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Ms Rachel Squire (Dunfermline, West): Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Aitken: No. Time is short.

Mr. Menzies Campbell: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Aitken: No. As I have said, time is short.

Let me repeat that, not having heard that it was a possible cost-saving measure, the Treasury was pleasantly surprised to learn that, in its new form, the scheme would save the PSBR more than £1 billion. That was a double whammy: good news for both service men and taxpayers.

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That brings me back to the Opposition. We are debating a classic old Labour Opposition day motion. The Opposition defence spokesman, the hon. Member for South Shields (Dr. Clark), presented himself as the service man's friend, wearing his heart and CND badge on his sleeve, and proclaiming that he was speaking up for service men; but his weapons in the debate have been "Down with better housing for service men" and "Down with a reduction of £1.5 billion in the PSBR". That is not old Labour; it is neanderthal Labour. It might be called aboriginal Labour, for the weapons that the Opposition have picked for today's debate have turned out to be boomerangs. The motion deserves to be defeated resoundingly.

6.13 pm

Mr. David Jamieson (Plymouth, Devonport): I am very glad to have been called. I apologise to the Secretary of State and my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Dr. Clark) for not having been present for their opening speeches.

The right hon. Member for South Thanet (Mr. Aitken) said that we were debating an old Labour motion. I remind him that the motion with which the House was originally presented was tabled by 65 Conservative Members, including a number of those who sat near him nodding as he spoke. This is not a Labour motion but an old Conservative motion, tabled by Members of Parliament who wanted to do what would be best for service families.

Hon. Members on both sides of the House who table early-day motions have a distant ambition that they will be discussed at an early day, and we must often contain our disappointment at the delay in discussion of the matters involved. I hope that the 65 Conservative Members who signed the early-day motion will now congratulate my hon. Friends on bringing the early day forward so conveniently, enabling us to discuss a matter that was so important to them only three weeks ago. The question before the House today is not whether Conservative Members will vote for a Labour motion, but whether they will vote for their own motion.

My constituency contains many service families, and Plymouth contains more than 3,000 service quarters. I use the word "quarters", because those who occupy the accommodation have no choice about the location. They are not ordinary tenants. They cannot choose their furniture, or even what they plant in the garden. They are allocated their quarters for the period during which they, or their husbands, are serving in the armed forces.

As has been said, those families need to feel secure, especially when the menfolk are working away. This deal is bad for service families and disastrous for the taxpayer, and in isolated pockets of the country, which nevertheless constitute significant areas, it will be bad for small home owners.

Without doubt, to make the deal work, service families will be encouraged to be shunted around from one place to another. The developers will eventually want to maximise profits: they will want to clear out lucrative estates that could easily be sold, and put them on the market. The scheme cannot operate in any other way. As the Minister and the Secretary of State know, there is no question of operating mixed estates, with service and civilian families living side by side. Indeed, the Minister of State for

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Defence Procurement has made that point. Service families will be cleared out of estates so that they can be sold as cheaply as possible.

There is a clear relationship between the sell-off and rent increases in the coming years. Earlier this year, in a written answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Warley, West (Mr. Spellar), the Secretary of State revealed that rents for service married quarters would increase by between 10 and 25 per cent. this year. In the same answer, he said that rents would continue to increase over the next few years until they reached the same level as civilian rents for surrounding houses.

Mr. Portillo indicated dissent.

Mr. Jamieson: The Secretary of State shakes his head; I hope that, when he winds up, he will tell us just what those rent levels will be. I calculate that they will be two or three times as high as they are now.

The Secretary of State will also know that, earlier this year, when I asked whether service families would be given any recompense for the extra rent that they would pay, the Minister of State for the Armed Forces replied:


This is a tax on service families. They will pay the price of the sell-off, so that the Conservative party can use tax cuts as a weapon in the election.

That was confirmed by the hon. Member for Bexleyheath (Mr. Townsend), who denied what had been said by the Minister. The Minister said that the Government's proposal was intended to provide better homes for service families, but the hon. Member for Bexleyheath--who presumably listens to his Whips--told us that the Whips were going around saying that they needed the money for tax cuts for the election. That is the truth. Service families will pay for the folly of this sell-off in years to come: they will pay for the extra money that is needed to lease back the properties. They will pay the £100 million a year that will be needed in the first few years as a tax on their income.

Each year, in my city of Plymouth, the MOD declares up to 80 service families homeless by evicting them at the end of their tour of duty. Will homes be available for men and women who have served their country but no longer have a home because the Ministry of Defence has evicted them? Will those homes continue to be available? Will developers take on the responsibility to put a roof over those people's heads? The MOD is not taking on the responsibility, and I see no prospect of a private developer doing so.

We hear that there are about 20,000 empty homes. Why does the Secretary of State not do what the Conservative party set out in its 1992 election manifesto? It was one of the few matters on which the Labour and Conservative parties agreed. The Conservative party stated that it would make these homes available for social housing--for rent--to get people off housing waiting lists.

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The Minister of State for Defence Procurement (Mr. James Arbuthnot): I shall read the 1992 Conservative manifesto to the hon. Gentleman, because he has got it wrong. The relevant passage reads:


We are selling them.

Mr. Jamieson: May I assist the Minister by reading on? The Conservative party manifesto claims that the party's policy


That is what the Conservative party stated in its manifesto. The Government are now denying that claim by the action that they propose to take.

Mr. Arbuthnot: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Jamieson: I will not give way again to the Minister. He will be able to take up my argument when he responds to the debate on behalf of the Government. He will have the opportunity to deny what is set out in the Tory party's election manifesto.

The Minister knows that, in my constituency, 147 houses have recently been released to a housing association. The lets have gone to Plymouth city council so as to do what the Conservative party stated in its manifesto--to take people off the housing waiting list and put decent roofs over their heads. The Minister will be aware that 50 per cent. of those homes are for former service families so that they can have some security once they have left the services, or because they have been evicted by the MOD.

The Government's proposals are bad for service families. The price of the sell-off will be met over many years by a tax on those families' homes and incomes. The proposals are bad news for local housing markets, because in certain areas a flood of cheap houses will suddenly come on to the market. House prices will be depressed, and that will have a special impact on home owners who are in negative equity.

The Minister knows that that has happened already in some areas. It has happened, for example, at RAF Sculthorpe and RAF Wittering, where groups of houses were sold. House prices in those localities suddenly plummeted. In one instance, three-bedroom bungalows came on the market at £10,000 each. What price did the taxpayer receive for those homes? We are seeing a scandalous waste of taxpayers' money, and that is why Opposition Members will be voting for the motion. We urge Conservative Members, whose motion, in effect, we are discussing this evening, to have the courage to vote in accord with their original thoughts.

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