Housing Stock Transfer
Good morning. The first item of business is a debate on motion S2M-5104, in the name of Colin Fox, on housing stock transfer.
As a policy to invest in council housing, housing stock transfer is in utter crisis. Further rejection of the policy by tenants in Inverclyde and the Highlands will kill the policy stone dead. Ministers have bullied tenants, employed bribery and threatened catastrophe unless tenants accept the handing over of their homes. They are expected to hand over their homes to faceless men and women on unelected, unaccountable housing boards.
The biggest myth of the whole sorry story of this debacle is the idea that stock transfer is tenant led. The City of Edinburgh Council paid £0.25 million to a public relations company to peddle that myth, but in the end that was a bit of a waste of council tax payers' money.
Let us consider whether stock transfer is really tenant led by examining the board in the Inverclyde stock transfer, on which tenants are voting as we speak. River Clyde Homes sounds a lovely organisation. It is good that the board has five tenants on it, but they make up only a third; the other two thirds of the board are made up of appointed members—who knows who appointed them—who are not tenants. I bet that all those members live in and own light, spacious homes in desirable areas. They are asking tenants to give them their homes on the grounds that they know what is best for council housing and will look after them.
Would any members of the Parliament be happy to hand over their homes to unelected, unaccountable faceless bureaucrats to manage for them? That is what the Executive is asking tenants throughout the country to do. I would not hand over my flat to any of those people, no matter how much money I was offered. In Glasgow, tenants handed over their homes to the Glasgow Housing Association and now the GHA will not give them back. Housing stock transfer is privatisation of publicly owned, publicly financed housing by the back door.
Councils' propaganda is costing a fortune—£0.25 million in Edinburgh and £70,000 in Inverclyde. The situation is both desperate and comic. The leaflet on the transfer in Inverclyde has two columns. One column explains that voting no will mean that rents will be raised by 9 per cent every year for eight years, by the end of which time tenants' rents will be £125 a week. The other column says that voting yes will result in no rent rises for five years; rents will be affordable.
Hear, hear. Good stuff.
Does Duncan McNeil live in a council house?
I take it that the member has invited me to intervene. The answer is no, but I want the very best for people who live in council houses. I want their houses to be improved and I want the money that will improve the lives of my constituents to be obtained.
In that case, they should not vote for stock transfer, because it does not work.
If tenants vote no, they will get only the minimum standards of maintenance and their rents will be put up, but if they vote yes, they will get new bathrooms, new kitchens and new heating. As a means of investing in and repairing council homes, stock transfer is more expensive than traditional methods, according to the report by the United Kingdom National Audit Office.
We know that £1 billion of debt needs to be written off to improve housing in Scotland. We also know that Gordon Brown has that money lying in a bank account in Westminster. I have a question for ministers. If the chancellor does not hand it over because tenants do not vote in the way in which he wants them to vote, what will he do with that money? Will he spend it on the war or on other things? What will he spend it on? The money is lying in a bank account in Westminster when it should be available to local authorities and tenants.
Why does the Executive want to hand over control of council housing to the banks? The GHA has run up debt, but now it is in hock to the banks at higher rates of interest. The GHA's management costs amount to more than all the money that it spends on repairs and investment. There is an alternative, and it is about time that members—including Duncan McNeil—and the Executive listened. The alternative model for investment in council housing is supported by the trade unions in the sector—Unison and the building trade union, the Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians—and by the 275 MPs, many of whom were Labour MPs, who signed an early-day motion at Westminster that argued that we should have investment and borrowing in the public sector.
Such a change in Government policy would write off the debt and allow local authorities to borrow at cheaper rates and to use all the rent money to invest. All that is necessary is a change in Government policy so that instead of borrowing under the public sector borrowing requirement, councils could borrow from a new Government deficit account. The responses to that suggestion have been pig-headed, especially given that tenants group after tenants group reject the Government's model. I wonder how long it will take the Executive to accept that the policy of housing stock transfer is in meltdown. The longer that it takes to accept that that is the case, the higher the price will be for the tenants who are waiting for repairs.
Support for the alternative is building among Unison, UCATT and MPs at Westminster. For four years in a row, the Labour Party conference has voted for the fourth option, which is cheaper and more efficient than stock transfer. If the Government introduced the new deficit model of borrowing, it would be cheaper to borrow to do up houses, at an average cost of £1,300 per house.
Tenants in Tony Blair's Sedgefield constituency have rejected housing stock transfer.
Will the member give way?
Provided that Jackie Baillie is really quick, because I have only a few seconds left.
I will be really quick. Does the member agree that the partial transfers that go on throughout Scotland every day are about community ownership? I deeply regret the fact that in ward areas in which it has representatives, the Scottish Socialist Party says one thing, but says something completely different here in the Parliament. I do not think that that is entirely honest.
Our policy is clear—we are opposed to stock transfer both at local level and across the board. At some point, the Executive will have to accept the views of tenants. It calls itself the listening Government, so it should listen to tenants in Scotland and change its policy now.
I move,
That the Parliament calls on the Scottish Executive to embark on a programme of council house building; believes that the chronic shortage of affordable new homes has led to a huge increase in house prices in Scotland; notes that the average cost of a new home is now £130,000 and thus excludes more than one third of Scots from owning their own homes; demands that the UK Treasury releases the funds already identified to provide the necessary social housing that local circumstances demand; believes that tenants across Scotland have repeatedly rejected housing stock transfer, seeing it as plain and simple privatisation; believes in the fullest democratic control and management of council homes by tenants; welcomes the decision of Midlothian Council to build 1,000 new houses; calls on the tenants of both Highland and Inverclyde councils to follow the example of council tenants in Edinburgh, Stirling and Renfrewshire and reject privatisation of their housing stock; believes that the promises made to Glasgow tenants by Glasgow Housing Association have not been kept, and believes that stock transfer, the Executive's flagship housing policy, is now in tatters.
I am grateful for the opportunity to participate in the debate. We all know about the importance of housing and the challenges that the issue presents. We need to help young people to meet their aspirations to own their homes—such aspirations are especially challenging for first-time buyers in areas of economic prosperity—but it is crucial that we offer people a range of housing options at different times in their lives. We recognise that being able to rent one's home is a legitimate option and that it is important that we provide good housing and sustain high-quality homes in strong communities.
The SSP motion suggests that we have been labouring under a number of illusions. It is clear that we are all in need of re-education. I invite Frances Curran to come with me to explain to local people in Darnley that, far from having their area transformed—from a place that no one wanted to live in and that people wanted to get away from—into a highly desirable area, they have been the victims of Rachman landlords. Perhaps she could tell the tenants of Dormanside in my constituency that, rather than taking control of their housing, they have been duped and conned.
