and whether, in view of the Housing Crisis, Le will appoint a Select Committee to report on the best method of removing the present deadlock?

Since the days when the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) created a Housing Crisis by means of his scheme of land taxation, we have gone from bad to worse, and we have failed to learn by experience to anything like the extent that we might have done.

that rents in many areas are rising; that suffering and overcrowding is being caused thereby; and will he call a conference in Edinburgh of Scottish Members of Parliament with representatives of the principal burghs and county councils for the purpose of discussing ways and means to overcome the Housing Crisis?

asked the Secretary of State for Scotland whether he is awarethat, arising out of the increased cost of building materials, certain local authorities have suspended building programmes; that rents in many areas are rising; that suffering and overcrowding is being caused thereby; and will he call a conference in Edinburgh of Scottish Members of Parliament with representatives of the principal burghs and county councils for the purpose of discussing ways and means to overcome the Housing Crisis?

I beg to move, in page 4, line 29, to leave out from "until" to the end of the Clause, and to add:sufficient houses have been supplied to overcome the Housing Crisis.

We do not conceal it from ourselves that we wanted to use the Crisis in Housing in order to enlarge the powers of the public authorities to acquire land.

We have to discover how to reduce the man-hours on the site by transferring them to man-hours in the factory, and by the use of labour-saving equipment on the site; that is to say, we have to find the means of building houses at a tremendous speed to meet the Immediate Housing Crisis.

It has been said that the housing position is a crisis similar to that of the war, but I am doubtful whether those who used the expression realise what the Crisis of Housing means.

Until that time the emergency must be faced as the war has been faced, and everything must be utilised to solve the Crisis of Housing.

Viscountess Davidson asked the Minister of Works if, in view of the Present Housing Crisis, he will consider the employment in the building industry of women who have learnt, during the war, many of the trades, such as carpentering, painting and electrical wiring, which are essential to the building of houses.

asked the Minister of Works if, in view of the Present Housing Crisis, he will consider the employment in the building industry of women who have learnt, during the war, many of the trades, such as carpentering, painting and electrical wiring, which are essential to the building of houses.

For example, there was his statement, made a little later in the same year, that he anticipated that the worst of the Housing Crisis would be over by the end of 1947.

Sir W. Smithers asked the President of the Board of Trade why, in view of the 41 Housing Crisis in Britain, 500 prefabricated houses are to be shipped abroad from the port of Immingham on 14th November.

To turn to another person whom I regard as an expert in local affairs, Sir John Ure Primrose, the Lord Provost of Perth, who speaking on 4th December last year said:There will be a Housing Crisis in Perth and other cities unless something is done quickly to bring down housing costs.

The "Evening News" tonight is perfectly correct when it says, in an article headed "Housing Crisis in London," that if the London County Council is able to build every house it wants to build and can build under its organisation up to 1960, we shall still be 10,000 houses short in respect of families in London, ignoring altogether the 30,667 requisitioned houses.

The Housing Crisis in Capitalist and Colonial Countries.

He, like others, seemed to get inveigled into making comparisons between house production under one Government and another, when we know that that will in no way solve the Housing Crisis in Scotland.

74 In one very telling passage the Committee lists what it describes as "four hypotheses" which have been advanced as the cause of London's Housing Crisis: (a) the deadening effect of rent restriction—we have heard that one; (b) the inefficient use of local authority housing—we have heard that one too; (c) immigration; (d) unused housing standing empty.

The responsibility for the London Housing Crisis and for the miseries caused by the Rent Act in every one of our great conurbations is something which hon. Members opposite cannot wriggle out of now that the Report is published.

Theoretically, this may increase the stock of available housing, but actually it has made the Housing Crisis far worse than it was before.

cut in our housing programme as the rest of the United Kingdom - simply because of the Acute Housing Crisis in Scotland, which has been made worse by this storm.

If, in consort with the local authority, the Minister could give the housing societies more financial help and encourage them to think on a bigger scale, they, in parallel with the local authority, might precipitate an end to the Housing Crisis in Notting Hill.

We have a Housing Crisis, yet this extra cost is still allowed to burden the industry.

We are talking about a Crisis in Housing.

The report talks about the Great Housing Crisis in London and recommends drastic measures to deal with it - measures which have been foreseen by my colleagues at County Hall and to which my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, Central (Mr. Clinton Davis) may make reference.

If the Government are serious about getting to grips with the Housing Crisis they should pour massive aid into housing authorities to enable them to get on with realistic house-building programmes and improvement programmes.

Solving the Housing Crisis is far more important than building more and more motorways, which increase traffic problems and do little to solve them.

But it is one very important way whereby the Government and the House could prove to homeless families that we really are serious about getting to grips with Our Housing Crisis.

We have spoken many times in this House of London's Housing Crisis.

Is the Minister aware that the Housing Crisis is not confined to inner London?

With the statistics of homeless reaching an all-time peak, with 500,000 people, according to the census, living in accommodation without their own bathrooms, hot water and inside lavatory, with 100,000 people lacking even the exclusive use of a stove or sink, with very modest houses built in my constituency at the beginning of the century now changing hands for £12,000 to £13,000, it is obvious that the Housing Crisis lies at the root of many of our problems.

The Housing Crisis is not restricted to the cities.

Whatever Whitehall may argue, there are more people today faced with a Housing Crisis than at any previous time.

If the right hon. Gentleman is not visiting Lambeth, will he acquaint himself with the dimensions of the Housing Crisis there?

My local authority was caught in a situation of an Acute Housing Crisis being suddenly thrust upon it, of worsening housing conditions and people having to stay longer under those conditions than they had expected, with a large comprehensive development already planned, approved and about to start, and with several developments for elderly people being completed in the city centre.

Perhaps for the first time, it is not just the central urban areas that are feeling the effect of the Housing Crisis.

We were discussing some of the problems arising out of the Housing Crisis, caused by a collapse of the house building programme under the Conservatives.

It is necessary for us to accept and acknowledge that there is a grave national Crisis in Housing.

Is there nothing that my right hon. Friend can offer in the short term to cities like Birmingham which are probably facing Their Worst Housing Crisis since the immediate post-war period?

Is the hon. Gentleman saying that the only solution to this terrible Crisis in Housing is to extend council house building and that the private building industry has no part to play?

I believe that we face a deep and worsening Housing Crisis, but not worsening for the reasons which have been given by some Conservative speakers, namely, that we are spending too much money on solving the problem.

The background of this debate is, by common consent, a situation of Crisis in Housing.

I want to see a measure for the public ownership of development land in conjunction with this Bill as a general attack on the Grave Housing Crisis.

This situation will mount up and we shall face an Acute Housing Crisis, if we have not already reached it.

It is about the total lack of success by the Government in dealing with This Housing Crisis that I shall speak.

By securing the release of this land the Government would be seen to be tackling the Housing Crisis and helping the housing problem this year.

The hon. Gentleman will also be aware of the statement, since the NEDC report was drafted, made by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment, showing that the Government are taking the Housing Crisis seriously whereas our predecessors did not.

But, above all, we are moving this motion today because of what we see as his ill-founded complacency and optimism in face of the Current Housing Crisis in this country.

In the 20 years I have been in the House, no Government have ever succeded in solving the Housing Crisis.

unable to look after the child, there are other powers open to the local authority—or whether it is a case of a parent who has done no harm to the child at all but where there is a long period of illness, financial difficulty, a Housing Crisis, or violence in the marriage.

Like most other industrial towns, Luton has an Acute Housing Crisis.

The size of my weekly surgery is a testimony to the town's Housing Crisis.

If we had better control over second home development, and either a voluntary or a compulsory scheme for utilising this stock outside the summer period, we could alleviate much of the Housing Crisis in rural areas.

What is the Government's response to the Welsh Housing Crisis?

We face a Major Housing Crisis, yet, the reaction of the Welsh Office is to reduce public expenditure on housing in real terms.

We face a major Housing Crisis, yet, the reaction of the Welsh Office is to reduce public expenditure on housing in real terms.

There are deepening anxieties about the Housing Crisis, an issue that was so aptly stressed by the hon. Member for Pembroke (Mr. Edwards).

I am determined that measures to deal with the Housing Crisis in Belfast should be given a much higher priority.

I am determined that measures to deal with the Housing Crisis in Belfast should be given a much higher priority than they have in the past.

The hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) - I do not often quote him - said only a week ago that the Housing Crisis was the failure of the Government and of no one else.

The background to today's debate on housing is clear: it is the total failure of the Government's housing policy, it is the exposure of the promises which the Labour Government put before the country in the two elections of 1974, and it is now the Government's apparent bankruptcy of thought about how to cope with the Housing Crisis which that failure has created.

I was glad to have that admission, but the hon. Gentleman should admit also that his Government's expenditure policies mean that we shall never be able to tackle Our Housing Crisis in Wales as we ought to tackle it.

I was glad to have that admission, but the hon. Gentleman should admit also that his Government's expenditure policies mean that we shall never be able to tackle our Housing Crisis in Wales as we ought to tackle it.

Although squatting is not a real or long-term solution to the Housing Crisis, it is a fact that we have to acknowledge although many Opposition Members refuse to acknowledge, that for many thousands of homeless people and homeless families squatting is a short-term necessity.

The Government seem to have no idea of the magnitude of the Housing Crisis in our country.

Mr. Heiferasked the Secretary of State for the Environment if, in view of the figures produced in the Report "Unfair Shares—Liverpool Improvement Resources ", produced by three housing associations from Merseyside and in a report by Shelter "The Housing Crisis Nationwide ", he will take action to provide a bigger share of resources for housing improvement in Liverpool.

Is the Secretary of State aware that in many inner cities, such as that which I represent, there is a Serious Housing Crisis that will not be helped by the complacency of his housing policly?

Because of their stubborn refusal to acknowledge that rent control strangles the supply of homes to rent and increases human misery, we shall never solve Our Housing Crisis unless and until some brave and moderate voices on the Opposition Benches - and there are some - publicly acknowledge that the Labour Party agrees that the ultimate answer lies in a gradual programme of decontrol.

Because of their stubborn refusal to acknowledge that rent control strangles the supply of homes to rent and increases human misery, we shall never solve our Housing Crisis unless and until some brave and moderate voices on the Opposition Benches - and there are some - publicly acknowledge that the Labour Party agrees that the ultimate answer lies in a gradual programme of decontrol.

Against the background of the Crisis in Housing, the Bill is largely irrelevant.

Is the Secretary of State aware that there is an Acute Housing Crisis?

Perhaps the reason why Conservative Members are not as agitated as the hon. Gentleman on this point is the realisation on the Government side that increased council house building year after year has not solved the nation's Housing Crisis.

It may not have solved the Housing Crisis nationally.

Over a period, the Government anticipate that the Housing Crisis will be eliminated.

We still suffer from an Acute Housing Crisis.

The Government claim that we have broken the back of the nation's Housing Crisis - a statement with which I do not agree.

We have a Real Housing Crisis in the South of England and we need to keep all property that is in reasonable structural condition.

Is he aware that every London Member can confirm that there is a worsening Housing Crisis in London, that homelessness is increasing, that waiting lists are increasing and that there is a decline in building?

