RURAL HOUSING.

HC Deb 03 April 1912 vol 36 cc1224-41

Earl WINTERTON

I desire to raise a question connected with the operation of the Housing and Town Planning Act as it affects rural districts. The administration of this Act has rendered the problem of rural housing even more acute than it was before. It has, by dealing with half of the problem, accentuated the evils of the other half. There are two evils connected with housing in rural districts—one is bad houses, and the other is the lack of sufficient houses I think the evil of bad houses in rural districts has been rather exaggerated in the Liberal Press and by others who are more or less pessimists on this question, and I also think the bad effects of insanitary houses in rural districts is not so great as in towns, because you have more space, and you have clean and fresh air. I am far from saying, however, that there are not a great number of houses in rural districts, practically in every village, which are not up to the standard of modern requirements. The operation of this Act has been to close throughout England a very large number of houses, and the movement is still going on. There are more houses being closed each day, but as yet comparatively nothing has been done to supply the want of houses by building fresh ones. The President of the Local Government Board, in answer to a question the other day, said that under the Act some 116 cottages had been built, and closing orders had been made in respect of 1,344 cottages in rural districts. He added, that did not mean all those houses were uninhabited. No, it does not, because in some eases the necessary repairs have been carried out. Section 17, Subsection (4) of the Act, however, provides:— Where a closing order has become operative, the local authority shall serve notice of the order on every occupying tenant of the dwelling-house in respect of which the notice is made, and within such period as is specified in the notice, not being less than fourteen days after the service of the notice, the order shall be obeyed by him, and he and his family shall cease to inhabit the dwelling-house. I can say from personal experience that while these houses were being put in a state of habitable repair many families were without any lodgings of any kind; indeed, in some cases they had to seek shelter in the casual wards of the workhouses. It is also a fact that the majority of the houses which have been actually demolished belong to small owners. Whatever views hon. Members may hold on the question of rural housing, it is not necessary to point out that no man can build cottages suitable for labourers at a price which will give him a decent return on his money. I do not think many personal experiences have been given in the course of this Debate, but, in the county of Sussex, I have recently built some cottages, and I have found that the cheapest price at which double cottages can be built is from £220 to £230 per cottage. Where you are building a single cottage it costs more. All the return which is to be got from a cottage is about £5 per year, and in no country will you find anyone who wishes to invest his money in an industry in which he can only get, after including the cost of repairs, about 2¼ per cent. I would call the attention of the right hon. Gentleman to a speech he made outside this House. He said there were rural districts where they are building on economical lines. I should like to know where they are. I believe the figures I have given will be found to be generally applicable to the whole of England; indeed, I think the hon. Member for one of the Divisions of Norfolk will admit it is more difficult and more expensive to get cottages there even than in the South of England. There is no place where cottages can be built on economical lines in rural districts.

Where are these unfortunate people, who are being dispossessed of their only habitation, going to find shelter? In every village in England at the present time there is a lack of sufficient cottage accommodation, and the operation of the Act, by speeding up the process of closing insanitary cottages, has made the position infinitely worse. It is the duty of the Government to deal with the matter immediately, either by some alteration in administration or in some other way. We are often told of the great attraction which towns have for agricultural labourers, an attraction which makes the difficulty of obtaining labour in country districts very great. My own experience, which is borne out by other hon. Gentlemen, is that, at the present time, emigration from towns is rather decreasing. Village institutes, cinematographs, and other attractions have made life in country districts more bearable, and there is not such a desire to go to the towns to seek brightness as there was in former days. Plenty of labour can now be hired. There is no difficulty in obtaining labour, the difficulty is to find cottages, and it is greater in the case of a man and his wife with a large family. There is nothing which acts as a greater deterrent to the bringing up of large families than the difficulty of obtaining deceit cottage accommodation in rural districts. This question has been made a great deal of by hon. Gentlemen on public platforms in the various constituencies. There is not a rural constituency in which, at the last election, the cottage scandal was not referred to very frequently, and both the "Morning Leader" and the "Daily News" were full of this subject daily We are entitled to ask the Government how they are going to deal with the difficulties which the Housing and Town Planning Act has accentuated. How are they going to deal with the problem generally? They have been in power six years. This is perhaps the most acute and trying of all the evils we have to deal with. It is at the root of many other evils which most vitally affect the future interests of this country. Yet, although the Government have had six years in which to deal with it, they have not touched it. Such matters as the Small Holdings Act, and the Allotment Act, and the Housing and Town Planning Act have really only accentuated the difficulty.

