cycle. That is why we have coined the phrase "suitable for use" which we talked about yesterday in the debate on the Environment Bill. I expect that in due course the hon. Gentleman and I will find out the extent of that in Committee. The point is surely that those who have caused the problem, either currently or in the past, or those in the same sort of market, are the ones who need to spend the money to rectify the problem. To allay the concerns of the insurance industry, the banks, and so on, we need to ensure that they believe that "suitable for use" means just that.
As for the hon. Gentleman's point about public registers, powers in the Environment Bill, which we discussed yesterday, will allow greater disclosure. In any case, local authorities have powers now to check and disclose details of contaminated land to those who are interested.
Mr. Thomason: Does my hon. Friend agree that, consequent on the proposals contained in the draft legislation which was before the House yesterday for Second Reading, it is likely that purchasers and others interested in developing a property will be able to gain the
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information that they require from normal conveyancing inquiries as well as from the usual inquiries with the local authorities?Strategic Authority for London
4. Mr. Tony Banks: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will make it his policy to reinstate a strategic local authority for London. [17908]
Mr. Banks: I asked the question more in hope than expectation, but when will the Government drop the dead dogma about London and accept what everyone in the public and private sector is saying--that London desperately needs a strategic authority to run it? Why is such a body good enough for every other capital city in the world, but not for London?
Mr. Gummer: I know that the hon. Gentleman has a long love of the Greater London council--so much so that he took its various insignia home to look after them at the end of its time--but he must remember that Paris, for example, has no such authority. It is not true, therefore, that every other capital city has one. The mayor of Paris controls an area which is not the whole of Paris by any means. As usual, the hon. Gentleman is wrong. That is the second time that he has been wrong during this Question Time.
The Government and the Cabinet Committee for London are our strategic authority. We deal with a range of problems throughout London, and the area covered depends on the issue. If one is talking about transport, the old GLC area is far too small. If one is talking about the Thames, it is the wrong shape and the area must go much beyond and below that. If one is talking about the problems of tourism and theatreland one is talking about two or three boroughs in the centre of London. On many of the issues, the sort of strategic authority that the hon. Gentleman wants would have no use and be very expensive and it would be largely opposed by his supporters in the borough councils, who are elected.
Mr. John Marshall: Does my right hon. Friend accept that the GLC gave London an intolerable bureaucracy, interminable delays and frequent differences of opinion with the London boroughs? Does he accept that outside London people would have looked to the Lord Mayor of London rather than the chairman of the GLC, of whom few, if any, had heard? Does he also accept that, since I became the Member for Hendon, South, I have not received one letter calling for the resurrection of the late and unlamented Greater London council?
Mr. Gummer: I am not surprised that my hon. Friend has received no letters. After all, in the last five years of the GLC, it put spending up by 170 per cent. when the total increase in the cost of living was 29 per cent., and it had 20,000 staff and a budget of more than £1 billion. It is difficult today to find anything it did which needed doing.
Mr. Dobson: Why do the Tories refuse to restore to Londoners their right to choose who governs their city? Why do the Government insist on ignoring the views of four out of five Londoners and of the Evening Standard ? Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that that rejection of the rights of Londoners was decided by a Cabinet
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sub-committee which includes the chairman of the Tory party? Is that because the Tories are scared stiff to face the voters of London, just as they are running scared of voters in every other part of the country?Mr. Gummer: I am glad that the hon. Gentleman managed to read that out word for word because he does not believe it any more than anyone else in the House, which is why he had to have it written down. The fact is that he is wrong on every point. The GLC did little that is discernible for the good of London and cost it a great deal. The needs of London are much better served by dealing with it as it really is. That is why there are elected borough authorities. The idea that London--meaning its 32 boroughs- -cannot elect its governor can be put forward only by someone who recognises that the Labour party, which runs most of those boroughs, does not act in the interests of the electors but in the interests of the Labour party. It is no wonder that the hon. Gentleman had to read out his question, lest he be led into the facts, which are that Lambeth, Hackney, Haringey and other examples of Labour London do not give anyone in London any chance to think that it would be better if there were a juggernaut such as the GLC again.
Mr. Colvin: Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is far better for the hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) to be here entertaining us, rather than being chairman of one of the most profligate local authorities ever? Can my right hon. Friend tell us when we can expect that great Lutyens building, county hall, to be put to a more profitable use?
Mr. Gummer: I hope that that will happen soon. I am glad that my hon. Friend mentioned the past because it is worth remarking that when the GLC was the so-called "strategic authority for London" it spent only a sixth as much in real terms on the London tube as is spent now that the Government have that role.