As the night is still very young, I call the attention of the House to the Impending Housing Crisis in London, which has been caused by the destructive policies carried out by the Tory Greater London Council.

Having outlined the growing Housing Crisis in South Wales, it states: "We therefore urge the Government to reconsider its attitude towards housing and towards a philosophy which cannot and will not work in the current economic situation.

I suggest that the problem is best seen in the context of the overall Housing Crisis in South Wales.

Failure to publish it will merely confirm our worst suspicions—namely, that the right hon. Gentleman is suppressing information about Britain's mounting Housing Crisis.

For our part, we shall not be party to a pretence that the Housing Crisis in this country can be overcome by making tenants survive on one-year tenancies.

If there is a Housing Crisis, it is not a crisis of demand or a crisis of supply.

It is dishonest of the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook to dismiss shorthold tenancies as being not on because they do not solve the Housing Crisis.

The cuts in housing association budgets will exaggerate the region's growing Housing Crisis.

Part of that national misery is being secured by the Secretary of State for the Environment, because he is presiding over what will become the Worst Housing Crisis that many of us will have seen in our lifetime.

Part of that national misery is being secured by the Secretary of State for the Environment, because he is presiding over what will become the worst Housing Crisis that many of us will have seen in our lifetime.

One cannot envy the task of the Minister in having to defend the indefensible, in having to defend a Government who are presiding over an Acute Housing Crisis.

One cannot envy the task of the Minister in having to defend the indefensible, in having to defend a Government who are presiding over an acute Housing Crisis.

This episode will be noted outside the House by many millions of people who regard the Housing Crisis as much more important than the Heseltine crisis.

The right hon. Gentleman's policies are ensuring that Britain's Housing Crisis will endure well into the twenty-first century.

Bearing in mind the right hon. Gentleman's whole appalling record as the Secretary of State responsible for housing, may I ask whether he realises the amount of family misery which is being caused by the policies for which he has been responsible and which have meant the Worst Housing Crisis that this country has faced for many years?

That Crisis in Housing has been compounded by the cuts in housing allocations this week - a cut of 50 per cent.

That is the accepted, factual background to the Housing Crisis in the borough that I represent.

What we are saying, very simply, is that to decrease in this dramatic way the real resources that are available for housing need in Scotland, at a time when the Housing Crisis is deepening and when authorities are struggling to maintain properties and standards, is a criminal misuse of priorities by the present Government.

Britain today faces its gravest peace-time Housing Crisis for more than half a century.

In his article Mr. Lipsey referred to:the bare bones of the Housing Crisis that is inevitable in the mid-Eighties.

We are heading towards the severest Housing Crisis that we have seen for a long time.

From that suppressed report we know how serious is the Housing Crisis in London.

It is a first-class method of relieving the Housing Crisis.

I raise the matter because there is developing a Housing Crisis in the borough.

Both the provisions in my Bill would bring great benefit and help to ease the nation's Housing Crisis.

Does the Minister accept that there is a Housing Crisis, and, if not why not?

Will the hon. Gentleman ignore his doctrinaire disagreement with public sector housing and admit that the only real way to solve the nation's Housing Crisis is to build more homes, whether for rent or for sale?

and future generations of young people on the housing waiting lists as the Housing Crisis develops during the rest of this decade?

Will the Leader of the House provide Government time for a debate on the Housing Crisis facing the nation?

I believe in the revitalisation of public sector housing as the only real means of solving the nation's ever-growing Housing Crisis.

All too often this is not possible because of the Housing Crisis in inner London and we are left with elderly people who are dependent on the services.

They become more pertinent as Our Housing Crisis intensifies.

However, the Bill will clearly make no significant impact on the parts of the Housing Crisis to which the Government have turned a blind eye.

The Bill does nothing to alleviate the Housing Crisis that the Government have created, and we shall oppose it tonight.

Historians will look back on the case made out for the Bill in the Present Housing Crisis as a joke in the worst possible taste.

Therefore, we shall have a Major Housing Crisis in Scotland.

The Government told us that there would then be a boom in the private sector, investment in it and the ending of the Housing Crisis.

Bereft of policies to put this country back to work, to solve the Housing Crisis or to produce peace in this country, it intends - as we have seen this afternoon - to spend the next four weeks smearing the Labour party with the most extravagant untruths that it can think of.

If existing rented accommodation is to continue to be sold off and very little new council accommodation is to be built, we seem to be heading for a formidable Housing Crisis.

However, I find that the case is to the contrary and the Bill deals with a whole series of relatively minor and peripheral issues, and is largely irrelevant when it comes to facing up to the Housing Crisis that we have to endure.

This Bill is introduced against the background of a Major Housing Crisis.

It falls to me to say from the Liberal Benches, as it did to the Liberal spokesman when the Bill was introduced in its original form in the last Parliament, that the Bill does nothing to deal with the Housing Crisis in Britain in 1983.

There will be a Housing Crisis of 1945 proportions.

The hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) mentioned the Crisis in Housing.

It is the monetarist policies pursued by the Government, the cuts in the housing investment programme and the way in which they have pulled the rug from under the feet of private sector constructors which are responsible for the Housing Crisis.

The Bill completely fails to measure up to the magnitude of the Housing Crisis in Scotland.

As the nation's Housing Crisis intensifies, with fewer public sector houses for rent being constructed, and waiting lists and homelessness increasing, the Bill becomes essential.

I have already been approached by a couple of moderate-sized landlords in my constituency - and I am currently in correspondence with the Chancellor on the issue-who have always been against letting their property by the week during the summer because, they say, they can see the agony of the Housing Crisis that that creates.

We have a major Crisis in Housing at the moment with 1·5 million people on the waiting lists and thousands homeless.

The scheme will continue the Housing Crisis and the lack of confidence in housing circles and will do very little for Scottish tenants.

It is almost offensive to hear the hon. Member for Hamilton complain that it is our fault that those people cannot find housing and that housing conditions in Scotland are so poor when the Housing Crisis about which we hear so much is the creation of Socialism.

Things are bad enough, but there is a need to avert the Major Housing Crisis that is round the corner.

There is a Housing Crisis which, on the basis of present policies, can only get worse.

There is cause for concern about the way in which, as a result of the Housing Crisis, some landlords are making unscrupulous profits out of bed and breakfast accommodation.

My hon. Friend the Member for Norwood was right when he said that there was a Housing Crisis around the corner.

Six months ago the local authority in my area declared that the London borough of Brent was an Acute Housing Crisis area, as soon as the waiting list went above 15,000.

There is something odd about the Housing Crisis of which we have heard in the debate.

The next lesson to be learnt is that we cannot run the construction industry on the basis of responding to a Housing Crisis at one moment and then shutting it down in response to monetary policy at another time.

There is a danger that Scotland will go into a Housing Crisis.

, and they would not have restricted the involvement of local authorities when the opportunity exists to tackle what is a Major Housing Crisis in many local authorities.

The Bill meets the needs of the Present Housing Crisis.

The background to the Bill and the need for it is a growing Housing Crisis.

There is a Major Housing Crisis in Wandsworth which some of the associations' schemes might do something to alleviate.

In its election manifesto for the last general election campaign, the Labour party made it clear thatBritain faces a Major Housing Crisis.

Those figures - I realise that sometimes figures are not absorbed- demonstrate a massive and growing Housing Crisis.

We are staggering to a Terrible Housing Crisis.

Will the Secretary of State now assure the House that the Housing Crisis will not be worsened by yet again forcing housing to bear the main burden of the current proposed cuts?

I fear that we are rapidly approaching a time when the housing stock will deteriorate rather than be improved, and there will be a Housing Crisis in a few years' time.

Does he recall that under our statutory obligations we are paying £30,000 a week for the homeless, and that we have a Crisis in Housing with 15,000 people on the waiting list?

There is no doubt that there is a Housing Crisis.

The debate centres on the deepening Housing Crisis that confronts the country.

We had a debate last evening about public expenditure on housing, and the Minister for Housing and Construction is well aware of the considerable anxiety about the Housing Crisis.

That debate related solely to the Housing Crisis, the wholly inadequate investment programme of the Government and the wholly inadequate priority which they give to housing and to improving the disastrous record that I have tried to highlight.

For example, there is the Housing Crisis.

There is a Real Housing Crisis.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Copeland has said, the Secretary of State for the Environment failed to make any mention of the Housing Crisis which is developing apace.

If all the best houses have been sold off after nine to 10 years of council house sales, and if the Housing Crisis has worsened and waiting lists have lengthened, we shall be in a completely new ball game.

Does the Minister not agree that the figures are a wholly inadequate response to the Housing Crisis facing the country?

It takes place against a background of an Impending Housing Crisis, which, if it is not countered soon, could result in the triumphant return of the bulldozer to many of our cities.

It takes place against a background of an impending Housing Crisis, which, if it is not countered soon, could result in the triumphant return of the bulldozer to many of our cities.

I see a need for the Government to respond with more resources and possibly the establishment of a Royal Commission inquiry to examine the extent and the gravity of Our Housing Crisis.

In the light of his statement how does he propose that the first city outside the capital should deal with urban decay and a genuine Crisis in Housing?

Is not the Worst Housing Crisis in those areas, with largely Labour-controlled authorities, where housing resources have been violently mismanaged?

Thus we say that the Government have failed to tackle the Housing Crisis effectively.

Burnley and many other towns are heading in the near future for a Housing Crisis in the public and private sectors, but that is a subject for another debate.

Does my hon. Friend accept that there are indirect as well as direct revenue implications from HIPs in boroughs such as his and mine upon all the current services of the borough and Lancashire county council from not solving the mounting Housing Crisis due to the additional burdens that will be placed on the social services?

If the hon. Gentleman wishes to help to solve the Housing Crisis in Liverpool, he should persuade the city council to end its policy of buying co-operatives and instead to encourage co-operative housing development, which is what many of the people of Liverpool want.

The nation's Housing Crisis will be resolved only if greater use is made of our existing housing stock and if more local authorities take the trouble to examine the tenants' charter enshrined in the Housing Act 1980.

A top level inquiry headed by a member of the royal family, the report of which was published in January, says that Britain faces a Serious Housing Crisis, with the poor suffering most of all.

A top level inquiry headed by a member of the royal family, the report of which was published in January, says that Britain faces a serious Housing Crisis, with the poor suffering most of all.

Coupled with that is the need to tackle the very Serious Housing Crisis.

My second issue is domestic - the growing Housing Crisis.

All informed opinion believes that the Government are contributing further to the Housing Crisis and, because of the vulnerable age group on which they are picking, they could rapidly create major social tensions as well.

This debate takes place against the background of an Acute Housing Crisis.

This debate takes place against the background of an acute Housing Crisis.

A debate on these matters is urgently needed as the Housing Crisis is getting worse throughout the country.

The Audit Commission was set up by the Government, but only a few days ago it said that to tackle seriously the scope and size of Our Housing Crisis no less than £50,000 million was required.

I thought that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Mr. King) was starting to tease me a little, but he made a valuable contribution about the massive scale of the Housing Crisis in Birmingham.