There is another point I wish to bring to the notice of the right hon. Gentleman. I think he has shown great remissness on the question of rural by-laws. By-laws in rural districts are totally unfitted to the circumstances of those districts, and there seems to have been no coherent attempts made to bring them into a uniform state. I believe the right hon. Gentleman did issue a model set of by-laws and building rules, but they have not been very widely followed. I hope he will tell us what he thinks of doing in regard to the question of the Housing and Town Planning Act. I should like, if I may, to quote some figures showing how this Act has operated. In 1910–11 there were 246 houses in rural districts in respect of which closing orders were made, and at that time only about 114 houses were built. Since that period the Housing and Town Planning Act, as regards the closing of houses in rural districts, has been largely speeded up, and many more houses have been closed during the past year. Unless this question is dealt with very promptly, there will be in many rural districts like Essex, a perfectly appalling state of affairs, and many honest respectable men capable of paying rents will be driven into the workhouses because of the impossibility of obtaining accommodation. I do not want to introduce any party prejudice into the question. I know hon. Gentlemen opposite are anxious to see some remedy applied. It is not a landlord's question; it is an economic question, and the authority responsible is the Local Government Board.

Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWEN

The point we want to bring before this House is this: that since the right hon. Gentleman came into power, notwithstanding all that has been said by hon. Members opposite about the need of housing in rural districts, operations have been slowed down in the most remarkable manner. If we take the figures given in answer to a question, put by myself to the right hon. Gentleman, as to the amount of money sanctioned in the way of loans for building purposes under all the Housing Acts in the last twelve years, what do we find? In the first five years, during which the party to which I belong was in power, no less a sum than £1,200,000 was sanctioned for building operations by local authorities. That is on the average £240,000 a year. In 1906, the right hon. Gentleman came into power, with his great programme of housing reform. What was the result? In the first five years that he was in office, the amount fell from £1,200,000 to £500,000, in other words, instead of £240,000 a year being sanctioned as loans for building purposes, the amount fell to only £100,000 a year. That means that there has not been the same energy and determination to carry out the Housing Acts under the administration of the right hon. Gentleman as there was when the party which is now in opposition was in power in the five years before. It is quite true that there has been a slight improvement since the year 1909. In 1910 and 1911, the amount rose to about £110,000 a year, and there was a wonderful spur at the beginning of this year, which coincided with the fact that certain Unionist Members have been so audacious as to bring in a Housing Bill. There has been a marvellous improvement since then. No less than £133,000 has been sanctioned by the right hon. Gentleman in the first three months of this year.

The "back to the land" movement was really taking on in the country, and there is no doubt that the attractions of the town were dying down. People were going back to the country, but, owing to the entire absence of decent housing accommodation, that most salutary movement has been checked, and the people have been driven back into the towns, where they go to swell the overcrowding in the slums, and make the housing conditions in the towns infinitely worse than before. No doubt the right hon. Gentleman thinks that everything is perfectly all right. His speech the other day was optimistic, and one would have believed that everything was being done by him and his Department to deal with the question. But when we asked him what was done in the rural districts in the year ending 31st March, 1911, the last year for which we have complete figures, what do we find? The total amount of loans sanctioned by the right hon. Gentleman for building in rural districts in that year, at a time when rural housing was tremendously needed, at a time when hon. Gentlemen opposite were preaching all over the country about bad cottages, was the paltry sum of £250. You could perhaps build one pair of cottages with that, sum, and that is all. In the same year, under the Acquisition of Dwellings Act, which is an Act passed by the Unionist party, and which we know has not been a very successful Act, and which the right hon. Gentleman contemptuously termed a "wooden nutmeg"—under that Act loans amounting to £3,000 were sanctioned by the right hon. Gentleman. If the Act of 1899 was a wooden nutmeg, the right hon. Gentleman's Act is an empty cocoanut, or something of that sort.

