HC Deb 08 July 1947 vol 439 cc2170-80

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Mr. J. Henderson.]

10.41 p.m.

Mr. Wyatt (Birmingham, Aston)

After the affairs of Manchester have had a good airing this evening, I would like for a few moments to turn the attention of those hon. Members who remain to the affairs of an even larger and more important provincial city, namely, Birmingham. I wish to raise the subject of housing repairs. It is a question which I feel is possibly being neglected, or overlooked somewhat, in view of the energy being directed to the new housing programme; but the majority of the people in the country, certainly in Birmingham and in my constituency, will have to live in the same house for the next 10 or 15 years at least, and perhaps in many cases for longer.

My constituency, Aston, is a typical area of Birmingham. It is a slice of working-class houses in an industrial area, and it is the case that the houses are in a bad state of repair, and a great number of them were condemned before the war. Aston is not going to be affected by any development scheme whatever—at least, not for a long time. Thousands in that constituency have no chance of getting new homes for at least a generation. There are nearly 15,000 houses in the area, and the Birmingham health department is confident in asserting that nearly every one of them requires repairs of some sort or another. There are at this moment more than 2,000 statutory notices outstanding in that area which are waiting to be carried out. These notices at the moment are issued only in respect of very serious defects, or where there is some danger to life. These houses were bad before the war, very largely owing to the neglect of the landlords of that time. Now' owing to the impossibility of carrying out repairs during the war and the bad weather at the beginning of this year. they are in an absolutely appalling condition. Thousands of them have holes in the roof; they have no spouting; there is no paint to hold the woodwork together; and in many cases the foundations are splitting. It is normal in many streets for householders to put buckets to catch the water which flows almost unhindered through the roofs.

What is the procedure when one has a house in that condition, with holes in the roof and no spouting left upon it? The tenant goes to the public health department and complains about the state of the house. The sanitary inspector goes along to look at the house to see whether or not the complaint is justified. I should mention that there is now half the number of sanitary inspectors in Birmingham compared with the number before the war, which makes their job even more difficult to carry out. After the inspector's visit, about a week later, if the complaint was justified, he serves a statutory notice, or arranges for a statutory notice to be served. Two months later, if nothing has been done—and in most cases nothing has been done—the inspector goes along to the house again; and then a further notice is served on the owner.

There is great delay after that, a delay of as much as two months. Then follows a summons which obliges the owner or his agent to go to court. A court order is made which usually gives more time to the owner in which to complete the repairs. The delay is perhaps 28 days, or sometimes more. It is only when that order has not been complied with that the local authority can step in and do the job itself. The local authorities are, naturally, very loth to bring many of these statutory notices to the summons stage because they do not have the materials to complete the job in any case. That is why there are, I think, only 30 summonses outstanding in my own constituency of Aston. Normally, the interval of time between the first appearance of the defect and the actual repairing of it is six months. In many cases the delay is as long as 18 months. I have cases which were outstanding when I became a Member of Parliament and which are still outstanding today. Delays of 12 months are quite frequent.

One of the most general excuses which the owners and their agents give is that there are no materials with which to do the job, and that they cannot get the labour. That is not always true. it is a good excuse for the lazy or neglectful agent or owner who does not intend to spend any money on these repairs. But it very often is true, and it is nearly always true in Birmingham. The chief deficiency, the chief shortage, is the shortage of slates. It is now practically impossible in Birmingham to buy slates for housing repairs. Permits are frequently issued for slates but are not honoured. Sometimes slates of 16 by 10 are available, but they are no use, because it is slates of 24 by 12 which are needed. I know of several repairers in my own area who have spent a lot of time trying to get these slates, with no result. They have tried to use asbestos sheets, but the owners have frequently refused to allow that. Another shortage is of zinc for spouting and flushings. Another very important shortage is of cement and adamant. The same applies to lavatory pedestals, and paint, for wood. There is, of course, in addition, some shortage of labour for house repairs.

