Commons Sitting of 21 November 1956

Preamble
The House met at half-past Two o'clock
PRAYERS
[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]
MESSAGES FROM THE QUEEN

  DOUBLE TAXATION RELIEF
  The VICE-CHAMBERLAIN OF THE HOUSEHOLD reported Her Majesty's Answer to the Address, as follows:
  I have received your Address praying that, on the ratification by the Government of the Republic of Austria of the Convention set out in the schedule to the draft of an Order entitled the Double Taxation Relief (Taxes on Income) (Austria) Order, 1956, a copy of which was presented on thirty-first October in the last session of Parliament, an order be made in the form of that draft.
  I will comply with your request.

  SUPPLIES AND SERVICES (TRANSITIONAL POWERS) AND EMERGENCY LAWS (MISCELLANEOUS PROVISIONS)
  The VICE-CHAMBERLAIN OF THE HOUSEHOLD reported Her Majesty's Answer to the Addresses, as follows:
  I have received your Addresses praying that the Supplies and Services (Transitional Powers) Act, 1945, and the various Defence Regulations and enactments which you specify be continued in force respectively for a further period of one year until the tenth day of December, nineteen hundred and fifty-seven.
  I will give directions accordingly.

  PATENTS AND DESIGNS
  The VICE-CHAMBERLAIN OF THE HOUSEHOLD reported Her Majesty's Answer to the Addresses, as follows:
  I have received your Addresses praying that the Patents (Extension of Period of Emergency) Order, 1956, and the Registered Designs (Extension of Period of Emergency) Order, 1956, be made in the form of the respective drafts laid before Parliament.
  I will comply with your request.

ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
  POST OFFICE

    10, Downing Street (Mail)
    Mr. Lewisasked the Postmaster-General what action he has taken during the past few weeks to deal with the delivery of the additional amount of mail to 10, Downing Street, S.W.1; whether he will state the extra amount of staff and/or man-hours put on to the sorting and delivery of this mail; and whether he will give an estimate of the percentage of increase of mail compared with last May.
    The Postmaster-General (Dr. Charles Hill): No special measures were necessary. An organisation which delivers over 30 million letters a day can face with equanimity temporary increases in individual deliveries, whether to the Prime Minister or to the hon. Member for West Ham. North (Mr. Lewis).
    Mr. Lewis: While thanking the Postmaster-General for that reply, may I ask him whether we can therefore feel sure that there have been no protests from the postmen concerned about the added mail which has arisen as a result of the protests about the Government's action in Suez?
    Dr. Hill: I am not responsible for the contents of the mail the Post Office delivers but only for its speedy and efficient transit.
    Captain Pilkington: Does this interest by the hon. Member for West Ham, North (Mr. Lewis) in No. 10, Downing Street mean that one day he hopes to go there?
    Hon. Members: Why not?

    Advertisements (Correspondence Colleges)
    Mr. M. Stewartasked the Postmaster-General whether, in future, he will decline to accept for insertion in stamp-books or other Post Office material advertisements from correspondence colleges and other institutions claiming that, by coaching, they can secure for children entrance to grammar schools.
    Dr. Hill: I am considering the matter raised by the hon. Member and will write to him later.
    Mr. Stewart: While thanking the right hon. Gentleman for that reply, may I ask him whether he is aware that on the back of a stamp-book I have here is a picture of a rejoicing family with the words,
    "He's Passed! Thanks to —'s correspondence college. So can your child. Simplified Postal Courses specially written to prepare children for Grammar School Entrance Examinations".
    Is he further aware that the Minister of Education said last week in the course of a Parliamentary answer,
    "I cannot believe anyone takes seriously a claim that coaching will get any child a place in a grammar school."—[OFFICIAL REPORT. 15th Nov., 1956; Vol. 560, c. 32.]
    Does he not agree that it is undesirable for the Government to get advertisement revenue from claims which the Government themselves say are bogus?
    Dr. Hill: I, too, have a copy of the advertisement, and I share some of the hon. Member's uneasiness at any advertisement which purports to coach children for the 11-plus examination. It is because of that uneasiness that I am looking into the matter and will subsequently write to the hon. Member.

    Books (Postage Rates)
    Dr. D. Johnsonasked the Postmaster-General whether he is aware that it costs almost twice as much to send a single copy of a book by post from one London address to another as it does to send the same book from London to Australia; and if he will accordingly review the recent increases in charges in inland printed paper rates.
    Dr. Hill: To the first part of the Question the Answer is "Yes, Sir". In reply to the second part, the overseas service is running at a substantial loss and I should not feel justified in incurring a corresponding loss on the inland service.
    Dr. Johnson: May I, none the less, ask my right hon. Friend if he is aware of the possibility that the Post Office may lose all this internal business to other forms of transport unless some kind of review, as regards single books in particular, can be made?
    Dr. Hill: I do not share my hon. Friend's gloomly forebodings about the loss on the inland service. I ought to say that the loss on the overseas service
    1718
    is £3½ million, but, for a number of reasons which hon. Members will appreciate, it did not seem right to increase the charges for overseas services, and we are continuing to bear that loss.

    Savings Accounts (Mental Hospital Patients)
    Mr. K. Robinsonasked the Postmaster-General whether, under his regulations, a patient admitted to a mental hospital on a temporary certificate under Section 5 of the Mental Treatment Act, 1930, is entitled to retain his Post Office Savings book and operate his Post Office Savings account.
    Dr. Hill: Nothing in the Post Office Savings Bank regulations prevents a patient admitted under Section 5 of the Mental Treatment Act, 1930, from retaining his book. Under Section 5 (16) of that Act, however, a person admitted to a mental hospital under Section 5 is automatically brought within the scope of Part IV of the Lunacy Act, 1890, the one dealing with management and administration of property. Post Office regulations do preclude persons covered by Part IV, of the Lunacy Act from operating their post office accounts, though withdrawals may be made by any committee of the estate or other proper person.
    Mr. Robinson: Can the right hon. Gentleman say how long this disability lasts, in view of the fact that the whole point of a temporary certificate is that the patient may recover volition at any time?
    Dr. Hill: That is, of course, more a matter for my right hon. Friend the Minister of Health, but I can say that the temporary certificate to which the hon. Gentleman refers lasts for six months. If at any time throughout that six months the patient is regarded as having recovered his volition then, in fact, the limit becomes 28 days.

    Christmas Mail (Forces, Middle East)
    Mr. Mossasked the Postmaster-General what advice he will give to relatives of members of Her Majesty's Forces engaged in the Middle East concerning the posting of parcels for Christmas.
    Dr. Hill: Latest dates for the posting of Christmas parcels and letters to

    1719
    members of Her Majesty's Forces engaged in Egypt and the Middle East have been extensively advertised. Full advantage is being taken of all available methods of sending air and surface mail to these Forces and I have every hope that all mail posted by the latest advertised times will be delivered by Christmas Day.

  TELEVISION

    I.T.A. (Grant Application)
    Lieut.-Colonel Liptonasked the Postmaster-General what requests for financial aid he has had from the Independent Television Authority; and what action he is taking.
    Dr. Hill: The I.T.A. has asked that provision for a grant under Section 11 of the Television Act be included in the 1957–58 Estimates. I hope to be able to announce a decision shortly.
    Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: May we expect an early statement about this proposed grant to the I.T.A. to assist in a proper balance of programmes? If I put down a Question for next week, will the Postmaster-General be able to announce something definite?
    Dr. Hill: I think that I would be able to announce a decision in a week's time.
    Mr. Chetwynd: Is the right hon. Gentleman giving any direction to the I.T.A. about future commercial advertising from the petrol companies in view of the present situation?
    Dr. Hill: As the hon. Gentleman fully realises, that is another and a different question. If the hon. Gentleman puts it on the Order Paper, I will be glad to answer it.

  ROYAL AIR FORCE

    Overseas Allowance
    Mr. Fernyhoughasked the Secretary of State for Air why corporals and below stationed in Germany, unlike all higher ranks, get no increase in their overseas allowance when accompanied by their families.
    The Under-Secretary of State for Air (Mr. Christopher Soames): The extra expense to which corporals and aircraftmen serving in Germany are put when separated from their families is thought
    1720
    to justify the same allowances as when their families are living with them.
    Mr. Fernyhough: Is not the hon. Gentleman aware that the fact that sergeants are getting three and a half times more as overseas allowance when their families are stationed with them than are corporals and those in the ranks is causing great discontent? Does not he appreciate that the wife of the corporal or the ranker has to pay just as much for the clothes for her children, for their food, and so on, and will he look into this matter again and thus remove a genuine grievance?
    Mr. Soames: We are of the opinion that it is right and proper for a sergeant to be able to maintain a higher standard of living, not only for himself but also for his family, than airmen of lower ranks.

    Discharges by Purchase
    Mr. Haymanasked the Secretary of State for Air how many officers and other ranks, respectively, have purchased their discharges in each of the last five years to the latest convenient date.
    Mr. Soames: As the Answer contains a number of figures, I will, with permission, circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
    Mr. Hayman: Can the hon. Gentleman give one figure for one year so that we may compare the conditions in the Air Force with those of the Army, the figures for which were given yesterday?
    Mr. Soames: Certainly. For airmen the figures are: in 1952, 563; 1953, 677; 1954, 1,134; 1955, 1,269; and 1956, 926.
    Following are the figures:

    1952

    1953

    1954

    1955

    1956

    Officers permitted to leave the Service before completing their full period on the active list

    R.A.F.

    80

    105

    128

    191

    145

    W.R.A.F.

    51

    40

    75

    70

    49

    Airmen and airwomen discharged by purchase

    R.A.F.

    563

    677

    1134

    1269

    926

    W.R.A.F.

    321

    256

    149

    246

    117

    NOTE
    (1) 242 of the W.R.A.F. officers left the Service on marriage.
    (2) 2168 of the airmen, and 428 of the airwomen, were allowed to take their discharge for compassionate reasons, and the purchase price was either reduced or waived.
    (3) The figures for 1952 and 1953 reflect the restrictions which were placed on voluntary exits during the Korean war.

    Airfield, Dundee (Use)
    Mr. G. M. Thomsonasked the Secretary of State for Air what representations were made to him during his recent visit to the City of Dundee concerning an airport suitable for civil air services from the city; and what answer he gave.
    Mr. Soames: My right hon. Friend was asked when civil aircraft would be serving the district. He answered that he understood neither B.E.A. nor any of the independent companies had made proposals to run such a service.
    Mr. Thomson: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that negotiations are at present going on for a civil air service from Dundee? In the event of such a service being established, can he give an assurance that every possible assistance will be given by his Department towards the establishment of a civil airport for it?
    Mr. Soames: We see no great difficulties in providing such airfield facilities as would be necessary, but so far as we are aware no request has been made either by B.E.A. or by any of the independent operators as yet.

  ROADS

    Widening Scheme, Newcastle-under-Lyme
    Mr. Swinglerasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation what reply he has sent to the letter to his Department from the town clerk of Newcastle-under-Lyme, dated 29th October, concerning the accident statistics on Clayton Road, A519; and if he will now reconsider his decision about the road widening scheme.
    The Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation (Mr. Harold Watkinson): I have replied that, in the opinion of the police, these accidents were caused by irresponsible driving and not by the nature of the road. I see no reason, therefore, to change my decision about the road widening scheme.
    Mr. Swingler: Would not the Minister pay a litle more regard to local opinion in this matter? Is he not aware that many of my constituents who live on this road and, almost unanimously, the members of the town council are most anxious
    1722
    about this rise in the number of accidents which they attribute to the increasing traffic on the road owing to congestion on the A34? Would not he therefore have another look at the matter, because most of my constituents will disagree with this advice that has been given?
    Mr. Watkinson: I am always willing to look at any of these difficult accident problems. It is only fair to say, and I think the hon. Member probably knows this, that the seven accidents referred to in the town clerk's letter of 29th October, were, in the opinion of the police, all due to irresponsible driving and not to the road conditions.
    Mr. Swinglerasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation why he refuses to receive a civic deputation from Newcastle-under-Lyme on the subject of Clayton Road, A519, the widening of which the Newcastle-under-Lyme council considers to be urgent in the interests of road safety.
    Mr. Watkinson: For the reasons given in the letter to the town clerk dated 3rd August, 1956, a copy of which I sent to the hon. Member at the time, I did not think it right to put the council to the trouble and expense of sending a deputation to see me. I cannot, in present circumstances, give priority to the scheme for widening this road.
    Mr. Swingler: Is not it rather unusual for the Minister to take this attitude? Is he not aware that this deputation was unanimously requested
    by the members of the council who have formed the view that, to the best of their knowledge, this road-widening scheme is urgent in the interests of road safety? Should not the Minister in these circumstances at least be prepared to listen to the views of the men on the spot who have the responsibility?
    Mr. Watkinson: I have no objection—either myself or my right hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary—to seeing the deputation, but I must warn the hon. Member that they may well go to the expense of coming for nothing.

    Silverdale—Scot Hay Road Staffordshire (Repairs)
    Mr. Swinglerasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation if he will now give loan sanction for the repair and adoption as public highway of the road

    1723
    from Silverdale via Crackley Gates to Scot Hay in Staffordshire, which was last repaired at Government expense thirteen years ago.
    The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation (Mr. Hugh Molson): My right hon. Friend has only just received an application for loan sanction for this work. He will decide as soon as possible what recommendation he will give to my right hon. Friend the Minister of Housing and Local Government.
    Mr. Swingler: Is not the right hon. Gentleman aware of this problem? I have asked Parliamentary Questions about it in, I think, each of the last three years. Is not he therefore aware that my constituents have been extraordinarily patient in waiting for nearly fourteen years now for this road to be repaired? Will not he give it absolute expedition and first priority in consideration for loan sanction?
    Mr. Molson: The responsibility for the delay does not rest with my Department. It is only since I came into the House that I have heard that the application has been received. My right hon. Friend will deal with the matter immediately.

    Speed Limit (Derestriction Signs)
    Mr. Hurdasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation what evidence he has received that the placing of speed limit derestriction signs in villages where the 30 miles-per-hour limit has been removed at the request of the police is resulting in reckless driving; and if he will allow highway authorities discretion in the use of derestriction signs.
    Mr. Watkinson: I have no evidence that these signs have encouraged reckless driving. If the speed limit is to be respected, motorists must be told clearly where it does not apply, although the road may be lighted.
    Mr. Hurd: Will my right hon. Friend look further into this, as it is undesirable that his Department should require de-restriction signs to be put up at danger points in villages on the main roads? It results in people thinking "All clear—I can drive as fast as I like." Would it not be much better to leave this decision to the local highway authorities?
    Mr. Watkinson: I have read the correspondence very carefully, and I quite agree that, in special instances, there may be something in what my hon. Friend says. If there are any special cases, I am prepared to look at them, but, on the general principle, I think it is only fair to the motorist to tell him clearly when there is a 30 m.p.h. limit and when there is not.

    Durham Relief Road
    Mr. Greyasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation if he has any statement to make on the new trunk road through Durham.
    Mr. Watkinson: A new trunk road through the county of Durham is shown in the county development plan, but I cannot say when it will be possible to include it in the road programme. If, however, the hon. Member has in mind the question of a new relief road in Durham City—which is a county road proposal—the present position is that the traffic figures have been analysed and the two councils are preparing alternative plans to compare costs.
    Mr. Grey: With regard to the latter part of that Answer, may I ask when agreement is likely to be reached on this matter?
    Mr. Watkinson: That does not, I am afraid, entirely rest with my Department, but I hope that they will get on with the job.

    Great North Road, Framwellgate Moor
    Mr. Greyasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation what attempts are being made to make the Great North Road at Framwellgate Moor, Durham, safer.
    Mr. Molson: A special propaganda campaign was carried out on this length of road last May, and we are considering whether anything further can be done to make it safer until the proposed by-pass can be constructed.
    Mr. Grey: Is the Joint Parliamentary Secretary aware that approximately 10,000 vehicles pass through this area in a day, and that it is a very dangerous area in any case? As a matter of fact, this stretch has become known as the

    1725
    "Death Mile." While one appreciates that, as a result of petrol rationing, there may be a reduction in the number of vehicles which will pass through the area, may we be assured that the right hon. Gentleman will not make this an excuse to delay any scheme that might be put forward to make this area safe?
    Mr. Molson: It was because we did realise that there were a large number of accidents on this stretch of road that we had a "Red Area" scheme carried out in the month of May this year. We can judge of the efficacy of that only when we have the figures of the accidents in the following six months and compare them with the previous six months. As soon as we have those figures, I will write to the hon. Member on the subject.
    Mr. Grey: May I press the Minister further on that? There may have been some schemes put forward to him. Will he not make of this reduction in traffic resulting from petrol rationing an excuse to delay any scheme that might be put forward?
    Mr. Molson: We do not look for excuses for delay in anything at all. I am very glad that, in the case of the designing of the by-pass road, the Durham County Council, of its own volition and without any request from us, is preparing the necessary engineering details in order that there may be no delay when we have the money available for the bypass road. But I must warn the hon. Member that, at the moment, we have not the money available for the new construction.

    Programme
    Captain Pilkingtonasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation whether he will make a statement on the 1955 Report of the Road Research Board; and, in particular, on its conclusion that the present road programme has no hope of keeping pace with the increasing traffic.
    Mr. Watkinson: I would refer my hon. and gallant Friend to the Answer I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for St. Marylebone (Sir W. Wakefield) on 31st October, which said that the Government have in hand the largest roads programme which, in their view, is possible in present economic circumstances.
    Captain Pilkington: Do the Government accept the principle that if we are to prosper in an increasingly competitive world we must have efficient transport facilities? If so, when are the Government going to give them to us?
    Mr. Watkinson: I certainly accept the principle, and that includes railways, air transport and a great many other things as well as roads.

    Improvements
    Captain Pilkingtonasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation how many men were employed on road improvements in 1938, 1951 and today.
    Mr. Watkinson: I am afraid I cannot supply my hon. and gallant Friend with figures in the precise form he requires. What details I have contain a number of figures, and I will circulate them in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
    Following are the details:
    Returns which are available indicate that shortly before the war 126,083 men were directly employed by highway authorities. In 1951 the number of men directly employed was 84,297 and in addition 5,703 men were employed by contractors on behalf of highway authorities. In March, 1956, the corresponding figures were 78,626 and 8,621. All these figures refer to road maintenance as well as improvements. During this period, of course, there has been a very substantial increase in mechanisation both in road maintenance and in road improvements.

    Parking Meters
    Mr. G. R. Straussasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation what progress has been made in preparing experimental schemes for the installation of parking meters; and when the first scheme is likely to be in operation.
    Mr. Watkinson: The Committee which I set up in March to survey the parking position in inner London has submitted a Report, which will be published shortly; it includes certain proposals for the initiation of parking schemes. The relevant sections of the Road Traffic Act, 1956, will be brought into force on 1st January, 1957; thereafter it is for the local authorities responsible for initiating schemes to put their proposals to me. I have every hope that they will do so.
    Mr. Strauss: Can the Minister say when it is likely that the first parking schemes will come into operation? Will it be during the next six months or so; and is it only in inner London that an early scheme is likely to be initiated, or might there be one outside?
    Mr. Watkinson: In reply to the first part of the right hon. Gentleman's Question, the initiative, as I have said, clearly rests with the local authorities, but I am very hopeful that some of the inner London authorities—I will not mention them by name—will come forward quite soon with schemes, once the plan is published. As to areas outside London, I am afraid I cannot answer that without notice, but I will try to answer it if the right hon. Gentleman puts down a Question on the subject.

    Trunk Roads
    Mr. Jannerasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation what mileage of trunk roads was constructed in each of the financial years 1950–51 to 1955–56, respectively; and what it is estimated will be constructed in 1956–57 and any other future years for which figures are available.
    Mr. Watkinson: One hundred and thirty-five and a half miles of trunk road, either new or realigned or widened, were built in the years 1950–56. I will circulate figures for each year in the OFFICIAL REPORT. In 1956–57 and the following two years I hope to authorise a further 400 miles of this work. This includes the first section of the London—Yorkshire motorway, the Birmingham—Preston motorway and the Ross Spur between Upton-on-Severn and Ross-on-Wye. It is not possible to say how much of this work will be completed each year.
    Mr. Janner: Will the right hon. Gentleman ensure that what he authorises is carried into effect as speedily as possible, and will he reconsider the amount of the mileage with a view to meeting the very urgent need that exists?
    Mr. Watkinson: If my arithmetic is correct, up till 1956 we managed to build only about 25 miles a year. In this year and the next two years I hope to authorise 125 miles a year, which is at least progress.
    Mr. Ernest Davies: Would the right hon. Gentleman state how many of those 125 miles will be actually constructed? Is he aware that it is one thing to authorise but it is another thing to construct?
    Mr. Watkinson: I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman, but equally if we do not authorise them we shall never construct them.
    Following are the figures:

    1950–51

    …

    …

    …

    19½ miles

    1951–52

    …

    …

    …

    24½ miles

    1952–53

    …

    …

    …

    12½ miles

    1953–54

    …

    …

    …

    14 miles

    1954–55

    …

    …

    …

    27 miles

    1955–56

    …

    …

    …

    38 miles

    Total

    …

    135½ miles

    Barking By-pass (Dual Carriageway)
    Mr. Parkerasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation when the Barking by-pass double carriageway is to be completed.
    Mr. Molson: We hope to authorise the acquisition of the necessary land within the next two months. If no difficulties arise, constructional work should start next year and take about fifteen months to complete.

    Footpaths
    Mr. Pageasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation whether the review of the national highway system which is being undertaken by a special planning section of his Department will include a review of the footpaths deficiencies on many busy main roads.
    Mr. Molson: Yes, Sir.
    Mr. Page: While thanking my right hon. Friend for that answer, may I ask him whether he will call the attention of those carrying out this review to the grave inadequacy of the pavements in some of the shopping areas, forcing pedestrians on to the road, and will he also call the attention of those carrying out this review to the pernicious habit of parking on pavements?
    Mr. Molson: I do not think it is necessary to draw the attention of the Department to those points when it is carrying out this review. The whole of the matter will be carefully considered.
    Mr. L. Thomas: Does my right hon. Friend not agree that, however important it may be to have adequate footpaths in busy main roads, there are in the countryside and rural areas hundreds of miles of made-up footpaths, particularly in sparsely populated areas, which are rarely used, thus indicating a great waste of public money? When this review is undertaken, will the Minister have this point in mind?
    Mr. Molson: Yes, Sir. Our policy is to provide footpaths where pedestrian and other traffic warrants them. I agree with my hon. Friend that to provide footpaths in the depths of the country is wasteful of money and of land. I am glad to say that, generally speaking, since the war a more realistic policy has been followed in this matter by most of the highway authorities.
    Mr. Ernest Davies: May I ask the Minister not to accept as a principle that footpaths should not be constructed in the countryside, because there is the safety factor to consider, which is very important, where traffic travels at very high speeds in country lanes?
    Mr. Molson: That is why I said, having chosen my words with great care,
    "where pedestrian and other traffic warrants them."
    There are undoubtedly many cases, such as my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. L. Thomas) has referred to, where we have footpaths in the depths of the country with no pedestrian in sight.

    Safety Campaign (Children)
    Mr. Pageasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation if he will make a statement on the progress of the "Mind That Child" campaign for the safety of children on the roads.
    Mr. Watkinson: Substantial progress has been made since the "Mind That Child" campaign was launched by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland and myself on 4th September. Local road safety committees and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents have joined with us in carrying on the campaign with great vigour, and we have received much help from many individuals and organisations. I am particularly pleased that more local authorities are taking part than in any
    1730
    previous road safety campaign. I will circulate some further details in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
    Mr. Page: While congratulating my right hon. Friend on the progress made in this campaign up to the present, may I ask him whether he does not think that better progress might have been made if the propaganda in pamphlets and posters had been directed to all road users? Is he aware that so far the campaign has been directed only towards pedestrians, cyclists and commercial drivers, and that no pamphlets or posters have been issued by way of direction to the ordinary motorist?
    Mr. Watkinson: I am not quite sure what my hon. Friend means, but if he means that it is wrong to concentrate on a specific objective in a road safety campaign, I do not agree with him. I think one must concentrate on specific objects if one wants to get good results. Although I think we must treat the figures with some reserve at this stage, I am very glad to say that in the first two months of the campaign 24 fewer children were killed on the roads than in the same two months last year.
    Following is the information:
    Provisional figures show that in the first two months of the campaign there were 24 fewer children killed on the roads than in the same two months of 1955. While this result is encouraging, it should not be taken as a comprehensive measure of the value of the campaign. I hope its spirit and its effects will continue long after its official ending in nine days' time and will lead to a progressive improvement in the safety of children on the roads.
    The movement to provide more and better training facilities for child cyclists is gathering momentum. During October more than 5,000 children passed the Cycling Proficiency Test of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents.

    Trent Bridge, Nottingham
    Mr. J. Harrisonasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation if he will make a statement on the negotiations being conducted between his Department and the Corporation of Nottingham regarding the connecting main roads to the new Trent Bridge at Clifton, Nottingham.
    Mr. Molson: When in Nottingham in connection with the road safety campaign, I was shown the site of the proposed road. At my invitation, a memorandum dealing

    1731
    with the project has now been sent to me and the Department is now examining it.
    Mr. Harrison: Is the Minister aware that, while this project is of local importance, it is also of immense importance to the national road network? Will he bear in mind that aspect of the matter when he is considering the whole affair?
    Mr. Molson: I can assure the hon. Gentleman that the town clerk and the surveyor impressed all these arguments upon me when they showed me the site.

    Durham Road, Stockton-on-Tees (Speed Limit)
    Mr. Chetwyndasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation whether he will review his decision not to impose a speed limit on the stretch of Durham Road, Stockton-on-Tees, between the borough boundary and the Mile House Hotel.
    Mr. Watkinson: The decision to remove the speed limit automatically imposed by the installation of street lighting was taken earlier this year after a full public inquiry. The reasons for my decision were stated fully in the Adjournment debate on 27th April initiated by the hon. Member. I am afraid that I can add nothing to what my right hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary then said.
    Mr. Chetwynd: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that, since that Adjournment debate took place, there have been two more fatal accidents, one involving a child, and will he consider, in conjunction with the local authority, whether any steps can be taken to draw attention to the particularly dangerous nature of this road in order to ensure greater safety for children on the estate?
    Mr. Watkinson: Yes, I will certainly consider that suggestion.

    A1 (Dual Carriageways)
    Mr. Jannerasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation whether work being carried out on road A1, at Tempsford, includes the provision of dual carriageways in conformity with the policy for this road.
    Mr. Molson: The existing carriageway is being improved in preparation for the provision of a second carriageway to the east of the present road.
    Mr. Janner: Does the Minister recall the statement he made some time ago with regard to the provision of dual carriageways here? Is it his intention to carry into effect the undertaking which he gave at that time?
    Mr. Molson: I do not recall exactly what the undertaking is to which the hon. Member is referring. A short length of new road, known as the Tempsford Bridge diversion, will be constructed with a single 24-foot carriageway to take the south-bound traffic only. Ultimately the new road and bridge on that diversion will be widened to take a second carriageway, and the existing road and bridge will then be de-trunked; but that will not be for many years to come.
    Viscount Hinchingbrooke: Why will my right hon. Friend persist in building single carriageways as narrow as 24 feet? If one is going to widen this great road to the North and provide for dual carriageway, each carriageway ought to be at least 30 feet wide.
    Mr. Molson: We must make the best use of the money available at the present time. Sometimes it is possible to carry out a substantial improvement now and make provision for a widening of some kind in the future. In the general interest of making the best use of the money available for the country as a whole, we do frequently have to carry out improvements which are not as comprehensive as we hope they ultimately will be.
    Mr. Strauss: As it appears extremely wasteful when building a new road not to build to an adequate size for the future, can we at least have an undertaking that where the carriageway is not of such adequate size there is always sufficient space left for making it larger at a later stage?
    Mr. Molson: That is precisely what we have done in this case. We have acquired the land, and the road will be widened at a later date. But I have made it quite plain that the further widening will not take place for a great many years to come.
    Mr. Jannerasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation why road A1, between Wansford and Stibbington, is being widened to 30 feet; and whether

    1733
    the work being undertaken is to include the provision of dual carriageways in conformity with his policy for this road.
    Mr. Watkinson: My intention is that eventually dual carriageways shall be provided on A1 between Wansford Bridge and Stibbington School in accordance with my general policy for this road. The provision of dual carriageways will, however, mean the construction of a new bridge over the River Nene, which cannot be fitted into the programme for some time and the present improvement is intended to give relief in the meantime.
    Mr. Janner: Does the right hon. Gentleman realise that the words "eventually" or "some time" are very indefinite, and can he not give any idea at all as to when dual carriageways are likely to be provided in accordance with his undertaking?
    Mr. Warkinson: What I realise is that they will be provided as soon as the bridge can be built, and I will fit the bridge into my programme as soon as I possibly can. Further than that, I cannot go.
    Captain Pilkington: Can the Minister say that he prefers a policy of providing dual carriageways wherever practicable rather than widening existing roads?
    Mr. Warkinson: I have clearly said that the policy for the Great North Road is to "dual" it from London to Newcastle.
    Mr. Slater: In view of the great interest now being taken up and down the country in regard to highway development, will the Minister tell the House the ratio of money received into his Department from motor taxation and petrol taxation?
    Mr. Watkinson: Perhaps the hon. Member would put that question down.

    Level Crossing, Dagenham (Bridge)
    Mr. Parkerasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation what progress has been made with the proposal to replace the level crossing on Chequers Lane, Dagenham, by a bridge over the railway.
    Mr. Molson: The road over this level crossing and to the south of it in the Dock Estate is not a public highway, and I am not aware that any scheme has been prepared to replace the crossing by a bridge.

    Severn Bridge
    Mr. Philips Priceasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation when he intends to authorise construction of the Severn Bridge.
    Mr. Ness Edwardsasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation if he is now in a position to give the promised reply to the joint local authority deputation relating to the Severn bridge; and if he will state the nature of the reply.
    Mr. Watkinson: I have not yet completed my consideration of this matter, but I hope soon to be able to write to the chairman of the conference of local authorities about it.
    Mr. Price: Can the Minister say whether it is likely that the scheme for the construction of the bridge will be authorised after the Forth Bridge has been dealt with, which we understand has received priority? Can he say whether it is likely that it will come on after that?
    Mr. Watkinson: No, I am afraid I cannot give any undertakings until I have replied to the very large and expert deputation which discussed this with me.

  SHIPPING

    Overloading
    Mr. Knox Cunninghamasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation whether his attention has been drawn to the report of the recent case of St. John Shipping Corporation v. Joseph Rank Limited; and if he will consider amending the law in order to increase the maximum amount of fine which may be imposed in cases of overloading a ship.
    The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation (Mr. John Profumo): Yes, Sir, and I would refer my hon. Friend to the Answer given to the hon. and learned Member for Gloucester (Mr. Turner-Samuels) on 1st November, when my

    1735
    right hon. Friend said that he was sympathetic to this suggestion and had noted it for amending legislation on a suitable occasion.
    Mr. Knox Cunningham: Will the hon. Gentleman go a little further than merely noting it for legislation? Is not he prepared to say that he will introduce legislation so that in future cases crime will not pay as it has in this instance?
    Mr. Profumo: I do not think I can go any further than did my right hon. Friend. It might be well if I added that our statistics show that for the past four and a half years only 4 per cent. of the ships which have been inspected in British ports have been found to be overloaded.

  TRANSPORT

    Private Cars, Central London
    Mr. Parkinasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation if he will take steps to secure the banning of the use of private cars in central London during the period of petrol shortage and use the opportunity to make a careful survey of any increased economy and efficiency in the use of public and commercial transport.
    Mr. Watkinson: I do not think that the ban suggested by the hon. Member is either practicable or desirable, especially now that the necessary saving in petrol is to be achieved by rationing.
    Mr. Parkin: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that it is not clever in any circumstances to use oil in 130 horsepower buses to achieve a rate of progress about equal to that of the old horse buses? Is he further aware that he will never get a better opportunity than this, and never get more good will from the public, in carrying out a test, which he will have to organise at some time or other, to try to find out if there is a way of removing this delay in public transport and frustration to goods vehicles in the centre of London?
    Mr. Watkinson: No, I do not agree, because, as I have said before in this House when we have debated this matter. I do not believe that putting a complete ban on the use of private cars in central London is the right way of meeting traffic congestion.
    Mr. Gresham Cooke: Would not this be the worst moment to ban private cars in central London, when only essential motorists will be able to get into it?
    Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: Has not the right hon. Gentleman, in reply to previous Questions which I have put to him in this House, said that unless the situation does improve he may be compelled to consider some ban or restriction on private cars in central London?
    Mr. Watkinson: Yes, but that was to be after we had tried several other things and I had received the advice of the London Home Counties Traffic Advisory Committee on parking in London.

    Vehicles (Testing)
    Mr. G. R. Straussasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation what progress has been made in organising the compulsory testing of road vehicles.
    Mr. Watkinson: Much work has gone into the preparation of detailed proposals for the testing of vehicles as envisaged by Sections 1 and 2 of the Road Traffic Act, 1956. I hope to circulate an outline of these proposals in the near future to the organisations representing local authorities and other interested bodies, in order to prepare the way for full discussion.
    Mr. Strauss: I am glad to hear that. May I take it that Members will be able to see these draft proposals in some form or other?
    Mr. Watkinson: Yes, Sir.

    Motor Cyclists (Crash Helmets)
    Mr. Parkerasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation what steps are taken to see that crash helmets for motor cyclists come up to a minimum safety standard.
    Mr. Molson: I would refer the hon. Member to the Answer my right hon. Friend gave on 31st October to my hon. Friend, the Member for Berwick and East Lothian (Sir W. Anstruther-Gray).

    Traffic Congestion (Staggered Working Hours)
    Mr. Ernest Daviesasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation when he expects to receive the report of the

    1737
    committee appointed to inquire into the staggering of working hours to relieve traffic congestion.
    Mr. Watkinson: The appointment of the committee has been delayed, because I wanted to give it the widest possible scope. I hope to announce its composition very shortly. As the hon Member will have gathered from my statement on 25th July, the functions of the new committee will be of a continuing nature, although they will report progress to me from time to time.
    Mr. Davies: In the meantime, and without waiting for this committee to be appointed, then to meet and to publish its report, will the Minister take action? Does he appreciate that, in view of petrol rationing, public transport will have a far greater load, and that transport conditions at peak hours are bound to deteriorate? Will he take steps on his own to see whether some extension of the staggering of hours of work cannot be embarked upon at once?
    Mr. Watkinson: I am very glad that the hon. Member has raised that point. It is absolutely necessary, if we are to have tolerable conditions when rationing is introduced, that all people who can should spread their travelling times as much as they possibly can. I would just correct one point; this committee's first duty will not be to prepare some long-dated report, but to advise me on that particular problem at once.

  CIVIL AVIATION

    Scottish Airports (Passenger Traffic)
    Mr. G. M. Thomsonasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation how many passengers have been carried to and from Scottish airports during the present year to the most convenient date; and what percentage increase or decrease has been recorded compared with the same period last year.
    Mr. Profumo: During the eight months period, January—August, 1956, the number of passengers carried to and from aerodromes in Scotland was 642,000, including those in transit. This is an increase of 21 per cent. over the number for the corresponding period of 1955.
    Mr. Thomson: Is the Joint Parliamentary Secretary aware that this magnificent progress in Scottish air services underlines the extremely anomalous position in the Dundee area, which is now the only major centre of population in Scotland without any civil air service at all?
    Mr. Profumo: I do agree that it has been magnificent progress, but I do not really think the conclusion can be drawn from what I have said that there is necessarily enough traffic offering in Dundee to warrant a service, and I must agree with what my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Air said in reply to an earlier Question.
    Sir T. Moore: Could my hon. Friend say what proportion of these passengers have been carried to and from the international airport at Prestwick?
    Mr. Profumo: Without notice, I am afraid that I cannot give that answer.
    Mr. Woodburn: In view of the development of Festival traffic, is there a prospect of getting better landing aids at Edinburgh, and at other airports of lesser standing than Prestwick?
    Mr. Profumo: That is, if I may say so, a good comment. My right hon. Friend is always trying to do his best to improve all the technical aids anywhere.
    Sir A. Gomme-Duncan: Will my hon. Friend remember the question of traffic from Perth as well as Dundee?
    Mr. Profumo: I rather gathered that what the right hon. Member for East Stirlingshire (Mr. Woodburn) asked was in consort with my hon. and gallant Friend's views, too.

    Prestwick Airport (Runways)
    Sir J. Hutchisonasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation what plans he has under consideration for lengthening the runways at Prestwick Airport.
    Mr. Profumo: I am afraid that I cannot yet add anything to the reply given to my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeenshire, East (Sir R. Boothby) on 24th October.
    Sir J. Hutchison: In view of the promise which the Government gave that

    1739
    Prestwick Airport would be maintained as a first-class international airport, and in view of the statement made by the President of Trans-Canada Airlines that the runways at Prestwick will soon be inadequate for modern aircraft and will require lengthening and strengthening, will my hon. Friend initiate or at least examine how soon he can initiate works to bring the runways up to date?
    Mr. Profumo: As I am sure my hon. Friend knows, the present length of the runways at Prestwick is perfectly capable of taking all existing types of modern airliners.
    With regard to the new giant jets, the International Civil Aviation Organisation has set up a panel of experts to try to find out what the requirements will be. Until we get those requirements, and indeed the requirements of the airlines themselves, I am afraid my right hon. Friend can go no further than I have just gone.
    Mr. Woodburn: Could not the hon. Gentleman give an assurance that there will be no going back on the decisions of all Governments up till now that Prestwick is to be kept in the front line of international airports? Is the hon. Gentleman not aware that there is great perturbation in Scotland lest there may be a tendency to let this mater slide? If we could have an assurance that Prestwick is going to be kept up to standard, that would allay a great deal of the doubts.
    Mr. Profumo: I hope that what I have said will allay any suspicions there may be in Scotland. I reiterate that Prestwick is still the second international airport in the United Kingdom.

