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House of Commons

Wednesday 21 July 2004

The House met at half-past Eleven o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. Speaker in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions

DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER

The Deputy Prime Minister was asked—

Post Offices (Deprived Urban Areas)

1. Ms Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) : What help he is giving to post offices in deprived urban areas. [185307]

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (Phil Hope): Among a range of Government measures to support post offices, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister has set up a £15 million fund for 2002 to 2005 to support post offices at risk of closure in deprived urban areas. To date, 194 post offices in the most deprived 10 per cent. of wards have been supported. We anticipate that this number will rise to 350 on completion of the fund. A further £210 million is available from the Department of Trade and Industry for managing the long-term sustainable future of the urban post office network.

Ms Munn: I thank my hon. Friend for his answer and welcome the fund. However, Jordanthorpe post office, in a deprived area of my constituency, was assessed for the fund and met the criteria, but was told that there were insufficient funds for it to benefit from the scheme. That post office is enormously important in supporting a whole community and shopping area. Will he give me further advice on what Jordanthorpe post office should do to keep providing the service that it does?

Phil Hope: My hon. Friend is a strong champion of the residents of her constituency. I fully understand her concern for ensuring that her urban post offices stay open and I shall listen carefully to her representations. She may not know that since 1997 the Government have invested £2 billion in the post office network. I urge her, as a specific action, to encourage the Jordanthorpe post office to investigate the option of gaining access to the additional funding for the urban post office network that has been made available by the DTI.

Mr. Roy Beggs (East Antrim) (UUP): Consultation on the closure of post offices in Northern Ireland has become a farce. There is obviously a clear policy on closures. Waterloo road post office in Larne in my constituency was signalled for closure. A neighbouring
 
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business man was prepared to provide new post office accommodation and to buy out Waterloo road post office's rights and interests with the full support of his community. That was refused and he received no support from Postwatch. Is any appeal open to my constituents as we had accepted the closure of several other small post offices?

Phil Hope: The ODPM does not provide support for post office networks in Northern Ireland. I appreciate the hon. Gentleman's concerns, which I shall convey to my ministerial colleagues in the Northern Ireland Office and ensure that he, his constituents and the business he describes get the fullest possible reply to those concerns.

Tony Lloyd (Manchester, Central) (Lab): Some farce is also associated with the closure programme in England. In my constituency—one of the most genuinely deprived inner-city communities in the land—more than 40 per cent. of the post offices will be closed. It would help enormously if the Post Office came clean about how the process works and opened up the books so that when people tell me that post offices are viable yet the Post Office still closes them, we know whether it is the Post Office that is abusing the rules or simply a misunderstanding of the position. I think that the Post Office is abusing the rules.

Phil Hope: I understand my hon. Friend's concerns and I will certainly convey them to my ministerial colleagues in the DTI who have responsibility for the post office network. It is true to say that the previous Government presided over 3,500 unstructured closures, with no plans for the long-term sustainability of the network. This Government are providing a huge investment in both the rural and the urban network to ensure that there is a planned process and a sustainable future for post offices in both urban and rural areas.

Ms Karen Buck (Regent's Park and Kensington, North) (Lab): I have recently been told that 50 per cent. of my post office network faces closure by this time next year. Although I fully understand the economic necessity for a reduction in the network, does my hon. Friend realise the impact that that has on urban communities as well as rural communities? Will he urge the Post Office to think carefully about what it does, especially in the complex social situation of London, where rich and poor areas jostle side by side, and ensure that it accepts that post offices are part of the lifeblood of local communities in urban villages, as they are in rural communities?

Phil Hope: My hon. Friend is absolutely right: the urban post office network is essential. That is why the Government are investing over £180 million to fund compensation payments to sub-postmasters whose offices close, and we are investing substantial extra resources through the urban reinvention programme that I mentioned earlier. Post offices play an important part in community life, and without a rational approach the unplanned closures that occurred under the last Conservative Administration would continue, leaving damaging gaps in the network. The DTI is working hard to ensure that there is a planned process for ensuring the long-term sustainability of post offices in urban as well as rural areas.
 
