HOUSING (Hansard, 15 July 1952)

§ Mr. William Irving (Wood Green)
I want to raise tonight, Mr. Speaker, the question of housing, not generally, but particularly to the Borough of Tottenham.
The House will recall that in the days towards the end of the war the Government of the day introduced a Bill for local authorities to provide temporary bungalows. In Tottenham, as elsewhere, the Housing (Temporary Accommodation) Act, 1944, was taken advantage of. Some 50 houses were erected in Tottenham on one site and two of them have subsided. I ought to point out that the Ministry of Works are responsible for the erection of those bungalows and that the local government is responsible for the cost of sites, roads, paths and other services.
After erection the bungalows were handed over to the local authoriy which became responsible for maintenance and repairs. The instructions set out in the Memorandum issued in 1944 provided that additional expenditure should be incurred by the Ministry if repairs and maintenance exceeded £8. In the case 2055 of Tottenham the expenditure amounted to £16 per annum, in addition to which the local authority paid to the Ministry £23 10s. per annum per bungalow. Paragraph 9 of Appendix 4 of the Ministry Memorandum provides that the local authority may apply to the Ministry for additional expenditure, but that has already been done in the case of Tottenham.
In the case of two of the 50 bungalows built on the site in Tottenham, the borough engineer of the Tottenham Borough Council pointed out at the time the land was prepared that it had been a refuse chute and therefore was likely to subside. It was necessary to reinforce the concrete base. Unfortunately this was not done by the Ministry of Works, and consequently two of the bungalows have broken their sides. The tenants have had to be removed and rehoused elsewhere. Before the houses were erected by the Ministry of Works, the Tottenham Borough Council engineer pointed out that this land had been a refuse chute, and, therefore, likely to subside. This happened and the concrete bases were not reinforced. The result has been that two of the houses have broken their backs.
This is a very serious problem in Tottenham, because the housing position is very acute and the cost of the immediate work should not be borne under the amount laid down in the memorandum for repairs and maintenance. The site was not satisfactory, and this was known to the Ministry of Works. Yet they used the site.
I should also like to draw attention to a third temporary bungalow in Tottenham, known locally as a prefab, where the plan drawn by the engineer shows the level of the concrete bases six inches higher than that erected by the Ministry. Flooding has taken place on several occasions, as it was expected it would for the land is low lying, and, consequently, that bungalow will have to be dismantled or the base will have to be built costing £175.
The Ministry say that it is in the hands of the Tottenham Borough Council to dismantle and erect this bungalow elsewhere, but, frankly, Britain's dollar position is better than Tottenham's land position. There are more dollars in this country than there is land in Tottenham, so much 2056 so that the borough council have had to buy land outside the boundary to house a proportion of their people. Something like 8,000 are on the waiting list and there is no land available at all.
There has been flooding on several occasions. The Ministry's officers have been down to see it, and though they were told that it was an old refuse dump and that the base required to be reinforced that was not done. Therefore, the Tottenham Borough Council said, rightly in my opinion, that the expenses ought to be borne by the Ministry of Health, as it was at the time this happened, and now by the Ministry of Housing and Local Government or by the Ministry of Works. The cost of the dismantling and erecting of the bungalow is £850. Obviously that cannot be met out of the amounts sanctioned in the memorandum to which I have referred.
The Ministry seem to think that the cost for this bungalow can be met by the local authority. The Ministry's excuse for not paying for this work is that they have no funds available. But neither has the borough council. This expenditure of £850 plus the £175 cannot be met out of revenue. The Tottenham Borough Council will have to go to the Ministry for a loan if it were so desired, and, therefore, the Tottenham Borough Council has a very strong case for saying that no funds are available.
The Tottenham Borough Council being reasonable, offered a compromise. They said that they would carry out the work provided the Ministry found £200, which is a reasonable estimate. That has been refused, and I think the Ministry are being very unreasonable. The defective work was approved by the officers of the Ministry of Works when the bungalows were constructed on land which was a refuse dump, and the land has subsided due to the fact that the concrete base was not reinforced. Therefore, this expenditure should not come out of the amount allowed for repairs and maintenance, but should be placed fairly and squarely on the shoulders of the Ministry.
With regard to the other case which I mentioned, the base there is six inches higher than that erected by the Ministry of Works, and, therefore, in all the circumstances the Tottenham Borough Council are being very fair about this. The Ministry ought to be a bit more 2057 reasonable than is shown in the correspondence. There may be some queries as to why the hon. Member for Wood Green raises the question of Tottenham bungalows, but the hon. Member for Wood Green not only represents that area but one-third of Tottenham as well, because one-third of Tottenham is in the division of Wood Green, and these bungalows happen to be in the Parliamentary Division. Therefore, it is my job to raise it in this House, and I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will be able to announce some concession in this matter, which is due to negligence on the part of the Ministry of Works.

§ Mr. Arthur Lewis (West Ham, North)
Originally I had no intention of taking part in this debate, but, seeing the House has got to the Adjournment rather earlier than is usual, I thought we could not let the occasion go without saying something on this important matter of housing. My hon. Friend the Member for Wood Green (Mr. Irving) is to be congratulated on raising this very important subject, and I want to support him in both the cases he has mentioned and on the general issue. I happen to know the peculiar problems and difficulties of Tottenham because, for a number of years, I lived in that particular borough and at the moment live in the adjoining borough of Edmonton. So I can substantiate the points that have been made by my hon. Friend the Member for Wood Green.
I believe that this is part of a wider problem which affects almost all the London boroughs, and particularly the blitzed towns and cities of this country. It was in the main the blitzed cities and towns which were given supplies of these temporary bungalows and prefabricated houses. Originally it was suggested that it would be for a short period, and I believe the lives of the bungalow were stated to be 10 years. In West Ham we have the unenviable reputation of being the worst blitzed borough in the country. It follows that we have a larger number of these hutments than any other borough, and that has, in fact, become a liability to the council, because we are in the invidious position of having these hutments, which are far from satisfactory, taking a number of people off the actual housing list, but in reality these people are not satisfactorily or adequately housed.
2058 In West Ham we have somewhere in the region of 14,000 people on the urgent priority list, and if we take the number who are unsatisfactorily housed the total would be well over 20,000. West Ham is having to make do and mend with these temporary bungalows, and how long they will keep going nobody knows, nor how long it will be before these people will have to be rehoused in decent houses. All the time that these dwellings are occupied they have to find the abnormal charges for repairs, redecoration and the like.
That may not seem much to a borough that is financially stable, but with, as in West Ham, a council that has a rate of 26s. in the £, and which has lost over one-third of its rateable income because of the blitz, it seems very unfair that the council should have to put up with these temporary hutments and have to find the abnormal cost of repairs and redecoration, and that because of the loss of rateable income they must put up their rates to the astronomical figure I have mentioned.
It is about time that the Ministry looked at this problem of the blitzed towns and cities in relation to housing. It is about time that some special assistance generally was given. I pay tribute to the Parliamentary Secretary for what he and his Ministry have done financially for West Ham. I appreciate that we are the only council to be getting a special grant, and I acknowledge the efforts that the Parliamentary Secretary made when I raised a similar debate on the Adjournment at the commencement of the year.
But that in no way mitigates the general problem that confronts all the blitzed towns and cities. They are in very great difficulties with regard to housing. They now find that houses which they thought were decent and fit for people to live in, are beginning to fall down and have to be condemned as unsafe because the foundations have been shaken and dislodged. I refer more to the Nissen hut type of building, where the council are continually having to put in new arrangements to try to stop the damp. I see many of these places where the concrete floors are literally swimming in damp and moisture, and where the people have to put out their furniture to dry in the sunshine because of the dampness on the floor.
2059 Surely, something can be done to give these areas an increased building quota and additional financial assistance to enable them to get on with building a larger number of houses. Surely, some building trade workers could be made available to help them to get on with the job of building.
My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Brixton (Lieut.-Colonel Lipton) discovered recently, as the result of a Question, the amazing fact that some thousands of building trade workers are unemployed.

§ Lieut.-Colonel Marcus Lipton (Brixton)
The latest available figures show that more than 4,200 building workers are unemployed in the London area.

§ Mr. Lewis
That shows how ludicrous the position is. Almost every London borough, and particularly my own, is urgently in need of houses, but for a number of reasons, either because of financial commitments, shortage of materials or shortage of building trade workers, cannot get on with the job of rebuilding and yet we find that over 4,000 building trade workers are unemployed.
Surely something can be done to assist councils to have these workers, if not directed, encouraged to go to the areas where the houses are needed, so that they can get on with the all-important job of rehousing the people. Many of them have not only been blitzed out, but dozens of working class people have been blitzed out as many as five and six times and have now been put into what they term the "rabbit hutch" of a Nissen hut, and do not know how long they are to remain there. For all these reasons, I urge the Parliamentary Secretary to give special consideration to the all-important job of rehousing the blitzed people of London.

