Commons Sitting of 28 March 1956

Preamble
The House met at half-past Two o'clock
PRAYERS
[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]
ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
  TRANSPORT

    Rural Services, Northumberland
    Mr. Owenasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation if he is aware of the continued decrease in rural transport services in the County of Northumberland; and what plans he has for dealing with the matter.
    The Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation (Mr. Harold Watkinson): There have been no withdrawals of bus services in Northumberland since the hon. Member's previous Question nine months ago. The British Transport Commission is, with my full support, pursuing a policy of withdrawing uneconomic rail services, and four stations have been closed to passengers in the same period. The interests of the public are fully taken into account in the consultations which take place with the appropriate transport users' consultative committee before any rail service is withdrawn.
    Mr. Owen: While I appreciate the point made by the Minister, that does not seem to be in accord with the facts, or with the feeling among those who are in a position to express opinion in the County of Northumberland. At a conference called only last week considerable concern was expressed at the increasing limitation of both rail and road transport, particularly in the rural areas. I am wondering if the Minister will examine the possibility of integration of rail and road transport so that the rural areas at least may be assured of an efficient service.
    Mr. Watkinson: I will consider any possibility, but I must make it plain to the House that completely uneconomic
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    services run by the British Transport Commission are to come under increasingly close scrutiny.

    Freight Charges and Fares
    Mr. Ernest Daviesasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation whether he will publish a White Paper on the talks he had with the British Transport Commission which led it to withdraw its applications to the Transport Tribunal for increased fares and to limit the increase in freight charges to 5 per cent.
    Mr. Watkinson: No, Sir. The position was fully explained in the statement which I made on 19th March.
    Mr. Davies: Is it not a fact that the British Transport Commission had already applied to the Transport Tribunal for an increase in fares and charges in fulfilment of its statutory obligations when the Minister intervened. As a result of his intervention, has not the Commission withdrawn its application, or is not proceeding with it? Therefore, was the Minister able to produce a very persuasive argument to cause the Transport Commission to change its mind, and should not Parliament be told what it was?
    Mr. Watkinson: The hon. Member has slightly confused the position. Of course, the British Transport Commission does not need my approval or authorisation for any decisions it takes on passenger fares. Therefore, those decisions were entirely its own and I accept its very helpful co-operation. I am answering a Question about freight charges later.
    Mr. Davies: Would the Minister state the position about passenger fares? Will fares remain at their present level or is the Commission raising them? The House was informed by the Minister last week that the Commission would make a statement, but I am not aware of a statement having been made.
    Mr. Watkinson: The Commission has made its position plain. It is that, apart from certain adjustments in sub-standard fares with which it is going ahead, it has decided to defer any general fare increase until the end of a six months' period.
    Mr. Ernest Daviesasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation the percentage rise of fares charged by British Railways compared with the immediate

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    pre-war period; and the percentage increase in freight charges during the same period.
    Mr. Watkinson: Compared with the pre-war period, the percentage rise in fares charged on British Railways is approximately 100 per cent., and the percentage increase in the authorised level of freight charges is approximately 175 per cent.
    Mr. Davies: Do not these figures indicate that fares and charges have gone up far less than have retail and wholesale prices? Does not that indicate that the increased costs have to some extent been absorbed by the Transport Commission through greater efficiency and economy?
    Mr. Watkinson: No, that is not the point at all. I do not want to mislead the House. I have answered the hon. Member's Question; but, to put it another way, freight charges have gone up roughly three times since before the war, which brings them to about the level of other costs. I agree that passenger fares have not gone up in the same ratio. They have roughly doubled.
    Mr. Ernest Daviesasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation by what authority the Government requested the British Transport Commission to refrain from applying to the Transport Tribunal for certain increases in freight charges and fares in pursuance of its statutory obligation to pay its way; why the Government did not proceed by general direction; and how far this change of policy is being applied in the cases of other nationalised industries.
    Mr. Watkinson: The British Transport Commission's application in respect of increases in freight charges is being dealt with in accordance with the procedure laid down in Section 82 of the Transport Act, 1947. As to fares, as I explained on 19th March, the decision of the Commission to defer those increases in fares for which it had already applied to the Transport Tribunal was taken by it as a measure of co-operation in the policy I then outlined, and accordingly there is no need for a direction. I can assure the hon. Member that the Commission's statutory duty to pay its way taking one year with another has not been overlooked either by the Government or by the Commission. The circumstances of nationalised industries vary considerably
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    and therefore the policy adopted in the special circumstances of the Commission is not necessarily applicable to other nationalised industries.
    Mr. Davies: If the necessity for the British Transport Commission to fulfil its statutory obligations by paying its way has not been overlooked, what has the Minister in view to enable it to meet its obligations? What is the Minister proposing to do to assist the Transport Commission to meet the very large deficit which the Minister has admitted? Whatever the position regarding the Transport Tribunal is, is it not a fact that the Minister has by-passed the Transport Tribunal, because he has persuaded the Transport Commission to refrain from raising its freight charges more than 5 per cent., without waiting for the Transport Tribunal to give its decision? Has that decision been given? Has he received the decision from the Transport Tribunal?
    Mr. Watkinson: Those are rather a lot of questions to answer. I have not received the decision of the Transport Tribunal. The broad general answer is that I recently explained in the House that the six months' period was adopted in order that we should not traverse the one-year period and that the Commission should have to look at this again before a year was up. The other general answer is that it is my view and that of Her Majesty's Government that we must make a concerted effort to try to stop the continual passing of this sort of charges to the general public.
    Mr. D. Jones: In view of the fact that the British Transport Commission has now stated that it does not intend to use its power to raise passenger fares, would the right hon. Gentleman like to review his figure of £20 million for a 5 per cent. increase in freight charges? Is it not a fact that by the end of the year the Commission will have a deficit of more like £125 million than £100 million?
    Mr. Watkinson: Perhaps the hon. Member will put down that Question.
    Mr. G. R. Straussasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation whether he will give an assurance that the postponement at his request of the freight and fare increases which the British Transport Commission desired will not result in a steeper increase later.
    Mr. Watkinson: I can give no assurance one way or the other as to the future at this stage. As I said in my statement on 19th March, the whole position must be reassessed in the light in the financial and operating prospects as they will exist in six months' time.
    Mr. Strauss: Does that mean in fact that, in view of the right hon. Gentleman's interference, it is quite possible that freights and fares may go up far more steeply than they might otherwise have done? If that is not his idea, surely he should have some practical policy to put before the House about how to deal with the growing deficit of the Transport Commission?
    Mr. Watkinson: I am sorry that the right hon. Gentleman takes a poor view of the future of the Commission. I do not. I take the view that it is now at a stage where we may look for considerable development and improvements, and that is why I took the action which I did.
    Mr. Strauss: Why does the Minister suggest that only now may we look forward to improvements in this system? Is he not aware that there have already been economies of over £20 million brought about by the Commission, and that it is a continuing process? Does the Minister expect a sudden change in this process?
    Mr. Watkinson: Of course it is a continuing process, and I am in no way suggesting that the Commission, and particularly its Chairman, has not worked very hard and efficiently in recent years. But, as in any process, one has to put in a lot of hard spadework before one begins to get results, and it is my judgment that the time has come when results may begin to flow.

    Speed Limit, Great West Road
    Mr. R. Harrisasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation whether he is yet in a position to say if it is intended to introduce a 40 miles-per-hour speed limit on the Great West Road.
    Mr. Watkinson: No, Sir. Until I have decided whether or not to accept in principle the recommendation of the London and Home Counties Traffic Advisory Committee to introduce a 40 m.p.h. speed limit on some roads, it would plainly be premature for me to express any view on particular lengths. In any case I would
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    first wish to have the views of the local authorities concerned.
    Mr. Harris: Will the Minister bear in mind that a few weeks ago there was an accident on the Great West Road in which seven cars were involved; that a few days later there was another accident in which fifteen cars were involved; and that accidents occur simply because cars are allowed to "belt" along at almost any speed? Can the Minister tell the House whether he is likely to make a decision in principle in the near future or whether he is willing to accept this Report?
    Mr. Watkinson: Yes, Sir, I hope to do so very soon after Easter.

    Scottish Transport Council
    Mr. Oswaldasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation what remuneration is given to the members of the Scottish Transport Council.
    Mr. Watkinson: The Chairman and members of the Scottish Transport Council serve without salary. Expenses of the chairman, the two independent members and the representative of the Transport Users Consultative Committee are met from Government funds, whilst the expenses of the other members are met by the bodies they represent.
    Mr. Oswald: Can the Minister tell us precisely what is the amount, because it seems to me that at the moment we are getting only a glossary of the methods by which it will be paid?
    Mr. Watkinson: I am sorry but I could not do that in answer to this Question.
    Mr. Ross: Does the Minister realise that hon. Members on these benches feel that the salary is quite in keeping with the importance of the work which the Council seems to be doing?
    Mr. Steeleasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation what response there has been to the appeal made by the Chairman of the Scottish Transport Council asking members of the public to submit suggestions for consideration.
    Mr. Watkinson: I understand that the Council met yesterday to consider these suggestions. It will, no doubt, make

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    public from time to time such information and details about its work as it thinks desirable.
    Mr. Steele: The Minister has not said how many suggestions have been received. Is he aware that during the discussion of the 1953 Bill we were told that this Council was to initiate consideration of co-ordination? Is it not a farce that men of this calibre should be asked to be office boys and await suggestions and complaints from the general public?
    Mr. Watkinson: That is not true at all. This body has a very useful and essential job to do. It has only just started on its work, and I think it should be given a chance to get on with the job before we criticise it.

    Bus Services, Remote Areas
    Major Anstruther-Grayasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation if he will give a general direction to the traffic commissioners to relax their restrictions in granting permits for buses to operate without conductors in remote areas where traffic is light and eicpenses are heavy.
    Mr. Watkinson: I am confident that licensing authorities are fully aware of the difficulties of bus operators in remote areas, and that within the needs of public safety they already use their powers of dispensation whenever there is good reason for doing so. No general direction from me is therefore required.
    Major Anstruther-Gray: Arising out of that reply, may I ask whether my right hon. Friend is aware that there are still many remote areas which have not a bus service, the reason being that it is too expensive to run one, but that if buses could be run with one man acting as driver and conductor, a great deal of the expense problem could be overcome?
    Mr. Watkinson: I should be glad to hear from my hon. and gallant Friend of any cases where he thinks that we could make adjustments to help rural transport, but I am advised that on the whole licensing authorities go a very long way to meat these cases.
    Mr. Smithers: Is the Minister aware that in Hampshire, despite attempts by the local operators to run bus services to country villages, it is proving extremely
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    difficult, on grounds of expense, and considerable damage is being done in country communities as a result?
    Mr. Watkinson: As I have said, if any hon. Member will bring suggestions to me on this point, I shall be only too pleased to consider them.
    Mr. Callaghan: Is not the short and simple answer to repeal the 1953 Act?

    Fatal Road Accidents
    Mr. Crouchasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation the numbers of fatal road accidents in the second half of 1955 in built-up areas, and open country roads, respectively; the number in which mechanically propelled vehicles only were involved in each of these two categories; the number in which pedestrians died in each category as the result of coming into contact with mechanical vehicles; and the number in which cyclists were involved in each category.
    The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation (Mr. Hugh Molson): The figures asked for by my hon. Friend are not readily available, and to extract them would require a considerable expenditure of time and labour. Police reports show, however, that in the second half of 1955 1,835 persons in all—of whom 1,061 were pedestrians—were killed on roads with a speed limit and 1,395 persons—of whom 278 were pedestrians—were killed on roads without a speed limit.
    Mr. Crouch: In view of my hon. Friend's reply—I wish it had been more detailed—may I ask whether more attention should not be given to making the roads in built-up areas safer? Will he consider the introduction of more zebra crossings in built-up areas and making it an offence for any pedestrian to cross a highway except over the pedestrian crossing, when one is available on that highway?
    Mr. Molson: The answer to the first point raised by my hon. Friend is that approximately two-thirds of our road programme each year is devoted to urban areas or to schemes such as by-passes, which should have the effect of reducing casualties in built-up areas. With regard to my hon. Friend's second point, in

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    accordance with the policy initiated by Mr. Barnes when he was Minister of Transport, we think it desirable that there should not be too many pedestrian crossings. Mr. Barnes aimed at reducing them to one-third of the number which there had been before. We believe that, on the whole, that is the wisest policy to follow. My right hon. Friend is following the policy of trying to improve the traffic flow in built-up areas.

    Cold Store, Cardiff Docks
    Mr. Callaghanasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation what will be the estimated loss of trade to the Port of Cardiff caused by putting part of the cold store at Cardiff Docks out of service.
    Mr. G. Thomasasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation whether he is aware of the anxiety caused in Cardiff by the announcement that 50 per cent. of the Cardiff cold store is to be placed on a care-and-maintenance basis; and whether, in view of the efforts now being made to obtain for Cardiff a greater share of the meat trade with New Zealand and Australia, he will take steps to retain this cold store in full operation.
    Mr. Watkinson: I am advised that as half of the refrigerated space will remain in operation, and the other half can be brought back into refrigeration at a few days' notice, the change should have no significant effect on the import trade of Cardiff.
    Mr. Callaghan: Is the Minister aware that nobody locally holds that view, and that, in addition to this Governmental decision, a further blow is to fall on Cardiff by the cutting out of coal exports, which will also be a Governmental decision? Do the Government intend this port to be strangled, and, if not, what help or advice has the right hon. Gentleman to offer the port, which is struggling hard to improve its trade?
    Mr. Watkinson: The only advice which I can give on this matter is that if Cardiff can get more refrigerated ships the store can be brought back into service almost at once.
    Mr. Thomas: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that now that his right hon. Friend the Minister of Fuel and Power
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    has wiped off Cardiff as a coal exporting centre this decision is a confession of defeat about food imports into the city? Does he not think that he and the Government have some responsibility for the welfare of the city, and for helping with its trade?
    Mr. Watkinson: One of the difficulties is that of the last cargo of refrigerated meat which came into the port the vast majority of it then went by rail to London.

  ROADS

    Forth Tube Crossing
    Major Anstruther-Grayasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation whether he has now received the interim Report of the panel of experts examining the Forth tube crossing; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Watkinson: I have not as yet received this Report, but expect to do so very soon. The Government must have a little time to consider, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland will hope to be ready to make a statement shortly after we reassemble.
    Major Anstruther-Gray: May I ask my right hon. Friend for an assurance that he and his Department will do their best to help the Secretary of State for Scotland to get an early start made with building a crossing, whether it be a bridge or a tube, because it is badly needed?
    Mr. Watkinson: I have not received the Report, but my Department will certainly collaborate very closely with the Secretary of State if we can help him in any way.

    Bencoolen Bridge, Bude
    Sir H. Roperasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation the amount of the grant which has been promised towards the reconstruction of Bencoolen Bridge, at Bude; and when the work is to begin.
    Mr. Molson: The amount of the grant, which has now been made, is £6,000. I understand that the county council has yet to obtain tenders, but work should be able to start in two or three months.
    Sir H. Roper: Will my hon. Friend bear in mind that I was advised more than a year ago that formal approval was about to be granted for this work and that the work was expected to start in early spring—spring of last year? Will he bear in mind that in the meantime about 100 people are living under the constant threat of flooding whenever there is heavy rain?
    Mr. Molson: I am glad to tell my hon. Friend that it is likely that the work will start in June this year.

    Pedestrian Crossings
    Lieut.-Colonel Liptonasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation whether he will include in the regular official statistics relating to road accidents, the quarterly figures of persons killed or seriously injured on zebra crossings.
    Mr. Molson: Figures of casualties on zebra crossings are already given in the monthly returns of road accidents issued by my Department.
    Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: Will the Parliamentary Secretary arrange to publish these figures quarterly or annually so that the general public can realise that there has been a substantial increase in the number of accidents even on zebra crossings? The figures went up from 675 in 1953 to 920 last year.
    Mr. Molson: These figures are made available in the Library of the House of Commons regularly every month. I have not drawn the hon. and gallant Gentleman's attention to that previously because I thought he liked putting Parliamentary Questions on the subject.
    Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: In view of the totally unsatisfactory nature of the reply, I beg to give notice that I shall raise the matter again.

    Trunk Road, Cardiff
    Mr. G. Thomasasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation whether he is aware of the danger caused to school children crossing the main Cardiff-Swansea trunk road at Ely, Cardiff; and whether he will arrange for traffic islands to be established at convenient points from Culverhouse Cross down to Lower Ely.
    Mr. Molson: At three points on this road, adult patrols or the police assist school children to cross. My right hon. Friend has had no application from Cardiff City Council for grant towards the cost of providing refuge islands on this road.
    Mr. Thomas: Surely the Minister realises that this is the most dangerous road in Wales? It is the main arterial road from Cardiff to the West. It is heavy with traffic, and school children have to cross it four times a day. May I assure the right hon. Gentleman that there is a need for these islands, which has been expressed by the local people, as otherwise I should not have addressed the Question to him?
    Mr. Molson: I do not really know why the hon. Gentleman is putting this Question to us. The Cardiff City Council is the highway authority responsible for this length of road, on which there are six pedestrian crossings, and at three of them there are adult patrols or police who assist school children to cross in safety.

    Wales
    Mr. G. Thomasasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation what reply he has sent to the memorandum submitted to him by the Industrial Association of Wales and Monmouthshire concerning the serious effects on industrial productivity in Wales and Monmouthshire caused by bad roads; and whether he will make a statement.
    Mr. Watkinson: This memorandum, which only reached me within the last week, is at present being examined.
    Mr. Thomas: Will the Minister give some urgent consideration to this matter, because the state of the roads is one of our major problems there? We look to the right hon. Gentleman for a considerable measure of help in this matter.
    Mr. Watkinson: I certainly will, and, of course, I shall examine it myself.

    Major Improvement Works
    Mr. Russellasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation the total commitments to date under the new roads programme; and the present rate of expenditure.
    Mr. Watkinson: Works of major improvement on trunk and classified roads which will cost the Exchequer just over £47 million have been authorised in the two years 1954–55 and 1955–56. By the end of 1956–57, I expect authorisations to reach a total of about £81½ million including works in Scotland.
    As my hon. Friend will appreciate, Exchequer payments on such works rise much more slowly, the actual expenditure on most schemes being spread over a number of years. In 1954–55 some £5 million from the Exchequer was spent; in 1955–56 some £8 million; and the provision for the coming year is £14½ million
    All these figures exclude the cost of land acquisition and other preliminary expenses of trunk road schemes.
    Mr. Russell: May I ask my right hon. Friend whether, as the speeding up of this programme will result in a great saving in the costs of industry, he will give an assurance that everything possible will be done to speed up the rate of progress and to press on with the improvements?
    Mr. Watkinson: I certainly will, taking into account the general economic policy of the Government. My hon. Friend might like to know that this year we shall spend £90 million in total on roads.
    Mr. G. R. Strauss: Will the Minister bear in mind, when considering all these matters, that while the need for road improvement in this country is probably greater than in any other country, our programme is much below that of other countries less industrialised than our own?
    Mr. Watkinson: There are all sorts of views about the road programme, but at the moment it is going to schedule and according to the plans which have been announced.

    Motorways
    Mr. Russellasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation what is being done about motorways in the new roads programme.
    Mr. Watkinson: The acquisition of land for the Ross Spur is about to start, and preparation of contract details for the London-Birmingham section of the London-Yorkshire motorway is proceeding.
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    Work preparatory to the publication of a draft scheme under Section 1 of the Special Roads Act, 1949, is in hand for the second section of the London-Yorkshire motorway and for the Preston-Birmingham motorway.
    I will, with permission, circulate in the OFFICIAL REPORT a detailed statement on the first section of the London-Yorkshire motorway.
    Mr. Russell: Can my right hon. Friend say when the first section of this highway will be opened? Will the statement which he is circulating in the OFFICIAL REPORT give any idea of the stages at which this road will be completed?
    Mr. Watkinson: The statement deals mainly with the methods of land acquisition, and that is the first step. We are trying to press on with that as fast as we can. I cannot say anything concrete until we have bought the land.
    Following is the statement:
    I have decided to make the scheme for the first section of the London—Yorkshire motorway under the powers conferred on me by paragraph 6 of the First Schedule to the Special Roads Act, 1949.
    Before coming to this decision I most carefully considered all the objections which had been registered and all the representations which had been made. I also took note of the fact that no objection was sustained by any highway authority or other body upon whom I am bound by Statute to serve notice of my proposals.
    The majority of the objections related to matters of access, compensation and accommodation works on particular properties. They are relevant to the later stages of the statutory procedure, either when the Order under Section 3 of the Act, dealing with proposed alterations to side roads and private access, is published in draft, or when detailed constructional and land plans are available and negotiations for entry onto land begin.
    At the Order stage all persons affected by the proposed alterations to side roads and private access will have their full statutory rights of objection Furthermore, all persons affected have statutory rights of objections and of appeal, if necessary, to an independent tribunal for assessment of compensation when negotiations for entry on to, or acquisition of, land begin. Detailed letters of explanation are being sent to all persons who objected or made representations on these matters.
    In respect of the small number of objecttions of which the effect was to propose alterations to the provisional line of route—for the purpose of establishing which the draft scheme was published—I am making immediate arrangements for my officials and

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    representatives of the consulting engineers to get into touch with the objectors in order to discuss their suggestions in detail. If, in the light of these discussions, it is practicable to make any of the minor modifications proposed on the line of route in order to reduce yet further the interference with private property, I am prepared to consider making them under the powers referred to above.

  CIVIL AVIATION

    Commandant's Suite, London Airport
    Mr. Emrys Hughesasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation what representations he received about the commandant's suite at London Airport; what alterations were made as a result of these representations; and the estimated cost of the alterations.
    Mr. Watkinson: I have received no representations. The rest of the Question, therefore, does not arise.
    Mr. Hughes: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that widespread publicity has been given to the fact that an additional £40,000 was spent at London Airport recently because of certain accommodation? Is that without justification?
    Mr. Watkinson: What I am aware of is that I have asked that plans should be prepared for an alternative method at London Airport of dealing with very special occasions. That is a purely planning project. No cost has been ascertained, no money has been spent, and no construction is projected.

    B.O.A.C. (Chairman)
    Mr. Rankinasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation if he will state the reasons given to him which caused Sir Miles Thomas to resign from the chairmanship of British Overseas Airways Corporation.
    Mr. Watkinson: The reasons were clearly stated in the Chairman's letter to me of 7th March, which has been published.
    Mr. Rankin: Can the Minister explain what Sir Miles meant by "back-bench sniping" and say whether or not that had any influence in his resignation?
    Mr. Watkinson: Perhaps he meant what the hon. Member is now doing.
    Mr. Edelmanasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation what facilities he has given to Sir Miles Thomas to engage in part-time commercial activities, unconnected with his function as Chairman of the British Overseas Airways Corporation since 23rd November, 1955.
    Mr. Watkinson: None, Sir, apart from the two part-time directorships of which my predecessor informed the House on 23rd November.
    Mr. Edelman: Arising out of that reply, and in view of the rather opportunistic comments by Sir Miles Thomas on nationalised industry, will the right hon. Gentleman make sure that the successor to Sir Miles is at least in sympathy with the form of organisation which he is appointed to serve?
    Mr. Watkinson: As I said in my letter to Sir Miles Thomas, he has done a very fine job in B.O.A.C., for which I feel the whole country should be grateful to him. Sir Miles resigned for reasons which he has made quite clear, and which I fully understand and accept. So far as I am concerned, that is the end of the matter.
    Sir R. Boothby: Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind that we shall be very lucky if we get anybody comparable to Sir Miles Thomas as his successor?
    Mr. G. R. Strauss: While everyone agrees about the competence of Sir Miles Thomas, in view of his statement that one of the reasons for his resignation was that he disliked the sniping from the back benches, did the Minister ask him, when he took on the job, whether he was aware that there was the power of Parliament and the right of hon. Members to question Ministers about the affairs of the Corporation?
    Mr. Watkinson: I quite agree with the right hon. Gentleman. That is the constitutional position of chairmen of all nationalised industries, which I am quite sure they understand.

  RAILWAYS

    Pension Supplements
    Dame Irene Wardasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation whether he will report on his talks with the Chairman of the British Transport Commission on the question of pensions for railway superannuitants.
    Mr. H. Hyndasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation whether he will now make a statement about adjustment of railway superannuation payments to meet the increased cost of living.
    Mr. Fenner Brockwayasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation if he will now make a statement regarding increased pensions for retired railwaymen.
    Mr. Watkinson: The Commission proposes to introduce, with effect from 1st April, 1956, a further scheme of pension supplements which will apply to a large number of pensioners who are outside the scope of the existing scheme. It will be limited to those who are not entitled to benefit under the State insurance scheme and will extend only to cases in which the pension plus supplement will not exceed £250 a year. The maximum amount of supplement, for those who have been retired a number of years, will be £28 a year, but pensioners who are already getting a larger supplement under the existing scheme will continue to receive it.
    With permission, I will circulate the full details in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
    Dame Irene Ward: May I ask my right hon. Friend to accept my thanks for this propressive step? Will he convey to Sir Brian Robertson the appreciation of many people for recognising the needs of old railway servants who have helped to build up the grandeur of British Railways? May I ask my right hon. Friend to accept my assurance that I like Ministers who are not frightened of creating precedents and that I am bored with Ministers who are made static by precedents?
    Mr. Speaker: Mr. Brockway.
    Mr. Collick rose—
    Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member for Eton and Slough (Mr. Fenner Brockway) had a Question on the Order Paper which the Minister has just answered, and he is entitled to be heard first.
    Mr. Brockway: I thank the Minister for his reply, but I did not hear the date when the new pensions are to come into operation. Would he consider backdating them to the time when pension increases were made for other public servants? Would he also consider
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    whether the cost of the pensions could be borne by the Treasury rather than the Transport Commission, which already has such a heavy burden?
    Mr. Watkinson: The date is 1st April. This is a quite proper burden for the Commission to carry. In answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward), I would say that both the Commission and I have tried very hard about this scheme. I say frankly that we would have liked to have done more, but at least we have tried to do something for the people who are worst off.
    Mr. H. Hynd: Does the scheme mean that all railway pensioners will be brought up to a minimum of £250 a year, and does it apply to the widows of pensioners?
    Mr. Watkinson: The answer to the first part of that supplementary question is "No"; but the scheme takes no account of other sources of income; there is no means test. It takes no account of whether an annuitant is married or single, and there is no lump sum benefit deduction, as there was under the previous scheme.
    Mr. Collick: Am I right in understanding the Minister's statement to mean that in effect practically none of the ex-wages staff of the railway will receive any benefit from the announcement that he has made?
    Mr. Watkinson: That is partly true, but not completely so.
    Following are the details:

  BRITISH TRANSPORT COMMISSION

    APRIL, 1956, SCHEME OF SUPPLEMENTATION FOR SUPERANNUITANTS OF THE BRITISH TRANSPORT COMMISSION
    Scope of Scheme
    1. Retirement annuities provided wholly or partly from Commission sources and payable to former employees of the British Transport Commission or its predecessors, other than those who are in receipt of or entitled to a National Insurance retirement pension or sickness, industrial injury or disablement benefits, will be eligible for supplementation under this scheme.
    Annuity eligible for supplementation
    2. The annuity eligible for supplementation will be the basic retirement annuity, excluding any supplementation under the Commission's existing scheme of supplementation dated April, 1955.
    Scale of supplements
    3. Subject to paragraphs 5 and 6, annuitants will receive supplements according to whichever of the following scales is applicable:

    Annuitants of the L.M.S. Superannuation Fund

    Year in which employment terminated

    Supplement payable

    The smaller of:

    £

    or one-third of the basic annuity

    1948 and earlier

    28 per annum

    1949

    21 per annum

    1950

    14 per annum

    1951

    7 per annum

    1952 and later

    None

    Other annuitants

    Year in which employment terminated

    Supplement payable

    The smaller of:

    £

    or one-third - of the basic annuity

    1951 and earlier

    28 per annum

    1952

    21 per annum

    1953

    14 per annum

    1954

    7 per annum

    1955 and later

    None

    Calculation of amount of supplement
    4. In calculating the amount of supplement, no account will be taken of:

    (a) sources of income other than the annuity to be supplemented;

    (b) whether the annuitant is married or single;

    (c) lump sum retirement benefits.

    5. No supplement will be payable in respect of annuities of £250 per annum or more and supplementation of any smaller annuity will be not more than is sufficient to increase the annuity with supplement to £250 per annum.
    Existing Scheme of supplementation
    6. The Commission's existing scheme of supplementation dated April, 1955, will continue in force, but any supplements payable under this scheme to beneficiaries of the existing scheme will be reduced by the amount of supplement payable under the existing scheme and only the excess (if any) provided by this scheme will be paid.
    Date of commencement
    7. The scheme will come into effect on, and the supplements will be payable with effect from 1st April, 1956.
    Mr. G. H. R. Rogersasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation if he can now report the result of his discussions with the British Transport Commission on the question of further financial assistance to railway superannuitants and pensioners; and what consultations he has had with the appropriate trade unions.
    Mr. Watkinson: As to the first part of the Question, I would refer the hon.
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    Member to the replies I have given today to my hon. Friend the Member for Tyne-mouth (Dame Irene Ward) and the hon. Members for Accrington (Mr. H. Hynd) and Eton and Slough (Mr. Fenner Brockway).
    The Answer to the second part of the Question is, "None." I have, however, had many representations from organisations formed by the superannuitants themselves, and my predecessor received a deputation from one of them.
    Mr. Rogers: While expressing our appreciation of the Minister's sympathetic activity in this matter, may I point out to the right hon. Gentleman that there are some unsatisfactory features about the new scheme, and in view of the necessity for taking the unions along with the Commission on this sort of matter, will he not advise the Commission to discuss these difficulties with the appropriate trade unions whose members the super-annuitants are?
    Mr. Watkinson: To be fair to the British Transport Commission, I think that it did see T.S.S.A. about this, but I agree that the notice was short. I must take part of the blame for that because it has been a long and difficult process to work this out.

    Electrification, South-West Scotland
    Mr. Hannanasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation if he will now make a statement about the progress of negotiations with regard to the electrification of railways in south-west Scotland.
    Mr. Watkinson: I understand that substantial progress has been made in the negotiations for an agreement between the British Transport Commission and the Glasgow Corporation. This is an essential preliminary to the electrification of the Glasgow suburban railway system.
    Mr. Hannan: Is the Minister aware of the volume of disquiet at the protracted negotiations over this matter? Will he do all he can to get an early decision in view of the great importance of these railway systems?
    Mr. Watkinson: I think that progress is now being made.

    Increased Efficiency (Savings)
    Mr. G. R. Straussasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation the extent of the savings he anticipates will be achieved by greater efficiency in the running of the railways during the next six months.
    Mr. Watkinson: As the right hon. Member will realise, any estimate of savings limited to six months, even if it could be made, would have little relevance to the point to which attention will be directed when the time comes. That, as I said in my statement on 19th March, is the financial prospect over the next few years.
    Mr. Strauss: Yes, but as the Minister, in his statement last week, based his plea for postponement on the economy measures which he anticipated would be put into operation in the next six months, surely he must have some idea of what they will be; otherwise he has no justification for interfering and reducing the income to the Commission from the £37 million which it desires to £20 million?
    Mr. Watkinson: One of the main things which has already been put in hand is an objective review of the whole future of the Commission's financial and economic situation, which will take some time to carry through. There are a great many other points of detail which will be examined, such as modernisation, freight charges, productivity and regional structure, and in my view all these things mean that there is a need for a breathing space for the Commission of six months in order that the plans may be pressed forward.
    Mr. Strauss: But in view of the drastic nature of the right hon. Gentleman's interference, is it not really unrealistic and dangerous for him to base his important change of policy on the expectation of some magical occurrence during the next six months?
    Mr. Watkinson: If the right hon. Gentleman calls my interference drastic, I would reply that there is a drastic need to stop the continual passing of costs on to industry and the public.
    Mr. E. Johnson: May I ask whether my right hon. Friend anticipates that among the advantages of greater efficiency would be included greater punctuality?
    Mr. Watkinson: To be fair, I should say that trains are already running with greater punctuality. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] If hon. Members will draw my attention to those which are not—as they fairly frequently do—I will endeavour to have their complaints looked into by the Transport Commission.

  MINISTRY OF DEFENCE

    National Service
    Mr. Allaunasked the Minister of Defence how many additional men he requires to be recruited to the Forces before abolishing National Service.
    The Minister of Defence (Sir Walter Monckton): I regret that I cannot give any accurate estimate. A number of factors must be taken into account, including the size and nature of our commitments, the rate at which men are recruited on Regular engagements, and the average length of time for which they serve.
    Mr. Allaun: Does that mean that if the Minister fails to secure the desired increase in volunteers, conscription must remain indefinitely? Is he aware that West Germany proposes to cut her call-up from eighteen months to twelve months?
    Sir W. Monckton: I was asked for an estimate of the number I wanted. We trust that Regular recruitment will improve as a result of the pay improvements, which take effect on 1st April next. It is premature to give an estimate at present.
    Mr. C. I. Orr-Ewing: Does not my right hon. and learned Friend agree that the two principal factors determining the level of our Armed Forces are the strength of the Russian armed forces and the activities of Russia in promoting Communism in all parts of the world? Does not he agree that our level cannot be reduced until Russian visits, words and smiles are followed by deeds?
    Mr. Shinwell: Arising out of the original Question and the original Answer, is the right hon. and learned Gentleman aware that only a few weeks ago his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for War explicitly stated, in reply to a question during a broadcast, that he required 300,000 Regulars before being able to abolish National Service? Has

    2145
    that figure been revised or has the right hon. and learned Gentleman not been informed about it?
    Sir W. Monckton: I have been informed. That figure was given against the background of our present commitments. In the matter of Regular recruitment for the Army—and only the Army was under discussion—to get the figure up to 300,000 would mean the intake of another 100,000 men, and I thought it premature to base any estimate upon that assumption.

    Welfare Arrangements
    Mr. George Craddockasked the Minister of Defence if he will arrange for the setting up of camp councils in the Services, on the basis of the Whitley Councils, composed of officers, non-commissioned officers and men to enable complaints and matters affecting general welfare to receive adequate treatment.
    Sir W. Monckton: I have no reason to think that the existing methods for the consideration of complaints in the Services are unsatisfactory.
    Mr. Craddock: Is the Minister aware that the long pipeline, through N.C.O.s and junior officers, through which complaints have to go really means that they never get to the right quarter? Is he further aware that where camp councils were set up during the war, and in different parts of the country since the war, they were very successful, and were more efficient from the point of view of the units as well as of the men?
    Sir W. Monckton: I still think that the method for making complaints, which has stood the test of time, is a good method. I am well aware that the Royal Navy has its welfare committees, the Royal Air Force its station committees and the other Service welfare, N.A.A.F.I. and other committees. If there is some detailed difficulty' about them, I am sure that Questions will be put down to my right hon. Friends who are responsible for these Departments.

  MIDDLE EAST

    Arms Supplies
    Mr. A. Hendersonasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs how far, as a result of the recent consultation
    2146
    between Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom, the United States Government, and the French Government, applications from the Government of Israel for modern aircraft and tanks will be met in accordance with the provisions of the Tripartite Declaration.
    The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Mr. Selwyn Lloyd): All requests by Middle Eastern countries to Her Majesty's Government for arms are considered in the light of the principles laid down in the Tripartite Declaration of May, 1950. As I have repeatedly stated, it would be contrary to Her Majesty's Government's normal practice to disclose what arms are supplied in response to such requests.
    Mr. Henderson: Is not the danger of war in the Middle East considerably increased by the fact that substantial numbers of modern aircraft and tanks are being supplied to Egypt and are being denied to Israel? What policy reason is there which the Foreign Secretary can adduce which would justify the prevention of a reasonable supply of comparable types of aircraft and tanks being made to Israel, so as to avoid any suggestion of an arms race?
    Mr. Lloyd: The question of arms deliveries to individual countries is a very sensitive matter. Generally speaking, I think it is accepted that over the past five years we have managed to keep a fair balance. We shall continue to try to do that.

    Tripartite Declaration
    Sir R. Boothbyasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what further progress has been made in the discussions in Washington about methods of implementing the Tripartite Declaration on the dispute between Israel and her Arab neighbours.
    Mr. A. Hendersonasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he will now make a statement on the recent discussions in Washington on the implementation of the Tripartite Declaration, 1950.
    Mr. Shinwellasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether, pending a decision of the Security Council on measures to deal with the dispute between Israel and the Arab States, the

    2147
    signatories to the Tripartite Agreement have now decided how to implement the provisions of that Agreement in the event of aggression by any of the Arab States against Israel.
    Mr. Selwyn Lloyd: I have nothing to add to the reply I gave to the hon. Member for Shrewsbury (Mr. Langford-Holt) on 21st March.
    Sir R. Boothby: Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that the continued deterioration of the position in the Middle East is due largely to the absence of any policy on the part of the West? If we cannot persuade the Americans to agree upon a joint policy and joint action, would it not be better to produce a policy of our own?
    Mr. Lloyd: I think that my hon. Friend is failing to draw a distinction between policy and the means of implementing policy. Our policy in the Middle East is perfectly clear. First, we wish to strengthen the means of keeping the peace on the frontiers of Israel—and I think that hon. Members on both sides of the House agree that that is the right thing to do—and, secondly, as we have made perfectly clear again and again, we stand by the spirit and letter of the Tripartite Declaration.
    Mr. Robens: Is the Foreign Secretary not aware that the failure to give an indication as to how the Tripartite Declaration is to be implemented is one of the main causes of trouble in the Middle East that neither the Arabs nor the Jews have any faith in this as a Declaration, and that he should make it perfectly clear where we stand, as a country, in relation to its implementation?
    Mr. Lloyd: That has been made clear again and again, and I really think that it would be most unwise to indicate the action which might be taken in hypothetical circumstances.
    Mr. Shinwell: But how can the right hon. and learned Gentleman claim that this matter is being raised in hypothetical circumstances? Already the representatives of the Soviet Government have declared their intention of vetoing any decision by the Security Council on this matter, and if there is a danger—which is apprehended by many persons concerned—of the Security Council discussions breaking down, what is to be the
    2148
    position of Her Majesty's Government? Are they to implement the provisions of the Declaration in whatever way is open to them, or are they to leave matters as they are, with all the dangers that are entailed?
    Mr. Lloyd: The Tripartite Declaration refers to action both within and without the United Nations, and we have made it perfectly clear again and again that we do reserve the right to take action without the United Nations.
    Mr. Shinwell: May I ask the right hon. and learned Gentleman to be a little more explicit and to indicate to hon. Members what kind of action he contemplates? If the peaceful efforts break down—and that may happen—what action is to be taken? Are the provisions of the Tripartite Declaration to be implemented, and will he make it perfectly clear to all States in the Middle East, including Israel and Egypt, that in the event of any aggression or the threat of aggression, the provisions of the Declaration will be implemented?
    Mr. Lloyd: We have said that again and again. [Laughter.] I do not see why that should be the cause for mirth, because it is a very serious obligation which might have very serious consequences, and it is certainly no laughing matter.
    Mr. Rees-Davies: Will my right hon. Friend be able to make a statement soon as to how the aggressor would be determined in the event of an outbreak, and whether, in the event of such an aggressor being determined, positive action would be taken, and whether a joint declaration to that effect cannot be made, on the principle that we certainly cannot "go" this matter alone?
    Mr. Lloyd: The obligations are laid down in the Tripartite Declaration, and those obligations will be honoured.
    Mr. Henderson: In view of the admittedly serious situation which exists on the borders of Israel and the Arab countries—we are told in The Times that three regiments of infantry, with armoured support, have been deployed in the Gaza strip by the Egyptian Government—is not this problem one of great urgency? As these discussions have been going on for nearly six weeks without any sign of

    2149
    being terminated, can the Foreign Secretary tell us when he expects the conference to come to a decision?
    Mr. Lloyd: Of course the matter is one of the greatest urgency, and we have said that repeatedly. But these discussions deal with methods, and I have said to the House before that I think that in any event it would be most inappropriate to have public statements about the methods to be adopted.
    Mr. Gaitskell: Is the Foreign Secretary saying that the discussions have now been concluded but that he does not want to reveal their outcome? May I ask him whether he does not feel, in view of the enormous importance of making it perfectly plain to all parties in that part of the world what we are going to do, that, despite the need for some degree of security in military matters, a precise indication should be given as to what we will do in the event of a violation of the frontiers?
    Mr. Lloyd: The discussions have not been concluded—they are continuing—but I still think that it would be most unwise to indicate what precise action is to be taken in a hypothetical situation.
    Mr. Gaitskell: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that unless he gives some precise indication—or some fairly precise indication—of what he and Her Majesty's Government will do, the parties to this dispute will not believe that any action is to be taken?
    Mr. Lloyd: I really do not think it possible publicly to disclose plans.

