HOUSING (FINANCIAL PROVISIONS) ACT, 1924.

HC Deb 12 December 1928 vol 223 cc2157-278

The MINISTER of HEALTH (Mr. Chamberlain)

I beg to move, That the Draft of the Order proposed to be made by the Minister of Health and the Scottish Board of Health, with the approval of the Treasury, under Section 5 of the Housing (Financial Provisions) Act, 1924 (presented 6th December, 1928), be approved. The business before the House this afternoon arises out of two Sections of the Housing (Financial Provisions) Act, 1924. Section 5 of that Act says that after 1st October, 1926, and in each second succeeding year, the Minister of Health and the Scottish Board of Health are to take into consideration the expenses which are likely to be incurred in the ensuing two years in connection with the provision of houses as well as the expenses incurred during the previous two years, and then, after consultation with the associations of local authorities, the Minister and the Scottish Board of Health may, if they think fit, make an Order altering the contributions payable by the Exchequer; and Section 6 says that such an Order before it becomes operative must be approved by Resolution of this House. My right hon. Friend and I have followed out the prescribed proceedure. We have taken into consideration the two sets of expenses, we have held the desired consultation with the associations of local authorities and we have decided to make an Order and we are here this afternoon to ask the House to approve by Resolution of the Draft of the Order.

The Order concerns houses built in Scotland as well as in England, but the Scottish case will be put later on in the afternoon by my hon. and gallant Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, and in any observations I make I propose to confine myself entirely to England and Wales. The House will remember that, in 1926, a somewhat similar Order was made, and was approved by this House on 2nd December in that year. The effect of the Order was to reduce the contributions payable in respect of the houses built under the Acts of 1923 and 1924. In the case of the 1923 Act, it reduced the subsidy from £6 a year for 20 years to £4 a year for 20 years, and in the case of the 1924 Act, the subsidy was reduced from 19 to £7 10s. a year for 40 years, or in agricultural parishes from £12 10s. to £11. Although the amount of the annual contribution was different in the two cases, yet as in one case the period during which the subsidy was payable was 20 years, and in the other case 40 years, the capital sum equivalent to the cut in the annual contribution was the same in both cases, and was equivalent to a sum of about £25 per house.

It will be desirable, I think to examine what were the results of that action before we come to consider what are the proposals which I shall have to make to the House this afternoon. Of course, on that occasion, as on this, the making of the Order preceded the moving of a Resolution, and it was therefore known before we came to debate the subject that the cut was in view, and hon. Members on the opposite side anticipated that the cut which was proposed would be defended upon the grounds that housing was costing too much, and that in the interests of economy it was necessary to make the reduction. But, to their surprise, and, I think I may add, to their disappointment, that vas not the reason which was adduced for the proposal then before the House. It is quite true that, in the course of my speech, I did point out that the amount of money that we were spending in subsidies upon house construction had reached very large figures, but the conclusion I drew from that was not that it must necessarily be reduced, but that we ought to be particularly careful to see that we were getting full value for the money we were spending. The reason I proposed a reduction in the subsidy was an entirely different one. It was because I had come to the conclusion that there was a definite relation between the amount of the subsidy and the cost of building, and I based that conclusion upon the history of the subsidy which I gave to the House with certain figures as an illustration.

The figures are interesting, and, as it is some time since I gave them to the House, I think the House will pardon me if I read them again. I began with the year 192], when the Addison scheme was in operation. In July, 1021, the decision was made to shut down the Addison Scheme. At that time the price of a non-parlour house was, on the average, £665. By December, 1922—and during that interval, there had been no new scheme for subsidy—the price had come down to £346 per house. It remained about that mice until April, 1923, when the new Housing Bill was introduced with a subsidy which was equivalent to about £75 per house. A month afterwards the price rose from £346 to £368 and by January, 1924, it had gone to £386. The next move was in June of that year, when a further Housing Bill was introduced, with an increased subsidy equivalent to about £160 per house. In a month the price went up by £52 to £438, and by October of that year it had reached the figure of £451—an increase of £65. There it remained for some time, until December, 1926, and what I said to the House at the time was that since it was clear from the figures I had given, that every time the subsidy had been increased the price of the house went up, it was only logical to conclude that the best way of getting the price down was again to reduce the subsidy.

That was then the argument which I used. That was the proposal which I made, and I ask the House now to see what happened. In the following quarter—the March quarter—after the cut was made, the price decreased by £23, and came down to £425, and since that time it has more or less steadily fallen until, in the September quarter of this year, it had got down to £360—a decrease of £88 per house. I do not think that many prophets can congratulate themselves that their prophecies have been so amply and rapidly fulfilled as my prophecy was in this respect. I am quite aware that hon. Members opposite are prepared to swear that the reduction had nothing at all to do with the subsidy, and that it was merely a coincidence that it happened to follow just at the time that the cut took place. I am not this afternoon going to enter into an argument upon that point, although I am bound to say that it does seem to me that to anyone who is not blinded by prejudice, there can he only one conclusion that can be drawn from the events I have related. But, after all, the thing we have got to consider is what are the actual facts to-day, and I would like to point out to the House what is the position of local authorities in regard to house building to-day as compared with what it was before the cut was made in December, 1926. We had a cut equivalent to £25 in the Exchequer contribution. It is proper, I think, to add to that the corresponding reduction in the contribution of the local authority, that is, half the Exchequer contribution. Putting the two together we have a total cut of £31 10s. Deduct that from £88, which is the fall in the price of non-parlour houses, and you get a net reduction of £50 10s. in the price of houses. Local authorities to-day, after making all allowance for the reduction in the amount of the subsidy and the reduction in their own contributions, are in a position to place orders for houses at £50 less than they were before the cut was made.

I ask hon. Members to bear that figure in their mind for a moment while I consider another aspect of the question, and that is the output of houses. Hon. Members opposite will probably say, in fact I have heard it said already, that the reduction in the subsidy has stopped building. I think I must give the House some figures on that point; I hope hon. Members will forgive me if I give them rather more figures than I usually do, but it is very important that we should have the facts of this case in our minds. What was the rate of output before the alteration in the subsidy took place? I have here the number of State-assisted houses completed—obviously houses which are built without any assistance do not come into this matter at all as they are not affected by the alteration in the subsidy—in each quarter of the year 1926. The total for the March quarter is, in round figures, 28,000: for the June quarter, 34,000; for the September quarter, 41,000: and for the December quarter, 40,000. In the March quarter, 1927, they went down to 38,000, in June they went up to 44,000; and I call the attention of the House to the fact that at that time it was known that there was likely to be an alteration in the subsidy. In September they went up to the tremendous figure of 90,000; and in December they dropped to 24,000.

What has happened this year? This year has been characterised by a rapid increase in the output of houses. In the first quarter it was comparatively small, 20,000. In June it rose to 25,000; September it was up to 32,000; so that by September of this year we were within 5,000 of the output of the quarter ending March, 1927. What is the conclusion to be drawn from these figures? Obviously, the salient feature is the violent fluctuation in an upward direction which took place just before the alteration in the subsidy became operative, 90,000 in that quarter, whereas it had been running at the rate of 40,000 per quarter. Naturally, after the tremendous scramble which took place then, all localities trying to get as many houses as possible finished before the subsidy came down, the tremendous figure which was reached was followed by a reaction. All the sites had been pretty well exhausted by that time and local authorities had to get new ones and make new plans before they could begin operations on a large scale again, but it is clear that the reaction was only temporary and, indeed, it is surprising to find how temporary it was seeing that in September of this year we were getting back nearly to the figure which ruled at the beginning of 1927.

I must remind the House that in the three quarters of the present year the total output of State-assisted houses has been 77,477, which is nearly half as many again as were produced in the whole year of 1924. I think I can pass from the question of output, having clearly shown that, whilst there has been undoubtedly a remarkable rise followed by a corresponding fall, it is only a temporary disturbance which will pass away. I would much rather there had been no such disturbance and that the course of house building should have kept on evenly, and it is possible that that result might have been achieved if I had not given so long notice to local authorities, but if I had not it would certainly have provoked strong protests on their part, and I think we may console ourselves for the disturbance of the trade by reflecting that the result was that many thousands of people got into their houses several months sooner than they otherwise would have done had there not been this tremendous effort in the month of September last year.

There is one other point on which I must say a word. I have seen a statement that the result of the Order of 1926 has been to throw out of employment a large number of people in the building trade. [HON. MEMBERS "Hear, hear!"] I see that hon. Members opposite agree with that statement. They say that there are 106,000 unemployed in the building industry. Let us see what are the real facts. The first is that the 106,000 includes Northern Ireland and Scotland, but for the purposes of this discussion, if we are to consider the effect on the building industry, we must take England and Wales alone.

Mr. VIANT

They are building houses in Scotland under the subsidy.

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN

It suits my argument better to take the figures which include Northern Ireland and Scotland. I was taking the figures for England and Wales in order that I might riot be accused of importing something which is not relevant. I want to compare the amount of unemployment to-day with the amount of unemployment which existed just before the alteration in the subsidy took place. If there is not much difference then there is nothing in the argument that the reduction in the subsidy has produced a large amount of unemployment. In Great Britain, and Northern Ireland the figure of unemployment to-day is 105,961, roughly 106,000. On the 20th December, 1926, it was 108,503. It was actually larger then than it is to-day. That, I think, is not quite a fair comparison, so I will give the House the figures for England and Wales alone. In England and Wales the figures of unemployment for this year are 94,324. In 1926, on the 20th of December, it was 92,574. There are 1,750 more people unemployed now than in December, 1926. It is necessary, however, to analyse these figures a little further and divide them into skilled and unskilled, because, obviously, a number of labourers and other unskilled men are not tied to the building industry in the same way as carpenters and plumbers and other skilled workmen.

Mr. THURTLE

Did not the right hon. Gentleman explain that in December, 1926, there was a very heavy slump consequent on the rapid increase which took place because the subsidy was taken off?

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN

No, Sir; the hon. Member is mixing up the two years. The cut in the subsidy was announced in December, 1926, but it did not operate until 1927. These figures, as I have said, should be divided into skilled and unskilled, and I find, taking the skilled men only, that the number of unemployed now amounts to 36,577. In December, 1926, it was 41,427. In other words, 4,850 more skilled men were unemployed before the alteration in the subsidy was announced than there are to-day. I think that disposes pretty well of the allegation that the cut in the subsidy has added to the unemployment in the building trade.

I will now come to the proposals in the Order which is before the House. Take the first Act—1923. I am aware that in 1926 there were a number of people who thought that the cut. I made then might well have been larger. It was a cut of £25. I preferred to be on the cautious side and I only reduced the subsidy by one-third. I could now reduce it by another third, but that would have left a subsidy of only £25 per house remaining, and I do not think anybody can argue that a subsidy of £25 is going to make any appreciable difference one way or the other in the building of that type of house. There is only a £50 subsidy now upon these houses, the fall in price has amounted to £88, and I am satisfied that. it is possible now to remove this subsidy altogether and leave these houses to he provided by private enterprise with the help of the loan facilities which are allowed under the Act of 1923, of which local authorities have taken advantage to the extent of some £20,000,000.

Then I come to the Act of 1924. I am bound to say that the same arguments apply and would justify an equal cut in the houses under the 1924 Act, but I have had in mind that although there is an actual net reduction in the case of building amounting to 250 per house it is an average figure over the whole country. There are places, including London, where there would not be so large a saving as that. On the whole, therefore, and with every desire to keep as much continuity as possible in the building programme of the country, I came to the conclusion with my right hon. Friend that it was better in this case that we should make the cut the equivalent of 225 per house. That is effected by Article 4 of the Order. Articles 5 and 6 are consequential upon the alteration in Articles 3 and 4. They make a corresponding difference in the contributions from the Exchequer and local authorities and from the London County Council in cases where new methods of construction lower the cost or where houses built for letting are subsequently sold.

I see on the Order Paper that the party opposite propose to move an Amendment, the effect of which will be to leave the Draft Order as it stands as regards houses built under the 1923 Act but, as regards houses built under the 1924 Act, to restore the subsidy to where it originally stood. I believe that would be absolute madness. I am certain that the result of it would be inevitably to raise the price of houses. I dare say we shall be told that the effect of the Order will be to stop building and throw people out of employment, to destroy the confidence of the building industry, and all the rest of it. We were told in 1926 that all those things would happen, and none of them did happen. I venture to say that none of them will happen now. What in my opinion all parties should aim at is by every means in their power to reduce the cost of building. If there is one thing which goes without contradiction anywhere in the House it is this—that the rents of houses that are now being built are too high for many people to be able to pay them. What we have to do if we are to help those people whom we want to help is to do something to get the price down.

The one indisputable result of the action of this House in reducing the subsidy has been to cut the net reduction of the cost of building by £50 per house. I do not expect that as a result of a second Order of this kind we shall get a second fall in the price to the same extent as after the first; but on the other hand I am not by any means satisfied that even now the price of houses has reached the bottom limit. When I am told that the effect of an Order of this kind is to raise the rent of houses, I say that those who maintain that are absolutely shutting their eyes to all the facts. As far as the building industry is concerned, I believe that if all subsidies and all restrictions upon building were removed, they would all heave a sigh of relief and would be glad to get back to normal conditions. Of course we cannot do that. It is the sort of thing that the party opposite would do, but we cannot as practical men make a great dislocation at one blow. We must proceed by steps. That has been the policy of the Government. But to refuse to take another step to-day, when all the signs point so plainly to the feasibility and desirability of it, would be in my opinion to show a lack of courage which nothing on earth could justify.

Mr. ARTHUR GREENWOOD

We have listened to a speech from the Minister of Health which carries far less conviction to the minds of hon. Members than most speeches which he delivers in the House. I find myself without one single word of his speech with which I can agree. We were told in 1926 that there was a relation between subsidies arid prices. The right hon. Gentleman to-day has treated us to his bowdlerised history of subsidies in this country. It is perfectly true that if you stop building houses you reduce prices. I admitted that in this House in these Debates on two occasions. The right hon. Gentleman knows that during the days of the Addison scheme—if he will look at his own records—the costs of building were falling rapidly before that scheme was brought to an end, and that was being done by increasing control of the industry and by getting rid of the purely artificial considerations which obtained immediately after the War. It was perfectly obvious that that fall in prices could be precipitated further if you were to give no new orders for houses.

When the right hon. Gentleman in 1923 introduced his Housing Bill, with the object of rehabilitating private enterprise in the building industry, the price of houses was uneconomically, low. Builders were at their wits' end. They were prepared to take contracts at almost any price. The right hon. Gentleman knows that that is so. The master builders of this country were in the last stages of despair, and it was perfectly obvious that any new scheme for building houses again on a big scale was bound to result in the rise of the price level to an economic basis. It was not the subsidy but the renewed demand for houses that put up the prices. That was bound to be so. The right hon. Gentleman in December, 1926, and again in May of this year, defended his cut of the subsidy and the reverse process—take off the subsidy and prices come down. As I said in May of this year, it was perfectly obvious that prices would come down. When we debated this question in the House in December, 1926, we did not deny that prices were coming down. What we did deny was the intimate relation between the subsidy and the price of houses on which the whole of the Minister's case is based.

It is true that prices have fallen very considerably. I shall not weary the House with detailed figures, but during the past two years there has been, in the case of non-parlour and parlour houses, a very substantial fall in prices. From the last quarter of 1926 to the last three months available, ending in October of this year, the average cost of the non-parlour house has fallen by 18 per cent. or 19 per cent. and of the parlour house by 16 per cent. or thereabouts. That is true. The building employers of the country put it rather differently. Their estimate is an estimate of the cost per superficial foot of floor space, and in their view, in the last two years or so, the cost has fallen from 10s. 6d. to 9s. 6d. a foot, which is round about a 10 per cent. reduction of cost. Those facts are admitted.

The right hon. Gentleman thinks that it is due to his subsidy, but I do not accept his statement at all. I can give him certain other reasons, totally unconnected with the subsidy, which are responsible for the whole of the cut that has taken place in the cost of houses. I would point out to him, in the first place, that during those two years, the average size of the houses has decreased. I am not saying that it has decreased in the same proportion as costs; I am merely pointing out that the size of houses has decreased in the last two years, according to the figures available to me, in non-parlour houses by about 28 square feet, and in parlour houses by about 12 square feet—not an enormous lot but inevitably leading to a reduction in costs. But what is of even greater importance—I would like the Minister to deny this if he can—is the reduction that has taken place in the quality of houses. I am not familiar with how the, right hon. Gentleman has been administering the Housing Acts. I do not know whether he has inspired the cheaper house and the cheaper quality house. All I know is the fact that local authorities to-day, hard driven by the reduction of the subsidy, are building worse houses than before. The fitments are not as good, and where anything can be pared out of the cost, it is being pared out, with bad results on the houses. I see in the last number of the Federated Employers' Journal a statement to that effect from them, that it is within their knowledge that steps are being taken to reduce prices in this particular way.

Then I would point out to the right hon. Gentleman that one of the causes of the continued fall in prices this year is the fact that almost at the beginning of the year—in February—the building trade operatives suffered a 5 per cent. cut in wages. The effect of that has been again to reduce the price at which houses could be built. It is perfectly true also that the three to four years run of the scheme of 1924 has led to an improved organisation of the industry, has led to economy of methods, has led to larger scale construction, and the effect of that again has been to reduce the actual costs of the production of houses.

With these reasons, apart from any others, there was bound to be a fall in the cost of houses. Even if the right hon. Gentleman had increased the subsidy you would have had that fall, because there arose considerations entirely distinct from the subsidy itself. But there has been a fall in the cost of practically all the large variety of building materials in the last two years since the reduction of the subsidy. I would remind the House that in 1926, as a result of the prolonged stoppage in the coal industry, the prices of building materials rose very substantially. There was a shortage of coal, a shortage of output, and it was almost inevitable that at the beginning of 1927, with the resumption of the supply of coal and a fall in price, there would be a fall in price of the very large range of building materials. All these things have happened. If you add these factors together and get the aggregate result, it is not surprising that we have had a fall of £50 10s., or whatever the sum may be, in the price of houses. These various factors are utterly irrespective of the subsidy.

Let me draw attention to the situation in Scotland. The right hon. Gentleman very skilfully evaded the situation in Scotland. I am not going to deal with the Scottish housing question, but I do wish to refer to the phenomenal fall in the cost of houses in Scotland before there was any reduction of the subsidy. If the right hon. Gentleman's reduction of the subsidy has produced this fall, then there should not have been a corresponding fall in price in Scotland where the subsidy was still operating. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health seems to think that that is amusing. I do not see the logic of his view. The Minister puts forward one cause for the fall in the cost of building. I put forward a whole series of causes which have operated over the whole of Great Britain. The right hon. Gentleman's one cause, which applies only in one part of Britain, cannot by any stretch of the imagination be responsible for the phenomenal fall in price in Scotland. If the right hon. Gentleman wishes to prove that the effect of the reduction of the subsidy in England was to reduce all these costs, and that there was a reaction on Scotland, he is welcome to the task, because there is no more immobile industry than the building industry and there is no industry which is more affected by local consideration. What are the facts in Scotland? I think it is worth while quoting the Report of the Scottish Board of Health for last year: The records show that during the past year the trend of building prices, so far as working class houses are concerned, is definitely downwards. The fall in price has been so pronounced that it was possible to make a substantial reduction on prices previously approved, and yet to have no great difficulty in approving tenders submitted by local authorities. And again: Some of the tender prices submitted during the year"— that is last year— are the lowest that have been received since Government assistance was offered in aid of the cost of building. I have some detailed figures for the city of Glasgow showing a fall in costs which corresponds curiously closely with the fall of costs in England and Wales. I take it from the costs of various Types of houses, in the last two years which I have analysed, that there has been, in Scotland, a fall in the price of houses of from 11 to 13 per cent. which is very like the figure of 10 per cent. in the estimate of the building employers. In some cases the reduction is even larger. If that be so, unless the Government are prepared to show that it arises from causes entirely different from those operating in England and Wales, we are entitled to draw the conclusion that the Minister's case against the subsidy falls to the ground. Then the right hon. Gentleman turned to the question of the output of houses. He did so, I thought, in a rather shamefaced way and he quoted figures from which I cannot see that he can draw any comfort because the outstanding fact is that the output of houses has been reduced. The right hon. Gentleman prided himself on his prophecy. I also am a prophet—it may be a minor one, but none the less a true prophet. When this question was first before the House I used these words and I think my prophecy has come nearer to the truth than the Minister's: I have within the last few days received letters and reports from many parts of the country and almost everywhere the same story is told by local authorities, by building experts, by mayors and town councillors that the only effect of this proposal will be to reduce the building of working class houses."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 2nd December, 1920; col. 1494, Vol. 200.] The Minister can juggle with the figures as he likes, but the fact remains that the rate of building to-day is much slower than it need ever have been. The figures quoted by the Minister disprove the conclusion which he tried to draw from them, that, after all, things are not so very had. If we take the houses under construction at the end of this month, which I submit is an even better test than houses completed, we find we have not got up to a monthly rate of building equal to that which existed before the reduction of the subsidy. We are now, as regards local authorities' houses under the 1924 Act, down to little more than half of what the local authorities are capable of building and what they have built in the past. Indeed, were it not that the local authorities, in spite of the reduction of the subsidy, have continued to build under the 1924 Act, the rate of output to-day would be half what it is. The fact that building is proceeding at all on any scale is due to the building of louses under the 1924 Act by local authorities; the rate of the falling off in building is far larger under the 1923 Act, and is larger still in private enterprise building under the 1923 Act. That is why the Minister can, if he likes, get rid of the 1923 subsidy, because the building industry has about reached saturation point as regards the building of houses for sale. The real problem, is the problem of building houses to let.

I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman has been trying to reduce the number of houses built under the 1924 Act. I remember when that Measure was before the House the present Home Secretary declaring that, while he did not want to say that it was a gigantic fraud, it would never produce houses. We happen to be producing houses now on a very coniderable scale under that Act, although the effect of the Minister's action in regard to the subsidy has been to reduce the building of houses. What is the position broadly? In the year before the reduction of the subsidy we built over 212,000 houses; in the year immediately following we built rather over 101,000 houses. I know there was a spurt. There was a spurt, according to the right hon. Gentleman, of 50,000. But when the Minister says that, as a result of the speeding-up of building, in order to get the subsidy, there were thousands of families who enjoyed new houses some months before they would have done so otherwise, I say to him that there are a hundred thousand families to-day without houses who might have had houses but for the right hon. Gentleman. The right hon. Gentleman told us in May that, of course, there was bound to be a period of reaction; that the local authorities were speeding up to take advantage of the increased subsidy, and that, afterwards, things would be slack but that the situation would improve. The situation has not improved. We are not building at the rate of which the building industry is capable.

As I understand the Minister's figures, he has been able to dissolve unemployment in the building industry altogether. That is a very convenient way for the Government to deal with an otherwise difficult problem. If you can prove to yourself that the problem is not there and thus satisfy your conscience, it is very convenient. But does the Minister mean to say that, with the rate of building to-day standing at about half what it was two years ago, there are as many men employed in the building industry to-day as there were two years ago? [HON. MEMBERS: "More!"] I cannot believe that more men are employed now than there were when far more building was being done. Even though there are only 1,750 more men unemployed in England and Wales, the fact that the number is 1,750 more instead of 1,750 less, with the housing problem in its present state, is not to the credit of the Government or the Minister of Health. The Minister pleads that we ought to reduce costs. We all agree. We all know that the problem before us to-day is the problem of providing houses at a price which will permit of rents within the means of working-class families. That problem has to be solved somehow or other. But the right hon. Gentleman's way of doing it is to take off £25 subsidy, and then say he has reduced costs by £50 nett. If he would only take off the other two-thirds, we might give houses away for nothing with a copy of the Tory Programme; but, obviously, it is no solution of the problem of providing houses to let at reasonable rents, to reduce the output of houses. That is the only sure result of the Minister's policy.

There are other ways. If the cost of houses to-day be uneconomically high, it is because private enterprise, in one of its many manifestations in the building industry, is holding the community up to ransom. We have had many illustrations of that and the practical way of bringing down housing costs to a minimum is to squeeze out every unnecessary profit. The Government will not do that. They go on with this indirect method of reduction of subsidy. The right hon. Gentleman has prophesied. I, also, venture to prophesy again, and I say that under the reduced subsidy you will never get up to the rate of building of which the building industry is capable. Under the reduced subsidy you will never get to a rate of building which will enable you to eat into the great bulk of housing needs and arrears. You may build at a rate sufficient to keep things as they are, but you cannot, under this reduced subsidy, stimulate local authorities and public utility societies to exercise the initiative and courage which they have often shown in the past. I said in 1026 that I had noticed a difference in the official attitude towards the housing problem. There was a time when it was realised that the solution of the problem demanded a great crusade, which would fill the hearts and minds of the people with the need for dealing with it. But the consideration of the matter by the Government is purely official now. The heart has gone out of it, as a result of the action of the Minister of Health during the last two years, and the more local authorities are dispirited and discouraged, the more the solution of this grave, pressing and growing problem will be postponed.

5.0 p.m.

We are spending a considerable sum on the unemployed whose numbers appear in the "Labour Gazette." We are spending on them far more than the Government will save in the cutting of the subsidy. That is not economy. The Minister said he did not propose this reduction on the grounds of economy. I put the whole question of the housing subsidy on grounds of economy, and I say that it is economical to apply the maximum amount of financial help to stimulate local authorities and ensure full employment at maximum pressure in the building industry in order to get rid of the cancer of bad housing in the towns. That evil is costing us, not only millions of pounds every year, but is costing much more in diminished vitality and shortened lives, in the reduction of social usefulness, and in other ways. It is costing us infinitely more than could be saved if the whole subsidy were abolished. This proposal is not economy. It is the wildest kind of national extravagance. The Government are playing with a matter of pounds, and disregarding the fact that the lives of thousands of people in this country are being lived under inhuman conditions. I think the right hon. Gentleman would pay attention to the views held in his own constituency, and the Medical Officer of Health here recently reported that this was a problem which demanded even greater attention now than it had demanded in the past. Quite steady progress continues to be made in the provision of new houses. The problem of housing must continue to rank as one of the most urgent and fundamental questions confronting Birmingham. He goes on to say: It is not possible to measure the loss to Birmingham arising from the effects of such surroundings, not only through their adverse effect on physical welfare, but far more fundamentally through their hindrance to any real fullness of life. I could quote report after report by medical officers of health showing the persistence of appalling housing conditions. The great city of Manchester, we are told, had last year nearly 19,000 overcrowded houses. We are told that in Brighton, which one does not associate with slums, unless one knows the town well, there are houses in the eastern part of the town which were condemned as slums in 1877 by the then Medical Officer of Health for the district. In Stoke-on-Trent—and here is another point of the utmost importance—the medical officer reports: A very large number of houses are still required to house newly-married couples and to relieve overcrowded dwellings. Nearer here, in Wandsworth, where one might think the problem was not as serious as it is in some parts of London, the Medical Officer says: Many cases of overcrowding were brought to the notice of the public health department, but owing to the shortage of housing accommodation it was not possible to remedy the conditions found. That story can be repeated in every town and every village throughout the country, and so long as overcrowding exists, however small the dimensions of the problem, so long as any slum exists, however small the slum may be, so long as the housing need exists and there is an unemployed building-trade worker, it is the business of the community to deal with this problem. Of all the disastrous Measures with which the Minister of Health in this Government has been associated, there is no more sinister blow at our national well-being than this proposal further to reduce the subsidy. If hon. Members could escape their party Whips and judge of this problem on its merits, apart from party political considerations, I venture to say that when the Division was taken to-night, there would be a great majority standing with us for more houses rather than with the Minister for fewer houses.