§ Lieut.-Colonel Marcus Lipton (Brixton)
I am very pleased to have this opportunity of supporting what has been said by my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Lewis). He has put his finger on a real problem so far as many Metropolitan boroughs, and many of the local authorities on the outskirts of the London County Council area, are concerned.
My hon. Friend has referred to the problem that has been created by the 2060 temporary bungalows. At the end of the war, the Metropolitan borough of Lambeth, part of which I have the honour to represent, made a very special effort to provide the housing accommodation that was then much needed. In that respect, this borough was perhaps a pioneer, because we employed American Service men, still serving in the American Forces, to put up some of the temporary bungalows of the kind to which my hon. Friend has referred.
These bungalows were never expected to last for more than a very limited period of time. Unfortunately, the people, who were only too pleased to avail themselves of the opportunity of living in these Nissen huts, now find that those huts are, to all intents and purposes, virtually uninhabitable. My hon. Friend referred also to the problem of damp. There is in these bungalows an unusual degree of condensation, which creates these damp and unsatisfactory conditions.
I am advised by those who are competent to express an opinion on the matter that it is virtually impossible, except at a prohibitive cost, to cope with this problem of condensation, which leads to the saturation of furniture and to water running down the walls and windows on to the concrete floors. It is difficult, in those circumstances, for the people living in the Nissen huts to do anything at all about it. It is even more difficult for the borough engineer or the local housing authorities to provide the sanitary living conditions which these people have a right to expect.
Some local authorities have devised a system whereby people who have lived in these bungalows for five, six or seven years, go to the top of the housing list. Unfortunately, however, quite a number of people, although they know of the conditions which prevail in these bungalows, are, nevertheless, still anxious to live in these conditions because they prefer to live in a Nissen hut, subject to those difficulties, rather than continue in their present even more difficult circumstances. It therefore leads to the difficult state of affairs that people who were given priority in 1945 are now having to be given an equal degree of priority for rehousing in 1952. This is aggravated by the fact that people who are desperately in need of housing accommodation will, nevertheless, agree to live in 2061 the Nissen huts to which my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham, North has referred.
I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government will lend a sympathetic ear to the case which has been submitted to him tonight. He is perhaps in a better position than most of us who understand the difficulties of the problem we are now discussing. I hope he will not mind my referring to the fact that for some considerable time before his elevation to ministerial rank he was connected with the building industry. In dealing with these matters he is not dealing with something with which he is not personally acquainted. I very much hope that he will give favourable consideration to the case which has been put forward tonight, a case which, fortunately, by the accident Of the Parliamentary time-table we have a little more opportunity of developing than otherwise would have been possible.

§ Mr. William Keenan (Liverpool, Kirkdale)
I am very pleased to have the opportunity to say a few words on this problem raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Wood Green (Mr. Irving). It raises a question which has given me some concern for a long time. As we are dealing with temporary houses erected in the course of the last seven or more years, this debate provides an opportunity for the Parliamentary Secretary to tell us the intention of the Ministry in this connection.
Some of the prefabricated temporary houses, particularly of the American type, even the Phoenix and the Uni-Seco have almost papier mâiché exteriors. I live in the borough of Bootle at the north end of Liverpool, next to the constituency I represent. We lost, I believe, 2,500 out of 16,000 houses apart from the loss of schools, "pubs" and about half the churches in the town. We have 800 prefabricated houses. Some were started in 1945 but there were others started, I believe, at the end of 1944 and they supposed to have a life of 10 years. I do not think that the American type will last for that time, unless they have a lot of attention.
Any hon. Member interested in local government will be anxious to know the approach of the Ministry to the problem 2062 in towns like that and in a city like Liverpool, which has a 1,000 or more such houses. What will the Ministry do to replace them? Already local authorities have to spend considerable sums on these houses. They are heavily subsidised by local rates and very few were let at an economic rent. Their life is near termination, particularly the American type, which will not last for 10 years without a lot of money being spent on them. My hon. Friend who spoke of prefabricated houses which had five years' life and were not built on a solid enough foundation. What do the Ministry intend to do about that?
I am glad to have the opportunity of speaking on this matter, to which I have given some attention. There are about 150,000 such houses in this country and local authorities would like to know what the Ministry intend to do to replace the habitations as some of them have a life even shorter than 10 years.

§ Mr. Peter Roberts (Sheffield, Heeley)
I should like to widen the debate slightly. On a number of occasions I have tried to obtain the Adjournment on the burning question of housing, particularly in Sheffield. I hope, therefore, that the House will bear with me when I put a few questions on this topic to my hon. Friend.
The position in Sheffield is extraordinary. The latest figures I can obtain are for March, 1952, and up to that date, of houses commenced during the time of the previous Government. Since 1945, and during the tenure of the last Government, the number of houses completed amounted to 7,600. The Minister will know that before the war under Conservative and allied Governments we in Sheffield were able to build 5,000 houses a year. Therefore, the record of 7,600 is not a very good one during that period.

§ Lieut.-Colonel Lipton
rose—

§ Mr. Roberts
No, I cannot give way as I want to put these facts to the Minister to find out what is the present policy.
In Sheffield, we are faced with a very low housing output. What worries me is that other parts of the country during the seven years since the war, in proportion, seem to have done so much better. For example, Norwich during that period in which Sheffield completed 7,600 houses, has completed 4,800, but the size of the 2063 two towns is very different. In Sheffield, we have a population of 500,000 and in Norwich it is 120,000. I am surprised to see that the number of houses built and allocated to Sheffield is only 7,600 compared with 4,000 in Norwich.
I raised this matter with the previous Government on a number of occasions. The answers I received were a little tortuous but so far as I could follow them they were to the effect that if Sheffield could show that she could build more houses more licences would be granted. The Socialist controlled council, on the other hand, said that they were doing their best and wanted more licences before they could build more houses. The Socialist administrators went round in circles and we did not get the houses to which we were entitled.
I doubt very much whether my hon. Friend will have the figures at his fingertips tonight, but I hope that he will be able to give some of the latest figures which we shall be able to publicise in Sheffield as we are anxious to know what is the policy of the Government towards housing in Sheffield. First, am I right in supposing that the Government are anxious to see as many privately-built houses as possible put up in comparison with the number of houses built to let by the local authority? My hon. Friend will be aware that the council at the moment is sticking to its own ratio which was laid down under the previous Administration.
I should like the Parliamentary Secretary to tell us whether the retention of that lower figure is entirely the responsibility of the Sheffield City Council or whether there are any instructions from his Department on that point. I ask that because I feel very sincerely that if the Sheffield authorities will not take advantage of the assistance and the drive which my hon. Friend and my right hon Friend are making in this respect we shall find that licences and materials will go to other authorities.
That is the danger—that other places such as Birmingham and areas which are building a large number of houses may take the labour and materials away from Sheffield because Sheffield is not at present using all the appropriate machinery or the proper policy to bring houses to Sheffield. Therefore, I should 2064 welcome any guidance which the Parliamentary Secretary can give us on this point.
There is no doubt that under the last Government Sheffield had a very raw deal with regard to housing. We are now looking forward with confidence to the present Administration. I should like my hon. Friend tonight to tell us in Sheffield whether if we can, by private enterprise, build more houses to let or to sell, under the recognised ceiling, those houses will come out of the allocation which Sheffield would otherwise receive; or whether, if private enterprise can build more houses, and the local authority can build to its maximum, we shall then be able to obtain a greater number of houses than if we follow the policy and the provisions at present obtaining.
Any help which my hon. Friend can give now or later will be very welcome. I hope that he will bear in mind more strongly than did his predecessors under the previous Administration that Sheffield has a very particular duty to perform. The steel and steel centre which Sheffield represents require the provision of houses just as much as the coal miners require houses which the Coal Board are now putting up. Agricultural workers are, rightly, being given priority in housing. It seems to me that Sheffield and the Sheffield industries have not been given, that priority or for that matter that encouragement which we in Sheffield feel so much we are entitled to have.

§ Lieut.-Colonel Lipton
Will the hon. Member make it quite clear whether, in his opinion, the Ministry of Housing and Local Government should bring pressure to bear on the local authority in Sheffield to depart or deviate from whatever policy it has been following in the past?

§ Mr. Roberts
I want to know whether, if the authority keeps to the present provisions which the Socialist council is proposing to follow, it will thereby lose licences and materials. In other words, if the local authority were to allow private enterprise to have a greater proportion of houses, would that greater proportion be deducted from the licences or allocations given to the local authority?
I believe that the answer which my hon. Friend will give is that if they followed the course of allowing the building of more private enterprise houses we 2065 should get more houses, and that the restrictive and reactionary policy of the Socialist council in Sheffield is having the result of our getting fewer houses. That is the question I should like my hon. Friend to answer. I apologise for widening the scope of this debate and introducing this very pertinent question, but hon. Members know as well as I do how difficult it is to secure the Adjournment. Accordingly, I hope that they will bear with me in putting these questions to the Minister and in saying that we know and are confident that Sheffield will get a better deal from this Administration than it got from the last one.