I regard my constituency as a deprived area in housing terms and hon. Members who represent deprived parts of the country welcome all initiatives to help overcome the Housing Crisis which has resulted from the Government's crazy economic policy.

May I take this opportunity to remind the hon. Gentleman of the Terrible Housing Crisis that is developing in Wales?

The Government will be building up a major slum problem for the next decade if they do not act now - indeed, take long-term action - to deal with the Housing Crisis in the public and private sectors.

Does the Welsh Office realise that that accummulated deficit, year on year, is building up an increasing Housing Crisis?

There will be a debate on an Opposition motion entitled "The Housing Crisis and Urban Deprivation".

The Housing Crisis has become more acute, particularly in the inner-city areas, because people have nowhere to go to work.

Many different reports on housing have been mentioned during the debate, but I would not have thought that any Member who represents an inner urban area, or who has one within his or her constituency, would need a report from any quarter to make him aware that there is a Housing Crisis.

I do not imagine that Coventry is facing a Housing Crisis on its own.

May I remind the House that this debate is about the Housing Crisis and urban deprivation.

There is a Housing Crisis in Bradford, yet £250,000 of urban aid has been directed recently to renovating 30 bedrooms in a luxury hotel in Bradford.

I know that the Government's philosophy is that problems are not solved by throwing money at them, but I should like the Minister to explain how one solves London's Housing Crisis by a 72 per cent.

There is a growing Housing Crisis in Waltham Forest and a severe problem of homelessness.

The debate covered the increasing poverty and deprivation in our inner-city areas and the Government's failure to deal with the serious pproblem of widespread disrepair in urban areas, the need to regenerate Britain's cities and the need to reverse the deliberate reduction of rate support grant and investment in housing which is leading to a Major Housing Crisis and more homelessness among the more unfortunate members of our society.

In other words, the council and the Government by cutting the housing budget for building, renovation and repairs are creating a Housing Crisis in our inner cities which makes the underlying problems far worse for people at every level.

The Housing Crisis is all around us.

When the Labour party comes to power - perhaps in the next 18 months or two years - it will face a Housing Crisis of 1945 proportions, with massively growing waiting lists, increasing homelessness and a deterioration of the housing stock.

We face a formidable Housing Crisis.

In those days it was said that there was a Housing Crisis.

The Chief Housing Officers Association suggested that billions of pounds in cash over 15 years is required in south Wales to avert a Major Housing Crisis.

In 1984 that report concluded that a Housing Crisis lay ahead unless urgent action was taken to allocate resources for house building and renovation.

Will the hon. Gentleman reconsider the grant given to the Housing Corporation, and encourage the view that, if there is a Crisis in Housing in the capital city, he will seek to make additional funds available to the Housing Corporation?

On the day that the House adjourned for Christmas, I raised the problem of the Housing Crisis in my constituency of Leyton and Leytonstone.

The housing problem which was evident when I became a Member in 1979 is now a Housing Crisis.

It would put building workers back into jobs and tackle the Housing Crisis that is building up.

Most of us do not find the Housing Crisis and the conditions in which many of our constituents live a laughing matter.

We welcome any money that will ensure that Scottish local authorities do not get into problems with housing finance, but the Secretary of State should not run away with the idea that the order will benefit, or do anything to stop, the Major Housing Crisis that Scotland faces now.

Many houses could have been repaired with those exorbitant, wasted funds, yet the council deliberately chose to keep 12,000 houses throughout the county unoccupied so that it could claim there was a Housing Crisis in the city of Leicester.

There is no doubt about the extent of the Housing Crisis.

The main feature about the Housing Crisis is that there is no division between the tenant and the owner-occupier.

However, that is no justification for not building new council houses and modernising older council houses and making money available to deal with the Housing Crisis that faces this country.

A Housing Crisis is rapidly dawning in the constituency that I represent.

The Labour party has spelt it out many times, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sparkbrook said it today and we repeat with all the force at our command that there is a need for spending on schools, roads, hospitals and railways, to say nothing of the Crisis in Housing.

The backlog of repairs and the blame for the Current Housing Crisis that the Select Committee highlights lies firmly with the Government.

The backlog of repairs and the blame for the current Housing Crisis that the Select Committee highlights lies firmly with the Government.

Everyone knows that there is a Crisis in Housing.

Against that appalling record, that lack of policy, there is a growing Housing Crisis and no evidence that the Government are prepared to do anything about it.

We believe that the Housing Crisis in this country demands more than a single-issue debate which takes place in 90 minutes.

There is nothing whatever in the Gracious Speech to show that the Government have realised the nature and extent of the Housing Crisis in our country, and how that crisis could be resolved.

The same sort of people are now trying to to suggest that there is not really a Housing Crisis, and that young women are becoming pregnant in order to jump the waiting list.

Despite its so-called Housing Crisis, it refused money for the Eldonian housing association that would have built 143 houses, in spite of complaints from the local community.

Regrettably, Newham, like other boroughs, has rent arrears, but it would be absurd to attempt to blame the Housing Crisis on that fact.

Is it not the case that housing allocations return the total only to 1984–85 levels and that Ministers are involved in an electoral ruse because Wales has a Housing Crisis for which the Government have no strategic answer whatever?

Twenty years ago, to within a couple of weeks, the television play "Cathy Come Home" brought home to the British public the seriousness of the problem of homelessness and the fact that there was a Major Housing Crisis.

So those things must be linked to the Housing Crisis in places like Liverpool.

I take the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Broadgreen, who, in his graphic description of Liverpool, related the Housing Crisis much more broadly.

We have a Major Housing Crisis which the Government have done nothing to solve.

We have a major Housing Crisis which the Government have done nothing to solve.

The hon. Member for Brigg and Cleethorpes was right in one respect - there is an Acute Housing Crisis, but deregulating the privately rented sector would make it far worse.

Thus it is increasingly difficult for the council to deal with the Housing Crisis.

No one is advocating - I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is not advocating - that that particular power in the Act be used in present circumstances, given the nature of the Housing Crisis.

They preside over the worst escalation in a Housing Crisis that I, and I believe most hon. Members, have seen.

There will be a debate on an Opposition motion entitled "The Housing Crisis and the Rise in Homelessness".

After seven years of Conservative policies it is widely recognised that a Housing Crisis exists and that there is an alarming increase in homelessness.

I share my hon. Friend's disappointment at the lack of interest in what is by any test a national Crisis in Housing.

Greenwich is an inner London borough with a mix of outer London borough housing problems which is quite typical of the Housing Crisis in London.

The Government's record is appalling, and the sooner they are swept away by a Government who will do something about Britain's Housing Crisis, the better.

The debate reflects the Acute Housing Crisis and the growing homelessness.

The debate reflects the acute Housing Crisis and the growing homelessness.

For the benefit of those hon. Members who were not present when the Secretary of State talked about the Housing Crisis and the rise in homelessness, I can tell them that he told us about Dick Whittington and shirt buying in Moscow.

Scotland faces a Major Housing Crisis and the tenants in council houses are facing major problems.

The Housing Crisis that Britain faces is the worst that we have experienced in the past 50 years, perhaps even in the past 70 years.

That seems a small price for resolving a Housing Crisis.

I heard the right hon. Gentleman say nothing today about how the Government will tackle the growing Housing Crisis.

My hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside gave the facts and figures about the Housing Crisis.

I cannot accept that there is a Housing Crisis in Leicester.

It has signed deals to acquire 600 new homes to meet the Housing Crisis; employed extra home helps and under-fives staff; restored free milk to 10,000 first school pupils; taken on much-needed local housing repair teams; recruited 150 extra teachers; begun a £12·1 million programme of road and pavement renewal, including dropped kerbs and new cycle routes; restored grants to voluntary play groups; spent £500,000 on emergency care, responding in particular tothe needs of the elderly during the recent cold spell; given schools 11 per cent.

I much regret that the Prime Minister recently refused my request to meet a broadly based deputation, which consisted of the city council, the chamber of commerce, the trades council, the university and the ethnic minorityorganisations, to discuss the full range of the city's problems, including Our Housing Crisis.

These stark and simple facts spell out the gravity of Bradford's Housing Crisis.

The answers to the Housing Crisis are to build and modernise more houses at rents and prices that people can afford, but the Government have done the opposite.

Does the right hon. Gentleman support the expenditure decisions of the now Labour-controlled Ealing council, which he was denigrating a few moments ago - the reintroduction of places for rising-fives in primary schools, the deals to acquire 600 new homes in the face of the Housing Crisis and the employment of extra home helps and extra staff to deal with the under-fives?

The country is facing a mounting Crisis in Housing in parts of our major cities, in education and training and.

Measures should have been taken this year to tackle the Housing Crisis and to control standards in bed-and-breakfast and other multi-occupied establishments.

The Government try to give the impression of taking action on housing, but they are deafeningly silent on the critical problems of homelessness, overcrowding, lack of investment, decay in the housing stock and the worsening Housing Crisis over which they are presiding.

It will help long leaseholders, but it does not allow the Minister to escape the fact that there is a Major Housing Crisis in London affecting people in other forms of tenure.

The remedy for the Housing Crisis will come when we again begin to build public sector housing.

We shall enable areas such as Merseyside to benefit from private and public expenditure - the latter on hospitals, schools, social services, increasing the number of people in the caring professions and building council houses to solve the Housing Crisis in Bootle and Merseyside and to nut construction workers back to work.

Coventry's Housing Crisis could be half-axed in the lifetime of a Parliament.

At the end of the day, the Housing Crisis in this country is a crisis inflicted by this Government which affects the way of life and the quality of life of the people of Britain.

I find, for instance, that the Halifax building society, one of the largest housing finance organisations in the world, is anxious to help alleviate the Housing Crisis in this country, to put money into local authorities and to seek to find a way of partnership and management that helps to do that.

Because of the acute Crisis in Housing, their problem will not be resolved in the near future.

It is conceded by Labour politicians and our political opponents that at present Manchester has a Housing Crisis.

Despite all the ministerial denials, there is an Acute Housing Crisis in many parts of the country, as my hon. Friends have pointed out in this short debate.

Despite all the ministerial denials, there is an acute Housing Crisis in many parts of the country, as my hon. Friends have pointed out in this short debate.

The only way to resolve Their Housing Crisis is for them to be housed by the local authority or a genuine housing association.

If it was conciliatory legislation or legislation that was going to lead to the building of more houses to deal with the Housing Crisis I dare say that there would be a measure of support on both sides of the House.

The Housing Crisis in Wales is almost as catastrophic as unemployment.

There is a deepening Housing Crisis, with some 47,000 unfit dwellings and the fastest increase in homelessness in London.

They do not seem to realise that the Housing Crisis cannot be solved by selling the houses.

The only way to solve or even to begin to solve this very Real Housing Crisis is to build and to improve and repair more houses.

Is there any surprise that there should be a Housing Crisis in our inner cities today, and can there be any reasonable doubt about why the number of homeless people has doubled in the past eight years?

We want a boost for the Welsh Development Agency and an urgent review of and fight against the Great Housing Crisis that we now face.

We favour the sale of council houses to their occupants, but if insufficient houses to rent are being built there will be a Housing Crisis and long waiting lists.