Perhaps the member would like to visit housing associations throughout Scotland to explain to them that they are really organisations that pursue profit and only imagine that they are supporting citizens advice bureaux in their work and creating apprenticeships for young people in their areas. Are housing associations deluding themselves in believing that houses are about more than bricks and mortar, which they have demonstrated by supporting local employment and training initiatives? Is it a figment of their imagination that they have been involved in business start-ups in their communities?
I say to the SSP that we know that people in local communities are transforming things. The SSP would have us believe that, far from being agents of change, housing associations are agents of misery and despair. Perhaps SSP members might like to drop in at Robert Owen House to explain that the Co-operative movement, with its democratic accountability and membership strength, is a figment of our collective imagination. They could call in at the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations and the councils for voluntary service and tell social eoncomy organisations throughout Scotland that they are living in a world in which the dollar is king, that we are all capitalists now and that there are no such things as the social economy and social enterprise.
Frances Curran might like to come with me to a housing association in Lochaber and explain to a mother there with a severely disabled daughter that it is a figment of her imagination that she and her daughter live in a house that they designed to meet her daughter's needs.
The fact is that if the SSP took that journey with open eyes and an open mind, it would establish something simple: the charge that housing stock transfer is privatisation is arrant nonsense. However, that charge is also a pernicious and calculated tactic. I was brought up in a private rented home, and my parents' generation understood the challenges of that kind of housing, which was a million miles away from the social rented sector in my community that is being invested in now. Anti-stock transfer campaigners deliberately invoke the folk memory of the hatred of poor private housing and the importance of what council housing represented when they spread fears that the community ownership programme is somehow privatisation.
I regard it as unforgivable to create the fear that leads people in Inverclyde or Highland to feel uncertain about a yes vote that will give them certainty for the future, regardless of what is going on elsewhere. I regret that, to judge by the Scottish National Party amendment, those within the SNP who understand the role of housing associations and the strength that they bring to communities seem to have lost out. The amendment calls for an end to wholesale stock transfer, but the reality is that that is a distinction without a difference. If the issue is size, I point out that the transfers in Argyll and Bute and the Western Isles, which were whole stock transfers, were equivalent to partial stock transfers that happened in other parts of the country. Local authorities are able to decide, as some have done, to go for the option of partial stock transfer as their approach to the community ownership programme.
It is necessary to lift the burden of debt to secure investment. People are entitled to certainty, which is what a yes vote allows. The SNP knows the powerful difference that housing associations can make in communities. It knows that tenant-led housing organisations' focus on the needs of tenants, housing and local communities can make a difference, but we are led to believe that staff and tenants in Inverclyde and elsewhere are being duped. Perhaps members would like to go down to Inverclyde and tell them that. The staff to whom I spoke there are up for the opportunity that huge investment will provide and the difference that it will make to their work with tenants. Tenants understand that. They cannot wait for their central heating and windows until Frances Curran manages to get herself into an influential position and persuades Gordon Brown to write off the debt.
In government, sometimes we have to make compromises. Sometimes, there is a trade-off between cost and benefit. I have supported policies that were not my perfect position, but the community ownership programme poses no such dilemma. It is not a compromise but a package that builds on the proven strength of the housing movement—tenants, staff and communities—and reinforces that good work with real investment, which will liberate communities' capacity to flourish. Tenants and staff have nothing to lose and everything to gain from stock transfer. The SNP can have a theoretical debate about debt write-off, but we are making a huge financial commitment to some of our poorest communities and if we direct the finances with staff and tenants in the lead, we will have nothing to fear.
I understand the anxieties of staff at a time of change, but what a poverty of ambition Unison displays in saying, "If you don't know, vote no." I say to tenants that, if they do not know, they should go and ask those who have the information, listen to tenants who lead the campaigns and recognise what a yes vote will mean for their communities. No one has anything to fear from stock transfer as part of a huge programme of investment in local communities, and people deserve to understand the opportunities that exist for them in voting on plans that have been created within local communities and which will be delivered in those communities by those who will benefit from them most.
I move amendment S2M-5104.4, to leave out from the first "calls on" to end and insert:
"commends the initiatives by the Scottish Executive to increase the quantity of affordable housing in Scotland through its increased investment programme, which will deliver over 16,500 new affordable homes for rent and nearly 5,000 for low-cost home ownership by 2008, and through its Homestake low-cost home ownership scheme and its use of the planning system to increase supply; supports the principle of housing transfer to community ownership to improve the quality of existing housing where this has the support of the tenants; agrees that transfer has the potential to deliver a substantial package of benefits for tenants, including increased investment in their homes, rent guarantees and a much greater say in how their homes are managed, and recognises that transfer is indeed now delivering substantial new investment for tenants, as confirmed by Audit Scotland."
In 2000, a minority report from the SNP members of the Social Inclusion, Housing and Voluntary Sector Committee had this to say about the Government's proposals on stock transfer:
"The minority felt that the Government's stock transfer proposals were clearly driven by Treasury policy, and that tenant involvement and participation is a secondary concern due to the repeated failure of the Minister to disclose other plans were there to be a ‘No' vote by tenants."
Let us move on six years. The Executive still has no plan B in place now that Edinburgh, Stirling and Renfrewshire have rejected wholesale stock transfer. As the Minister for Communities told me two weeks ago at the Communities Committee,
"Where community ownership takes place, new borrowing is not public expenditure, so it makes perfect sense from the Treasury's point of view to write off debt for community ownership but not for councils that retain their own stock … The debt is there and will remain there until people vote for community ownership. That is just a fact of life".—[Official Report, Communities Committee, 24 October 2006; c 4127.]
Johann Lamont gave powerful support to housing associations in her speech, and I acknowledge fully that transfer to housing associations is not privatisation, that housing associations contribute a great deal to their communities and that, in many places, people believe in them passionately. However, the point is that the Government's flagship policy of whole stock transfer was never driven by the tenants' aspirations; it was driven by no more than Treasury policy.
At the Communities Committee, the minister rejected my suggestion that he get in touch with the Treasury and ask it to write off the capital debt on Scottish housing stock. If he genuinely cared about the conditions in which people live, he would recognise that it is unfair to expect current local authority housing tenants to pay out of their rent for the historical capital debt on houses that have been sold or demolished and to take responsibility for bringing housing stock up to the quality standard that the Government has set. Rents cannot keep going up. That would be neither fair nor sustainable.
Malcolm Chisholm said last week at question time that the debacle over Glasgow's second-stage stock transfer had no bearing on the no votes in Edinburgh and Stirling. In fact, it was central to those votes. To put it simply, the people of Glasgow were promised the second-stage transfer of their housing to the housing associations about which Johann Lamont spoke so passionately, but it has not been delivered. Even now, the minister is unable and unwilling to say when or if any of those transfers will take place. That is a debacle in anyone's language. It is a matter of trust, and tenants in communities that are now faced with a ballot simply do not believe the minister when he promises them anything because he has let down the Glasgow tenants. That is well known throughout Scotland and explains why he gets the results that he is getting.