§ Mr. J. A. Sparks (Acton)
I think my hon. Friend the Member for Wood Green (Mr. Irving) is to be congratulated on having secured the Adjournment at so early an hour on what is one of the most important problems with which this House has to deal. I am sure that the Parliamentary Secretary must have thought, when this subject came to be debated at so early an hour, that the debate would obviously be very much wider than that very narrow point which my hon. Friend sought originally to discuss. The point he has raised is a very important one, connected as it is with the temporary housing policy which this House has pursued since 1945.
As has been said, a considerable majority of the temporary houses that have been erected in past years were designed to remain in existence for only a short time. The period, in the case of most, was 10 years and in the case of aluminium houses a little longer. There are nearly 160,000 of these temporary dwellings erected in many parts of the country. Some of them have now been up for about six or seven years so that within about four years many will have served their 10-year period of life and it will be necessary to do something about them.
I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will be able to indicate to the House whether his Department has this matter in hand because within three or four years the Department and the Minister will have to decide whether many of these temporary dwellings, having served their purpose, shall now be demolished and either the sites they occupy be developed 2066 or the tenants within them be transferred to other accommodation. In Greater London this offers a very great problem because there is obviously so little, if any, land available within the geographical boundaries of the local authorities on which to develop alternative housing schemes. Therefore, it means that when these prefabricated dwellings have to come down, the problem will face the local authority of rehousing the tenants who will have to leave those dwellings.
That is very difficult to do, especially where there is no more land for development and where the area is over-crowded and over-populated. I am sure that the Parliamentary Secretary will realise that in these congested areas there is a racket taking place arising directly from this serious shortage of housing accommodation. Therefore, we know quite well that unless the Minister is prepared to do something when the time comes for the people who will have to leave their temporary dwellings they will find great difficulty in getting, if they do not find it impossible to get, other accommodation.
To emphasise the seriousness of this position, I should like to mention a matter which I submitted to the Minister a few weeks ago. I sent him lists of vacant properties which have come into my hands from only one house agency of many practising in London. There are a number of lists, all quite recent, containing scores of vacant dwellings which are being offered to let upon tenancies. Most of them are controlled houses, and they are being offered to let for various reasons.
To emphasise the seriousness of this problem I think it would be of interest to the House if I quoted one or two cases, because I am not sure that the House is fully conversant with the extent of this profiteering. I mention this because the local authorities have the power to take action in these cases. I want the Minister to ginger up the local authorities and to see that they are taking action in matters of this kind.
At Stockwell there is a dwelling containing four rooms, a kitchen and bath. The rent is 10s. weekly and they want £325 for the contents. In the Holland Park area there are two rooms with kitchen and bath where the rent is £200 2067 per annum and three years' rent is required in advance. So that a tenant of a prefabricated dwelling, if he has to move out, would have to find £600 to become the tenant of this two-room flat with a kitchen and bath in the Holland Park area. In the Barking area two rooms with kitchen and bath are vacant at a rent of 18s. per week, and £380 is required for the contents. In the Hampstead area there are four rooms with kitchen and bath at a rent of £250 per annum and £700, or offer, is required for the contents. The contents are usually called furniture and fittings, but in many cases the correct designation would be junk.
In the Worcester Park area there is a flat of two bedrooms and one reception room with kitchen and bath at a rent of £154 a year and £850 is required for the contents. In the S.E.19 district there are three rooms with kitchen and bath, the rent is £3 2s. a week and £750 is required for the contents. At Brixton there are two rooms with kitchen and bath, the rent is 19s. 9d. weekly and £360 is required for the contents. I can assure the House that there are scores of these cases, and that I have not quoted the worst of them.
I sent this evidence to the Minister, asking if he would put an end to this obvious profiteering in the letting of these tenancies. It is true that the right hon. Gentleman said that he was considering the matter and would see whether he had administrative powers to deal with it. He said that local authorities could take action. In a letter to me, dated 4th July, he said: Where the purchase of any furniture, fittings or other articles is required as a condition of the grant of a tenancy of a controlled house or flat, and the price exceeds a reasonable price, it is an offence for which local authorities can prosecute in the courts. I would like the Minister to give us some information about the number of prosecutions which local authorities have undertaken. I know he may not be able to give that information tonight, because he was not aware that this question would be put to him. But it is important that his Department should make inquiries into the problem to see to what extent local authorities are using their powers to restrain the profiteering which is going on throughout the Greater London area, and 2068 maybe in cities and towns in other parts of the country. What are the local authorites doing to stamp out this racket and to enable dwellings to be offered at a reasonable figure?
In this connection it is significant to note that not only have the local authorities power to deal with abuses of that kind, but, as a direct result of the powers of the Minister which he could delegate to them, they would have the power to extend the principle of requisitioning. Unfortunately, the Minister is working in the opposite direction. If the local authorities had extended powers to requisition a good deal of this profiteering would be prevented. Many of the places I have instanced have been empty for long periods, but the local authorities now can do nothing about it, because the Minister will not permit them the wider powers of requisitioning which he could give them if he so desired.
I urge the Minister to widen, instead of restricting, the powers of requisitioning in order that local authorities may stamp out this racket in our congested areas, and make available to homeless people the much needed accommodation which they are seeking and which so infrequently can be found. The Minister is already making investigations into the powers of requisitioning and I believe that he has also suggested to local authorities—in fact, he has required local authorities—not to requisition any more vacant accommodation, as he is very anxious to get rid of the whole requisitioning system as quickly as possible.
He has recommended to local authorities that whenever the occasion arises existing properties should be de-requisitioned and returned to their original owners. I want the Minister to be very careful about what he does in London in the congested areas. If anything will make for trouble that sort of policy definitely will. It could be done only by handing over the vacant house to the owner. To some extent I suppose one cannot blame an owner presented with vacant possession of his own house if he is tempted when he knows he can sell it for a fantastic price. The inducement to do that will be very strong. Does the Minister propose to hand over to the original owner the property with vacant possession so that the owner may profiteer —there is no other word for it—as a 2069 result of the existing serious shortage of housing accommodation in the built-up areas?
If these requisitioned properties are to be handed over with vacant possession where will the present tenants go? They must be re-housed somewhere. They cannot be turned out on to the street. There is no available accommodation for them in the built-up areas. It is true the Minister has suggested that local authorities may purchase some of these requisitioned dwellings which they considered to be suitable, and something may be said for that. But the Minister attaches to it a condition which makes it almost hopeless for local authorities to do any such thing, because he denies them the Exchequer grant should they purchase a requisitioned house.
I see no difference in making an Exchequer contribution for any dwelling, whether it be a new dwelling or a requisitioned dwelling, if it is an additional unit of accommodation acquired by the local authority. The Minister ought to make up his mind about the wider implications of this policy. He should encourage local authorities, in suitable cases, to purchase existing requisitioned property and he should make available to them the Exchequer block grant. In addition, the local authorities should provide the normal rate fund contribution. That would go a long way towards helping to reduce the extent of the requisitioning programme without injuring the tenant and without adding to the tendency towards profiteering about which I have complained.
I hope that as a result of our discussion tonight the Parliamentary Secretary will take our views back to the Ministry. I hope that he will get the Ministry to work to evolve a scheme for the replacement of existing temporary dwellings when their lifetime expires. I hope that he will be able to work out a proper plan for the replacement of this accommodation. If he does not he will find that the problem is on top of him before he is ready to deal with it.
I also appeal to him to reconsider his whole atttiude towards the requisitioning policy of the Government. A retraction of these requisitioning powers now in the congested areas of London and our big cities and towns is accentuating this profiteering in housing tenancies and 2070 sales. The way to stamp out some of these illegal and fantastic charges which are being demanded for premiums, fittings, and all the rest, is to give local authorities added requisitioning powers over vacant accommodation. Then I feel sure that these vacant places would become available at more reasonable rents. I conclude by expressing the view that this debate has been well worth while and I hope that it will help to contribute towards a solution of this problem.

§ Mr. H. A. Price (Lewisham, West)
During the last seven or eight months I have often been amazed at the temerity of Her Majesty's Opposition in the attitude which they have displayed towards the efforts which we on this side of the House have been making to clear up the mess which they left behind. Nobody listening to their speeches, either inside or outside this House, and nobody reading their literature, would think that they had the slightest responsibility for any of the problems with which we are grappling.
Those remarks apply in full measure to this debate. I am astonished at the temerity of hon. Gentlemen opposite in arranging a debate on this subject that is one upon which, more than any other I can think of, they are vulnerable. The hon. Member for Acton (Mr. Sparks) congratulated his hon. Friend for Wood Green (Mr. Irving). I doubt whether his colleagues on the Front Bench will congratulate him, though at the moment there is no one on the Front Bench opposite. I do not blame them. Discretion is the better part of valour. But I do not think that they will thank the hon. Member for Wood Green for exposing them to a three hour debate on this subject.
Every speech so far has been one in condemnation of the previous Government. The life of Nissen huts when first put up was supposed to be two years. We are being told that these huts are still in use. They should have been removed by the last Administration three or four years ago. It is their fault that the huts are still there, and not ours. I hope that my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary will not feel in the least guilty on the question of Nissen huts.
2071 The hon. Member for Acton quoted figures published by a firm of racketeers charging exorbitant rents, and no doubt premiums too, for accommodation. If he and his hon. Friends had done their job and kept their promises of 1945, these racketeers would have been out of business years ago.

§ Mr. Sparks
This sort of thing is far more rampant now since the Tory Government came into power than it was before.

§ Mr. Price
There is good reason for that. These racketeers know that their days are numbered. They have to get the money while the going is good. Hon. Members opposite cannot get away from their responsibilities. They promised this country 4 million houses in 10 years. They promised 400,000 houses a year for 10 years. But they did not get half way there.
During the last Election campaign they told us that we could not improve upon their performance. They said that 200,000 houses a year was the maximum. I wonder how many hon. Members remember the saying which was popular in the desert during the 8th Army campaign, "The difficult we do immediately. The impossible takes a little longer." The impossible has taken my hon. Friend and his right hon. Friend eight months. Already they are half way towards the target which hon. Gentlemen opposite said it was impossible to achieve. [Interruption.] Hon. Gentlemen opposite are very good at dishing it out: they must learn to take it for a change.
The Minister and his Parliamentary Secretary are to be congratulated upon a magnificent effort. I have not the slightest doubt that if they ignore the misleading policy which hon. Gentlemen opposite are indicating, and if they continue upon the road which they have been treading for the past eight months, they will very soon reach their target of 300,000 houses, to the complete discomfiture of the Opposition. There is no doubt that they are on the right road.

§ Mr. Percy Shurmer (Birmingham, Sparkbrook)
To the exclusion of churches, schools and hospitals.

§ Mr. Price
No. It is not to the exclusion of churches, schools and hospitals. 2072 That suggestion has been completely exploded. And the houses are not for the rich. Hon. Gentlemen will recall that it was said that we intended to build houses only for the rich. That fact is completely disproved by all the returns we have had so far. We are building more houses to let and a few more for purchase. Already there are 16,000 families comprising about 50,000 people occupying new houses which would not have existed had the Socialists won the last Election. Yet my hon. Friends opposite have the temerity to initiate a debate on housing.
I want to make three constructive suggestions, because of course there are some suggestions which can be made. My first is in connection with the Rent Restriction Acts. I suggest to my hon. Friends opposite that they should read the speech made by their noble Friend in another place not long ago.

§ Mr. George Jeger (Goole)
We are not the hon. Gentleman's hon. Friends.

§ Mr. Price
That is their fault, and not mine.

§ Mr. Jeger
We are very particular.

§ Mr. Price
So am I. If hon. Gentlemen opposite read the speech, which was one of the soundest speeches made on housing by a Socialist for years, because it was factual—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Mr. Hopkin Morris)
I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman proposes to deal with legislation. If so it would be out of order.

§ Mr. Price
No, Sir. I was merely about to suggest that hon. Gentlemen opposite should read that speech which deals with the question of rent restriction.

§ Mr. Shurmer
Who made the speech?

§ Mr. Price
It would not be proper for me to mention the name. I think that it would be out of order.
The next point to which I wish to direct attention is one about which I suggest that good deal could be done. It is in reference to the self-help building societies which are becoming popular all over the country. They are meeting difficulties from reactionary local authorities.

§ Mr. Shurmer
No.