Mr. AUSTIN HOPKINSON

The speech of the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. A. Greenwood), to which we have just listened, is interesting from an academical point of view, but from a practical point of view I doubt whether it really has added very much to the knowledge of the House. It is perfectly obvious that the hon. Gentleman has never built a house in his life, and knows absolutely nothing about the conditions of building. In order that the House may realise, in some degree, the actual, practical effect of the constant changes in policy of successive Governments in the matter of the housing of the working classes, I might perhaps briefly state from my own experience in my own district, what the result has been of all this chopping and changing. As I, for one, instead of talking about providing houses for the working classes, have provided a very large number at my own expense, I may be able to explain my reasons for congratulating the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Health on having had the courage—for it does require great political courage to do it—to take away this distinct detriment to the building of houses at reasonable rents for the working classes in this country.

In my own district we are still saddled with a considerable number of most unsuitable houses, which from time to time we condemn as a local authority, although we cannot condemn them as quickly as we should like, since, under the Rents Restriction Acts, it is extraordinarily difficult to condemn any slums at all. Before 1910 a fair number of fairly satisfactory new houses were being built for our people, hut, of course, the introduction into this country in 1910 of the principles of the late Mr. Henry George at once put a stop to the building of any working-class houses. It absolutely cut off the building of working-class houses throughout the whole of my own district and the surrounding districts of South Lancashire, for the simple reason that it made it unprofitable for anyone to build working-class houses, and naturally, as builders are not working for the benefit of their health, but are working for their livelihood, they did not build any more houses of this class. Thereafter we were bound to have to face a housing problem sooner or later. No houses were being built suit- able for renting to working-class tenants, and by the time the War broke out our own district was beginning to feel the shortage rather badly. In other words, if industry began to expand at all, it was very difficult for workers from other districts to get suitable accommodation when they came into ours to work in our new industries.

The War intervened, and with the War there came another change in the policy of this country in relation to these matters. We had the Rents Restriction Acts, which, of course, at once cut off any normal supply of capital for the building of houses for working-class tenants to be rented. So long as the Government of the country says that Any man may get a full return for his investment in any other direction, but that if he invests in the building of working-class houses he is not allowed to get a full return on his investments, it stands to reason—and this has been proved up to the hilt—that you cannot get capital invested for the building of working-class houses to rent. After the War, in my district, the position was extremely acute, and being at that time a member of the local authority, as I am now, I thought it my duty to make, at any rate, some sort of start with the building of the houses that we required.

I started building houses on my own land, with what result? As soon as Dr. Addison's scheme got fairly going, the price of houses went up, week by week and month by month, so that, although immediately before that scheme came into effect it was just possible to build houses to let at a rent which working class people in those days could pay, and at the same time not to lose heavily on the transaction, by the time Dr. Addison had really got to work, it was absolutely out of the region of practical politics at all. Prices went up at one period by as much as 5 per cent, per week, in my district, in the cost of construction. The Addison scheme produced a complete corner in the building trade, a corner in building trade labour, and a corner in building trade materials. Rings formed in every direction, in every sort of building trade material, and in every sort of building trade labour too. As far as my own observations and my own experience of the cost of building at that time go, if Dr. Addison had been allowed to proceed with his scheme, there would have been no chance of any appreciable fall in the real cost of building. There might have been a fall in the money value of the cost, but not a real fall in the cost of construction, if you took into account the falling prices in other directions and for other commodities.

Therefore, some of us, as Members of this House will remember, took it upon ourselves to make a dead set against that scheme, and ultimately we were successful in getting rid both of the scheme and of Dr. Addison, with the result, as the right hon. Gentleman has hinted already in his speech, that within a very few months of Dr. Addison's leaving the Government and the abolition of his scheme, we were once more back upon practically an economic level of building prices. I remember well myself passing the plans for buildings of my own on my own land, at a price which actually gave a return of something like 4 per cent. on the capital invested in them—a most remarkable return, in these days, on newly-built working-class property. There was every prospect then that we should at last be able to get working-class houses built at a rent that working-class tenants could pay and houses that were quite of a better type than we had been accustomed to build prior to 1910. But the right hon. Gentleman came along then, and just at this point, when we were getting on to a proper level of costs for the building of houses, when we could have put them up and let them at rents that working-class tenants could pay, he introduced his subsidy scheme.

The result was that the cost of building materials began to go up. I remember that on the Second Reading of his Subsidy Bill I went home and found a notice on my desk there saying that the price of bricks had been raised 5s. per thousand; after the Third Reading, I went home and found another notice to say that the price of bricks had been raised another 5s. per thousand; and when finally the Bill got the Royal Assent, I went home and found a third notice saying the price had been raised another 5s. per thousand, making a total of 15s. a thousand for bricks as a direct and immediate result of the right hon. Gentleman's Subsidy Bill. Before he introduced his subsidy, there was consterna- tion among the building trade rings. I found, just before the subsidy was introduced, or at any rate before the announcement of the policy was made, that the building trade rings were breaking up right and left. I found that I could get light castings, of all things in the world, at below the ring prices, and the right hon. Gentleman will understand that when the light castings people allowed you to get things under the ring prices, things were in a very bad state for that ring, because, of all other rings in the building industry, the Light Castings Association has been the worst of the whole gang.

But hope came to those building trade rings, and hope came to the labour rings in the building trade as well, when the right hon. Gentleman introduced that subsidy, and that hope was duplicated and re-duplicated when the right hon. Gentleman who was Minister of Health in the Labour Government added to that subsidy. As the right hon. Gentleman the present Minister of Health has told us to-night, and as I have told this House again and again, year after year, the average price of houses went up by almost exactly the capital value of the subsidy which was granted in the two Acts. In the case of the 1924 subsidy, it did not go up by the full capital value, because the building trade came to the conclusion that the basis of the subsidy was so preposterous that the people of this country would not stand it, and so they discounted the rise by about 50 per cent. instead of the whole 100 per cent. that they got in the case of the other subsidy.

We went on building in my own district. Fortunately, I was able to convince my local council, of which I am a member, that it would be a mistake to adopt a council scheme, and what has been the result? Immediately after the War we had 1,900 odd inhabited houses in our district. Since then we have had built no less than 340 new houses of a far better type than was customary in the same district, absolutely without a penny of contribution from the ratepayers, and I venture to say that if there had been no subsidy at all, there would have been exactly the same number of new houses built in that district. In fact, we only applied as a local council for the grant of a subsidy to our builders because the surrounding districts were giving the subsidy, and we found that our own builders were rather at a disadvantage. We should have preferred, and so would the builders themselves, to have done without any subsidy at all, but the surrounding districts were giving it, and we had to apply to the Ministry of Health for it in consequence.

Therefore, when the right hon. Gentleman comes here, as he has done to-day, and says: "We have tried this thing out to the full; it has been a gross mistake from beginning to end, it has had exactly the opposite effect from what it was intended to have, and it has accentuated the difficulty of housing," then I say that we can congratulate him on political courage in revoking a scheme for which he himself was responsible, unless indeed it was forced upon him by an unfortunate bye-election in the Mitcham Division of Surrey, because, although post hoc was not propter hoc, it was so very much post hoc that one might hazard the statement that it was propter hoc. That has been the position in one small urban district, which has suffered for years from the lack of working-class houses very largely owing to the follies perpetrated in the People's Budget of 1910.

The right hon. Gentleman has at heart the problem of the housing of the working-classes. His own work in the city of Birmingham is proof that he at any rate really feels the seriousness and the importance of the problem, and I would ask him to impress upon his colleagues in the Government that there is still one bar to the housing of the working-classes. That bar is that it is impossible to get capital for the housing of the working-classes. It is possible to get any amount of capital for building houses for sale, and the reason that it is impossible to get it for houses to let is that the whole thing is so insecure, and people fear that we may have a repetition of the policy of rent restriction. They fear that, if they invest their money in that direction, like so many of their poorer neighbours they may find that their money has been put on a wrong horse, and they feel that, if they invested it in greyhound racing or in gold-mining shares, they might retain their capital instead of losing it. As the right hon. Gentleman has done so much by the reduction of the subsidy to encourage the building of working-class houses at a reasonable rent and at a reasonable cost, I ask him to continue the good work by impressing on his colleagues the necessity for departing as soon as possible from the ridiculous policy which has cut off the supply of capital for the building of houses for letting.

Mr. WHEATLEY

The hon. Gentleman who has just addressed the House has given us one of his delightful and characteristic speeches. I cannot help but regard him as the remnant of a bygone age. In this House he represents an individualist system which has, as far as I can hear, no defender but himself. He congratulates the Minister of Health on the courage which he has displayed in this draft Order, and one may congratulate the hon. Member in being faithful to the individualist views of his grandfather. I would respectfully ask him to take a few lessons in modern economic history. He tells us that the collapse of house building was due to the Finance Act of 1909. I submit that it was due to nothing of the kind. If the hon. Gentleman will examine housing history, he will find that the birth of the rings and combines in the building industry took place in 1909. There was an indiscriminate and unregulated system of house building in every part of the country, and a surplus of working-class houses to let. Between 1910 and 1913 the cost of building went up by 30 per cent. Obviously, the people who would have put their money into building, as the hon. Gentleman desires them to do, in 1913, and erected houses costing one-third more than existing houses which were empty, could not hope to compete successfully with those empty houses. So they had to stop building until two things had happened—first, until the surplus houses had been inhabited, and second, until the rents of existing houses were put up to a level that would make profitable the erection of houses that were to enter into competition with them.

Had it not been for the Government of that time, or rather for the pressure put upon the Government by tenants all over the country, rents would have gone up when the surplus houses disappeared. It would not have been merely the rents of the new houses that would have gone up; the hon. Member, and people who think like him, think that the Govern- ment should have stood aside and allowed rents to be put up on the millions of houses already in existence, which had cost no more to build, because in the meantime we had had a war. In other words, the hon. Gentleman is defending the policy that people who had money invested in house property should, because of the nation's difficulty, be allowed to rob the nation. He went on to tell us that the prices had fallen after the Addison Scheme had been stopped. As my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. A. Greenwood) has pointed out, prices will always fall if there are no buyers. There were no houses being built when the Addison Scheme stopped—

Mr. HOPKINSON

The right hon. Gentleman is totally misinformed about that.

Mr. WHEATLEY

I submit that I am not misinformed. It is within the recollection of Members of the House, and, if it is not within the recollection of the hon. Member for Mossley (Mr. Hopkinson), he has not been following so closely as I thought the history of the building industry.

Mr. HOPKINSON

Can the right hon. Gentleman give any figures to prove it?

Mr. WHEATLEY

I have no doubt that if the hon. Gentleman puts down a question to the Minister of Health, he will get all the figures that he wants. Before dealing point by point with this policy as I propose to do, I will ask the House to consider that it is possible to give far too much attention to the relation between subsidy and the cost of building from another point of view. The granting of the subsidy by any Government was not due to the fact that the cost of building was high; I mean that it was not due to that fact in itself. The object of the subsidy was to bring the rents of habitable, healthy houses within the reach of the average working man, and the cost of the houses did not necessarily bear a relation to it. Let me put it this way. If a house was costing £600 to build and the wages of the man for whom it was provided were £6 a week, and the cost of the building came down to £300 and the wages at the same time to £3, the fall in the cost of building had not brought you one step nearer the solution of the problem that con- fronted you. The problem was to enable the man, out of the wages which he was receiving, to pay a rent for the house that was being erected at the current cost. What the right hon. Gentleman leaves out of account altogether is the fact that, while the cost of building has come down, the rate of wages has come down proportionately, and that the rent of the houses is no less for the man for whom they were originally intended than it was when the cost of building was double what it is to-day. Nominal wages have come down, and with nominal wages coming down, the product of labour comes down. If the house has come down from £600 to £300, and the wages from £6 to £3, the fall in the cost of the house is not to be claimed as a reason why we should refuse State assistance to the man whose wages are also down.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bridgeton (Mr. Maxton), the other evening, said that it seemed to be the settled policy of the Government to give as many parting gifts to their friends as possible before they meet their fate at the General Election. I ask the House to regard the draft Order, which is to be pressed through by the Government majority to-day, as one of the Government's death-bed gifts. In the old days, if one had assisted one's friends out of public funds, it would have been done in such a crude manner as to be evidently corruption. The modern method is more scientific and respectable. The Government put through an Act of Parliament which is quite clearly calculated to help the friends to whom they look to give them backing. Considerable capital is sunk in dwelling-houses for letting purposes; I suppose that there are few industries in which a larger amount of capital is invested. The return on this invested capital depends, of course, upon the rents that can be obtained for the houses, and the new publicly-built houses naturally come into competition, in the fixing of rents, with the existing privately-owned houses. If the new houses are scarce, if building is slow, the supply is reduced, and you put up under the competitive system the market value of the commodity. If the rents of the new houses are kept high, the rents of the old houses can be kept high; and if the rents of the old houses can be kept high, there is to a greater extent that extra return on capital which was desired by the hon. Member for Mossley.

When the subsidy is withdrawn, undoubtedly rents will be put up. You will shift the burden from the State, from the taxpayer, and to a corresponding extent from the ratepayer, and put it on to the shoulders of the working-classes who are the inhabitants of these houses. You at the same time enable the private owners of houses to put up their rents and you put millions of money into their pockets as a result. The Minister of Health is well aware that there is still a tremendous shortage of houses. My hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne gave the figures, and no one knows them better than he does. I read an official statement last week that 34,000 people are waiting for new houses in Glasgow. That is a considerable increase on the number five or six years ago. My hon. Friend pointed out that you may be embarking on a scheme of very unsound finance in this policy. Undoubtedly, the shortage of houses leads to overcrowding. There is a mistaken idea that overcrowding is associated only with slums. No one knows better than the Minister of Health that there is more overcrowding outside slums than there is inside slums. A shortage of houses necessarily creates overcrowding. The working-class house has no margin beyond the healthy requirements of an average family. When there is a shortage, the people who have no houses must find shelter somewhere. They will never be taken in by the richer families who have surplus accommodation, so that they have to find accommodation in the small houses of their fellow workers. Every time you have an additional family brought into a small house you have overcrowding, and all its consequences. Those consequences are only too well known to the Ministry of Health. No one knows better than the present Minister of Health how much of the disease, the death-rate and the financial burden of this country is due to overcrowding.

While the housing shortage exists you are bound to have overcrowding. But the policy of the right hon. Gentleman clearly retards building. His own figures prove it. They prove that the policy of withdrawing the subsidy retards building. He cannot get over those figures. But I think there is stronger evidence than that. There is evidence that the right hon. Gentleman does not believe in his own policy. The right hon. Gentleman, as the House well knows, is no fool, and it is of no use for him to come here and attempt to play the fool. He cannot get out of the evidence which is within that Order itself. If the right hon. Gentleman believes in his policy, and thinks that by reducing the subsidy you bring down the cost of housing, how does he explain the attitude taken towards Scotland? How does he explain why Scotland is dealt with less harshly than England and Wales when he comes to the revision of the subsidy? Surely it cannot be that he loves Birmingham less than he loves Scotland; there must be some other reason for it.

Is not the reason, quite clearly, that the housing problem in Scotland is more intense than the housing problem in England? When the right hon. Gentleman came to deal with the subsidy in 1926, he said, in effect: "We are going to bring down building costs in England by reducing the subsidy. We are going to keep up building costs in Scotland by not interfering with the subsidy." So he allowed the full subsidy of the 1924 Act to remain intact in 1926. Now he comes forward again to-day and says: "We are going to reduce that subsidy in Scotland to the level which exists at the moment in England, but we are also going to bring the subsidy for England down further still." Why? Is it that he wants the costs of building in Scotland to remain up? Surely if this is a specific for bringing down building costs, then Scotland needs its building costs reduced much more than England and Wales require their building costs reduced. Quite obviously, the right hon. Gentleman does not believe in his own policy. He simply comes here and wraps it up in a volume of figures and attempts to humbug this House.

I think it is worthy of remark that for all practical purposes the 1923 Act, put on the Statute Book by the right hon. Gentleman himself, is now completely wiped out. The 1923 Act expresses much more clearly and much more reliably than do his speeches the right hon. Gentleman's view of what ought to be the State's attitude towards the removal of the housing shortage. I think it might be summed up in this way. He believed the way to do it was to help those who least need help; in other words, to help those who could financially help themselves and allow all the others to go to slumdom—or further, I suppose, if they like. So under the 1923 Act he produced a scheme for giving State assistance to those who could afford to buy houses, and giving no State assistance, or practically none, to those who could not afford to buy houses. If the cases were closely examined it would be seen that the great bulk of that money went into the pockets of the private builders. We know what the situation was. There was such a shortage of houses that people who had a little capital to invest were engaged in a scramble for houses at any price, and the speculative builder was in the position not only of being able to extort from the house purchaser an exorbitant price for the house but, in addition, was able to put the right hon. Gentleman's £75 subsidy in his pocket. In nearly every case, I should say, it could be easily proved that instead of the subsidy under the 1923 Act reaching the purchaser of the house it went in the other direction altogether. That was due to the fact that, unlike the Act of 1924, the right hon. Gentleman's Act made no provision at all for controlling the subsidy and directing its destination. So I am not at all surprised, but rather glad, that he now sees the folly of the step he took in 1923, and refuses to distribute any more public money among private speculators who are erecting houses for sale.

The 1924 Act, on the other hand, expressed the Labour view of how the housing problem ought to be faced. That Act is based on the idea that State help should be given only to those who need State help. Not only in this matter, but in the de-rating Bill, and all through their policy, it will be found that that conception never enters into the consideration of the Government. It enters into the consideration only of hon. Members on this side of the House—that is, the view that State help should be given only to the people who need State help. The 1924 Act set out to give substantial assistance to the local authorities to enable them to provide houses to let. I remember that the right hon. Gentleman himself said that the real housing problem was the provision of houses to let. If everyone could afford to buy his own house, there would be no housing problem to trouble us at all. In the 1924 Act, unlike the 1923 Act, stipulations were made to ensure that the assistance given by the State for the erection of houses would reach the people for whom the assistance was intended. The local authorities were bound under that Act to pass on the subsidy to the tenants.

I would submit this to the local authorities, if my voice should reach them by the aid of the Press—that they should render vigorous opposition to the present Order of the right hon. Gentleman, and that they should at least recognise that the only Act for giving State assistance towards the removal of the housing shortage in this country is the Act put on the Statute Book by the Labour party in 1924. Everything else now disappears, and but for the fact that we had a Labour Government local authorities, after the passing of this Order, would not have a penny of State assistance going towards the solution of the housing problem. I submit that local authorities and everyone else interested in housing should be grateful that even for the short period of nine months we had a Labour Government in this country.

I oppose this Order, further, on the ground that it violates all the pledges given by the Government of 1924 to all the people interested in the solution of the housing problem. Hon. Gentlemen opposite may sneer at the violation of pledges given to our own people. That is characteristic of them. If we give pledges to Frenchmen, those pledges are sacred; but if we make promises to our own people, they are to be regarded as belonging to the piecrust order. Hon. Gentlemen opposite sneer at their own people, but they hail with reverence and deference the people of other countries in their negotiations with them and in the promises made to them. We violate here solemn pledges to our own people in 1924. It is impossible to convey to this House, even after a brief period of four years, the difficulties which stood in the way of housing in 1924. Hon. Members opposite and their party were completely helpless, and came to this House and confessed their helplessness. The fundamental criticism in 1924 was that out of the chaos in which the industry was it was impossible for us to carry out our policy and impossible to build houses. The party opposite had tried it. The right hon. Gentleman had put his Act of 1923 on the Statute Book, but no houses were being built, and, after all, it is houses that matter, not Acts of Parliament. The right hon. Gentleman, or his successor at the Ministry of Health, had to come here and state in the most lamentable language that they could not get houses built.

I remember the Conservative predecessor of the right hon. Gentleman at the Ministry of Health, now the Home Secretary, coming to the Treasury Box here and telling us that he had been practising bricklaying. They had started off on the assumption that the first step necessary in solving the housing problem was to smash trade unionism. You could make no progress till you had smashed the trade unions. The right hon. Gentleman the present Home Secretary wanted to demonstrate that there was really no craftsmanship in the laying of bricks, and so he accepted an invitation from a speculative builder who later, I suppose, pocketed the 192.3 subsidy, and went down to where houses were being built, and then solemnly came back and told the House that with the aid of a hoard which served as a guide line he could lay six bricks while a bricklayer was laying one. I submit that as just a sample of the tone which prevailed in the House at that time. There was a. shortage of houses, there was a shortage of men, there was a shortage of materials, and right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite, whom many of you here believe to have superior business capacity—wrongfully believe it, because they are inferior to you, so far as my experience of them has gone—held up their hands in holy horror, and said: "We cannot get out of the difficulty until we smash something. Let us begin with the bricklayers, let us go for the plasterers, let us go for the joiners, let us smash everybody who can help in the building of houses, and then we shall be able to solve the problem." That was the attitude adopted towards the problem, and that was the basis of their policy in 1924.

I remember that when I made an estimate that in the second year a re-organised industry would be able to produce 90,000 houses per annum hon. Members opposite jeered. I was met with loud laughter from the Conservative party. They jeered at the proposal and they sneered at me, just as the hon. Member for Mossley (Mr. A. Hopkinson) said to-day to the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne: "If you knew anything about the problem you would not make such a rash prophecy." I said not only 90,000 houses, basing my scheme on that, but I said that later there would be a steady increase in the output of houses. What do hon. Members opposite do now? They stand at that Box, and they go round the country, proudly boasting of the houses that are being built, as if they were the actual builders, as if they had followed the example of the Home Secretary with the board and had gone round the country erecting houses. You would think that the trade unions had contributed nothing towards the problem, but that hon. Members opposite had had something to do with the laying of the foundation of the industrial system which has enabled us comparatively to solve the housing problem of this country. They have no right to parade as builders of houses or the builders of a policy that would lead to the building of houses. I submit that the 1924 Act was more than an Act of Parliament. It was a first-class piece of national industrial organisation. We are witnessing to-day not merely the breaking up of an Act of Parliament, but deliberate, smashing blows at probably the one intelligently organised industry in this country.

In 1924 we found the building industry in chaos, and we brought together all the people interested in a solution of the problem. We made an appeal to them on high moral lines as well as on other grounds. We appealed to them for the sake of the nation to come together and help us. We got the local authorities, operatives, manufacturers, contractors and merchants to meet the Government and the representatives of the tenants, and these people a-greed to terms which, for the first time in this country, put the building industry on a solid basis. The Government gave pledges to the country, and I say that those pledges are just as solemn and worthy of recognition as any pledge given to any nation in the world. If the people of this country know their own business and have any respect for their own honour, they will make snort shrift of the Conservative Government that violated the pledges which were given in 1924.

The local authorities said that the subsidy was insufficient. I will show the roguery that is behind this Order. The local authorities pleaded with me that the 1924 subsidy of £9 per house for 40 years and other parts of it was insufficient for the purpose. They fought me and my officials for several days, and it was only within half an hour of the close of the Housing Conference that I succeeded in bringing the local authorities to a sense of reason, and they agreed to accept my proposals. The members of that Conference told me that they felt that prices might rise, but I assured them that the steps I had taken were more likely to lead to a reduction, and ultimately we reached the compromise to which I have referred. We agreed to allow the scheme a fair run for two years and see what would happen. We agreed to leave the door open, and if local authorities felt that they could not carry on with the subsidy granted then the Minister could come to Parliament and ask for an increase in the subsidy. Of course, hon. Members know that no increase could be made in the subsidy without the approval of Parliament, and that could not be done by any party without the approval of Parliament. We said that we would leave the door open, and allow the local authorities to come back again at the end of two years' experience. I told the Conference that if my estimate of the future was not correct, and my anticipation of a fall in prices did not, materialise after two years' experience, then an additional subsidy could be applied for if required. No one contemplated then that when you left the door open, the right hon. Gentleman opposite and his party would take advantage of the open door to go in and rob the fund that was provided for the housing of the people.

The Minister of Health now says: "I am acting under the powers conferred upon me by the Act of 1924; I am taking into account all these things and revising the housing subsidy." It was never intended that that should be the case. It was generally agreed that a £13 10s. subsidy was insufficient to provide houses at rents prevailing in the locality for exist- ing houses occupied by this good deal [...] people, and we agreed that [...] cost of building came down, the first people to be relieved should be the tenants. We said to the local authorities: "We will not reduce the subsidy, but in order to induce you to co-operate with us in bringing prices down—it was very essential to give an inducement to the local authorities to help to bring down the cost of house building—if you help us to bring down the cost of house building and our joint efforts are successful, then the first to receive the benefit will be the tenants, and we will reduce the rent." We said further to the local authorities: "After the tenants have been relieved, if prices come down still more, we will then reduce the subsidy to be contributed by the local authority." Our policy was to relieve first of all the tenant, then the rates, and afterwards the taxpayer. That was to be the method by which the relief from a reduction of building costs was to be distributed.

In spite of the fact that there has been no relief in relation to wages, and assuming the reduction in costs to be a relief, the Government have reversed that process, and they say that the first people to be relieved must not be the tenants, but the Super-tax payers. Consequently, it is proposed to give the State the first relief, so that the Super-tax payer in possibly the last year of office of the present Government may be relieved at the expense of the poor population of this country, who are to be camouflaged by pages of figures which neither they nor anyone else can properly comprehend. The cost of building is down and wages are down proportionately. As things are to-day, the ability of a worker to get a house even at the present cost is less than the ability of the same man to get a house under the higher costs in 1923 and 1924. The Minister of Health spoke about the madness of our policy, but can you think of anything more mad than the policy now being pursued? As my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne pointed out, you have increased unemployment, and you are going to further reduce the number of houses built as well as the number of people who will be engaged in the building industry. Consequently, you are going to have a much greater demand on your Unemployment Insurance Fund.