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Decent Homes

2. David Taylor (North-West Leicestershire) (Lab/Co-op): What Government policy is in relation to the rights of local authority tenants to have homes which meet the decent standard criteria by 2010; and if he will make a statement. [185308]

The Minister for Housing and Planning (Keith Hill): We are determined to make good the appalling neglect of council homes by the last Tory Government, who left us with a colossal £19 billion backlog in repairs and modernisation, and 2 million substandard homes. We have now reduced the number of substandard homes by 1 million and are on target to bring a further 600,000 homes up to the decent homes standard by 2008. Where councils can achieve the decent homes standard through mainstream funding they are perfectly entitled to do so; otherwise the most effective and efficient way to secure the extra funding and better standard of management required to deliver decent homes will be through a choice of public finance initiative, stock transfer or arm's length management organisation.

David Taylor: Many on these Benches benefited from an affordable, well maintained home rented from an accountable local authority, and we welcomed the reassurance of the then Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tyneside, North (Mr. Byers), that the right to a decent home would be extended even to those who retained their local authority landlord. Why has this Minister torn up that commitment, allowing home investment only through the PFI, ALMOs or stock transfer even where tenants prefer direct investment from their local authority to coerced privatisation? Does not the modernisers' mantra of "a right to choose" apply to our core supporters?

Keith Hill: Well, if my hon. Friend wants to put it in those terms, he can, but I believe that the decent homes programme is precisely designed to deliver to our core supporters. My hon. Friend misuses language when he talks about privatisation. Under the PFI and ALMO arrangements the stock remains council-owned stock and the tenants remain council tenants. The housing associations, which are a key lever for bringing in the huge new sums to deliver the decent homes programme, are not-for-profit organisations. Fifty per cent. of all tenants are in housing associations, which on the whole deliver homes that are of a higher standard and afford tenants greater satisfaction.

Mr. Robert Key (Salisbury) (Con): Has the Minister seen yesterday's report from the UK Noise Association, called "Antisocial Housing"? Why do the Government continue to refuse to include noise insulation in their decent homes-plus standard?

Keith Hill: Ambient noise is included in the decent homes standard.

Mr. Ken Purchase (Wolverhampton, North-East) (Lab/Co-op): I welcome and understand the Minister's concern about the disrepair of our stock and that which we inherited, but the solutions that he proposes are seen as departmental proposals that are mean and spiteful—
 
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bad-tempered, even—and almost a betrayal of the wishes of many tenants who want to remain with their local council. For a Labour Minister to be denying them that right seems to me perverse.

Keith Hill: But I put it to my hon. Friend that we have so far had some 130 ballots on various aspects of the decent homes programme, and in over 80 per cent. of cases tenants have voted for the various forms of PFI, stock transfer or ALMO on offer; they have gone for what my hon. Friend seems to regard as a spiteful option. Where a ballot fails the Government are anxious to work with the local authority to examine the ways forward. That is occurring in Birmingham, close to my hon. Friend's constituency, where good progress is being made.

Mrs. Caroline Spelman (Meriden) (Con): Birmingham, Hodge Hill borders my constituency, and in an effort to help my neighbour—[Laughter.] I might remind Labour Members that their party was in charge of Birmingham city council during the time to which I am referring, and it still is. No one could fail to have been struck by the number of homes and shops boarded up in that constituency. Take, for example, the parade of shops in Shard End, over which all the flats were boarded up. [Interruption.] Perhaps the new hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr. Byrne) might like to take note.

Mr. Speaker: Order. First of all, if the hon. Lady intended to raise matters relating to another constituency, she should have notified the hon. Gentleman. Secondly, I know we are near the end of term and I like to give some leeway, but the supplementary question must be short.

Mrs. Spelman: For all the worthy aspirations of the decent homes standard, does the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister accept that the Government have failed to get to grips with the problem of empty flats over shops, which could be made into perfectly decent homes and be an asset rather than a liability?

