HC Deb 18 December 1919 vol 123 cc779-89

8.0 P.M.

Sir S. HOARE

I do not rise to follow the arguments of the Noble Lord who has just spoken. I should just like to say a word or two as to how thoroughly I disagree with him in what he said about peace with Bolshevik Russia. I cannot imagine anything more disastrous than that we should enter into any kind of negotiations with the Bolshevik Government. On that account I was very much relieved to hear what the Prime Minister said in his speech. Both on the ground of morality and on the ground of high politics, I cannot imagine a, more shortsighted policy than that just recommended by my Noble Friend. But I do not rise for the purpose of dealing with that, but to call attention to another matter altogether. That is the occupation of private property in London by Government officials, and, particularly the occupation of museums, public parks, hotels, and other non-governmental buildings. This is a question of very great interest to London members. On more than one occasion during this Session I have raised it, and I make no apology for raising it again. At the present moment, more than a year since the Armistice, no less than 3,000,000 square feet of private property is still occupied by Government officials. I believe I am right in saying that something like 50,000 clerks in Government offices are still housed in commandeered premises. This is a most unsatisfactory state of affairs.

The First Commissioner of Works, I am quite aware, is in a difficult position. Every day of the week he must have some request to find housing accommodation for the ever-increasing staffs of Government offices. I sympathise with him. None the less, I do think the time has come when we must make a most emphatic protest against the continued occupation of, particularly, London museums, and next, London hotels, by these innumerable Government officials. As a Member for Chelsea, a commandeered property which, perhaps, interests me most directly is Burton. Court, Chelsea. I do not, however, allude to Burton Court as Member for Chelsea, but also because everyone who has any affection for the pleasant sights of London does most seriously object to its continued occupation by the Ministry of Pensions. The last time upon which I raised this question here the First Commissioner of Works gave me little hope of the evacuation of the site, for the reason that something like £100,000 of public money had been spent upon the Ministry of Pension buildings that now cover it.

I quite agree that that is a very serious expenditure, and in these days of the need for economy it is a serious matter to say that that £100,000, should be scrapped, and the site immediately evacuated. I think, however, it should be remembered that when first the site was taken over for the Ministry of Pensions the explicit understanding was that it was a temporary arrangement, and that the site would very soon be evacuated. In the first instance an actual date was suggested in the agreement. It was originally suggested that a year after the ratification of Peace the site should be completely evacuated. I am quite aware that after that other correspondence followed, and the actual date was waived; but the understanding still continued that the occupation of the site was a temporary one, and that in the near future the buildings would be removed. Anyone who reads carefully the White Paper published by the House of Lords in the spring could Dome to no other conclusion than that the site would very soon be evacuated after Peace was signed. That being so, it came to me as a great shock upon the last occasion when I raised this question that the First Commissioner of Works said it would be a matter of years before the buildings could be taken down. The House should realise what that means. This particular site, which is part of one of the best examples of town-planning in London, is not the property of any Government Department. It is the property of the Chelsea Commissioners, and was bought by them comparatively recently out of their funds. It seems to me to be outrageous that a Government Department at 8.0 P.M. whatever instigation should take over this site upon the distinct understanding that its occupation should be temporary and that then after a year of Armistice they should repudiate that contract and let it be understood that it will be some years before the site will be eventually evacuated. When the right hon. Gentleman said that the site was being used for the administration of pensions and that all of us who sympathise with the work of the Pensions Ministry would not desire that that work should be inconvenienced, that was no answer. This site was taken over on the understanding that its occupation would be purely temporary, and I emphatically protest against the decision of the Office of Works, or who ever is concerned, that it will be some years before it will be evacuated.

I hope when the right hon. Gentleman replies he will be able to give me a more satisfactory answer. I understand that the Chelsea Commissioners feel most strongly on this subject. I know that all the public bodies in London connected with questions of this kind also feel strongly, and I believe the right hon. Gentleman, having a genuine feeling for the beautiful sights of London will also take that view. The site I refer to was taken over for purely war purposes on the under- standing that it would soon be evacuated, and it is unjust, a year after the Armistice, that we should be met with the answer that a large sum of money has been spent on this site, and that it will be kept in the occupation of the Ministry of Pensions for some consderable time longer. I suggest that this is a case where the right hon. Gentleman might well apply the policy that he has already described to the House of housing Government Departments in the outer areas of London. This seems to me to be exactly a case for removing the officials of the Ministry of Pensions who are now working in the buildings in Burton Court to one of those buildings in Outer London, the Alexandra Palace or the Crystal Palace, for example, and by this means free from the very ugly buildings that now disfigure it this site which is one of the most pleasant open spaces in the West of London.

