HC Deb 08 November 1948 vol 457 cc1318-21

5.46 p.m.

Mr. A. Edward Davies (Burslem)

I am glad to have the opportunity to continue consideration of the subject we were discussing earlier. I apologise to hon. Members if this appears to be a comic performance after the most important speech we have just heard——

Mr. George Porter (Leeds, Central)

On a point of Order. In your absence, Mr. Deputy Speaker, an hon. Member opposite who was responsible for instituting a previous discussion rose and gave notice that he was so dissatisfied that it was his intention to raise the matter again. Would you say how far that is in Order, and whether if the same notice is given at Question Time that debars anyone else from taking part in the discussion?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Major Milner)

Hon. Members have their opportunities, but I understood that the hon. Member who now has possession of the House desired to speak on the same subject. It seems to me desirable that he should do so whilst the Minister is present.

Mr. Porter

The matter I have raised arose subsequent to the hon. Member for Burslem (Mr. A. Edward Davies) giving notice that he desired to speak.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker

Any hon. Member who is fortunate in the Ballot and has an opportunity of raising a question on the Adjournment, subject to anything Mr. Speaker has to say, may certainly raise the subject again.

Sir Patrick Hannon (Birmingham, Moseley)

Is it not rather unfair to the hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) who prepared an admirable speech on foreign policy and introduced a subject of very great moment, that there should be no one on the Government Front Bench to reply on behalf of the Foreign Office?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker

The hon. Member knows from his long experience that that is not a matter for the Chair. I do not know whether or not notice has been given to the Government.

Mr. Emrys Hughes

I did everything in my power—I telephoned to the Foreign Office—but I do not complain.

Mr. A. Edward Davies

Earlier I raised a point of Order on this matter, because I considered that it would have been better to dispose of the subject about which I wish to speak, before hon. Members discussed other matters. It is not for me to criticise the conduct of the Chair. I wanted to release the Minister. The case which the Minister made out seemed to some of us to be most unsatisfactory. As the hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. W. J. Brown) said, the Minister quoted at length a number of Acts of Parliament and regulations which were so much mumbo jumbo to the man in the street. I concluded that the ordinary citizen has been very roughly treated. In fact, it seems to me he has been most unjustly treated. The Minister made out a case that he was acting in line with legislation. Nobody questions that. He said that it was possible to take away a man's railings and to assess them at a fair value in the ordinary market.

I wish to supplement the plea which has been made tonight by saying that this is not a matter which affects only very wealthy citizens. It is a matter of great interest to many people of limited means. A friend of mine in my constituency, whose name I will not mention for obvious reasons, is a miner who has two small cottages which he managed to procure out of his savings, as he has always been a very careful man. Round each of these cottages he had railings to protect them. When the war came, in common with other people, he lost these railings and the gates to the cottages. It has been estimated since that the value which he should be paid for the loss of those railings and gates is £2 5s. The Minister made it quite clear that he is not concerned with present—day costs, but with what the man would be able to get in the open market. Which of us would think of taking up railings from the front of gardens and houses and offering them as scrap iron in the open market? They had a utility value that is something completely different.

My friend, being a good landlord towards his neighbour, and wanting to make the property respectable, sought to put the cottages in order at the earliest opportunity, and went along to get estimates from contractors. He got two prices, and the lower one was £15. The contractor wanted £15 to put that property in something like the shape in which it was found when the scrap iron was taken away. The owner, now retired after working hard for the whole of his life and acquiring this property, and wanting to keep it tidy and decent for himself and his friend next door, is not in a position to pay £15 to have the railings restored. To tell him that, in the open market, he could have got £2 5S. for his railings and that that is the total sum which he could get today, is no satisfaction at all for him.

I know there is very little redress in this matter, because, from what the Minister said, it would involve new legislation, and I should be out of Order in discussing it, but this is a matter of wide interest to many people like myself in the country, who feel that they have been unfairly and indeed monstrously treated, as the hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. W. J. Brown) suggested, in being called upon to bear this burden. It does not seem to be equitable in any sense. I hope that, in the unhappy event of the Government having to deal with a similar position in future, the requisitioning and taking of other people's property will be conducted from a more sensible point of view.

5.54 p.m.

Sir William Darling (Edinburgh, South)

I should like to say a word or two about railings, because I feel that the Minister has not, perhaps, had all the sympathy that we ought to give him. This campaign for railings began in 1940, and my complaint about the treatment of railings in the city of Edinburgh, upon which my noble Friend the Member for Midlothian and Peebles, Northern (Lord John Hope) was speaking for many hundreds of people, is the inequity of the whole transaction. If I lived in a flat, my railings were not taken. If I had a wall round my garden, I sacrificed nothing in the way of railings. If I had a wooden fence, I suffered nothing, but, if I had cast—iron railings which would cost me at least £50 to replace, I would get compensation at the rate of 2s. 6d. That is monstrously inequitable, and I feel that the Minister himself feels that it is, though he sees no way out of the difficulty.

I challenge him to say that his Department did this business in exactly the way that, doubtless, it could have been done. I have spoken to many of the people who complain, and have been told that no effort was made to weigh these railings. There is no proof in the records of this business that, in fact, the railings removed weighed xcwts. or ytons. No such arrangement was made. One cannot imagine, during years of war, a travelling apparatus going round from cottage to cottage, knocking down the railings and weighing them, but it is the case that the price given for scrap metal was not based upon any process of weighing which was obvious to the person whose railings were being confiscated.

Not only are the railings being paid for at a compensation rate which is quite inadequate, but this taking of property from a small part of the community throws on them a burden which the whole war effort should have borne. I do not think the present arrangements can be justified as satisfactory, and, whatever the difficulties—and the Government claim that justice must be done if the heavens fall—they should recognise that this is a grievous matter, though it is not their responsibility, but one which was laid upon them by the Coalition Government. They should, nevertheless, review the whole situation. I know the administrative difficulties, but they have abundant staff at their disposal which is not, perhaps, fully employed, and which might be employed to review the whole question and attempt to readjust what has been a very real grievance.

I want to touch on one other matter, and that is the case of the noble Lord's constituent. He was away at the war, and even the notice required by the Department may not have reached him. His case was the same as that of hundreds of others, and I think that, in this matter, where a small section of the community—residents of luxury flats did not give up their railings; Whitehall did not give up its railings—made this sacrifice, went to the war and are now offered compensation for property worth £25 at the rate of 2s. 6d., there is a grievous injustice which can be remedied. The Minister is a man of good heart and good sense, and I hope that, whatever the difficulties, he will review this matter.