TABLE Floor area of room Number of persons 110 sq.ft. or more 2 90 sq.ft. or more but less than 110 sq.ft. 1.5 70 sq.ft. or more but less than 90 sq.ft. 1 50 sq.ft. or more but less than 70 sq.ft. 0.5 Floor area of room Number of persons 110 sq.ft. or more 2 90 sq.ft. or more but less than 110 sq.ft. 1.5 70 sq.ft. or more but less than 90 sq.ft. 1 50 sq.ft. or more but less than 70 sq.ft. 0.5
Housing Bill
10:30 am
Mr Keith Hill (Minister of State (Housing and Planning), Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; Streatham, Labour)
I am sorry if I appear to have misled the hon. Gentleman. But let me put it like this: the amendment will not simply be a source of information, but will lay an obligation on authorities to act. My recollection is that the effect of the ten-minute Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton would have been to bring something of the order of 500,000 homes into the ambit of the
overcrowding standards. It is an issue that I will explain to the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton.
With regard to housing issues, the Government are currently committing very large amounts of resources, first, to the decent homes programme, where we seek to remedy the £19 billion backlog we inherited in 1997 in the modernisation of council housing stock. We have set a target of 2010 for achieving the decent homes standard, which will benefit 2.5 million homes. We have already achieved that standard for 1 million homes. We are committing substantial resources to the decent homes programme, a central priority for local authorities.
Secondly, the Government are committing very large amounts of resources to dealing with the problem of homelessness. In that regard, I was grateful for the supportive comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Regent's Park and Kensington, North. Lay a further obligation on local authorities with regard to overcrowding, and you jeopardise the first two very important commitments and targets. I say to the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton that it is a matter of resource. We all desire to deal with the issue of overcrowding, but to achieve the end, one has to will the means. This Government have, particularly since the last general election, estimated by common consent our investment in housing across the board. However, I must tell the hon. Gentleman that there are limits. That is certainly the source of our misgivings about acceding to the more ambitious, updated targets with regard to overcrowding.