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The House of Commons ‘Council Housing’ group yesterday (March 8) held the final evidence gathering session of its inquiry to demonstrate support for the ‘fourth option’ for council housing.
30 areas were represented by councillors, council officers, tenants and trade unionists. Seventeen separate delegations gave verbal evidence and answered questions. The group has already taken verbal evidence from 33 delegations as well as receiving written evidence from more than thirty authorities.
The committee will now be reviewing the verbal and written evidence it has received prior to writing up a full report that will be distributed to local authorities, tenants organisations and trade unions to add to the existing pressure on government to change policy and give tenants real choice.
Austin Mitchell MP, chair of the group, said today:
“The three successful hearings organised by the Council Housing group of MPs culminated in yesterday’s full day hearing at the House of Commons. They brought together hundreds of tenants, officers and councillors from all over the country to paint a horrifying picture of the appalling methods being used to force privatisation of council housing on tenants and councils who don’t want it.
Tenants and councils are being bribed, bamboozled and conned into spending millions to give away billions of pounds worth of public assets in housing and land which have been built up by councils to serve local needs. Even where there are ballots few are being run democratically or offering tenants the choice they want.
Now this appalling process is coming to a climax as The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and his privatisation task force are now hoping one more heave will force local authorities to submit proposals by July this year. This desperate last minute game of bluff is defying party conference, the party, rendering councils impotent, costing millions, and denies tenants real choice.
We will now send the mass of evidence and representations we have accumulated in these hearings to John Prescott in the hope of bringing home the damage he is doing to council housing and those who live in it in pursuit of his new ideology of privatisation at all costs.” |
