To ask the Secretary of Stale for Scotland what plans he has to stimulate housing investment in Edinburgh.

Edinburgh district council's provisional housing capital allocations for 1992–93 total over £53 million. In addition, I understand that Scottish Homes plans to spend over £24 million in Edinburgh in 1992–93.

Is the Minister aware that these changes are trivial compared with the hundreds of millions of pounds of Government support for housing which Edinburgh and other Scottish cities have lost as a result of changes in policy introduced by the Conservative party over the past 12 years? Edinburgh faces a desperate housing crisis. When will the Government face up to that? Surely, as a Member representing Edinburgh, the Minister appreciates that hundreds of families are suffering as a result of the desperate shortage of homes to let there.

The last Labour Government enormously reduced capital allocations for housing. In the accounts sent in by Edinburgh district council—a Labour-controlled body—the £45 million that it would cost to complete the backlog was missed out. We are now sorting that out; we have made an allocation of £12·9 million and we will fully consider Edinburgh's claims when we make the final allocations in early March.