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6.55 pm
Ms Karen Buck (Regent's Park and Kensington, North): Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to make my maiden speech in this debate, which marks a welcome and long overdue fresh start in housing policy.
I want to break with recent precedent by saying nothing whatever about football, other than that there are some wild proposals to bring Queen's Park Rangers home to Paddington basin; I am not an advocate of that, and it would come as something of a surprise to QPR--but who knows?
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith and Fulham (Mr. Coleman) on his excellent maiden speech. His constituents can only benefit from his passionate advocacy on behalf of them and their part of the city.
As we are discussing additional resources for my constituency, among others, I should declare an interest. I am currently, although probably not for much longer, a member of Westminster city council. Being a member of the Labour minority on that council and coming to the House as a Labour representative for part of that borough, with a Labour Government, is not an easy political place to occupy, so I shall be grateful for all the friends that I can get.
I speak on behalf of my constituents with pride, gratitude and humility. My constituency is an exciting place. Newsweek recently nominated London as the coolest city on the planet, and it undoubtedly had my patch in mind. From Portobello to Church street, we have the liveliest markets and hippest bars in town. We host the Notting hill carnival, which has its problems but is the largest and most successful street festival in Europe.
We are, however, an area of extremes. We span St. John's Wood, Lord's cricket ground, Madame Tussaud's and the zoo; yet a short stroll up the Grand Union canal, under the shadow of the Westway, brings one to some of the most acutely deprived corners of the city. They are, thankfully, no longer as deprived as in the days when the piggeries stood off Ladbroke grove and infant mortality reached 87 per cent. as humans and animals vied as to who lived in the greater squalor.
Perhaps we are also slightly better off than in the days of Rachmanism, which had a hold in my part of the city. For an evocative description of those days and of my part of North Kensington, I would guide hon. Members to Colin MacInnes's description of Napoli in "Absolute Beginners" which, as everyone knows, is Britain's greatest post-war novel.
Much of our corner of the city is still not doing so well. In the shadow of some of Britain's wealthiest streets are pockets of chronic unemployment and poverty.
Our communities are scarred by crime and drug abuse. Our black and ethnic minority communities, from or with roots in the Caribbean, Morocco and Bangladesh, among many other places, experience unemployment disproportionately, at levels two or three times higher than the general population.
Those people also experience the worst social conditions and bear the added burden of racial disadvantage and discrimination. Unfortunately, in a society that has become so unequal, diversity is not something that we can simply celebrate. Inequality turns diversity into a ladder of deprivation and, therefore, it is an inequality which our new Government must tackle.
Our housing conditions mirror and to some extent exacerbate the inequality that I described. At one end of the housing spectrum, we have some of the country's most expensive homes. A little further down the price ladder, are the private leasehold homes, where there are frequently chronic problems between leaseholders and management companies over repairs and maintenance charges.
I want to pay tribute to my two predecessors, Sir Dudley Fishburn and Sir John Wheeler. Sir Dudley Fishburn enjoyed a reputation as an assiduous constituency Member. Both Sir Dudley and Sir John put considerable effort into campaigning for the rights of leaseholders. It is not their fault that the previous Government bequeathed a continuing mess on leasehold reform. I look forward to the new Government dealing with that.
Our private rented sector is a long way from being the engine of a newly revived third force between owner-occupation and social renting, capable of meeting the needs of people requiring short-term housing to match labour market flexibility. Rents have been escalating to the point at which they are inflicting serious damage on settled communities, with rent increases of 25 and 35 per cent. not uncommon. Private sector rents are breaking the housing benefit bank and locking people into the poverty trap. Worse still, the combination of high rents and short tenancies is a major factor in homelessness. Figures that I have just obtained from Westminster city council, for example, show that the termination of lease or tenancy was the single largest cause of homelessness last year, affecting 876 households or one in five of total homeless applicants. I look forward to further discussions on how we can stimulate the private rented sector, but without those undesirable side effects.
Perhaps, it is in the council and former council stock that we face some of the greatest housing problems. There is severe housing need in north Kensington, where the relatively new tenant management organisation and many well-established housing associations are struggling to deal with the problems. I think for example, of some of my constituents whose cases I am dealing with, such as the family of 10 shoe-horned into a two-bedroom flat 11 storeys up a tower block.
In Westminster, the story has been far more controversial. Despite a well-researched level of housing need, confirmed most recently by surveys that found 12,015 households or 12.5 per cent. of the population in housing need, Westminster's ruling Conservative group chose to play politics for its own electoral ends. The result was the district auditor's conclusion last year that certain members and officers had acted unlawfully with regard to
their "designated sales" policy at a cost to the taxpayer of £31 million. No doubt the House will hear more of that story in the coming months. When we do, we must at all times remember the victims: first, the council taxpayers who have forgone the benefit of that wasted £31 million; secondly, the many people who innocently bought council properties and found themselves unable to sell while at the same time being confronted with huge and unexpected service-charge liabilities, in some instances leading to homelessness and repossessions; and, thirdly, people in housing need who saw precious social rented property sold off. Since 1988, Westminster city council has sold more than 1,300 precious homes over and above those sold under the right to buy. I have no doubt that that issue deserves the attention of our new Government. For those reasons, I welcome the Government's close scrutiny of the local use of resources.
So, my constituency can certainly be defined as having housing need. Investment in the building of new homes or refurbishment of existing homes will be greatly valued. We will build on partnerships with the best housing associations. I commend the work done by Walterton and Elgin Community Homes as just one example of what can be achieved when local people work together with housing associations through the whole process of design, building and renovation.
