TOWN AND COUNTRY PLANNING

HC Deb 25 March 1965 vol 709 cc894-964

11.3 P.m.

Mr. Arthur Blenkinsop (South Shields)

I regret that the hon. Member for Gloucestershire, South (Mr. F. V. Corfield) does not appear to be in his place, as one understood that he was going to raise the subject on which I wish to make some comment, that of the general question of town and country planning and its relationship to local government.

I think it is somewhat discourteous to the House after the matter had been noticed, and notice given to the House, that the hon. Member should not in fact now be in his place.

Hon. Members

Where is he?

Mr. Blenkinsop

As my right hon. Friend the Minister has shown his care and concern by coming to the House to reply to this debate, together with his Parliamentary Secretary, it seems to me rather astonishing—

Sir D. Glover

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. If my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucestershire, South, is not here to raise this point, can we have a debate on it?

Mr. Speaker

The proposition we are debating is whether or no the Bill should now be read a Third time. The hon. Member called to speak on the topic is the hon. Member who catches my eye.

Mr. Blenkinsop

I merely wish to call the attention of the House to this matter, but of course I did give notice that I wished to say something on this subject, too, because it is obviously a matter of very great concern and it is not very often that back-bench Members get an opportunity of raising matters of this consequence. Therefore, one appreciates very much the opportunity that is available this evening.

I would first of all like to ask my right hon. Friend one or two questions relating to the South-East Study, which has been a matter of particular concern to many hon. Members on both sides of the House, before I proceed to raise some rather wider questions on town and country planning generally.

The South-East Study has been a matter of a great deal of dispute in this House. It was, indeed, in dispute before the General Election took place, and at that time there were some very contrasting views expressed about it. In particular, one group of experts, as I think we can probably call them, from the Town and Country Planning Association expressed their criticisms of the Study, particularly because they felt that the estimates given in that Study of population growth were likely to prove inaccurate. I would like to start by asking my right hon. Friend whether he has any evidence to support that criticism that was made at the time—whether, indeed, the natural population growth provided for in the South-East Study is, in fact, far less than is likely to prove the case, and that, in fact, the position may well be worse and not better than was estimated in the Study.

The second point of criticism raised by the Town and Country Planning Association, and, indeed, by many others, was doubts about whether the Study should have allowed for the influx from other parts of the country into the South-East, which, of course, many hoped might be stopped altogether. They also raised what is a perfectly valid point about the assumption that industrial growth would be maintained in the South-East—the very factor which is likely to accentuate all our present problems and which is likely to attract population growth and all the other social problems associated with it.

It was urged that very much stronger measures should be taken in order to limit industrial growth, and also, of course, to put a stop—even a temporary stop—to office accommodation building. As we know, this present Government since the General Election have taken very rapid action on these lines, and the only reason why a particular Bill is not yet through the House is the delaying tactics adopted by hon. Members on the other side.

Mr. H. P. G. Channon (Southend, West)

As a member of that Committee, I repudiate that insinuation very strongly, and I would like to ask the hon. Member if he has ever attended the proceedings of the Committee.

Mr. Blenkinsop

Yes, I took the precaution of doing so on one occasion, and it was obvious in a matter of minutes what was going on. It was perfectly clear, too, that when it was mentioned that additional sittings of that Committee would have to be taken, an arrangement was very quickly come to about the period of time within which sittings would be completed—a much more satisfactory arrangement.

Mr. Arthur Palmer (Bristol, Central)

May I remind my hon. Friend that the hon. Member who has just intervened has probably been one of the greatest offenders?

Mr. Blenkinsop

I would not make any comment on that, but I would like to express my pleasure at seeing the hon. Member for Gloucestershire, South in his place, and express my hope that perhaps he will be able to catch your eye, Mr. Speaker, rather later in this debate.

Now that the hon. Member is in his place, I can, as I intended to do, express my apologies for something that I said about him on an earlier occasion when I quite unfairly suggested that he had no contact with planning matters concerning our National Parks. It is clear on looking through the record of the hon. Member's speeches when he held office as Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing aria Local Government that he did, indeed, reply to a number of debates and Questions on the subject of the National Parks and, therefore, it was quite wrong of me to suggest that he had not taken part in discussions on that subject. I withdraw those comments and criticisms fully.

I cannot, however, withdraw my criticism concerning the hon. Member's knowledge or expertise on the subject, because I still feel that his comments in the House on earlier occasions on planning matters as they affected National Parks showed a good deal of lack of knowledge of the subject.

When the hon. Member took his place, I was speaking about the South-East Study and asking my right hon. Friend the Minister one or two questions which might well be of interest to hon. Members, on both sides, both concerning the estimates of population growth that were included in the Study and on questions relating to the restriction of industrial development and the criticisms that were made of its effect when the Study was published. I should like to know whether my right hon. Friend can make any further comment upon the Study as to whether in any other major respects statistically it is proving to be at all inaccurate.

One well knows the difficulties about this kind of statistical exercise and one makes no complaint against the authors of the Study, but it would certainly be valuable to hon. Members, on both sides, if further information could be given on that subject. It is a matter of real concern to all of us if the position is even worse than the Study suggested.

Mr. Stanley Orme (Salford, West)

Would not my hon. Friend agree that the decision of the First Secretary and the Government to introduce regional planning boards will redress many of the points that he is raising? Would he like to comment on the problem of the regional planning boards and what they might do in stopping the drift to the South-East?

Mr. Blenkinsop

I completely accept what my hon. Friend says. I was hoping that others of my hon. Friends might wish to raise some of those matters.

I proposed to go on from there to deal with one or two rather wider questions on the issue of town and country planning and its relationship to local government: first, to emphasise again, as it is important to emphasise, that the whole object of town and country planning is to secure a higher quality of environment in which people can live. It is concerned essentially with people. It is not right to suggest, as has been suggested, that it is concerned purely with matters of economics and the hard question of whether people can live at all. It has a wider objective of being concerned with the actual quality of living as well as the necessity of living.

One of the first questions in considering town and country planning matters and the relationship of the subject to local government is the whole question of land prices. I realise that part of this question is outside the authority of my right hon. Friend, but, nevertheless, in considering the question of town and country planning it is of obvious importance that we should know more fully the impact of land prices upon it.

Hon. Members opposite have expressed rather differing views. In the months before the General Election, right hon. and hon. Members opposite, who were then on the Government side—including the hon. Member for Gloucestershire, South—insisted that they believed that it was perfectly satisfactory to rely upon market values for compensation purposes for land. They—or at least the hon. Member for Gloucestershire, South— gave no indication at that time of wishing to move from that. I think that the right hon. Member for Leeds, North-East (Sir K. Joseph), who was then Minister of Housing and Local Government, on one occasion gave some indication that he hoped that some change would be made, and he did, of course—

Mr. F. V. Corfield (Gloucestershire, South)

Would the hon. Member oblige me by giving the date to which he is referring, as I think he is almost certainly wrong in what he is saying?

Mr. Blenkinsop

The date of the hon. Member's remarks was July, 1964, when the hon. Member for Gloucestershire, South, in answer to a Question in the House, reasserted the virtue of market value for compensation purposes, when his right hon. Friend, who was then Minister of Housing and Local Government, had made various suggestions in the House as to the ways in which local authorities might avoid the most severe impact of market values by buying land well in advance of their need and so on. There was an occasion on which he appeared to go much further than this, and suggested that he was anxious to avoid the whole betterment value going to a few private individuals.

However that may be, it is quite clear that, more recently, right hon. and hon. Gentlemen on the other side have begun to change their views and are now putting forward various proposals with regard to the prices of land—

Notice taken that 40 Members were not present;

House counted, and, 40 Members being present—

11.18 p.m.

Mr. Blenkinsop

I am very glad to have the encouragement and support of my hon. Friends, because I was pointing out that one of the matters which very much affect local authorities in the pursuance of their town and country planning powers was the question of land prices. I was saying that it was of great interest, I know to all of us in the House, and, indeed, to many people outside, that right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite appear to have been changing their views on this matter, and recently to have been—

Mr. Orme

Where are they?

