HC Deb 27 October 1949 vol 468 cc1651-60

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

10.46 p.m.

Mr. Irving (Tottenham, North)

The New Towns Bill, when introduced into this House received the enthusiastic support of both parties. We welcomed it and looked on it as being something to solve the housing problem of Greater London. I recall that I made my maiden speech on it and in that speech I urged the Minister to accept the proposal in the Reith Committee Report, which provided for local authority sponsored corporations as against the corporations established under the Bill. What happened was a particular blow to my constituency of North Tottenham, because when the Greater London Plan was published in 1944, my local authority took steps to find accommodation for its surplus population of 30,000 and continued negotiations with Harlow, the Hertfordshire County Council, and the Epping Rural District Council, and received agreement for the building of a garden city.

The plans reached some stage of maturity, but then the New Towns Bill was introduced and the Tottenham Corporation very willingly dropped its proposals in favour of the new town sponsored by the Ministry. I venture to say tonight that if the idea of local authority sponsored corporations had been accepted and if these had been set up in addition to the corporations established under the Bill, there would have been lively competition and we would have had some houses in the new towns. In May, 1946, none of us supporting that Bill thought that no houses would have been completed in the new towns during the ensuing three years.

The new towns, in my opinion, are working extravagantly in the setting up of their corporations, and if I mention Harlow it is for no other reason than that I have no time in the space allotted me tonight to mention all the others. It is no better, nor is it any worse, than the others; there is evidence of extravagance in the administration of the new towns. At Harlow, premises have been acquired costing £25,000. If these were required simply for administrative purposes one could understand it, but the Mulberry Green House, as it is called, costing £6,000, is for staff residence. A property named Terlings is the headquarters of the administrative offices, and another property, known as Mill House, costing £6,500, is the residence of the general manager. That is all very well, but it gives no comfort to the large number of people in my constituency who have been, and still are, clamouring for accommodation. It seems to me that if the corporation acquired property, it should have been for the people building the new towns.

The general manager's house is known locally as a mansion, but in fact is a very large house. It is interesting to note that the total rent received for these properties amounted, according to the Report, to £82 for the year. That seems to be along the lines of extravagance. In the first year of this corporation at Harlow—and I would again emphasise that I am not only attacking Harlow—there were four cars acquired. I know local authorities in the Greater London area who have not four cars but are running their corporations with two private cars. Most of the officers in connection with the corporation own their own cars and receive a car allowance from the corporation. It is said that "as the twig is bent so the tree grows," and it looks to me as if a considerable amount of the £50 million put aside for the development of the new towns will be administrative expenses if this trend is not stopped immediately.

That is my reason for speaking on this Adjournment Motion tonight. I claim that there is extravagance in the administration and that the members of the corporation themselves took anything from £4,000 to £6,000 in fees during the year for services which are rendered by hundreds of thousands of public-spirited people in this country completely voluntarily.

The local authorities want to know bow they are to accommodate the persons on the housing lists. Let me give the housing list for Tottenham. After complete re-examination of the housing list, we have 6,800 people on the list of genuine cases. No fewer than 260 of these are married people living apart because there is no accommodation. I leave the House to imagine what that means with regard to the possibility of a happy marriage. Then, 180 of the other cases are T.B. cases. No fewer than 2,000 of them are living in one room. The point is that Tottenham is completely built-up. There is no land available for building purposes. The Minister of Health discourages local authorities going outside their own boundaries to buy land and we meet with the answer from the Minister of Health every time, "You must look to the new towns."

When we do, we are told "It is our business." We can get no information either from the Minister or the new towns corporations as to when they are likely to accept residents or applicants from the built-up areas: neither will they give us information if they are going to accept any at all. The local authorities are befogged. They do not know where to move, and what they want to know from the Minister tonight—and what I and many others in particular want to know—is, how are the local authorities in the Greater London area to accommodate the 6,800 people in this borough?

If they are to go to a new town, which new town is it to be? And furthermore, who is to make the selection—the new town corporation or the local authority? When may we expect the transfer to take place? Things are moving in a totally different direction from what the Minister anticipated. The "Star" last Saturday evening had an article which stated: Tottenham for pioneering. Overcrowded and unable to find any more housing sites in the Borough, Tottenham Council are working out a scheme with Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, to transfer light industry there with Tottenham people. Wisbech wants to expand. The country town wants the people. There is evidence that Tottenham firms and Tottenham families are prepared to go. When there is such ready willingness, it is up to the Board of Trade and the Ministry of Health to act at once, for houses will have to be built in Wisbech before Londoners can be welcomed there. That is how things are developing. One can understand that local authorities tire of the refusals of the new towns corporations to give any information at all. I raise this question in the interests of the 6,800 applicants, 2,000-odd of whom are living in one room, who must remain without houses unless we can fairly soon accommodate them in the new towns. This is a great human problem, and I hope the new towns corporations will look at it from that point of view.

10.54 p.m.