    Accident, London Airport (Report)
    Mr. Hunterasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation whether the separate inquiry he is conducting into the Vulcan bomber accident at London Airport on 1st October will be made public.
    Mr. Watkinson: The report of the investigation that I am having made may well be highly technical. I will, however, as soon as I am in a position to do so, make a full statement to the House on its findings. I do not expect my investigator to be able to report for another two or
    1740
    three weeks, as I am most anxious that a comprehensive technical investigation should be made into all the civil aspects of this accident.
    Mr. Hunter: May I ask the Minister to hurry the report as much as possible? There is great concern amongst the residential population around London Airport and, in addition, it is only fair to the staff at London Airport that the report be properly published.
    Mr. Watkinson: I quite accept that, but, in answer to the second part of the hon. Gentleman's supplementary question, it is because this matter really must be sifted to the bottom in the interests of everybody that I must not ask Dr. Touch to do other than the most thorough job possible.
    Mr. Beswick: Having regard to the fact that this concern, of which my hon. Friend the Member for Feltham (Mr. Hunter) so rightly speaks, was especially felt by his own officers employed at London Airport, may I ask whether every opportunity is being given to them, if they so require, to be professionally represented at the inquiry? Further, in view of the fact that there would appear to be some unfortunate conflict of interest between the Minister's Department and the Air Ministry, would he not say that here is a special case for the publication of the full report?
    Mr. Watkinson: I understand that full opportunity is being given as to representation. What I said was that when I receive Dr. Touch's report I will consider what is the best way to communicate it to the House.

  RAILWAYS

    Liverpool Overhead Railway
    Mrs. Braddockasked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation, in view of the need to restrict the use of petrol and oil, what consultation he has had with the Liverpool Overhead Railway Company regarding the need to keep the railway running after 30th December, 1956, in the national interest.
    Mr. Watkinson: None, Sir. As the hon. Lady knows, I have always regarded the question of the possible continuance

    1741
    of this railway as a local issue and, looking at it again, as I promised, in the light of the need for economy in petrol and oil, I still think that any further consideration of the position must be left to the local interests.
    Mrs. Braddock: Is not the Minister aware that the conferences which were held with the local authorities proved that the local authorities could not deal with the situation? In view of the fact that buses will have to be put on the road almost immediately this railway closes, or before the railway closes on 30th December, and that this will very greatly increase the amount of petrol and oil being used, can something not be done by his Department in the national interest to deal with the situation in some similar way as it dealt with it during the war?
    Mr. Watkinson: Yes, but as the hon. Lady will agree, my Ministry did bring all the parties together in an attempt to get an agreed solution of what is a very difficult but a local problem. If we were asked to help again, I do not say we should not do so; but the initiative must come from the local authority, not from me.
    Mr. Page: Is my right hon. Friend aware that this is the only matter on which I am ever likely to be in agreement with the hon. Lady the Member for the Exchange Division of Liverpool? Perhaps if nothing else will soften his heart in this matter, that fact will. Will he not therefore please look at the matter again?
    Mr. Ernest Davies: Does the Minister not agree that there is an overwhelming case for keeping this railway open in view of the present emergency as regards petrol and oil supplies? Does he not agree that this is, as has been said, no longer a local issue but a national issue, and will he not take the initiative in calling a conference with those concerned to see whether it could be kept open temporarily?
    Mr. Watkinson: No. If there is any demand locally for my Ministry to help, it is clearly known that it will help as it did before; but further than that I do not think I should go.

  MINISTRY OF DEFENCE

    Casualties, Port Said
    Dr. Summerskillasked the Minister of Defence what is his approximate estimate of the number of Egyptian service casualties and civilian casualties, men, women and children resulting from the recent operations in Egypt; and what steps he took to assure himself that Egyptian hospitals had water, light and equipment to deal adequately with the wounded.
    Mr. G. M. Thomsonasked the Minister of Defence if he will make a further statement on the amount of damage to civilian life and property in Port Said during the recent military operations there.
    Mr. K. Robinsonasked the Minister of Defence if it is now possible to estimate accurately the number of Egyptian casualties, civilian and service, in the Port Said area, and elsewhere in Egypt, resulting from Anglo-French operations.
    The Minister of Defence (Mr. Antony Head): As regards Egyptian casualties and military casualties in Port Said, I have received no information which leads; me to modify the estimate of 100 killed and 540 wounded which I gave to the House last Wednesday. I have no information about casualties in other parts of Egypt.
    Throughout the operations every care was taken to keep danger to life and property to the minimum. In Port Said the damage to the town as a whole is not severe, but during the seaborne landings, which were made necessary by the Egyptian repudiation of the cease-fire which had been agreed on the previous evening, some damage was caused to buildings along the sea front. After the landings there was some house-to-house fighting in which a number of buildings used as strong points were damaged and the Arab quarter was partially destroyed.
    Thanks to the efforts of the allied engineers public services in the town were quickly restarted.
    Both main hospitals in Port Said remained open. A generator was supplied to the civil hospital to ensure continuity of lighting during blackouts. Essential drugs and food were supplied by the Army Medical Service.
    Dr. Summerskill: Will the right hon. Gentleman reply categorically: is it a fact that the intensive bombing cut off the water and light to the General Hospital, Cairo, as a consequence of which the surgeons were unable to operate efficiently on the injured? Furthermore, is it a fact that the mortality rate in this hospital was very high and the corpses had to be piled in sheds and even on the ground outside the hospital?
    Mr. Head: I must tell the right hon. Lady that I have no information on this concerning inside Egypt, but I can also tell her that the most lurid stories have come out of Egypt which have been proved, so far as we have been able to check them in Port Said, to be gross exaggerations. It was stated by the Egyptians that there were 12,000 casualties in Port Said, of which a large proportion had been caused by machine-gun fire from helicopters. That was pure invention and entirely at variance with any of the facts which we know in Port Said. Concerning elsewhere in Egypt, I can only say that, judging by the propaganda put out about Port Said, it is highly likely that such allegations were untrue.
    Dr. Summerskill: I asked the Minister to reply categorically. Can he say that he has no information about the General Hospital, to which a large number of wounded were taken?
    Mr. Head: We have no official representative in Cairo who could go and examine, but there are United Nations observers there. As far as I know, no report or representation to the United Nations to that effect has been made by an observer.
    Mr. Thomson: Is the Minister aware that this is a matter which is doing harm to Britain's name abroad and that we are anxious to clear it up? Is he aware that the Prime Minister of India has talked about several thousand casualties in Port Said, that a B.B.C. correspondent has broadcast that he has seen more than 100 dead in Port Said and that several reputable American correspondents, who have great influence throughout America, have talked about seeing a very large number of casualties in Port Said? Can the right hon. Gentleman say categorically that these stories are untrue?
    Mr. Head: As far as Port Said is concerned, I reaffirm what I have stated. The report to me of these casualties has been strictly in accordance with the facts, and the information at my disposal is that they are limited to 100 dead and 540 wounded. The British have a great reputation for truth in these matters. [Interruption.] I would say that throughout the last war the B.B.C. had an immense reputation for stating facts.
    Mr. Wigg: That was before the right hon. Gentleman and his friends came to office.
    Mr. Head: The allegations of these heavy casualties in Port Said I can categorically deny.
    Mr. Robinson: What is the source of the right hon. Gentleman's information? [An HON. MEMBER: "What about the hon. Member's? "] Can he explain why there is this great discrepancy between his estimate and the estimate of many responsible neutral observers? Will he tell us where he gets his figures from?
    Mr. Head: My figures are entirely from the administration of Port Said, which is in the hands of our forces. It is their job to deal with all matters military and civilian in the town. They send to us accurate reports of casualties, both of our own forces and of the Egyptians, so far as they know them. I rely on their facts, and I am absolutely certain that there has been a calculated dissemination of distorted facts and propaganda in this matter.
    Sir J. Hutchison: Can my right hon. Friend confirm or deny the report that Nasser breached the Sweet Water Canal, which supplies Port Said with water? If it is true, does it not show—
    Mr. Speaker: That is another question. We are dealing now with the hospital.
    Mr. Stokes: Arising out of the question by my right hon. Friend concerning the Cairo Hospital, cannot the Minister assure us that there was no bombing anywhere near the water supply of that hospital which would disconnect it? Is not that really the question?
    Mr. Head: We have a very careful analysis of our bombing and where the bombs fell. As the water supply—I am no expert in this—goes along the whole of the route from its source to the hospital, I cannot give any categorical

    1745
    assurance. Naturally, we have no official observers in Egypt. There are United Nations observers, and I have noticed that very little has been forwarded to the United Nations which substantiates the very wild claims which have been made of atrocities.
    Mr. P. Williams: Can my right hon. Friend assure the House that any British casualties that occurred in this incident were taken to hospital, where there was, in fact, water, light and necessary equipment? Will be express some concern from this side of the House for the survival and good treatment of British casualties?
    Mr. Head: I am satisfied that the medical arrangements which were made at Port Said were adequate and functioned well during the time. Not only that, but in addition to looking after British casualties, which were, I am glad to say, light, there were sufficient facilities to deal promptly and effectively under difficult circumstances with the Egyptian casualties as well.
    Later—
    Mr. Lewis: On a point of order. I tried to catch your eye, Mr. Speaker, while Private Members' Bills were being presented, and hoped that my voice might have reached you. I rise to ask your advice and guidance.
    As you know, on several occasions the Government have stated that there have not been many casualties in Egypt. Even as recently as this afternoon the Minister of Defence said that the casualties and destruction in Port Said were negligible. In view of that, is it in order for my right hon. Friend the Member for Blyth (Mr. Robens) to use the facilities of the House to circulate Press photographs showing terrible death and destruction in Port Said?
    Mr. Speaker: I have not seen the photographs of which the hon. Member complains, and I would not like to say anything about them until I have seen them. There are photographs and photographs but, prima facie, I see nothing whatsoever wrong in it or anything in which I could interfere.
    Mr. Robens: I am obliged to you for that, Mr. Speaker, because it absolves me from unparliamentary conduct in circulating these photographs. But as these photographs are of more than
    1746
    passing interest to Members of Parliament, would you give permission for them to be exhibited in the Library?
    Mr. Speaker: I am willing always to comply with what is desired if I can, but would the right hon. Gentleman allow me an opportunity to consider the matter? I know nothing about the photographs. I should like to arrive at an informed opinion on the matter without making a snap decision which might be wrong.

    Egypt (Captured Equipment)
    Mr. Lewisasked the Minister of Defence what arms and munitions were captured from the Egyptians during the recent armed conflict with Egypt, and to what extent this military equipment was manufactured in Czechoslovakia, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and Britain, respectively.
    Mr. Head: I have received a statement giving the latest count of equipment captured by the Allied Forces. As it is very detailed, I will, with permission, circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
    Mr. Lewis: Can the Minister confirm or deny that amongst those arms and munitions which have been captured—we all regret and deplore that the Russians and Czechs have supplied them—were some which Britain has been supplying, and that some of these arms that were used against our boys were supplied by this Government up to a week or two before the Eden war commenced?
    Mr. Head: There is another Question down about the supply of British equipment.
    Mr. Stokes—
    Mr. Lewis: On a point of order. I put a supplementary question to the Minister and he did not refuse to answer it but referred to another Question. Surely, if I put a supplementary question and it is in order, the Minister should not refer to a later Question, knowing that it will not come up.
    Mr. Speaker: That is not a point of order. It is quite usual.
    Mr. Stokes: Whilst I appreciate what the Minister says about publishing the detailed figures in the OFFICIAL REPORT, can he tell the House whether the summation of those figures reveals a substantial increase in the supply of arms from

    1747
    Russia to Egypt beyond that which Her Majesty's Government had already ascertained and knew about?
    Mr. Head: The amount of arms captured does not give an overall picture of the total in Egypt, but I would say that the proportion of arms captured substantiates and, indeed, underlines our previous estimates of the supply of Russian equipment.
    Mr. Bellenger: Have any Czech or Russian arms and ammunition been captured

    Equipment

    Total

    Czech

    U.S.S.R.

    U.K.

    SU 100 (S.P. guns)

    3

    3

    —

    —

    Wireless sets for above

    3

    3

    —

    —

    100 mm. Ammunition, H.E

    340

    —

    340

    —

    Fuses for above

    500

    —

    500

    —

    100 mm. Ammunition, A.P.B.C

    200

    —

    200

    —

    32-Barrel 131 mm. Rocket Launcher

    3

    3

    —

    —

    131 mm. Rockets

    300

    300

    —

    —

    100 mm. A/Tk. Rocket Launcher Tarasnice

    2

    2

    —

    —

    100 mm. Tarasnice Rockets

    90

    90

    —

    —

    Fuses for above

    760

    760

    —

    —

    6-pdr. guns

    4

    —

    —

    4

    6-pdr. Ammunition, H.E.

    50

    —

    —

    50

    6-pdr. Ammunition, A.P.B.C.

    70

    —

    —

    70

    3·7 inch guns

    2

    —

    —

    2

    3·7 inch ammunition, A.P.

    500

    —

    —

    500

    A.P. Mines, POM Z-2

    500

    —

    500

    —

    A.P. Hand Grenades

    6

    —

    6

    —

    3 in. Mortar Bombs

    200

    —

    —

    200

    7·62 mm. L.M.G.

    52

    2

    50

    —

    7·62mm. S.L. Rifle

    520

    20

    500

    —

    7·62 mm. Ammunition

    7,000

    —

    7,000

    —

    7·92 mm. Machine carbine

    10

    —

    10

    —

    7·92 mm. Rifle

    25

    —

    25

    —

    7·92 mm. ammunition

    40,000

    —

    40,000

    —

    A/Tk. Magnetic mines

    40

    40

    —

    —

    ·303 Lee Enfield

    420

    —

    —

    420

    ·303 Ammunition

    40,000

    —

    —

    40,000

    Greener Mk. III

    20

    —

    —

    20

    9 mm. Ammunition

    168,000

    —

    —

    168,000

    Eley buckshot

    500

    —

    —

    500

    Praga G.S. 10 ton vehicles

    3

    3

    —

    —

    Bedford 3 ton vehicles

    20

    —

    —

    20

    Fordson 3 ton vehicles

    20

    —

    —

    20

    Thorneycroft 3 ton diesel

    3

    —

    —

    3

    Austin PU

    12

    —

    —

    12

    Bren carriers

    2

    —

    —

    2

    Tecalemit Pressure Greasing Plant, Portable

    1

    —

    —

    1

    In addition the following equipment of other nationalities was captured:—

    83 mm. Blindicede Rocket Launcher (Belgian)

    …

    …

    …

    10

    83 mm. Blindicede Rockets

    …

    …

    …

    100

    7·92 mm. FN L.M.G (Belgian)

    …

    …

    …

    10

    30 mm. Hispano Suiza Cannon (Spanish)

    …

    …

    …

    8

    81 mm. Ecia Mortars (Spanish)

    …

    …

    …

    3

    Bombs for above (Spanish)

    …

    …

    …

    370

    A.P Grenades (Red Devil) (Italian)

    …

    …

    …

    80

    7·9 mm. M 49 Ball (Yugoslav)

    …

    …

    …

    1,800

    ·303 Rifles (Citadel) (Egyptian)

    …

    …

    …

    36

    Rifles (unidentified)

    …

    …

    …

    50

    57 mm. A.P.C.B.C (unidentified)

    …

    …

    …

    140

    Willys vehicles (American)

    …

    …

    …

    30

    Breakdown Lorry, 10 ton

    …

    …

    …

    1

    by British forces? If so, will representatives of the right hon. Gentleman's Department or of the Service Departments have an opportunity of inspecting them?
    Mr. Head: Yes, Sir, we have captured both Russian and Czech equipment. We are inspecting them and we may bring some back to this country.
    Following is the statement:
    The following is the latest count of Egyptian equipment captured by the Allied Forces, analysed into countries of origin.

    Conscientious Objectors
    Mr. Brockwayasked the Minister of Defence what opportunities are provided for reservists or men in the Forces to claim conscientious objection to continued service in the Forces.
    Mr. Head: As the answer to this Question is complicated and long, I will, with permission, circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
    Mr. Brockway: While thanking the right hon. Gentleman, may I ask whether it is not the case that the appellate tribunal which acts in these instances has given decisions that conscientious objection need not necessarily be pacifist applying to all wars, but can be to a particular war if a sense of right and wrong is present? [HON. MEMBERS: "They will not understand that."] That is a decision of the appellate tribunal and not mine. If that is the case, is it not desirable that this should be drawn to the attention of reservists so that they may not have to absent themselves and act in other ways which are troublesome to the War Office?
    Mr. Head: I should like notice of the first question which the hon. Gentleman raises, because this is a difficult matter which wants very careful handling, but I am at one with him in this, that I think it is important that all men who have such beliefs should be very well aware of the situation and the facts relating to appeals to the tribunals.
    Mr. E. Johnson: Will my right hon. Friend be particularly careful in examining the claims of those whose consciences do not trouble them in this way until after a period of service in the Forces?
    Following is the Answer:
    A National Service man who before being called up has failed to satisfy a tribunal that he has sincere conscientious objections to service in the Armed Forces has a right to appear before a tribunal if he is sentenced to not less than three months' imprisonment or detention for an offence committed on grounds of conscience. In practice this right is extended, at the discretion of the Service Departments, to other Service men who develop conscientious objections to continuing their full-time or Reserve service.
    National Service men who had completed their normal period of service in the Reserve but who had their liability to recall extended by the 1954 Act, and also former Class Z
    1750
    and Class G reservists, are entitled to appear before a tribunal immediately on recall without having first served a sentence.
    Apprentices and boys who develop conscientious objections on reaching the age of 18 are entitled to apply for discharge on these grounds.

UNIVERSITY BUILDING PROJECTS (GRANTS)
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Henry Brooke): With permission, Sir, I should like to make a statement on the Government's plans to meet the greatly increased demand for university education which will arise during the next decade, and the acknowledged national need for more university-trained scientists and technologists.
The universities have already made proposals to the University Grants Committee which, taken together, would increase the number of students from 84,000 in the academic year 1955–56 to 106,000 by the mid-1960s. Of this increase, it is expected that about two-thirds would study science or technology.
This increase could not be met without building much new accommodation of all types. The Government are convinced that this is a sound long-term investment, and, accordingly, my right hon. Friend has given authority for university building projects up to the value of £10·4 million to be started in 1957, £12 million in 1958 and a further £12 million in 1959, over and above the large sums required for the expansion of Imperial College.
These amounts are instalments of what will be needed over a longer term, and they compare with starts of £4·8 million for the current year, which means that the present rate of starts is to be more than doubled.
But, large though this increase is, the Government believe that the universities should be encouraged to expand even more. The University Grants Committee has advised us that a larger expansion would be desirable if resources can be made available. It would like to invite the universities to consider still further expansion to meet national needs. The Government are giving further thought to this in consultation with the Committee.
It is certainly our intention to ensure that the universities and the technical

1751
colleges will, together, be able to produce at least the number of qualified scientists and engineers which the Committee of Scientific Manpower recently estimated to be needed over the period ten to fifteen years hence.
Mr. M. Stewart: I should like to put three questions to the right hon. Gentleman, but may I say, first, that I am sure we are all glad to hear that this increased provision is to be made for university building; glad, too, that the statement the right hon. Gentleman has made recognises that the sums to be provided in the next three years can be only a beginning to the solution of this problem?
The three questions I should like to put to him are these. First, can we be assured that in the increased building which is to be provided, proper provision will be made for facilities for the social life of a university which, as was recognised during the debates on technical education, is an important part of a liberal education? Secondly, can we be sure that, with the increased number of students and the increased provision of buildings, the provision of university staff will keep in step with these arrangements? Thirdly, in view of this provision of increased places at universities, will it not be all the more important to secure a wise selection of students and to make sure that suitable persons are not prevented from going to a university by lack of means? As this is bound up with the policy of some local education authorities in the matter of awards, will the right hon. Gentleman and the Minister of Education bear that in mind?
Mr. Brooke: I am obliged to the hon. Gentleman for his approach. He will appreciate that my statement opens up large matters which, no doubt, should be further discussed on future occasions.
In answer to his questions, I would say, first, that the building plans certainly include provision for facilities for social life for the increased number of students in the universities. Secondly, we have not forgotten that the increased numbers of students and the increased facilities will require increases in staff. Thirdly, it is the Government's desire that all those boys and girls who have the mental and general abilities to profit by a university education shall get that opportunity. I would remind the hon. Gentleman
1752
that, of course, during this period we shall be securing the benefit of the bulge passing out of the schools.
Mr. Woodburn: Is this a United Kingdom programme? If so, will the money be spread over the whole of the United Kingdom and not concentrated only on, say, Oxford, Cambridge and London? Will the expenditure be co-ordinated with the local authorities and with what they want to do for students? Many boys and girls are by-passing this type of education. Their ability to profit by it is not being developed to the full extent because of some of the considerations my hon. Friend the Member for Fulham (Mr. M. Stewart) has mentioned. Will these provisions be made in conjunction with the Minister of Education and the appropriate Minister for Scotland so that those boys and girls may be enabled to carry on their education at universities? The provision of all this money will be futile unless we can get the students.
Mr. Brooke: It is a United Kingdom programme. As I think the right hon. Gentleman realises, the University Grants Committee is a United Kingdom body on which Scotland is represented. We are aware that there are many who leave the schools prematurely at present and who might benefit by a university education, and I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that the Chancellor of the Exchequer is in close touch with the Minister of Education, and any other Ministers who may be concerned, so that we can so arrange our affairs that the very best use is made of the abilities of boys and girls.
Mr. Gower: Can my right hon. Friend say whether the University of Wales will benefit under this programme?
Mr. Brooke: I said that the University Grants Committee is a United Kingdom body. I am quite sure that it will bear in mind the needs of the Principality.
Dr. King: If a university education is the good, long-term capital investment we all believe it to be, will the right hon. Gentleman bear in mind that the universities are fed by the secondary schools, and convey to the Minister of Education the need for co-operating with the Chancellor in the policy of putting back the building of the secondary schools he stopped this year?
Mr. Brooke: This is a co-ordinated policy. I do not think that the House would wish me to make a comprehensive statement on all educational intentions. I hope the hon. Gentleman will accept my statement that it is the desire of the Government that all boys and girls who are worthy of a university education shall receive it.
Mr. Usborne: Does the Treasury realise that it is also important to produce more teachers, particularly for the primary level? Is the right hon. Gentleman considering continuing, in this programme, the expansion of teacher training colleges, which, I gather, have been curtailed?
Mr. Brooke: That is outside my responsibility at the Treasury.

PRIVATE MEMBERS' BILLS
  ADVERTISEMENTS (HIRE-PURCHASE)
  Bill to make provision as to the information to be included in advertisements displayed or issued in connection with hire-purchase or credit sale; and for purposes connected with the matter aforesaid, presented by Lieut.-Colonel Schofield; supported by Mr. Glenvil Hall, Mr. Gresham Cooke, Sir John Barlow, Mr. Fort, Sir William Steward, Mr. Royle, Mr. McKibbin, Mr. Bidgood, Mr. Harold Steward, and Sir Robert Cary; read the First time; to be read a Second time upon Friday, 1st February, and to be printed. [Bill 12.]
  NORTHERN IRELAND (COMPENSATION FOR COMPULSORY PURCHASE)
  Bill to enable the Parliament of Northern Ireland to make, in relation to land in Northern Ireland, provision for purposes similar to those of Section fifty-three of the Town and Country Planning Act, 1947, presented by Mr. Currie; supported by Mr. Armstrong, Sir David Campbell, Mr. Chichester-Clark, Mr. Knox Cunningham, Mr. Montgomery Hyde, Lieut.-Colonel Grosvenor, Mr. McKibbin, Mrs. McLaughlin, Mr. Phelim O'Neill, Captain Orr, and Sir Victor Raikes; read the First time; to be read a Second time upon Friday, 7th December, and to be printed. [Bill 13.]

  AGRICULTURAL MARKETING
  Bill to amend the provisions of the Agricultural Marketing Acts, 1931 to 1949, as to the schemes which may be
  1754
  submitted and approved thereunder; and for purposes connected therewith, presented by Mr. Baldwin; supported by Major Legge-Bourke, Mr. Hurd, Mr. James Lindsay, Mr. Gibson-Watt, Commander Agnew, Commander Maitland, Mrs. Evelyn Emmet, Wing Commander Grant-Ferris, Captain Duncan, Mr. A. B. C. Harrison, and Sir Alfred Bossom; read the First time; to be read a Second time upon Friday, 15th February, and to be printed. [Bill 14.]

  MAINTENANCE ORDERS (ATTACHMENT OF INCOME)
  Bill to provide for the attachment of sums payable to a person by way of wages, salary or other earnings or by way of pension for the purpose of enforcing certain court orders requiring payments by that person to some other person; and for purposes connected with the matter aforesaid, presented by Miss Vickers; supported by Mrs. Evelyn Emmet, Mr. Simon, Wing Commander Bullus, Mr. Russell, Mr. Geoffrey Wilson, Mr. Vaughan-Morgan, Dr. King, Mr. Parker, Mrs. Lena Jeger, Mrs. Corbet, and Mr. McLeavy; read the First time; to be read a Second time upon Friday, 1st March, and to be printed. [Bill 15.]
  PARISH COUNCILS (MISCELLANEOUS PROVISIONS)
  Bill to make further provision as to the constitution of parish councils, and as to the powers of parish councils and parish meetings, in rural parishes in England and Wales, presented by Wing Commander Bullus; supported by Mr. Russell. Mr. Fort, Mr. Arthur Lewis, Mr. George Jeger, Sir Alfred Bossom, Mr. Farey-Jones, Mr. William Taylor, Mr. Whitelaw, Mr. Edelman, Mr. Snow, and Sir Lancelot Joynson-Hicks; read the First time; to be read a Second time upon Friday, 15th March, and to be printed. [Bill 16.]
  OBSCENE PUBLICATIONS
  Bill to amend and consolidate the laws relating to obscene publications, presented by Viscount Lambton; supported by Mr. Angus Maude, Mr. Roy Jenkins, Mr. Fort, Mr. Nigel Nicolson, Mr. Kenneth Robinson, Mr. Maurice Macmillan, Sir Edward Boyle, Sir Victor Raikes, and Sir Jocelyn Lucas; read the First time; to be read a Second time upon Friday, 29th March, and to be printed. [Bill 17.]
  NEW STREETS ACT, 1951 (AMENDMENT)
  Bill to amend the New Streets Act, 1951, presented by Mr. Maddan; supported by Mr. Currie, Mr. Woollam, Major Patrick Wall, Mr. du Cann, Captain Corfield, and Mr. Body; read the First time; to be read a Second time upon Friday, 7th December, and to be printed. [Bill 18.]
  DEATH PENALTY (ABOLITION)
  Bill to abolish or for a period suspend the passing and execution of the death sentence on conviction of murder and to substitute an alternative penalty therefor, presented by Miss Bacon; supported by Mr. Bevan, Mr. Ede, Sir Frank Soskice, Dr. Summerskill, Mr. Sydney Silverman, Mr. Grimond, Mr. Montgomery Hyde. Miss Herbison, Sir Beverley Baxter, Mr. Wade, and Mr. John Paton; read the First time; to be read a Second time upon Friday, 1st February, and to be printed. [Bill 19.]
  ANIMAL BOARDING ESTABLISHMENTS
  Bill to regulate the keeping of boarding establishments for animals; and for purposes connected therewith, presented by Mr. Ridsdale; supported by Mr. Russell, Wing Commander Bullus, Mr. Anthony Greenwood, Mr. Burden, Mr. Hastings, Mr. John Eden, Mr. A. B. C. Harrison, Brigadier Terence Clarke, Mrs. Evelyn Emmet, Mr. Douglas Marshall, and Mr. John Hall; read the First time; to be read a Second time upon Friday, 15th February, and to be printed. [Bill 20.]
  NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE (AMENDMENT)
  Bill to empower local health authorities to make available, for reward, ambulance services provided by them in pursuance of the National Health Service Act, 1946; presented by Sir F. Markham; supported by Mr. McLeavy, Mr. Frederick Bennett, Mr. Baldwin, and Mr. Sparks; read the First time; to be read a Second time upon Friday, 1st March, and to be printed. [Bill 21.]

  NORTH OF SCOTLAND DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION
  Bill to establish a corporation for the development of Northern Scotland; and for purposes connected therewith, presented
  1756
  by Sir D. Robertson; supported by Mr. Elliot, Mr. George, Mr. Grimond, Mr. Leburn, Major Sir Duncan McCallum, Mr. MacColl, Mr. Neil McLean, Mr. John MacLeod, Mr. M. K. MacMillan, Mr. Malcolm MacPherson, and Mr. John Rankin; read the First time; to be read a Second time upon Friday, 15th March, and to be printed. [Bill 22.]

  REGISTRATION OF BIRTHS, DEATHS AND MARRIAGES (NAVY, MARINES AND SERVICE CIVILIANS) (OVERSEAS)
  Bill to provide for the registration of births, deaths and marriages overseas in respect of the Navy, Marines and certain Service civilians, presented by Mr. Dudley Williams; supported by Sir Harold Roper, Mr. du Cann, Mr. Kenneth Robinson, Miss Joan Vickers, Mr. Lucas, Sir Beverley Baxter, Viscount Hinchingbrooke, Mr. Beswick, and Commander Maitland; read the First time; to be read a Second time upon Friday, 29th March, and to be printed. [Bill 23.]
  PUBLIC HEALTH OFFICERS (DEPUTIES)
  Bill to dispense with the consent of the Minister of Health to the appointment under the Local Government Act, 1933, or the London Government Act, 1939, of deputies of medical officers of health and deputies of public health inspectors, presented by Mr. Vaughan Morgan; supported by Mrs. Hill, Mr. Frederick Bennett, Mr. Burden, Mr. Kimball, Mr. Atkins, Mr. Tiley, Mr. Bidgood, Mr. Fort, Mr. Speir, Mr. A. B. C. Harrison, and Mr. Vane; read the First time; to be read a Second time upon Friday, 7th December, and to be printed. [Bill 24.]

  MAINTENANCE AGREEMENTS
  Bill to make provision with respect to the validity and alteration by the court of financial arrangements in connection with agreements between the parties to a marriage, whether made during the continuance or after the dissolution or annulment of the marriage, for the purposes of those parties living separately; and for purposes connected therewith, presented by Mr. Keegan; supported by Captain Corfield, Mr. Green, Brigadier Terence Clarke, and Mr. Pott; read the First

  1757
  time; to be read a Second time upon Friday, 1st February, and to be printed. [Bill 25.]

  LEGITIMATION (RE-REGISTRATION OF BIRTH)
  Bill to extend the operation of section fourteen and paragraph (d) of section thirty-six of the Births and Deaths Registration Act, 1953, and of the schedule to the Legitimacy Act, 1926; and for purposes connected with that matter, presented by Mr. Gibson-Watt; supported by Mr. Whitelaw, Mr. Vane, Mr. Tiley, Mr. Cronin, Mr. Watkins, Mr. Freeth, Mr. Gower, and Mr. John Howard; read the First time; to be read a Second time upon Friday, 1st March, and to be printed. [Bill 26.]
  LOCAL GOVERNMENT (PROMOTION OF BILLS)
  Bill to repeal certain enactments relating to the promotion of Bills by certain local authorities, presented by Mr. W. R. A. Hudson; supported by Wing Commander Bullus, Mr. Robert Jenkins, Sir Victor Raikes, Mr. William Taylor, Mr. Kenneth Thompson, and Mr. Anthony Greenwood; read the First time; to be read a Second time upon Friday, 15th February, and to be printed. [Bill 27.]

  REPRESENTATION OF THE PEOPLE (AMENDMENT)
  Bill to amend the Representation of the People Act, 1949, by assimilating the limitation on election expenses for candidates at parliamentary elections in constituencies in Northern Ireland to the
  1758
  limitation on those expenses for candidates at such elections in constituencies in Great Britain, presented by Sir D. Campbell; supported by Mr. McKibbin, Mrs. McLaughlin, Mr. Montgomery Hyde, Mr. Armstrong, Mr. Chichester-Clark, Mr. Knox Cunningham, Mr. Currie, Lieut.-Colonel Grosvenor, Sir Thomas Moore, Captain Orr, and Mr. Phelim O'Neill; read the First time; to be read a Second time upon Friday, 15th March, and to be printed. [Bill 28.]

  RACIAL DISCRIMINATION
  Bill to make illegal discrimination to the detriment of any person on the grounds of colour, race and religion in the United Kingdom, presented by Mr. Brockway; supported by Mr. Sorensen, Mr. Leslie Hale, Mr. Wedgwood Benn, Mr. Orbach, Miss Jennie Lee, Mr. Ian Mikardo, Mrs. Castle, Mr. Janner, Sir Leslie Plummer, Mr. Julius Silverman, and Mr. Frank Allaun; read the First time; to be read a Second time upon Friday, 29th March, and to be printed. [Bill 30.]
  LITTER
  Bill to make provision for the abatement of litter; to prescribe penalties for the deposit of litter; and for matters; connected with the purposes aforesard, presented by Mr. Speir; supported by Mr. Hurd, Mr. John Hill, Mrs. Eirene White, Mr. Wade., Lieut.-Commander Maydon, Mr. Michael Stewart, Mr. Vaughan-Morgan, Mr. J. T. Price, Mr. Graeme Finlay, Mr. Fort, and Mr. Whitelaw; read the First time; to be read a Second time upon Friday, 1st March, and to be printed. [Bill 31.]
ORDERS OF THE DAY

  RENT BILL
  Order for Second Reading read.
  3.47 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.
  The achievement of this country in housing since the war has been, by any standard, a most remarkable one. In new houses alone, between 2½ million and 2¾ million have been constructed in Great Britain. It is a record which bears comparison with that of any other European country. It is a record in which the nation as a whole and not one party only can take pride. But, of course, it is not the mere number of houses built which matters so much as the ratio between the supply and the demand, between the number of families and the number of houses or homes which there are to accommodate them.
  As early as 1949, in introducing the Housing Act of that year, the then Minister of Health, the right hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Bevan) was able to point out that the number of houses per head of the population was then already higher than before the war and that that ratio was constantly improving. Since that time, over 1½ million net additional homes have been provided, so that the ratio today must be very much more favourable than it was then.
  The census of 1951 provided a firm basis upon which could be founded an estimate of need and the availability of homes to meet it. A study made by P.E.P. of the results of that census came to a conclusion about the ratio between the supply and demand for homes at the end of 1954. If I may remind the House of that conclusion, the calculation was as follows:
  "Rough estimates…of the position at the end of 1954…suggest that the need for additional dwellings had fallen, in England and Wales, to about three-quarters of a million."
  And it concluded:
  "It is…clear that the demand for more houses is beginning to be met."
  This estimate of an additional
  Three-quarters of a million houses required to
  1760
  bring the general demand and supply into balance over the country has, I notice, been adopted by the party opposite as a minimum, and as the basis of their calculations in their policy for housing.
  Taking that admittedly rough estimate of demand as it was at the end of 1954, from then until the end of 1957, when the provisions of this Bill will be coming fully into force, we can calculate with certainty that there will be a net addition of at least three quarters of a million homes. It follows that upon an objective basis, and one which has been broadly accepted I think, we are now within sight of, and should in 12 months' time or so be level with, an equation of the overall supply and demand for homes.
  Rent control as we have it is essentially an emergency measure. It is a product of the war, a product of the stresses of war, a product of the temporary derangement of the relationship between demand and supply which the war inevitably brought with it.
  Mr. Hugh Dalton: Which war? The First World War?
  Mr. Powell: It is partly a product of the First World War but, for the most part, today rent control is new control, the control which was established in 1939. The majority of houses controlled today are new controlled houses, as can be verified if the right hon. Gentleman will refer to the statistics furnished in Cmnd. 17.
  Mr. A. J. Irvine: On this matter of demand, is it not correct to say that the vital figures are those which show the numbers of houses of different sizes in the country and the numbers of families of different sizes? One wants to compare and correlate those two columns. Will the hon. Gentleman explain why that information is not available to the House, having regard to the fact that it can be easily extracted from the information derived from the census?
  Mr. Powell: I understand the importance of the occupation of houses and I shall be dealing with that point several times in my speech. But, also material, is the broader point I have been making hitherto, the balance between units of accommodation and household units, be they respectively large or small.