One of the basic troubles in this matter is that the Ministry of Works seem to have made the erroneous assumption that jobs costing under £10 do not really require special facilities for obtaining materials because the amount of materials needed is so small; but if you have a whole street full of jobs under £10—and there are whole streets in my own constituency where one could count 60 houses in need of such repairs—at least as much material is needed as for a new house. Of course, it is not available.

I am beginning to believe very strongly that one of the troubles is that too much material is being diverted to new houses. Some will have to be diverted back again to repairing and reconditioning old houses. I think it is only fair to point out, on behalf of the people who will have to live in such houses for a great many years to come, that in my area there are still nearly 600 houses out of 15,000 which have no water laid on; that there are 3,500 which have no lavatories; and 11,000 which have no baths, let alone bathrooms. That is a typical area. Something has to be done to make them habitable if they are to be lived in for another 20 years. In Birmingham, 4,000 statutory notices are being served every month, but they are not being met, and nothing is happen- ing. One hundred and fifty licences are being issued in Birmingham every day. Ninety per cent. of these are for house repairs, but permits are not always issued, and if they are, certainly not honoured. I suggest that the Government should set in hand at an early date a complete programme for re-conditioning houses throughout the country. These people pay rates for new houses to be put up which they will not be able to live in for 20 years. It is asking very much of people to remain patiently under these conditions and to expect them to get cheerfully out of beds on which rain has been pouring all night, and then to be told on their way to work, to work harder when they are probably suffering from rheumatism as a result of the conditions in which they are living.

I think that more pressure will have to be put on landlords as well. There is a tendency for landlords to say: "The Rent Restriction Act still applies; why should we spend money on repairing a house when we cannot get it back by putting the rent up?" It is a psychological attitude which one can understand, even if one cannot sympathise with it. I feel that more flexibility is required in the administration of the present regulations with regard to materials such as plasterboards for ceilings. It would be a great help if we were able to use plasterboards for ceilings; but we are not allowed to do so because they are all allocated to new houses. There is a good supply of plasterboard in Birmingham that could be made available for repair work, but it is not allowed to be used because it is all waiting for new houses. The wretched repairer has to try to get laths and plaster and he has to try to obtain the labour to put the plaster on. I think these difficulties should be ironed out.

My right hon. Friend the Minister of Health has said on one or two occasions that slates and other repair materials are available. That is totally untrue and certainly it is not true of the other materials I have mentioned. I ask him if he will give some hope to these people, who are really desperate for want of these repairs and are living in appalling conditions, that their needs are not being forgotten and that something will be done to make more materials available.

10.53 P.m

Mr. Shurmer (Birmingham, Sparkbrook)

I do not want to take up the time of the House for more than a couple of minutes. I feel very indebted to my hon. Friend who has raised this question because, as a member of the Birmingham City Council for 26 years, I know something about this awful property repair problem, and there is a great need here. My hon. Friend has not stressed the fact that there are five great central areas in which people are living in the most appalling conditions. As I think I said in my maiden speech, there is a need because it may be quite a number of years before we can house the 59,000 people who will require houses after we pull down the slum houses.

There are 32,170 houses in these slum areas. Over 19,000 are back-to-back houses, many of which have been standing for nearly 100 years in back streets, and 24,600, that is, 76 per cent., have been declared unfit by the medical officer of health. Four thousand are without separate water supply and over 18,500 are without separate sanitary accommodation. It means bad enough sanitary arrangements in a house that has one family using the sanitary convenience when it needs to be repaired, and more especially is it so when 30 or 40 people are using one convenience. I spent part of my time living in courtyards for a number of years, and used to do street by street, courtyard by courtyard, trying to get repairs done. What is the matter? The law wants tightening up. There is not the slightest doubt that if we find a butcher who is selling bad meat, we seize that meat and fine him. Yet we allow landlords to own slum property which is detrimental to the health of the people. We impose only a small fine on them and let them excuse themselves and say they are unable to find the materials and are unable to get the labour to carry out the work.