I come now to the London hotels. There, again, it seems to me to be almost out-rageous that thirteen months after the Armistice the following hotels are still occupied by Government officials: Metropole, York, Holborn Viaduct. St. Ermin's, Horrex's, Windsor, Howard, and the Salibury. Let me suggest that the continued occupation of these hotels when there is an unprecedented demand for hotel accommodation is reacting most injuriously upon the whole of the housing problem in London. I should like to hear, when the right hon. Gentleman replies, that all these hotels, without exception, will be completely evacuated by Government Departments before Easter next.

Then there is what I consider an even more serious question—that is the continued occupation of the London Museums by Government officials. After thirteen months of Armistice the National Gallery of British Art is still occupied by 781 officials. There are still 250 in the National Gallery, 1,290 in the Imperial Institute, though that cannot be exactly classed in the category of museums; 729 in the Victoria and Albert Museum, and there are still about 300 in the British Museum. I need not indicate to the House the grave objection to this continued occupation. A great grievance is felt by our overseas sightseers and others, and there is also a further grievance that a great deal of scientific and educational work is held up by the occupation of certain departments of these museums by Government officials. I think those objections are obvious to every hon. Member. More particularly in the case of the British Museum, which is one of the places which should have been freed first of all of Government officials. After thirteen months of Armistice important parts of the British Museum are still closed to the public and there is still something like 300 officials housed in it. I will give an instance or two of the Departments that are still housed in the British Museum. There is the Registry of Friendly Societies, which is not a temporary, but a permanent Department. That is not a war-time Department created within the last five years, but a permanent Department, and it occupies the whole of the first and second Northern Galleries on the upper floor, the whole of the Print gallery, and two rooms of the Greek and Roman Vase galleries, all the Egyptian, Assyrian and Babylonian historical antiquities, the Assyrian tablets, the Creation and Deluge tablets, and the Magical tablets. These things cannot be seen at all, and consequently a number of Biblical students are prevented from inspecting and studying the antiquities of the later Assyrian empires. The First Egyptian Room is crammed full of cases containing coffins and mummies which nobody can inspect. In the Second and Third Egyptian Rooms the wall cases, containing mummies, are boarded up, and the whole of the floor space is occupied by a series of presses for friendly society registers. The Fourth Egyptian Room is completely occupied, by plaster and wood cubicles for the use of the Registry's staff, and the Fifth is used as a typewriting department. The fine Old Print Gallery, 182 ft. in length, is given up to wood and plaster cubicles for clerical work.

I suggest to the House that from every point of view that is a most unsatisfactory state of affairs. I think we have a right, whilst fully realising the difficulties, to demand that the right lion hon. Gentleman should give the House a definite date upon which all the museums, and particularly the popular museums to which the public go in large numbers, like the British Museum and the Tate Gallery, will be entirely evacuated. I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman's influence in the Government, if lie would send an ultimatum to his colleagues and give them notice to quit on a particular date, would be really doing something not only extremely popular, but something which is necessary in the interests of art and education. When he comes to reply, I hope he will be able to go a long way further than he did when he answered similar questions put by me some months ago, and really give the House a definite date upon which all the museums will be evacuated, and upon which the temporary buildings in Burton Court, Chelsea, will be removed, and the site handed back to the Chelsea Commissioners to be used as it was before the War, as an open space in that part of London.

The FIRST COMMISSIONER of WORKS (Sir Alfred Mond)