    Jordan (Negotiations)
    Mr. Youngerasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he will make a further statement on negotiations with Jordan.
    Mr. Selwyn Lloyd: The right hon. Member will now have seen the joint communiqué issued on 24th March. I have nothing to add at present.
    Mr. Younger: Will the Foreign Secretary say whether reports which have been very authoritatively appearing in the Press are correct, namely, that we are proposing to continue at approximately its former level our subsidy for the military forces of Jordan, while, at the same time, we have lost all assurance that those forces will be used in any way in
    2150
    conformity with British policy? Is he aware that there is very great anxiety about that in this country?
    Mr. Lloyd: I am aware of the anxiety, but I think that until the negotiations are over I can add nothing.

    United Nations
    Mr. A. Hendersonasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what further action Her Majesty's Government now propose to take through the United Nations in order to secure a relaxation of tension in the Middle East.
    Mr. Selwyn Lloyd: The right hon. and learned Gentleman will be aware that the Security Council met on 26th March to discuss the situation in Palestine. A draft resolution was introduced by the United States Delegate requesting the Secretary-General to investigate the situation, to arrange for certain measures to be taken by the parties affected in order to reduce existing tension and to report to the Security Council within one month. This Resolution has Her Majesty's Government's full support. The Council adjourned until today.
    Mr. Henderson: Can the Foreign Secretary say whether General Burns' organisation—the United Nations Truce Supervisory Organisation—has powers to investigate concentration of troops on either side of the border? If it has, can he say whether it is to investigate, as requested by the Government of Israel, an alleged concentration of Egyptian troops in the Gaza strip?
    Mr. Lloyd: I think that I would require notice of the precise definition of the powers, but my impression is that the powers of the Organisation are limited to investigating breaches of the armistice agreement, as a concentration might be, of course.
    Mr. S. Silverman: Are we to understand from an earlier Answer of the Foreign Secretary's that in certain circumstances the Powers, including ourselves, who are parties to the Tripartite Declaration might consider taking action not merely outside the United Nations but possibly in conflict with a decision which the United Nations has taken? Having regard to the Answer which he has now given, does he not think that a very far-reaching statement to be made in so casual a way?
    Mr. Lloyd: I certainly did not intend to make a statement in a casual way. The point is that there might be absence of decision by the Security Council. That is the contingency for which, of course, it is very necessary to keep open other action.

  TRADE WITH CHINA (CONTROLS)
  Mr. Chapmanasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs when the China Committee of the Paris Consultative Group is to discuss the ban on export of commercial vehicles to China; and what view is to be expressed by the British representative.
  Mr. Selwyn Lloyd: Although Her Majesty's Government hope that proposals for a review of the China controls will be brought before the China Committee of the Paris Consultative Group at an early date, no date has yet been fixed for a discussion. Since such discussions are confidential, I am unable to disclose the view which would be expressed by the British representative.
  Mr. Chapman: What is happening about this? Why is there all this dilatoriness and indecisiveness on the part of the Government? Is the Secretary of State aware that there is no chance of the American Government changing their mind during a Presidential election year? Why does the right hon. and learned Gentleman not take courageous action and give a lead by allowing British exporters to send commercial vehicles to China?
  Mr. Lloyd: It has been our policy to deal with these matters in concert with our Allies, and I am seeking to further that policy.
  Mr. M. Lindsay: Whatever may be the arguments for maintaining a strategic list of prohibited imports to Russia and the rest of the Communist world, is not it the most complete nonsense that N.A.T.O. countries should have a separate and more severely drawn-up strategic list for China?
  Mr. Lloyd: As was stated in the communiqué issued after the Washington talks, a review is taking place of that China list.
  Mr. Harold Davies: Is not the right hon. and learned Gentleman aware that responsible British businessmen consider this to be an infringement of British sovereignty and economic rights? As representatives of the people, have not hon. Members the right to demand from the Government an explanation of what is taking place in this Consultative Group.
  Mr. Lloyd: I think that we should be very foolish not to continue to work through the machinery which is laid down between us and our Allies.
  Mr. Gaitskell: Is the Foreign Secretary aware that on these benches we feel that these arrangements are now getting seriously out of date and, in particular, that the distinction between the control of deliveries to Russia on the one side and China on the other is really without any sensible foundation? Will he say, first, whether these matters were discussed at Washington, in the talks which he had with Mr. Dulles; and, secondly, how soon we may expect a final decision in this matter?
  Mr. Lloyd: I do not think that there is a very great difference of opinion between the right hon. Gentleman and myself in this matter. It was raised at Washington, and our views were perfectly clearly put forward.
  Mr. Gaitskell: Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman answer the last part of my supplementary question? When does he expect to be able to get this matter settled?
  Mr. Lloyd: I can only say, "As soon as possible".
  Mr. Smithers: Is my right hon. and learned Friend aware that nothing could do more harm to the cause of peace and our relations with China than a precipitate attempt to "go it alone" in this matter?

  HONG KONG (CHINESE NATIONALIST AIRMAN)
  Mr. Bairdasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what diplomatic channels were used to facilitate the return to Formosa of the Chinese Nationalist airmen whose aeroplane crashed on Hong Kong territory after a bombing expedition into China.
  Mr. Selwyn Lloyd: If the hon. Member is referring to the pilot of an unarmed Chinese Nationalist fighter aircraft which landed at Hong Kong on 31st January, the answer is "None, Sir". Her Majesty's Consul in Tamsui informed the provincial authorities in Formosa of the name of the ship on which the pilot had been allowed to depart, after it had sailed from Hong Kong.
  Mr. Baird: As the Formosan Government refused to repatriate the Chinese saboteur who placed a bomb in the Indian plane which was refuelling at Hong Kong on the way to Bandaung—I believe that he was afterwards paid £40,000 indirectly by the Americans for doing it—would it not have been sensible to hold the plane and the airmen until we got satisfaction from the Formosan Government? Furthermore, as this action is obviously offensive to the Chinese People's Government, might it not endanger our position in Hong Kong?
  Mr. Lloyd: I do not think that the hon. Member has really any right to make the kind of insinuation which he did make about the United States. So far as the position of the man to whom he refers is concerned, that was covered by the extradition treaty—or lack of an extradition treaty. In this case we do not recognise a state of beligerency between Chinese Nationalists and Chinese Communists and I therefore think that our action in this matter was right.
  Later—
  Mr. Daines: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I have been reflecting on the statement made by the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mr. Baird). As I understood him, he said that the American Government had paid £40,000 to a man to commit a murder. Surely that statement is out of order, and is a deliberate slur and slander on a very good friend to this country?
  Mr. Speaker: An hon. Member who makes imputations in a Question makes himself responsible for the truth of the statements which are made. There is a point at which I can interfere, but I did not think that I could there. The point was answered by the Minister, and I think it was for the Minister, and not myself, to answer it.
  Mr. Fenner Brockway: In view of the fact that the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mr. Baird) is not now present, may I ask whether it is not the case that he made no reference whatsoever to the American Government?
  Mr. Speaker: We cannot go into that. Perhaps I may be allowed to say, as a general rule for the guidance of Members, that all imputations of any sort at Question Time are out of order and should not be made. It is sometimes difficult to check them at the moment when they are made. One has to rely on the co-operation of the House and the good sense of hon. Members to avoid this sort of regrettable incident in future.

  MR. BULGANIN AND MR. KHRUSHCHEV
  Mr. Bellengerasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs how many Soviet security police are to be admitted to this country on the occasion of the visit of Mr. Khrushchev and Marshal Bulganin.
  Mr. Selwyn Lloyd: The Soviet leaders' delegation will include fourteen security guards.
  Mr. Bellenger: May I ask the Foreign Secretary whether these officials will be armed, and is it his opinion that in relation to the security of visiting foreign Heads of Government the Metropolitan Police and the C.I.D. are quite sufficient to secure their safety, at any rate in this country?
  Mr. Lloyd: It is the normal practice to allow visiting delegations to include such members of their staff as they want, and I think that normal practice is being followed in this case.

  MR. MALENKOV (VISIT)
  Mr. Lewisasked the Prime Minister whether he will make a statement on his recent discussions with G. M. Malenkov, the Minister of Fuel and Power in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
  The Prime Minister (Sir Anthony Eden): Mr. Malenkov, accompanied by the Soviet Ambassador, paid me a formal call on Monday last week.
  Mr. C. Pannell: Would the Prime Minister please answer the supplementary question dealing with these and other Russian visitors? Under what conditions are foreigners allowed to be armed in this country? If our police are not allowed to be armed, why should foreign police be allowed to be armed?
  Mr. Speaker: We have passed that Question.
  Mr. Daines: Did the Prime Minister receive the customary box of chocolates and the peace medal when he received Mr. Malenkov?
  The Prime Minister: I should not care to reveal any diplomatic secrets.

  AIRCRAFT (NEAR-COLLISION)
  Mr. McKibbinasked the Secretary of State for Air if he has any statement to make about the incident yesterday morning when an Elizabethan Airliner bound from Belfast to London suffered a near-collision with an R.A.F. Vampire jet fighter over Daventry.
  The Under-Secretary of State for Air (Mr. Christopher Soames): Shortly after 10 o'clock yesterday morning a Royal Air Force Vampire aircraft from Little Rissington flying at 9,500 ft. very nearly collided with an Elizabethan aircraft of British European Airways which was on its way from Nutts Corner airfield in Northern Ireland to London Airport. Both pilots took evasive action. A Royal Air Force court of inquiry has been convened to investigate the incident. I understand that as a result of the airliner's maneouvre five of those travelling in it sustained injuries for which they are at present detained in hospital, and I know that the House will wish to join with me in expressing regret at the suffering caused to them.
  Mr. McKibbin: While thanking my hon. Friend for that reply and welcoming the setting up of a court of inquiry, may I ask whether he is aware that the public in Northern Ireland is greatly concerned about this incident and the possibility of further incidents if Royal Air Force pilots are allowed to fly in close proximity to the corridors used by British European Airways?
  Mr. C. Pannell: On a point of order. Do you not consider, Mr. Speaker, upon reflection, that this Question is an abuse of the Private Notice Question procedure?
  Mr. Speaker: I do not think so. I took it all into consideration.
  Mr. Soames: The incident occurred in a civil aviation airway. Royal Air Force planes are permitted, within certain very stringent rules and regulations, to fly within these airways. The court of inquiry which has been set up will reveal whether those rules and regulations were adhered to.
  Mr. Bellenger: Will the hon. Gentleman ask the court of inquiry to pay particular attention to whether the Royal Air Force kept within the lines laid down by civil control and whether the Royal Air Force is not a law unto itself? Is the Minister further aware that this is not the only incident of a near-miss, and that something ought to be done to ensure safety for civil aeroplanes from the Royal Air Force?
  Mr. Soames: I do not want to prejudge the findings of the court of inquiry, which will show whether the rules and regulations laid down were adhered to and whether in fact they need tightening up.
  Mr. C. Pannell: Further to the point of order which I just raised, Mr. Speaker. Does this Question not establish a precedent, and may I ask whether, in future, we are to have cases where one bus narrowly misses another bus made the subject of a Private Notice Question? It is quite fantastic.
  Mr. Speaker: There must be differences of opinion on these matters of discretion. I considered this matter and I thought it was just suitable for a Private Notice Question, in view of the season of the year, the amount of interest caused and the safety measures involved in it. All these things have to be taken into consideration. The hon. Gentleman's opinion may differ from mine, but I cannot help that.
  Mr. Glenvil Hall: Will the findings of the court of inquiry be made public?
  Mr. Soames: The court of inquiry itself is not held in public, but my right hon. Friend will certainly consider whether it is advisable to publish the findings.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Mr. Gaitskell: May I ask the Leader of the House whether he can state the business for the first week after the Easter Recess?
The Lord Privy Seal (Mr. R. A. Butler): Yes, Sir. The business for the first week after the Easter Recess will be as follows:
TUESDAY, 10TH APRIL—Report and Third Reading of the Clean Air Bill.
WEDNESDAY, 11TH APRIL—Committee stage of the Restrictive Trade Practices Bill.
Committee and remaining stages of the Agricultural Mortgage Corporation Bill.
THURSDAY, 12TH APRIL—Committee stage of the Restrictive Trade Practices Bill.
FRIDAY, 13TH APRIL—Consideration of Private Members' Bills.
Dame Irene Ward: May I ask my right hon. Friend whether he is aware that I am not asking for time for a debate on the Phillips Report, because I expect that the Chancellor of the Exchequer will give relief to those on small fixed incomes when he opens his Budget on 17th April?

MALTA (LEGISLATION)
The Prime Minister: With your permission, Mr. Speaker, and that of the House, I will make a statement on Malta.
As my right hon. Friend the Colonial Secretary told the House in Monday's debate, the Government accept the Report of the Round Table Conference and intend to proceed with the necessary steps to carry out its recommendations.
The Government have now considered, in the light of the debate, what these steps should be. They have decided to proceed with legislation in this House to give effect to the recommendations of the Report. The Bill will provide for all the necessary changes involved in carrying the Report into effect.
However, that part of the Bill relating to the representation of Malta in this House will be brought into operation
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only if and when the Maltese people have shown their desire for it in a General Election following a dissolution of the Maltese Legislative Assembly. The Prime Minister of Malta has said he will request the Governor to grant this.
Mr. Gaitskell: While welcoming his statement and the decision of the Government in this matter, may I ask the Prime Minister whether we may take it that the proposed legislation will be passed through all its stages in Parliament before the General Election takes place in Malta?
The Prime Minister: Yes, Sir. We are considering now how the Bill can be drafted so as to ensure that representation will not come into effect until the Maltese people have confirmed in another General Election that they desire it, and also to ensure that the changes in the Constitution, which involve a substantial diminution in the power of the Imperial Government, could also be dealt with. We are considering how those matters can be handled in the legislation. But our purpose is to pass the legislation while, at the same time, by whatever legislative process is worked out as the best, ensuring that there shall be a further pronouncement in Malta before it comes into effect.
Mr. Gaitskell: I do not think that the right hon. Gentleman quite understood my question. What I was asking was not about the details of the legislation but whether he would give an assurance that it would be passed through all its stages in Parliament and receive the Royal Assent, subject, of course, to the qualification which he has mentioned, before the General Election takes place in Malta.
The Prime Minister: I have said that it is our intention to proceed with the Bill in all its stages. As to the Royal Assent, I should like to reflect on that and on how it would be affected by what happened in Malta.
Mr. Bevan: What we desire to find out is whether all the Parliamentary stages here will be concluded before the Election takes place in Malta.
The Prime Minister: I am sorry if I did not make that plain.
Mr. Bevan: The right hon. Gentleman said "proceed with".
The Prime Minister: Yes. I thought that if one proceeded with a Bill one proceeded with the purpose of proceeding with it. At any rate, our intention was that all the stages in this House should be completed.
Mr. Bevan: The right hon. Gentleman will, I am sure, sympathise with our anxiety here because the language that he has used in his statement today conveys the impression that the people of Malta are now to be asked to decide this matter a third time. If the right hon. Gentleman looks at the language he will see that that is so. What we desire is to make clear to the people of Malta what our intentions are before they have an Election there. Therefore, may I ask whether Parliamentary stages will be concluded before the Election takes place in Malta?
The Prime Minister: That is the intention. I think it was clear, because I said:
"The Bill will provide for all the necessary changes involved in carrying the Report into effect"—
all of them. We will proceed with those. However, that part of the Bill dealing with representation would await the verdict of Malta.
Viscount Hinchingbrooke: Is my right hon. Friend aware that there are quarters in this House and sections of opinion in the country which are bound to view certain of the decisions reached with some alarm, misgiving and disquiet? Can he say how soon it is proposed to table the Bill?
The Prime Minister: I am certainly aware that there are some who view this procedure with concern or anxiety, and some, indeed, who do not agree with it. That is very natural, in all the circumstances. I can only tell my noble Friend that we have, as a Government, given the most careful thought to this matter and are absolutely convinced that the course on which we have decided is the right one to pursue in those circumstances. Otherwise, I should not be here saying it to my noble Friend. I cannot give a time-table for the legislation because, as the House will realise, the Report dealt with principles and there must be some discussion of detail with the Government of Malta before the Bill can be actually drafted.
Mr. N. Pannell: May I ask my right hon. Friend whether it is intended that when the final decision is reached in the Maltese Legislative Assembly account shall be had for the Constitution of Malta which calls for a two-thirds majority of the Legislative Assembly for any change in the Constitution?
The Prime Minister: That was dealt with in the debate the other day, and my impression is that we proceeded on the basis of the existing Constitution of Malta.
Mr. J. Griffiths: Will the right hon. Gentleman make it clear that that provision in the Constitution will not apply in the new circumstances? That was made clear in the debate, and it is clear now.
The Prime Minister indicated assent.
Mr. Dudley Williams: Will my right hon. Friend undertake not to introduce into this Parliament any Bill, where this question is concerned, which has not the approval of all denominations of the Christian religion, including Roman Catholics, Anglicans and Protestants?
The Prime Minister: I take it that the House would wish that the Government should do everything in their power to try to bring about full agreement between all the denominations concerned. I must say to the House that I think that the course which we have decided to follow gives us the best chance of bringing that about. We shall certainly try to do it, and I could not give the kind of undertaking for which my hon. Friend has asked.

MALTA (LEGISLATION)
  BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
  Proceedings of the Committee on Slum Clearance (Compensation) [Money] and on the Pensions (Increase) Bill exempted, at this day's Sitting, from the provisions of Standing Order No. 1 (Sittings of the House).—[The Prime Minister.]
  SITTINGS OF THE HOUSE
  House to meet Tomorrow at Eleven o'clock; no Questions to be taken after Twelve o'clock; and at Five o'clock Mr. Speaker to adjourn the House without putting any Question.—[The Prime Minister.]
  ADJOURNMENT (EASTER)
  House, at its rising Tomorrow, to adjourn till Tuesday, 10th April.—[The Prime Minister.]
ORDERS OF THE DAY

  SLUM CLEARANCE (COMPENSATION) BILL
  Order for Second Reading read.
  3.45 p.m.
  The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (Mr. J. Enoch Powell): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
  This is a short Bill of limited purposes, but not, for that reason, a Bill which is unimportant either to the thousands of persons who will be affected by it or to the full success of that campaign of slum clearance, which now opening on a large scale.
  I will briefly explain to the House the three main effects which the Bill is designed to produce. In the Housing and Town Planning Act, 1919, the rule was established—and it is a rule which has ever since been maintained—that nothing shall be paid for a house, as apart from the site of that house, which is found to be unfit for human habitation and is dealt with either by compulsory purchase or by clearance, demolition or closing order.
  The late Lord Addison, introducing that Measure into this House in 1919, said in explanation:
  "I think we have to proceed on this basis, that if this property is condemned as being so bad that it cannot even be patched up and must be pulled down and cleared out of the way, we ought not to be required to pay anything for it. That is the basis of the Clause.'—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 7th April, 1919; Vol 114, c. 1719.]
  All successive Parliaments and Governments have reaffirmed and maintained that principle, and Her Majesty's present advisers see no reason to depart from it. It follows that persons owning or acquiring houses which are likely to be dealt with as unfit have for a great many years had every reason to know that they would receive no more than site value for those houses when they came to be so dealt with, and, in consequence, when that time did come and when that process was carried out, no legitimate expectations were defeated.
  Since the war, however, there has arisen a limited class of people, of owners of unfit houses, for whom in equity, if not in strict justice and logic, some special
  2162
  treatment is called for. In combination with the post-war housing shortage, the effect of rent control has been to place a high scarcity value on houses sold with vacant possession or let on long leases with vacant possession. The whole emphasis of the scarcity has been funnelled as it were into the sector of vacant possession to which rent control did not, of course, apply. This has created a market for the freeholds or the long leases of unfit or near unfit houses with vacant possession—houses which before the war no one would have dreamed of buying for owner occupation.
  Thousands of people, not least ex-Service men, desperate somehow to get a home, have paid considerable sums for the freehold or the long lease of houses of this kind, either ignoring or else being ignorant of the prospect that they stood to be acquired in the course of time at site value only. It was all the easier for people so situated to overlook the risk OF to take it, because for about 15 years after the outbreak of the war there virtually was no slum clearance going on, and so the application of the law as it had stood since 1919 was no longer so familiar, no longer an everyday occurrence, as it had been up to 1939.
  The Government therefore believe that this is a case where a too strict insistence on the principle of caveat emptor would be harsh on the individual concerned and, what is more, that it would attach a taint of arbitrariness and unfairness to that process of slum clearance which we want to command universal support.
  The Government therefore propose that where a house was acquired by a person for his own occupation after August, 1939, and where he or a member of his family was still occupying it on 13th December last, the price paid for it, if at any time in the following ten years it is dealt with as unfit, either by compulsory purchase or by clearance, demolition or closing order, shall not be the site value only, as the law stands at the moment, but shall be the full compensation which would have been payable if the house had not been dealt with as an unfit house.
  In that complicated definition of the cases which fall within the ambit of Clause 1, there are three essential time factors, and I should like to deal with each of those time elements separately. The first is the adoption of 1st September, 1939, as the starting point—the date

  2163
  on or after which the house must have been acquired by the person concerned in order for him to have one of the necessary qualifications for full compensation. It is true that the scarcity value which I have just explained did not in all areas attach to houses of this kind until the war was over. Nevertheless, there were parts of the country in which that process was already happening during the war itself, and the Government therefore decided to err on the side of including too many houses, rather than too few, by applying the provisions of the Bill to houses acquired for owner-occupation since August, 1939.
  Of course, when one goes back beyond 1939 one comes into an entirely different region; one comes into circumstances in which, as I have already explained, there was no legitimate expectation which would be defeated by the acquisition of the house at site value. Hon. Members will, moreover, bear in mind that where the house was acquired for owner-occupation before 1939, the owner-occupier has had at least about 20 years' use of that house, bought for that price, and in most cases a great deal more than 20 years' use.
  The second time element in these qualifying conditions is the date of 13th December. 1955, which was the date on which my right hon. Friend announced to the House in outline the contents of the Bill. The date of 13th December plays two separate rôles in Clause 1, which we are at the moment discussing. To qualify, a house must have been bought before 13th December, 1955, by the person, or a member of his family, who still owns the interest in it when it comes to be dealt with as unfit. It must have been acquired for owner-occupation before 13th December last.
  This is clearly right and necessary. A later qualifying date would clearly be out of the question. For example, a later date would enable landlords of unfit houses to sell them to sitting tenants, and then, when the houses eventually came to be acquired at a higher compensation than would otherwise be attracted, to share the spoils between the two parties. I think it will be agreed, therefore, that it is right that no house acquired for owner-occupation after the announcement
  2164
  of the contents of the Bill should be able to qualify.
  The other rôle which is played by the date 13th December in the Bill is that it is on that date, as Clause 1 stands, that the house must still have been occupied by the person who bought it or by a member of his family. It may be asked, would an earlier date be possible? This is a very difficult question. Some starting line has to be fixed, because, obviously, when houses have been demolished and cleared away months and perhaps years before, it is impossible to set out on the task of valuing them. There must be some limit beyond which transactions which have been completed and closed cannot be reopened.
  The proposal is. therefore, that the concession should start from the date on which both the owners of the houses and the local authorities—that is, the two parties to the transaction—had good reason to know what the new compensation position probably would be. This is, as I have said, a difficult point, however, and it is one which can, if desired, be considered in detail during the Committee stage.
  I come to the third qualifying date in Clause I. the terminal date—ten years after the concession begins to run; namely, up to 13th December. 1965. Clause 1, therefore, is a ten-year temporary provision. As this concession is designed to meet temporary and exceptional circumstances due to wartime and post-war conditions, so it should itself be temporary and exceptional. When ten years have elapsed, even persons who bought such houses as these for their own occupation immediately before my right hon. Friend's statement will have had a very substantial use and enjoyment of those houses. The Government do not propose, therefore, that the concession should apply to houses dealt with as unfit after 13th December, 1965.
  Dr. Horace King: Before the Parliamentary Secretary leaves the question of dates and times, may I ask whether he proposes to do nothing for the man whose house has been taken over for slum clearance prior to December of last year, and who has received this very inadequate payment?
  Mr. Powell: As I have said, that is the question of the starting date. Factors

  2165
  which have to be borne in mind are the impossibility of valuing a house which has already been acquired, the whole site cleared and perhaps even redeveloped. Clearly, there has to be a fairly close starting date.
  Mr. J. A. Sparks: This is rather an important point, because there has already been a certain amount of slum clearance since 1945 and there will be quite a number of small people who would otherwise benefit from the Bill but who may not now be entitled to benefit.
  Mr. Powell: The hon. Member is quite right. I am sure that the whole House realises that whenever any change in the law, in terms of compensation, is introduced, there must be a point of time from which that change will operate, and there will inevitably be people on the other side of that line—and hard cases, too—which everyone would wish could be covered; but it must be inherent in the nature of such a change that a start line has to be fixed.
  I would ask the House to note that this start line has been pushed very far back. It does not date from the Royal Assent to this Act it does not date from the presentation of the Bill. It dates from the earliest moment at which the nature of the new proposals could be known, namely, the date on which my right hon. Friend made his statement, 13th December.
  Mr. T. L. Iremonger: Is it the confirmation of the compulsory purchase order as the determining act which has to fall at the right time?
  Mr. Powell: The material fact about which we have been talking in connection with the date 13th December is occupation of the house. The qualification we have been discussing is that on 13th December, in whatever circumstances, the owner-occupier was in actual occupation of a standing house.
  Mr. Herbert Butler: Or his relative.
  Mr. Powell: The purchaser or a member of his family as defined in the Bill in Clause 4. However, as I have mentioned, this is essentially a matter of detail which can be considered during the Committee stage.
  In passing now to the remainder of the Bill, I am passing from a provision which
  2166
  is intended to be temporary to provisions which are intended to be permanent, because they are designed to remedy hardship which arises from certain defects in the slum clearance compensation code which, though admittedly always present, have only been high-lighted and had attention focussed upon them by post-war conditions.
  That compensation code as embodied in the principal Act, the Housing Act of 1936, treats a building as a house—and consequently, if unfit for human habitation, as an unfit house—irrespective of the use to which it is being put, provided it is structurally a house. The definition of "house" for the purpose of the principal Act depends not upon the use to which the building is put but upon the nature of its structure.
  Consequently where the whole or part of a house unfit for human habitation is being used, without major structural adaptation or change, as a shop or for other commercial purposes, no compensation for that house apart from the site is payable if it is dealt with as unfit by compulsory purchase, clearance or demolition order.
  Such a state of affairs is really unjustifiable. A house may cease to have any value as a house, and, as I have pointed out, this proposition lies at the basis of the existing compensation code; but, though having ceased to have value as a dwelling-house because of unfitness, a house may still retain a value for some other purpose for which it may be perfectly suitable and for which it may be quite reasonable and not contrary to public interest that it should be used.
  There is no reason why the owner of a business carried on in such a house should not be compensated for the full value of his interest just because the premises happen to be unfit for human habitation, which, in any case, is not the purpose for which he is using them. The result of the law as it is at present is that such persons stand to be deprived of what is, in fact, their livelihood in the process of dealing with unfit houses.
  The Bill therefore proposes that where such a house as I have described, or part of it, is dealt with as unfit, the owner of the business shall receive no less compensation than he would have received if the premises had not been dealt with as an unfit house. There are safeguards to

  2167
  prevent this right to higher compensation being abused by a brief and possibly collusive business use being entered into in future.
  Mr. Sparks: The hon. Gentleman is referring to cases where persons may be displaced from business. Presumably that compensation would be paid for loss of business goodwill. In many cases, such persons have been accommodated in new schemes developed by the local authority and, in fact, they have only gone to new premises in a newly developed area where there could not be said to be any loss of goodwill at all. In such cases, would the hon. Gentleman not be prepared to take the matter into consideration?
  Mr. Powell: I am not sure what the hon. Member's point is. The right to compensation for that which is compulsorily acquired is a matter quite separate from the right, if any, to re accommodation or arrangements which the individual may make, with or without the assistance of the local authority, for carrying on his business elsewhere. We want him to be compensated for that which is compulsorily taken from him.
  Mr. Sparks: May I take up the hon. Gentleman's time a little more on this point? Take, for instance, the case of an off-licence keeper who is accommodated in a slum clearance area where the dwellings are destroyed. Some dwellings are then rebuilt. In some cases it is possible that the local authority can provide a new shop for such a person to carry on his business in within the new area. There is no obligation on the local authority to do that, I think, but in some cases they do sympathetically make that arrangement. In a case like that, it really would not be true to say that the individual would be losing any goodwil at all.
  Mr. Powell: It depends, of course, upon the terms on which he is re-accommodated. When re-accommodated, he will no doubt be paying a new rent. He may pay a lump sum for the right to carry on the business in the place where he starts up again. We must keep separate these two issues. We are dealing here with the compensation he should receive for that property of his which
  2168
  is taken from him compulsorily by the act of the local authority.
  In turning to Clause 3, I pass to the law dealing with additional payments which are made where houses are unfit for human habitation but have been well maintained by their owners, by their occupiers, or by both. That is provided for by Section 42 of the principal Act, though at the moment payments for a house being well maintained only relate to properties compulsorily acquired under compulsory purchase orders. I will revert to that matter in a moment or two.
  Such houses attract a payment for good maintenance which may be calculated on one of two bases. The first basis is the amount by which the sums actually spent on maintenance in the previous five years exceed one-and-a-quarter times the rateable value. There is no reason to alter this basis because it is one which automatically adjusts itself to any change of building costs and the value of money, since it depends upon the bills of costs over the previous five years.
  The position is different in regard to the alternative basis which is applied either where it is more favourable or, usually, where no such bills and evidence can be produced. This other basis is a multiple of rateable value: one-and-a-half times the rateable value in the case of a landlord and three times the rateable value in the case of an owner-occupier. This latter basis is completely out of date, for, while building costs have increased since the time of the passing of the principal Act by about three or three-and-a-half times, the rateable values of dwelling-houses have, on the average, only gone up by about 40 per cent. in the new valuation lists which come into force next week. Indeed, I am informed that in the case of houses of the kind we are talking about now, houses which are likely to be dealt with as unfit in the next few years, the increase in rateable value has been much less than 40 per cent. and often has been quite negligible.
  Mr. Sparks: Does the hon. Gentleman complain about that?
  Mr. Powell: No, all I am doing is pointing out that a basis of compensation for good maintenance which multiplies rateable value today by the same figure

  2169
  by which it was considered fair to multiply it in 1936 is completely out of date because the two elements, the cost of building and rateable value, have moved entirely out of line with one another.
  The Bill therefore proposes to give the Minister power by order to adjust the figures by which rateable value has to be multiplied in fixing the payments for good maintenance. The advantage of doing that by order is that a new Act of Parliament is not required whenever there is some appreciable change either in rateable values or in building costs. My right hon. Friend proposes, however, to make use of this power immediately upon the passing of this Bill and to increase the present figures of 1½ and 3 respectively in the principal Act so as to take into account the changed relationship between the relevant rateable values and building costs.
  Before announcing the precise figures which are proposed, my right hon. Friend will, naturally, have to hold consultations with the local authority associations and other interested bodies, but the general objective is quite clearly and definitely to make an adjustment in regard to the changed relationship between rateable value on the one hand and the costs of maintenance on the other.
  Mr. C. W. Gibson: Will that be gross or net rateable value?
  Mr. Powell: It is gross rateable value.
  Mr. H. Butler: Before leaving Section 42 of the 1936 Act, will the hon. Gentleman add anything about the qualifying period which applies in respect of well-maintained houses? So far as I can see, there is no reference to that in the Bill, but, as the hon. Gentleman may know, there has to be a particular time for occupation under that Act.
  Mr. Powell: It is not thought that Section 42 requires amendment except in so far as the changed value of money and the changed cost of building in relation to rateable value has rendered Section 42 out of date. There is nothing in the principle of Section 42 with which I would invite the House to disagree.
  The opportunity has also been taken in making this adjustment of multiplier for well-maintained payments when houses are compulsorily acquired to introduce
  2170
  the well-maintained payment to houses which are subject to clearance, demolition or closing orders and for which, in the past, no such payment has been available. In doing so, it has been necessary to provide a machinery of appeal by the owner or occupier against the determination one way or the other of the local authority because, of course, the making of a demolition order or a closing order is essentially a local authority operation, whereas the decision on a well-maintained payment under a compulsory purchase order is a decision taken by the Minister on the evidence provided by his inspectors.
  I have now outlined and given the reasons for the three main provisions of this Bill. I am sorry to see from the Order Paper that the Opposition apparently consider this Bill, the purposes of which I have just outlined, to be one which the House ought to reject.
  Mr. G. Lindgren: For a reason.
  Mr. Powell: Yes, but it is still a proposal for the rejection of the Bill. The reason for doing so appears to be flimsy to the last degree, for it alleges that for a Bill such as this an indispensable condition ought to be the introduction of new, special, direct Exchequer subsidies in respect of the additional payments which are involved.
  Let us try to get this thing into proportion. My right hon. Friend indicated on an earlier occasion—in fact, when he first acquainted the House of the intention which this Bill fulfils—that the proportion of houses likely to be dealt with as unfit which are owner-occupied does not exceed about 5 per cent. Of course, that 5 per cent. includes owner-occupied houses acquired before September, 1939, which, as I have explained, are outside the scope of the Bill. It may, therefore, be safely assumed that the proportion of unfit houses covered by Clause 1 is substantially below 5 per cent.
  Mr. Percy Collick: Am I right in understanding that the proportion of scheduled slum houses in the country which are owner-occupied is 5 per cent.?
  Mr. Powell: I am not sure that "scheduled" is the term of art in this connection, but of the houses which are

  2171
  likely to form part of the slum clearance programmes put forward under Section 1 of the 1954 Act by local authorities the best estimate that can be made is that about 5 per cent. are owner-occupied.
  Mr. David Jones: Can the hon. Gentleman tell us how the Minister arrived at that percentage, as the plans of local authorities for the next five years, let alone ten years, are not yet known?
  Mr. Powell: Obviously, there is no difficulty in taking quite a large sample of slum houses which have been dealt with under all these procedures in the last few months or years and working out from the statistics the proportion of those which are owner-occupied. The only remaining link in the chain of argument is the assumption—which, I think, is a fair one—that the proportion of owner-occupation would not be substantially different in the houses falling to be dealt with in the next few years from that in those which have been dealt with in the last few years. We have the material upon which to make such an estimate—which, though it cannot be correct to the last point of decimals—can be reasonably accurate.
  Mr. Collick: The hon. Gentleman will appreciate that this figure is of great importance because, as I am sure he knows, in the country slum owners have been bringing pressure to bear on tenants to buy those slum properties. I should have thought that the figure would have been more than 5 per cent.
  Mr. Powell: Of course, it is very easy to form an impression from cases brought to one's attention. It would be cases of the kind which the hon. Member has mentioned which, naturally, would make an impact upon one's mind, but this matter has been gone into quite carefully, with the evidence of houses dealt with over recent months, and indeed years, and I think I can commend the figure of 5 per cent. to the House as not likely to be seriously misleading.
  Mr. Albert Evans: If we accept the sample given by the hon. Gentleman, which seems reasonable enough, why does he go on to say that the actual net figure will be substantially below 5 per cent.?
  Mr. Powell: For the simple reason that the 5 per cent. is of houses owner-occupied, whether they were bought before September, 1939—and, therefore, fall outside the Bill—or since that date. It is only the lesser number, bought since 1939, which falls within the scope of the Bill.
  Mr. Gibson: Is there any estimate of that smaller figure—
  Mr. Speaker: We have had a great number of interruptions of this speech. It makes it very difficult to follow a speech when there are so many interruptions.
  Mr. Powell: What the House is concerned with, surely, is to know what is the worst case which is likely to be dealt with. If one establishes that 5 per cent. must be the outside figure, since it covers cases not covered by the Bill as well as cases which are covered by the Bill, at least we have the maximum figure and we know that the real figure will be below that.
  We then come to the percentages of slum houses, not covered by Clause 1, which will attract increased payments either under Clause 2, that is, business use, or under Clause 3 as well maintained. It will at once be observed that there will be a considerable overlap between those three classes, especially in the case of the well maintained payments, because it is most often the owner-occupied house which is well maintained, although unfit for human habitation. Similarly, many of the houses of which part is used as a shop, or for some business use, are houses which are in owner occupation. In each of these two cases again, the maximum percentages are no greater than those of the houses which are dealt with under Clause 1.
  It is fair to conclude on sufficient evidence that the proportion of houses falling to be dealt with as unfit which will attract increased payments under any of the three provisions of the Bill is a very small minority. The House will further note that these increases are increases on the Site costs of the new development. They increase one of the factors in the acquisition of the site by the local authority which is doing the clearance. But site cost itself, except

  2173
  where it is so high that the special subsidies for high site costs are attracted, is itself only a fraction of the cost of the new house, or other new development upon the site. The Bill increases only a fraction of local authorities' costs for a very small fraction of their sites.
  Even for local authorities which have a large slum clearance commitment, the annual additional cost resulting from the Bill will be extremely light. I remind the House that the annual cost of these additional payments falls to be spread over 80 years, which is the normal period for the amortisation of site costs. Both in fixing subsidies for housing purposes and in fixing the planning subsidies where comprehensive redevelopment is involved, regard has always been had to the total charges falling to be borne by the local authority in consequence of the operations in question. It has never been thought right or necessary to single out some particular item of site cost for special treatment.
  I suggest that it would be ludicrous to make the slight increases—and I have proved how slight in proportion they are—which the Bill involves in the case of slum clearance the basis for a new, separate subsidy.
  Mr. Collick: I am trying to follow the argument of the Parliamentary Secretary. What he is saying, in effect, is that the cost will be so small that there is no argument why it should be met by the Exchequer, instead of through the rates; but is that not a greater reason why the cost should be met by the Exchequer?
  Mr. Powell: I should have thought that if it were proved that the cost were substantial the argument for special Exchequer assistance would have been strengthened. It must follow that the less extra cost is involved the less must be the case for special Exchequer assistance, outside that already available under both the Town and Country Planning Acts and the Housing Acts.
  My own view of the reasoned Amendment is that it is not and cannot be seriously meant. I prefer to regard it as an item on the agenda put down to ensure that the financial consequences of the Measure are not overlooked in the debate which is to follow. I am inclined to think that the Opposition, no less than the Government, wish to see upon the Statute
  2174
  Book as soon as possible a Measure which removes unfairnesses to thousands of individuals which might diminish the speed and impair the popularity of the campaign of slum clearance.
  4.25 p.m.
  Mr. G. R. Mitchison: The Bill proposes to make certain additional payments and I should like to begin by saying a word or two about the payments before coming to the question of who should make them. We gather from the Parliamentary Secretary that the baby which has been conceived by himself and his right hon. Friend is quite a small one. We will see about that in a moment. Let me reassure him about something at once. We should not have opposed the Second Reading of the Bill had it contained proper provision for direct Exchequer subsidies.
  We have some minor points—rather of comment than of hostility—about the payments themselves. However, we take the strongest objection to the fact that the whole of the payments is to be put upon the rates and I shall elaborate upon that later. I was glad to hear the hon. Gentleman explain so clearly that we were making a complete departure from the principle derived from the Housing, Town Planning, &c., Act, 1919, and repeated, as he said, again and again. It appears, for instance, in the Housing Acts of 1930 and 1936, and I can put it very shortly indeed.
  It is simply that if a man can be made to clear a site at his own expense and to remove from it a house, because it is unfit to live in, there appears to be no logical reason why he should get any more by way of compensation than the value of that site. That undoubtedly has always been the general principle. What is being done here is to make a departure for what seemed to us, as they seemed to the Government, to be perfectly good social principles. The reason is simply that there are people up and down the country who have had to buy these unfit houses and live in them, because they could not find anywhere else to live at the time.
  We recognise that and we recognise, as do right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite, that slum clearance obviously had to be suspended during the war and after the war the first need was new houses.

