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Mr. Nick Raynsford (Greenwich): The Minister has implied that the reinstatement of mandatory grants would require additional expenditure. Will he give us the Government's estimates for next year's expenditure without mandatory grants as his comments imply that there will be a reduction in expenditure?
Mr. Jones: The Government's plans have been published and show level pegging into next year.
Mr. Raynsford: If the Minister now concedes that there will be level pegging, how will the reintroduction of mandatory grants lead to increased expenditure?
Mr. Jones: The hon. Member for Pendle raised that point. With or without mandatory grants, there will be queues if we keep to the present arrangements. That is a reasonable issue to debate. We concluded that we should end the mandatory grants system. If the Opposition's response is that the mandatory grants system should be retained, but that money should be made available to deal with the present demand-led system, they should say so and let us know where the money will come from.
The Bill retains mandatory and discretionary disabled facilities grants, which are designed to help disabled people stay in their own homes. It relaxes the means test so those caring for disabled people, other than spouses, will no longer be expected to contribute to the cost of adaptations. Disabled adults living, for example, with their parents or children will be more likely to receive grant.
There was a useful discussion in the other place on those provisions and as a result, we have included a less dated reference to disability for the purposes of the Bill, replacing one that had been based on the definition in the National Assistance Act 1948. We have ensured that the wide eligibility has not been prejudiced by such a change, and I hope that the new definition will command the agreement of the House.
The Bill retains grant assistance to landlords on a discretionary basis, allowing local authorities to decide the level of grant to award to landlords and introducing the possibility of attaching conditions--such as nomination rights and good maintenance, to assist in securing strategic aims.
The Bill also simplifies and replaces the minor works assistance scheme. Local authorities will continue to be able to give help for minor repairs, improvements and adaptations through home repair assistance to the elderly, infirm, disabled people and persons on means-tested benefits. I welcome what is being done to bring into eligibility people living on houseboats and in mobile homes.
There was some debate in the other place, which was continued this afternoon, about the current standard used to assess the fitness of a property. We have announced the intention, once the Bill is out of the way and before the end of the year, to begin a review of the housing fitness standard, which will ensure that the requirements of the standard and its application are properly considered.
The Bill also reforms the system of architects registration. In the United Kingdom, to use the title "architect" a person must be registered with the Architects Registration Council of the United Kingdom--know by its acronym of ARCUK. Anyone is allowed to design buildings, but they cannot use the title "architect" unless they are registered with ARCUK. Our proposals seek to reform that body. For the sake of clarity, I should mention that the Royal Institute of British Architects is a separate professional organisation to which most, but not all, architects belong. It is not affected by this legislation.
The reason for reforming ARCUK is that since it was established in 1931, it has grown large and cumbersome and it has taken on functions that are not strictly concerned with registration. Moreover, the council has
difficulty in enforcing protection of title. Because of those problems, ARCUK asked the Government in 1991 to review the architects registration legislation. The Government commissioned John Warne to undertake a review, and his subsequent report highlighted the inefficiencies of the existing registration system. John Warne's recommended solution was to repeal the architects registration Acts and to abolish protection of the title "architect". The Government were initially prepared to accept that recommendation but, in view of the strength of feeling against abolition, agreed instead to explore ways of improving the existing system.
As a result, the Government worked with the profession to produce an agreed package of reforms. The subsequent public consultation revealed a strong level of support for the proposed reforms within and without the profession. Our proposals build firmly on the existing pattern of regulation in the architects profession and streamline the registration body. They reduce its size from 73 members to 15 and remove unnecessary committees. They limit the council's functions to matters strictly related to registration and discipline, and they create a genuinely minimalist body that we expect to remain minimalist.
The reforms provide for the profession, its customers and the public to be represented on the board. The changes are designed to maintain a high level of public confidence in the standards of the architectural profession and they provide a channel for complaints where those standards are not met.
The Bill also includes provisions to extend the powers to give financial assistance for regeneration and development, to provide a single legislative basis for the single regeneration budget, which currently operates under a range of powers. The SRB brings together a number of programmes to provide co-ordinated support for regeneration initiatives in England. New schemes are supported through the competitive challenge fund, which has already been widely welcomed as a success. That success was endorsed in the recent report by the Environment Select Committee on the conduct and outcome of the first challenge fund bidding round. The Committee concluded that the challenge fund had already demonstrated its potential to achieve excellent value for taxpayers' money. Local partnerships have submitted high quality bids, reflecting tremendous co-operative effort towards the successful regeneration of their areas.