§ Mr. Price
Yes. In this connection the word "reactionary" means Socialist. I 2073 can quote a case which came to my notice only this morning. A self-help building society have obtained an option upon 4½ acres of land in Bromley. They are not being allowed to proceed because the majority of the members live in Lewisham. That is a pity. It is high time that that parochial outlook was dispensed with. Thirty houses could be built on this land. I ask my hon. Friend to convey to his right hon. Friend my view that it might be possible for him to encourage local authorities to assist the self-help building societies and not to hinder them in this way.
A third point which I want to make concerns my own borough, although I am sure it also concerns West Ham and other boroughs; and it is the problem of value payment sites. I urged the last Government to do something about this, and they did not; and I want this Government to take the opportunity of action where the previous Government failed. I can speak only for Lewisham, but in Lewisham there are about 1,600 value payment sites lying idle—small sites which are unsuitable for the local authority and are suitable only for private development.
The owners of those sites did not receive enough compensation to enable them to rebuild. There are 1,600 in Lewisham alone, and I have no means of estimating how many there are throughout the country. Would the Minister look at this problem to see if there is any way in which he can help the owners of these sites to build upon them? If there is, it will make a great contribution towards the solution of the housing problem, especially in bombed areas such as West Ham and Lewisham.
I urge my hon. Friend to continue along the path which he has been treading for the past eight months. The relaxations which he has been able to make are beginning to bear fruit, and I am sure that if he found it possible to introduce more relaxations they, too, would bear fruit. I support previous speakers in asking the Minister to see what can be done to persuade reactionary local authorities to use to the full the facilities which he has provided. Those who have used those facilities are producing figures very much more favourable than those of the past six years. Could not the Minister use those figures, or any other method which his fertile mind suggests, 2074 to encourage other authorities to use these facilities and thus increase the total housing accommodation available in the country?

§ Mr. Percy Shurmer (Birmingham, Sparkbrook)
There is no doubt that the greatest tragedy still facing this country is that of housing. I do not think anyone on this side of the House would quarrel with the Government if they could build 600,000 houses a year. No sane, sensible man, whatever his political opinions, would quarrel with any Government which could solve the housing problem if he was in close contact with those who are suffering from the housing shortage.
It was my intention earlier, when some of my hon. Friends were dealing simply with matters in their own constituencies, to speak briefly of some of the housing difficulties in Birmingham. I well remember that housing has been an important subject ever since I joined the council in 1921. Hon. Members opposite, however, have begun to get controversial and have told again the same old story about what the Socialist Government did, what they did not do, and what they ought to have done. It is a very old story, but hon. Members opposite have a lot to answer for when we recall the housing conditions which existed before the war, when we could have built many thousands of houses and when the builders were walking the streets out of work.

§ Squadron Leader A. E. Cooper (Ilford, South)
rose—

§ Mr. Shurmer
I am going to get on with my speech. There is not the slightest doubt that we did not build the number of houses we could have built at that time when the building operatives were out of employment. Instead, jerry-built houses were built for sale, and then people had to leave them because they could not afford to pay for them. I could take hon. Members into districts in Birmingham where jerry-builders built houses for sale and where people had to be turned out of them because they could not afford to pay for them—and they were jerry-built houses which were nearly tumbling down.
It is all very well for hon. Members opposite to talk about what they did before the war and what they are doing now, 2075 but let us look at the position. We know full well that the situation in the building industry was the same as that in the mining industry. There was a shortage of men in the mines immediately after the war, and there was a shortage of operatives in the building trade. Why? Because the fathers would not put their sons to that trade. The same attitude that there had been in the mining industry applied in the building industry. So we found ourselves short of building operatives. What happened? Everyone knows that for the first two years after the war, or for nearly two years after the war, building operatives from every town and city in the country, even from a great city like Birmingham, which also had been blitzed, were sent to repair the damage in London.
There is no doubt about it that the house building that is going on at the present time is due to contracts that were placed before the present Government came to power. One would like to know how many of those contracts were placed before the present Government got in. Let us be frank about this. This is a serious position.

§ Brigadier Terence Clarke (Portsmouth, West)
Due to six years of Socialism.

§ Mr. Shurmer
Anyone who attends an advice bureau knows how serious the position is. I live in a poor district, and anyone who attends an advice bureau every Friday night, or who reads his post, knows, as I know, living as I do in a poor district, the tragedy that is going on, the agony that is being endured.

§ Brigadier Clarke
Because of six years of Socialism.

§ Mr. Shurmer
Six years of Socialism! There is not the slightest doubt about it that had the present Government been in power then there would not have been the houses to let for the workers that there are at present. At present houses are being built for sale that the workers cannot afford to pay for. However, I want to get back to my point about the question of who built the houses. Let us have a look at the situation at present. There are so many people waiting for houses—

§ Brigadier Clarke
Because of six years of Socialism.

§ Mr. Shurmer
Because of six years of full employment which gave to young people the chance to get married more quickly and, therefore, to want houses sooner; and which enabled older people to remain in their houses, whereas in pre-war days, when a man would be too old at 40 and would become unemployed and thrown on the scrap heap, older people had to give up their homes and go to live with their children, and could not have homes of their own.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Mr. Hopkin Morris)
I am not quite sure how the Member relates these remarks to the administration of this Department.

§ Mr. Shurmer
I think, Sir, with all due respect to you, that you have allowed other people to criticise the Socialist Government. Surely, I have the right to prove that the present Government could do no better, and that, anyway, the building that is going on now is due to work that was begun by the Socialist Government? I have been led astray.

§ Brigadier Clarke
Hear, hear.

§ Mr. Shurmer
We shall soon lead some of you up the garden all right.

§ Mr. H. A. Price
On a point of order. Is it in order for the hon. Member to allude to you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, as being led up the garden?

§ Mr. Shurmer
I apologise, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. I meant the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro) and other hon. Members on the opposite side of the House.

§ Mr. Gerald Nabarro (Kidderminster)
The hon. Member has already been led up the garden path.

§ Mr. Shurmer
I should like to know—I do not know whether the Parliamentary Secretary can give the figures, even roughly—how many of the houses that are being built with the extra number of operatives coming along month by month, exactly as is happening in the mining areas, were put out at contract before the Government come into power?

§ Mr. Lewis
Would my hon. Friend permit me? Is he not aware of the fact that I myself asked a question of the Minister about how many of these—

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
Order. The hon. Member has already spoken.

§ Mr. Lewis
With respect. My hon. Friend has given way to allow me to put a question to him. I wish to ask him whether he is not aware that I put that Question to the Minister, asking him if he would state for how many of these new houses the previous Administration were responsible, and that the Minister refused to answer me? That speaks for itself.

§ Mr. Shurmer
On the controversy between what the present Government can do and what the Socialist Government were doing, we shall see that the present Government will build houses for sale but not for ordinary people to rent.

§ Brigadier Clarke
No.

§ Mr. Shurmer
We shall see.

§ Brigadier Clarke
We have seen already.

§ Mr. Shurmer
In the City of Birmingham we have at present some 65,000 applicants on the register of the housing department.

§ Brigadier Clarke
That shows the position after six years of Socialism.

§ Mr. Shurmer
After six years of full employment these people are lucky enough to be able to afford to rent a house.

§ Brigadier Clarke
We have got 13,000.

§ Mr. Edward Short (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Central)
On a point of order. Is it in order for the hon. and gallant Gentleman to keep up this running commentary whilst remaining in his seat?

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
Hon. Members would do well to remember that all remarks should be addressed to the Chair.

§ Mr. Shurmer
The problem in Birmingham is very, very difficult, and there is not the slightest doubt that shortly the local authority will have to go to the Minister to find some means of getting land outside the City. I should imagine that in future the only possibility will be the building of a satellite town for Birmingham. We are fast using up all the land we have, and, whilst we might be prepared to build a number of blocks of flats, I must be quite frank and say that Birmingham people are not flat-minded. Flats would be very expensive, and I 2078 imagine the only solution to the problem will be to go out of Birmingham and build a satellite town. I hope that when they are approached the Ministry will be able to make some suggestion as to how we can deal with the housing problem in the City of Birmingham.
At the present time in Birmingham—and this is a blot on the past administration in years gone by—we have 48,000 householders sharing piped water, 36,000 families sharing cooking stoves, 38,000 sharing kitchen sinks, 73,000 sharing water sanitation, 30,000 sharing fixed baths, and 116,000 houses without any bath accommodation. I doubt whether there is any hon. Member on the Government benches who has ever had to live in a house without any bathroom accommodation. I have been in public life for 31 years, and at the present time I live in a house which has no bath accommodation. If I want a bath at home I have to go to the public baths.

§ Mr. H. A. Price
Why live there?

§ Mr. Shurmer
I live in the district by choice.

§ Mr. Price
Why not change houses with your right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, South (Mr. Gaitskell)? [Laughter.]

Mr. Shurrner
It is all very well to laugh. You make that sacrifice. You live your life amongst the people—

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman must address his remarks to me.

§ Mr. Price
rose—

§ Mr. Shurmer
No, I am not giving way. If the hon. Gentleman cares to make a joke of these things he can do so. Hon. Members opposite have never known poverty; they have never known what it is to go without these things; they cannot understand and never will understand, and it is no wonder that our people do not want the party opposite to represent them.

§ Mr. Price
On a point of order. Since the hon. Gentleman has referred to me, is it not customary for him to allow me to reply?

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
That is not a point of order.

§ Mr. Shurmer
In Birmingham quite a number of houses have been taken over by the local authority. In fact, they have taken over the block of houses where I live, and have just been doing the first repairs to them since the first-aid repairs after the blitz. Many of these houses could last for another 10 to 15 years. Where there is a possibility of installing bathrooms in these houses, I think the Government should be prepared to consider some financial assistance to the local authorities to provide better sanitation, to make these houses more comfortable, because there is not the slightest doubt that we cannot afford to pull houses down in that city. Slums still prevail in the City of Birmingham—one of the wealthiest cities in the country—and some of them are appalling.

§ Mr. Nabarro
I think that I am the only other hon. Member present who lives in Birmingham and who has a knowledge of the conditions there. Most of the ills which the hon. Member has stated so religiously result from the fact that Birmingham, of all the provincial cities of this country, has grown the most rapidly in the last quarter of a century, and that is the principal cause of the difficulty.

