Orders of the Day — Housing (Scotland)

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:45 am on 23 January 1989.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of John McAllion John McAllion , Dundee East 12:45, 23 January 1989

I will accept your ruling, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I was grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Garscadden, (Mr. Dewar), who drew our attention to a dramatic speech made by the Secretary of State for Scotland. That speech was made not during this debate—it has been his wont to take part in only few debates on Scottish business—but in a previous Parliament, and in it he complained about the corrupt system of council housing finance in Scotland, which he believed was corrupt because it benefited Labour voters. That comment shows the true genesis of the poll tax. Far from trying to root out corruption, and get rid of a corrupt system of financing local government, the Secretary of State has introduced another corrupt system of local government that will benefit Tory voters—the poll tax.

The Minister described housing support grant as a deficit subsidy. However, if there is no deficit in the way in which the council meets its housing costs, there can be no housing support for the council. How does one establish whether a deficit exists? The Minister said that one makes reasonable assumptions about the income and expenditure of local councils' housing revenue accounts.

Such a system depends on those who are making the assumption, and whether that assumption is reasonable. The Minister seems to be saying that a Tory Minister who knows little about housing in Dundee can make an assumption about the income of the Dundee district council and its expenditure on its 38,000 council houses and can arrive at the conclusion that there is no deficit on the council's housing revenue account, so it should get no subsidy from central Government funds. I can tell the Minister that Dundee district council's housing revenue account for next year will have to receive an additional £6 million over what it received last year, and the Minister is saying that that money will have to be found directly from increases in rent for council house tenants in Dundee and from no other source.

People who, like me, are owner-occupiers can look forward to central Government subsidies to meet their housing costs in the coming year, but those in the 38,000 council households will get no such subsidy because the Minister says that the revenue must come from rent increases. The people of Dundee are facing rent increases not of £1·34 per week but £3·95 and many tenants will face increases as high as £5·50 a week. The Minister says that that is because the rents have traditionally been too low.

An old couple came to see me last week in my surgery. They have suffered badly under the housing benefit changes introduced by the Government. They are receiving some transitional protection but they have not received any payment for some weeks. They were concerned about the rent increase about to be imposed upon them because they were down to the last £200 of their savings. A few months ago they had £340 but they had to eat into that to pay the rent increase as it stands now. The Minister is telling those people that they will just have to live with it and eat into their savings. After that, I do not know what will happen to them. Perhaps the Minister will explain how that old couple can stop worrying about the rent increases that he is imposing on the people of Dundee and no one else.

If anything is more arcane or difficult to follow than the procedures of the House, it is local government finance. So many phrases have been thrown into the debate—the general fund contribution, the housing revenue account, the housing revenue account block A capital allocation, the housing revenue account block B capital allocation and so on—that it is not difficult to understand why people in Scotland sometimes find it hard to follow the debates about housing and rent that take place here.

My hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell, North (Dr. Reid) said that none of the 30,000 homeless in Scotland would follow the debate closely or be able to question anyone on it. I doubt whether many council tenants in Scotland will follow the debate closely, not only because it involves obscure and detailed language with which they are not familiar, but because the Government deliberately stage it at this early hour in the morning when no members of the press are present. so that it will not appear in the press tomorrow and will not be on the radio or television. No one will know why their rent has increased.

When the people in Dundee try to find out why their rent has increased by £3·35 or £5·50 a week, we all know what they will be told by D C Thomson press in Dundee. It will say that the Labour council increased the rents as will Tory Ministers and the SNP opposition on Dundee district council. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Government and the Minister now sitting on the Front Bench are increasing rents. No matter how obscure the Minister makes that or how much he wraps it in detailed language, that is the truth and we will ensure that the people of Dundee realise that.

That becomes obvious if one looks closely at the housing revenue account for Dundee district council. Compared to last year the council will have to find an additional £6·3 million next year. There are many reasons why it has to find that additional expenditure and most of them are caused by the Government. First, there is inflation. The Chancellor set himself the target of zero inflation but the Morning Star on Saturday said in banner headlines that inflation was 6 per cent. plus and rising. The Morning Star has always taken a keen interest in inflation and counter-inflationary policies. It was rightly drawing attention to the way in which the Government's economic policies are failing and the way in which inflation is imposing increases upon councils—[Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Stockton, South (Mr. Devlin) wishes to intervene, I will gladly give way. I would rather he intervened than continued to shout and mutter from a sedentary position.