  1761
  It is interesting to remember, as a reminder of the emergency character of rent restriction, that it could be brought to an end within six months by an Order in Council declaring the end of the emergency. Thereby, under Section 1 of the 1939 Act, rent restriction as a whole would come to an end in this country. So we are dealing with a state of affairs and with a system of control which is the fruit partly of the first, but also partly of the second, wartime emergency. Now that supply and demand are coming into balance—
  Mr. Ellis Smith: We have a long way to go yet.
  Mr. Powell: This emergency action is not only losing its usefulness, but it is becoming productive of greater and greater and widely recognised evils. Perhaps the most useful summary of those evils which I could quote to the House was given in a leading article in the Manchester Guardian a few days ago. Referring to rent restriction, that article stated:
  "It discourages the landlord from keeping old houses in good repair, and so increases the rate at which they become uninhabitable. It further diminishes the number of houses to let by encouraging the sale of those which fall vacant, and deterring the letting of those which have previously been owner-occupied. It creates a vested interest in a sitting tenancy, and so prevents large houses from being made available for growing families by the removal of shrinking households to smaller premises; by the same token, it inhibits the movement of redundant workers to places where their labour is needed."
  Now I will look for a moment at some of the items in that list of the present evils which rent restriction is producing. The first is the waste of accommodation, and has already been mentioned. This is notorious, but there is statistical evidence of it. For example, the 1951 census showed that there were 1¼ million households with three or more rooms per person, and the probability is that the under-occupation which those figures indicate has increased rather than lessened since 1951.
  Mr. Ellis Smith: Especially in the South.
  Mr. Powell: Probably so. There is no relationship between the size of a house and the rent of a house and consequently, no inducement to a small or shrinking family to seek to reduce its commitments
  1762
  by way of rent by releasing larger accommodation than it needs.
  There is the discouragement to the letting or sub-letting of accommodation which is not needed, since the sub-letting of controlled premises would be subject to a further application of controlled rent, and a person contemplating the subletting of part of his house would have to consider that the proposed tenant would become a protected tenant.
  Then there is the factor of the constant erosion of the stock of houses available for renting by the fact that, whenever a rented house falls vacant upon the departure of a tenant, in far more cases than not the landlord puts it up for sale, however long he has to wait to effect a sale.
  Mr. Herbert Butler: How will the Government stop it?
  Mr. Powell: I shall explain that.
  This was well stated in a leading article last week in the Municipal Journal, which made the following point clearly:
  "The current situation is quite ridiculous. While many people are desperately in need of a home of their own…rent restricted houses are standing empty, for sale. One such—a five-roomed, self-contained maisonette in an over-populated district of south-east London—has lain unoccupied since February pending a sale. The controlled rent…bears no relation to present value; which is why the owner feels obliged to sell."
  The writer then calculated how little could be obtained in net rent from that house if the owner continued to let it.
  Mr. Charles Royle: But is it not a fact that the price being asked for the house also has some relationship to the fact that the house has been empty so long?
  Mr. Powell: We all recognise the reality of the problem of the sale of previously rented houses and the simple reasons which lie behind it. Then there is the serious fact of immobility, the fact that people who have to move, or who are setting up a family, move from rent-restricted accommodation into circumstances in which they cannot even rent accommodation at market value, but must seek furnished accommodation until they can get to the head of the council waiting list in the place to which they have gone. The whole natural movement of the population is inhibited by the effects of rent restrictions.

  1763
  There is, I think, no doubt at all that both sides of the House and professional opinion have recognised that rent control is one of the main factors in the disrepair of houses. The Labour Party recognised that specifically and expressly in its recent publication on the subject. The effect on the repair of houses was studied as long ago as 1949 by P.E.P., which found that not only is there often no margin left after repairs have been done but that, in some cases, the whole rent is insufficient to meet the necessary outlay. Small wonder, then, that all observers deplore the constant deterioration in the condition of repair of our stock of rented houses.
  To end this brief analysis of the consequence of rent restriction, there is the injustice of the whole system. There is the injustice between tenant and tenant occupying identical property rented entirely differently for no reason whatever except the vagaries of rent control. There is the injustice arising from the fact that there is no relation between the size of the property and its rent. There is the injustice arising from landlords being called upon in many cases, by rent restriction, to subsidise the incomes of tenants who are better off than they are.
  There is, therefore, a general recognition of the evils which rent control, as we have it, is producing, and increasingly producing. There is a general recognition that the time is now ripe for that to be dealt with. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] Hon. Members opposite have just produced their own proposals for dealing with the situation. They think that the time is ripe and we agree with them. The difference between us is the form of decontrol, whether we shall end rent restriction in the manner outlined in the Bill or whether we shall do it by transferring the whole stock of rented houses to municipal ownership—which is also decontrol. It is, therefore, only upon the form of decontrol, the method whereby rent restriction is to be abolished, that the two sides of the House differ.
  Before I sit down, I shall make some observations upon the implications of the method which is proposed by the Labour Party. I want for the moment merely to point out one other feature which is common to both sets of proposals. It is
  1764
  that they both envisage a general rise in the level of rents. It is perfectly clear—to give them credit, hon. Members opposite have never sought to deny it—that the proposals of the Labour Party would imply, just as do the proposals in the Bill, a substantial rise in the general level of rents. That is one of the important differences, perhaps the most important difference, between the process of decontrol as we knew it between the two wars and that in which both sides of the House are prepared at this time to engage.
  Mr. Raymond Gower: Would not my hon. Friend also agree that there is one circumstance which is compatible with his proposals but incompatible with the proposals of the Labour Party, namely, that at present many local authorities will not accept these houses even when they are offered to them for practically nothing?
  Hon. Members: Why?
  Mr. Powell: I do not think that it has been denied that, as I said, a substantial rise in rents is implicit in either alternative.
  When rent restriction was previously
  dealt with by the House in the years from 1923 to 1938, which spanned the inter-war measures of decontrol, the situation was that during those years the cost of building was falling steadily and the value of money was rising. In 1934, the economic rents of council houses—I mean the unsubsidised rents—were practically down to the level of the subsidised rents of council houses built only eight years previously. Therefore, as each slice of rent controlled property was decontrolled between the wars, very little increase in the rents of those houses followed. If one compares 1956, the gross values—
  Mrs. Jean Mann: Will the hon. Gentleman also take into account the rents of the houses which were decontrolled between the two wars?
  Mr. Powell: I am simply placing on record the fact that, owing to the steady increase in the value of money and the steady decline in the cost of building, pre-1914 controlled rents and post-1918 economic rents moved to meet one another in those years, so that at each step of decontrol the consequent rise in rents was comparatively insignificant.

  1765
  One can judge that from a comparison between the gross values in the current valuation lists, which, in England and Wales, represent the assessment of 1939 market rentals, and the controlled rents of old controlled houses. On the whole—
  Mr. James Callaghan: How many unemployed were there?
  Mr. Powell: Hon. Members may assign what causes they please to these phenomena, but I am giving the facts of the situation over those years. The old controlled rents are, on average, little below the assessment of 1939 free market rentals.
  Today, controlled rents, whether they be 1939 rents or whether they be old controlled rents—that is, 1914 rents plus 40 per cent.—are completely out of line with current values. The cost of building today stands at about three and, a half times the 1939 level, the cost of living stands at about two and a half times the 1939 level, and average earnings are 3·7 times what they were in 1939.
  Mr. Ellis Smith: But not wages.
  Mr. Powell: It is, of course, upon their earnings that people live. In addition—
  Mr. Ellis Smith Mr. Ellis Smith rose—
  Mr. Powell: I really cannot give way. In addition, there is the fact to be borne in mind that average family earnings have risen more than in proportion to average earnings.
  It is in consequence of these facts that the decontrol which both sides of the
  House envisage involves an increase in rents, though by no means necessarily an increase proportionate to the increase in purchasing power. However, because rent restriction has been in force for seventeen years at least—in the case of many houses, it has been in force for more than forty years—decontrol cannot be sudden or immediate. It must allow for necessary readjustments, and the transition must be smoothed.
  I wish now to turn to the provisions of the Bill which relate to decontrol. I refer to Clause 9. The proposals are as follows. Hon. Members may also find it convenient to have in front of them the statistics published in Command Paper 17, entitled "Rent Control".
  1766
  Where an owner-occupier is at present in possession of a house, that house will, from now onwards, be decontrolled and the Rent Acts will cease to apply to it. Hon. Gentlemen will see from Table I that 4·4 million houses—that is the England and Wales figure—are affected by that provision. This means that houses will in future be let which otherwise would not be. There are many circumstances in which an owner-occupier, either moving temporarily to another town on business or, having built a house for retirement but not needing to occupy it for a year or two, would wish in the meantime to let that house and allow use to be made of the accommodation. Today, that does not happen. In future, the owner of a house will be able to let that house out of control.
  In the second place, wherever a controlled tenancy comes to an end, the dwelling to which that tenancy applies will also be decontrolled. The House may be interested in an estimate of the number of houses which may be involved as time goes on as the result of this provision. Between 1923 and 1933 there was a similar provision for the decontrol of houses upon the ending of a controlled tenancy. In that period, it was found that about 3 per cent. per annum of the houses in the bracket to which this provision will now apply, came into possession, and were consequently decontrolled.
  If that very rough estimate be applied to obtain an estimate of the number of houses remaining under control under the Bill, it results in an annual decontrol of about 125,000 houses a year, all cases in which the increase in rent does not fall to be met by the controlled tenant and all cases where the controlled tenancy has, in any case, come to an end.
  Mr. Barnett Janner: Will the Parliamentary Secretary tell the House what happened after the 1923 decontrol; whether there was not an outcry in the country and what the Government had to do in consequence of it?
  Mr. Powell: What happened was that in 1933 the decontrol upon vacant possession of the very small houses where there was still a continuing disbalance of supply and demand, was terminated. Undoubtedly, between 1923 and 1933 the decontrol of other houses contributed to a

  1767
  general loosening of the housing situation in those years.
  Undoubtedly, the provision which I have been explaining will have a most beneficial effect. It will mean that houses such as that to which the Municipal Journal, in the quotation which I made, referred, will no longer be held empty month after month, waiting for a purchaser, although quite unsuitable for an owner occupier. [HON. MEMBERS: "Why?"] Those houses will now be let, and it will be the object of the landlord—[HON. MEMBERS: "Why?"] Why? I will tell hon. Members opposite why. Because, in future, there will be no difference between the value of the house with vacant possession and the house with tenants.
  They will be let at the market rent. The capital value of a house is the capitalisation of its market rent. The inducement to an owner to attempt to get the current value of his house by selling it will disappear. He will have the object of letting that house again as soon as possible. In future, the object of landlords will not be to get possession, but to avoid voids.
  Mr. G. Lindgren: The Parliamentary Secretary has perhaps put himself out of line with his right hon. and hon. Friends now, by doing himself an injustice. His suggestion was that the type of house now being held for sale is unfit for owner-occupation, which means that a tenant can be expected to occupy accommodation which is inferior to that of an owner-occupier.
  Mr. Powell: Oh, no. I do not think that the hon. Member really disagrees about this matter. There are large numbers of older houses rented which can be and should be, when maintained in proper condition, able to provide very good accommodation but for which an individual ought not to be induced to take responsibility as a family investment. I do not think that there is any difference between us on that point.
  When the Bill comes into force there will already, as a result of this provision, be a considerable initial reservoir of houses to let, either which have come into possession since the terms of the Bill were known or which were already standing empty awaiting a purchaser.
  1768
  They will provide a useful transition and assistance for the original implementation of the provisions of the Bill.
  The third measure of decontrol is that houses above £30 rateable value in the provinces and £40 rateable value in Scotland and in London, will be decontrolled. From Table II hon. Members will see that these houses number 750,000 in England and Wales, and that of them 190,000 are in London. The first point I want to make about these houses which are
  being decontrolled by rateable value is that they are only a minority of the total number of houses of that class and type. In fact, they are only, as the figures in the table show, just over a quarter.
  Where similar decontrol occurred between the wars the number of houses decontrolled bore a much higher proportion to the total stock in the relevant band. For example, in 1933, when houses were decontrolled down to £35 rateable value, these houses were 44 per cent. of the total. In 1938, when control was brought down to £20, these houses were 32 per cent. of the total. The houses being decontrolled are a minority of the total available, but that minority is constantly diminishing because it is for this class of owner-occupier that private enterprise is constantly building at a high rate; so that with every year that passes, and, indeed, before these provisions are implemented, the proportion of these houses to the total available of that class will be even smaller than one in four.
  A large number—and it is a large number—are being decontrolled at once, half as many again as were decontrolled at once in 1933, a sufficient number, the Government believe, to provide for adequate consumer resistance and to ensure that demand is not concentrated upon a comparatively smaller number of houses which go out of control.
  I was interested in the leading article today in the Manchester Guardian. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] I thought I would venture to quote this journal as not one which has been conspicuous for its general support of the Government. The article says:
  "When we add to these"—
  that is, the 800,000—
  "many thousands of controlled houses that have been standing vacant for months—simply because it pays the landlord to wait for a buyer

  1769
  when a tenant leaves rather than let again at the controlled rent—we get a market that should be adequate in size to keep free rents down to an economic level."
  That is a calculation which, the Government believe, will be proved correct.
  Mr. Thomas Fraser: Does this apply to houses in Scotland? The Parliamentary Secretary is moving the Second Reading of a Bill that applies to Scotland, but I should have thought that what he has said does not apply to Scotland.
  Mr. Powell: The hon. Gentleman can read from the tables of statistics the similar proportion which these houses in Scotland bear to the total stock. I invite him to do that.
  Mr. George Chetwynd Mr. George Chetwynd (Stockton-on-Tees) rose—
  Mr. Powell: Now that I am describing the provisions of the Bill I should very much like to be able to proceed with my speech without giving way.
  Where houses are decontrolled under Clause 9, not upon possession but by rateable value, there will be a minimum of six months' notice from the landlord to the tenant, a minimum of six months during which a new rent—for, in the vast majority of cases, that is what it will be—can be negotiated between the two. The detailed provisions for that notice are set out in the Fourth Schedule to the Bill.
  I would once again emphasise to the House that in the vast majority of cases the object of the owners of these houses will be to ensure that they are not vacant of a tenant. If they are to get the value out of those houses, they will have to continue to let them at a market rent at which they can find tenants and they will have to bid for those tenants—[HON. MEMBERSH "Oh"]—in what I have shown is a very large market indeed.
  Hon. Members: Nonsense.
  Mr. Kenneth Robinson: Can the hon. Gentleman tell us where the consumer resistance is coming from in London, where the demand grossly exceeds the supply for this type of house? What estimate have the Government made of the increased rents which are to be asked by landlords for this decontrolled class of property?
  Mr. Powell: In London alone, as I have informed the hon. Member, 190,000 houses will be decontrolled at once. In addition, there will be a number of houses which have come into possession since—indeed, before the publication of the Bill—which will all be on the letting market at the same time. It is the common experience of hon. Members that a great many houses which have been let and which, up to the present, have been subject to rent control in London, are standing vacant in the vain endeavour to sell them.
  Mr. G. R. Mitchison: I have restrained myself with great difficulty from interrupting before and I am obliged to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. I want to ask only one question. Does he, or does he not, say that the demand for houses in London will have been met by the end of 1957?
  Mr. Powell: Undoubtedly there are areas of the country where the balance of supply and demand is different from that in other areas. In London there is a special situation, but the Government see no reason to doubt that the rents which it will be possible to obtain for this large number of rented houses coming on to the market at the same time will be not much in excess of the rents which will be permissible under the rest of the Bill for houses remaining in control.
  Before I pass from the decontrol provisions to those relating to houses remaining in control, I want to emphasise that these provisions do not affect the protection accorded to members of the auxiliary and reserve forces. None of the decontrol provisions affect their security in any way.
  There will then remain—here I am giving the England and Wales figure—4¼ million rent-controlled houses which are at present let. Those houses, except upon possession, will not be decontrolled until the pattern which will emerge as a result of the rest of the provisions of the Bill can be clearly seen. If hon. Members will look at Clause 9, subsection 3, they will see that the utmost flexibility has been retained so that decontrol can be varied according to place and to type of house which falls under it from time to time.
  Now I come to the provisions of the Bill relating to the houses which will

  1771
  remain under the Rent Acts. I am going to deal with the English Clauses in this context. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland will be dealing tomorrow with the different Scottish provisions which, in that respect, apply.
  Mr. S. O. Davies: Will the hon. Gentleman say a word about Wales?
  Mr. Powell: England embraces Wales.
  Mr. Dalton: That should be circulated in Welsh.
  Mr. Powell: In the case of the 4¼ million houses which remain controlled, all the provisions of the Rent Acts, security of tenure, and so forth, will continue to apply, but the rents will be able to be raised in a manner prescribed in the Bill up to certain limits if they are below those limits. The basic constituent of these new rent limits is a multiple of the 1956 gross value, that is to say, the gross value of the house shown in the current valuation lists subject to any alteration which may be made in pursuance of a proposal made before 7th November this year.
  This basing of the new rent limits upon gross values provides for the first time some means of bringing into uniformity the gross variations at present between controlled rents. It will eliminate the existing unfairnesses and anomalies since, for the first time, we have got a nationwide valuation of the 1939 rental of dwelling-houses. To this basic constituent of a multiple of 1956 gross value will be added, as under the Rent Acts at present the rates payable for the time being so far as they are payable by the landlord, 8 per cent. of any expenditure by landlords upon future reasonable improvements and also the cost of any services, furniture, and so on, provided by the landlord for the tenant.
  The multiple by which the gross value is to be multiplied in the calculation of the rent limit varies according to the responsibility of the landlord for repairing. The normal situation is that the landlord is responsible for all repairs except internal decorative repairs. Where that is so the multiplier wil be 2; the basic constituent of the rent limit will be twice the 1956 gross value. Where the landlord also does internal decorative repairs, the figure will be 2⅓. On the other hand,
  1772
  where he is responsible for no repairs at all, the figure will be 1⅓. In the normal case the figure will be twice the 1956 gross value.
  This figure was selected as one clearly below the rise since 1939 both in costs generally and also in wages and earnings, since the intention was to retain a real measure of protection and control. Even so, in many cases I believe that this new rent limit will prove to be in reality a maximum which in many cases will not in practice be actually obtained. The existing rent will be able to be raised in the prescribed manner up to the rent limit I have described by stages. It will be necessary for the landlord to give three months' notice of any increase and, for any increase—where one is allowable—exceeding 7s. 6d., nine months' notice will be required. That is under Clause 2 of the Bill. For 2 million of the houses concerned the increase under the Bill cannot in any case exceed 7s. 6d. a week and for more than a further 1 million it cannot exceed 10s. That appears from Table IV in the White Paper.
  Looked at from the point of view of the resultant maximum net rents, the new maximum net rent will not exceed 15s. for more than 2 million houses, or £1 for more than 3 million houses. As long as control continues, it would clearly be wrong to allow the increase to be obtained for a house which is not in a condition to command the rent.
  Mr. Mitchison: May I ask this question before the hon. Gentleman leaves that point? All the leading newspapers simultaneously published a statement estimating the average increase at just under 10s. I think that it must have come from the Ministry. Can the hon. Gentleman tell me whether it was one of the figures which the Ministry provided and, if so, was it one of the correct ones or incorrect ones?
  Mr. Powell: The hon. and learned Gentleman has only to look at Table IV of the White Paper, which shows the increases and the number applicable for each increase and he can work out the average for himself. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] I mean that it would be possible for him to work out the average for himself while looking at Table IV.
  It was essential that a safeguard should be provided to ensure that the new rent

  1773
  was only obtained for a house which was fairly in a condition to provide for it. Accordingly, there can be no increase for houses which are subject to any statutory procedure for unfitness—the House will find this procedure set out in detail in Clause 2 (2, c)—or for any house whose landlord fails to remedy items of disrepair notified to him by the tenant and upon the tenant's application certified by the local authority.
  Where an increase of rent has been obtained under the Bill, if the house subsequently fails to be kept in a condition to command the rent there is a provision for the abatement of the rent to the rent that would be obtainable if the landlord were not responsible for doing any repairs at all. This procedure is set out in the First Schedule to the Bill. Briefly, it is that the tenant at any time, and not merely upon receiving a notice of increase from the landlord, can serve upon the landlord a list of the defects of repair which he considers to exist in the house. The landlord can put them right, or he can give an undertaking to put them right. If he failed to do either, the tenant can go to the local authority and ask for a certificate of disrepair. Before the certificate of disrepair is issued, the landlord has a last chance of giving an undertaking to remedy the defects.
  If the landlord undertakes to remedy the defects, he has six months in which to do it. At the end of that time—
  Mr. John Hynd: Winter time.
  Mr. Powell:—if the work is not done, the abatement provided by the Bill is suffered and the excess of rent which has been overpaid is recovered week by week until it is paid off.
  Secondly, the tenant is protected where the house is defective in repair either against an initial increase or, if an initial increase has been obtained, against a larger rent being payable to the landlord than would be payable if the tenant were responsible for all items of repair himself.
  The Bill includes certain minor provisions which, I think, will be widely welcomed. One is that in the case of furnished lettings which remain subject to the Furnished Houses (Rent Control) Act, 1946, a rent book must be provided
  1774
  and duly maintained. Incidentally, the Bill removes from the control of the tribunals lettings of premises which would not be controlled if they were let unfurnished.
  The existing right of the owner of a house to apply to the court for possession of the house for the use of himself or his family upon proof that the tenant will not suffer greater hardship by leaving than the owner does by being excluded from possession will be extended to include persons who acquired houses up to the date of the publication of the Bill.
  I think it is right that we should attempt to see the financial implications of the new rent limits for houses remaining in control in their wider perspective. In the first place, these increases will affect the actual rent of, at the most, four out of the 13½ million houses in England and Wales.
  Mr. Mitchison: Four million.
  Mr. Powell: The hon. and learned Gentleman will realise that many of these houses are subject to statutory procedure for unfitness and many will not qualify for reasons of disrepair, so I think that the figure four—4 million out of 13½ million—is on the high side rather than on the low. These increases, as they take effect, will do so gradually over many months, and for the great majority of the households effected the new maximum rent will amount to less than 8½ per cent. of current adult male earnings.
  I have chosen that standard of comparison because the House will recollect that the housing subsidies from the 1946 Act onwards were based by the party opposite upon the concept of a rent which represented 10 per cent. of average adult male earnings. The rents of these houses will be proportionate to the size and the value of the accommodation since they are based on the valuation of free market rental value.
  Mr. Lindgren: Does the hon. Gentleman mean to say that a house built prior to 1875, when there were no building regulations, is comparable accommodation to a house built under Dudley standards in 1946, as to purchase and the rest?
  Mr. Powell: I am also suggesting that such a house will not be found in the

  1775
  higher rateable value brackets which will qualify for a higher rent.
  The net rent—and it is upon the net rent that these increases operate—
  Mr. Callaghan: If you are a landlord.
  Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Charles MacAndrew): I am not a landlord.
  Mr. Callaghan: I will certainly withdraw that, Mr. Deputy Speaker, because the remark was not addressed to you. I was referring to some of the landlords on the other side of the House.
  Mr. Deputy-Speaker: If right hon. and hon. Gentlemen would address their remarks to the Chair, we should perhaps get on better.
  Mr. Powell: The net rent—and it is upon the net rent that these provisions of the Bill operate—represents, in the actual cost-of-living index, 3·6 points out of 100. It will, therefore, be seen when one considers as a whole the financial bearing of the increases of this order the impact both upon the cost of living and upon family budgets is very much less than many people have suggested.
  This is the Measure which, with the safeguards and provisions for transition which I have outlined, the Government believe will go far to meet the evils which I outlined at the beginning of my speech. It will halt the drain upon rented accommodation, it will release additional accommodation which is under-used or wasted, it will arrest the deterioration of millions of houses for lack of maintenance, and it will give to persons who are moving or setting up home the opportunity to find accommodation in the market.
  The Bill will end long-standing injustices between tenant and tenant and between landlord and tenant. We want this or something like it to remedy a situation which, by universal agreement has become intolerable. [HON. MEMBERS: "Intolerable to whom? "] Intolerable to those represented on both sides of the House, because both sides have made proposals for dealing with it.
  The only alternative is decontrol by 100 per cent. public ownership of the accommodation which is now rented in control. I think it is right that the public
  1776
  should recognise what that alternative method of attaining these agreed ends would mean. It would mean that virtually all in this country except owner-occupiers would be council tenants. It would mean that for those who want a home there would be no recourse but to the waiting list of the local authority.
  Mr. Maurice Orbach: Where do they go now?
  Mr. Powell: It would mean that those who required to move from one part of the country to another would have to wait until they could be admitted to the waiting list of the local authority in the place to which they had to go. So serious have hon. Members opposite felt this difficulty to be that in their policy they say that
  "Difficulties could arise "
  —which is putting it mildly—
  "over transfers from other parts of the country. If necessary we shall assist the local authorities to set up a central clearing house that will be able to co-ordinate such work."
  In a man's own town he goes on the local authority waiting list, but, otherwise—
  Mr. Orbach: He goes into a tent.
  Mr. Powell:—if he wants to move, he goes to the local authority's central clearing house. That is the proposition which hon. Members opposite place before the country. It is not, I believe, the solution which the people of this country would wish to embrace. [HON. MEMBERS: "Ask them."] I do not believe that in circumstances in which the people are able to command an ever-increasing standard of living, in which they are able to demand and obtain for themselves not only the necessities but, happily and increasingly, the luxuries of life—
  Mr. Chetwynd: Such as petrol.
  Mr. Powell:—they will not be willing or able to pay the current value of the accommodation which they occupy. I do not believe that they will wish to continue to be subsidised by their fellow citizens through rent control or become the universal tenants of the local authorities.
  It is upon that belief and that assessment that the Bill is founded, but it is also founded upon a still more fundamental conviction: that it is a caricature

  1777
  of our society to see it divided into antagonistic classes and sections with mutually opposing interests—employers against employees, suppliers against consumers, landlords against tenants. It is a conviction that if our laws are justly and reasonably framed, the profit and the advantage of one section is the gain and not the loss of another section, the gain of one can contribute and should contribute to the comfort and convenience of the other—
  Mr. B. T. Parkin: The economics of Messina.
  Mr. Powell:—and the nation can be richer and stronger by the mutual and not conflicting interests of both.
  4.47 p.m.
  Mr. G. R. Mitchison: I think it would be kinder not to say too much about the Parliamentary Secretary. He was put up to argue an unarguable case and to move the Second Reading of a preposterous Bill. He kept completely off the Scottish part of the Bill, as distinct from both the English part and the United Kingdom part. I shall do likewise, but I should like to make a protest about this situation.
  It is quite wrong that there should be a single Bill to cover completely different conditions and completely different proposals about the increase in rents in Scotland and in England. If there is a single Bill, as there now appears to be, I think it ought to be dealt with on the Floor of the House in order that Scottish Members may have a proper opportunity of dealing with their part of the Bill. If that is not to be done, then the specifically Scottish part of it ought certainly to be sent to the Scottish Grand Committee: otherwise, the English will have to listen to a great deal which they do not understand and the number of Scots who will be able to deal with it in Committee will be inadequate for the importance to them of what is proposed.
  Having said that, I should like to make one further incursion into Scotland and adopt a sentence which fell from the Secretary of State for Scotland in the course of a housing debate the other day. He said:
  "I am afraid that my vocabulary does not contain enough adjectives to compete."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 7th November, 1956; Vol. 559, c. 243.]
  1778
  Nor does mine in relation to this Bill, and I make my choice rather carefully. I call it an iniquitous Bill—and so it is, for two reasons. First of all, the one obvious and certain effect of it is to transfer a very large sum of money from people who cannot afford to pay it, and many of whom are very poor indeed, to people who do not need it nearly as much, that is to say, to the landlords, corporate and individual, of this country.
  The second major effect of it is to deprive a very large number of people of a security in the occupation of what has now become their home which they have enjoyed for years and to give them no sort of security in return. I am therefore justified in calling it iniquitous, and I should like to take three other adjectives and follow them out: it is ill-timed, it is harsh and it is misconceived.
  I will begin with "ill-timed." The Parliamentary Secretary seems to have forgotten that the Government made a previous attempt to deal with rent increases. Three years ago, in November, 1953, they produced what they called "Houses The Next Step," Cmd. 8996. In Section 27 of it there appears these words:
  "Since there is still a severe housing shortage, rents of privately-owned houses cannot yet be freed from control. Her Majesty's Government do not think that it would yet be right to free even the houses in the higher rateable value categories as was done in the 1930's; that method of approach would not in any event"—
  that is to say, even if it could be done now—
  "deal with the problem of maintenance and repair among those houses left under control."
  In consequence, they brought in the 1954 Act, Part II of the Housing Repairs and Rents Act, 1954, which made any increase conditional on the landlord spending money on repairs.
  In this Bill there is not a word about that, as I shall show later. I am not talking about liability; I am talking about the repairs actually being done. That is not the end of the story. That was before the General Election of 1955 and, of course, in a General Election there are at least two ways of influencing public opinion. One way is by political broadcasts. There was not a word about this in the political broadcasts—I have looked at all of them—but there was something else.

  1779
  My right hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Bevan) appears to have said at Huddersfield on 11th May:
  "If the Tories get back with a majority all rent-controlled houses will have an increase in rent."
  That seems to be exactly what the Bill will do, in some cases directly and in others indirectly. Here, two days later, are the comments from the Conservative research department—their "Daily Notes." This is what they say:
  "This is reminiscent of an earlier canard of Mr. Hugh Dalton, who said at the Margate Conference on 2nd October, 1951, that 'a general permission to raise rents everywhere was what the Conservatives wanted'."
  Then they say:
  "There was no more truth in the report circulated by Mr. Bevan than there was in Mr. Dalton's insinuation of October, 1951."
  This is what they told the electorate, or asked their speakers to tell the electorate. They were not content with doing it once. They did it again the next day. They referred to the same remarks by my right hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale and said:
  "Apart from the fact that this is not true…"
  and then they proceeded to a number of criticisms of Socialist policy.
  What do hon. Members think they headed this little paragraph? They headed it:
  "Rents: Misleading the People."
  Who was misleading the people? That is what I should like to know. At any rate, we can take it for certain that, since these election notes presumably represented the policy and the views of the Conservative Party at that time, they did not at that period think—this was in May, 1955—that rent decontrol was in the least bit required.
  Now we hear a most remarkable proposition, that by the end of 1957 supply of and demand for houses will have coincided. "We shall be able to meet," say the party opposite, "the demand for houses by the end of 1957." I do not propose to repeat what I said in a housing debate the other day, but let me just take one or two remarks out of it. By an understatement characteristic of many Government blue-books, the Ministry's own Report for 1955, on page 3, speaking
  1780
  of the present as I read it—it was published last month—admitted that:
  ".. this problem"—
  That is to say, the severe shortage of housing accommodation—
  "is still acute in some areas.…"
  I think that that was putting it very mildly indeed There is a lot more than that. The figure quoted by the Parliamentary Secretary from the P.E.P. report, which incidentally was a report on the 1951 census, cannot be regarded as anything more than a bare minimum for one thing and that thing is the demand on a family basis.
  I remind the hon. Gentleman, who seems to have forgotten, that the Government are conducting a great slum clearance campaign at the moment. There are nearly 1 million slum houses in the United Kingdom and they are now being cleared in England and Wales at the rate of 33,000 to 34,000 houses a year. Even the astronomical arithmetic occasionally indulged in by the Minister and his hon. Friend would hardly justify them in supposing that they can clear a deficit of 1 million houses at the rate of 33,000 a year in one and a half years. That is just a little wrong.
  Mr. Powell: Perhaps I can make it clear to the hon. and learned Gentleman that the figure of 750,000 houses between the end of 1954 and the end of 1957, to which I referred, is exclusive of any houses built for slum clearance.
  Mr. Mitchison: It appears to be abundantly clear—as indeed everybody knows; it is really foolish to tell the House this sort of thing—that the supply of houses will not be sufficient to meet the demand by the end of 1957. Just look at the figures. The housing position is really acute. Right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite who produce the sort of nonsense that was just talked by the Parliamentary Secretary about supply meeting demand are shutting their eyes to the true facts of the situation and seem to me to be paying remarkably little attention to the constituencies which they are supposed to represent. Let them go and ask some people who live in their constituency about housing. They will tell them fast enough.
  Let me remind the House of one or two facts, as distinct from the fancies

  1781
  with which we have been regaled so recently. Take the London position. Did the House notice how the hon. Gentleman shuffled away in a coil of verbiage from the very simple question, do the Government or do they not say that the London housing shortage
  can be met by the end of 1957? It is possible to answer that question "Yes" or "No," and the hon. Gentleman is perfectly aware as is the rest of the House, that to answer it "Yes" would be absolutely untrue.
  There are 165,000 cases on the London housing list, of which 53,000 are urgent; and apart from a quite small figure for slum clearance all that the L.C.C. can do at present is to cope with them at the rate, at most, of 2,000 a year. It is clear that not only is there an acute shortage of housing in London but equally that it is wicked nonsense to say that that shortage can be met in a matter of a year or two. [An HON. MEMBER: "What about South Wales?"] I have no doubt that it is the same in South Wales, but I cannot give all the figures. This applies all over the country, but the figures vary. Here are some of the figures for the big cities: Birmingham and Manchester, a shortage of over 200,000; Liverpool. 150,000; Sheffield and
  Leeds, 70,000. Are these figures consonant with the suggestion that the supply of houses will meet the demand by the end of 1957?
  This is all from the point of view of family accommodation, but look at the condition of the houses. Remember that, of the houses we are talking about now—the let unfurnished, rent controlled houses—nearly one-half have not got a bath and about one-quarter have not got a water closet of their own. What do the Government propose to do about that sort of thing? Remember that this Bill is their one contribution, so it appears from the Gracious Speech, to the housing problem that I have just outlined. Really, how a Government charged with the responsibility, among other things, of housing our people can take that line and make that defence of it passes my imagination.
  This is not a new proposition from the Conservative Party. The House of Commons was not favoured with it first. On the contrary, by the beaches of Llandudno—if it has any—in the bracing
  1782
  air of those parts, the right hon. Gentleman faced the embattled and somewhat indignant Tories. They had not had enough tax reductions; prices were too high; some of the things that had been said, even to them, at the last election had proved to be a trifle untrue, and something had to be done about it.
  What did the right hon. Gentleman do? He first of all made some remarks, to which I shall refer in a minute, about the Socialist policy in these matters, and then he produced this:
  "Our Conservative solution is a much simpler one. It is progressively to abolish rent control altogether."
  Let the House make no mistake about it—this Bill is simply the first step, and a very large step at that, towards the complete abolition of rent control.
  Let us look at his reasons. The first one was that it creates an artificial shortage by discouraging letting and encouraging under-occupation. Of course, if one encourages letting by putting up the rents, one does not increase either the number of houses or the number of people who live in them. What one certainly does is to rule out a large number of people who cannot any longer afford to pay the rent. That will be the effect of this Bill.
  I would not deny for one moment that there is under-occupation, but it is not confined to this type of house. It is just as common in owner-occupied houses as in others; and I do not believe that the rent is a substantial reason. At any rate, in most of the cases I know, the reasons have been family rather than economic. People who had raised a family had themselves grown older and did not want to move from the house: and, I might add that, sometimes—and equally, of owner-occupiers—they could not afford to move.
  I say that, because this is not just a problem relating to rented houses. The remedy for it ought to be exchange. In Committee on the 1954 Bill we brought forward a Clause to give local authorities power to promote and facilitate exchanges, not only between council tenants and council tenants but between other tenants. The right hon. Gentleman's predecessor, the present Chancellor of the Exchequer, said a few kind words about it—and then turned it down because it gave too much power to the local authorities.