There are one or two other points I want to put to the right hon. Gentleman as showing the ineffective administration of his Department, which has ruined the good intentions and possible good effects of the Housing and Town Planning Acts. Let me put one or two questions to the right hon. Gentleman. The first section of the town planning part of that Act says that the Local Government Board may sanction schemes for town planning. That is the whole object of that Act. The Act has been in operation for over two years. How many schemes for town planning has the right hon. Gentleman sanctioned? I do not know whether he has any figures different from mine; but, according to my information, he has not sanctioned a single one up to the present moment. Let us take another matter. Under Section 55 of the Housing and Town Planning Act—the right hon. Gentleman's own Act—the Local Government Board are to issue general provisions as to the character of housing and town planning schemes, to show what ought to be done, and those regulations are to be included in the town planning scheme. Has the right hon. Gentleman carried out that Section of his own Act? Not at all. According to my information, he has not issued any sets of general provisions up to the present moment. I should like to ask what is the explanation of the omission of his own Department to carry out his own Act in this respect.

But there are not only sins of omission. Let me take the regulations that have been issued. Under the Act, the Local Government Board has the right and the power to issue general regulations. It is to be done by the Local Government Board in England, and in Scotland by the Scottish Office. The regulations issued by the Local Government Board are of such a cumbrous character that local authorities find it almost impossible to carry them out, whereas in Scotland the Scottish Office has issued different regulations, which are far more effective. Let me give an example. According to the Local Government Board's regulations, in the case of a town planning scheme being suggested by a local authority and being prepared by them, they have to issue notices to every single person affected. The result is a most cumbrous process that delays the whole proceeding. In Scotland, all they do is to put an advertisement in the paper. Why could not a simple process like that be adopted by the right hon. Gentleman, instead of this highly cumbrous system which has been adopted here, and which I am told has had the effect of absolutely snowing under the Hendon Rural Council, because they find it impossible to ascertain all the people to whom the notices have to be issued, and the whole scheme has been hung up in consequence. What I want to say, in support of my Noble Friend, is this: that what we want is a little less optimism on the part of the right hon. Gentleman in his speech, and a little more practical work in the affairs of his Department. We believe that a little more administrative work put in under his own Act would be far more effective than it is at the present time. We do not bring this forward as a party question. We fully recognise the great evils of housing, both in town and country. We want to see the rather more effective carrying out of the work, and if that is done we shall be perfectly content, and we shall leave the right hon. Gentleman in peace for the rest of his time.

Mr. NOEL BUXTON

The hon. Gentleman who has just sat down drew an unfavourable comparison between the action of the present Government and that of the last Government. I should like to remind him that upon one point, that of by-laws, the question was very prominent before this Government came into office, and it was particularly prominent in 1905, and that not much progress was made in that matter by the Administration which preceded this one. The Noble Lord (Earl Winterton) alluded to the question of housing in Norfolk. He spoke of a certain figure which represented the minimum cost of building a house in Sussex, and he alluded to Norfolk. I should like to tell him that he is correct in saying that the question is a very urgent one in Norfolk, but that the figure which can be quoted as the minimum in Sussex is very different from the figure which can be quoted as the minimum in Norfolk. Something more like £175.

Earl WINTERTON

I included wells.

Mr. NOEL BUXTON

I think it is certainly lower in Norfolk. Passing from that, I should like in the most friendly way to appeal to my right hon. Friend to add something to the declaration that he made the other day in the debate that has been alluded to. I am particularly concerned to express the point of view which is felt in many counties, and perhaps particularly in my own county of Norfolk, which is one of the counties where the lowest agricultural wage prevails. There the question has been brought to the front recently, particularly by the cases of the Litcham inquiry and the Edgefield inquiry. I shared the delight with which the House received my right hon. Friend's speech the other night, but it is only my duty to tell him that in the country districts there is a certain feeling that something is needed to be added to the declaration which he then made. There is a certain sense of dissatisfaction, or unsatisfaction, at the rather negative quality of his declaration as it applied to very poor agricultural districts. I should like to recall for a moment the point of view of those districts. What he then said was very impressive and represented that robust admiration for an independent spirit which I, for one, yield to none in admiring in my right hon. Friend, but in those districts the points which he made do not very fully and finally apply. What he said was somewhat cold comfort to the places where a number of people are suffering from very inadequate housing. There we are in a dilemma from which there appears to be no escape, and I should like to sketch the point of view of those places where an inquiry has been held, where housing has been admitted to be wanted, and yet owing to the inability to pay the rate necessitated, there is an absolute standstill. One of those places I know very well, and I wish I could get my right hon. Friend to come with me and see one or two houses there which have been reported upon by one of these inquiries. I could show him a house there where two rooms are occupied by four beds, and the four beds by eleven people, and in that particular family, which is blessed with a large number of boys, no boy has a chance of sharing a bed with less than two other boys, and the beds are placed not where it is most convenient, but where it is extremely inconvenient, because of the number of places at which water comes through the roof. That is not at all untypical of a very large number of houses in Norfolk.

