Mr David Winnick (Croydon South)

I was pleased to see in the Queen's Speech a reference to the housing position. It has been said, and I think with a great deal of justification, that housing hardship today is rather like what unemployment was before the war. It produces the same degree of misery and hardship, and the same feeling of personal inadequacy as those who have suffered hardship, and it is also my view that the housing hardship today tends to affect the same type of person as unemployment did before the war.

I should like to illustrate, if I may, the sort of family which is hit hardest by the housing shortage. Usually, it is a family on the local council's waiting list, whose chances of being rehoused are rather slim because the local council has a tremendous number of applicants for houses. Such a family is not able to solve its housing shortage by buying a house, because the husband's income is considered by a building society to be too inadequate, and, at the same time, there is no way in which, in the private sector, it can get unfurnished accommodation at a rent which it can afford. For this sort of family there does not seem to be any solution to its problem, which cannot be solved by getting a council flat, or by buying a house, or by becoming tenants of unfurnished accommodation.

Where do such people end up? During the last few years as a member of a housing committee of a north-west London borough I have found that many of these families end up in furnished rooms. It is not unusual in some parts of London—and I am sure the same is true of certain other overcrowded cities and towns—to find a husband, wife and two children living in a furnished room. They are entitled to go to a rent tribunal to get their rent reduced, but they do not do so because they are frightened of losing what accommodation they have.

It is also not unusual to find a number of landlords saying in their advertisements of furnished rooms, "No children". The result is that a family which has found a furnished room, or perhaps two furnished rooms, no matter how inadequate they are, and no matter how excessive the rent may be, is reluctant to go to a rent tribunal because it is happy to have found some kind of roof over its head, although the accommodation is most inadequate.

Others live with their in-laws, which causes a tremendous amount of domestic stress and worry. It is not unusual for a housing department, on a Monday morning, to receive many letters, or to have wives coming along personally, begging for housing accommodation and saying that their marriage is virtually "on the rocks", and that the only possibility of its being mended is by their being able to obtain a council flat. These are genuine cases.

I know that when one is addressing the House for the first time it is not customary to make controversial remarks, or to indulge in party polemics, but I should be dishonest to myself and to many others if I refrained from making the point that the Rent Act, passed in 1957 by the Conservative Administration, caused a great deal of added hardship to that which was already existing in housing. I was pleased that in the last Parliament it was found possible to repeal this Act and to give tenants some degree of security, and to establish machinery for fixing fair rents. That was an excellent move.

Croydon has about 3,300 people on the housing waiting list. In my constituency, Croydon, South, which I have the honour to represent in this House, there are many people who form part of this overall total. A few weeks ago, since the General Election, I went to see a family in my constituency which had asked me to visit it. I suppose that it is better off than many other families, in certain respects. It consists of husband and wife and two children—the children being of different sexes. It is important to note this, because it so happens that owing to the cramped accommodation the mother has to sleep with the daughter and the father with the son. Although this family is better off in some respects than many others of which I know it shows how acute the housing problem is, and the amount of hardship and misery that many of our fellow citizens now have to suffer.

We must ask ourselves what we can do about this problem and what solution we can find. I am pleased that the Government are to make it easier for local councils to provide council accommodation, and also for people with modest incomes to purchase their own homes. There seems to be a feeling that more council dwellings are not so necessary. I disagree. Many people are in urgent need of such accommodation—far more so than in need of the ability to buy their own houses.

It is not simply a question of an overall target of houses and flats; what we want is the right type of accommodation—council dwellings and homes which people can buy through mortgages—which will help to solve the housing problem. It is no good anyone writing to me about his housing problem and my telling him that a new flat has recently been completed at a price which he cannot possibly afford. When we consider our housing target we must think not merely of the overall figure; we must bear in mind the type of accommodation that we believe will best help to relieve people of their personal housing problems.

In many respects local councils can be more enterprising. I would like to see them buying up houses—not slum houses, but old houses which have fallen into disrepair and which they can convert. This would help to relieve the housing shortage in boroughs and constituencies. Many local councils could be far more enterprising in this respect. In my constituency a Roman Catholic organisation does this sort of work on a modest scale. It buys up a limited number of houses and converts them to let at rents which can be afforded by people with modest incomes who cannot obtain council dwellings at the moment. I would like to see councils doing the same.

Building societies and perhaps even local councils could be a little more enterprising in the matter of granting mortgages. Many people who are now paying large sums of money for furnished accommodation could buy their own homes, although they are not in a position, and will not be in a position for some time, to obtain council dwellings. The former London County Council, and, I believe, the Greater London Council now, have been willing to grant mortgages to people without laying too much stress on their incomes. This is a good step. It should be repeated by many building societies and other local councils.

I also feel that instead of a mortgage being granted for 20 or 25 years, in suitable cases the period could be extended even up to 40 or even 50 years in order to help people to buy their own homes. I know that there are certain technical difficulties, concerning repayments and the rest but, faced with this very acute housing problem, if a person cannot obtain a council dwelling and has to pay £5, £6 or £7 a week for a couple of quite inadequate furnished rooms, it would be better for him to pay this amount each week in buying his own house.

I hope that the Government will consider the matter not only in respect of their proposed new scheme of option mortgages, but also in respect of the possibility of extending the amount of time during which a person can buy a house.

It is also important to recognise that in London and other overcrowded cities and towns we are most unlikely to solve the housing problems, and there is, therefore, a tremendous need for the provision of many more new towns. It is very disappointing to note that in the last few years hardly any new towns have been built. We know of Harlow, Basildon and Stevenage, and when distinguished people come here from overseas we have a tendency to show them around such new towns, although they were built 10 or even 15 years ago. I hope that we can go ahead on a large scale with new towns and extended towns, because this is an important way of relieving the housing shortage in the Greater London area.

We need to create a tremendous sense of urgency in our effort to deal with the housing shortage. We need a housing crusade. We must realise the amount of suffering that many people experience, through no fault of their own—in many cases simply because they have very modest incomes. To a large extent this Parliament will be judged by the degree to which they can solve the housing problem and give practical help to the people in greatest difficulty in respect of housing. That is all that I wanted to say. This is my first speech in the House and I have tried to keep it as short as possible.

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