Keith Hill: I suppose that after her long sojourn in Hodge Hill I ought to welcome the hon. Lady back to the Dispatch Box, but in the light of her singular lack of success in Hodge Hill, it might be a good idea for her to repair to her own constituency, Meriden, at the earliest opportunity. She raised a number of issues, one of which was the decline in neighbourhood shops. I want to encourage Birmingham city council's programme of flourishing neighbourhoods, which is designed to deal with those issues. With regard to flats above shops, the Government have already set up a taskforce to deal with that problem. We are making progress there. The hon. Lady ought to at least acknowledge the Government's addition to the current Housing Bill of a proposition to bring empty homes in cities back into rented accommodation.

Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab): What is the philosophical objection of my right hon. Friend to the idea that councils like Bolsover—which does not have social services, does not deal in education, and deals
 
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only with housing—should be able to keep control of the housing stock and build even more? What is the philosophical objection to that, even in new Labour?

Keith Hill: Well, I do not know. I am not always described as new Labour, nor, for that matter, is my Department invariably categorised in that fashion. As I understand it, my hon. Friend's local authority, Bolsover, is in the process of carrying out the stock options appraisal, which will be completed in January. At that stage we can have a look to see what is the appropriate way forward. As I have already indicated, mainstream funding by Bolsover may well be the appropriate way forward.

Mrs. Spelman: As Shelter's report on homeless households, "Living in Limbo", reveals, the number of people living in temporary accommodation has hit record levels at 94,000 and is still rising. Does the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister accept that temporary accommodation, by definition, is the antithesis of a decent home, and that a doubling of the length of time that people have to wait for a permanent home is an indictment of the Government's policy? Is not the truth of the matter that although the decent homes standard is a laudable ambition, for 94,000 people the Government have made it irrelevant?

Keith Hill: The hon. Lady makes a fair point. It is an issue about which the Government and hon. Members on both sides of the House are deeply concerned. But while she has been away in Hodge Hill, she obviously missed the Chancellor's excellent statement, which will accord huge new levels of investment for social housing in the next spending review period. It is our expectation that as a result of those high levels of investment, which will yield no fewer than 75,000 new homes for social renting in that period, by 2008 we shall have turned round the increase in homelessness.

Mr. Clive Betts (Sheffield, Attercliffe) (Lab): Can my right hon. Friend confirm that of the three options that he says are available to tenants now to achieve decent homes—stock transfer, PFIs and ALMOs—ALMOs are different in that their borrowing counts against Government borrowing? Will he give an assurance to tenants in Sheffield who are working with the local authority towards ALMOs that no artificial limit will be placed on the amount they can borrow, so that even where tenants of local authorities choose the ALMO route, in practice it will not be available to them?

Keith Hill: We hope to work with Sheffield to deliver on the ALMO programme, for which funding is available. The new arrangements for housing capital finance were introduced in April, and they allow local authorities to determine how much they can afford to borrow beyond borrowing supported by central Government—the matter is linked to increases in the management and maintenance allowance. We hope that a number of authorities will be enabled to deliver decent homes under the so-called prudential code.

Mr. Edward Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD): The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister: Housing, Planning and Local Government Committee recently
 
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released a critical report on progress towards the decent homes standard. Why are Ministers now the only people who believe that the decent homes standard will be met by 2010? The spending review provided new money for housing in growth areas and low-demand areas, but it provided no money for the decent homes programme. Given the tough efficiency savings that Ministers demand from the housing sector and the recent trend for tenants to vote against stock transfer, which of these will be dropped first—the decent homes target or the Government's ideological obsession against local authority borrowing for housing investment?

Keith Hill: The hon. Gentleman is wrong on all counts. Funding is available for the decent homes programme. We acknowledge that the decent homes target for 2010 is challenging, but I reiterate that we are on target to bring 1.6 million homes up to the decent homes standard by 2008.

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