Out-of-town Developments
5. Mr. Heppell: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will make a statement as to when he will publish his review of planning policy guidance concerning out-of-town developments. [17909]
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Sir Paul Beresford): Before the summer recess
Mr. Heppell: How does the Minister plan to convince local authorities and commercial enterprises that the Government are serious about supporting town and city centres when planning guidance still lacks clarity? Does he agree that any out-of-town development is bound to have a serious effect on town and city centres?
Sir Paul Beresford: I would not absolutely agree with the last part of the hon. Gentleman's question, when he said that out-of-town development causes destruction to town and city centres. There is cross-party and local government support for the changes and for PPG6, which shows that local government recognises the positiveness of that report.
Mr. Quentin Davies: Does my hon. Friend agree that it would be an enormous tragedy if we followed the pattern of so many American cities, where all economic
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development has shifted out to new shopping malls in the suburbs and city centres have become an economic vacuum? Does he agree that imaginative planning policies can play an important role in preventing such development from taking place?Sir Paul Beresford: I would certainly agree with that. Indeed, there is probably cross-party support on all the points that my hon. Friend has just made.
Mr. Matthew Taylor: Does the Minister accept that, apart from out-of -town centres which have already been built, many planning permissions for out-of-town developments are still outstanding and people are concerned that the stable door is being shut well after the horse has bolted? Will the Department review what it can do to help town centres regenerate and build investment through local authorities and others to push back the tide in favour of town centres, particularly in communities where town centres are already well down the path of decline?
Sir Paul Beresford: First, given the current number of outstanding planning permissions, the hon. Gentleman's question conveys a sense of doom rather than reality. The reality is very different. Secondly, not only local authorities and planning authorities are involved; the private sector, whose response towards city centres has been very positive so far, is also involved.
Mr. Vaz: Why does the Minister not have the courage to admit that current planning policy is in a state of complete confusion? No sooner is planning guidance issued than it is ridiculed, criticised, withdrawn and subjected to a fundamental review. Will he assure the House that, once that review is completed, the Government will for the first time have a coherent and clear policy on out-of-town development rather than the current mess?
Sir Paul Beresford: If the hon. Gentleman cares to look at PPG6 and the revision as it comes forward, he will recognise that the whole basis of his question is wrong.
Mr. Anthony Coombs: While welcoming PPG6 and tentative evidence reported in the Estates Gazette last week that relative values and rents in well managed town centres are rising compared with those in out-of-town shopping centres, will my hon. Friend look closely at an application to extend the Merry Hill centre, which would significantly affect surrounding towns such as Kidderminster, Bromsgrove and Worcester?
Sir Paul Beresford: I am sure that my hon. Friend would not want me to comment directly on a particular issue, but his point has been noted.
Young Single Homeless
6. Mr. Khabra: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what recent assessment he has made of the extent of homelessness among young single people in England. [17910]
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Robert B. Jones): The assessment of the number of homeless young people and consideration of their housing needs is the responsibility of each local authority.However, in central London the Government's
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rough sleepers initiative has been particularly successful in helping young single homeless people. In November 1994, just two under-18s were found sleeping rough there.Mr. Khabra: Has the Minister had time to read the report recently published by Crisis, a leading charity which cares for single homeless people, which shows that rates of tuberculosis among homeless people are comparable with those in third-world countries? Will he establish a working group to combat that danger and to co-ordinate agencies' work with help for homeless people? Does he agree that homelessness has a link with health? If so, what is his Ministry doing in relation to homeless people?
Mr. Jones: The hon. Gentleman asks me to establish a working group. Such a group was established last year under the leadership of the Department of Health. Furthermore, there is a sub-group on homelessness, on which Crisis has a representative. The report is likely to be available in a couple of months' time.
Mr. Garnier: Does my hon. Friend agree that, if Labour local authorities collected their rents efficiently and maintained their buildings properly, more houses would be available for homeless people?
Mr. Jones: Efficient use of existing housing stock is one of the most important strategies that any local authority can pursue. We try to encourage them to pursue that in every possible way.
Mr. Betts: Does the Minister agree, however, that outside London the Government have effectively washed their hands of the problem of homeless young people? The Government have altered the housing benefits arrangements so that in many cases young people are not entitled to benefit. At the same time, those people have no alternative but to go into the private sector. Local authorities which could provide housing for them are denied an opportunity to do so because their capital receipts from housing sales cannot be used to build new homes. Does the Minister have one single initiative outside London to offer those people, who are suffering the most appalling housing and other deprivation?
Mr. Jones: As I have said, responsibility lies with local authorities. The hon. Gentleman is saying that Labour local authorities have washed their hands of the problem. When we judge the housing investment programme submissions of every local authority, we look for evidence that local authorities have proper strategies in place. If the hon. Gentleman is criticising his local authority, he should provide the evidence.
Conservation (Lewes)
7. Mr. Rathbone: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment when next he plans to visit Lewes to discuss conservation matters. [17911]
Sir Paul Beresford: My right hon. Friend has no plans to visit Lewes at present.