§ Mr. Shurmer
For the first 25 years I was on the council. We had 32 Labour men out of 136 councillors. The question of Birmingham rapidly growing has nothing to do with the filthy back-to-back houses that exist there. I am not prepared to let the hon. Member for Kidderminster, who lives in Birmingham, tell me anything about Birmingham, because for a number of years I lived in a back-to-back house, while a councillor in the district, so that I could be among the people.

§ Mr. David Renton (Huntingdon)
rose—

§ Mr. Shurmer
I think the Government will be well-advised to consider some financial assistance, so that these houses can be made more habitable for the next 10 to 15 years and have some of the conveniences, such as bathrooms. If I wanted to put a bathroom in my house, it would cost £80 or £90, which is a rather large sum. On the other hand, that house could be made habitable and convenient and blocks of houses in that district could be 2080 made so, if financial assistance was given by the Government to the local authority which is spending considerable sums of money on these areas. Birmingham City Council during the 12 months it had its first Labour majority—

§ Mr. Nabarro
Now, be careful.

§ Mr. Shurmer
—which it lost and got back again in the May elections, was prepared to set up a central area department and to sanction the spending of an enormous amount of money in reconditioning houses.

§ Mr. Nabarro
rose—

§ Mr. Shurmer
Another matter to which I wish to refer was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Acton (Mr. Sparks), namely, the requisitioning of houses. How far the Socialist Government went in requisitioning houses, I am not concerned about at the moment; but I am concerned about the people walking the streets, sleeping in parks and air-raid shelters and living under awful conditions. While conditions like that exist, no houses should be allowed to be empty for more than a reasonable time, and that reasonable time should be one month. Hundreds of houses stand empty in our great towns and cities. I could find plenty of empty houses all over Birmingham.
Houses are standing empty simply because owners and landlords want to get as much for them as they can. It is a tragedy. If a war broke out tomorrow the Government would requisition everything they wanted to destroy life. It is a tragedy that these houses should be empty if allowing them to be occupied would give a chance to families, to men in the factories in Birmingham who are doing their best for the export drive to get the country on an even keel, to families which are suffering through having to live in one room, or to families which, through lack of accommodation, are split up, the man living with his people and the woman with her's and the children probably in a home. The Government have as much right to requisition such houses in peace-time as in war-time, if not more so. I hope we shall hear no more about what the Socialist Government did and that we shall find houses being built to let at rents which people can afford to pay.

§ Squadron Leader A. E. Cooper (Ilford, South)
One of the tragedies of the age in which we live is that housing has been brought into the arena of party politics. It is a tragedy that the miseries of ordinary human beings should be thrown about from one party to the other merely in order to secure a few votes. The fault does not rest entirely on one side of the Chamber.

§ Mr. Lewis
The Conservatives started it.

§ Squadron Leader Cooper
I do not think that the remarks of the hon. Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Lewis) contribute very much to the discussion.

§ Mr. Lewis
rose—

§ Squadron Leader Cooper
I will not give way. I must be guided by the behaviour of the hon. Member for Sparkbrook (Mr. Shurmer), who did not seem to observe the courtesies of this House.

§ Mr. Shurmer
I gave way two or three times.

§ Mr. Nabarro
The hon. Member made a most provocative speech.

§ Mr. Shurmer
I intended it to be provocative.

§ Squadron Leader Cooper
In the first few months of this Parliament hon. Gentlemen opposite were seized with the idea that they should talk very loudly about the alleged misdoings of the Conservative Party to cover up their own misdoings of the last six years. That policy succeeded for some months, but today the initiative has passed to this side of the Chamber. Hon. Gentlemen opposite now dislike intensely having brought home to them in the House and throughout the country the mess and the muddle in which they left the country.

§ Mr. Barnett Janner (Leicester, North-West)
That is an old story.

§ Squadron Leader Cooper
The hon. Member for Leicester, North-West says it is an old story, but it is a story which gets worse the more we dig into the history of the last six years.
The hon. Member for Sparkbrook should remember that, with approximately the same building force, between 2082 the wars we built about 350,000 houses a year—

§ Mr. Shurmer
What type of house?

§ Squadron Leader Cooper
—compared with the 200,000 houses by the Socialist Party. I deny the charge that all those houses, or anything like all of them, were jerry-built. A very large proportion of the houses built between the wars stand today as a fitting monument to the people who built them, and those who live in them are very proud owners. Today about 500,000 people in this country would be very glad to be able to live in such accommodation.
The hon. Member for Sparkbrook sets himself up as an authority on Birmingham. I am sorry to say that I do not regard him as an authority on Birmingham. In a recent debate on British Transport I made some criticism of the railway stations in Birmingham which he said was unfounded. Within 48 hours I received a letter from the Chairman of British Railways supporting what I had said.

§ Mr. Shurmer
rose—

§ Squadron Leader Cooper
No, I will not give way. The hon. Member ought to go about Birmingham with his eyes open.

§ Mr. Thomas Steele (Dunbartonshire, West)
On a point of order. Is it according to the usual custom of this House that one hon. Gentleman should make an accusation against another and then not give him the opportunity to question it?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Mr. Hopkin Morris)
That is not a point of order. There was no accusation that I heard.

§ Mr. Shurmer
Will the hon. and gallant Gentleman allow me to correct a statement that he has made? [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] The hon. and gallant Member knows it is not true. It is a deliberate lie.

§ Brigadier Clarke
Is it in order for an hon. Member to talk about a definite lie?

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
I did not hear that expression.

§ Squadron Leader Cooper
I question the Parliamentary language of the hon. Member, but I am quite prepared, 2083 though not at this precise moment, to show him in HANSARD the statement to which I refer, to show him his own speech and also the letter from Lord Hurcomb.

§ Mr. Shurmer
Queen's Hotel?

§ Squadron Leader Cooper
The hon. Member is quite right. He remembers it now.

§ Mr. Shurmer
I do not live in hotels.

§ Squadron Leader Cooper
To deal with the criticism I made about the Queen's Hotel the hon. Member did not have to go inside, because I was criticising the outside.

§ Mr. Shurmer
Be fair and give way on that point.

§ Squadron Leader Cooper
The hon. Member wants some help regarding further land in Birmingham because Birmingham, he says, is a congested area. I would ask the hon. Gentleman to pay some attention to the legislation which passes through this House. In this Chamber we have recently approved the Town Development Bill, and if he takes some notice of that he will find that Birmingham has all the powers which it needs to do what is necessary—

§ Mr. Shurmer
Before the hon. and gallant Gentleman leaves that I should be obliged if he would give way. I am grateful to him for giving way. He must be fair in his statements. He talks about something he said of Birmingham. He wanted a glass canopy put outside the Queen's Hotel, and he said that the Queen's Hotel looked a disgrace because it had not a glass canopy on the outside.

§ Squadron Leader Cooper
I am very glad I gave way because it will be within the knowledge of the House that when I made certain observations a few moments ago the hon. Member denied that I knew anything about it. He said what I said was a deliberate lie. I take it that now he withdraws that. I want to make one final reference—

§ Mr. Shurmer
What has a canopy to do with housing?

§ Squadron Leader Cooper
—to the background of hon. Members on this side of the House.

§ Mr. Shurmer
There were more labourers on the Queen's Hotel who ought to have been building houses.

§ Squadron Leader Cooper
The hon. Member referred, in his speech, to the social background of hon. Members on this side of the House, and made particular reference to my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, West (Mr. H. A. Price). He would not give way to my hon. Friend, and I am going to tell him this: my hon. Friend lived for 20 years as one of five children with his father and mother in two rooms in Islington without any bathroom whatsoever. His father was a builder's labourer, and that is one example, and there are very many others, of hon. Members on this side of the House with similar backgrounds. [Interruption.] I should have thought —[Interruption]—

§ Mr. Deputy-Speaker
I can scarcely hear what is being said by the hon. and gallant Gentleman. The less noise there is the better.

§ Mr. Nabarro
The hon. Member for Sparkbrook (Mr. Shurmer) ought to apologise.

§ Squadron Leader Cooper
I think the hon. Member for Sparkbrook—

§ Mr. Nabarro
It is disgraceful.

§ Squadron Leader Cooper
—ought to have sufficient courtesy to withdraw.

§ Mr. Shurmer
I think it will be within the recollection of hon. Members who heard me that I was attacking hon. Gentlemen on the other side, and that I attacked the hon. Member for Lewisham, West (Mr. H. A. Price) because of his laughing. I did not say anything about the conditions under which he lived. I said that I did not suppose the majority of hon. Members, or possibly any hon. Member, on that side of the House knew what it was to go without the convenience of a bathroom. I did not refer to any particular Member.

§ Squadron Leader Cooper
The hon. Member can shuffle and wriggle as much as he likes. When he reads HANSARD tomorrow he will find out precisely what he said. I have no doubt whatsoever that, in the end, he will send a note of apology to my hon. Friend.
2085 I want to spend a moment or two upon the more constructive efforts which have been made by the hon. Member for Acton (Mr. Sparks). He has had long experience in local government and on various housing committees, and we have noticed the considerable effort that he has made to help.
I cannot appreciate his remarks about requisitioning. Surely he must know that local authorities, whatever their political complexion, are very vexed about this matter, and are anxious to get rid of requisitioned property rather than to take on further property. Every hon. Member receives a great deal of correspondence from owners of requisitioned property who want to get control of their properties, not to sell them—although I admit there are a few in that category—but to live in the houses themselves.
I have a number of cases where because of housing shortage, the tenants have to remain in the requisitioned property, the council cannot put them elsewhere, and the owners of the property are living in appalling conditions.

§ Mr. Sparks
In cases like that local authorities have power to release requisitioned property. I cannot conceive of a local authority, being asked by an owner to release his requisitioned property because he was homeless, refusing to do so. Release has been carried out extensively in cases like that. Where the owner wants to gain possession in order to sell the house, he himself being properly housed, would he a case for the local authority's refusing to release.

§ Squadron Leader Cooper
The owner of the property need not necessarily be homeless, but he may be living in very bad conditions. He may have a roof over his head, but be living in one or two rooms a long way from his work. Civil servants who were evacuated during the war to other parts of the country, and whose homes were temporarily requisitioned by the authorities, are now being brought back to London, and they want to get into their properties. Such cases are very sad and there is quite a number of them. [An HON. MEMBER: "Very few."] There is a great number of them.