Mr. Wray asked the Secretary of State for the Environment if, in tackling the Housing Crisis in Britain, he will make it his policy to consult fully and regularly with local authorities.

However, in spite of the Housing Crisis in South Africa, those houses cannot be used because they happen to be in white only areas.

The result is a Housing Crisis more serious than any to be found elsewhere in England and in any period since the 1940s.

He said that the Housing Crisis in his constituency is more serious than anywhere in Europe.

Will the Secretary of State address his mind to the effect of Government spending cuts on the Housing Crisis in London?

The consequence of the Government's policy since 1979 is the creation of a desperately serious and growing Housing Crisis throughout the United Kingdom.

It is also caused by the Housing Crisis.

On Friday, hopefully, a number of hon. Members will present petitions to the House and I hope to have some petitioners from my constituency who believe that the Housing Crisis can be resolved by joining the campaign for homes and jobs.

There is an Acute Housing Crisis in this country.

This is an odd person to be Secretary of State at a time of Acute Housing Crisis.

The Bill fails to recognise Britain's Housing Crisis or to accept people's housing needs.

That was a true analysis of Our Current Housing Crisis.

That is the Housing Crisis that the nation faces, which the Bill does not address in any way.

There are thousands, millions, who need homes, and the way to deal with the Housing Crisis is to build more homes.

The Secretary of State is a newcomer to Wales, and I say especially to him that we are suffering from mass unemployment, let alone a Housing Crisis, which he, it seems, is beginning to recognise.

The Housing Crisis in many of our constituencies is reaching catastrophic proportions.

The Housing Crisis in Britain is now reaching epidemic proportions and the Government's dereliction of duty in seeking to block the use of funds that are readily available to cope with the problem is a moral and practical scandal.

When, in addition, people are looking for two homes, a Housing Crisis is created for people in rural areas who are seeking to buy or rent for the first time.

Is that not an abdication of responsibility, given the scale of the Housing Crisis in Scotland?

I remind the House that in 1985 the Duke of Edinburgh made a report about the severe Crisis in Housing.

Bradford is facing a Housing Crisis.

There is undoubtedly a Crisis in Housing in Scotland and I shall give the House some statistics to consider.

Far from beginning to tackle the Acute Housing Crisis affecting Scotland today, they can serve only to make that crisis much worse.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, East (Mr. McAllion) and to all my hon. Friends who have spoken in the debate for bringing to it an air of reality, because there is a Housing Crisis in Scotland, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, East has said.

Am I correct in thinking, then, that the right hon. and learned Gentleman will be aware of the views of Scotland on the Housing Crisis in Scotland today?

Their record on the building of new houses is the worst for 40 years, and a Massive Housing Crisis is developing in Wales.

Unless extra resources are spent on maintaining the housing stock in the borough it will decay further and the Housing Crisis will continue to worsen.

Is it any wonder that this has induced a horrendous Housing Crisis in the borough?

The Government's failure or refusal to tackle or recognise the Housing Crisis that is afflicting people in Scotland is nothing less than a national scandal.

The Minister and his buddies on the Front Bench are always praising the private landlord, who they say will come to the rescue and help to solve Scotland's Housing Crisis.

They may not want to recognise it, but there is a mounting Housing Crisis in Scotland.

Such a commitment is essential if we are to get to grips with the Current Housing Crisis that besets the Scottish people.

If that happened, it would be an unfortunate step to take at a time when the Housing Crisis is so severe.

Will he consider once again the need for a special debate on London which can encompass the many problems faced by health authorities as a result of staff shortages - because of low pay, lack of accommodation and amalgamation of health authorities - the increasing planning and traffic problems of London - caused by the lack of support for public transport - and increasing underfunding of many voluntary and social agencies which are trying to deal with the Housing Crisis that thousands of Londoners face?

There will be a debate on an Opposition motion entitled "The Crisis in Housing".

In view of the Housing Crisis, those who appear to take that approach and who represent other Opposition parties do a disservice to the people.

It will do nothing to solve Our Housing Crisis, but it will do everything to create splendid new tax shelter opportunities.

The desperate Crisis in Housing in this country relates to the planning problem.

Given the Present Housing Crisis, will the Minister allow local authorities to spend at least some of the moneys accrued from the sale of council houses on making improvements, to meet the basic needs of existing council tenants?

Until seven o'clock there will be a debate on an Opposition motion entitled "The Crisis in Housing".

Will the Leader of the House consider that it is now important that there be an early debate on the situation facing the people of London in respect of the Housing Crisis and the shortage of housing for rent, the high unemployment that many inner-city places face, the cuts in the Health Service and the amalgamation of health authorities, and the growing chaos in traffic and transport throughout London?

I can, however, name one person from the Indian sub-continent who has made a contribution to solving the Housing Crisis, Mother Teresa.

We have seen the Housing Crisis growing at an alarming pace.

Is that the answer to the Housing Crisis?

When a group of tenants on an estate near the City of London or an area of Housing Crisis are hoodwinked into allowing tenancies to be transferred, will that not be a setback in the long run, because it will take housing from the working-class people for whom it was built in the first place?

I suspect that the Secretary of State does not know it, and that the Minister, who is a nice chap who tries to build up his role as the acceptable face of the Department of the Environment, will not escape criticism, because there is a Housing Crisis.

That cut lies at the heart of the Government's failure to tackle the Housing Crisis.

There is profit in the private rented sector and in the free market only if there is a Housing Crisis, a housing shortage and waiting lists.

it is a nightmare world of the Government's creation which they are imposing on the Current Housing Crisis and which will make it even worse.

It is fundamentally unfair in the midst of the Current Housing Crisis to expect such people to behave as they might in a completely free market.

As the Housing Crisis worsens, and as more people sleep out or are forced into bed-and-breakfast accommodation, so the Government will be forced to address the problem.

As a result, the Housing Crisis will continue to get out of control.

On numerous occasions the Minister has gone out of his way to praise the response of that community to the Housing Crisis.

If anyone doubts that that process can happen, I advise him to visit council house blocks in Wandsworth, which were built by the London county council before the war In a determined effort to solve London's Housing Crisis.

That has happened because of the Housing Crisis and because of short-term measures taken to place families in houses of multiple occupation.

They occur because families are in dreadful housing as a result of the Housing Crisis and the inability to provide homeless people with adequate, safe and secure homes to rent either on a long-term or short-term basis.

The hon. Gentleman's constituency is not the kind of place that one imagines as the epitome of the Housing Crisis in Britain.

Let them try living in a cardboard box for a while and then tell me that there is not a Housing Crisis.

He blamed local authorities for the Housing Crisis that has been created by the Government's policies.

There is no freedom in a Housing Crisis of scarcity and price.

It is at best irrelevant to the Housing Crisis, and, at worst, will make it dramatically worse.

Given that councils such as Glasgow are already spending a vast amount of their income on repaying debt, why do the Government insist that they spend more money on repaying debt rather than dealing with the Housing Crisis in Scotland?

Yet again, we have had to drag information out of a reluctant Government who are increasingly embarrassed by Their Housing Crisis.

The Housing Crisis did not happen by accident.

My first example concerns an excellent project to alleviate the Housing Crisis in Tower Hamlets.

The Housing Crisis requires attention, both to the overall financial system under which housing is supported and to what is happening to public sector and other kinds of rented housing.

Because of the Present Housing Crisis there is a sellers' market in Scotland.

In Glasgow's Housing Crisis she is at the tail end of a long waiting list.

When will the Government do something serious about the approaching Housing Crisis in that region?

That reassurance will fall on deaf ears in terms of those at the cutting edge of the Housing Crisis and the current spate of speculation in housing.

Those who operate in the private sector will make substantial profits as they increase rent levels and see their property investments increase in value during a Housing Crisis.

As a former farm manager who had some responsibility for farm workers' housing including tied cottages, I believe that there is a Housing Crisis in the countryside.

It is nothing to do with the Housing Crisis; it is all about the Conservative party's ideology.

I want to point out to the Leader of the House that there is a Housing Crisis in London and the country.

When may we expect a debate on the Housing Crisis?

Will my hon. Friend consider the speed at which we can sell land and property which is empty, particularly in the south-east, and certainly in my constituency, because there is a Housing Crisis in that area and the MOD seems to be hanging on to rather a lot of land and property that could be better used in the private sector?

Does he realise that his Department, by failing to have an integrated policy, is contributing to the Housing Crisis?

Will the Minister confirm that if the money was given to the city council - it is its rightful property - it would considerably ease the Housing Crisis in Leicester?

How can we ignore, particularly at this time of year, the Housing Crisis in this country?

That new body will require substantial support if it is to tackle the Major Housing Crisis in Wales.

One does not need to have the gift of second sight to understand the true nature of the Present Housing Crisis in London and elsewhere.

One does not need to have the gift of second sight to understand the true nature of the present Housing Crisis in London and elsewhere.

The order will do nothing to help the Housing Crisis in Scotland.

We are creating a Massive Housing Crisis.

The order goes nowhere near to tackling the housing problem in Scotland, and the Government continue to turn a blind eye to the Housing Crisis by understating the need for expenditure and overstating the level of income likely to be achieved.

The Government's callous indifference to Scotland's Housing Crisis is in the order for all to see.

The Government make out a good case for tackling the Housing Crisis in Scotland.

In a statement about the Whitfield estate, the Government agreed that the way to tackle the Housing Crisis in peripheral estates is to increase expenditure on them and housing services.

We need a Minister who is prepared to ensure that the Housing Crisis in Scotland is solved.

short of what the authorities require to tackle Scotland's Housing Crisis.

They force up rents, cut services and create a Housing Crisis, and then say, "There is a crisis and we had better do something about it".

Until about seven o'clock there will be a debate entitled "The Housing Crisis".

I cannot deal with all the issues because many other hon. Members still wish to speak, but let me say finally that Britain faces an Acute Housing Crisis.

I cannot deal with all the issues because many other hon. Members still wish to speak, but let me say finally that Britain faces an acute Housing Crisis.

We should have a guarantee of major increases in funds to tackle the Housing Crisis.

The point that we are making strongly, and with increasing support from across the political spectrum, is that there is a growing Housing Crisis.

Other people know that the Housing Crisis has been caused by the present Government.

I do not have time to quote all the facts and figures, but the Housing Crisis still exists.

They speak of a Housing Crisis which is really a crisis of their own.

When the Secretary of State meets the chairman of Housing for Wales, will he tell him of the Housing Crisis in rural Wales?

I hope that the Minister will address the Housing Crisis in Newham seriously.

The Housing Crisis is a scandal and disgrace.

That is why the Housing Crisis in this country is no longer just an inner-city crisis or a crisis in the rented sector, but one that goes to urban and rural areas and hits people who are buying as well as people who are renting.

If the Housing Act 1988 from which these regulations flow had done anything to address the Housing Crisis, I would have been most encouraged.

Until we get rid of this stinking, rotten Government who could not care a monkey's toss, the Housing Crisis will just get worse and worse.

The Minister should instead be concerned about and ashamed of the Acute Housing Crisis in Britain, about the number of families living in bed-and-breakfast accommodation and about the fact that only five minutes away from here many poeople, not all of whom are beggars - many are young people who have come from the north - will have to sleep in the open air by the embankment tonight.