I could show him another house where a family occupies for sleeping accommodation one room, not more than an attic, with another room, I was going to say, but in reality a mere cupboard, with no window at all, in which a child sleeps. These things are not altogether untypical of a somewhat widespread state of affairs. From the point of view of that village, where there is a general sense that something must be done, we are in an absolute quandary. Here one sees there is a general feeling duly expressed in the demand for inquiry and an inquiry has been held, a report has been made to the district council and the district council has occupied a day or two in debate upon the subject, and there has been a full inquiry into the maximum wage which could possibly be paid, and, finally, there has been on the part of the district council a resolution passed, after much opposition, in favour of building, but with this reservation, that the financial risk involved in the building should not go upon the district rate, but upon the parish rate. That offer was made to the parish council, and very naturally declined, because, although the cost of housing properly falls upon the land of the particular district, and the land is perfectly able to bear the cost of housing and the other costs of living of those who work upon the land, still there are ratepayers in the parish whose business it is not to subsidise in any way the building which is required to supply labour for working upon other properties than those of the ratepayers who object to this rate being levied upon the parish in particular. The result of all this is depopulation. I should like to give one little proof of that, rather a striking proof, and one peculiar to Norfolk, because in Norfolk we have what no other county has in any strength, an Agricultural Labourers' Union, and that union, though it does not, of course, include all the labourers in the county, is still a fairly strong union. It is recorded that in the last year or so no fewer than 300 members of the union itself have migrated from this country—300 members probably of rather more than average activity whom this country could ill afford to lose.

It must be admitted that the case of these low-paid rural districts is not being adequately met by the Housing Act. The social and economic machine does not work in respect to agricultural houses. May I ask my right hon. Friend how many of the councils to which he alluded, in answer to a question, are councils in the poorly-paid and purely agricultural districts? Something of a very positive quantity is needed to meet this case, though it is only a small part of the problem. Statistics of what is done in more favoured places do not apply strictly to this small, low-paid agricultural problem. In these county districts there is, in regard to the right hon. Gentleman, an affection and a confidence which I am sure is not rivalled in any other part of the country, and I have frequently had occasion to note the confidence, which I am sure would touch him, which is felt in his ability to deal with the problems of practical social reform which affect them. If there has been criticism of his administration in any section of the community it is certainly not in the low-paid agricultural community, where extreme confidence is felt in his interest in problems which affect that section of the community. It would not be in order to allude to many modes by which perhaps a solution is to be found. There is the question, raised the other day, of a subsidy, and there, of course, there are all the objections of logic and of strict, sound economics; but I do not know whether as the lesser of two evils we may not be driven to a subsidy, to deal with what is an urgent practical question. I must allude to the problem of rating reform, which may be at the bottom of the trouble, and to a proposal which, I believe, to be a very practicable one, that of giving powers to local bodies to provide not buildings but building sites at a reasonable rate, upon which that large number of men who have saved a couple of hundred pounds might very likely build purely as an investment for letting purposes, even to agricultural labourers. That class of man builds somehow very cheaply, and if land were available at a reasonable rate there would be a very great deal more buildings even for the poorer agricultural labourers than there are now. That will be a matter of legislation. Of course, at the bottom of it all is the abnormally low wages paid to labourers. I do not know whether my right hon. Friend can tell me whether he could support the application to agricultural labourers of the principle of the minimum wage. The whole housing problem, and all the difficulties and rearrangements of the economic order, would solve themselves if the wages of farm labourers were adequate, and probably that is the solution which will be required in the end. As a matter of administration I would put in a plea for the rural district councils in the lower-paid districts. I ask extremely sympathetic treatment for them, because their difficulties are greater than those of other districts. I hope the President of the Local Government Board with his unrivalled powers will be able to apply himself particularly to the problem of the difficulties of districts which are so poor that the provisions of the Housing Act do not provide for their needs.