The hon. and gallant Gentleman who has raised this question, like many others who have raised similar questions before, naturally finds it is not difficult to criticise the accommodation in London which is in possession of Government staffs. The hon. Baronet does not, however, realise what we have had to do or what our position has been since the Armistice. I propose to quote a few figures to really bring this question into a true perspective. The total headquarters Government staffs in London, excluding the Post Office and the Naval and Military staffs in August, 1914, were 18,000. In November, 1918, at the Armistice, they were 100,000. On 1st December, 1919, the number was 78,000. On the date of the Armistice the 100,000 staff were housed as follows: There were 22,000 in thirty-four Crown buildings, 17,000 in fifty-five offices held on lease, 11,000 in eighteen hotels, 8,000 in fourteen public institutions, 22,000 in 850 sets of business offices, 9,000 in 180 private houses and flats, 2,000 in seventy clubs, 9,000 in fifty-eight temporary buildings in parks and public spaces. When the Armistice took place, far from a diminution of staffs taking place as might have been anticipated, we were immediately faced with an increase of staffs, and that went on for some considerable time. On the 1st of December, 1919, the total number of staffs had been decreased only by about 20 per cent. In spite of this being the case, before the Armistice I submitted a memorandum dealing with the demobilisation of commandeered premises, and I asked the Cabinet to approve of the line I then took. The first of my proposals was to release hotels; the second, museums and public institutions; the third, business premises; and the fourth, private houses. That order of priority has been very rigidly adhered to. We have surrendered nine hotels, eight museums and galleries, 256 business offices, eighty-one private houses and flats, and five clubs. We have left to surrender three museums out of eleven. These museums are practically in a condition to be surrendered in a very short time. I quite agree that it is very unsatisfactory if any gallery or museum is closed at any time. We have, however, already released the National Portrait Gallery, the London. Museum, Hertford House, and the bulk of the national galleries. The remaining galleries will be released in the course of the next few days, certainly in the course of the next week. I hope that the staff at the Imperial Institute will have left by the 1st February. The bulk of the Victoria and Albert Museum is open. There is still a staff of 729 in the occupation of the Board of Education, and they hope to return to their Whitehall offices in January. I am taking the most energetic steps to release the galleries at the British Museum, and, though I cannot announce to-day exactly when I shall be able to find other accommodation, I can assure my hon. and gallant Friend that two or three alternatives are being now discussed, and I have given the most stringent instructions that other accommodation must be found, so that these galleries may be released.

Sir S. HOARE

Will the British Museum be entirely free before Easter?

Sir A. MOND

Certainly before Easter, and I hope within a few weeks. I am doing my very best to get that done. There is a little misunderstanding on the hotel question. I fully realise the importance of the question; in fact, so much do I realise its importance that in the earlier part of my remarks I said that we gave the hotels first priority for clearance when we started demobilisation. There is one curious thing about the hotels which does not seem to be recognised. A number of proprietors of hotels have preferred to lease them to Government offices than to attempt to restart the hotel business after the War. The result is that four hotels that the hon. and gallant Member read out, the Howard Hotel, the Salisbury Hotel, the Hotel Windsor, and another, are all let to the Government on leases of considerable length by their proprietors for Government offices. Of the remaining five, the Holborn Viaduct is still in the hands of the Goal Controller. The only large hotel still outstanding is the Hotel Metropole, and I am in hopes that it will not be very long before that hotel will be restored to the public. The York Hotel, after all, is a very small thing. We hope to vacate these three hotels during the next few months. That will leave us with only two hotels to be vacated, namely, Horrex's, which is in the possession of the Ministry of Labour Appointment of Officers Department, and St. Ermin's Hotel. One of these has been sold for offices. There is no intention of restoring it as an hotel at all, and, therefore, whether the Government retains it or whether it is let privately for offices, makes no difference to the hotel accommodation.

Hon. Members must remember that since the War we have started something like seven new Ministries—the Air Ministry, the Ministry of Labour, the Pensions Ministry, the Transport Ministry, the Ministry of Supply, the Food Ministry, and the Ministry of Shipping. All these Ministries have had no permanent homes at all, and there has not been time to build permanent homes for them in Whitehall. These Ministries must have buildings, whatever size their staff may be, and it is therefore, necessary to provide buildings for them. I dare say that some day some successor of mine will put up some palatial block of buildings in Whitehall and that these Ministries will be housed there in premises adequate to their importance. In the meantime, they have to occupy second-rate hotels, much to their disgust, and other buildings that I am able to acquire for them of that character. As the House has sanctioned these Ministries—only the other day it sanctioned the Ministry of Transport—it is not fair to turn round on the Office of Works and complain when we have to take buildings to house them. If the House wants less accommodation occupied by Government Departments, then new Ministries must not be established. These Ministries, however, are undoubtedly vital to the carrying on of our business, and large staffs will remain a permanent part of our future Government. If the Government of this country take a more active part—as it is called upon to do every day—in the life of the nation, and if greater speed is required from Government Departments, then it follows naturally that larger staffs will be required in future to deal with all these multifarious matters. There is no question with which I have had to deal that has been more complex or given rise to more difficulties than this question of accommodation. I can assure my hon. and gallant Friend that I have been urging my colleagues to the best of my ability to assist me in dealing with the problem of returning premises to their owners. A great deal has been done in that direction, and a great deal more will very shortly show itself. One of the difficulties that you find is that when you have housed people, say, at the Alexandra Palace, protests are made that the Palace was not designed for offices, and, of course, is not such a nice place as the Hotel Metro-pole, the Grand Hotel, or the Constitutional Club. These are some of the difficulties with which you are faced. With regard to the Tate Gallery, the hon. Member asked me to do two contradictory things. He asked me to clear the Tate Gallery by transferring the staff to Burton Court, but if I clear Burton Court I cannot clear the Tate Gallery at all. Burton Court was never commandeered. It was offered by the Chelsea Hospital Commissioners to my Office in December, 1916. A long correspondence followed. As a matter of fact, the ground at Burton Court was let by the Chelsea Hospital Commissioners to the Brigade of Guards, for football. They were getting a rent for it, and they have received that rent from the Government ever since. The negotiations were somewhat protracted, and at one time a stipulation was endeavoured to be put into the agreement in favour of the Brigade of Guards with a view to the evacuation of the place one year after the declaration of Peace. We have not yet reached that date.