We have heard a [...] in our discussions upon unemployment about paying out money in doles, and hon. Members have asked, "Why not put the unemployed people doing useful work?" The useful work provided for them by the Government seems to be digging holes, making unnecessary bridges, and widening roads which might very well have been left alone for another 50 years. What more useful work could you have than the erection of houses? If you want to solve the problem of unemployment, what is the use of talking about futile labour schemes? Why not put the people on to the most useful work in which men at the present moment can be engaged? Instead of doing that, the Government proceed to put men on the dole and drive them away from useful work. I feel sure that if the Minister of Health made a careful calculation of the financial consequences of this Measure, he would find that the increased amount to be paid in unemployment insurance, for unnecessary overcrowding, and matters of that kind would be considerably greater than the amount that will be saved by the cutting down of the housing subsidy. We all know that bad health accrues from overcrowding. We hear a great deal about the foreigner being to blame in these matters. We are told by hon. Members opposite that if we could have more overseas credit and make the Belgians, the French and the Russians richer, then we should become richer ourselves. It is always the foreigner across the sea who is blamed for our poverty, and it is always the fellow across the sea who gets assistance first. We are now dealing with something with which the foreigner has nothing to do. He is not breaking up the building industry. It is not the foreigner who is breaking up this branch of our trade. We are dealing now with what is exclusively a home trade, and here we can operate without any regard for the foreigner at all. If we can be so kindly disposed towards the foreigner, whether he is a Frenchman or a Russian, why cannot we have a little of that kindly disposition for that section of our own people at home who need it most?

It was the duty of everybody to improve upon the scheme of 1924 and extend it to every branch of the industry. Now the people who prate about the importance of national unity are taking ever possible opportunity to strike a blow at the poorer section of the community, and they are doing this to put an extra penny into the pockets of their own supporters. This is something which is not only indefensible but it is scarcely respectable in politics, and it certainly emanates from a mentality that deserves no respect from the people on this side of the House or the people whom we represent. I hope that we shall take every opportunity to expose in the country and make clear to the elector how the health, the lives and the happiness of the poor are being exploited in order that the pennies of the Income Tax payers may be saved.

6.0 p.m.

Mr. HARRIS

When the Minister of Health made his statement last Tuesday foreshadowing a reduction in the housing subsidy, it came to me as no surprise. I had the honour of accompanying a deputation to the Ministry of Health in another capacity. It was a deputation representing local authorities from all parts of the country, including municipal corporations, urban district councils, rural district councils, and the London County Council, and those representatives came at the invitation of the Minister of Health, who is required under the Act to consult local authorities on these questions. These representatives were people not accustomed to sitting at Whitehall reading documents, but they were practical people who for some years have been trying to put into operation the various Housing Acts. They were public-spirited persons, not the friends of contractors. It was a most representative gathering, including the Chairman of the Municipal Corporations Association, the chairmen of other authorities, and the Chairman of the Housing Committee of the London County Council; and they pressed the Minister to maintain the present rate of subsidy. Apparently they did not think, from their knowledge as practical people, that the result would be to give a present to contractors, and they ought to know what they are talking about. If the theory of the Minister of Health is right, however, all that they were asking was to be allowed to give a benefit to contractors and to stop the reduction in the price of houses. According to the theory of the Minister, the [...] eduction of the subsidy will be [...]mediate drop, as happened, accor[...] his statement, two years ago, in the cost of housing, but at any rate the Chairman of the Housing Committee of the London County Council, who was the first speaker, and who represents a borough very near to that which the Parliamentary Secretary represents, pressed for an increased subsidy for London in the central area. [Interruption.] The Manchester Corporation, as I understand, was rather inclined to support that view.

Ministers talk a great deal about averages, but averages are often very misleading, and to take a great number of authorities all over the country, urban and rural, strike an average, and say that there is a reduction and therefore the case is proved, is certainly not very conclusive. It is far more satisfactory to take a typical area and get at the facts, and so test the argument of the right hon. Gentleman, particularly if the authority selected is beyond suspicion, non-revolutionary, and of the same political complexion as the right hon. Gentleman. The majority of the London County Council at present is Conserva and the Chairman of the Housing Committee is a Conservative, and has been for some years.

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of HEALTH (Sir Kingsley Wood)

For 20 or 30 years.

Mr. HARRIS

The right hon. Gentleman confirms what I say. For the last 22 years the Chairman of the Housing Committee has been a Conservative. He pointed out that, although, according to the Minister's average all over the country, there has been a reduction of about £80 yet in London the average reduction is only a little over £26. We can test the matter in London, because we have three estates, for which I have the figures here, and of which the circumstances are very different. The building has been done by different contractors and under different conditions. There is an estate in South London which has been called after an ex-Minister of Health, the late Mr. Hayes Fisher, who afterwards became Lord Downham. The average cost on the Downham Estate has only dropped by Then we have in North London the Watling Estate, near Hendon, where the building conditions are very different, and there the drop has been £25 or a little more. These figures are very different from the average figure given by the right hon. Gentleman.

In East London, on the Becontree Estate, the drop has been larger, namely, £39, but there we have had mass production, and, during the period in question, the output has been larger than at any other period. The production was standardised, and houses were turned out at the rate of 90 a week, which, naturally, has brought down the cost of production. The County Council in that case were working practically by direct labour. They were working through contractors, Messrs. Wills and Company, on a cost-plus-percentage basis, and the contractors were merely acting as our agents. That justifies me in saying that to be guided by a supposed average reduction throughout the country through a change of policy involving a reduction of the subsidy is very dangerous in face of the facts that we have in London, where we have the advantage of a great number of contractors and a great deal of building labour, and of being able to import supplies of materials from abroad, because we have, I think quite rightly, gone in for a policy of buying in a free market.

Leaving for a moment the question of the actual drop in prices, let me go into the question of the adequacy of the present subsidy. Before the subsidy is reduced, it is necessary to prove that the present subsidy is adequate. I took the trouble to get the figures and facts from the experts of the London County Council. The Parliamentary Secretary was once a member of the London County Council for some years, and I think he will agree that they have the advantage of expert officials who are some of the ablest and most competent men in the country. The man in charge of the contract department has just been knighted by His Majesty in recognition of his great services in trying to get mass production and cheap houses.

At present, the loss per annum on the houses that are being built in 1928 works out at something like £14 10s. per house. The present subsidy—not the reduced subsidy—is £7 10s. According to the provisions of the Act, local authorities were to contribute in the proportion of 2 to 1, and therefore, the amount that they were supposed to give was £3 15s. £7 10s. plus £3 15s. makes £11 5s., so that actually at present the rates have to bear, on the present output, an average loss all over London of £3 5s. Therefore, the present rate of subsidy, so far from being too large, is insufficient, because, over and above the 2 to 1 proportion, an additional contribution has to be found from the rates of no less than £3 5s. This is not because the rents are too low. On the contrary, I have a report here which I think is conclusive. It is dated as recently as the 13th November, 1928. I have had the advantage of speaking to one of the principal financial officials of the County Council this afternoon, and he admitted to me that, all the evidence tends to prove that, so far from its being possible to increase the rents in order to cover the reduced subsidy, we are coming now to a point when we shall very soon have to bring rents down, because they are such that the applications of many deserving families have to be refused. This report, dated the 13th November last, which appeared on the Minutes of the County Council says: As regards houses on cottage estates, experience shows that, generally speaking, it has not been practicable for the council to enact houses complying with the requirements of the Act of 1924 as to the class of accommodation and the amenities to be provided, which do not involve annual losses greater than those contemplated by the Act and subsequent Order of 1926, respectively. The report goes on: In accordance with Section 3 (1, e) of the Act of 1924, the rents of the council's houses have been fixed on the basis of pre-War rents for similar accommodation in the neighbourhood concerned "— that, as I understand, means the requirements of the Ministry of Health on the basis of neighbouring houses— the 40 per cent. increase allowed by the Rent Restriction Acts being added, and due variation being made having regard to size, amenities and position. In other words, the London County Council, protecting the ratepayers, make generous provision not to charge too low rents, and they have covered increased amenities and the 40 per cent. increase provided by the Rent Restriction Acts in calculating their rents. The report says further: We always seek to keep the rents of the council's dwellings as low as the circum- stances warrant, and we cannot contemplate any increase in the present rents, but are rather looking forward to the time when it may be possible to effect reductions. And the answer to that report is the Minister's proposal to reduce the subsidy.

Sir K. WOOD

I cannot quite follow what the complaint of the hon. Gentleman is. In London, as I understand it, there has been a reduction in the cost of housing of about £25, which is just about the amount of the subsidy, and there has been no slackening off in the building programme for London. What is the complaint? What is the matter?

Mr. HARRIS

I am sorry if the right hon. Gentleman's intelligence is not equal to my reasoning. If he likes, I will repeat my argument, and, if he applies himself to it, he will understand it. This Report, issued on the 23rd November, 1928, is based on the present cost of production of houses, and it points out that, over and above the Government subsidy and the subsidy expected out of the rates, an additional amount has to be provided by the rates, and yet the rents are too low to cover the cost of the houses. An additional loss has to be borne by the rates, and the Report points out that, so far from its being possible to increase rents, the present rate of rent is too high, and it is anticipated that the reduced subsidy will mean one of three things. It will either mean a further increase of rents, or an increased charge on the rates, or, alternatively, a reduction in the building programme.

I regret to say that already the London County Council has reversed engines. Already it is slowing down. Already the programme at Becontree has been cut down. Whatever may be the influences that have brought that about—whether it is due to the influence of the Minister's policy, or whether there are influences at work inside the council—I do not know, but there has been a slowing down. The council has adopted a policy of slowing down on the outskirts. On the outskirts of London, the cost of travelling is high, and it is very difficult, owing to the low wages paid, for people to pay railway fares in order to go backwards and forwards to and from places five or six miles out of London. That means an additional charge on the rates, and for that reason the programme is being slowed down, and the council, as was made clear at the deputation, has come forward with another policy—

Sir K. WOOD

That has nothing to do with the subsidy.

Mr. HARRIS

Oh, yes, it has everything to do with the subsidy. I think the right hon. Gentleman must be asleep. He must be confused by the other Act, and by the five-year periods. Apparently he has been trying to master the Act passed by his right hon. Friend, and has not his usual clearness of mind. This very Report which I have quoted says that the council has another scheme, and suggests that it is advisable to build houses in the centre of London; but it is pointed out in this Report that that means buying very expensive sites, costing from £5,000 to £10,000 an acre. They say, however, that the present rate of subsidy—that is to say the old rate which is now in existence—is quite inadequate, and they went to the Minister last Thursday to ask for an increased subsidy. The right hon. Gentleman said that he was giving the matter his sympathy and consideration. The sympathy that we are getting is merely a reduction in the subsidy. I do not know what the right hon. Gentleman was thinking of when he referred to that as being quite a different story; it is entirely the same story. It is a matter of pounds, shillings and pence, and we shall not get houses in the centre of London unless we get, not merely sympathy, but some pounds, shillings and pence to help us to do so.

It is suggested, not by many but by some, that something like equilibrium has been reached, and that the supply of houses is meeting the demand. I have here, however, another report, in which I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will be interested. It is of the London County Council's familiar orange colour, and is dated September, 1928. It deals with the present position, and is signed by the council's valuer, Mr. Hunt, one of the ablest surveyors and housing experts in the country. This is what he says: There continues to be a great demand for accommodation on the council's estates. During the year a very large number of persons made inquiries, both written and oral, as to the possibility of obtaining accommodation and, being informed of the position, did not make formal applications which, in the circumstances, would have been futile. It is undoubtedly the case also that many persons refrained from making inquiries owing to its being well known that the council cannot, in the present circumstances, meet the requirements of the numerous applicants already registered. It is indicative of the situation that the number of persons who called at the central office "— most of these are working men, occupied during the day, who have not very much time to go to the central office in Trafalgar Square— during the year to apply for houses was nearly 60,000, while over 77,000 inquiries were made by letter as to the possibility of obtaining living accommodation on the council's estates. The right hon. Gentleman's answer is merely to reduce the subsidy. But perhaps the most serious part of it all is that, while the Minister now is changing his attitude and initiating this new policy, everything indicates that, instead of things getting better, there is something like stagnation. In reply to a question asked in the London County Council on 30th October, a statement was made that, according to the census return, 683,000 persons, about 15 per cent. of the population, were overcrowded, or living more than two persons to a room. This is the statement: Later figures available for one or two boroughs indicate that, while overcrowding as a whole has not increased since the last census, there has been some increase in the worst forms of overcrowding. That is a very serious position. The Minister is taking a very serious step on the insufficient information that (is available in reducing the subsidy. There are one or two very healthy indications for the future. There is now no shortage of building material. There is an ample supply of all the necessary requirements for the construction of houses and there is plenty of skilled labour available. I have on many occasions been prepared to support schemes for increasing the amount of skilled labour, but there are plenty of bricklayers, plasterers, carpenters and other forms of labour. It is not even necessary to use alternatives—to build steel houses or to use substitute materials. We can get all the bricks and labour that we require and all we ask for is a forward policy by the Minister and a lead to the country.

The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for SCOTLAND (Major Elliot)

We have listened with interest to the hon. Member who has just sat down, speak-on a subject on which he is an acknowledged master, but speaking in the way we have come rather to associate with him, with a semi-gloomy outlook, which we have to discount to a certain extent, coming from him. I ask the House to turn from the affairs, however important, of the Metropolis to a consideration of the matter in the Northern Kingdom. We are dealing with Scottish affairs, and dealing with them according to what I conceive to be the very right and proper practice, here on the Floor of the House. It is said that this amounts to an insult to Scotland, but one cannot appreciate that point of view. We are dealing with a suggested reduction in the subsidy which is not so great as in the case of England. We are also dealing with a housing position which differs very considerably from that in England and will require a moment or two of explanation. The housing situation in Scotland has been most acute, and I would not deny that it is still acute. It has received the anxious attention of Members in every part of the House, and it has been universally recognised as one of the blots upon our Twentieth Century civilisation. No one has done more to bring it to our notice than my predecessor in the Scottish Under-Secretaryship of Health.

To-night we have had prophecies from the Minister of Health, and the divine afflatus descended upon the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. A. Greenwood), who prophesied in his turn. All one can say is that in the past the prophecies of the Minister of Health have been more accurate and more nearly fulfilled than those of the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne. But it is always an uncertain business to deal with prophecies. We in Scotland are in the very much simpler and more pleasant position of being able to deal with ascertained facts. It is not a question whether a fall will or will not take place, for a considerable reduction has already taken place, as was brought out by the hon. Member himself. In fact, I had some hesitation whether it was necessary for me to make a speech at all, on hearing the eloquent way in which he brought out the facts, which I shall try further to make clear. He pointed out that there had been a very considerable drop in the cost of housing in Scotland.

I would simply ask the House to consider a few figures which give a concrete example of how great that drop has been. In October, 1926, when the subsidy was previously under consideration, the price of a three-apartment cottage was £449. To-day the price of that same house is £414, a drop of £35 in the average cost. In 1926 the price of a four-apartment cottage was £469. To-day it is £425, a drop of £44 in the average cost. For the flatted type of house, which is the standard type of house in Scotland, a three-apartment flat, which in October, 1926, was being constructed at £392, in October, 1928, was being constructed at £339, a drop of £53. We are asked, then, to make our decision to-day not on prophecies but on ascertained facts. The cut my right hon. Friend is recommending to the House for future building programmes is a cut which in round figures represents £25.

The ex-Minister of Health strolled into -the House and delivered an eloquent tirade upon many subjects, but chiefly, as far as I could gather, on the callousness and brutality of the Government in not carrying out any part of his policy when he was Minister of Health. I understood that the main part of his policy was to stimulate the production of houses, and the production of houses has certainly been stimulated even beyond his most enthusiastic prophecies. But we in Scotland are not making a cut equivalent to the amount of the drop that has actually taken place. A substantial amount of the reduction in costs is being left with the local authorities, to apply either to the lowering of rents or to a reduction in the rate of their contribution, whichever they propose. An average cut of £25 means, in the case of a three-apartment cottage, that £10 is being left with the local authority, and, in the case of a four-apartment cottage, £19. That is to say, they will be £19 better off than they were in October, 1926, under the right hon. Gentleman's unreduced subsidy, and, in the case of the apartment flat, £28. Even after this cut has been made, local authorities will be £28 better off under my right hon. Friend's proposals than they were in October, 1926, under the unreduced subsidy of the ex-Minister of Health. These are proposals which we can not only bring before the House but to which we confidently ask the House to give its assent. They are reasonable and businesslike proposals. A fall has taken place. The cut we propose does not by any means absorb the whole of the fall that has taken place, and a substantial portion of that fall is left with the local authorities to utilise in whatever way they wish.

The hon. Member for Nelson and Colne seemed to discover in the fall in the prices of building in Glasgow some dilemma upon which he hoped to impale the Minister of Health and the Under-Secretary. He asked, "What becomes of the contention that the cut in the subsidy has brought about the fall in houses, when the fall in building costs has taken place in Glasgow as well as in Birmingham, Newcastle and other English cities?" I entirely fail to understand his argument. He buttressed it by the most astounding suggestion I have ever heard from a responsible Minister. He said the fall in the English price could have no relation to the fall in the Scottish price, because the building trade is immobile. The building market is one of the most immobile. Is it? Is there any foundation for that statement? We are told by the hon. Member who has just spoken that they in London have a free market. They buy their building material abroad. It is brought into this country without let or hindrance. Is a cargo of Belgian tiles not as free to be delivered at Glasgow as in London? If it is getting a lower price in London, will it not similarly get a lower price in Glasgow? Of course, it will. A fall in the price of building material is reflected in the prices in Glasgow, with a result as immediate as that which stands reflected in the building costs here in London. As for the immobility of labour, labour moves freely from place to place across the Border. It is the first time I have ever heard the suggestion that with a boom and high wages in England an army of hungry Scotsmen would not come here to take advantage of it. This immobility of labour seems to me to be an entire chimera. The fact remains that, whether you say the fall in the subsidy brought down prices in Scotland or not, we know for certain that a rise in the English subsidy would produce a rise in the prices in Scotland, and we should have an immediate difficulty in getting our tenders let at the price at which they had been before.

The progress of housing in Scotland has been considerable. The rise in the number of houses constructed has led to a substantial annual contribution being made to meet the deficit that has been accumulated, and that is brought out in all the publications that deal with the matter, with the authority of official publications. The progress that has been made is not merely in dealing with the 1923 and 1924 Acts new housing construction, but there has been a very substantial progress in dealing with slums—much greater advance proportionately than has been made in England. I do not say it is satisfactory or begins to be satisfactory. The slums of Scotland are still a disgrace to our nation. They are still one of the great cankers gnawing at the health of Sootland. But it is clear that no accusation can possibly lie against the Government in that respect, for there is no suggestion of touching, by a penny piece, the proposals originally made by the Minister of Health for the slum clearance subsidy—the fifty-fifty grant. That will remain after the passage of this Order, just as it was before, as an insurance to ensure that the poorest of the poor will not be in any way affected by any proposals that are made under the present Order. Further, I take this as a strange attitude from hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite who have already indicated their intention of attacking us in unmeasured terms because of certain proposals to deal with the percentage grants in relation to health matters on another Bill, and to substitute for them block grants. Here, when we are making a modification of the block grant, and leaving the percentage grant untouched, we have these unmeasured denunciations hurled at us as people who desire to injure the health of the people and to keep dawn the housing of the poorest.

The difference between the position after the passing of this Order and the position in October, 1926, is that the local authorities, after the passing of this Order, will be better off than they were in October, 1926. In regard to the slum clearance proposals, no change whatever of any kind or description is envisaged. With regard to the slum clearance proposals—those proposals under which already tenders have been approved for nearly £4,000,000, £3,900,000 worth of slum clearance—they remain on the Statute Book, and the Government will continue-to find the money in the future as they have in the past—fifty-fifty—for any proposals local authorities put forward to deal with the problem of the slums.

I think that these are all the facts which. I should like to bring to the notice, of the House in recommending hon. Members to accede to the Order which the Minister of Health and the Scottish Department have proposed, save one point. The question of unemployment in the building trade has been brought up. I would only say this: We are supposed to have the unemployment of over 8,000 people in the building trade in Scotland. That arises almost very largely from the conception that there is such a thing as a building trade. There is not. There are "the building trades," which are in many ways highly compartmented, as highly compartmented as other trades which are grouped under entirely separate headings. Of the total, we have over 80 per cent. belonging to the three categories, house-painters, labourers and other occupations, and the unemployment in the key trades remains at a very low state.

Mr. STEWART

Is not house-painting, a trade?

Major ELLIOT

Yes, the house-painters constitute a trade, but I am sure that the hon. Member would agree that a house cannot be painted until it is built; that the house builder is absolutely dependent on the activities of other trades, and that, if the plasterer does not complete a new house, it is impossible for the painters to be brought in.

Mr. STEWART

But if the bricklayer does not lay the bricks there will not be an opportunity for the plasterers to get to work.

Major ELLIOT

I quite agree. The question of the bottle neck still remains, and, with 8,800 people normally unemployed in the building trades of Scotland, unemployment among the real key trade of the plasterers is to-day 88, not 8,800. There are 88 plasterers registered as unemployed throughout the whole of Scotland from the Cheviots to the Pentland Firth. [Interruption.] The hon. Member thinks that everything is very serious.

Mr. STEWART

May we take it that there is a shortage among the key people in the building industry?

Major ELLIOT

I would ask the hon. Member what becomes of his whole argument as to the reduction of the subsidy causing unemployment. Since we agree that there is no reduction of subsidy in Scotland so far, his whole argument that the reduction of the subsidy has led to unemployment falls to the ground. Whatever the future action of the Government may be, the present action to which we are asking the House to assent is fully justified on the figures which have been brought up. Furthermore, there can be no doubt that it will in the future mean a rapid spurt in the building trade in Scotland; that whatever happens we shall get an immediate increase of employment in the building trade in order to complete the houses within the subsidy period. That will be considerably to our advantage in Scotland, for oddly enough, in the last year, the housing fell as compared with the year before. In spite of the full subsidy, in spite of the longer run of organisation, and in spite of the schemes which ought by this time to have been yielding a growing increase of houses each year, the output of houses for the current year looks like being less than the output of houses for the year before. The output for the year 1928 looks like being actually less than the output for the year 1927. That cannot be put down to any failure in subsidy or to any failure of the desire of the Government. [Interruption.] The hon. Member brings forward explanations of his own. I will say, at any rate, that no Member on the other side of the House can suggest that the action of the Government has had anything to do with it save in regard to one thing.

Part of that decrease is represented by the fact that we did not continue the programme of steel houses this year as we did the year before. It was that auxiliary programme of additional houses that brought our numbers in Scotland for the first time up to 20,000 houses. It was that auxiliary programme carried through not by a penny piece on the part of the ratepayers, but by 100 per cent. support from the Exchequer that brought our programme over 20,000. It was a programme which enabled unemployed men to do useful work, and brought our housing programme in Scotland forward with a great rush. Hon. Gentlemen opposite can consider for themselves how much assistance the Government had from them in bringing forward that scheme. I do not wish to say more. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Mr. Benn) is not perhaps aware of the previous history of the party which he has recently joined. In that matter of the auxiliary housing programme there was a unanimous vote against it by the party of which the hon. Gentleman is now a member.

Mr. WEDGWOOD BENN

The hon. and gallant Gentleman has forgotten that I was in this House when he was in his perambulator.

Major ELLIOT

We are not discussing what either the hon. Member or myself did when I was in my perambulator, but during the past two years when housing in Scotland was being pushed forward. I say that in the near future we look for an increase and not for a decrease in housing as a result of this Order. Whatever happens, we have as a safeguard the slum clearance schemes giving us a steady 50–50 for Scotland, and, with these two things in view, we confidently ask the House to support the Ministry and the Measure which we are introducing.

Mr. STEWART

I was interested in what I think were some of the contradictions made by the Tinder-Secretary of State for Scotland. It seemed to me that he claimed some credit for the Government for the increase in housing in Scotland because of their housing policy, and because of their 50–50 policy with regard to slums. May I point out to the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland that the argument which the Minister of Health used this afternoon for a reduction in the cost of houses was that it was entirely due to the fall in the subsidy. As the subsidy fell, so did the price of the houses fall. The hon. and gallant Gentleman has, on the contrary, made it appear that the subsidy has no reflection whatever in the cost of houses in Scotland. I submit, if I understood him aright, that either the statement of the Minister of Health is somewhat incorrect or the argument that the hon. and gallant Gentleman has used with regard to houses is quite incorrect.

When I had the honour to be the Parliamentary Secretary to the Scottish Board of Health there was an attempt—as I put it and as my responsible advisers looked upon it—on the part of the building trades, to increase the cost of houses in a way that was antagonistic to the welfare of the State. Though I claim that there is no man in this House or in this country more interested in the housing question and in the provision of houses for the people than I am, I felt it my duty to take such action as prevented houses from being built. The consequence thereafter was that when the hon. and gallant Gentleman came into office prices had begun to fall. The subsidy was still the same. It was the 1923 subsidy with which I was connected in 1924. The 1924 Act had not been passed then, and in Scotland we had that particular position. I submit that private enterprise in connection with the building trades did not do its duty by the State. You are proposing to stop house building by the state, for, in my opinion, that is undoubtedly the ultimate aim of the Government, but long before the programme of houses which the Government have set themselves to carry out is anything like an accomplished fact, the condition of housing will be much the same.

I heard the hon. Gentleman the Member for Mossley (Mr. Hopkinson), while speaking in the House this afternoon, state that the cause of the increased cost of building and the stoppage of house building in 1910 was due to -le Land Tax which was then imposed by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George). As a matter of fact, in Scotland at any rate—I do not claim to speak for England—the building of houses stopped in 1905, and that condition of affairs continued until after the War had started. From 1905 onwards, there were practically no houses built. Between that year and 1914 there were not sufficient houses built, as far as Glasgow is concerned, to meet one year's requirements. The reason is, and I admit it at once, that we were then over-built. If that statement of mine be correct, I submit that the oft-repeated statement made with regard to the effect of the tax on land and its prevention of house building, has proved to be, I will not say untrue—I do not like to use that word—but at least exaggerated and not is accordance with fact.

In Scotland we have continued to pay the £9. We are paying it to-day. The price of houses has fallen in Scotland; that is admitted. The Government say that it is due to the fall in the price of houses in England. If that argument is correct why not exclude the North of England from this Bill and, indeed, cut other parts of the country out of the Bill. The Government would then leave themselves with a very small subsidy in a localised centre, which would have the effect of reducing the cost of house building all round. The Government would save money. No, I do not believe that the fall in prices in England has had any effect in reducing the cost of houses in Scotland. Other causes have contributed to this result. In 1924 one of the reasons given why the building of houses was not proceeding very rapidly was the shortage of labour. The representatives of the building trade met the Government and gave a pledge, which they fulfilled, that they would take apprenti[...] excess of the number stipulated the agreement between themselves and the employers. As a result of their assistance the Minister of Health to-day is able to say that there are over 100,000 unemployed people in the building trades. In Scotland alone we have over 8,000 unemployed, the larger proportion representing, it is true, as stated by the Under-Secretary, those belonging to the labouring section of the building trades. But also in the skilled sides, plasterers, plumbers and joiners, there is a greater number unemployed now than there has been at any time since 1919, and this is due to the fact that the building trades took in this larger number of apprentices, who have been employed and are responsible for the building of 20,000 houses, apart altogether from steel houses, last year.