Surprise, surprise, I found that she discussed the Crisis in Housing, homelessness and the problem of eviction, a major issue at the time, and the unbalanced economy.

In any case, there is a Serious Housing Crisis in my area.

Housing advice centres exist purely and simply because of the Housing Crisis in certain areas, which is a crisis in people's lives.

I and everyone in the housing movement know that no absolute definition can satisfy everyone, but we also know beyond reasonable doubt that rents are becoming increasingly unaffordable for many people, which is why so many have been driven to desperation or homelessness, and why the Housing Crisis is growing so rapidly.

I and my right hon. and hon. Friends have argued for a long time that Britain's Housing Crisis derives largely from the Government's having driven up rent levels at the same time as house prices inflation has pushed up house prices.

The Bill is called a housing Bill, but it does nothing for the Housing Crisis that has developed in the past 10 years.

In return for tax cuts to the rich, we have poorer services to our local communities, a demoralised education service, a Housing Crisis and social services stretched to breaking point.

Could he also oblige us by not presenting that report to the House next Tuesday, in an exercise of news management intended to keep the debate on the Housing Crisis out of the first items in the television news broadcasts?

There are now hundreds of thousands of homeless in London and they will be pointing their fingers at the Government and blaming them for the Housing Crisis that now afflicts London and the nation.

Such is the extent of the Housing Crisis that the Government cannot bring themselves to face either the purchase sector problem or the rented sector problem.

I have never before heard such an incredibly blind view of the Housing Crisis, not least the crisis over rents.

The Major Housing Crisis that we face is due to a lack of affordable accommodation either for rent or for sale in both urban and rural areas, but we do not have a Minister for Housing to deal with it.

That is why increasing numbers of the public, myself included, give money without asking questions because the Housing Crisis is so desperate.

I end where I began, by saying that we are facing a Housing Crisis in this country the like of which we have not faced since the end of the second world war.

The tragedy of this Bill is that the Government had an opportunity to examine all the problems that contribute to the Housing Crisis, but they have refused, or were too stubborn or too stupid, to deal with the problems.

We are confronted by an Acute Housing Crisis, as my right hon. and hon. Friends have said.

We do not have a Housing Crisis.

Sometimes one can say that Opposition Members stir things up a bit and blame the Government for bad weather or whatever - and that mightbe considered a little unreasonable - but on this occasion one can point the finger with unerring accuracy and say that the responsibility for the Housing Crisis in this country lies with the Government's policies.

The Minister should remember that we have not invented the Housing Crisis in London.

My hon. Friend is dealing with what the Minister described as only minor amendments, but which my hon. Friend is showing are a factor in the Housing Crisis.

We were dealing with the Housing Crisis and the plight of people who cannot afford a mortgage and so are denied adequate accommodation because over the past 10 years, local authorities in the main have not been able to build.

That does not do justice to the Terrible Housing Crisis, nor does it do credit to the way that we conduct our business or to the way in which legislation reaches the statute book.

In the debates over the past few years, including our debates yesterday, my hon. Friends and I have been drawing attention to the growing Housing Crisis.

There is a Housing Crisis in Scotland.

It is precisely because of that failure that I have been able to point out consistently over the past few years that our Housing Crisis is no longer primarily an urban or inner-city crisis, but a national crisis which is hitting the rural areas.

I wish that she had first directed her attention to the Housing Crisis that she has created here.

Under the present financial arrangements we cannot cope with Our Housing Crisis.

A Housing Crisis is developing in some areas, including mine.

Given the available resources, surely we can overcome Our Housing Crisis.

I beg to move,That this House condemns the Government's responsibility for the growing Housing Crisis; deplores the rise in mortgage interest rates which has destroyed family budgets, cost some their homes and placed home ownership beyond the reach of others; warns that Government-inspired increases in council rents above the rate of inflation will cause hardship to many low-income people; deplores the Government's failure to maintain the condition of the housing stock and the consequent shortage of affordable housing; and believes that the scandal of growing homelessness is just the most visible sign of a wider housing failure.

A Housing Crisis is building in Britain.

They have begun to wonder whether the Government have any answers to the Housing Crisis.

Personal anecdotes are no way to solve London's Massive Housing Crisis.

Members are justifiably angry, and people right across the board are angry about the growing Housing Crisis in Britain.

I can certainly confirm what local authorities and Shelter have said about the Housing Crisis which people in Scotland are experiencing.

Is the Minister really aware of the Housing Crisis in rural Wales?

the loss of homes will exacerbate the Housing Crisis, and disrupt community ties; 2.

The Chancellor, in his Budget, seems to have forgotten that this country faces a Housing Crisis.

The massive growth in poverty over which the Government have presided, the Housing Crisis, the huge build-up of personal debt and he cuts in benefit and in the NHS have inevitably led to a growth in the budget of a caring local authority.

I understand that this is the first time that the House has debated homelessness in Leicestershire, but because of my constituency interest I have decided to concentrate on the city of Leicester and the Crisis of Housing in it.

The Crisis in Housing is particularly reflected in a marked increase in homelessness.

Does he also accept that the Housing Crisis in Wales is severe, with 70,000 people on housing waiting lists?

Both are equally committed to deal with the acute and growing Housing Crisis which is easily the worst since the second world war.

Why are Lady Anson and the Conservative-controlled Association of District Councils, as well as nearly every Conservative-controlled local authority in rural areas, saying that the schemes that the Minister has introduced do not begin to touch the problem and that a major change of Government policy is required if the Housing Crisis that is the result of a lack of affordable accommodation for rent or sale in rural areas is to be reversed?

If the Minister genuinely believes that local authorities are dealing with the problem of the 28,000 homeless people in Scotland, what is his answer to the leaders of the housing committees of Scotland's four largest housing authorities who yesterday claimed that there was a Major Housing Crisis because the Government had cut £51 million in real terms of capital allocations?

If the Minister genuinely believes that local authorities are dealing with the problem of the 28,000 homeless people in Scotland, what is his answer to the leaders of the housing committees of Scotland's four largest housing authorities who yesterday claimed that there was a major Housing Crisis because the Government had cut £51 million in real terms of capital allocations?

Nevertheless, the extent and nature of the Housing Crisis in the midlands is such that, were we talking about London, it would merit headline space.

As the Housing Crisis deepens and homelessness is rampant, the Government's advice appears to be to stay put, as the pavements of London and other large cities are not paved with gold.

I beg to move,That this House condemns the Government's incompetence and indifference in the face of the mounting Housing Crisis which is evident from growing homelessness, soaring mortgage costs and rents and the lack of affordable accommodation in urban and rural areas of Britain; and notes the failure of the Government's chosen instruments, as evidenced by the financial crisis of the Housing Corporation which is undermining Housing Associations, and the failure of the Housing Act 1988 to achieve its targets on Housing Action Trusts, Tenants' Choice and Assured Tenancies.

The all-too-predictable and depressing aspect of the Housing Crisis is that it hits those who are most vulnerable.

There were several crucial issues regarding the Housing Crisis on which he did not see fit to touch.

The Housing Crisis in Britain will get worse as high mortgage rates and ever-increasing rents push people into arrears.

At a time when the nation has a Housing Crisis it is utterly ridiculous to sit on millions of pounds that could be put to good use.

We have a Housing Crisis in Preston as a result of homelessness and Government attacks on council housing.

There are no solutions to the Housing Crisis in the Queen's Speech.

After 10 years of Conservative government, there is a Real Housing Crisis in rural areas of Scotland and, I believe, in rural areas of other parts of the United Kingdom.

The Present Housing Crisis is precisely due to the fact that since 1979 local authorities have not been able to fulfil their basic housing responsibilities.

In response to the growing Housing Crisis, the council has developed a housing aid service.

I am grateful for an opportunity to raise the problems of the Housing Crisis in Wakefield.

There needs to be an awareness in the Welsh Office that we have a Housing Crisis, and something must be done about it now.

I despair of their ever understanding that Scotland has a Housing Crisis, especially in the public sector, and that that crisis has existed for far too many years.

Scotland's Housing Crisis breaks my heart, and I am sure that it breaks the heart of many hon. Members who receive letters on the subject.

There is a Housing Crisis in Wales and homelessness is an increasing and, in many instances, heartbreaking problem.

Is he aware that we are in the midst of the Worst Housing Crisis since the war?

Do not those miserable figures represent a massive indictment of the Government's failure to respond to the Housing Crisis that has gripped Bradford for the past 12 years?

May we have an urgent debate on the Housing Crisis that continues unabated, especially in London?

The same applies to the Crisis in Housing.

Londoners know that things have gone wrong when they see the Housing Crisis in the capital, which has produced record levels of homelessness.

With that burden around the neck of the council and tenants, there is no chance of effectively tackling the Housing Crisis facing Glasgow and Govan families.

Given that one in nine homeless families are in that position as a result of mortgage repossession, would it not be more intelligent for the Government, having created the Housing Crisis and lost 1.

May we have an urgent debate on the Housing Crisis that has been caused by the Government?

As for local government provision of housing in London, there is a Housing Crisis in the capital.

One does not need to have a PhD in housing administration to work out why there is a Housing Crisis in London.

I welcome the debate on local government services because I want to raise the important issue of the Housing Crisis, both in my borough and in London generally.

Until about seven o'clock there will be a debate described as "The Housing Crisis".

There is a growing Housing Crisis for two main and obvious reasons.

Above all, if we are serious about tackling the Housing Crisis, as we must be, we must build more houses.

Where are the practical policies for dealing with the growing Housing Crisis - after 12 years of record high mortgage repayments, a cut of 80 per cent.

We have a Terrible Housing Crisis.

Does the Secretary of State accept that his statement will give no reassurance to local authorities in Wales which are facing a Massive Housing Crisis, that, even in the Conservative-controlled borough of Monmouth, homelessness is set to double this year and that local authorities such as that in Monmouth are embarrassed at their incapacity to respond effectively to that growing problem?

The housing charity Shelter, in its recent report entitled "Urgent Need for Homes", pointed out that 500,000 new homes will be needed in the next five years to solve the Housing Crisis.

That is the way to pull the construction industry out of its slump and to combat the growing Housing Crisis.

Will the Secretary of State recognise at long last that there is an Acute Housing Crisis in Britain?

Does the Minister agree that the transfer of council houses to housing associations will not solve the Housing Crisis?

In view of the Housing Crisis in Cardiff, that contribution is not insignificant, although many of us would like the proportion to be even higher.

The Government's high interest rate policy, which they have pursued consistently since 1979, is the root cause of the Housing Crisis in owner occupation.

The right-tobuy policy was the Government's flagship in 1980, but because it was implemented as part and parcel of Conservative mania to reduce public spending and to restrict the powers of local government, it has contributed to the present scandalous homeless and Housing Crisis which is growing all the time.

The genesis of the Housing Crisis was during the former reign of the Secretary of State for the Environment, accompanied by the hon. Member for Acton, who, in his first incarnation as a Minister with responsibility for housing, was a member of the terrible duo that is now reinflicting itself on housing policy.

