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11.37 am
Mr. David Marshall (Glasgow, Shettleston): As one of many hon. Members who applied for a debate on this important subject but who was unsuccessful in the ballot, I congratulate the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond) on his good luck. I also thank him for allowing time for other hon. Members to participate, and I shall be brief.
Over the festive season, Scotland had not just severe weather, but exceptionally severe weather. Record low temperatures were established and the country had never known weather like it since record keeping started. The whole country was affected, but Glasgow suffered especially. For several days, it was one of the coldest cities in the world. Temperatures were recorded of minus 20 deg and even lower. Such freezing weather could not have been foreseen and nothing could have been done in advance to cope with the situation.
I wish to tell the House just how badly Glasgow's housing stock was hit by the weather. I am grateful to Mrs. Margaret Vass, the head of development for Glasgow city council, for some statistics for the period from 23 December to 11 January. During that time, 42,910 emergency repair requests were issued as a result of the severe frost and the subsequent thaw. In a normal winter, the number of such repair requests is around 2,000. Sometimes more than one request was made for the same houses because they had burst pipes on several different days, but about 25,000 council houses were affected, plus several thousand other houses in the city. Over 2,000 of them were in the east end of Glasgow and in my constituency.
I am glad to say that of the total number of necessary repairs reported, City Build has completed about 31,000-- a remarkable record in such a short space of time. Of the outstanding repairs, about 9,500 relate to high-cost emergency reinstatement--work estimated to cost
£5.5 million. The estimated provisional cost to the council for turning off water and for repairing burst pipes is
£2.5 million, to repair major damage, £5.5 million, to pay for staff overtime, £150,000, for emergency equipment, £60,000, for temporary flats being refurnished and repaired, £450,000, for bed-and-breakfast accommodation, £50,000 and for lost rents, £400,000. That adds up to a grand total of £9.11 million. Those costs may vary, but if anything, they are likely to increase before the final figure is known. I suggest that a sum of
£10 million is much more likely.
Just in case anyone thinks that those costs are excessive, it should be borne in mind that 25,000 houses and possibly 50,000 people or more were affected, and that more than 1,000 families had to leave their homes and be put up in temporary accommodation by the council. That does not include the many thousands who left their homes and went to live with relatives and friends, before being able to return home once repairs had been carried out. Moreover, many of the days involved were public holidays, which incurred additional expenditure and caused more difficulties.
Perhaps one of the saddest aspects of the results of the freeze will be the delays to other much needed projects and normal repairs--to housing improvements and modernisation, and to other capital projects. Everything will be slowed down now and people will suffer for months and possibly years to come.
Glasgow has seen nothing like this weather in living memory. Like other hon. Members, I pay tribute to everyone who helped in the crisis: the plumbers and tradesmen who worked day and night, the water, gas and electricity workers, the Army who helped to provide emergency water supplies in parts of the city, Clyde Action, and Radio Clyde, which set up a special freeze line that helped many people when they needed it most. I also thank all the volunteers who helped others, Strathclyde regional council and social work department, Glasgow district council, and the city's housing department and City Build. Those last two departments are much more used to criticism than to praise, but on this occasion they did a magnificent job, keeping offices and depots open at all hours through holidays and weekends. Staff did all they could to cope with the crisis.
It is always invidious to single out individuals for praise because some who deserve it more than others may be missed out. My constituency includes a higher than average number of elderly and vulnerable people and of the unemployed and people on low incomes. Rosemary Hendry and Dave Hanratty of the Whiterose tenant management co-operative in the Parkhead area of the city opened their community hall and cared for 15 families at a time. They put in beds and fed and looked after those people, who ranged from babies to an old woman of nearly 80. They certainly did a tremendous job. Frank Kelly co-ordinated efforts in Barrowfield, which was particularly hard hit by the effects of the weather.
There were many similar examples throughout the city and doubtless throughout Scotland of people helping others. Their efforts are to be contrasted with the lack of effort on the part of the Government--particularly the hon. Member for Kincardine and Deeside (Mr. Kynoch), the miscalled Minister responsible for industry and local government. He is quoted as having complained that it was his day off: he was not, he said, the duty Minister. It seemed that he was content to sit on his backside at home in front of the fire. No wonder the Daily Record described him on its front page as "A big drip". I do not like criticising other Members, but this time I feel that the Minister's actions left a great deal to be desired. He should have done much more to deal with the crisis.
The Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Scotland have it all wrong. In replies to my written questions, they both refused to visit the hardest hit areas
and chose instead to concentrate on water supplies. But the problem is not about water supplies; it is about restoring people's homes so that they can get back to normality. The Government seem more worried about the loss of water than about the loss of accommodation.
There have already been references to the insurance problems. It is estimated that almost half the tenants affected in Glasgow had no contents insurance. Before Conservative Members tell me that that was their own fault, I might point out that insurance costs are high. People who are unemployed or on low incomes but who have families to look after and must choose between paying for insurance or feeding their kids will inevitably choose to feed the kids: it is no contest. Many people have no insurance, not because they do not want it, but because they cannot afford it. Poverty is a terrible thing and the city of Glasgow is full of it.
The supreme irony is that while people were losing all their possessions and were in the depths of despair, the rollover jackpot in the national lottery rose to
£42 million, with record profits being made for the company. There must be some way of devoting some of the money raised by such schemes to good causes such as helping people when they most need help. Who can think of a better good cause? I can think of none. I do not see why there cannot be a special fund to use some of the money thus generated to help people who have lost everything.
As far as I am aware, the Department of Social Security and the Benefits Agency are not giving grants to people who have suffered loss; they are giving them loans. But people who could afford to pay off loans at £8 or £10 a week would not need the loans in the first place--they could go out and buy replacements for what they had lost. I therefore hope that the Secretary of State and the Cabinet will argue for additional money to be given to local Benefits Agency offices, so that they can give people grants to buy bedding, clothing, cooking equipment and the other essentials of daily life that they have lost because their ceilings have collapsed or their pipes have burst.
Mr. James Wallace (Orkney and Shetland):
Hon. Members will recall that when the news about the bad weather broke, it tended to focus at first on my constituency, which between Christmas eve and new year's day experienced some of the heaviest snowfalls in memory, with drifts of up to 30 ft reported in places. I shall not indulge in semantic arguments about when a state of emergency is a state of emergency. Let us be clear, however: these were exceptional circumstances, which rightly prompted Shetland Islands council to activate its emergency response plan. It would appear that it proceeded to co-ordinate the various services remarkably well.
Obviously, people wanted the roads cleared sooner than they were, but we should not underestimate the size of the task. Besides road clearance, important work was done by the social work department, which concentrated on providing help for the vulnerable and the elderly. Fine work
was also done by the health board--by nurses, doctors and district nurses, who kept the health service going, ably supported by the helicopter services of the coastguard. BBC Radio Shetland came back on air between Christmas and new year and provided an important flow of information. The people themselves were responsible for many acts of neighbourliness and showed their resilience in coping with the exceptional weather.
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