Lords Amendments

Part of School Boards (Scotland) Bill and Housing Bill (Allocation of Time) – in the House of Commons at 10:58 am on 11 November 1988.

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Photo of Mr Alf Morris Mr Alf Morris , Manchester Wythenshawe 10:58, 11 November 1988

This is an outrageous motion that makes it impossible for us to debate a huge number of important amendments to the Housing Bill. It is the bounden duty of the House to scrutinise and, where necessary, to challenge the intentions and actions of executive government; but how can that duty possibly be discharged if the motion is passed?

It will come as no surprise to the House that my particular concern is with amendment No. 133, for which, to be realistic, there will now be scant, if any, time for meaningful debate. Quite deplorably, the motion makes no specific provision for the amendment to be debated. Yet it affects the well-being of some of the most needful people in Britain today. I refer to people with severe disabilities, some of whom, if the amendment is approved —it was in part unsuccessfully resisted by the Government in the House of Lords—will have the right to buy their homes.

The Royal Association for Disability and RehabilitationRADAR—readily concedes that the amendment removes a sense of descrimination felt by a number of disabled people, but asserts that a much larger number of people with severe disabilities will suffer, now and in the future, the no less real discrimination of being unable to obtain housing in which they can live their lives independently and with dignity.

In many areas, the shortage of appropriately designed and equipped housing for disabled people now verges on famine. They want the House fully to debate their claims before the Bill becomes law, but to save embarrassment the Secretary of State is trying to gag his critics on both sides of the House. RADAR wants local authorities to buy back properties sold by virtue of amendment No. 133 if and when they are no longer required by their purchasers, and also a duty to replace any properties sold to existing tenants. Both propositions will require the release by the Government of new resources, and it was hoped that the Secretary of State would accept today his responsibility to make adequate funds available if disabled people now waiting for suitable housing accommodation are not to suffer the discrimination that RADAR fears. But what time is there now to debate these propositions with the Minister?

During the 1980s there has been a massive reduction in housebuilding by local authorities, from almost 75,000 dwellings in 1978 to under 15,000 in 1987. Within those figures, the number of units of wheelchair housing fell from 827 in 1978 to 184 in 1987, and those of mobility housing from 7,383 units to 902 over the same 10 years.

Those statistics, about which the Government must now be challenged, are deeply disturbing. Many disabled people regard them as proof of shocking neglect. Their significance should be fully debated by the House. They reflect the extremely low priority given to housing provision for people with disabilities by a Government who now want to dodge debate by means of this disgraceful motion. John Stanford, RADAR's housing policy officer, writing about the Government's departure from the priorities of the 1970s, said: Policies were developed then which placed consideration of disabled people in the mainstream of housing provision. That is certainly not true today, yet the motion, if passed, will save the Minister from having to defend his neglect.

The Department of the Environment estimated in the late 1970s—when I was Minister for the Disabled—that 460,650 mobility dwellings and 61,420 wheelchair dwellings were needed nationally, yet by 1986 the total number of mobility dwellings provided by local authorities and housing associations numbered only a derisory 44,125 and the number of wheelchair dwellings only 8,591. Are those worrying statistics not worthy of detailed debate?