  1783
  That may or may not be a good reason, but let us see what happened. The next thing was the issue of Circular No. 68 in 1954—not the first on this subject—which urged local authorities to do certain things; and among other things, to get together with private landlords to find out what could be done about exchanges. Reports were to be made to the Minister. So far as I know, nothing more ever has been done—certainly, nothing has been published—and I suggest to the right hon. Gentleman that, in connection with this question, which ought not to be exaggerated, there is a very great deal more to be done yet before resorting to the drastic remedy that he advances in this Bill.
  Let us come to another criticism. I am dealing now with what this Bill will not do, and I have just instanced one thing that it will not do.
  "The first feature of this haphazard and obsolete system "—
  said the right hon. Gentleman:
  "is its fearful unfairness."
  I would agree at once that there are anomalies in rent-restricted houses at present. It would be quite absurd to deny it. Nevertheless, the extent is, I think, exaggerated. The anomalies are almost entirely in old controlled houses—that is, a minority of the houses with which we are now concerned—and in another type of house, houses which were let for the first time because the owner-occupier moved out during the war, or after the war. There are a great many such houses, and I shall have to refer to them in a moment in another connection.
  The old controlled houses were those which in 1939 were only of a value of, or under, £30 in London and £20 elsewhere. All those houses had, at various periods, been decontrolled during the years between the wars, and quite a number had, in fact, been recontrolled. It is perfectly clear that that type is the smallest, cheapest and poorest house. That is the type of house with which we will interfere by going about it in this way.
  There is something else which supports me in my opinion that the "fearful unfairness" of the system is much exaggerated by the right hon. Gentleman Cmd. 17, the statistics to which we have been referred, shows that there was a general correspondence—I am referring to Table III—between the rents and the
  1784
  gross rateable values; and the gross rateable values, let it be remembered, are assessed on their market basis, not on a rent control basis. They are assessed on more or less the usual terms, with the landlord's liability for repairs and maintenance.
  If there were, in fact, a very large-scale spread of anomalies one would find them reflected in the Table, and it is not there. I say, therefore, that while I do not regard the present control, in its incidence, as by any means perfect, and while I recognise that there are anomalies in it, it certainly does not amount to anything that would justify the right hon. Gentleman in what he is now proposing.
  I come to another point. It is said that many of these rents are unreasonable. I refer now to the owner-occupied house from which the owner moved during the war, or after, and let for the first time. Obviously, there are a great many of those houses, and there is at present a provision by which rent tribunals can fix a reasonable rent for them. It was the party opposite that, in 1954, brought in that provision by allowing those tribunals to increase the rent in those cases, whereas previously they had been allowed only to reduce it. The Government, therefore, provided a method for rent tribunals to fix reasonable rents for, at any rate, those houses. But when I asked the right hon. Gentleman the other day how many of them there were, he replied:
  "I have no information on this point."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 19th Nov., 1956; Vol. 560, c. 58.]
  Let us see what it amounts to. If, in fact, this Bill is to allow rents higher than those that the rent tribunals would allow then it is to allow unreasonably high rents in all of those cases, and the machinery for fixing reasonable rents is being repealed by this Bill. It seems pretty obvious that for certain purposes, and in certain cases at any rate, the party opposite prefers the unreasonable to the reasonable.
  Let us look at one very simple effect of the Bill which, I noticed, was not mentioned by the hon. Gentleman in putting it before the House. I asked him if he supported the figure, given in all leading newspapers, of an average increase of 10s. a week. He did not answer. He referred me to tables. They do not give an average figure, but if one tries to calculate

  1785
  it from the figures given it comes to something like 8s. a week.
  I am going to take the lower figure, the 8s., the average permitted increase of a two-factor house—that is to say, with the landlord doing the repairs. It is not going to be the end of the story, so the Parliamentary Secretary will get one or two deductions if he waits. Take 8s. a week, or £20 a year roughly speaking, on 4¼ million houses. The result is nearly £88½ million a year, which is going to be added to the landlords' rents in this country.
  From that figure we have to make a deduction for anything that was done under the 1954 Act, called by its promoters "Operation Rescue" and by my right hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale a "mouldy old turnip" for the landlords. The landlords declined to be rescued and they declined to eat the turnip because they have done remarkably little about it. It is impossible to get accurate figures, but there is something to be got out of the National Assistance Board's Report for 1955, on page 9. If we apply the figures there to the whole bulk of these houses I think I am safe in saying that they certainly do not account for more than £1 million out of the total figure of £88·4 million.
  Next let me refer to the cases where repairs are paid for by the tenant. There are not many such cases, as the Minister rightly pointed out. The usual position is that nobody is responsible for the repairs, but very often in the rent book there is a provision that the landlord should do the outside repairs. It is a question of whether any allowance should be made for that in the future. We are going to see what the effect of it is.
  As to the liability to repair—that is to say, the factor that would reduce the increase from twice to 1⅓ times the gross value—there can be very little doubt that there is little or no liability in the vast majority of cases. I am perfectly safe in saying that on the reduction in rents alone £85 million or more is going out of the pockets of the tenants into the pockets of the landlords. One does not know why, although I think one may guess.
  That, however, does not account for decontrol. That is anybody's guess. But I feel certain that the average rise on
  1786
  decontrol will be a great deal bigger, and I say with confidence—and I invite the right hon. Gentleman to deny it if he can—that the result of this Bill is going to mean at least £100 million a year extra into the pockets of landlords. The sum of £100 million a year is the total amount that was paid towards council housing out of council rates and public taxes in 1955. That is the extraordinary result of this effort.
  I come next to the question who is going to pay these increases? I should like to refer to the Oxford Institute of Statistics bulletin on the results of the 1952 housing survey. The document is mentioned in Cmd. 17, and, by the way, in one of its sidelines it pointed out how extraordinarily inaccurate the Government's previous statistics were. But I will let that be.
  Out of two tables in that bulletin it becomes quite clear that more than half of these unfurnished houses are occupied by manual workers—57 per cent. of them; 18 per cent. by white collar workers, much better off; and no less than 25 per cent. by a much smaller group who are called in the census the retired and unoccupied, and whose gross household income averages £330 a year. Those people pay nearly 12 per cent. of their gross income in rents and rates. That is one class of person who will have to pay these higher rents.
  What is the result going to be? Again, taking the information in the National Assistance Board's Report, somewhere about £16 million or £17 million of the £88 million increase that I was talking about is going to be paid by the National Assistance Board. Does the right hon. Gentleman really intend or welcome this remarkable result, or does he deny it? That is what the effect seems to be. It is impossible to assess it accurately, I agree, but the figure is not going to be very far out, and it is abundantly clear that a substantial contribution towards the funds of the landlords in England and Wales is going to be made by the National Assistance Board in helping tenants to pay their rents. Are hon. Members opposite, who are usually so sedulous in their conservation of public funds, wholly satisfied with that result? Are there not some uneasy qualms of conscience among them?
  Let me mention another public service which will have to pay these increases—

  1787
  and let it be remembered that they have to be paid. These people will not have anywhere else to go. That is the plain English of it. If the Government put up the rent of people as poor as the majority of these tenants are, and certainly as poor as the people to whom I have been referring as retired and unoccupied, which usually means the very old, what happens? They do not get any more money. They take it out in food.
  If hon. Members opposite would look back to 1933 and study the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, they will find that the then medical officer of health for Stockport carefully examined what happened when a large number of people were moved out of a very poor area into a new housing estate at much higher rents. They could not afford the higher rents. They took it out in food, and the mortality rate rose.
  Do hon. Members opposite by this Bill, which will no doubt give great satisfaction to the landlords, really wish to be responsible for starving a considerable number of people and increasing the mortality rate among those who occupy these houses, many of them old houses?
  The right hon. Gentleman said at Llandudno—a bracing place—
  "The Socialists are certain to misrepresent our motives."
  I can see him explaining that it is not his motive to starve those who are already rather near the starvation level. I am sure he would say that. But when men are in Government they must be judged by the effect—the certain effect, as I see it—of what they are going to do. They are not justified, in order to correct a few anomalies, a few questions of under-occupation and the like, in allowing landlords to double the existing rent. I say "to double the existing rent" because in the tables in Cmd. 17 that appears to be roughly what is going to happen. There is no exception—not even the smallest houses. They used to be left under control in the old days, but not under this Government.
  Before turning to the next side of the Bill I want to mention one other matter in connection with repairs. I wonder if hon. Members opposite realise one effect of what has happened. They are going to raise the rent without changing the house. The only protection which most
  1788
  tenants have against a landlord, if they want to get repairs done, is that for small houses the landlord is, notwithstanding any stipulation to the contrary, bound to keep the premises fit to live in, and whether or not the premises are "small houses" is judged by the rent. The rent limit is £36 in London and £20 in the provinces. The effect of this provision will be to deprive a large number of tenants of small houses of the only right they have had so far to get the landlords to do repairs. That is a serious matter.
  I turn from that to the Conservative solution, the much simpler one, to abolish rent control altogether. The party opposite has made a fairly good step towards it. It has first of all removed what was called at Llandudno a "slice of higher value houses". What happens? The result is that within a limit of time mentioned by the Parliamentary Secretary—I will not repeat it—a landlord is entitled to turn out any occupants of those houses. The numbers involved are quite considerable. Take them at the three-quarters of a million mentioned.
  Let us consider some of the types of house to be particularly affected. May I say to right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite that I find that a very great many of my hon. Friends live in this kind of house. Perhaps hon. Gentlemen opposite do. If they do, they will find that they have to make a bargain with the landlord, and the better the house the more likely the landlord is to turn them out because, if the place has been well kept inside by the tenant, the better is the bargain for the landlord if he can get the tenant out. Do hon. Gentlemen really suppose that in this large-scale marauding expedition sentiment is going to play a large part?
  The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. James Stuart): Does the hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) really mean to suggest that the landlord will want to lose a good tenant who has kept the place in good order?
  Mr. Mitchison: I should have thought it was not necessary for me to assure the right hon. Gentleman, who is Secretary of State for Scotland, that financial considerations do move landlords even in England and Wales, and that they would get a better rent out of a well maintained house than they would out of a ill

  1789
  maintained one. They would therefore prefer to have possession, either for sale or to let, of the better maintained house. I see that the right hon. Gentleman is falling a little short of adjectives for me. I am sorry.
  Let us consider a few more cases. My right hon. Friend the Member for Battersea, North (Mr. Jay) had a letter from a Tenants Security Association formed as a result of this Bil. So did the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Housing and Local Government. I can assure him that large numbers of people have written to me saying that they have written to him also; he must have quite a mailbag now—more than the seven telegrams, was it, that the Conservative Central Office admitted that the Prime Minister received about Suez?
  What did these people say? The chairman of the association is a clergyman, and I had better find the association's own words. It is put quite generally first of all; these people say it is a somewhat iniquitous Measure, and will cause grave hardship. Hon. Gentlemen must remember where these people are; this is Chelsea and Battersea, on the whole a fairly well-off part of London. At any rate, Chelsea usually returns a Tory Member without much difficulty. Speaking about the decontrol provision the letter says:
  "The tenants of the dwellings which will be affected include old people and sole women with children living on fixed incomes; ex-Service men building up their careers after long war service; persons without capital and others prevented by the credit squeeze from buying houses, parents with large families. In fact, those with the largest families will suffer most, for the larger the dwelling the higher the rateable value and the more likely the rateable value is to be over the prescribed limits."
  I think this very respectable body of people has really understood and put the point very plainly.
  Take the case of the small shopkeeper who lives over his shop. He is going to be hit by this Bill. He is usually quite a good Tory voter, like the man whose letter I have here. He says that he has been a Conservative for thirty years, but he has now realised his folly; the Conservative Party has never helped him and is now going to throw him out of business if the Bill goes through. What I have here is only a selection; I can assure the House there are many other
  1790
  letters. What the right hon. Gentleman's mailbag must be like, I do not know. He would be wise not to look at it for a little while, I think.
  There is another provision as to tenancies. Incidentally, this is quite different from the provision in the 1923 Act to which the Parliamentary Secretary assimilated it, and if he would look at a copy of the 1923 Act and read it through carefully he will see the differences for himself. It says in Clause 9 (2):
  "…a tenancy beginning at or after the commencement of this Act…"
  We know what happens to a controlled tenancy at present; it is transmitted, as the phrase goes, when Mr. A dies to Mrs. A, the widow who has been living with him. Remarkable though it may seem, the better view, to quote from the standard text book, is that a transmitted statutory tenancy begins with the new tenant, so that it is a new tenancy rather than a continuation of the old. I do not suppose for one moment that the right hon. Gentleman has not been properly advised about this. He must know perfectly well what he is doing, which is to decontrol property in a case where Mr. A dies and Mrs. A—
  Mr. Powell: I think the hon. and learned Gentleman cannot have noticed Clause 16 (2).
  Mr. Mitchison: I am very glad to hear that I may have omitted Clause 16 (2), and so much the better; but I do not think I shall argue with the hon. Gentleman about that now.
  Mr. Powell: The hon. and learned Gentleman should read it.
  Mr. Mitchison: It becomes a Committee point, and it is quite sufficient for me to take the family one stage further. Besides Mrs. A, there is Miss Jane A and Miss Mary A, who have always lived with the parents. Now they have no right to succeed, but if they do succeed they succeed at the controlled rents; whereas under the Bill the poor girls will be left to make the best bargain they can with the landlord. That is the effect of decontrol.
  Lastly, we must consider the Minister's powers. What the Minister does by this extraordinary Bill is to take power to do everything short of complete decontrol—

  1791
  to do it at one swoop, to do it in bits and patches, to do it locally, and so on. He has taken to himself, subject only to affirmative Resolution, the power to decontrol any number of other houses, the power to remove these limits or, if he likes, to reduce them to £I rateable value, and so on. As to that, I can only say that there is no precedent whatever for it in any previous rent Bill. I know of no other precedent for taking this sort of power, except what the right hon. Gentleman himself did in connection with housing subsidies, and that is not too good a precedent. It goes far beyond anything that any Minister of the Crown ought to do without bringing in a new Bill and providing the opportunity for full discussion and amendment that a new Bill would provide.
  Now I turn to the last thing I am going to say, and I apologise to the House if I have taken rather too long. It is, after all, not much good to say that a Bill is thoroughly bad, even that it would be better to leave things as they are if one does admit, as I do, that there is a little wrong, and has no alternative to propose. I have never heard a more fantastic summary of what the hon. Gentleman appeared to think were the proposals of my party on the subject than what emerged from his lips today.
  Let me put it a little more simply. The right hon. Gentleman's objection to these proposals was this. This is part of the Llandudno speech:
  "It would merely transfer the problem from the private owner to the local authority and unless huge new subsidies are to be provided one thing is quite certain and that is that the local authorities would have to put up rents to pay for the repairs."
  I take those two sentences. Of course it would transfer the problem from the private owners to the local authorities. That is exactly what it is intended to do. Are hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite so confident of the virtues of landlords, so confident of the complete efficiency of private enterprise in dealing with the housing problem that they really suggest that private owners would solve it? The condition of their houses and the matters I referred to a short time earlier show perfectly well two things. One is that the private owners as a whole have not met the requirements of modern housing. They do not provide it. Modern houses, and some very good houses, have
  1792
  been provided by councils. Of course they have. The private owners have not done it. Now it is said that under diligent fostering they are doing a lot, but how many of their houses are to let? How many of them are at prices many can afford to pay? We do not know.
  The final objection was that the councils would put up the rents to pay for the repairs. What is going to happen under this Bill? Rents are going to be put up—
  Mr. Lindgren: And no repairs done.
  Mr. Mitchison:—and there is not even any provision that the repairs should be done. Under the 1954 Act there was at least that. There was a stopper. One could not go above the stopper. The stopper reappears a bit larger in the Bill because rateable values have gone up since then, but it appears without any obligation whatever to do any repairs. There is no condition saying, "If you do not do the repairs you shall not get more rent."
  The Minister of Housing and Local Government (Mr. Duncan Sandys): I think the hon. and learned Gentleman should be more accurate. He has referred with great precision to many of the detailed provisions of the Bill, indicating that he has studied it with care, and I cannot believe that he has observed that rents may not be increased unless repairs are done and the house is put into a proper state of repair. I should like to ask the hon. and learned Gentleman a question, since he quoted that part of my speech in which I said that, unless large subsidies were to be made available to local authorities for the purpose of doing these repairs, rents would have to go up to pay for the repairs. Would he tell us, since we have not yet been told this clearly, whether the Labour Party proposes that large additional subsidies should be paid to put into a proper state of repair the private houses it proposes should be taken over?
  Mr. Mitchison: I am flattered indeed at having provoked the right hon. Gentleman to such a long interruption. I am afraid I cannot agree with him about the first point. Let me tell him what his own Bill does provide. No doubt, he will tell me if I am wrong. It provides two things. First, if the landlord

  1793
  has no liability for repairs and the tenant has, then in that case the rent shall still increase but increase only to one and one-third times the gross value. Exactly how to justify a 33⅓ per cent. increase—which is really what it is under those conditions—I do not know.
  The next thing it does is this. If the house is in a state of disrepair there is very elaborate machinery indeed to be initiated by the tenant, machinery that we shall have to look at very carefully in Committee, by which the tenant may be able to get a certificate of disrepair from the landlord. In those circumstances what is going to happen? The increase is not to stop altogether. It is only to be reduced to the one and one-third figure instead of the double figure. That is a very remarkable proposal. Neither of those propositions obliges the landlord to do repairs, and I simply repeat that there are houses which quite obviously need repairs, and others which would require them to avoid getting a certificate of disrepair which is a stiffer proposition. If the right hon. Gentleman would be prepared to accept Amendments to make it perfectly clear that whenever there were any repairs to be done there would be no increase at all, we could come easily to terms.
  I turn to the next question the right hon. Gentleman asked, about paying for repairs. Somebody has got to pay for repairs of old houses—somebody somehow. Under this Bill they are going to be paid for, if they are done at all to the smaller houses, by increasing the rents to the tenants. They are going to be paid for in the larger houses by decontrolling them, and enabling the landlords to make pretty stiff bargains. It does not in the least appear that the landlord is going to do the repairs. If somebody has to do them, and let us assume the landlord can be forced to, even if the 1954 Act failed, is it better that they should be done by him or that they should be done by local authority? Is there any reason whatever why huge subsidies should be required in order to get these repairs done? I should have thought that the right hon. Gentleman would have remembered the case of Birmingham, where they were allowed to take over a whole batch of slum property with some good property, and so far as I know no huge subsidies were required.
  1794
  I say this to the right hon. Gentleman. It is the first duty of the Government of the country to provide homes for the people in it through the local authorities or otherwise. In that duty the present system and the present landlords have completely failed. It has not been done. There are not enough houses. They are in too bad a state. Repairs have not been done. We say, as, indeed, we propose, that that responsibility ought to rest on the local authorities under Government control, and I would ask the right hon. Gentleman to read with more care than either he or his hon. Friend appear to have shown so far the proposals to that end in "Homes of the Future."
  Mr. Sandys: I am still not clear. Will the hon. and learned Gentleman make it quite clear whether under the Labour Party's proposals rents will be put up in order to pay for the repairs? [Interruption.] I am sorry, but the hon. and learned Gentleman has deliberately spent some time in discussing his alternative proposals. I want to know whether under those proposals rents
  will be put up by local authorities to pay for the repairs. Alternatively, will there be an additional subsidy? We need not discuss how big the subsidy would be.
  Mr. Mitchison: I should have thought that the answer to that must depend on each separate case. [HON. MEMBERS: "Ah."] If the right hon. Gentleman would listen for a minute he would, perhaps, understand a little better. It must depend on each case just as at present it depends on the views of the council and the resources of the council whether it can go on building houses or whether it cannot. It seems to me to be an exactly parallel case.
  The right hon. Gentleman is in process of removing all Exchequer housing subsidies from the councils. They are still at liberty to put the cost of building council houses either on the rates or on the rents, or partly on the one and partly on the other. That must be a question for them to decide. I say this to the right hon. Gentleman. We have opposed and shall continue to oppose the removal of housing subsidies. We think that is completely wrong. We think there ought to be subsidised housing, not only for those who stand in sore need of it, but for the citizens of this country as a whole;

  1795
  and, of course, a subsidy for housing includes the subsidy for repairing houses as well as for building them. There can be no reasonable doubt about that.
  I repeat to the right hon. Gentleman that we take an entirely different view of council housing. It is the view of the party opposite that subsidies are a gift and that they should be given only to those who stand in need of houses. The right hon. Gentleman himself has said so, and he means by that people who are in sore need and cannot afford to get houses on their own. We take the view that housing is a public service, that it must be provided now for the people, that it has got to be provided mainly from two sources—one is owner-occupied houses and the other is council houses—that the relationship between the private landlord and the tenant is quite wrong and that the private landlord is bound to regard his house simply as something out of which he gets money; and the other man has to live.
  Just as in the course of this generation and the last the view of war between countries has completely changed and countries are no longer at liberty to indulge in private wars to settle their grievances if they are members of the United Nations, so in this country the view of housing has gradually changed and that which was at first a relief for the poor—" housing for the working classes," as the old phrase went—has now become a public service and must be treated as such.
  What is fundamentally wrong with the Bill is that it does not recognise that and it hopes that out of the jungle of free bargaining between the landlord and the tenant some justice and fairness will emerge. It has never emerged in the past. It is no more likely to emerge under this Bill than it has done ever before. The result of the Bill will be the transfer of a large sum in money to the pockets of the landlords and the transfer of a power to them to deal with tenants who will be citizens of this country with nowhere to live and nowhere to go.
  I know what those tenants will do. They will ask the councils for council houses and they will find that there are not any council houses because the right hon. Gentleman has cut the housing subsidy. He is choosing to introduce the Bill at a moment when he has cut the
  1796
  housing subsidy, when there is a credit squeeze going on that will make it much harder for people to buy houses and when, in addition to that, there will be serious trouble in connection with what the Government have been doing in Egypt. I say that it is completely wrong.
  5.43 p.m.
  Sir Eric Errington: The hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) has, to his own satisfaction, divided the world, so far as concerns these matters which we are now debating, into the sheep and the goats. He and his party will find that in the mind of the country it is not such a simple division as that. I should like at once to declare my interest as the President of the National Federation of Property Owners and, in common with others, the owner of some rented property.
  The hon. and learned Gentleman has said that over a period the property owners have not provided sufficient housing accommodation. The answer to that is the very simple one that for about forty years there has been some form of control or other. The result has been that there has been no money available for the private owner to do what he would otherwise wish to do.
  I welcome the Bill because I believe it will go far to remedy some of the existing housing shortages. My first main reason for saying that is that it will free immediately about 5 million owner-occupied houses. The Ridley Committee stated in 1945 that 3 million houses were built between the wars and that most of them were owner-occupied. Those houses were occupied largely by families whose younger people have now grown up, and they have been held vacant largely because of the impossibility of anybody who is taken in being able to be got out if he does not fit in with the family arrangements.
  I read in The Times yesterday of the plight of a
  "Middle-aged, undistinguished author, family now reared and mated "
  and who has been looking for a smaller place in which his wife, his typewriter, his dog, his cat and himself
  "can grow old together."
  He will have a much better chance of doing that under the conditions created by the Bill than he would ever have had in the past.

  1797
  The second main reason is that the Bill will foe of great value in increasing the flow of houses which become vacant, and will free from control many over the whole of the country which today are standing vacant. We have no reliable figures, but it is known to many hon. Members that that is the case. The main reason that they cannot be sold is the credit squeeze. The other reason is that owners who have a number of properties must—rather than let them—sell their houses at a favourable price so that they can obtain finance for the rest of their properties to ensure that they are kept in proper order.
  Dealing with what I referred to as the habit of the hon. and learned Gentleman and of other hon. Members opposite to speak about goats and sheep in such clear terms of definition in respect of landlords and tenants, it should be realised that the houses which often are sold at vacant possession prices are often sold by tenants who have bought them as sitting tenants and who have made a considerable profit on the transaction.
  The question of under-occupation is of great importance in considering the effect of this proposed legislation. From the 1951 Census, it is clear that in England and Wales there are 44 million people and 13½ million houses. This assumes an average of
  between three and three-and-a-half persons per house, which shows that there is sufficient accommodation over the whole country. Nobody pretends that the houses are in the right places, or that that applies to every class of house, but it applies as an overall figure.
  In this connection, an interesting
  statement was made by the borough treasurer of a town not very far from my constituency. He said:
  "However many new houses are built, the present shortage will persist for a generation unless most of the 7¼ million controlled houses are brought into circulation and used to the best advantage. During 1951, a census was taken by one local authority of the degree of under-occupation of 23,000 of their council houses."
  The local authority fixed a definite standard of occupation. It was considered that a family of three, that is parents and one child, needed two bedrooms, and a family of parents and two children needed three bedrooms.
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  To continue the quotation:
  "Of the total houses surveyed, 58 per cent. were under-occupied according to the standard adopted. The degree of under-occupation increased as the size of the houses increased. Further statistics of interest showed that 40 per cent. of the families occupying the houses had no children, and 67 per cent. had one child or less. Housing accommodation once occupied by a family with young children is now occupied by the parents only or a single survivor.
  "The position could be greatly eased if under-occupation could be reduced. As another indication of the degree of under-occupation, the Preliminary Report to the 1951 Census stated that one of the most outstanding changes since 1931 was in the number of people living alone, which had more than doubled. The census showed 1¼ million living alone, nearly three-quarters of whom had separate dwellings to themselves, and they occupied, on average, over three rooms each."
  I asked an estate agent in a southern town to pick a fair sample of houses for which he is responsible. His information has as least the merit of being up to date. He chose fourteen houses in the same ownership and of a similar character. Seven of the
  fourteen houses were occupied by two people only, presumably husband and wife. Therefore, assuming that all were husbands and wives, they needed only seven bedrooms, but the list shows them to have twenty bedrooms. There was, therefore, under-occupation to the extent of nearly twice the accommodation.
  Mr. Callaghan: How is doubling the rent going to solve this problem, in the hon. Member's view?
  Sir E. Errington: Doubling the rent is not the question with which I am now dealing. Doubling the rent is designed to make it possible for landlords in general to spend the amount of money which they ought to spend on their houses. I am dealing with under-occupation, to indicate that if there is some freedom it will be possible to make arrangements for people to go into houses which at the moment can be made available.
  Mr. Callaghan: They can all take in lodgers?
  Sir E. Errington: They can do so if they want to, but they need not if they do not wish to do so. That is quite different from the theory held by some hon. Members opposite that we all have to do as the State tells us.
  Mr. Parkin: I do not want to interrupt the hon. Member's analysis of what councils ought to do, but I am hoping that he will develop in his speech the special skills and knowledge which he indicated at the beginning. I do not want to bait the hon. Member, but it would be most interesting if he told us how many houses he has caused to be built and what provisions there are in the Bill or in any other Bill that the Conservative Party might put forward which would induce members of his association to re-invest their money in the building of new houses for working-class occupation?
  Sir E. Errington: I hope to indicate some methods by which my association hopes to find a way of helping in these matters.
  I want to refer particularly to the Minister's statement of his determination to provide subsidies for the provision of small dwellings for the older type of person or for people living alone, or for married couples living in houses which are too big for them. I am delighted that the Ministry is continuing to pay a subsidy to ensure that the older and more lonely people have an opportunity of living in suitable accommodation.
  I pass from decontrol to matters relating to houses remaining under control. The whole history of the Rent Acts and their anomalies is well known to the House, and I believe that the proposal to raise, in general terms, the rent to twice the gross rateable value, where the landlord is liable for the normal repairs, is as good a way as any of dealing with this matter. I say quite definitely that the considerable number of small landlords who are members of the National Federation of Property Owners, to which I have the honour to belong, will not find that the increase of rent will make things too easy for them.
  Mr. Parkin: So they will not build any more houses?
  Sir E. Errington: I am not in a position to say whether they will or not, but the people whom I represent are not the sort of people who could afford to build large numbers of houses at present-day prices. They are concerned to have houses which are kept in as good a condition as possible, so that they may be
  1800
  used over a period. I believe that those people are doing a service to the community, because the alternative would be the expenditure of very large sums of money on new houses—if they could be built in time.
  The number of people who will pay an increased rent in respect of property rated up to £15 is about 750,000, and they will have to pay up to 5s. a week more. I really do not think that the hon. and learned Member for Kettering has given the right impression about these matters. Nowadays, 5s. per week does not go any way to meet the very great increase in the cost of repairs. It certainly will not be easy for a large number of landlords to meet these costs, although it may be so for some people. We have only to remember that it costs 5s. to mend the washer of a tap to realise the problem.
  Mr. Parkin: I believe it costs 4d.
  Sir E. Errington: Then obviously the hon. Gentleman has not much experience of housing repairs, so he had better keep quiet.
  Mr. David Jones: I will undertake to put a washer on every tap that the hon. Gentleman can find for Is. a time, and I will make a profit.
  Sir E. Errington: I shall be delighted if the hon. Gentleman will come along and do it.
  I believe that the increases which this
  Bill will provide will be swallowed up for a considerable time. The majority of owners have realised for many years—without being able to do very much about the financial problems involved—the great importance of keeping their property in repair. I believe that they will take this opportunity to put their capital assets into repair. If they do so, they may save many thousands of properties from going out of existence as units of accommodation.
  I know that it is not always agreed but it may be that in the case of some of the more highly-rented properties the law of supply and demand will come into operation before full increases are reached.
  Mr. Mitchison: May I ask the hon. Gentleman one question? Does not that depend on how high is the rent? The

  1801
  hon. Gentleman mentioned higher-rented properties. If the rent is put high enough, I believe that the law of supply and demand can be satisfied.
  Sir E. Errington: I am obliged for the correction. Higher-rated properties would be a better way of putting it.
  The other matter I want to refer to is the certificate of disrepair procedure, which I think has been much improved under the Bill. It is right that the tenant should take the initiative and the first step to prove that the increased rent is not justified by the condition of the premises in which he is living.
  When application is made for a certificate of disrepair there is an opportunity for negotiation to take place between the local authority, the tenant and the landlord. As a result of that negotiation, it should be possible reasonably to arrive at what ought to be done. If the landlord is prepared to give the undertaking, it will then be open to him to do the work within a period of six months. If he does not do so, then he has to repay any extra money that has been paid by the way of additional rent.
  The National Federation of Property Owners desires to co-operate to its utmost in the operation of this Bill. It is fair to say that every effort was made to make the 1954 Act work, but the complications, and the few inducements to the landlord to undertake repairs, were such that this was impossible. The Federation is now preparing a pamphlet or booklet in which it will recommend to its members the standards of good ownership and good management which they should observe.
  After forty years of quasi-regimentation, it will not be an easy matter for owners to adjust themselves to the new conditions. There will be a period of transition during which both owners and tenants will not quite know their rights and obligations and where they stand. Under those circumstances I have thought that it would be useful to outline for their guidance some recommendations as to a condition where there is at any rate some little freedom from control.
  Hon. Members of the party opposite have produced a booklet called "Homes of the Future." Since it may be a long time before they have a chance to put their plan into practice, I feel that we
  1802
  should pay attention to the existing situation.
  Mrs. E. M. Braddock: Do not be too sure.
  Sir E. Errington: The title of the booklet I have mentioned will be "Good Homes Now". That is what the landlords are out to achieve. There are between 150 and 250 associations in the country affiliated to our Federation. The majority of their members, some 30,000, are comparatively small men and women who are trying to do their best under what are admittedly difficult circumstances. What we want to do, and what I am afraid hon. Gentlemen opposite have not done much to help, is to restore a good relationship between landlord and tenant. [Laughter.] Hon. Gentlemen opposite laugh, but it is only in such a condition that landlords and tenants can be happy together.
  In preparing this booklet we hope we shall have done something towards that condition. We shall advise that houses should be kept in a really good state of repair, a state of which any owner can be proud.
  Mr. Albert Evans: I am interested in what the hon. Gentleman is saying because he speaks for a large number of property owners. He-has told us that landlords are to be advised to maintain their houses in a good state of repair. Would he recommend to his members that they adopt the good standard of repair contained in the 1954 Act, which this Bill overthrows?
  Sir E. Errington: Certainly I would recommend our members to put houses into good repair. I cannot say whether' I would agree with a definition set out in a specific Act, but everybody knows when a house is in a good state of repair.
  Now I want to mention the situation arising in regard to repairs and the difficulty, particularly of the small property owner, of finding sufficient finance for repairs. Under Section 4 of the Housing Act, 1949, the local authority has power, with the sanction of the Minister, to advance money for the purpose of "altering, enlarging, repairing or improving houses." That power is limited to Part V of the Housing Act, 1936. So far as my experience goes, it has not been fully used by the owners of houses to help them to put the houses in

  1803
  better repair. When the Minister replies to the debate, would he tell us whether those powers can be used for the benefit of ordinary houses, whether they are used, and if not, whether he is prepared to frame some Measure by which assistance of this nature can be given, or at any rate can be made more generally known?
  The situation is that the small man who has not very much capital wants to get his house into repair, but it is difficult for him to raise the money from the banks or any other source. However, it is most desirable that these houses should be put into repair, and if there is a procedure designed for this, it would be helpful if it could be more generally known in the country.
  Property owners look upon the Bill favourably—
  Mr. Janner: Before he comes to his peroration, will the hon. Gentleman be good enough to tell the House what recommendation he and his Federation propose to make to those owners who for very many years took the 25 per cent. increase in respect of repairs but did no repairs? Is he going to ask them to do something about it?
  Sir E. Errington: There would be very few such people. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] As is well known, it was almost impossible for repairs to be done during the war years. [HON. MEMBERS: "What about before the war? "] We are not now dealing, as hon. Members opposite so often do, with what happened years ago.
  Mr. Janner: We are dealing with what did not happen years ago.
  Sir E. Errington: We are now dealing with the Bill before the House.
  Property owners look upon the Bill favourably as a first instalment in the abolition of a haphazard, out-of-date, unfair and impracticable mass of legislation which was justified only by war-time and immediate post-war considerations. I believe that the effect upon the condition of our available stock of houses will be very pronounced improvement. The feature about which I am happiest is it is a step to the restoration of a free market, because I believe that to be the shortest way to achieving ample housing accommodation.
  6.12 p.m.
  Mr. C. W. Key: I shall not detain the House for many minutes. My only intention is to put on record the effect of the Bill upon a large number of my constituents. The area which I represent is one of the poorest and worst housed areas in the East End of London, and 98 per cent. of its houses will remain controlled after the Bill becomes an Act. Only 2 per cent. of the houses there, just over 200, have a gross value of more than £40 a year. Unfortunately, in that overcrowded area there are 3,000 people on the waiting list for new accommodation.
  In order to be able to present this case, I asked an official of the local authority to give me information about the effect of the Bill, if it becomes law, upon a dozen houses selected from over a wide area in the constituency. The first house dealt with has a gross value of £39 and a rateable value of £27, and the present rent is 10s. 3d. net. When the Bill becomes law, if the landlord—this is not actually the case; I will deal later with what the landlord really has to do—is responsible for no repairs and thus has to do nothing to improve or maintain the condition of the house, the rent will become £1. This Bill will practically double the rent although the landlord has to do nothing in return for it.
  In reality, the landlord is responsible for all repairs and interior decorations as well. That being the case, under the Bill the net rent will become £1 15s. a week. In other words, there will be an increase of £1 4s. 9d. per week in the rent. That is a gross burden to put upon such a tenant.
  Mr. W. R. Rees-Davies: Will the right hon. Gentleman tell the House the approximate rents of council houses in the immediate neighbourhood of the house about which he is speaking?
  Mr. Key: I shall come to the question of the rents of council houses a little later.
  Mr. John Hay: I wonder.
  Mr. Key: The hon. Gentleman may wonder.
  I will now deal with the average of the cases provided for me by the official of the local authority. The average gross value is £36, the average rateable value £25, the average net rent 14s. lld., and,

  1805
  if the Bill becomes law, the average net rent, the landlords being responsible for general repairs only and not interior decorations, will be £1 9s. 11d. Thus, the weekly increase in net rent for each tenant will be 15s. These houses were not picked out to enable me to make a case; they were selected to give an example of what will happen as a result of the Bill.
  I now want to deal with the effect of the Bill upon the incomes of the landlords. The net rent of the first house with which I dealt is 10s. 3d., giving an annual income to the landlord of £27 14s. 8d. We were always given to understand that the difference between the gross value and the rateable value, the statutory deduction, is the average amount which the landlord was supposed to spend upon repairs to keep the house in an adequate condition. In 1939, having spent £12 upon keeping the house in repair, the landlord would have had a balance of £15 14s. 8d. to put in his own pocket.
  What is the position under the Bill? The net rent is increased to £1 15s., giving an annual income of £91. When we dealt with the Housing Repairs and Rents Act, 1954, we could not say definitely that, in the light of existing costs, the statutory deduction was an adequate amount for repairs. However, the Minister and his colleagues told us that the provision being made was adequate and that the sum for repairs would be three times the statutory deduction, and that was provided in the 1954 Act. Take three times the statutory deduction, or £36, and deduct that from the £91. He will put into his pocket £55 now, out of that house.
  Mr. Hay: What about Income Tax?
  Mr. Key: Everyone pays Income Tax, including the poor devil living in the house.
  Mr. Hay: It does not go into the landlord's pocket.
  Mr. Key: The landlord will get an increase from £15 to £55 on that house as a result of the carrying out of the provisions of the Bill.
  Let me take the average of a dozen cases given to me. The average gross value is £36, the rateable value £25, the
  1806
  net rent 14s. lid. and the annual income £38 15s. 8d. If we take the statutory deduction at £11, it gives a pocket balance of £27 15s. 8d. Under the Bill, the net rent will average £1 10s., giving an annual income of £78. If three times the statutory deduction is spent upon repairs, say £33, the landlord will get an increase from £27 to £45. That is a gross injustice to people who are living in the type of property to which I have referred, in the condition in which they are and with the wages that they are now getting.
  The Government are trying to put money into the landlord's pocket, and they are making it easier for him to do so by reducing the accommodation available from the activities of local authorities. The Government have increased the rate of interest to local authorities and have abolished subsidies to them. Thus they have reduced the capacity of local authorities to do general house-building and by that means they are trying to reduce the number of houses that are available and to make it possible for landlords to push up rents. The Government tell us that their policy will make it easier for more and more landlords to do that, while in the Bill they are taking power for the Minister to introduce Regulations for reduction of the standard of control by reducing the rate value to which it shall apply.
  I turn to local authorities, particularly in the London area, and will give a comparison between them and the private landlord. I have some interesting figures relating to the London County Council. They show that the aggregate rent of dwellings owned by the London County Council is £9·4 million per year. The total gross value of the property so owned is £6 million. The London County Council is responsible for all repairs, including internal decoration. If these dwellings were owned by private corporations instead of by the London County Council the rents could be put up to £14 million a year, or two and one-third times the gross value. In other words, rents could be increased by more than £4½ million if they were in private ownership. This shows the benefits which tenants get from local-authority housing. Because the tenants get that benefit, Government supporters are trying to hinder general building by local authorities.

  1807
  The Bill is another step in the activities of the Government to improve financial conditions for the classes that they favour, at the expense of the poor people living in areas such as my constituency. I have spent the greater part of my life among the people in that area, dealing with educational and welfare problems among the boys and girls. The greatest obstacle to the improvement of their social and moral education was the cramped and confined conditions in which they lived.
  What will be the result of the Bill? A goodly number of these families will not be able to find another £1 per week on their rent so they will have to go back to the over-crowding that we used to know in the early part of this century. The only salvation for the standard of living of the people is for the House to reject the Bill and for the people to eject the Government neck and crop.
  6.27 p.m.
  Mr. James Ramsden: I shall not follow the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Poplar (Mr. Key) into the problems of his constituency. I recognise that housing conditions vary very much between one part of the country and another. Most of my constituents will accept the Bill, as I do, and as we do on this side of the House, as a fair and reasonable attempt to deal with a pressing economic problem.
  The hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison), who opened the debate for the Opposition—I am sorry that he is not in his place at the moment, because I want to take him up on one point—poured a great deal of cold water on the 1954 Act and on the success that attended the Government in getting property which was in bad condition renovated and put into order. I have obtained figures from my constituency which, in part, refute some of the implications made by the hon. and learned Gentleman. Since 1949, 12 improvement grants had been authorised by the principal housing authorities in my constituency, but since the passing of the Housing Repairs and Rents Act, 1954, they have given approval to more than 98 applications.
  Mr. Lindgren: My hon. and learned Friend contended, rightly, that that Act was a failure because the repairs had not
  1808
  been carried out. The improvements to which the hon. Member is referring come under a totally different Act, passed by the Labour Government in 1949, under which the landlord got improvement grants and was allowed to put an increase of 8 per cent. on the rent as well as getting 50 per cent. towards the cost of the improvements.
  Mr. Ramsden: One of the important provisions of the 1954 Act made it easier for local authorities to assist private owners by giving improvement grants. The figures which I have given prove its value.
  Mr. Lindgren: There were 7 million sub-standard houses, and the total number of improvements grants in the whole time was £70,000. Most of those related to owner-occupiers and not to tenants of houses.
  Mr. Ramsden: The hon. Member will have his opportunity to make his own speech. I have promised not to speak for too long, so I had better get on.
  I wish to ask my right hon. Friend the Minister to say a little more on the general economic effects which he anticipates will arise as a result of the Bill. I suppose it is true that, in practice, one of the effects of rent control has been to reduce the true wage and salary bill of industry artificially by amounts paid by the taxpayer, the ratepayer, and, indeed, the landlord. It follows that now that we are getting in sight of a measure of reform there will be a shift in the incidence of those costs back to industry through wages.
  I take it, therefore, that the Government have carefully considered what will be the effect on wage claims, on the inflationary position—[HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."]; hon. Members opposite need not cheer so soon—on the export prospects of the country, and so on, as a result of the changes brought about by this Measure. I hope that my right hon. Friend will say a word about those considerations. I hope he will be able to confirm my impression that the increases under the Bill are so timely and that the increases, in particular, which may come about in respect of houses still under control so cushioned—I refer to the 7s. 6d. six months' limit—will not, in fact, produce any sudden or major distortion in the economy.