Major ELLIOT

Just under 20,000.

Mr. STEWART

Well, just under 20,000. In any case it was the action of the building trades which enabled us to reach that level. Ever since 1923 all parties have been striving to give effect to the building of houses and it was not until last year that we were able to reach a total of 20,000, and for one year only. The housing needs of Scotland do not show the least diminution. They are as great to-day as they were in 1917 when the Commission made its Report, and now the Government propose to cut down the subsidy. The Lord Provost of Glasgow at the opening of a scheme, at which the Under-Secretary was present, said that there were some 34,000 people whose names were down for houses who could not be supplied. In 1925 the Government reported, as did also the Board of Health in its Annual Report, that the figure of 118,000 was an under estimate. Instead of going forward we have actually gone back, and now the Government come along and tell us that if the. Subsidy is decreased it will tend to increase the building of houses. I contend that the action of the Government is going to defeat what I believe is the desire of everyone, and that is to see people living under better conditions. Let me once again revert to the case of Glasgow. The problem of overcrowding there tends to grow worse instead of better. Last year the medical officer of health stated that he had investigated 2,100 houses in four of the wards on the South side of the city. These wards were Govan, airfield, Kinning Park and Kingston and he found that 12 per cent. of them were one-roomed houses, two families living, and 13 per cent. were two-roomed houses, with two families living in them. I submit that the action of the Government is not going to abolish these conditions which everyone will condemn.

In addition, the action of the Government will be reflected on rents. Already in Glasgow, and I dare say throughout the country, the policy of the Government in decontrolling houses when vacated by the tenants has given the landlord power to raise the rents to any height they like, and where houses have been decontrolled the rents are steadily rising. If the Government by this policy prevent houses being built in Scotland I say that it will mean a still further increase in rents. As a matter of fact, the rental of houses. which before decontrol amounted to £100,000 have now risen to £108,500; an increase of 8½ per cent. And so the Government go on. The effect in my opinion must be worse and worse. It has been said that there have been no complaints with regard to the stoppage of the housing subsidy. A conference was recently held at Buxton when the following Resolution was passed: This National Housing Conference of local authorities in England and Wales and Scotland is emphatically of opinion that a satisfactory solution of the housing problem depends on building good standard houses to let at rents within the means of the lower paid wage earners, and that so long as the present economic conditions prevail this can only be accomplished by means of an adequate Exchequer grant. The Conference therefore, strongly urges that the subsidy granted under the Housing (Financial Provision) Act, 1924, should be stabilised at its present rate for a further period of at least five years and that additional Exchequer assistance should be provided to enable poor and large families to occupy healthy modern homes. 7.0 p.m.

That Conference was attended by representatives from all local authorities in Scotland as well as in England; from Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh, and all the great towns, and they unanimously passed that Resolution. I have no authority for the statement except my own experience, but I believe that the Government's policy will retard the building of houses in Glasgow. It will increase the cost to. the City itself. At present the housing rate in Glasgow is 3¾d. in the A 1d. in the £ yields £45,000. That means that Glasgow has £160,000 to bear in connection with housing schemes. Up to now the number of houses built in Glasgow is 14,000; and the immediate needs of the City are at least 80,000 houses per year. That I believe would make no impression on what the Under-Secretary calls Scotland's disgrace, the one-roomed house; and I would point out that, even after you have. built these 80,000 houses, there will still remain 42,000 one-roomed houses and 114,000 overcrowded houses, where people are living under terrible conditions, suffering from tuberculosis and propagating the disease. And it is at a time like this that the Government propose to make a reduction in the subsidy, a policy which in my opinion, and in the opinion of every hon. Member who knows Scotland and the conditions which prevail there, will prevent houses being built. It will also tend to increase rents on people whose wages are falling, whose conditions are becoming worse, at a time when the cost of living is rising instead of falling. I submit that the proposals which are being made by my Scottish colleagues on the opposite side of the House to deal with this matter, however well intentioned they may be, will work out badly for the people of our country who deserve our protection and who, even though it may cost a little more money, should get more support than they are getting at the present time from the Government.

Lieut.-Colonel FREMANTLE

We always like to hear the hon. Member for St. Rollox (Mr. Stewart) on housing, because he confines himself very largely to talking about the points we all have in common and, if he ends up with a rhodomontade against the conditions to which we all object, we on this side do not object. I should like, however, to turn to the arguments brought forward by the right hon. Member for Shettleston (Mr. Wheatley). When the right hon. Member was Minister of Health, he always spoke, and he still speaks, with two voices. He really represents the old myth of the god Janus who had two heads, one facing in one direction and one facing in the other. When I had the privilege of visiting the right hon. Member in the Ministry of Health, one could see clearly that it was quite a different face which one saw there to the one which faced the audience up at Shettleston from the soap-box. To-day we have had rather a mixture, but I am afraid he has shown us more of the soap-box side than of the side we saw as a Minister. I would remind him and the House of his own Act and the failures which occurred under it. I shall not go into them in detail as it would be rather an unpleasant bit of anatomy for the right hon. Gentleman. Of the many objects, some of them very worthy, which he put forward, some were defeated even at the time, while others proved their failure later on in practice. If he accuses the present Minister of Health of having failed to carry out the obligations under the 1924 Act, I would remind him of Section 5 of his own Act, which gave the Minister power at any time to rearrange the subsidy owing to financial exigencies.

I want to consider seriously the question of the finance of this Measure of housing in relation to other matters which are equally important to the public health and welfare of the people. It seems to be argued sometimes from the opposite side of the House that the State ought to pour forth any amount of money in order to rectify those conditions which are rightly referred to from all sides as disgraceful to civilisation. We ought, how[...] to have a considerable regard to [...] sense of proportion as regards the different objects for which money can be [...]ghtly used. We are considering an expenditure on housing amounting, roughly speaking, to £10,000,000 a year, which is settled upon the Exchequer for a period of from 20 to 60 years, quite apart from any continuance of housing and of existing subsidies in the next few years. That is a definite subsidy of £10,000,000 a year for that purpose only up to date. Here we may leave party politics, and refer simply to the point of view of the medical officer of health who simply wants to get an improvement in the health of the people. The medical officers of health ask for grants of £10,000, £20,000, or £50,000 a year at the most. The idea of spending £1,000,000 a. year on various measures for the improvement of public health is quite beyond their dreams, and yet we are spending £10,900,000 a year on housing.

Me. KIRKWOOD

Is not that a bagatelle compared with the £350,000,000 you spend on war debt?

Lieut. - Colonel FREMANTLE

I am not comparing £10,000,000 with £350,000,000, but with the paltry few thousands which any Government, even the Labour Government, have given for important matters of health. My argument is that we want to go back again and again to this sense of proportion. If you are arguing the necessity for better housing from the point of view of the improvement of the health of the people, then we say at once that we would rather spend every extra penny proposed to be given to housing on other purposes which could be named but which would not be pertinent on this vote. We have to look at the matter then in a different light to that from which the other side have been looking at it this afternoon. From that point of view, we should certainly not maintain the subsidy at the very high rate of these post-war years, unless we were perfectly certain that we were going to get value for money out of the continuance of it. Every Chancellor of the Exchequer knows that he has only a limited amount of money every year which he can devote to public health services, including housing. Therefore, if he is going to take £100,000 more for housing next year, it means that £100,000 less will be devoted to other purposes. Let me make it clear that I have never opposed, but have always favoured, increasing the housing subsidy where you are getting value for your money, but, where you are not certain of getting value for your money, then I would much rather, for the sake of the people, see that money used in a way that would bring 100 or 1,000 times more results for the health of the people than the housing subsidy does. Even if this costly way of helping the health of the people is necessary, we still have to consider whether we get value for money or not.

The right hon. Member for Shettleston dwelt upon the profiteering that went on as the result of the subsidies after the War. We ought all to be on common ground that, when you get a subsidy, it naturally goes very largely to anybody who has a finger in the pie. My hon. Friend the Member for Mossley (Mr. Hopkinson) said it all went in profiteering. The right hon. Member for Shettleston said it went largely in profiteering. I would say that 75 per cent. to 80 per cent. of the cost of building, including the cost of building materials, is labour, and that, if you accuse the building trade of profiteering, you must include the operatives as well as the employers. If the employers were getting a large sum of money out of this or any other national sources, I maintain that the trade union leaders would not be doing their duty unless they saw that the operatives got their fair share out of it. The Labour party opposite have either to say that the trade union leaders have not done their duty and have not got their fair share for the operatives out of this plunder, or else they must agree with what I say that all parties have had a finger in the pie and have all taken their share out.

I am glad to say that the records we have at present show that the output of labour in the building trades engaged in house-building has improved fairly steadily, and that the costs are not so high as they were when I proved to the satisfaction of the House that the cost of building output, as compared with building output costs before the War, had risen to 900 as compared with 100 before the War. At the present moment, the cost of building output labour is something like 300 as compared with 100 before the War. That is higher than most labour in this country. It is not for us to say it is too high, but it is quite obvious that building labour is one part of the general building trade which has scored very heavily out of the building subsidy.

Mr. MONTAGUE

Does the hon. Member say that building trade workers are to-day getting three times as much as they did before the War?

Lieut.-Commander FREMANTLE

No, I was dealing with the cost of output per rod of brick work laid.

M r. MONTAGUE

What does that mean?

Lieut.-Colonel FREMANTLE

I have argued it once in the House. I cannot argue it again. It will be in the OFFICIAL REPORT. As regards the causes, the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Greenwood) relied largely upon the actual statements of the "National Builder," the official organ of the National Federation of Building Trade Employers. He quoted almost word for word as regards the causes of the reduction of cost. He did not add the conclusion of that article, which was very largely what the Minister has stated. The article concluded: The building industry hope that they may soon be relieved from the causes of the violent fluctuations and under normal conditions may be free to restore order and to secure the utmost efficiency and economy in its service to the public. The cause of the violent fluctuations, as the hon. Gentleman the Member for Nelson and Colne has said, was, of course, the question of the subsidy. A subsidy quite clearly cannot be imposed without causing violent fluctuations. The sooner you get rid of that the better. The Minister of Health has replied to the query as to why he should not at once remove the whole of the subsidy. All of us who have had to do with the building trade, or with any trade, know that you cannot make violent changes without incurring violent results. We on this side of the House do not believe in violent results; what we are in favour of is a gradual change.

I should like to remind the House of how this was exemplified in the policy of the present Minister of Health when he came into office after the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Shettleston had vacated office. Many thought that, inasmuch as the 1924 Act, which was introduced, as the right hon. 'Gentleman the Member for Shettleston said, in opposition to the 1923 Act, to do what the 1923 Act, according to the right hon. Gentleman, did not do—to do something to solve the problem of housing—the present Minister of Health, on taking office again in 1924, might have repealed the 1924 Act. But what happened? The present Minister of Health came into office and said: "No; let us make these two Acts run side by side and see which has the most effect." The result has been very satisfactory to the authors of both Acts. We have seen a very wonderful growth of houses, so much so that the figures prophesied by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Shettleston have been exceeded. The actual number for four years, according to the pledge given in connection with the 1924 Act, has been exceeded by 111,125 houses, over and above the number actually laid down in the scheduled programme. That is very satisfactory. The number laid down for four years was 420,000; the number actually built during that same period was 578,893.

Then, again, it was expected in certain quarters that, in reducing the subsidy, the Minister of Health would take the opportunity to put the subsidy given under the 1924 Act and under his own Act on equal terms. It was said that he was going to reduce the subsidy on the 1924 houses to the level of the 1923 houses, and keep the subsidy on the 1923 houses at the same level as it is at present. Many were in favour of this, in order that private enterprise and the local authorities' houses for sale and letting might be put on an equal footing. But the Minister is not doing that. If he had done that, we can imagine what an outcry there would have been from the benches opposite. Instead of doing that, the Minister says: "I believe that the doing away with the subsidy will not increase the cost of the houses; indeed, I believe that the cost of the 1923 houses will go down when the subsidy is withdrawn. I will put it to the test, and, in the future, the 1923 houses will have no subsidy." That is a test which we shall all watch wits the greatest interest and sympathy. We shall see if the 1923 houses can hold their own.

I come back to what is to be the future of all this. I still believe that the causes put forward in the article quoted by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Nelson and Colne for the decline in costs were true, but it is not worth while now discussing the causes. We are making a bold experiment whereby, I hope, we shall save much needed money, and hon. Members must not forget that we can re-impose the subsidy if necessity should arise. I agree that the subsidy is an unnatural way of supplying houses, and the sooner we can get back to normal conditions the better, but we must not forget that, with the supply of houses, there goes also the question of rent restriction. I hope that next year, under the happy auspices of the next General Election, it will be possible to deal with the slum question as a whole, and to insist upon the bringing of Part I of the Rent Restrictions Act to an end and to allow free play to Part II. I should like the whole lot of the housing subsidies to be merged into a block grant to be given to the different boroughs and housing authorities to use specifically for housing in respect of slum. Clearances and provision of houses for the poorer classes, to be carried out as they felt inclined, with as much latitude as is possible under the improved local government and the block grant. It is to that future, to the proper use of this enormous sum of money that is voted by the Chancellor of the Exchequer for the solution of the slum problem and the improvement of housing that I look in the end, and I believe that this Measure, this experimental Measure, is certainly one in the right direction, and I strongly support it.

Mr. GEORGE THORNE

I do not rise to repeat the arguments which have already been emphasized by hon. Members, but only to emphasize one point. If I understood the Minister of Health aright, in the course of his speech he told the House that the course which he has taken was taken by him after consultation with the local authorities. That I believe to be the case. The consultation did take place, but the point I want to emphasize is that, although that consultation took place, the course now taken by the Minister is not in accordance with the advice of those authorities; it was not in accordance with their acquiescence. The decision to which he has come is, in fact, in direct opposition to the advice they gave him. I cannot help regarding this as a very important matter. Of course, I admit that the Minister, while taking that necessary course of consulting the local authorities, is not bound by the advice given him. But this is a matter for very serious consideration. I did not hear from the Minister any direct reason why, having consulted with the local authorities, he did not find it right to follow the advice which they gave him. I am speaking with the authority of the Association of Municipal Corporations, with which I am identified as one of its Vice-Presidents. They did not come lightly to the conclusion which made them give the advice they gave to the right hon. Gentleman in the consultation which took place. I propose to read to the House a short quotation from the report of the Housing Committee of the Association of Municipal Corporations: By our direction, questionnaires were issued to a number of selected cities and towns of varying sizes, and, after having examined the replies thereto and considered other relevant factors, it appears to us that, in view of all the circumstances, including the importance of reducing rents, no justification exists for any further reduction of the Government subsidy. I consider that, coming from a body of men so representative of the whole country, is a matter for very serious consideration. I respectfully submit that it might receive from the Government more consideration that it has hitherto received. The County Borough of Wolverhampton, of which I am one of the representatives, has just passed a resolution in confirmation of the course taken by the association. If I am not mistaken, numbers of Members this House have received from their various local authorities notification that those authorities have given the same advice. The position, therefore, is this. This is the Act of the Minister and the Minister alone. It is not done with the advice, ut it is done contrary to the advice, of all these recognised local authorities of the country, including London. The course proposed to he taken is a very serious one. The results which will naturally follow have been pointed out by Member after Member. I do not desire to repeat their arguments, but I would point out that the course taken is in direct opposition to the advice of the bodies best calculated to give advice to the country on this matter. I submit that is a very serious course, and the responsibility of that course must rest upon the Government and upon no one else.

Sir ROBERT NEWMAN

I propose to intervene only for a very few moments. I am sure that there is no Member of this House who is not anxious to approach this question with the desire to promote good housing among the people. I am, however, bound to ray, from my experience, that I look with some fear upon the sudden stoppage of the subsidy, at any rate under the 1924 Act. An ounce of fact is better than a ton of theory, and I will put some facts before hon. Members. I represent a city that is now just beginning an extensive housing programme. It is going to erect about 400 houses under the subsidy given by the 1924 Act. I am advised, on the best authority, that it is quite impossible for those houses to be finished within the next 12 months and therefore, without going into a great number of figures, it will be apparent that, in respect of those houses, this subsidy will be lost. The result of that will be that these houses will have, to cost 7d. a week more, and that will either have to be borne by the tenants or it will have to come out of the pockets of the ratepayers. Of course, 7d. a week may not be a very large sum, but these houses will be designed for the very poorest of the poor who have now very great diffi- culty in getting houses, and this really is a matter for very serious consideration. I respectfully suggest to the Minister that, even if the subsidy is eventually to be abolished, it might be allowed to run for two or three years longer, while these schemes which have been entered upon throughout the whole country are being carried out.

I have another instance which I might mention. I belong to a little association or company which is run snore or less on philanthropic lines to try and do away with some of the slum areas of that great city. We, again, find a very great difficulty in carrying out our policy. I suggest to the Minister that what is really handicapping housing at the present time is the fact that we have to pay such a very large sum of money in the way of interest on loans, and that we are allowed such a very short term of years for repayment of the loans. Let me give one instance only. I know of houses that are being built now. The interest on the loan is about 5¼ per cent. and all has to be paid, capital and all, in 20 years. That really means 8 per cent. In other words it is £30 a year or about 12s. a week, and the man that I have in my mind can no more afford to pay 12s. a week for rent than I can afford to pay £10,000 a year.

I shall not trespass further on the time of the House, but I was anxious to get up and ask whether it would not be possible to postpone the fall of the guillotine, as far as the subsidy under the 1924 Act is concerned. My experience may be limited to one place and may be peculiar to that place, but I do not think it is so. There is another point. Personally I aril not very much taken with the question of pounds, shillings and pence. I know that we have to pay consideration to it, but there are certain times of crisis in all nations when we have to put on one side mere questions of money. We had to do that during the Great War and had to spend money with both hands. I think we are passing through a great crisis on housing at the present moment. It is going on and on and on. I am almost ashamed to go into the city I represent and see the slums that exist there, knowing as I do the toll they take every year in the way of loss of life and health. I understand that the Minister of Health shares those views entirely, but he thinks that the cutting off of the subsidy will mean more houses. Personally I am rather doubtful. Which of us is right the future will show, but meanwhile I once more urge that the dropping of the subsidy should be postponed for two or three years.

Mr. VIANT

I rather regret that the hon. and gallant Member for St. Albans (Lieut.-Colonel Fremantle) should have gone out of his way to attack the building industry as such. I well remember that when housing schemes were embarked on throughout the country it was the common custom to attack the building trade operative as being responsible for the delay in the erection of houses. They were charged with playing the game of ca' canny. I noticed that, the hon. and gallant Gentleman also stated that the cost of these houses had gone up to a very large extent. The building trade operatives are in no sense of the word responsible for the increase in the price of production. Never in the history of this country has the building trade operative given such magnificent results as he has done since the 1924 Act was passed. We have already built an unequalled number of houses. The figures are actually 1,200,000. Side by side with that we have rebuilt considerable portions of London. One has only to visit the West End. to see evidence of that fact. In every town and city in the country there have been cinemas and theatres built. All this work has been going on side by side with the erection of houses. Care and time have been given to an investigation of figures as to the amount of output and the number of operatives engaged in the building industry in this country, and the result is this: That for every three operatives in the building industry to-day you have a result equivalent to that of five operatives in pre-War days.

Lieut.-Colonel FREMANTLE

Does the hon. Member mean an equivalent financially, in the amount of money and cost?

Mr. VIANT

I am talking of production and not of money valves.

Lieut. - Colonel FREMANTLE

The amount of production, not the cost of it?

Mr. VIANT

The amount of production. I am meeting the statement levelled against the operatives that they are responsible for the high cost of houses to- day. At no time have the building trade operatives—this has been the exception and not the general rule—received more than 2s. 4d. an hour, and that has been enjoyed by the plasterers, who were very scarce. To-day, in London, the craftsman is receiving 1s. 9½d. per hour. I am not concerned with the money value of output; I am concerned with the output per unit in the industry, and that is the only fair basis of comparison. Then it was suggested that there was a ring or understanding between the operatives on the one side and the employers on the other.

Lieut.-Colonel FREMANTLE

I did not make any such suggestion.

Mr. VIANT

I submit that that was the general impression conveyed. I want to prove that such a thing is impossible in existing circumstances. The hon. and gallant Member should know that wages and hours of labour in the industry are determined by a Wages Council, and that the wages are determined further by the cost of living. Therefore, it is grossly unfair to charge the operatives with not giving their best, and at the same time to make the insinuation that both operatives and employers have joined hands for the purpose of fleecing the general public. As a result of the 1924 Act we have had introduced into the industry something like organisation, which did not exist before. Our increased output to-day is due very largely to the fact that we have a more intelligent operative, and that in Addition there is far better organisation and every facility for getting mass production.

I listened with considerable interest to the Minister of Health when he brought this Motion before the House, and I tried to understand the reasons that were advanced for a further reduction of the subsidy. Behind it all there is the suggestion that the reduction of the subsidy on a former occasion was responsible for the reduction in the cost of housing. Nothing is further from the truth. There have been reductions in wages in the building trade; coal is cheaper, and coal enters into the manufacture of much building material, which in turn gives you material and labour at a price very much lower than that charged when the subsidy was last reduced. The Minister has no right to take honour upon himself for the reduc- tion in the price of houses to-day. There are a dozen and one factors responsible for the reduction of the price. The right hon. Gentleman did produce some figures relating to the building trade operatives who were unemployed. I suggest that the full effect of the reduction of the subsidy was not felt at the beginning of 1928. It would be fairer to take the month of June, 1928, and compare it with the month of June, 1927. Anyone who is acquainted with the building trade knows that the summer months are the months when you concentrate on completing your shells in order to get the men on inside work for the winter. Immediately it went forth that the subsidy was to be reduced every local authority urged the contractors to speed up the erection of houses.

What are the figures? On 20th June, 1927, there were 3,493 carpenters unemployed. By 25th June, 1928, the number had grown to 7,978, and by October of this year it had increased to 9,216. Take the bricklayers. There were only 908 unemployed on 20th June, 1927, but by June, 1928, the number had increased to 3,690, and to-day there are 5,892 unemployed. Then there are the masons. In June, 1927, there were 957 unemployed; in June, 1925, the number was 1,345; and to-day it is 1,974. So one can go right round the table, which shows conclusively that by a reduction of the subsidy the Government are intensifying unemployment among building-trade operatives. But assuming that the hypothesis of the right hon. Gentleman is correct, what genius of statesmanship is shown in reducing the subsidy and intensifying the unemployment problem, and then suggesting that the reduction in the cost of housing according to the figures that he advanced can justify him in his policy! I suggest that after the manner in which the labour in the building trade was augmented in accordance with the 1924 agreement, it is evidence of poor respect and consideration for the operatives to find that they are on the scrap heap or the unemployed market at the present time.

Assuming that the builders are trying to fleece the general public as the right hon. Gentleman suggests, what justification is there for trying to hit the builders through the stomachs of the building-trade operators? That is the policy of the right hon. Gentleman, and it appears to me a grossly unjust and unfair policy. If he is persuaded that the building-trade employers are getting undue profits out of the industry, why does he not ask the House candidly to pass a Bill to deal with undue profiteering? That would show a sounder mentality and greater statesmanship than is being shown in the present policy. The 1,200,000 houses erected up to date are, in the main, inhabited by comfortable and well-off people.

We have arrived at a stage where, instead of reducing the subsidy, we ought to be increasing it, so that the poorly paid can obtain houses at rents which they can afford. In my constituency, the Willesden District Council are at their wits' end to get houses for the very poor, at rents which the poor can pay. I repeatedly get letters asking me to use my influence with the local council to secure houses for people. Here are some of the cases. A man, wife and four children occupy two rooms, one of these being an old washhouse with a stone floor in which two children have to sleep—the premises, very dirty and in-sanitary, being overrun with beetles. In another instance, a man, wife and five children—three girls aged 13 years, 10 years and 8 years respectively, and two boys aged 6 years and 3 years respectively—have one bedroom, and have to share a kitchen with another family. In a third case a man, wife and two children—a boy aged 9 years and a girl aged 6½ years—have one room and no cooking facilities except a gas ring, in consequence of which they can only have fried or boiled food.

I have a list of such cases and other hon. Members could produce similar lists. With this reduced subsidy the local authorities can never hope to provide houses to meet circumstances such as I have indicated, and that is why I say that instead of reducing the subsidy, we ought to be increasing it. If the right hon. Gentleman is persuaded that undue profiteering is taking place I repeat that he should ask for a Bill to deal with it. But this proposal is not going to find a way out of the difficulty. It will intensify the difficulty. The right hon. Gentleman has promised that he will bring in legislation to deal with slum areas. I hope he will face up to the fact that, even before we tackle the so-called slum areas, we have to deal with the problem of the large numbers of people to-day whose wages are only £2 per week. In my district the rents asked for the houses that are being erected are 19s., 20s. and 23s. per week. People earning such wages as I have mentioned cannot pay those rents. I hope the House is prepared to consider this question not solely from the point of view of £ s. d. but with an understanding and appreciation of the fact that housing to-day is a social service just the same as our public health service. There is no surer or shorter way of improving the health of the community than by providing good housing accommodation. Money well spent on houses is true economy, which ought to commend itself to this House.

Sir BASIL PETO

If the Minister of Health had based his argument this afternoon upon the supposition that the reduction of £25 in the subsidy in respect of one of the Acts had actually reduced the cost of houses by £88, whereas there had been no reduction in Scotland at all, it would have been very difficult either to have followed his argument, or to have supported him. But the right hon. Gentleman made no such contention. What he did was to prove conclusively that his anticipation when he reduced the subsidy in 1926 had been justified. He showed that the reduction in the subsidy had produced no permanent diminution in the output of houses, but, incidentally, had for the moment, actually increased it and that it had not increased the cost of housing. He further argued that in consequence of that, and many other factors, there had been, at the same time, a general reduction in the cost of building both in this country and Scotland. That is a perfectly understandable and clear proposition and one to which there has been no answer from the Opposition. They have attempted to answer a proposition which was never put forward by the Minister and I am sure never will be put forward by him.

On the subject of the relation of this proposal to the question of employment I should like to say a few words. The hon. Member for West Willesden (Mr. Viant) is very interested in and knows a great deal about employment in the building trade, but I think he sought to over-prove his case. He pointed out, quite rightly, that the erection of small houses under these Acts is only a part of the activities of the building trade as a whole. He claimed great merit for the building trade operatives because they had been able to tackle the immense production under the Act of 1923 of houses for the working-classes while at the same time they had very largely rebuilt the West End of London and there had also been immense building schemes not connected with working-class housing in every part of the country. If that be the case—as it is—why should the hon. Member attempt to argue, on this comparatively small matter of the proposed reduction in the housing subsidy, the whole question of the increase, as he put it, of unemployment in the bricklaying, carpentry and other great basic trades which are linked together in the building industry? He is right in saying that the production of working-class houses is only a part of the building trade activities. Surely then, the demand for labour in these other building works, is also a factor in the question of employment or unemployment. I think that the Minister is on perfectly sound ground in showing that, broadly speaking, there has been no increase in unemployment but on the contrary a slight diminution since the 1926 proposal. The right hon. Gentleman carried the argument no further than to say that it could not be shown that that proposal which was carried into effect had produced a great amount of unemployment.