At the end of that 12 years, Britain is a country with high and rising unemployment, with the balance of payments in deficit - even in a recession - and with negative growth, reduced investment, spreading poverty, rundown public services, a Housing Crisis and record bankruptcies.

My second point on the ways and means resolution and the Housing Crisis that it represents is that many people have been forced into home ownership by the Government's policies.

I wish to give notice that, because of the Minister's disgracefully complacent answers, I intend to raise the Crisis of Housing in Wales on the Adjournment.

This country has a Housing Crisis and homeless people.

The Bill does not address the Housing Crisis.

The Bill will only tinker at the edges of a Housing Crisis that the Government fail or do not wish to recognise.

As the Government stagger towards defeat in the election, I thought that because this was the Minister's last speech we might just have had a contrite speech which at least recognised that over 13 years he and his Government had created a Major Housing Crisis in Scotland.

As an hon. Member for Edinburgh, the Minister should be well aware of the Housing Crisis in Edinburgh.

These orders relate to housing and the Government have created a Housing Crisis.

In the districts there is a very sad story, with the failure to release funds from council house sales which has failed to fund the necessary housing to rent and will certainly fail to solve the Housing Crisis and resulting homelessness.

We face a Housing Crisis.

Some of my colleagues have already talked about the Housing Crisis in their authorities.

Other problems include the Housing Crisis - the fact that no houses can be built - and the rundown of schools.

Greenwich is also experiencing a Major Housing Crisis.

Will he support the campaign launched by Centrepoint today and even at this late stage, after 13 wasted years of Tory rule, take steps urgently to end the Housing Crisis in Scotland and to give our young people a future there?

I have spoken before in the House about the Housing Crisis in Wales.

It refers to the Housing Crisis that now affects all parts of Wales.

Those statistics show the Housing Crisis in Wales.

Many people outside will think that the Housing Crisis that engulfs this nation should be eradicated first.

I beg to move, at the end of the Question, to add:but humbly regret that the Gracious Speech contains no recognition of the proper role of local government and local democracy, no recognition of the scale of the Housing Crisis and no proposals to release local council capital receipts, no legislation to establish an Environmental Protection Agency and no measures to improve educational standards and opportunities, but instead represents a further series of measures to centralise power, weaken local democracy and extend privatisation which will undermine the quality and supply of local service provision and do nothing to fulfil the expectations raised by the Citizen's Charter.

There is a Housing Crisis of staggering proportions and crises in agriculture brought about largely by the Government's laissez-faire attitude to the common agricultural policy reform proposals.

I referred to the Crisis in Housing.

Our Housing Crisis will continue to worsen, training programmes will continue to be underfunded, school classes will be too large, the NHS will continue to lose beds and British Rail, the most crowded and least punctual service in western Europe, will continue to be badly funded.

My hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich (Mr. Raynsford) has rightly spoken of London's Housing Crisis.

The 16 and 17-year-olds whom one sees on the streets are the visible face of the Housing Crisis, but other aspects are visible to those of us who represent local communities as Members of Parliament or councillors.

Colchester borough council welcomed both me and my hon. Friend the Member for South Colchester and Maldon (Mr. Whittingdale) with a somewhat barbed congratulation to workin a spirit of partnership to overcome the Borough's worsening Housing Crisis".

Will the Leader of the House find time for an urgent debate on the Housing Crisis?

Is the Secretary of State aware that the recession is creating a Terrible Housing Crisis in Wales?

Two weeks ago one of my hon. Friends with a London constituency raised with the Prime Minister the question of the Housing Crisis.

But to end the moratorium now, whenthere is no sign of an end to the Housing Crisis - the market remains in a deep trough of recession - would be a foolish and retrograde step.

Certainly the depth of the Housing Crisis with which Ministers were confronted was one, but I suspect that the second was the ticking away of the general election clock sounding very loud and clear in Ministers ears, and providing a very clear incentive to tackle the problems of the housing crisis.

The Housing Crisis that prompted the moratorium in the first place has not gone away; arguably, in some respects, it has even intensified.

The Housing Crisis has not gone away.

We will see how many Conservative Members turn on their heads and vote for the cessation of stamp duty relief and for a continuing Crisis in Housing.

Perhaps the Government will eventually admit that that scheme was a failure, too, but it is already a failure in that it is no solution to the Real Housing Crisis affecting our major cities.

No debate during the lengthy course of the Bill's proceedings has better illustrated the paucity of the Government's strategy for dealing with the country's problems than that on the Housing Crisis and the collapse of the Government's measures to deal with it.

Would not this be an appropriate time to organise the phased release of the £7 billion of local authority capital receipts to solve the Housing Crisis and the crisis that the Government have engineered in the construction industry?

If the hon. Gentleman wants to know why there is a Housing Crisis in London, he does not have to look around to blame local authorities.

The real reason for the Housing Crisis in London is socialism.

Page 26 of the document mentions "healthy cities, healthy schools, healthy hospitals, healthy workplaces and healthy homes", but fails to offer any solution to the Housing Crisis, so it is worth nothing.

Page 26 of the document mentionshealthy cities, healthy schools, healthy hospitals, healthy workplaces and healthy homes",but fails to offer any solution to the Housing Crisis, so it is worth nothing.

I do not accept that the Scottish Office played an indirect role in the condition of housing in Scotland over the past 12 years and the present Crisis in Housing.

Nowhere is the Housing Crisis greater than in Wales.

If the best that the Secretary of State can do for housing and urban regeneration is this paltry Bill, which will not build a single home, will not save a single family from repossession, and will not put a single extra pound into our inner cities, he will be justly condemned for creating a Housing Crisis of the most monstrous proportions and for then wilfully refusing to take any effective action to end it.

My main concern lies with the Major Housing Crisis in this country and we must consider what will happen if the Bill reaches the statute book in its present form.

We could blame the Germans in the 1950s for the Housing Crisis.

The United Kingdom faces a huge Housing Crisis.

What is the Government's response to the Housing Crisis?

I move it because the Housing Crisis is a crisis the length and breadth of the country.

Young people and others on the streets of cities such as London are the most visible victims, but there are many other invisible victims of the Housing Crisis.

It is also sad that the rough sleepers initiative, which was supposed to meet the needs of those at the acute end of the Housing Crisis, has also been cut as a result of the autumn statement.

The scale of the Housing Crisis is daunting and worsens day by day.

Families now face the Worst Housing Crisis in our society since the war.

There is no real evidence that the Government take the Housing Crisis seriously.

Members recognise that there is a Housing Crisis in this country - I hope that I made that clear at the beginning of my speech.

The hon. Member for Brecon and Radnor summed up the situation when he asserted that there is a Housing Crisis and that after 13 years in power it is unacceptable that under the Government there are so many individuals and families in bed-and-breakfast accommodation.

Is it possible to have a full day's debate on Britain's growing Housing Crisis?

Without tackling unemployment by investment, the Government have no hope of tackling the Housing Crisis.

We tend to think of the Housing Crisis as affecting only those who want to rent.

I had no idea of the scale of the Housing Crisis facing this country outside my area of the north-west of England until I compared notes with my colleagues.

The problem is their failure to recognise the importance of the links between the breakdown in the economy generally and the growing Crisis in Housing.

Homelessness is only the most obvious expression of the Housing Crisis in London.

I welcome the opportunity to debate the Housing Crisis and congratulate the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Mr. Miller) on securing the debate.

I warmly congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Mr. Miller) on choosing to debate the Housing Crisis.

The Housing Crisis is frozen in the permafrost of the economic recession which is gripping the country.

The Current Housing Crisis is the most vivid symbol of the failure of the free market myth.

We were given one and a half hours to debate Scotland's Housing Crisis.

Our Housing Crisis need not have arisen.

What can, must and, I hope, eventually will solve London's Housing Crisis is real investment by the public sector to ensure the provision of social housing, at affordable rents, for all the people of London, so that they have decent, safe, dry roofs over their heads.

We have a Crisis of Housing, a crisis of transport, a crisis of health and a crisis of employment.

The Housing Crisis in London is critical.

If the Government allow historical capital receipts to be used over a sensible, phased period, and directed at areas of need - I accept that some benefiting areas do not need them - we could tackle the Housing Crisis and get back into employment building and construction workers and those who make items such as baths, taps and window frames.

There, as my hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley, North (Mr. Howarth) said, he had to resort to scapegoating the children of single parents to pass on the blame for the Housing Crisis over which he presides.

The Queen's Speech makes no reference to tackling unemployment, contains no Bill to deal with the Housing Crisis in Wales, no energy conservation Bill and no Bill to outlaw discrimination against disabled people.

We could have used housing investment to tackle the Housing Crisis, the homelessness problem and get the building industry moving.

What is the Chancellor's response to the Housing Crisis?

Britain faces a Housing Crisis unparalleled for four decades.

If it was right to unfreeze capital receipts last year - notwithstanding the way in which the PSBR is defined - why is it wrong this year, when the Housing Crisis is even worse?

Those policies include an extension of the numbers of houses that are built so that the Housing Crisis is dealt with.

The Housing Crisis now extends far beyond the inner areas of our great Victorian cities.

At the next election, we shall explain to people why there is a housing shortage - a Housing Crisis - and why so many people have been punished in the way that I have described.

What is clear to everyone except the Government and the Minister is the sheer scale of the Housing Crisis which has been rejected by the Government.

The Current Housing Crisis, for instance, is related to the lack of democracy in Scotland.

The current Housing Crisis, for instance, is related to the lack of democracy in Scotland.

A move towards more shared ownership, therefore, will have only limited applicability in trying to solve Our Housing Crisis.

The other point of that interview, and of a speech that I gave to Shelter in July 1980, which certainly stands the test of time, was that I predicted - although I do not often get such things right - that, 10 years later, there would be a Housing Crisis, with many more people homeless and with a great shortage of social housing, precisely because the Government had stopped authorities from using their capital receipts.

The Housing Crisis in Bristol takes some of the forms familiar to other parts of the country.

Frankly, it was due to the embarrassment of the Government that those people were taken off the streets of London - it was nothing to do with solving the Housing Crisis.

We have a Terrible Housing Crisis and a terrible sequence of inequality of living in our society at the present time.

Does not the Minister realise that it is his abject failure to secure such a strategy that lies behind the Worst Housing Crisis this country has seen for decades, with the numbers of homeless having doubled since 1979, 850 families thrown on to the streets each week through repossessions, half a million building workers on the dole and a complete collapse in the council house building programme?

A Welsh Office Minister should be on the Government Front Bench for a statement of this importance, bearing in mind the growing Housing Crisis in Wales.

It would be wrong to say that we have a Housing Crisis, although there are increasing numbers of homeless people and homes considered unfit for habitation.

What nonsense it is that the Government will not allow councils to use their capital receipts when doing so would not only help to solve the Housing Crisis which exists throughout the country but would help to get people back to work and to improve the economy.

Will the Scottish housing Minister explain why, when he faces a worsening Housing Crisis, with record levels of homelessness, he has remained silent and inactive while the Scottish housing budget has been slashed and plundered to pay for future tax cuts to save the Tories' electoral skins?

So, in response to a Housing Crisis that is unparalleled in modern times, the Government will cut the amount spent on housing.

