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Mrs. Fyfe: Glasgow tenants now pay almost the entire cost of public sector housing, because it has been years since there was any contribution from the general fund. The increase in rents in Scotland, since 1979, is 483 per cent. Is that fair to tenants? Instead of the Minister talking about deals on stock that cannot be let, it would be much more relevant for him to talk about people's real housing needs.
Mr. Robertson: I repeat: does the hon. Lady want the sort of deal that I have described for her
constituents? Will she join me in seeking to persuade the new city council to make such a deal? I shall gladly try to persuade the council to make such a deal, so that we do not have to have debates about rent rises that are twice or three times the rate of inflation. The hon. Lady seems to forget that we have funded investment in Glasgow's housing next year by almost 22 per cent. more per house than the Scottish average. If she wishes to complain about what the new Glasgow council does with the money, she probably has more influence over that than I have.
Mr. Phil Gallie (Ayr): I seek information about the level of housing benefit support for tenants in Glasgow. Has my hon. Friend any idea of what proportion of tenants in Glasgow public housing are on housing benefit? How much is the taxpayer paying for that?
Mr. Robertson: I shall come to that subject later, but I can tell my hon. Friend that, of all Scottish council tenants, some 72 per cent. are on housing benefit and are therefore protected--if not wholly, at least in part--from many of the indiscriminate rent rises that we have seen. I understand that the figure for Glasgow is higher than 72 per cent.
Mr. Nigel Griffiths (Edinburgh, South): Specifically on the point about the number of people who are exempt from paying full rent, does not the Minister realise that the 20 per cent. or so who pay full rent include widows and people with small occupational pensions? Many of those people have been loyal council tenants for many years, and they were promised by Margaret Thatcher in 1979 that she would not penalise them for having widows' pensions or occupational pensions. But they have been penalised, and housing support can go some way to keeping rents at reasonable levels for those people and preventing general resentment from building up against Government policy.
Mr. Robertson: I take it from the hon. Gentleman's comments that he is supportive of our move away, over the past decade, from the indiscriminate subsidy of housing support to the targeting of assistance through the housing benefit system.
I remind the House that the grant decisions reflected in the order will have only a minimal effect on local authority rent levels. Only Aberdeenshire, Highland, Shetland and Western Isles will receive housing support grant for their mainstream council housing. The impact will be outweighed by each authority's decisions on such matters as management and maintenance spending. For the other 28 councils, the rent levels are entirely a matter for local decision. Decisions on HSG, in that respect, are irrelevant. Each council must decide for itself what level of rent is appropriate in the light of local circumstances and defend that decision to its tenants.
Mr. Andrew Welsh (Angus, East):
Angus council has the second lowest rents in Scotland and a good record of low rents. How can the Minister justify a rent increase for every Angus rent payer of £2.75 a week to pay for his capital receipts policy?
Mr. Robertson:
The decision taken by Angus council is a matter for the council itself. How can the hon.
Mr. Welsh:
Will the Minister give way?
Mr. Robertson:
I must make progress. The hon. Gentleman will get a chance to make his speech.
Predicting the overall average rent increase across Scotland for 1996-97 is difficult, especially as some of the new councils may wish to rationalise the different rent structures that they have inherited. However, I understand that a number of councils have proposed rent increases well above inflation. I remind the House that, last year, councils were able to hold rent increases to an average of 3.5 per cent. This year, they seem to be taking a different course, which they will have to justify to their tenants. I note, for example, that the new Highland council has decided to increase rents by about 9 per cent., or £2.96 a week on average. One press report suggested that the council blamed the Government for the increase. However, the report went on to point out that only one third of the increase was due to a reduction in HSG. I calculate that only 67p of the increase can be attributed to that cause. By far the largest part of the increase was due to decisions taken by the new council.
Where an authority does not receive HSG, it is even more the case that the decisions on rents have nothing to do with the Government and everything to do with decisions of local councillors. I have no quarrel with the idea that local authorities should decide rent levels in the light of local circumstances, but I believe that they should accept responsibility for the decisions and not seek to pass the blame elsewhere.
Mr. James Wallace (Orkney and Shetland):
Perhaps the Minister can satisfy my curiosity. In annex C, where the apportionment is given for each authority, Orkney islands council has been omitted. One would have thought that even if the balance was nil, it should have been there. Is there a special reason why Orkney, of all the councils in Scotland, is not mentioned?
Mr. Robertson:
The hon. Gentleman will understand if I say that I am sure that during the debate I shall receive inspiration on that matter.
Interestingly, former public sector tenants whose homes have been transferred to new landlords often find themselves protected from such annual fluctuations in their rent, because they have received guarantees about future rent rises as part of the transfer process.
Mr. John McAllion (Dundee, East):
The debate is, uniquely, about council housing since housing support grant payments go only to councils. That means that it is not to the Minister's liking, which was obvious from the way in which he read the brief from his civil servants. The Minister is on record as expressing his distaste for council housing. I have a photocopy of a recent magazine article which is headed by an unattractive picture of the Minister. However, to be fair to the magazine, it is difficult to get an attractive picture of this Minister. In the article, the Minister makes clear his attitude to council housing, for which he is responsible. He says:
that is councils--
He wants councils in Scotland out of the housing picture completely.
Even the Minister, with all his arrogance, realises that that is a tall order. The magazine article points out that
In the article, the Minister says:
I fear that the Minister is using the word "persuade" in the same way as the Mafia. In other words, councils and council tenants will be made an offer that they cannot refuse and, in part, that is what we are seeing in the order.
We have it straight from the horse's mouth. It does not matter what elected local councils, or council tenants, might think or want, the Minister and the Government have already made up their minds about what those council tenants will get, and they will not get council housing because it will not be on offer. That comes poorly from a Minister who, in the article to which I have already referred, talks about his vision for the future of housing in Scotland and says that he wants greater diversity and choice. It seems that people can have greater diversity and choice as long as they do not choose the tenure of which the Minister does not approve. There is no future for council housing as long as he is the Minister.
Tragically, the Minister's prejudice will impact upon hundreds of thousands of ordinary families in Scotland, partly because of the order. Council housing is by far the largest part of the social rented sector in Scotland. We hear a great deal from Ministers about the 300,000 council tenants who chose to buy their council house under the right-to-buy legislation. We never hear anything about the 600,000 council tenants who have remained in the council sector as council tenants. They are the forgotten Scots under the Government's housing regime. They will be let down by the order and will suffer because of the Government's and the Minister's prejudice and their dislike for council housing.
I shall explain some of the ways in which those 600,000 Scots will suffer. The order sets housing support grant for Scotland next year at £19.4 million. That is just under£3 million or 13 per cent. lower than the planned level for the current year. It is just under £5 million or 20 per cent. lower than the level that the Government gave last year. It represents yet another cut, another twist in an
on-going downward spiral--the steady withdrawal of Government support for council housing in Scotland over the past 15 years.
Fifteen years ago, £228 million was given to Scottish councils in housing support grant. Next year, it will be just £19.4 million and, as the Minister said, only four out of 32 local authorities will qualify for it. In cash terms, councils are now receiving 8.5 per cent. of what they were receiving from the Government 15 years ago. In real terms, they are receiving significantly less than that.
"I want to see them"--
"get out of the business of being landlords, out of the day to day management of the housing stock".
"he will have to break the bonds which tie 35 per cent. of the population to public sector housing."
"We are quite a bit away from what I am describing. We have a major cultural problem and a major exercise to persuade local authorities and tenants that this is the way forward."
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