§ Mr. WHEATLEYI beg to move, in page 3, line 8, to leave out the words "one-third", and to insert instead thereof the words "thirty per cent."
I do not want to detain the Committee long, but, if I had looked at this Amend- 1608 ment merely from a party point of view, it would have been very tempting to me to have gone even further than I now propose. I will not get any very deep gratitude for what I am doing from those who are still left outside the provisions of the Bill. Indeed, I am inclined to think I might have been more comfortable if I had left a still greater number out. I want the Committee to remember the existing condition of things. There are a great number of parishes which are only partly agricultural, and in which the greater part of the population consist of industrial residents. The concession which I have made here, by reducing this figure from 33⅓ to 30, brings in 360 additional parishes in England and Wales, and I can assure the Committee I am thoroughly convinced that to go beyond this would be an extravagant use of public money. The intention of the House quite clearly it; that the £12 10s. 1609 grant should only be given to those parishes which are mainly agricultural, and we know there are many cases where parishes that were never intended to participate originally in the provisions of the Bill are now going to share in the £12 10s. subsidy. It would have been quite easy for me to have said that all can have it The Noble Lord the Member for Hastings (Lord E. Percy) sought to confine the concession to houses built for agricultural workers, but the proposal I make gives generous treatment to agricultural people, and I hope the Committee will accept my Amendment.
§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKSI must say one or two words about this Amendment. It is quite true, as the Minister states, that the concession here will affect 360 parishes, but there are something like 20,000 parishes in England and Wales, and as to the number in Scotland, I am not informed.
§ Mr. WHEATLEYThere are 869 in Scotland.
§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKSOnly 869! Why there are 800 parishes in one English county, namely Norfolk. We asked the Minister to try to make some Amendment to this Bill which would deal fairly with the position of agricultural labourers. Various suggestions were made by us in Committee and they have been ruled out of order on this recommittal stage, although they dealt with a grievance which was admitted to exist. It is not to the benefit of the agricultural labourer, the poorest paid worker in this country, that a man who may be earning £3 or £4 a week should live in an agricultural parish and should get an extra subsidy under the provisions of this Bill. The whole reason of the Bill is to give a weekly rental subsidy to the poorest class of the community because they cannot afford to pay an economic rent. That proposition was accepted by the Committee as the basis of this Bill. Then the Minister came to realise that there is a stratum of society poorer than the ordinary average industrial worker—the agricultural labourer, whose wages average from 25s. to 30s. a week and who therefore is not able to pay the same house rent as the ordinary industrial worker. In order to meet that difficulty the Minister said the Government would give a higher subsidy to agricultural 1610 parishes for the purpose of dealing with the poorest paid labourers in those parishes. But that is not what is done by this Amendment. It is all very well for the Minister to say that he will alter the definition of agricultural parishes by 3 per cent., and so bring in 360 more parishes. But what will occur? He will find on one side of the road in an agricultural parish an agricultural worker who is getting the extra subsidy and on the other side in the adjoining parish—which is not technically an agricultural parish—there will be an agricultural labourer living there and working perhaps for the same farmer who will get the lesser subsidy. Both men will be earning the same wages and working on the same farm. I submit that that is a ridiculous thing which will have to be put right if this Bill is to be made a success.
It is quite clear that we do not want to pay greater subsidies than is necessary. The country cannot afford it. Under the Bill, if in an agricultural parish there are living agricultural labourers earning 25s. a week, and there are also living miners or railwaymen or postmen earning from £2 to £4 a week, these latter men will equally be entitled to the extra subsidy for the new houses built in that agricultural parish. The thing is absolutely unfair and unworkable. What answer can the local authorities give to men working at the same wage on the same farm when they complain that one is getting the higher subsidy and the other, because he lives in an adjoining parish, although Duly on the opposite side of the road, is, because his parish is not technically an agricultural parish, getting the lower subsidy.
§ Mr. PRINGLEWorkmen do not get the subsidy at all.
§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKSThe supposition is that the local authorities will let the houses at lower rents in consequence of the subsidy. The hon. and learned Member has not taken very much part in the debate on this Bill—
§ Mr. PRINGLEThe right hon. Gentleman is wrong. During the whole Committee stage I was only out of the House for three hours.
§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKSI am glad to think that the hon. and learned Member sometimes listens.
§ Mr. PRINGLEI made several short speeches.