  1809
  We all recognise that lately there has been a tendency for the rent element in costs to rise. As local authorities put up their rents, differential rent schemes came into operation, and so on. That element in wage costs has been successfully absorbed so far and I should not have thought that any further increases which may come about
  under this Measure will produce a dangerous distortion of the economy. I think that industry generally would like to hear a little more about that from my right hon. Friend when he replies to the debate.
  On the question of the likely levels of rent increases which may come about under the Bill, two points are worth making. The first concerns houses which will remain subject to rent control. I believe that the figures in the White Paper are rather misleading on the question of what rent increases are likely for this class of tenant. I refer to Table IV of the White Paper. Those figures have already succeeded in misleading one newspaper. Table IV sets out the amounts by which twice the 1956 gross values exceed the present weekly net rents. I noticed yesterday in one newspaper, which was enjoying considerable circulation among hon. Members opposite who were thinking about the speeches they would make today—
  Mr. Hay: The Daily Worker.
  Mr. Ramsden: It was not the Daily Worker, but the Star, which reprinted this table as though it assumed that the increases which would follow this Measure for the various categories listed in the table were going to be as great as those set out in it.
  Mr. Lindgren: They might be more.
  Mr. Ramsden: If hon. Members will reflect on this matter, they will see that it simply is not so. The point that we and the public ought to bear in mind is that those figures based on the multiplier of the gross value are not in any sense flat rate statutory increases. They are not imposed as increases by this Bill, and there is no reason why they should be imposed as a result of this Bill. They are the permissible upper limits beyond which rents may not rise. In the event, the actual new rents will be agreed between the landlord and the tenant and will depend on the state of the market
  1810
  in the district and a hundred and one other things, such as the type of house, and the class of person needing accommodation.
  To hon. Members opposite who are shaking their heads, I say that it is altogether too big an assumption to suppose, as I think is supposed, that the market will always allow for the maximum permitted increase to be imposed in a bargain between landlord and tenant.
  Sir Frederick Messer: The market at present allows it.
  Mr. Ramsden: My next point concerns the future rent levels of those houses which will become decontrolled altogether. The question
  which many people will be asking is: how much are the increases of rents in the free market which are contemplated by the Bill likely to be? I concede that there may be people who will be worried about this—[HON. MEMBERS: "There are."]—because there will be a period of uncertainty until the market level is known. A period of uncertainty is always a worrying thing to have to go through.
  I was glad that earlier this afternoon my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary was at great pains to make clear good reasons why, in the event, there should be no unreasonable difference between the existing levels of rent and the levels which will obtain in a free market.
  After all, this is not the first time that my right hon. Friend and Her Majesty's Government have had to make an assessment of the conditions which will obtain in a market which has been set free. There are plenty of opportunities open to my right hon. Friend and his advisers for getting the information necessary to make an accurate assessment of the kind of market conditions which may obtain in various parts of the country. Personally, I would accept unreservedly the estimate he has been able to make, on which he has based his policy, and I believe the country will do so, also.
  Mr. Janner: Have we not already had experience of that? When the 1923 Act was introduced did we not need to resume control because the estimated market price was not that which the Government of that time assumed it would be?
  Mr. Ramsden: The hon. Member goes back beyond my time, but I should have thought that the reasons given for assuming that the new market level would not be unreasonable were, on the whole, convincing. This is a serious problem and a decision has to be made; it is only reasonable to go on the assumptions and information available. I do not think that anyone can expect that the Government could do more.
  May I conclude by saying one word in criticism of what I understand to be the alternative policy proffered by hon. Gentlemen opposite? They would wish to see this problem solved through a measure of municipalisation of the houses in the categories which we are discussing. I wonder whether, if it came to the point—and this is not a political criticism so much as one based on administrative considerations—they would find that housing authorities would want to work the system of municipalisation which they contemplate.
  It is, I am sure, within the experience of almost all hon. Members that 50 per cent., or nearly 50 per cent., of the housing cases which come to us arise when somebody has been allocated a council house and somebody else thinks that he should have got it and is aggrieved. [HON. MEMBERS: "Nonsense."] That is a common experience of mine. We would all wish to pay tribute to the work of the local authority housing committees. They have a very thankless task and get many more kicks than ha'pence, because when they satisfy one person they almost inevitably leave others dissatisfied. I do not think that it is reasonable to ask them to undertake a threefold extra responsibility in being responsible for the allotment of these houses. [An HON. MEMBER: "They are already."] Would it be reasonably practicable for them to administer this extra burden? I do not believe that, if it came to the point, hon. Members opposite would find local authorities very glad to undertake this new aspect of their policy.
  Finally, I hope that it is not too cynical to say that for a political Measure I find it refreshingly disinterested. In spite of what hon. Gentlemen opposite have said, the Bill cannot be claimed in any sense to be a landlords' charter. I have no doubt that hon. Members on this side of
  1812
  the House who have more detailed knowledge of these matters than myself may very well argue that in many respects, considering the difficulties being experienced, this Measure does less than justice to some landlords. I do not believe that the Bill will win or lose many votes in the way that we tend to expect a bold and realistic policy to attract or lose votes. The Parliamentary Secretary has this afternoon made a straightforward attempt to tackle a grave and serious problem. This Bill is fair, and, even more important, it will, I believe, appear throughout the country generally to be fair. I hope that the country, as well as the House, will accept it.
  6.45 p.m.
  Mr. Julius Silverman: I should like to follow the hon. Member for Harrogate (Mr. Ramsden) on the question of the administration of houses by local authorities.
  I come from the City of Birmingham which already has had very considerable experience in the administration of prewar houses, formerly controlled houses, that it has taken over. It has now a pool of about 23,000 such houses, which it administers without any considerable difficulty at a cost substantially less than estate management costs private landlords in the ordinary way.
  I can assure hon. Members opposite that the city is not in the least degree worried about taking over a very much larger number of these houses, for the reason that the task of administration is well within the capacity of any local authority.
  I say this because it is the actual experience which Birmingham has had. The cost of administration is less. They had at their disposal a large pool of prewar houses at varying rents and at varying places under local authority administration. This makes it possible for the easing of the housing situation, creates greater equity in administration and, generally speaking, makes the problem of the local authority in dealing with its housing register very much easier. That is one of our strongest arguments in favour of our policy upon this matter.
  The Parliamentary Secretary, who opened the debate, spoke about the mobility which the increases in rents of houses decontrolled would produce. We

  1813
  say that we shall get the greatest amount of mobility by putting these houses under the control of the local authorities and we base that assumption upon the practical experience which Birmingham and other local authorities have had.
  It is based on our experience in Birmingham. The Labour Party's policy, and its solution of allowing the local authorities to take over, is practicable, human and it has worked. Another thing is that repairs have been and are being done for the first time. The attitude of private landlordism towards these houses has been a complete failure, because the sole consideration of the private landlord is how much he can get out of them. In the majority of these cases he regards it as a short-term investment.
  It is true that there are large companies who take a long-term view of repairs and investment, but the vast majority of these houses have been kept on a short-term investment basis and the landlord's main consideration has been how much he could get out of this as quickly as possible and, therefore, how little repairs he need do. That, unfortunately, is the consideration that applies to the great majority of houses in this country.
  Let me give a practical illustration of what is happening in Birmingham. For houses taken over by the Birmingham City Council, an average of more than £200 has been spent in making them reasonably habitable. I do not say that that is sufficient to make them ah that houses should be because many of these houses are in due course—in five, ten, fifteen or twenty years—scheduled for demolition and clearance. But, in the meantime, an average of more than £200 has been spent. That shows that there has been a generation or more of sheer neglect by the landlords who have not done the repairs and have allowed the houses to fall into decay, not merely since the end of the war.
  When it is suggested that the sole reason that landlords did not carry out repairs was that the price of repairs has gone up since the war, that is not so. It is not a matter of a few years' neglect; it is a generation of neglect. Bearing in mind that the repairs increase of 25 per cent., which is part of the 40 per cent.
  1814
  increase in 1920, was based on the cost of repairs and the cost of building existing in 1920, which steadily declined in price, as the Parliamentary Secretary admitted, we know that, although landlords were, therefore, getting a substantial allowance for repairs during the inter-war period, the plain fact is that the repairs were not done. That applies not only to the houses to which I have referred. This deterioration applies to the majority of rent-controlled houses. I say that that is proof that private landlordism in this matter has failed.
  The main object of the Bill is not to remove unfairness, to get repairs done or to encourage housing mobility. It is simply to transfer a substantial portion of income from the pockets of the tenants, many of whom cannot afford it, to the pockets of the landlords. That is the purpose of the Bill. That is what it will achieve, and based upon past experience, we know that it will achieve little else.
  That means that every week about £2 million will be going from the pockets of people who cannot afford it. What will be the economic consequences? The Chancellor of the Exchequer recently appealed to workers to restrain their demands for increased wages. He said, "Do not ask for more; the country cannot afford it". How can he possibly face the workers, 5 million of whom will have to pay an average of 10s. a week more in rent, and say, "Please do not ask for more wages"?
  It is obvious that we are heading for great industrial clashes. I do not see how anybody on this side of the House has the right to say to the workers, when these increases come into operation, "Please do not ask for any more wages, because of the effect that will have upon the economy of the country". How can we do that when £100 million or £150 million every year is being put into the pockets of the landlords without any reason whatever?
  That is not the whole picture. There are 800,000 houses which are being taken entirely out of control. What will happen to them? Will the rents be increased, or will the owners do what owners are doing now? When a house becomes decontrolled the owner evicts the tenant and sells it, making as much cash out of it as he can. It is clear that that is what

  1815
  will happen to most of these 800,000 houses.
  Apart from the human effect of that, which was dealt with by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison), let us deal with the economic effect. For example, landlords can make a clear £1,000 profit on many of these houses. If 800,000 houses are sold at substantial profits, varying from hundreds of pounds to £1,000 or even more, within the comparatively short period of one to two years, what will be the inflationary effect? Suppose that only half the houses are sold—400,000—and that the average profit is only £500, that means that there will be about £200 million which will contribute to a process of sheer, uncompensated inflation. What will be the effect?
  Sir Keith Joseph: Even if one can assume the fantasy on which the hon. Gentleman bases his calculations, surely he realises that anybody who buys a house reduces his own resources as a result. This is not in the least inflationary; this is an exchange.
  Mr. Silverman: No. The person who buys usually borrows or he invests capital. This is not a question of capital. The landlord gets a sheer profit and a very large part of it will be spent. What does one do with profit? Some prudent people may invest it, but a very large number say, "Well, if I have got several hundred pounds for nothing I will spend it". It is obvious that the effect must be inflationary.
  Mr. Kenneth Thompson: If it is true that the injection of, say, £200 million into our economy would be inflationary, and I have no doubt that it is true, will the hon. Gentleman consider how much more inflationary it would be if the local authorities compensated present owners to the tune of £3,000 million?
  Mr. Silverman: I hope that the hon. Gentleman will read our policy. That is a matter which we have considered. To prevent any inflation there is provision for the compensation to be spread over a number of years.
  Mrs. Mann: Based upon the present value.
  Mr. Silverman: Based upon the value to the sitting tenant, as my hon. Friend
  1816
  says. That is a matter which we have taken into consideration, but the party opposite have not taken into consideration the economic consequences of what they are doing any more than they took into consideration the economic consequences of Suez.
  Let us deal with the question of unfairness. The Minister is saying, "You tenants are being unfairly treated as between yourselves. This man in a similar house to yours is paying 3s. a week less rent than you; it is quite unfair; you are labouring under a sense of injustice: so what do we do? We put up the rent of everybody by 10s., and that removes the injustice". What nonsense. That is a most ineffective argument.
  My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kettering said that it would appear that, under the Bill, when a tenant dies the successor is not protected because it would seem, on the best authorities, that a new tenancy is then created and, therefore, under Clause 9 there is decontrol.
  Mr. Powell: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will allow me to explain that under Clause 16 (2) where a statutory tenancy is created out of a controlled tenancy, which is the case the hon. Gentleman has in mind, it is treated as one controlled tenancy and there is no decontrol.
  Mr. Silverman: My attention has already been called to Clause 16 (2). If the hon. Gentleman examines what I have said he will find that his reply does not meet the objection. Clause 16 (2) deals with something entirely different. A statutory tenancy is created when in the case of an increase in rent where there is a common law tenancy.
  Clause 16 (2) deals with the question of a person who has been a common law tenant where notice of an increase of rent has been served and he becomes a statutory tenant. The Clause provides that, as far as he is concerned, there will not be a new tenancy. It does not deal with the point made by my hon. and learned Friend about when there is a different person as successor. It may be that the hon. Gentleman has not considered that; I hope that he will. Clearly, this would be a complete disaster for a very large number of people.
  Mention has been made of the provisions of paragraph 17 of the Sixth

  1817
  Schedule, which extends the Schedule of the 1933 Act which deals with the question of possession and the proving of hardship. What has frequently happened is that people have bought occupied houses with the intention of getting the tenants out. Up to now, the courts have been obliged to resist that procedure, quite rightly, because for such an action to succeed would be monstrous. This is a provision of the Bill which we shall certainly resist. It is one which, if carried, will result in very great hardship, because it is completely unjustified.
  Even if the Minister were to look at these matters and to improve them, it would not make this Bill a good Bill. It is a thoroughly bad Bill. It achieves no useful purpose. It is introduced simply to make a wealthy section of the community wealthier and it is introduced, also, because the much-heralded and trumpeted Housing Repairs and Rents Act of 1954 has completely and entirely failed. This is a much worse Measure than that. It is the most iniquitous and reactionary piece of legislation that any Government have introduced in the last fifty years. I hope that we shall not only vote against its Second Reading tomorrow night, but that we shall resist it both inside and outside the House with all the means at our disposal.
  7.0 p.m.
  Sir Keith Joseph: I should first explain that although I am director of a company owning housing accommodation, and of a building company, I have no interest to declare, as the first company ranks as an housing association and the building company builds no houses for itself.
  I should like to refer to something about which the hon. Member for Aston (Mr. J. Silverman) spoke at the beginning of his speech. No one on this side of the House wishes in any way to criticise the conduct of such a pioneering local authority as Birmingham in the management of its own housing property, but there is a very great difference between a local authority owning even a substantial number of houses for rent and a local authority owning all the available houses for rent in an area. It is with that proposition in the Opposition's programme that I very much disagree.
  1818
  I welcome this Bill because it seems to be making a really serious effort to deal with those people of whom we have all too few statistics. Hon. Members on both sides of the House have told us harrowing tales of what will happen to present tenants of accommodation, but there are no statistics of the unhappiness, misery and frustration existing in the enormous waiting lists of people who cannot move—and cannot even get married—for lack of housing.
  For most of the population it is bewildering to see, year after year, the enormous programmes of new housing construction—undertaken be it by the Tory Party or by the Socialist Party—and yet, at the same time, seeing the waiting lists of applicants for housing accommodation growing. Although some houses, it is true, fall out of use by deterioration, I think that the real explanation is under-occupation, and it is because this Measure deals with that problem that I think it is a brave Bill and one which should be supported.
  Nobody begrudges living space to any family or individual, but surely it is unwise, when seeking to use to the optimum our national capital resources, to encourage the waste of an asset as scarce as housing now is. If we are to have the flexible and dynamic society which both sides of the House desire, we must encourage mobility of labour. If we are to take advantage of automation and of all the new techniques, it must be possible for wage-earners and management to move from industry to industry and from town to town. Unless there is much more freedom in the housing market that will be impossible.
  I commend the Bill, first, because it releases from control the owner-occupied houses. That in itself will make a great contribution to providing that freedom of accommodation without which we cannot have mobility for tenants. It is true that those who own houses have been able to let rooms to lodgers or tenants, but in many cases they have been very frightened of the tenure which they were giving to those tenants, or of the control of rent, or of the other legal complexities in which they might involve themselves. I believe that decontrol will encourage owner-occupiers to make available very much more accommodation than has been

  1819
  available in the past. This is one of the first advantages of the Bill.
  There is much under-occupation in rented houses as well as in owner-occupied houses—both in rented houses owned by local authorities and in those owned by private landlords. I think that both sides of the House recognise that, and recognise, too, that it will be necessary to increase rents. There is no difference between the two parties in this. There are at least two passages in the Opposition's booklet on the subject which clearly recognise it. We all recognise also that the bulk of the increase in rent will go towards enabling repairs to be carried out. That is my answer to the hon. Member for Aston; that in no case will a landlord be able to keep the extra rent unless he keeps the house in good condition.
  Miss Alice Bacon: I know that the hon. Gentleman knows his constituency very well, and if he will go into Louis Street he will find an example of private landlordism doing nothing to maintain very good property. There the council had to take over the property compulsorily in order to improve it and make habitable flats. That would never have been done by the private landlords.
  Sir K. Joseph: I am grateful to the hon. Lady, and of course I know the property to which she refers. Surely she is not trying to describe as bad landlordism a case where it has not been possible, because of war and licensing, to do decent repairs. But I am trying to direct the attention of the House to the problem of under-occupation and, without making any party point, I say that both sides recognise this as a problem.
  If we, as a country, are to free the statistically higher average space per head that is in theory available, both parties will have to do something about it, and in all seriousness I should like to ask what the Opposition intends to do. I have read its pamphlet, page 19 of which makes it plain that the party opposite intends to encourage the transfer of small families from houses and flats which are too large to others more in keeping with their requirements. We could not put our own intent into better words.
  1820
  Nevertheless, the hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) said, I think quite rightly, that in many cases tenants continue to hold under-occupied space for sentimental and family reasons. How will it be possible to encourage that transfer of those people if they just do not want to move? This is a real, human problem. Will the local authorities say "Very well, we will leave you to under-occupy these rooms. We will not charge you more rent"? Or will they, as I am sure they will, use differential rents to that end?
  Mr. Mitchison: As the hon. Gentleman was kind enough to refer to me, may I ask him the same question with reference to this Bill? Supposing the sentimental tenant who under-occupies the space is unable to stay there because the rent is too high, or because the premises are decontrolled and the landlord wants to get him out—does the hon. Member regard that as a good thing?
  Sir K. Joseph: It seems to me that this Bill will create a free market in housing accommodation which will give such a person ample alternatives at cheaper rents, though possibly not so much accommodation and possibly accommodation not in such good condition. This Bill will achieve that. That is its purpose.
  By this Measure, people who have under-occupied housing space at a controlled rent will have to choose whether to spend more on housing, and go without something else, or move to less good and less ample accommodation which, I believe, will be made available; because I foresee that, whereas up to now the empty house has been a great asset to a landlord, because of the scarcity of houses, the landlord will in future find a discipline in the empty house; the void house will force landlords to maintain their property, because otherwise they will not be able to find tenants.
  That is why I believe that this is the beginning of the creation of a really free market in housing accommodation, and I think that we should remember throughout this debate the tens of thousands of families, of whom we have no statistics, but who will welcome this Bill as their first chance to get the housing which they need.
  7.10 p.m.
  Mr. Donald Wade: At the outset, I should like to say that I think it is a little ironical that it is only two and a half years since we were debating the Housing Repairs and Rents Bill. I remember those heated debates very well, because I sat throughout the Committee stage as well as through the debates on the Floor of the House, and I think it is fair to say that the sponsors of that Bill, which became the Act of 1954, were a little optimistic in their expectations of the effect that that Measure would have on the problem of repairs.
  There was a White Paper which has already been referred to—Cmd. 8996—in the concluding paragraph of which there is this sentence:
  "Her Majesty's Government feel that they are setting out on a new and inspiring adventure."
  I rather suspect that those words were coined by the present Chancellor of the Exchequer, for I think that that is the sort of phrase which he rather enjoys using.
  While the words which were used when
  that Bill was introduced were, I think, over-enthusiastic, it is also fair to say that the denunciation of it was somewhat extravagant. On the one hand, we were told that it was a bold and courageous attempt to deal with this problem of houses falling into disrepair, and on the other hand, if I remember rightly, we were told that it would lead to very great hardships and serious unrest in the country.
  Mr. Janner: Does not the hon. Gentleman admit that there were and are serious hardships? Does he not know of many cases in which such hardship is experienced?
  Mr. Wade: Yes, there are cases of serious hardship, but I know of few as a result of that Measure.
  I do not want to take up a lot of time talking about the 1954 Act. So far as improvements are concerned, I welcome the provisions in that Measure. I thought that they were helpful, and I still hold that opinion. In respect of repairs, the Act really has been rather a flop. Now we have a new attempt, and I think it is a bolder one.
  1822
  The attitude that one adopts to this new Bill depends largely on one's view about the alternative, and therefore although Members of the Opposition will probably not agree with me, I should like to say what I think of the alternative put forward by the Labour Party. I think that the Labour Party's alternative policy is logical, certainly from the Socialist point of view, but, in my opinion, the objections are overwhelming. In the first place, I think a number of local authorities will be reluctant to carry out those proposals.
  According to a report which I read of a speech by the right hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Bevan) on 2nd October at Blackpool—I understand that he was speaking on the subject of "Homes of the Future "—he pointed out that
  "There must be no loopholes…If this operation is ever discharged with any prospect of success, it will have to be imposed on the local authorities by the Government."
  I feel uneasy about that. I have always supported independence for local authorities, and I think it is true that this policy of the Labour Party could be carried forward only by a considerable amount of compulsion upon local authorities. Secondly, I think the compensation would be very substantial, even though spread over a number of years.
  I do not think that the policy would be particularly popular with tenants, although I know it has been contended that tenants would prefer to be council tenants rather than tenants of private landlords, but I do not think one can generalise, and I do not think that that is necessarily true. It is clear, however, that the Labour Party proposal is an indirect method of abolishing the Rent Restrictions Acts. It is another way of doing the same thing.
  Also, in my opinion, the cost of repairs and of administration generally would on the whole be higher than where ownership is spread amongst a number of landlords. I know that there are good and bad landlords, but on the whole the cost of repairs and administration would work out at rather less in cases where ownership is spread among a number of landlords.
  Mr. A. Evans: We are interested in the hon. Gentleman's view of the Labour Party's proposals, but would he tell us how he thinks maintenance would operate under local authority ownership as against private ownership?
  Mr. Wade: I was dealing with the question of the costs of administration and repairs.
  Mr. J. Silverman: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for allowing me to intervene. May I comment on this matter of estate management and repairs? As the hon. Gentleman may know, the City of Birmingham has taken over a number of houses. Until fairly recently, the rent collection was managed by estate agents. The rent collection has now been taken over by the local authority, and it has been found that on these houses there is a saving of £3,500 per annum. On the question of repairs, obviously there would be a difference as between a private landlord and the local authority, but is that not simply because the landlord does not do the repairs and the local authority does?
  Mr. Wade: I do not want to take up too much time on the Labour Party proposals, although I would gladly do so if I were given an opportunity on some other occasion.
  Many landlords spend a great deal of time on administration for which they receive nothing, and for which no charge is made. Some of them carry out their own repairs. I think that on the average the cost would be less; at all events, that is my view.
  One comes to the other possible policies to pursue. One could leave things as they are, and I gather that there is very little support for that view. One could introduce some minor amendments to the 1954 Act. That would cause irritation without achieving very much. At the other extreme, one could abolish the Rent Restrictions Acts at one stroke. It is true that we have a most bewildering maze of complex legislation as a result of these various Acts which have been passed dealing with rent control, but I think that the immediate abolition of the Rent Restrictions Acts would undoubtedly cause hardship, and I would not favour it. Thus, by a process of elimination I am brought to the conclusion that a gradual dismantling of the Rent Restrictions Acts is necessary. It is because this Bill broadly follows those lines that I think the right course is to give it a Second Reading.
  I understand that Mr. Gladstone, at a public meeting, after speaking for an hour, paused for a moment and said,
  1824
  "Gentleman, that is my preface." Then he proceeded to speak for another hour. Having concluded my preface, I do not propose to speak for another hour, but I should like to make a few critical observations on the Bill.
  The first question I asked myself when I studied this Bill was, what is the real purpose of its operation?
  Mr. Callaghan: It would not take long to answer that.
  Mr. Wade: Is it primarily to raise rents? The mere raising of rents is not going to solve our housing problem. Frankly, I did not feel that the Parliamentary Secretary gave an entirely satisfactory or convincing statement on the raising of the rent to a limit of 1⅓ of the gross value where the landlord is not responsible for repairs As I understand it, if the landlord is not responsible for repairs, the rent can go up to 1⅓ of the gross value.
  Further, if he is responsible for repairs and puts the premises in repair, but at some later date allows them to fall into disrepair, the rent can be reduced, but only to 1⅓ of the gross value and not to the original rent. Perhaps the Minister will deal with those two points when he winds up, because the Parliamentary Secretary certainly gave me the impression that, whatever view one may have of the Bill as a whole, those provisions—
  Mr. Sandys: For the benefit of the hon. Member for Huddersfield, West (Mr. Wade) and the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison), I should like to say that there is evidently a misunderstanding about this point. I shall not deal with it by way of interruption, but I will deal with it in the course of my speech later.
  Mr. Wade: I am much obliged to the Minister for that answer.
  I suggest that we should have four aims in mind in considering this problem. The first is that there should be more houses to let as well as for sale. Although I know I do not carry the whole House with me in this, I am of the opinion that the result of a partial decontrol will be that some houses will become available to let, that when owners find it difficult to sell their houses and know that they are able to let them without the houses becoming rent controlled, they will be more willing to

  1825
  let. Therefore, I think that the Bill will probably result in more houses coming on to the market to let.
  That alone will not suffice. We must have a more realistic policy on the subject of repairs. A mere increase in rent will not solve the very grave problem caused by houses falling into disrepair and which require very considerable work to be carried out on them; work which, of course, would cost a great deal today. I cannot now go into the reasons for the high cost of repairs, one of which I believe to be price rings in the manufacture and distribution of much of the material required for building repairs; but to discuss that would be out of order.
  The fact is that repairs are very expensive. It may well be that the large property-owning companies can deal with the matter by borrowing from the bank, but the smaller property owner cannot do so. I should like to express again the view which I expressed in the debates in 1953 and 1954, that there should be some grants for repairs as well as for improvements. I have never been convinced of the need for drawing a hard and fast line between repairs and improvements. Obviously, it would be unfair that an owner should get a grant for repairs and then sell the property without having to repay what he has obtained. I should perhaps call it a loan.
  Sir E. Errington: Under Section 4 of the Housing Act, 1949, the position is that money can be advanced and a mortgage taken in respect of that money as a charge on the property. The difficulty is that, so far, that provision has not been used to any extent.
  Mr. Wade: Yes, I am aware that very little use has been made of that provision.
  If loans—I think it is best to call them loans rather than grants—were made for essential repairs, and if the rent were increased, the loan being, say, 50 per cent. of the amount expended, it would be only fair that half of the increased rent should be paid to the local authority making the loan. Similarly if the house were sold the whole of the grant should be repaid. I am convinced that something will have to be done if the smaller landlords are to finance the major repairs which are needed, because even though they may get something back from maintenance
  1826
  claims in a few years' time, they have not got the ready capital with which to do the work now.
  Thirdly, I suggest that we should have a more forthright policy on the subject of housing elderly people and finding accommodation for couples, husband and wife, for instance, who, their families having grown up and left them, are living in houses which are too large. We have all had such cases brought to our notice. I had one brought to mine a few days ago, of a man and wife living in a house obviously too large; the husband is unwell and has been told by his doctor that he should not go up and down stairs, but though those unfortunate people would willingly give up this large house in favour of someone with a larger family, they just cannot find other accommodation.
  It is true that the Bill may result in more houses becoming available to let, but in the main they will be the larger houses. If the Bill is to be successful, there must, in addition, be some further building of houses for elderly people, more accommodation found for elderly people and for those who want smaller housing units. I calculate, on a very rough basis, that out of the higher rents there will be a tax yield to the Exchequer of between £20 million and £30 million a year. I see no reason why that money, at all events, should not be used in providing accommodation for older people and for people who want smaller houses.
  Fourthly, I consider that something might well be done to facilitate exchanges. By that I do not mean compelling a landlord to take a particular tenant. During our debates in 1953 and 1954, reference was made to a suggestion that an exchange bureau system should be set up in order that there could be more information available when an employee goes from one part of the country to another. Something could well be done to facilitate movement from one place to another by people who want a house to let rather than to buy.
  I am never enthusiastic about procedure by Ministerial Order, and I regret that under Clause 9 further decontrol can take place by Ministerial Order. It is true that those Orders will have to be approved by a Resolution of each House, but this is a subject of such importance to so many people that any further decontrol

  1827
  could and should be dealt with by a Bill introduced in the House in the normal way.
  When the Housing Repairs and Rents Act, 1954, was passed, the authorities, no doubt with the assistance of the Ministry, produced a helpful leaflet explaining exactly what it was all about. True, a good many landlords and tenants, when they read it, decided to have nothing to do with it because the procedure was so complicated, but at any rate the attempt to clarify the position and put it into simple language was praiseworthy. I hope that the same attempt will be made again. This will not be a popular Bill. I do not suppose the Minister expects it to be a popular Bill, but the least we can do is to make as clear as possible to landlord and tenant exactly what their rights and liabilities are.
  7.28 p.m.
  Mr. Richard Body: I find it difficult to follow the hon. Member for Huddersfield, West (Mr. Wade). As I understand, he has given quiet approval to the Bill. I had rather hoped to follow someone who would have offered some more robust opposition to it. I agree with many of the proposals that the hon. Gentleman made; indeed, I accept and agree with almost everything he said.
  I hope that my right hon. Friend the Minister will take some comfort from the saying which is often repeated in my native county, that if one grasps a nettle firmly enough it will never sting. This is a Bill which will provide a measure of justice, not justice for the landlord—that will never be—or justice for the tenant, but something more important than that: justice for the nation's housing drive.
  I hope that the House will forgive me if for a moment I go back to the Second Reading debate of the original Bill which introduced rent restriction in 1915. It was a Measure intended to prevent the raising of the rents of houses occupied by a few munitions workers in a few munitions towns. The sole purpose of the Bill was to help those people.
  Mr. Janner: Is not the hon. Member aware that the 1915 Bill was introduced for the specific purpose of preventing landlords from extracting higher rentals from those who were left in this country when their menfolk were away fighting?
  Mr. Body: That gives me an excuse to remind the House of what was said by the President of the Local Government Board in introducing the Bill. I have the OFFICIAL REPORT of the Second Reading debate here.
  In answer to the hon. Member for Leicester, North-West (Mr. Janner), I will point out that in introducing the Bill the President of the Local Government Board said that he had inquired throughout the whole of the United Kingdom whether there had been any rent raising as a result of the war, and that he was happy to report to the House that there had been no widespread rent increases of that kind. The hon. Member for Leicester, North-West may shake his head, but I have memorised those words from the OFFICIAL REPORT which I have open here in front of me.
  The President of the Local Government Board went on to say that legislation of that kind would never have been introduced had it not been for the war. He went on to give a very significant reason for that. His reason was that, although rent raising in itself was an evil thing if done to exploit the emergency of the war, the remedy for it might create far greater evils afterwards. In those days, pioneering the first piece of legislation in rent restriction, he was not to know what was to follow. To put his words in a nutshell, he said that the effects of such legislation might store up greater troubles for the future and that the cure might be far worse than the disease.
  It is impossible to say whether the cure of rent restriction has been worse than the disease of rent raising by bad landlords, but all can agree that to some degree at least rent restriction has meant the deterioration of many properties into slums. Some of us on this side of the House believe that it has been one of the principal factors.
  The hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) said the other day that about 1 million houses are now reduced to slums and will have to be demolished. It has also been estimated that the number of dwellings which come into that category
  each year is 200,000. The drive to pull down those dwellings is now well under way, thanks to my right

  1829
  hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Local Government. In particular, I know of one district in West Ham which has almost been cleared. Nearly all the houses have been pulled down. These houses were erected only seventy years ago and were originally of sound structure. The adjoining street, of the same type of house, has also been very nearly demolished and all the occupants re-housed elsewhere.
  One house is still standing in the street and still occupied. It was built at the same time and of exactly the same structure as all the other houses which have been demolished, yet it is still lived in by its present occupant; and it is still clean, comfortable and in good repair. It will have to be demolished; it is one of a terrace, and it is out of the question to expect that house to remain in the midst of the new flats and council houses which will be erected in place of the other slum property.
  There is one reason that that single house stands alone, still occupied and fit to be lived in for at least another generation. There has been spent on it two or three times as much money as has been spent on any of the adjoining property, the rents of which have been but a few shillings a week.
  When one allows for the payment of rates and Schedule A Income Tax and the cost of collecting the rents, no margin is left for the landlord of those other properties to make any but the most cursory repairs. A landlord owning 12 of those terraced houses, each bringing in a rent of 7s. a week, receives a total of £4 4s. a week from the property. Rates, taxes and the cost of rent collection take £3, which means that the landlord has an income of £50 a year for his 12 houses, representing a capital of £10,000. If my arithmetic is correct that is interest at the rate of ½ per cent.
  Out of that ½ per cent. he has to meet the cost of repairs, including such articles as a new dustbin, and such other items for which the landlord is responsible. The good landlord—and there is such an animal—sees his property gradually deteriorating. In this case he has £50 in his pocket with which to effect all the necessary repairs to those houses. Anyone who has seen a builder's bill in recent years knows that precious little can be done for £50, let alone when it is
  1830
  spread over 12 houses; it works out at £4 a house, which might cover the replacement of a few tiles on the roof.
  Mr. A. Evans: Has the hon. Gentleman taken into account in his figures the initial cost of the houses? He has said that they have been up for seventy years, and the initial cost of the erection of such a house was probably £150. Has he also taken into account the cost of maintenance in the early years before prices rose?
  Mr. Body: I fully realise that, but the hon. Member should bear in mind that rent restriction has been in operation since the First World War. These difficulties have existed throughout the whole of that time and neglect has been taking place all that time.
  Mr. Evans: The hon. Member said seventy years.
  Mr. Body: Perhaps the difficulties have not existed for seventy years, but the structural repairs must be done regularly. In any event, I hope the hon. Member does not think that I have any special brief for the landlords. I have not. My only brief, such as it is, is for the country's housing drive.
  Mr. H. Butler: The hon. Member says that he has no brief for the landlords. Will he tell us something about his brief for, or his interest in, the tenants who happen to be his constituents?
  Mr. Body: They are concerned, as we are all concerned, with the success of the country's housing drive, and it is ray earnest belief that we shall never solve the problem without a Bill of this kind, to ensure that the older properties are kept in a reasonable state of repair. Surely it is ludicrous to expect a house erected fifty or sixty years ago to be kept in sound structural repair for £4 a year. In my opinion, the Bill will enable more repairs to be done.
  Hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite suggest that this Bill is a profiteers' charter. I have always understood a profiteer to be someone who makes an unduly large profit, out of all proportion to his investment. Under the Bill, the property owner is lucky to derive interest of 1 per cent. That is a little less than one-third of what he would receive if he invested his money in a building society.

  1831
  I notice that the Daily Herald has joined in the cry of profiteering, the allegation made against the landlords. I notice, also, that it declares a good healthy dividend of 17½ per cent. I do not know what its criterion is of profiteering, but the Daily Herald is a property which yields 17½ times what these landlords receive from their properties. [An HON. MEMBER: "It belongs to Odham's."] Odham's'? Odham's hold 49 per cent. of its shares.
  The hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Kettering took up the cry of profiteering during his vigorous denunciation of the Bill today. I feel tempted to remind him that the Martha Gold Mining Company, of which he is chairman, is so successful under his chairmanship that it declared a dividend of no less than 200 per cent. last year.
  Mr. Callaghan: But not on slum property.
  Mr. Mitchison: It is very kind of the hon. Member for Billericay (Mr. Body), to say so, but he has got that one wrong.
  Mr. Body: It was in 1955. There was a dividend of 33⅓ per cent. in 1954. I do not blame the hon. and learned Gentleman or his company for being so successful as to declare so healthy a dividend.
  The answer to what the hon. and learned Gentleman says and to what others say who make this allegation of profiteering is Part II of the First Schedule to the Bill. It provides the most stringent and severe penalties for the bad and even the mediocre landlord. Such benefits as accrue to landlords under the Bill are taken away by that Schedule. Many landlords will say that they derive no net benefit from the Bill. Apart from that, a landlord's income depends upon his letting houses. No tenants, no income; and he will soon have no tenants when houses become more plentiful, as they will when the Bill is enacted.
  The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Bevan) and the hon. Gentleman the Member for Welling-borough (Mr. Lindgren) are both on record as saying that there is no shortage of accommodation as distinct from houses. There are more rooms per head of the population than there have ever been. The Bill will do much towards
  1832
  releasing that excess accommodation. That itself will provide a most powerful incentive to the profiteers to put and keep their houses in good repair. For these and other reasons the older tenanted houses will be kept up to a standard which would be impossible to maintain without the Bill. Far fewer houses will deteriorate into slums than the 200,000 dwellings which now deteriorate into slums every year and every house saved from slumdom is equivalent to a new house.
  May I return for a moment to those houses in West Ham which I mentioned? If they had all been maintained at the standard of that one house to which I referred, where that same family can go on living for the time being, about fifty houses would be saved from demolition and fifty families would not need to be re-housed. That example in West Ham can be repeated all over the country. The number of slum properties could have been halved had a Measure of this kind been introduced in the 1920's.
  We can never solve the housing problem if every house has to be demolished after a generation or two. There are countless dwellings, both in the country and in the towns, that are structurally the same now as they were a hundred or a hundred and fifty years ago. With this Bill enacted, many houses can have their lives extended for no less time.
  My plea, therefore, is this: we shall never solve the housing problem unless we regard a house as something permanent, a place to be lived in not for just one or two generations, but for several. That can never be done while 11 million houses are shackled by arbitrary rent restrictions. All of us are in favour of restrictions upon unscrupulous landlords, but the present rent restrictions go far beyond that. For these reasons, I believe the Bill to be essential for the successful solution of our housing problem.
  7.45 p.m.
  Mr. Albert Evans: I wish I could really believe it to be true that there are landlords of the kind about whom the Member for Billericay (Mr. Body) has just been telling us, landlords who are content with a one per cent. yield upon their investments, landlords who really play fair by their tenants and do essential repairs.