Mr. Frank Dobson (Holborn and St. Pancras):
I welcome the Minister, who moved the Second Reading in the absence of his boss, the Secretary of State for the Environment, who is variously reported as being in Norfolk and in Derbyshire. I believe that the right hon. Gentleman is trying to track down the last remaining Tory councillors in those areas.
This is the second housing Bill that the Government have introduced this year. Like the first one, this Bill does not measure up to the housing problems faced by so many people. It does not even address most of their difficulties. As with the Housing Bill, the Government's proposals will make matters worse--certainly for owner-occupiers and private tenants whose homes need to be repaired; the Bill deprives those people of their right to renovation grants.
Anyone who listens to people in Britain today--whether in city centres, suburbs, market towns or villages--knows that millions of people feel insecure in their jobs, on the streets, about their pensions, about the prospects for their children and grandchildren, and about their homes. The Housing Bill ignored the insecurity of owner-occupiers and only tinkered with the dangers and insecurity faced by people who live in houses in multiple occupancy. It claimed to help leaseholders, but failed to deliver. It increased the insecurity of private tenants and made homeless people even more insecure.
The Housing Bill was improved in Committee as a result of the efforts of my hon. Friends--in particular, by the spectacularly well-informed contributions of my hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich (Mr. Raynsford). By ancient and ridiculous custom, the House confines the description "learned" to Members of Parliament who are Queen's counsel. My hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich is truly learned on the subject of housing. He is certainly the most learned in the House and among the most learned in the country, and more learned on the subject than me. Even the combined efforts of my hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and all the other Opposition Members in Committee on the Housing Bill could not turn that legislative sow's ear into a silk purse.
The first part of the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Bill covers housing. It does not just ignore problems or pretend to deal with them--it will make matters worse for many people. The Bill will take away the right of owner-occupiers and tenants to grants for repairing their homes, so it will protract the enormous backlog of disrepair that has left 1.5 million homes unfit for human habitation. The problem afflicts people throughout the country. There are 79,000 unfit homes in the north-east, 257,000 in the north-west, 160,000 in Yorkshire and Humberside, 116,000 in the east midlands, 200,000 in the west midlands, 114,000 in the south-west, 149,000 in the south-east--excluding London, and more than 240,000 in London.
The fact that a property has been officially designated unfit for human habitation does not mean that no one is living in it. Most such properties are still used--that, after 17 years of Tory government. The Government's appalling housing record is not confined to leaving millions of people in homes that are unfit for human habitation, but goes much wider. The Government, having encouraged the public to become owner-occupiers, turned around and kicked millions of people in the teeth.
The Tories can no longer claim to be the party of owner-occupiers--far from it. Theirs is the party of repossessions, mortgage arrears and negative equity. One million or more families live in homes worth less than their mortgages. Negative equity preys on the minds of more than 180,000 families in London, 400,000 in the south-east, 160,000 in the south-west, 90,000 in the east midlands, 60,000 in the west midlands and 50,000 in the north-west. Negative equity is something new. It is the Tories' latest addition to the lexicon of housing misery and their novel contribution to the tide of insecurity that afflicts so many families.
That is not the end. A quarter of a million families are seriously in arrears with their mortgage. Under Labour, serious arrears affected only 10,000 families. So mortgage
arrears under the Tories are 25 times worse than they were under Labour. That is another bitter, depressing and unsettling Tory contribution to family insecurity.
People who are in arrears fear that their homes will be repossessed and they are right to fear repossessions, because about 50,000 families a year have their homes repossessed. Repossessions under the Tories are running at 17 times the rate under Labour. So there are 17 repossessions under the Tories for every one repossession under Labour. The figures work out at about 1,000 repossessions a week.
Since Second Reading of the Housing Bill, which did nothing for owner-occupiers, about 14,000 more families have lost their homes. That has all happened under a Prime Minister who told the British people at the general election:
and:
and:
No wonder Mrs. Thatcher has said:
It is not just owner-occupiers who have been hammered by the Government. They have also hammered tenants. Average council rents are six times as high as they were under Labour. In the past five years, they have risen by more than three times the rate of inflation. In the same five years, while the retail prices index rose by 27 per cent., housing association rents went up by 85 per cent. Rent rises in the private sector have been even worse. As a result, the cost to the taxpayer of housing benefit has risen from £4 billion a year to £10 billion a year--and a great deal of that money has gone straight from the taxpayer into the pockets of the landlords and moneylenders who bankroll the Tory party.
"We stopped the repossessions just before Christmas"--
"We are going to make life easier for people buying their own home"--
"We will maintain mortgage tax relief."
"You can imagine my horror when the Government which succeeded me cut mortgage tax relief. It's not fair on all those young people who bought in the knowledge that it was there."
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