Since the Government came to power, the communities budget, which includes housing, has risen in real terms by 5.9 per cent while the whole Scottish budget has increased by 17.1 per cent. The minister must explain to members why the housing budget has risen much more slowly than any other Scottish Executive budget. The impact of that underfunding is clear: in every year from 1999 to 2004, the Government built fewer houses in the social rented sector than the Tories built in 1995.
We have a crisis in housing. The Government has had nine years to do something about it and it has failed.
I move amendment S2M-5104.2, to leave out from the first "calls on" to end and insert:
"recognises the failure of the Scottish Executive to adequately fund Scottish housing and its refusal to consider any other funding options than large-scale voluntary transfer; deplores the lack of real choice offered to Scottish tenants; condemns the Executive's failure to deliver the promise of second-stage transfer to the tenants of Glasgow Housing Association, and calls on the Minister for Communities to make immediate representations to the UK Treasury for the write-off of local authorities' capital housing debt without preconditions."
As I look around the chamber, I see that many of the members who were involved in the discussion and formulation of the Housing (Scotland) Act 2001 are present today. I cannot be persuaded that the arguments in favour of the 2001 act that were canvassed five or six years ago are any less valid today than they were then. I remember that one of the pieces of research that came before the Social Justice Committee, which dealt with the Housing (Scotland) Bill, demonstrated that about 92 per cent of the Scottish population aspired to own their own home. The Minister for Social Justice of the time trumpeted that statistic. I recall pointing out, somewhat cynically:
"100 per cent of the population of Scotland probably aspire to win the lottery; unfortunately, not all of us are likely to achieve that."—[Official Report, Social Justice Committee, 9 May 2001; c 2243.]
For a substantial percentage of the population, home ownership is not an economically viable option. It follows that we require public sector housing, and it is essential that housing of a reasonable quality and standard be provided for economical rents. All of us would agree with that.
Could Bill Aitken give us the source of his information that repairs and maintenance expenditure is higher under the GHA than under Glasgow City Council?
Arguably, part of the issue is that so much more is being done now. When the dead hand of municipal housing was controlling people's housing ambitions in Glasgow, very little happened. Mr Sheridan and I were both councillors in the city for some years. He must have been aware of the frustration that arose from attempting to get any reaction from those responsible for council housing with regard to repairs and other matters. They were completely unresponsive to the ambitions of tenants.
Will the member give way?
No, I must move on.
Having accepted that we must provide reasonable-quality housing at a reasonable level of rent, we should establish what has worked in housing and what has failed. Undoubtedly, the real success story in post-war Scottish public sector housing has been the housing association movement. It is clear that, when people are given responsibility over their own problems and housing conditions, they respond very positively. I acknowledge that one or two associations have gone belly up, but the vast majority have been real success stories.
There is much to be said for Johann Lamont's amendment. I part company with her, however, with regard to the fact that the job of stock transfer is half done and has been a bit of a PR disaster. The people of Glasgow voted overwhelmingly for stock transfer, but it has happened only in part. The ideal model is of locally accountable housing associations with a critical mass of, say, 4,000 houses and a maximum of 8,000 houses under their control. That has not transpired despite the fact that, over the years, I have repeatedly written to successive ministers, asking for action in that respect. Until transfers are completed successfully, it will be extremely difficult to persuade tenants in other parts of Scotland that that model should be followed.
We can, of course, read Audit Scotland's report with a degree of satisfaction. It has been demonstrated that things are happening in stock transfer. However, until we are prepared to hand over the stock to locally accountable housing associations, we will not make the progress that we wish to make. Stock transfer has been a tremendous success. In many instances, and particularly in Glasgow, we have seen how it can work. The Executive must complete the job and effect the secondary transfer as quickly as possible.
I move amendment S2M-5104.1, to leave out from first "calls on" to end and insert:
"supports the transfer of local government housing to communities run by locally accountable housing associations, co-operatives and companies and notes the recent Audit Scotland report which concluded that the handover of more than 100,000 council homes to new landlords since 1998 has brought more investment in properties and promoted tenant control as well as facilitating increased repairs and maintenance and the building of new homes and keeping rent increases down; therefore urges all tenants to seriously consider voting for the stock transfer of their homes, but notes, however, that the Scottish Executive now needs to address urgently the issues preventing the second stage transfer in Glasgow and to publish what it and the City of Edinburgh Council now plan to do for the future of Edinburgh's housing stock, with a view to assisting in future investment for vital affordable housing."
It is helpful to have this short debate on housing stock transfer. The Liberal Democrats have always supported the concept of stock transfer and, in particular, the prospect of the change from monolithic municipal providers to community management and ownership. Housing associations should be tenant led and should adopt policies that the tenants require. If that is not happening in certain locations, ministers will need to review the particular circumstances—but not the overall policy.
Stock transfer has the added practical advantage of the write-off of council housing debt, which should pave the way for investment. Councils spend 43 per cent of their rental income on repaying housing debt, which must surely restrict the capacity to invest. Should debt be written off without transfer? The practical position is that the United Kingdom Government has made its stance clear: debt write-off without transfer is not on the cards, so that debate is largely academic. Those who suggest that tenants should vote no to stock transfer must describe the alternative. As the minister said, why should tenants wait until an undisclosed future date simply because they are not prepared to accept the current realities?
Setting aside the financial arguments, council ownership and community ownership are clearly not the same. The model of greater tenant involvement and control of decision making—the housing association model—is not one that councils can replicate. It is no use replacing one monolith with another. The situation in Glasgow gives rise to concern. Implementation of the second-stage transfer is imperative. The Liberal Democrats are not entirely convinced that 64 is the right number of local housing associations—perhaps a smaller number would be more realistic. However, it is overwhelmingly obvious that the second-stage transfer must take place. Although they are unique, the problems in Glasgow cast a shadow over the whole process of housing stock transfer and over housing associations themselves.
The first housing stock transfer in Scotland occurred in Berwickshire, in my constituency, even before there was any legislation on the matter. Berwickshire Housing Association is a good landlord with a fantastic record in innovative design and in the development of sustainable, energy-efficient housing. It is almost a leader in the field. There is no council housing left in my area. Investment is taking place and tenants now have a direct say in the policies of their associations. Of course there are still problems, including overcrowding and lettings policies under which, sadly, unsuitable tenants are sometimes put among people who they should not be among, but such problems can be overcome with effort and assistance from central Government.