The PRESIDENT of the LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. Burns)

No one representing the Local Government Board can complain that these questions have been raised by hon. Members on both sides of the House, but it is rather inconvenient that in matters where one his to defend the operations of a great Department over a wide area of administration one should be somewhat constrained in his reply and his defence, by the exigencies of time, and the desire we all feel to go off on a well deserved holiday. But I must reply to one or two of the points that have been submitted by hon. Members in different quarters of the House. As to the point raised by the Noble Lord (Earl Winterton) he took the line, and it surprised me somewhat, that some of the statements which have been made with regard to the domestic and sanitary condition of rural houses by some of the London newspapers had been grossly exaggerated, and particularly because, if there are density and overcrowding in a rural area, it was mitigated by the fact that there are pleasant environments and plenty of fresh air. I am not in favour of a typhus or typhoid seed plot behind a Virginia creeper in a rural cottage any more than an insanitary dwelling in a London slum. It is our duty to take the other line to the extent that though the environment of the labourer is pleasant, his wages are low, and that he ought, in my judgment, to have adequate compensation in the fact of having a spacious house giving immunity from either contagion or disease. I am very glad that the Noble Lord took that view, not that I agree with it, but because it does show that he does not appreciate the kind of criticism to which my Department has been subjected by newspapers that are very often as silly and sensational as they are stupid in their suggestions. [An HON. MEMBER: "It was the 'Daily News.'"] I will make my observations, and you can apply them where you like. Their statements are as sensational as they are often stupid. I ask the Noble Lord to apply that particularly to special papers representing all parties in this House, whose comments are very often as superficial on housing as they are on other economic and political matters. The Noble Lord made an extraordinary statement when he said that the operation of the Housing and Town Planning Act had in itself done a great deal of harm. He ought to have qualified his statement when he said that there had been 1,344 houses against which closing orders had been made. I presume he made the assumption that a number of superficial critics of the housing problem have made, that, because 1,344 closing orders were issued, therefore that number of houses were demolished in the rural areas.

Earl WINTERTON

Will the right hon. Gentleman allow me—

Mr. BURNS

No, the Noble Lord has made his statement on this matter, and I decline to give way. The fact is that although 1,344 closing orders were made, all the houses except 126 were put into decent and habitable repair. It is not correct to represent that 1,344 houses are in process of demolition. That is a considerable modification of the Noble Lord's statement.

Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWEN

made a remark which was inaudible.

Mr. BURNS

The hon. Baronet must do me the courtesy of listening to me with patience, as I listened to him.

Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWEN

I have no desire to be discourteous to the right hon. Gentleman. I only wish to ask a question to elucidate this matter. We know that the closing orders were issued, and we never said that the houses were being demolished. The point is—were these closing orders made operative, and had the people to leave the cottages? I wish the right hon. Gentleman would reply to that.

Mr. BURNS

I am quite willing to help a lame dog over a stile, and I shall proceed to reply to the hon. Baronet. As I have said, 1,344 closing orders were made, but they were only finally applied to 126 houses. The rest of the houses were made fit and adequate for habitation. Therefore the suggestion that because 1,344 closing orders were made the rural areas were short of that number of houses is not speaking according to fact. The Noble Lord wanted to know how it was that in rural districts it was possible for cottages and other houses to be erected and let at economic rents. That requires an answer, and I am willing to give it. In fifteen months nineteen authorities in rural areas have built 153 houses at a cost of £30,208 at economic rents. The hon. Member for one of the Divisions of Norfolk knows that in the parish of Montagu, and also in a rural parish of Happisburgh, economic houses are being erected on economic lines. If the people there are not able to sustain themselves on economic lines my suggestion to the Noble Lord and to Members in all quarters of the House is that they should join in criticising in the proper quarter the low standard of wages paid to agricultural labourers of 13s. to 16s. a week, instead of coming to Parliament for a bonus to landlords, who do not always do their duty, and to farmers, who do not always pay economic wages on which labourers can sustain themselves. I can assure the Noble Lord and his Friends that they will do more good for rural housing in the next twelve months, if they could get the wages raised only 1s. a week, than they will do by supporting a cadging organisation on the part either of farmers or landlords, and by coming to the House of Commons for ninepence a week subsidies for cottages to underpaid labourers in the country to be paid by unskilled labourers and charwomen in our large towns and cities. If the Noble Lord will undertake a peripatetic campaign in a gipsy van with a green door and a brass knocker, I would be pleased to take the chair for him.

