Orders of the Day — Housing (Scotland) Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 8:09 pm on 11 January 1988.

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Photo of Mr Bill Walker Mr Bill Walker , North Tayside 8:09, 11 January 1988

As is so often the problem with Opposition Members, the hon. Lady confuses the use of funds when allocated with the way in which the funds are budgeted for.

I return to my point. If, over a period of 30 years—or even 10 years—realistic rents had been charged and the balance had been made up from the public purse, through the various support systems now called housing benefit, that money would have been channelled straight into the housing coffers. That is the first way in which adequate funds could have been found. Secondly, the people who could afford to pay full rents should have paid them. I make no apology for saying that, because that would have been the most sensible and logical use of public resources.

I am sure that Opposition Members' aims are no different from mine. I want all the citizens of this country to live in accommodation of which we can be proud. I am certainly not proud of the conditions in which the local authorities have asked many of my constituents to live. My local authorities are good local authorities — I do not deny that—but also in my constituency, Dundee district council had enormous problems. It would be nonsense to pretend that it did not. However, the probems were not new. I remember looking at Fintry when I first stood as a council candidate in Dundee. Fintry was built a long time before some of the other ghastly housing schemes. Not long after it was built, it was fairly obvious that Fintry would become a maintenance problem. Furthermore, it was built in the wrong place. [HoN. MEMBERS: "SSHA."] I know that part of it was SSHA, but not all of it was.

I can list every house in Fintry. I used to live in the next housing estate, which was called Linlathen. [Interruption.] If Opposition Members know Glasgow that well, they will know where Linlathen is. I lived in Alloway terrace. I was not looking at matters through rose-tinted glasses. I knew about the problems at first hand, because I lived there. It was fairly obvious to anyone with any brains that there would be enormous maintenance problems. That was the first thing that was obvious. The second was that the houses were in the wrong place. They were too far away from the places where the majority of people worked and it was obvious that the cost of travel would be prohibitive and would deter many people. Fintry was built long before many of the other housing schemes in Dundee which have even greater problems. The lessons of Fintry were lost.

I do not say that everything that the Government have done since coming to office has been right, because that would be nonsense. However, the majority of the action that we have taken on housing was long overdue. Even today we have the massive problem of houses standing empty. However, whereas 120,000 houses were below tolerable standards 10 years ago, we have brought that figure down to 55,000. That is a move in the right direction, but the target must be to eliminate the problem altogether.

I also welcome the substantial increase in sheltered housing. This again involves targeting scarce resources where they are most needed. Clearly, we must cater for the disabled and the elderly, but the old blanket provisions paid insufficient attention to this. Resources have been channelled into sheltered accommodation, often through housing associations, and I compliment the associations in my constituency on the splendid schemes that they have developed. Those schemes are working well and the tenants are happy, as I know from regular visits to them, because the only way to find out what is happening is to go and see for oneself. The increase in sheltered housing and accommodation for the disabled shows that the Government have been channelling scarce resources in the right direction.

Another welcome development is that 106,000 families have been able to buy their own homes. One dream that has turned into reality and not into a nightmare is the opportunity for people to have a stake in their own homes. The Opposition may ask what that really means. To people who grew up in council homes it means that for the first time they will have a nest egg to leave to their families, an opportunity which they never enjoyed before, because it simply did not exist for them. Today, 106,000 households in Scotland have that opportunity as a direct result of legislation that was opposed by the Labour party.

Home ownership does more than give people a stake in their homes. It changes attitudes. One has only to look at the estates to see the evidence—new doors, porches and windows, improved gardens and decreased vandalism. That alone would be a good enough reason to sell the houses. I sometimes wonder whether the discounts are big enough, because the benefits to the community are enormous. The people with whom I grew up in Alloway terrace in Linlathen dreamed of owning their homes and being part of the community, of owning a car and a television set. All those things are coming to pass because the Government are channelling resources in the right direction.

One of the benefits of the Bill will be to bring together the two major housing agencies. That is important, because in my view we have reached a crossroads where we must change direction and go not for quantity but for quality. The first and major challenge is to improve the quality of the existing housing stock. Secondly, we must ensure that the houses being built meet the special needs of the community. As my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries (Sir H. Monro) said, we welcome the efforts to improve and regenerate peripheral housing schemes in the cities, because they are desperately needed in many areas, but we must also recognise the need for regeneration in rural areas.

We hear a great deal from the Opposition about unemployment, but in one part of my constituency there is a problem brought about by full employment. In Aberfeldy, firms cannot find workers because of inadequate housing resources. More houses need to be built in that area. In the initial stages, the need is often for housing at economic rents. That is another welcome benefit that could come out of the Bill.

We also hear a great deal about the availability of building workers. This, too, will be effected by the Bill. My hon. Friend the Minister will be interested to hear that for the past three months, on Monday mornings, I have been calling on the various places of employment in my constituency to discover the true employment situation. A consistent factor for companies in the building industry has been the dearth of building workers in north Tayside, so in my area at least, the stories about building workers on the dole are pure fairy tales. I am told that there is also a shortage of skilled building workers in the Dundee area.

The Bill will provide opportunities to widen the forms of tenure and letting. This, too, has attracted some hostility from the Opposition. Many of them must have faced the problem of finding rented accommodation at some time in their lives. Council house waiting lists always involved special qualifications or long waits, so for the young, ambitious person who was willing to move, the real problem was not finding a job, but finding accommodation near the available work at a rent that he or she could afford. I have certainly experienced that problem.

I should have thought that in the 40 years since I first tried to find rented accommodation the problem would have been solved, but it has not been solved, because, as a matter of policy, successive Labour Governments deliberately squeezed out the private sector landlords. I have no brief for Rachman-type landlords, but when I was a young man there were a substantial number of private lettings in Dundee.

The right hon. Member for Glasgow, Govan (Mr. Millan) suggested that they were slums, but he should know better because, like me, he knows Dundee well. He knows that immediately before and after the war, although there were slums in Dundee which needed to be, and were, removed, there were many private sector rented properties which were beautiful flats in first-class tenement buildings. That accommodation was forced out of the private rented sector by successive Labour Governments, so more and more people were deprived of the opportunity to rent such properties.

I also welcome the idea of management schemes and cooperatives. I do not object to something just because it is called a co-operative. Unlike the Opposition, I do not have such hang-ups. I believe that things should be judged on their merits — whether they are viable and an improvement on the present situation, and whether they provide increased choice and wider options. I therefore believe that there is scope for co-operatives, and I welcome their development. I also welcome the fact that the private sector will be encouraged to become involved in areas which so far have been the exclusive province of the public sector.

I am aware that a substantial number of Opposition Members wish to speak, so I shall conclude. I believe that my contribution has clearly shown that I welcome the Bill, because there is much in it that will give hope, much that will bring about change, and much that will be welcomed in Scotland, just as the right to buy was when we introduced it some years ago, but it was equally resisted by Opposition Members. I believe that in about five or six years those voices on the Opposition Benches—the same voices and the same faces will still be there on Opposition Benches — will be saying, "We are modifying our stance," just as they did about the right to buy. Experience will show that the Bill contains much that will be beneficial to the people who really matter, the people of Scotland.