The fact is that housing associations are here to stay. We should encourage them. We should say yes to stock transfers for all the benefits that they bring.
The majority of members will very much agree with Johann Lamont's comments this morning about the range of tenures that should be available, giving people a genuine choice in making the legitimate decision to rent if that is what they want to do. The majority of members support the idea of mixed communities and want there to be different options, including community ownership through genuinely local and accountable housing associations; owner-occupation; other, less explored, tenures that can fill certain niches, such as co-operatives and co-housing; private rented sector housing; and council housing. I think that the majority of members would be comfortable with that mix, and genuinely local decisions are the best way of achieving it.
The SNP is right to say that if we want local decisions to be free and genuine, central Government must take responsibility for all the debt. That would allow those choices to be made. The problem is that we know without a shadow of doubt the answer to that suggestion. The UK Government might take the view—the Executive may or may not support this—that community ownership is the right choice in all circumstances. It might even hold that view with as much ideological fervour as the Scottish Socialist Party has in opposing it. However, the Government is clearly wrong if it imagines that tenants will vote for community ownership only under the threat that they must take it or get nothing. If there are genuine benefits to be had from community ownership aside from the debt write-off, as I believe there can be, ministers should advocate those benefits and allow a free choice to be made. The conditionality of debt write-off gives rise to the whiff of blackmail. It should be clear by now that that benefits only those who are implacably opposed to community ownership and who are willing to misrepresent it as privatisation.
Does Patrick Harvie agree that, among the range of choices, it is surely right that there should also be a place for council ownership? Is not that the consequence of the votes in Edinburgh, Stirling and Renfrewshire, where the tenants wish to remain council tenants? Where is that option among the range of choices?
I support the principle of giving tenants a choice and a vote. That is an important principle, so it is regrettable when they are given a misleading idea of the choices that they have. It is a shame that the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations should have to send us a briefing that bluntly disagrees with the terms of a debate in the Parliament. Stock transfer is not privatisation and it is wrong for the SSP motion to suggest that it is. It is also wrong for the SSP to put that idea about in communities that are about to make the decision.
The Tory amendment ends by posing a challenge to the Executive: how will we provide decent housing in areas where tenants vote against stock transfer? However, why does that challenge focus only on Edinburgh? The problem is widespread and will continue to spread unless the Executive acknowledges that it needs a new strategy for making the case for community ownership to tenants.
I regret the lack of recognition in the Executive's amendment that it has some responsibility for the deep trouble that its policy is getting us into—for example, events in the wake of the no votes, or the mire in which the GHA seems to be stuck because second-stage transfer has hit the rocks. The Labour-led Executive is facing a crisis in a Labour-led council area over a Labour policy and the financing of an organisation that is the creature of Labour policy. That demands a response from the Labour Party, including a clear commitment on when second-stage transfer will take place and a new strategy on how to advocate community ownership that is not based on the conditionality of debt write-off. The challenge for the Executive is to address those issues. I regret that its amendment fails to do that.
Patrick Harvie talked about choice, and added a description when he talked about "genuine" choice. If this debate was taking place 10 years ago, the Deputy Minister for Communities and other Labour members would be arguing forcefully that genuine choice should include people's right to live in a council home, the right of local authorities to own and manage housing stock on behalf of their tenants, and the right of local authorities to invest in improving that stock and its management to encourage as much tenant control as possible.
Sadly, debates on housing today lack a principle that the Labour Party used to stick by and promote—that is, that local authority housing is social housing and represents democratic control. If, through lack of funds, failure to invest or failure to address local management problems, tenants are not satisfied or sufficiently involved in the management of their homes, the answer is not to throw the baby out with the bath water and abolish council housing, which is what the Labour Party wants to do. The answer is to improve the funding that is available to local authorities and to improve local management.
My experience is different from the experience that Bill Aitken described in his speech. My 11 years as a local authority councillor in Glasgow taught me a lot about Glasgow City Council's housing department. I learned that it was underfunded and that it had an albatross around its neck, with 65p in every £1 of rent going to pay off historic debt, but I also learned that it was staffed by thousands of committed workers who were determined to try to get a good deal for the tenants they served.
Surely when Tommy Sheridan was a councillor in Glasgow he supported a stock transfer in his ward to the Glen Oaks Housing Association. Is there a whiff of hypocrisy here?
That is factually incorrect. I supported the ballot. When I was asked how the tenants should vote in the ballot, I advised them to stay with the council. The tenants decided to transfer because what was on offer from the local housing association was better than what the council could offer at that stage. It is regrettable that Charlie Gordon tells lies in the chamber.
Order. Mr Sheridan, not lies, please.
Sorry. It is regrettable that Charlie Gordon peddles an untruth in relation to that particular vote.
Mr Aitken talked about repairs and maintenance. He should check the answer to written question S2W-24061, on repair and maintenance costs under the GHA compared with those under Glasgow City Council. If he did so, he would find that Glasgow City Council spent more per unit on repairs and maintenance in 2000-01, 2001-02 and 2002-03 than the GHA spent in its first two years of existence. Glasgow City Council could do everything that the GHA is doing but more quickly and cheaply if it had the same debt write-off facility that was on offer to the GHA.
What we have is not genuine choice but blackmail by a Labour Party, both here and at Westminster, that is determined to abolish local authority housing. That is the social policy engineering that is under way in the housing sector today. The tenants of Scotland should reject that blackmail and fight to retain local authority housing. They should tell Mr Brown that, instead of investing £6 billion in Iraq or spending £76 billion on a replacement for Trident, he should write off the debt so that local authorities can properly invest in improving housing for ordinary tenants.
I am sure that my experience is similar to that of other MSPs. We have lost count of the number of constituents who come to see us because they cannot get the right type of house. Often, they cannot get a family home or there are problems with the quality or cost of homes. We meet elderly people who cannot get the modifications done that would allow them to stay in homes that they want to stay in long into their retirement.
In those circumstances, it is surprising that there is still confusion when ballots come around, but I suppose that that is understandable given the rhetoric that we heard this morning and the scaremongering and propaganda about what is going on. Earlier speakers said that stock transfer is privatisation, but housing associations are not private companies; they are non-profit-making organisations and every penny that they make is ploughed back into serving tenants. Most housing associations are managed by tenants.
I hope that the tenants who are receiving their ballot papers in Inverclyde today will join the 50,000 tenants in Scotland who have voted for housing stock transfer. If so, they will join tenants in the majority of council areas in which there have been votes on housing stock transfer—transfer has been supported by a majority of eight council areas to five, and one of those five was Renfrewshire, where transfer was rejected by 36 votes.
Will the member take an intervention?
No, thank you.