  2175
  I need not quote what the right hon. Gentleman himself said in introducing the Housing Subsidies Bill, but everyone recognises that it had to be so. There is no doubt that from that point of view we welcome the first Clause as a good social measure, even though it does involve a departure from principle.
  I can tell the hon. Gentleman that if we had been in office, I have not the last doubt that we would have done something of the sort, subject to similar limitations. I have very little with which to disagree so far as that goes. There are some minor points. For instance there are questions of whether this ought not to be extended a little. I am not sure that the hon. Gentleman did not go rather far in suggesting matters which might be dealt with in Committee. We have not yet come to the Money Resolution, but it is lamentably tight and we shall have to see how much is open to us.
  I am glad to see that the hon. Gentleman shakes his head, which means, I take it, that the terms of that Resolution have been carefully considered, and that it would, therefore, be possible, if it were thought fit, to move back the date of 13th December. 1955. Clearly, no one wishes to move it forward because, as he pointed out, it would open the door to collusive transactions since then.
  Mr. Powell: To move back the date of 13th December, 1955, in the context in which I made reference to discussions in Committee.
  Mr. Mitchison: This is a Committee point, so let us leave it at that for the moment. There are other similar points. There are many cases where demolition orders and the consequence of them have been avoided by agreement, and they probably should be considered, too. There are matters of that sort, but they are minor points.
  I earnestly hope that the hon. Gentleman's exceedingly bad example of neglecting the terms of the reasoned Amendment, and trying to make out that we were opposed to this Clause, will not be followed. We put down the Amendment in terms clearly expressing what we thought, and we meant what we said. It has not been done as a joke or for the purpose of ensuring proper financial discussion or anything of the sort. What
  2176
  we want the Government to do is to reintroduce tomorrow a similar Bill, but with the provision of a direct Exchequer subsidy in it; and I will come to that matter in a minute.
  We are somewhat more critical about the next two Clauses of the Bill, and for this reason. Clause 1, as has been pointed out, is a temporary provision—lasting, it is true, for some time, but still temporary—to provide for a particular social need. Clauses 2 and 3 make permanent provisions, and we are not at present entirely satisfied why the statutory provision in Clause 2 is now required in addition to the corresponding provision which already appears in Section 42 of the Housing Act, 1936.
  I am bound to say that I was somewhat surprised that the hon. Gentleman, in introducing the Bill, did not think it even necessary to mention that the local authorities, in dealing with houses which are unfit houses—the same type of houses as those being considered in this Bill—have already a discretion to make such reasonable allowance as they think fit—
  "to any person carrying on any trade or business in any such house or other building,…may pay also such reasonable allowance as they think fit towards the loss which, in their opinion, he will sustain by reason of the disturbance of his trade or business"
  and they are also to have regard—
  "to the period for which the premises occupied by him might reasonably have been expected to be available—"
  Indeed, there is a further subsection giving effect to the changes in custom in relation to a shop.
  Therefore, that Act already gives powers to local authorities in their discretion to meet exactly the kind of thing, so far as I can see and speaking subject to correction, that it is proposed to meet in the form of a statutory right in Clause 2. While we should not have thought this a matter for voting against the Second Reading of the Bill, I hope that when the right hon. Gentleman speaks at the end of the debate he will tell us what relation he supposes there will be between the discretionary right in Section 44 of the 1936 Act and the statutory right which he now proposes to superimpose on top of it.
  That seems to me to cover substantially the same sort of thing. The discretionary right is actually, as one would expect a discretionary right to be, considerably

  2177
  wider, and at first sight I found it difficult to see why local authorities are not fully competent to deal with the matter of this sort.
  Squadron Leader A. E. Cooper: I think that this particular provision which the hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) is now discussing, which is a discretionary power which local authorities now have, relates solely to the trading losses of particular owners, and has nothing whatever to do with the property in which they live.
  Mr. Mitchison: I do not so read the Section which I have quoted, and the hon. and gallant Gentleman must take his own interpretation of it. It seems to me, to put it at the very lowest, that there is a very wide overlap between these two provisions, and I should have thought that the discretionary powers of the local authorities went rather further than what is now proposed. I agree that the language is not exactly the same, but, of course, one is a discretionary and the other a statutory right, and their coexistence seems to me to need some sort of explanation.
  Moreover, we are dealing here with unfit houses—houses of a kind which has been rather extended since the term appeared in Housing Acts—but, still, unfit houses. We are told that a great slum clearance campaign is to be introduced. We are told that all this is to be got out of the way in a short time. I do not accept that kind of statement at anything like its face value, but I think it very remarkable that in these circumstances it should be thought necessary to introduce a permanent provision in favour of shopkeepers while giving only a temporary one in favour of owner-occupiers living in their own houses. I therefore regard with some suspicion which, I hope, will be dispelled, some of the features of Clause 2.
  Clause 3 deals with the special cases of what is called a well-maintained allowance, and here again I merely mention the point that this is to be indefinite in duration. The power to vary the fixed well-maintained allowance, if I may so describe it, which is contained in Section 42 (2, b) of the 1936 Act, is to be exercised indefinitely by the Minister. If that is to be done, I suggest that the House ought to remember that the primary intention of that Section was to relate it to
  2178
  the amount spent on repairs, and that if, in fact, the rateable value is no longer a proper guide for the purposes of the fixed allowance, then it ought also to be varied for the purposes of the amount of repairs required to have been done.
  I notice with some suspicion that this power is taken to vary the multiplier provided in subsection (2, b) of Section 42, though no similar power is taken to deal with the inaccuracy of the rateable value, which also appears in connection with the amount of repairs that have to be done. I mention this matter simply to illustrate that these changes entirely within the Minister's discretion and for an indefinite time will have some uncertain effects, and I should have thought—and I agree that this is rather a Committee point but still an important one—that instead of the negative procedure that is provided for in the 1936 Act, the Minister ought in a matter of this sort, which is of considerable importance, to be obliged to obtain an affirmative resolution of the House before varying the multiplier. That is all that I have to say about the payments themselves.
  I repeat for about the third time, I hope not tediously, that we should not have opposed the Second Reading of the Bill if it had provided for proper Exchequer subsidies. I wish to make that perfectly clear. We were told that the absence of those subsidies was a flimsy reason for putting forward our Amendment. We were told that this was a very small baby. I would remind the House that the last thing that broke the camel's back was a straw, and whether the camel's back of local authority finance has or has not been broken already, is an open question.
  One thing is perfectly certain—the miserable camel, the local council, has a very heavily loaded back indeed, and the Minister is constantly putting on to that back one straw after another. There is not the least doubt about it that some time or another the Minister will attain what appears to be his object and completely cripple the finances of local authorities as regards housing. I can come to no other conclusion.
  I find this the more remarkable, because just at this time the right hon. Gentleman is engaged in a review of the financial position of local authorities, and surely that review will lead to some fairly

  2179
  comprehensive result. It is thought to be about to be concluded reasonably soon—I put it no higher than that—and there is no real need to put this extra burden on local authorities for the comparatively short time which we hope will elapse before the Minister feels driven to come to their aid, in some respects at any rate, as a result of his review.
  I am complaining about the absence of direct Exchequer subsidies and I am glad that the Parliamentary Secretary did not even attempt to put up the bogey that all would be met by changes in the Exchequer equalisation grant. That somewhat discredited instrument would certainly not be suitable for the purpose. Any changes in Exchequer equalisation grant would be quite inadequate and, for all practical purposes, negligible.
  I take leave to differ entirely from the kind of estimate which the Parliamentary Secretary has just given. It must have been produced at rather short notice. I asked the Minister a Question a day or two ago and his Written Answer appears in today's OFFICIAL REPORT. I asked:
  "…what estimate he has made of the additional cost to local authorities in England and Wales of compensating"—
  on the basis adopted here—
  "any owner-occupiers of the unfit houses which it is proposed to demolish during the next five years at full compulsory purchase value instead of at site value…"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 27th March, 1956; Vol. 550, c. 175.]
  The Minister said that it was difficult to make any precise estimate.
  An estimate was not available then, because no answer was given to the Question about what estimate the right hon. Gentleman had made. I did not ask whether it was difficult or easy to make a precise estimate. I simply asked what estimate the right hon. Gentleman had made. He did not answer. Therefore, I have made an estimate of my own. I do not know where the 5 per cent. derives from and I find that very difficult to follow.
  I have in mind Cmd. 8996, entitled "Houses The Next Step". Roughly speaking, and it is fairly accurate, that shows that out of houses not being council houses, one-third were owner-occupied and two-thirds were let. I imagine that that proportion is about right. If we are told that the proportion is entirely
  2180
  different in the case of unfit houses, we want to know how that proportion has been arrived at and what is the real reason for the difference.
  I should have thought that the social need which we are recognising in the Bill—the fact that people were driven to buy these houses in order to find somewhere for themselves to live—would have tended to show a rather higher proportion of owner-occupied houses in those cases than in the generality of houses in the country. However that may be, I find it quite impossible to see any reason for the extraordinarily wide discrepancy now suggested by the Parliamentary Secretary.
  The Minister of Housing and Local Government (Mr. Duncan Sandys): The hon. and learned Member seems to be suggesting that this figure of 5 per cent. has been jumped upon the House at the last moment since Question Time yesterday, but it was a figure which I myself gave when I announced, on 13th December, that a Bill on these lines would be introduced.
  Mr. Mitchison: I am not suggesting that. I heard what the Parliamentary Secretary said and I recall what the right hon. Gentleman said on that occasion, but I cannot accept the figure and I do not know upon what it is based. I do not at present believe that it can be right. I am perfectly certain that if that is the figure generally it will not be the figure in particular cases—that is to say, the spread of the percentage will differ very widely.
  I am going to take for the moment the one-third given in "Houses The Next Step" as my figure and I am going to make a rough estimate. The local authorities proposed to demolish 75,000 unfit houses in a year. That was before the special Tory incentive to demolish more induced the Minister to lower the figure to 60,000 a year. That is the result of Tory incentives, but we have had that one before.
  Let us take the 75,000 houses and take one-third of them, that is, 25,000. Let us take a hit-and-miss figure for the sort of amount that is likely to be involved in this additional compensation. On experience, I take about £200 to £250 as a likely figure. If we take that figure and combine the two figures, the result is

  2181
  about £5 million a year. That is the equivalent over the country, on the total new rateable value, of about a 2d. rate. I do not say that I am right. I may not be. I merely say that I asked the Minister for an estimate and he did not give one and I had to make an estimate myself. If, therefore, the right hon. Gentlemen is going to correct me now, I only wish that he had answered my Question and had saved me the trouble of trying to explain to the House what I think the estimate might be.
  I take this figure with very great interest, for another reason. In my Question I went on to ask the Minister about particular cases. The right hon. Gentleman did not answer that part of the Question at all. I asked him about Leeds and Bournemouth. I worked out my little sum in relation to their programme and in relation to their rateable value, and the results were startling. I asked the House to observe this, that though the basis of my sum may be wrong, the inaccuracies in it, if any, will not affect the proposition I am now putting. It is this, that as regards Leeds, for instance, instead of an average 2d. rate the rate would he about 6d. For Bournemouth it would be about one-tenth of ld.
  The reason is a simple one, that in relation to its rateable value Leeds has a difficult job of slum clearance to do, and this bit of legislation follows the pattern of all Tory legislation, it gives to the rich and does not give to the poor. In this case, of course, it imposes a burden on poor Leeds and little or nothing on wealthy Bournemouth.
  Take another instance. The right hon. Gentleman's own Borough of Wands-worth comes out rather well, as against the average I have given, at the equivalent of ½d. a rate. If we take the county districts in the County of Durham, a mining county full of houses where clearances have to be made, where new houses have to be built, where there actually exists a new town for the purpose, we find that there it is rather over a 4d. rate on these figures.
  My basis may be wrong but, right or wrong, the inaccuracies of it will apply to all the places in that comparison, and the net result is perfectly clear. It is that Leeds and the county districts of Durham will get it in the neck once more, while places like Bournemouth and
  2182
  the Borough of Wandsworth will come out, Bournemouth very easily and Wandsworth fairly easily.
  This is something which can only be justified as a measure to meet a particular social need arising out of the war. But why should the Minister, if he is to meet a need of that kind. meet it unfairly out of the rates instead of meeting it as a general public need out of taxation? I know no answer to that question and I shall be interested to hear it from the right hon. Gentleman, and to hear it in relation to the justification which his hon. Friend gave, and with which I agree entirely, for Clause 1 of the Bill.
  That is the first point. The next point is this. The Government are intent on shedding the very last drop of the financial blood of local authorities. They will not shed any of their own but they are going to save the country at the expense of the rates, since presumably the Chancellor will not allow them to do it in any other way.
  Just look at the position in which local authorities and their treasurers and finance committees find themselves at present. Let us take rateable value first. They do not know at present what will be their rateable value. The country is stiff with appeals from shopkeepers. It is true that in Circular 62/55 the Minister told them not to take those too seriously, but he is so intuitional about these things. The right hon. Gentleman could not give me an estimate but he felt sure that it would not amount to much.
  The Minister ought to be careful. He had the same sort of hunch or intuition, or whatever one calls it, about the effect of the Housing Subsidies Bill—it would not really stop council housing in the country. Well, even within the dark portals of the Ministry rumours must have arrived that council housing is being held up all over the country as a result of what was done on that occasion. And if that was one of his intuitions, then I am not inclined to place too much weight on this one.
  That is not all. There are other uncertain things. I shall not bore the House by going into them in detail but, curiously enough, some of the rate relief for charitable and other organisations has had a considerable effect. What is happening about this rateable value? Council after council appears to reduce

  2183
  the rates, but that is simply because the rateable value has gone up on this last valuation. I followed with great interest the calculations which were made in the Local Government Chronicle of 10th and 17th March.
  An ingenious person there had carried on the 1955 to 1956 expenditure and had shown what rate it would have meant on the new valuations. So. of course, we can compare like with like, and I think that was done fairly accurately as far as I can judge. If we look at the actual rate and at what the rate would have been if there had merely been the 1955 to 1956 expenditure, we find some startling results which, however, are not altogether surprising.
  They show clearly that local authority expenditure has not only gone up considerably but that it has gone up very irregularly. The county increases on the basis I am giving now—that is to say, eliminating in effect the change in the valuation list—varied from 5d. in London to no less than 4s. 10d. in Cambridgeshire. The county borough increases showed sharp rises, being 3s. 2d. in Leeds, 3s. 5d. in Norwich, 4s. 5d. in Oxford and 4s. 10d. in Sheffield.
  Squadron Leader Cooper: Six shillings in Ilford.
  Mr. Mitchison: That may be.
  This is what is happening. The expenditure of local authorities is steadily and necessarily increasing and the Government 'are not exempt from blame. I said just now that the right hon. Gentleman was ready to shed the last drop of the financial blood of the local authorities. If he does not like that rather nasty bit of language, let me assure him that it is not any worse than what his hon. Friend said when he declared that "the emphasis of scarcity funnelled into the sector of vacant possession." For somebody with a classical education to use such a phrase is horrible, so I shall keep to my financial blood.
  What happened the other day? We had a debate about teachers and teachers' pensions. In that instance another 1 per cent. of teachers' salaries was put by the Minister on the backs of local authorities. Further, he encouraged teachers in the claim they will soon make before the Burnham Committee. The right hon.
  2184
  Gentleman was quite right to do it, but all this was at the expense of the local authorities. It is no use telling me that it comes down on the council and that they are not the housing authority because what comes down on the county is reflected in the precept, and comes down on a county district. In the case of a county borough there is only one authority.
  That is not all. There are many other things happening to these local authorities now. They are partly uncertainties and they are partly the quite definite increases that are going on. I do not want to go into them in detail. I believe that right hon. and hon. Members of this House keep in some sort of touch with their own local authorities and they know what is going on perfectly well. What is going on is that for some years past now, local rates have been rising steadily, and yet Government grants have been required to meet the necessary expenditure.
  The position has been that Government grants have in recent years outstripped the total product of local rates, and that is merely a measure of the insufficiency of local rates to meet the necessary expenditure of local authorities. Local authorities have had to face all the time not merely questions of the increase of teachers' salaries, not merely uncertainties about this or that Measure of the Government, but the common inflation which exists in the country at present, and they have had to face it in two ways.
  First, they have had a constant rise in salaries and wages of all sorts—everybody from the town clerk to the humblest man who is employed by a local authority. They have had rises in everything that they have had to do, and who thinks otherwise? What have the Government done to help them? They have done just this: local authorities have to meet their major expenses by borrowing. The Government have put an additional sum of about £10 million a year on the backs of the local authorities by putting up the rate at which they have to borrow from about 3 per cent. to 5½ per cent. That has been done in the cause of the sound administration of local finances. They are to have no exceptional benefits, and the dear money policy of the Government—their patent remedy for the ills of the country—is to be visited to the full on the local authorities.

  2185
  Look at the present position—rising costs, rising rates of interest, difficulty in borrowing, uncertainty as to what more is to come. Some of these large authorities are putting aside millions towards teachers' salaries. The whole of this presents a position of financial desperation, and financial uncertainty which it would have taken a Tory Government to bring about in local finance. Now, on top of it, they come forward with this Bill—small, I agree—and, in a spirit of miserable niggardliness, they intend to put the whole cost of it on the rates and not one penny on the Exchequer, although the Bill is meant to meet a general social need. If they allow it to go through in this way, it will come down hardest on those local authorities which have the most to do and the most difficult job to face.
  It is said that this is to be part of a campaign of slum clearance. What is the use of coming down on local authorities who have their hands full and are overburdened with the job of slum clearance with a bit more financial discouragement, and then expecting them to get on with the job wholeheartedly? Let us remember about this business of slum clearance, that the slum clearance subsidy, as I may call it, does not meet the increases which local authorities have had to face. It ought to be £30 for all purposes and it is £22—another bit of Government niggardliness towards the local authorities.
  I can come to no other conclusion than this: either the Government do not mean to promote proper local government in this country and do not mean to encourage the people who have to do the job in local authorities, or they just do not know what they are doing in this respect. I say to them, "Take your Bill away bring it back with a reasonable Exchequer subsidy and recognise that the biggest subsidy that the people get in connection with local government is the unpaid, voluntary, publicspirited work of the thousands of people who serve local authorities and serve their fellow citizens because they think it right to do so."
  Mr. Sandys: Hear, hear.
  Mr. Mitchison: The right hon. Gentleman says, "Hear, hear." If, instead of saying that, he would give the local authorities a reasonable Exchequer subsidy I would have greater belief in the
  2186
  enthusiasm with which he welcomes local authority efforts.
  I beg to move, to leave out from "That" to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:
  "this House declines to give a Second Reading to this Bill, because it does not provide for any direct Exchequer subsidies towards the payments proposed and so imposes an undue burden on the rates."
  Dr. King: I beg to second the Amendment.
  5.7 p.m.
  Mr. Norman Pannell: I was very encouraged by the peroration of the hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison), when he referred in such flattering terms to the servants of local authorities. presumably meaning the councillors, since I am a councillor of the City of Liverpool, and it is only for that reason that I presume to speak on this subject.
  The Bill, in my view, is a measure of simple justice designed to relieve innocent people of the consequences of their sometimes ill-considered and imprudent actions A great many people have suffered in recent years because such a Bill as this has not been on the Statute Book. would like the Bill to be retrospective, but I know full well that there are insuperable difficulties in that course.
  This is a problem of very great consequence to Liverpool. As a recent report showed, 44 per cent. of all houses in Liverpool had been declared unfit in some way or other. In my own division of Kirkdale large areas have been scheduled for slum clearance. They have been so scheduled for many years, so that the term "slum clearance" has almost fallen into derision and few people expect anything to be done about it. There is now a wide gap between promise and performance. The architect's plan of Liverpool does not represent what the position will be for a very long time to come. The practical measures that have to be taken, the availability of funds and so forth take a very long time. I am encouraged by the fact that the recent Housing Subsidies Act has lent an impetus to slum clearance, and that gives further point to the Bill.
  In my division, and no doubt in others, there are cases of people of independent

  2187
  outlook, previously living in unfortunate housing conditions, who have not been content to continue to endure those conditions and who have sought their own means of housing themselves. In some cases the houses which they have chosen have been in areas already scheduled for clearance or subsequently scheduled. These people have been so desperate to obtain a house that they have not made very close inquiries. In many cases the lawyer for the vendor has also acted for the purchaser and facts which might otherwise have been disclosed have not been apparent to the purchaser.
  Mr. James MacColl: Is not the hon. Gentleman making a rather grave accusation against a very distinguished profession? If a solicitor is acting for both parties, as I understood he was in the hypothetical case quoted, is it not a very shocking allegation to say that he has not revealed information vital to the value of the house which would affect the purchaser as well as the vendor?
  Mr. Pannell: I intended no slur on the legal profession. I am not a lawyer, but the case I had in mind was where one lawyer acts; he acts for the vendor and the purchaser employs no solicitor at all. The legal formalities are completed on behalf of one party, but, in a sense, on behalf of the purchaser, too. The facts about the imminence of clearance are not disclosed.
  These unfortunate purchasers then find that the council suddenly decides to proceed with a slum clearance scheme in the area and they are offered site value for their property. If they dispute it, they are faced with a compulsory purchase order. In Liverpool the site values vary between £10 and £20, which is very poor compensation for the owner of the property.
  Some of these people have put their life savings into the property and others have bought the property on mortgage—a mortgage on onerous terms, because property of this description will never attract the most favourable terms. In Liverpool, and no doubt in other corporations of humane outlook, there is a moral obligation to house people whose property has been demolished, and Liverpool always honours that obligation. If a man has lost his life savings through
  2188
  being dispossessed, he may not find difficulty in paying the rent of the council house allotted to him, but if he had purchased the house on mortgage he may be in grave difficulty, for he will be called upon to pay the rent of the council house plus the mortgage payments on property which he no longer possesses.
  For a time I was chairman of the Arrears Committee of Liverpool Corporation, and it was the duty of the committee to examine many heartrending cases every month of people who were unable to pay their council house rents. Not infrequently these were cases of people who had been dispossessed of houses which they had bought on mortgage in good faith; and, on being dispossessed, they had had to continue their mortgage payments in addition to paying the corporation rent. They had to choose between one and the other, and they failed to pay their corporation rent. These are cases which are extremely hard and which the Bill does much to overcome.
  The Bill will not do everything. It does not deal with cases of people who may innocently buy these houses in future, since it deals only with people who have bought houses before 13th December
  Mr. Lindgren: The hon. Gentleman is speaking from a long practical experience and has been dealing with these cases as chairman of the Liverpool Arrears Committee. Will he say what was the percentage of owner-occupiers in Liverpool?
  Mr. Pannell: I am sorry, but I could not possibly give those statistics. The proportion of those who were owner occupiers who had been dispossessed and who could not pay the rents of the council houses allotted to them was not very high, but there were such cases and they were significant cases.
  The Bill does not cover the cases of those who may innocently buy such houses in future. It is important that the widest possible publicity should he given not only to the rights of people under the Bill but also to the dangers of purchasing property which might be subject to a slum clearance order at some later date. It is incumbent upon local authorities to give this the widest publicity, and I hope that my right hon. Friend will issue a circular to them to that end.

  2189
  In conclusion, I do not think the burden likely to fall on local authorities will be heavy. The number of owner occupied houses in slum clearance Lucas is very small in relation to those which are landlord-owned, and I would also say that these sites are cheap sites. If, in a block of twenty houses, only one comes under the provisions of the Bill, the compensation for it is not likely to exceed £400 or £500, and the other nineteen houses will be bought at site value, at about £10 each. Taking the twenty houses together, the site will be extremely cheap. We must also remember that the Housing (Subsidies) Act raised the subsidies for buildings erected in slum clearance areas.
  Mr. Gibson: No.
  Mr. Pannell: By replacing one basis for another, in my view a corporation will be at an advantage on these cheaper sites compared with previously.
  Mr. Mitchison: The hon. Member has made a slip. All the Act did was to maintain the existing subsidies in most cases, while reducing subsidies in other cases.
  Mr. Pannell: I had in mind the multistorey flats which are a feature of Liverpool's new building programme. I think I am right in saying that in those cases the subsidies have been materially increased.
  I think the Bill is an overdue measure of justice, and I sincerely hope that it will be given a Second Reading.
  5.19 p.m.
  Miss Alice Bacon: This is a very difficult question. To my knowledge, and to the knowledge of the hon. Member for Kirkdale (Mr. N. Pannell), there are some very distressing cases. The hon. Member quoted what my hon. Friend the Member for Widnes (Mr. MacColl) called a "hypothetical case." During my speech I hope to quote not a hypothetical case but a real one to show how innocent people are sometimes deliberately taken in and misled.
  The Bill is an attempt to remedy certain injustices, but what I fear is that in remedying those injustices we may be in danger of creating others. The Bill will undoubtedly recompense the many rather poor people who in the past few years
  2190
  have bought old houses without realising the true position. I thought that the Parliamentary Secretary viewed this matter today in a rather detached way. I find it difficult to view it in a detached way because, representing the constituency I do, I live with this problem, and am faced with it almost every day. I cannot have the interviews which I have regularly with my constituents without people asking that something should be done about the problem.
  Leeds has a great many unfit houses. Leeds has already been referred to by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison). We in Leeds wish to demolish more than 14,000 houses in the next five years. That is double the number Liverpool hopes to demolish. I think it is double the number to be demolished in any other provincial city. As my hon. and learned Friend said, the whole of the burden of the Bill will be put upon the local authorities.
  Practically all our new council houses in Leeds, with the exception of a few which are being let to people for medical reasons, are of necessity being allocated to tenants from areas of slum clearance, and nobody living in otherwise overcrowded conditions stands any chance of getting a new council house—unless he happens to live in an area of demolition. During the last year almost all our new houses have been let to people from demolition areas, and this allocation of necessity certainly will not stop for the next five years.
  The constituency which I represent comprises the centre of Leeds and the whole of the ring around it, and contains a great many of these unfit houses. I could quote many individual examples of hardship, but as I do not want to weary the House too much I shall quote only two, with the object of showing the problem we are up against, and how the Bill will help. One of these examples is of a man who bought a house in February, 1953, for £400, which is rather more than the amount for which a house of this type is going for at present in Leeds, the majority of such houses being sold for any amount between £150 and £250.
  I will read to the House a letter which that man sent to me, for it shows how he entered into this transaction, by which he

  2191
  paid £400 for a practically worthless house. The letter says:
  "We were living in lodgings and received seven days' notice owing to my wife having her second child. There was no other way but to take this house we are now living in, or be out of a home for my family. I had to buy the house at £400 plus 5 per cent. interest. I pay it at £3 per month plus £1 4s. rates per month."
  He goes on to say that the house is not fit to live in and that he has got into debt trying to repair it. He details what is wrong with the House, and says:
  "The roof is parting from the brickwork. It is raining into the bedroom. The living room floor is sinking from its level. Brickwork outside is cracked, and there are many more items inside which need repair."
  Although he paid £400 for the house only two years before he wrote to me, he implored me to try to get the medical officer to condemn the house as unfit to live in. I wrote asking him if he realised that he would receive only site value, but he was not deterred. The medical officer saw the house and it was condemned, and today the house is closed and that man is now living in a new council house.
  It is proposed in the Bill that the local authority shall not any longer pay just the site value but the market value, but I should think that the market value of such a house would be well below the £400 which that man paid for that house. The Bill is really an expression of sympathy for certain classes of people. It is not pretended that the local authority is buying anything for its own advantage or getting anything out of the Bill. The local authority is being directed to make certain payments merely out of sympathy with people who, perhaps, did not understand what they were doing. I am not at all sure that the Bill will help that man very much.
  I come to the second case, about which I feel very strongly indeed. This relates to the question about the solicitors. It is important that the Minister should know about the kind of practices which are going on in the buying and selling of these houses. The man in this case has no objection to his name being given in the debate. He is Mr. Carney, who bought a house at 48, Ney Street in Leeds. A few weeks ago I had all his letters relating to the transaction, and I am very sorry that they are not in my
  2192
  possession now, but ten days ago Mr. Carney set off to Southern Rhodesia to take up employment there, and I have not been able to get the letters back from him.
  He bought a house for £180 in the middle of 1954. He followed a mode of purchase which is very common in Leeds. He paid £30 down and a private mortgage was arranged for him at £1 a week. He was an ordinary workman who came from the other side of the city and did not know that the area in which was the house he was buying was scheduled for demolition in the very near future. He bought the house through an estate agent. The estate agent said to him, "You will need a solicitor." Of course, the purchaser said, "I am only an ordinary working man and I do not have a solicitor." The estate agent said, "I will provide you with one." Only after the transaction was completed did the purchaser realise what had happened.
  He realised then that the solicitor with whom he had been provided was the solicitor acting for the vendors, who owned quite a number of houses in that district. The solicitor actually wrote a letter to him afterwards, saying that to warn him about the property had nothing to do with him. He admitted he knew, the estate agents admitted they knew, and the vendors knew, that the house was in an area scheduled for demolition. The solicitor said, "You decided to buy the house before I came in. I was employed merely to do the conveyancing."
  Such practices as this ought to be stopped. While it may be strictly true that solicitors are brought into the business only to do the conveyancing, surely there is a moral obligation to ensure that ordinary working people are not taken in in this way. This house is one of a block of seven houses, of which two have already been sold. I suppose the vendors have been looking for somebody to buy the other five.
  What happens under the Bill? We have heard a great deal about this Measure and about the sale of these houses, but something seems to have been forgotten. It is true that under the Bill people who have been taken in, or even have bought unfit houses knowingly, are to be reimbursed to some extent, though, perhaps, not to the whole. It depends how much the market value is, compared with the

  2193
  price paid for the house. That is one thing: they will be reimbursed to some extent, though the local authority will have to pay for that. What seems to have been forgotten is that the people who will really gain by the Bill are the previous owners who have been selling the houses. Nobody has said anything about that at all.
  Some time last year, as, perhaps, the Minister will remember, because it was referred to him, there was in Leeds a case which received a great deal of publicity. At that time the Secretary to the Leeds and District Property Owners' and Ratepayers' Association wrote to me to see if I would take up the matter in the House. I wrote back to him to say:
  "I believe it is significant that owners of slum property in Leeds, having collected rents for years, are now selling. Surely there is some moral obligation on such owners not to sell off their houses in this way."
  There has been no attempt by the Government to try to stop people acting in this way. I know it is difficult by law, but there has been no attempt by the Government to condemn these most reprehensible actions.

  ROYAL ASSENT
  5.30 p.m.
  Message to attend the Lords Commissioners.
  The House went; and, having returned—
  MR. SPEAKER reported the Royal Assent to:

  1. Consolidated Fund Act, 1956.

  2. Housing Subsidies Act, 1956.

  3. Criminal Justice Administration Act, 1956.

  4. Validation of Elections (Northern Ireland) Act, 1956.

  5. Local Authorities (Expenses) Act, 1956.

  6. Archdeacon Johnson's Almshouse Charity (Oakham and Uppingham) Scheme Confirmation Act, 1956.

  7. Baptist Chapel and other Charities (Totnes and Tuckenhay) Scheme Confirmation Act, 1956.

  8. Leigh Almshouse, Stoneleigh, and other Charities Scheme Confirmation Act, 1956.

  2194

  9. Greenock Burgh Extension &c. Order Confirmation Act, 1956.

  10. Ministry of Housing and Local Government Provisional Order Confirmation (Colne Valley Sewerage Board) Act, 1956.

  11. Gloucestershire County Council Act, 1956.

  12. Swansea Corporation (Fairwood Common) Act, 1956.

  13. Willoughby de Broke Estate Act, 1956.

  SLUM CLEARANCE (COMPENSATION) BILL
  Question again proposed. That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question:—
  5.43 p.m.
  Miss Bacon: I was saying that a short time ago in my constituency the Secretary of the Leeds and District Property Owners' and Ratepayers' Association asked me to take up a certain matter and to ask the Minister to direct the City Council to make a special payment to the person in question. This I refused to do. I wrote back to the Secretary of the Association in these terms:
  "I believe it is significant that owners of slum property in Leeds, having collected rents for years, are now selling. Surely there is some moral obligation on such owners not to sell off their houses in this way. In all this issue, nothing has been said about the previous owner who very luckily collected £225.…I am sure you would be doing a great service to the poorer people of Leeds if you could persuade your members to desist from selling their old houses in this way."
  There is abundant evidence of the way in which people, who have owned these houses for years, are now getting rid of not one but sometimes of four or five in one street. I have evidence, for example, about five houses in one street which were sold to the occupiers at prices varying from £100 to £165, the vendor in each instance being one owner who also owned a number of adjoining houses. In another street four houses were sold at prices varying from £120 to £225. Again, they were all owned by the same person, and this vendor also owns a number of adjoining properties. I think it clear that the owners of these slum properties are getting rid of them as fast as they can, knowing that the properties are in demolition areas.
  Mr. Sandys: Could the hon. Lady give any indication of the dates when these houses were sold, as that would be of interest?
  Miss Bacon: I cannot give the date, but I should say that it was in the last two or three years. This has a bearing on what was said by the Parliamentary Secretary about percentages. I think that if the percentages were absolutely up-to-date the figure would be found to be greater than that of four or five years ago, because a great many houses have been sold in the last year or two in an endeavour by the owners to beat the demolition orders.
  One thing that worries me about the Bill is that not all the people who have been buying these houses have done so innocently. There is a minority—I wish to stress that it is a minority, because I do not want anyone to run away with the idea that I am saying that the majority are of this type—who have been driven to desperate means, and have deliberately bought houses in slum areas to ensure that they get a new council house in the fairly near future. Indeed, sometimes the deposit, the down-payment, is regarded almost as "key money" for a new council house. I know of a man who bought such a house for a down payment of £20 or £30 and a weekly payment of £1. When he was told that it was in a demolition area he said he did not mind, because he had been paying 30s. a week for rooms, and was now paying £1 a week off the mortgage. "But," he said "I shall be assured that in a fairly short time I shall get into a new council house."
  My hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge and Airdrie (Mrs. Mann) told me that only a few weeks ago she received a complaint because the council did not propose to condemn a tenement which the complainants had bought. My hon. Friend was told by the complainants, "We have bought this tenement and now we are told that the council will not condemn it." I wish to suggest that though these people represent a minority, nevertheless they have been able to make a down-payment and are thus able to jump the queue for council houses. They are getting ahead of other people in the queue for council houses. Now, because of the provisions in the Bill, the local authorities will be directed to repay to
  2196
  them, if not all, at least some of the money which they have already paid.
  It is difficult to distinguish between genuine cases, where innocent people have been taken in, and cases of the kind I have just mentioned, but I should like to hear from the right hon. Gentleman some condemnation of owners who for years—sometimes even for generations—have made money out of these slum houses and who are now trying to unload them onto the unsuspecting tenants. That is the problem. I could wish that the Bill had contained some provision to deal with it, or that we may even have more legislation to stop the sale of such houses, or at any rate to regulate their sale in order that this practice shall not continue.
  I reiterate what was said by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kettering. The Bill, as it stands, will put an undue burden on great cities like Leeds, Liverpool, Newcastle and the rest. The authorities in these cities will not only be called on to provide an enormous number of houses to rehouse the tenants of slum properties, but will be directed by the provisions of the Bill to pay out sums to cover the market value of the old properties. To hon. Members who represent these areas it seems unfair that this burden should be placed on these cities. It seems an unequal burden, which is not shared by the better-off and more beautiful towns where there is no slum clearance problem.
  5.50 p.m.
  Mr. Alan Green: I should like to add my voice to those of hon. Members opposite who have already welcomed this Bill, at least in general terms. We all, I think, know of plenty of eases that illustrate the hardship which would befall people if, as owner-occupiers, they were to receive no compensation for condemned houses when such houses were demolished. I have no doubt that every hon. Member could give many examples of such hardship.
  I should like to give one example mainly because, perhaps, it is not altogether without topicality at the present time in view of the visit of certain distinguished gentlemen from overseas. The case is that of two Ukrainian refugees named Tarala who fled to this country in 1947 and who, I am glad to say, found a welcome in my constituency.

