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Housing and Regeneration Bill

The House sometimes gets a bit nauseating in its self-congratulations, but my right hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West and Royton (Mr. Meacher) clinically set out the arguments for the new clause. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) not only for the new clause but for the work that he has done in recent years to maintain this campaign. I cannot understand—many of us cannot—why the Government do not incorporate the new clause into the Bill, because it would precisely implement the Labour party's policy. It would also precisely fulfil the promise that was given by the Prime Minister when he was elected leader of the Labour party last year that we would start to build council housing again. When he made that statement, he was cheered to the rafters by Labour party members from constituencies across the country, who knew, as we did, what a housing crisis we were facing. I think that he gave that promise because he understood those problems. To be frank, it was an admission that the existing policy had failed. That policy was based on a belief that the private sector would provide the bulk of new housing that was required by our communities and on an antipathy to local government providing social housing, which led to a forced transfer of council properties into the housing association sector and, wherever possible, devices being used to prevent council houses from being built again. We need only look at the Government's own statistics to see what that has resulted in. I was elected in 1997, when we ran a campaign attacking the Conservatives for the scandalous fact that we had 40,000 homeless households. The number of homeless went up to 100,000. Last year, the figure dipped down to 80,000, but that is still a scandal. There is a crisis of housing and homelessness in my constituency such as we have not seen since just after the second world war. I have raised this matter in the House before; I find it emotionally difficult to cope with my surgery each week because of the number of people who turn up with their families, including their children, whom I can do nothing to assist because there is not an adequate supply of housing. About three quarters of those homeless families have children. I looked up the recent Government figures, and 112,000 children are now being brought up in homeless households, some 700 of whom are living in bed-and-breakfast accommodation. There are 700 children living in bed and breakfasts 11 years after the election of a Labour Government.