Mr. Rathbone: Will my hon. Friend please pass to his right hon. Friend the regrets at that news and the hope that he will be able to accommodate a visit as soon as possible? When he comes, he will be welcome. While there, will he take advantage of that presence to reassure my constituents that the Government have no plans for
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additional dumping of radioactive waste at Beddingham pit in the beautiful Ouse valley south of Lewes? Will he give an assurance that inspectors' reports on the standards maintained at that pit will be published more quickly in the future than they have been in the past?Mr. Mackinlay: I suppose the hon. Gentleman thinks that they should stick the waste in a working-class area.
Sir Paul Beresford: I understand that an application exists to take the load from my hon. Friend's area and to move it to Thurrock. Leaving that to one side, however, I assure my hon. Friend that there is no dumping. There is disposal of very low-level radioactive waste, which comes from one source only--the university. We are talking about things such as gloves and radioactive wrappings. No plans exist to expand on that. I understand that Her Majesty's inspectorate of pollution is working hard to respond to my hon. Friend's last request to speed up reporting.
Unfit Housing
8. Mr. Bayley: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment how many houses in England are unfit for human habitation. [17912]
Mr. Robert B. Jones: According to the statutory definition, in 1991 1.5 million such dwellings existed. Half of those are unfit on only one item, and we estimate that one third of the properties could be made fit for less than £500.
Mr. Bayley: What assessment has the Minister made of the effect of homes that are unfit for human habitation on the health of people who live in them? Are the Government planning to abolish the mandatory framework for grants, which they introduced in 1989, in their forthcoming housing White Paper? If so, what effect will that U-turn in Government policy have on the health of people condemned to live in houses which are unfit for human habitation?
Mr. Jones: We have made no decisions yet about the grant regime and have been consulting about that. Several authorities, primarily Labour controlled, have urged me to ensure that we scrap the mandatory grant system, but we have not reached a conclusion about that yet.
Mr. Sykes: The Minister knows that almost a year has passed since the Richmond hotel, a Department of Social Services hostel in my constituency, was burnt to the ground. Is he aware that there are many such hostels in my constituency, many of which are to the detriment of tourism, which is vital to our prosperity? When will the Minister promise to introduce a scheme to license and regulate those places, so that the unfortunate people who live there can live in safer conditions?
Mr. Jones: We have consulted on houses in multiple occupation, which are usually termed HMOs. The results are now to hand and we hope to announce our decision before long, once we have pulled those results together.
Vauxhall Cross (Regeneration)
9. Ms Hoey: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what plans he has to help regenerate the area around Vauxhall Cross. [17913]
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Sir Paul Beresford: As the hon. Lady is aware, regeneration is a co- operative activity and I look forward to receiving sensible proposals from Lambeth council, businesses in the area and other local organisations. It may also be helpful to her to know that I was minded to allow the appeal on the Effra site, subject to conditions and planning obligations.
Ms Hoey: I thank the Minister. Will he welcome the setting up of a Vauxhall employers group and the work that has initially been done on an SRB bid, or whatever the new name is, for the coming year for the Vauxhall Cross district? Will he also welcome the fact that one of the millennium fund bids will be for the recreation of the Vauxhall pleasure gardens in that district? Does he accept that the Vauxhall district, especially around that intersection between roads and railways, has a thriving local community and that anything he can do to bring together and support the partnership which now exists will be extremely welcome?
Sir Paul Beresford: I look forward to seeing those plans. I am intrigued, as an Edwardian historian has given me a description of the pleasure gardens which raises some rather interesting smirks and question marks.
Mr. Simon Hughes: Following the question asked by the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Ms Hoey), can the Minister confirm whether all planning applications for Vauxhall and along the riverside in central London are now as a matter of course brought in for review by his Department, as appears to have been the case in recent months?
Sir Paul Beresford: No, that is not so. It is selective.
Council Estate Improvements
10. Mr. Pike: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what have been the financial implications for improvement of council house estates by the move from estate action funding to the single regeneration budget scheme. [17914]
Mr. Curry: About £750 million is expected to be spent through the single regeneration budget in the next three years on estate action commitments. In addition, more than 80 new schemes with significant public and private housing outputs were approved in round 1 of the SRB challenge fund, and will receive about £670 million of investment during their lifetime.
Mr. Pike: Does the Minister accept that, as a result of the changeover to SRB, less money is available to deal with problem housing estates? Are the Government not really bothered about helping people who by choice or by necessity live in council houses?