Mr. Blenkinsop

We are very grateful to have one hon. Member on the opposite side—I apologise, three hon. Members on the opposite side, and we should be grateful that such mercies are vouchsafed to us.

Mr. Orme

And after a Count.

Mr. Blenkinsop

I was trying to follow this important matter of land prices. I think that we are particularly concerned to know what the views of hon. Members opposite are today. There is no doubt at all that one of the factors which has very much influenced local authorities and made their problem infinitely greater has been the Amendments which right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite have made to the Town and Country Planning Acts, and the way in which they have enforced the payment of market values in compensation for land required for urgent and important local authority planning purposes.

One example of this is the problem affecting local authorities in the redevelopment of their city centres. This is a matter of particular concern to hon. Members who represent the larger and, in some cases, some of the small towns. The vast cost involved in acquiring the land necessary for major redevelopment is bound to be a matter of concern, and hon. Members have from time to time tabled Questions about this asking whether some special measures could be taken to assist local authorities.

We have hopes that some assistance will be given through the proposals which, we understand, my right hon. Friend the Minister of Land and Natural Resources will be bringing before the House shortly. We are conscious of the difficulties which face all major local authorities in any ambitious plans which they wish to carry out.

In the past local authorities have been urged by Government spokesmen to be ambitious in their plans, not to be satisfied with piecemeal redevelopment schemes and to attempt to tackle their problems in an exciting and dramatic way. They have been urged to carry out the major part of this work under their own control, but experience has revealed to many of us that they face a considerable number of difficulties in doing this.

To carry through a major plan of redevelopment of an ambitious and worth-while kind in a city centre a local authority must employ architects and planners of high quality, perhaps bringing in architects from abroad as well. An ambitious, dramatic and exciting development of this kind must involve enormous problems of cost, problems which the local ratepayers are unlikely to welcome, however much they may welcome the broad outline of the plan.

Because of this many local authorities have felt obliged to call in private speculative bodies of one sort or another to lessen the immediate financial impact. This, alas, results in the kind of development we all too often see when going through many of our provincial towns. That is often the result when a development is left in the hands of a private development company. All too often the result is drab and uninspiring, since the company is concerned purely with obtaining an immediate financial return.

We need schemes that are stimulating, exciting, are a real challenge to the community. A terrible example of commercial development—one of the worst—can be seen in the Elephant and Castle area in London. Some of the buildings there, including the one which my right hon. Friend the Minister of Health must occupy, are typical of unambitious commercial development which we might well have been better off without. Throughout the country we see drab city centres and often the reason is the way in which local authorities have been driven to accept commercial private developers to reduce the charge on the ratepayers. I appeal to my right hon. Friend to do what he can to encourage local authorities everywhere to be reasonably ambitious in their programmes; and to help and encourage them, possibly through interest rates, and in other ways, to do the job that I am sure he would wish them to do.

Many of us are anxious lest plans should be developed on too narrow a basis. All recent technical developments and, above all, the problems of transport, force upon us the need to plan on a wide basis. There are grave dangers if too many cf our planning authorities, who may still be limited in their outlook, are tempted to come forward with plans without adequate consideration of wider regional needs. The work of my right hon. Friend the First Secretary is emphasising explicitly the newly-developing regional pattern. Hon. Members of the Liberal Party have also expressed themselves quite vigorously on the subject of regional authorities, and have said that they should be popularly elected. There are many differences of view on this subject, but it is one that needs consideration.

What is clear is that we must increasingly look upon the region as the natural basis on which to build our planning work. I am concerned lest we should fall into what I think is the trap of concentrating too much on our planning upon narrow conurbations, without taking into full account the rural communities laying adjacent to them. No planning can be effective that artificially isolates a purely rural community from its natural background. There are anxieties in many of our conurbations lest proposals put forward by commissions in examining particular problems should be outdated almost before the ink is dry on their reports. Many of us feel that if these suggested new urban counties are proceeded with, it is highly likely that they will, in turn, be superseded by a wider regional authority. I should be pleased to hear any comment my right hon. Friend may have to make on that aspect.

I realise that this is only a very limited and temporary kind of appraisal of a few points of a very wide subject, but a matter that is particularly dear to my heart is planning for recreational and leisure facilities. In the past, too many town and country planning authorities tended to assume that this was something outside their scope; that it was proper to leave recreational and leisure facilities on a completely unplanned basis, and that people would find the kind of facilities they wanted automatically, and without special planning being attempted.

I do not think that anybody now would pretend that that could be regarded as true. I think that nearly all our chief planning officers now recognise that this is as real a need as the physical requirements of housing, a health service, education, and the rest. The needs for recreation and for leisure pursuits are vital in our community today. They are vital in both the urban setting and the rural setting; one is related to the other.

Again, it is most important that we look at this on a regional basis and not too narrow or parochial a one. Only if we can greatly increase the facilities for recreation near our great urban centres is there any hope of our being able to preserve some of the more sensitive and wilder parts of our countryside from the damage which over-use may otherwise cause. This is why the exciting scheme here in the London area, the Lea Valley project, is so stimulating. It is a project which offers great attraction for both indoor and outdoor recreation for vast numbers of people, many of whom might otherwise have to travel far greater distances for similar facilities. I hope that both my right hon. Friends, the Minister of Housing and Local Government and the Minister of Land and Natural Resources, will do all they can to encourage schemes of this kind.

There must be similar opportunities in many other parts of the country. One thinks of industrial Lancashire, Yorkshire, parts of the North-East and elsewhere where the need is so urgent. It is possible, at one and the same time, to reclaim derelict areas, gravel pits, disused quarries, and the like, and provide water sport facilities which can be enormously attractive if properly developed.

There are some exciting examples of what can be done in Staffordshire, for example, where the authority has done remarkable reclamation work both near areas like Cannock Chase, which has been declared an area of outstanding natural beauty, and farther away in places which no one would have imagined to have any intrinsic beauty. A new beauty and attraction have been created there by the work the Staffordshire authority has set on foot, and the same kind of thing could be done in other parts of the country.

Mr. Palmer

Would my hon. Friend say something about the South-West, for instance, parts of Cornwall which have been ruined by industrial development?

Mr. Blenkinsop

I am no authority on the South-West, although I know something of the problems to which my hon. Friend refers, particularly in the areas affected by clay workings and so on. Perhaps other hon. Members may be able to speak about these matters from their special knowledge.

I strongly urge that this new phase of planning be given every encouragement. It opens up very great new possibilities, and offers also the hope that areas of outstanding beauty in our rather remoter parts, our National Parks and elsewhere, may be more fully used and more properly used for, perhaps, rather more limited forms of recreation by those who love the quiet. There is more chance of their needs being met if we can ensure that the more gregarious tastes—good luck to them—have the chance of being catered for somewhat nearer to our towns. In the same way, it would be possible to reduce the congestion falling on our already overcrowded roads.

I have done no more than attempt to open the subject. I hope that we shall hear the views of the hon. Member for Gloucestershire, South. If I have done no more, I hope that I have made it possible for the House to have the benefit of his observations and those of other hon. Members.

11.35 p.m.

Mr. E. S. Bishop (Newark)

I am sure we are all grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Blenkinsop) for raising this very important subject. I am pleased also to see the hon. Member for Gloucestershire, South (Mr. Corfield) in his place. His previous responsibilities fit him to make a contribution to our discussion, and we are also aware of the great interest he takes in this subject.

I welcome the opportunity to speak, because this is one of the important subjects which many of us think should be aired and which should get far more discussion than they have had. The proceedings tonight give many hon. Members a chance to air subjects which they feel are of great importance to their constituencies and to the country. Now that the Debate on the Address is over and we have not a chance normally of getting in with subjects dear to our hearts, we have now an opportunity to be seized and I am pleased that this subject has been initiated by my hon. Friend.