I wish to deal with one or two specific matters in connection with the 1924 Act. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Shettleston (Mr. Wheatley) is extremely proud of that Act and he told us that it is more than an Act of Parliament—that it is a great piece of industrial organisation, I want to examine what this great piece of industrial organisation has done for employment in some of the very trades to which the hon. Member for West Willesden referred, such as the carpenters' trade. I find in Section 3 of that Act that in respect of houses provided by local authorities—and there is a similar provision concerning houses built by societies or bodies of trustees or companies—there is the usual Fair Wages Clause. We all know what that means, namely, that those employed under these schemes by local authorities or by companies or societies, must be paid the full standard wage applicable to their trades. I find, however, in Section 10: In approving proposals for the construction of houses under this Act, the Minister shall not impose any condition which would prevent the materials required being purchased in the cheapest market at home or abroad, or which would require the employment of any particular trade. 8.0 p.m.

The hon. Member for South-West Bethnal Green (Mr. P. Harris) gloried in the fact that in the East End of London they had been able to build houses at a reduced rate; and he attributed that result, not to the reason given by the Minister, but to the fact that they were convenient to ports and could obtain the cheapest possible joinery and other things from abroad. It is rather remarkable that this part of the industrial policy of the party opposite is becoming more and more divorced from trade union policy in this country. Only the other day my attention was called to the fact that the Carpenters' and Joiners' Society—I think now called the Woodworkers' Society—had written a letter of protest to a town council against foreign joinery being used in the construction of council houses under this subsidy. Broadly speaking, the policy of the Government, as I understand it, is that in all these contracts which involve an expenditure of public money, preference should be given to the employment of people belonging to our own country. In this matter of the building subsidies it appears to have been handed down by the Labour Government of 1924, as a part of their industrial policy, that public money is to be paid in subsidy for the employment of foreign carpenters and not of our own trade unionists. Naturally the trade unionists do not quite understand that industrial policy now. It is not only a matter of doors and windows; there are also slates and tiles. There are various trades which are concerned where there is very considerable unemployment at the present time, and I suggest that although I most cordially agree with him in his proposal to-day in reducing the subsidy under the 1924 Act and doing away with the remainder of the subsidy under the 1923 Act, yet as long as there is any public money used for subsidies of any kind for the erection of houses for the working classes, it should be at least the policy of any party to see that the working classes have a chance of building their own houses. The actual laying of the bricks is, of course, done, but when you deal with a trade like that of the carpenters or the joiners, why on earth is it that all that an English carpenter has to do is to hang the product of a foreign carpenter's labour? I do not think it is common sense. Therefore, it is necessary to point out this one flaw in the great industrial system set up by the right hon. Member for Shettleston in 1924 from the point of view of the actual building operatives themselves, and I hope that the Minister will give very serious consideration, if ever he is amending that Act, to amending that particular part of it which is set out in Section 10.

There was a good deal in the speech of the right hon. Member for Shettleston which was very ungenerous, and I thought the most ungenerous thing of all was this, that he gloried in the fact as he called it, that in future, as the subsidy was done away with so far as the 1923 Act was concerned, there would be no houses built under that Act. That was a monstrous supposition, because the whole reason for doing away with the subsidy is that the Act was so well conceived that it can now do without State aid in the form of spoon-feeding any longer, and the output of houses under that Act will continue, I have not the slightest doubt; but the gibes at the Minister for doing away with the subsidy under his own Act while dealing so extraordinarily fairly with the Opposition Act of 1924 seem to me to be a little beyond the ordinary limits of ungenerous treatment by one party of another. I think the Minister has been extraordinarily generous. As was pointed out by one of my hon. Friends, when this Government came into power, obviously it was a question of whether we wanted all these different and competing Housing Acts, and the right hon. Gentleman decided to give both the Act of the Opposition and his own Act an equally fair chance, and he is now giving the Opposition Act of 1924 a still fairer chance. He is only slightly reducing the subsidy there, while he is doing away entirely with the subsidy under his own Act. I believe it will stand the strain and that private enterprise will fill up the gap which might be expected to be made by leaving it to stand upon its own feet.

Mr. SNOWDEN

I will not detain the House at any very great length, as I cannot lay claim to the expert knowledge or practical experience possessed by many hon. Members who have taken part in the Debate. There is perhaps an advantage, in coming to a Debate of this character, in having an open mind, and I certainly began to listen to the statement of the Minister of Health this afternoon prepared to give an unprejudiced consideration to the case that he might submit. The right hon. Gentleman set forth the reasons in support of the proposal that he is now making with all his accustomed dialectical skill, but I confess that when he sat down he left me certainly not prepared to support this proposal; and the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Greenwood), which followed, was, I think—and I believe that most hon. Members of the House, even many hon. Members opposite, who listened to it will agree—one of the most devastating refutations of arguments which has been heard in the House of Commons for a long time past.

I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for East Wolverhampton (Mr. G. Thorne) raised that matter of the views of the local authorities on the proposal of the Minister. I noted that the right hon. Gentleman said nothing at all about the views which the local authorities had, in the obligatory interviews, laid before him. I think it would be agreed that that obligation was inserted in two Acts of Parliament not merely for the purpose of formal interviews between the Minister of Health and the representatives of the local authorities, but that due weight should be given by the Minister to the representations which the local authorities might submit. After all, they are entitled to such consideration, for they are men who have had practical experience in the working of these Acts. I do not want to say one word in disparagement of the officials of the Ministry of Health, but they look upon these questions from a distance, and therefore the views. of the local authorities ought to carry more weight than those of the officials of the Ministry of Health. Now what are the views of the local authorities upon this proposal? My hon. Friend the Member for East Wolverhampton has stated them in part, but he did not mention that the local authorities have quite recently submitted to the Ministry of Health a strong protest against the proposals in this draft Order, and have urged the importance of postponing any reduction of the subsidy until the next revision period two years hence. That, I think, is a matter which Members of this House ought to bear in mind when they come to vote upon the Motion which is now before the House.

The right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Health began by saying that this proposal to abolish the subsidy under the 1923 Act and to reduce it under the 1924 Act was not actuated by motives of financial economy, but he based the whole of his case upon the pretension that the subsidy did not encourage the building of houses and that the previous reductions in the amount of the subsidies had —I believe he did not go so far as the hon. Member for Barnstaple (Sir B. Peto) who said that Members on this side, referring to that part of the Minister's speech, had said that he had claimed that the whole of the £80 reduction in the price of houses was due to the reduction in the subsidy. I do not believe that any of my hon. Friends have made that statement, and I certainly would not assume that the right hon. Gentleman had made a claim of that kind—if he had, it would be quite untenable and altogether absurd—but, at any rate, the right hon. Gentleman did contend that the previous reductions in the amount of the subsidy had had a very considerable influence in bringing about the reduction in the cost of houses during the last two or three years. In other words, he maintained that there was a relation between the subsidy and the cost of building.

I was not in the least impressed by his reference to prices under the Addison scheme. He told us that in 1921 the average cost of these houses was £665. Well, I remember houses that were built under that scheme which cost a great deal more than £665. There were cases, I believe, where the cost ran as high as £1,200 in 1919, and, therefore, if the Minister of Health had given the highest figure, he might have shown a much greater reduction in the cost of build- ing after the Addison scheme was abandoned. However, I do not attach the least importance to that, because it must be remembered that that was a period of chaotic and inflated prices, and it was after 1921 that the general level of prices began to fall very rapidly; and even if he is able to show a reduction from £665 to £451, that reduction is no more than the fall which has taken place during that period in the general price level. Whether or not the Minister of Health proved that the reduction of the subsidy had been responsible to some extent for the fall in prices, he made no attempt to prove that it had stimulated building. A reduction in the cost of building is very important, and we are as anxious as is the Minister himself to do everything which is practicable to reduce the cost of building, but there is something more important than reducing the cost of building, and that is to maintain and to increase the rate of building houses.

It is the easiest thing in the world to quote figures in support of a case, and Ministers are always under the temptation to present a vast mass of figures and thereby confuse Members and obscure the issue. Therefore, sweeping aside the mass of figures that the right hon. Gentleman submitted this afternoon, I think there is one fact which emerges, and that is that in normal conditions the rate of building has declined with the reduction of the subsidy. It is all very well for the right hon. Gentleman to take particular periods, but nobody knows better than he does that it has been the threat of a reduction in the subsidy which has been responsible for occasional outbursts of greater activity in the building of houses. If we take what I might call the level of building during the last two or three years, the fact is indisputable that there has been a reduction in the rate of building side by side with the reduction of the subsidy. Therefore, even if it could be proved that the reduction of the subsidy has lowered the price of houses, the fact undoubtedly remains that it has not stimulated it. That is the important thing. It has not stimulated it; it has reduced the rate of building.

My hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. A. Greenwood) among the many good points which he made, made. one very forcible point. He was dealing with the claim of the Minister of Health that there had not been any reduction in the rate of building since the subsidy was reduced, and he pointed out that there has been greater progress of building under the 1924 Act than under the 1923 Act. It is quite possible—and this I might be prepared to concede—that one effect of the proposal we are now asked to approve might be to increase building under the 1924 Act at a greater rate than building under the 1923 Act. If that happens, and these houses are for letting purposes, some advantage would undoubtedly accrue, but I should say that the abolition of the subsidy under the 1923 Act will stop building under that Act altogether. I have had placed in my hand a striking letter from a large co-operative society in Lancashire, a place which attained some considerable political notoriety, and indeed I might say a great deal of honour, a few weeks ago by affording a striking victory to the Labour party. I mean Ashton-under-Lyne. The secretary of the Ashton-under-Lyne Co-operative Society writes this letter. It is sufficient to say that the society have built a large number of houses under the 1923 Act. I do not think they could build under the 1924 Act without the permission of the local authority. The secretary of the society states most emphatically that if the subsidy be abolished under the 1923 Act, the housing activities of that society will completely come to an end.

Sir K. WOOD

That is the right hon. Gentleman's Amendment.

Mr. SNOWDEN

We are prepared to accept that for the reasons which we gave just now. There may be some stimulus of building under the Act of 1924—

Sir K. WOOD

The right hon. Gentleman's own Amendment takes it away.

Mr. SNOWDEN

The reason for the reduction in the price of houses built by the building trade has been referred to by many Members, and I need not deal with it. The hon. and gallant Member for St. Albans (Lieut.-Colonel Fremantle) made a statement which could not have been possibly understood by Members of the House. He said that the price of materials had increased nine times as compared with pre-war cost.

Lieut.-Colonel FREMANTLE

I said that at one time the price of the output cost of labour had increased nine times.

Mr. SNOWDEN

I do not know what the hon. Member means by the output cost of labour. One reason why the cost of houses is high is the existence of rings in the building trade; and they are not merely rings in the production of materials for houses, but rings among the builders themselves. Of course the builders get their opportunity when the house building trade is greatest. I heard of the experience of an urban district council in my constituency from the chairman, who is a builder. He knew that tenders which had been sent in for some new houses were altogether extortionate, and the council sought tenders outside the district. They received tenders at a much lower figure. In a week or two, these outside tenders were withdrawn, and the explanation that he gave to me was that pressure was brought to bear upon the outside builders to withdraw their tenders, and it was accompanied by the threat that, if they did not do so, the supply of building material would be withheld from them. The Parliamentary Secretary nods his head. I do not mean to insinuate that he is nodding approval, but it is an acknowledgment of his knowledge that these practices do exist.

There is in existence a committee to watch prices. They have no powers, but they publish returns; apparently, they have no influence. Some time ago the Minister was asked if he would give them some kind of powers in the examination of books, and so on. The right hon. Gentleman stated, in reply, that he thought publicity would attain the desired object, but it has not attained the desired object. The right hon. Gentleman further said that, if publicity did not secure the object, he was prepared to take other measures. Publicity has not secured the object, and the right hon. Gentleman, therefore, ought to redeem his pledge, and give this committee powers of a more drastic nature.

What has been done in the way of supplying housing accommodation? The Conservative party are constantly boasting about the number of houses built, and we have been told this afternoon that since the War nearly a million and a quarter have been built. I am attaching no blame to anybody at this point, but the point I want to make is this, that those million and a, quarter houses have not gone very far to supply the most urgent needs. It has been estimated, an estimate which I think was generally accepted, that we require about 100,000 new houses every year to make up the wastage and supply new demands. If that be so, and we have built a million and a quarter in 10 years, we have only just met what might be called the annual demand for houses, and have made no impression at all upon the housing situation as it existed before 1918. We had four or five years during, the War and just after when there was no house building at all, and everybody admits that in the years before the War the housing situation was a national scandal. Therefore, these two things remain quite untouched by the building done during the last 10 years: the state of things which existed before 1914 and the aggravation of that state of things by the absence of building during the War. What is the kind of building which has gone on during the last eight years? My hon. Friend the Member for West Willesden (Mr. Viant), in his very well informed speech, said quite truly that this building had supplied the needs of the lower middle class and the better artisan class. It has not touched the needs of the poorer part of our population. Of course, a, great many of the houses built for sale have been built through the co-operative societies and through the building societies.

Sir K. WOOD

The building societies first.

Mr. SNOWDEN

Oh, yes; the extension of that movement during the last 10 years is almost a romance. But let us not forget that there has been a great deal of what we might call compulsory thrift. People have been compelled to buy houses as the only way of getting a roof over their heads, and often it has involved very great sacrifices on their part. The drain upon this class has corn-polled them to economise in other directions. These are the people whose needs have, perhaps, to a very considerable extent, been met by what has been done during the last 10 years; but the grave side of the problem has not been touched at all. I wholly agree with a remark made by my hon. Friend to whose speech I referred just now, that what any Government which tackles the need for housing the working classes will have to face is the financial problem. It cannot be done without money.

An hon. Member opposite said this was a question of economy, that we had only so much money to spend and that if it were spent upon one thing it could not be spent upon another. There is such a thing as false economy, and economy in a matter of this sort is the worst of all. If we save a few millions a year by not spending it upon housing the people better let us not deceive ourselves into thinking it is a national gain. It is no such thing. It is a great national loss. I believe that if a calculation could be made it would be found that we are spending more indirectly through sickness. Sir George Newman has stated in his Report—published only a few weeks ago, if my memory serves me right—that 33,000,000 weeks work were lost last year through sickness. I do not say the whole of that is due to the insanitary conditions under which these people live, but nobody will deny that bad housing and bad sanitary conditions generally are to a very large extent the cause. That loss of 32,000,000 weeks work probably means a loss in wealth production of not less than £150,000,000.

I was amazed to hear the hon. and gallant Member for St. Albans, who, I believe, is a medical man, minimising the influence which bad housing conditions have upon the health of the people. He wants less money spent on housing subsidies and £50,000 or £100,000 a year spent upon certain public health services. He would spend a few thousand pounds a year in dealing with the effects of bad housing, instead of dealing with the cause of those effects. If we are going to tackle this slum problem—[Interruption]. I give a rather comprehensive definition to slums. We include as slums houses which have been condemned by the local authorities, and I believe the number of such houses is nearly 300,000. But there is a vast proportion of our working class living in houses which no self respecting community ought to tolerate, and we want at least another million houses for the people. The reduction of the subsidy is going to do nothing at all to help that problem. On the contrary—and I doubt if this will be disputed—the reduction in the subsidy under the 1924 Act must result in an increase of rents, and if it does, then it has aggravated that part of the problem which it is so important should be dealt with drastically.

The Conservative party, and this Government, have a special obligation in this matter because one of the pledges they gave at the General Election was that they would deal effectually with the slum problem. They have done nothing whatever. I believe that only 100 schemes for slum clearances submitted by local authorities have been approved by the Ministry of Health, and that only something like a paltry 10,000 houses are affected by them. I submit, therefore, that the case as presented by the Minister of Health has not been proved, that the reduction of the subsidy under the 1924 Act is not likely to lower the price of building, is not likely to stimulate building to any extent, and is going to do nothing to help the grave unemployment problem in the building trade; and not even the Minister himself would contend that it is going to touch the urgent need there is for providing houses for working people at rents within their means. I do not know—it is one of the mysteries I cannot solve—how working people pay their rents. Every Member of this House knows of his own knowledge that in a great many cases rents are taking half the income of working people. The hon. Member mentioned families with an income of £2 a week having to pay rent amounting to 18s., 19s. and 20s. per week. What does that mean? The rent is the first charge and it must be paid, and the higher the rent the less there is for food, clothes and other necessaries. Therefore, high rents mean the starvation of the working people. The proposal which the Minister of Health is making does not touch that problem, and it is certain to have the effect of aggravating the grave conditions which exist.

Mr. BARR

I should like to refer to some remarks which fell from the hon. and gallant Member for St. Albans (Lieut.-Colonel Fremantle). The hon. and gallant Member referred to the Section of the 1924 Act under which this reduction was taking place, but he made no reference to the statement of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Shettleston (Mr. Wheatley) that there might be an increase in the subsidy, and that whatever benefit there was from a decrease in the building costs would go to the local authority. The hon. and gallant Member went on to deprecate the expenditure on various forms of housing as compared with expenditure on schemes of health. I should like to give an illustration. I was a Member of the Royal Commission on Housing, and I know the effect of bad housing on the health of the people. I will quote some figures given in evidence before the Housing Commission which I have never forgotten. Of the boys who died under five years of age, the death-rate for one-apartment houses was 40.56 per thousand:. for two-roomed houses, 30.2; for three roomed houses 17.9; and for four-roomed houses 10.27. So that, speaking generally, for every boy under five years of age who died in a four-roomed house four would die in a single-roomed apartment house.

The hon. and gallant Member for St. Albans deprecated extravagant expenditure on housing and he demurred to some remarks which were made by an hon. Member on this side dealing with the expenditure of the War. Take the housing scheme of 1924. If you make a broad calculation of the subsidy, it would amount to £1,000,000,000 spread over a period of 40 years. During the Great War covering a period of five years we spent, not £1,000,000,000, but £11,000,000,000. Surely if this country could afford to spend £11,000,000,000 in five years on a work of slaughter and destruction, it can easily afford to spend in 40 years—which is eight times that period—one-eleventh part of that amount on a work of reconstruction, making better homes for the people and better people for the homes. The hon. and gallant Member for St. Albans referred to my right hon. Friend the Member for Shettleston, who made a very effective defence of the 1924 Housing Act, and he likened him to the god Janus who had two faces. The hon. and gallant Member forgot to mention that the god Janus had another function, which seems to be in the way of a compliment to my right hon. Friend, because the god Janus was an opener of doors. When I read that under his scheme already 241,000 houses have been provided, I think my right hon. Friend can claim to be a Janus and an opener of doors, for he has opened up a good many doors of hope for the working classes of this country. The hon. and gallant Member for St. Albans admitted that the slum problem was practically untouched, but he said that after the next Election the Conservative party would take up the question of the slums. I think we might remind the hon. and gallant Member and the Government he supports of the words: To-morrow, and to-morrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. The hon. and gallant Member for St. Albans further said that the conditions existing in Scotland were a disgrace to civilisation. I am sure we were glad to have that condemnation of the conditions existing in Scotland. I remember that during the recent Election in North Aberdeen the Prime Minister said that Scotland had really overtaken England on this question, and that the shortage of houses was in a fair way towards being solved. That places upon us the onus and responsibility of showing what is the shortage of houses in Scotland and how that country stands to-day in that respect. When the Royal Commission issued its Report in 1917 it estimated that 121,000 houses were required to meet overcrowding and to provide accommodation for those who were living in uninhabitable dwellings. The Report also went the length of stating that 114,000 more houses were required in order to provide better conditions. I will take the shortage at 121,000. In 1921 the local authorities in Scotland and the Scottish Board of Health put the figure of requirements at 131,000 houses. Following that up in 1925, the medical officers throughout Scotland put their requirements at 118,000 houses. Suppose we say that, in 1919, 120,000 houses were required. We learn, further, that 10,000 houses are required every year to meet the normal growth, wastage, and so forth, apart from the figures I have quoted.

Therefore, for the nine years since 1919, 90,000 houses must be added, giving a total of 210,000 houses that should have been built to meet the total requirements from 1919 to the present time. As a matter of fact, the houses that have been built with State assistance, even including those in process of erection and definitely arranged for, total, according to the Report of the Scottish Board of Health, 96,689, and that was at the end of 1927. That leaves a shortage still of 113,000 houses, and, assuming that 13,000 have been or are being built up to the 30th September of this year—which I think the right hon. Gentleman will agree is very near to the figure—there are still, according to "the estimates of the Scottish Board of Health itself, 100,000 houses unprovided. Indeed, these Reports have admitted that that is the position, and the Report for 1926 contains a statement that: It supports the general view that the efforts since 1919 have not resulted in any material reduction of the shortage. It is only this year, in the Report for 1928, that an effort is made at all to show that there is any meeting of the shortage, and this year's Report states that: The impression is gathered that in a number of districts the period of really acute shortage is passed, and that we may concentrate now on replacing uninhabitable houses. But how does that Report proceed to show that the shortage is past? It points out that, in the mining areas particularly, the population is being depleted. There is no employment, and, because there are not the people to provide for, the housing problem is solved by the Government in that they do not need to provide houses for people who have to quit the district.

Take the case of Glasgow. The Commission's estimate of the needs of Glasgow in 1917 was 57,000 houses. That was confirmed by the corporation and approved by the Local Government Board. But in 10 years the normal increase of the City of Glasgow would require 31,910 houses. That gives a total of 89,000 houses. Taking the number of completed houses as 14,000, the figure given by my hon. Friend the Member for St. Rollox (Mr. J. Stewart), and the houses in progress at nearly 9,000, that gives a total of 23,000 houses, which, as compared with the requirement of 89,000, leaves a defi- ciency of 60,000 houses in Glasgow to-day. At Whitsunday last, in the City of Glasgow, 17 per cent, of all the houses were one-apartment houses. Of two-apartment houses there were 46.4 per cent. That is to say, 63.4 per cent. of the houses in the City of Glasgow were either single-apartment houses or room-and-kitchen houses. It is no wonder that ex-Bailie Morton, who has had great experience in the City of Glasgow, who has been convener of the housing committee, and who does not belong to our party at all, said that the housing shortage was in his opinion more acute to-day than when they began building.

A good deal has been said, and rightly, about the efforts that must be made in regard to housing the very poorest class of people. The Corporation of Glasgow and their Housing Committee have been experimenting with a three-apartment house at a rent of 125. 6d., and they have been reducing that until now they have in view a reduction to 10s. a week, and even to 8s. and 6s. All that is now ruled out and becomes impossible with the withdrawal of the subsidy. To deal with that poorest class of the people an entirely new scheme will be needed, and a special subsidy more than anything we have known, in order to bring these houses within the reach of the poorest people at rents which they can possibly afford. In my own district last Christmas, 69 houses had been built and rented for these poor people, and, of those 69, 41 have been unable to meet the requirements as to rent, and, on economic grounds alone, have fallen into arrears.

The various effects of this withdrawal of subsidy in Scotland have been indicated. I will just mention what I believe they will be. As to falling costs, I do not think that the hon. Member for Barnstaple (Sir B. Peto) at all met the argument that in Scotland, where until now there has been no reduction of subsidy, there has been a fall in costs exactly similar to that which has taken place in England, and that, therefore, you cannot attribute to the subsidy the fall in costs that has taken place equally in Scotland and in England. The tendency will be to raise the rents, not perhaps to a larger figure than at present, but certainly to a larger figure than they would stand at if the subsidy were continued. There will also be a tendency to raise the rates, and to lower the standard of quality and size of the houses. In England, already, the floor space has been reduced by 25 superficial feet. That affects the question of cost, and shows the whole tendency to depreciate the standard of housing, which is already poor enough in Scotland at present.

I do not think that hon. Members here realise the kind of housing that we have in Scotland. At the Census of 1921, and the conditions have not materially altered since then, 11.8 per cent. of all the people in Scotland were living in one-roomed houses. In my own district, which, perhaps, has some of the poorest houses in the whole country, no less than 19.2 per cent., or nearly one-fifth, of the people I represent live in single-apartment houses. You call it, and the Registrar-General calls it, congestion in England if there is an average of more than two persons to a room; but only 30.8 per cent. of the people whom I represent live not more than two to a room. There are 24.7 per cent. living two and not more than three to a room, and 20.4 per cent. living three and not more than four to a room; while no fewer than 24.1 per cent., or nearly one-fourth, of all the people I represent, live, on an average, more than four to a room. Further, it will produce a slackening off, if not a cessation, of house-building for the working classes. I have the figures here, and I do not think the Minister of Health will be able to contradict them. In England, in the first 10 months of 1927, there were erected 183,021 houses, but in the first 10 months of 1928, with the reduced subsidy, the number fell to 88,220.

I will give the Secretary of State a little arithmetic which will show the position in which Scotland stands to-day. In England, on the 1st November last, the total number of houses completed with State assistance was 792,337. Scotland's proportion of the cost of housing is 11-80ths, and we will take it as though the cost per house were the same for this argument. Scotland's proportion, on the 1st November last, would he 108,946. There were actually completed on the 1st October, including the steel houses, 82,991, so that, adding 1,000 houses for October, you have 84,000 houses completed, whereas Scotland's proportion, in order to conform with England, would be 108,000. That is to say, 25,000 houses have to be completed between 1st October of this year and 1st October of next year in order that we may be alongside of England in respect of the subsidy. I believe that calculation cannot be impugned. The figures are taken from the Scottish Board of Health Report. The highest production ever obtained was in 1927, when 21,660 houses were produced. I do not see that we are to be in any other position than we were in in 1921, when Scotland lost a very considerable amount of money owing to the hasty withdrawal of the Addison scheme. Therefore, I hold that we are not receiving even our full amount, and I trust, if my argument be correct, that what we may lose may be carried over and considered in connection with the future readjustment of the subsidy.

