HC Deb 22 March 1950 vol 472 cc2121-30

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

11.42 p.m.

Mr. Peter Roberts (Sheffield, Heeley)

Tonight I wish to raise the matter of certain housing conditions in Sheffield, and I particularly want to ask the Parliamentary Secretary to explain the reasons why Sheffield has not had its fair share of houses in the last four years, whether the responsibility is on his Department through not granting sufficient permits, or whether the responsibility is on the City Council in not pressing on with building projects.

I want to lay before the House certain tragic facts which I think will raise this matter above party strife. I wish to assure the House that I approach this matter in all sincerity to try in some way to ease some of the misery, desolation and hopelessness which there is in thousands of homes in Sheffield. May I first remind the Parliamentary Secretary of the position in Sheffield? We have a waiting list of 26,000 families which, if one takes two children to a family, is something like 100,000 men, women and children, some of whom are waiting in appalling conditions.

I should like to refer to the maiden speech of the hon. Member for Sheffield, Park (Mr. Mulley), whom I am glad to see in his place, and on whose speech I should like to congratulate him. On 13th March—reported in column 819 of the OFFICIAL REPORT—he said that in the constituency there were very many distressing conditions. Families, he said, were living six in a room and there were streets of back-to-back houses, many of them condemned. Unfortunately, the same applies in parts of my division and other divisions in the City of Sheffield. Therefore, we have this waiting list of 26,000, and the deplorable fact is that new permanent houses are going up at the present rate of only just over 1,000 a year. Therefore, it looks as if there are certain people on these waiting lists who, at the present rate, will have to wait 25 years before they are likely to get a house.

The national arguments on this problem were put before the House in recent Debates. The big problems were not answered by the Minister, such as the question of obtaining timber from dollar sources. Until this problem is tackled in the right way one cannot begin to see real speed in house building. I do not want to stress that point but to ask the Parliamentary Secretary certain questions upon the more local aspects over which he has more direct control.

The first question is, why has Sheffield not had its fair share of houses? The facts are these—and I will put them as fairly as I can. Nationally, in the four years before the war the number of permanent houses built by local authorities. and others was about 1,200,000. In the four years after the war the rate was. 600,000. For the moment I am not arguing the reasons for that, whether it may be manpower or whether it may be-timber; I am merely stating the fact that in the four years the number of houses, built was half what it was before the war.

Let us look at Sheffield. The City Surveyor's report for 1939 shows, as nearly as I can work it out, that in the four years before the war private enterprise and the local authority, more or less on a 50–50 basis—slightly more to private enterprise, 9,000 to 8,000—built 17,000 houses. If one takes half of that sum and applies it on a national average, that should give us 8,500 houses over the four years after the war. That, I suggest, is the national entitlement that Sheffield should have. Now we have not had that fair share, either on past performance or on the present availability of labour or manpower. The figure of 8,500 I refer to would exclude pre-fabricated houses and repaired houses. How many have we had? We have had, so far as I can work it out, 4,500—and these are figures given by the chairman of the Housing Committee, so far as I can follow them. It leaves the fact that Sheffield has been short of 4,000 houses in these four years. Those houses have been built, but they have not been built in Sheffield but somewhere else.

What we are entitled to ask is, Was it the Minister who said Sheffield should have a full entitlement and did not give permission, or was permission given and the council just did not have permits? If it is the former and the permission was not given, why were the needs of Sheffield overlooked? I can assure the Minister that the needs of Sheffield are extremely great. He has only to see the productive effort of the city, the great increase in the value of the productive goods which is taking place, to note the fact that the city is increasing in population every day, that we have a waiting list of 26,000 and that many people are living in appalling overcrowded conditions.

None of these things could have entitled the Minister to take away from Sheffield half of what they were entitled to have. Therefore I ask of him quite earnestly, whose responsibility is it that these people are now waiting for 4,000 houses which they should have had in the last your years? It is no good the Minister saying that labour and material are not available, because they were available to build 4,000 houses. It is no good the Minister making cheap jibes about dentists trying to build houses with drills because Sheffield is in the centre of England and it is easy for contractors to get to Sheffield and to be able to build houses if they were given permission.