Sir S. HOARE

Will the right hon. Gentleman give that undertaking again? If so, I shall be quite satisfied.

Sir A. MOND

No, I did not say I had given it. I wrote a letter at the time stating that it was impossible to give any pledge for the evacuation of the place within a specified period, and that could not sanction, for a moment, Government expenditure on a big scale such as would have been necessitated. If such a pledge had been given, of course I should have stopped the buildings that were being erected and put them on some other site. As a matter of fact, the demand was withdrawn and the buildings proceeded with. You, therefore, cannot pin me down to a pledge which was abandoned with the consent of all the parties concerned. Not merely has more money been spent at this place, but 32,000 awards weekly are being issued from the Pensions Office there, and if that work is interfered with the whole awards of our pensions system would be brought to a standstill. I am certain that not a single Member in this House wishes that to take place. The hon. Member asks, "Why do not we house these people at Acton?" But how could I find accommodation there for the staff of 5,000 belonging to the Pensions Issue Department. I have a scheme which has been passed by the Estimates Committee, and which I shall have to proceed with, involving an expenditure of something like £300,000, in order to house these 5,000 officials on the Issue Department. Now the hon. Gentleman invites me to spend another £300,000 or £400,000 in providing accommodation for the Awards Department, and to scrap, in consequence, the £150,000 which I have already spent on the site we are discussing. In fact, I am asked to spend £500,000 in all in order to house this temporary service.

The Minister of Pensions is now reorganising the service in order to see what accommodation will be required, and it would be irrational and recklessly extravagant, having got the organisation established at this place, and having spent so much money on it, if I were to agree to return to the Guards Brigade their football ground in order to improve the aesthetic appearance of the building and to put up a. new structure at enormous expense which might not be required two years hence. I do not think that, in the state of our national finances, I could go in for any such shocking extravagance. Remember that Burton Court never was an open space to which the public had any right of access. Still I feel sure, much as I sympathise with the right hon. Gentleman, that if he will exercise reasonable patience and let us see how the whole scheme of the Pensions Ministry which is now being decentralised works out, that in another nine months, I may be able to make a reply of quite a different character to that I am now giving him. I cannot pledge myself or the Minister of Pensions to the exact year on a matter of this magnitude. We cannot at one moment preach economy and in the next be extravagant. That must be fundamentally understood. Every day I am being pressed to pull down temporary buildings in the parks. But it must be remembered that for every one I take down I have to put up another elsewhere, and with the present high cost of building, and with our present position financially, to be asked to take such a course for purely aesthetic reasons is neither logical nor reasonable.

We must bear in mind the taxation of the country. There is a snowball reduction of Government staffs going on. We have already achieved substantial success in the release of buildings, a success which could not have been achieved had it not been for the incessant tirelessness of my staff which is dealing with the housing of Government Departments, and is exercising endless trouble to sandwich in every bit of space sections of the staffs, with the result that they have been releasing building after building. Even today I have given instructions to speed up as far as possible the release of commandeered buildings, and I hope we shall succeed in making still greater progress in the next few months than we have hitherto been able to register. People talk about buildings being released twelve months after the Armistice. Twelve months is not a very long period to pull down establishments which it has taken five years of war to create. They cannot be scrapped at a moment's notice. They-must unwind themselves carefully. My Department has no reason to be ashamed of the record it has achieved in the pro- gramme we have adopted of releasing hotels first, museums next and offices next. It is a practically sound programme, and in a little more time, and a little more good will on the part of those who have undoubtedly suffered during the War, I am sure we shall get back to a state of normality which will get rid of many present difficulties.