Earl WINTERTON

Will you recommend Tariff Reform?

Mr. BURNS

No; but I will take the chair for the Noble Lord at the first meeting that he will hold, say, in the county of Sussex or Dorset or Wilts, and will point out the injustice of asking a man on 14s. or 15s. a week to support a wife and family and pay 2s. 6d. rent out of his miserable wages. So much for economic rents. Now, as regards another point. From the criticisms made, anyone would think that the Government were dealing only under the Housing and Town Planning Act with houses in towns and rural areas, and that that was the only thing that was being done. I am very glad to say that during the last few years the Local Government Board have sanctioned advances of nearly £3,000,000 for the purchase of 140,000 acres under the Small Holdings Act, and that in connection with that Act alone 1,015 cottages, independently of the Housing and Town Planning Act, have been provided in rural areas. Hon. Members cannot have it both ways. My suggestion is that what the Housing and Town Planning Act is not doing in some areas the provision of cottages in connection with the Small Holdings Act is doing, and, both combined, do make a contribution of a larger total sum to the provision of cottages in rural areas than hon. Members are inclined to admit. One hon. Member made a great flourish about by-laws. A great deal of nonsense is talked outside this House, and sometimes in the House, about the Local Government Board and by-laws. That is disposed of by this simple statement. The Local Government Board has prepared both rural and urban model by-laws. We have the power, which we exercise on application, of varying those by-laws to adapt them to the peculiar circumstances of the district or county and the class of material available for cottage and house building in all the areas. We have only had one application from one authority at Gateshead to vary the by-laws about which so much display has been made.

4.0 P.M.

Then we come to the very remarkable statement of the hon. Baronet, who really does know better, in following the Noble Lord, and saying that the Housing and Town Planning Act had accentuated overcrowding in towns. The hon. Baronet should know that that is not true. Everybody knows that we have got 500,000 empty houses in the United Kingdom at this moment. The tendency is from the town to the suburb and from the suburb to the country, and from the semi-rural to the rural. That is one of the difficulties that rural areas are now labouring under. If you do get overcrowding in the towns the London County Council and all the great authorities are amply provided with sufficient power to deal with that without even coming to the Local Government Board for any stimulus or suggestion at all. London has 60,000 empty houses, and they are going from the centre to the circumference and from the circumference to the rural area. That is the condition of things which all of us have to face, but it is not true to say that people are coming back to towns and cities, or that the towns and cities have grown in volume or in intensity of overcrowding. It is really the other way about.

The hon. Baronet, in referring to the Housing and Town Planning Act, said, so far as I can gather, that there has not been a single application or any scheme sanctioned under the Act. You cannot have a scheme sanctioned unless application has been made. These are the facts. The preparation of fourteen schemes by fourteen municipal authorities has been already sanctioned by the Board. Applications for authority to prepare schemes have been made by three others. Notices have been given by eleven local authorities of other schemes. There are proposals in reference to schemes from twenty-two other local authorities under consideration at this moment, and negotiations are proceeding between the Board and thirty-nine other local authorities. In all there have been either sanctioned by the Board or are in course of development, not the minus quantity that the hon. Member suggests, but no fewer than ninety town planning schemes. If the hon. Member will only go to a greater authority than himself upon this particular subject—namely, Mr. Aldridge—he will find that, speaking the other night in a suburb of London, he said that "the Act had passed the stage of doubt. Mr. John Burns had told them that there were no fewer than sixty authorities"—there are now ninety—"and he knew that there were upwards of 200 authorities contemplating the administration of the Act." So much for the suggestion that not a single scheme had been sanctioned. Then the hon. Baronet, lacking material in other directions, wanted to know why during the recent period under the administration of the party that he belonged to, namely, between 1900 and 1905, there had been £1,238,000 sanctioned for housing schemes. But more than half of that was not for rural areas at all, and was not for small towns, but was for five large cities, such as Liverpool and Manchester.

Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWEN

I did not say that it was for rural areas.

Mr. BURNS

No, but I am supplying the deficiency.

Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWEN

I said building schemes generally. My point was, whether it was for rural or other areas, a great deal more per annum had been sanctioned by the late Government.

Mr. BURNS

The point of to-day's Debate is rural housing, and I want to point out to the hon. Gentleman that he cannot claim that in six years from 1900 to 1905 £1,238,000 was sanctioned, and hide from the House the fact that more than half of that was for great housing schemes in rich cities, and not for houses or cottages in the majority of cases, but for block tenement schemes that I do not like, and that I do my best to discourage on every possible opportunity.