§ Mr. Lewis
Is the hon. and gallant Gentleman aware that my hon. Friend the Member for Acton (Mr. Sparks) referred 2086 to houses that were empty, and that the whole point of his case was the vast number of properties in London that were empty for weeks and months on end and should be requisitioned?

§ Squadron Leader Cooper
At this moment, I am not concerned with them. I do not know the details of the list which the hon. Gentleman has in front of him. It is fair to point out that it was the right hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Dalton) who curtailed the requisitioning powers of the local authorities. It was not my right hon. Friend the present Minister of Housing and Local Government. The right hon. Member for Bishop Auckland recognised then that requisitioning had to stop, that it was proper in due time for the properties to go back to their proper owners.
It is all very well for some hon. Gentlemen opposite to talk about requisitioning more properties. When they are in their own homes, as so many are, buying them under mortgage or in some other way, it is not generous to talk about disposing of the property of other people in this way. We would all much prefer to see people who have bought a home being able to get into it. Surely it is wrong, and contrary to British justice, that so many people who own their homes are not permitted to live in them because of the requisitioning powers?

§ Mr. Shurmer
Does the hon. and gallant Gentleman suggest that people should be walking the streets or living in one room in overcrowded conditions while hundreds of houses are standing empty? Those are the ones we are trying to get at. Why does not the hon. and gallant Gentleman put it properly?

§ Squadron Leader Cooper
The hon. Gentleman states a case which is very sad. We all realise that housing our people is No. 1 priority. I would point out to the hon. Member, who insists on bringing this back to party politics instead of discussing it on a national basis, that it was the right hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Bevan) who, in the first Socialist Government of 1945, said time and time again that before the next Election the housing problem of this country would be ended. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] Oh yes, over and over again, and he would not in any circumstances 2087 authorise a programme in excess of 200,000 houses a year. We have said that we do not regard 200,000 houses as our ceiling; we will go up to 300,000 and beyond.

§ Mr. Shurmer
What about hospitals and schools?

§ Squadron Leader Cooper
My right hon. Friend is already able to show a considerable advance. The hon. Member asks, "What about hospitals and schools?" That is a pertinent observation because a lot of illness which we get at present, a lot of juvenile delinquency, and so forth, is brought about through bad housing. If I am asked to quote a priority for men and materials, I would opt for building houses first. Is there any other hon. Gentleman who would do anything different? The hon. Member for Sparkbrook knows that is right and so does his hon. Friend the Member for West Ham, North. What is the point in continuing to interrupt with such frivolous observations?

§ Mr. Shurmer
rose—

§ Squadron Leader Cooper
No, I will not give way any more; I have been very generous.
Now I want to ask a serious question about the borough of Battersea. I tried to get into touch with the right hon. Member for Battersea, North (Mr. Jay) tonight when I knew that this debate was on, but I was not successful. I understand that in the borough of Battersea the district auditor has made serious observations in connection with the direct labour of that borough. Battersea is a Socialist controlled borough and it has a direct labour department. It built a large number of houses, the costs and rents of which are very high indeed.
I understand that the report of the district auditor has been submitted to my right hon. Friend, and the House is entitled to know what is being done in this case. It seems to me wrong that any local authority, whatever its political complexion, should force a doctrine down the throats of the ratepayers which has resulted, as in this case, in excessive costs of houses at uneconomic rents and in a very heavy rate subsidy falling upon the rest of the ratepayers.
2088 I am very glad that we have had this opportunity tonight of ventilating the serious problem of housing. I join with my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, West in saying that I marvel at the temerity of hon. Members opposite in raising this subject tonight. [An HON. MEMBER: "And their dishonesty."] In the years 1945 to 1950, as a result of bad housing conditions, we had the spiv, the racketeer and the black marketeer. That is the price that the country had to pay for six years of Socialist policy in housing, and I hope that the people will never forget it.

§ Mr. Barnett Janner (Leicester, North-West)
Of all the non-party political speeches I have heard, the speech of the hon. and gallant Member for Ilford, South (Squadron Leader Cooper) takes some beating. He started by telling us that he was disgusted with the party political speeches and that this was a matter outside party politics. Then he proceeded to give a speech so peppered with party political prejudices that it is almost impossible to know where the purport of the speech came in at all apart from its political attack.
The hon. and gallant Member knows very well that it was estimated by the great thinkers in his own party that when we had 450,000 houses built the problem would be solved. [HON. MEMBERS: "Seven hundred and fifty thousand."] All right. Let us have the figures correctly. Does the hon. and gallant Member still say that? Does he still say that the people, having had six years of good Socialist rule, with good social amenities and with a proper understanding of how to live, now that they require proper houses to live in in order to carry out those methods that have been prepared for them by the Socialist Government, would be contented—the newly marrieds and all the rest—with 750,000 and that that will solve the problem? Of course, the hon. and gallant Member does not think it for one moment. Then he talked about requisitioning
Let me talk about one or two points that I want to raise specially in this debate. For many years, in many Governments, we have endeavoured to protect those who were in houses which were below a certain rateable value from being ejected. Until the present Government came into office efforts were made 2089 to make and keep the Rent Acts effective. It was the purpose of those Acts to protect people from being profited against by racketeers taking over premises and using them for the purpose of extorting unreasonable rentals. Attempts were made to bring landlords into line, so that they would repair the houses and keep them in repair, and the tenants were called upon to pay the costs of those repairs.
Fifteen per cent, was allowed to the landlords, when the first Rent Act came into enable them to have some reasonable return above the rental that they were receiving before. Ever since the 1915 Rent Act came into force, however, all houses, until the time of the 1939 Rent Act, were being let at a rental in which the landlord was entitled to charge, and in the main did charge, 25 per cent. of the net rent for the purpose of keeping those houses in repair. What has been done with that money? What are the Government going to do about compelling those who have received these rentals year in and year out for so many years to utilise that money for the purpose for which it was given or extracted from the tenant?
Today we hear a lot of talk about increasing the rents in consequence of repairs. All too often it is forgotten that landlords have used those moneys without fulfilling the obligation placed upon them by those Acts in the direction of effecting the repairs. I give that as an introduction for the reason that instead of strengthening these Acts and doing all that is essential to make them effective, this Government are today doing everything to wreck those Acts.

§ The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (Mr. Ernest Marples)
That is a rather serious allegation. I hope the hon. Member will say in what way my right hon. Friend is wrecking an actual statute on the Statute Book.

§ Mr. Janner
Of course; I would not have said it unless I was prepared to justify it. What is the position today with regard to the duties of local authorities? A local authority under the Rent Acts is supposed to give information, and to be encouraged to give information, to the people in the district as to what their rights are and what they are entitled to do. It is false economy and wrong 2090 economy on the part of the Government to stop, or not to encourage, local authorities doing what is their obvious duty under the Acts. But what do we find? Question after Question is put in this House about landlords extracting rents to which they are not entitled under the Acts. They are forcing tenants to contribute to what they consider to be a proper additional rental. But the Acts say they are not entitled to ask for that.
When the Minister is questioned on the point he does not say, "I am going to tell the local authorities to use their powers in order to let the people know that this kind of thing is illegal and improper." All the answer that is given is, "Well there is a legal possibility of those people exercising a right to prevent that kind of thing, but good luck to them." That is practically what it amounts to and the Minister cannot deny it because, if he looks up HANSARD, he will see it amounts to that. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] Perhaps I ought to put it on a lower level—"We do not mind if they get it."
But what is the difference between "We do not mind" and "Good luck to them" in that context we do not know. It has become a public scandal and has been raised in this House time after time. Tenants in large blocks of buildings are receiving notices day after day telling them that sums which cannot be recovered under the Acts are going to be charged. The Government stand aside and say, "Do not bother about that. That does not matter." What is the result—

§ Sir Geoffrey Hutchinson (Ilford, North)
Is the hon. Member going to give the House an example of one of these cases of large blocks of buildings?

§ Mr. Janner
Good heavens, yes. I have one here. I do not want to weary the House by reading the letters, but this, for example, is the kind of gentlemanly letter sent to a big block: We have been instructed by the landlords… I do not want to give publicity to the landlords— to write you on the subject of increasing costs of maintaining the landlord's services of this building. We think you will agree that they have succeeded in maintaining these services on a high level …We feel sure you will appreciate the difficulties. We suggest in your 2091 case a contribution of £40 per annum might be made towards these. We ask you to appreciate that your present rent is considerably below the present day value of your flat. That is only one of many cases. If the hon. and learned Gentleman is doubtful and will come along a little later I will give him details of dozens of cases which will satisfy him that this is prevalent throughout the country.

§ Sir G. Hutchinson
Will the hon. Member bring me a case where the tenant is told that he is under a legal obligation to pay? That is what the hon. Member says.

§ Mr. Janner
That is precisely my point about the attitude of the Government. Of course the landlords do not tell the tenants that they are under a legal obligation, and the Government say "Good luck to you for not saying it. Get whatever you can, even if it is robbery with violence." That will not do: it is what I am complaining about.

§ Mr. Marples
When did the Government say what the hon. Gentleman is saying with so much indignation? When did my right hon. Friend say that?

§ Mr. Janner
It must be within the knowledge of Members; I do not know that the hon. Member did not say so himself on this question of the legal right of the tenant. Of course he did not say "Good luck to them," but he meant it. If he did not mean it, let me ask the Parliamentary Secretary honestly and in all seriousness why he did not circulate the whole of the local authorities in this Country and tell them to publicise the fact that these things were illegal? He is supposed to do it under the Act. Why did he not do it? I wonder if he will answer that when he replies? If he was in earnest about protecting the tenants, why did he not do it?

§ Mr. Harmar Nicholls (Peterborough)
I understood the hon. Member to say that the Minister had discouraged the local authorities from applying the Rent Acts. Having made a statement of so sweeping a character as that, the hon. Member ought to give us an actual example of where the Minister had discouraged the town clerk of the local authority from doing so.