Those of us on this side of the House who are keen Members are anxious at any time of night or day to take a chance to talk about things which concern us and our constituents. I am honoured to represent a constituency which covers about 300 square miles of Nottinghamshire and which has about 83 towns, villages or districts. It is a vast area and, therefore, I am particularly concerned about town and country planning and its relationship to local government. We realise the important part played in our society by those engaged in local government. I have a particular interest here because, for the best part of 20 years, I have been a member of a city council with very important planning responsibilities.

Be that as it may, the area I am honoured to represent has many contrasts. It seems that, in future, not only in that area but in other areas throughout the country, the need for sensible and wise planning is of great importance because things which are not well planned at the start often cannot be retrieved and damage done remains a very long time. These matters are, therefore, of great import.

Perhaps I may illustrate the area I represent. There is the great coal-mining area of the East Midlands on one side of my constituency. It also has agriculture, which has its own concerns these days and which includes intensive husbandry with probably the biggest units of the poultry industry in the country. There are also the small farmers. It also has some of the few oil wells in Britain. Newark is an old and historic city with engineering and diverse light industries.

Most of us want to see the best of these historic interests preserved as much as possible and to see that they are blended in with the needs of the present and the future. In all matters of planning and development, we are concerned about the need to accommodate the ever-growing traffic. We want to make sure that agricultura land is preserved because we realise that land lost to housing can never he reclaimed for agriculture.

We realise the important part agriculture plays in our economy through the substantial contributions it makes to our balance of payments and to food production. We recognise that our local considerations and anxieties must be set against the wider pattern of regional development. We must have regard to historic associations where they exist and to historic and geographic boundaries and make sure that our towns, cities and villages retain as far as possible the individual characteristics with which they have been associated for centuries. We want to make sure, as my hon. Friend pointed out, of satisfying the need to satisfy future social life in the centre of our cities, which someone has described as cemeteries with traffic lights. We want to make them live. We want to make sure that all this is set against a background of a properly balanced and developed community. These are important considerations. No matter what the hour, my hon. Friends and I feel that we have the right to use this opportunity to make sure that this green and pleasant land remains that way, because many of us feel that it is becoming less green and less pleasant.

There is a need to avoid piecemeal development schemes. We want to get away from ribbon development, to make sure that towns do not grow too large and to see that we have other communities in the area to supplement them without joining with them. We feel strongly that there is a need for more consultation between planning authorities. I know that in county areas, where the county council is the planning authority, there is not always the consultation which should exist between the county council and the urban and rural district councils and the parish councils, too. At the same time, when there is consultation, we must be careful to see that there is not too much delay, because consultation in excess means delay.

We must make sure that our local planners are trained and experienced in the job which they have to do, and some fears which I have expressed here must be shared by my hon. Friends—fears that some people concerned with planning on our planning committees do not always have the range of vision, background and experience which they need to carry out their important tasks. At the same time, I pay tribute to those who have made very substantial contributions in the past. We know only too well how very important all this is, because in future those who are concerned with planning must have regard to the social life, community development and traffic considerations. They need to be experts in traffic control. They must have some knowledge of psychology and the way in which people live, and of the tensions in a modern built-up community and the frictions between people and districts. All these factors are important if we are to ensure proper development.

At the same time, we must not lose sight of the individuality and character and colour of our cities, towns and villages. In many ways there is a great pride in local communities. When parish councils are threatened—if that is the word—with being taken over by neighbouring authorities, they fight for their lives because they want to retain their identity and they do not want to be swallowed by what they regard as big brother around the corner.

These are matters which must be borne in mind all the time. While we pay attention to the need to maintain existing associations, we must beware of the wider considerations, the need of those working in the local community to have regard to the comprehensive use of amenities and facilities in our municipal life and rural communities, the sharing of services, the balance of economic units, and the financial aspects of local government. All these factors are relevant to town and country planning and its association with the local government at all levels.

We must also have regard to the wider implications of the economic development of the country. In theory one would like local authorities to have the finance and economic means whereby they can go ahead and develop their towns and villages in a comprehensive way and avoid piecemeal development. That is why it is so important that the Government of the day should pledge themselves to end the stop-go policies of the past and to provide a programme of balanced development.

Some of us who have worked in local government—and I have been chairman of a finance committee of an authority with a budget of £20 million of spending—realise how important it is economically to avoid "Stop-Go". We want to make sure that when we get on with housing development, with roads and transport, with public buildings, schools and all the rest of it, the plans on which we are embarked can go forward as laid out in the estimates for years to come. Of course, it mitigates against good development to have this business of getting on with the job and then stopping suddenly because of economic considerations, and then being told to get on again. This is bad from the point of view of good development, and I think we have got to make sure that in the future, as far as possible, we have assurances from the Minister and from his Government colleagues that, within the framework within which we have to operate in the field of our own municipal and social responsibilities, the things which we plan to do can go forward to fruition as the years go by.

One matter which concerns me particularly, of course—and I think it is also of concern to other hon. Members—is the matter of land use. I made the point just now that the land which is lost to housing and other developments from agricultural purposes cannot be easily reclaimed. This is of great importance. We realise the drastic amount of change we need in our land use in order to accommodate housing developments. We want to see many more houses built to clear the slums and to get rid of the hideous aspects of life in our community. At the moment, we want to make sure that we have the best use of agricultural land, and we also want to ensure that marginal land is used as widely as possible.

In my own particular constituency, I am more than a little concerned at the extent of gravel workings, because I know farmers who are threatened with their farms being broken up into uneconomic units because someone comes along and says, "I am seeking planning authority from the local authority to take over part of your farm for gravel workings". The farmer seems to have little defence against that. I should like to know to what extent agricultural land has been lost not only to housing, which is absolutely essential, but also to gravel workings in various parts of the country. This is a problem concerning not only the loss of agricultural land, but also, of course, the building up of areas which are not always very beautiful to look at in our countryside. These are some of the matters which must be concerning us in the future.

At the same time, as well as the need for housing, we have got to appreciate that, if we want to have more houses or units of accommodation, and at the same time not lose too much agricultural land, we need more flats accommodation. Of course, the problem there is that such accommodation does not always fit in very easily with the skyline and the environment of some of our communities, especially the historical ones where there are ancient castles, seige works and ruins around. But one has to try to fit into modern communities flat dwellings. These are some of the aspects.

It seems to me that a great problem which we face in the future, in taking a look at our housing developments and the slums which we have got—probably well over a million—is that before we deal with them there will be many more sub-standard houses turning into slums, each presenting a problem to successive generations. We must have regard to some of the so-called charming cottages in the countryside, which look so nice to people who flash by in their cars, but which are really nothing but dwellings which ought to have been scrapped many years ago. Many of them are without fixed baths, many are without piped water, many are without proper sanitation. I feel from time to time that, if only the Government would promise to get rid of bad sanitation in the countryside, they would have more Seats, and this, of course, would greatly enhance their majority next time. There are all these considerations.

Of course, the Report which was recently published on the state of our school buildings indicates the extent of the work which must be done. It is really startling to realise how many hundreds of thousands of children are being taught in schools which were built before 1875, and many more, of course, in schools built before the turn of the century. There are, of course, many other schools which were built before the turn of the century.

Mr. Robert Cooke (Bristol, West)

The hon. Member is speaking about his association with the City of Bristol, where he was chairman of the finance committee. He will, of course, recall that it is his Government who have taken away the freedom of the people of Bristol to spend their money on making school improvements, about which he is now speaking.

Mr. Bishop

I do not intend to digress—

Mr. Cooke

The hon. Member cannot answer the question.

Mr. Bishop

—from the subject which is under consideration. The fact is, of course, that the Government have to have regard to the immense calls upon their purse in so many directions at the present time and must have a sense of priorities, and I certainly leave to the Minister to assess how the money is to be spent.

Mr. Cooke

Bristol would rather not.