I wish to point out why I say that the need of Sheffield is so great, and why we should not only have had our entitlement of houses but possibly more. I want to refer to some of the more dreadful conditions for which the Minister and Parliamentary Secretary are responsible. Norton Camp is a cold, draughty, damp camp where there are no methods of heating water except boiling it in saucepans, where there is sickness, and in some cases death, owing to the unhealthy conditions. I have sent the hon. Gentleman a picture, which I see he has before him, which shows one of the best of the compartments in which people have been living sometimes for three or four years. I see in a letter to the Press from the Lord Mayor that these huts are managed by the local authority on behalf of the Minister of Health. Therefore they are the tenants of the Minister, and I should like the Parliamentary Secretary to know something about the conditions in which his tenants live.

I will quote only two cases to the hon. Gentleman. The first is that of Mr. and Mrs. Hall, who live in one damp room. Mr. Hall is bedridden and blind. The mother lives in the same room, and there is his daughter, his son-in-law, and a grandchild aged four months. The place is so damp that this bedridden man has already had pneumonia twice. The other is the case of Mr. and Mrs. McCarthy, where a father, mother and four children live in one damp room. There are two other compartments which this family could use, but the doctor has told them that they should not be used because they are so damp. The father and one child already have chronic asthma from these conditions.

The Minister is the landlord of these people. No doubt these homes are some of those included in the million the Prime Minister talked about over the wireless. No doubt these children are some of the bonny babies which hon. Members opposite are so proud of. In fact, they are poor, pitiful creatures forced to live in these conditions. The crowning irony is this. When these people have been on the housing list three or four years and their turn comes, they are told by the Socialist council that they are considered to be adequately housed, and they will have to go back to the bottom of the list—to wait another 25 years, presumably, in these conditions, where when the rain comes and the wind blows the walls stream with water. The Minister is responsible for the childhood of these children. It is not their fault that they may be dirty and sick.

The council say they have spent something like £6,000 on this camp. I suggest that those figures are entirely misleading, and I hope the Parliamentary Secretary will not use them as an excuse tonight. I think those figures must include some of the building costs of the camp. If the money has been spent it has certainly been wasted, because there is no evidence of good conditions at this camp. The only evidence I have is that of one man, a coal heaver, who has nowhere to wash, who says that in the last four years they have spent only 4s. 6d. on his compartment. In the last day or two some repairs have been made, but that does not stop this camp being damp and unhealthy.

I ask the Minister to give instructions to his managers to repair this camp—until it is made healthy these people will not be adequately housed—and to reduce the rent from 8s. to 2s. a week. I ask for no priority for these people, but only that when their turn comes they shall be given their place in the list. If he will not give this assurance, it will show that the Minister and his assistant are hypocrites and peddlers of empty phrases. All that the authorities in Sheffield have given is abuse to these poor people. I should certainly hope that the Parliamentary Secreretary will not follow that rather sordid method of attack, and I think I know him well enough to know he will not do that. These people are not squatters but tenants of the right hon. Gentleman and it is not their fault if they are living in conditions making it impossible to keep themselves clean. That is one particular case.

Alderman Smith, a Socialist alderman who cannot count, and does not know, apparently, the difference between prefabricated and permanent houses, when trying to excuse these conditions made this dreadful admission: There are hundreds of families without the amenities necessary for normal existence living in far worse conditions than those in Norton Camp. What an admission after 25 years of Socialist control of the Sheffield City Council. That comes from the chairman of the Housing Committee. I hope the Parliamentary Secretary will have seen from the speech I have quoted, from the complacent excuses of the chairman of the Housing Committee in Sheffield, from the facts I have given tonight, that there is a need in Sheffield, and I ask him whether he will look again at the entitlement of the city to the houses which are rightly hers. Why have we not that 4,000 houses? Local authorities' permits for this year are only 800 so far.

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

indicated dissent.