The hon. and gallant Member for St. Albans spoke of the subsidy as an artificial and unnatural way. Others have spoken as if the whole effort were to be to get back to private enterprise. I believe the right hon. Gentleman will agree to some extent that it is out of the question to think of private enterprise supplying the needs of Scotland for many years to come. I will not quote, in that connection, a partial advocate who might support the views held on this side of the House, but before the Royal Commission Mr. G. Fraser, then a factor and land agent on the Dalzell Estate, gave evidence that the necessary housing for Mid-Lanark could not be provided by private enterprise and that he was prepared to face the housing of the whole population of Scotland by the nation. The Royal Commission on Housing said this, referring to conditions even before the War: We have indicated that in our view private builders had, for a long period before the War, failed to provide in anything like adequate numbers the houses necessary for the working-class population. Is it more hopeful now than it was in 1917? Are the economic conditions better? They are admittedly worse. To give modern working-class houses for the poorest people at rents which they can afford demands that we have the continued aid of the State. The hon. Member for Mossley (Mr. Hopkinson), like others, attributed the failure of private enterprise to provide houses to the pass ing of the Finance Act of 1909–10. If he had been here, I should like to have given him this conclusive reply, which is to be found in the Report of the Scottish Commission on Housing. Only two members of that Commission were Labour men. Some of them were Conservatives, and some were attached to the party below the Gangway, which was a larger party then than it is now: We are unable to agree with the suggestion that there is any evidence to show that the difficulty of finding capital for house building has been to an appreciable extent brought about by the Finance Act of 1909–10. I should like to recall what the fluctuations were when it depended on private enterprise. I take Glasgow. In 1902, they had linings for 4,558 new houses. By 1911, it had fallen to 256. I do not want to see housing ever go back to be dependent on the fluctuations of private enterprise, speculative builders producing them when it is profitable and not producing them when it became unprofitable. We say that this duty to provide houses is a fundamental and primary one. I can quote to that effect the Royal Institute of Surveyors, which, in paying a tribute to private enterprise, said, in 1917: It is impossible to provide sufficient houses for the people, save by the nation with its national resources. I do not want to look at this question merely on financial grounds, but on the grounds of the physical, mental, and moral welfare of the people. The Minister of Education, on the Second Reading of the 1924 Bill, said: We have shown on the Money Resolution that it is not the cost of the Bill to which we object mainly. I say, frankly, that if I thought there were any prospect of the expenditure provided by this Bill producing the houses, I would vote for the Bill on those grounds with a light heart. So far as the expense of the subsidy is concerned, it does not terrify us. 9.0 p.m.

The present Home Secretary, on the same occasion, spoke to the same effect, that it would not produce a single house, and that it was not a matter of the cost. I have already shown that the Act has produced the houses in a large degree, and I have referred to the value of continuing the houses from the point of view of the health of the people. I value housing, and I plead for a continuance of the sub- sidy for the moral refinement and the uplift that it brings. I know people can live good lives in the poorest houses. I know something of the heroism of the poor, but it is a heroism which should not be asked of any man or woman in a civilised, I do not even say in a Christian community. There are two ways by which men and women can be elevated: the one by their own resolve, by their high endeavour, by their laying hold of things above the material, and the other by giving surroundings and conditions which make virtue easy and vice difficult, by giving better homes for the people in order to make better people in the homes. The Royal Commission, from which I have quoted, recognised that. They said: These people are the victims of manifold social evils, of which bad housing is one of the greatest. Without in any way minimising or under-estimating the importance of character, in the securing and maintenance of good housing, we maintain that the provision of better houses will be one of the best means of elevating the character and habits and tastes of the people. In the reports of the Scottish Board of Health it is gladly recognised that it has had that refining effect, and those who have been brought from the slums and from poor conditions have been refined in their taster, and the keeping of the houses has been most satisfactory. That is in the reports of all the local authorities, and so I desire that we should go on. I wish that, instead of lowering the subsidy, we had been greatly increasing it. I would close with a reference to the man in Nehemiah who hindered the work of the building of Jerusalem and did what he could to keep it back. The judgment that fell upon him and those who were associated with him for hindering the work was this. It is worth recording. You will find it in the 6th chapter of that Book, and it is what will fall on hon. and right hon. Gentleman opposite. After others had come in and done the work, they were "much cast down in their own eyes." After others have come in a year hence to do the work that hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite have been hindering, I am confident that hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite will be "much cast down in their own eyes" and in the eyes not alone of the Scottish people but of this nation.

Mr. BRIANT

I cannot follow the hon. Member for Motherwell (Mr. Barr) in his eloquence. I am going to very prosaic. I am, of course, intensely interested in the question as to whether the reduction of the subsidy will lead to reduction in the cost of housing. I do not think that the Minister is correct in his assumption. I do not believe for a moment that the reduction of the cost of housing is due to the reduction of subsidy. One would like to know from the right hon. Gentleman definitely what is his policy on the matter. Does he believe that the subsidy never reduced the cost of houses for the people? Does he believe that it is of no use whatever, and that it never can be of use? We should like to know definitely his policy. I do not hesitate to say that the problem of housing, with regard to those receiving small wages, will never be solved without a very substantial and largely increased subsidy from the nation. It is perfectly idle to try to hide the fact. The average man earning £2 10s. or £3 per week cannot pay the present rents of even those houses which are built at a reduced cost, and even with the subsidy.

I want to illustrate this by a typical case—that of the London County Council. This body have made attempts to build houses at reasonable prices. They also charge, I suppose, what they describe as an economic rent, even in view of the reduced cost of houses and the application of the subsidy. Here is an actual case. A few doors, comparatively speaking, from a place which I very often visit in my constituency, a woman is living with her husband and six children in one room. They came to me and asked me if I could find them more accommodation. I said, "Have you applied to the London County Council? "Yes," they said. The London County Council had refused them. So I went to the London County Council, and the reply I received was very interesting because it was to the point. It shows how absurd it is to think that we can meet the situation by ordinary private enterprise. The London County Council's answer, which I hold in my hand, is very simple. This man is earning 3s. a week, which is a very much larger wage than many thousands of men are earning. The County Council say, and quite rightly, that this man ought to have four rooms, because he has a wife and six children. I agree with the County Council. But what follows? The County Council say, "Your total earnings are 3 3s. a week, but the cost from this place to your work and the maintenance of your family is so much that. we do not think you can pay 17s. Cd. a week rent, and so you cannot have a house." The largest municipal body in the world says to this unfortunate man in effect, "You ought to live in foul rooms, but as you cannot pay the rent even of a subsidy house, you must live in one room till you die." It is a terrible thing to say, but it comes from the London County Council as the net result of their efforts.

No hon. Member, whatever his politics, can defend social conditions which render such a letter as that possible. I have seen, of course, the people concerned. I wish the, hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for St. Albans (Lieut. Colonel Fremantle) was here. He talked about expenditure on health. The best expenditure on health would be to try to save that family of six children, because inevitably they are going to be a cost in one way or another on the whole of the community. We have heard that it is costing £10,000,000 a year for housing. That, is not really an accurate statement. A large proportion of that £10,000,000 is being spent in wages and means that the community are being relieved of the responsibility of keeping a very large number of men who are being found employment in this connection. The nation must realise the terrible waste of money which is going on year after year through employment not being provided where it is required. When we spend State money on unemployment schemes we are relieving the rates, we are relieving the Insurance Fund, we are relieving the community in one respect or another. If a man is unemployed he becomes in some way or other, a charge on the rest of the community. Everybody knows that.

These figures are alarming. They would be humorous if they were not tragic. In the last six years we have paid out £200,000,000 in unemployment benefit and in Poor Law relief for the able-bodied. I am not a statesman. I am not an economist. I am not a business man, but I cannot help thinking that if 12 business men were to sit round a table they would be able to say that £200,000,000 could be spent on building houses when so many men are wanting work and people are dying for the wan t of houses. It is idle for the Government to say that this reduced subsidy may reduce the cost of housing. I want to know, not whether the cost of houses has been reduced but when the increase of houses is to come. If they say that this policy of reducing the cost of housing is a wise one, I want to know what really is their policy on housing. We have not had a hint of their policy except that somehow or other they are going to reduce the cost per house. It does not follow that there will be more houses built. I am inclined to think it is true that to some extent the subsidy was diverted into the pockets of some of the big builders, but I think also that the provision of the subsidy did divert some of the labour employed on luxury buildings like cinemas and hotels to the building of houses. The amount that we spent in that way was paltry compared with the lives at stake, let alone the comfort of the people.

The hon. Member for Barnstaple (Sir B. Peto) made one valuable contribution to the reduction of the cost of housing. He would reduce the cost by putting a ring round all British materials and letting no foreign materials in. How the hon. Member expects that to reduce the cost of housing I do not know. It could only be invented by the mind of a tariff reformer.

I wish the Government would face the problem seriously and would not content themselves by telling us so much a-bout the actual subsidy. If they are right that it does effect a reduction in the cost of particular houses that is not the thing we want to know. We want to know what the Government are doing about the building of houses. The figures are alarming. We were told last May by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health that there would soon be a large acceleration in building. It has not come. The figures quoted by the Minister of Health to-day show that 150,000 houses will be built this year. That only meets the annual need caused through the increase of population and the deterioration of existing houses. It does not give us one house to wipe off the deficiency which at present exists, and which are required to give some 3,000,000 people who are at the present moment living in insanitary conditions proper and decent accommodation.

I do nut want to dwell on the humane side of the case because it may be thought that one is trying to raise a scare, but these are facts which are with me every day. It is idle to tell me that there are houses at Becontree which can be had for 17s. 6d. a week. These people cannot go there. A man earning £2 10s. a week is living in a room 14 feet by 10 feet, and the height—it is an attic—is 6 feet 3 inches, with four children; and they are nearly all ill. How can you expect anything else? We talk about spending money on our health services; this is the great health service of the nation. I am not speaking from a party point of view, the health of the nation is more important than anything else and the Minister of Health leaves us with the vague statement that his calculations may be right and ours may be wrong. I hope he will at any rate give us some substantial promise that he has some scheme which he can put before us by which these vast masses of people may be housed in decent conditions.

Mr. SEXTON

The speeches which we have already heard on the question of the provision of houses, particularly those of the right hon. Member for Shettleston. (Mr. Wheatley) and the right hon. Member for Colne Valley (Mr. Snowden) have covered the ground extremely well. I do not wish to go into details with regard to this subject but I should like to refer to the characteristically pedantic speech of the hon. Member for Mossley (Mr. Hopkinson). It is a little difficult to follow the argument of the hon. Member. Everyone knows the sacrifices he has made to his workpeople because of the economic conditions which prevail at the present moment, but the curious part is that the sacrifices lie professes to have made on behalf of his workpeople to combat present economic conditions are supported by the greater portion of his speech. Personally I do not support the principle of a subsidy at all, but the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Health has put his hand to the plough and it would be a waste of energy and time and raw material if he refused to complete the furrow now. There is something radically wrong in a system that does not provide wages to enable a workman to pay an economic rent for his house. The hon. Member based his charge for the collapse of the housing system on the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) because he introduced his Land Tax in 1909, and from that he jumped to the price of bricks. The right hon. Gentleman may have committed many sins since then, but I do not think his introduction of the Land Values Bill in 1909 can be called a sin, as it has been by the hon. Member for Mossley.

I remember the very eloquent speech the right hon. Member made then from the Government side of the House. We were sitting on this side and were complaining bitterly about the delay in the production of houses. I remember how he told us to be patient, that he had already ordered four thousand million more bricks and four thousand million doors and windows. Although they had not yet commenced to build, by jingo when they did they had the bricks and doors and they had the windows too. That statement of the right hon. Gentleman was responsible for an enormous rise in the price of bricks. It went up to phenomenal heights; and may I tell the hon. Member for Mossley that in some cases the price of bricks was raised even before they were made. My memory goes 'pack to a time and a place, not many miles away, when an extension of the docks was required. The barren seashore did not produce anything but grass and r.2eds. It was valueless apparently, but underneath there was clay and the demand of the people for houses, owing to the extension of the docks, was so great that the price of that land rose from nothing at all to £3,500 per acre. It was all due to the demand of the people for houses and a speculator who was making bricks leased it on a short lease at that figure. In addition, for every thousand bricks he made he paid a royalty of 2s. 6d. to the man who claimed to own the land. May I give one or two instances to the hon. Member for Mossley who is utterly at sea when he lays the whole of the blame for the collapse of housing on the shoulders of the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs because he introduced the Land Bill in 1909. If it was a sin then it was like the servant girl's sin, it was only a very small one. Personally I was sorry the right hon. Gentleman dropped the Bill, and I remember that some of my colleagues when conferring together behind the Speaker's Chair expressed the opinion that the right hon. Gentleman had entered on a period of degeneracy.

Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER (Mr. James Hope)

The hon. Member is now some distance away from the question of the subsidy on housing.

Mr. SEXTON

I will try to obey your ruling. The hon. Member for Mossley raised the important point that the Act of the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs is responsible for the collapse of the housing policy introduced by Dr. Addison, or by anybody else. I am trying to show how unsound is that argument. I speak as one who has had some 24 years' experience of municipal life, in a city where houses are required and where slums have been demolished, but where slums still exist, namely, Liverpool. There was one in which I lived or existed for a while—one apartment with two beds and four in a bed and a week's washing at the foot of the bed all night. After generations, these slums were abolished, under the Local Government Act. The men who created the slums got nothing, but the demolition of the slums created the value of the land, and, when we came to buy that land back again, we had to pay such an enormous price that after that we had to put the people up in the air. Therefore, the subsidy came from the rates that these slum dwellers had to pay.

Let me give one or two cases. In one case, we paid £100 a square yard for land for city improvements and for houses. In another case, we paid £5 per square yard or £23,400 per acre for land which, on a 20 years' purchase, was not worth more than £800 or £900 at the outside. You talk about subsidies! Not one penny of this increased value created by the slum dwellers and the joint action of the workpeople and the docks, not one penny of that contributes one farthing to the local rates. Here is an example of the necessity for relieving the local rates— Something is rotten in the State of Denmark"— when men who are on the dole or who are out of work or even in work get a subsidy in order to pay the rates of the houses in which they live.

If the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Borougns (Mr. Lloyd George) had got fair play, we should not be asking for subsidies from the Government. We should be asking for a subsidy from the landlords. He asked the men who made the profit on the land to pay their fair share of the local taxation. It is said that open confession is good for the soul. I know landowners who take advantage of this system. I have friends of my own among them. I do not blame the individual but the system.

Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER

I cannot help thinking that a general argument on rating or the taxation of land values has only a rather remote connection with the immediate subject of whether the Government should continue the present rate of subsidy for building houses.

Mr. SEXTON

I was afraid I was getting a little way from the subject, and -I am very thankful to have been given the opportunity. However, I will try to keep within the Motion as much as possible. There was a period in the time of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs which I have always thought was a period of degeneracy. At that time, he was contaminated by being in close association with hon. Gentlemen opposite in the Coalition Government, but I have never subscribed to some of the things said of him or that he had burnt his boats. I do think that the country had a very difficult time and that the right hon. Gentleman did yeoman service then. Nevertheless, I could not help sighing for the touch of a vanished hand, And the sound of a voice even temporarily stilled. In my own mind, I always thought that the political jade with which he was then coquetting was temporary and that he would eventually come back to his old love. Indeed, we have had every sign that he is trying to come back to-day.

Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER

The future action of the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs has even less connection with the subsidy than the hon. Member's previous remarks.

Mr. SEXTON

It is a betrayal on the part of the Minister of Health that, after having once started to relieve the horrible conditions under which people lived in the old days, he should now try to drop this thing in the way that he is doing to-day. Of course, the most essential thing is the health of the people. This is not going the right way to improve the health of the people. It is a betrayal of trust and a breach of pledges. That is nothing new to the right hon. Gentleman, but I hope that even at the eleventh hour he will see that, instead of helping the local authorities, he is, by this method of depriving them of the subsidy, simply inflicting more penalties on them every day.

Mr. SCRYMGEOUR

I want to concentrate upon this point of the unwillingness of the Government to face the principal feature of the situation, which is that we are only now getting down to the necessities of the poor people of our country. The hon. Member for Wolverhampton (Mr. G. Thorne) read a deliver-ante appertaining to the local authorities, whose view was that there should, at any rate, he a deferring of revision until another two years. My own position in the matter is that from the very beginning I have stood throughout for the contention that the first people to get the benefit of these subsidies should, undoubtedly, have been the people who were in greater need of this housing accommodation. The hon. Member who has just spoken from the Liberal benches has made a very considerable impression on the House by his own illustration of some of those facts which crop up in our industrial constituencies. He, like others of us, felt some diffidence in unduly emphasising that situation for the very reason which he gave, which is that it might be thought that we are wanting to strain the matter from the personal point of view in order to make an impression upon that ground.

At the same time, I think, even at the risk of any misunderstanding, there is a real and appalling tragedy prevalent in the homes of those people who are resident in these one or two-roomed dwellings. The hon. Member for Motherwell (Mr. Barr) gave us statistics, which I thought he handled remarkably well considering that he had memorised them, showing the more frequent deaths in the family circles in the one-room and two-room houses. That arises from the con- gestion, which is a feature in all industrial places. I would ask the House to remember the point which has been made by the hon. Member for North Lambeth (Mr. Briant), that the London County Council has admitted that people are entitled to larger accommodation, and that, although that is the natural right of the family circle, they cannot get it because they are not able to pay the money. You have that laid down by the London County Council with all the wealth that that great body commands.

In my own constituency there has been an effort made for some time to bring about economy and to bring the provision of housing accommodation to a standstill. Fortunately, that movement has not got to the point of complete success. Only the other day, they were obliged, after the recent November elections, to face the necessity of providing for those people who are in the poorest circumstances. One of the new representatives suggested that there ought to be consideration of all-round slum clearance in one great undertaking; and it was very forcibly brought home to him that the cost would be far too heavy. Yet it will have to be adopted, even from the point of view of economy; the houses that are uninhabitable will have to be closed and an endeavour made to find fresh accommodation elsewhere. Now, at the stage when we are making more and more provision to meet the needs of people with miserably small wages, the Government, in spite of the recommendations of the local authorities, who must be admitted to know better than the Government what are the local circumstances, say that they will stand up against the local authorities and take a course of their own. Only some two years ago, we had representations from some Scottish constituencies, including my own, that an attempt was being made to amend the Act so that these small dwellings would be made available for the people. There were differences of opinion on this side of the House as to the desirability of providing the smaller dwellings, and it was said that a larger class of houses ought to be made available.

I am glad it has been emphasised from the front Opposition bench that we have all over the country large numbers of people who are in good circumstances, and who are being provided with the better class of houses at lower rents than they would otherwise have been obliged to pay. It is quite apparent, from the public point of view, that one of the great wrongs that has been done is in making provision first of all for the people who are not actually necessitous. You have poor people stifled in those dwellings, where it is a matter of wonder how they manage to exist at all, the conditions are so appalling. The Prime Minister himself emphasised that when he visited our constituency. Yet here we have the Government, in spite of what the Prime Minister himself said, tightening the screw on the people whose noses are to the grindstone, and who are being bound to a. state of conditions which is appalling. It would he a failure on our part if we did not make our protest and our appeal that even yet this question should be reconsidered. The convener of the housing committee of Dundee, before I came away, said he felt there was reason for considerable anxiety about this matter. That is why I am making my protest, that the Government ought not now to take the step they are taking after providing subsidies for people who are well established in excellent dwellings, and leave these poor people in their depressed conditions to feel that they are last in the race.

Mr. THURTLE

This second reduction of the housing subsidy is, in the view of hon. Members on this side of the House, and I am sure in the view of the country as a whole, a most unworthy form of economy. It is a surrender by the Minister of Health to the very false idea that avoidance of spending money is necessarily economy. It may easily be that, by avoiding spending money in this way, so far from economising, you are indulging in something akin to criminal waste, and our view is that you are doing so by economising on housing. Conditions being what they are, it is all the more regrettable, because the Minister who is responsible for this knows better. Not only does he know better, but he is doing this wantonly. There was no kind of political pressure or pressure from public opinion on him to effect this economy. The most moderate, not to say the most reactionary, person in this country looks upon the housing problem in rather a different way from that in which he looks upon many other social problems. You will find people who are unmoved by inequalities of wealth or by stark poverty and yet are deeply stirred by the mass of human misery and suffering which arises from overcrowding.

In the course of my attempt to spread political and economic wisdom, I sometimes engage in arguments with Conservatives. They say to me, "Why do you fellows take such an extreme view of things? Why are you so bitter against existing conditions?" I put one argument after another to them, and very frequently I fail to move them, but when I confront them with the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of their fellow countrymen and women living in conditions in which these Conservatives would not keep their horses or their dogs, they invariably hold up their hands and admit that that is something to which there is no effective answer. So I say that the Minister of Health would have had public opinion entirely with him if he had continued this subsidy instead of cutting it down. The only argument that has been given to us in justification of the reduction of the subsidy is that it is going so to reduce the cost of houses that it will not affect the building of houses. That point has been so fully dealt with that I do not propose to spend more than a minute or two on it.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Mr. Snowden) adduced what seemed to me to be very cogent reasons why that argument was fallacious. He mentioned the decreased size of the houses that have been built, the inferior quality of the houses built, the 5 per cent. decrease in the cost of wages, and above all the great expansion of the machinery of building, which by reducing overhead costs made cheaper production possible. But even leaving those arguments on one side, the Minister has failed to meet the illustration which was given by my right hon. Friend the Member for Shettleston (Mr. Wheatley) as to Scotland. What was the case of the Minister when he introduced the first reduction of the subsidy? What he said was that so long as that subsidy continued, so long as the builders could see that pool of money there, they were determined to keep up their prices in order to get it out of the authorities. He said that if we reduced the pool of money and cut down the subsidy there would be a tendency on the part of the builders to reduce their prices. What happened in Scotland? In Scotland there was no reduction whatever of the subsidy, and yet we find that, although the pool remained the same, and though we may assume that the rapacity of the builders in Scotland would be the same as that of the builders in England, the cost of housing in Scotland has fallen in exactly the same proportion as the cost of housing in England.

As a matter of fact, the figures speak for themselves; they are the most eloquent things in all this Debate—the figures showing the fall in the production of houses since the subsidy has been reduced. I shall not presume to take the year 1927. It may be said that, with a decrease of the subsidy imminent, there was an acceleration of housing production in 1927. I shall therefore be fair and compare 1926 with 1928. In the first quarter of 1926 there were 28,000 houses built; and in the first quarter of 1928 there were 20,000 built. That is a reduction of over 25 per cent. In the June quarter of 1926 there were 34,000 houses built, and 25,000 in the June quarter of 1928. That is a reduction of 30 per cent. In the September quarter of 1928 the reduction was again 25 per cent. In the face of those figures it cannot be gainsaid that the reduction of the subsidy has led to a diminution in the number of houses built. We have had it from members of the London County Council who are intimately acquainted with the problem in London, that as a result of the reduction of the subsidy the London County Council itself has not built at nearly the same rate as before.

It is not only the number of houses that concerns us. We on this side are almost as much concerned about the rent that the workers have to pay. Those of us who happen to represent crowded areas in the East End of London know that it is not merely the fact that a house is available which interests a worker, but whether he can pay the rent which is to be charged for that house. I notice that the hon. Member for North Lamebth (Mr. Briant) is present. Like him, I have people continually coming to me and asking me if I can get them a London County Council house on one of the housing estates. It may be that in one case I succeed in establishing the fact that it is a case of acute overcrowding and deserves precedence, but when the people come before the London County Council representative and are asked what their income is, and they reply, "£3" or "£3 5s. a week"—that is a very high income in the East End of London—and that they have six or seven children, the London County Council say that according to the council regulations the people need either three or four rooms, and the rent for those three or four rooms would be such that they do not think the people concerned would be able to pay it, and therefore they cannot have the house.

I want to bring this problem down to the human basis. It so happens that an independent body of architects recently conducted a survey of the Borough of Shoreditch, which I represent. These architects are not Labour people. I believe they are Conservatives in their political views. They work, I understand, under the inspiration of the Bishop of London. I hope, therefore, that there will be no suspicion that they are at all partisan in their review of the situation.

Let me tell the House some of the things which these architects found in the Borough of Shoreditch. It is good that we, the Commons of England, who are now considering a reduction of the housing subsidy, should learn the conditions under which some of our fellow-countrymen and women have to live. In one case, in a house in Moneyer Street, a man, wife and three boys aged 13 years, 9 years and 7½ years respectively, and a daughter aged 20 years live in one room. There is only one bed and—this statement remarks in brackets—there is only room for one. The father and the boys have to go to bed first, and the mother and daughter undress behind a curtain. The mother then shares the family bed and the daughter sleeps on some chairs. It is added that the room was extremely clean and orderly when visited. The family have repeatedly tried to get other acommodation but they must live in or near Shoreditch. The next case is in Angrave Street. In one room on the first floor of a house live a man, wife and seven children—five girls of varying ages and boys aged 10 years and 8 years respectively. The man is a casual labourer and is often out of work, but the rent has been paid regularly for over 10 years. All the children except a baby sleep in one bed. These six children sleep in one bed, the sides of the bed being used as the head and the foot respectively. The children are always ailing and the mother spends most of her time taking them to hospitals and clinics. Then you talk about economy!

There is another case in Baches Street. This is a house in a dilapidated street, overcrowded throughout. In two rooms on the ground floor which are dark, gloomy and dirty, live a man, wife and three girls, aged 18 years, 10 years and 3 years respectively and three boys aged 16 years, 6 years and 4 years respectively. In the little back room the elder girls share a bed with the boy of six, and the boy of 16 years sleeps on a couch bed made up at night. There is no room for this and the table and accordingly the table has to be moved out of the window to make way for it. In the front room the parents sleep with the two youngest children. The man is a hawker whose average earnings are £2 a week or less. The daughter works in an "A.B.C." and earns 22s. 6d. a week. She is very much ashamed of the house and cannot bring her friends there. The mother is disheartened and miserable and says she is so worn out with struggling in these wretched rooms, that she has lost all her energy. I apologise for reading all these extracts, but I propose to give two further cases. The next is the case of a five-roomed house in Styman Street—two rooms upstairs and two downstairs with a back addition room over a wash-house. When visited it was in an insanitary condition as the drain was badly choked. The back rooms' are small, being only 9 feet by 9, and the back addition room is very dark and is overshadowed by factory buildings, a sausage factory and a silk warehouse. All the rooms are crowded. In the little ground floor back room live a man, wife and four children, the eldest of whom is 14 years of age. It is stated: The room is infested with blackbeetles which appeared on the occasion of our visit to come from the sausage factory. 10.0 p.m.

The last extract which I give refers to a house in Windsor Place, in two rooms of which live a man, wife and five children—a boy of 10 years and girls of eight years, seven years, five years and one year, respectively. The boy of 10 sleeps in the same bed with his father and mother. The girls all sleep in another bed in the same room. The downstairs room is so small and congested, as well as being damp, dark and infested with rats, that sleeping is impossible. At meals there is just room for the father to sit at the table. The children sit on the stairs and the mother walks about. Home, sweet home, Mr. Speaker, in the year 1928 in the heart of the greatest Empire that the world has even seen! I want to say very little more, but there is this to be remembered. It may be said that in citing these extracts I have been sentimental. Let it be so, but the people who live in these crowded and damnable conditions have a right of equity, apart from sentiment, to be provided with decent accommodation. Who are the people who live in the crowded areas of our great cities? They are the hewers of wood and drawers of water for capitalism. The workers living in these conditions in London are the men who, in our factories, warehouses, docks, railways, and so forth, make tee industry of this country possible. Men like these have a real title, apart from sympathy, to decent houses in which to live. I do not know whether the Minister is troubled with what is called a conscience. There are times when one doubts it very much; but, if he is, I think he must sometimes be stricken with shame for the part he is playing in economising on the housing conditions of these poor people. He is not doing it in ignorance. No man in this House knows better than he the terrible consequences to these poor people of having to live under such conditions. He knows the magnitude of the problem. Therefore, if he sins at all he is sinning against the light.