§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKSI am not complaining of the hon. Member for not making speeches. It is admitted that the purpose of the Bill is to provide cheap rents for those men who cannot afford to pay ordinary normal economic rents That is an admission common to both sides, but there is a real difficulty which has not been attempted to be solved by the Minister, who says, "I see your difficulty, I see all the troublesome points that have been raised by the hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. Brown) and by the Noble Lady the Member for Perth (Duchess of Atholl), and I am going to ask the Committee to get over them, not by meeting them, but by saying we will throw another 360 parishes into the Bill and call them agricultural parishes." It is not just to take that course. If the right hon. Gentleman had thrown 3,000 additional parishes in he would not have dealt with the difficulty which I have pointed out. He has preferred to take the easier course of throwing in 360 parishes and let all the difficulties go on just the same. With regard to the suggestions we have tried to put before the Committee, the Minister says they "may or may not be unjust, but I am not going to worry about them. I will simply throw in 360 more parishes." That is not dealing fairly with these unfortunate agricultural labourers. There is only one way of dealing with them.
§ Mr. PRINGLEGive them the minimum wage at once.
§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKSAnd suppose you gave them the minimum wage, would that put them on the same footing as the postmen, the railwaymen and the miners in the same parish?
§ Mr. R. RICHARDSONThey would be better off than some of the miners at any rate.
§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKSI am referring to men who are living in the same parishes. [An HON. MEMBER: "30s. will bring them nearer to the same level."] The minimum wage of 30s. will not enable an agricultural labourer to pay an economic rent.
§ Mr. PRINGLEThe right hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well that neither the 1612 agricultural labourer nor anyone else is going to pay an economic rent under this Bill.
§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKSThe whole basis of the Bill is to provide cheaper houses for men who cannot afford to pay an economic rent. We proposed on this side to take, roughly speaking, the poorer paid labourers and to give them the higher subsidy. We want the subsidy to go to the man who needs it rather than to the man who lives in an artificially created agricultural parish. If the Minister had taken a little more trouble he might have found means of doing the thing fairly for the agricultural labourer.
§ Mr. BUCHANANHow?
§ Sir W. JOYNSON-HICKSThere were Amendments down on the Paper, not only by my noble Friend the Member for Hastings (Lord E. Percy), but by hon. Members below the Gangway, which had that in view and which were discussed. The hon. Member may not have been in the House at the time we raised them, but I may tell him there was no reply from the Minister except that it was a very difficult thing to do. I think it could have been done if there had been a little good will on the part of the Minister. Now that the Bill is about to go to another place, I think it would be better for the right hon. Gentleman to be a little more reasonable and see whether he cannot remove what is an admitted blot on the Bill. It is a blot which will make much had blood and cause much heart burning in agricultural districts, and it will at the same time inflict a good deal of hardship and unfairness on agricultural labourers.
§ The CHAIRMANI think the better plan would be to first get out of the Clause the word 'one-third,' and then we can discuss the words to be substituted for them.
§ Question, "That the word 'one-third' stand part of the Clause," put, and negatived.
§ Question proposed, "That the words 'thirty per cent.' be there inserted."
§ Mr. E. BROWNI beg to move, as an Amendment to the proposed Amendment, to leave out the word "thirty", and to insert instead thereof the word "twenty-five."
1613 I wish to make the Bill as workable as possible from a rural point of view, and I think the Minister might very well accept this Amendment. I gather that the Minister and his advisers are afraid that if a further reduction be conceded villages, which are not agricultural but mining, or where there are engineering works, will be brought in. I have made a number of inquiries in hundreds of parishes, and I have taken typical parishes in my own area, and I find that there is no danger whatever of any increase in the number of urban villages being included through a reduction, such as I propose, in the proportion of net rateable value. It must be remembered that we have to deal not merely with the rateable value, but with population, and I suggest to the Minister that wherever there is a large industrial village—I have one in my own area—it can come in in no possible way by either of these definitions; that is to say, it will be cut out either by one or by both. There is an industrial village, with a population of 6,000, that I have in mind. Possibly, its rateable value would bring it in under the first part of the definition, but the population is many more than 50 persons per 100 acres, and so it would be shut out.
In proposing the small reduction to 30 per cent., the Minister has made another anomaly. In my own division, by the original definition, in four rural districts, 10 villages were left out in one, four in another, and three in another. I gratefully acknowledge that the first Amendment, on population, has brought in the whole of the villages in one district, one in another, and seven in another, but the curious thing is that the reduction now proposed in the rateable value will not bring in the small hamlets through which the railways go, but will bring in one other village. I will take two parishes. There is one where the agricultural land is valued at £2,312, and the total rateable value is £9,080. At 30 per cent the value will be £2,744, but with the 25 per cent. that parish would come in. I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that it is an absolutely agricultural parish, and if we can get the definition lowered to 25, it will not be bringing in an urban parish, but a purely agricultural parish. On the other hand, there is a similar village where the agri- 1614 cultural land is rated at £957 and the total property at £5,049, but if you made the net rateable value 10 per cent., that village could not come in. I appeal to the Minister, having met us so far, to go one step further and define the net rateable value at 25 per cent.
