To ask the Secretary of State for Defence how many houses currently owned by his Department and defence establishments are standing empty.

As at 30 September 1991, the latest date for which figures are available, 9,966 Ministry of Defence owned houses and flats were vacant of which 9,834 were service married quarters. Many of those properties were either undergoing or awaiting major maintenance work or modernisation, some were already allotted to service families who were due to move in shortly and others were being considered for disposal. In addition, some 1,700 dwellings were in the process of being sold.

In view of that enormous number of empty dwellings, will the Minister give an assurance that none of the 1,600 wives—and their children—whose husbands have left them will be evicted? What will happen when another 40,000 military personnel are made redundant as a result of the white paper proposals? Will there be any evictions? Will the Minister assure the House that empty houses will be handed over to local councils or housing associations for rent either to redundant service men or to others? Will he assure the House that the empty properties will not be sold off and service personnel and their families turned onto the street?

We attempt to treat the wives and ex-wives of service men living illegally in some of our properties as sympathetically as we can and that is why the 1,600 to whom the hon. Gentleman referred live in service accommodation.

The figure of 40,000 redundancies is not right. For the army we are talking about in excess of 10,000 redundancies and much of the other reductions will occur through natural wastage. A housing task force has been set up under my noble Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Armed Forces and he is considering how we can use the existing housing stock to alleviate problems. In particular, he will consider the problems faced by those who come back from Germany who may be made redundant and ensure that they have somewhere to live while they are looking for a job. We are addressing that issue now. However, the number of vacant dwellings will probably increase while the running down of the Army continues.

What consideration is my hon. Friend giving to the scheme put forward by the services charity, SSAFA—the Soldiers', Sailors' and Airmen's Families Association—to deal with redundant housing stock?

The SSAFA is in close touch with the Department at all times and we listen to what it has to say about problems associated with housing and everything else. We are listening hard to its recommendations and we take seriously the points that it makes to us.

Mr. O'Neill:

We welcome the working party that has been established to deal with the housing issue. However, does the Minister recognise that there is an increasing problem of homelessness and squatting among ex-service personnel? Since the MOD housing stock is being sold off and other houses are being renovated and improved slowly, does the hon. Gentleman accept that the situation will not get better in the foreseeable future unless far greater urgency is given to the problem of properly housing and properly treating our service personnel and those whom we consider are no longer needed in our forces?

We are well aware of this problem and the last thing we want is ex-service men having to live in temporary accommodation. For that reason, we are making the best use of married quarters to ensure that people are not forced into such temporary accommodation.

Does my hon. Friend accept that the problem raised by the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Ashton) is probably the most crucial element in the redundancy programme to which my hon. Friend has referred? The priority given to resettlement through access to housing will probably be the greatest determinant of the fairness of Government policy on redundancy.

Yes, indeed, I accept what my hon. Friend says. There is a difficult Catch-22 situation because people cannot get a job until they have housing and they cannot get a mortgage until they have a job. Therefore, it is important that we solve the problem of where redundant people live so that they are able to get jobs, raise a mortgage and buy their own homes. At that stage they will no longer need the married quarters that we make available to them.