When the tenants in Inverclyde vote to join those 50,000 tenants, they will be voting to clear away unpopular, run-down houses and build 1,000 much-needed new homes in the area. They will be saying yes to home improvements, modernisation and upgrades. However, if they vote against the great deal that is on offer in Inverclyde, they will lose out on that investment and rents will double in the next eight years. More pensioners will be forced into residential care unnecessarily because the council will not be able to afford to make the adaptations that would allow them to remain in their homes. We cannot ignore that fact. We want action now, not jam tomorrow.
If tenants in Inverclyde want a stark illustration of what would happen without stock transfer, they should consider their neighbours in Renfrewshire, who voted against it. Their rents will need to increase by 275 per cent just to get their homes up to scratch.
I ask the SSP, the SNP and other opponents of stock transfer where the downside is. Where is the catch? As they know perfectly well, the answer is that there is not one.
Will the member give way?
No. Mr Fox limited the time this morning, not me.
The only reason why those parties are against stock transfer is pure, naked, cynical political opportunism. What sort of political party runs a campaign to condemn the least well-off tenants to damp, expensive, unfit housing for the rest of their lives? Who would campaign to ensure that rents go up next year just so that they can get a couple of good press releases out of the resulting misery?
They can try to deny it, but the proof comes out of their own mouths. The Paisley Daily Express on 7 November reports a Renfrewshire SNP councillor having the cheek to say:
"One in five families are living with damp in their home and 50 per cent of the housing stock needs repairs right now".
He is one of the people who campaigned only last week for a no vote, which will ensure that tenants stay in those damp, unfit homes for ever and a day. Now they cannot wait to use that misery for political ends.
I urge tenants in Inverclyde not to give in to the scaremongers but to tell the SNP and the SSP that their lives and homes are not something for them to play politics with. I tell them in no uncertain terms: Inverclyde Council knows that it cannot match the good deal from River Clyde Homes, which is why the council has unanimously backed transfer. Trish Godman MSP, David Cairns MP and I would not be recommending the package if we did not believe that it was in the best interests of our constituents. If the residents think that they deserve the same housing investment as Glasgow and elsewhere and if they want new homes, they must vote for it—vote for the guarantee of improvement in their homes, not jam tomorrow.
We think that Duncan McNeil and those on the Labour benches protest too much. The proof is in the pudding: they should go and ask the tenants how they are suffering.
Go and ask the tenants in Glasgow.
You have had your say, Duncan.
I want to comment on the Executive's amendment, which in particular proposes that the Parliament
"supports the principle of housing transfer to community ownership to improve the quality of existing housing where this has the support of the tenants".
I cannot disagree with that. However, it later proposes that the Parliament
"recognises that transfer is indeed now delivering substantial new investment for tenants".
Although that may be in an Audit Scotland report, I can disagree with it. If the amendment had referred to "some tenants" rather than all of them, it would have been fine and dandy.
Let us look at the reality in Glasgow with the GHA—not propaganda or scaremongering like Duncan McNeil, but the reality that people are living with.
Let us take tenants first. Tenants have been put into groups. Some tenants are getting improvements, but others are getting none. Some tenants are on lists and do not know whether they will have a house next month or next year, and some tenants have been moved three or four times within the Glasgow area. When a house is demolished, they are moved again, and there have been wholesale clearances of communities. It is not a happy life to live if, coming into winter, older people do not know whether they will be in their house. That is the reality for some tenants in the Glasgow area; it is not scaremongering or propaganda.
Will the member give way?
Sorry, Colin. I have got only a short time.
Let us consider the owner-occupiers, who have been mentioned not so much by Labour but certainly by people on the ground. Because of the GHA—a huge monolithic supposed transfer vehicle, set by Labour—old-age pensioners are being forced to go into debt to pay for housing repairs that they say they do not need. People enter their homes and tear up their gardens. They then give them a bill for £5,000, £6,000 or £7,000 to be paid within a year and tell them to go to a bank to get a loan. What kind of fairness is that to anyone, let alone an old-age pensioner?
That is the reality in Glasgow right now, and the Executive seriously wonders why other areas do not want to go down the road of transfer. It has made a mess of the situation in Glasgow through the GHA—a Labour policy—but it will not admit it.
Let us look at second-stage transfer, which has been mentioned by many today. Second-stage transfer is supposed to be completed in 2007, but we are not even near it yet. I will ask the minister a couple of questions, and perhaps whoever sums up will be able to answer them. Has the minister sought independent, external advice on the financial shortfall for second-stage transfer, which the GHA's own financial report said was £500 million? If it has not, the second-stage transfer will not go ahead. The minister said that 2006 would be a pivotal year for second-stage transfer. Does she still believe that? We are nearing the end of 2006, and nothing has happened. When will we see second-stage transfer in Glasgow?
The minister cannot hide from the issue—neither can anyone in the Labour Party. For years, they have been talking about second-stage transfer. The process started in 2003, and we are nearly in 2007. It has been an unholy mess in Glasgow and no one will trust the Executive simply because of the situation. It should be apologising to the tenants and owner-occupiers who put their trust in it for both stock transfer and second-stage transfer. They have been sold a pup and sold down the river. Ministers should hang their heads in shame.
We have heard a lot today about housing investment in Scotland. There are understandable differences of opinion, on both ideological and practical grounds. As someone who has experience of representing some of the neediest communities in Scotland, I want to put on record the reason why people such as me, who argued for debt to be written off for what was then Glasgow District Council, when the Grieve report was produced in 1988, have changed our perspectives because of the reality for some of those neighbourhoods.
I am not here to pontificate or to lecture to other members who have arrived at different conclusions, but I want to make a few points.
The fundamental lesson in my area is that where housing has been transferred effectively to local tenants, mainly through housing co-ops and housing associations, they have done markedly better pound for pound than any municipal authority charged with provision in either Glasgow or any other part of the UK. That is based on evidence from significant research. The conclusion for me is that, where we can, we should endeavour to achieve that transfer.
The difficulty is the illusion that that is easy. There are people who will oppose transfer for ideological reasons, even in the light of the evidence. If they want to do that, that is fine, but in the real world we have to make difficult choices about what is on offer. We could argue that the chancellor should make more resources available. That is a legitimate political position to take, but it is not one that I want to waste too much time on. I want to address the immediate needs in communities.
Another argument was that stock transfer would lead to privatisation, people selling off council houses, and home owners existing across Glasgow and Scotland. In fact, some associates of Sandra White popped up in my area persistently to claim that the agenda was to ensure that home owners in Glasgow were looked after. They are now popping up in my area to say that they are concerned that home owners are the victims of high charges for repair and renovation. There is a legitimate issue that the GHA needs to deal with, but it is separate from the broad debate on investment in Scotland's housing.