The right hon. Gentleman is credited with having a sincere desire to promote the health services of this country. It is said of him, with what truth I do not know, that when the Government was formed he had the opportunity of taking a more exalted post, but chose the post of Minister of Health because he desired—so it is said—to promote the health services of the country. If he did that he deserves credit, because it is something not common to politicians. But I am sorry to find, if that were his motive, that he has so soon wearied of well-doing; that he has not proved a good "stayer," and that now, under pre-sure of the rich taxpayers of the country, he is sacrificing, the humanitarian claims of the people.

The Minister is said to be strong-minded. He has not been strong-minded enough to stand up to the ruthless and calculating economists who are to be found in his party. He will not hold his present office for ever. He may not hold it very much longer. I dare say the time will come, when he has given up that office, when he will indulge in some reflections on the work he has achieved. We all do that at certain times, in the quiet watches of the night, as it were. If the Minister of Health thinks over the work he has done at the Ministry he may, quite justifiably get certain thrills of pride for some of the things he has done. But when he is thinking about those things, he will also probably recall the time when the overcrowded and poverty-stricken denizens of the East End of tendon were looking to him to stand by them in their claims for decent housing conditions. and he will remember that when they looked to him to stand by them he deserted them and left them to their fate; and I cannot help thinking that that memory will be to him a matter of shame and humiliation.

Sir K. WOOD

It is now my duty to make some observations on the course of the Debate and to ask the House to come to a decision. The hon. Member for Shoreditch (Mr. Thurtle), who has just spoken, has devoted a great deal of his speech to my right hon. Friend the Minister of Health. My right hon. Friend needs no defence from me. I only desire to say that when the time comes for the history of this Parliament and time to be written, I think he will occupy a very honourable place so far as housing and health matters are concerned, and certainly so far as housing is concerned, as having made perhaps the most valuable contribution to the housing problem of our time. The hon. Gentleman also gave, in another irrelevant passage, a recital of cases which I know as well as he does. He must not think that we, on this side, do not know as much about housing conditions in London and the country as he does. He has recited a number of pathetic cases in the constituency of Shoreditch. Anyone who knows the position of housing in Shoreditch knows that the remedy for those cases is the one of what we call slum clearance, and he knows as well as I do that there is no room for building new houses there. He is also aware, or perhaps he is not aware, that under these proposals to-night there is no question of interfering with the assistance which the State is now giving in connection with slum clearances.

I will now endeavour to deal with a few of the arguments which have been raised of a more relevant character. The right hon. Member for Colne Valley (Mr. Snowden), the ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer, paid a well-deserved tribute to the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Greenwood) for his very able speech, as he described it, when he followed my right hon. Friend. It is true that he had a very formidable task, in view of the facts and statements which were then presented to him. I rather thought, however, the right hon. Gentleman might have paid a similar tribute to the right hon. Member for Shettleston (Mr. Wheatley). Whether he is such a kindred soul as is the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne, I do not know, but it is only fair to the right hon. Member for Shettleston that I should remind the House that it is due to his wise forethought in this Act of Parliament that we are considering this question of a reduction of the subsidy to-night, because it is one of the most valuable features of the Act of Parliament which he placed upon the Statute Book that under Section 5 of that Act this House has, at stated periods, to consider whether or not, having regard to the expenses incurred by local authorities in connection with the building of houses, both under the Act of 1923 and under the Act of 1924, a reduction in the subsidy should take place.

I should rather have gathered from the speeches that have been made to-night that most hon. Members opposite resented the fact that we are considering this matter to-night, hut this is a duty that is cast upon the House of Commons at the instigation of the right hon. Member for Shettleston himself. He certainly was under some misapprehension. Perhaps he has not studied this Act of Parliament recently, but he was under the impression that his intention in introducing this Section of the Act was that at some time or other the subsidy should be raised; and he referred to pledges that he had given to tenants in the country and to the building trade in that particular connection. I should like to call attention to Section 5 of this Act, because it certainly does not carry out what apparently were the desires of the right hon. Gentleman. Section 5 lays it down that, after considering the expenses actually incurred during a period of a particular two years, and after the suggestions shall be approved by the Treasury, the order is then to be made, and shall not exceed the respective amounts and periods fixed by the Housing, &c., Act, 1923, or … by this Act, unless Parliament otherwise determines. Therefore, it is clear that what we have to consider in this connection, and what was always the intention of Parliament, as it appears in the Act itself, is not under any circumstances whether an increase in the subsidy should he made, but whether a reduction shall be made, and it is for that particular Section of that Act that the right hon. Member for Shettleston should have due credit. In considering whether a reduction of the subsidy should or should not be made, we should consider, as many speakers have endeavoured to do, what is the exact position of the housing problem to-day. It is true that we have the very grave problem of the slums confronting us in this country. It is true that during the last year or two we have in fact cleared more slums than in any recent time in housing history, though no one would say that the progress has by any means been satisfactory. But the real problem with which we are confronted is whether we can get houses erected at such a cost as will enable them to he let at rents that can be paid by the poorer paid workers of the country.

The hon. Member for Nelson and Colne, two years ago, paid a very high tribute to my right hon. Friend the Minister of Health when he said that the Act of 1923 had done its work, and that it had virtually solved the problem of the lower middle class and similar class houses of the country. Therefore, what we have to face to-night as a House is how we are to provide housing for the lower paid workers of the country at such rents as they can afford to pay. There is a very sharp division of opinion as to how that should be done. As far as I can gather from the speeches of hon. Members opposite, they think that houses can be obtained at lower rents by increasing the subsidy. On the other hand, we, on this side of the House, believe that the only way in which you can obtain houses at rents suitable for the poorer paid people of the country is by reducing the cost of housing. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Nelson and Colne said that the way to stop building in this country was to reduce the subsidy, and he apparently overlooked the fact, which is well known to anyone who has studied the problem, that when we announced the reduction of the subsidy on the last occasion, the reduction in housing costs did not wait the Order, but preceded it by a considerable period. This remarkable thing happened. No sooner was the announcement made by the Minister of Health in this House that the subsidy was to be reduced, than housing costs began to fall. I had a letter placed in my hand some time ago, and, for obvious reasons, I will not give the name of the writer, but he was a builder, and he wrote to the local authorities about this period. His letter gives some revelations of what happened when the subsidy was reduced. He wrote: Dear Sir, In order to meet the reduced subsidy on houses, we have brought down the price of tiles, machine-made quality, by 9s. 6d. per 1,000. We hope this will enable you to continue with any further housing schemes that may he under consideration, and will also assist in preference being given to British-made tiles in place of those of foreign manufacture. I do not think there is any question that anyone who gives impartial consideration to the history of both the increase of the subsidy and the reduction of the subsidy, must come to the 2enclusion that the higher the subsidy, the larger has always been the cost of the workingman's house; certainly the reduction in the subsidy has produced houses at a lower cost, and what is, I think, more beneficial still, especially from the point of view of cases of which we have heard in this Debate; it has already produced lower rents. My right hon. Friend stated that the average price of houses in this country at the present time was £350. In taking the average, a large number of houses which are costing considerably more have been included, but it is now possible in some parts of the country to find houses costing only £280, £290 and £300 each.

What has been the result'? It is true that at the Ministry of Health we do not have returns of the rents of these houses, but anyone who goes about the country or reads the newspapers can see the facts. I have here a few instances, taken from reputable newspapers, of what is happening in regard to houses for the poorer paid workers as a result of the cut in the subsidy. I find, for instance, at Derby that on 1st November this year the corporation housing committee proposed to reduce the rent of the two-bedroom type of house by 5d. per week, making the charge Us. 6d. plus 3s. 4d. for rates. I find that in Staffordshire houses are now being let at 4s. 6d. per week, or, with rates, 7s. per week. I find that at Leigh the town council resolved that the rents of the corporation houses should be reduced from 9s. 2d. to 8s. 8d. a week. Anyone who is going about the country knows that one of the direct consequences of a reduction in the cost of houses must be to bring about—and eventually, I hope, much more than is the case at the present time—a reduction in the rents themselves.

It has been said by several hon. Members, without a single instance of proof, that the reduction in the cost of housing has nothing to do with the subsidy, but is due to a variety of reasons, such as were specified by the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne. Several hon. Members said it was due to the fact that bad materials, of a poor quality, are being used, and that the houses are not up to the specification required, we will say, before the subsidy was cut. There is not a word of truth in any of those allegations. The specifications for housing have not been altered. We have many opportunities at the Ministry of Health of conferring with local authorities upon their housing problems, and what do they tell us? As a result of the reduction in the cost of houses and of houses being now obtainable at an average of some £350, they tell us that in many eases they have found themselves in a more favourable position to improve the standard of their houses, and they also tell us that they are able to put in fittings and other amenities which previously they were obliged to forgo. What truth is there in the allegation made to-night that as a result of the cut in the subsidy tenants have suffered in any way?

I want to give this assurance to the House, that no attempt whatever has been made to lower the standard of quality in housebuilding. I think it is perfectly natural—I say so at once—that the local authorities are turning at this time to smaller houses, but the average reduction made in the size of houses since the cut in the subsidy has simply been a reduction of 25 square feet. In the face of that evidence, who can say, at any rate as regards the standard of quality or the materials wed, that the cut in the subsidy has affected people in any way, except to the good? Because if local authorities can build houses at a reduced price as a result of the action of Parliament two years ago, we know that they must be in a better position to meet the wishes of prospective tenants.

The hon. Member for Nelson and Come gave as the reason for the reduction in the cost of houses the fact that these local authorities have reduced their houses in size by 25 square feet. What does that amount to in the actual cost? It amounts to a figure of £12 10s., and in that connection I claim that we are entitled in respect of the reduction of the subsidy to claim that particular allowance on that account. The hon. Member also said that the reduction in the cost of building has been due to the price of materials being lowered, but that has nothing to do with the cut of the subsidy which only accounts for £20. The last thing which the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne said was that this lowering of the cost and the price of houses in the country is due, first of all, to a reduction in size; secondly, to a reduction in the price of materials; and thirdly, to a reduction in wages. What does the reduction in wages amount to? The reduction in wages during the last two years simply accounts for the sum of £5. Therefore, if you add those three items, the only items which the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne could think of, they simply account for £37 10s. out of a total of £88.

Hon. Members have heard the statement made by the hon. Member for South-West Bethnal Green (Mr. Harris) as to the position of the local authorities in the country, and the position of the London County Council. How do they stand so far as the reduction in the subsidy is concerned? If we take the proportionate reduction in the rate contributions of the local authorities, the reductions actually amount to £37 10s., leaving a balance of £50 10s. already available to go towards reducing subsidies from rates and taxes without prejudicially affecting the position of the tenant in any way whatever.

Mr. HARRIS

Exactly the reverse is the case; the right hon. Gentleman is entirely wrong.

Sir K. WOOD

The hon. Member for South-West Bethnal Green came forward with a deputation, and he spoke of the position in London. He admitted that in London there has been no diminution in house-building during the last two years, and that the authorities have steadily gone on with their programmes. Therefore, so far as housing in London is concerned, it cannot be said that the reduction in the subsidy has stopped the rate of house-building. Secondly, the hon. Member for South-West Bethnal Green made the admission that even so far as London is concerned the cut in the subsidy has resulted in a reduction in the cost of houses of £25. In face of those facts, how can anyone get up with any pretence of dealing fairly and impartially with this question, and say that London has suffered in that respect?

Mr. HARRIS

It is due to the drop in the price of materials and wages.

Sir K. WOOD

The hon. Member for South-West Bethnal Green came forward with a deputation and asked for special terms for London. No Minister of Health, and no Government, Liberal, Labour or Conservative, has ever assented to the giving of special terms to London in connection with housing. Therefore, I suggest that at any rate London can go forward with confidence with its programme, and can rely, as my right hon. Friend stated in the course of his speech, upon a continuous programme, with the great advantage of the reduction in prices. I should have thought that, instead of the kind of speeches that we have heard to-day, we should have heard speeches of apology from hon. Gentlemen opposite. They seem to have forgotten all that they said two years ago. The hon. Member for South-West Bethnal Green practically repeated word for word the speech that he made two years ago in this House. He then said, and so did hon. Gentlemen opposite, including the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne, that the whole building industry in this country was going to collapse. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Shettleston, not to he outdone in language of that kind, said that the proposal made on that occasion would wreck the building industry and plunge us back into the chaotic conditions from which we escaped in the harmonious year of 1924.

The hon. Gentleman who spoke last, and who talked about the record of my right hon. Friend and of the Ministry of Health and this Government, might have remembered one or two things in this connection. At this moment, despite all that has been said to-night, we are building at the rate of 188,000 houses a year, which was inure than was reckoned upon by the right hon. Gentleman in his famous housing programme. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Colne Valley said to-night that it was necessary to get over 100,000 houses before you began to eat into the shortage. He, at any rate, will be able to contradict the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne, who said that we were doing nothing at all in that connection. There is no doubt that we are steadily going on. I ask hon. Gentlemen opposite, who speak, no doubt, quite sincerely about the necessity of helping the more poorly-paid workers of the country, what is their programme? Is their suggestion that we should increase subsidies? I know, and so does almost every Member of this House, that the worst time in this country, from the point of view of the prospects of the more poorly-paid workers in regard to getting decent housing accommodation, was when building costs were highest, and I say that it would be far better, from the point of view of good housing in this country, to erect 100,000 houses at a cost of 2350 apiece than to erect 200,000 at a cost of £1,000 apiece. That is the policy that we are pursuing. So far as this country is concerned, and so far as this Government is concerned, we need not be ashamed of our record. We have contributed to and stimulated house-building in this country much more extensively and vigorously than any other Government has done, and I think we can with confidence accept the recommendation of my right hon. Friend, in the interests of good housing, in the interests of the lower-paid workers of this country, and in the interests of slum clearance, and ask the House to approve of this Order.

Mr. HARDIE

I beg to move, at the end of the Question, to add the words: subject to the omission of Articles 4 and 5, and paragraph (I) of Article 6. In listening to this Debate, it is quite evident that from the Government side there has been no point of view in regard to providing houses for those who want them. All we have had to-day has been simply the point of view of finance. The retention of the subsidy, which this Amendment seeks, is something that can, as far as Scotland is concerned, be dealt with quite apart from finance. If the housing question is going to be solved, that must come from those who are prepared to consider the housing of the people, apart from £ s. d. We had it from the right hon. Gentleman that slums were something apart, just as if the people in the slums were not to be considered as being worth rehousing, and were not to be considered as human beings to be dealt with in any housing scheme. That was his final word. But we had some rather interesting ideas from hon. Members opposite as to what is in the Government's mind. The hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for St. Albans (Lieut.-Colonel Fremantle) made it quite plain that, if the Tory Government comes back, the first thing it is going to do is to remove the Rent Restrictions Act, and that is worth keeping in mind. If the Government had been sincere in regard to housing, without going into the details, which have already been thrashed out, if they had taken action in regard to rings and prices, there would not have been these sad cases which have been quoted one after another from all parts of the country. Our health report in Scotland draws attention to what is taking place in house-building, putty being used where lead should be used and there being all forms of fraud. If we had been going to deal with the matter thoroughly, we should have been dealing with these things, not from the point of view of putting them in the health report, but from the point of view of housing the people.

The question of unemployment in the building trade has been referred to. I wait to give the figures for Glasgow at the end of November. Unemployed joiners, 71; bricklayers, 77; masons, 94; plasterers, 43; slaters, 34; painters, 685; plumbers, 90; labourers, 765; others, 953; a. total of 2,816. While we have this army of unemployed men in the building trade, we are being told that things are going on well. Since 1919, in Glasgow we have had over 14,000 houses. Of that number, 3,000 are in regard to slum clearances, which cost the city over £1,000,000, hut all we received from the Government was £72,000. That involved a rate of 3d. on Glasgow. My constituency is outside the city, where there is room to build, and not like Shoreditch. where there is no room at all. We are finding that the occupants of these new houses are not the type of people who were visualised by this House and for whom they passed this Act. The rents are much too high for those whom we should like to see changed from their slum conditions. They are so high that we are having in these places just the same thing that happens in other congested areas. We have two families to one house because the income of one family is not sufficient to meet the rent. Even under this proposed new scheme, the same sort of thing is going to be produced.

The whole basis of the housing idea is that houses should be built so as to be accessible to the poorest paid workers. You are not solving the housing question by building a type of house which still leaves those whom we desire to relieve in the same position. If you take any city in Scotland, the same argument applies. We speak now of taking away part of the subsidy as the only means of enabling the Government to do something better. It was understood, in the first instance, that the subsidy was to provide the houses of which the people could pay the rent. What has happened. The subsidy has gone into the pockets of the private contractors. Not long ago, in my own constituency, I was called to see a number of houses where the ceilings had fallen, and I found just that kind of materials had been used which rendered it impossible to make a good job. We talk about the subsidy, but, when you put out the work to private enterprise, it means that the Corporation have to have an inspector to stand behind every man to see that specific materials are used. A great deal has been said about specifications, but in Glasgow we know from sad experience that unless we take money from the rates in order to pay an inspector to stand behind every man in order to see that the right materials are used, we shall be robbed every time. These houses in my constituency are dreadful evidence of that. For those reasons, I am moving the Amendment which is on the Paper, and I hope that those who are really interested in housing will show that they are determined that we shall have houses for the people. The national health is at stake, and a healthy population is the biggest asset that we can create.

Mr. TINKER

I beg to second the Amendment for the purpose of put ting a question. I understood from the righthon. Gentleman that Leigh is having reduced rents. I do not follow the point of his argument, for I received a letter from the Leigh Town Council this morning asking me to oppose the Motion of the Government. They want the present subsidy to be continued, so it is evident, therefore, that the town council believe that good can come from money granted by the State. Surely, anyone with a knowledge of slums, and who is convinced of the necessity for the removal of slums, must realise that the Government will have to continue to give subsidies. Most hon. Gentlemen believe, as I do, that environment plays a great part in the life of the individual. A slum environment means that you will have a poor class of citizen; give better housing accommodation and you will have better citizens altogether. Unless there is some State help for the purpose of clearing slum property, I cannot see how it can be brought about. I support the Amendment on behalf of the Leigh Town Council.

Mr. GILLETT

I just want to reply to a point raised by the Parliamentary Secretary in his closing speech. In his answer to the hon. Member for Shoreditch (Mr. Thurtle) on the question of slums he said that the problem was one of land—

Sir K. WOOD

I said that it was not a question so far as Shoreditch was concerned of erecting new houses, because we continue the subsidy as far as slum clearances are concerned.

Mr. GILLETT

And the Parliamentary Secretary went on to refer to the question of land. I think he will find that is so when he refers to the OFFICIAL REPORT. I refer to it because a neighbouring town council has found it impossible to obtain land at a price which would be worth their while to erect houses. A landlord of Finsbury offered them a site, and they declined it. Finsbury is one of the most overcrowded parts of London. Afterwards, when the Home Secretary wanted to erect houses for the accommodation of the London police a site closely adjoining the one offered to the borough council was accepted. The Home Secretary thought it was worth while spending money in order to house the London police whereas the borough council. said that the land was too expensive for them to buy. To my mind the Government, if it is going to tackle the problem of slum clearances properly, will have to get out of their minds the idea that it can be done on what is called a financial basis. We shall never make any headway by considering this problem on purely business lines. A block of tenements has been erected in Finsbury, and when I went and saw one of the tenants, he told me that they liked the accommodation but that they had to nay in rent and rates £1 per week. The man was making little over £2 per week and on that he had to keep himself, a wife and three or four children. The right hon. Gentleman must not think that he is going to tackle the slum problem without putting down a large sum of money. Only in that way shall we ever be able to make any headway. The London County Council as their housing policy have built houses on the outskirts of London. It has barely touched the problem in the centre of London. The London County Council has closed the list of applicants—

Mr. SPEAKER

The hon. Member is not strictly relevant; this refers to the housing subsidy.

Mr. GILLETT

The houses to which I am now referring are in the housing estates of the London County Council, for which they are making provision under one or other of their schemes, and what I was wishing to point out was that although I recognise the work that has been done by the provision of these houses, the Government must understand —I know the right hon. Gentleman the Parliamentary Secretary is always very complacent and self-satisfied—that as far as the Borough of Finsbury is concerned, what has been done by the Government and the London County Council under the various schemes has not touched the housing problem. There are thousands of people who want accommodation, and I hope if it is not in order to discuss the slum problem now, the Parliamentary Secretary will understand that there is still an unsolved problem awaiting him in Central London.

Mr. MacLAREN

The question before the House, as Mr. Speaker has reminded us, is as to whether the subsidy should be continued or not. In listening to the speech of the Parliamentary Secretary one would have made the deduction that pro rata with the reduction of subsidy the cheaper would houses become. Let us be quite fair on this matter and try to put the Government's point of view, which is, that over a number of years there has been a sustained flow of subsidies into houses. The tendency with that flow has been to aggravate prices and rather to feed the maw of those who are forming combinations and putting up the prices for housing material. That being so, they have made arrangements to reduce the subsidy in order to bring down the price of materials. It is not irrelevant to remind the House that for the last fortnight or three weeks we have heard from the Treasury Box, and from no less a person than the Minister of Health himself, of the devastating effect which rates have upon industry and how they have brought some industries to the verge of bankruptcy. Here is the question of housing. If we are trying to solve it by subsidies, I would say quite openly, with- out fear of contradiction, that you will never solve the housing problem by subsidies. Indeed, I go as far as to say would abolish the housing subsidies at once. I know that may seem a heresy on this side and a novelty on the other side of the House, but I would at the same time take precautions to cut down any contributory cost that would increase the rent charged to the tenants of the houses.

Let me give my own experience in Stoke-on-Trent. We can build houses there, to let, with three rooms, kitchen and bathroom for 10s. a week. We have made inquiries this last mouth or so and we have had to clear out 250 people living in wooden shacks and caravans, with no lavatory accommodation and no water laid on. The thing has become a menace to the entire city. We have had to enforce by-laws and to say to these people: "Within six months you must cleat out of these ramshackle erections," but we have no houses to put them into. We have made inquiries and we find the people are paying 10s. a week for railway carriages, and caravans and things that have previously been used as War huts. They have told us, before the town planning committee of which I am a member, that they are willing to pay 10s. if they can get houses.

It is true that the cost of building material has come down recently, and naturally that would be so, because the more they know that the Government are feeding them with subsidies, the more those gentlemen will sweat the Government. We found we could let three rooms and a kitchen at 10s. a week; but, when we add rates, the rent of that house is 17s. 6d. a week, and it is thrown out of the grip of the working man. The statesman and politicians say, "Solve the problem by means of subsidy." You collect money from the taxpayers and send a subsidy to the local authorities, who send it to the builders, and then you send the rate collector to collect rates on the house—a system the like of which you could not find outside a lunatic asylum. If you are to abolish subsidies, then abolish also the rates upon houses which are making them dearer than they ought to be. At Stoke-on-Trent our rates are 20s. in the 2; and, so long as you continue this heavy impost there is no alternative left but the subsidy. It will not solve your problem. I support this Amendment not because I believe that by giving more subsidy you will solve the housing problem—I would rather follow the Government in its reasoning and de-rate houses—but because I believe that, as long as you create by your rating system a scarcity of houses, I am in favour of more subsidy.

Mr. BECKETT

When the right hon. Gentleman the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health reads his own speech in the OFFICIAL REPORT to-morrow morning, he will not feel any happier about it than, as my hon. Friend the Member for Shore-ditch (Mr. Thurtle) said, the Minister of Health will feel when he reviews the whole of his legislation on this subject. The speech was based on the Gilbertian theory that the less money you spend on houses the better the houses are going to be. While I have considerable sympathy with the speech of the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down (Mr. MacLaren), at the same time, while we allow our house-building to be the miserable piece-

meal thing it is now, while we reject the obvious common-sense process of putting up houses for the community on a community plan and thus allow landlords and other sharks to extract profit from it, while we go on with this system out of Bedlam, it is absolutely necessary that proper subsidies should be given.

I rose only to say that this proposal to reduce the subsidy is going to have an immediately disastrous effect on all the housing schemes on which local authorities are now engaged. In Gateshead we have already had to abandon one scheme because of the reduction that took place two years ago. This further reduction will make it practically impossible to get on with the big schemes of housing that are absolutely necessary. I want Members to divide with the full knowledge that when they vote for this reduction they are making it even more difficult than it was before for overburdened local authorities to meet the strain of rehousing the industrial population.

Question put, "That those words be there added."

The House divided: Ayes; 149; Noes, 245.