§ Mr. Janner
That will not do when there is an act of omission in these matters in respect of which an Act of Parliament says it is the duty of the local authority to keep the people informed. If the Minister does not perform an act of commission by telling the local authorities they are not doing their job in that direction, then he is encouraging them not to do their job. That is my view. I may be entirely wrong, but I think that any reasonable person would think the same as I do.
Let me ask my next question. Since when has it been an act of encouragement in relation to the exercise of rights under Acts for the protection of tenants to close down the only places in the country where tenants can get proper advice and reasonable direction? The rent tribunals are part and parcel of the fabric of our Rent Acts. They were guides of tenants and inquirers in every district. They knew their job; they were specialists in it, and if a tenant wanted to know anything about his position he could go to the local office of the rent tribunal in order to obtain the necessary information.
What is happening today? How are the Government showing their genuine regard for the interests of the tenants? They are closing them down. Out of 11 in Lancashire and Cheshire eight have been closed. That is not true economy, it is economy on the backs of the people for whom a series of Acts were passed in order to enable them to know what their rights are and to exercise those rights. We are told that in Cheshire there is to be no rent tribunal at all. Some have to go 20 or 30 miles—

§ Mr. J. R. Bevins (Liverpool, Toxteth)
Would the hon. Gentleman allow me? I think this is a most lamentable example of abysmal ignorance. The hon. Member has surely heard the statements made by the Minister of Housing and Local Government in this Chamber, and he has probably also heard the conversations his hon. Friend has had with the Minister in which it has been made perfectly clear that the rent tribunal based on Liverpool will be an Assize tribunal which will visit complainants on the other side of the River Mersey: and that they will be in exactly the same position and get the same service in the future as they had in the past?

§ Mr. Janner
Before the hon. Gentleman talks about abysmal ignorance he had better study the conditions in his own city, and in Chester, which is near to him, because he knows nothing at all about it. I will read to him what the Chester people say themselves and then perhaps he will understand the position better. They say, this is from Chester—[HON. MEMBERS: "Who says?"]—this is from the actual tribunal. Right from the horse's mouth—not from the hon. Member for Liverpool, Toxteth (Mr. Bevins), who believes he knows what he is talking about, but does not. This is the position: A quarterly return has been issued showing the work of rent tribunals for the whole country and I quote extracts of the details which apply to the north-west region"— That is the region in which you are living and perhaps you will be interested to hear what has happened—

§ Mr. Speaker
I am not living in that region.

§ Mr. Janner
I am sorry, Sir, I meant the hon. Member for Toxteth. I anticipated there might be some objection on your part, although, with great respect, I do not think you would object to living in the district which the hon. Member represents. This is what is quoted: You will see that as regards the number of cases Chester is listed as number 5. But it is a fact that under the Landlord and Tenant Rent Control Act, 1949 we top the list"— "We" meaning the people who know, who are there; not people who are abysmally ignorant about the facts, but people who know all about it. They say that in Chester, under the 1946 Act there were 444 cases; under the 1949 Act there were 253 cases, a total of 697. That was the latest information they obtained. And it is proposed to send round a tribunal on Assize, on circuit. Does the hon. Member know what on earth he is talking about? What are they going to do—advertise that they will be in Chester Square on a certain day and that all the citizens may come and inquire of them what is going to happen? Are they going to send out the local town crier to tell the citizens and ask them to come together in a merry mood so that they may have their problems settled?
This is not the case of a Member of Parliament going round to his constituents. We are talking about a rent tribunal with 2094 an office, a place to which any individual had occasion to come in order to get his problems solved. The fact of the matter is that in those counties there were 11 tribunals, and the number is being reduced to three. Some people will have to come 20 or 30 miles in order to have their problems solved, to know whether their rent is to be altered by 3s. or 4s. and whether they can be protected or not. They may have to come 20 or 30 miles in order to make that inquiry. Or perhaps they can ask their neighbours. Perhaps they will send a letter to their Member of Parliament. I think that perhaps the hon. and learned Member for the City of Chester (Mr. Nield) would know the answer, but I doubt very much whether the people in Toxteth would get the right answer.
I say that this is another attempt to wreck the Acts, because it is not going to stop there. It may be of interest to the hon. Member for Toxteth to know that this is the thin end of the wedge, and that this kind of thing is being done in other parts of the country. In other words, the means by which the Rent Acts live is to be taken away from them. The Rent Acts can die so far as the tenants are concerned, because the tenants themselves will have no recourse to any authority.

§ Mr. Ellis Smith (Stoke-on-Trent, South)
I have friends who have served on these tribunals, and I give them full credit for the great work that they have done. But has there not recently been a high court decision affecting the competence of these tribunals?

§ Mr. Janner
My hon. Friend has anticipated my third point. I want to know what is to be done by the Government about this recent decision. I know that it would not be in order in this debate to suggest any change in legislation. I am not touching upon that. But strange things have happened. For many years it was felt that the rent tribunals were not in a position to prevent people from being turned out of furnished rooms if they took their complaints to the tribunals. The country was agitated about this and we passed an Act in 1949 to deal with the matter. We decided in our wisdom that we should give tenants protection under Section 11 of that Act whereby the tribunals would have the right to increase the three months and so on. Parliaments propose, sometimes the courts dis- 2095 pose. The result is that it has now been held by court in the case of Rex v. the St. Helens Rent Tribunal ex parte Pickavance, that a landlord, as long as he does not give the tenant notice to quit until after the first three months have expired, is able to turn out the applicant for relief.
This case went to appeal, but it is no no longer sub judice. As I understand it there was some suggestion that an appeal should be made to a higher court, but I gather that the appeal is not being proceeded with, otherwise I should not have referred to the matter.
So what does the landlord do now? He serves a notice the day after the three months have expired. The result is that the tenant who had the temerity to take the case to the tribunal, probably with full justification, is now thrown out of his home. I asked Questions about this some time ago. Of course I cannot ask the same question tonight, because I cannot ask about new legislation: but what about administration?
What does the Parliamentary Secretary propose to do to requisition these houses? Is he prepared in a case of that sort to requisition the rooms under the powers which he has already so that a tenant will not be ejected and so that this unfortunate position which has arisen owing to the court's decision may not affect those who thought that they were protected and who now find that they are not? This is one of the uses to which he could put requisitioning.
I take the matter one step further. The hon. and gallant Member for Ilford, South in his non-political speech, was upset about the fact that possibly empty houses may be requisitioned. I wonder if he has ever sat in a county court and listened to those cases where questions of greater hardship have to be decided by the learned judge and he has come to the conclusion that he must weigh in favour of one side or the other although he feels that the hardship is very serious on the other side as well.
Why should not accommodation be requisitioned for those who suffer that hardship? The Minister has to come to a decision. When these people go to the local authorities, what happens? Is it not a fact that often people who have occupied 2096 houses with their families for a considerable time have to go into rest rooms and other unsuitable places and that sometimes, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sparkbrook (Mr. Shurmer) said, they cannot find homes at all? Why not requisition?

§ Squadron Leader Cooper
I can see the point which the hon. Gentleman makes, but surely he must admit that the owner of a property, who himself may be living in very unhappy circumstances, is entitled to some consideration so that he can get his property back.

§ Mr. Janner
Of course, but the hon. and gallant Gentleman does not see the point. There are certain houses which are empty when the owners do not want to live in them but are keeping them for sale. The result is that those houses remain empty for long periods at a time when there is a big demand for accommodation. Why should not notice be served on such owners—it was done before—stating that if they have not disposed of the house by a certain time it will be requisitioned? With the need for accommodation which exists at present it is very important that there should be wide and extensive requisitioning, not against people who need their homes for their own accommodation, but against many people who are simply waiting for the highest price which they can get in this period of shortage.
May I turn to another racketeering scandal? We were told by the Minister the other day that he was taking some action about these agents—not genuine agents but racketeering persons—who advertise that they can help people to find accommodation. Men and women are going to them in desperation, putting down as much as £5, and entering into contracts for another £20, for services rendered.

§ Sir G. Hutchinson
Has not the hon. Gentleman observed on the Order Paper a notice of Motion for next week by which I am seeking leave to introduce a Bill to deal with the matter?

§ Mr. Janner
Of course I have, but that is a matter for legislation and I must do my best to observe the rules of order. While I thank the hon. and learned Gentleman for his assistance, and while I hope he will be successful, nevertheless 2097 —I must in this debate keep within what the Minister can do without Legislation—in my view he can deal with these matters without legislation. It is a scandal and it is clear misrepresentation on the part of those so-called agents, for they do nothing at all for the £20 or £25 which they demand. The Minister should institute inquiries in order to root them out, lock, stock and barrel. They have no right to batten on the needs of the people and to demand these sums for doing practically nothing at all—because all they do, if anything, is to give a letter of introduction to some house agent or other and say, "See this agent"—as if the applicant could not go to see him without a letter of introduction.
I want to deal with another matter before I close, and here again I should like the attention of the non-political hon. and gallant Member for Ilford, South. He is trying to get away with a political argument which the people of this country will never accept. It is quite true that priority must be given to housing, and the Labour Government gave priority to it, but we cannot take a lot of people from one district, plant them on a housing estate and leave them there without the facilities which are vital to their lives and the lives of their children. In the first place, we must remember that families with at least two youngsters, babies or children in their early years, are put into these houses. We cannot leave them without schools. The hon. and gallant Gentleman should go to the New Parks estate in my constituency and make his suggestion there. If he did he would never survive. He would find himself metaphorically torn limb from limb.

§ Squadron Leader Cooper
The hon. Gentleman overlooks one very important factor, and that is that today, as compared with before the war, there are about the same number of building operatives in the industry—about the same number; and yet the late Labour Government's own Girdwood Committee reported that productivity in this industry was some 23 per cent. to 27 per cent. below what it was pre-war. That cannot be dismissed with a wave of the hand. It is a fact.