Mr. Roberts

The latest civic record shows that the number of permits at the moment is 800 for local authorities. There may be 200 or 300 for private enterprise but that only comes to 1,000, and our entitlement is 2,000. On behalf of those helpless and miserable people I ask for an assurance from the Parliamentary Secretary that as a landlord he will see that the conditions of his tenants are healthy and reasonable, and also state who is responsible for Sheffield being so far short of her entitlement of houses.

11.57 p.m.

Mr. John Hynd (Sheffield, Attercliffe)

I would not have intervened but for the unfortunate and completely false impression given to the House of what is happening in the City of Sheffield, which has cause to be proud of its housing record. The hon. Gentleman has accused one of the Socialist members of the Council of giving wrong figures but he has certainly done so himself tonight. He knows full well that in the last four years, since the end of the war, the council has built no fewer than 5,408 houses, plus 194 rebuilt war-damaged houses. 734 under private enterprise—

Mr. Roberts

Does that include prefabricated houses?

Mr. Hynd

Certainly. Are they not homes too? Does the hon. Gentleman prefer that people should remain in places like Norton Camp rather than be housed in prefabricated houses, and is he aware that thousands in Sheffield would be only too glad if they could have one? I would remind him also of the houses which are condemned as unfit for human habitation. They were not built by the local authority, but by those people who are the political friends of the hon. Gentlemen opposite. Here are the figures when the Socialist council took over in 1926. There were 20,000 overcrowded houses, over 6,000 condemned as unfit for human habitation, and 16,000 back-to-back houses over 56 years old, many of them over 100 years old.

Why does the hon. Gentleman bring up Norton Camp now, after so many years in this House? Has he only now discovered the existence of these people in this camp? What has been happening to the three Conservative-Liberal councillors from Norton? I understand they have never raised it as a first-class issue before the council and now claim to back the hon. Member in this campaign. The record of housing in Sheffield since 1926, when the Labour council took over, is a record of which the city has cause to be proud, and hon. Members on this side of the House and on that know it. The only difference is that hon. Members on that side are only too willing to exploit this plight of these unfortunate victims of a Communist stunt, people who were rescued from the dilapidated gun sites by the city council and put in these brick-built dwellings, on which some £6,000 has been spent and which are let for a rent of 8s., of which 2s. 6d. is water and rates, bringing to the City Council over the four years some £1,000.

The hon. Member knows that this is a situation which we have been fighting for many, many years. I should like to say a great deal more about this, about the responsibility of the three Conservative-Liberal councillors from Norton and about the hon. Member's political friends in Sheffield, but unfortunately time is short and I am satisfied that the Minister will be able finally and fully to deal with the points raised by the hon. Member.

12.2 a.m.

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

I cannot understand why the hon. Member for Heeley (Mr. P. Roberts) who raised this matter seemed to think it wrong for another hon. Member for Sheffield to intervene in what he apparently thinks should be his own "perquisite." Let me first deal with the question of the Norton Camp, which is managed by the Sheffield Corporation on behalf of the Ministry of Health. As I assume the hon. Member knows, the original tenants were brought from some appalling gun sites in other parts of the city. Since then partitioning was carried out on these comparatively—and I say comparatively—good huts which were available. Originally, in September, 1946, some 32 families were there. That was steadily reduced to 20 in March, 1949, and to the 13 families which are there now.

These are brick-built and 'asbestos-sheeted huts. There is a piped water supply and there is electricity through prepayment meters. There is no doubt that the sanitation is satisfactory; it has been examined only recently by our own inspectors. I am not in any way pretending they are satisfactory from the viewpoint of ordinary housing conditions, but compared with other camp sites, they are in comparatively good condition. Rent is being charged of some 8s. a week, which, for that type of property, and considering the charge is inclusive of rates, is satisfactory as compared with the rents charged for private property which I hope both hon. Members opposite as well as hon. Members on this side condemn. When considering the speed with which alternative accommodation is being provided for those who live in these huts, we must bear in mind the people living in Sheffield in foul old private enterprise houses, which I hope we all condemn as being unsatisfactory.