  1833
  I wish I could believe those landlords to be typical of landlords, but all my experience, and all the evidence, too, I should have thought, indicates quite clearly that the landlords who own property for rent as a business are primarily concerned with the profit yields they give them and only secondarily are concerned with their tenants.
  Mr. Body: I was not suggesting that those essential repairs are being carried out. It was the burden of my song, as it were, that they have not been because they could not be.
  Mr. Evans: I am much obliged to the hon. Member. He agrees, at any rate, that it is very doubtful whether essential repairs are being carried out, and it is the view we hold on this side of the House that under private ownership and control essential repairs are neglected and that slums are the consequence.
  The Bill will have some very far-reaching consequences. It will have a permanent effect upon the whole economy, and even after this Government have been forgotten and their sorry record is a thing of the past, the consequences of this Bill will be felt. Throughout industry wage claims will be started. We cannot impose large increases of rent upon 4 million or 5 million of our people and not expect them to ask for higher wages. The Government must bear in mind that in due course, when the Bill becomes fully operative and large increases of rent result for large numbers of people, the trade unions will demand that wages should go up to meet the higher cost of living. In consequence of that change in wage rates there will be a stimulus to the rise of prices. I say to the Government that these will be some of the long-term consequences of their Bill, and that they should bear those things in mind.
  The Bill takes out of the ambit of the Rent Restrictions Acts about 4½ million owner-occupied houses. They have been legally within the Acts, but they have not been really subject to rent restrictions for the simple reason that they have not been rented, but occupied, by their owners. I do not think that there is any great difference of view in the House about owner-occupiers. Nobody on these benches would wish to restrict what a man does with his house which he owns and in
  1834
  which he lives. The only difference between the two sides of the House is in deciding how to arrange the finance for his buying of his house.
  The Government cannot avoid the plain fact that during the past two or three years they have imposed upon those who wish to buy their own houses a terrific burden of interest rates. We on this side, as we have said in our policy statement, shall attempt as soon as possible to make money available to house buyers at reasonable rates of interest. On the other hand, the Government's record shows that they have been persistently pushing up the price which a man has to pay for money with which to buy his own house.
  The Bill takes about three-quarters of a million houses completely out of the ambit of the Rent Restrictions Acts. The tenants of all these houses will be subject to the imposition of any rent the landlord chooses. Furthermore, their security of tenure will end. I have in my hand a letter, one of a number sent me today, from fourteen teachers at a secondary school in my constituency. They protest against the Bill and especially against the Clause which proposes the complete decontrol of houses and flats with a rateable value of £40 and over in London. They say:
  "This will not only cause great hardship, but might well result in the loss of their homes for a large number of professional people."
  Undoubtedly, those houses which are taken completely out of control are occupied, in the main, not by industrial workers but by teachers, bank clerks, and that type of person.
  We have had rent restriction in this country for thirty-five years. Ever since 1920 we have had some form of restriction of rents on rentable property. We have had these Rent Restrictions Acts for the simple reason that the supply of rentable property has been less than the demand. It could be said that as supply was at last drawing level with the demand there would be a case in logic for abolishing the Rent Restrictions Acts but, although we have made progress and built more houses over the years, and there is a greater number of houses available for letting, I do not think that we can say that even by the end of 1958 the supply of rentable houses will be equal to the demand.

  1835
  However much we build, while there is more demand than supply the landlord's market will remain and the need for control will continue. The gap between the two has to be only a small one and still the tenant has no alternative. He should be protected from the landlord who can extort an unfair rent. That difference between supply and demand of rentable houses remains and that fundamental of the Rent Restrictions Acts remains. It is quite as effective as it was in 1920, 1940 or 1950. As long as we have more people requiring rentable accommodation than there is rentable accommodation available for them, there is the possibility of exploitation. Not until we have sufficient accommodation to meet the demand can we say that the time is ripe to take away control.
  The Minister believes that now is the time to begin decontrol, because he believes that thereby he will bring into the lettable market some unoccupied accommodation. I believe that the right hon. Gentleman is basing this part of his argument upon a fallacy. It is true that many houses are unoccupied, but it must be remembered that today people demand more living space. They expect an adequate number of rooms for themselves and their families. The standard of living space which people expect has risen considerably. People will continue to have an adequate number of rooms for their families unless they are forced by economic pressure to give up some of those rooms. Therefore, the under-occupation which the Minister might disturb and bring into the lettable pool will be that under-occupation by poor people who are forced by their economic situation to crowd up and surrender some of their accommodation.
  I should be very surprised if, as a result of these rent increases, we have an appreciable amount of accommodation made available. It is quite true that the main evil of rent restriction and control has been the widespread neglect of maintenance. We all know that to be so, and we can see its effect in our own constituencies. Some of the things we see and read about in this matter of neglect of maintenance are horrible and shocking. People are living in intolerable conditions because of this neglect.
  I agree with the hon. Member for Billericay that some part of the neglect
  1836
  arises from low rents. It was the purpose of control to keep rents low, and it did so. Therefore, I am quite prepared to concede that the Rent Restrictions Acts have kept rents low and made it more difficult for landlords to maintain their houses adequately. There are good landlords who maintain their houses in fairly satisfactory conditions. Houses have been well maintained even under the Rent Restrictions Acts. The evil of this neglect arises partly from low controlled rents, but partly, also, from the profit motive which guides those people who own property and let it. It is the function of people in the property-owning business to get a profit out of their business. That is what they are there for.
  Sir Ian Horobin: Can the hon. Member tell us how one gets a profit out of a business by spending a lot of money on building a house, only to neglect the maintenance so that it becomes a slum and is taken away at site value?
  Mr. Evans: The hon. Member's catalogue of events runs over a hundred years and I cannot go back over that period.
  It must be accepted by all of us that when people go into the property-owning business and acquire houses for renting they are in the business to make a profit.
  Mr. Arthur Holt: What is wrong with that?
  Mr. Evans: Perhaps I shall be able to describe some of the failings of that procedure before I finish my speech.
  The Government seem to think that if, by means of this Bill, the landlord receives higher rent he will play the game and do the repairs, maintain good standards, and maintain his asset, but surely the businessman maintains his asset at the point of maximum profit. He would be a bad businessman if he did not. That is the motive which animates all property-owners. If it were not so, they would be strange fellows. Therefore, we cannot expect private people engaged in letting houses to spend more on repairs than they are obliged to do in their own interests.
  Mr. Holt: The relevant phrase there is "maintain his asset." That is the point.
  Mr. Evans: I do not follow that interjection. These people maintain the asset only at the point of maximum profit. They do not maintain the property in a state of good repair, because they are not concerned with amenity. That is the ethics of business. I should have thought that all of us would agree on that point.
  We cannot expect people engaged in letting houses to concern themselves with standards, with amenities, and with developing better conditions. All our experience of houses tells us that the development of better social conditions is not the function of the person who is in business for profit. Only the Government and the local authorities can fulfil that social function.
  As leading members of the community we have a responsibility to recognise that housing is a basic need of our people. Between 4 million and 5 million people must rent houses. They cannot buy them, for a number of reasons. Therefore, it is essential for them to rent houses, and we should recognise this as an essential part of our society.
  When we look at what has happened under existing arrangements, where rented houses are owned in order to yield profit, we find slums, and there are 1 million slum houses in this country today. We say that private enterprise has failed to meet the basic human need of a decent home and that the only alternative is for the community to step in and meet this basic human need.
  The policy of the Labour Party has been mentioned, and I also have tried to give an indication of it to the House. It has been said that this will cost money. I agree at once that it will cost money to give our people decent houses. We must be prepared to spend. We spend over £400 million on our National Health Service, and even hon. Gentlemen opposite would not deny that this is a good investment. We spend £300 million on our education service. What hon. Gentlemen opposite will say that we should do other than spend this money? When we come to the social service of housing we must be prepared, if necessary, to spend money out of taxation so that we can meet the basic human need of these 4 million people.
  Mr. Rees-Davies: Does the hon. Gentleman mean that we should spend another £400 or £500 million?
  Mr. Evans: The hon. Gentleman is a lawyer. He should not allow his fancy to run away with him. I did not say anything about £400 million or £500 million. I said that we should be prepared to spend public money out of taxation to provide housing as a social service. I stand by that. Although some of my colleagues may not agree with me, I take the view that Exchequer money must be provided to make the supply of rented houses a social service.
  It has been said that rents will go up. Of course they will. I have admitted that rents are artificially low. Even under local authority ownership, rents will have to rise from their present artificially low levels. But the difference is that under local authority ownership the houses will be maintained. They will be decent houses in which people can enjoy living and bringing up their families, whereas under private enterprise there are 1 million slum houses in the country today. That is the contrast. We are forced to adhere to the Socialist view that only common action can solve this problem.
  The Minister has run away from the standard set by the 1954 Act. When the present Chancellor of the Exchequer framed that Measure he made an attempt to oblige landlords to carry out essential repairs. The right hon. Gentleman put safeguards into that Act which were good ones. He knew that properties would not be maintained unless he enforced maintenance, so he made it obligatory for the landlord, before getting an increased rent, to serve a notice of increase upon the tenant. Then the landlord had to make a declaration that the house was in good repair and fit for human habitation. Under the 1954 Act the landlord had to declare on the prescribed form that the house was sound as to fitness and stability and in good repair, was free from damp, had ventilation, natural lighting, and had drainage and sanitary conveniences as well as having facilities for storage, preparation and cooking of food and for the disposal of waste water.
  Mrs. Mann: That was before the General Election.
  Mr. Evans: Please do not bring politics into this.

  1839
  The landlord was also obliged to say that the house was in good repair, and the definition in the Act was as follows:
  "'Good repair' in relation to any premises, means that having regard to the age, character and locality of the premises they are in good repair both as respects structure and as respects decoration;"
  All those safeguards have gone. The Minister may try to deny that, but he cannot. My reading of the second part of the Second Schedule to this Bill indicates that. Though I must admit that it is difficult to make out exactly what is the intention, I think I am correct in saying that the conditions imposed upon the landlord as to maintenance are much more lax than they were under the 1954 Act. Then he could obtain a certificate of disrepair and the onus was upon the landlord, but now the initiative is left with the tenant, who has to serve a notice upon his landlord.
  I am sorry that the Government have been so drastic in their proposals under the Bill, particularly in the case of the 750,000 tenants who, in future, will not enjoy security. I suppose that this is a part of the Tory freedom about which hon. Gentlemen opposite like to talk, and which they have extended to these tenants. Those people will be free to be turned out if the landlord so decides, and without having any alternative accommodation. They will be free to pay any rent the landlord demands. Another 4½ million of our people will be free to pay greatly increased rents, with no assurance that their houses will be properly maintained.
  This is a Tory Measure. It will hit the poor and put money into the pockets of the rich. The reckoning will come. It came in 1945. It will come again, perhaps very soon.
  8.10 p.m.
  Sir Henry d'Avigdor-Goldsmid: It is a very great pleasure for me to be able, for once, to speak in a debate of this sort after having sat mute by order for over a year in similar debates during last Session.
  I cannot begin more appropriately than by congratulating my right hon. Friend and my hon. Friend upon the Measure. It took very great courage to produce it at this moment. I know the intense thoroughness with which the whole matter has been studied and the enormous
  1840
  care which they have given to it, and I also realise their very great aliveness to the human values involved.
  This is primarily a matter where human values take precedence over everything—that is frankly recognised on both sides of the House—but, all the same, I think it has also caused a certain fogginess to enter into some of the arguments which have been used. The words "landlord" and "landlordism" seem to bear no particular relation to actual landlords. I mention that because, in the nature of things, when our laws were made, they were made by the property, owning classes. Therefore, up to fifty years ago the law was very much biased in favour of the landlord. During the last fifty years all our legislation has been entirely opposed to the landlord.
  As a result, the landlord has changed his character very much. He is no longer the wicked oppressor who derived great profit from the squalor in which his tenants lived. That sort of landlord sold out a long time ago. The owners of low-rented properties today are basically divided into two classes. In one class we have the tied house or tied cottage. Whether it is owned by a company or a farmer is immaterial. In the other class, we have what is really mainly working-class investment. From my experience in my own constituency, I should say that the ownership of a few houses is very often a working-class investment.
  The big landlords who built our industrial towns have been out of the business for years and years. They got out when they saw the trend of legislation against them. The streets in my constituency bear the names of famous men, great landowners, but nowadays the ownership of the houses there is in no way related to the original landlords.
  Mr. Lindgren: While that may be true about the individual landlord in small urban and rural areas, surely the hon. Member is not contending that in such large cities as London, Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester the present landlords are not soulless investment companies managed by estate agents who have no concern for the tenants?
  Sir H. d'Avigdor-Goldsmid: I referred to low-rented properties. The ownership of such properties is not an attractive

  1841
  investment today. Despite what has been said, profits are being earned through medium and high-rented properties which are not affected by the Measure.
  Mrs. Lena Jeger: What kind of rent has the hon. Member in mind when he refers to medium-rented properties? I know of flats rented for £5 a week which will be affected by the Bill. Is that a medium rent or a low rent which should be raised in order to help the landlord?
  Sir H. d'Avigdor-Goldsmid: Obviously, I cannot talk about individual flats. I am talking about the main lines of the Measure. No doubt points such as the hon. Lady has in mind may be dealt with in Committee.
  Mr. Charles A. Howell: Where is the point of demarcation?
  Sir H. d'Avigdor-Goldsmid: I am not prepared to set such a point. I base my attitude upon the White Paper. Rents will remain controlled for 4,250,000 houses. The "soulless companies" referred to by the hon. Member for Welling-borough (Mr. Lindgren) do not own properties of that type.
  Mr. David Weitzman: Does not the hon. Gentleman realise that there are many properties in London at a rental of £200 to £300 a year which will be directly affected by the Measure, and that the rents will rise to £400 or £500 a year?
  Sir H. d'Avigdor-Goldsmid: I am obliged for that information. I am still talking about the bulk of the people affected by the Measure.
  In any case, the landlord has undoubtedly suffered under our legislation during the last fifty years. As a result of this, we have created a privileged class, that of the sitting tenant. The sitting tenant has been entirely arbitrarily chosen. Anyone lucky enough to be a sitting tenant has had major advantages. He has taken no special action to earn those advantages; they have simply come to him. The interesting thing is that this privilege is paid for by means of a levy charged not upon the public purse but upon the private landlord, whoever he may be. If we wanted to have a privileged class, I should have thought it would have been proper for the cost of
  1842
  the privilege to be borne by the Exchequer. It is nonsensical that landlords, individually, should be asked to provide the privilege.
  It is similar to the situation which might arise if, during a time of petrol shortage, we considered it desirable for most of our people to use bicycles, and we therefore ordered the bicycle manufacturers to sell their machines at very greatly reduced prices. The answer to that is obvious. The bicycle manufacturers would, of course, go out of business. That is exactly what landlords as a whole have done. Landlords as a whole are not in business for the class of property which we are mainly discussing here.
  I can see no stigma attaching to owning property. There was a time when people thought it a very bad thing to own armaments shares, but I notice that the Church Commissioners have been wise enough to change some of their investments, and they have certainly bought some of those shares.
  Mrs. L. Jeger: They have had slums, too.
  Sir H. d'Avigdor-Goldsmid: They may have had slums, too, but the fact is that these things are done by the Church Commissioners. I have no doubt that the T.U.C. has also invested its funds wisely.
  Mr. Callaghan: Not in slums.
  Sir H. d'Avigdor-Goldsmid: The hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) produced a calculation and said that as a result of the permitted increase a sum of £85 million might be going into the pockets of the landlords. This is related to the 4,250,000 houses the rents of which remain controlled. Without accepting those figures—though I do not see any reason for not doing so—I would recall that the hon. and learned Gentleman said that this might double the existing rents. In other words, the rents would go up
  The hon. and learned Gentleman said that the average rent would be 17s a week, but that does not represent in any way today the cost of producing an adequate house. I do not understand why hon. Gentlemen opposite think there is a duty on landlords, as against other people, to provide a service at less than it costs to replace—
  Mr. Callaghan Mr. Callaghan rose—
  Sir H. d'Avigdor-Goldsmid: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will just allow me to finish my sentence.
  I was just about to mention the point made by the hon. Member for Aston (Mr. J. Silverman) that an enormous inflationary effect might arise through the 800,000 houses now to be free from rent control being put on the market. He foresaw the possibility of all these houses being sold at great profit at the same time. I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman is not in his place at the moment, but when one waits all the evening to speak one cannot always ensure that hon. Members points of whose speeches one takes up are here. I really must stress one point. We all know that rows of empty houses are waiting for sale. Why the hon. Gentleman feels that because 800,000 more houses are available they should all be for sale and all find buyers, when at the present time they do not find buyers, absolutely defeats me.
  The hon. Member for Islington, South-West (Mr. A. Evans) said that the Bill was particularly untimely. I should have thought it a particularly timely Measure because it is almost impossible to borrow money now to buy a house, and therefore there is no danger of all the houses which are now to be available being sold by people who pre-empt and so prevent tenants from getting them. Most of the houses that change hands do so on borrowed money.
  Mr. Callaghan: That was a very long sentence by the hon. and gallant Gentleman. He has escaped from the point on which I wanted to keep him. I wanted him to explain why he saw no reason why landlords should be expected to provide a service at less than cost. He hesitated and then said, "Less than the cost of replacement." Which does he mean? The rent of 17s. 6d. which he cited related to a house which cost only £200 when built sixty or seventy years ago.
  Sir H. d'Avigdor-Goldsmid: Anybody who can maintain in good order a house which was built seventy years ago and which up to now has only had a rental of under 10s. a week deserves public praise. His award of 17s. 6d. will in no way reimburse him for the expense which he has had in maintaining that
  1844
  house. [Interruption.] I am sorry, but I must continue with my speech.
  The right hon. Member for Poplar (Mr. Key) mentioned with great feeling a large number of houses the rent of which would go up from 10s. 8d. per week to a higher figure. I would point out to the House that 10s. 8d. per week only pays for 50 cigarettes. Do we really believe that the value of a house is 50 cigarettes a week? Are we taking as our dominant principle in these matters that 50 cigarettes a week is all the value we place on a house? I really cannot believe it.
  Those who represent industrial constituencies are familiar with three disagreeable features, all of which the Bill will help to remove. The first is the rows upon rows of houses that are for sale, empty houses. They are a feature of most of our towns. Why are they for sale? Because, as hon. Gentlemen opposite have said, in present conditions the disadvantage of having a sitting tenant outweighs the rent which he can be asked to pay.
  The second feature has not been mentioned, and I would draw it to the attention of hon. Gentlemen. It is something I have met very often and occurs where old people are living in a small rent-controlled house in my constituency. They have found themselves under very great pressure to buy the houses, many of which are little better than slums, at absolutely ridiculously high prices, in many cases. The reason they are under this pressure is that these are old people and the agents have told them that the tenancy will expire with their death and if they want to safeguard their children who are living with them they must buy the house. That is a great social evil that we see in industrial towns. The Bill will do something to remedy it because people will find that other accommodation is available.
  The third feature is one of which we are very conscious. It is the creation of new slums from the over-occupation of property. We are particularly conscious of it in the Midlands. The Bill will do a very great deal to correct these three features. The Bill may be extremely unpopular but any housing measure is always unpopular. I believe it to be a serious effort to bring reality into housing matters.

  1845
  I see the point that hon. Gentlemen make in their publication "Homes of the Future". Hon. Gentlemen should notice that many of us have in the last few days been reading that interesting pamphlet about turning housing into a social service. If housing is a social service why not the supply of bread? [HON. MEMBERS: "Why not? "] Very good. If hon. Gentlemen intend to put before the electors a programme in which they wish to nationalise or municipalise every form of service in this country, let them say so openly to the electors and let the electors judge whether they want every form of service to be nationalised or municipalised. I have no doubt whatsoever what the result will be if the electors have a chance to give a decision upon it.
  8.27 p.m.
  Mr. Victor Collins: I can assure the hon. Member for Walsall South (Sir H. d'Avigdor-Goldsmid) that we are only too anxious to submit our views on these matters to the electorate. We also have no doubt whatever what the result will be: we shall be sitting on the Government benches and some Government supporters, but not so many, will be sitting on these benches.
  The hon. Member tried to calm our fears about the actions of landlords under the Bill by saying that in his experience most landlords were working-class Conservatives. I do not know that I take any comfort from that because the probability is that those curious individuals are even more ruthless than the other kind. The hon. Member said that the 17s. 6d. rent was not sufficient for an adequate house. I can assure him that in the constituency of which I have most knowledge we are not dealing with adequate houses.
  What has been most marked about this debate is that in all their speeches back bench Members opposite have put forward experiences of their own constituencies, I am sure quite honestly. They confirmed my view that experience throughout the country is hopelessly uneven and that the Bill—while it might not hurt hon. Members opposite in their constituencies, where, perhaps the majority of people are already adequately housed—will, I assure the Parliamentary Secretary, do a great deal of damage and cause
  1846
  very considerable hardship in constituencies in London and the big towns.
  I consider that the statement of the Parliamentary Secretary that by the end of 1957, roughly speaking, the supply of houses is expected to be equal to the demand is fantastic when we realise that all over London local authorities are closing their housing lists and telling people, "There is no more hope for you." Out of 160,000 applicants the L.C.C. may be able to house 2,000 from their waiting lists in three years. In a small constituency like mine there are 7,000 on the waiting list. The hon. Gentleman was good enough to make clear that when he was speaking of building three-quarters of a million houses he excluded those to be built for slum clearance.
  Mr. Powell: That was because I was talking of a net increase in the total number of houses and necessarily omitted houses built to replace those demolished.
  Mr. Collins: I agree; I thought that that was what the hon. Gentleman must mean, but there is no other building than slum clearance going on in constituencies like mine and, in effect, no building for the 7,000 on the waiting list, unless they happen to be in an area due for clearance.
  This is a very serious thing and, in my view, the most wicked and anti-social piece of legislation introduced by either of the last two Tory Governments. The Minister has thrown the people to the wolves. He has given everything to the landlords and exacted nothing by way of repairs and improvements in return. The greatest crime is not so much the increase of rents—although that is bad enough—but the destruction of security of tenure. If this Government remain in power no one in a privately rented house will be safe. The Minister told us this afternoon that the annual increase of decontrolled houses through natural processes will be at the rate of 125,000 a year, in addition to the 800,000 that it is intended to decontrol under this Measure.
  The Government take power in the Bill progressively to reduce the rateable value level, which means that before very long, if they continue in power, over every home there will hang the threat, "Pay up. Pay to the limit, or get out into the street". The Bill shows how

  1847
  utterly out of touch the Government and hon. Members opposite are with the realities and stark misery of the housing situation in the densely populated areas of London and other big cities. When its full effects are made known to the people I believe that their anger will be such that no Government will find it possible to stand against it.
  I believe that in putting forward some details of my constituency I am putting forward what is typical of a very considerable number. We have 20,000 dwellings, of which 8,000 are flats built by the local authority and housing associations. That leaves 12,000 dwellings which are old houses, without modern conveniences, and none of which has been built this century. The newest is eighty years old. Most of them are ripe for demolition or very soon will be. Yet, out of that 12,000, 2,324—nearly one-fifth—are rated at over £40. If this Measure is enacted they will be decontrolled, so that one out of every five families will be liable to pay an exorbitant rent or be put out on the street.
  Landlords can demand, and many will demand, an impossible rent with the sole object of getting vacant possession. Then they will be able to sell at a high price a big sub-standard house. The main value to them is that these houses are big and they can put a family in every room and charge each family an exorbitant rent. Have the Government considered what will happen in Central London constituencies if the new colonies of exploited tenants are British subjects from overseas? If some of these houses are decontrolled it should be a punishable offence to charge rent for them; people ought to be paid to live in them.
  I know of houses, to be decontrolled under the Bill, which have not been internally decorated for more than thirty years. There is nothing in this Measure to compel the landlord, if he charges only double the gross value, to pay one penny for internal decoration. Surely the Government cannot commit the supreme folly of leaving the figure for rateable value at £40. That would be a gross injustice. I hope that at a later stage we can get that altered to £70 or £75. In my constituency, high rateable values are due to high site values. The condition of the accommodation is a disgrace. I say most
  1848
  earnestly to the Minister that he must look on this as a matter of inequity throughout the country and of special circumstances, so that during the other stages of this Bill exceptions can be made.
  The Parliamentary Secretary himself has admitted that the supply of dwellings in the areas of which I have spoken cannot possibly be adequate under present arrangements in anything like the time that he has mentioned. I say that unless exceptions are made hundreds of thousands of families will be thrown out of their homes and local authorities will be asked to bear the impossible burden of housing them at the very time when the Government—I am not arguing about this—are insisting that they devote all their housing energies to re-housing the people from the slums.
  And we have such slums. Of the 12,000 houses of which I spoke, 6,053—more than 50 per cent.—are rated at less than £18 a year. I ask hon. Members opposite to consider that kind of constituency, where, of 12,000 houses, 6,053 are rated at less than £18 a year. Some of those houses are a hundred years old. They have the lavatory in the yard, rain coming through the roof and they are damp and overcrowded. I say that we cannot put any more burdens on people already suffering those conditions.
  That is what this Bill does. It adds to their burden. In some cases it will even take from them the pitiful thing to which they cling, the security of even living in a hovel such as that.
  Mr. K. Thompson: Surely the hon. Gentleman is not trying to mislead the House. The tenants of these houses will not lose their houses, because houses at £18 a year will not be taken out of control. Secondly, if the houses are in the condition be describes, they will qualify for a certificate of disrepair.
  Mr. Collins: I would ask the hon. Member to look at the White Paper. He will then see that there are 141,000 dwellings in England and Wales, at present let at net rentals of 5s. to £1, which will be decontrolled. There are many other ways in which these houses will be decontrolled, as I have already mentioned. Hon. Members may say that the tenant will be protected from such conditions because he can get a certificate of disrepair. I am not so sure about that.

  1849
  I would remind the House that twice in the Schedules these words appear in relation to a disrepair certificate:
  "Having due regard to the age, character and locality of the dwelling."
  How is this to be interpreted? I ask the Minister tonight to remove apprehensions on this score and consider even using the language and procedure of the 1954 Housing Repairs and Rents Act which was very much better in this respect, left much less onus on the tenant and did not give us this objectionable minimum nine weeks' delay that we have now and during which possibly higher rents can be charged. I ask the Minister to take serious note of the difficulties of the disrepair certificate, particularly when we have such a large number of substandard houses.
  One question which I think is
  important relates to Clause 14, concerning the position of the landlord and tenant of a former requisitioned house. The position now is that where a landlord has accepted the council's invitation to take the house back, together with the existing tenant, the tenant has a statutory tenancy and the statutory rent is laid down in Section 4 of the Requisitioned Houses and Housing (Amendment) Act, 1955. This rent is roughly the annual rate of compensation paid by the local authority plus the statutory repairs deduction, plus the rates. Under Section 4 of that Act the landlord, subject to the discretion of the local authority, could not recover more than the rent previously paid by the tenant to the council and the council was under a duty to make up the difference.
  It is not at all clear what the effect of Clause 14 would be on this arrangement. Will the Minister say whether the notice of increase refers only to rates, or whether it means that the landlord who has taken back a tenant can, in fact, also raise the rent under the provisions of the Bill? If he can, then I say that it is absolutely iniquitous, because I would remind the House that this landlord has had two sweeteners. He has had paid to him two and a half years' compensation rent and, in addition, has received a sum to cover repairs, etc., which may have amounted to anything from £200 to £400. In other words, he may already have received quite as much as the house
  1850
  is worth, and, in the opinion of many of us, more than the house is worth.
  I do not know how much public money has been spent in that way, but I would assess it at about £10 million. Are we to understand that, that public money having been paid, the landlord is to be allowed to put up the rent again under this Bill even though in many cases he has not done the repairs for which he was paid? It would be a scandal if that were the position.
  I will quote two instances taken at random. The first is in respect of house A, a house which has been handed over. Under the council, the old standard all-inclusive rent was £99. The new rent would be £143, which means an additional 16s. 11d. per week. The second is house B, which had the old standard rent of £87 15s. In this case, the new rent would be £103 8s. 4d., which means that the council would have to pay an extra 6s. a week.
  This is a striking example of how much more cheaply the local authority could and did do it and how much lower the rent was than it will be if it is allowed to go up to twice the gross value. The Minister is looking doubtful. If there is any point on which he is not clear, I will willingly give way. I have mentioned two actual cases and I would say that if the Government can find £10 million to throw away on landlords in this way it makes it even more scandalous that they cannot find even another 2s. 6d. a week for the old-age pensioners.
  There is another small point to which I should be grateful to have an answer. The Bill provides that rents fixed as a condition of the making of improvement grants will be subject to increase in the same manner as other rents. This seems a very unfair provision and a misuse of public money when the local authority has made a grant on the assumption that the rent would be at some particular unalterable rate.
  I should also like to ask the Minister to tell us what is meant in the Bill by a "clearance area." It is referred to in Clause 2 (2, c). I think it should be made clear what exactly is meant. Is it the resolution of the council or the making of the order or the confirmation of the order by the Minister which makes

  1851
  it a clearance order? Something might be said for including in that provision any properties which are included in the joint proposals, as slum clearance, for five years confirmed by the Minister in Section 1 of the Housing Repairs and Rents Act, 1954.
  My final point refers to the proposed variation of the powers of the court to make an order for possession without alternative accommodation being provided. At present, the landlord can get such possession only for occupation by himself or his family, except where he purchased after 6th December, 1937. Now it is proposed to make the date 7th November, 1956. It was well known that there were legislative proposals of this kind, and I think it is utterly wrong to have put in the date 7th November when people have had a great deal of opportunity to buy property with the sole idea that in this way they could get the sitting tenants out and use it for their own occupation. I hope that considerable thought will be given to that point.
  The Minister has a reputation for toughness, for conceding the shadow while retaining the substance. I hope that during the passage of the Bill he will lose that reputation and, to that end, I invite him and the Parliamentary Secretary once again to come to East and North-East London to see some of the properties to which I have referred. If they do, I am sure that they will be convinced that the Bill must not be allowed to go on the Statute Book without major modification.
  8.46 p.m.
  Mr. W. R. Rees-Davies: The Bill can be summarised by the Opposition in the following words: it is a wicked, anti-social, iniquitous Bill the purpose of which is to starve the old people and to release a flood of wage claims. I have had the opportunity of listening to the entire debate, and that is a summary of the phrases used. If it were so, I would expect to see, in such a momentous debate, a good many more Members on the Opposition benches than there are.
  Mr. Stan Awbery: What about the Tory benches?
  Mr. Rees-Davies: On the other hand, we have considerable confidence and trust
  1852
  in the Minister and therefore the enthusiasm which one would have expected from hon. Gentlemen opposite is not necessary on this side of the House.
  As I am very limited in respect of time, I turn to my main points. In his lucid and extremely able speech the Parliamentary Secretary stated the issue as between the two parties briefly and accurately, as one would expect of him. The two sides differ on the method to end rent restriction; but what he left out is what may be the differences on our own side on this Bill which he is promoting, and that is the second issue: what is to be the timing of this very important operation? That is the issue to which I wish to turn tonight.
  First, let me say that I am sorry not to have the opportunity to debate a little some of the observations which have been made
  by hon. Members opposite and also, in particular, to develop the merits of what I call the rent part of the Bill. This Bill is a misnomer. It is not a Rent Bill; it is a rent and decontrol Bill. It is primarily a Bill for the amendment of the Rent Restrictions Acts. The second feature is in fact the increase of rent.
  I support all that part of the Bill which deals with the increase of rent, and I think it can be briefly stated thus: that the increase of rent provided for in Clause I will, in almost every case, not mean that the tenant will have to pay more than similar tenants are paying at present for their council houses. In those circumstances I do not see any financial hardship imposed under that Clause.
  What I want to do is, I am afraid, to be perhaps the only person tonight to criticise, and I hope criticise constructively with suggestions, one part of the Bill—Clause 9 (1). I am very much in favour of the progressive decontrol under the Rent Restrictions Acts. I accept entirely both the objectives of getting a fair rent and of decontrolling progressively the houses of this country, but from my experience in this matter, and the sources which I shall be prepared, if need be, to quote and to enlarge upon by further evidence subsequently, I want to draw attention to the position in London.
  There are, altogether, as we know, about 5 million houses which will remain under control, and about 4½ million which will go out of control in any event.