Mr. Bishop

I know the hon. Member is trying to catch the eye of the Press to get a write up in the local newspaper, but I think even the local Press must have gone home by this time. Be that as it may, the fact is we need to have regard to the present position and also to the inheritance, and the hon. Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Robert Cooke), who approves freedom, should therefore have regard to the Report which has now been published and which ought to have been published before the election took place and which has exposed the inactivity of the previous Administration over many years gone by. So we have inherited a great task in order to bring this accommodation up to date. One could talk at great length, of course, on the subject of school buildings. They are a challenge to us. I have no doubt this Government will get on with the job, the job which should have been done by the previous Administration of the hon. Member opposite.

Mr. Cooke

The hon. Member has accused the Government who were in office before the election of not getting on with this job and concealing the state of school buildings, and yet it is his Government who have taken away the power of Bristol Corporation to spend the ratepayers' money on school improvements. Can he answer that one?

Mr. Geoffrey Rhodes (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, East)

Would my hon. Friend like to answer the hon. Gentleman opposite by—

Mr. Speaker

Order. Interventions upon interventions create confusion, so we do not allow them.

Mr. Bishop

I am obliged, Mr. Speaker. I deplore the way in which the hon. Member opposite is bringing politics into this. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh".] Having seen the hon. Member for Gloucestershire, South here, I did not realise that the hon. Member had been creeping up on me in this way, but his intervention ought not to worry us.

Mr. Palmer

Will my hon. Friend bear in mind, in reference to Bristol, that it is the tremendous activity of Bristol's Labour-controlled education committee which makes the extra spending necessary?

Mr. Bishop

I am obliged to my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, Central(Mr. Palmer), for whose area I have the honour to be a member of Bristol City Corporation at the present time. I appreciate his intervention On this point.

I now want to turn to some aspects which I think will interest the hon. Member for Bristol, West, who withdrew, I understand, his desire to speak on the preservation of ancient buildings tonight—in case he was not here when the opportunity occurred.

Mr. Cooke

I am sorry to interrupt again, but since the hon. Member uses this opportunity to refer to it, perhaps he will bear in mind that I withdrew my topic because I did not wish it in any way to be used by the Government side to try to impede the progress of a vital Bill which deals with a human problem and which comes into tomorrow's business.

Mr. Norman Dodds (Erith and Crayford)

Why does the hon. Member keep getting up then?

Mr. Bishop

The fact remains that the matter of the planning and development of our towns and cities means that we have to have regard to the characteristics and the traditions of the areas with which we are concerned. Many of us feel that the development of our towns and cities and villages at present leaves much to be desired. There is the problem, of course, often due to extremism, on the one hand of those who want to preserve almost everything because of either real or supposed historical associations and, on the other, of those who want to make drastic clearances of almost everything. The result is that the average man stands by rather apathetically wondering what he can do about it between the two extremes. I realise—many of us do—that in many of our communities there are civic societies, archaeological societies and so on anxiously watching the way things are going. Some declare that buildings must be preserved because of their historical associations. I suppose that in almost every community one finds local people who say that some church, chapel or other building should be preserved because of its associations. There must be an enormous number of churches and chapels where Whitfield, Spurgeon and Wesley and others have preached, which is given by local people as reason for preserving them. I suppose that the number of places where those well-known preachers have spoken must be equal to the number of places where various Queens of England are said to have laid their heads over the years.

In all this we need a sense of proportion. Harm can be done by an unreasonable insistence on the preservation of certain features of every community. I recall an area—hon. Members from the South-West will know the place to which I refer—where outside the new bus station there remained for a considerable time on an island a Georgian house which many people said should not be destroyed or damaged but preserved, and buses had to go round it at great inconvenience. The amazing fact is that only a hundred yards or so away there was a perfectly good Georgian house preserved as such, equipped and furnished for the purpose and in keeping with the building, which was maintained by the museum and art gallery committee. That sort of thing is found in many parts of the country.

I understand that throughout the country there are more than 1,000 schemes of development which are likely to require the approval of the Ministry of Housing and Local Government in the near future, and many of them will affect our historic towns. Although one may say that there are plenty of safeguards, at the same time many feel that there remains much to be desired if we are to ensure that the mistakes of the past are not to be repeated.

There is a matter on which I hope the Minister will say something. Many of us feel that many buildings which ought to remain are nevertheless in danger. I understand that the Ministry of Public Building and Works and the Ministry of Housing and Local Government have certain rules which must be observed by local authorities in the preservation of these buildings. I believe that there are grade one and grade two categories, grade one giving the best protection and grade two not quite such good protection. I am anxious about this because in many towns and cities the greedy hand of the speculator is becoming obvious, and although the Ministry of Public Building and Works has to be informed of the proposals to demolish any building, nevertheless these buildings can still be in some danger. An order may be placed on a building, but if the owner—he may be a private individual—does not keep the building in good order it can fall into a state of decay and decline to such an extent that later on no one thinks it is worth preserving, and, therefore, an important part of our historical associations and development is lost. Whatever the authorities, national or local, may think, the gem which may be lost is lost for ever.

We are also concerned about authorities which, in order to preserve a structure, building or monument, almost knock it down and then rebuild it and say that it is the original building. On so many occasions it is clear that these developments do not retain the charm of the original structure. It is rather like a bicycle when someone says, "I have had this bicycle for 50 years and it has had only new handlebars, a new frame and new wheels, but otherwise it is the same". Of course it is not. When decay and decline set in to too great an extent in a building, methods of repair and renovation are such that we lose the original altogether and the new is not worth having and is nothing more than a sham and a fake. This is all the more important because we all know that up and down the country many historic buildings have been lost for ever. We have lost things of which we should have been the stewards and for which we should be accountable. Authorities have not been doing their job, either because they have not realised the importance of the things they have taken over, or because national planning and preservation powers are not adequate to meet modern needs.

When these buildings are in private hands, who is responsibile for their upkeep and maintenance? The Ministry may say that this is a job for the local authority and the local authority that it is a job for the owners; but the owners may say that it is not an economic proposition. The parties look to the Historic Buildings Trust and similar bodies, but while the application is being considered, the damage is going on and the rot sets in and eventually everybody agrees that the buildings should be pulled down. This is a tragedy, for history cannot be built overnight. It must be inherited and cherished and maintained and kept and handed on to future generations. In the process of change, we want to keep the blend of the past, the needs of the present and the demands of the future in proportion when we consider these planning matters.

We all owe a debt to the national and provincial papers for the way in which they have tried to keep the public informed of changes in planning developments and the need to preserve the past. I should like to quote from the Observer when Ian Nairn spotlighted twenty threatened towns and said: Even new Britain is crammed full of marvellous towns. A few of them are recognised and preserved. Many more have survived through luck or accident, even in the most unlikely locations. Slum clearance, commercial redevelopment, or road widening, or all three, threaten these places. He goes on to mention what he calls the threatened towns whose value is misunderstood, places which he says, ought to be safeguarded in 1965.

I pay tribute to the local newspapers who have an important job in this respect, in all matters of development of our highways and byways and communities in the preservation of what is worth preserving. There were three articles in one of my local newspapers, the Sheffield Telegraph, in recent weeks which highlighted problems which face places such as Salisbury, Canterbury and Exeter, many threatened by insufficient consultation with the public and local residents.

We want to ensure that we have proper redevelopment of our communities and rehabilitation of areas. We want to resolve the conflicts between property developers and those who are concerned with speculation. We have also to consider the responsibility of the local planning authorities. Local authorities sometimes give too little information to the Press and are not clear about the protective provisions which cover the preservation of buildings, and developers are not always clear about where they stand in law.

I think we ought to realise that if we want to preserve the character of an area we do not merely want to copy the past. Every age must make its own contribution to the future, and in years to come we should be able to say that this is the contribution of architecture, and planning, and layout, and development of our communities which has the characteristics of the twentieth century, characteristics of which we will be proud.

This is something which must be considered by local people when they are developing areas for which they have responsibility. I think it is important that local people, as the custodians of the present and the future, should, as far as possible in their planning and development, try to retain the characteristics and the traditions of their community. These are proud things which ought not to disappear. In all these things there must be local consultation so that the associations and experiences of the past can be preserved where they are worth preserving, and handed on to the future.