Ultimately, tenants make the decision, and I recommend the experience that Mr Sheridan went through. The tenants and workers in his area decided that they would much prefer to have Glen Oaks Housing Association than the local authority running their housing. That is good, and I hope that such an approach can be accelerated across Scotland. In my area, particularly in the Gorbals, it has made a real difference when tenants have run housing, even with major transition issues.
There will always be a transition stage when people feel that they need to be moved from house to house, and Sandra White needs to understand that. If the long-term agenda is about improvement and tenants running the housing, ordinary people will support the strategy, but the transition requires a lot of sensitivity.
Will the member give way?
I am sorry, but I am in my last minute.
Will the member give way?
No, I genuinely think that there is an important conclusion, which I need to outline. Colin Fox has already taken up 25 seconds of my time trying to intervene. If he wanted more time, he should have extended the time to allow a broader debate.
My final point is that 17 out of 18 commitments that were made during the stock transfer in Glasgow are being met. I would like to move quicker to second-stage transfer because of the arguments that I deployed earlier. However, we need to address the issue of how we invest in housing. We have a strategy of dealing with debt through transfer, but we must ensure that tenants are central to the debate.
Some of today's debate has been regrettable, because many people in the housing association movement who are also long-term socialists have been saddened, feeling that some of the language both in the debate and in the motion has been hijacked. On balance, the Executive's strategy is right, but we need to ensure that the agencies that we ask to carry it out listen to the concerns that tenants still have.
We now move to winding-up speeches. Mr Stone, you have four minutes.
I suppose that one should acknowledge the fact that the SSP initiated today's debate. I do not agree with its position, but it is good that we have had an open debate on the issue. However, it is a pity that we did not have a little longer, so I suggest that it was a mistake for the SSP to divide this morning's debating time between two debates.
Frances Curran made a robust speech in which she accused ministers of bullying and described stock transfer as a handover to faceless men and privatisation by the back door. Other members have dealt with her point about privatisation by the back door, but I will return to her claim about faceless men and women.
Johann Lamont made a robust speech defending the policy and important speeches were also made by Tricia Marwick and Bill Aitken. In particular, Bill Aitken highlighted the issue of economic rents and flagged up the fact that Audit Scotland has given good marks to what has happened so far. Euan Robson outlined nicely what has always been my party's position—this is a fact—which is that we support the notion of stock transfer. We are very much wedded to the thought that such transfers should be tenant led.
Stock transfer is about the write-off of housing debt, as Mr Sheridan acknowledged in his speech. I can remember how crippling that debt was when I was a councillor, but I will return to that in a minute or two. Mr Robson pointed out that 43 per cent of housing income is spent on debt. He said that second-stage transfer is vital, but he slightly questioned the number of housing associations that are to be involved. However, that issue is a debate for another occasion.
Patrick Harvie talked about the need for choice. Tommy Sheridan's speech made some points that I have already mentioned. Duncan McNeil made an impassioned speech defending the policy.
As a councillor in the Highlands—which is different from the central belt—I was a member of a housing authority for 13 years and I recall how crippling the housing debt was. I remember how we could do less and less each year. It was difficult to get kitchens done up and windows replaced and so on.
We also need to be wary of talking about democracy in housing. In the Highlands, at any rate, the very nature of our councils was such that a powerful member could corner a budget to ensure that the housing estates in his or her ward were done up. Very often, the investment was not spread in the best possible way. I do not know whether that is a facet only of Highland politics, but it was not always for the best. I can remember having to fight to get anything done to the housing estates in my ward.
By comparison, in my constituency, we have two good examples of housing associations—Albyn Housing Society and Pentland Housing Association—that have been with us for some time. The tenants of Albyn—which is very close to my home—will confirm that the estate has improved a lot over the years and will be the first to say how delighted they were to get their new kitchens. Frances Curran accuses housing associations of being full of faceless people, but I think that the people and tenants who work in either of those housing associations would not be at all pleased by her description of them. They are not faceless. They have put themselves forward for the good of both the community and their neighbouring tenants. We should pay tribute to them for all that they are doing.
One minute.
Will the member take an intervention?
I am sorry, but I am in my last minute.
Albyn Housing Society and Pentland Housing Association are examples of what a good housing association with tenant participation can be all about. I see the evidence of that with my own eyes. The idea that people should say no to getting rid of the crippling housing debt is ludicrous in the extreme. As Duncan McNeil said, we must think carefully before we condemn people to live in rotting houses on which there is little prospect of any work being done. Getting rid of the debt is crucial, as it unblocks desperately needed funds. At the end of the day, do we want decent housing for our people or dogma? Let us have decent housing first, please.
A much forgotten point, to which Bill Aitken did not refer but would have had every right to do so, is that the previous Conservative Government presided over the greatest redistribution of wealth in modern history—[Interruption.] Excuse me, I have only four minutes.
That redistribution, towards the poorest in our society, was due to our extremely popular right-to-buy policy.
Our further reforms to allow for stock transfer extended that much-needed movement away from the big, all-controlling state towards individuals in local communities. I am pleased that our policy has done so much to help to ease a great deal of the social decay and exclusion that many of the poorest in our society experience.
I agree with Johann Lamont that the attack in the motion, which claims that stock transfer is privatisation through the back door, simply does not stand up to the test. The new housing associations are not-for-profit, community-based, charitable organisations. Stock transfer is not about big business or global capitalism. If anything, it is about power to the people.
All members will agree that the issue comes down to how social housing is best provided. The Conservatives are not in the pockets of big business or uncaring towards the poorest in our society, as some SSP members might have people believe. Scotland's homelessness figures are a disgrace. I am committed to ensuring that Scotland has a social housing system that works best for those who need it and that the most vulnerable are given the protection of which the state assures them.
The simple fact is that the current council housing system is not well run. Councils do not provide good value for money. Many councils have been forced to push up rents to pay for their inefficiencies. Accountability is lost because of falling turnouts at local elections. The current housing debt even in small authorities such as the Western Isles is £20,000 per unit. The total for Scotland as a whole rises to £3.5 billion. That cannot be sustained. The transfer of administration of such housing to a body that is locally accountable to the immediate tenants and is part-run by tenants who are actively involved in the decision-making process must be a step towards a better system for all.
In certain individual cases, matters may not have gone as smoothly as we would have hoped for, but we need to strengthen the procedures rather than scrap stock transfer altogether. The principle of stock transfer is right and we must not lose sight of that. For example, thanks to the stock transfer to Glasgow Housing Association—which was the most controversial application of the policy—some 700,000 repairs have been carried out that would otherwise have been suspended; rent increases have been pegged to inflation; and an extra £4 million of welfare payments are now being claimed.
Will the member give way?
Sorry, I do not have much time.
The member has plenty of time.
Mr Fox, sit down.