  2197
  By dint of hard work they had saved enough money by 1950 to be able to put down £300 for the purchase of a house now condemned as unfit. In addition, they had to borrow another £300 on mortgage.
  These two people have now raised a family, and if they were not to receive some form of compensation, which will amount, perhaps, to £200 or possibly £250—though I doubt the latter figure—they would be dispossessed and left owing £300 on a property that no longer exists. It would have been a doubly bitter blow for them because the father, Mr. Tarala, had his first experience of dispossession at the age of seven when, along with his father, he was thrown out of his house in the Ukraine in midwinter by the police because his father would not join the Communist Party. Perhaps it is not inappropriate at this time to be able to put that story on record.
  These people came to see me before compensation was announced and pointed out that, having settled and received a welcome in England, they would really have no hope left in the civilised world if for the second time they were dispossessed without compensation by an arbitrary bureaucratic decision. Of course, there are many other such cases, some of them possibly even much worse, but in personal history I doubt if there is a worse case than this one which causes me most heartily to welcome the Bill.
  There is another reason, quite apart from that of hardship to certain individuals, which makes me glad to say "Thank you" to the Minister for this Bill. It is this. I am sure that the measures for compensation, not only in the case of an owner-occupier on demolition, but also of compensation for good maintenance, will help to prevent the otherwise increasing rate of deterioration in property.
  I am quite sure that just because a measure of justice is being done to people who have bought this type of property, those who still own property which is not at the moment condemned, but which is moving towards that state will realise that it will be worth their while to maintain their property in a decent state. I am sure that this will help appreciably to increase the life and serviceability of the
  2198
  amenities of a whole group of properties at present outside the scope of this Bill. For those two major reasons I welcome the Bill.
  Questions have already been asked about the most common sort of date on which these houses have been bought. Of course, I cannot answer for any other area than my own, but it is my impression that most of such houses in Preston were bought between 1948 and 1952. Those four years, so to speak, appear to have been the peak years of activity in the change of ownership of that type of house. I think that the reason for this is quite clear. It was precisely during that period that (a) fewer houses were available to people, and (b) as a result of good wages people were accumulating the money with which to pay the deposit on any kind of house that happened to be available.
  I am delighted that, in general, hon. Members opposite welcome the provisions of the Bill. It is always pleasant to receive a bouquet of flowers from the benches opposite even if on this occasion one or two thistles were included in the bouquet. I could not help feeling that some of the thistles were constructed of rather synthetic material, if I may be permitted to say so.
  My own local authority has certainly made no complaint or approach to me on the question of the high cost to it of this Bill. I have been in the very closest touch with my authority throughout, and no mention of any complaint by it has been made to me. I agree that that does not mean that it is not going to complain, but the plain fact is that it has not done so yet. I have done my level best to bring all the provisions of the Bill to the notice of my local authority. I have on more than one occasion talked the matter over with the town clerk, but, as I have said, so far I have not received a single complaint.
  If I am in order, I should like to make a plea for an extension of the provisions of the Bill. There are a few people—they are quite easily defined—who will be outside the provisions of the Bill because, although they became owner-occupiers after August, 1939, they were not in residence owing to a very special reason on 13th December last. I am referring to those members of Her Majesty's Forces who, purely through the

  2199
  exigencies of the Services, are posted away from the place where they bought such a house round about the time that the announcement about compensation was made. They represent a very small number indeed and are readily defined as people wearing the Queen's uniform.
  I wish to make a special plea for these people because when they are posted away they do not go for the purpose of improving their material circumstances, but simply in order to do the same job for the same reward in another place. They have absolutely no power to refuse to obey an order to move.
  I know all the difficulties that are involved in making exceptions the argument that, by opening the gate a little wider, a whole throng of people will pour through it. I know it may be said that local government employees might have had to move out of houses which they were forced to buy—houses now condemned—on, say, 1st December last year. It might be said that they were, in a sense, posted away. Again, an industrial worker may have had the same experience. It may be said that if we grant this right to members of the Queen's Services, we should grant it to everybody who has had to move. But people outside the Armed Forces do not generally move their residence unless they are improving their circumstances. Those who wear the Queen's uniform, however, have no such opportunity.
  Mr. Sparks: The hon. Member will probably agree that many people are moving from slum dwellings into the new towns and are having to pay twice or three times as much in rents—and their wages are much lower than they were in the industrial areas. That fact cannot be said to support his contention that people who move are improving their financial circumstances.
  Mr. Green: I said that they do not generally do so. They are not ordered to move. They are not under absolute compulsion to do so. The class of people to which I refer, which is very small in number, may have a grievance which can easily be remedied simply because the class is so readily defined. I have already corresponded with my right hon. Friend's
  2200
  Department upon this matter, and I would ask him to open his mind—I know that I do not have to ask him to open his heart—to the possibility of including those members of H.M. Forces who, through no fault of their own, were unable to be in residence on 13th December, or unable to sell their houses before that time.
  6.3 p.m.
  Mr. James MacColl: My comments upon the Bill might almost be characterised as thistles in the bouquet to which the hon. Member for Preston, South (Mr. Green) referred. The bouquet, so far as it is discernible, will be somewhat obscured by the presence of that very attractive national emblem. I may be doctrinaire and academic about this matter, but I regard with a good deal of concern the departure from the basic principles of compensation for the acquisition of unfit houses.
  The tendency of this discussion—by hon. Members on both sides of the House—has been rather to imply that acquisition on site value is a kind of gratuitous fine inflicted upon the owner of the house, and that the housing authority which is acquiring, instead of being honest and paying the value of the house, proceeds to do a rather mean trick and pay only the cost of the site. It has been referred to as though it is a rather shady transaction and that where it will inflict hardship the decent thing is to pay what is called the full compensation value, which is a very question-begging term, as I shall explain in a moment.
  But that is not what happens. The reason why only site value is paid is that that is all it is worth. Having declared that a house is unfit for human habitation, that it cannot be made fit at reasonable expense, and that it is dangerous and injurious to health, there is not very much left in respect of which compensation can be paid. When we were discussing the Housing Subsidies Bill I ventured to make some critical comments about the definition of a slum. I suggested that it should be made wider and that, on the whole, it was a little old-fashioned. I was then rebuked by the Minister and by the Parliamentary Secretary, who said, "After all, although it may be quite true that there are lots of other houses which ought to be

  2201
  demolished, these are real horrors; these are the ones which should really be dealt with first. Therefore, any proposal to extend the definition of a slum is undesirable at this stage".
  So we start from the common ground that we are talking about houses which are dangerous or injurious to health and cannot be made habitable at reasonable expense. That is the basis from which we start to access the price that should be paid. That point should be made quite clear. Only in very exceptional circumstances should we depart front that principle, and we should do so only to the minimum extent necessary to remove a really grave social evil.
  I find it difficult to understand how the full compulsory purchase value of these houses is to be calculated. Presumably we shall calculate the full compulsory purchase value of another house, which is not this house. If we take into account the full value of this house, we have to take into account the fact that sanitary inspectors are sitting on the doorstep, with piles and piles of orders for repairs to the house, which have to be carried out in order to bring it up to a habitable condition. That will cost so much that by definition of a slum, it is out of all relationship to the value of the house.
  How, then, is the valuer to be launched upon the task of trying to find the true value? What is he to exclude from consideration, and what is he to take into account? That question must be settled, otherwise the Bill will not give the unfortunate owner-occupier anything at all. We ought to have a much clearer definition of the measure of difference between the full value and the site value of something which, by definition, is worth nothing. If we say, "Oh, it is the market value—what you can get if you carry on the kind of activities which my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, South-East (Miss Bacon) described, by fraud, sleight of hand, and ignoring sanitary inspectors' notices. It is what you can persuade some sucker to buy the house for."
  Is that to be the measure of full compensation value? If so, we should he told that we are paying compensation based upon an unlawful act. If we are basing compensation upon an act which obeys the law I find it difficult to see how
  2202
  we can inflate the compensation to much more than the value of the site—apart from some notional value of the house as suitable for being patched up, or something of that sort. It would be helpful if the right hon. Gentleman could clear up that practical point.
  I start with a good deal of suspicion, uneasiness and alarm about this matter. I wonder just how far it is going; how far the door is being opened in the future, and where we shall end the queue of people who will have quite plausible reasons why, out of pity, they should be given something more than their property is really worth. That is a dangerous principle to play about with, and it should be approached very cautiously.
  I am prepared to admit that the Bill is limited in scope and time. It deals with an abnormal situation which arose after the war, and I am prepared to be persuaded by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) that, on balance, there is a case for doing something about that situation. But the Bill is not the answer. If we are trying to tackle the people who, perhaps through no fault of their own or through fraud, and in a few cases through genuine bad luck, have paid more for the property than they should have done, the compensation payment ought to be limited as strictly as we can. We should be very careful to see that we are not allowing anybody to make a profit out of fraud. Why should we be light heartedly chucking public money out in compensation in this way, on the ground that certain people will suffer—a highly laudable motive—without taking adequate care to see that the money will not percolate through to people who, by unscrupulous behaviour, have created the very situation which calls for gratuitous payments out of public money?
  Cases were cited by my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, South-East and by the hon. Member for Kirkdale (Mr. N. Pannell) where legal advice was available but the solicitor, who was ostensibly acting as legal adviser for both vendor and purchaser, had either neglected to make a search or to consult the town hall, or had omitted to tell the purchaser that he was buying something valueless. There ought to be some means to ensure in these cases that no kind of profit will reach those people.

  2203
  I am a bit concerned about people who are paying for their houses on mortgage. We were told by the hon. Member for Kirkdale of pathetic cases he knew of in Liverpool where people had bought on mortgage houses which were now being condemned and were being left with the mortgage payments to pay, although they were getting no benefit from the payments. These are not cases of saving by buying a house cash down but of people who are paying for houses on mortgage.
  Are we really to pay gratuitously compensation which is not the value of the house but is a charitable payment which will be used to subsidise payments to mortgagees, such as building societies or whoever they may be? I should have thought one of the first things to do was to make certain that the building society was not at fault. The building society survey must have revealed the fact that the house, if not actually scheduled as subject to slum clearance, was so near the margin that no prudent person would lend money on it. The hon. Member said that a lot of the money was lent at a high rate of interest. This is not some extravagant Bolshevic outburst of mine, but what the hon. Member for Kirkdale said.
  Mr. Lindgren: In these cases—I shall quote cases later of my own—it is not the building society but the landlord, auctioneer or estate agent, in association with a private financier, who is at fault.
  Mr. MacColl: I am glad that my innocent belief in the integrity of building societies is fortified by that of my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Lindgren).
  Mr. Kenneth Thompson: This is an important point. There is a great deal of validity behind the hon. Gentleman's case, but is it not leading up to an argument for making an entirely different law to govern the conditions under which the initial transaction would take place and requiring the observance of certain practices and rules for the purchase of a house in the first place, and not to a compensation law for someone injured as the result of the existing rules?
  Mr. MacColl: If this could be made into a Bill to alter the law relating to mortgage payments to building societies.
  2204
  I should be most happy to make my contribution to it. There is a Money Resolution, and I think I know what is in order and what is not. I am suggesting that a new partner enters into the situation, the local authority. It comes in and says, "We are prepared to pay out—or we are told we have to pay out—money in compensation. We have an interest in what is going to happen." This is not the haggling of two private people in the free market. The community is stepping into this transaction as a third party. The first precaution that ought to be taken in that case is to be sure that nobody is profiting out of fraud, but the Bill completely ignores that side of the situation. That is my first constructive suggestion.
  Here is my second constructive suggestion. Why make this matter mandatory on the housing authorities? Let us admit that there are hard cases. We have all met them. Let us also admit, as does my hon. Friend who has such great experience in Leeds, that there are cases where the purchaser has been pretty smart and not a little shady as well as cases in which the vendor has been a little smart and even rather fraudulent. Why not allow the housing authority to make grants by way of compensation in appropriate cases? That would leave the matter open.
  I remember we were discussing a comparable point about charities on the Valuation Bill and the right hon. Gentleman saying, "Borough councillors have their ears to the ground. They know the fraudulent charities and the charities which are well run. They are the people who keep a shrewd eye on what happens". Why not apply that principle here? Let the housing authorities, who know the crooked landlords and the shady tenants, deal with genuine cases by an ex gratia payment? That would make it clear that there was no legal right arising out of some value inherent in the house. If this is a compensation Bill for those who are hard hit, why not make the payment discretionary and not obligatory on housing authorities? These are all reasons why I am extremely uncomfortable and suspicious about the Bill.
  The Parliamentary Secretary should have thought of a better reason for trying to dispose of the Amendment than saying that there was only a little amount

  2205
  involved. We really cannot go back to the old argument that the size of the offspring is relevant to its legitimacy. The Parliamentary Secretary is young and innocent and may have thought he could get away with that the first time, but the Minister is like some old harridan with rows and rows of the little brats all of dubious origin.
  The Government now have a long record of having done everything they can to starve and squeeze money out of the local authorities, and of taking every step of stinginess they could to hold up, obstruct their work and to do everything at the expense of the ratepayers, like raising the rates of interest and reducing the general housing subsidy.
  Naturally, when it is said that this is to be paid out of the ratepayers' and not the taxpayers' money, no one will believe that it is because it is not administratively worth bothering about. The Government are doing this for their own good purpose and should pay for it. The law in regard to compensation for slum clearance has been in existence for 30 years or more, and if the Government are now to alter it in a fundamental principle they should say that this extra charge should be borne upon the Government's money and not on the money of the local authorities.
  By all means let the local authority pay for what it is getting. It is getting an unfit, unhealthy and dangerous house, which must be demolished before it is a danger to human life. That is what it is getting, and that is what it ought to pay for. If there is anything more to be added for reasons of charity, then let it be a charge on national funds and not on the rates. Therefore, 1 say that even if—and of this I am very dubious—this Bill in its wide form is the way to meet the difficulty, the final insult to the local authorities is to make this a local charge on the ratepayer, and for this reason I heartily support the Amendment.
  6.22 p.m.
  Lieut.Colonel J. K. Cordeaux: The hon. Member for Widnes (Mr. MacColl) accused the Government of meanness and stinginess, rather following the line taken by the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison). I am very glad that those charges were confined
  2206
  entirely to the way in which the money was to be found. No one on the other side of the House has suggested for one moment that the general object of the Bill is anything but one of generosity and sympathy.
  Because I intervene in this debate I hope that no one will think that in Nottingham we have a very great number of slums. As a matter of fact, we think that in housing conditions—as, of course, in everything else—no other town or city can touch us. Unfortunately, Nottingham is divided into four Parliamentary divisions, and nearly all the slums there are seem to be situated in my constituency. Altogether we have listed as unfit for human habitation 2,610 houses which we hope to be well rid of in about five years. From my personal knowledge of those houses I am absolutely convinced that their demolition—and the demolition of all such houses in the country—is the most important item in the whole of the Government's domestic programme.
  Mr. Ellis Smith: Can the hon. and gallant Gentleman give the total figures for Nottingham?
  Lieut.Colonel Cordeaux: The total number of houses listed in Nottingham as unfit for human habitation is 2,610.
  Mr. Ellis Smith: It is a paradise.
  Lieut. Colonel Cordeaux: I am glad to say that. I cannot compete with the total figures given by the hon. Lady the Member for Leeds, South-East (Miss Bacon).
  As I was saying, I believe that getting rid of these houses is the most important item in all our present domestic programme. I know that that opinion is shared by the very big majority of the unfortunate people who are still condemned to live in those horrible places. Every time I talk to them I am asked the same questions—"When are these houses to come down? Can you not give us a date yet? When am I to get another house?" Thanks to the very big building programme we have carried out in the last three or four years, it is now possible to make a serious start on slum clearance, and one can give those people a much more satisfactory answer.

  2207
  That is the general type of question asked in those places, but there is a small minority living in those areas who are almost as dismayed by these slum clearance proposals as the majority are elated. I suppose that that was bound to be so, because in any slum clearance programme of any magnitude there must be just one or two who will suffer hardship, and perhaps even injustice. I am very glad that my right hon. Friend has not been content merely to say that hard cases make bad law and do nothing for those people, but instead has brought in the Bill.
  I do not want to say very much about owner-occupiers of slum dwelling houses, partly because their case has already been fully argued today, but also because I have only very few in my division. I have only fifty in one slum clearance area and two in the other. I want to speak for another class of people.
  Mr. Simon Mahon: Would the hon. and gallant Gentleman give the total figures in each slum clearance area, and what percentage his figures represent? The Minister said 5 per cent.
  Lieut.Colonel Cordeaux: I cannot do it for the total area but only for my division, which has the majority of the 2,610 houses in it. In one slum clearance area there are fifty owner-occupiers, and in the other there are two.
  The people I am anxious to talk about are the small shopkeepers, whether owner-occupiers or tenants, and of those there are quite a few in my constituency. Before the Bill was introduced those people faced real tragedy. If they lived in the premises which also housed their businesses they faced not only the loss of their house, for which they would get a mere site valuation—a token payment—but, in addition, whether owners or tenants, they often faced the loss of their livelihood. It is no exaggeration to say that. Those who say "Well they can go away and transfer their business to another place," have no proper realisation of the problems which face these people.
  A transfer does not meet the case. These people have built up their livelihood and their success, such as it may be, because their shop is where it is,
  2208
  because they have lived there for a very long time, because they know all their customers and have learned to study their needs and to minister to them for a very long time. It is impossible for them at a moment's notice to leave and to try to settle down elsewhere without help and to build up a business again without great disadvantage and loss of money.
  Mr. Sparks: But in a slum clearance scheme the customers will have disappeared, and the basis of the shopkeeper's trade will have disappeared with them. The customers will have gone to a new area where they have been rehoused, and the local authority has the power to provide in the new housing scheme a shop to which the person who has been dispossessed of his trade may transfer. He goes with his customers to the new area There cannot be very much loss involved in that.
  Lieut.Colonel Cordeaux: I fully take that point, but the fact that other people may be moving out of that slum area at the time does not alter the fact that the man is losing his customers. Moreover, in Nottingham—and I 'am quoting from my own experience—there are many such small shopkeepers in a rather compact clearance area who are serving people in streets round about which are not actually in the clearance area. Those people have often built up their businesses not only by a lifetime of work but often by the work of two generations. If they are old they cannot be uprooted and then expected to start afresh in some new place. Apart from the fact that they will not know anyone there, it will be difficult to find a site where they can set up their business which is not already served by some existing shop. In addition, there are instances where their own trade association—in the case of newsagents for instance—will not let them do so within a certain radius.
  All the local authorities do what they can for people in such cases and often they say, "We will give you the first chance; we will put you first in the queue when the new buildings are finished." But, after all, they have got to live somewhere in the meantime. This applies, I think, to all the small shopkeepers, but mostly to people who own what we are accustomed to call the "corner shop."

  2209
  I have not referred to half the difficulties which face the small shopkeepers in this position. There are all sorts of factors which daunt them when they face this problem of eviction. If the House will bear with me, I should like to quote one or two examples from my own division to prove what I mean.
  The first that I have in mind concerns a man in his sixtieth year, who owns a small sweet and tobacco shop in Alfreton Road, one of our busiest main streets M Nottingham, a large part of which is scheduled. He, his wife and mother, have built up that little business through forty years of hard work. It has been forty years of slogging—working a 14 or 16 hour day in the old days, keeping open until 10 o'clock, and 11 o'clock on Saturdays, and then, after closing, sitting up and working until midnight bottling the ginger beer, making the ice cream, and doing the accounts. During the war they had to open at 3 o'clock in the morning. They had to serve the troops after they came back from night exercises.
  Those people have built up a reasonable living, and there is one reason why they have done reasonably well. It is because their shop is next door to a cinema. However slack trade might be during the day, in the evening people go in for a packet of cigarettes or a box of chocolates on their way to the cinema. When that roan is evicted he may get another shop in the neighbourhood. He may, if he is lucky, get one in that same main street, but it will be a miracle if he gets one next to a cinema.
  Another example concerns a man 73 years of age, who keeps a small fishing tackle shop. He has worked there all his life; indeed, his father started the business in 1890. It has been an awful struggle nearly all the time. He sells nothing but fishing tackle. He is an expert on the subject, but not very many people want to buy fishing tackle, and those who do do not want to buy it very often. In the last ten years he has begun to reap the reward of his labours. His business has improved considerably every year, and the reason—as some hon. Members may not know—is that the sport of angling has become very much more popular since the war. In fact, I am informed that, after football and cricket, it has become the third most popular sport in the country.
  2210
  That man would probably have kept his old customers in any case, but all the new customers that he is getting as a result of the popularity of angling have come to him because his shop is situated near perhaps the busiest traffic junction in Nottingham. It is a place where three main roads converge into the town. It is served by no fewer than seven corporation bus routes, three trolley bus routes, and some private bus routes. It is very likely that all the new customers will melt away. Indeed, a lot of them have told him that they will do so if he moves even a comparatively short distance from that area.
  Mr. H. Butler: Is the shop which is next to a cinema in a house? This Bill deals with businesses carried on inside unfit houses.
  Lieut.Colonel Cordeaux: Yes.
  Next door to this fishing tackle shop is a small flower shop. Women generally buy flowers at the last shop on their way home if they possibly can, because the flowers must not be at the bottom of the shopping basket, and also they must not be out of water for longer than possible. Near this shop at this main traffic junction hundreds of women every day change buses on their way home.
  Stretching out along one of the main roads from that main traffic junction there are dozens of little shopkeepers with the same specialised problems. I call to mind the newsagent, the pet shop, the radio shop, the sports shop, two sisters running a small hairdressing business, and so on. They all have special problems. I believe those small shopkeepers to be among the most deserving people in the country. For thrift, integrity, hard work, patience, and good humour they set an example to us all, and there are no people more deserving of justice and consideration. I support the Bill wholeheartedly because Clause 2 is designed to give them just that.
  6.37 p.m.
  Mr. C. W. Gibson: I find myself in a considerable measure of agreement with my hon. Friend the Member for Widnes (Mr. MacColl). In my opinion, the Bill is a fraud. At least two of the speeches that we have heard from the Government benches—one from

  2211
  the hon. Member for Kirkdale (Mr. N. Pannell) and the other from the hon. and gallant Member for Nottingham, Central (Lieut.Colonel Cordeaux)—illustrate that fact. This Bill does not apply to any of the matters which they have discussed, whether it be the man who sells the fishing tackle, the man in the fish and chip shop, or the person who sells flowers. They have to own the places and live in them.
  Lieut.Colonel Cordeaux: They do not have to live in the premises.
  Mr. Gibson: They have to own the premises and, as I read the Bill, they have got to live in them or else a relative has to do so.
  Lieut.Colonel Cordeaux: If the hon. Gentleman studies Clause 2, which deals with business premises and unfit houses, he will find that that it is not so.
  Mr. Gibson: I have studied Clause 2. I have had a lot of experience of handling these problems in connection with slum clearance schemes. The compensation does not relate to the type of business or to the goodwill of the business. That is already covered by the existing law. I may be wrong, but if so, the Parliamentary Secretary has misled the House. As I understand the Bill, it relates only to the property.
  Lieut.Colonel Cordeaux: I am sorry to keep interrupting, but in the case of business premises it refers to the existing use value.
  Mr. Gibson: But it is the property which is the cause of all the trouble, and it is that to which the compensation is related. It is a house condemned as unfit to live in. It is suggested that there is some peculiar reason why a shopkeeper living in such a house should get additional compensation over and above which the local authorities already have power to give him and, in many cases, do give him.
  Lieut.Colonel Cordeaux rose—
  Mr. Gibson: I am sorry, but I cannot give way again. I did not interrupt the hon. and gallant Gentleman. The difficulties which the hon. and gallant Gentleman has been referring to are almost entirely provided for by the existing law. Local
  2212
  authorities can give additional payments if they are satisfied, but we are now providing that additional compensation is to be given if certain provisions laid down in the Bill are carried out. The Parliamentary Secretary was very careful to point out that there are about 5 million owner-occupiers who might be affected by slum clearance schemes, but that a somewhat—
  Mr. Powell: I never said any such thing. I never mentioned 5 million. I said that 5 per cent. of the houses likely to be affected are owneroccupied.
  Mr. Gibson: I beg the hon. Member's pardon. However, he said that only a small minority of the 5 per cent. would probably be affected by the Bill.
  Mr. Powell: I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman again, but I did not say that a small minority of the 5 per cent. would be affected by the Bill. I said that the number affected by the Bill would be less than the total number of owner-occupiers.
  Mr. Gibson: If HANSARD tomorrow proves me to be wrong, I will apologise to the hon. Gentleman, but I wrote down the words as he uttered them, and I have noted that he said "a small minority".
  My point is that the Bill does not apply in the wide manner imagined by some hon. Members opposite. It is not a Bill which will help slum clearance work in any way. It will not increase the number of houses which are being cleared. It will not make the job easier for local authorities. So far as it applies to shopkeepers, it applies to a very small number, and so far as it applies to owner-occupiers, it probably applies to a smaller number.
  It is wrong to give the country the impression that this is in any way a large-scale attempt to rectify an enormous injustice built up by the present slum clearance law. Of course, it suits the Tory Party to have that impression created. We have all read articles in the Press trying to establish as a fact that the Bill is an enormous improvement on our slum clearance legislation. It is nothing of the kind. As the Parliamentary Secretary said, it will have comparatively a very small effect. I am not sure that it will have even the effect which he said, because of the conditions surrounding the

  2213
  provision of any extra compensation in these cases.
  Those who are trying to create the impression that this is a wonderful effort to speed up the slum clearance programme are encouraging one of the Government's frauds. It is like the Housing Repairs and Rents Act, 1954, which was to have been "Operation Rescue" and was to have brought tens of thousands of houses into a condition of decent, habitable accommodation. We now know that that Measure is a complete flop and that even the landlords' associations are disgusted with it. We were unable at the time to persuade the Minister that the Measure would not work and that it was a fraud, but it is gradually becoming known now that it is a fraud. When this Measure comes to be operated by local authorities it will be found to be a fraud in that the benefits are so small and restricted that they can have no real effect at all upon the admittedly very great problem of shopkeepers, in particular, and owner-occupiers who are moved. I hope that the House and the country will recognise that.
  It is wrong that we should so light heartedly break a principle upon which compensation in slum clearance schemes has been based for so many years. The principle has always been that if a house is unlit to live in no compensation should be payable for it. When one remembers the measures that medical officers of health have to undertake to establish that a house is unfit—they have to visit the house, examine every room, look at every wall, look at every ceiling, examine the back of the building. and go on the roof; in other words, make absolutely sure that there is not a room in the house which is fit to live in; and then there has to be a public inquiry before the Minister approves an order—it is obvious that such a house really is unfit to live in.
  The house being unfit to live in, the law has said up to now that there should not be any compensation for the building, but that the land values should go to the owner or the occupier and compensation should be limited to that. If we are to allow the principle that rotten houses are to be the subject of special compensation if they belong to owner occupiers or happen to house shops, how long will it be before we find ourselves excusing a baker for selling bad bread—which is
  2214
  illegal—or a costermonger or greengrocer selling rotten fruit? It seems to me that this principle has been so seriously cut into that there ought to be a protest against it because of the dangers which could result from an extension of what is proposed, and the fact that wide application of it will seriously impair the possibilities of effectively clearin our slums.
  Hon. Gentlemen opposite are trying hard to give the impression that a Conservative Government started the great slum clearance programme in this country. They did nothing of the kind. In the case of London, the Government were six years too late, because the London County Council began this work six years before the Government issued their first circular. What is more, the London County Council has already been able to get rid of several thousands of broken down and unfit houses. The same is true of most of our large towns. No special inducements have been given to local authorities, unless one regards the maintenance of the subsidy as an inducement, but that is not much of one when one remembers that interest rates have been raised so high that the cost of building in itself will be up by nearly 50 per cent. long before the end of the year.
  It seems to me that we are bound to reach a position where, even with the slum clearance operations, only authorities which are able to obtain money at cheaper rates than those of the Public Works Loan Board will be able to build. It is impossible to expect the average small local authority to be able to build even a few houses when its capital charges are at least 5 per cent. Indeed, rates of 5¾. and 6 per cent. are already being charged on some loans which have been taken up.
  If local authorities charge the extra costs to rents, the rents become impossible for the tenants. The alternative is for local authorities to have a heavy supplementary rate charge, and as soon as that happens every ratepayers' association and every local Tory organisation begins to scream. It seems to me inevitable that the tendency, which has already begun, for a serious slowing down in housing—in some quarters there has been a complete stoppage—will affect the slum clearance programme in a few months' time, and there will be virtually a stoppage of house building. That has already

  2215
  happened twice this century. The Bill will do nothing to arrest the decline.
  It is fraudulent to attempt to give the impression that the Bill will in some way be of great assistance to the fairly large numbers of owner occupiers who may be affected by slum clearance schemes and also the small number of shopkeepers for whom alternative shops are not found. It is quite fraudulent to conduct debates in this House and propaganda associated with them so as to give those people the impression that this Bill represents a wonderful move forward by the Tory Party in the furtherance of slum clearance. I hope, therefore, that the House will accept the Amendment.
  6.51 p.m.
  Mr. Peter Smithers: The hon. Member for Clapham (Mr. Gibson), whom we all regard with great affection in this House, if I may say so, fell much below himself in the speech he just made.
  Mr. Ede: The hon. Gentleman must take care he does not get above himself.
  Mr. Smithers: I hope to succeed in doing that, but I cannot be sure; we had better wait to find out.
  The hon. Member for Clapham (Mr. Gibson) has a great reputation for his knowledge on local government matters. He used this debate mainly to attack the Tory Party for its policy; his speech was freely interspersed with words such as "fraudulent", and he said the Bill will not have any effect on the problem.
  When the hon. Gentleman began, it was at once apparent to us on this side of the House that he had not studied the Bill; he simply had not read it carefully. One ought not, if I may say so, with respect, to accuse one's opponents of being fraudulent if one does not take the trouble to find out what it is that they are proposing to do. The hon. Gentleman will excuse me if I am wrong, but on this side of the House we received the unmistakable impression that he thought this Bill, in the case of shop property, applied only to the owner occupier of a shop. It does not; he does not have to be living there.
  If the hon. Gentleman looks carefully at Clause 2, he will see that the key words are
  2216
  "…the house was occupied at the date of the making of the order wholly or partly for the purposes of a business",
  and that the person entitled to the receipts of the business is the person in occupation. That person may be a tenant; it does not have to be the owner at all. I want to return to that question presently and make a point to the Minister upon it, because I think a genuine difficulty does arise there.
  The hon. Gentleman also told us—I took down his words as best I could—that the Bill "would have no effect at all on the problem". If the Bill is to have no effect at all on the problem, I cannot see how it could have any effect on the rates; and if it is not to have any effect on the rates, why should hon. Gentlemen opposite put down an Amendment which amounts to opposing the Bill, because they say it will? It seems to me that the hon. Member for Clapham has joined us on this side in making a most devastating attack on his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison), who opened the debate for the Opposition from the Front Bench opposite.
  The hon. and learned Member for Kettering made a most enjoyable speech. If I may say so, he went very wide of the Bill; he used the opportunity, perhaps excusably, to make a general assault upon the local government policy of the party now on these benches, particularly in its financial aspects. I shall come back to that in a moment or two; I am pointing it out for a reason which will, I hope, presently become apparent.
  The hon. Lady the Member for Leeds, South-East (Miss Bacon), made a very appealing and eloquent speech, as she always does, in which she drew attention to various examples of sharp practice. It is a favourite theme of hon. Members opposite to harp upon the monstrous sharp practices of people whom they particularly dislike. I myself have observed that people always indulge in sharp practice whether there be a Socialist or Conservative Government. I do not think that either of us has succeeded in eliminating it, and when hon. Gentlemen opposite were in power they did not, I think, have any conspicuous success in eliminating the sharp practitioners. Indeed, I think there were, on the whole, more then than now; those were the

  2217
  days of the "spivs" and other picturesque gentlemen associated with that name.
  When the hon. Lady holds forth about the wicked things sellers and purchasers of house property in Leeds have done, she may well be right: but those things have gone on under both Governments; they are very regrettable, and I only wish that hon. Gentlemen opposite had had more success in putting a stop to them.
  Next we heard from the hon. Member for Widnes (Mr. MacColl). He began by saying he was perhaps going to be accused of being doctrinaire. I do not object to that; I expect hon. Members opposite to be doctrinaire in their approach. It is not a bad thing, nor anything to be ashamed of; it is good to have a certain amount of doctrine. Nevertheless, I could not help noticing that he was mainly concerned to apply his doctrine in an effort to discover the same sharp practitioners about whom the hon. Lady the Member for Leeds, South East was so concerned.
  The hon. Member said that we on this side were inclined to think of the compulsory purchase procedure with which we are concerned here as a sort of gratuitous fine levied on owners of property. I would say it is the attitude of hon. Members opposite which has created that impression. When up and down the country people read of attacks made on owners of property in general—and many in particular—they naturally feel they are being exposed to some political discrimination and they suspect that, rather than it being an act of justice, it is an act of class warfare.
  The House will have observed that each of the three speeches with which this debate was opened from the other side was principally concerned with matters other than the promotion of slum clearance. Hon. Gentlemen opposite were mainly concerned to point out all the difficulties, all the possible abuses, to discourse upon local government at large, upon political doctrine in general, and the wicked practices of certain people in particular. I do not blame the Opposition for doing their part of criticising the Government; but, for my part, I came to the House today to discuss a Bill designed to promote slum clearance. That is what I am interested in.
  Mr. Collick: Is not the hon. Gentleman falling into the error of which he
  2218
  accuses my hon. Friends? This Bill has nothing at all to do with slum clearance as such but, if I understand it aright, it has to do with a basis of compensation which arises out of slum clearance; it is not concerned with the business of slum clearance itself.
  Mr. Smithers: I am much obliged to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention; it enables me to illustrate how little this problem is understood by hon. Members opposite. It is true that the Bill does not actually provide for the mechanics of demolition and slum clearance. What it does is to try to assure justice and, therefore, that element of public support for slum clearance without which the campaign cannot hope to be a success.
  Hon. Gentlemen opposite do not understand that if they treat this human problem in the atmosphere of the class war we shall never have the slums pulled down at all; and their own lamentable failure to do so is clear evidence in support of what I am saying. I apologise for digressing; the hon. Member led me a little astray. I will now come back to the Bill.
  When I wake up in the morning I am confronted with certain objects which relate directly to this Bill. Four of them are agreeable and the fifth is disagreeable. Through a window at the foot of my bed I see the tower of Winchester College, which is agreeable, although it does remind me of the opposite Front Bench. Through a window on my right I see my garden and the east end of Winchester Cathedral—
  Mr. D. Jones: Lucky man
  Mr. Smithers: I am a very lucky man; no one could live in a nicer place.
  A little further across to the right I see another agreeable object, a vacant space with no houses in it, which is the result of the demolition of the slums in Winchester under a Tory Government before the war at a time when we were rehousing 1,000 slum dwellers daily. [Hors. MEMBERS: "Daily?"] Yes, daily.
  Mr. Jack Jones: Three hundred and sixtyfive thousand rehoused in a year?
  Mr. Smithers: Yes, at the peak of the programme.

  2219
  Now I come to the object which I find disagreeable. It is that between my windows and the cathedral I see a number of houses in which some of my unfortunate constituents have still to live and which are bad slums. I want to see those slums go, and go quickly. The last two or three years have begun to see them disappear, a house here and a house there. The city council has begun to get a move on with its slum clearance campaign.
  A little further away, in the centre of the city, a very large area has been cleared but there is much more to go. Winchester is quite a small city, but in it we have 500 unfit houses. Out of our not very large total of houses that is quite a big proportion. Of those 500 unfit houses it is calculated that 30 will come within the provisions of this Bill, thereby providing the House with a percentage—roughly of 6 per cent.—which does not compare too badly with the calculation of the Minister. It seems to prove that our case is a relatively difficult one.
  What I am anxious to do this evening is to ask the Minister one or two questions about how this Bill will work, because, obviously, it is trying to do something quite difficult and there are several practical problems involved. If some hon. Members opposite had been a little less anxious to play party politics over this matter, they might have found that this House, on both sides, would have a good many things to say in common to the Minister, which would have been a valuable contribution to the debate.
  First, I wish to say to the Minister that we cannot have slum clearance on the cheap. It is bound to be quite an expensive operation, whatever happens. We cannot have it on the cheap mainly for the reason which I have already indicated, that if slum clearance is to go forward successfully it must be felt by the whole community that justice is being done to all concerned in the transaction. The reason why this Bill is, in my view, an important contribution towards slum clearance is that it seeks to do justice in hard cases and, I believe, will prove to do justice in practice.
  Anyone who had studied the local Press in my constituency recently in connection with the slum clearance programme, which excites a lot of interest in the city, would have been impressed by the
  2220
  tremendous amount of feeling, not on party lines at all—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] No, not on party lines at all—in a number of contributions in the Press which indicate that the public at large are concerned about the hard cases which have come to their attention.
  I think Clause 1 of the Bill will be the most welcome and is the most important Clause which deals with owner-occupiers of house property. What I want to ask the Minister is related to a point which was raised by the hon. Member for Widnes. It is how district valuers and arbitrators will proceed to access their valuations. That will be very difficult. I will give two examples. First, I take three roughly comparable houses in three different streets. Those houses were purchased, comparatively recently, one in Cannon Street for £250, one in Lawn Street for £550, and one in Eastgate Street for £750. They are comparable houses on sites of comparable value, but they were purchased for widely differing prices.
  Now I take three houses in the same street, in Union Street. One was purchased for £275, one for £425, and one for £1,000. If one values those houses on their site value they are probably worth £40 to £50 per site, but under the Bill they will be valued on a different valuation. It seems to me that that would present district valuers and arbitrators with a very difficult problem. If the Minister can give some guidance about that when he speaks later I think that would be of practical use.
  Mr. Mahon: I am very interested in the point that the hon. Member is making. He has made a comparison between houses in the same street, used for the same purpose, yet there is such a disparity between the prices at which they were purchased. Would he say whether they were owned by the same person and why there was this disparity? Is it because of the condition of the houses, or the method of selling? Are they all slum houses?
  Mr. Smithers: I do not think that the hon. Member has taken my point. I am not concerned with what people paid for those houses. They wanted the houses and that is why they bought them. They are intrinsically comparable in value.

