Lords Amendments

Part of School Boards (Scotland) Bill and Housing Bill (Allocation of Time) – in the House of Commons at 9:49 am on 11 November 1988.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Frank Dobson Frank Dobson Chair, House of Commons (Services): Computer Sub-Committee, Shadow Leader of the House of Commons 9:49, 11 November 1988

My hon. Friend is right, but the Bill goes further than that. Under the assured tenancy concept in the Bill, the Government are trying to create the impression that something is assured for the tenant. The only things assured for the tenant are insecurity and higher rents.

I believe that the Bill is a precursor to removing whatever security private tenants now have and that we will have another Housing Bill in which the Government will try to line the pockets of their landlord friends and remove all security of tenure from private tenants. The Bill is a landlords' charter. It will encourage property speculators to roam council estates trying to identify those which they think they can buy up, tart up and sell off. The Government say that they have provided some protection against that by giving the tenants the opportunity to vote on whether they want a private landlord. That is all very well, until we discover the terms under which those referenda will be conducted. If General Pinochet had conducted the recent plebiscite in Chile on the basis on which the Government have said that tenants will be allowed to choose whether to have a private landlord, he would have won the referendum despite the views of the people of Chile.

Under the Bill, even the dead will be able to vote for a private landlord. In some senses that is quite reasonable, or at least logical, because only the brain dead would vote for a private landlord. That brings me to the House of Lords. Some people have said that they had hoped the House of Lords would introduce a more democratic element into the Bill. They do not realise that the full title of the House of Lords is the house of landlords. Most of them are landlords. They voted to impose the poll tax because they will do so well out of it financially. It will be interesting to know how many noble gentlemen and ladies declared an interest because of the money that they stood to make if the measures were passed, because they strengthen the hands and line the pockets and handbags of private landlords. In view of some of the backwoods people who were dragged out to support the Bill in the House of Lords, I understand how they might sympathise with the idea that the dead should be allowed to vote. That would guarantee an even bigger Tory majority in the other place.

The Bill does nothing to help most people presently living in public sector housing or private rented accommodation. Opposition Members are convinced that the Bill will create homelessness. Where will people go if they cannot afford to pay the new rents? Who will have the obligation to house them, and will those who have that obligation have any houses for them? There are no houses for them now. That is why they are reduced to living in lodgings. At the moment, about 10,000 of our fellow citizens in London live in filthy, stinking, rotting, verminous and vile bed-and-breakfast accommodation.

Conservative Members would not like the idea of living with their children in one room of a bed-and-breakfast hotel. None of them would like to think that their children, having had an interrupted night, and with no opportunity to relax and no space in which to play, had to get up in the morning and go to school. Conservative Members, particularly the right hon. Member for Mole Valley (Mr. Baker), who poses as the Secretary of State for Education and Science, criticise teachers for not doing a good job. How can they do a good job with a small child who has not had a decent sleep, or anything decent to eat in the morning, no relaxation and no place in which to play? That is the position before this preposterous Housing Bill becomes law. Many people will become homeless after its passage.

It is logical that the Bill should harm the homeless, because it was the product of a White Paper on housing that talked about the housing of everyone except those who most need it—the people who are already homeless. The White Paper produced by the Secretary of State did not even mention the word "homeless". The right hon. Gentlemen pays so much attention to the problems of homelessness, which is at record levels, that he cannot even get the word into his White Paper.

I am glad that the Secretary of State is here today, because he was following a precedent that he set. He is good at leaving out important words. He was the man who laid down the rules for the future conduct of London Regional Transport. Faced with an Act of Parliament which said that LRT should consider economy, efficiency and safety, he wrote an 838-word letter telling LRT what its priorities were, but he did not mention the word "safety". It was all about economising and so-called efficiency. This Bill is all of a piece with the Secretary of State's record. He did not mention safety for people travelling on the Underground, and he does not mention homelessness when he is talking about housing.

That is the sort of person who, in a most incompetent manner, is presiding over the Bill. I feel rather sorry for the Leader of the House. It must be terrible having to cope with the right hon. Gentleman, whose incompetence and arrogance are an amazing combination.

This obnoxious Bill was not substantially improved by the House of Lords, and the House should have the opportunity to set right what the other place has done wrong. It should be given the time to put back into the Bill the measures which my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley) has worked so hard to include. We must try to make a tolerable measure out of this intolerable Bill.

The Leader of the House heaped paeons of praise on himself for all the Bills that the Government had managed to get through this Session. Many of his friends in the Press Gallery—they were his friends until last Friday—said, "How clever he and the Prime Minister are to get all this controversial legislation out of the way in the first Session." There is a curious assumption that the Housing Bill, the Local Government Act which introduced the poll tax and the Education Reform Act are unpopular only in Parliament. The Government know how unpopular the Housing Bill is now. Just wait until it is put into practice, and then they will know how popular it is outside.