Regrettably, the Executive has not managed the transfer adequately. By providing insufficient money for the new GHA, the Executive has created suspicion and doubt about the whole process. That is unfortunate, but I point out that vast improvements have been made for those who need them most, which would not otherwise have taken place.
I also point out that the scaremongering and negative campaigning of the SSP on the Glasgow stock transfer are holding back hundreds of thousands of the poorest in our society from getting the home improvements and rent security that they deserve.
On tenant support for the policy, although it is regrettable that the proposals of City of Edinburgh Council and Stirling Council were defeated, stock transfer was supported by 90 per cent of tenants of Argyll and Bute Council and by the tenants of Western Isles Council and Glasgow City Council. In Renfrewshire, tenants were split down the middle. Such levels of support hardly confirm the resounding opposition to the policy that some would have us believe they do. A more accurate interpretation is that the irresponsible, negative scaremongering campaign that was carried out by certain figures on the left managed to strike enough fear into tenants' minds to create a victory for the no camp.
A final, important point to make to those who advocate that Scotland should separate from the rest of the UK is that, for many authorities in Scotland, stock transfer is an accepted fact that is here to stay and for which the Treasury has earmarked many millions of pounds over a set period of time. If Scotland were to divorce itself from union to the Treasury, where would it find those extra millions of pounds that are already committed and planned for? That is just another demonstration of how the separatist argument falls down.
I support the amendment in the name of Bill Aitken.
I declare my interest as a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Housing.
The SSP motion—members will not be surprised to know—contains a few statements that I fundamentally disagree with. I found it amusing that the motion asks us to confirm our belief
"in the fullest democratic control and management of council homes by tenants".
I have never seen that in my life, despite having worked in housing for many years. A big issue is that tenants have never had democratic control of council housing because the monolith has been too big. We have had the odd play at democratic control through attempts at tenant management co-operatives and so on, but we have never had full democratic control of council housing. Let us not pretend that we have had.
Before Frances Curran accuses me of lacking credibility, let me say that, yes, I have lived in council houses and, yes, I have had to deal with tenants. In fact, my family has been evicted from a few council houses, although I do not say that with great pride.
The motion also talks about the privatisation of housing through housing associations. Housing associations are not, and never have been, private landlords. Yes, they use private money, but where do people think that the money that funds the public sector borrowing requirement comes from if not from the private market? The use of private money does not automatically mean privatisation.
Will the member take an intervention?
No.
Some people say that housing associations are not profit making; the claim was repeated in the SFHA briefing. In fact, that is a bit of a myth—they are. They are not profit distributing, which is very different. Housing associations make a profit, which is why those that are not charities pay corporation tax. What is great about them is that the money is ploughed back in for the benefit of the communities that they serve.
Will the member take an intervention?
No.
The money is put into sinking funds and so on to ensure the on-going maintenance of houses.
I believe in housing associations and both the SNP and I believe in stock transfer. However, we heard from the minister Labour's view of stock transfer. She cited some good examples of it, which can be found all over the place. Why did we not use them? Why did the Executive not listen to the SNP and others who said that stock transfer is good when it is tenant led but that large-scale stock transfer is bad, because it involves replacing one monolith with another? People do not have real choice or real community ownership. That is clear from the lack of secondary stock transfer in Glasgow. As Tricia Marwick indicated, that was pointed out a long time ago, in the minority report of the Social Inclusion, Housing and Voluntary Sector Committee on housing stock transfer. I remember Wendy Alexander saying when she was the Minister for Communities that there was no plan B. That is the problem—there has never been a plan B.
In 2001, I tried to have the right to community ownership enshrined in the Housing (Scotland) Bill. That proposal was knocked back by the Executive. If such a right had been included in the legislation, perhaps there would not be the current fuss in Glasgow about the failure to have secondary stock transfer.
Will the member take an intervention?
No, I am in the last minute of my speech.
Earlier this year the minister told Tricia Marwick that in Glasgow secondary stock transfer is not being prevented by a financial black hole. If that is the case, why is secondary stock transfer not happening? Why are the promises that were made to tenants in Glasgow not being kept? The situation is making people lose trust in the Executive every time another ballot is held. Why are the tenants who are being balloted in other areas not being given the option of secondary stock transfer in the papers that are sent out? Is that not happening because the Executive does not really want to have secondary stock transfer? I hope that the minister will tell me otherwise and will be able to say that second-stage transfers in Glasgow will go ahead, so that we can have full community ownership.
Both a theoretical debate and a real debate are taking place. I know which side I am on; I want to focus on the needs of tenants. At the time of stock transfer in Glasgow, Kenny Gibson—who used to be an MSP for the Glasgow region and was previously a councillor there—said that, despite people's reservations about stock transfer, he did not have it in his heart to tell his constituents to vote against their own interests. Tommy Sheridan had it in his heart to urge people to do that, but they disregarded him. We must think about the choices that people in communities now face.
I say to people in Inverclyde and Highland that there may be an opportunity for some to give a theoretical bloody nose to the Chancellor of the Exchequer in a theoretical debate, but that after that theoretical bloody nose has been given the caravan will move on and people will remain with the challenge of houses with very high rent and poor levels of investment. That is unacceptable.
We are giving people a choice, with no downside. Sometimes there is a downside, but in this circumstance there is not. As Tommy Sheridan said, in my constituency of Glasgow Pollok people got a better offer and voted for it. They are now living in communities that have been transformed by that better offer. They are living in mixed communities because, as Linda Fabiani said, housing associations generate surpluses, ideas, imagination and creativity in local communities and are able to make a difference.
Debt write-off is significant expenditure. I know that as a general rule Thursday mornings tend to be quite expensive for the SNP, but is it committed to the write-off of £2 billion of debt? Where would the money to fund that come from? The chancellor has said that he will write off the debt, but that it is in the interests of the public purse to ensure that that debt does not regenerate. We know that we have residually high rents in the social rented sector not because rents are attached to the value of the property but because there are other pressures on budgets. I remember the debate in the 1980s about jobs versus rent levels and the consequence of that. It is important for housing to be able to focus on housing decisions. That is on offer to people in local communities.
Much has been said about the GHA. First, there will not be 63 organisations. There are already substantial housing associations in Glasgow, so the figure of 63 is a myth. Secondly, the issue is not money alone. There is £1.6 billion-worth of investment that is going into Glasgow, including support for owner-occupiers. When Frank McAveety was a councillor in Glasgow, we could only dream about such sums; the idea that people would invest in housing in that way was a fantasy. I say to the SNP that Alex Neil's notion that the answer to the problems in Glasgow is £700 million suggests to me that he is asking the wrong question. I do not accept that the SNP believes that there is a £700 million funding gap. All that that claim does is undermine commitment to second-stage transfer.
