Power to Give Financial Assistance

Part of Clause 50 – in the House of Commons at 6:30 pm on 14 June 1988.

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Photo of Mr Clive Soley Mr Clive Soley , Hammersmith 6:30, 14 June 1988

I am anxious to go through this in detail, without taking up the time of other hon. Members.

Let me go on to what I found most offensive of all, new clause 47. I shall not debate it, but new clause 47 provides that local authorities can give away all their council housing lock, stock and barrel. The small print of the paper that was left in the Table Office on Thursday—so it had been thought about, printed and produced, but left there only on Thursday—-says that local authorities, to meet their homelessness statutory responsibility, will be able to contract out the homeless to private landlords.

I ask Conservative Members to consider whether, even if they think that it is a good idea for a local authority to enter into a contract with private landlords and for private landlords to take the homeless people, it is a good idea to produce such a clause—without its being debated in Committee—which does not decide how long those people will be there, how much the landlords will be paid or who they pass them on to afterwards. None of that has been debated, nor would it have been had we not taken this exercise.

What happens next? New clause 47 is really offensive. It refers to the "Housing (Scotland) Act 1987". The Housing (Scotland) Bill is not yet an Act of Parliament. It is in the House of Lords at the moment. If the Government wanted to amend the Housing (Scotland) Bill, they could do so in the House of Lords. They have not done so; they have done it in a Bill that applies to England and Wales. There was not a single Scottish Member, never mind a Scottish Member from the Government Front Bench or the Opposition Front Bench, on the Committee. No wonder Scottish Members and Welsh Members feel angry about it. Why should they be treated in that way?

Then we come to the really offensive part. From time to time, the Government have chosen to lecture the people of this country on the dangers of retrospective legislation. Yet new clause 47 takes effect from 9 June 1988. It is retrospective legislation by which a local authority can get rid of all of its housing. Where is the great argument of the Government and the Tory party against retrospective legislation? It has gone. Conservative Members, the Government and the Minister must know that what they have done is deeply offensive to the methods by which the House is used to proceeding.

The next issue also concerns new clause 47. It concerns the voting system. We all know that the voting system in which local authority tenants are transferred to private tenancies is rigged. We know that people who die have their votes counted in favour of a transfer to the private landlord. We know that empty flats are counted as a vote in favour of a private landlord. That has been around for some time. Suddenly the Government have discovered that, despite that rigged voting, tenants still do not want to be transferred. Therefore, they invented new clause 47. They know that, if they squeeze local authorities enough, sufficient local authorities will do their dirty work for them and transfer the tenants under the guidelines of the voting system. Of course, there is no statutory requirement on local authorities to carry that out. It is not in the Bill, and we all know that if it is not in the Bill it is not a statutory requirement.

The Bill has been appallingly mismanaged from beginning to end. I have some sympathy for the Minister for Housing and Planning, but frankly he must ask himself how much longer he can serve under a Secretary of State who drafts a Bill for him, fights him all the way, line by line, on the changes, and then puts him through this. If the Minister wants a Secretary of State who wipes his feet on him, so be it. But that is his choice, and the House of Commons will not put up with it.

The Bill is not just about housing. Housing is central to it, but underneath rests the issue of parliamentary democracy and the way in which the House of Commons is trampling all over it.