Mr. Curry: No, I do not accept that, for the following reason. The estate action programmes which are under way will continue and they will see out their life. The new money goes into the challenge process of a single regeneration budget, and the essence of that is that local groups should define their own priorities and needs. Nothing prevents them placing housing at the top of their list of needs. What is more, whereas estate action was a purely physical refurbishment and rebuilding programme,
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under the single regeneration budget it is possible to tackle more than one aspect of housing problems, as the successful SRB bid for Burnley is indeed doing.Mr. Barry Field: Does my hon. Friend agree that the concept of the single regeneration budget is an ideal opportunity for small communities such as that on the Isle of Wight to make application for Government funds, especially in places where local councils and councillors concentrate on local issues? In that respect, will he contrast the statements by the leader of the Liberal Democrats on 10 April 1995 in the Southern Daily Echo , where he said that the elections were about local issues and asked people to please judge the councillors according to their record, with what he said when he crossed the Solent to the Isle of Wight, when he said that the elections were about national issues and asked people to please use a double-barrelled shotgun against the Government? Does he agree that, yet again, the leader of the Liberal Democrats is wedded to and inundated with inconsistency?
Mr. Curry: I have observed the same phenomenon in the same gentleman.
London Docklands
11. Sir Michael Neubert: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment when he next expects to make an official visit to the London docklands to discuss the prospects for further developments there. [17915]
Mr. Curry: I will meet the chairman of the board of the London docklands development corporation on 20 June to discuss the draft 1995 corporate plan.
Sir Michael Neubert: I thank my hon. Friend for that positive response. Will he confirm that development of London's docklands not only brings long overdue regenerative benefits to east London but materially enhances the potential of our capital city's national assets? In that context, will my hon. Friend lend his support to proposals for a major international exhibition centre at the royal docks to put us on a par with our European rivals?
Mr. Curry: It is very much the Government's intention to have high- quality development in the east Thames and east London area--the same sort of quality that we would find necessary in any other part of the country. As for the exhibition centre, my hon. Friend will know that the development corporation has nominated a consortium, with which it is negotiating. It has until the end of the year to come forward with a scheme that will stand up in financial terms. We have made it clear that that scheme, which I hope will be successful, must stand up with private finance--there is no public subsidy.
Global Warming
12. Mr. Flynn: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what new proposals he has to combat global warming, following the Berlin conference. [17916]
Mr. Gummer: Britain set the pace at the Berlin conference by calling for others to join us in making reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in the decade after 2000. This enabled us to take the lead role in producing the Berlin mandate which provides the engine that will
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make such reductions possible. We must work hard now to agree, and to get others to agree, real reductions in 1997.Mr. Flynn: While the Minister is entitled to half a cheer for that complacent answer and for the fact that we are one of only three of the primary emitter countries likely to achieve our targets, does he not agree with the Alliance of Small Nations that the conference was a failure because it lacked any political will and the decisions were short sighted? Does he not know that many areas of this country, including many parts of my constituency, lie under the level of high tide and have to be protected by sea walls? Is it not true that the Government are failing, and the conference failed, to come up with new targets for a reduction in the emission of the gases that cause global warming? Is that not a failure to tackle the most serious problem facing our world civilisation?
Mr. Gummer: The hon. Gentleman should get his facts right. It would be good if we occasionally heard from the hon. Gentleman something congratulatory about his own country--on this occasion, we are leading the world. We shall not only meet our obligations in 2000, but do better than that. We are the country that has taken the lead in the European Union. We have got the European Union to put forward the basis of the agreement for the Berlin mandate.
The facts that the hon. Gentleman quotes are false. The Berlin conference was not a conference to decide on the amounts of reduction, but one to decide on the means by which we would achieve them and to agree that there would be reductions. When we arrived, we found that the United States and many other countries had no intention of signing up to reductions. We managed to bring those countries on board. We have played a key role, and have been helped in that by the support of the Opposition. It is sad that the hon. Gentleman should try to drive a wedge between us. As for the hon. Gentleman's constituency, I have the honour to represent a constituency almost all of which will disappear under the sea unless I am successful.
Mr. Fabricant: I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the moves that he made to produce the Berlin mandate. I also remind the House that it was Baroness Thatcher who initially proposed the Rio summit, the precursor of the Berlin conference. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State should not get carried away with the single idea that it is greenhouse gases that cause global warming. Many scientists argue that the cause could be sun spots, and that changes in the earth's core could also have an effect on global warming. May I commend to my right hon. Friend an excellent article that was published in The Spectator a few months ago on that very subject?
Mr. Gummer: I agree with my hon. Friend that my right hon. and noble Friend Baroness Thatcher was the person who most immediately raised the subject in the political debate, as is natural for a Conservative--concern for the next generation is part of our political creed. My hon. Friend would do better to follow my right hon. Friend Baroness Thatcher's example than that of the article in The Spectator . The truth is that the work that the Meteorological Office and the Hadley Centre have produced clearly shows that analysing historic evidence gives every indication of the link between the emission of
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