It depends, also, on the atmosphere and the feeling which a place can create. It depends on past associations. It depends vitally for its existence on the care and concern of local people. I think that this is the best safeguard, the only safeguard, for the preservation of things which really count, because if local people stand by unaware of what is happening, indifferent to what is happening, apathetic about their responsibilities, not knowing the rules which they can enforce if they have a concern for their community, past associations will be lost. We must ensure that local communities care, and show concern, for the things which our forefathers loved and held in great regard in years gone by.

What can be done for the preservation of these places? I have paid tribute to the Press. Both the national and the provincial Press have done, and can do, a great job in these matters by spotlighting some of the problems and pointing, out to the public the dangers of reckless development. In the area with which I am concerned, the East Midlands, there is a local paper, the Newark Advertiser and there are the Nottingham evening and morning papers, and the Chronicle Advertiser operating in the Sherwood Forest area. All these editors and journalists know the traditions, the background and the characteristics of the areas in which their papers circulate, and they are the principal custodians of their inheritance.

In the area with which I am concerned there are lots of historical associations, earthworks, and siegeworks threatened by gravel works, and so on, and history is being swept away week by week. We must review our regulations and laws to make sure that these things are protected. I think that we ought to do this to assure local communities that all that can be done is being done to protect the things which we really value.

I think we have to realise that in protecting the past and in making sure that our communities are balanced and suited to the needs of the future, mere legislation is not enough, whether it is legislation from the Ministry, or from the local authorities. First and foremost, we must awaken in our people a deep concern for the past and warn them of the responsibility which they bear to coming generations. We must make them realise that once a thing has gone it cannot be replaced, and that development stays with us for a long time and can haunt us in the future. This is a very important responsibility.

I believe that in these matters the Ministry and local authorities are in the front line for action. I should like to see many more local authorities, through their museum committees and historical associations, engendering in our younger people an awareness of the problems and of the dangers which they face. They can do a great deal to engender greater interest and concern.

I want to refer briefly to industrial archaeology, because this is also an important matter, which is in keeping with local traditions to a great extent. All these things must be our concern for the future.

Mr. Norman Atkinson (Tottenham)

Can my hon. Friend tell us, from his experiences in the South-West or the East Midlands, whether the preservation of archaeological values has ever arisen with the development of private property? I always have the feeling that whenever private development takes place—in housing, particularly—there is a complete and utter disregard for planning, in its intrinsic sense, as opposed to development by local authorities. Can my hon. Friend tell me—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker(Sir Samuel Storey)

The hon. Member cannot use an intervention to make a speech.

Mr. Bishop

Industrial archaeology is also important because in every community there are buildings which should be preserved, in the background and setting with which they have been associated for so long. It is pleasant to know that colleges of advanced technology, amongst other places, can play their part. I know that in Bristol a college of advanced technology has been running lectures on this subject, so that people may have a greater awareness of their responsibilities. In weekend conferences, and so on, lecturers have made their contributions to the discussions.

Some local things, like a Severn Trow, have been preserved, to be shown in their proper setting. I also want to refer to changing trends in our social life. We realise that in the past transport was limited, and people rarely went beyond the confines of their villages or local communities. This made it very easy to trace one's local ancestors. But things are changing, and there is now a far greater tendency for people to move. A moving population means that there are greater changes in each community. At one time, if one found that a family was living in an area in the seventeenth century one could probably trace the same family back to the thirteenth century.

Mr. Palmer

I thought that my hon. Friend referred just now to an old restaurant in Bristol and called it the Severn Trow. Is it not the Llandoger Trow?

Mr. Bishop

I was not referring to that building but to the trow which operates in the River Severn. There must be a proper setting for it. These relics should be preserved.

In the past people and their descendants stayed in the same area for centuries, and it was easy for them to know the traditions and characteristics of the places in which they and their forefathers lived. Nowadays, however, people move quickly into new areas and into different parts of the country, and even outside the country, and it is not so easy for local communities, settled in new towns or even in new housing developments, to realise that the areas into which they have moved have traditions and histories about which they should learn. It is essential that this should be done, in order to maintain the characteristics to which I have referred, which are important in preserving the tone of the area. Therefore a better knowledge of the environment of a place gives us a better understanding, and leads to people settling into a locality more quickly.

We know the problem of those who move from slum dwellings and sub- standard houses to new housing estates and say, "we have been here for several years and do not feel settled". Often they show a constant desire to go back to the place from which they came, despite the fact that the accommodation there is sub-standard. In their new communities—and I know some in the area of the hon. Member for Gloucestershire, South; and we all know these places in our county areas—people often find it difficult to settle down and feel that they have roots. It is through traditions and history that they can have a greater feeling of being at one with the area and have a civic consciousness in both local and national elections. If one feels that one belongs to a place one has a greater pride in it.

Mr. Atkinson

We have always said that an integral part of family life in this country has been communication between members of the family. It seems to me that since the coming of Dr. Beeching, the Beeching era, opportunities for the family to communicate with one another have been shattered, because he has made it virtually impossible for younger members of the family to visit older relatives and for older people to go and see their grandchildren. If they are not able to use these supersonic motorways and have to rely on old-fashioned transport, there must be a deterioration of communication—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker

I must once again call the hon. Member's attention to the fact that he must not make a speech on an intervention.

Mr. Bishop

I was making the point that it is because people do not feel they have any roots in the area to which they have gone and have no knowledge of its past and traditions that they do not settle in very quickly and there is often a desire to go back to whence they came.

We often say that these matters concern town planners, that we need consultants, and so on. I appreciate that we do, but we not only need them but landscapers, architects and transport experts to advise on traffic flow and do away with bottlenecks, to suggest bypasses and diversions. We also need economists and sociologists. We need people who have an understanding of families and their problems and their need to feel closely knit to the community to which they have gone. And these experts and their recommendations have to be fitted in against the local situation which is best known by local people.

We wonder sometimes how we can avoid the ghastly prospect of immense concrete and steel motorways, highways and race-tracks ploughing through our land and threatening the destruction of a thousand years of history and all we hold dear overnight. It seems to me that there is a real danger here.

Mr. William Yates (The Wrekin)

In view of the most important speech which the hon. Gentleman is making concerning the future of the country, I do not see a sufficient number of Members in the House paying attention. I would therefore call attention to the fact that there are not 40 Members present.

Notice taken that 40 Members were not present;

House counted, and, 40 Members being present—

12.20 a.m.

Mr. R. W. Brown (Shoreditch and Finsbury)

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. In an interesting debate this evening, we are being subjected to this rather childish interference with the business of the House. Is it possible for you to rule that it be recorded in HANSARD that, after many Counts of this House, we can find only two hon. Members on the Opposition benches? This childish behaviour is indefensible and, because of it, a whole train of thought can be lost.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker(Dr. Horace King)

The hon. Member knows that what he has said is not a point of order.

Mr. Bishop

This is a very important subject, and I am grateful for the attention which I have been having from my hon. Friends.

I was asking how we can possibly avoid having ghastly motorways and main highways going through our towns and cities on high-level concrete and steel constructions which tend to smash the characteristics of our local areas. We wonder sometimes whether we are not going to be slaves to the motor car and to our modern transport system.

I do not want to digress, but it may well mean there ought to be greater consideration given to the use of our railways in order to avoid this. It is important, as we have been told, that transport should be the servant of man and not the other way round. These are matters which must be concerning all of us, and I think we also have to have regard to the changing pattern of our national affairs. Whether we like it or not, and whether hon. Gentlemen opposite like it or not, we are bound to lose a certain amount of our freedom in order eventually to regain it. We need more control in some respects in order that unwarranted, unnecessary and undesirable development does not take place and that we do not regret it later on.

The future of our towns, historic and otherwise, must be fitted in with our economic pattern at the same time. The proposed regional development units are important in this respect. The planning boards are intended to channel the economic and industrial interests through to central Government, and these, of course, will affect the needs of our own towns and cities.

