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Mr. Hayes: The Minister, as I anticipated, has responded by acknowledging that this is indeed a probing amendment, designed to drive him towards ever greater efforts to achieve the targets set. He has given us an undertaking today that he is re-energised by the pressure from his Back Benchers—so admirably represented by the hon. Member for Milton Keynes, North-East (Brian White)—and from the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr. Stunell). The hon. Member for Broxtowe (Dr. Palmer) has not been following these matters closely until today, perhaps because he has been out buying shoes—although I resisted the temptation of drawing him into the earlier debate about aesthetics, because I thought that he would be less than a front-runner in that department, judging by today's footwear. However, although he is less certain on these matters, I am satisfied that the Minister has got the message, and I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
10.30 am
Mr. Hayes: I beg to move amendment No. 2, in clause 6, page 7, line 3, at end insert—
'91B Accessible housing registers for the disabled
(1) Each local housing authority must maintain an "accessible housing register"
(2) The accessible housing register must outline—
(a) current and proposed accessible residential properties in the local authority area (whether purpose-built or adapted) with details of the access features relating to each property; and
(b) the provisions available for disabled people who require accessible housing,
(3) For the purpose of this section "accessible residential properties" means dwellings, flats and HMOs which provide a reasonable means of access and ease of use for disabled people, or which may be easily adapted to provide such access and ease of use.'.
Amendment No. 2 relates to registers of accessible housing for disabled people. That is not a new idea, and it is widely supported by disabled organisations and charities, as well as by many Members. I raised the matter in the Committee on the Housing Bill; the amendment is almost a repetition of the new clause that we then tabled.
Briefly, the argument for such registers is as follows. There is no doubt that all Members want to ensure that adequate housing is available for people with disabilities. That housing, often by necessity, must be adapted so that a person's needs can be properly catered for. Adaptations that take place in the cause of providing good housing for disabled people are varied. Someone with a spinal injury who is a wheelchair user will require very different adaptations from someone with partial sight. A range of disabilities requires a range of approaches.
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Such adaptations can be expensive, and the current problem is that local authorities often adapt a house to satisfy a tenant who subsequently dies or moves on, and the new tenant might not necessarily be able to access the same property. The match between disability and suitable adapted housing is often poor, which leads to houses being re-adapted for a person with a different disability, or de-adapted—if such a word exists—for someone with no disability at all, or only a minor one. That is a costly process, which wastes many millions of pounds for local authorities up and down the country.
Mr. Hayes: I give way to the hon. Gentleman, who is about to offer a riposte to my earlier rebuke.
Dr. Palmer: Not at all. I would hesitate to compete with the hon. Gentleman's sartorial elegance, but I am less certain about his drafting elegance. There are 41,000 homes in my constituency. Is he seriously suggesting that the local authority should assess and maintain a register of each one, including "dwellings, flats and HMOs", to see whether it is accessible—whether purpose-built or adapted—and what provisions are made for disabled people to access it? How many hundreds of additional local civil servants does he think that Broxtowe council would require to implement that proposal?
Mr. Hayes: I can see that despite the hon. Gentleman's good will, he has not made a close study of the matter. I am not surprised at that; he is a busy man and cannot always take as much time as he would like to advance the interests of disabled people. If he had made a close study of the matter, he would know that in those parts of the country where such schemes have been adopted, there have been substantial savings to local authorities. The cost of setting up and running a register has been found, for example in Bradford, to be considerably less than the savings made by not having to re-adapt homes. I am not simply advancing my proposal in the interests of disabled people because of a proper concern for them; I advance it because it is highly cost-effective for local authorities to ensure a better match between tenants and available properties.
Mr. Hugo Swire (East Devon) (Con): I agree with my hon. Friend's proposal. In my local authority in East Devon there is increasing pressure to comply with Government regulations on providing housing for disabled people, although there is not necessarily the financial wherewithal. If we moved towards a local register, it would not only save money in the long term but make it much easier to move people who need that sort of housing around in the constituency, without having to spend vast amounts of money each and every time they have to be housed.
Mr. Hayes:
Yes, as my hon. Friend implies, the figures for the possible savings are impressive. It is certainly true that moving people around, as he puts it, is costly and painful to those concerned, and the savings themselves make a case for my proposal. Local
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authority estimates from Bradford suggest that savings may be in the range of £200,000 to £400,000, and some estimate that those savings may in fact be of more than £500,000. Of course, that will vary from place to place depending on the nature of the local available accommodation.
This idea was supported by Members on both sides of the Housing Bill Committee—I draw particular attention to the hon. Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney), who is an advocate of a similar proposal—and at the very least, the Government must consider the matter further. The Minister for Housing and Planning, who is sitting in his place because he takes these matters seriously, and who saw my name on the screen and rushed into the Chamber, acknowledged when I made my proposal in Committee that it was something that any Government would want to consider seriously.
My argument, therefore, is not partisan; nor is it trivial. It is born of a desire to do what is right, but it is also to do something that can be implemented cost-effectively, as the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Dr. Palmer) properly suggested.
Matthew Green (Ludlow) (LD): The hon. Gentleman will know that when a similar amendment was tabled to the Housing Bill it had our broad support. However, I hope that he rapidly describes this as a probing amendment because, if my reading of it is right, it applies to all houses, not just local authority and social housing. I think that the latter is what he means, but the amendment in fact seems to apply to all houses, including privately owned ones. I am sure that he would not particularly want his local authority to maintain a register of whether his property, which we have discovered is listed, has been adapted for disabled purposes.
Mr. Hayes: It is fair to say that this amendment, as the tone of my comments suggests, is, like my previous amendment, designed to probe. Given that the debate in Committee was received well by Members on both sides, and given that the Minister for Housing and Planning dealt with it with his characteristic generosity, we are once again looking to press the Government to examine the matter more carefully and perhaps to come back with their own proposals, which we could then consider with equal generosity. My proposal comes from a real demand from disabled organisations, and the cause is driven by a proper concern for vulnerable people, so the matter should be taken up with alacrity throughout the House.
A pilot study in conjunction with local authorities might be a way forward. Far be it from me to suggest how the Government should run their affairs, but such a study could be done reasonably quickly and inexpensively, and with the co-operation of local authorities—of varying party political persuasions—that are already leading the way in this regard. If the Minister says today that that is already his intention—that he had plotted such a scheme before today's debate—my regard for him, which is already high, would reach proportions to which even he would be too modest to aspire.
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The Minister will doubtless reply in the spirit offered, and the hon. Member for Hazel Grove will know that the amendment is meant to be a helpful addition to his Bill. Neither he nor the Minister has anything to fear from it, and they have the opportunity to show that in some measure they can match the Conservative commitment, rooted in our party's proud history, to the most vulnerable in our society.
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