  1853
  Therefore, the problem with which I am dealing is a very small one. The total problem for the country is that altogether three-quarters of a million houses are to be decontrolled or, taking 3·6 as the average number of people per household, there are just over 2 million people involved, including wives and children.
  In London, however, there are approximately 200,000 houses and flats which are at present controlled and which will become decontrolled, if in fact the rateable value to which the Rent Acts apply is reduced from £100 to £40 in the Metropolitan Police district. As between those limits of £40 and £100 there are involved, roughly speaking, 200,000 properties, rather more than half being flats. Let us just look at the position.
  It is a statement of fact which I challenge anyone to disprove, whether he be land agent, estate valuer or anyone else, that the true value of the property if it returns to the open market will be four times the gross value, and the rents which will be commanded in the near future will frequently be two and a half times as great as those paid at present. I have here some actual instances, which are supported by the valuations of independent valuers. And I may say in passing that I have here no axe to grind at all. I am speaking, of course, in relation to London, not to my own constituency, and speaking from actual knowledge of a multiplicity of cases in this matter.
  I take, first, as an example a block of flats in Sloane Avenue. They are one-room flats, with a bathroom, a kitchen and a hall. The occupants living in that type of bachelor flat are professional men and women, their average income being about £750 per annum. These are the facts. The gross value is £58. The rateable value is £42. The rates are approximately £30 per annum. The present rent is £100 a year. I am leaving out of consideration, for the moment, repairs, and am giving the full amount.
  Therefore, for the future, if the rent were controlled under Clause 1, it would be £116 gross, plus £30 for rates, plus about £15 for services—about £160 a year. It is the judgment of those advising me in the matter, and of those who are able members of the Town Planning Institute—land agents and the like—
  1854
  that, in fact, the free value of a flat in this block is £230 to £250 a year. As I say, the present rent is £100 a year. Therefore, in that block of flats, those professional people who are at present paying about £100 to £110 a year will, if the property is freed, have to pay about £230 to £250 per annum, and my view of the matter is that they will not be able to afford that.
  The next point is this. If 750,000 properties are to come on the market at once, will that, in fact, bring down the values sufficiently so that the effect will not be what it would be in today's conditions? The answer to that is, no, because there is a very considerable
  demand. That can be checked—and this is what the valuation officers in the Inland Revenue do not know and what the open estate agents and others do know; and it is why I think that on this matter the Government have not had the best advice.
  There is an enormous demand from the Midlands and the North by businessmen, mainly company directors and others, for a pied-à-terre in London. They are able to do that on expense accounts, as company directors. I know of three cases in the last fortnight in which rents of £7 to £7 10s. a week have been cheerfully paid by these directors for furnished accommodation in this particular block of flats, and they would be quite willing to pay £250 for an unfurnished flat there, with a deterrent effect upon the professional men.
  As I say, I regret casting a note of discord in this matter. I cannot, because I have not the time, develop my remarks on the features which I find so admirable in this Bill, as to 90 per cent. of which I am entirely behind the Minister. I believe that this is a courageous Bill.
  Let me now give my second example of some large flats in Kensington. At the present time the rent of a flat of six rooms is £230 per annum. The gross value is £110, the rateable value £86 and the rates £65. If that were governed under Clause 1, we should get a rent of £220, plus £65 for rates and £40 for services, which would be £325. That is to say, there would be an increase of £95 to the tenant if Clause I were applied. The free value of that flat at the moment is £500 per annum, which can easily be obtained. That is to say, it is two and

  1855
  a quarter times the amount paid at the moment.
  May I take a third example before I conclude, and this relates to a flat in the country in my own constituency, at Broadstairs, where the same problem does not arise? There the identical-sized flat has a gross value of £80 and a net value of £55, with rates of £50. If that were governed under Clause 1, there would be a rent of £160 plus £50 for rates, which is £210, plus £20 for services, which is £230. The rent which was last demanded was £160.
  It is clear that at the present time in the country, although there would be an increase of rentals between £40 and £100, or between 50 per cent. and 70 per cent., by the application of Clause 1 and the elimination of Clause 9 (1), we should produce a rental which, although low, would not be altogether unfair throughout the country. Probably two and a half to three times the gross rateable value is a fair estimate of what is the true economic value throughout the country at the present time.
  That, however, does not apply in central London or in certain of the suburban parts of London. Hence we get the real difficulty, not, as has been suggested, in the Labour constituencies, but in such places as Hendon, where this difficult problem arises. I suggest that the most admirable feature of this Bill is Clause 9 (3), despite what was said by the hon. Member for Huddersfield, West (Mr. Wade), whose views on this kind of subject I respect and usually share. In this case it is not a question of using the principle of Statutory Rules and Orders of this House. We have an operation which is an evolutionary process. The actual law which we are passing at the moment is one in which the Minister is carrying out a gradual process. He is seeking to bring about the progressive abolition of rent control by stages.
  The second important issue, therefore, which I draw to the attention of the Minister is the timing of that operation. At the present time taxation is extremely high on those with an income of about £1,500 a year. Those are the people who are going to suffer here. In the County of London—I would stress this—this is a speculators' paradise which will attack the living standards of the middle class.
  1856
  It may be that it is so in some other big cities—I do not know; I have no evidence—but it will certainly be so here. I believe that the young chartered accountants, barristers, people working in the banks and others who have to work in and near the City and who receive from £1,200 to £1,500 a year will not be able to pay the rents which will be demanded of them, amounting to as much as £500 a year or more.
  In conclusion, therefore—I will finish now so that the hon. Member for Welling-borough (Mr. Lindgren) can rise—I suggest that Clause 9 (1) should be excluded, but only in this sense, that it should be excluded so that Clause 9 (3) can be operated by the Minister whenever he chooses; and that in the operation of Clause 9 (3), that is to say, in the operation of the limits of decontrol, we should decontrol throughout the country, but, for the present, we should be very careful of decontrolling property in the Metropolitan Police district, if at all, because if one starts one may have accentuated the problem by taking out too little, and it may be that when one wants to operate decontrol one may want to take it even further than the £40 limit which is provided.
  I do invite my right hon. Friend the Minister to treat the matter with the greatest care. I believe that the Bill which he has introduced is an admirable and courageous one in very many respects, but it would be unfortunate if the commercial men were enabled to muscle in on the extreme shortage of accommodation in the West End, Chelsea, Batter-sea and other parts of London, to the real detriment of the extremely hard-working professional man.
  As I have said, I am sorry to strike a somewhat discordant note and not expatiate on all the points of which I approve, but I am limited in what I have to say solely by a shortage of time. If I may help my right hon. Friend by giving him evidence about this matter, which I have available in abundance, supported by surveyors of repute, I should be only too glad to do so.
  9.1 p.m.
  Mr. G. Lindgren: This has been a rather unusual debate, unusual because it was opened by the Parliamentary Secretary who, as no one on either side of the House would deny, is a

  1857
  man of very considerable ability. The hon. Gentleman is usually at ease at the Dispatch Box, and he was equally at ease when he was on the back benches. He earned his promotion by the facility of his speech and manner of explanation when he sat on the second bench. But if I may say so, with the greatest respect, I am sure that the Parliamentry Secretary was not satisfied even with himself today. We sympathise with him because he was ill at ease in putting before the House a Measure which no person can really have at heart if he is at all disinterested.
  Throughout this debate, there has been a sense of uneasiness among hon. Members opposite, until we came to the speech of the hon. Gentleman the Member for the Isle of Thanet (Mr. Rees-Davies) who was less ill at ease because he was criticising the Bill from the standpoint of a section of the community with which he is in contact and which he knows. Today—at least, this is the impression left on me—hon. Gentlemen opposite have just not had a clue as to what happens in the homes of these people about whom they are talking.
  One or two hon. Gentlemen opposite have declared an interest, quite rightly, because they are associated with property companies or associations. Will the Minister declare an interest on behalf of the Government? This Measure is a payout to the landlords in response to contributions from property owners' associations and large landowners to Tory Party funds.
  Sometimes I envy my more academic colleagues because they can, from their wider vocabulary, find words which somehow seem to keep within the rules of order, whereas I, if I said the same thing in my language, would be out of order.
  Mr. E. C. Redhead: My hon. Friend would still be correct.
  Mr. Lindgren: Yes, I should still be correct. It is rather questionable, if no more, that we should have here a piece of legislation, which will put millions of pounds into the pockets of one small section of the community, introduced in response to contributions to party funds. If that were done by the ordinary hon. Member of the House, it would be a case
  1858
  for the Committee of Privileges and he would soon be outside the House. Yet a Government can do it almost with impunity.
  Do not let us hide any facts or be mealy-mouthed about this. The purpose of the Bill is to take money out of the pockets of the tenants and to put it into the pockets of the landlords. That being so, the Bill
  is lowering the standard of a section of
  the community. The hon. Member for the Isle of Thanet said that the Bill lowered the standard of professional and technical people very seriously. I make no bones about it; I am much more concerned about the 4 million people in the lower income groups than about the professional and technical people. After all, 80 per cent. of the latter are responsible for the Government being in office. They asked for it and now they have got it. The Bill lowers the standard of life of the people.
  Let us see what the Government say is the purpose of the Bill, as opposed to what I say is its purpose. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) referred to the Minister's speech at the Tory Party Conference. On that occasion the Minister spoke of "fearful unfairness". He said that it was unfair that private tenants should have their rents frozen while council house tenants enjoyed no such security
  It is surprising to see this tenderness on the part of the Tory Government towards council house tenants. To make this new increase of rent possible they set about increasing the rents of council house tenants. The Government have never been anxious about substantiating their statements with the facts. Let us consider the facts. When discussing the recent Housing Subsidies Act, the Minister spoke about an increase of 9d. a week in rents. Yet hon. Members on both sides of the House know that council house rents in their constituencies have risen by anything up to £1 a week directly as a result of the Government's actions.
  Having put up those rents by £1 a week, the Government now say that it is unfair that the council house tenant should have his rent increased while the private landlord is unable to put up the rents of his houses. The Minister went on to tell the Tory Party Conference that it was unfair to the nation as a whole that a substantial proportion of the

  1859
  precious stock of houses should be left to degenerate into slums.
  I intend to deal with those two points. First, there is the question of it being unfair to the council house tenant. Let me say straight away that the vast majority of tenants, whether under a private landlord or under a local authority, have no objection at all to paying a reasonable rent for a reasonable standard of accommodation and reasonable facilities to go with that accommodation. What they object to is being robbed by high rents for a low standard of accommodation.
  Let us look at the council house tenant. He has a reasonable standard of accommodation, and no more than a reasonable standard; he has water provided, sanitation, a bathroom and a reasonable standard of density in the area in which the houses are sited. Let us now look at the houses owned by private landlords. We are talking now about 7¼ million houses which are privately rented. Of these 2¼ million are over a hundred years old; 1¾ million are over seventy years old; 750,000 of them are over sixty-five years old. We come to the houses which are to have their rents increased by the Bill. I grant to the Government that 1 million slum houses are not to have their rents increased.
  The 4 million houses we are talking about, whose rents are to be increased, are houses which were built before the Public Health Act, 1875, built before there were any rules and regulations and restrictions about standards of building construction, density of building, or anything else. There are 5 million houses which have no bathroom; 3 million which have no water closet, or in which the water closet is shared; 2 million which have no kitchen sink; and 1 million which have no kitchen stove.
  All these houses, with the exception of the 1 million which have already been declared slums, are to have their rents doubled for no additional amenity whatever. What justification is there for doubling the rents of accommodation of that type? The landlords have for a long time proved that they have no intention of improving it.
  It is suggested by the Government, and their supporters that rent control is the cause of property falling into disrepair.
  1860
  That is sheer nonsense. The landlord is concerned with his profit. He is concerned with what he gets out of his property, not what he puts into it. Landlords, in the main, have never been concerned with repairs to their property. Ever since the Torrens Act, the Artizans and Labourers Dwellings Act, 1868, we have had legislation to try to make landlords maintain their properties at a good standard. Was it rent control which caused the Government of the day, in 1868, to make the legislation to make landlords keep their properties in good repair? Of course it was not.
  Ever since that time Governments of various parties—I will give credit to right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite and say successive Tory Governments and Liberal Governments—have passed successive pieces of legislation in attempts to try to make property owners accept the responsibility for maintaining their property at a reasonable standard. They have all failed. The Government have even placed the responsibility upon the local authorities, and the local authorities, through their sanitary inspectors and medical officers, have had to try to do it.
  It is not merely coincidence that the only two categories of local authority officers who are protected from getting the sack by local authorities have been the categories, medical officer of health and sanitary inspector. The reason for that is this. Landlords were on local authorities, and as soon as the sanitary inspectors or medical officers of health started to do their job of getting the landlords to put their properties into repair the local authorities would sack them. So even Tory and Liberal Governments had to seek to protect those local authority officers.
  What reason is there to suppose that landlords today are any different from the landlords of those days? I know, and admit right away, that there are persons who own one or two houses, the one in which they live and some other. Most of the houses owned by such people are in the small rural and urban areas. Their owners try to maintain their property at a reasonable standard. The vast majority of these houses we are talking about, however, are in large towns, London, Birmingham, Manchester, and the rest.
  Large investment trusts buy up the properties and try to get out of them as

  1861
  much as they can as quickly as they can.
  The properties are administered by
  estate agents, and the tenants just do not stand any chance whatever. An hon. Member opposite is muttering. Lawyers are not exempt from these strictures, particularly some solicitors who sometimes aid and abet landlords in getting more out of their property than what they are entitled to.
  Although he mentioned that we had rent control in the two wars, the Parliamentary Secretary did not say why we had to have it in 1915 and 1939. The reason why a Liberal Government had to impose it in 1915, and a Tory Government in 1939, was that the landlords could not be trusted not to exploit the wife and family of the soldier when he was away fighting for his country and, incidentally, for the landlord's property. If one could not trust the landlord in those circumstances, is there any more reason to trust him to be more reasonable in peacetime? 1, at least, do not think so.
  We also had, in 1920, an Act to control rents—the Increase of Rent and Mortgage Interest (Restrictions) Act. Although the landlords of that
  time were given a 40 per cent. increase—15 per cent. for their investment and the remaining 25 per cent. towards the cost of repairs because materials and labour were at a high price then—the vast majority of them just pocketed the whole of that 40 per cent., and they have done nothing at all to the property. The property has been maintained only because the tenant, having to live there, and trying to make the best of it for his wife and family, has spent his own money in improving at least the internal condition of the property.
  I agree that where tenants have not done that, the property has deteriorated even further. One can find examples everywhere of a street in a town where two or three houses are complete slums and the remainder are of a more reasonable standard, because those tenants have been responsible for maintaining the properties internally for the sake of their own health and comfort. But for the whole time the landlord has been taking the money.
  He has taken the money during a peirod when the cost of labour and materials was falling all the time. There
  1862
  was no difficulty about obtaining materials and labour during the inter-war period. Painters and plasterers were walking the streets of London. Materials were cheap, and if the landlord could not get the job done officially by a builder he could always have it done by a workman who was only too glad to get a job.
  There has been decontrol under both the Rent and Mortgage Interest Restrictions Act, 1923, and the amending Act of 1933. Under those Acts, 3½ million houses of all types came out of control. They included property of a rateable value over £45 in London and £35 in the provinces, but there is no evidence anywhere to show that those houses which came out of control were better maintained by the landlord than those which still remained under control. Because of the shortage of accommodation., the landlord has secured his high rents and has put as little as possible into the property in return.
  Not one hon. Gentleman who has spoken from the opposite side of the House has said that there is any guarantee that any of the money coming in will be used for repairs. Indeed, the hon. Gentleman the Member for Aldershot (Sir E. Errington) was frank enough to say that if we wanted a higher standard of repair to be maintained this increase was not sufficient.
  Sir E. Errington: May I point out to the hon. Gentleman that I was speaking only of the smaller landlords?
  Mr. Lindgren: The smaller the house, the less it will cost to maintain. I agree; that there is not quite so much profit likely to be made out of that property as out of the property to which the hon. Gentleman the Member for the Isle of Thanet referred. The Parliamentary Secretary was very coy. No one would have thought from his speech that we had the Housing Repairs and Rents Act of 1954, because he ignored it completely
  Mr. A. Evans: The Suez affair has made them forget it.
  Mr. Lindgren: I do not think that even the Suez crisis has caused either the hon. Gentleman or his right hon. Friend to forget that Act. That great "Operation Rescue," on which we spent so much Parliamentary time both in the House and in Committee upstairs, where is it

  1863
  now? [An HON. MEMBER: "Sunk in the Canal."] If that Act had done its job, why is this Bill necessary? [An HON. MEMBER: "Operation salvation."] The Parliamentary Secretary ignored that Act because he did not want to admit that it had been a complete failure.
  Perhaps I ought not to say "complete" because I have to declare an interest. Unfortunately, under that Act, my rent was increased by £20 a year. [An HON. MEMBER: "Hear, hear."] An hon. Gentleman opposite says, "Hear, hear." That meant a reduction in my standard of life, but the hon. Gentleman did not say "Hear, hear," when we wanted more money to help us to pay that £20.
  Under the 1954 Act the increase of rent was applied to repairs. Having mentioned my own case, may I say that I had no cause for complaint because the repairs were
  carried out by the landlord. But in the majority of cases the landlord is concerned only with rent, not with repairs, and because the repairs were required before he received more rent he did not increase the rent. [An HON. MEMBER: "Sometimes he did."] Yes, he increased the rent sometimes when he was entitled to it. I do not object to that. No tenant will object to it if the standard of accommodation is there. If there is reasonable maintenance of the standard, no tenant minds paying for it, but nowhere, at any time, has there been any guarantee that this work would really be done.
  Of course, there is a considerable difference between 1954 and now. Then, it is true, right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite were also in office, but they had a very small Parliamentary majority. They were much more worried about pairs then than they are now.
  Mr. Hay: We were concerned about repairs.
  Mr. Evans: They were concerned about pairs because a small Parliamentary majority kept them here. They never knew when they were likely to go to the country—
  Mr. Arthur Skeffington: They do not know now.
  Mr. Lindgren: When the Minister made his speech at Llandudno he did
  1864
  not realise that his other right hon. Friend was likely to make a mess of foreign affairs and put him in the cart with this Bill. This is the deceit that the Tory Party practises on the electors,
  In 1954, because they had a small Parliamentary majority, were likely to go to the country and, naturally, did not want to lose the General Election, the Government said "We must put a piece of legislation through as window-dressing. When we have got our majority, we will, early in the new Session, put through some legislation which will really give the landlords something. We will then hope that the electors will have forgotten it when the next General Election comes along, in three or four years' time." That is true. If it is not true, why did not the Tory Party say at the General Election that the Housing Repairs and Rents Act would not be sufficient from the point of view of the landlords and that they would again increase rents?
  I want to give, a little more evidence that landlords are not likely to improve their properties. Ever since 1920 it has been possible for landlords of the properties about which we are speaking to improve them and to increase their facilities in respect of bathrooms, sanitation, kitchen sinks, and so on, and charge increased rents based upon a reasonable percentage of the money spent upon the properties. However, the landlords just have not done that. I have already quoted the figures for sub-standard houses.
  The Labour Government said, "These landlords have never done anything. The Government, in 1920, helped them to obtain an increase in rent and allowed them to charge for repairs on the basis of a certain percentage. We will now give them 50 per cent. of the cost of improvements." Some of my hon. Friends, if not some of my right hon. Friends, thought that the Labour Government were being too generous to the landlords in 1949 by offering to provide half the cost of the improvements to their properties. Nevertheless, we gave the landlords the advantage of having half the cost of the improvements, up to a maximum of £400, met by the Government, and of being able to charge 8 per cent. upon the money spent upon the improvements.

  1865
  Did the landlords respond to that? Well, there are 7 million substandard houses, and the number of grants made under the 1949 Act and subsequent Acts is 70,000. Also, the great majority of the 70,000 grants have been to owner-occupiers who purchased houses and then wished to bring them up to standard. Advantage of the provision was taken by a number of country estates which improved the houses occupied by agricultural and other workers, but ordinary landlords took no advantage of the provision. The Parliamentary Secretary interjected earlier that the purpose of the 1954 Act was to encourage landlords to carry out improvements.
  Mr. Gower: Would the hon. Gentleman agree that some local authorities were, perhaps, rather slow in appreciating all the facilities for approving advances afforded by the Measure to which he has referred?
  Mr. Lindgren: Some local authorities may have been a little slow in approving advances, but successive Governments have tried to induce them to make grants. It is true that some local authorities thought the provisions were a little generous to landlords, but, generally, landlords have not taken advantage of them.
  The Parliamentary Secretary referred to supply and demand. I would ask the Minister either to confirm or correct the impression given to the House by his hon. Friend that our housing problem is finished and that by the end of 1957 supply will have met demand and everything in the garden will be lovely.
  Reference has been made to London. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kettering referred to the 160,000 on the London waiting list, but the same applies to the rest of the country. Local authorities in my constituency have been no more backward than elsewhere; housing lists are there, with hundreds of applicants. What is worse, because of the action of the Government, local authorities are not now continuing with housing for general needs. People on the waiting lists just do not stand a chance of being housed within the next ten years, let alone in 1957. Nevertheless, the Parliamentary Secretary talks about the Bill helping tenants because it would make accommodation available.
  1866
  It has been stated that there is some under-occupation. Of course there is. What right hon. or hon. Gentleman on the Government benches has a house which is not under-occupied? Have they not a spare room? A large number of Government supporters have both a flat in London and a country house. It is only the worker who has to be huddled up. Is not the worker entitled to a spare room? If his family gets married—if he has a family—and he has a three-bedroomed house, is he not entitled to keep the three bedrooms, so that if a son or daughter wants to visit him for the week-end, with ma and pa, he or she can come? Even better, when grandchildren come along they can spend a week-end, or even a week, with grandma and grandpa.
  Why do Government supporters say that it is only we, the working class, who ought to be huddled together? That is what they are saying. Of course there is under-occupation. There is under-occupation in every section of the community. I hope that we shall never go back to the days of my boyhood when we were huddled together five or six in one room, father, mother and children aged 12, 13, and even 14, all sleeping in one room.
  The Parliamentary Secretary said that the Bill would release accommodation. People in the big houses would give then) up and go into smaller houses. May I ask whether the occupier of the smaller one is likely to give it up and go into a big house, the rent of which has been put up? He is not.
  I can tell Government supporters what this means. What is coming is what they want. They are going back to the days when, for the working class, it was "doubling up". We have to accept all the overcrowding. We know what it is to be one of five or six families in a tenement house, each family having one or two rooms. But Government supporters are not concerned about that son of thing. Landlords have paid money to the party funds and it is the landlords who are concerned with the Bill.
  The hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Hay) smiles. Let me remind him that when I was at the Ministry of Local Government and Planning, with my right hon.

  1867
  Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Dalton), the Property Owners' Association was almost daily on our doorstep to ask us when we intended to do something for it. We said that we were much more concerned with the 8 million tenants than we were with the landlords. The Tory Government has now told the Association that they are more concerned with the landlords than with the tenants.
  I make a final plea to the Minister, in a most serious way. The country is in a difficult economic position. This point follows upon the one made by the hon. Member for Harrogate (Mr. Ramsden). I am not arguing now whether the Suez policy was right or wrong, but the economic consequences of the Suez policy will make matters much more difficult for the country. Some of us are trade unionists and some have responsibilities inside the trade union movement. I am a national officer of my trade union and am proud of it.
  The Chancellor of the Exchequer has been lecturing us in the trade union movement. He even offered to come to the Trades Union Congress, at Brighton. He has been asking us not to make applications for wage increases. We in the trade union movement realise that the spiral of wages and prices is such that trade unionists ultimately do not gain. We were prepared to do something if the Chancellor would play his part in keeping prices stable. He talked about his "plateau" of prices.
  I will make an even more personal point. My trade union has not gone forward with a wage claim, although there has been very heavy pressure from the membership to do so. I put it to the Minister, quite bluntly, that for those of us who have been asking the trade unions to exercise restraint he is cutting the ground right from under our feet. Some of the members I represent, and who accept the Tory idea of a property-owning democracy, have had their repayments increased by £1 a week as a result of the increased interest charges on their mortgages. Those in council houses have had their rents increased up to £1 a week. Under this Bill, those rents are to go up by about 15s. a week and 800,000 are to be decontrolled. Goodness knows what will happen to them.
  1868
  I say to the right hon. Gentleman that he has come to the limit and that if he puts these burdens on our members he can no longer expect those of us who are associated with the trade union movement to accept that reduction in their standard of living. He and the Government will have to face the fact that these payments to landlords will not only come from grants to be paid by the National Assistance Board for those no longer in employment, but in increased wages to those who are in employment and are represented in the trade union movement.
  9.37 p.m.
  Sir Ian Horobin: I cannot think that the speech of the hon. Member for Welling-borough (Mr. Lindgren) will increase his reputation. I do not intend to waste the last few minutes in this debate by referring to his speech but to some of the important matters dealt with by the hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) and other hon. Members. [Interruption.] I think I can claim that I have spent all my life in a working-class district, and I want to treat this matter much more seriously than this knock-about turn of the hon. Member's party.
  The housing record of this Government is, after all, not too bad, and it entitles them to a hearing in this matter. It does not lie with hon. Members opposite to criticise them, even those who speak with much more care than the hon. Member for Welling-borough. After all, we built nearly twice the number of houses that were built by hon. Members opposite. We are doing about four times as much in improvements. For the first time since the war we have started on slum clearance, and are already doing more in a year than they did in all their time in office.
  Paradoxical as it may sound, it is rather important to get back to what this Bill is really about. Strictly speaking, the point which seriously divides the House and which requires serious discussion, and on which the country must make up its mind, is not a rent problem at all. What we are discussing is not whether rents should be decontrolled, for that is agreed. It is true that hon. Members opposite want to decontrol faster than we do, but it is agreed on both sides of the House that rent control must come to an end.

  1869
  We are not discussing whether rents should go up. All serious hon. Members and all speeches in the debate—I am not referring to the last one—on both sides of the House have agreed that rents must go up. There is no dispute on that. It is extremely doubtful whether the level of rents at the end of the day will be very different whether our proposals or those of hon. Members opposite are adopted. It is equally true, although I am not quite so categorical about it, that the question of security of tenure is not really very much at issue between serious hon. Members on both sides of the House. There is less security of tenure in our proposals over part of the fields—
  Several Hon. Members Several Hon. Members rose—
  Sir I. Horobin: I have little time and I am not being provocative.
  On the other hand, serious hon. Members have argued from the Socialist point of view that good local authority housing management to some extent and by some method implies a greater melting of the present over-rigidity in the occupation of houses. That is not really what is in dispute between us. What we are really discussing tonight, and what we have to settle, is not whether rent should go up but who is to own the houses which are to let.
  Hon. Members opposite have a perfectly arguable case. Frankly, I think that in part of the field it is a stronger case than is sometimes recognised on these benches. What they in effect say, when they are being serious, is: "It is vital to get rid of control, vital to put up rents, but you cannot fairly do that without grave risk of injustice unless we own the houses". That is a perfectly arguable proposition, if put honestly and frankly in that way. Why is it that we on these benches are making, as was very rightly stated, a second desperate effort since we came here in 1951 not to take that line of action?
  We have two general objections to anything which would involve, as a means of getting rid of rent control, all rentable houses being owned by local authorities. We have some practical objections. First, we feel that it would grossly overburden the local authorities. We want them in the next few years to
  1870
  concentrate on slum clearance and reconditioning, without having to take over millions of houses which we feel would hopelessly overclog the local authority machine.
  Secondly, in spite of some of the fantastic financial arguments which I do not think that the hon. Member for Aston (Mr. J. Silverman) on consideration would wish to pursue, we feel that the financial implications of paying anything like fair compensation in respect of millions of houses would be quite intolerable, particularly at a time when we are still struggling with inflation. Those are two practical objections. We also have social objections.
  We have social objection to there being only one landlord over a huge area of some of our great towns. We think that bad in itself. I, for instance, know well—and other hon. Members probably know—what we might call the Becontree mentality. [Interruption.] I am not asking hon. Members opposite to agree. I tried to put their case fairly and now I am putting ours—why we on these benches will not accept that there is no alternative to the proposal for all rented houses to be owned by local authorities. We think that that would be building up a thoroughly bad society which would be in danger of becoming a totalitarian society. We feel that it is thoroughly bad that in large industrial areas people should grow up in street after street looking to the town hall for everything from the time they are born to the time they die.
  We take that view, and that is why we are introducing this Bill. It is fair enough for hon. Members opposite to ask us: is it practicable to reconstruct the old landlord-tenant relationship? Can it be done? Even if we desired to do it, is it possible? [An HON. MEMBER: "Heaven forbid."] It is not a question should heaven forbid it; but can we forbid it? That is not quite the same thing. I tell hon. Members at once that over part of the field I very much doubt whether it can be done.
  For forty years we have made in this country the position even of the good landlord of the smaller and poorer type of houses impossible. Even where he wanted to keep them in decent repair he could not do so. We may for a moment admit that some of them may not have

  1871
  tried. But it is just not true—hon. Members on this side of the House will bear me out and I shall be surprised if some hon. Members opposite do not—that every landlord becomes a curious creature with no virtues, who is at the same time such a good businessman that he wants to make a profit and such a bad businessman that he puts off all repairs until they cost five times as much, and his house falls down. That is a fantasy and bears no relation to the true position.
  Over a small part of the field—what I might call the near-slum—I frankly admit that something in the nature of what Birmingham set out to do and what the Government have done their best to foster in Sections of the 1954 Act will have to be done. I frankly do not believe that any increase of rents under this Bill could possibly meet the kind of house referred to by the hon. Member for Aston, I think it was, where about £200 has got to be spent on each house. In the majority of those cases such houses will have been under old control, and, therefore, it is fair to point out that for forty years the landlord will not have had the money with which to keep them up. It is no good jobbing backwards on that.
  I admit at once, and I think the Minister will admit it, that those sort of houses cannot be rescued in this kind of way. Local authorities will have to take them over. [HON. MEMBERS: "Ah."] They are taking them over. We cannot claim that that kind
  of bad property will be rescued by a Bill of this sort, but such property is not representative. It is ridiculous to pretend that such houses are representative of all the millions of working-class houses. That just is not true. A great number of these houses will easily be kept in decent repair if rents anything like the present value of money are allowed to be paid, as they will be paid under the Bill.
  I want at this stage to put one very important point. I do not want to go into it in detail tonight because that can be done during the Committee stage. I beg the Minister not to make the mistake made in the relevant Sections of the 1954 Act of cutting this thing too fine. We simply come to the psychology of the ordinary human individual. If he is given a chance to keep his house in decent order, the normal businessman will try
  1872
  to do that, but if whatever he is allowed is going to be clearly insufficient to prevent the house from falling gradually into a slum, he will not spend a penny on it. He will put the money into his pocket, which is what anybody would do. That is what will happen in respect of a great many of these houses where £30 or £40—certainly £20 or £30—has got to be spent because in recent years it has been impossible to find the money out of the controlled rent.
  If we take 10s. as the average increase, the landlord is only going to get £26 in the course of a year and only £13 in six months. If, therefore, he is met with a list of things which no doubt ought to be done and which may cost two or three times that amount, and if he has not done that at the end of the six months of the increased rent and has got to refund the increase, the result will be that he will not do any of that work. Therefore, the Minister must make sure that the landlord cannot be called upon to do more than the repairs which can be paid for by the increase in rent which he has received
  I do not think that any hon. Member on either side of the House would wish a landlord of a house on which work ought to be done to be able to have an increase in rent unless he does an equivalent amount in work. But we must face the fact that these landlords have no more money left. There is nothing in the kitty. They have got to have this money first—
  Mr. Arthur Lewis: Ask the hon. Member for Wimbledon (Mr. Black).
  Sir I. Horobin: They have to have the money first if they are to spend it. I do not need to ask anybody. I have dealt with these houses all my life. I live among them, as the hon. Member knows perfectly well.
  The sort of people who have these reasonable, decent houses in working-class areas round about London cannot spend £30, £40 or £50 out of their own pockets. They have to have it first. If it can be lent to them by some procedure, well and good, but the normal thing is that it should come out of the rent. We should be sure that any demand made under the certificate procedure does not call upon them to do more than the

  1873
  amount that they get out of the increased rent, because if that happens they will not in fact do anything at all.
  Before leaving that general point, I insist that the normal landlord-tenant relationship is nothing like as bad as has been made out. There are thoroughly bad slum landlords, but my principal objection to the Rent Restrictions Acts is that they have been a great apparatus for ensuring that nobody who is not a bad landlord owns this kind of house if he can help it. There must be something thoroughly wrong with a social structure which makes it a good proposition to make television sets and an excellent proposition to spend years and years improving motor cars until we have got the Rolls Royce, when the one thing that no businessman will do if he can help it is either to build or own houses for rent. That situation has been produced by the Rent Restrictions Acts.
  What we are setting out to do in the Bill, and I believe that we shall do it increasingly, is to make it possible once again for the ordinary decent investor to hold houses for letting. It used not to be the investor of large sums of money. The joke in my constituency is that everybody in the town owns his own house and the house next door.
  Working-class houses always have been a favourite form of investment for a person owning two or three of them. We want to make it possible for those sort of people to keep these houses in decent condition, for themselves and their neighbours. Equally, where there are good companies which own houses of this kind, we want to make it possible for them to raise capital in the ordinary way on the market and to spend it in the ordinary way on keeping these houses in decent condition. We shall never do that so long as we have the Rent Restrictions Acts.
  Both sides of the House have come to that conclusion. The only thing we differ upon is whether we can do it as fast as hon. Members opposite think, or whether we have to go more slowly. We are determined to ensure that the private landlord should not be in a position to exploit houses which he, for one reason or another, is not able or willing to spend money on to put them in good repair.
  I want to make a few passing remarks on two criticisms that have been made
  1874
  and to comment on a point which nobody has criticised, and which I think is very interesting. Nobody has even referred critically to the very important decisions of the Government to rest their rent increases on the rateable value. I am speaking only of England and Wales. It is an extremely strong point in favour of the Bill that, by avoiding anything in the nature of a percentage increase and concentrating on the rateable value basis, we have found a much more reasonable way of gradually lessening the control than by any alternative.
  It has been suggested that the limit on rents under the Bill will be too high. The answer to that, in my submission, is simply this: that at the very highest I do not believe there can be many of the houses concerned where all that money will not be needed for a substantial time to be spent on the houses, and anything less than that would not prevent those houses falling into decay.
  It is of no use at all putting on an increase of just a few shillings a week because, even if it is all spent on the house, when it has been spent we still have a wasting asset. From the national point of view that is a complete waste of money. Even supposing, for the sake of argument, that we let the Opposition have its way and that the money, in some extraordinary way, was taken from the tenant and spent by the local authority on the house—so that every penny was spent on the house—it would still be a gross waste of money if we merely spent a few extra shillings a week on repairs which were not sufficient to prevent the house falling into decay. I think that that is the fundamental argument in favour of an increase of at least the kind which we are providing.
  We have heard some complicated calculations suggesting that this is a huge subsidy to landlords. Of course, that is putting the matter the wrong way round completely. For years there has been a concealed subsidy of tenants by landlords. What we are now doing is simply a tardy act of semi-justice, and all the calculations which have been put forward merely show the extent to which a quite unreasonable and unfair burden has been put on one section of society to provide accommodation for another.
  It is proved beyond all doubt that if we go on as we are, millions of houses

  1875
  will simply fall down. There is no solution of the housing problem at all in simply building one house at one end of the street and watching two houses falling down at the other. The present position is completely intolerable and must be brought to an end. That is the answer, if I may say so, to the adjective used by the hon. and learned Member for Kettering who spoke of this Bill being "untimely". So far from being untimely, this Measure is years overdue.
  The present position cannot be allowed to continue. If we are not prepared to see a situation arising in the main industrial towns in which there is only one landlord and, therefore, a landlord with complete monopoly control over the livelihood of the citizens, we are forced to something like this Measure. More money must be found to be spent on these houses, otherwise they will just fall down. Some means must be found of abolishing the absurd position, which we know perfectly well happens over and over again, in which landlords are having to pay these huge subsidies to tenants who are earning more money than they, and who sometimes, in their turn, are sub-letting.
  Millions of our houses are going to remain for letting. It is impossible to envisage a position in which everybody can be an owner-occupier. I am all in
  1876
  favour of owner-occupiers, and think that they should be helped in every possible way—[Interruption]. Incidentally, that is one of the reasons why I want to see council houses sold. It is, however, quite unrealistic to suppose that more than a proportion, even though a substantial proportion, of the people in this country can be owner-occupiers. Millions of people will continue to do what they have always done—live in houses belonging to someone else.
  To whomever the houses belong it is, in the public interest, essential that sufficient money should be available to preserve the asset. What the country has to decide, and what this House will be deciding when it votes tomorrow night has, as I say, nothing at all to do with rents, security of tenure or anything else, but with who is to own the houses which will be available for letting to working people. Hon. Members opposite have argued the case that they should all belong to the local authorities. We, on this side, are not prepared to accept that. Therefore, we have brought in this Bill which will, we believe, ensure that the private owners of houses available for letting shall have sufficient money to prevent them falling down.
  Debate adjourned.—[Mr. E. Wakefield.]
  Debate to be resumed Tomorrow.

FLOUR (COMPOSITION)
10.0 p.m.
Mr. G. R. Mitchison: I beg to move,
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Flour (Revocation) Order, 1956 (S.I., 1956, No. 1182), dated 31st July, 1956, a copy of which was laid before this House on 2nd August, in the last Session of Parliament, be annulled.
Would it be convenient, Mr. Speaker, if reference were made at the same time to the next Motion on the Order Paper:
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Flour (Composition) Regulations, 1956 (S.I., 1956, No. 1183), dated 31st July, 1956, a copy of which was laid before this House on 2nd August, in the last Session of Parliament, be annulled?
Mr. Speaker: If it is agreeable to the Government, I think that the first two Prayers could well go together. They could both be discussed on the first one. I think that the third Prayer, relating to sugar, is entirely different, but we could take the first two together.
The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Harmar Nicholls): I agree with your suggestion that the first two Prayers should be taken together, Mr. Speaker, and that the third one should be taken completely separately.
Mr. Mitchison: If that is in accordance with your Ruling, Mr. Speaker, I beg to move, also—
Mr. Speaker: Order. It is not necessary to do that. If the hon. and learned Member has moved the first Prayer, on that Motion he can discuss the second one, and I shall put the second one formally, if necessary, later. We can have only one Motion at a time.
Mr. Mitchison: I have moved it formally, Mr. Speaker.
10.1 p.m.
Dr. Barnett Stross: I beg to second the Motion.
I think that everyone is aware that our first Motion is quite simple in that it asks only for the revocation of the 1953 Flour Order. By the Flour (Composition) Regulations, however, which are the subject of our second Motion, we are creating
1878
certain changes in a very important food, and in bringing that about we on this side; of the House—and, I believe, quite a number of hon. Members on the other side as well—have certain hesitancies and fears about the outcome.
The background of this matter is, J think, well understood by everyone. Sir Jack Drummond, who was the Chief Adviser to the Ministry of Food, in 1942., was responsible at that time for raising the extraction rate to protect the public health of the people and to save us from the dilemma with which we were faced as a result of the shortage of shipping space.
In mentioning Sir Jack Drummond's name, may I say that we who knew him and admired his work so much have never ceased to deplore his tragic and untimely death, and that of his wife and child, while on holiday in France. He was a very great man, a very great expert on nutrition, and I am proud to acknowledge myself, very humbly indeed, as a pupil who learned a great deal from him.
Our case against the Minister falls into three parts. Before I discuss them, may I say that it is not possible to overestimate the importance of bread as a nutritional factor in our diet. I know that the Parliamentary Secretary will agree with me at once when I say that one-third of the calorie intake of our people comes from bread and that it is very important, therefore, that we should know that our bread is as good as possible. There are two conflicting views, and the Minister has come down on one side; I will, however, deal with that in a minute.
Our three grounds on which we attack the Minister for his decision are as follow. First, in accepting the advice of the Panel set up by Lord Adrian at the request of the Minister, and in face of a disagreement, he has disregarded the advice of his own scientific and medical advisers and of the Medical Research Council.
Secondly, we must criticise him because, when the problem had to be examined, the very learned Panel had its terms of reference grossly limited so that it was not able fully to examine the question. It was told that it had to consider one matter only, namely, what is the difference between flour at 80 per cent. extraction unfortified, and flour at 70 per cent. extraction fortified with three

1879
token additions, vitamin B, which is needed to protect us from beri-beri, vitamin B 2 needed to protect us from pellagra—from which we do not suffer much in this country—and iron, which, as everybody knows, is necessary for good health to protect us from anæmia.
As the terms of reference clearly stated, those were the only three things the Panel was told to consider. As a result, therefore, it was not for the Panel to take note, except in passing, of other factors which are removed from the wheat berry when the extraction rate is lowered to 70 per cent., as compared with 80 per cent.
As is made quite clear in the Report of the Panel, there has been a conflict of opinion and a struggle waged between the Minister's own advisers, both medical and scientific, and the trade. Here is our third ground of criticism, which we wish to press very strongly, that it was to the trade that the Minister has listened. The Panel thought the weight of evidence lay with the trade. We say that the Minister has listened much too easily to the millers, who have always preferred the whitest possible type of flour.
We know why the millers have this preference. There are three reasons, which I will give very shortly. First, they say that it meets popular demand. We know, to go back to the thirteenth century, that London, or Cheapside at any rate, was known for its white flour, which was the envy and admiration of aristocratic foreigners who came here and found the workers had a whiter flour than they themselves consumed in their own countries.
The truth, as everybody now recognises, is that when white bread was made available but unsubsidised, the public did not make a rush to buy it. Indeed, in many parts of the country it was hardly favoured at all. I doubt whether more than 10 or 15 per cent. of the bread eaten today is pure white. No doubt I may be corrected, because the Minister may have up-to-date figures, but in North Staffordshire it was not favoured until recently. People preferred to buy the national bread, which was subsidised. Whether that preference arose because of the subsidy or because of taste, I do not know. But the millers rely for their case on appearance, and that case we say is not proved.
1880
They, the millers, argue that it is easier to standardise. That is true; it is obviously easier to standardise if extraction is taken down to the 70 per cent. level.
The third reason why the millers like what the Minister is to give them is that the wheat offals can be sold profitably for animal feedingstuffs, or, what is more interesting, as patent foods sold back to people at high prices to prevent them getting the constipation they are liable to suffer as a result of eating white bread. The Minister knows that that is true. I do not wish to mention names, because we do not normally do so, but it is well known that the bran, after being taken away from the flour, is sold back at high prices for this purpose if there is too much for animal foods.
The Panel, in coming to its conclusion, said that 70 per cent. extraction, if there is fortification by the addition to those three token accessory factors I have mentioned—the two vitamins in the B class and iron—would significantly protect the health of the population "in any foreseeable circumstances." They are very guarded words—"in any foreseeable circumstances." As we read the Report we find that the Panel was very nervous at having to disagree with the very eminent disinterested scientists in the Ministry and in the Medical Research Council. Again and again in the Report we see that it is hesitant and worried.
In page 23 the Panel covers itself about the loss of a substance called riboflavin, which is also a vitamin B complex or a constituent of a complex of vitamin B. It says:
"The Government's plans to safeguard the uptake of riboflavin are linked to its policy for milk rather than to its policy for bread."
It did not know then what was to be the Government's policy for milk. Had it known that the Government would increase its price and halve the amount made available free for young children. I wonder whether the Panel would not have been more hesitant. I wonder whether it might not have come down on the other side.
It speaks of "in any foreseeable circumstances". No one can blame the Panel; it did not know. But we may well be short of shipping all over the world for the next year or so until the present difficulties over the Suez Canal are solved.