Therefore, we must make sure that housing, industrial and cultural developments are sited in the right places. I appeal here to my right hon. Friend the Minister of Housing and Local Government to have regard to the economic situation of the country, because regional planning boards can mean that in future we shall have new towns and areas which we do not envisage at the present time, and our economic development and industrial development will have to be decided upon, by which I mean the areas to which we want people to go and the areas where we want to restrict development. When that has been decided within the economic and financial framework of our economy, then the local communities and planners must start work.

It is, therefore, important that in changes of boundaries and in local planning considerations, the industrial and the economic position of our country has some place. Otherwise, we shall start developments in an area and find that there are not enough houses or population to serve the industries which are later established there. We want to avoid these snags which we have experienced in the past.

I have mentioned the important responsibilities of members of our planning authorities. Very often, these bodies are made up of well-meaning men and women in local government at county level as well as at lower levels in the local government structure, but they are not experts in the proper sense of the word. I made the point only a few minutes ago that planners need to be expert in so many ways. They need to be planning experts, traffic experts, landscape architects, sociologists, and so on. I am sorry to feel that too few of our towns employ planning consultants. This is an expert job, and the local people can play their part by giving of their local feeling and experience about the characteristics of the place where development is to proceed.

I hope that more towns will employ consultants to advise them from expert knowledge. I am pleased to see that three new chairs of economics of planning development, urban design and urban sociology have been established at Manchester University. This shows a growing awareness of the need for trained people.

How can we best use the people whom we have? Even the best equipped local authority, and certainly the smaller authorities, can employ only a certain number of trained people. Local authorities certainly do not have the staff to advise them on their planning needs. We often get assemblies or forums of well-meaning architects, some expert, some amateur, telling the authorities what to do, and the authorities are not helped to any great extent by this. I suggest, therefore, that we encourage more people to undertake training for the profession of town and country planning. This should become a greater feature of our universities and colleges as the places where training can be given.

There is, of course, the need for experience in local work at the same time. Local pride must be taken into account in these questions. We need also public relations activities if we are to avoid some of the troubles. We know what happens in local government. A local council is asked to approve planning development for new buildings and a new outline in the community. Then the local people hear of it and protest. The authorities are held up while planning objections are heard and the Minister has to consider the matter, whereas if local authorities would take local people into their confidence, often through the Press, many of these troubles might be avoided.

Planning for the future and for development is really a matter for teamwork, for experts at the highest level and for those responsible lower down the local government structure. It is a matter of concern to the local residents and ratepayers who have to foot the bill and to the people who have to live in the development. All three levels should be consulted and taken into the confidence of those who want development in an area.

Amongst all this, we want to make sure that our towns, cities and villages of the future are a blend not only of the present, but of the past as well. There should be a much closer working relationship between Ministries, local authorities and the people, and we must have greater regard to the need to protect the past. I should like my right hon. Friend the Minister tonight to assure me that he is aware of the machinery which he needs for the future to safeguard the buildings and monuments which we have taken over. In all these things, the public must play their part. All the legislation in the world is of no use—whether at the highest level or at local level—unless the people in our communities show concern and care for the things which they have inherited.

I want to make sure that in the future we have answers to all the points which I have raised, or at least to some of them—the need to avoid piecemeal development, the need to avoid ribbon development, the need for greater consultation between authorities, the need to have regard to the regional planning and development of our country through the new planning boards, and the need also to avoid some of the worst aspects of parish pump politics and outlook which bedevils some of our local government areas. I believe that we should have regard at the same time to the economic and financial needs of the country, so that we can get an assurance, at the lower levels where planning takes place, that the money will be available, that the planning permission will be available, and that, when development takes places, it can go ahead with proper planning and with proper priorities, so that we do not have to stop and go, with all the bad effects which that will have on the development of our communities in the future.

I would ask the Minister to give us some assurance on these matters, because they concern not only my own constituency, but also those of many hon. Members here tonight. We want to be assured on these points, in order that we can go to our communities and say that we are doing our bit nationally to help them and that it is now a matter of their helping themselves with the machinery and the legislation which we may provide for them.

12.33 a.m.

Mr. Ernest G. Perry (Battersea, South)

I welcome this opportunity to address the House on town and country planning and its relation to local government. I am sorry that it is at this late hour. I want—

Mr. William Yates

The hon. Member knows that on the Consolidated Fund Bill it is the greatest privilege we have that, as long as we are in our places, we can seek to defend the rights of our constituents. He should not worry about the lateness of the hour; he should proceed.

Mr. Perry

I am glad to have the assurance of the hon. Member for The Wrekin(Mr. William Yates) that I can go on. This is a matter which concerns all back-benchers and all hon. Members of the House. I am glad to have heard the fine speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Newark(Mr. Bishop). He said at the start that he intended to speak briefly, and I am sorry he did not give us one of his lengthier ones.

I am glad that I have this opportunity. I prepared a speech on Monday night on the Milner Holland Committee's Report, I prepared one on Tuesday for the immigration discussion, and on neither occasion was I able to catch Mr. Speaker's eye—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker

Order. I do not want to hear the hon. Gentleman's political biography. He should return to the subject of the present debate.

Mr. Perry

I accept your correction, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, and I am very glad this evening to be able to talk about the Consolidated Fund and its reference to town and country planning and local government. I say this because I have had 30 years' membership on a local authority in London, and at present I am a member of the council of the new London borough of Wandsworth. I think that with that 30 years' experience and the information which I can impart to the House, as well as the information which I can collect from the House, I shall be able to learn something this evening.

I was glad that the hon. Member for Gloucestershire, South(Mr. Corfield) put down this subject on the Paper. I was most grieved when I discovered, at the last minute, that he was not present to present his case. I am sure that he is grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields(Mr. Blenkinsop), who took his place at the last minute and presented us with this subject.

Mr. Edward M. Taylor (Glasgow, Cathcart)

The hon. Gentleman said that he was glad to have an opportunity to contribute to the debate, and no doubt his remarks will be listened to and acted upon by the Government. Does he appreciate, however, that it is a scandal and a disgrace that Scottish hon. Members on this side of the House who wish to speak about planning in relation to local government must do so in the absence of Scottish representation in the Government? Is he aware that on the benches opposite there is no Secretary of State, no Minister of State and no Under-Secretaries to answer or listen to the points we wish to make and the questions we wish to put? This is a scandal and a disgrace and a discrimination against Scottish hon. Members.

Mr. Perry

I recall that a few evenings ago we had a long discussion on the Highland Development(Scotland) Bill and I believe that the hon. Gentleman took part in it. Tonight I wish to take part in this debate. I am sorry if that does not meet his wishes, but I believe that he only recently came in. I have been here since 2.30 this afternoon and I am glad to have this opportunity to speak.

Mr. Robert Cooke

Before the hon. Gentleman proceeds—he spoke about my hon. Friend not having been here for very long. I think that the hon. Gentleman joined us at the last election. Perhaps he does not realise that he is unwittingly taking part in an exercise designed to destroy tomorrow's business and so to get the Government out of an extremely difficult situation. I hope he will realise that he is prolonging matters with his hon. Friends and is taking part in a calculated effort to destroy tomorrow's business to prevent a valuable Bill from being passed.

Mr. Perry

I am not aware that the Government are in any difficulty. I imagine that after the results of the two by-elections the boot is on the other foot.

The Paymaster-General(Mr. George Wigg)

On a point of order. Is it in order for the hon. Gentleman to impute a motive to my hon. Friends when the hon. Gentleman has himself not been present? Is it also in order for the hon. Member for Glasgow, Cathcart(Mr. Edward M. Taylor) to castigate my hon. and right hon. Friends without having given them notice that he was going to do so?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker

Had anything happened which was out of order I should have taken note of it.

Mr. William Molloy (Ealing, North)

Further to that point of order. Is it permissible for hon. Gentlemen opposite who have longer experience of the procedures of the House to give absolutely contradictory advice to new hon. Members on this side of the House?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker

That is not a point of order.