Let me deal with the general position in Sheffield. In common with many other cities, Sheffield is faced with a serious housing condition; but because of the great progress made, particularly in the inter-war years, by the vigorous city council and the work done since the war, that position is perhaps not quite so serious as it is in other cities. I am in no way suggesting that there is not a most urgent need for new houses and nobody would be complacent at all in view of the position that exists in Sheffield, but it is not true to suggest that Sheffield has not had a fair share of allocations that are available.

The hon. Member suggested there is plenty of labour available. He must face the realities of this situation. In fact, on 13th March this year, for the whole of the building and civil engineering trades there were exactly 163 unemployed, including five bricklayers and six joiners. There are vacancies for 301. One of the reasons why the demand, very properly, is as great as it is in Sheffield is the reason mentioned so frequently by my right hon. Friend in this house, namely, that the needs of the people are becoming clearer. That is so because of the very good employment position in Sheffield today compared with that of the years before the war.

Mr. Roberts

The hon. Gentleman has not answered the question.

Mr. Blenkinsop

I know that the figures I am going to give are not figures which the hon. Gentleman wants to hear mentioned in this House. It is a fact that in 1938 there were 22,000 people unemployed in Sheffield, and that this year the number was 1,850. Those people who are employed today are for the first time able to make a claim for new housing. The tragedy of the past, when the hon. Gentleman's friends were in office—[Interruption.] I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman really wants to listen. Obviously he has no intention of doing anything more than advertising himself in the House this evening.

Mr. Roberts

Will the hon. Gentleman answer my questions?

Mr. Bleinkinsop

The reason why the waiting lists are so high as they are is that people for the first time have the income which enables them to claim houses. The tragedy of the past in Sheffield, as shown by survey after survey, was that although a good number of houses was built, later on, near the war years, many of the people who had gone into those houses could not afford to stay in them. Some 30 per cent. of those who had taken houses on new estates had to leave in a period of a few months. That was the tragedy of those years.

Mr. Roberts

What about the future?

Mr. Blenkinsop

The hon. Member has rightly asked what about the future, and housing allocations for the future. He mentioned a figure of allocation for the current year of 800. In quoting the original allocation figures the hon. Member must bear in mind the number of houses under construction in the previous year. It is also true that we have promised, and the council knows this, to make a further allocation of 400 houses in addition to the 800 already granted, provided that labour can be found to do the job. The council understands that. That is the difficulty which we face in Sheffield as in many other places.

The hon. Member must face the problem of whether he wants other work suspended so that more workers can be brought into housing, whether in fact, he wants direction of labour to enforce the removal of workers, from house repairs for example, to building work. Does he want that? He must deal with the practical issue—

Mr. Jennings (Sheffield, Hallam)

During the Debate on the Gracious Speech I made an appeal to the Government to put this matter upon a non-party basis. I had no reply on that suggestion. I want to ask whether we are short of timber because the Government has missed the boat in Sweden?

Mr. Blenkinsop

The hon. Member must not take advantage of my giving way. Here we must face the fact that if labour is not available to build the houses no increased allocation by the Ministry of Health will provide more houses in Sheffield, and it is vital that those who criticise the allocations made should say from where they would take the labour. What the hon. Gentleman always refuses to do is to face these simple realities. In Sheffield, as elsewhere, we have to allocate the resources available. They are far smaller than we would wish, but it is no use pretending that we can allocate the whole of our resources to one item; housing is most urgent, but it is not the only call, and Sheffield would suffer more if we attempted to take away the resources so vitally needed for her other needs.

Mr. Mulley (Sheffield, Park)

May I say that if either of the hon. Members opposite wish to debate this in Sheffield, I should be pleased to see that it is arranged?

Mr. Jennings

Why will not the hon. Gentleman hold a public inquiry to consider housing conditions in Sheffield, and let us have the whole matter brought out into the light of day instead of merely having the blandishments of the Minister of Health?

Question put, and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at Eleven Minutes past Twelve o'Clock a.m.