Mr. Beverley Baxter (Wood Green)

As the Member for a neighbouring borough I would like to associate myself with what the hon. Member has said tonight. While he described the conditions in Tottenham completely accurately, the conditions in Wood Green are not quite so bad. Unfortunately, however, they are deplorable. Like other hon. Members who represent overcrowded North London constituencies, one gets letters which have now become so numerous, and so desperate that really one does not know what to do. One appeals to the local council and perhaps to the Minister of Health without avail: I do not want to amplify what the hon. Gentleman has said tonight, but simply to say that this is a desperate situation, and if Charles Dickens were alive, he would write such a novel as would scourge the conscience of the nation about this matter.

10.56 p.m.

Mr. Eric Fletcher (Islington, East)

May I add one word to endorse what has been said by my hon. Friend who originated this Debate? This is a matter which affects most acutely the whole of North London. I agree with everything that has been said and Islington, one part of which I represent, is probably as severely affected as any other borough. There, housing conditions, in spite of everything the Borough Council and the London County Council have been able to do during the last four years, are very serious indeed. As the hon. Gentleman the Member for Wood Green (Mr. Baxter) has said one get heartrending letters every day. There are appalling cases; hundreds and thousands of people are still in accommodation which is inadequate and insanitary. These people, and the local authorities, are anxiously looking to the contribution that can be made, we hope as rapidly as possible, by the new towns to assist them in their housing problems. One of the things this House and the country will want to know from my right hon. Friend the Minister of Town and Country Planning is when we may expect some contribution in actual houses constructed by the new towns in and around London. The House and the country will also want to know what effect, if any, is caused by the cuts announced during the last few days on the programme of the new towns. I hope that my right hon. Friend, when he replies, will be able to give some figures to indicate that some of the new towns on the periphery of London will be able to provide houses to make a contribution to this pressing and human need.

10.58 p.m.

Mr. E. L. Gandar Dower (Caithness and Sutherland)

I wish to support what the hon. Gentleman the Member for East Islington (Mr. E. Fletcher) has said. I have a particular interest in his constituency because my family have had property there for nearly 100 years and I actually reside there. I see daily the misery and the squalor within 200 yards of Collins' Fairground on Islington Green. I sincerely hope that the right hon. Gentleman will give some firm encouragement so that we may look forward to transfer of population from London. The desire to get away out to the cinema is escapist, and comes from the misery of being locked up in one room, something which, I hope, hon. Members have not experienced.

10.59 p.m.

Mr. Francis Noel-Baker (Brentford and Chiswick)

Hon. Gentlemen who have spoken in this Debate have spoken for North London. I wanted to say a word for West London, and about Bracknell, in which my own constituency is particularly interested. I would not like to make the comments about the new town corporation at Bracknell which my hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham, North (Mr. Irving) has made about the new town corporation with which he dealt. Many thousands of people in my constituency are anxious to know the reason for the endless delay in the work of the corporation in getting on with the job. It may be that the reasons are adequate, but we ask for more information because this is a pressing need in all parts of London.

11.0 p.m.

The Minister of Town and Country Planning (Mr. Silkin)

I suppose every Member of the House could stand up and make a speech similar to that made by the hon. Member for Wood Green (Mr. Baxter) and others about housing conditions in their areas; I could make the same speech about my own constituency. These conditions arise because of the neglect of generations in the past of the type of building allowed to go up and the failure to deal with overcrowding in slums over many years. I have particular acquaintance with this problem because for a number of years I was endeavouring to solve it as chairman of the Housing Committee of the London County Council and, with all modesty, I feel I can say that over the period of six years in which I was chairman, we got rid of the great majority of slums in London. There are still some left, but the war intervened.

I am, therefore, acquainted with this problem and I am willing to admit that it has some relationship to the problem of the new towns, but the difficulty of housing is not one which can be solved by new towns alone. If I may use the expression, new towns are really the junior problem in the business. The primary attack on the housing problem is one which must be made by the local authorities themselves.

In that respect, since we have been talking almost entirely about London, may I say that London County Council is making a great contribution towards the solution of the housing problem, and so are the metropolitan boroughs and outer London boroughs. I recognise that there are some areas, like Brentford and Chiswick, Tottenham and, possibly to a lesser extent, Wood Green, where soon—if it has not happened already—the land available for that purpose will be exhausted and the authorities will have to look outside. It is there that the new towns will be making a partial contribution, but even there the major contribution will be made by expansion of existing towns in the areas. Hon. Members will be acquainted with the Greater London Report, which has been accepted substantially by the Government, in which the solution is stated to be as to two-thirds by extension of existing towns and as to one-third by the creation of new towns. It is in that respect that our main interest is today in the housing problems of Greater London and other parts of the country. It does not help in the solution of this problem for hon. Members to make the attacks on the new towns which have been made this evening. It is grossly unfair and entirely inaccurate.

Mr. Irving

It is in the Report.

