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Mr. Chope: Can the Minister tell the House how many extra jobs will be created in the construction industry as a result of the £200 million allocation this year in the supplementary credit approvals and the £700 million next year?
Ms Armstrong: That depends on how authorities decide to use the initiative, whether they go into renovation or new build and whether they encourage work with other organisations, such as housing associations, whereby the money will be matched with money from the private sector so that the effect of the initiative will be greater. It is impossible to give a proper estimate of the number of jobs and I do not want to speculate. We know, however, that many more jobs will be created by this initiative than would have been if we had not taken it. This Government will create many more jobs in this area than did the previous Government.
In particular, we will encourage young people to be involved in the initiatives that local government takes through the Bill. Opposition Members were somewhat scathing about the amounts that we intend to release this year. I remind them that we cannot release any money until the Bill is enacted. We want to get the Bill through to release some money to local authorities this year. That is why we are pressing ahead with it.
The Bill will give us, local authorities and others in the housing sector the real opportunity to be imaginative and creative in how the money is used to encourage regeneration and pull in money from elsewhere so that jobs are created for young men and women and the other priorities identified in the consultation document can be put into practice.
The Bill and the resources provided by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer should leave the House in no doubt that the Government are serious about tackling poor housing, poor health, ghetto estates and joblessness. We are not content that we were left a legacy that did not need moving and shifting. If the previous Government were honest, they would be ashamed of that legacy. We are not prepared simply to inherit it. We want to give people opportunity. We are determined that they will be given opportunity. A decent home is always necessary if people are to be able to take advantage of opportunities.
Mr. Chope:
The Minister noted that this is the first Bill this Parliament to have had a normal Committee stage. It is a commentary on the Government that none of their Back Benchers participated in Committee or on Report; everything has been left to the Front-Bench spokesmen.
The Labour party manifesto included the following commitment:
I also asked the Chancellor about the allocation of the £200 million between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Again, I received the answer that he would let me have a reply as soon as possible. Put together, those answers leave one with the feeling that the Government are arrogant beyond belief. They are not even prepared to let an Opposition spokesman speaking in a debate material to the subject of the questions to have information that, we now learn from the Minister, she divulged during a press conference last week. It was divulged in debate today, but the Chief Secretary was not prepared to divulge it to the Opposition Front-Bench spokesman in answer to a priority written question.
We know that the Government want to take debate away from this Chamber and this Parliament. This is another example of the arrogant way in which they are seeking to achieve that objective. I hope that you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and Madam Speaker, will intervene to protect the rights of Parliament and of the Opposition to receive timely information.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael J. Martin):
Order. The hon. Gentleman must not draw the Chair into his case.
Mr. Chope:
I raised the issue on a point of order earlier. I shall insist that we get assurances from the Government that we will not again be put in a position where information that is clearly available to the Government is withheld from the Opposition.
Ms Armstrong:
The hon. Gentleman was given the information.
Mr. Chope:
The hon. Lady says that the information was given to me. It was given to the House three or four hours after I had been told that it was not available.
Ms Armstrong:
I understand that the hon. Gentleman asked for information from the Chief Secretary for all four
Mr. Chope:
The hon. Lady is clearly desperate. In this debate, she said that the Barnett formula applies. If it applies to the £200 million, the results of its application could have been announced in a press notice on Budget day in the same way as detail was announced, using that formula, for allocations available under the health service and education initiatives. The Barnett formula was used for both those initiatives and the figures were produced. In respect of the so-called capital receipts initiative, the press notice from the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions said that the allocation would be announced shortly, clearly implying that either the Government had not made up their mind or they were not sure whether they would use the Barnett formula. Perhaps we now know that they wanted to keep the information secret and prevent the Opposition knowing about it so that they could divulge it to suit their convenience.
Despite the Budget, at the end of this financial year and the next, local authorities will have more unspent capital receipts from the sale of council houses than at the time of the general election. I cannot believe that many Labour party supporters envisaged that, two years after the election of a Labour Government, the total of unspent receipts would be greater than at the time of the general election, yet that will be the impact of the Chancellor's Budget announcement and of the Bill. It is going to be a grave disappointment to Labour supporters.
We know what the Bill does not do. Contrary to the wishes of the Local Government Association, it does not remove restrictions on the use of new receipts. As recently as 5 June, the LGA said:
Nor is the Bill's application confined to house receipts and housing authorities, as the Government said all along it would be. The consultation paper, the rhetoric and, indeed, the Labour party manifesto, refer to housing receipts, but under the Bill the Government are taking power to allow non-housing receipts set-aside to be taken into account in the granting of credit approvals. The Bill also allows set-aside receipts to be taken into account for any purpose of credit approval.
I raised this issue in Committee. The Minister replied:
"capital receipts from the sale of council houses, received but not spent by local councils, will be re-invested in building new houses and rehabilitating old ones. This will be phased to match the capacity of the building industry and to meet the requirements of prudent economic management."
Having discovered from the Budget that there would be some £200 million extra for Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland this financial year, I asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what estimate of the capacity of the construction industry in 1997-98 and 1998-99 underlay his decision to allocate extra sums under the Government's capital receipts initiative. I was asking him to explain exactly how the phasing would match the capacity of the building industry and meet the requirements of sound economic management. Today, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury replied that he would let me have a reply as soon as possible.
"Restrictions on the use of new receipts should be removed."
Nor does the Bill remove restrictions on the use of set-aside receipts; it merely allows them to be taken into account in the granting of credit approvals. The Bill is a charade. It purports to be something other than what it is.
"We have made it quite clear that the Bill deals specifically with housing receipts."
Unfortunately, the text of the Bill does not match her words. She continued:
"Over many years in opposition . . . we have been committed to an initiative to deal specifically with the sale of council houses and the proceeds of that sale. We wanted to deal with the problems that local authority areas have experienced as a result with both the state of their existing stock and, in some cases, a simple lack of housing.
The hon. Lady has not said during the passage of the Bill why it goes far wider than dealing with housing authorities and the receipts from housing sales.
Our priority is to meet the commitments that we made in our manifesto."--[Official Report, Standing Committee A, 24 June 1997; c. 16.]
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