  2221
  What I am concerned with is the effect of that situation when the district valuer makes his valuation.
  Mrs. Harriet Slater: Would the hon. Member tell us whether those houses were sold for those very different prices at about the same time? Is he saying that those houses are houses which will be dealt with under slum clearance, including the one at £1,000?
  Mr. Smithers: In every respect the houses are comparable. They were sold under roughly similar circumstances, at roughly the same time, and they are roughly similar houses. The only thing which varied was the price, and that varied greatly. That is the problem I am putting to the Minister. I do not know what the answer is, but it must be a difficult problem.
  Mrs. Slater: Are they all slum clearance houses?
  Mr. Smithers: Yes, they are slum clearance houses.
  Mr. Mahon: Before passing on to the next point, will the hon. Member bluntly and simply describe that as a fraudulent deal—for someone to buy for £750 or £1,000 a slum house with a site value of only £40?
  Mrs. Slater: There are some "spivs" still living.
  Mr. Smithers: The hon. Member must be quite familiar with the problem. It is not necessarily fraudulent if a man wants to buy a house for which he has £1,000 and is willing to pay it with his eyes open. That is not fraudulent.
  I pass to the next point, which was raised in a leading article in The Times this morning, and which, no doubt, hon. Members will have noticed with interest. It arises in Winchester. Certain small house properties have sites which are so small that they cannot be individually developed, but, when aggregated, a number of them can provide a large site which has a very considerable redevelopment value. Where the owners of those houses are different owners, I think hon. Members will follow me when I say that there can be no moral obligation on the local authority to compensate an owner for the increased redevelopment value in
  2222
  which in his previous ownership he had no part.
  But when a person owns a number of small properties adjacent to one another and they are compulsorily purchased in a block, and when the redevelopment value, therefore, of the whole block is considerable, I submit to my right hon. Friend that that should be taken account of in assessing compensation under the Bill. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] That seems to me to be only common sense.
  Mr. Mitchison: For whom?
  Mr. Smithers: For the previous owner.
  At present, the district valuer can only give compensation for redevelopment value on the basis of the individual site. He cannot take a block of sites adjacent to one another, belonging to a single owner, and say, "While these individually have no redevelopment value, in the aggregate they have a redevelopment value." That is the point that I hope the Minister will take. If the hon. and learned Member for Kettering does not follow me, he will find it put much more clearly than I can state it in the leading article in this morning's issue of The Times.
  Mr. Mitchison: I assure the hon. Member that I, too, have read The Times leader. I did not quite see its application to the Bill any more than I see the application to the Bill of what the hon. Member is saying; but perhaps I have misunderstood him. Let me ask him one question. The hon. Member is concerned with Tory progress in Winchester and with the progress of slum clearance. I see that Winchester has 490 unfit houses.
  Mr. Smithers: It is 500.
  Mr. Mitchison: The return says 490; there may be ten new ones since. During the next five years, Winchester proposes to demolish only 160 and to retain 330 for temporary accommodation. Does the hon. Member regard that as a good example of Tory slum clearance?
  Mr. Smithers: The hon. and learned Member should know better. He knows Winchester quite well. In fact, I am not sure that he did not once live in my street.
  Mr. Mitchison indicated dissent.
  Mr. Smithers: In that case, I withdraw. However that may be, the hon. and learned Member will know that it is quite a small city. Our total electorate is just under 20.000 and I think that in demolishing at that rate we are doing extremely well.
  Mr. Jack Jones: Winchester is not short of "spivs."
  Mr. Smithers: I feel happy to have understood The Times leader apparently better than the hon. and learned Member for Kettering has done.
  Clause 2 of the Bill deals with shop properties. A point on which I have previously touched in passing is the position of tenants of shops in dwelling-houses which come within the scope of the Bill. I am not clear that I fully understand this part of the Bill, but I think I am right in saying that if a tenant of a shop has a yearly tenancy he will be entitled to compensation. whereas if he is a weekly tenant at will he will not. That, at first sight, may appear quite logical, but, in fact, by the operation of the rent control Acts, the weekly tenant has for years enjoyed a security equal to that of the tenant who holds his shop on a yearly tenancy. The provision of the Bill therefore seems to me to be logical, but in practice it is anomalous. 1 hope that my right hon. Friend will allude to it when winding up the debate and say whether, if my interpretation of the Bill is correct, anything can be done about it in Committee.
  Clause 3 is complicated and difficult to understand, but as far as we can tell in Winchester it appears that it will be quite expensive. As far as we can judge, the sums to be paid out under the Clause will vary from £60 to £200. They are likely to be a considerable item in the total cost of the Bill.
  As a Conservative, I am very gratified that we are getting on with the slum clearance drive. We must have a foundation of good will if it is to continue and succeed. I believe that the Bill will help to provide that foundation. My right hon. Friend must, of course, have the good will not only of the electorate at large but of the local authorities. I hope he will bear in mind that some of them will be put in the rather difficult position of being urged to carry on with slum clearance while, at the same time, having to cope with considerably increased
  2224
  costs. Nevertheless, I am sure that the local authorities, who are all keen to see their slums go, will back up my right hon. Friend in his campaign for slum clearance. I thank him for the Bill and I wish it all success.
  7.16 p.m.
  Mr. Herbert Butler: I do not propose to follow the hon. Member from the delightful surroundings of Winchester (Mr. Smithers) into his examination of the Bill. As far as I know, he made no reference whatever to the Bill.
  Mr. Græme Finlay: Nonsense.
  Mr. Butler: The hon. Member told us of three sights that pleased him very much and of one that displeased him. I thought he was going to say that the fourth was when he looked in the mirror in the morning when he shaves.
  The Bill is described as the Slum Clearance (Compensation) Bill, and I want to draw the attention of the House to the matters we are discussing. Having listened to the speeches of hon. Members opposite. one understands why the Bill is introduced. All that it does is to give more money to people who possess property which is unfit for human habitation. That is the whole substance of the Bill. Which way it, is done or whether it should be done differently is a matter for conjecture, but hon. Members opposite will devise all kinds of ways and means to ensure that if it cannot be done in one way it will be done in another.
  I remind hon. Members and the Minister that we are dealing with property which is unfit for human habitation. Section 9 of the 1954 Act draws attention to the conditions under which a house can be declared unfit the standards of fitness for human habitation are laid down.
  To advise him, the Minister has a Central Housing Advisory Committee, which made certain recommendations to him as to the conditions which should operate if property was to be considered fit for human habitation. This is referred to in Circular 55/54 from the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, which states on page 14:
  "Section 9 follows the definition recommended by a subCommittee of the Central Housing Advisory Committee in listing the

  2225
  matters to which regard must be had in deciding whether a house is fit or unfit for human habitation. It departs from the recommendations of the sub-committee in that it does not specify that a house is to be regarded as unfit solely because it is defective in one of these matters. Instead, it leaves the local authority to decide in the first place whether in view of the number or degree of the defects the house is or is not reasonably suitable for occupation in that condition."
  It therefore admits that the conditions laid down in the 1954 Act are less onerous than those which applied before under the 1936 and other Acts.
  We are dealing here with properties which have had a life far beyond their usefulness. We are not dealing with something which has just been purchased and has a considerable expectation of life. This follows a pattern which is found particularly in the London area—and I have said this before in this House—in which tenants for 50 or 60 years have paid rents of £20 and upwards per year for houses which cost only £100 to build. The houses have been paid for to successive landlords by successive tenants five or six times over, and these properties are still in existence. Hitler's bombs destroyed some of them, but some are still there.
  Now, the local authority is told by this Bill that if these properties are now declared unfit for human habitation, if they are owned by someone who bought them since 1939, the local authority has to pay the market value, so that what in fact the local authority is being told to do is to pay for a diseased and rotten apple the price of a good apple, which the "spiv" from Winchester puts in front of his barrow.
  Mr. Smithers: If the hon. Gentleman will allow me to say so, we do not have any "spivs" in Winchester.
  Mr. Butler: I did not introduce the question of "spivs." The hon. Gentleman gave us the story of someone who sold a property in Winchester which is worth £40 for £1,000. Does he not regard that as "spivvery"? I am saying that all that this Bill tells the local authorities to do is to pay for a diseased and rotten apple the price that good fruit could command in the market under the unfettered free enterprise of the Tory Party.
  Mr. C. N. Thornton-Kemsley: Surely, the hon. Gentleman would agree that the market
  2226
  value of the houses which he describes as diseased and rotten would be very low indeed?
  Mr. Butler: I am not responsible for the deductions which the hon. Member for North Angus (Mr. Thornton-Kemsley) or any of his hon. Friends may draw from the statements contained in this Bill.
  All I do know is that this Bill proposes to alter a principle that has operated since the 1919 Act. That is the point which hon. Gentleman opposite have to bear in mind, and when I hear the jubilations from some hon. Members below the Gangway about 1,000 people having been rehoused daily by slum clearance between the wars, and when the claim is made that they were rehoused by the party opposite, I must state that that is not so, but that they were rehoused by local authorities, in the London area particularly, which had Labour majorities. Under these slum clearance Acts, local authorities bought—as I myself, as a member of a housing committee of a local authority, have bought—slum property at half-a-crown per super foot. We bought land at that price, and on it erected homes for our people, and now the Conservative Party claim credit for it, when Labour local authorities—
  Mr. Douglas Glover: Surely the hon. Gentleman will be fair and will agree that the Tory Party did at least pass the legislation which made it possible?
  Mr. Butler: The hon. Member might cast his mind back to the time when we had the Wheatley Act in this country and one associated with the late Mr. Arthur Greenwood. I hope the House will never forget those two Acts when considering housing matters.
  Now I wish to say something particularly to the Minister, and I am glad that he is here. It has been suggested that this is part of a great slum clearance crusade. I agree that the Parliamentary Secretary never endeavoured to give us that opinion, but I want quite seriously to say to the Minister that it is a little unfair of him to go down into an East End borough and have himself photographed knocking down walls, getting a subpœna to appear in a police court, getting himself interrogated by irate citizens, and spreading these pictures around

  2227
  the country showing his great desire to assist in slum clearance, while at the same time—
  Mr. Glover: On a point of order. Is it in order, Mr. Speaker, to suggest that an hon. or right hon. Gentleman himself engineered a subpœna to appear in a police court? Is that not an infringement of the privileges of the House? One cannot get a subpœna for a police court oneself; such a subpœna comes from the police court, and to suggest that a right hon. Member of this House engineered a subpœna for attendance at a police court is surely completely out of order?
  Mr. Speaker: I did not quite gather the purport of that observation, but I did not hear anything out of order.
  Mr. Butler: I think the right hon. Gentleman realises that I never intended to indicate in any way that he went round asking prospective Communist candidates to serve him with subpoenas. All I say to him is that, at a time when feeling runs high about this matter, this sort of thing should not be done.
  I say that because of what is actually happening. My hon. Friend the Member for Clapham (Mr. Gibson) has referred to the fact that the effect of the Government's general housing legislation is to increase the cost of housing to local authorities. I can assure the Minister that local authorities, while they are proceeding with their housing schemes at the moment, are feeling very diffident about laying down plans for two or three years ahead, because of the implications to the tenants who may be housed.
  The increases in the rates of interest, the reduction of the subsidy for general housing and the mere maintenance of the subsidy for ordinary slum clearance are making it very difficult for local authorities to go ahead with enthusiasm in their plans for 1958 or 1959. I am, however, very grateful to note that in many areas of London plans for housing schemes have been made up to 1958. As the Minister and hon. Members in all parts of the House will be aware, these things have to be planned two or three years in advance, and, as a consequence of the general policy of the Minister and the Government, local authorities are now damping down.
  2228
  What do we find? We are now to pay increased prices for slum property, and these prices will be higher than the market prices of property. The situation with regard to residential property is becoming absolutely absurd. I have in my hand a document which was handed to me as a member of a finance committee when dealing with applications for dwellings under the Small Dwellings Acquisition Act. According to it, a property is offered for sale at £1,775, and the valuer who is paid by the applicant and is entirely independent of the local authority, has valued it at £700, subject to first floor possession, and at £1,200, subject to complete vacant possession. Here we have an individual paying £1,775 in order to get into a house which is really worth £700. The values that are being created because of the policy of the Government and because of the impossibility of local authorities continuing to build houses to let are maintaining an artificial cost of property throughout the whole country.
  As a consequence of Tory policy, the local authorities, without any assistance from the Government at all, will be forced to make the ratepayers in their areas pay for the slum properties which are covered by this Bill. Why should the local authorities have to pay famine prices for a commodity which Parliament itself decided is unfit for habitation? All Housing Bills and Acts have defined this commodity.
  As was confirmed by the Parliamentary Secretary in answer to my interjection, even length of occupation is not a consideration in the Bill. Section 42 of the Housing Act, 1936, provided that where extra payment for well-maintained houses was to be made, there had to be a period of three years occupation before that provision applied. There is nothing of that kind in this Bill. We are entitled to assume that in the main, apart from the bad cases of really crooked people who take on unsuspecting persons and absolutely rob them, anyone who is investing in buying a house for himself will secure the best possible advice about the price and the general condition of the property.
  It is a fallacy to assume that the Bill will deal with every house owner who is the occupier of a slum. We are entitled to assume that, generally speaking, people have bought these houses well

  2229
  knowing their value. I do not know the whole of the country, but in 1939–42, at a time when the country was receiving Hitler's missiles, I believe that there was not a tendency to purchase property but a tendency and desire to get rid of it. Therefore the price paid for the type of property which we are now discussing approximated in the main to the real value.
  This Bill is very much on the lines of widows' and orphans' legislation. Whenever the Tory Party wants to do something for a particular section, it serves up the cry of the poor, the needy and the suffering. When we discussed the Transport Act and the question whether the resources of the transport industry should belong to the State, we had the story about the wife of the transport owner sitting up burning the midnight oil to keep the books and tot up the halfpennies and pennies. Tonight we have had stories about a fish and chips shop and a fishing tackle shop and of people working 24 hours a day, and when the clocks were put back they presumably worked 25.
  This is an attempt by the Government to respond to their own particular pressure group. It arises from a case which became famous and led to the Ministerial demise of one member of the Government after it was over. Pressure was exerted because certain actions on the part of the Government were allowed to continue. Now the Tory Party is attempting to put the matter right.
  If a local authority, through its medical officer of health, says that a house is unfit for human habitation, the owner has a right to appeal to the Minister and has a right to an inquiry. If that inquiry upholds the local authority's representations, I submit that to make the local authority pay the market value for that commodity is much the same as if the medical officer had inspected a load of meat or some other food and had said that it was unfit for human consumption. The corollary of the proposal in the Bill would be to make the local authority pay the market price for the unfit meat or food.
  Mr. K. Thompson: Nonsense.
  Mr. Butler: Why is it nonsense? Hon. Members opposite must remember that the things which make up human life and for which people work in factories are
  2230
  food, clothing and shelter. Housing accommodation is as much a commodity as meat and fruit and other things that are sold in the market. Therefore, if a local authority had to pay a fantastic price for the diseased, rotten carcase of a house, it would be quite natural to make it pay for the diseased, rotten carcase of a bullock.
  The Tory Party has a bad record in slum clearance. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] I can take hon. Members opposite to parts of London where their party has been in power on local authorities since 1922 and where no local authority house was built by the Tory Party. When they controlled local authorities in London, hon. Members opposite would not enter into the sphere of house building because that would be competing with their friends the landlords. [Laughter.] It is not a laughing matter. It is a serious proposition.
  Hon. Members opposite take the view that if profit can be made out of a commodity it should be left to free enterprise. It was and is the basis of their political philosophy. The Tory Party did not enter into the sphere of house building at all. It argued that it was not its job to do so. Hon. Members opposite have no monopoly in slum clearance. Rather, their records show that they have been laggards. Local authorities of Labour complexion were clearing slums in 1934, 1936 and up to 1939. We shall go on with the job and I hope that we shall eventually deal with the problem of slum property. I have one serious suggestion to make to the Minister.
  Mr. K. Thompson: Now we are getting down to it.
  Mr. Butler: The Minister should follow the line adopted by the Government in some other matters. The Government should buy all these houses and then sell them at knock-down prices, just as they sell nails and motorcars and the like. Just as they have bought orange juice, let them buy these slum properties from their friends the slum owners, put the addresses in a hat and let somebody make a bid for them.
  If the Government feel that there are certain cases where people, through no fault of their own, have purchased properties which in a short space of time have been termed slums and they want

  2231
  to help those people, it should be the Government's responsibility. The buck should not be passed to the local authorities. In so far as any extra payment should be made, the Government cannot abdicate their responsibility. If the Government want to call the tune, let them pay the piper.
  7.39 p.m.
  Mr. Geoffrey Rippon: I hardly know what to say in following the speech of the hon. Member for Hackney, Central (Mr. H. Butler). The hon. Member gave us a history lesson about slum clearance in London, which apparently related to pre-1934 days with which I and many of my hon. Friends are not very familiar. I should have thought that if the hon. Member had taken the trouble to study the slum clearance record between 1931 and 1939 he would have seen that he could not possibly sustain the attack which he has tried to make on my hon. and right hon. Friends.
  Mr. Lindgren: The hon. Member should ask his Liverpool pals.
  Mr. Rippon: I would prefer to deal with the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Mr. Smithers) and brought out by the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Collick), about the extent to which the Bill will encourage and assist local authorities in their slum clearance schemes.
  Time after time in my experience local authorities have encountered fierce opposition to their proposals for the acquisition and development of land for public purposes, including slum clearance, simply because of public resentment at the gap there is between the real value of their land or other property and the pi ice which is payable upon compulsory acquisition. As this gap grows wider—and it will grow wider the further we get away from 1947 values as far as development value is concerned—so public resentment grows.
  I am sure, therefore, that sooner or later we shall have to face the necessity for amending the basis of our present law of compensation upon compulsory acquisition. In the meantime, I feel that the House should welcome the Bill in so far as it is designed to give additional compensation in a limited number of cases to persons who would otherwise suffer acute
  2232
  hardship as a result of the compulsory purchase of their property.
  Mr. MacColl: Would the hon. Gentleman explain what he means by a true value of the property? He has been referring to the two-price system introduced by a Conservative Government in the Town Planning Act. We would agree with him on that, but this Bill has nothing to do with that problem. This Bill concerns the right price to be paid for an unfit house. How does the hon. Gentleman define the true value of an unfit house?
  Mr. Rippon: I will come to that in a moment. I am only saying, at this stage, that I support this Bill in so far as it is designed to narrow that gap in these circumstances. I understood that the hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) was with us on the need to provide some amelioration of hardship in the cases that fell under Clause 1.
  As I understand the position, there is no division of opinion on this matter, apart from the question of Government grants raised in the Amendment. In fact, it was only from the hon. Member for Hackney, Central and one or two other hon. Gentlemen opposite that we heard the suggestion that the Bill is designed in some way to help a certain class of people, that the Government are giving to their own pressure group some favoured treatment—I think that that was what the hon. Gentleman said. I recommend the hon. Gentleman to read the Daily Herald which said, the day after the Bill was published:
  "There is disappointment today for anyone who saw the chance of a racket in the Government proposal to pay extra compensation to owner-occupiers of slum houses when their homes are pulled down."
  I should have thought that most hon. Gentlemen opposite would agree with that, as the hon. and learned Member for Kettering agreed with it when he opened this debate on their behalf.
  It appears reasonable that additional compensation should be paid in these cases, especially where people bought their own houses for owner-occupation under scarcity conditions during and since the war. Those people face financial loss in circumstances which they could not reasonably have contemplated, partly because of the new standard of fitness contained in the Housing Repairs and

  2233
  Rents Act, 1954, and partly because at the time they acquired their houses, even if inquiries had been made of the local authority, they might well have been told that no slum clearance scheme as was contemplated in their area.
  I want to deal primarily with the Opposition Amendment which, I notice, has not received a great deal of support from hon. Gentlemen opposite who have followed the hon. and learned Member for Kettering. Certainly, it has received no support from the hon. Member for Clapham (Mr. Gibson), who said that the additional compensation would cost only a few shillings.
  It seems curious that the Opposition should have seen fit to put down an Amendment of this kind to a fairly modest Measure involving relatively little additional expenditure by the local authorities. It seems as if right hon. Gentlemen opposite have used a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Whilst I was much impressed with the vigour with which the hon. and learned Gentleman sprang to the defence of the local authorities, and by the way in which he ranged over the realm of local government finance, I felt that it would have been easier to follow him if the debate had taken place upon another occasion and upon a broader subject.
  Having been a member of a local authority for a considerable time, I regret that hon. Gentlemen opposite did not show the same tenderness towards the subject of local government finance when they were in office. I can only repeat what I have said before, that nothing has done so much damage to the structure of local government finance in recent years as the Local Government Act, 1948, for which they were responsible. [HON. MEMBERS: "Nonsense."] I should have thought that the Opposition would have hesitated to champion local authorities on this occasion when, as far as I understand the position, the local authorities are not complaining.
  Mr. Lindgren: Let us get this quite clear. The Urban District Councils' Association has circulated their vice-presidents who are hon. Members of this House, including Tory Members, who have been conspicuous by their absence today, asking them to raise the matter in the House because this is an unfair
  2234
  burden on local authorities, as the Association has informed the Minister.
  Mr. D. Jones: And the A.M.C., too.
  Mr. K. Thompson: But the Association does not want to make an issue of it.
  Mr. Rippon: Even if the Urban District Councils' Association has so informed its vice-presidents, that is not the only source of information as to what local authorities feel on these matters. I should think it fair to say that local authorities have given a general welcome to this Bill because they are in sympathy with its objects, for the reasons I gave at the beginning of my speech, namely, that they are alive to the difficulty which arises when they cannot carry public opinion with them on their slum clearance.
  I believe that, if there is a fair basis of compensation in these hardship cases affecting owner-occupiers, then a great many of the plans of the local authorities will go forward much more smoothly, much more efficiently, and with none of the difficulties that often arise at public inquiries into these matters.
  Apart from that, I think it fair to say prima facie that the local authority which acquires property should, in normal circumstances, be responsible for paying for it. Paragraph 4 of the Explanatory and Financial Memorandum states that:
  "The increased payments authorised by the Bill will be met out of rates, but may have the effect of increasing the Equalisation Grants payable by the Exchequer. It is not possible to estimate the amounts involved."
  That is a factor to be taken into account. Another factor to be taken into account, particularly in the London area, is that in many of these cases the expensive site subsidy will be payable under the existing housing legislation.
  The point I want to make is that the additional expenditure incurred would be for a relatively minor amount—at least, that is the view taken by the London County Council—and that the Bill is, therefore, to be welcomed. So the L.C.C., at any rate, is not pressing for any alteration in the grants system.
  Apart from the fact that a very small proportion of unfit houses are affected—if we accept the figure of the Minister, as I do, that the probable proportion in most areas is about 5 per cent. of the total number of houses affected—it would

  2235
  appear that there will not be an exceptionally heavy burden on the local authorities such as would justify putting in a Measure of this kind a complicated provision for the payment of Government grants on a special basis.
  I believe that hon. Gentlemen opposite, such as the hon. Member for Hackney, Central, have exaggerated the amounts that will be payable under the Bill. It has been suggested that the difference between paying virtually nothing for the "diseased house" on the basis of site value and some enormous sum for market value will involve the local authority in a considerable additional cost. I do not think that it will work out quite like that.
  I think that we ought to bear in mind the procedure which will have to be followed in assessing the amount of compensation which will be payable under Clause 1, which states that
  "… the appropriate authority shall make in respect of that interest a payment of an amount equal to its full compulsory purchase value …"
  which is not quite the same as its market value.
  Mr. H. Butler: Will the hon. Member fell us what is the difference?
  Mr. Rippon: The difference is that the full compulsory purchase value has to be assessed under the Housing Act 1936, which is read in conjunction with this Bill, in accordance with Clause 6, and, in particular, by reference to the Fourth Schedule of the Housing Act 1936, being a house which has been acquired under Part III of that Act.
  Mr. Sparks: What does that mean?
  Mr. Rippon: I will explain by reference to the Fourth Schedule. The relevant paragraph is paragraph 2:
  "If the arbitrator is satisfied that any premises are in a state of defective sanitation, or not in reasonably good repair, the compensation shall be the estimated value of the premises if put into a sanitary condition, or reasonably good repair, less the estimated expense of putting them into such condition or repair."
  J am afraid that the position which may arise in some cases is that, having regard to the fact that, having done that sum, one has to deduct, in accordance with Clause 1,
  2236
  "… the compensation which was or would have been payable in respect of the interest in connection with the compulsory purchase of the house at site value …"
  one may arrive at a situation by which, under the Bill, one may get a minus quantity rather than even the site value. I am not at all sure that we should not have a provision in this Clause that the owner of the property shall be entitled to the site value if that, in fact, is more than the compensation payable under Clause 1.
  In a very bad case it may well be that the effect of this Bill is negligible. But if we get a house which is technically unfit in accordance with the new definition in the 1954 Act and, therefore, properly included in the slum clearance area, if it is a house of which the ordinary man would say. "It has springy floor boards or lacks a damp-proof course, but, although technically unfit, is a reasonably good house," it seems unfair, in those circumstances, that we should pay only the site value, having regard to this new test of unfitness which is of a higher standard than the previous one.
  If we get a house which is technically unfit but which is really a good house and we apply the new basis, it may well be the case that there will be considerable compensation payable under the Bill, even after we have made the deduction for putting it in good order.
  In the case of the wholly "diseased house," I fear that there will not be very much payable to the owner-occupier.
  Mr. Ede: Why fear?
  Mr. Rippon: I will amend that word for the benefit of the right hon. Gentleman. I feel sure—I think that is right—that there will not be a great deal for the owner-occupier in those circumstances.
  There should be greater relief in cases of real hardship where people have bought at scarcity values, and I hope that particular importance will be attached to the provisions of Clause 3 which provide for a more generous "well-maintained" allowance. I am sure that hon. Members opposite will agree that it is fair that where people have spent their savings on a bad house and have genuinely done their best to put it into proper order, even though they had failed to bring it up to the standard to make it a fit house in the

  2237
  technical sense, it is right that they should receive some compensation for the repairs which they have done to the house.
  Because I believe that the amount involved in the Bill is relatively small and, therefore, does not justify the Amendment put clown by the Opposition, and because the Money Resolution is drawn so tightly that it may be difficult to raise these matters later, there are one or two points which might otherwise have been made in Committee to which I should like to draw attention.
  Undoubtedly, the strongest case for assistance is for those who bought at the time of acute scarcity after September, 1939, but, at the same time, I think it is true to say that the people who bought before the war may equally suffer hardship partly because of the new standard of fitness and really because, before the war, the worst slums, in spite of what the hon. Member for Hackney, Central said, had been largely cleared away. Therefore, many houses are included now in a slum clearance scheme which would riot have been included before the war, and the intending purchasers would not have been told that there was any danger.
  There is another aspect of this which may appeal more to hon. Members opposite. It may perhaps be invidious for a local authority to tell Mr. A. who bought his house in 1939, that he is to get this extra payment and to tell Mr. B, who bought his house in 1938, that he cannot—two people in the same road in comparable properties. One who bought 16 years ago gets the extra payment and the other, who bought 17 years ago, gets nothing. I should have thought that because of the small number of properties involved—5 per cent., to take the Minister's figure—it would have been more equitable to make a payment for what it is worth to all classes of owner-occupiers, no matter when they bought their houses.
  The second point which I would make arises out of the reference in the Clause to the necessity for the house to have been purchased during the "material period," that in between 1st September, 1939, to 13th December, 1955, or the date of declaration notice or order, whichever is the earlier. I would have thought that it might be considered equitable that the owner-occupier who had entered into a
  2238
  valid contract to buy within the "material period" should have been brought within the Bill. I think that a similar minor variation was referred to by the hon. Member for Preston, South (Mr. Green) relating to the additional payments, which are normally conditional upon occupation upon 13th December, 1955, by the owner or his family.
  It appears that there may be some cases where people, for a good reason, have not been in occupation, either themselves or through their families, on that material date. There may also be cases where people have vacated their premises through voluntary action under persuasion by the local authority before that date and they will be prejudiced as against the person who hung on to the last moment and waited to be physically evicted.
  These are minor points which ought to be adjusted in Committee, but, as I understand the position as it is at present, the Money Resolution may be drawn too tightly for these matters to be in order when we come to the Committee stage. It seems to me that there has been more shoddy, ill-considered un comprehensible piecemeal and tinkering legislation since the war than anyone would have believed possible 10 years ago. As a matter of principle it seems to me that it would be a great misfortune if reasonable and moderate Amendments could not be introduced or discussed during the Committee stage of the Bill in order to ensure that the Measure which emerges is as fair and just and equitable as Parliament can devise.
  Apart from these minor matters which I would not say ought necessarily to be put in the Bill, but which, I would say, ought to be considered as proper Amendments which might be made to the Bill, I join with hon. Members on this side of the House in welcoming this Measure. It is a modest Measure, but I think that it is a useful one having regard to the object which it is designed to achieve. I do not think that it will involve expenditure on the level which has been suggested in the Opposition Amendment. I think that it would be a pity if anything were said in this House which raised false hopes on the part of anybody as to the amount of compensation that may become payable under the Bill.

  2239
  We have to go a very long way before we can achieve a proper balance between the rights of the individual and the rights of the community upon the compulsory purchase of land. As the hon. Member for Widnes (Mr. MacColl) has rightly pointed out, that raises much wider issues than the ones we are discussing today, and perhaps even a different issue altogether. It is undoubtedly the main reason why public opinion has felt that something ought to be done to meet the cases of hardship with which the Bill is designed, so rightly and properly, to deal.
  8.0 p.m.
  Mr. David Jones: This Bill attempts to remedy certain cases of hardship which have arisen. I well know the experiences of very large numbers of persons employed in the railway service, in which I was engaged prior to 1945. Because of the necessity for them to move from station to station, frequently at short notice, because of the unusual and difficult hours they were called upon to work, and because of the reluctance of local authorities to put them on the housing lists because they had not previously resided in the areas to which they had moved, large numbers of railwaymen had to buy houses of the type we are discussing today. The Bill seeks to remedy a defect in this respect, but I do not think it will do it nearly as effectively as it would have been done if the Minister had placed the financial responsibility for the problem where it properly belongs.
  I have listened to the speeches of the hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Smithers) and the hon. Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Rippon). I find from a document issued in November, 1955, that there are in the City of Winchester 8,874 dwelling-houses and that 490 are estimated to be unfit. In other words, in Winchester one in 19 of the dwelling-houses are regarded as unfit. The County Borough of Norwich has 37,584 houses and there are 1,679 unfit ones, which represents one in 23.
  Figures in the document show that the average for the country is about one unfit house in 16. In Bournemouth, it is one in 400. The Borough of Hartlepool has 4,955 houses and 1,384 unfit ones. The Borough of Jarrow has 9,432 dwelling-houses, and 1,772 are unfit. The
  2240
  Urban District of Blaydon has 9,350 houses, and 1,010 are unfit.
  It may be all right for the Parliamentary Secretary to talk about an average of 5 per cent., but it is unevenly spread over the country. The expenditure necessitated by the Bill is bound to be considerable in a very large number of areas which have the biggest slum clearance problem. It will be very much more difficult for the older towns to deal with the problem. It is no use the Minister or the Parliamentary Secretary telling us that it is really 5 per cent. over the country. We must face the problem as it is likely to exist in the areas where it is worst and where it will be difficult to deal with it.
  After all, on 13th December, the Minister said:
  From a sample which I have taken of compulsory purchase orders which have come through our hands in the last year or so, it looks as though the proportion of unfit houses which are occupied by owners is probably about 5 per cent."—[OFFICIAL REPORT. 13th December, 1955; Vol. 547, c. 1015.]
  We are entitled to suggest to the right hon. Gentleman that the percentage is likely to be considerably more than that in many places. To the extent that the problem does not exist in towns like Winchester, Norwich and Bournemouth, it must exist to a greater extent in other areas.
  Another interesting thing about the Minister's statement on 13th December was that he gave no indication whatever that he would place the financial responsibility entirely upon local authorities. Reading that statement again today, it seems to me that the Minister implied that he himself would accept the responsibility. That was the impression formed by the local authority associations. The hon. Member for Walton (Mr. K. Thompson) said that the Association of Municipal Corporations has not raised the matter as an issue, but it has certainly circularised all its vice-presidents who are hon. Members of the House. I have a copy of a letter, dated 26th March, in which it points out the objections which it has to the Bill and asks that they should be raised during the Second Reading.
  Mr. K. Thompson: Would the hon. Gentleman care to read the letter to the House?
  Mr. Jones: That Association is concerned, first, about responsibility being placed on local authorities.
  Mr. Thompson: Read the letter.
  Mr. Jones: I will certainly read the letter. It says:
  "This Bill will come before the House of Commons for its Second Reading on Wednesday next.… Some time ago, when local authorities were beginning to resume their slum clearance operations, several members of the Association expressed their concern at their inability to relieve the hardship suffered by certain owner-occupiers who had acquired slum houses at high prices during the period of acute housing shortage, many of them having substantial mortgage debts for which they would remain personally responsible.…"
  The letter calls attention to the fact that to suggest that it ought to be met by the Exchequer equalisation grant is not satisfactory because the grant varies from 53 per cent. in the case of Merthyr Tydvil to 1 per cent. in the cases of Norwich, Gloucester and West Ham. It points out that there are very many towns, such as Birmingham, Manchester, Portsmouth, Southampton, Great Yarmouth, Ipswich, and Chester, which:
  "…have comparatively large slum clearance problems but will, of course, receive no Exchequer equalisation grant.…"
  It also points out: that there are non-county boroughs and other urban districts which also have substantial slum clearance problems.
  I can think of any number of municipal boroughs and urban districts in the industrial parts of the country which have heavy slum clearance problems and do not receive Exchequer equalisation grants except by way of capitation grants from their county councils. If the Minister wants to get the enthusiasm of the local authorities in tackling the problem he had better look again at the question of financial assistance.
  If these difficulties require to be tackled they must be tackled in the only proper fashion. The Minister ought not to place responsibility on the local authorities. The suggestion has been made to the local authorities that the subsidies embodied in the Housing Subsidies Bill will take care of the added expense incurred by them in dealing with these matters. It is not without significance that in the negotiations by the right hon. Gentleman and his officers with the local authorities no mention was made of that matter and that the Minister did not mention it
  2242
  when he made his statement to the House on 13th December.
  It is also not without significance to note that the Housing Subsidies Bill had been introduced many days before the December statement was made and that, therefore, it is apparently an afterthought on the part of the right hon. Gentleman to argue that the £22 1s. now paid for slum clearance must include the added payment. It occurred to him to endeavour to avoid his obligations under the Bill. The local authority associations are definitely opposed to the Bill in its present form, because they feel that the financial obligation which will be placed upon them is considerably heavier than they could be expected to bear having regard to their additional commitments.
  I want to raise two other points. The first is whether these payments ought not to be made to cases where there has been a voluntary arrangement with the local authority to buy properties in advance of an order being made. The co-operative and public-spirited citizen who decides to make a deal with the local authority at the beginning of the acquisition of a site and to dispose of his property voluntarily to the local authority is to be treated in an inferior fashion to the person who sits tight and says, "You have to pay if you want to get me out of the house". The right hon. Gentleman says, "We will pay him increased compensation, but the public-spirited citizen will get lower compensation". I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will look at the matter again.
  Another problem exercising the minds of local authorities is the case of the slum landlord who has taken advantage of the housing shortage to sell a vacant house to a man that is badly in need of one for a modest down-payment and an annual payment over a period of 20 years, the deeds to be transferred at the end of the transaction. I understand that there are many cases in the records of local authorities of this kind of thing. It may very well be that local authorities and the Ministry will be hoodwinked. There is a danger that the advantages of the Bill will be reaped by slum landlords for whom they were never intended. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will look at this type of case.
  The greatest blemish in the Bill was pinpointed by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison). It is that, if the Minister

  2243
  really believes in slum clearance and believes that the sites should be cleared as quickly as possible, he will make it possible for even the poorest local authority to get on with the job by putting the financial responsibility for paying compensation where it rightly belongs, and that is on the Treasury.
  8.16 p.m.
  Brigadier Terence Clarke: I hope that the hon. Member for The Hartlepools (Mr. D. Jones) will forgive me if I do not follow closely upon what he said. I would rather touch upon a different aspect of the matter.
  I am grateful to the Minister for introducing the Bill. For a long time pressure has been put on him by myself and by at least one other hon. Member to try to understand the problem of the owner-occupier who, we felt, was having a very raw deal, especially in our constituencies. Although the Minister says that there may be only a small percentage of them over the whole country, in Portsmouth there is a comparatively large number, something between 10 and 15 per cent. That is because Portsmouth is a Service town. At the end of the war, when the soldiers and sailors came back, they were forced to buy property at extortionate prices because there was a very great shortage of accommodation.
  Mr. Lindgren: Is the hon. and gallant Member openly admitting that, even in a Service town like Portsmouth, Tory slum landlords are prepared to swindle the Service man who fought for his country?
  Mr. Rippon: And Socialist slum landlords as well.
  Brigadier Clarke: What it really amounts to is that during six years of Socialism hardly a house went up in Portsmouth. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] I did not want to bring controversial matter into my speech. It was entirely due to the Government which was supported by the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Lindgren) that we had housing difficulties, plus Hitler. The hon. Gentleman ought to have tried to help Portsmouth, knowing that Hitler had done nothing to help us. Perhaps he will now let me make my speech in my own way.
  The Service people came back. There was a housing shortage, and it was
  2244
  not due to the landlords. I do not represent a single landlord. If the hon. Gentleman had seen my constituency he would know that it consists of ordinary working-class people who vote Tory because they know they are voting for the better sort of Government.
  The Service people paid reasonable prices at that time and not "spiv" prices. Under the existing laws they could have been deprived of their houses and simply given the site value. That would have happened but for the fact that the Minister of Housing and Local Government broke his holiday when he was over in Bembridge and came down for a day. I showed him some of the houses which were going to be declared slums and for which the owner-occupiers were to get nothing but site value. My right hon. Friend must have been greatly impressed with what he saw.
  Some of these houses are like new pins, but they have no larders or inside lavatories, and so they are declared unfit. They may be quite fit otherwise in all respects and are lived in perfectly happily by the occupiers. These people will not be delighted to read the speech made by the hon. Member for Hackney, Central (Mr. H. Butler), who seemed to think that they were all Tories and ought not to be paid anything at all. As a matter of fact, they are about fifty-fifty Conservatives and Socialists, and I wish to have fair compensation for them all. I was very surprised at the hon. Member making such a speech.
  These people are now to get fair compensation, which is the least we can give them. Even so, they are very reluctant to be moved from their houses, in which they have lived for a very long time. All their associates are around them there, and they do not regard the area as a slum area at all. They will be picked up and either put into a council house or called upon to buy a house elsewhere. A house cannot be bought for £800 these days, and if they are to make themselves into owner-occupiers again they are faced with a down deposit and a considerable amount of rent for a long time. I admit that they get a new house instead of an old one, but if a person can see himself living in a house and not paying any rent—and having a certain income—he can plan the rest of his life. If someone just picks up such a man and says "This

  2245
  house is not fit to live in—you must go and live there "—and he has to start paying rent all over again, it is a considerable hardship, especially in old age.
  I would ask the Minister to look very carefully into these houses that are being condemned as slums. According to the book which has been published, there are 7,000 slum houses in Portsmouth. I do not believe there are as many as 700 unfit for human occupation at the present time. I ask the Minister to look very carefully at this, because there are 16,000 people still on the housing list as a result of the administration of a housing policy of hon. Members opposite and those who think like them. We have got on immensely in the last four or five years. Before that we had a most appalling housing programme in the city. We have built many houses recently, and if the Minister will give us a few more years before these old houses are pulled down we shall have built enough new ones to be able to consider whether or not these other places are slums. By comparison with other cities, I would say that there are very few slums in Portsmouth. People living there do not regard their houses as slums.
  I am very glad that the cost of paying compensation has been put on the local authority. The local authority will be paying the bill and will have to think again as to whether or not many of the places really should be pulled down. It is much easier to pull down a place if someone else is to pay the cost of it, and now the responsibility is entirely on the shoulders of the local authority. The equalisation grant is quite a different problem. I know that Portsmouth does not get it—although it should—but I do not think that that should be mixed up in any way with the slum clearance problem.
  Mr. D. Jones: If the hon. and gallant Member is referring to what I said, I was merely pointing out that a large number of towns like Portsmouth do not get even the Exchequer equalisation grant, so the whole cost must be borne by the local people, which we think wrong.
  Brigadier Clarke: I agree with the hon. Member to that extent, but I am glad that the cost does fall on the rates and not on the central government, because it will make the local authorities more
  2246
  careful in condemning houses. The equalisation grant is another matter.
  I can find nothing in the Measure to help the Service man who, through no fault of his own, is moved away. It may be that his ship is moved to Malta, Gibraltar or elsewhere—or the soldier may be sent to Cyprus. When he goes away his wife, if she can, follows him. If she cannot go with him she may go to live with her mother or someone else. The house is then nominally unoccupied on the specific date and the wife finds that it is being pulled down without compensation. It is not fair to send men away and then to say, "You are not the owner-occupier because you are not living at the address on that date." I hope that in Committee the Minister will put something in the Bill to safeguard Service men who are doing their duty outside the country.
  I am not in favour of slum landlords getting any compensation, but there are certain landlords who are good landlords. Very often they are only small, ordinary working-class people who may have saved up and bought a couple of houses. Not all of them are the "spiv" type of landlord. These people who own a couple of houses are, perhaps, old-age pensioners, living in one house and letting the other at a reasonable rent. In most cases the two houses are identical, and it seems queer to me that the authority should say, "In regard to A in which you live we will give £600, because you bought it when property was scarce, but in regard to B which you let at 24s. a week you can only have the site value." It does not seem logical to me.
  I know that the Minister is facing great difficulties here, because all the hon. Members opposite will howl like a lot of wolves "They are helping the landlord again", which will frighten the Tory Minister into not giving compensation to the chap who ought to have it. I suppose hon. Members opposite are entitled to howl like wolves. It is part of the game which they are more or less paid to play, but it does not impress in this case.
  I would like to raise the case of a Mr. Clarke, who lives in Paradise Row. He is no relative. He has nine children and he was dispossessed of his house by the local authority and put into a council house about three or four weeks before

  2247
  the crucial date on which he should have been an owner-occupier in order to get his compensation. He would have been in his house today if the council had not picked him up, put him in a council house and given him what was considered fair compensation, which was a little above the site value. Mr. Clarke's house was badly bombed—the whole area was bombed and has been made into a car park, and his house is in the middle of that car park. The council assure me that it has not taken the house in order to make a better car park, but it is very difficult to make Mr. Clarke believe that.
  Before buying the house on mortgage, Mr. Clarke got a clearance that the house was not to be pulled down. He got it on mortgage—and mortgagees look into these matters very carefully. He had £300 worth of war damage work done less than three years ago, and now he cannot get even £300 for the house. It is an appalling waste of public money. Mr. Clarke might have been told that his house was unfit, that war damage work should not be done on it and that he should not, in fact, buy it at all. Having ben allowed to buy it he now has an enormous mortgage and, as I say, was turned out of it a few weeks before the date on which, had he stayed, he would have got reasonable compensation.
  Mr. Mahon: The hon. and gallant Gentleman speaks of a man who has gone to a council house from a house scheduled for slum clearance and which he bought on a mortgage. Supposing the Government did pay him the amount, to whom would the money go—to him or to the mortgagee?
  Brigadier Clarke: That is a legal matter. I would say that it would go to the mortgagee because the man owes that money to the mortgagee, but it is of little consequence to Mr. Clarke because he has still got to pay the mortgagee the amount that he owes.
  Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Rhys Hopkin Morris): It seems to me that the hon. and gallant Member is going into Committee details rather than confining himself to the Second Reading.
  Brigadier Clarke: I apologise for getting involved in this matter, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. I know what the hon. Gentleman was trying to get at, but he was
  2248
  wrong. The man borrowed the money from the bank. The bank can demand money back and the man has got to pay it back. He has had a raw deal and the Minister ought to look into this case, the details of which I have already sent him on two occasions, and if necessary I will send them to him a third time.
  8.30 p.m.
  Mr. Albert Evans: I am somewhat surprised that the hon. and gallant Member for Portsmouth, West (Brigadier Clarke) should have challenged the return made by his council on the number of unfit houses in the area of Portsmouth. The Portsmouth local authority gave its return to the Minister and estimated that some 7,000 houses in Portsmouth were unfit for human habitation. The hon. and gallant Gentleman queried that with the Government and suggested that only 700 were really unfit. The hon. and gallant Gentleman is entitled to his opinion, but he should bear in mind that the return made by his council was made after due consideration by the medical officer of health for the city of Portsmouth, and he should not lightly cast aside that considered estimate.
  I noticed that the hon. and gallant Gentleman at one point in his speech asked that slum houses other than those occupied by their owners should receive additional compensation for which the Bill provides. I think he is treading on very dangerous ground. His right hon. Friend would certainly not countenance any suggestion that the provisions of this Bill should be made wider and that the additional compensation should go to owners other than owner-occupiers.
  Brigadier Clarke: I warned the House that the wolves would howl.
  Mr. Evans: I should like to offer half a word of congratulation to the Minister for his new-found concern for the owner-occupier or, at any rate, for a limited number of owner-occupiers. Up to now he and the Government have done nothing at all to assist the owner-occupier. Indeed, we know that over the years they have piled up penalising rates of interest upon owner-occupiers. Perhaps this is a small sign of repentance for past misdeeds and the right hon. Gentleman is now coming to the rescue of some of the more unfortunately placed owner-occupiers.

