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5 Mar 2003 : Column 863—continued
Matthew Green: Is not the reality that the Government are effectively saying that they are not interested in those affordable homes because they are not in their priority areas? The reality is that South Shropshire will need 1,400 affordable homes by 2011. With the abolition of that scheme, one of the main ways of delivering that will have gone, and the regional body will say that places around Birmingham, or somewhere like it, have priority and people in South Shropshire should not have any social housing funds. Rural areas have very real needs, and the fear is that they will not receive the funding that they used to get because they are not one of the Government's priorities.
Mr. Davey: My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. The problem is that the Government are trying to centralise housing policy over the regions and pick certain areas, and they do not like some areas. They are taking money from all debt-free authorities of whatever political persuasion, and they are taking the local authority social housing grant away from them, too. The Government are trying to control the nation's housing policy from Whitehall, and that cannot be right.
We are finding—this affects my hon. Friend's part of the country—that the Government sometimes put ceilings on the number of affordable houses that can be built. The councils and communities in those areas would be prepared to see more houses built, but that is being stopped by central Government. That seems to be nonsense.
I hope that the Government will not leave this issue, especially the local authority social housing grant, at the statement that we received today from the Minister. Frankly, so far as we can tell from the statement, the available grant will be cut by £225 million next year, so fewer affordable homes will be built. That is why I refer the Minister to early-day motion 824, which my hon. Friends and I tabled last night. We did not realise that we would have such an effect—a written ministerial statement being produced the very next day. Obviously, we have more influence than even we had imagined. Unfortunately, the ministerial statement does not go as far as our early-day motion, so I hope that the Minister will look at it again.
My final remarks relate to new clause 6, on empty homes, the first part of which I have been very critical. I shall end on a more consensual note by telling the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge that the second part of new clause 6 is very laudable, and he will know that not only do we support it, but the Local Government Association supports it. The hon. Gentleman would like local authorities to be able to
keep the council tax receipts where they decide to get rid of discounts on empty homes. That seems very sensible—it has been Liberal Democrat policy for many years.3.15 pm
The Government might say, "Well, we've gone some way. We have given councils the power to end the discounts on empty homes. Isn't that a good thing?" Well, I am afraid that that is only half the cake. Allowing local authorities to keep the revenue that they thereby raise would enable them to get a much greater hold on the housing issues in their areas. However, siphoning off that revenue not only gives poor incentives to local authorities, but prevents that policy from having an even more powerful effect on the housing situation. If the Minister does not like the first half of new clause 6, I hope that he will see some merit in the second half.
I have spoken for longer than I had intended, so I shall simply end my speech by saying that new clause 3 would make a major improvement to the Bill and it therefore deserves the support of not only Conservative Members and the Liberal Democrats, but other hon. Members on both sides of the House.
Mr. Raynsford: We have had a long debate, with two speeches—one lasting about 45 minutes, the other 25 minutes. It would be nice to think that I could get through this quickly because my analysis of the two contributions is that they were both erroneous, but the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) was slightly less wrong than the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond). If one speech was only half the length of the other, there is clearly some merit in keeping comments short.
Let me try to focus on the various issues. This is a complex range of housing matters. New clause 3 mirrors a number of amendments tabled by the Opposition in Committee. Like them, it would remove significant resources—some £600 million—from the funds that will be allocated to all authorities on the basis of their housing needs. The amendments tabled by the Liberal Democrats would either remove the power to make regulations requiring housing capital receipts to be pooled, or limit the pooling rate to 50 per cent. In other words, they are not quite as wrong the Conservatives, but their proposal is still unsatisfactory because it would reduce the amount available for distribution to authorities in need.
We have always taken the view—interestingly, so did the previous Government when the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) was the relevant Minister—that it is right that a proportion of the proceeds from the sale of council housing through the right to buy should be recycled, so that it can be used in areas of greatest need. That is a fundamental principle of housing capital finance, but the amendments tabled by today's Conservative party would overturn that principle. If the amendments were passed, the very authorities that we want to help would be penalised—those with high housing need, but low capital receipts.
I believe strongly that all authorities should have access to the funding that they need to meet national housing priorities, such as affordable housing and
decent homes, and pooling three quarters of housing receipts is an element in the process by which we can achieve that; removing £600 million from the national mechanism is not.The hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge claimed that this was a centralising measure, interfering with local authority freedom. On the contrary, it simply applies the same principles that were the fundamental element of the previous Government's policy, but it does so consistently to every authority, rather than allowing a different logic to apply uniquely and paradoxically to debt-free authorities.
The proof of the pudding has to be in the total sums available. I put it to the hon. Gentleman that, far from reducing local authority freedom, the Government are in the business of increasing investment and allowing local authorities to do a great deal more. In 1997–98, we inherited £900 million capital investment in housing; in 2002–03, we are investing £2.5 billion in housing—about two and half times more. That is possible partly because we make proper use of the available receipts, which otherwise would not be applied.
Matthew Green: The Minister will accept that there may be years when the amount that the Government put into housing, or the amount collected back from capital receipts, is not enough to meet all the housing need throughout the country. The Bill is a centralising measure because somebody in the centre, at regional or national level, will decide what the priorities are for giving out what grant there is. I accept that there may be much more money going into housing, but if it does not meet total need, someone will still be making decisions on priorities—and that someone will not be the local council.
Mr. Raynsford: Housing is a national issue, and it is absurd to suggest that it should be left entirely to individual local councils to decide whether there should be policies to meet housing need in their areas. In Committee, I cited an example of the Liberal Democrats making a great fuss about the failure of a Conservative council in Surrey to use its money for housing investment—yet they still attack the Government's proposals to ensure that money is used for housing. I have to say here on the Floor of the House, as I said in Committee, that it is typical of the Liberal Democrats to look both ways. First they say that they want money invested in housing, because housing is a priority, but when the Government do something to achieve that, they complain that we are centralising.
Mr. Raynsford: On that note, I give way to the hon. Gentleman.
Mr. Davey: I am surprised that the Minister has brought that example up again, because we soundly defeated him in argument when he brought it up in Committee. My colleagues in Surrey, who were arguing against the Conservatives running the council, were speaking to the local people, because they wanted them to exercise their democratic choice at the next council
elections to get rid of the Conservative administration that was mishandling the resources available to it. That is called local democracy. If the Government are to push a model in which everybody, on every issue throughout the country, should always look towards Westminster and Whitehall for a solution, they are advancing a centralised model that Stalin would have been proud of.
Mr. Raynsford: As usual, the hon. Gentleman does his case no good by overstating it. The Bill is designed to ensure that there is a larger pot of money available to enable local authorities to respond to housing need in their areas. By no stretch of the imagination can it be compared to the behaviour of the former Russian dictator whose death 50 years ago is the cause of a certain amount of newspaper comment at the moment. On reflection, the hon. Gentleman will realise that that is not a very appropriate parallel.
As hon. Members will know, because we made the announcement in Committee, we have put in place generous transitional arrangements to assist debt-free authorities—a move that was largely welcomed in Committee, albeit slightly grudgingly by some Members.
New clause 3 is to some extent unworkable. For example, I assume that the reference to special grant means a special grant under section 88B of the Local Government Finance Act 1988, which, as hon. Members will know, requires an affirmative resolution of the House. If the receipt concerned were received at the end of the financial year, there simply would not be time to go through that procedure to comply with the time scale in the new clause. I therefore hope that new clause 3 will be withdrawn.
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