§ Mr. BLUNDELLI beg to second the Amendment.
Where you have rural parishes in the vicinity of big towns, they have more need of this subsidy than rural parishes right out in the country, because in the parishes in the vicinity of big towns all the available labour and materials will be drawn into the housing schemes in the big towns, whereas right out in the country you will have a certain number of local builders, who will probably be able to keep their men and go on building on a small scale sufficient for those villages. I therefore hope the Minister can see his way to accept the Amendment, which will give considerable satisfaction to the rural parishes which will be covered by it.
§ Mr. F. GOULDI wish to appeal from these benches to the Minister to accept the Amendment which has been moved. During this Session much consideration has been given to these agricultural problems. Here we have a problem that I believe breaks down all party barriers, and I believe that there is general sympathy for it throughout the Committee. I want to suggest that if we are going to meet the problem of tied cottages, here is an opportunity of meeting it in very many new parishes beyond those included in the concession already accorded. If the Minister will meet us, I believe it will do more than any other Housing Bill has ever done in the history of housing for these rural parishes. What we need for these rural parishes is more vision and more appreciation of the rural problem, and I believe that this Committee ought to demand at least this concession.
In spite of what has been said by hon. Members opposite, this Bill will make big inroads into the problem, and it ill behoves those hon. Members to criticise this Measure, when it is remembered that £6 for 20 years was the maximum that could be conceded by them, and we have now got £9 for the urban industrial areas and £12 10s. for the agricultural 1615 areas, for 40 years. It seems to me to be a liberal provision, but I do not want to see, side by side, one village, because of railroads or any other rateable value that may be in it, cutting against another village without railroads. No agricultural worker will understand such an arrangement. He will say, "I am an agricultural worker with 30s. a week, and I have as much right to ask that my cottage should come under the £12 10s. as the agricultural worker in the next village." I believe, although the hon. Member for Penistone (Mr. Pringle) does not think the rents will be adjusted, that public opinion and public pressure will adjust the rents according to the subsidy paid. I hope the Minister will accept it that I am voicing the feeling of the Labour Benches in favour of this concession being made, and will reduce the rateable qualification to 25 per cent.
§ Mr. A. GREENWOODI fear there is some little misapprehension in the minds of hon. Members with regard to the actual way in which this Bill will work. In an agricultural parish all the houses in that area will be in receipt of the higher subsidy. As a matter of fact, some of these cottages are not being let to agricultural workers, and might conceivably be let at what we might call industrial rents because of the higher wages of the workpeople occupying them. That could, so far as the housing authority is concerned, be set off to assist in a non-agricultural parish in the rural housing authority's area.
§ Mr. F. GOULDDoes the hon. Member imply that the two classes of subsidy will operate in the same parish, and that two different rents will be paid?
§ Mr. GREENWOODNo. In an agricultural parish there will be one subsidy, the higher subsidy, for all houses built by the housing authority in that area, but my point is, that while there might be what we might call an agricultural rent charged for the agricultural cottage, and thus meet the requirements of the Act, at the same time other cottages in that area, in the occupation of industrially employed workers, could be let at a higher rate, and that would enable the rural housing authority in another parish, 1616 which had been ruled to be not agricultural, to assist in reducing the rents of the agricultural workers there. On the general question, it is quite obvious, I think, to all Members of the Committee, that, whether you put it at 30 per cent., 25 per cent., or 20 per cent., you will have some Member in this House who knows of an agricultural parish in his constituency which is left out, and so long as there is an agricultural parish which is left out, there will be a grievance. We have tried to meet the Committee on this point, and the Amendment of my right hon. Friend to substitute 30 per cent. for one-third has gone, I think, some way to meet the views of hon. Members. At the same time, we are very desirous of ensuring that no truly agricultural area shall be deprived of the higher subsidy. After all, we have done something for the rural areas, and we have not, so far as I remember, received much encouragement from the thousands of agricultural parishes we have brought in.
§ Mr. E. BROWNTwice in this House I have stated in no measured language my views about the problem.
§ Mr. GREENWOODIf the Amendment to make it 25 per cent. were adopted, it would bring in some more agricultural parishes, but even then it might leave out one or two here and there which the Members of Parliament for those areas would think ought to be brought in. That is a serious difficulty, and one that I see no way of overcoming, but I think the Committee will, on the whole, feel it desirable to amend our proposal I think the feeling of the Committee is in favour of even more generous treatment than the generous treatment we have already afforded to the agricultural parishes, and, therefore, the Government propose to accept the Amendment.
§ Amendment to the proposed Amendment agreed to.
§ Proposed words, as amended, there inserted.
§ Clause, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.