  2249
  We welcome this attempt by the Minister to come to the rescue of these people who and themselves in difficult circumstances, who have been obliged to buy slum or sub-standard property in order to get a house and who have subsequently found themselves subject to a clearance order. We welcome his sympathy and his attempt to assist them, but having said that, we should remember that there are certain principles involved in this Bill which we should consider instead of allowing our sympathy to run away with us.
  First, we must impress upon the Minister that our Amendment is not a frivolous one. We believe that he is not doing his duty by the local authorities in putting this additional burden upon them. I have tried to get some estimate of the size of this problem and of how much he is really placing upon local authorities. It is very difficult to know exactly, but we can make some rough estimate. We know that during the next ten years 800,000 unfit houses are to be cleared—400,000 in the next five-year period and the remaining 400,000, according to the return, presumably will be dealt with in the following five years.
  We know that some 800,000 houses are due for demolition over the ten-year period covered by this Bill. On the Minister's sample we can, with rough accuracy, arrive at the conclusion that 40,000 slum houses which will be cleared during the term covered by this Bill will be occupied by their owners. That is for England and Wales. The Minister shakes his head, but I have taken the number of unfit houses to be dealt with in the ten-year period and I have taken the number of owner-occupied houses from his 5 per cent. sample.
  Mr. Powell: The 5 per cent. includes the houses to be dealt with by Clause 1, but it is not identical with them.
  Mr. Evans: There are qualifications to be made on that rough estimate, but it is not wildly out to say that the 5 per cent. sample is a good sample on which to work.
  We get a rough figure—it may be a few more or a few less—of 40,000 which have to be dealt with under Clauses 1 and 2, since Clause 2 deals with houses occupied as business premises. I think 40,000 is not wildly out as an estimate.
  2250
  It is difficult to reach any firm figure of how much compensation will be paid, but from cases which have passed through my hands I would say that about £200 to £300 would be the average amount of additional compensation for these 40,000 houses. If that is a fair, or even a rough, basis of computation, we see that over the whole of the 800,000 unfit houses which will be dealt with in the next ten years the rough total will be £12 million.
  That is not an immense sum. Indeed, the Minister said this is only a small Bill. It is, however, a necessary Bill containing some good parts. The amount of money involved, £12 million on my computation, is quite a small amount when set against the Exchequer expenditure over the next ten years. It would be an almost negligible impost upon the Treasury during the next ten years. I should have thought, therefore, that in justice to local authorities the Minister would have asked the Treasury to carry this burden.
  I speak seriously to the right hon. Gentleman: surely it is part of his duty to defend local authorities at the Treasury, and in my opinion he has again failed to do so. It is not only in this small case that he has faltered and has thrust the financial burden on the local authorities. This small sum is an addition to past burdens which he has put on the local authorities while he has been Minister. One would have thought that to redress to some extent his past lack of fighting spirit on behalf of local authorities at the Treasury he would have found it in him to stand up to the Treasury and insist that this small amount should be a central charge and should not fall upon local authorities.
  It would be bad enough if this total compensation of £10 million to £12 million over ten years could be spread evenly over the country. The Minister recently replied to my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison)—-a quite inadequate reply, as my hon. and learned Friend said—that he was confident that the effect upon the rates would be very small. Even if that is true as a broad statement applying to the country, the Bill and the financial burdens involved in it will bear very heavily upon certain local authorities, and it will be the inequality of the burden which will be the main, outstanding injustice in the Bill.

  2251
  We know that the extent of the problem facing local authorities who have to re-house people from the slums varies considerably from area to area. We have only to look at this Command Paper 953, giving the returns for slum clearance, to see at a glance that this burden is very unevenly felt by different local authorities. In Bethnal Green, which is known to the Minister at first hand and where he has had some practical experience, the authority has to clear in the next five years 2,434 slum houses. In Stepney, where again he has had first-hand experience, the local authority will have to clear i,888 slum houses in the next five years.
  When we turn to Hove, we find that in five years the task will be to clear one. The Minister has signified some responsibility and direct interest in Bethnal Green where the figure is 2,400-odd; let us compare that with the situation in the wealthy borough of Holborn where only 36 slum properties are due to be cleared in the next five years.
  It is obvious that the burden upon local authorities will be heaviest where the problem is greatest. Those very areas which are in housing distress, if I may put it like that, where there is the greatest task to perform, will suffer the heaviest burden in cost under this administration That is quite wrong.
  The Minister has shown some interest in Bethnal Green, and I hope he will think very seriously about the hard-pressed central urban authorities which are faced with such a tremendous problem in comparison with places like Bournemouth and Hove.
  In Bethnal Green, where some 2,400 houses are to be cleared in the next five years, on the basis of 5 per cent. owner-occupation there will be 121 cases to be dealt with under this Bill. If a sum of, shall we say, £300 is given in compensation, the total cost will be some £36,000. In Bethnal Green that is equal to a Is. 8d. rate.
  Mr. Powell rose—
  Mr. Evans: Never mind about it being spread over 80 years. I know the Parliamentary Secretary is going to say that.
  Mr. Lindgren: Even if it be spread over 80 years, that merely means that even more goes to the financiers in interest charges.
  Mr. Evans: I am not going to be drawn into argument about the refined calculations made by the Parliamentary Secretary. He can be as clever as he likes. I want the House to look at the stark contrast which is presented. In Bethnal Green, the compensation the local authority will have to find under the Bill will be equivalent to a Is. 8d. rate. In the neighbouring Metropolitan Borough of Holborn, it will be equivalent to less than one-tenth of a penny.
  There is the contrast. The poorest, the most hard-pressed, local authority will have to bear the greatest burden. The injustice of that has caused us to put down this Amendment. But for that injustice to the local authorities there probably would not have been that Amendment before the House and the Bill would have received its Second Reading without opposition from this side of the House. It is because of the Minister's lack of concern for hard-pressed local authorities, because we believe that he as Minister of Housing should fight their battles at the Treasury, that we have moved this Amendment which we invite the House to accept.
  I want now to deal very briefly with another aspect of this matter, which has already been mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Widnes (Mr. MacColl) and also by my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, South-East (Miss Bacon). They both were concerned that some of this compensation money would go to unscrupulous people who had been dealing in slum property during recent years. We know it has been going on. We know this "spivvery," as it has been called, has been widespread during the recent housing shortage. The hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Smithers) dismissed it by saying it was human nature and that nothing could be done about it. We do not accept that view. Where we see fraudulent dealings and innocent people being fleeced, we want to do something about it.
  I want to give details of an actual case which occurred whereby an unscrupulous dealer will receive compensation money. A constituent of mine in August, 1953, desperately needed a house and took a lease on a small house. The whole matter was arranged by a West End firm of agents who acted in a dual capacity. They arranged the mortgage and put the

  2253
  whole thing through. My constituent, a simple working man, signed on the dotted line and engaged to pay £400. Two months later there was a clearance order on the property. Those of us who have experience in local government know that anyone could and out from a local authority that such action is to be taken. Local authorities are always willing to assist and they wish to hide nothing at all. This was a clear case of deception. It was dealing with the finances of innocent people and avoiding the penalties on small landlords by passing them on to innocent poor people.
  I ask the Minister to think about that aspect of the problem. It might not be possible to deal with it under this Bill, but he must agree that if possible he should take action to prevent public money passing to the kind of person who deals unscrupulously in small property. I ask the Minister to consider that matter and devise sonic means of dealing with it if he can. I am not sure that it is possible to do so within the confines of this Bill, but the right hon. Gentleman ought at least to consider whether that can be done.
  I think that some Committee points will have to be raised on Clause 2, which deals with business premises. There is no limit there on the time at which the house was built; it could be in the 1930s or at some other time and still come within the compass of Clause 2. That is quite different from the position in Clause I which deals with the ordinary dwelling. We shall have to look closely' at that provision when we reach Committee stage.
  We can approve this Bill if the Minister will show courage and face the Treasury again. The Money Resolution has not yet gone through, and need not go through tonight. If the right hon. Gentleman showed courage as the Minister of Housing and Local Government and went boldly to the Treasury he would reassure some of us that he was concerned about local authorities. I hope he will employ his undoubted obstinacy in that regard, for I believe that he has to fight the Treasury. The sum involved is not large, but a principle is also involved. If the right hon. Gentleman will take that course, I hope we shall get this Bill through without delay, because the people
  2254
  concerned have not large resources and they cannot wait for their money.
  Once the argument is out of the way, I hope that we shall not waste time in getting the Bill through. I hope that, whoever makes the payment, the procedure will not be long drawn out. It is a failing of local authorities as well as of the Treasury to keep people waiting for months before they are paid in these circumstances. Therefore, I hope that when the argument is out of the way we shall all do what we can to make the Measure work as speedily as possible.
  8.49 p.m.
  Mr. T. L. Iremonger: I should like to say a word or two about this Bill if only because I have been very critical of the abuses and injustices—I do mean injustices and not the kind of fractious and bogus injustices of which we have heard from hon. Members opposite—which the Bill seeks to remedy.
  I particularly welcome this sign of grace from a Minister who is responsible for a Department which has become regarded in the public mind as the repository of those Socialist doctrines of punitive vindictiveness against the institution of private property.
  I welcome the Bill. My borough council welcomes it. Never mind who has to pay for it, they have been appalled at the thought of the injustices that would have had to be remedied had it not been for the Bill. I know that constituents of mine who will be effected by it welcome it, too. For all I know, there may be sinister figures in the world such as those who have been conjured up by hon. Members opposite—
  Mr. Ede: They are not conjured up.
  Mr. Iremonger: All I know about is my own constituents, who have been subjected to intolerable injustices which I could not possibly defend to them and which will be remedied by the Bill. Therefore, I welcome the Bill and I welcome it on their behalf, just as my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Portsmouth, West (Brigadier Clarke) welcomed it on behalf of his constituents.
  There have been times in this debate when some hon. Members opposite have departed from the standard of magnanimity which the House has been accustomed to expect from them. I think

  2255
  that the spirit in which the Bill has been received is in some respects quite deplorable.
  I want to make two points arising out of the speeches which have been made by hon. Members opposite. I am sorry that the hon. Lady the Member for Leeds, South-East (Miss Bacon) is not present, because I do not want to do her an injustice and I am not certain that I properly understood her argument. Her case was that the Bill would make the compensation payable for houses which are to be demolished greater than it would be were it not for the Bill, and that, therefore, a lot of "spivs" would speculate in property and thereby get compensation which they would not have got; or, as it was put, if they are landlords they will prevail upon their sitting tenants to buy the houses and divide the spoils with them. That was how I understood the hon. Lady's argument, and if I took it that way, it is quite possible that that is what she meant.
  Surely, it is impossible for anybody who has read the Bill to sustain that argument, for Clause 1 states that the person to be compensated—the owner-occupier—must have been in occupation on 13th December last and made the transaction during the material period, which the interpretation Clause defines as between September, 1939, and 13th December last year, or possibly earlier. If hon. Members read the number of other subsections in the interpretation Clause, they will see that it is quite impossible for anybody row to buy one of these houses and to cash in on the Bill. If I take the hon. Lady's argument correctly—
  Mr. Lindgren indicated dissent.
  Mr. Iremonger: That seemed to me to be the point she was making, but anybody who has read the Bill correctly knows that that argument cannot be sustained.
  The hon. Member for Widnes (Mr. MacColl) asked how the amount of compensation should be determined when a house was by definition valueless. Again, I may be wrong, but I think that the answer is "Read the Bill," because it is laid down there that the compensation shall be the full compulsory purchase value, and that, again, is defined—admittedly, most inadequately, but, all
  2256
  the same, defined with precision—in the interpretation Clause of the Bill. [HON. MEMBERS: "Precision?"] Yes, but with the most unsatisfactory kind of precision which always confuses me. Indeed, we can have precision that is unsatisfactory, because we can have the kind of precision which puts everybody to a great deal of trouble in order to find out what is meant, and that is what the Parliamentary draftsmen do. They put such things into their Bills very largely in order to conceal their meaning.
  If anybody takes the trouble to read the interpretation Clause and looks at what is the meaning of the full compulsory purchase value, he will get a very precise definition, but for anybody who tries to understand the Bill it is rather like going up a series of staircases in the dark and arriving at landings that are not there. If one goes on with the process, eventually one will arrive—[Interruption.] I always carry the Housing Act, 1936, in my hare pocket; that is what I have a hare pocket for. Anybody who goes to the trouble to look at the interpretation Clause will eventually arrive at Schedule 4 of the 1936 Act, and there, at last, will be found the basis upon which this full compulsory purchase value is assessed.
  I do not think it is really fair for the hon. Member for Widnes to say, as I understood him to say, that this Bill leaves in the air what the payment is to be, because I think that, in its own peculiar way, the Bill tries to make that absolutely clear.
  Mr. MacColl: The point I was trying to make was actually made with rather more clarity and precision by the hon. Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Rippon), and it was that if the premises were unfit and injurious to health the compensation might well be negative, because the value would be less than the site value. That was what the hon. Member for Norwich, South said, and that was the point that I was trying to put across—that the full compensation value is assessed, after taking into account how much it would cost to put the house into repair, and, therefore, make it habitable. That is by definition an unreasonable amount in relation to the value of the house in the case of a slum.
  Mr. Iremonger: I thought that what the hon. Gentleman was doing was not

  2257
  complaining about the definition given in the Bill, but complaining that, when one found out what the value was, it was not enough. I should have thought that, in that case, he would have been the last to complain, because the burden of the complaints from the other side of the House has been that people will have to pay a lot for something that is not worth anything. If the effect of the interpretation of the Bill is to make it worth nothing, I should have thought that the hon. Gentleman would have been perfectly happy. I apologise to him if he was not complaining about the difficulty of finding out what the Bill means.
  As hon. Members have said there are some gaps in this Bill, and I support what my hon. Friend the Member for Preston, South (Mr. Green) and my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Portsmouth, West (Brigadier Clarke) have said. It should surely be possible to stop the gap whereby serving members of the Fores are, quite possibly, to be penalised because they do not fulfil the conditions of Clause 1. It would be quite possible for a Service man to be away on the critical date, whereas he was, in every other respect, one of the people whom this Bill is intended to serve. I hope that in Committee we shall be able to remedy this very serious defect, because I think that a great number of those whom this Bill is designed to help will, in fact, be deprived of its help on this point.
  I find the Amendment quite lamentable. We are being invited to decline to give a Second Reading to a Bill which sets out to and, in my opinion, does remedy a patent injustice, because the cost of remedying that injustice should be borne, according to hon. and right hon. Members opposite, by the Exchequer instead of by the local authorities. It is perfectly clear what has happened. Hon. and right hon. Members opposite saw the Bill and said, "We cannot have this." They are fundamentally opposed to the institution of private property. They said, "Here is a Bill which, on the face of it, is right and equitable. How shall we oppose it?" They searched their minds for a reason like a water diviner searching in the desert and said, "We can call in aid the oppressed local authorities."
  If hon. and right hon. Members opposite divide the House, they will be dividing against the principle of the Bill,
  2258
  which is to give fair compensation. The Amendment is merely a device for opposing a Bill to which they object in principle, but have not the courage to say so.
  Mr. Mitchison: May I ask the hon. Member to accept it from me that that is quite untrue? Our reason for opposing the Bill is the reason given in the reasoned Amendment and no other. I told the Parliamentary Secretary several times, when I spoke at the beginning of the debate, that we should have given the Bill an unopposed Second Reading if there had been a proper provision for Exchequer subsidy, and I expressed the hope that nothing of the kind the hon. Member is now saying would be said because I do not regard it as fair and honest criticism of the attitude which we have taken.
  Mr. Iremonger: I am most grateful to the hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) for making that point. I am very glad that he said that.
  Mr. D. Jones: My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) said it before.
  Mr. Iremonger: I am quite sure that the hon. and learned Member for Kettering believes it, but he is very innocent. I am sure that that is true of him, otherwise he would not have said it, but I have heard what his supporters on the back benches have said and it is impossible to believe that the hon. and learned Member is supported in that respect.
  Mr. A. Evans: Is the hon. Member pointing his finger at anybody in particular?
  Mr. Iremonger: I was not looking along my finger, so I cannot say whether I was pointing at the hon. Member. If he thinks that I was pointing at him he can assure me, if he wishes, that he would like to be associated with the excuse made by the hon. and learned Member for Kettering.
  Dr. King: Can the hon. Member justify his charge in view of the fact that a Motion on this subject was signed by hon. Members on both sides of the House?
  Mr. Iremonger: I am glad that the hon. Member has risen. I had not noticed him in the House, not that he evades notice. If I had seen him I certainly could not

  2259
  have said what I did say without a blush at failing to exclude him. I am happy to acknowledge that the hon. Member has to be excepted. I was grateful to him for the moral courage which he showed on the occasion when, alone of his party, he signed a Motion on the Order Paper in my name and the names of some of my hon. Friends. I am happy to except any other hon. Member who would care to rise and ask that he be excluded.
  Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Rhys Hopkin Morris): I think that the hon. Member might now come back to the Second Reading.
  Mr. Iremonger: I have been led astray, Mr. Deputy-Speaker.
  Mr. MacColl: That is not difficult.
  Mr. Iremonger: But the journey has been worth while. With the exceptions which I am happy to acknowledge, I assert that the Amendment is supported on principle and not on a matter of detail by a great many hon. Members opposite. They dislike the Bill in principle because they hate owner-occupiers of private property and know that as long as the country is salted and seasoned by owner-occupiers of private property there will be no success for Socialism.
  Mr. D. Jones: Humbug and rubbish.
  Mr. Iremonger: Speaking of humbug and rubbish, I will not debate with an expert, but, as I have said, I am moved to support the Bill simply because of the personal experience that has come my way from constituents. They have come to me with grievances that seemed to me to be undeniable. I brought them to the attention of my right hon. Friend and was glad to find that these things were much in his mind. This House should be glad that in this Department of all Departments there is a Minister who has the courage and sincerity to bring forward a Bill which gives defence to a certain type of citizen of this country who is so often the victim of the Department.
  I welcome the Bill. Outside this House, where less attention is paid to doctrine than is paid here, the Bill will also be welcomed. I thank the Minister for it, and I shall be glad if the House will leave the doctrinaire nonsense of hon. Members opposite and give the Bill a Second Reading.
  9.7 p.m.
  Mr. G. Lindgren: I will start by referring to something on which we all agree so that later we can disagree with the hon. Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Iremonger). I want to pay a compliment to the Parliamentary Secretary for the manner in which he introduced the Bill. The hon. Gentleman did so with the competence and clarity which we have come to expect from him at the Box, and he replied with good humour to the continual interruptions made by my hon. Friends who wanted clarification of certain points. Such interjections often put speakers off their stroke, but the Parliamentary Secretary dealt with them very competently and was not put off his speech.
  Having said that, may I tell the hon. Member for Ilford, North that most hon. Members in this House would agree that the existing law is sufficient to compensate slum landlords when their property is taken over by the local authority for the purpose of demolition. There is an obligation on a landlord to maintain his property fit for human habitation. It is true that there is a power on the part of the local authority to require him to do so, and even to do the work for him and to charge him for it if he does not do it himself. Where, however, a landlord has so neglected his duty as a property owner as to render the property for which he is responsible unfit for human habitation, I should think that few hon. Members on either side of the House would agree that he is entitled to compensation after a clearance order has been made and the property is demolished.
  What we are really dealing with in this Bill is the slum landlord who, in an unholy alliance with estate agents, financiers and sometimes solicitors, sells property to unsuspecting individuals to whom it should never have been sold.
  Mr. Iremonger: I may be wrong, but I do not see that those people will get anything out of the Bill. If injustice is done to the owner-occupier, it is because the owner-occupier has his property acquired for less than its value.
  Mr. Deputy-Speaker: The hon. Member is not using an intervention for its proper purpose.
  Mr. Lindgren: If I continue the point I am making, the hon. Member for Ilford, North will perhaps understand what I am trying to convey. It may be difficult, however, because he completely misunderstood what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, South-East (Miss Bacon). The hon. Member for Kirkdale (Mr. N. Pannell) and the hon. Lady the Member for Leeds, South-East gave instances of the alliances I have mentioned, and later I will give some instances from my constituency. Landlords, knowing that a clearance order was to be made for certain property in alliance with estate agents, auctioneers, valuers and independent financiers—not building societies—with the same solicitor acting for both parties, have used the housing shortage to induce people to buy property which should never have been sold. That shortage arose immediately after the war. I and the majority of my hon. Friends on this side of the House would agree with the Parliamentary Secretary in his opening statement that there is much to be said for making the date from which this Bill operates 1945 and not 1939, and had the Government put that date in the Bill there would again have been no objection from this side of the House.
  It is true, as the Parliamentary Secretary said, that the same type of landlord took advantage of persons who were bombed out of London and other cities and went to live in the rural areas to sell them properties which ought never to have been sold. Some of them had been empty for a considerable time, and but for the fact that the local authorities had not proceeded in those days with demolition, they would have been condemned and the property pulled down.
  I can give the hon. Gentleman examples in my own constituency. Much of the debate today has centred quite naturally on Liverpool, Leeds and London, but the slum landlord exists just as much in the rural areas as he does in the towns. The hon. Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Rippon), who has a very creditable record in local government in the borough of Surbiton, referred in his speech to the fact that this was not a great problem in some areas, but in Surbiton, as I interjected, there are only six houses for demolition. Wellingborough Urban District, with 550 houses to be demolished, has only
  2262
  a total of 4,000 houses in the rural area. The problem is a rural and a small urban problem just as much as it is a large city problem, the only difference being that, together with the normal housing problem, it shows up much larger in cities like Liverpool, Leeds and London.
  In my constituency, at Finedone and Earls Barton, this sort of thing happened. The landlord, and the auctioneer and valuer who acted for the landlord, and the financier who provided the money, knew of the local authority's intention to put clearance orders on property, but then sold the property to persons in desperate need of housing who were quite unsuspecting. Of course, it can be said, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, Central (Mr. H. Butler) said, that a person who buys property ought to take the precaution of seeing whether or not a clearance order is to be placed upon it. But there are a large number of people who do not take elementary precautions, and in one instance, in my constituency, a person who bought a house thought that the solicitor from whom he got the bill was acting for him and would protect him. When he was told afterwards that all that the solicitor was doing was to carry out the conveyance, he began to feel a little sore about it. I think that he had every entitlement to feel sore about it.
  It is from that point of view that we accept the Bill, but no hon. Member opposite should get the idea that the Government are being over-generous. All that the Government are doing is putting right, with taxpayers' money, a wrong done by Tory landlords—I will just leave it at "slum landlords"—who ought never to have sold the property. What would be much more satisfactory would be legislation to make the compensation payable by the people who sold the property, because they ought never to have sold it and it was really a matter of selling it under false pretences.
  There are a number of Committee points. The Bill in itself creates hardship. One knows one's own constituency better than other constituencies, and it is often easier to give examples from one's own constituency. This is the sort of thing that will happen in the Finedon clearance area to which I have referred. In spite of what the Minister has said about this Government starting slum clearance, local authorities have been

  2263
  carrying out slum clearance work ever since 1945. The Wellingborough Urban District Council has been doing slum clearance for some years. Some of the people in the Finedon area have already accepted houses and been moved.
  The Wellingborough Urban District Council gave the first houses to the people whose need was greatest. A man with four or five young children who had been forced into one of the properties with which we are dealing would be one of the first to receive a council house. Those with only one child had to remain where they were, because their need was less, until other accommodation became available for them.
  The position is that the man with one child who is still in the property will be entitled to compensation, but the person with two or three children who was moved last year will be outside the additional compensation provisions under the Bill, although the house vacated by him may still be standing and waiting to be dealt with by the local authority under a comprehensive clearance area scheme.
  We were glad to hear from the Parliamentary Secretary that his view was that the Money Resolution is wide enough to permit during Committee consideration of some Amendments to bring more people within the compensation provisions.
  We object to the Bill because it deals with compensation for property which ought never to have been sold. We are, however, relieving the hardship of a person who purchased a property who still has the mortgage to pay after the property has been demolished and has the rent of a council house to pay, and is very hard hit by it all.
  The Parliamentary Secretary said that the total figure would be 5 per cent. He may be right on averages, although spokesmen of the Ministry of Housing and Local Government have not in recent months been very strong on the figures they have quoted. I addressed a rents protest meeting in Wellingborough last night, and rents there have gone up by 10s. to 15s. a week. Those figures are rather different from the Minister's average of 8d. to 9d. a week. It is true that the Wellingborough Urban District Council has taken off the rates subsidy
  2264
  to which the Minister was referring in his calculations. We object to the Bill because it places an additional burden on the local authorities and it is not really their responsibility. National legislation allowed this racket, if racket it be—and we consider it was—to be carried on. Now we are placing the burden on those local authorities which are hardest hit.
  There is no comparison between Surbiton, with six unfit houses, and the Wellingborough Rural District Council, with 500 unfit houses. I do not know what a penny rate produces in Surbiton, but very likely it is thousands of pounds; in the Wellingborough Rural District the product of a penny rate does not amount to many hundreds of pounds. When the local authority has to make provision for compensation that means an added burden on the rates.
  The Minister is continually saying that he is anxious that slum clearance should proceed. Some of us have expressed doubts whether that anxiety is really genuine; but, if the Minister really is anxious, he seems to be going a very funny way about it. He is putting in the way of the local authorities every possible objection and obstruction that he can find. I recall how interest rates have been rising. Since the further addition of last Friday the minimum that a local authority has to pay is 6 per cent. On a £1,500 house, on repayment of loan over 60 years, 1 per cent. in interest charges represents 6s. a week on the rent. On a £1,500 house, £1 15s. a week has to be found for interest charges. This burden faces local authorities which wish to provide new houses for people from clearance areas.
  In Wellingborough rents are being raised because of increased interest charges, but the local authority is still trying to carry on its slum clearance programme. With interest at 5½ per cent., at least £1 15s. per week per house has to be paid in interest charges, and now the authority is faced with compensation payments for houses which every member of the council knows ought never to have been sold. They realise that, from their point of view, the selling of them is a complete and unjustified racket.
  As was aptly said by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison), "It is the last straw that breaks the camel's back." Local

  2265
  authorities could carry on with slum clearance in spite of reduced subsidies, but when they face reduced subsidies, plus increased interest charges, plus compensation payments to owner-occupiers of these properties, that will make the authorities of the smaller rural and urban districts think twice before they go ahead with their schemes which would put an even greater burden on the rates of those who already live in the district. Residents of council houses now know that every house built in the district in which they live will mean that their own rent will be increased. Now the increased compensation comes along.
  It may be that my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kettering was not accurate in his figures. He is a lawyer and not a mathematician. It may be that my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South-West (Mr. A. Evans) was not correct and that the Parliamentary Secretary is correct that this is a very small problem and we are exaggerating it. I do not see the exaggeration when it comes to 500 houses in Wellingborough rural area and 450 in Wellingborough urban area. If it is a small problem, what are the Government giving away by accepting the principle of Exchequer contribution? When they persist in not accepting responsibility, some of us are suspicious enough to believe we are right in assuming that the burden will be fairly heavy.
  An hon. Member mentioned 5 per cent. of owner-occupiers. My hon. Friend the Member for Bootle (Mr. Mahon) passed across to me earlier in the day a return he had from his town clerk showing that in that county borough there were 10 per cent. owner-occupiers. One could not have assumed that owner-occupiers were as numerous in Bootle as in Portsmouth or that Bootle was an owner-occupier area. If it is 10 per cent. in Bootle one is inclined to believe that it might be high in other places.
  Squadron Leader Cooper: The percentage differs from area to area. Would the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Lindgren) take it from me that when we recently cleared an area in Ilford there was not one owner-occupier?
  Mr. Lindgren: I am delighted to have that interjection. It is a pity the hon. and gallant Gentleman was not here when his hon. Friend the Member for Ilford,
  2266
  North was speaking about the thousands of people to whom Ilford Borough Council would have rendered an injustice but for the Bill, and was saying that Ilford Borough Council welcomed the Bill because it saved them from the iniquity and injustice of taking away the properties of hundreds of people.
  Mr. Iremonger: May I point out that there are two Ilford constituencies? I know that the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Lindgren) could not resist making that point, but what I said was perfectly consistent with what has been said by my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South (Squadron Leader Cooper). It is simply that there have been owner-occupiers in areas cleared in my constituency but not that of my hon. and gallant Friend.
  Mr. Lindgren: Far be it from me to intervene in a war between hon. Members representing the same borough, but it would be nice if now and again we could get the same story from them. It is not the first time we have had differences of view between the hon. Members representing the Borough of Ilford.
  If the Minister is adamant about compensation to owner-occupiers, will he say why the burden of compensation for business premises should be placed upon local authorities? It might be extensive in some places. The contribution for business premises is different from that for the owner-occupier. As the Parliamentary Secretary said in his excellent opening statement, there is a time-limit on compensation for the owner-occupier, accepting that there were abnormal conditions after the war ended. If compensation for business premises in clearance areas is to be a permanent addition to the compensation law of the country, we think that the local authorities ought to have assistance from the Exchequer.
  One hon. Member opposite after another has said that local authorities are accepting this Measure wholeheartedly and enthusiastically. The A.M.C. and the Urban District Councils Association, speaking on behalf of local authorities, have said that they welcome this Bill in so far as it remedies an injustice that might be done to people who unsuspectingly bought property which they ought not to have bought, but they have asked that the Bill should be amended so that

  2267
  the central Exchequer accepts responsibility for the payment and that it is not placed on the local rates. This Bill does make a contribution towards the needs of those who have been hard hit, but we feel that it should be based on an Exchequer grant and not based wholly on local rates.
  9.32 p.m.
  The Minister of Housing and Local Government (Mr. Duncan Sandys): Although there has been a certain amount of controversy during this debate, I think there is no doubt that every hon. Member in the House wants to do what he can to speed up slum clearance, to ease the path of local authorities in carrying it through on a large scale and to resume that work after the interruption of the war and the years following.
  I repeat what I said during the Second Reading of the Housing Subsidies Bill, that I would certainly be the last to criticise in any way the decisions of the party opposite, when it was in power, in continuing the stoppage of slum clearance during the years immediately following the war, when any roof was better than no roof, and when it was quite clear that it was right to hesitate to pull down a house when the housing shortage was so fearfully acute everywhere. It is still acute in many parts of the country, but it is of a different order of acuteness from the situation we faced immediately after the war.
  Now I feel, and I think that the country as a whole feels, that the time has come when these people who are living in these wretched conditions should be given a fairer and a fuller share of the new houses that are being built. In dealing with compulsory purchase orders and slum clearance orders since I have been in my present position I have felt acutely unhappy and uncomfortable, during the year-and-a-half that I have had to consider such orders—and I look at them all.
  I have felt very unhappy and uncomfortable when I have seen that within these areas there have been cases—not numerous but very hard cases—where there have been families, and very often pensioners, who have bought a small unfit house at an inflated price after the war, not because they wanted to live in
  2268
  a slum house, but because there was literally no alternative.
  I have known that as a result of my confirming that order they are deprived of their house, deprived of their savings, and, in some cases, find that they have not only no house but have a rent to pay for a council house and have a mortgage to pay off perhaps for the rest of their lives. In pressing forward with slum clearance, one felt that one was merely increasing the number of these cases and accelerating and augmenting the cruel hardship which must inevitably be caused.
  Leaving aside for the moment the question of whether it goes on the Exchequer or the rates, the principles of this Bill seem to me to be generally acceptable in all parts of the House. They certainly were accepted by the local authorities. There has been a certain amount of reference to whether I said this or that to the local authorities about the rates. I have been in correspondence with the local authority associations and I do not think they have been misled about that.
  On the principles of the Bill, I think there is general agreement that something on these lines was only an act of common justice. A few hon. Members opposite—I think the hon. Members for Widnes (Mr. MacColl) and Hackney, Central (Mr. H. Butler)—seemed to think that the whole basis was wrong and unfair and that it was an altogether unsatisfactory Measure. But I think that the House generally agrees with the hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) when he said that, although the Bill involved a radical departure in certain ways, in the principles of compensation, from the 1919 Act, nevertheless there is a good social reason for doing so.
  The hon. and learned Gentleman described Clause 1, in particular, as a good social Measure, and he said that he and his hon. Friends would not have thought of opposing the Bill as a whole if it had provided for an Exchequer subsidy. Therefore, the differences between us are not differences on the major intention of the Bill or its principles or objectives, but on whether or not there should be an Exchequer subsidy. I am not asking hon. Members to commit themselves in any way to give it an unopposed passage through Committee, but I believe that we shall all approach it from the same point of view in Committee and

  2269
  will try to improve it in such ways as we can.
  I feel that there is no justification for a special Exchequer subsidy, for, as my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary well explained earlier in the debate, this is a small aspect of one part of the cost of building a house. If we started with that, we would have radically to reconsider the whole structure of housing subsidies. Under every Government in the past a subsidy has been paid on the house that was built and not an a particular part of it, except in these special cases where there were exceptionally expensive sites.
  The element that is going to arise here, as has been stated by a number of hon. Members, is a very small element of the whole cost—not because it may not be a large figure; as has been said today, it may be a large figure in a particular case, but the number of cases involved are very small indeed. Of course, there can be disagreement on whether that is a correct statement and whether, in fact, such cases are going to be few. I can only base myself on such information as is available to me, and I have done it in the way that has been explained—that is, to take a sample of the cases which have arisen in practice.
  The hon. Lady the Member for Leeds, South-East (Miss Bacon) said that the sample that I had taken was out of date. I do not know how she knows that it is out of date, because I do not think anything has been said so far about the date of the sample, but I will gladly give the hon. Lady information about the sample which I have taken. It is about as up to date as we can get it.
  The figures which I have taken relate to 1955, and they are a cross-section of 3,000 houses included in compulsory purchase orders and slum clearance orders during 1955. In all, during 1955 there were 9,000 such houses under compulsory purchase and slum clearance orders, which means that the sample which I have taken is not only up to date but covers about one-third of all the houses involved last year. Anybody who knows anything about Gallup Polls and public opinion polls will agree that that is a rather large sample. Much more sweeping conclusions have been drawn from much smaller samples than that
  Miss Bacon: The right hon. Gentleman misunderstood what I said. I said that to take past figures does not give an indication of what will happen in future years, because a great many of these houses have been sold during the last two or three years and will probably come under slum clearance orders in the next few years, so that the percentage is likely to be greater.
  Mr. Sandys: I have taken the last year available. Obviously, I cannot take a sample of the future. The House has been asking me for information and I am doing my best on such figures as are available—and they are most up to date.
  Mr. D. Jones: If slum clearance had been proceeding in the past at the rate at which the right hon. Gentleman thinks it ought to proceed in the future, his sample would be sound; but the very fact that he has had to give special subsidies and to urge local authorities to get on with slum clearance proves that the slum clearance during 1955 was infinitely less than it will be in the future, so that the future problem will be much greater.
  Mr. Sandys: I am dealing with the proportion. If we had two or three times as many houses I see no particular reason why the proportion of owner-occupied houses among them should be different. It might be different, of course, but there is no particular reason to suppose that the number will be more or less than that in the sample. I shall be surprised if the number is very different from that in the sample which we have taken from all parts of the country.
  The hon. and learned Member for Kettering said that my estimate of 5 per cent. slum houses being owner-occupied was much too small. He cleverly based himself on a White Paper issued by the present Government entitled "Houses. The next step". This stated that there were 13¾ million dwellings altogether in Great Britain and that 3¾ million of them were owner-occupied. As 3¾ million is about one-third, he used that as his basis for his estimate that 33 per cent. of these houses are owner-occupied and not 5 per cent.
  That is correct as far as it goes, but about 3 million out of the 31 million are less than 40 years old, and it is most unlikely that any of them will be scheduled as slum property for quite a long time.

  2271
  That leaves us with only about three-quarters-of-a-million of the older houses which are owner-occupied; and I am advised that three-quarters-of-a-million out of 13½ million comes to about 5 per cent. I am glad that the hon. and learned Member made his calculation, because it made me make this calculation; and it is comforting and reassuring to find that I have reached the same result of 5 per cent. by two entirely different processes.
  On his basis of 33 per cent. of these houses being owner-occupied, the hon. and learned Gentleman estimated that the cost over the country as a whole would be the equivalent of a 2d. rate. If we take 5 per cent. owner-occupied instead of 33 per cent. we must obviously scale that figure of 2d. down quite a lot. I have my calculations. The hon. and learned Gentleman pressed me at one stage to give an estimate, but he was most helpful, also, because he complained that I was relying upon my intuition in arriving at conclusions and advised me to be cautious in making guesses. I will take his second piece of advice and not make any guess on this occasion.
  The hon. Lady the Member for Leeds, South East spoke of people who bought homes not realising that they were unfit. Some she said, were misled by slum landlords who were for their own advantage unloading their houses upon other people. She asked me to condemn this practice and to take action to warn people to be careful in buying houses which might be scheduled for slum clearance.
  I have done better than the hon. Lady thinks. I had already taken some action quite a long time ago, in a circular dated 26th September, 1955, which I sent out to all local authorities. It is entitled, "Slum Clearance—Advice to Intending House Purchasers". It says:
  "I am directed by the Minister of Housing and Local Government to inform the Council that the renewal of slum clearance makes it necessary for action to be taken to ensure as far as possible that intending house-purchasers do not, in ignorance of the Council's intentions, buy houses likely to be included in a clearance area in the next five years or so, or to be the subject of demolition orders. He has specially in mind people who are buying for their own occupation including sitting tenants".
  2272
  At the end of the circular, it says:
  "The Minister accordingly recommends that Local Authorities should take early action on the lines suggested below:—
  Local Authorities should issue a general reminder to the public through the Press, and in any way they think proper, that they are preparing a comprehensive programme of slum clearance; and should make such other statements from time to time as they think fit ".
  Finally, the circular says:
  "Local Authorities should advise those who are proposing to buy older houses in the district to make inquiries at the Council offices in order to ascertain whether they will be affected by the slum clearance programme".
  The circular goes on:
  "Sometimes it may be difficult to give a very definite answer.… But the Council's object should be to give the inquirer as much information as they reasonably can to help him in making his decision".
  That circular received very good publicity. I have a sheaf of Press cuttings here—

  "Helping would-be house-buyers"

  "Councils asked to protect Public".

  "Warnings about slum clearance schemes".

  "Don't let them buy in the dark".

  "Purchases of old houses".