We can and must look imaginatively at how the inner city can play its part in meeting the growing demand for homes--refurbishment of existing properties from all sectors and conversion from offices, as well as new build. We must ensure that the potential from our few remaining large sites is not lost. Locally, I think of Paddington basin and goods yard, which forms the border of my constituency. It offers exciting potential for affordable housing and leisure, as well as commercial use, but it cannot be allowed to become another enclave of luxury housing, spearing additional traffic on to local roads, 100 yd from north Paddington, but on a different planet.
The Bill is to be welcomed, since it gives us the opportunity to make real inroads into tackling housing need. It also deserves applause for placing housing in a wider economic and social context. The housing programme will create much-needed jobs. We must rise to the challenge of developing training schemes that can supply skilled labour to the construction industry.
Before I conclude, I must draw the attention of the House to one further substantial benefit that will accrue from our revived housing programme, which is the benefit to public health. The local health profiles for north Kensington and north Paddington point out that housing conditions are often used as proxy indicators of material deprivation when investigating the association between poverty and ill health. Overcrowding is associated with the increased risk of respiratory infections, gastro-intestinal infections, peptic ulcers, home accidents, chronic obstructive airway disease and increased mortality rates from coronary heart disease, lung and cervical cancer, as well as poor mental health. Our assault on housing need will, therefore, constitute an assault on poverty and ill health as well.
Mr. Paul Burstow (Sutton and Cheam):
First, I must congratulate the hon. Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North (Ms Buck) on her maiden speech. I was pleased that she did not dwell for long on football, which I gather has been much touched upon in today's debate. She painted a clear and good picture of her constituency. While I also have a London constituency, she almost made me feel that her seat was more interesting and exciting than mine. She rightly drew attention to the way in which an area's appearance can be misleading--it can appear affluent on the surface, belying the pressures below the surface. I shall return to that subject in my remarks on the Bill.
I welcome the Bill, as do my colleagues on the Liberal Democrat Benches. The relaxation of the control over the use of capital receipts is long overdue. It is important that the Bill is enacted as soon as possible, to implement not merely a commitment made by the Government but one made by the Liberal Democrats. We want action now to tackle unmet housing need. It has been estimated that since 1989-90--the last year when receipts were reuseable--investment has fallen by about £5 billion, or 60 per cent. The consequences are only too obvious--a huge repairs backlog and a shortfall in the provision of new housing for rent.
In 1996, households accepted as homeless amounted to 121,990. Shelter has turned that figure into the number of people involved--350,000 people were homeless in 1996. That is the measure of the problem.
I said that an area's appearance can mislead us about its problems. My constituency has an image of being a green, leafy and pleasant suburban area in which to live. It, too, has unmet housing needs--needs which I hope that Bill will go some way to address.
If the Bill becomes an Act, as I am sure it will, I hope my local authority of Sutton will be able to take some action on three particular needs. The first is the need for self-contained accommodation for young people. The homeless persons unit in my local authority has on its list 100 young people in need of such accommodation. That may seem a small number when compared with other areas, but it is a pressure on those individuals, which needs to be sorted out.
Secondly, there is a need to provide accommodation for people with multiple special needs--often a combination of drug, alcohol and mental health problems. Finally, we also need housing for people with mental health problems, who often need a high level of support, but are not necessarily suited to group homes.
I asked finance officers in my local authority their estimate of Sutton's housing reserved receipts to get an idea of what might become available. The figure was £22 million. I hope that relaxation of controls will mean that my authority can fulfil its aims and ambitions for a single regeneration budget project in which it has been engaged for some time on the Roundshaw estate. It is a 1960s deck-access estate with many problems, and a great concern of my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton
and Wallington (Mr. Brake), in whose constituency it lies. We share a local authority, and thus an interest in the project's progress. I hope that unlocking receipts and making resources available will enable my local authority to tackle its repairs backlog with greater vigour and allow us to increase the number of advances to housing associations for new projects.
I was pleased by the assurances that we were given earlier about the need for a broad definition of housing in respect of expenditure under the Bill. Regeneration projects that involve housing encompass far more than the bricks and mortar of their buildings. We need to consider community safety issues and ensure that we take public health into account. We must examine energy conservation and how to deal with fuel poverty.
We must also consider accessibility in taking projects forward. As the Bill progresses, we must try to ensure that when social housing is built or renovated, the access requirements of disabled people are taken into account. In a written question a few weeks ago, I asked whether the Government would make a firm commitment to extend part M of the building regulations to cover all dwellings as a first step to extending access for disabled people. I hope that the Bill will at the very least allow the extension of part M to new buildings and to those that are being renovated with money spent under it.
I have a question about the wording of clause 1, to which those hon. Members who are fortunate enough to serve on the Committee will no doubt return. Having talked to people more expert than I on drafting Bills, I understand that it is intended as the device to enable redistribution of resources using supplementary credit approvals, but I do not understand how the wording achieves that intent. I hope that in Committee we can agree a more intelligible form of words.
Reference was made earlier to how the Bill will increase the public sector borrowing requirement. The previous Government used controls over capital receipts as a way of reducing the PSBR. I hope that the new Government will take the opportunity to review the Treasury rules on capital and revenue expenditure. Those of us who come from local government are only too familiar with separating revenue expenditure from capital expenditure in the way in which we account for them. The Government should look to do much the same to allow a more sensible attitude on how capital expenditure is raised to take forward much-needed projects.
The hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Luff) attacked the Liberal Democrats for being critical of the Bill for not going far enough. However, he answered that criticism more adequately than I could have by going on to state that the Institute of Housing had identified a £20 billion housing repair backlog, which is a sum far greater than the resources that the Bill will unlock.
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