Why are we experiencing the Worst Housing Crisis for decades?

We now have the Worst Housing Crisis that people can remember.

We are told constantly that there is a Housing Crisis, and the hon. Member for Garscadden gave us the usual list - the Halifax building society and so on.

Perhaps he can suggest to his colleagues that the Government's housing policies ignore the Massive Housing Crisis and causes cardboard cities and people living rough to move out of the cities and into towns like those in my constituency.

The Present Housing Crisis shows just how far our country falls short of that basic requirement.

The present Housing Crisis shows just how far our country falls short of that basic requirement.

Both those moves would make a start in dealing with the Present Housing Crisis.

The Minister's complacency about the Housing Crisis will appal millions of people.

Will he confirm that that complacent view will continue and that there is to be no assistance for home owners in the Present Housing Crisis?

of the population blame the Government for the Housing Crisis, and the Shelter report that 700,000 people have lost their homes due to repossessions since 1985, will the Leader of the House provide a debate in Government time to discuss what can only be described as a national scandal presided over by the Government of which he is a member?

Add that to the difficulties faced by local authorities because of the rather ridiculous restrictions placed on them by central Government and the fact that the house building market has stagnated because of the Government's fiscal policies, and it is no wonder that we have a Housing Crisis.

From that statement, one would never guess the scale of the Housing Crisis now harming the lives of families in every part of the country, whether they are owner-occupiers, whether they are renting or whether they are simply trying to get somewhere decent to live.

It is no wonder that the Tory party is going to the dogs when, after 16 years in government, it fails to recognise that it is facing a Housing Crisis.

Is the Secretary of State aware of the scale of the Housing Crisis in Bristol, where 23,000 people are on the council waiting list?

The Government do not intend to deal with the Housing Crisis by building homes for people to live in.

The proposal to change the rules on access to social housing is little more than an exercise in scapegoating to try to shift the blame for Britain's Housing Crisis away from the Government.

Can the Secretary of State explain his strategy to deal with this growing Housing Crisis, given that the 14 per cent.

The Housing Crisis in Britain is not just about building new homes, as important as that is; it is also a question of repairing existing homes.

He cannot shift the blame for the Present Housing Crisis.

However, it was clear from the context in which it was announced that it was less about tackling the Housing Crisis than about reinforcing Ministers' prejudices.

It also demonstrated that repossessions, negative equity and rough sleeping were symptoms of the much wider Housing Crisis that is facing Britain.

If we examine the Government's response to the Housing Crisis in rural and urban areas, we find that it simply fails to match the scale of the problem.

We believe that Our Current Housing Crisis will not be resolved until a greater proportion of our nation's wealth is invested in our housing stock.

We have a Massive Housing Crisis in Scotland.

They are all knowledgeable about Scottish housing and call for a massive programme of additional investment to meet the Housing Crisis in Scotland.

Housing must become the priority of the elected representatives of the Scottish people and the focus of a genuine national debate about the best way to tackle Scotland's Housing Crisis.

The fact that, as we approach the new millennium, we cannot apply design standards to new-build houses in order to make them fit for habitation by future generations says a lot about the Government's failure to address the country's Housing Crisis.

If I did so, I would discuss the effects of unemployment on the family, the Current Housing Crisis, the implementation of the Government's care in the community policy, and the work of the Child Support Agency.

That is not only a method of solving the Housing Crisis and taking many people out of bed and breakfast and other accommodation, but a way in which we can save a great deal of public money, which is currently lining the pockets of private sector - often millionaire - landlords through spending on the housing benefit system.

We have a many-pronged approach to the Housing Crisis, and that is one part of it.

My hon. Friend the Member for Leith made the point that, because of the Government's cuts year on year in the housing budget, we are seeing not just a Housing Crisis, particularly in rural areas, but a health crisis, as people's health is affected when they live in houses that are damp, draughty and not properly insulated.

An added advantage would be that Scottish local authorities could raise private money to invest in remedying the Housing Crisis which afflicts so many people in my country.

Does the right hon. Gentleman understand the scale of the Housing Crisis?

The right hon. Member actually analysed the failure of the previous Government's attempts to deal with the Housing Crisis and acknowledged that there was a crisis.

It is no wonder that there is a Crisis in Housing.

The scale of the Housing Crisis will not be tackled by the Bill.

The hon. Member for Torbay (Mr. Sanders) seemed to say that it was not the right way to tackle the Housing Crisis.

Everyone recognises that we are living through a Housing Crisis of monumental proportions, although one would not get the impression, listening to Conservative Members, that they had presided over that crisis for almost two decades.

It begins to tackle the Housing Crisis that has been worsened by the dogma of the Conservative party and bequeathed to the nation.

Tackling the Housing Crisis is an urgent imperative.

I should be grateful if the Leader of the House could persuade her ministerial colleagues responsible for housing to table a motion before the recess in Government time to do something about the Housing Crisis faced by the nation and, in particular, by the city of Portsmouth, which I represent.

The Government are walking into Another Housing Crisis.

The property values I have just mentioned add up to a Crisis in Affordable Housing, especially in central London.

No doubt that was a success in some cases, but the inducement contributed to the 1,000 repossessions a week that were happening at the height of the Housing Crisis in the early 1990s.

Not only did the previous Government preside over a Housing Crisis, with the worst levels of homelessness and house repossessions in any years since the war, but they allowed extensive development all over the countryside.

We also need to tackle the Housing Crisis.

Given the Government's commitment to tackling social exclusion and addressing child poverty within the next 20 years, I hope that they recognise that that can be done only if the Housing Crisis is tackled.

However, the Minister must answer the outstanding question of whether the Government have the political will to solve the Housing Crisis which, according to the Association of London Government, is the worst ever.

We have a particular kind of Housing Crisis in the South East.

The Home Secretary should be working with the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions to ensure that we tackle London's Housing Crisis.

There is a Housing Crisis in London and the South East.

Does she concede that the Terrible Housing Crisis faced by many in inner London can be adequately solved only by a large public investment in good-quality homes for many of the poorest and most dispossessed people in this country?

There is a real Crisis in Housing.

All agencies will have to work together to settle London's Housing Crisis, not only in the medium and long term, but in the immediate short term.

I welcome, and have argued for, the spirit of this legislation, but I trust that Ministers will recognise that without increased assistance over and above that already announced, areas with a Current Housing Crisis will never be able to meet the spirit of the law - still less the letter of it.

There is also an Acute Housing Crisis, which is reflected in the fact that 9.

Another point that may be useful with regard to London--I do not think that I am overly stressing London's Housing Crisis--is that more than 70 per cent.

It is not possible to build our way completely out of the Housing Crisis, although by planning and examining every vacant site it is possible to do a lot.

As I said, the opportunity for people to buy their way out of the Housing Crisis in London is extremely limited.

The Government are not serious about tackling the Housing Crisis - they merely tinker at the edges of the problem - and the Conservative Opposition seem obsessed with the number, rather than the type, of homes that need to be built.

It is unacceptable and inexplicable that areas with high housing demand, which are in Housing Crisis, should be penalised by the funding formula.

Although Luton generally has an Acute Housing Crisis in areas such as Stopsley and Farley, special attention needs to be paid to areas where the housing crisis is magnified because of a multiplicity of deprivation.

118WH The court cases have thrown up a serious issue that particularly affects vulnerable families at a time of nothing less than Housing Crisis, especially in London and the south-east.

The court cases have thrown up a serious issue that particularly affects vulnerable families at a time of nothing less than Housing Crisis, especially in London and the south-east.

The Housing Crisis affects almost everyone: those on waiting lists, those in bed-and-breakfast accommodation, those who are homeless or, unfortunately, still roofless, and those who are desperate to pay high private rents or buy a flat in London.

After the second world war there was plenty of land on which to build and large amounts of money did make an impact on the Housing Crisis in those years.

This is the second debate on the Housing Crisis in London this week.

We need to back regeneration funding by tackling the Housing Crisis.

London is engulfed in a Housing Crisis with three times the level of overcrowding than in any other part of the country.

Some such provision needs to be made - we cannot afford to subsidise people in penthouses in Marble Arch - but the principle has gone too far, particularly as the supply of private rented accommodation for families on low income has halved in the past five years, causing hardship and fuelling the Housing Crisis.

I cannot remember him ever voicing his concerns when the Conservative Government were in power and laid the foundations for the Housing Crisis that we undoubtedly now have in London.

Does my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister agree that bed and breakfast is only the sharp end of a Housing Crisis that is affecting public sector recruitment in London as well as homelessness?

The movement to build high-rise flats as a solution for Our Housing Crisis came from the strong utopian - some say socialist - thinking led by the Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier.

The hon. Member for Hammersmith and Fulham (Mr. Coleman) spoke about the Housing Crisis.

For instance, Tesco has answered the Housing Crisis in the south of England and Oxfordshire by building housing for its workers.

There was a dramatic increase in inequality in the capital, including a Housing Crisis - there was not only rampant house-price inflation such as we have now, but record levels of homelessness, which have continued to be a problem.

The Housing Crisis, the inability of families to enter employment because of the housing benefit trap, the high cost of child care and so forth have made it difficult for families to move out of child poverty at the same rate as elsewhere.

One of the reasons for the Housing Crisis is that from the mid 1980s, for 10 years, the Conservative Government allowed developments of fewer than 20 houses per hectare.

Let there be no misunderstanding: one of those pressures is the fact that there is a Housing Crisis.

I am grateful for that reply, but does my right hon. Friend accept that London faces an Acute Housing Crisis?

I welcome the Government's examination of the Housing Crisis facing people in the inner city, especially inner London.

Until 7 o'clock there will be a debate entitled "Crisis in Affordable Housing".

Judging by the amendments to our motion, there appears to be a great deal of agreement about the existence of a Crisis in Affordable Housing, and a recognition that in recent years, inadequate attention has been paid to it.

It is no wonder, therefore, that Jon Rouse, the chief executive of the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, should have told the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister: Housing, Planning, Local Government and the Regions Select Committee that we have "a Housing Crisis" on our hands.

The Opposition Front-Bench spokesman, the hon. Member for Cotswold (Mr. Clifton-Brown), spoke of a Crisis of Affordable Housing in the countryside, but that crisis was created over 20 years by the Tory Government.

I beg to move, That this House notes that the current Crisis in Affordable Housing has reached such a level that there is a national need for more than 80,000 new affordable dwellings per annum for the next decade and beyond; regrets the failure of the present Government to take earlier action while welcoming additional funding for that housing announced in the Spending Review 2002 and recent measures to tackle homelessness; and believes that urgent action is needed better to link local and regional planning and housing policies, to bring back into use empty properties, to increase the density of housing developments, to encourage local authorities to implement fully PPG3 and to reform the right to buy to prevent abuses of the system, while resisting the Conservative Opposition's proposals for its extension.

Does he agree that it is of immense concern that the Government do not seem to have realised that the Crisis in Affordable Housing afflicts the west country as well as the south-east and London?

It is clear that they will never, under their proposals, be able to help to solve the Affordable Housing Crisis.

However, we are looking at what can be done to tackle abuses, and the effects of the scheme in Housing Crisis areas.