  This one will please the hon. Lady the Member for Leeds, South East:
  "Sandys warns on house cheats ".
  The House will see that we really are already on to that point.
  However, I will do one additional thing as a result of the hon. Lady's speech. She said she knew of cases where solicitors who had been dealing with the property, and who should have known that the houses concerned were scheduled for demolition or in a clearance area, had not brought that fact to the notice of the clients. It is obviously most desirable that solicitors, like any others, should play their part in helping to see that people do not become involved in deals which will, in the end, cause them hardship.
  I am not expressing any view on the particular case, of which I have heard no more than the details given by the hon. Lady, but I will write to the Law Society, draw its attention to the speech of the hon. Lady, and ask the Society to see whether that kind of thing is happening. If it is, perhaps the Society may think it worth while to draw it to the attention of solicitors.
  Mr. F. J. Bellenger: Surely solicitors are under an obligation to make the usual searches when investigating a title, and are bound to know.
  Mr. Sandys: I know nothing about it except that the hon. Lady alleged that solicitors were not drawing the attention of their clients to this position. I do not know whether that is correct or not, but I thought it would be worth while to draw the attention of the Law Society to the matter.
  My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Portsmouth, West (Brigadier Clarke) and my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Iremonger) referred to the position of Service men who, owing to the conditions of their service, have been obliged to leave their houses before the operative date, 13th December, and thereby would be excluded from the benefits of this Measure. I should like to look further into that.
  There will be every possibility of raising that question during Committee stage. Perhaps my hon. Friends would put down al Amendment to deal with it if they think fit and we can discuss the matter then. Naturally, I have sympathy, as I am sure the whole House has, with anyone who, by reason of his service, is obliged to leave his house and as a result suffers disadvantage. I cannot give any promise at this stage, but I will look sympathetically at that point.
  The hon. Member for The Hartlepools (Mr. D. Jones) asked for an assurance that where a local authority is able by agreement with the owner to purchase an unfit house in a clearance area the authority should take into account the additional compensation which would be possible under the Bill if they had instead proceeded by compulsory purchase. I can certainly give the hon. Member that assurance. There should be no difficulty about local authorities making an allowance for that, and I shall see that the matter is drawn to their attention.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Mr. Smithers) raised a number of points. I cannot deal with them all tonight, but there was one in particular which I think was of interest to the House, more especially as it was referred to in the newspapers today. That was the question of separate valuations of a number of adjoining sites belonging to
  2274
  the same owner. That, of course, is outside the scope of the Bill as it stands. The position is that the compensation payable is the value of the separate sites for their existing use, plus the 1947 development value of the site as a whole. Where the resulting compensation turns out to be unduly low—as it does in a number of cases—I submit to my hon. Friend that that is normally due, not to the procedure of separate valuation, but to the inherent difficulties of establishing claims for development value under the 1947 Act. That is a much wider issue which I do not want to be drawn into tonight.
  Mr. Mitchison: I asked the right hon. Gentleman specifically to answer one question. Why is Clause 2 necessary when there is already a similar discretionary provision, under Section 44 of the 1936 Act?
  Mr. Sandys: That Clause deals with the business occupier. Discretion is not the same as a right. I felt, especially having regard to the extraordinarily widely varying practice of local authorities in different parts of the country, that it was desirable that we should put this on to a statutory footing. Then the small shopkeeper who has set up his business in a house which is declared to be unfit will have the protection of the law and not be dependent on an act of charity by the local authority.
  Mr. Mitchison: He now has two rights.
  Mr. Sandys: The other right will not be operative in his case, but it will be useful and that is why there was no question of removing it. The discretionary power will be useful to deal with the point raised by another hon. Member. That is, to deal with the position of the small shopkeeper who is a weekly tenant. It is not simply in regard to slum clearance, but in regard to other matters. If he cannot claim that he has a sufficient interest to get the statutory compensation, then he will still be able to be treated under the ex gratia method. I propose to draw the attention of local authorities to this point when the Bill becomes law.
  The hon. and learned Member also asked why Clause 1 was temporary, whereas Clauses 2 and 3 were permanent.
  Mr. Mitchison: It was the other way round.
  Mr. Sandys: Clause 1 is temporary—there is a ten years' limit—and the other two are permanent. Clause 1 is temporary because we feel that when an owner-occupier of a slum house has had ten years' or, perhaps, up to 26 years' occupation, he has probably had good use from the house and there is no reason why he should have special treatment after that time.
  I think that hon. Members will agree that the problems raised in Clauses 2 and 3 are permanent problems. There are no special post-war circumstances about the well-maintained Clause. It should provide a reasonable payment having regard to the costs at the time. If those costs vary in the future, the rate ought to be varied, and that is what we are pro
  posing. In the same way the shopkeeper, in the slum house is a problem which is not a temporary post-war one. If it is right to do it now, it is obviously right to do it later in the future.
  This Bill is a modest Measure. I certainly do not claim that it is a great reform. On the other hand, I hope that it will remove the cause of cruel hardship in a small number of cases. As a small act of simple and overdue justice, I ask the House to give it a Second Reading.
  Question put, That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question:—
  The House divided: Ayes 190, Noes 139.

  Division No. 134.]

  AYES

  [9.58 p.m.

  Agnew, Cmdr. P. G.

  Gibson-Watt, D.

  Lindsay, Hon. James (Devon, N.)

  Aitken, W. T.

  Glover, D.

  Lindsay, Martin (Solihull)

  Allan, R. A. (Paddington, S.)

  Godber, J. B.

  Linstead, Sir H. N.

  Alport, C. J. M.

  Gomme-Duncan, Col. Sir Alan

  Lloyd, Maj. Sir Guy (Renfrew, E.)

  Amory, Rt. Hn. Heathcoat(Tiverton)

  Graham, Sir Fergus

  Lloyd, Rt. Hon. Selwyn (Wirral)

  Armstrong, C. W.

  Grant, W. (Woodside)

  Lucas, Sir Jocelyn (Portsmouth, S.)

  Astor, Hon. J. J.

  Grant-Ferris, Wg Cdr. R. (Nantwich)

  Lucas, P. B. (Brenford & Chiswick)

  Baldock, Lt.-Cmdr. J. M.

  Green, A.

  Macdonald, Sir Peter

  Baldwin, A. E.

  Grimston, Hon. John (St. Albans)

  Mackie, J. H. (Galloway)

  Barber, Anthony

  Grimston, Sir Robert (Westbury)

  Maclay, Rt. Hon. John

  Barter, John

  Gurden, Harold

  Macmillan, Rt. Hn. Harold (Bromley)

  Baxter, Sir Beverley

  Hall, John (Wycombe)

  Maddan, Martin

  Bell, Philip (Bolton, E.)

  Harris, Reader (Heston)

  Maitland, Hon. Patrick (Lanark)

  Bidgood, J. C.

  Harrison, A. B. C. (Maldon)

  Manningham-Buller, Rt. Hn. Sir R.

  Birch, Rt. Hon. Nigel

  Harrison, Col. J. H. (Eye)

  Marlowe, A. A. H.

  Bishop, F. P.

  Harvey, John (Walthamstow, E.)

  Marshall, Douglas

  Body, R. F.

  Harvie-Watt, Sir George

  Mathew, R.

  Bossom, Sir A. C.

  Hay, John

  Maudling, Rt. Hon. R.

  Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hon. J. A.

  Heald, Rt. Hon. Sir Lionel

  Mawby, R. L.

  Brooke, Rt. Hon. Henry

  Heath, Rt. Hon. E. R. G.

  Maydon, Lt.-Comdr. S. L. C.

  Browne, J. Nixon (Craigton)

  Hill, Mrs. E. (Wythenshawe)

  Medlicott, Sir Frank

  Bryan, P.

  Hinchingbrooke, Viscount

  Moore, Sir Thomas

  Bullus, Wing Commander E. E.

  Hirst, Geoffrey

  Neave, Airey

  Butler, Rt. Hn. R.A.(Saffron Walden)

  Holland-Martin, C. J,

  Nicholson, Godfrey (Farnham)

  Carr, Robert

  Hornsby-Smith, Miss M. P.

  Nicolson, N.(B'n'm'th, E. & Chr'ch)

  Cary, Sir Robert

  Horobin, Sir Ian

  Nield, Basil (Chester)

  Channon, H.

  Horsbrugh, Rt. Hon. Dame Florence

  Noble, Comdr. A. H. P.

  Clarke, Brig. Terence (Portsmth, W.)

  Howard, Hon. Greville (St. Ives)

  Nugent, G. R. H.

  Cole, Norman

  Hudson, Sir Austin (Lewisham, N.)

  Oakshott, H. D.

  Conant, Maj. Sir Roger

  Hudson, W. R. A. (Hull, N.)

  O'Neill, Hon. Phelim (Co. Antrim, N.)

  Cooper, Sqn. Ldr. Albert

  Hughes-Young, M. H. C.

  Ormsby-Gore, Hon. W. D.

  Cooper-Key, E. M.

  Hurd, A. R.

  Pannell, N. A. (Kirkdale)

  Cordeaux, Lt.-Col. J. K.

  Hutchison, Sir Ian Clark(E'b'gh, W.)

  Partridge, E.

  Corfield, Capt. F. V.

  Hutchison, Sir James (Scotstoun)

  Peyton, J. W. W.

  Craddock, Beresford (Spelthorne)

  Hyde, Montgomery

  Pickthorn, K. W. M.

  Crosthwaite-Eyre, Col. O. E.

  Iremonger, T. L.

  Pilkington, Capt. R. A.

  Crowder, Petre (Ruislip—Northwood)

  Irvine, Bryant Godman (Rye)

  Pitt, Miss E. M.

  Cunningham, Knox

  Jenkins, Robert (Dulwich)

  Powell, J. Enoch

  Currie, G. B. H.

  Jennings, J. C. (Burton)

  Price, David (Eastleigh)

  Dance, J. C. G.

  Johnson, Dr. Donald (Carlisle)

  Raikes, Sir Victor

  D'Avigdor-Goldsmid, Sir Henry

  Johson, Eric (Blackley)

  Rees-Davies, W. R.

  Deedes, W. F.

  Johson, Howard (Kemptown)

  Ridsdale, J. E.

  Digby, Simon Wingfield

  Jones, Rt. Hon. Aubrey (Hall Green)

  Roberts, Sir Peter (Heeley)

  Doughty, C. J. A.

  Joseph, Sir Keith

  Roper, Sir Harold

  du Cann, E. D. L.

  Joynson-Hicks, Hon. Sir Lancelot

  Russell, R. S.

  Duncan, Capt. J. A. L.

  Kerr, H. W.

  Sandys, Rt. Hon. D.

  Emmet, Hon. Mrs. Evelyn

  Kershaw, J. A.

  Schofield, Lt.-Col. W.

  Errington, Sir Eric

  Kirk, P. M.

  Sharples, R. C.

  Farey-Jones, F. W.

  Lambton, Viscount

  Shepherd, William

  Finlay, Graeme

  Langford-Holt, J. A.

  Smithers, Peter (Winchester)

  Fisher, Nigel

  Leavey, J. A.

  Speir, R. M.

  Fletcher-Cooke, C.

  Leburn, W. G.

  Spens, Rt. Hn. Sir P. (Kens'gt'n, S.)

  Freeth, D. K.

  Legge-Bourke, Maj. E. A. H.

  Stevens, Geoffrey

  George, J. G. (Pollok)

  Legh, Hon. Peter (Petersfield)

  Steward, Harold (Stockport, S.)

  Steward, Sir William (Woolwich, W.)

  Vane, W. M. F.

  Williams, R. Dudley (Exeter)

  Storey, S.

  Vaughan-Morgan, J. K.

  Wills, G. (Bridgwater)

  Studholme, H. G.

  Vosper, D. F.

  Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)

  Taylor, Sir Charles (Eastbourne)

  Wall, Major Patrick

  Wood, Hon. R.

  Teeling, W.

  Ward, Hon. George (Worcester)

  Woollam, John Victor

  Thomas, P. J. M. (Conway)

  Ward, Dame Irene (Tynemouth)

  Yates, William (The Wrekin)

  Thompson, Kenneth (Walton)

  Waterhouse, Capt. Rt. Hon. C.

  Thornton-Kemsley, C. N.

  Watkinson, Rt. Hon. Harold

  TELLERS FOR THE AYES:

  Touche, Sir Gordon

  Webbe, Sir H.

  Mr. Richard Thompson and

  Turner, H. F. L.

  Whitelaw, W.S.I.(Penrith & Border)

  Mr. Edward Wakefield.

  Turton, Rt. Hon. R. H.

  Williams, Paul (Sunderland, S.)

  NOES

  Ainsley, J. W.

  Hall, Rt. Hn. Glenvil (Colne Valley)

  Owen, W. J.

  Albu, A. H.

  Hannan, W.

  Palmer, A. M. F.

  Allaun, Frank (Salford, E.)

  Hastings, S.

  Pannell, Charles (Leeds, W.)

  Allen, Arthur (Bosworth)

  Hayman, E. H.

  Pargiter, G. A.

  Allen, Scholefield (Crewe)

  Herbison, Miss M.

  Parker, J,

  Anderson, Frank

  Hobson, C. R.

  Parkin, B. T.

  Bacon, Miss Alice

  Holman, P.

  Peart, T. F.

  Baird, J.

  Holmes, Horace

  Popplewell, E.

  Bellenger, Rt. Hon. F. J.

  Houghton, Douglas

  Price, J. T. (Westhoughton)

  Bevan, Rt. Hon. A. (Ebbw Vale)

  Howell, Charles (Perry Barr)

  Proctor, W. T.

  Blenkinsop, A.

  Hughes, Emrys (S. Ayrshire)

  Randall, H. E.

  Blyton, W. R.

  Hunter, A. E.

  Rankin, John

  Boardman, H.

  Hynd, H. (Accrington)

  Redhead, F. C.

  Bowden, H. W. (Leicester, S.W.)

  Irvine, A. J. (Edge Hill)

  Reeves, J.

  Boyd, T. C.

  Irving, S. (Dartford)

  Rhodes, H.

  Braddock, Mrs. Elizabeth

  Issacs, Rt. Hon. G. A.

  Robinson, Kenneth (St. Pancras, N.)

  Brockway, A. F.

  Jay, Rt. Hon. D. P. T.

  Ross, William

  Broughton, Or. A. D. D.

  Jeger, George (Goole)

  Short, E. W.

  Burton, Miss F. E.

  Jenkins, Roy (Stechford)

  Silverman, Julius (Aston)

  Butler, Herbert (Hackney, C.)

  Jones, David (The Hartlepools)

  Slater, Mrs. H. (Stoke, N.)

  Callaghan, L. J.

  Jones, Elwyn (W. Ham, S.)

  Smith, Ellis (Stoke, S.)

  Chapman, W. D.

  Jones, Jack (Rotherham)

  Sorensen, R. W.

  Collick, P. H. (Birkenhead)

  Key, Rt. Hon. C. W.

  Sparks, J. A.

  Collins, V. J.(Shoreditch & Finsbury)

  King, Dr. H. M.

  Steele, T.

  Corbet, Mrs. Freda

  Lawson, G. M.

  Stewart, Michael (Fulham)

  Craddock, George (Bradford, S.)

  Lee, Miss Jennie (Cannock)

  Stones, W. (Consett)

  Dalton, Rt. Hon. H.

  Lewis, Arthur

  Strauss, Rt. Hon. George (Vauxhall)

  Darling, George (Hillsborough)

  Lindgren, G. S.

  Summerskill, Rt. Hon. E.

  Davies, Stephen (Merthyr)

  Logan, D. G.

  Thomas, George (Cardiff)

  Delargy, H. J.

  Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson

  Thomas, Iorwerth (Rhondda, W.)

  Dodds, N. N.

  MacColl, J. E.

  Thomson, George (Dundee, E.)

  Dugdale, Rt. Hn. John (W. Brmwch)

  McGovern, J.

  Thornton, E.

  Ede, Rt. Hon. J. C.

  McInnes, J.

  Turner-Samuels, M.

  Edwards, Robert (Bilston)

  McLeavy, Frank

  Ungoed-Thomas, Sir Lynn

  Edwards, W. J. (Stepney)

  Mahon, Simon

  Warbey, W. N.

  Evans, Albert (Islington, S.W.)

  Mallalieu, E. L. (Brigg)

  Weitzman, D.

  Fienburgh, W.

  Mallalieu, J. P. W. (Hudderfd, E.)

  Wells, Percy (Faversham)

  Fletcher, Eric

  Mellish, R. J.

  Wheeldon, W. E.

  Fraser, Thomas (Hamilton)

  Mitchison, G. R.

  Wilkins, W. A.

  Gaitskell, Rt. Hon. H. T. N.

  Moss, R.

  Williams, W. R. (Openshaw)

  Gibson, C. W.

  Moyle, A.

  Wilson, Rt. Hon. Harold (Huyton)

  Gooch, E. G.

  Mulley, F. W.

  Woof, R. E.

  Gordon Walker, Rt. Hon. P. C.

  O'Brien, Sir Thomas

  Yates, V. (Ladywood)

  Greenwood, Anthony

  Oliver, G. H.

  Younger, Rt. Hon. K.

  Grey, C. F.

  Oram, A. E.

  Zilliacus, K.

  Griffiths, Rt. Hon. James (Llanelly)

  Orbach, M.

  Hale, Leslie

  Oswald, T.

  TELLERS FOR THE NOES:

  Mr. Deer and Mr. Simmons.

  Question put and agreed to.

  Bill accordingly read a Second time.

  SLUM CLEARANCE (COMPENSATION) [MONEY]
  Considered in Committee under Standing Order No. 84 (Money Committees)—[Queen's Recommendation signified.]
  [Sir RHYS HOPKIN MORRIS in the Chair]
  Motion made, and Question proposed,
  That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to make additional provision for payments in respect of certain unfit houses subject to compulsory purchase, clearance, demolition or closing orders, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament of any increase in the sums payable under any other enactment out of moneys so provided which is attributable to any provision of the said Act of the present Session providing—
  A. That where a house which has been wholly or partly occupied as a private dwelling by (or by a member of the family of) a person who acquired an interest in that house by purchase for value during the period commencing with the first day of September, nineteen hundred and thirty-nine, and ending immediately before the thirteenth day of December, nineteen hundred and fifty-five, has, at any time during the ten years commencing with the said thirteenth day of December, been purchased at site value in pursuance of a compulsory purchase order or vacated in pursuance of a clearance order, demolition order or closing order, and at the date when the house was purchased compulsorily or, as the case may be. vacated the person aforesaid or a member of his family was still entitled to an interest in the house, the appropriate authority shall make in respect of that interest a payment of the specified amount;
  B. That where, on or after the said thirteenth day of December, a house has been purchased at site value in pursuance of a compulsory purchase order or vacated in pursuance of a clearance order or demolition order, and that house was occupied at the date of the making of the order wholly or partly for the purposes of a business, the appropriate authority shall make in respect of any interest in that house which, at the date when the house was purchased compulsorily or, as the case may be, vacated, was held by the person entitled to the receipts of the business a payment of the specified amount;
  C. For the variation, for the purposes of any payment made on or after the said thirteenth day of December under section forty-two of the Housing Act, 1936, of the multipliers specified with respect to rateable value in paragraph (b) of subsection (2) of that section;
  D. That where a house has, on or after the said thirteenth day of December, been vacated in pursuance of a demolition order or closing order or purchased compulsorily
  2280
  under section three of the Housing Repairs and Rents Act, 1954, and, leaving out of account any defects in respect of any such matters as are mentioned in paragraphs (b) to (h) of subsection (1) of section nine of the said Act of 1954, the house has been well maintained, the appropriate authority shall make to any person by whom or at whose expense the work to which the good maintenance of the house is attributable was carried out the like payment as would have fallen to be so made under the said section forty-two if the house had been a house to which that section applies and directions had been given by the Minister of Housing and Local Government for the making of a payment thereunder.
  In this Resolution—
  "appropriate authority" means the authority by whom the compulsory purchase, clearance, demolition or closing order in question was made;
  "clearance order" means an order under section twenty-six of the Housing Act, 1936;
  "closing order" means an order under section ten of the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 1953;
  "demolition order" means an order under section eleven of the Housing Act, 1936;
  "house" includes any building constructed or adapted wholly or partly as, or for the purposes of, a dwelling;
  "site value" in relation to the compulsory purchase of a house, means compensation in respect thereof assessed in accordance with the provisions of subsection (4) of section sixteen, or subsection (2) or (3) of section forty, of the Housing Act, 1936;
  "specified amount", in relation to a payment in respect of an interest in a house, means an amount equal to the difference between:—

  (a) the compensation payable in respect of the compulsory purchase of that interest if that compensation fell to be assessed in accordance with subsections (1) and (4) of section forty of the Housing Act, 1936, and, in the case of a house subject to a clearance, demolition or closing order, if the making of that order were the service of the notice to treat; and

  (b) the compensation which was or would have been payable in respect of the interest in connection with the compulsory purchase of the house at site value.

  being in each case the compensation payable apart from any payment under section thirty-one or thirty-five of the Town and Country Planning Act, 1954.—[Mr. Sandys.]
  10.12 p.m.
  Mr. G. R. Mitchison: There are one or two questions I want to ask about the Money Resolution, because frankly I did not understand, for instance, the Minister's agreement in principle to the discussion of some Amendment which would extend quite considerably, and no

  2281
  doubt meritoriously, the class of persons who would benefit under Clause 1. It looks to me as if this is a very tightly drawn Resolution.
  In that connection, what is the position if it is sought to move backwards the date of 13th December, 1955? That could be done in two relations. If it were moved back so as to shorten the material period, it would reduce the class of persons who would benefit. If, on the other hand, it were moved back in relation to the period of compensation, which is at present 10 years, it would have the opposite effect. I should like to know what is intended. I cannot ask the right hon. Gentleman or the hon. Gentleman to rule on the Money Resolution; I can only ask them about their intentions.
  Then again, are any Amendments possible on the rest of the Money Resolution which would enlarge the benefits intended to be conferred, that is to say, the additional payments, or the class of persons who will receive them? This Money Resolution seems to follow the terms of the Bill so closely that this may be difficult or impossible. If I can be assured that this is not as tight as I suppose it to be, many of my objections to it would disappear. At first sight, however, this looks to me to be the kind of mischievous Money Resolution about which there were disputes between the Government and the House before the war. It seems to be the kind of Money Resolution which makes any proper consideration in Committee exceedingly difficult. In a case where a Government subsidy is being granted I do not understand why there should be so much strictness—if I am right in supposing it is there—when it is simply a question of the Exchequer equalisation grant.
  The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (Mr. J. Enoch Powell) indicated dissent.
  Mr. Mitchison: I see the hon. Gentleman shaking his head, and for once I would welcome disagreement with him on that point, because I hope the Money Resolution is wider than it seems to be. Am I right in supposing, therefore, that it debars any attempt to move Amendments in Committee which will involve any Exchequer subsidy whatever other than what is in existence already under other Acts?
  Mr. James MacColl: There is another point arising out of what my hon. and learned Friend has said. It may turn out in discussion in Committee that if some people are getting too much under the Bill, many deserving people are not getting enough, and that the full compensation values defined in the Fourth Schedule to the Housing Act are not sufficient. Does the Parliamentary Secretary think it likely that an Amendment will be possible enabling a somewhat more generous basis of compensation to be included in the Bill?
  The operative words in the Money Resolution seems to be at the end of paragraph A where it states that
  "the appropriate authority shall make …a payment of the specified amount."
  Precisely what is the limit of that definition of the specified amount I do not pretend to be sufficiently an expert to understand, so could the hon. Gentleman help us on that point?
  10.15 p.m.
  Mr. Powell: I shall endeavour to answer briefly the questions I have been asked. The hon. and learned Genteman the Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) said, quite rightly, that the date 13th December has two significances. First, it is the terminal date of the material period and the Money Resolution freezes 13th December in that function. I think I am right in saying that no hon. Member, in the course of the Second Reading debate, has disagreed with that date.
  The other function of 13th December is to be a qualifying date for occupation of a house in order that the owner-occupier may receive the higher compensation. In that context, the date 13th December does not appear in the Financial Resolution, and it would, therefore, be possible to discuss Amendments involving an earlier date, or some relaxation of the conditions attaching to occupation on 13th December.
  The hon. and learned Gentleman asked me whether the remaining paragraphs of the Money Resolution left any room for discussion in Committee. I can assure him that they do. There is nothing in paragraph B of the Money Resolution which specifies a minimum period of 10 years for future business occupation, so that that qualification in the Bill—I take it as an example quite at random—

  2283
  is one of many details which this Money Resolution will leave open for discussion.
  The hon. and learned Gentleman also asked me whether the Financial Resolution excludes any new Exchequer subsidy to meet the cost on the public resulting from the Bill. He was, incidentally, under a misapprehension in thinking that equalisation grant is the only existing Exchequer grant which is involved, because the planning grants are also involved. The answer to his question is and must be "No," because the principle of the Bill to which the House has just agreed, defeating the Amendment proposing the opposite principle, is that no new Exchequer grant should be payable in specific aid of the new charge upon the public.
  Finally, in answer to the hon. Member for Widnes (Mr. MacColl), he will find a definition of the "specified amount," which he saw mentioned in paragraph A, in the definition section of the Money Resolution, where the definition of the amount is set out approximately in the terms of the Bill.
  Resolution to be reported Tomorrow.

  PENSIONS (INCREASE) BILL
  Order for consideration, as amended (in the Standing Committee), read.
  Bill recommitted to a Committee of the whole House in respect of the Amendments to Clause 5, page 5, line 15; Clause 7, page 6, lines 30 and 34 and page 7, lines 3 and 28; Clause 11, page 11, line 22; Clause 13, page 12, line 37; and Schedule 1, page 15, line 2, standing on the Notice Paper in the name of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.—[Mr. H. Brooke.]
  Bill immediately considered in Committee.
  [Sir RHYS HOPKIN MORRIS in the Chair]

  PENSIONS (INCREASE) BILL

    Clause 5.(OTHER AMENDMENTS OF ACT OF 1944 AND ACT OF 1952.)
    10.19 p.m.
    The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Henry Brooke): I beg to move, in page 5, line 15, to leave out "appointed day" and to insert "passing of this Act."
    The apparently formidable list of eight Government Amendments on the Order Paper narrows down to one single point. It will be in the recollection of the Members of the Standing Committee on the Bill that in the Committee I gave an undertaking that the Bill should be made to operate from 1st April. It is now all too clear that the Bill cannot possibly reach the Statute Book by that date. I am advised, therefore, that the proper procedure is thus to recommit the Bill and to ask the Committee to agree to these eight Amendments, which are all designed to have the one effect, that is, to write into the Bill 1st April as the effective date of the coming into operation of the Bill. That was the decision of the Committee. There is no other point that arises on any of the eight Amendments.
    Amendment agreed to.
    Clause, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

    Clause 7.—(ADDITIONAL PROVISIONS AS TO POLICE AND FIRE SERVICE PEN SIONS.)
    Further Amendments made: In page 6, line 30, leave out "appointed day" and insert "passing of this Act."
    In line 34, leave out "that day" and insert "the passing of this Act."
    In page 7, line 3, leave out "appointed day" and insert "passing of this Act."
    In line 28, leave out "on or after the appointed day" and insert:
    "after the passing of this Act".—[Mr. H. Brooke.]
    Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill.
    The Deputy-Chairman: The Question is—
    Dame Irene Ward: On a point of guidance, Sir Rhys. Before you put the Question, might I ask the Joint Under-Secretary whether he has a statement to make on this Clause in view of the undertaking given in the Standing Committee that the position of the preOaksey widows would be reconsidered? If he has, I hope that it will be a favourable one.
    Mr. James Callaghan: I am glad that the hon. Lady the Member for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward) has raised this point. With hon. Friends of mine, she took a prominent part in the proceedings of the Standing Committee relating to this matter. The Joint Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department undertook that he would have discussions with certain retired police pensioners who had sought an interview with him and whom he had promised to meet.
    I understand from the pensioners that they met officers at the Home Office last week, when there were discussions between them, but I gather that no figures were discussed. It may be that the Joint Under-Secretary was waiting to tell the House what proposals he has in mind. Before we part with the Clause, we should like to hear what proposals he now has to make.
    I am sure that the hon. Gentleman does not need reminding, but I think that the Committee should be reminded, that in the Standing Committee there was a very strongly held view, which I think the Joint Under-Secretary accepted, that a certain class of these widows were entitled to something over and above the pensions that they are getting. If not "entitled" in law, they were at any rate,
    2286
    it was felt, entitled in equity. They are suffering great hardship. Most of them are over 60 years of age.
    I should like to know whether the Joint Under-Secretary can tell us whether he finds it possible to meet the sentiment of the Committee and to make some concession to these widows of retired police officers.
    The Joint Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. W. F. Deedes): If it is for the convenience of the Committee, I will take this opportunity to meet the requests made by my hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward) and the hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan).
    It is true that in Standing Committee I undertook to bring to the attention of my right hon. and gallant Friend the representations made by hon. Members on both sides on behalf of this group of pre-Oaksey widows. Having given that undertaking, I should like now to report progress, as it were, at this stage of the Bill's passage.
    I think I can say that hon. Members in the Standing Committee accepted, in the light of the discussion that we had, that this group of police widows were not, in practice, in any less favourable position than other widows whose husbands had been unable to contribute to schemes introduced after their death or retirement. They asked me to bring two considerations to the attention of my right hon. and gallant Friend.
    The first was that the position of these widows is not due to any feature of their husbands' occupational pension scheme, but to the position of the police in the field of State insurance before July, 1948. Theirs was the only public service whose members were outside the scope of the old Widows' and Orphans' Scheme, because they were the only public service to have a comprehensive scheme of widows' pensions. There is, therefore, no other public service whose widows are debarred from the benefit of State insurances because their husbands were precluded from membership of the old State scheme.
    The second consideration was that before July, 1948, it had for many years been accepted as proper that, in view of the arduous conditions of service of

    2287
    the police and of the assistance which police officers receive from their wives in carrying out their duties, police authorities should provide widows' pensions which were more advantageous than those provided by the State. While steps were taken, in 1948, to ensure that the police widows were as well treated as other widows whose husbands had contributed to the old State scheme, they were no longer in the same favourable position which they had enjoyed before July, 1948, and which police widows whose husbands have died since July, 1948, have continued to enjoy. It was the strongly expressed feeling the Committee that, in view of the special services rendered to the community by police officers and their wives, there was a special case for restoring this more favourable position. In accordance with the undertaking I made to the Committee, I have brought these representations to the attention of my right hon. and gallant Friend. The Committee will be aware that, since 1949, successive Secretaries of State have given the position of these widows most sympathetic consideration, but have hitherto felt that they would not be justified in according them more favourable treatment than other widows who are outside the scope of schemes introduced after their husbands' death or retirement.
    My right hon. and gallant Friend recognises that there is strong feeling on both sides of the Committee that, notwithstanding the strict logic of the situation, there is a special case for singling out this group of police widows for exceptional treatment. He has, therefore, authorised me to say that regulations to give police widows the benefit of the present Bill will be placed before the House for approval in due course.
    In these regulations, my right hon. and gallant Friend proposes to provide that where a police widow whose husband died before 5th July, 1948, at present qualifies for the equivalent of a National Insurance widow's pension in substitution for her basic pension as increased by the Pensions (Increase) Acts, she will in future qualify to receive a National Insurance widow's pension in addition to the basic pension as increased by the Pensions (Increase) Acts.
    2288
    My right hon. and gallant Friend has felt that he should meet the wishes of the House of Commons in this matter, but I must make it clear that he has felt able to do so only because of the unique position of the police in the field of State insurance before July, 1948, and because he will be restoring to these widows the more favourable position which it was thought proper for police authorities to provide for the dependants of police officers before July, 1948, and which police widows still enjoy where their husbands have died since that date.
    In meeting the view of the Committee that these widows should be granted this favourable treatment, my right hon. and gallant Friend is glad to pay his tribute to the services which they render, and their husbands rendered, to the community.
    10.30 p.m.
    Dr. Horace King: It is a privilege to be the first to catch your eye, Sir Rhys, after the Under-Secretary's announcement, because hon. Members on both sides of the Committee have pressed the issue of the pre-Oaksey widows for quite a long time, and the Minister's statement tonight has not only pleased all hon. Members who were on the Committee upstairs, but, I am certain, will also give pleasure, almost even more than to the widows, to the surviving old retired policemen of this country who, for the last four years, have fought the battle for the widows of their dead comrades. It is indeed a grand thing tonight to know that as a result of the fight that veteran policemen have made for quite a long time we have at last been able to persuade the Home Office to grant something towards what we think has been all the time a claim founded on justice.
    Several Hon. Members rose—
    The Deputy-Chairman: Mr. Callaghan.
    Dame Irene Ward: Oh.
    Mr. Callaghan: The hon. Lady got in first last time.
    Dame Irene Ward: On my Amendment.
    Mr. Callaghan: With great respect, as far as I know we are not discussing any Amendment at the present time.
    Dame Irene Ward: We were in Standing Committee. The hon. Gentleman has made one speech.
    Mr. Callaghan: I do not know why the hon. Lady should be so annoyed.
    Mr. George Thomas: She wants the credit.
    Mr. Callaghan: The hon. Lady can have the credit. I give the hon. Lady credit for having raised the question time after time.
    Dame Irene Ward: And my Government.
    Mr. Callaghan: Do not try me too hard. The hon. Lady is rather a glutton for praise.
    Dame Irene Ward: No, only my Government.
    Mr. Callaghan: What I wish to say, Sir Rhys—and I promise you that I will from now on ignore the hon. Lady—is that I think the Joint Under-Secretary really has done a great deal in this matter for which the widows of these retired policemen will be extremely grateful to him. If that gets him into trouble with the Treasury, let me hasten to add that I think he has done his duty by the Treasury too, because, if I may say so, he started off by presenting a very blank face to us indeed and refused to concede anything. He did his job magnificently by the Treasury, but he was overcome by the power of the arguments that were advanced, and I think it does credit to his heart, and also to his forensic ability, that he has been able to convert both his right hon. and gallant Friend and the Treasury to his point of view.
    May I ask the Joint Under-Secretary this? He said that these widows would be entitled to the National Insurance pension together with the old original police pension as amended by the Pensions (Increase) Acts of the past. The original pension, as I remember, was 11s. 6d. per week. I am not quite sure what the old Pensions (Increase) Acts brought that up to, but I have a feeling that it was about 14s., and I have also in my head the figure of 16s. 1d. on one of them. Is it 16s. 1d.? Could the hon. Gentleman tell us what will be the effect of this? If he could, then we could pass
    2290
    on, as soon as the hon. Lady the Member for Tynemouth has been able to say her piece.
    Dame Irene Ward: I should like to thank my hon. Friend for having made this very happy arrangement arising out of the discussion we had in Standing Committee with my right hon. and gallant Friend. I will only repeat what I had the pleasure of saying during Question Time today, that I like Ministers who do not become static on precedents, and I am glad to say that today my Government have had two Ministers who have not been static on precedents and have moved forward, as I see it, in implementation of the pledges given by my Prime Minister—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] Well, he is my Prime Minister.
    Mr. Michael Stewart: On a point of order. Is it correct for the hon. Lady to refer to the Government and the Prime Minister of this country as hers? We had always understood that it was Her Majesty's Government.
    The Deputy-Chairman: The hon. Gentleman is quite correct; that is so.
    Dame Irene Ward: It still happens to be my Prime Minister in Her Majesty's Government which I am supporting. The hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan) made two speeches before I said a word, except to ask for guidance. I am glad to say that I feel that today we have had two Ministers of Her Majesty's Government who have not stood on precedent.
    I repeat what I said; I take it that this is part of the implementation of the pledge given by the Prime Minister—my Prime Minister—and by the Chancellor of the Exchequer—my Chancellor of the Exchequer—in relation to the people with small pensions. I am very grateful. We had a most interesting debate in the Standing Committee, and I pay a tribute to the National Retired Police Officers' Association for the long battle which it has fought. I am proud and glad that we have been able to do this.
    After all, the difficulties were created by the Opposition, who introduced the Bill—or whatever it was—in 1948. We have been able to remedy the injustices, and I thank my Government for the action they have taken.
    Mr. Glenvil Hall: I do not desire to join issue with the hon. Lady the Member for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward). We do not want her Government or her Prime Minister.
    Dame Irene Ward: You will not get them.
    Mr. Glenvil Hall: The sooner we see a change of Prime Minister and of Government the better will my hon. Friends on this side of the Committee be pleased. Let me say how delighted we were to listen to the speech of the Joint Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department. When he began I felt sure he was going to turn us down.
    Dame Irene Ward: Why?
    Mr. Glenvil Hall: His lead-in was so long and his explanation of what he eventually agreed to do was so laboured that I felt he was leading up to an excuse for doing nothing. I was correspondingly delighted when, in the end, he came down on the right side. In fact, he reversed his performance in Committee, when he indicated that a great deal was going to be done and ended by indicating that little or nothing could be hoped for. Nevertheless, we are delighted at the excellent way in which the Joint Under-Secretary and the right hon. and gallant Gentleman have met the Committee.
    My real reason for rising was to say that we do not accept for one moment the underlying note of what the Joint Under-Secretary said, that this was a precedent which must never be followed in future. We say that if a precedent is good we are willing to follow it and apply it at any time.
    The Deputy-Chairman rose—
    Mr. Callaghan: I asked the Joint Under-Secretary to give us a figure. I think he was ready to do so, Sir Rhys.
    Mr. Deedes: The hon. Gentleman asked for a figure, but he will appreciate that the regulations that will follow the Bill will contain the details. I am anxious not to go into detail now. However, I can give the hon. Gentleman the figure he asked for. The answer is 21s. 6d. per week, which is £56 a year, plus increases in the light of the present Bill.
    Clause, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

    Clause 11.—(INTERPRETATION.)
    Amendment made, in page 11, line 22, leave out from second "the" to end of line 23 and insert:
    "first day of April, nineteen hundred and fiftysix."—[Mr. H. Brooke.]
    Clause, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

    Clause 13.—(SHORT TITLE, REPEALS, EXTENT AND COMMENCEMENT.)
    Amendment made: In page 12, line 37, leave out from "shall" to end of line 38 and insert:
    "be deemed to have come into force on the first day of April, nineteen hundred and fiftysix."—[Mr. H. Brooke.]
    Clause, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

    First Schedule.—(PENSIONS WHICH MAY BE INCREASED UNDER SECTION ONE OF THIS ACT.)
    Amendment made: In page 15, line 2, leave out "on the appointed day" and insert:
    "at the passing of this Act."—[Mr. H. Brooke.]
    Schedule, as amended, agreed to.
    Bill reported, with Amendments; as amended (in the Standing Committee and on recommittal), considered.
    10.41 p.m.
    Mr. H. Brooke: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
    I nearly said "a Second time"—time passes so fast. TMs is an extremely complicated Measure—as those who have studied it will confirm—yet in less than two months from its launching, after navigation through Standing Committee and Committee of the whole House, the Bill has now reached at any rate the mouth of the harbour, and I have some hopes that within not too many minutes it may be safely in port prior to voyaging to another place.
    In Standing Committee the ship's company was not always united. It is true that we had two Divisions and that on another occasion I sensed some restiveness—not quite mutiny—when certain widows hove in sight and attempted to board the ship. They were