§ Mr. Janner
Wait a minute. I do not intend to allow the hon. and gallant Gentleman to start leading me up the garden path. What I am saying is a very simple fact, and that is that where there 2098 are housing estates, as, for example, in the case of the New Parks estate in Leicester, where there are some 2,000 to 3,000 new houses, we have got to provide them with schools and have got to provide the people there with other essential amenities. It is a scandalous thing that on that very estate that I am speaking about there is not proper accommodation for our children for schooling. They are taken away to other schools—away from their parents; and they have to travel considerable distances; and some youngsters are separated from their brothers and sisters in consequence of the fact that proper provision has not been made for them on the estate.
The Labour Government, immediately after the war, at the most difficult time of all, when the Prime Minister of today said that this country was bankrupt and could not possibly live more than a few months—at least, that is how one would interpret what he said—in the way we wanted to, pulled the country through. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] Oh, yes, they did—and they built houses, and they built decent houses—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] —houses fit for people to live in; not houses with lowered ceilings and no w.c.; or only one w.c.; not with skimping and scraping. They built houses in which the housewives were perfectly contented and which were good and easy to run.
Someone spoke tonight about Birmingham. Let hon. Members come to Leicester and see the slum houses there. Let them see the kind of houses built in Tory times—houses in which one can push one's feet through the ceiling, houses for which 25 per cent. is charged as additional rent for repairs; houses condemned; houses unable to stand up to the ordinary stresses and strains of family occupation. And then let them understand why we are in this terrible housing position.
I know that the Parliamentary Secretary is an active, live man. I hope he will take notice of the points I have made. I hope he will help us get out of these difficulties. I hope he will play his part in seeing that the Rent Acts operate as they should, and in seeing that people are not denied knowledge of what their rights are—are not deprived of the means of obtaining that knowledge. If he will give them a chance they will thank him. If he proceeds on the lines the Government 2099 are at present proceeding on in the matters to which I have referred he will find himself in a very deep hole indeed.

§ Sir Jocelyn Lucas (Portsmouth, South)
I shall not try to follow the hon. Gentleman the Member for Leicester, North-West (Mr. Janner), but I want very briefly to point to a grave situation which has arisen in Portsmouth and also, I believe, in other bombed cities.
There are a number of houses left standing in bombed-damaged streets. Some of the damaged houses have had to be pulled down because they became derelict, thus leaving the party walls of houses, which are inhabited, exposed. These walls have been shored up by the local authority ex gratia. Tarpaulins have been lent, also ex gratia, to keep the rain out. These temporary repairs are ex gratia, but the council deny all liability for the further repairs necessary. The War Damage Commission, in turn, also denies all liability because it says it is the council that pulled down the derelict buildings. I have tried various Government Departments, but I can get no answer at all as to whose responsibility this is.
I am not making a complaint against any party in particular. These problems have been inherited, but we have not solved them any more than the last Government did, and they must be solved without delay. If these houses are not repaired but are left as they are, they will soon become uninhabitable and we shall merely have a more acute housing shortage than before. In the majority of cases the present owners or occupiers are themselves quite unable to pay, even if they get the necessary licences, and I beg the Minister to do something to make somebody responsible for seeing that these repairs are carried out and these houses properly patched up and made habitable. I shall be very grateful if my hon. Friend can give me a satisfactory answer which I could send to my people.

§ Mr. Edward Short (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Central)
A great deal has been said in this debate about the Tory Government's housing record and about the record of the Labour Government. While I think that is a fruitless argument 2100 at this early stage in the Government's career, there are one or two things which should be put on record in relation to this argument. The first is that practically all the houses completed since the Tory Government took office were started when the Labour Government were in office. That is the first thing to be remembered. The second is that the quicker rate of completion has been achieved by cutting out a vast range of other building. The Minister of Education admitted when I raised the matter that there has been a cut of £40 million in the school building programme.

§ Mr. Nicholls
The number of houses completed in the first three months of this year was 10,000 more than the number completed in the equivalent three months of last year. One can see the point of the suggestion that they were started by the previous Government, but how does the hon. Gentleman answer the point that 15,000 more houses were started in the first three months of this year than in the first three months of last year?

§ Mr. Short
The answer is the same. The Minister of Education, in reply to a query I put to her, admitted that there, had been a cut of £40 million in the school building programme, and in many large local education authority areas there is not one new school being built at present. In addition, a vast amount of factory building has been cut out since the present Government took office.
It has been argued that housing should be given an absolute priority. I agree that it ought to have a high degree of priority, but there is something more important than houses, and that is jobs. Those of us who live in areas which before the war were dependent on one or two major industries realise the importance of the dispersal of industry and the allocation of new factories in the old distressed areas. The Government have been able to complete and to start more houses because they are not building schools or factories, and that should be noted.
The second thing to note is the difference between conditions when the Labour Government came into office and when the Tory Government came in. It is often overlooked that in 1945, when the 2101 Labour Party took office, the war was still on; the war in the East had not been won, so that they did not start from scratch. That was starting a lot further back than from scratch, because almost all the labour force was in the Armed Forces. When the Tory Government came in in October of last year there was a large efficient building force of approximately a million men, about half of them engaged on housebuilding.

§ Colonel J. H. Harrison (Eye)
Did the late Sir Stafford Cripps and Mr. Ernest Bevin remember that when, in the 1945 Labour Party Election programme, they said that four or five million houses could be built in very quick time?

§ Mr. Short
I am coming on to promises. My right hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Bevan), who has already been referred to, said on a number of occasions that the back of the problem would be broken by the end of the 1945 Parliament. All hon. Members opposite are adept at taking things out of their context. They do not tell us in what context that was said. My right lion. Friend was referring to the estimate made by Lord Woolton when he was Minister of Re-construction during the war. If the hon. Member who laughed turns up the speech in which that was said, he will see that the right hon. Member was referring to Lord Woolton's estimate that 750,000 houses would be sufficient.

§ Colonel Harrison
Will the hon. Member not agree that on one occasion the right hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Bevan) said: I give you this promise, that by the next Election there will be no housing problem for the British working-class."? Could that be interpreted in more than one way?

§ Mr. Short
Of course it could. During the war, Lord Woolton was given the task of laying down plans for reconstruction at the end of the war. The estimate of Lord Woolton and his expert staff was that 750.000 houses would satisfy the post-war housing needs. It was in reference to that, that the right hon. Member for Ebbw Vale said that the back of the problem would be broken and there would not be any considerable housing difficulty.
2102 I want to pass from general remarks to the housing problem in my own city. I am glad that the Parliamentary Secretary is here because I raised this matter in the first few days of this Session. We have a waiting list at the present time in Newcastle-upon-Tyne of over 16,000, and it is increasing at the rate of about 1,000 a year. This bad housing is concentrated largely along the old area of the river. This area in the division which I represent is a cesspool of tuberculosis. The figure for tuberculosis is more than twice the national level in spite of all improvements, and that, I believe, is largely due to the appalling housing conditions.
I held an ordinary M.P.'s "surgery" on Saturday morning, and I had a stream of people to see me about their housing conditions. There were people living eight, nine and 10 in two rooms who could not get houses. We have had in Newcastle a Tory council since 1949, and since then we have only had a trickle of houses. In the last year of the Labour council, we built very nearly 2,000. I have asked the Minister to look into the problem of increasing the number of houses and I ask him to do so again.
I want to mention one or two other factors. The first is the question of land. Newcastle is a very ancient city and is largely built up. There is land available for this year and may be for next year, but there is no land left for any period after 1953. We are experiencing difficulty of getting land from Northumberland. I would implore the Minister to look into the controversy between the city of Newcastle and the county of Northumberland to see if he can do anything to facilitate the acquisition of land. I see him smiling, but that is the crux of our problem, and I ask him to look into the matter.
Secondly, there is the shortage of material. I have taken up the question of cement with the Minister of Works on a number of occasions during the past winter. Almost all our cement comes from the Thames-side factories and a small amount from I.C.I. at Billing-ham, but there is a great shortage of cement. That shortage is not confined to one or two unsatisfactory contractors; as the Minister of Works indicated. It is fairly widespread throughout the northeastern area. I should like the Minister to do something about it.

§ Mr. Ellis Smith
I am interested in what my hon. Friend has said, because Sunderland and the north-eastern area had one of the best records in the country. Surely there must be something in the local drive.

§ Mr. Short
That is so when we have a Socialist council which believes in building houses to let. It is not only a question of cement. Quite small things hold up housing. A contractor told me a few weeks ago that he was held up for want of nails. I should be glad if the Minister could do something about that.
We have a number of contractors in Newcastle whom I believe to be unsatisfactory. I asked the Minister to look into this previously, but the position is still unsatisfactory. I am a member of the city council and I see the progress reports of the various contractors, and we still have contractors who, I believe, are not pulling their weight. If the Minister could do anything about this we should be very grateful.
We have heard much about empty houses. If an owner has a bona fide intention of moving into his own house surely he should have a reasonable opportunity to do so. I see hundreds of empty houses in Newcastle. In my own area I see houses which have been empty for from three to six months simply because the owners wish to sell them and are holding out for the highest prices. The question of requisitioning should be re-examined, but the position of owners who really intend to occupy their own houses should be safeguarded.
The Tory council in Newcastle has worked out a gigantic flats development scheme. There is widespread opposition to this, because the rents will be much too high for the wages paid on Tyne-side. It is estimated that the rents will go up to about £2 10s. a week, which is absolutely out of the question for Newcastle. The greater part of the energies of the housing committee and the architects department are directed towards this scheme, and I regard it as housing a class bias, because such accommodation can only be occupied by people with very high incomes. Perhaps the Minister will investigate that as well.
As to licences, we still have the ratio of one in five. The Minister and one 2104 of his regional officers have been suggesting that many local authorities in the North should give more licences to private builders. With the present ratio of one in five in Newcastle it is considerably easier to get a building licence than to get a council house. It would be shocking in an area such as that, with a shortage of land, labour and material, that so much should be devoted to houses which will be allocated on the criterion of wealth and not that of need.
A person getting a building licence must have 10 per cent. of the amount required, which, at a very low estimate, will probably be £160, plus legal charges of perhaps another £40. That means that the licences are restricted to people who have a capital of £200 to begin with and who can meet the charges of £3 10s. a week for the next 20 years.
I would ask the Minister to stop pressing local authorities to increase their ration of houses to licence. It is extremely difficult to get cement, land and all the things we need for our ordinary building programme.