The pilots seem to be working, and in areas of Housing Crisis such as my own, we have to make some difficult choices.

The Opposition Front-Bench spokesman,the hon. Member for Cotswold (Mr. Clifton-Brown), spoke of a Crisis of Affordable Housing in the countryside, but that crisis was created over 20 years by the Tory Government.

The sale of stock during the 1980s without properly replacing it has exacerbated the existing Housing Crisis.

[76046] Mr. Edward Davey (Kingston and Surbiton): On the eve of the urban summit, does the Prime Minister agree with the Deputy Prime Minister that Britain's building industry is "the most inefficient in the world" 869 and a major cause of Britain's Affordable Housing Crisis?

On the eve of the urban summit, does the Prime Minister agree with the Deputy Prime Minister that Britain's building industry is Xthe most inefficient in the world" and a major cause of Britain's Affordable Housing Crisis?

We have a Housing Crisis because so many people are being sent to Southend, mainly from London boroughs.

I envisage planning reform providing opportunities for innovation that will finally turn the tide of the Housing Crisis in London.

We do not oppose the fact that it gives people a property right, but it is more important, especially in areas of Housing Crisis, to provide new houses.

The position was not felt to be the same in urban areas, but there is a powerful case to be made for certain areas of London with a Housing Crisis.

However, the point that they continue to miss is that the Current Housing Crisis is not just a continuation of the need to provide good quality social housing.

I want the Government to recognise that there is a Crisis in Affordable Housing to buy.

My constituency includes Thamesmead - in effect, a new town designed in the 1960s as a contribution to solving London's Housing Crisis, but built without any thought of providing an adequate public transport infrastructure.

In his current privileged position, is he aware that, after a quarter of a century of right-wing Governments, both Conservative and new Labour, we now have a Housing Crisis again?

An intelligent, thoughtful planning process is likely to help to resolve the Crisis in Affordable Housing, and increase the amount of house building on brownfield sites.

In his time as a Housing Minister, he accepted my invitation to come and look at the Housing Crisis in east Lancashire.

Although I welcome the Deputy Prime Minister throwing his considerable political weight behind the important issue of urban renaissance, may I ask him to call another summit - a rural summit, perhaps in Devon - to examine the also important issue of the Crisis in Affordable Housing to buy and to rent in many parts of rural Britain?

Would not we make an impact more quickly on the Affordable Housing Crisis, with much smaller environmental costs, by using the homes that already exist?

The Affordable Housing Crisis continues almost six years into a new Labour Government.

Houses were built quickly using the kind of techniques that the Deputy Prime Minister advocates to address the Affordable Housing Crisis in the south-east.

That could prove a solution to the Affordable Housing Crisis from which London and the south-east suffer.

No one can say that the Housing Crisis in this country is an urban one when people on waiting lists in rural areas must wait longer.

We have restricted that by reducing the discounts in Housing Crisis areas.

We are told that this country has the world's fourth richest economy, but why does Britain now have a Housing Crisis the like of which I have not witnessed before in my more than 30 years of elected public office?

I would welcome the hon. Gentleman giving us the good news of the breakthroughs and progress made by the Government to solve the Housing Crisis in his reply.

The present Government inherited a mess created by the two previous Conservative Governments, but they have not tackled the Housing Crisis.

No wonder we have a Housing Crisis.

Given the Crisis in Affordable Housing, I wondered whether it might have been better if he had gone out and dug some foundations or laid a few bricks, but I welcome him none the less.

In London - I am going to be unashamedly, unapologetically and nakedly metropolitan - we have a Housing Crisis.

I suggest to the Minister that in the Current Housing Crisis, every authority receiving capital receipts could use every penny in its area.

I argue that, in many cases, such areas will be in less need of affordable housing in the Present Housing Crisis than the areas to which the receipts accrue.

I suggest to him that the Real Housing Crisis today is in those areas - precisely the areas that he has tried to paint as leafy and suburban, without real housing need and not deserving of the ability to reinvest capital receipts in their own area for the benefit of local people and local communities.

They do not understand that, in the Present Housing Crisis, it does not matter where the houses are built, nor what sort of houses are built.

I have argued previously that the only way to tackle the Housing Crisis is to double our output of affordable homes.

Are the Government committed to doing what they have not done in any of the years during which they have been in office - significantly increasing the amount of affordable housing in this city and elsewhere, so that the Present Housing Crisis can be dealt with not in never-never land but in the immediate future?

That would sit much easier with the hon. Gentleman's argument if he could point to any positive contribution to solving the Housing Crisis that the Conservatives made during their 18 years in government.

The Government have been slow to react to the Affordable Housing Crisis.

As a result of a quarter of a century of Tory policies, we are now suffering the Worst Housing Crisis for three or four generations.

Will he also prevent local authorities and public corporations from selling off existing buildings and land that could be used to meet the Terrible Housing Crisis that many of poorest people in London face?

However, the market created the Housing Crisis that the poorest people of London and the south-east face at present.

We constantly see big news stories about the Deputy Prime Minister's vision for solving the Housing Crisis.

At a time when the Government are facing a Housing Crisis and addressing - the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister is certainly doing so - much of their energy to trying to deal with the housing affordability problem across a large part of the country, are we seriously contemplating doubling the construction costs of new dwellings?

Does my right hon. Friend share my concern that unless there is a substantial increase in the number of affordable homes for rent - and council housing is the most efficient way of providing this - many areas are approaching a Housing Crisis not seen since the post-war era?

That is the only way to deal with the Terrible Housing Crisis that Londoners face.

I agree that we cannot simply build our way out of the Current Housing Crisis faced by the UK, particularly in the south.

In straightforward terms, the unsuitable mix of housing - that is, too little social housing, as we heard fromthe hon. Member for Luton, North (Mr. Hopkins) - and the problem of affordability, which is related not to supply but to income and mortgage eligibility, may be at the heart of the Housing Crisis.

No one can be in any doubt about the seriousness of the Housing Crisis in this country.

The sheer scale of the Housing Crisis requires fresh thinking.

It is incredible that she made no mention of anything that preceded that date, or of the Housing Crisis that this Government inherited.

The Housing Crisis in Wales and in the regions of England is as acute as that in the south-east.

That is a significant driver of demand, and therefore of the Housing Crisis that we face.

Much has been made of house building in the debate and I acknowledge that there is a Housing Crisis, but the real crisis is housing mix; it is about the match between the availability of particular types of houses and the need for them.

The Barker review's proposed additional 17,000 to 23,000 social houses a year barely scratches at the surface of Our Affordable Housing Crisis, as it is called by Home Truths, backed by the Town and County Planning Association, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and many other leading housing associations.

VAT reform would provide a major boost to social house building for rent and thus attack the Crisis in Affordable Housing and help to keep prices down.

However, the countryside cannot stagnate, and a recent report produced by the Country Land and Business Association on housing and the rural economy concluded that the current planning policies are neglecting the growing Crisis in Housing in rural areas, particularly in villages in the wider countryside, and that the problems of affordable housing cannot be addressed in isolation from the insufficient supply of housing as a whole.

The Real Housing Crisis involves not the net supply issue, but the relationship between provision and need.

The Minister must recognise that there is a growing Crisis in Affordable Housing in successful resorts such as Southport.

That is why I was happy to speak at the parliamentary launch on24 March of the National Housing Federation - South West report on the economic effects of the Affordable Housing Crisis in the south-west.

It is the fourth option: let the councils run their own housing, build and make their contribution to solving the Housing Crisis.

On that basis, most local authorities can balance their housing books and can use the money to renovate, repair and build anew to make their contribution to tackling the Housing Crisis that has arisen.

Will the Minister recognise that there is currently a Terrible Housing Crisis in London?

I hope that the Minister will recognise that many people around the country simply do not accept the three options that have been proffered by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister to deal with the Housing Crisis.

As I said earlier, we cannot simply build ourselves out of the Present Housing Crisis.

However, the homelessness legislation provides a safety net for individuals who find themselves in a Housing Crisis.

When they are here, they then fall under the provisions of the homelessness legislation, which provides an important safety net for vulnerable people who find themselves facing a Housing Crisis.

At the same time, we have had the Government's national prioritisation of the Thames gateway, arising partly because the Housing Crisis in the south-east acts as a brake on broader patterns of economic change across other regions of the British economy.

The Government have not listened, because we have the same problems as Cornwall - in most cases, incomes are lower in Somerset than in Cornwall because of the Housing Crisis in rural areas, which many hon. Members have already eloquently discussed.

"In 41 areas of Housing Crisis, I have capped the level of discount.

So far, the Government's sole answer to the Housing Crisis has been to concrete over more and more green fields in the vain hope that eventually supply will match demand and bring house prices down.

I have capped the level of discount in 41 areas of Housing Crisis, but elsewhere, the right to buy still gives a discount of up to £38,000 for each home and the right to acquire a discount of up to £16,000.

We need to be clear that the statement is necessary because of the Crisis in Housing - a crisis that has spiralled out of control and is largely of the Government's own making.

Up to now, the Government's sole answer to the Housing Crisis has been to concrete over more and more green fields in the vain hope that supply will eventually match demand and bring house prices down.

Given Britain's Affordable Housing Crisis, is not the real challenge to build more homes, not to cut funds going into housing, as the Conservatives propose?

My hon. Friend knows that my right hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Planning has been examining in new housing legislation how to keep the flexibility to judge whether an area is in Housing Crisis and whether we should take action.

When we fought the election in 1997, one of the major concerns was the Crisis in Housing caused largely by boom and bust in the economy.

As for a Housing Crisis, I do not think that anyone doubted that there was one in 1997 when we came to office.

At the heart of the Government's plans to solve the Housing Crisis is the provision of cut-price houses for £60,000 each.

In fact, one of the great difficulties of the previous Administration's policy on rural housing was that they limited it in certain circumstances where they believed that there was a Housing Crisis.

Where the Housing Crisis particularly hurts the young, the council tax crisis particularly hurts the elderly - it cannot be said that the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister discriminates on grounds of age.

Since the senior management at English Partnerships has improved recently, why does not the Deputy Prime Minister ask EP and the local authorities together to compile and publish a full register of all publicly owned land, not least so that that land can be made available to tackle the Crisis in Affordable Housing?

Trying to build our way out of the so-called Housing Crisis in the south-east of England will not solve the crisis but create - and is creating - a new environmental crisis.

The Minister mentioned various aspects of tackling the Housing Crisis, but when will the Government introduce the secondary legislation promised in the Housing Act 2004 to deal with the problem of empty homes?

The Housing Crisis is serious, as the Government now recognise.

I genuinely and sincerely believe that the Affordable Housing Crisis is a powder keg ready to explode at any time in the imminent future.

Those are stark facts, but before I draw attention to more facts, I wish to say that Shelter, the London Housing Federation and the Greater London authority paid unstinting tribute in their briefings to what the Government have done already and are in the process of doing to deal with the Serious Housing Crisis in London.

I genuinely and sincerely believe that the Affordable Housing Crisis is a powder keg ready to explode at any time in the imminent future.

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Present Housing Crisis is predicted to become worse in terms of low-cost social housing for rent?