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Ms Cunningham: I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman if he is brief--we are pushed for time.
Mr. Gallie: Does the hon. Lady join me in welcoming the extra investment that the Government have recently announced for hostels for the homeless?
Ms Cunningham: I am always happy to welcome extra investment. However, there have been years and years of reductions in investment and there has been a cumulative effect. Homelessness in my constituency is increasing,as it is elsewhere in Scotland, and has been increasing over the years that the Government have been in power. The Perth and Kinross district council has been a Tory administration for the past four years. Happily, that will be the case for only another two weeks because the voters of Perth and Kinross saw the wisdom of removing that administration and voting in a Scottish National party administration for the new unitary authority.
Mr. John McAllion (Dundee, East): I congratulate the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond) on his good fortune in the ballot which enabled him to secure the
debate this morning and, more particularly, on his chosen subject. It has given us one of the great parliamentary occasions so far this Session in that we have witnessed the hon. Member for Ayr (Mr. Gallie) accusing others of being lacking in sound judgment. I am sure that the House was grateful for that.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross (Ms Cunningham) and my hon. Friends the Members for Edinburgh, Leith (Mr. Chisholm) and for Glasgow, Govan (Mr. Davidson) on their contributions to the debate. They displayed detailed and expert knowledge of the crisis facing public sector housing in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Perth. They all exhibited a knowledge and understanding of Scottish housing that was clearly lacking in the hon. Member for Southport (Mr. Banks), who almost routinely pops up in Scottish debates to display his complete ignorance of all matters concerning Scotland. Nevertheless, he is welcome to the debate, as he provides us with entertainment, if nothing else.
I particularly welcome the debate this morning as,by my calculation, it doubles the time provided for debating housing in Scotland on the Floor of the House. The only other debate on these matters so far this Session is on the draft Housing Support Grant (Scotland) Order, on which the Government have to spend one and a half hours every year. In this Session, there have been just three hours on the Floor of the House in which Members elected in Scotland have had the opportunity to debate one of the most important subjects to the people of Scotland. That, more than anything else, makes the case for establishing a Scottish Parliament where Scottish housing can be given a proper national focus and where it can be debated by the elected representatives of the Scottish people.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Raymond S. Robertson):
How many debates have the Opposition initiated on housing in Scotland and how many applications have been made through the usual channels for such a debate?
Mr. McAllion:
The most recent debate on housing in Scotland was in the Scottish Grand Committee. That debate was initiated by the Opposition. Although the Scottish Grand Committee is part of the House, it is not a Scottish Parliament established in Scotland to debate Scottish issues--and that must happen.
Although there has been little debate in Westminster on Scottish housing, there is a real debate in Scotland among those who are interested in housing. The basic demand that has arisen out of that debate is for increased investment in the housing stock. That demand now has widespread support across Scotland.
Shelter, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, the Scottish Trades Union Congress, the Chartered Institute of Housing in Scotland and the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations are widely respected bodies with huge experience of Scottish housing. They are all knowledgeable about Scottish housing and call for a massive programme of additional investment to meet the housing crisis in Scotland.
Those organisations propose additional investment of about £580 million in each of the next five years. If that programme were realised, it would allow 13,000 affordable rented homes to be built in Scotland in each
year. It would halve the numbers of houses below the tolerable standard in Scotland and restore repair and grant expenditure to the heady levels last experienced under Baroness Thatcher. Ministers cannot call those demands irresponsible. They have not been conjured up out of thin air, but are based on a detailed knowledge of housing needs in Scotland.
One such example is the demand for housing which has been generated by the increasing number of elderly people in Scotland. In 1992, the number of people over 75 represented about 6 per cent. of the Scottish population; by 2032, they will represent 11 per cent. of the Scottish population--in other words, the numbers will almost double in the next 35 years. If care in the community is to be honoured and if elderly Scots are to be given the opportunity to live independent lives, there will have to be a wider range of flexible housing options. That will require increased investment in the Scottish housing stock.
Mr. Matthew Banks:
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. McAllion:
No. The hon. Gentleman has made his speech, so he will have to sit down.
The same is true for those with learning difficulties and those who suffer problems with their mental health.If they are to avoid a lifetime in institutional care, there will have to be greater investment in integrating housing with social care in Scotland. The examples are endless. They include meeting the needs of the 78,000 homeless people in Scotland, according to the latest estimate by Shelter; meeting the needs of rural Scotland, which Conservative Members claim to represent; meeting the needs of young people--particularly very young people--coming out of care, a group whose plight was recently described by the journalist Jon Snow as a continuing national disgrace; and meeting the needs of those trapped on waiting lists and those in damp-ridden houses.
The knee-jerk response to all those demands for investment would be that the country cannot afford it and that the public purse is already stretched to the limit trying to satisfy the demands for social welfare spending and that housing will simply have to take its turn. That response ignores completely the strong economic case for investing in housing which receives widespread support across Scotland. Time prevents me from discussing every aspect, but I shall give a few examples of the arguments that support it.
House building and repair remain a labour-intensive industry that creates more jobs for a given level of investment than almost any other sector of the economy. Therefore, by investing in housing, we can quickly get more people back to work so that fewer people will claim benefit and be a drain on the public purse.
As has already been said, poor housing has a direct impact on people's health and therefore contributes to increased spending on the health service, as is evidenced by the incidence of bronchitis and asthma. Increased investment in housing would decrease the demand for spending on the national health service. The lack of good-quality, affordable rented accommodation reduces labour mobility and undermines our national economic
performance. A growing number of people in Scotland are beginning to ask not whether we can afford to invest in housing, but whether we can afford not to do so.
Let me concentrate on one particular issue of housing investment under the present Government--housing benefit. Yesterday, I attended the national poverty hearings at Church house in London. It was a moving occasion in which real experts in poverty--the poor themselves--told the rest of us what it was like to be poor. They said that the hardest part was the negativity and hostility directed towards them by the rest of society--for example, being described or thought of as a scrounger, a waster, someone who did not want to work or was congenitally lazy. One of them summed it up beautifully when he said that there is no such thing as the poverty gene: people are poor not because of any lack in themselves, but because they are victims of a system which discriminates against them and makes them poor. The housing benefit system that has been promoted by the Conservative party is evidence of that.
Housing benefit in Scotland is enormously expensive. It currently costs the taxpayer around £900 million every year. That is £320 million more than the additional investment called for by Shelter, the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations and other bodies. They call for an additional investment in the housing stock of£2.9 billion in the next five years. The Minister would cry, "Where will the money come from?" but over the same five years he plans to invest £4.5 billion in the housing benefit system. We are entitled to ask him where he plans to find that money.
What are taxpayers being asked to pay for by that huge investment? They are being asked to subsidise unrealistic rent levels to keep rent at a level that tenants cannot afford to pay. They are being asked to pay to make it impossible for people on full housing benefit to get off benefit and back to work. They are being asked to pay to make people entirely dependent and trap them in poverty. Those are the consequences of the Government's housing policies.
There is an overwhelming need to rethink the present strategy whereby ever-increasing rents in Scotland are backed up by ever-increasing levels of housing benefit. Shelter has asked that urgent consideration be given to the relationship between rents and the benefit system. It is not alone in that call. Scottish Homes--the Government's own national housing agency--is arguing the economic case for controlling housing costs in Scotland. It points out that, for those not in work, the high cost of housing, coupled with the operation of the benefit system, reduces work incentives, thereby reducing overall labour supply and damaging the economic interests of the Scottish people. That leads us to ask: why does the Minister not listen to the advice of his national housing agency and break the ever-spiralling levels of housing benefit, rising rents and benefit dependency in Scotland?
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