Clause 6.—(AMOUNT OF STANDARD GRANT.) (Hansard, 13 May 1959)

§ The Minister of Housing and Local Government and Minister for Welsh Affairs (Mr. Henry Brooke)
I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment.
The perspicacity of hon. Members will have revealed to them that this and the other two Lords Amendments cover the same point, where it arises in different Clauses. The issue is quite simple. It has come to light that it might not be possible to install all the standard amenities in a house without interfering with or moving one which is there already. The most obvious case, which would most often arise, is the house which has a water closet but which lacks other modern facilities, and yet in order to install the other facilities it is necessary to move the w.c. Under the Bill as it stands, the fact that the house already had a w.c. would mean that the maximum grant which could be paid under the Bill would not be £155 but only £115. Nevertheless, the owner of the house, carrying out what is the object of the Bill, would necessarily be put to expense in moving the w.c. from where it is and putting it elsewhere.
It might similarly arise that the house had a food store in a scullery and it was necessary to convert that scullery into a bathroom in order to equip the house with all the standard amenities. In that case, under the Bill as it stands the owner would he entitled to receive not the full £155 but only £145.
These three Amendments are designed to correct that. The first, which I have 1383 moved, deals with the privately-owned house. The second deals with the local authority house. The third deals with Scotland. I do not think that there is anything in the wording of the Amendment which I need explain. The House will see that a local authority must be satisfied that it would not have been reasonably practicable to undertake the improvement in some other way. If it is so satisfied, the local authority will be required under the Amendments to assess the grant without making a reduction from the maximum.

§ Mr. G. R. Mitchison (Kettering)
As I understand the effect of the Amendment, if a man has one of the amenities already and has to move it, for the cost of moving it he receives that contribution which he would have received if it had had to be supplied as a new amenity.
This opens up some rather curious possibilities, not, I agree, in connection with large amounts. But in most of these cases the amounts contemplated bear some relation to the cost of the actual object that was installed, the bath or the washhand basin or whatever it was, and in these cases, for merely moving a bath, one gets from a generous Government the same contribution that one would have received if one had put in a new bath. I may have misunderstood the Amendment, but I thought that was what it meant and that was what I understood the right hon. Gentleman to say.
Since we are dealing with comparatively small amounts I should not have thought it a matter worth objecting to at this stage, but the Government ought to meditate more profoundly about the possible effects of putting in baths, basins, and so on, and the financial consequences of what they are doing. They ought to bear in mind, as we reminded them at an earlier stage of the Bill, that there is the further possibility in connection with this sort of thing that someone will find that he has been deprived of a perfectly good bedroom because a bath has been put in and, in consequence. the house is overcrowded. However, I cannot go into that now.

§ Mr. Brooke
I would point out that there is a maximum limit of half the cost of the work.

§ Mr. Mitchison
And I would point out that new baths cost more than the moving of old baths.