Mr. Perry

To proceed with the subject under discussion, without agreeing with the entire policy of the former Government on this issue, I do appreciate the inclusion in their London Government Act of a provision which gave town planning authority to the new London boroughs. Prior to that autho- rity being given everything had to go to the L.C.C. In Wandsworth we consider that, under the new Administration, things will work out better in relation to town planning—with my right hon. Friend now in charge of the Ministry—than it did under the former Administration.

However, the problems facing the new London boroughs in regard to town planning are serious. Many of them are built up areas, without room to spread or to build houses. They just do not have space in which to develop. These difficulties make it hard for us to build houses and settle our development problems. We feel that unless we have the support of the Ministry we will not be able to carry through schemes for town planning and other developments. I hope, therefore, that the Ministry will see eye to eye with us when we submit schemes.

I feel sure, from the statements so far made by the Government, that in the long run the new London boroughs will have a much better chance of solving their problems under the new Administration than under the former one. We have been afraid, in places like Battersea, that certain activities would continue. For example, when we had new housing estate and developments in preparation under the former Administration the former Administration the Ministry of Transport would suddenly submit designs for huge motorways through our developments. We hear of plans and ideas, and of developers coming along wanting to do this and that with a certain part of the borough. Before we know anything about it, plans have been laid somewhere and we have a fait accompli. Those who want to do these things will now have to apply to the local authority, and we are very glad to have these powers.

The Evening Standard tonight had a description of the motorways that it is proposed will go through the new London boroughs. Formerly one of them was shown as going right through Clapham Junction, practically destroying the shopping centre altogether. That would be a very serious matter to the traders and others there, and on their behalf I hope that the construction of these motorways will not affect those interests at Clapham Junction. If these motorways go through, they will destroy rehousing work in Battersea and other parts of London on which millions of £s has been spent since the war. Only by co-operation between the Ministry and the new London boroughs can we hope to achieve the results we want.

The trouble is the dearth of land, particularly in the new London borough of Wandsworth, and I have been glad to be reassured on many occasions by the Minister about the development of railway land in our borough. I hope that we shall be able to use that land, that it will not be handed over to private developers, but that, when it produces its plans, the London borough of Wandsworth will be able to use it. There are many, many acres of spare railway land, in addition to the space needed for the new Covent Garden Market, which can be used for fine housing in Wandsworth.

Negotiations were entered into more than three years ago by firms called Overland Investments and Railways Sites Ltd. for the disposal of a large amount of railway land at Battersea for private development, without the local authority knowing anything about it. It was not until planning application was made to the London County Council that the local authority got to know that this land was to be used for building luxury flats at rents of anything up to £10 a week. In Battersea we have a housing waitinglist of 5,000, and we want to use any spare land there might be. If the Minister can give us the power to develop this land, we shall be very grateful.

It has been suggested that there are small pockets of railway land near the industrial sites that could be handed over for local government housing, but we do not want the poorest sites in the worst places being given to us while the best sites, facing the river and Battersea Park, are handed to the private developers. We want all the sites, good or bad, so that we can develop them in accordance with the needs of the people.

Another thing that I want to bring to your notice—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker

Order. The hon. Gentleman must not address me. Anything he wants to say must be addressed through the Chair to the Minister whom the hon. Gentleman is seeking to persuade.

Mr. Perry

I sincerely apologise, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. I was at fault. I wish to draw to the Minister's attention that Battersea owns some land outside the borough at Morden, Surrey. We have 125 acres there which we use for burial purposes, for a crematorium, and for a sports ground. Fifteen acres of this land are now lying idle and will not be used for burial purposes because, as is well known, cremation is taking the place of earth burial. On two occasions, we applied to the previous Minister for permission to use this land for housing. We could house over 200 Battersea families on it and alleviate our housing problem. There were two public inquiries and, on both occasions, our application was turned down. On the other side of the road, there are large blocks of flats and houses, yet our application for permission to build houses was refused. I hope that we shall receive more favourable treatment from the present Minister.

We have sold land to some of the interests who opposed our applications. We sold land to the Surrey County Council for a Catholic school, a sports ground and for a county council health clinic. The sales were made at reasonable prices, district valuers' prices, but, when we made our own application to build houses on the rest of the land, we were opposed and turned down.

Relations between the Minister and the local authorities of London are far better now than they were under the previous Administration. In the past, a local authority has had a job to get permission to develop sites, but a private developer could get it practically overnight. We look forward to a greatly changed attitude towards local authority enterprise. I am glad that the Minister will do what we have wanted done for so many years and will not give preference to private developers to develop railway land and private sites. Thousands of people are homeless. People are living five to a room.

Mr. Graham Page (Crosby)

When permission was granted to the private developers, they did develop for housing purposes, did they not?

Mr. Perry

Yes, possibly they did, and they also developed for office purposes. I am emphasising the need in London for houses and flats built by local authorities at rents which people can pay. People earning £13 or £15 a week cannot pay rents of 7, 8, 10 or 15 guineas a week. Somebody came to see me this week who told me that he had been in a flat for 22 years, he had been taken to court and lost his case, and he had been told by the magistrate that he must pay 5, 6 or 7 guineas a week out of his wage of £13 10s.

This is the sort of thing happening in Battersea. This is the sort of case we want dealt with. It is all very well for hon. Members opposite to laugh about people who earn small wages and cannot pay high rents, but many people in London earn well under the national average and endure housing conditions which are a disgrace. Any London Member will testify to the number of bad housing cases brought to his attention.

I could take the hon. Member for Crosby(Mr. Graham Page) to a place in Battersea where a coloured family of five lives in one room. Two oil heaters stand in the corner and they have to cook and sleep in that room as well. It is a six-roomed house. That is overcrowding all right. But when the local authority inspector visits the place he realises that these people have nowhere else to go. That is the sort of situation existing in London. It is all right for people to scoff and sneer at the complaints we make about this, but there are hundreds of such cases.

Mr. Graham Page

rose—

Mr. Perry

I am sorry. I gave way to you. You interrupted me.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker

Order. The hon. Member did not give way to me.

Mr. Perry

I am sorry, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. I give way to the hon. Member for Crosby.

Mr. Graham Page

Is not the hon. Member aware that the Ministry, under the last Government, had to intervene to prevent the L.C.C. giving too many permissions for office developments in Battersea and to oblige the local council to provide more housing where the L.C.C. was giving permission for office developments?

Mr. Perry

I am not aware of those circumstances. I will look into it. But I do not know that there are many sites in Battersea that could be used for housing and which are still owned by private developers. There has not been a lot of office development there. Most of the development has been undertaken by the local authority. There has been only a small amount of office development. There is no doubt that priority must be given to housing development at rents that people can pay. People in low income groups cannot be charged high rents.

Mr. Molloy

Would not my hon. Friend agree that the terrible housing problem in London was further aggravated by the Tory Rent Act? Would not he further agree that repeal of that Act will go some way to meeting the housing problem?

Mr. Perry

I agree. The Milner Holland Report sets out these details in full. I shall not discuss that, however, because we debated it on Monday. But housing conditions in many parts of London, particularly areas like Battersea, are so bad that we must have any spare railway land or any other sites that we own for council house development. Priority must be given to local government housing. I appreciate that my right hon. Friend the Minister of Housing and Local Government will do all he can to see that the local authorities are given priority to develop sites they own. This problem is so serious it must not be scoffed, jeered or laughed at. I do not doubt that hon. Members opposite do not live four or five in a room.[HON. MEMBERS: "Do you?"] They are not threatened with eviction. But many people in my constituency have been threatened with eviction and many of them do live three, four and five in a room. Anything which the Government can do about local government and town and country development will be gladly received.

12.56 a.m.

Mr. F. V. Corfield (Gloucestershire, South)

We have had a debate for which I think there is only one honourable explanation—that hon. Members opposite have shown enormous distrust of the ability of the Minister of Housing and Local Government to carry out his planning functions. The hon. Member for Newark (Mr. Bishop) took nearly an hour to express his fears that his right hon. Friend would not carry out his functions and might not have enough powers, and the hon. Member for Battersea, South(Mr. Perry) spoke in the same vein.