1881
There will be shipping difficulties because grain is very bulky to carry. It was because of our difficulties during the war, following the loss of ships to submarines and bombers, that we went over to a high extraction rate. When we did so we found that it not only eased our shipping problem, but that we received a great advantage to the health of the community, much greater than we had expected. We were dealing with a new, strange subject. None of us had known such an experiment in our history.
In its criticism of what the Minister is doing the Medical Research Council makes two points. It says, first, that in addition to the three token substances which I have mentioned and which I will not repeat by name, there are others which we know. They elaborate four more. Again, I will not mention their names; some of them are a little unusual and difficult to spell. Those four are all vitamins; they are accessory factors. We suspect that they are absolutely essential for health, but we do not know as much about them as we do about the other three, vitamins B 1, B 2 and iron. We nevertheless have a right to suspect, unless there is proof to the contrary, that they are essential to the health of the individual.
If a man has a mixed and reasonably good diet he will pick up these substances elsewhere in his diet, but in the Report the Panel took careful note of the fact that at least 10 per cent. of the people tend, in their early life-time, while they are children, to be deficient of these particular substances. Their diet may improve when they grow older and become wage earners, but if they are children of poor homes, or children whose parents are ignorant and choose things by appearance rather than for the sake of knowledge—if they are English rather than Scots—they may well find that they suffer in their tender years and that it is too late to obtain a full remedy when they are grown up and consume a better diet.
The Medical Research Council declares that a 70 per cent. extraction flour, which is to be imposed upon us by this Order, fortified as declared, must therefore lead to a reduction in some of the nutrients. The Council means the four which we know, but I think it is fair to say that there may be others which we have not
1882
yet discovered. We must be fair about this. The Medical Research Council uses a most interesting sentence:
"This constitutes a risk which can be avoided."
Of course it can be avoided. It can be avoided by the Minister's having the good sense to take back these provisions and to realise that they are not safe, and that we should be far better off using the 80 per cent. extraction.
The conclusion one is forced to is that during the war we were very well served by the higher extraction rate. We were very well served after the war. I will give two illustrations. In the late 'twenties some children, many hundreds of them—a very large sample for the experiment—in the East End of London, all aged five, had their teeth examined to see how much dental decay and caries they suffered from. By using a very special technique it was found that only five out of a hundred of those children at that time were entirely free from all dental decay. In 1948 to 1949 another experiment was carried out through three surveys in the same schools, all the children being aged five, with the same technique being used. It was discovered that well over 30 per cent.—not 5 per cent.—of the children were entirely free from dental decay.
Why was that? During the war we had a change in the quality of our bread. During the war there was a better distribution of milk. During the war there were less sugar and sweets for the children. I think those were the three reasons, and probably the most important ones were the better distribution of milk and the change in the quality of the bread.
My next illustration is drawn from personal experience. I noted that when the men came back when the war was over in 1945 there tended to be a rapid rise in the number of women having babies. We call that increase in the number of babies the "bulge" in the schools now. Those children are now-passing into the secondary schools. I had lived and worked in my constituency as a medical man, delivering many women of their babies, for very many years—since 1925. I noticed that dramatic change in the circumstances of the birth rate. The women, of course, tended to

1883
be older when they had their babies, for their men had been away at the war. Women of up to even 40 years of age, and having their first let alone their second or third child, were being delivered of their children with ease, and without complications of any kind.
It was a most remarkable situation. There were these factors in that situation, the ante-natal clinical treatment, the vitamin and calcium tablets mothers were given, and, again, the bread, and there was the milk distribution. There was the quality of the bread and there was the fact that it had become fashionable to drink more milk and that the mothers could get it because steps were taken to see they did.
I appeal to the Parliamentary Secretary not to be obdurate about this, because we know that this is a tried safety measure. This tried safety measure, which we know was good and secured us against ill-health, is to be discarded for an untried substitute. Those words are not mine, but taken from the editorial of the British Medical Journal of 9th June this year. The medical profession is deeply sorry that the Government are taking this step. This is not a political issue. We believe that it is a great mistake. I hope that it is not too late for the Parliamentary Secretary to tell us that the Government have had second thoughts about this. If it is imposed, and if, as the years go by— and it will take ten years to make certain—we find that the standard of health of the nation is falling off we shall have to place the blame squarely where it ought to lie and say that on this night a shameful thing was done because we were not listened to in time.
10.20 p.m.
Mr. C. N. Thornton-Kemsley: The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Dr. Stross) is always persuasive and, of course, is listened to with great respect if only because he is a member of the medical profession and naturally knows what he is talking about on a subject such as this. I rise because the hon. Member implied that there were hon. Members on this side of the House and on his own who were anxious about the Government's policy. I do not think that that is true of this side of the House. If it were, my hon. Friends would be here in force.
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I think that there are just about the same number of hon. Members on each side at present. It is not a bad thing to put it on the record. Let us face the fact that there are at the moment four hon. Members on the Opposition side of the House and seven on this side.
Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Charles MacAndrew): Is the hon. Gentleman drawing my attention to the fact that there are not 40 Members present?
Mr. Thornton-Kemsley: No, Sir. I am not calling attention to that fact. I am quite sure that there are that number outside, but it reinforces my point that there is not really such indignation about the Government's action.
The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central said that the Government had disregarded the advice of their own experts on this matter. I would remind him of its history, which I am sure he well knows. I would recall how, in 1945, the conference on the post-war loaf, which the Government convened, recommended that on the decontrol of the milling industry, regulations drawn up by the Government ought to provide that flour must contain not less than certain specified quantities of the three token nutrients which the hon. Member has mentioned.
In order to determine the value of low-extraction flour suitably enriched by these three token nutrients—two of the B vitamin group and iron—experiments were held in German orphanages after the war by Professor R. A. McCance and Dr. E. M. Widdowson. Those experiments proved conclusively, as I am sure the hon. Member knows, that reinforced low-extraction flour was a perfectly good substitute for high-extraction flour which derives its vitamin contents from the darker portion of the wheat grain.
Dr. Stross: I think that the hon. Member would remember also, however, that it has since been pointed out by the two eminent gentlemen who conducted the experiment that they would not like too much to be inferred from one experiment, especially since it was conducted on German children who had suffered from a very low diet until they were handed over to them.
Mr. Thornton-Kemsley: That is a good point.

1885
Because medical opinion and lay opinion in this country was still divided on whether synthetic enrichment was a good thing, the Government invited the President of the Royal Society to appoint an independent panel to advise them on this matter. The Panel consisted of accepted authorities, representative of the scientific and medical professions.
It seems to me that when the Government do not appoint a panel of that kind themselves but nominate a man of the eminence of the President of the Royal Society to appoint it, and the Panel arrives at the finding that white bread is an excellent food and that the available evidence does not reveal any ascertainable difference between national flour and ffours of extraction rate less than national flour to which vitamin B, nicotinic acid and iron has been added, we must accept it, otherwise it seems to me that there is no finality whatsoever.
10.25 p.m.
The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Hat-mar Nicholls): I should like to join with my hon. Friend the Member for North Angus (Mr. Thornton-Kemsley) in saying how much we always enjoy listening to the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Dr. Stross). His sincerity is beyond question, and he has a manner which, if he had a good case at all, would win us all over without any doubt. On this occasion, I do not think that he had such a case.
We dealt with most of the arguments produced by the hon. Gentleman tonight during an Adjournment debate initiated by his hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Crayford (Mr. Dodds) on 16th July. I suggest, therefore, that as those points were dealt with in detail on that occasion, it may not be necessary for me to spend so much time on them tonight, especially as there is another Prayer to follow this one.
There is one point, however, with which I want to deal at once. The hon. Gentleman brought out a new point when he referred to the limitation of the terms of reference of the Cohen Panel. If his inference were true, it would very much affect all that flows from the submission of that Report. It should be made perfectly clear, therefore, that the Panel covered the area of conflict between the
1886
experts, the whole field. There was no question of the Panel having to make a report on only one tiny section. There was this conflict of view between the medical men on the one side and the scientists who advised the industry on the other, and effective arguments had been put forward by both sides for many years.
Because that went on over so many years I do not think that the hon. Gentleman was quite fair in saying that my right hon. Friend the Minister had ignored the advice of his own experts. The truth is that my right hon. Friend held the ring for years, and in doing so he was really accepting the advice of his own advisers at that time. However, the conflict of opinion became so acute, and the rights and wrongs of the matter were becoming so narrow, that my right hon. Friend did what I think is accepted on all sides of the House as the only thing that he could do and was the proper thing to do.
My right hon. Friend said that in view of the conflict of expert opinion there must be an umpire, one whose impartiality was above any question. As my hon. Friend the Member for North Angus has reminded us, my right hon. Friend asked the President of the Royal Society to appoint an impartial group of people who had the knowledge to understand the medical evidence that would be produced.
I do not think that any Government could have been fairer than that. The Panel was not limited in the sense that the hon. Gentleman seemed to suggest Its terms of reference covered the whole area of conflict between the experts. In furtherance of that, it is not without significance that right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite did not criticise the terms of reference at that time, so obviously there was no real complaint, or the hon. Gentleman who is so keen on these matters, would have been on his feet long ago and would not have waited until we had received the Report and acted upon it.
The Panel did, however, consider the possible importance of other lesser nutrients. The hon. Gentleman rather suggested that they had not taken that into account, but if he looks at paragraph 10·6 in page 26 of the Report, he will see that this point was well covered.
Those were the new points brought out by the hon. Gentleman this evening. They

1887
are important points, and we should not let it go from the House at this stage that there was any deliberate limitation of the terms of reference.
The main point put forward by the hon. Gentleman was that all medical opinion was against altering legislation on the extraction rate to what we are going to do under these provisions. I do not think we ought to ignore the impartiality of the Cohen Panel, nor should we ignore its eminence. It is well known to the hon. Gentleman and to other hon. Members present here tonight—Professor Henry Cohen himself, Doctor Chibnall, Professor Gaddum, Professor Morton, Professor Witts. If we look at their eminence in the medical world we cannot really say that they could have ignored the importance of the medical evidence given.
Dr. Stross: I would not dream of saying that, and have not done so. My accusation is against the Minister. I think that he made the terms of reference too narrow. If the Joint Parliamentary Secretary will look again at page 26 he will see in the fourth paragraph:
"Enrichment with other essential nutrients is outside our Terms of Reference."
Mr. Nicholls: The whole area of conflict—the matter had been going on for years and everybody who had been taking up the topic knew what was under discussion—was submitted to this impartial Panel. I have no doubt—I am sure that the hon. Member has no doubt—that the Panel approached the subject with an impartial mind, and its Report and our action based on the Report were the result of the honest beliefs of those men, with medical qualifications, after they had heard all the evidence. I do not think the suggestion that we ignored the evidence of our own medical advisers can stand.
There are two points that I should make about the practical reasons for our action. The 80 per cent. extraction rate was not begun with nutrient value in mind. It was to save shipping, and it got us through a difficult period. It was said later that at the 80 per cent. rate of extraction we were leaving in the nutrients needed to make bread of the quality that we wanted. The Order that we are revoking laid it down that national
1888
flour was to be made at the 80 per cent. extraction rate, which is what the hon. Gentleman wants.
However, there is an administrative problem which the House should bear in mind. It is all very well to put in an Order that we will judge the quality of flour by the extraction rate, but there is no effective way of checking whether we are really getting flour at the 80 per cent. extraction rate. If someone wants to cheat and produce flour at an extraction rate of 72–73 per cent., there is no easy way of discovering that he is doing so. Thus, the Order tied one to an extraction rate of 80 per cent. but one could not prove that that was the extraction rate in use, and it might be that the health of the people was suffering because some bread was made at a lower extraction rate, for the nutrients present at the 80 per cent. rate might not be there in sufficient quantity at a rate of 72–73 per cent. We might then be forcing on the country a supposedly nutritional loaf which did not contain the required nutrients.
The Panel said that there were certain additives which were essential if bread was to provide the nutrients that we required, and that, as the 80 per cent. rate could not be proved and there was a doubt about the presence of the required nutrients, it would be wise to adopt the positive attitude that the nutrients must be contained in the bread, because their presence could be checked.
Consequently, under the new Regulations
the test, instead of being the 80 per cent. extraction rate, is one which can be more effectively carried out, the determination of the presence of specific quantities of the nutrients, because if they are not in the bread, they must be added. I believe that what we are doing achieves what the hon. Gentleman desires rather more effectively than do the provisions which he wishes to retain.
Dr. Stross: That is true as to the three token additives, but what about the four which will not now be present and those we know nothing of yet, but which may appear later?
Mr. Nicholls: I am speaking from memory, but I believe that the Cohen Panel said, "As far as we can see in the

1889
forseeable future." They have looked ahead as far as possible and did not express real doubt on that score. In asking the House to reject this Prayer I am satisfied that if we examine the debate in detail in HANSARD tomorrow it will be seen that, far from going against the argument that the hon. Member has adduced, we are doing what he wants in a more effective way than if we accepted his advice.
Question put and negatived.
Mr. Deputy-Speaker: Does the hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) wish to move the second Motion?
Mr. Mitchison: No, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. We desired to discuss the two together.

SUGAR
10.36 p.m.
Mr. G. R. Mitchison: I beg to move,
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Sugar Surcharge Regulations, 1956 (S.I., 1956. No. 1652), dated 23rd October, 1956, a copy of which was laid before this House on 26th October, in the last Session of Parliament, be annulled.
In doing the kindness that I propose to do the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food, I fear that I shall not get off so easily as I did the last time. The kindness is this: these are Regulations made under Section 11 of the Sugar Act, 1956. Section 11 of that Act is a purely enabling Section which allows the general provisions of the Customs and Excise Act, 1952—that is, the general Act—to be applied as and to the extent that the Ministry thinks fit. It was accepted during the passage of that Bill that an indication would be given of what all this meant. I see that on the Second Reading the Minister looked forward to hearing in Committee a lucid exposition of this subject from his right hon. Friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury.
That was on Clauses 7 to 16. I may be wrong, but it seems to me that his hopes were disappointed. I feel certain the right hon. Gentleman will correct the if I am wrong. I feel equally certain that if he had made any exposition at all it would have been lucid, but I do not believe he made one. So far as I can make out, right hon. and hon. Members interested in that Bill got through it without really considering what they were doing in Section 11. In those circumstances it becomes of fascinating interest to see exactly what happens when we start to apply it. That is what these Regulations do. They start by dealing with exceptions and adaptations by general provisions of law, that is to say, attempting to apply as much as is thought fit of the Customs and Excise Act.
There is one thing which puzzles me. The Sugar Board, in favour of which all these arrangements about surcharge and surcharge payments are effected—those are the things which are to be the subject of Customs and Excise procedure—has two main duties. One is to deal with sugar or molasses and the other to deal with sugar or molasses used in the manufacture of imported composite sugar products

1891
which have become chargeable to sugar duty. I can understand that, but what I do not understand, if that is the business, is why Section 259 of the principal Act should be expressly excluded, because that is the Act which charges duty on manufactured or composite articles.
I am sure that there must be a quite simple explanation, but it looks at first sight as if sugar or molasses were chargeable with surcharge, and so was the mixture. I do not know what it is to be, but it will be something with sugar in it. When we come to deal with the sugar, we deal with it in one way, and when we come to deal with the mixture, with which the Sugar Board, the surcharge and the rest of it are equally concerned, we deal with it in another way. Perhaps the Minister would explain to me why it is necessary that Section 259 shall not apply.
Another thing that puzzles me is the position whereby the whole of the Customs and Excise can apply if nothing is said about it, or is it the position that none of it applies unless something is said about it? I feel sure that there must be some quite simple explanation, but I confess that I find it just a little bit difficult.
I am also, I confess, a little frightened, and I would like some explanation of it, about paragraph 5 of the Regulations. This contains a number of references to defrauding Her Majesty which appear in the principal Act, that is, the 1952 code, and they are to be construed as references to defrauding the Sugar Board. That means that they entail certain penalties. That is right enough, but what I cannot understand is how the rather peculiar selection is made.
Some instances of defrauding Her Majesty appear to be all right if they only result in defrauding the Sugar Board, and others are all wrong if the Sugar Board is defrauded. On what principle, and by what curious arrangement, is this done? For instance, one gets a rather similar point in connection with the previous paragraph. It is substantially the same thing.
I think we can leave the right hon. Gentleman to give us a lucid explanation of why some instances of defrauding are punishable as against the Sugar
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Board and others are not. It will take the Minister a little time, but I will not keep on too long on that side of the matter.
There is another thing that puzzles me just a little, too. The end of Part II of the Regulations says:
"Regulation 11 of the Manufacture in Warehouse of Cavendish or Negrohead Tobacco Regulations, 1952(f), shall have effect in relation to surcharge and to surcharge repayment …"
and then the consequences follow. If we look around we find that the trouble is really that the manufacturers must not receive into the warehouse for use in the manufacture of Cavendish or Negro-head Tobacco sugar or articles without the payment of duty.
That is a rather obscure sort of way of saying that the manufacturers of Cavendish or Negrohead Tobacco have not only got to understand the Sugar Act, but, what is worse, also the sugar surcharge Regulations. Would not it have been simpler in relation to the whole of this matter if, instead of this quite appalling concoction of miscellaneous Sections and subsections of the Customs and Excise Act, the Molasses (Food for Stock) Regulations, the Molasses (Spirits and Yeast) Regulations, the Beer Regulations, of all things, and, finally, in a sort of crashing finale, the Manufacture in Warehouse of Cavendish and Negrohead Tobacco Regulations, the Ministry and the Treasury between them had really pulled up their drafting socks and told people in tolerably plain English what they could do and what they could not do when bringing sugar or sugary things into the country?
Would not it have been simpler, too, if, instead of punishing people by a series of reference to some other Statute, they had told them in tolerably plain English what would happen to them if they did one of the things that they ought not to do?
I make that suggestion. I have been taking a little information on this matter, because I was afraid of putting my foot in it when I came to sugar and the Sugar Act—getting stuck in the molasses, as it were. I should like to suggest to the Parliamentary Secretary that quite a lot of the complications in these Regulations, as, indeed, was suggested during the discussion of the Bill, come from the curious

1893
structure of the sugar industry itself as constituted by the Government and reconciled under the Commonwealth Trading Agreement—
Mr. Speaker: We are not discussing the Act now. That has been passed.
Mr. Mitchison: If I may humbly say so, I thought it was possible that I was getting rather near the margin at that point.
Mr. W. A. Wilkins: I beg to second the Motion.
10.48 p.m.
The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Harmar Nicholls): I do not know whether to admire the hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) or be terrified of him, but the emotion I have uppermost in my mind is one of relief that he was not on the Standing Committee when we had our long debates on the Sugar Bill. Goodness knows, that was a very technical Bill and we had enough problems to deal with there. If we had had the hon. and learned Gentleman putting his mind to adding to those problems, it would have been a formidable job.
When hearing him just now I wondered whether these Regulations are really as complicated as all that; but I suppose that it is the duty of a lawyer always to make it sound complicated. Otherwise, they might not feel that their standing in society was justified. I do not think that this matter is as complicated as the hon. and learned Gentleman tried to make out. It was obvious that, while he had made jolly good use of the short time that he had had to look at the proceedings on the various stages of the Bill, he had not gone far enough.
I know that I may not give him all the satisfaction that he wants, in view of the speech he made, but if I say the few words that I want to now, and if he will read them in conjunction with what was said on Second Reading, the Committee stage and Third Reading, I think he will find that all the points he made will have been answered. I am sure that he will have that satisfaction.
The real purpose of the Regulations is very simple. As was explained by the hon. and learned Gentleman, the duty now of purchasing the sugar and averaging it out, which was previously in the hands of my right hon. Friend, will now
1894
be in the hands of the new Sugar Board. It will do it by applying a surcharge on all sugar. The actual application of the surcharge procedure will be carried out by Her Majesty's Customs and Excise.
It was found, as was foreseen when we were discussing Clause 11 in Committee, that the documentation and the procedures which the Customs and Excise has for its normal duties did not quite fit in with this distinct job of applying the surcharge. The purpose of the Regulations now being prayed against is really to complete the process of bringing surcharge into line with Customs duty and into operation under Her Majesty's Customs and Excise. There is really no more in it than that. It was anticipated when we were in Committee.
The hon. and learned Gentleman mentioned the various Regulations. Regulation 1 enables the Commissioners to direct, as they do for Customs duty, the form of documentation to be used when goods are imported or removed from a bonded warehouse. They will recommend the forms of documentation that have to be complied with, and I can assure the hon. and learned Gentleman that we have reduced the forms to the very minimum. I do want him, in conjunction with a reading of the debates and of our proceedings in Committee, to understand this. I think that it will save time later.
Regulation 2 applies certain provisions, which now relate to the Customs duty documentation, to such documentation as may be required for Customs purposes. That is what I have described in general terms just now.
Then there is Regulation 4. In the ordinary course, drawback of sugar duty is not payable unless the duty can be shown to have been paid, but it is provided in the Act that surcharge repayment shall be made from the appointed date, notwithstanding that surcharge as such has not been paid. Regulation 4 makes it clear that the general provisos of the Customs law are not to stand in the way of this specific provision.
By Regulation 5, certain penalty
provisions which now apply when Her Majesty is defrauded of Customs or Excise revenue are applied to cases where the Sugar Board is similarly being defrauded. These provisions were not general and, otherwise, there would not

1895
be power to act when the offence related to surcharge. It really brings the powers in relation to the surcharge into line with their other powers.
Mr. Mitchison: Before the hon. Gentleman leaves the Regulations, will he consider what he has been saying? He has been suggesting that the answer to this could be found in the debates. I can assure him that that is not the case. For one thing, the Regulations were not out at the time. What I really want to know is why Section 259 of the 1952 Act, which does not refer, at any rate primarily, to drawback at all, but to a charge of duty on manufactured or composite articles, should not apply in this case.
Mr. Nicholls: I do not think I said that the hon. and learned Gentleman would find the answer to that in the debates. I think that what I said was that if he read what I have said tonight in conjunction with the debates it might be that some of the points which he raised would be answered.
The general provision of Section 259 of the Customs and Excise Act relates to a charge of Customs duty on the ingredients of manufactured goods, and since, in Section 7 of the Sugar Act. surcharge is applied to such ingredients, the general provision is unnecessary, and is excepted by Regulation 3. I think that if he will look at Section 7 of the Sugar Act he will find that that is covered there, and that is why it need not have been entered into in more detail here.
Mr. Mitchison: That is a different explanation, and a better one.
Mr. Nicholls: I think that the hon. and learned Gentleman will find it an authentic one when it has to be operated after the appointed day. The real purpose is to give to the Customs and Excise the same powers to deal with its surcharge responsibility as it already has for its normal responsibilities. With that explanation I ask the hon. and learned Gentleman, with great confidence, whether he will not proceed with the annulment of the Prayer.
Mr. Mitchison: Having heard the singularly incomplete explanation which has just been offered on behalf of the Government, Mr. Speaker, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Motion.
Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

TROLLEY BUSES, LONDON (REPLACEMENT)
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Oakshott.]
10.55 p.m.
Mr. Arthur Palmer: I wish to raise a matter concerning the policy of a public authority. I must confess that I have always thought this particular policy to be regrettable, but I think that it has become even more regrettable because of the events of the last few weeks in the Middle East.
I refer to the obstinate policy—I do not think that that is too harsh a way to describe it—of the London Transport Executive in persisting in a programme of replacing electric trolley buses by diesel oil buses, at a capital cost, I believe, of about £10 million, and with an ancillary expenditure which is possibly double that amount.
There are many objections to diesel vehicles. These have been very well canvassed in the past. Diesel vehicles are an offence to the senses, particularly in the narrow London streets. They are certainly noisy, and, although I do not put it too highly, I think that there is at least a suspicion that diesel fumes are a contributory cause of lung cancer.
It can be argued, I think, that at a time when there are supposed to be restrictions on the capital expenditure of public authorities this large sum of money to be spent on the replacement of these perfectly sound electric vehicles could be put to better use.
The arguments which I have mentioned are weighty in themselves, but tonight I propose, with the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation present, to give them all second place to my main contention, which is that it is, in my view, and, I should think, in the view of a great number of people, very short-sighted folly to make the entire surface transport of the largest urban concentration of population in the world entirely dependent in the long run on fuel, every drop of which must be brought to this country from overseas. It may be objected that a certain amount is derived by synthetic means, so let us say, if I do not persist in the words "every drop," that the great

1897
bulk of it is brought from overseas. One would have thought that the Suez crisis and the other Middle East events of the last few weeks would at least have caused the London Transport Executive to stay its hand. I will put it no higher than that.
Yesterday, the Minister of Fuel and Power announced the rationing of petrol and fuel oils of all kinds. That was melancholy news to the House and probably to the country as well, but it did not come as a great surprise to informed people.
I do not propose this evening to enter at all into the controversies of the last few weeks that we have had in this House, but surely it has been obvious, as I say, to informed people, that ever since the Middle East difficulties started there was a threat all the time to our oil supplies. The Government argued that if they did not intervene the oil supplies might be cut. They did intervene, and the oil supplies have been cut. As I say, I am not going into the rights and wrongs of that policy, but I am arguing that from the very beginning, ever since July, there has been this risk of restriction on the oil supplies to the United Kingdom.
Yet it is since last July, as the Parliamentary Secretary must know, that the London Transport Executive has placed contracts for the first of these new vehicles. In a sense, one can forgive the Executive or, at least, understand it: it may take a narrow view of this question; it may gaze on smaller horizons and not gaze on the wider world. But it is very difficult to exempt the Minister of Transport of blame, because as recently as 31st October he was defending this position.
I put a Question to the Minister on that date, asking him
"… whether, in view of the desirability of limiting as far as is practicable in present circumstances the import of fuel oil, and the desirability of not adding further to the volume of diesel fumes in the congested London area, he will give a general direction to the British Transport Commission to disallow the decision of the London Transport Executive to spend over £10 million on the purchase of diesel buses …"
The Minister replied:
"The additional consumption of diesel oil will be comparatively insignificant."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 31st October, 1956; Vol. 558, c. 158.]
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I do not know what the Minister means by the expression "comparatively insignificant". Does he mean in relation to total consumption? If there are hundreds of diesel buses running week in, week out, year in, year out, how can it be "comparatively insignificant"? It is like a drunkard arguing that his personal consumption of alcohol is comparatively insignificant in relation to the total consumption of all moderate drinkers. The point is that he should not be drinking at all, and I would have thought that the London Transport Executive, if it were following a wise policy, would not be making itself more dependent on imported fuel, but less dependent. Who is to know that the present crisis is only temporary? We hope that it is, but, nevertheless, that part of the world from which most of our oil comes is, to put it mildly, a centre of constant political disturbance.
I should have thought that the responsibility for guiding the London Transport Executive in the right direction was that of the Minister. Up to now the Minister, and his predecessors—I want to fair—have hidden behind standard excuses of the modern Minister: the expert committee, or saying they should not intervene in something which they regard as purely a commercial matter.
I cannot see that, in relation to this issue, either excuse is valid. It is clearly a matter of vital national policy for the Government to decide. We are spending large sums of money developing the mining industry. We do not regard that industry as one which is, in any sense, declining. We want more coal, we are sinking new shafts, because we must have electrical power, which is derived in the main from coal—and will be in the future.
To supplement our coal supplies we are proposing to embark on a large programme of nuclear energy, with many nuclear power stations. There are rumours that the present programme is to be greatly extended. So one would have thought that it was the general correct intention of the Government to meet, as far as possible, the energy needs of the country from indigenous sources using electricity as the intervening medium.
I am not disputing, and no one, I think, would, that oil is not vital to our

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economy. We cannot hope to replace it completely, and should not make the attempt. But just because oil is vital to the economy, both for industrial and agricultural purposes, it is all the more reason surely why its use should be reserved for those occasions and situations where there is no alternative.
Of course, I know that by some it is said against the electric trolley vehicle which succeeded the tram that it is not a flexible vehicle, but one who travels by a petrol or oil bus would hardly call it a flexible vehicle these days in Central London. The argument may be that the trolley bus hinders other road users, but I believe that is the policy of the Ministry now to restrict, by means of parking meters and other devices, the number of private cars coming into Central London. Therefore, I should think that argument against the trolley bus will not in the future be anything like as strong as it was in the past.
It can be said at least in favour of the trolley bus that it is smooth, quiet and clean, that it has a tremendous passenger-carrying capacity, and that it does not wear out quickly. A curious fact is that while in this country, dependent, as we are, on imported oil, it is the tendency, not only in London but in other great cities, to do away with the electric road vehicle, in Continental cities, and even in the United States of America, with all their oil resources, they are extending their use of such vehicles.
I think I know why the London Transport Executive persists in this policy. It is because the Executive has a narrow and tidy mind in matters of this sort. It likes the cosy idea of standard buses with standard depots and a standard maintenance organisation. I suggest to the Parliamentary Secretary that he should put it to his right hon. Friend that he should resist this cosiness and inject, in view of the present circumstances, a little of the cold wind of realism.
Whatever he may have overlooked in the past he now has every reason in the national interest to postpone the implementation of this mistaken policy—at least, to postpone it. He may say, if he wishes, that he has had representations from both sides of the House, because I understand that the hon. Member for
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Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro), if he can catch your eye, Sir, would like to say a word also in support of what I have tried to argue.
I appeal to the Parliamentary Secretary to put it to his right hon. Friend that the decision be postponed. Let the interval be used by the London Transport Executive to discuss with the British electrical industry, which has great experience and knowledge of these matters, how modern electric road surface traction can be adapted to meet London's traffic needs in great part. I feel that a vast amount could be done by proper cooperation between the engineers and experts of the Executive and the electrical manufacturing industry. If that were done for London, then in due course, I think, other great cities in this country might follow a sound example.
11.9 p.m.
Mr. Gerald Nabarro: I am sure that the House is indebted to the hon. Gentleman the Member for Cleveland (Mr. Palmer) for raising this very important matter of principle tonight, for the policy that is pursued by the London Transport Executive will find an echo in the transport arrangements and policies of very many provincial cities in this country and, perhaps, to a lesser extent, in foreign cities, too.
On occasions, I have quarrelled with the Government about fuel and power policy. One aspect of it on which I have always quarrelled with them is this, that it is disastrous from the economic point of view, from the strategical point of view and from the financial point of view, to swing our reliance most largely from indigenous coal resources to imported fuel oil. Only 16 months ago, during the last major controversy on this issue, to the right hon. Gentleman who was then Minister of Fuel and Power I used those words exactly. The principle at stake is whether a major public corporation shall be allowed, particularly in present critical circumstances affecting our oil supplies—and about 75 per cent. of them come from the Middle East—to pursue a policy, though it is allowed to within the autonomy of the Statute, which I believe a majority of this House consider is inimical to the public interest. I use the word inimical for four separate, though related, reasons.

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First, coal is the principal means of generating electricity in this country today. Our electric power stations are enormously expensive fixed assets, used to only 24 per cent. of their operational efficiency. That means that the load factor of them is as low as 24 per cent., or that less than one quarter of the maximum efficiency of the station is employed. If electrical transport is substituted for diesel oil transport it is generally found that the electrical transport is used at off-peak times. For example, trolleybuses plying in the suburban areas of cities are used to their maximum extent, taking workers to work in the morning and bringing them home at night, when the load has already shifted for the most part from factory machinery, thus helping to spread the load and improve the operational efficiency of power stations.
The second point was brought out admirably in the Ridley Report on Fuel and Power Resources as long ago as 1952. During the passage of the Clean Air Act last year, and the Private Member's Bill that preceded it, there was widespread public criticism of the fact that that particular Statute could have no regard to filthy, stinking petrol and oil fumes, which are particularly obnoxious in narrow and congested city streets and urban areas, and vast clouds of black and dirty smoke, which is particularly offensive. I am informed by the Department of Scientific
and Industrial Research that in the present state of our scientific knowledge we have no means of cleansing or dispensing with those fumes. At least, trolleybuses make a much more direct contribution to a policy of clean air and the abatement of atmospheric pollution than the diesel oil bus.
Thirdly, we are building large and expensive atomic power stations. They must be used to maximum efficiency if the nation's investment in them is to yield the optimum results. The only means of applying atomic power to traction, whether it be railway or road traction, is through the medium of electricity. It is surely inconceivable that railway engines and buses will in future be powered by small atomic piles on each vehicle or engine. The power can only be provided through the electricity grid system, and I believe that we should endeavour to switch as many diesel oil buses as possible on to electricity, instead of the
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reverse process, in order to pave the way for utilization of atomic power.
Finally, a current point of some
importance. The private motorist will be very hard hit by petrol rationing. I do not think that he will take very kindly to the fact that public corporations are to be allowed to continue to consume vast quantities of diesel oil and petroleum products, and, in the case of the London Transport Executive—an example that may well be copied by provincial cities—actually to increase their consumption of petrol products by dispensing with what are at present, I believe, highly efficient electric vehicles.
The Minister of Transport, who has corresponded with me about this for three or four years, has always said this is a decision resting within the autonomy of a public corporation. I dissent from that. Where matters of important principle are involved, affecting our national economy, especially at a time such as the present when there is grave petroleum and oil shortage, my right hon. Friend should ask the Minister to intervene to get the London Transport Executive, and probably some others, to reverse its decision renouncing the use of the highly efficient and versatile trolley bus.
11.16 p.m.
The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation (Mr. Hugh Molson): It is one of the strange coincidences of political life that I should have dined tonight with the British Electric Traction Company and that I should have asked to be excused before the end of the dinner to enable me to answer this debate and state why I am not prepared to agree to the advocacy by hon. Members of electric traction upon the roads. I must say that to leave to make a speech of this kind was like biting the hand which, at that time, was feeding me; but I was a little fortified in the arguments which I am going to make when the chairman of the company told me that in all their undertakings there are now only two which now consist of trolley buses. It would seem, therefore, that private enterprise has arrived at the same conclusion as London Transport Executive has done.
Although the hon. Member for Cleveland (Mr. Palmer) spoke of the decision to change from trolley buses to

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oil vehicles in present circumstances, I have a feeling, from the general line of his speech, and also that of my hon. Friend the Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro), that "present circumstances" form a convenient hook upon which to hang arguments put forward on a number of occasions in the past. Most of the arguments dealt with the general question of whether electric traction or the diesel engine was the more efficient form of transport in London streets; so I should like briefly to reply to the other and more general arguments put forward.
It was suggested, without any great conviction, that the fumes of diesel transport exhaust were a contributory factor in the causation of lung cancer. That
matter has recently been investigated by the Medical Research Council's Group for research into atmospheric pollution, and in its researches the London Transport Executive co-operated. Dr. Lawther, the Director of the Council, is reported to have said on 2nd November at the annual Conference of the National Smoke Abatement Society, that
"There is absolutely no evidence to justify the allegation that oil engines are responsible for the rise in the incidence of lung cancer."
The hon. Member for Cleveland also suggested that at a time when capital expenditure in this country has to be limited, it was unjustifiable that the London Transport Executive should invest £10½ million in new Routemaster buses. I would remind him that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer said on 17th February, in the House, that the Transport Commission had made all the reductions in capital expenditure that had been asked of it for this year.
The third point put forward—and that was the one which hung most naturally from the hook—was that at present, and owing to difficulties encountered over Suez, it was desirable that the Minister should now reverse the policy adopted by his predecessors. It had obtained the support of the Chambers Committee, which investigated the general administration of London Transport and had come to the conclusion, in regard to this policy, that it was justifiable on commercial grounds.
The order for the first of the 1,500 Routemaster buses has been given, but
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the first batch of them will not come into service until 1959. I hope that the Government will be acquitted of any undue complacency if I say that we certainly hope that long before 1959 oil supplies will once again be normal.
Before sitting down, I should like to state briefly the reasons why the London Transport Executive is proposing to make this change and why my right hon. Friend is supporting it, and will continue to support it, in doing so.
First, a diesel bus is cheaper to buy than a trolley bus of equivalent capacity. Secondly, it is more mobile in traffic and more flexible in operation, and in that way it reduces the congestion in the streets and enables the standard of service to be improved. Thirdly, unlike the trolley bus it is not subject to mass holdups through dewirement, and when there is a local power failure there are not a large number of vehicles immobilised in the streets. Fourthly, it has been proved by experience to afford material economies and better service.
The hon. Member for Cleveland accused the London Transport Executive of having a narrow and tidy mind. I do not see why anyone should be sensitive at the accusation of having a tidy mind. The complaint he made, however, was that to have all the vehicles of the same kind would result in a reduction in maintenance and repairs costs. That seems to me to be an extremely desirable thing. I should have thought that the London Transport Executive would be justified in putting that forward as an additional reason for abolishing the comparatively small number of trolley buses which exist and replacing them by the smaller number of buses which will be uniform with all the other buses in its services and which can be maintained and repaired in the same establishments.
Those seem to me to be reasonably conclusive arguments in favour of the policy which has been adopted by the London Transport Executive. For those reasons I am unable to agree that there is any justification for my right hon. Friend to withdraw his support from the Executive.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at twenty-three minutes past Eleven o'clock.