I have to laugh at Sandra White. She is not in favour of stock transfer, but she argues that when it has happened we must have second-stage transfer. Given that she opposed the initial proposal as privatisation, it is bizarre and illogical for her to say that she is now disappointed because stock transfer is not local enough. That is irrational in the extreme.
I will finish by making an important point to people in Inverclyde and Highland. There is a stock transfer proposal and policy, but the strength of it is that it is locally expressed. That is exactly the point that Patrick Harvie made. The Inverclyde plan is designed to meet the needs of people in Inverclyde. It provides for 1,000 new homes and a doubling of the budget for adaptations to allow older people to stay in their homes, and takes account of the need of older people, in particular, for security. In Highland, where the challenges are different, the emphasis is on energy efficiency. The plan is very much in tune with the Highlands' commitment to community liberation and community buyout; it is exactly in line with the culture of people in the Highlands.
Plans should be developed and created locally, with tenants not as dupes but as people who understand the hard choices that need to be made and who take the lead in saying that this is the opportunity for them to make a difference in their communities. I ask people in Inverclyde and Highland not to listen to the pernicious lies that they are told about privatisation. They should look at the investment that is promised, make a judgment on the basis of need in Highland and Inverclyde, and disregard the theoretical opportunity for some to make a headline in the short term. Those people will not live with the consequences, but tenants certainly will.
I have thoroughly enjoyed this morning's debate. I agree with those members who said that it has been all too short and look forward to the Executive making available some of the copious amounts of time that it has. The Scottish Socialist Party has only one chance each year to debate the issue.
The Scottish Socialist Party is proud to have initiated this morning's debate to hold the Scottish Executive to account. Housing stock transfer is one of the most important issues facing the people who sent us here to represent them. As other members have said, it is the Executive's flagship housing policy. Frances Curran was right to say that it is a flagship that is holed below the waterline. It is Labour's poll tax, in as much as Labour is wedded to the policy and is losing huge respect for not recognising that the policy is failing and needs to be abandoned.
I say for the record that the Scottish Socialist Party is utterly opposed to stock transfer. We believe in a programme of publicly owned social housing to ensure that everyone gets the right to live in a house fit for the 21st century. When we consider that the average cost of a new home in Scotland today is £130,000, it is clear that a huge part of our population has been left behind and is unable to buy a house. There is a chronic shortage in Scotland of quality, affordable homes for rent that are publicly owned and democratically controlled.
The Executive's stock transfer policy has rightly come in for some ridicule this morning. Patrick Harvie quite rightly highlighted and ridiculed the briefing that MSPs received from the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations.
Will the member take an intervention?
If Mr Harvie is quick.
I will be very quick at expressing my anger at being misrepresented. I did not ridicule the briefing; I said that it was outrageous that any organisation should have to disagree so fundamentally with a motion because that motion misrepresents the situation.
I am happy to hear Patrick Harvie clarify his position. The briefing needs to be ridiculed because it is ridiculous for it to say that opposition to stock transfer is ideologically driven. That is an astonishing point to make, blind as the SFHA is to the Treasury's ideological reasons for stock transfer. It is clear that the SFHA cannot see the wood for the trees.
Malcolm Chisholm was quoted as saying,
"It is a fantasy to think the Treasury will step in and write off Council housing debt without new landlords taking over the stock."
I wonder who he had in mind when he was talking about that fantasy. Could it have been this year's Labour Party conference, which voted by more than two to one for such a fantasy? I and Malcolm Chisholm are old enough to remember when decisions made at the Labour Party conferences meant something. It is sad to see a once great democratic organisation reduced to a state where such decisions are completely ignored by ministers and leaders. That remarkable quote divulges an ideological pig-headedness. The Executive is not saying this morning that there is no money to write off the debts in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Stirling, Inverclyde and Highland; it is saying, "We've got the money to write off the debt, but we are only going to give it to you if you vote for privatisation. We'll give you the money as long as you do what we say." That is ridiculous.
It is also remarkable that tenants in Edinburgh, Stirling and Renfrewshire, not to mention Tower Hamlets, Cannock Chase, Mid Devon, Birmingham, Sedgefield and countless other places throughout Britain, have rejected the blackmail and told the minister and others, "You're not on." What notice do the minister and his equivalents down south take of those decisions? Not a bit. They have come along, as Johann Lamont has this morning, and insulted our intelligence by dressing up stock transfer and community ownership as a step up from public ownership rather than the quite transparent abandonment of public ownership by a party that does not support it anyway.
The Scottish Socialist Party is not opposed to community ownership, but when it is a clear reduction in what we have just now, it is a backwards step.
Will the member take an intervention?
I do not have time. I allowed one intervention, which is more than the member or anyone else did.
Linda Fabiani talked about full democratic control and management of council houses. The motion says that the SSP believes in that. We never claimed that we had the fullest democratic control and management in Glasgow or anywhere else; it is an aspiration and it is quite right that it should be in the motion.
The Glasgow experience is important because that is where it all began to go badly wrong for ministers. In 2002, 80,600 homes were transferred from Glasgow City Council to the GHA for £1, and £1 billion of debt was written off amid promises that repairs would be made here, there and everywhere and that 3,000 new homes would be built. What is the reality? Where is the famous Blairtummock semi-detached house that everyone was promised? Here we are in November 2006; how many houses have been built? Three thousand? One thousand? Two thousand?
Alex Neil will get there when I tell him. Not one house has been built by the GHA—that is the reality. Not a brick has been laid. However, it has already demolished 10,000 homes and plans to demolish another 40,000. That is the record of the GHA, which received £1 billion in debt write-off, got 80,000 houses for £1 and still could not make a go of it. It came back for another £300 million when its business plan fell apart. It asked for another £400 million for its demolition plans, and now it wants another £500 million for second-stage transfer. That is the reality in Glasgow.
Bill Aitken, Frank McAveety, Duncan McNeil and the minister are all wrong when they say that the GHA experience has turned out to be better for tenants. Glasgow City Council's director of housing and finance compared the GHA's investment in stock in Glasgow—£160 million per year—with the £236 million that Glasgow City Council would have been able to invest had its debt been written off. In other words, if Glasgow City Council had had its debt written off, there would have been a 50 per cent greater investment in housing in Glasgow.
The Executive lost the debate in the Edinburgh, Stirling and Renfrewshire ballots. Will the minister bet her house on a yes vote in Highland and Inverclyde? Perhaps she will tell us later. I ask her to answer a straight question. If, at the end of this month, she is 5 and 0—if five stock transfer ballots have gone against her after Inverclyde and Highland reject it—will she resign, or will she accept the inevitable, that the policy is dead in the water? The SSP believes that top-quality housing is a right for everyone and we are opposed to stock transfer because it takes us backwards.