I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Ladywood (Mr. Yates), who represents a slum district, and was a colleague of mine on the Birmingham City Council, wishes to say a few words. I would emphasise that it is time that the Public Health Act, 1936, was altered. We ought to be able to take over the property if the excuse is that the landlords are refusing to repair houses. Thousands and thousands of houses need slates, extra spouting, eave spouting and down spouting, and one can go into any house in the central area and find people having to use buckets, and living under inhuman conditions. I hope the Minister will see that in Birmingham, where thousands made a good war effort, houses will be given a little patching up until we can sweep the slums away. A little bit was done by the Germans. I wish they could have done more without the loss of life.

10.56 p.m.

Mr. Yates (Birmingham, Ladywood)

I also am grateful to the hon. Member for Aston (Mr. Wyatt) for raising this matter. We Members of Parliament for Birmingham have felt for several months past the tremendous anxiety the people are experiencing in the City of Birmingham, and for that reason, having sent many letters to the medical officer of health regarding the unhealthy conditions of the houses, we felt it necessary to raise the question in this House. On 23rd June, the hon. Member for Moseley (Sir P. Hannon) and I raised the question with the Minister of Works, who was asked if he was aware of the shortage of necessary materials for carrying out essential repairs. His reply was: I am not aware of any serious difficulty in meeting these needs. I must say I was extremely amazed at that answer, and I want to ask the Parliamentary Secretary to note particularly that, as a result of many complaints we received, I wrote a letter to the medical officer of health for the City of Birmingham, Dr. Newsholme, asking him what the position was, and this was his answer: There is at the present time very great shortage, in particular of slates, so that we have the utmost difficulty in getting repairs, even to serious damage to roofs. I understand from the chief sanitary inspector that builders are obtaining substitutes in the form of asbestos sheets. In other cases, we have knowledge that builders have had to take slates from outhouses in order to repair holes in a roof, rightly regarding the latter as the more urgent requirement. That is the opinion of the medical officer of health, and I have also with me the report of an agent, responsible for many hundreds of back-to-back houses, in which he says in one instance:— We are applying for a licence to put the work in hand, and in the meantime we have given instructions to the builder to strip the washhouse roofs, salvaging the slates for use on the main roofs, and to cover the washhouse roofs with corrugated iron. I say it is a misdirection of labour, and I ask that an inquiry should be made so that this great anxiety shall be removed from the people of Birmingham.

11.0.p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health (Mr. John Edwards)

I am grateful to my hon. Friends for raising this matter. There are perhaps one or two points of detail which they may permit me to look into and upon which I will write to them. I should not seek to contest for one minute—I myself have lived in Birmingham, though it was some years ago—that there is a great number of sub-standard houses in Birmingham, that people will inevitably have to go on living in them for many years, and that there is a vast programme of patching up which could be done if we had the materials. I know there is a limit to the patience of those who are contributing their rates and taxes to the building of the new houses. I know there is a limit to their patience when they have to live under all too dreadful conditions; but I am sure my hon. Friends would not expect me to anticipate the considered statement that my right hon. Friend promised on the subject of reconditioning in general. I must confine myself to the more limited aspect of the subject—the business of repairs.

Of course, one could give a general answer which would not be acceptable to my friends. One could say we have not unlimited building resources, that the available resources are being used to the full and that, therefore, any substantial expansion of repair work could only be at the expense of new house building. As everyone knows, over the last few years huge pent-up demands for repair and maintenance to existing houses have accumulated throughout the country, but I must insist that until at least the worst of the housing shortage has been overcome, repairs, except for essential and urgent work, must continue to be deferred. But I would ask my hon. Friends to believe that a substantial amount of work is being done in Birmingham, and I want them to take note of it. I think it would be as well to put on record what is in fact being done. In December last the number of licences issued by Birmingham Corporation was 1,383, to a value of £65,690. In January, the number of licences was 1,881, to a value of £100,350.