Mr. Silkin

I know; it is really inaccurate. It is a great pity that the hon. Member for Tottenham, North (Mr. Irving) did net let me know the kind of allegation he was going to make; all I was aware of was that he was going to talk about new towns. I did not know that he was going to make specific allegations, and it is impossible for me to carry in my head details about numbers of cars and the amount of rent a particular individual has paid in respect of new towns.

As regards cars, it is true that the Harlow Corporation has four cars. It must be remembered that Harlow and other new towns are supposed to be built on virgin land. The corporations have to make a start—have to get office buildings somewhere, and usually that means buildings remote and inaccessible by ordinary transport. Therefore, conveyances have to be secured to get members of the corporation and their staffs to and from stations. During the passage of the Bill hon. Members on both sides of the House were exceedingly anxious that these development corporations, once they were set up, should be given relative freedom from interference in their day-to-day administration. I take it that this meant that the responsible persons appointed to the corporations were to be trusted not to try to get extra cars in order to give joy-rides to there staff.

This particular Development Corporation at Harlow which has been referred to has as its chairman Sir Ernest Gowers, a very eminent ex-civil servant and former Chairman of the Board of Inland Revenue—a man who was Regional Commissioner in London during the war, and one of the most distinguished men in public life today. As its general manager it has Mr. Eric Adams, former town clerk of Islington. It is inconceivable that men of that character would go fooling about trying to get an extra car improperly.

It is also inconceivable that I should be required to take up the question of whether the four cars that they have for the purpose of their activities are really necessary or not. If I had to do that there would be a complete conflict with the spirit in which I was asked to administer the Act. I trust Sir Ernest Gowers and the corporation, which consists of eminent persons of no political party. I do not know the politics of more than half the members of that corporation. I would guess that they are not the same as mine. But the members are not appointed on political grounds. I trust them and I believe they are doing a good job of work.

I want to refer to one accusation, and that is that the general manager has been given a house costing £6,500 and is presumably living there rent free. The facts are that this house was bought to provide accommodation for the general manager. It is true and it is very desirable, and indeed essential, that the general manager should be on the spot, instead of getting Mr. Eric Adams every day from Islington. It was regarded as vital that he should be on the spot and this house was secured; but part of that building is used for the purpose of the Corporation. They hold their meetings there and some members of the staff do their work there. As to that portion occupied by the general manager, he is paying a rent fixed by the district surveyor and I cannot see that that is an improper arrangement. It seems to me a very sensible arrangement.

I recognise that houses are not forthcoming at the rate which hon. Members like those for Wood Green and North Tottenham (Mr. Irving) would like them to be. There are natural impediments in view of the many calls made upon them, and upon me and most of us, to secure accommodation for our constituents. The building of new towns, however, is a very big project. It is one thing to get a site which is fully serviced and has its roads and sewers and all the rest of it and where all we have to do is to prepare plans and enter into a contract for the building. It is quite another thing to pick a site like Harlow and to prepare a plan for it. Unless one prepares a plan and decides exactly what was going to be done, the very same mistakes might be made which have been made so deplorably in many towns which so many of us would like to pull down. We must make sure we have our industrial area right, our shopping area right and so on, and the public are entitled to express their views on the plan. The preparation of such a plan does take time if done properly. Services have to be provided, miles of roads built, electricity, gas, water, sewerage, all these things have to be provided before the development of houses can be begun.

Harlow was set up in May, 1947, and already houses are going up. The plan has been approved—roads are in course of construction, and as I say houses are actually going up. The same applies to all the new towns which were set up about that time. Therefore, I would say to the House that there has been no avoidable delay. Things are moving, and moving as satisfactorily as it is possible for them to do having regard to existing conditions, the shortage of labour and materials, and so on.

I was asked when it would be possible to provide specific housing for particular areas which have been more closely associated with Harlow, Stevenage and the other new towns? These houses are going up and as soon as they are ready for occupation the local authorities concerned will be communicated with. Arrangements will be made for the appropriate selection of tenants. The selection of tenants will have to be in the hands of the development corporations. It cannot be otherwise. I cannot think anyone would seek to deprive the owners of these houses of the right to select their own tenants. Of course the selection will be from the housing lists and will include as a priority those people from the housing lists who wish to work in the area. We are most anxious—indeed it is an essential characteristic of these new towns—that they should not become dormitories. In the beginning the people who come to live there will be working there and the two will have to be linked together.

I much regret that the hon. Member for North Tottenham, who is normally most moderate and reasonable in the statements he makes to this House, should have thought it necessary, in a very proper request for information, to couple it with an attack on the new towns, with Harlow as an example. The attack is entirely without justification.

Mr. Irving

It is all in the Report.

Mr. Silkin

Nonsense. I could have answered that satisfactorily if I had been given notice, but these allegations are entirely without justification. I am satisfied that the new towns are making as good progress as can be expected under present conditions.

Question put, and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at a Quarter past Eleven o'Clock.