Division No. 55.]	AYES.	[11.2 p.m.
Adamson. Rt. Hon. W. (Fife, West)	Gibbins. Joseph	Lowth, T.
Adamson, W. M. (Staff., Cannock)	Glllett. George M.	Lunn, William
Alexander, A. V. (Sheffield, Hillsbro')	Graham, D. M. (Lanark, Hamilton)	MacDonald, Rt. Hon. J. R.(Aberavon)
Amnion, Charles George	Graham, Rt. Hon. Wm. (Edin., Cent.)	Macklnder, W.
Baker, J. (Wolverhampton, Bilston)	Greenall, T.	MacLaren, Andrew
Baker, Walter	Greenwood. A. (Nelson and Colne)	Maclean, Neil (Glasgow, Govan)
Barnes, A.	Grenfell, D. R. (Glamorgan)	MacNeill-Welr, L.
Barr, J.	Griffith, F. Kingsley	March, S.
Batey, Joseph	Grundy, T. W.	Maxton, James
Beckett, John (Gateshead)	Hall, F. (York. W.R., Norm-nton)	Mitchell, E. Rosslyn (Paisley)
Bellamy, A.	Hall. G. H. (Merthyr Tydvil)	Montague, Frederick
Benn, Wedgwood	Hamilton, Sir R. (Orkney & Shetland)	Morris. R. H.
Bondfield, Margaret	Hardle, George D.	Morrison, R. C. (Tottenham, N.)
Bowerman, Rt. Hon. Charles W.	Harris, Percy A.	Mosley, Sir Oswald
Briant, Frank	Hayday, Arthur	Murnin, H.
Broad. F. A.	Henderson, T. (Glasgow)	Naylor, T. E.
Bromfield, William	Hirst, G. H.	Newman, Sir R. H. S. D. L. (Exeter)
Brown, Ernest (Leith)	Hirst, W. (Bradford, South)	Oliver, George Harold
Brown, James (Ayr and Bute)	Hollins, A.	Owen, Major G.
Buchanan, G.	Hore-Bellsha. Leslie	Palin, John Henry
Buxton, Rt. Hon. Noel	Hudson, J. H. (Huddersfield)	Paling, W.
Cape, Thomas	Hutchison, Sir Robert (Montrose)	Pethick-Lawrence, F. W.
Charleton, H. C.	Jenkins, W. (Glamorgan, Neath)	Ponsonby, Arthur
Cluse, W. S.	John, William (Rhondda, West)	Potts, John S.
Connolly, M.	Johnston. Thomas (Dundee)	Richardson, R. (Houghton-le-Spring)
Cove, W. G.	Jones, Henry Haydn (Merioneth)	Riley. Ben
Cowan. D. M. (Scottish Universities)	Jones, Morgan (Caerphilly)	Ritson, J.
Crawfurd, H. E.	Jones, T. I. Mardy (Pontypridd)	Roberts, Rt. Hon. F. O.(W.Bromwich)
Dalton, Hugh	Kelly, W. T.	Robinson, W. C. (Yorks,W. R., Ellan)
Davles. Rhys John (Westhoughton)	Kennedy, T.	Saklatvala, Shapurll
Day, Harry	Kenworthy, Lt.-Com. Hon. Joseph M.	Salter, Dr. Alfred
Dennison, R.	Kirkwood, D.	Scrymgeour, E.
Duncan, C.	Lansbury, George	Sexton, James
Dunnico, H.	Lawrence, Susan	Shaw, Rt. Hon. Thomas (Preston)
Fenby, T. D.	Lawson, John James	Shepherd, Arthur Lewis
Gardner, J. P.	Lee, F.	Shlels, Dr. Drummond
Garro-Jones, Captain G. M.	Longbottom, A. W.	Shinwell, E.
Sinclair, Major Sir A. (Caithness)	Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton, E.)	Wheatley, Rt. Hon. J.
Sltch, Charles H.	Thorne, W. (West Ham, Plaistow)	Whiteley, W.
Smillie, Robert	Thurtle, Ernest	Wiggins, William Martin
Smith, Ben (Bermondsey, Rotherhiths)	Tinker, John Joseph	Wilkinson, Ellen C.
Smith, Ronnie (Penlstona)	Tomlinson, R. P.	Williams, C. P. (Denbigh, Wrexham)
Snell, Harry	Townend, A. E.	Williams, T. (York, Don Valley)
Snowden, Rt. Hon. Philip	Trevelyan, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles	Wilson, C. H. (Sheffield, Attercliffe}
Stamford, T. W.	Vlant, S. P.	Wilson, R. J. (Jarrow)
Stephen, Campbell	Wallhead, Richard C.	Windsor, Walter
Stewart, J. (St. Rollox)	Walsh, Rt. Hon. Stephen	Young, Robert (Lancaster, Newton)
Strauss, E. A.	Watson, W. M. (Dunfermilne)
Sullivan, Joseph	Wedgwood, Rt. Hon. Josiah	TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—
Sutton, J. E.	Wellock, Wilfred	Mr. Allen Parkinson and Mr. Charles
Thomas, Rt. Hon. James H. (Derby)	Westwood, J.	Edwards.
NOES.
Acland-Troyte, Lieut.-Colonel	Erskine, Lord (Somerset, Weston-s.-M.)	Luce, Maj.-Gen. sir Richard Harman
Ainsworth, Lieut.-Col. Charles	Everard, W. Lindsay	Lumley, L. B.
Albery, Irving James	Falle, Sir Bertram G.	Lynn, Sir R. J.
Alexander, E. E. (Leyton)	Fanshawe, Captain G. C.	MacAndrew, Major Charles Glen
Allen, Sir J. Sandeman	Fermoy, Lord	Macdonald, Capt. P. D. (I. of W.)
Amery, Rt. Hon. Leopold C. M. S.	Fleiden, E. B.	McDonnell, Colonel Hon. Angus
Ashley, Lt.-Col. Rt. Hon. Wilfrid W.	Forestler-Walker, Sir L.	MacIntyre, Ian
Astor, Maj. Hn. John J. (Kent, Dover)	Forrest, W.	McLean, Major A.
Atholl, Duchess of	Foster, Sir Harry S	Macmillan, Captain H.
Atkinson, C.	Fraser, Captain Ian	MacRobert, Alexander M.
Baldwin, Rt. Hon. Stanley	Fremantle, Lieut.-Colonel Francis E.	Maitland, A. (Kent, Faversham)
Balfour, George (Hampstead)	Galbraith, J. F. W.	Maitland, Sir Arthur D. Steel-
Balniel, Lord	Ganzonl, Sir John	Makins, Brigadier-General E.
Barclay-Harvey, C. M.	Gates, Percy	Manningham-Buller, Sir Mervyn
Beamish, Rear-Admiral T. P. H.	Gault, Lieut.-Col. Andrew Hamilton	Margesson, Captain D.
Bellairs, Commander Carlyon	Gilmour, Lt.-Col. Rt. Hon. Sir John	Marriott, Sir J. A. R.
Benn, Sir A. S. (Plymouth, Drake)	Glyn, Major R. G. C.	Mason, Colonel Glyn K.
Bennett, A. J.	Golf, Sir Park	Meyer, Sir Frank
Berry, Sir George	Gower, Sir Robert	Milne, J. S. Wardlaw
Bethel, A.	Grace, John	Mitchell, S. (Lanark, Lanark)
Bevan, S. J.	Grant, Sir J. A.	Monsell, Eyres, Com. Rt. Hon. B. M.
Bird, E. R. (Yorks, W. R., Skipton)	Grattan-Doyle, Sir N.	Morrison, H. (Wilts, Salisbury)
Bird, Sir R. B. (Wolverhampton, W.)	Greene, W. P. Crawford	Morrison-Bell. Sir Arthur Cllve.
Boothby, R. J. G.	Gretton, Colonel Rt. Hen. John	Murchison, Sir Kenneth
Bowyer, Captain G. E. W.	Grotrian, H. Brent	Newton, Sir D. G. C. (Cambridge)
Brass, captain w.	Guinness, Rt. Hon. Walter E.	Nicholson, O. (Westminster)
Briggs, J. Harold	Gunston, Captain D. W.	Nuttali, Ellis
Briscoe, Richard George	Hacking, Douglas H.	O'Connor, T. J. (Bedford, Luton).
Brittain, Sir Harry	Hamilton, Sir George	O'Neill, Major Rt. Hon. Hugh.
Brocklebank. C. E. R.	Hammersley, S. S.	Oman, Sir Charles William C.
Brooke, Brigadier-General C. R. I.	Hanbury, C.	Ormsby-Gore, Rt. Hon. William
Broun-Lindsay, Major H.	Hannon, Patrick Joseph Henry	Pennefather, Sir John
Brown, Col. D. C. (N'th'l'd., Hexham)	Harland, A.	Penny, Frederick George
Bullock, Captain M,	Hartington, Marquess of	Percy, Lord Eustace (Hastings)
Burman, J. B.	Harvey, G. (Lambeth, Kennington)	Perkins, Colonel E. K.
Carver, Major w. H.	Harvey, Major S. E. (Devon, Totnes)	Perring, Sir William George
Cayzer, Maj. Sir Herbt. R.(Prtsmth. S.)	Headlam, Lieut.-Colonel C. M.	Peto, Sir Basil E. (Devon, Barnstaple)
Cazalet, Captain Victor A.	Henderson, Capt. R. H.(Oxf'd, Henley)	Power, Sir John Cecil
Cecil, Rt. Hon. Sir Evelyn (Aston)	Henderson, Lieut.-Col. Sir Vivfan	Pownall, Sir Assheton
Chamberlain, Rt. Hon. N. (Ladywood)	Heneage. Lieut.-Col. Arthur P.	Preston, Sir Walter (Cheltenham)
Chapman, Sir S.	Henn, Sir Sydney H.	Preston, William
Churchill, Rt. Hon. Winston Spencer	Hennessy, Major Sir G. R. J.	Radford, E. A.
Churchman, Sir Arthur C.	Hilton, Cecil	Raine, Sir Walter
Clayton, G. C.	Hoare, Lt.-Col. Rt. Hon. Sir S. J. G.	Ramsden, E.
Cobb, Sir Cyril	Holbrook, Sir Arthur Richard	Rawson, Sir Cooper
Cochrane, Commander Hon. A. D.	Holt, Capt. H. P.	Held, D. D. (County Down)
Cockerill, Brig.-General Sir George	Hopkins, J. W. W.	Remer, J. R.
Cohen, Major J. Brunei	Hopkinson, A. (Lancaster, Mossley)	Rhys, Hon. C. A. U.
Conway, Sir W. Martin	Howard-Bury, Colonel C. K.	Richardson, Sir p. W. (Sur'y, Ch'ts'y)
Cooper, A. Duff	Hudson. Capt. A. U.M. (Hackney, N.)	Roberts, E. H. G. (Flint)
Couper, J. B.	Hudson, R. S. (Cumberl'nd, Whlteh'n)	Roberts, Sir Samuel (Hereford)
Courtauld, Major J, S.	Hume, Sir G. H.	Rodd, Rt. Hon. Sir James Rennell
Courthope, Colonel Sir G. L.	Hume-Williams, Sir W. Ellis	Ropner, Major L.
Craig, Sir Ernest (Chester, Crewe)	Hurd, Percy A.	Ruggles-Brise, Lieut.-Colonel E. A.
Crookshank, Col. C. de W. (Berwick)	Inskip, Sir Thomas Walker H.	Russell, Alexander West (Tynemouth)
Crookshank,Cpt.H.(Lindsey,Gainsbro)	Jackson, Sir H. (Wandsworth, Cen'l)	Rya, F. G.
Culverwell, C. T. (Bristol, West)	Kennedy, A. R. (Preston)	Salmon, Major I.
Curzon, Captain Viscount	Kindersley, Major Guy M.	Samuel, A. M. (Surrey, Farnham)
Davles, Maj. Geo. F. (Somerset,Yeovil)	King, Commodore Henry Douglas	Samuel, Samuel (W'dsworth, Putney)
Dawson, Sir Philip	Kinloch-Cooke, Sir Clement	Sandeman, N. Stewart
Dean, Arthur Wellesley	Lamb, J. Q.	Sanders, Sir Robert A.
Dlxey, A. C	Lloyd, Cyril E. (Dudley)	Sanderson, Sir Frank
Dlxon, Captain Rt. Hon. Herbert	Locker- Lampson, Com. O. (Handsw'th)	Sandon, Lord
Edmondson, Major A. J.	Long, Major Eric	Sassoon, Sir Philip Albert Gustave D.,
Edwards, J. Hugh (Accrington)	Looker. Herbert William	Savery, S. S.
Elliot, Major Walter E.	Lougher, Lewis	Sheffield, Sir Berkeley
Ellis, R. G.	Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh Vera	Shepperson, E. W.

Skelton. A. N.	Thorn, Lt.-Col. J. G. (Dumbarton)	White, Lieut.-Col. Sir G. Dairymple
Smith, Louis W. (Sheffield, Hallam)	Thompson, Luke (Sunderland)	Williams, Com. C. (Devon, Torquay)
Smith, R. W.(Aberd'n & Kinc'dine.C.)	Thomson, F. C. (Aberdeen, South)	Williams, Herbert G. (Reading)
Smith-Carington, Neville W.	Thomson, Rt. Hon. Sir W. Mitchell	Wilson, R. R. (Stafford, Lichfield)
Smithers, Waldron	Tlnne, J. A.	Windsor-Clive, Lieut.-Colonel George
Somerville, A. A. (Windsor)	Titchfield, Major the Marquess of	Winterton, Rt. Hon. Earl
Southby, Commander A. R. J.	Tryon, Rt. Hon. George Clement	Withers, John James
Spender-Clay, Colonel H.	Vaughan-Morgan, Cot. K. P.	Wolmer, Viscount
Stanley, Lieut.-Colonel Rt. Hon. G. F.	Waddington, R.	Womersley, W. J.
Stanley, Lord (Fylde)	Wallace, Captain D. E.	Wood, Rt. Hon. Sir Kingsley
Stanley, Hon. O. F, G. (Westm'eland)	Ward, Lt.-Col. A.L.(Kingston-on-Hull)	Woodcock, Colonel H. C.
Steel, Major Samuel Strang	Warner, Brigadier-General W. W.	Wright, Brig.-General W. D.
Storry-Deans, R.	Waterhouse, Captain Charles
Stott, Lieut.-Colonel W. H.	Watts, Sir Thomas	TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—
Sueter, Rear-Admiral Murray Fraser	Wayland, Sir William A.	Major Sir William Cope and Sir
Sugden, Sir Wilfrid	Wells, S. R.	Victor Warrender.

Main Question put.

The House divided: Ayes, 241, Noes, 146.

Division No. 56.]	AYES.	[11.12 p.m.
Acland-Troyte. Lieut.-Colonel	Dixey, A. C.	King, Commodore Henry Douglas
Ainsworth, Lieut.-Col. Charles	Dixon, Captain Rt. Hon. Herbert	Kinioch-Cooke, Sir Clement
Albery, Irving James	Edmondson, Major A. J.	Lamb, J. Q.
Alexander, E. E. (Leyton)	Edwards, J. Hugh (Accrington)	Lloyd, Cyril E. (Dudley)
Allen, Sir J. Sandeman	Elliot, Major Walter E.	Locker-Lampson, Com.O. (Handsw'th)
Amery, Rt. Hon. Leopold C. M. S.	Ellis, R. G.	Long, Major Eric
Ashley, Lt.-Col. Rt. Hon. Wilfrid W.	Erskine. Lord (Somerset, Weston-s.-M.)	Looker, Herbert William
Astor, Maj. Hn. John J. (Kent, Dover)	Everard, W. Lindsay	Lougher, Lewis
Atholl, Duchess of	Falle, Sir Bertram G.	Lucas-Tooth. Sir Hugh Vere
Atkinson, C.	Fanshawe, Captain G. D.	Luce, Maj.-Gen. Sir Richard Harman
Baldwin, Rt. Hon. Stanley	Fermoy, Lord	Lumley, L. R.
Balfour, George (Hampstead)	Fielden, E. B.	Lynn, Sir R. J.
Balniel, Lord	Forestler-Walker, Sir L.	MacAndrew, Major Charles Glen
Barclay-Harvey, C. M.	Forrest, W.	Macdonald, Capt. P. D. (I. of W.)
Beamish, Rear-Admiral T. P. H.	Fraser, Captain Ian	Mc Donnell, Colonel Hon. Angus
Bellalrs, Commander Carlyon	Fremantle, Lieut-Colonel Francis E.	MacIntyre, Ian
Benn, Sir A. S. (Plymouth, Drake)	Galbraith, J. F. W.	McLean, Major A.
Bennett, A. J.	Ganzeni, Sir John	Macmillan, Captain H.
Berry, Sir George	Gates, Percy	Mac Robert, Alexander M.
Bethel, A.	Gilmour, Lt.-Col. Rt. Hon. Sir John	Maitland, A. (Kent, Faversham)
Bevan, S. J.	Glyn, Major R. G. C.	Maitland, Sir Arthur D. Steel.
Bird, E. R. (Yorks, W. R., Skipton)	Goff, Sir Park.	Makins, Brigadier-General E.
Bird. Sir R. B. (Wolverhampton, W.)	Gower, Sir Robert	Manningham-Buller, Sir Mervyn
Boothby, R. J. G.	Grace, John	Margesson, Captain D.
Brass, Captain W.	Grant, Sir J. A.	Marriott, Sir J. A. R.
Briggs, J. Harold	Grattan-Doyle, Sir N.	Mason, Colonel Glyn K.
Briscoe, Richard George	Greene, W. P. Crawford	Meyer, Sir Frank
Brittain, Sir Harry	Gretton, Colonel Rt. Hon. John	Milne, J. S. Wardlaw.
Brocklebank, C. E. R.	Grotrian, H. Brent	Mitchell, S. (Lanark, Lanark)
Brooke, Brigadier-General C. R. I.	Guinness, Rt. Hon. Walter E.	Monsell, Eyres. Com. Rt. Hon. B. M.
Broun-Lindsay, Major H.	Gunston, Captain D. W.	Morrison, H. (Wilts, Salisbury)
Brown, Col. D. C. (N'th'l'd., Hexham)	Hacking, Douglas H.	Morrison-Bell, Sir Arthur Clive
Bullock, Captain M.	Hamilton, Sir George	Newton, Sir D. G. C. (Cambridge)
Burman, J. B.	Hammersley, S. S.	Nicholson, O. (Westminster)
Carver, Major W. H.	Hanbury, C.	Nuttall, Ellis
Cayzer. Maj. Sir Herbt. R.(Prtsmth.S.)	Hannon, Patrick Joseph Henry	O'Connor, T. J. (Bedford, Luton)
Cazalet, Captain Victor A.	Harland, A.	O'Neill, Major Rt. Hon. Hugh
Cecil, Rt. Hon. Sir Evelyn (Aston)	Hartington, Marquess of	Oman Sir Charles William C.
Chamberlain, Rt. Hon. N. (Ladywood)	Harvey, G. (Lambeth, Kennington)	Ormsby-Gore, Rt. Hon. William
Chapman, Sir S.	Harvey, Major S. E. (Devon, Totnes)	Pennefather, Sir John
Churchill, Rt. Hon. Winston Spencer	Headlam, Lieut-Colonel C. M.	Penny, Frederick George
Churchman, Sir Arthur C.	Henderson,Capt.R. R. (Oxf'd, Henley)	Percy, Lord Eustace (Hastings)
Clayton, G. C.	Henderson, Lieut.-Col. Sir Vivian	Perkins, Colonel E. K.
Cobb, Sir Cyril	Heneage, Lieut.-Col. Arthur P.	Perring, Sir William George
Cochrane, Commander Hon. A. D.	Henn, Sir Sydney H.	Peto, Sir Basil E. (Devon, Barnstaple)
Cockerill, Brig.-General Sir George	Hennessy, Major Sir G. R. J.	Power, Sir John Cecil
Cohen, Major J. Brunel	Hilton, Cecil	Pownall, Sir Assheton
Conway, Sir W. Martin	Hoare, Lt.-Col. Rt. Hon. Sir S. J. G.	Preston, Sir Walter (Cheltenham)
Cooper, A. Duff	Holbrook, Sir Arthur Richard	Preston, William
Cope, Major Sir William	Holt, Captain H. P.	Radford, E. A.
Couper, J. B.	Hopkins, J. W. W.	Raine, Sir Walter
Courtauld, Major J. S.	Hopkinson, A. (Lancaster, Mossley)	Ramsden, E.
Courthope, Colonel Sir G. L.	Howard-Bury, Colonel C. K.	Rawson, Sir Cooper
Craig, Sir Ernest (Chester, Crewe)	Hudson, Capt. A. U. M. (Hackney.N.)	Reid. D. D. (County Down)
Crookshank, Col. C. de W. (Berwick)	Hudson, R. S. (Cumberland, Whiteh'n)	Remer, J. R.
Crookshank,Cpt.H.(Lindsey,Galnsbro)	Hume, Sir G. H	Rhys, Hon. C. A. U.
Culverwell, C. T. (Bristol, West)	Hurd, Percy A.	Richardson, Sir P. W. (Sur'y, Ch'ts'y)
Curzon, Captain Viscount	Inskip, Sir Thomas Walker H.	Roberts, E. H. G. (Flint)
Davles, Maj. Geo. F. (Somerset, Yeovil)	Jackson, Sir H. (Wandsworth, Can't)	Roberts, Sir Samuel (Hereford)
Dawson, Sir Philip	Kennedy, A. R. (Preston)	Rodd, Rt. Hon. Sir James Rennell
Dean, Arthur Wellesley	Kindersley, Major Guy M.	Ropner, Major L.
Ruggles-Brise, Lieut.-Colonel E. A.	Spender-Clay, Colonel H.	Waterhouse, Captain Charles
Russell, Alexander West (Tynemouth)	Stanley, Lieut.-Colonel Rt. Hon. G. F.	Watts, Sir Thomas
Rye, F. G.	Stanley, Lord (Fylde)	Wayland, Sir William A.
Salmon, Major I.	Stanley, Hon. O. F. G. (Westm'eland)	Wells, S. R.
Samuel, A. M. (Surrey, Farnham)	Steel, Major Samuel Strang	White, Lieut.-Col. Sir G. Dairymple
Samuel, Samuel (W'dsworth, Putney)	Storry-Deans, R.	Williams, Com. C. (Devon, Torquay)
Sandeman, N. Stewart	Stott, Lieut.-Colonel W. H.	Williams, Herbert G. (Reading)
Sanders, Sir Robert A.	Sueter, Rear-Admiral Murray Fraser	Wilson, R. R. (Stafford, Lichfield)
Sanderson, Sir Frank	Sugden, Sir Wilfrid	Windsor-Clive Lieut.-Colonel George
Sandon, Lord	Thorn, Lt-Col. J. G. (Dumbarton)	Winterton, Rt. Hon. Earl
Sassoon, Sir Philip Albert Gustave D.	Thompson, Luke (Sunderland)	Withers, John James
Savery, S. S.	Thomson, F. C. (Aberdeen, S.)	Wolmer. Viscount
Sheffield, Sir Berkeley	Thomson, Rt. Hon. Sir W. Mitchell-	Womersley, W. J
Shepperson, E. W.	Tinne, J. A.	Wood, Rt. Hon. Sir Kingsley
Skelton. A. N.	Titchfield, Major the Marquess of	Woodcock, Colonel H. C.
Smith, Louis W. (Sheffield, Hallam)	Tryon, Rt. Hon. George Clement	Wright, Brig.-General W. D.
Smith, R. W. (Aberd'n & Kinc'dine.C.)	Vaughan-Morgan, Col. K. P.
Smith-Carington, Neville W.	Waddington, R.	TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—
Smithers, Waldron	Wallace, Captain D. E.	Captain Bowyer and Sir Victor Warrender.
Somerville, A. A. (Windsor)	Ward, Lt.-Col. A. L.(Kingston-on-Hull)
Southby, Commander A. R. J.	Warner, Brigadier-General W. W.
NOES.
Adamson, Rt. Hon. W. (Fife, West)	Hardle, George D.	Robinson, W. C. (Yorks,W.R., Eiland)
Adamson, W. M. (Staff., Cannock)	Harris, Percy A.	Saklatvala, Shapurji
Alexander, A. V. (Sheffield, Hillsbro')	Hayday, Arthur	Salter, Dr. Alfred
Ammon, Charles George	Hirst, G. H.	Scrymgeour, E.
Baker, J. (Wolverhampton, Bilston)	Hirst, W. (Bradford, South)	Sexton, James
Baker, Walter	Hollins, A.	Shaw, Rt. Hon. Thomas (Preston)
Barnes, A.	Hore-Belisha, Leslie	Shepherd, Arthur Lewis
Barr, J.	Hudson, J. H. (Huddersfield)	Shiels, Dr. Drummond
Batey, Joseph	Hutchison, Sir Robert (Montrose)	Shinwell, E.
Beckett, John (Gateshead)	Jenkins, W. (Glamorgan, Neath)	Sinclair, Major Sir A. (Caithness)
Bellamy, A.	John, William (Rhondda, West)	Sitch, Charles H.
Benn, Wedgwood	Johnston, Thomas (Dundee)	Smillie, Robert
Bondfield, Margaret	Jones, Henry Haydn (Merioneth)	Smith, Ben (Bermondsey, Rotherhithe)
Bowerman. Rt. Hon. Charles W.	Jones, Morgan (Caerphilly)	Smith, Rennie (Penistone)
Briant, Frank	Jones, T. I. Mardy (Pontypridd)	Snell, Harry
Broad, F. A.	Kelly. W. T.	Snowden, Rt. Hon. Philip
Bromfield, William	Kennedy, T.	Stamford, T. W.
Brown, Ernest (Leith)	Kenworthy, Lt.-Com. Hon. Joseph M.	Stephen, Campbell
Brown, James (Ayr and Bute)	Kirkwood, D.	Stewart, J. (St. Rollox)
Buchanan, G.	Lansbury, George	Sullivan, J.
Buxton, Rt. Hon. Noel	Lawrence, Susan	Sutton, J. E.
Cape, Thomas	Lawson, John James	Thomas, Rt. Hon. James H. (Derby)
Charleton, H. C.	Lee, F.	Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton, E.)
Cluse, W. S.	Longbottom, A. W.	Thorne, W. (West Ham, Plaistow)
Connolly, M.	Lowth, T.	Thurtle, Ernest
Cove. W. G.	Lunn, William	Tinker, John Joseph
Cowan, D. M. (Scottish Universities)	MacDonald, Rt. Hon. J. R. (Aberavon)	Tomlinson, R. P.
Crawfurd, H. E.	Mackinder, W.	Townend, A. E.
Dalton, Hugh	Maclean, Nell (Glasgow, Govan)	Trevelyan, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles
Davies, Rhys John (Westhoughton)	MacNeill-Weir, L.	Viant, S. P.
Day, Harry	March, S.	Wallhead, Richard C.
Dennison, R.	Maxton, James	Walsh, Rt. Hon. Stephen
Duncan. C.	Mitchell, E. Rosslyn (Paisley)	Watson, W. M. (Dunfermilne)
Dunnico, H.	Montague, Frederick	Wedgwood, Rt. Hon. Joslah
Edwards, C. (Monmouth, Bedwellty)	Morrison, R. C. (Tottenham, N.)	Wellock, Wilfred
Fenby, T. D.	Mosley, Sir Oswald	Westwood, J.
Gardner, J. P.	Murnin, H.	Wheatley, Rt. Hon. J.
Garro-Jones, Captain G. M.	Naylor, T. E.	Whiteley, W.
Gibbins, Joseph	Newman, Sir R. H. S. D. L. (Exeter)	Wiggins, William Martin
Gillett, George M.	Oliver, George Harold	Wilkinson, Ellen C.
Graham, D. M. (Lanark, Hamilton)	Owen, Major G.	Williams, C. P. (Denbigh, Wrexham)
Graham, Rt. Hon. Wm. (Edin., Cent.)	Palln, John Henry	Williams, T. (York, Don Valley)
Greenall. T.	Parkinson, John Allen (Wigan)	Wilson, C. H. (Sheffield, Attercliffe)
Greenwood, A. (Nelson and Colne)	Pethick- Lawrence, F. W.	Wilson, R. J. Marrow)
Grenfell, D. R. (Glamorgan)	Ponsonby, Arthur	Windsor, Walter
Griffith, F. Kingsley	Potts, John S.	Young, Robert (Lancaster, Newton)
Grundy, T. W.	Richardson, R. (Houghton-le-Spring)
Hall, F. (York, W.R., Normanton)	Riley, Ben	TELLERS FOR THE NOES.-
Hall, G. H. (Merthyr Tydvil)	Ritson, J.	Mr. T. Henderson and Mr. Paling.
Hamilton, Sir R. (Orkney & Shetland)	Roberts, Rt. Hon. F. O.(W.Bromwich)

Resolved, That the Draft of the Order proposed to be made by the Minister of Health and the Scottish Board of Health, with the approval of the Treasury, under Section 5 of the Housing (Financial Provisions) Act, 1924 (presented 6th December, 1928), he approved.