Mr. Yates

Would the hon. Gentleman say whether they get the material? Licences may be issued but do they get the material?

Mr. Edwards

I will come to that point, but at the moment I am giving figures about what is being done. I will not give the figures for February or March because the totals were approximately the same. But the April figures jumped to 3,472, to a total value of £148,210; and in May the figure was 3,295 and the total value £158,940. I know that not all licences are for housing repairs and maintenance work, because the figures include small non-housing jobs where the value of the work is under £100. But I do want my hon. Friends to appreciate that there has been a heavy rise both in the number of licences granted and the value of the work under licence. This may be partly accounted for by the take-over by the corporation of some licensing functions formerly exercised by the Ministry of Works, but corporation officials themselves, at zonal conferences we have held, have said that the major part of the increase was due to the licensing of more house repair work.

The second thing we have to bear in mind is the head of labour for use for this purpose. The total labour force in Birmingham, on housing work, is estimated to have averaged during the last 6 months some 6,600 men. It was distributed as follows: new building by local authorities, 1,350; new building by private enterprise, 750; repair to war damage houses and conversions, 1,850; temporary houses, 600; repairs and other work under licence, 2,000.

It will be seen that the head of labour engaged, broadly speaking, on the provision of new units of accommodation is approximately 4,500, compared with 2,000 on repairs. The number on repair work represents a higher proportion in Birmingham than anywhere else in the Midland region. Taking the figures I have given for licences and for the head of labour, I would suggest that the volume of repair work now proceeding in Birmingham is at as high a level as is consistent with the present limitations, and is certainly not lagging behind in comparison with anywhere else.—[An HON. MEMBER: "You do not know what you are talking about."]—The hon. Member says that I know nothing about it. The figures I have given for the number of people engaged on repair work, most of which is work of a type to which the hon. Member was referring, is higher in proportion in Birmingham than in other parts of the Midland Region.

Mr. Yates rose—

Mr. Edwards

No, I am not going to give way. I have a bare measure of time in which to reply to the points that have been made.

Mr. Yates

The Parliamentary Secretary has not referred to the statutory orders.

Mr. Edwards

Then let me refer to the statutory orders. I was disturbed, and a little perplexed, by the figures my hon. Friend gave for delays. I could not understand why the delays should be of this order. I had assumed that when the local authority had made an order, they could step in, after the time put in the order had expired, unless the person on whom the notice had been served had decided to appeal against it. I am advised that in a great number of cases it would be competent for the local authority—the limit under the notice having expired—to step in and do the work itself, and to charge the cost of it to the person on whom notice had been served. Be that as it may. The important thing which I think, perhaps, one ought to say in this connection, is that one understands perfectly well the shortage of materials at present. With the large amount of war damage, necessarily absorbing large quantities of slates and plasterboards, with the difficulties that we have, particularly with the production of cement—of which stocks have fallen very low—with all these things, one understands that there are difficulties in supplying materials. But let me say to my hon. Friends that I am not satisfied that the provisions which we have made for trying to ensure the supply of materials for repairs of the kind that have been described have, in fact, been properly worked out in all these cases. When my right hon. Friend says, as he did, that he was not aware of the specific instances, he was naturally speaking of the information we have had. I would ask that the procedure we have laid down should be followed, and that the Ministry of Works should be asked specifically to deal with any shortage, and I have an assurance from them that they will do everything they can to speed up the supply of materials.

Finally, I would like to say that the Building Materials Priority Scheme is under review, and I would assure the House that in any revision the need for materials for essential repairs will be kept in the forefront of our minds. I appreciate the difficulties, I share the sense of impatience of the people who have to live in these conditions, and I would ask my hon. Friends to support us in anything we may do to tighten up on these matters, and to put the screw on any landlords who are avoiding the exercise of their duty by excuses which are not always as valid as they might seem.

Question put, and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at Ten Minutes past Eleven o'Clock.