I need not tell the House that from 1906 to 1910, on much smaller schemes, and more on rural housing than previously, £448,000 in loans had been sanctioned by my Department, but better still, in 1911, and in the three months of 1912, £245,000 had been sanctioned in that fifteen months. But as rural housing is being discussed, may I give a practical answer to a question which was asked to-day by the hon. Member for Wilton (Mr. C. Bathurst), in the form of a few simple figures? I am referring exclusively to the rural housing, and from 1890 to 1899 only £3,500 were sanctioned by the late Conservative administration in that ten years. From 1900 to 1905, £6,800; from 1906 to 1910, £37,380; and from 1911 and for the three months of 1912—only fifteen months—I have had the pleasure of sanctioning £29,688, or just half of the amount of the previous twenty-two years. I am glad to say that in the last fifteen months nearly three times as much has been sanctioned as in the first sixteen years of the Housing Act. But that is only for loans to local authorities. Hon. Members must not assume that these comparative figures which I have given of the amounts sanctioned for housing, by way of loans to local authorities, represent the total amount of housing done in rural areas. It frequently happens that when a locality knows that the local authority is going to apply for housing loans, the fact at once stimulates private enterprise which was dormant until the moment the local authority applied. The action of the local authority stimulates rivalry in other directions, and I am glad to say induces good landlords to become better, bad landlords to become good, and shames the worst landlords to become something like decent in comparison with their fellow men.

I believe that the Census figures with regard to rural areas to be submitted by the Registrar-General will prove very satisfactory in regard to the attempt made by the Local Government Board to bring pressure to bear upon the rural authorities to prosecute housing schemes. I can assure the House that we are losing no ground; we are making every effort to stimulate the rural authorities to build new cottages, and to put cottages which are not habit able into decent repair; and probably the best piece of work I have ever done at the Local Government Board, and which will never be recorded, is what I have doneby way of personal persuasion of land lords, who are continually seeking advice as to how they can tread the straight butnarrow path that will lead to rural happiness. It is in that direction that a great deal of good can be done. I have satisfaction in knowing that in rural areas the death-rate has dropped, infant mortality has diminished, and the Local Government Board, as the hon. Member for Norfolk kindly said, never stood higherin the estimation of the people of the rural areas than it does now. I have only one other cheering fact to give to the House. I approach this question with the optimism born of hope, and with the knowledge and experience that more is being done in the way of social activity than hon. Members realise. You have no right to approach a housingquestion with the temperament of an undertaker's mute, and that is not the spirit in which anything can be done. Hon. Members will probably want to know what independent authority there is whichconfirms what the Local Government Board is doing, and which I have recorded to-day. There is one body from which there can be no appeal, and that is the Public Works Loans Commissioners. From1890 to 1908 that body sanctioned on the average £30,000 per year for housing loans to companies for working-class houses and to other public utility societies. For the last three years, since the Housing and Town Planning Act has been in operation, the average has jumped from £30,000 per year to £192,000 per year; that is the defence of the activity that is now being shown by the central department and the local authorities that speaks for itself. Let me say, in conclusion, to rural Members that the extent to which I dislike large towns, those monstrous aggregations of men, women, and children in the cities, is the measure of my sympathy with all rural housing schemes, and if by more inspectors and by speeding up—

Sir A. GRIFFITH-BOSCAWEN

Hear, hear.

Mr. BURNS

The hon. Member says "Hear, hear." Does he know that the average number of letters on housing before I took office was less than 2,000 per year, and at present it is over 10,000 per year. That is an indication of the spirit with which we are trying to animate rural authorities, and of the spirit in which we are urging them to do their duty in this regard. I shall be supported in the view that we take as a Local Government Board that the rural housing problem is a serious one in the many ways in which this Government have taken steps in a way that no previous Government ever attempted. All of that would be relatively ineffective unless the landlords and all political parties in this country realise that instead of advocating dear food for men, women, and children, and low wages, the better plan is to raise the wages, and let those wages be good enough to enable the agricultural labourer, out of his higher wages to build without subsidy from the rates or a bonus from the taxes, and live in a house of his own, or for which he pays rent from those higher wages which it is the duty of every one of us to the best of our capacity to secure.