    2293
    pre-Oaksey widows. They were a little premature in their boarding, but they have got on board at a later stage and, of course, I, as an experienced captain, ought to have been aware that there is always liable to be trouble in any ship when we have a woman on board.
    It is with sincere gratitude that I should like to thank all Members of the Standing Committee, including my hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward) for the work done on that Committee. We did the work quickly; I think we did it well—and we did it with a great deal of good humour. We improved the Bill in a number of minor ways, Amendments were accepted from both sides of the Committee, and we had one final Amendment which was seized on as slightly dramatic by the Press when I mentioned that a most obscure correction had to be made in the Fifth Schedule on the recommendation of an unknown person who had called on the Clerk of the Parliaments of Northern Ireland. I now know his name and should like in this House to express my thanks to Mr. Samuel Turner.
    I think I should report to the House that in Committee we made one important and rather far-reaching change, the responsibility for which rests primarily on my hon. Friend the Member for Burton (Mr. Jennings). In the Second Reading debate there was only one major criticism but it was voiced from both sides of the House and that was a criticism of the rather complicated arrangements introduced into a Pensions (Increase) Bill for the first time, whereby the amount of pension increase varied from 10 per cent. down to 6 per cent. according to the length of service of the pensioner.
    As I explained in Standing Committee, the purpose of that arrangement was to safeguard, so far as possible, against certain anomalies that would arise, because if a Rat 10 per cent. were given all round that would bring the pensions of large numbers of pensioners and people who had retired some time ago actually above the pensions on which their counterparts with the same service would retire at the present time.
    We were in a difficulty. The Government first chose that course of action, well aware that they were rendering
    2294
    themselves liable to the criticism that people with this same pension would receive different amounts of increase. In Committee, my hon. Friend moved an Amendment to remove the graduation of the scale, and I advised the Committee that if there was a general feeling in the Committee, as I had already sensed there was outside the House, in favour of the abolition of this graduated scale, I would not oppose the acceptance of the Amendment by the Standing Committee. That Amendment, therefore, was made. This graduation has gone out of the Bill.
    As I warned the Standing Committee—and I must warn the House—it will produce some curious and anomalous figures, and no doubt hon. Members in the future will write to future Financial Secretaries complaining on behalf of their constituents that something has gone wrong. It will actually have been done by the will of the Committee and of the House.
    The cost of the Bill as amended in Committee will be about £8,500,000 a year, of which one quarter approximately will fall on the local authorities. I am excluding from that the announcement which my hon. Friend has just made this evening about the pre-Oaksey widows. In addition to the total cost of about £8,500,000, there will be the further £3 million falling, as I explained before, directly on the Exchequer as a result of the increases in Armed Forces pensions made by Prerogative Instrument after the Bill has gone through.
    So far as Government expenditure is concerned, I can tell the House that this additional expenditure which I have mentioned is provided for in the Estimates for 1956–57 because the Bill had already been presented to the House before any Estimates were published.
    Finally, I am well aware that in the course of the preparation of the Bill I have been an unmitigated nuisance to a great many Government Departments, most of them perhaps, and countless people in them. I want to thank them just as I am now thanking hon. Members in the House for having rendered this Bill possible and facilitated its passage. I hope we can all feel this evening that we have completed here a good job of work and that we shall be giving help, which I know will be welcome help, to more than 300,000 people who, in a

    2295
    multitudinous range of activities, have earned their pensions in the public service.
    10.48 p.m.
    Mr. Glenvil Hall: We agreed that it was very desirable to get this Bill through this House before the Easter Recess. That, I think, is perhaps the reason more than any other why we are dealing with it at this late hour just before we rise for Easter.
    There was a feeling that we would not spend too long on these final stages, but I think it would not be right if, from this side of the House, I did not indicate to the right hon. Gentleman that those of us who were privileged to sit upon the Committee felt that our time was not ill-spent. I think that for once party differences were largely sunk and hon. Members on both sides of the Committee belonging to the Government of the hon. Lady the Member for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward) and those who were against the hon. Lady's Government did what they could to try to improve the Measure.
    I should like to thank the right hon. Gentleman for the way in which he strove to meet the points put from both sides of the Committee. I can say, without fear of contradiction, that between us we improved the Bill greatly. It is not all that some of us would have liked to see, but we can all be pleased with it; it will in no small degree help a large number of deserving people, including the pre-Oaksey widows, who have been mentioned this evening.
    We can hardly consider this on Third Reading, because it is not in the Bill, but the proceedings upstairs produced from the right hon. Gentleman the announcement that in future the pensions would be paid monthly, as soon as arrangements could be made, instead of quarterly in arrear, and that is a great step forward.
    Mr. Brooke: I did not make any pledge of that kind. I said that the pensions increases would be paid at the same time as the basic pensions were paid, but it is not for me to amend other legislation which may affect the periodicity, if I may use that word, in the payment of pensions.
    Mr. Glenvil Hall: I am sorry if I put words into the right hon. Gentleman's
    2296
    mouth which he did not use, but I have a distinct recollection that during our proceedings upstairs we were given to understand that arrangements would be made at some time in the not-too-distant future to see that these pensions are paid at a more frequent interval than at present.
    Finally, I should like to put a question to the right hon. Gentleman which I should like him to answer, if he can, before we part with the Bill. Can he say when these increases will, to use a Parliamentary phrase, come in course of payment? Obviously, it cannot be with the pensions due at the end of this month. Will the pensioners have to wait until the pension payments which are made on 30th June? It would be interesting not only to ourselves but to the pensioners to know when they may expect these increases in the cheques which they receive.
    10.53 p.m.
    Sir Patrick Spens: I had not the privilege of serving on the Standing Committee, but I have a special interest in the Bill. I have to admit at once that I myself appear to benefit by it, but I speak not on behalf of myself but on behalf of one or two former colleagues in the judiciary in India and Pakistan. What has been done for them, I can assure the House, and particularly those hon. Members who served on the Committee, is very greatly appreciated.
    Unfortunately there remains in the Bill one date—31st March, 1952—which decides whether or not those retired judges shall have any increase in their pensions. There is at least one, and I believe there are more, who, at the request of Her Majesty's Government and of the two Dominions, remained in India or Pakistan and did not retire until after 31st March, 1952. I do not think there can be more than half-a-dozen, if that; I know of only one for certain, but one particularly deserving of most careful consideration. It seems extraordinarily hard that that very small class, who stayed on at the request of the three Governments, should be penalised because of that date in the Bill.
    I believe that paragraph 7 of the Second Schedule does, or may, give a discretion that they shall be treated as a special class and regulations made and brought before the House which would

    2297
    enable the benefit of the Bill to be applied to their pensions. I hope that is the case and that either here or in another place an undertaking may be given, as was given a few minutes ago on behalf of the pre-Oaksey widows, that regulations will be considered and brought before the House in order that these very exceptional and deserving cases shall be dealt with as I submit they ought to be dealt with. Subject to that, I rejoice with everybody else that Her Majesty's Government have brought the Bill forward and I join with others in thanking the Committee for its work.
    10.56 p.m.
    Dr. King: I will not follow the point made by the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington, South (Sir P. Spens) except to say that we unsuccessfully raised the question of date in Committee and that I hope that the Minister will take notice of his right hon. Friend's words.
    The Bill will give sums ranging from 3s. to 6s. a week, on the one hand, to a few cases of £3 a week at the top of the scale to a group of deserving State and local government servants. I am glad that the Minister mentioned a figure of 300,000 and that the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington, South has called attention to the quality and character of some of the more eminent public servants who are being helped, but among the beneficiaries of importance equal to that of the retired India judges whom he mentioned, and probably representing most of the people who benefit from the Bill, are those who will be receiving 3s., 4s. and 5s. a week. They are honest, ordinary folk who have worked faithfully throughout their years as postmen, policemen, teachers, firemen, clerks, and local government officers who have seen their pensions dwindling away in value in the last few years and to whom the addition of a few shillings a week to their meagre pensions will be of real value.
    I am glad that we have managed to improve the Bill in Committee and that from Second Reading onwards pressure from both sides of the House has persuaded the Minister to get rid of the graduated system of increase and we have secured a flat rate of 10 per cent. I assure the Minister that whatever
    2298
    anomalies there are—and he has convinced us that there will be anomalies in a 10 per cent. flat rate—those anomalies would have been far outweighed by the anomalies of a graduated system whereby we paid a lower rate of pension increase to the lowest pensioner.
    This is one of the few occasions when hon. Members on this side of the House in this Parliament can thank a Minister of this Government on Third Reading for a good Bill and for his willingness to accept useful Amendments in Committee. I hope that the Measure will get on the Statute Book as soon as possible. I hope, also, that it will be taken as an example and that people outside the House, looking at the purpose of the Bill—people in nationalised industry, on the one hand, and in private industry, on the other—will act in the spirit of the Bill. I hope that they will do something for the hardest-hit group of the community, that is, those living on small fixed incomes, who have watched those incomes dwindle away. I would urge others to take a leaf out of the Government's book—I was glad to hear the Minister of Transport's announcement today about retired railway servants.
    The Bill fulfils the promise made to some of us by the former Chancellor of the Exchequer about two years ago. He can indeed take credit for carrying out that promise, but the chief credit must go to the Financial Secretary to the Treasury who, during the two years has, as he told us tonight, carried out an enormous amount of detailed work to make the Measure the comprehensive one that it is.
    Nevertheless, we must be frank on this side of the House. I say quite fearlessly this evening that this Bill has been made necessary by the Government's failure to carry out their Election promises to grapple with and control the cost of living, and that the pensioners whom we are helping in this Bill, and the pensioners who are not being helped because they are outside its scope, would have all been better off had this Bill not been necessary, and had the Government managed to control the cost of living. Having said that, I congratulate the Minister on a Bill which he has conducted and piloted through the House in a way which does him credit, and I hope that it will soon become law.
    11.1 p.m.
    Mr. Norman Cole: May I also add my welcome to this Bill and my congratulations to my right hon. Friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury? It is particularly welcome that the date on which this Bill comes into force should be 1st April. As I have said, I welcome the Bill, and it will be more than welcome to the 300,000 people affected. I am also glad to know that as soon as the Bill becomes law, the Royal Warrant giving corresponding increases to Service pensioners will come into force.
    It has already been mentioned this evening that these pensioners covered by the Bill have given great service to the public, and that cannot be mentioned too often. They have served the public well in their time and, to use the words that my right hon. Friend used on another occasion, it is just and right that we should give this additional measure of practical assistance to those who served in that way. There is a special feature about this Bill, in that we remove the limitations which have prevented many people from enjoying the results of pension increases in other Bills of this kind.
    There is one point to which I should like to draw the attention of my right hon. Friend. He mentioned at one stage a booklet, which it was hoped to produce, to explain just how the Bill affected the pensioner in relation to these pensions. I have in mind a corresponding booklet produced, I believe, by the Ministry of Pensions about two years ago, asking, "Are you sure you are getting your right pension?" The Ministry was not satisfied with that, and followed it up with another pamphlet, saying, "Are you still sure?" For some time I carried those pamphlets about with me, because they were so valuable in explaining the complexities of pensions generally.
    The Bill is a complicated measure, and I am sure that every hon. Member of the House and everyone in the country would wish every pensioner to get his or her full benefit under the Bill and under previous Acts of the same character. I should like to ask my right hon. Friend to ensure that we shall see the booklet at the earliest opportunity,
    2300
    that it receives the widest possible circulation, and that we may all have a copy from which to advise our constituents.
    Once again, may I thank my right hon. Friend for the Bill and his part in it. I am sure that he will feel happy at the great benefit which it will produce for such a very large body of pensioners.
    11.5 p.m.
    Mr. G. Thomas: It was not my privilege to be a member of the Standing Committee which dealt with the Bill, but I note with satisfaction the harmony which appears to have prevailed during its discussion. I have rarely known a Third Reading in which so many tributes have been paid.
    The plight of these people has been on the conscience of the House for a long time. I believe that the House has been disturbed in past years to know that thrifty people who have been paying into superannuation schemes, expecting to get pensions which would give them a certain standard of living, have seen them being whittled away through circumstances over which they had no control. It is a terrible experience for people to pay through a lifetime of hard work for a pension, believing that they will then live in comfort, only to find that they come into superannuation in a period when money is losing its value.
    During the inter-war years people could safely calculate what their standard of life was likely to be. People who retired knew just where they would stand in regard to their pension. Since the end of the war, however, that has not been the case, and people today are unable to be sure what value their pension will have during the next five years, or certainly within the next decade. Who in this House believes that he can guarantee that there will be no further inflation, that money will henceforth keep its value, and that the pensions envisaged here will hold, in ten years' time, the value that they hold at the present time?
    I have received some correspondence about this Measure, and I want to refer to it because I think that we would be wrong if we congratulated ourselves too much and believed that this Bill really solves the problem of pensions which have lost their value. I have a letter here from a retired head master. He retired from a large school in Cardiff in 1942 and his pension was half salary,

    2301
    £237, plus annuity under the 1898 Act, £23, less allocation towards his wife's pension £25, leaving a pension of £235. The value of the £ today compared with when that man retired is only 8s. 6d. If he were to have today the equivalent of the pension which he expected, instead of £235 he should be receiving £553.
    In the Explanatory Memorandum to the Bill, as my correspondent points out, the statement is made that the purpose of increasing pensions is to meet hardship caused by the fall in money values. This 10 per cent. gives £23 to that man, and it is, of course, welcome. I do not for a second wish to be churlish about the fact that an increase has been given, but I do not want us to pretend that it meets the problem, because that man will still be receiving far below what he had expected to receive.
    Mr. Cole: I appreciate the point which the hon. Gentleman is making, but has his constituent gained anything on the occasion of the previous pensions increase in addition to what he will receive under this Bill?
    Mr. G. Thomas: I should not like to reply to that question, but I accept the point which the hon. Gentleman has made.
    I have also received correspondence from the Post Office Retired Colleagues Association. If I may give an illustration from the City of Cardiff, I understand that of the 250 Post Office pensioners in Cardiff, West, there are at least 200 whose weekly pension ranges from 35s. to 70s. To these, writes Mr. Hurdidge, their secretary, any sum less than 10s. a week would be inadequate.
    The man who has been a head postman for forty years and who retired in 1944, receives a weekly pension of £2 3s. His increase will be scarcely that given to people in receipt of National Assistance. A member of the Post Office engineering staff in Cardiff who retired in 1947 after 40 years' service, which is the highest figure given to me, is receiving £3 5s. 0d. Clearly, 10 per cent. on that is inadequate to meet the 14 per cent. cost of living rise in respect of food since the last increase was granted. The 10 per cent. increase cannot compensate for the increased cost of food consumption alone.
    2302
    Again I would say, who would like to tell these people that their pensions will now keep their value? I trust that we shall move into happier times financially, when the £ will be stabilised at home; but until it is we shall have a special responsibility for these people.
    Lest the Financial Secretary thinks that I am being churlish, I must say that I also am grateful for the way in which this Measure has been dealt with in Committee. I am glad that the graduated scheme has disappeared. It is true that even today the more one has the more one is given under this Bill; but I know that The Schoolmaster said a little while ago that there are questions not only of absolute hardship but of relative hardship, and we in this House must be willing to face up to the question. For that reason I welcome the Measure. I join in expressing thanks for what is being done, but I hope that the Treasury will keep a careful eye upon the needs of the old guard, and will not feel that it can now sit back, and that these people are all right for ever.
    11.12 p.m.
    Mr. J. C. Jennings: I shall, of necessity, be brief. It is fitting that one who was a member of the Standing Committee which considered this Bill should, at this stage, pay tribute to the Minister and to the Treasury. I have not often heard the Treasury complimented while I have been in this House. We have got roughly £12 million out of the Treasury in connection with the Bill. To borrow a phrase from another quarter which was used in another context, I think the Treasury has turned out to be not altogether a cold, desiccated calculating machine.
    When I was a boy and wanted something from my parents I learned to ask for what was expedient and practical. I asked for what I thought it was within their power to give. I found that I got a reasonable response to my request. Hon. Members on both sides of the Committee, I think, followed that idea. Our requests were reasonable and practical.
    The Bill was a good one at its inception. It had two defects. One was the graduated scale, and the other the apparent omission of anything for the pre-Oaksey widows. I am glad that on

    2303
    these points the Minister and the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department have seen fit to grant concessions.
    During Second Reading, hon. Members opposite paid tribute to the work of the sub-committee appointed by the 1922 Committee. We who served on it were grateful for the tributes, and we are glad that in some small measure we helped to bring this Bill into being. May I pay tribute to hon. Members opposite, because they have certainly contributed to a large extent to the good result which has been achieved. I hardly dare to say that the lion has lain down with the lamb, because there might be argument as to who was the lion and who was the lamb, but we exchanged across the Floor mostly guarded geniality instead of hard basilisk stares.
    I should like to pay tribute to the Minister. In the Standing Committee, my right hon. Friend the Financial Secretary was calm and factual, but the warmhearted and sympathetic way in which he received our representations and the concessions which he gave showed his readiness to meet the very grave human problems which we put to him. I congratulate him and the Government on a very good job of work.
    11.16 p.m.
    Mr. Douglas Houghton: On the occasion of the Third Reading of the Bill we are in danger of becoming a mutual admiration society. Nevertheless, I certainly join with the hon. Member for Burton (Mr. Jennings) in the words of praise which he has just uttered. The proceedings in Standing Committee were certainly very agreeable. There was only one savage attack made on the Government, and that was by the hon. Lady the Member for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward). The violence of her attack was modified, to some extent, by the fact that she had almost lost her voice; but apart from that attack we certainly got on in a very friendly way.
    Of course we have not done enough for the pensioners. We all realise that, but the Bill represents an advance on the present position, and for that reason it must be welcomed. It is extremely difficult, in these years of the declining value of money, to see that all deserving citizens are suitably protected from the injury that inflation causes. Here is a
    2304
    very large body of retired public servants for whom this House must have a special care, and the Bill is the expression of it—modest but nevertheless welcome to all those who will receive the benefits. I am sure that it has been a pleasure to all of us to have contributed something towards it.
    When the Financial Secretary referred to his hon. Friend the Member for Burton, who moved the Amendment which the Government accepted—and we were all grateful for that—it passed through my mind what a great disadvantage it is that proposals of this kind cannot, apparently by constitutional practice, be discussed with representatives of those most interested and affected before a Bill is introduced into the House. It seems strange to me that amendments to National Insurance and industrial injuries schemes can be discussed with the Trades Union Congress before legislation is introduced, and that prospective legislation can be discussed with interested parties outside, yet in this instance public service pensioners are allowed to know nothing of the contents of the Bill until it is published and presented to the House. We all know the difficulties of getting changes made once a Bill has been introduced. There is no doubt that all the advice which the Minister got from representative bodies of pensioners—
    Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Rhys Hopkin Morris): Order. The hon. Gentleman is going beyond the terms of the Motion, which is, "That the Bill be now read the Third Time."
    Mr. Houghton: I am dealing with the Bill, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. I do not wish to transgress the rules of order. I think I have made my point, and I will leave it at that. I have said this on more than one occasion. I think that a better way of dealing with these matters ought to be found.
    I shall not detain the House for more than a minute or two longer, and I apologise to the right hon. Gentleman for raising belatedly a question of interpretation or explanation. I know that this would have been more properly done in Standing Committee, but this particular matter was brought to my attention only after the conclusion of the Committee stage. I have caused notice of this to be given to the right hon. Gentleman, and

    2305
    I hope that I do not take him unprepared. It is a comparatively small point, I think, though a somewhat intricate one.
    I refer to paragraph 2 of the Second Schedule. This is an escalator clause, and such clauses are always troublesome, whether they go up or down. In past Pensions (Increase) Acts the escalators have gone up, and this one goes down. The point is this. This Bill gives a pension increase to those who retired before the end of 1947 whose salaries at the time of retirement were £1,500 a year or more; they get a 10 per cent. increase, with a limit of £100 increase. The Bill also gives a pension increase to those who retired between the end of 1947 and the end of March, 1952, provided that their salaries on retirement were below £1,500 a year, and they get a 10 per cent. increase, with in their case, no need to apply the ceiling.
    I understand that it is possible—although I have no example which I can quote to the House—for the pensioner who retired between the end of December, 1947, and the end of March, 1952, on total emoluments of less than £1,500, to get, in pension and the pension increase together, more than a pensioner who retired before the end of 1947 on emoluments of £1,500 a year exactly, and paragraph 2 of the Second Schedule provides that in such a case the higher pension shall be reduced to the level of the lower, whereas similar escalator clauses in previous Pensions (Increase) Acts have enabled the lower pension to be lifted to the figure of the higher one.
    That, as I understand it, is the explanation of paragraph 2 of the Second Schedule, and I should like the Minister, if he could spare a moment or two before we part with the Bill, kindly to explain whether my interpretation is correct, and, if so, why he has dealt with the matter in this way. Why has he thought it necessary this time to keep the total pension down instead of, as in previous cases where these marginal difficulties arise, allowing the lower pension to move up? There may be—and I am quite sure there is—an explanation. I am not asking the Minister to alter the provision. I am just asking him to consider the point which I have made, and to see whether he can convince himself, when giving the explanation, that it is a fair and a proper one.
    2306
    That is all I have to say, and I sincerely hope that the Minister will be able to spare a moment or two to deal with that point.
    11.24 p.m.
    Mr. John Peyton: I certainly do not wish to detain the House any longer, and I am sure my right hon. Friend will forgive me if I therefore make my congratulations to him very short indeed, but nevertheless very sincere. I should particularly like to, congratulate him on the fact that included in this Bill are the members of the ex-Indian Government services. They are a comparatively small number of people who have felt, I think with some reason, that they have not received the full measure of the rights and deserts to which they felt entitled.
    I wish to make briefly only one point in regard to these people. I know it affects only a few people, but it is matter of some difficulty. My right hon. Friend may not be able to reply to the point tonight, but I hope that he can consider it when the Bill goes to another place. It concerns some members of the ex-Indian Government services who stayed on after the transfer of power, in response to appeals made by Lord Mountbatten, who was then Viceroy, and Mr. Attlee, the then Prime Minister,. in pursuance of their duty, as they saw it. By reason of the Pensions (India, Pakistan and Burma) Act, 1955, they are disqualified from benefits or increases under the Bill. I hope that my right hon. Friend will look at this case and do his best to remedy what I believe to be a genuine grievance.
    11.26 p.m.
    Mr. H. Brooke: I can speak again only by leave of the House. I should like to be allowed to reply briefly to questions which have been raised. I have been feeling rather embarrassed at the congratulations that have been pouring in. I would assure hon. Members that tomorrow at Question Time the usual basilisk stare of the Treasury will be back again. In any case, those congratulations ought not to be addressed to me, because it would have been impossible for me to do anything had not my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer agreed to find the money for the Bill.

    2307
    My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington, South (Sir P. Spens) and my hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr. Peyton) raised questions about certain Indian pensioners. I know they will not expect me to make any detailed reply. The chance of amendment of the Bill in this House has passed. I will study carefully what each of them has said. I am sure they will appreciate that I am not giving any undertaking that I can meet their wishes. As I explained earlier, I am anxious to avoid letting slip any word which might raise the hopes of some pensioner when those hopes are not going to be fulfilled.
    The hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton), who has taken a great interest in the Bill inside and outside the House, raised questions about paragraph 2 of the Second Schedule. It is complicated, but his interpretation was entirely correct. A pensioner who retired between 1947 and 1952 on a final salary of £1,500 a year would qualify for no increase, whereas if his salary for pension purposes had been £1,498 a year he would qualify. Clearly one must do something to prevent unfairness between those two men.
    The way we have chosen in the paragraph is to lay it down that the man whose final salary was under £1,500 may not receive a pension increase which would put him in a better position than the man who retired during those crucial years on a salary of £1,500 a year, or over. I thought once that we might do it the other way round, but in fact we did it this way round. I should have been prepared, in Committee, to explain why we chose this way, but the matter was not raised.
    The hon. Gentleman is perfectly right in taking the opportunity of raising it now. The general reason was that Pensions (Increase) Acts are based on hardship, and the whole plan of having a different cut-off date for the over-£1,500 men from the under £1,000 men was formulated in the belief that it was the under £1,500 men who were likely to suffer the greater hardship. It was that principle that was followed through all our treatment of the over-£1,500 people. We may not have done it in the right way but I think that, on balance, we did, and had the point been raised in
    2308
    the Standing Committee I do not think I should have advised the Committee to make any change in this paragraph.
    The hon. Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. G. Thomas) raised a number of cases, which sounded like sad cases—and indeed they may well be—but I think that he will recognise that one must be quite certain, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bedfordshire, South (Mr. Cole) pointed out, whether the people concerned have, in fact, received earlier increases. Some of them will certainly have done—I can tell the House that straight away—under earlier Acts. The hon. Member suggested that there had been an increase of 14 per cent. in the price of food since the last Pensions (Increase) Act, but we established in the Standing Committee that the increase in the cost-of-living index since the passing of the last Pensions (Increase) Act has been between 11 and 12 per cent. We are raising pensions by 10 per cent., which is pretty close—though not, I grant, right up to the cost of living.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Bedfordshire, South, also asked about the explanatory booklet—the child's guide to knowledge. I think that however simple it is made, it will have to be quite an intelligent child who understands the intricacies of pensions increases. I would like to assure my hon. Friend, and to tell the House, that the first draft of the booklet is already prepared. We shall issue the booklet as soon as we can, but it stands to reason that we cannot issue it until the Bill has received the Royal Assent.
    Finally, the right hon. Member for Colne Valley (Mr. Glenvil Hall) asked how soon the payments would start. There, again, he will appreciate that no increased pensions can be paid until the Bill is actually on the Statute Book, but we shall get on with our preparations as fast as we can. This Bill is, in some respects, simpler than previous Acts because there is no means test, and as we have, in fact, simplified it still further in Committee by taking away the graduated scale it should be possible to be ready to pay increased pensions within quite a few weeks from now, provided that the Bill by then is on the Statute Book, and provided that the normal date for the payment of a periodical pension will arise at that time.

    2309
    We are getting on very fast, and one of the satisfactory features of the Bill is that, owing to this greater simplification, the number of staff required to operate it, when the new calculations have been made, will be lower than it was before. But there are some 330,000 calculations to be made, and none of us would like to have that personal responsibility on his own shoulders. It is bound to take some time.
    The hour is late. I hope that I have shown my appreciation of the way in which the House has received the Bill, and I know that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer would like me, on his behalf, to express good
    2310
    wishes to all those who will benefit from it.
    Mr. Glenvil Hall: May I just say that I did, unfortunately, attribute to the right hon. Gentleman, by inference, the fact that an announcement had been made as to the payments of pensions at shorter intervals than at present. We did discuss that upstairs, but I now recollect that it was the Minister of Education who actually made the announcement at that Box, and I therefore apologise for attributing it to the Financial Secretary.
    Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.

  NATIONAL SERVICE (PERSONAL CASE)
  Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Oakshott.]
  11.35 p.m.
  Mr. John Peyton: In raising this case, I want to say to my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour and National Service that I have seldom been more convinced that an administrative decision was both wrong and unjust than I am now.
  Mr. Hooper, a man now 64 years of age, who is partially disabled, is attempting to run a smallholding business which has been in his family for nearly a hundred years. He has a considerable investment capital commitment in this holding of something over £2,000. It is a heavily mechanised holding, and production is highly intensive. Between 300 and 400 tons of potatoes are produced every year, which from a holding in all of not more than 34½ acres is a very considerable figure. In addition to that, over 100 pigs are reared annually.
  Today this man's son has been called up. He is, therefore, left with the help to run this holding—and as I have said, he himself suffers from a considerable degree of disablement—of his 15 years old daughter who has just left school and one man aged over 60. I make it perfectly clear to my hon. Friend that it is quite impossible for the business to continue in the absence of this young man who is the only person on the holding competent to run and maintain the very considerable amount of machinery.
  So far, at this point at any rate, the boy having been called up in January, operations continue, but now Mr. Hooper is faced with the necessity for doing the sowing and he is unable to carry that programme out adequately even though his son may from time to time be able to help him whenever he may get leave from the Army. The son is aged 20. I may say that I visited the holding myself last weekend, and I am perfectly satisfied that this young man's right place to work on this holding from which both the nation and he himself and his family will benefit.
  2312
  Although I realise that it is not a cardinal factor in the matter, I hope that my hon. Friend will consider the frame of mind of this young man who is called upon now to do two years' National Service, knowing at the same time that his absence from the holding will mean the wreck of what should be properly his future livelihood. It is obviously right in these cases that one should have prior regard to the national interest. The national interest here, I suggest, demands quite clearly the highest possible agricultural production.
  Only recently we have been informed that the potato guarantee is to be raised, and I would remind my hon. Friend that under the stress of war this holding was thought sufficiently good to warrant not only the employment of Mr. Hooper himself and his son but four other men two of whom were of military age, and yet now his own son cannot possibly be spared, although this boy is far more vital than anybody else.
  I suggest also that, quite apart from matter of production, considerations of fairness demand that this young man should be deferred because, if a comparison is made between this and other cases, I believe that this is a glaring instance of a gross error of judgment.
  I first came to know this case in the summer last year. The change in the Regulations covering deferment appeared to have been designed specially to cater for just such a case as this. I should like to quote here the opinion expressed to me, both verbally and in writing, by a responsible, intelligent and sensible branch secretary of the National Farmers' Union. I am bound to say that I might well have put it in the same words myself. He wrote:
  "I should not have spent so much time myself on this case had I not felt convinced that it was one where deferment should be granted to the son and had I not felt that the three main conditions for deferment were fully met, i.e., that the holding was making a very significant contribution to food production, both because the soil is some of the best in the country and because it was worked intensively and expertly; secondly, that it was quite apparent from the other staff employed that they were not suitable or willing to do the son's work, and to drive and manipulate the specialised machinery; and thirdly, that my experience over the last four years of the labour position locally made me certain that it would be virtually impossible to obtain a suitable replacement for the son."

  2313
  I should like to ask my hon. Friend what investigation took place. Is he satisfied, is the agricultural advisory panel satisfied, that this holding makes a substantial contribution to food production? Is he satisfied that the holding is properly run? Is he satisfied that the presence of this young man is essential to the holding? I believe that no one would challenge the first two points, but I suspect that my hon. Friend will have difficulty in accepting what I tell him now—that the presence of this young man is clearly essential and that no replacement is available.
  What ground had the agricultural advisory panel in denying the vital necessity to the holding of Mr. Hooper's son? I am in some difficulty because I have been told by the War Office that compassionate release cannot be granted unless the Ministry of Labour change their minds. On the other hand, I am well aware, and have been reminded by my hon. Friend, that the responsibility of the Ministry of Labour ceases as soon as a man enters the Forces. It is difficult to know where to turn. One is simply echoing from one Department to the other, without ever getting a satisfactory or conclusive answer from either.
  I want to know who can take some action now to save this holding and its production. I want to know from my hon. Friend whether he maintains that this advisory panel—and I realise that people do good work on such panels—is infallible. I suggest that in this case it has failed, and blatantly failed. I say to my hon. Friend that if the panel's opinion is upheld in the face of all the other evidence submitted to him from other quarters, then to me it will be disquieting proof of how little an hon. Member is now able to do to redress a genuine wrong.
  This decision and the advice given by the panel in this case makes a mockery of the Regulations and of the policy that lies behind them. Adherence to the present position will show that more respect is paid by the machine of Government to a panel which is administratively fallible than is paid to the claims of justice and common sense. I repeat my conviction that here is a holding on which food has been produced very intensively and with considerable skill. By this action the key man upon whom the whole
  2314
  functioning of the holding depends is being removed.
  I very much hope that even if my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour and National Service cannot meet my request tonight he will hold some consultation with his right hon. Friends the Minister of Agriculture and the Secretary of State for War and will suggest, at any rate to the Secretary of State for War, that this young man's presence in the Forces is a mockery when it involves the loss which it undoubtedly does, both personally to his family and ultimately to his country.
  11.46 p.m.
  The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour and National Service (Mr. Robert Carr): My hon. Friend has treated the case of his constituent with passion and perhaps even with fierceness. I do not complain about that, because I know from our previous correspondence and conversation how strongly he feels about the case. I recognise that in this, and in many other cases, National Service imposes a very real hardship, and I share strongly my hon. Friend's sympathy with the hardship that is suffered. Nevertheless, we must realise that this possibility of personal hardship is inseparable from the need for universal National Service.
  My hon. Friend spoke about the danger of Mr. Hooper's business having to be closed down. I must tell him, though I certainly take no pleasure in doing so, that the hardship associated with National Service may indeed even involve the closing down of a business and, except in the case of an agricultural business, the owners of that business would not even have the possibility of deferment. Had this, for example, been a greengrocery business rather than a business producing vegetables, the owner would not even have had the chance of applying for deferment of his employee.
  Therefore, the starting point from which we must consider each individual case is that the duty to perform National Service is universal and all men are liable to be called up, in spite of the fact that that may cause sacrifice and hardship. Here the agricultural industry is in a very special position, shared, to any comparable extent, only by the coalmining industry and the Merchant Navy. Agricultural workers born in and after 1933,

  2315
  although regarded as normally available for call-up, may be granted deferments for limited periods, provided that certain stringent conditions are fulfilled. Such deferment is granted by administrative action under the discretion of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Labour and National Service.
  The exercise of this Ministerial discretion is obviously a most complicated and difficult task. Clearly, it would be impossible for my right hon. Friend personally to assess the merits and qualifications of each case. For one thing, and this is particularly true in agriculture, so much depends on local conditions, which vary greatly from one area to another. To ensure the maximum fairness in assessing the merits of a large number of claims for deferment, it is necessary to lay down certain tests which must be satisfied, and to devise machinery by which those tests can be applied in each case.
  All the time we must remember that the consideration of these applications for deferment has to be given against the background of universal liability; in other words, that in the case of each and every applicant, the presumption must be that he shall do his National Service unless the case for an exception is most clearly proved. It will always be an extremely difficult and invidious task to draw the dividing line between those who qualify for deferment and those who do not.
  However good the machinery, however efficiently and conscientiously it is applied, there will always be the cases which fall narrowly on one side of the line or the other, and about which there will be claims of inconsistency and hardship. The best we can do is to set up the most fair and efficient tests and machinery that we can devise, and my right hon. Friend and I believe we have done that in the case of agricultural deferment.
  In the first place, there are three basic tests laid down, against which each case must be judged. The first test is that the farm or holding must be making a significant contribution to food production; the second test, if the first is passed, is that the production of the farm must be substantial in relation to its size—in other words, the farm must be efficiently
  2316
  run; and the third test is that the departure of the man in question would lead to a substantial loss in food production.
  Since the conditions in agriculture vary so much from one area to another, it has for long been the practice to apply these tests locally and not centrally, and the machinery used for this is as follows. The body which actually makes the decision is the local National Service deferment board, and there are thirty-one of these boards throughout the country, dealing with agriculture. This board—and this is the crux of the matter—is advised by an agricultural advisory panel. The board consists of officials of my Ministry, but the panel consists of equal numbers of local farmers and farm workers. There are normally at each panel meeting two farmers and two farm workers, but if necessary this number may be reduced to one on each side. There must, however, be a balanced representation actually present at each meeting.
  In attendance at a panel meeting would be the convener of the panel—a whole-time official of my Ministry—and another official with a knowledge of the labour supply position in the area. But the recommendation of the panel on whether deferment should or should not be granted is made by the agricultural members alone. These agricultural advisory panels are the essence of the system. They provide the deferment board with an independent and technical assessment of each case. That is arrived at with the help of factual information, provided by the county agricultural service about each case. In addition the farmer himself also supports his application with facts and arguments.
  So the panel has before it the factual information, given by the farmer, checked by an agricultural officer, and with the farmer's arguments in support of his application. If there is unanimity both within the advisory panel and between the panel and the deferment board, then the case is settled locally, as has happened in the case we are discussing. It would be contrary to the basic principle of the arrangements to over-ride such unanimous local decisions. If, however, there is a lack of unanimity either within the panel or between the panel and the board, then the case is referred to the headquarters of the Ministry of Labour

  2317
  and National Service which, in turn, consults the headquarters of the Ministry of Agriculture before a final decision is made.
  Now I should like to look at the way in which this machinery was applied in the case of Mr. Hooper's son. The son registered for National Service in March, 1954—two years ago—in the normal way, after reaching the age of eighteen. His father at once applied for his deferment, but that application was not even eligible for consideration because at that time the deferment of agricultural workers of that age was confined strictly either to stockmen or otherwise to men employed on small farms where there were not more than two full-time workers in addition to the farmer himself.
  On this farm there were four workers at that time, so the case did not come within the scope of consideration. That rule was altered only in October, 1955, and so it was only then, for the first time, that Mr. Hooper's application for the deferment of his son became eligible even for consideration. By that time, it must be remembered, the majority of farm workers, other than stockmen, of the age of Mr. Hooper's son, working on farms like his, with more than two employees, had already been called up. The only reason why Mr. Hooper's son had not been called up earlier with the others was that he had been given two periods of six months' postponement of call-up on grounds of business hardship, granted, let me emphasise, for the sole purpose of providing an opportunity for making alternative arrangements.
  While not in any way wishing to belittle the extent of any present hardship which is being suffered in this case, it is only fair to remember that nearly two years elapsed between registration and the date when Mr. Hooper's son was called up. This in itself is by no means a negligible consideration against a background of the principle of universal National Service. One is bound to ask whether in that period the maximum effort was made to train a replacement for Mr. Hooper's son.
  But there could, let me repeat, have been no question of deferment in this case had the conditions of eligibility not been changed in October last year when, for the first time, all workers on farms of
  2318
  all sizes, not only the smallest, became eligible for consideration. This change of Regulations brought the case within the scope of consideration, and quite properly, Mr. Hooper, senior, made an application for his son's deferment on 14th October, 1955. The deferment board, according to the machinery already described, referred the application to the agricultural advisory panel. The panel considered the case on 2nd December, 1955, briefed with information from the farmer and from the agricultural officer, and that panel unanimously recommended that the application should be rejected.
  My hon. Friend asked what was the basis of that advice and which tests had been applied. I should like to tell him that the panel agreed that the farm was making a significant contribution to food production. It also agreed that the production of the holding was substantial in relation to its size. The point which it disallowed was the need for Mr. Hooper's son in the conduct of that business. The panel unanimously took the view that the business could be conducted without him. This unanimous advice was accepted by the deferment board and, as I have said, since there was complete agreement at local level, that decision was implemented.
  What my hon. Friend is really asking is that the Minister should override that unanimous decision of a local deferment board, a decision which has been arrived at on the unanimous recommendation of a panel of farmers and farm workers from that locality. I cannot believe that that would be a right and proper thing to do. The Minister can have neither expert nor local knowledge, and it is because he must rely on technical advice from some independent quarter that the present system has been evolved, with the agreement not only of the agricultural Departments of State but with the agreement, too, of the industry itself.
  I recognise that my hon. Friend tonight has advanced what to a layman may sound strong technical arguments as to why the presence of Mr. Hooper's son was essential to the farm, but the fact remains that the advisory panel specifically and unanimously expressed its expert opinion in the opposite sense. It said categorically that the farm could be run without the son. I must ask my hon.

  2319
  Friend to consider what the Minister of Labour could do in such circumstances. There is conflicting opinion on a technical point; but the technical advisory service set up for this purpose was not divided. It was unanimous. Two farmers and two farm workers from the locality, with the facts before them, were unanimous in a contrary view. I feel bound to conclude that Mr. Hooper's application was considered in the light of all the relevant facts, and on the best advice available, and that my right hon. Friend had no option but to refuse to grant deferment.
  That decision having been taken, and Mr. Hooper, junior, having been called up, as he was on 19th January, for service in the Army, he passed out of the jurisdiction of my Ministry into that of my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for War. If, unfortunately, the fears so strongly expressed by my hon. Friend, about the effect of Mr. Hooper's call-up turn out in due course to be justified, the only possible remedy appears to be for him to apply to his commanding officer for compassionate release. If there is at any time a significant change in the circumstances of the case which
  2320
  appears to warrant discharge from the Army on compassionate grounds, then I am assured that the Secretary of State for War is always willing to consider the matter.
  I am sorry that I cannot give my hon. Friend further help than that. I feel great sympathy for the case he has advanced, but I hope he will realise that this matter has been looked into with the greatest possible care. I hope he will also realise that when there is conflict with technical advice from the agricultural advisory panel of farmers and farm workers, having both expert knowledge of agriculture and close knowledge of the area concerned, with which the local board has agreed, my right hon. Friend must accept that advice. To do otherwise would upset the basis of a system which we believe is the one most calculated to give fairness in drawing a difficult dividing line between those who just qualify and those who unfortunately just do not qualify for deferment.
  Adjourned accordingly at three minutes past Twelve o'clock.