It is not my intention to stand between the right hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends in his efforts to reassure them that he proposes to use his planning powers and to try to meet some of the very serious accusations which have been made against his Ministry. I had intended to withdraw the Motion, because it seemed clear that there was not much intention to make this a serious debate on planning in which, as the hon. Member for South Shields(Mr. Blenkinsop) was kind enough to say, I have had a considerable interest for a number of years—long before I became a politician.

One thing which makes me suspicious about advice on planning is when the hon. Member for South Shields tells me what is wrong and what is right. When all is said and done, the great majority of the aspects of planning are matters of opinion. Occasionally something sticks up like a sore thumb and is clearly wrong, but the occasions on which one can say that a specific development is definitely and clearly right for a piece of land must be very rare indeed. When people start talking about right and wrong in an absolute sense in relation to planning, I greatly suspect their judgment and the value of what they have to contribute.

The point which I want to put to the right hon. Gentleman—and hope springs eternal that we shall get a serious answer, despite the rest of the debate—is that his Department for many years, at any rate since the end of the Ministry of Town and Country Planning, has been responsible both for planning and for local government, and I am told that one of the reasons why the planning functions were not transferred to the new Ministry of Land and Natural Resources was the feeling that the right hon. Gentleman's connections with local government made it appropriate that they should remain—because the local authorities are planning authorities—with the right hon. Gentleman.

When I put down a Question earlier to the Prime Minister about the func- tions of the new Ministry, and particularly about how they would affect the right hon. Gentleman's functions, it was made clear that the town and country planning functions would remain with the right hon. Gentleman, and when we had the first Transfer of Functions Order it was noticeable how meticulously any Section of the National Parks Act—which by and large has been transferred to the Ministry of Land and Natural Resources—were preserved to the right hon. Gentleman if they had any planning functions attached to them at all. We had the somewhat ludicrous situation in which the new Ministry was being set up to look after the National Parks without any of the powers to control the planning within them. That may have been consistent with the Prime Minister's proposal that planning functions should remain with the Minister of Housing and Local Government, but I want the right hon. Gentleman to tell me how on earth this can be an improvement in the planning functions and how it will enable the right hon. Gentleman to improve our planning techniques in seeking to achieve what we all want to achieve. How on earth can it improve the situation to split these functions between two Ministries?

When we came to the debate on the Machinery of Government Bill on 9th December, we had confusion worse confounded, because the Chancellor of the Duchy told us amongst other things that the new Minister of Land and Natural Resources would have under his control: The problems of commuters and the horrible conditions in which many people have to go to and from work, the congested towns putting great strain on services and on transport, the need to preserve the green belt and to prevent the kind of urban sprawl which took place years ago leaving permanent marks on the countryside are all part of the responsibility of the Minister who will advise the Government about them. There was another passage: With this new Ministry, we are trying to bring together with a body of knowledge about land and its uses in a way which has never previously been brought together under one Minister. We were also told: The Minister of Housing and Local Government will want land for housing and for new towns, and so on. The Secretary of State for Education and Science will be building new schools and there will be new universities and so on. In general, all Ministries wanting land have used the machinery available to them to get what they wanted, subject to planning permission, but not subject to any general oversight or assessment."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 9th December, 1964; Vol. 703, c. 1569–66.]

Mr. William Yates

I am sorry to say that there are going to be no new universities at all. This is the great mistake.

Mr. Corfield

I was only quoting from the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy. But the point I want to make is this; that, of course, the right hon. Gentleman or his Department and his predecessors have always been responsible for planning permission for all these projects. As far as I recollect, there is a procedure called the Circular Hundred procedure, by which, even though the Crown does not require planning permission, other Government Departments submit to the right hon. Gentleman any clash of opinion they may have with the local planning authority, and he, as far as I recollect, gives a decision in very much the same way as he would on a planning appeal.

What, again, I want to ask the right hon. Gentleman is: in what possible way is the green belt to be better preserved, are these school sites to be better selected, by bringing in the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Land and Natural Resources? Also, in what way is he going to bring him in, because this, after all, is what the Chancellor of the Duchy told us this Ministry exists for? We want to know exactly what his right hon. Friend's function is in this connection, because on the face of it—and I do not think the right hon. Gentleman will accuse me of exaggerating—it does not appear to increase efficiency to bring in two Ministries where there was only one before. Of course, any form of planning decision which crosses the boundary between England and the Principality brings in yet another Minister. For example, with regard to many of the right hon. Gentleman's water functions, the River Severn does not conveniently follow the boundary between the two countries; nor, indeed, does the River Wye. There will also, no doubt, be certain new town development schemes where the receiving area will be on one side and the exporting area on the other, and here we are bringing in yet another Minister to take part in these decisions.

What I want to ask the right hon. Gentleman again is: how on earth does this increase the efficiency with which he can do his job, when, as I understand it, he is primarily responsible for town and country planning? If he is not, then I hope he will enlighten us, because it is leading to a great deal of confusion. I would be the first to admit with the advantage of hindsight, that a great many decisions since the war, both local and Ministerial, could have been better made, but mistakes will go on being made and it is pure arrogance to pretend that they will not. But what we want to do is to get an improvement all the time, with fewer and fewer mistakes, and this is surely something which is not going to be brought about by bringing in a multitude of Ministers, all with interests in only part of the problem. As I say, I think it is most important that we should be told how the right hon. Gentleman's functions are being improved and helped by this spread of functions. Also, we want to know exactly where the dividing line comes between him and his right hon. Friend the Minister of Land and Natural Resources.

The other point that I wanted to raise was the question of, so to speak, the broader strategic planning decisions marching hand in hand with local government administration. This is something which—if there is a case for the planning functions remaining with the right hon. Gentleman—is surely only to be supported if it is clearly shown that the planning decisions do go hand in hand with local government administration. I want to put to him a particular case. I apologise if it has a certain parish pump atmosphere about it, but I want to cite particularly the position in and around the City of Bristol.

Here we have a city with a population—in greater Bristol—of something like 500,000. We have a green belt which has two functions, one part of which is to prevent the coalescing of the two quite different cities of Bath and Bristol, and the other part of which is to prevent the sprawl of Bristol to any excessive degree northwards into Gloucestershire, and in due course, no doubt, there will be an approved green belt in Somerset.

As a result of the Local Boundaries Commission we have a situation in which the suburbs of Bristol in Gloucestershire are to remain in Gloucestershire. If the right hon. Gentleman will take a trip through Bristol, which, no doubt, he has done, I defy him to tell us where Gloucestershire begins and Bristol ends, or the other way round, purely by observation on the ground. I can show him one or two landmarks, but he would have to look for them. Nevertheless we have a situation in which in one great city we get first the city, urban Bristol, and surrounding it an urban development of precisely the same type divided into two parts, two contiguous urban areas form parts of two R.D.Cs. Two such areas are U.D.C.s on their own.

It seems to me obvious that unless we tighten the green belt around Bristol we shall get other urban areas in Gloucestershire building themselves up, and striving to build themselves up into another solid urban mass striving for county borough status. If we do get that, I suggest we shall probably get the worst possible local government administration we know of. It is something we have had to put up with for historical reasons in the Black Country where we had to consolidate a very large number of urban districts and non-county boroughs into a number of county boroughs simply because Birmingham, which developed differently from London, was dominant, and the L.C.C. or G.L.C. sort of solution could not be adopted—as an overriding local authority. Birmingham was larger than the other urban areas and authorities and would have been predominant. London developed quite differently.

In Bristol the same thing will happen, with urban local authorities side by side, with Bristol dominant, and it will be much more difficult to apply the L.C.C. approach. I would suggest to the right hon. Gentleman that, in looking at the boundaries of the smaller urban areas, and therefore looking at the function of the green belt, he is, I think, in making the green belt decision, ignoring the local government side of the matter, because with the green belt restricted northwards from Bristol, leaving a lot of white land which undoubtedly will gradually be developed into one urban mass, he is inviting the worst possible build up from the local government, administrative point of view.

I hope he is going to give us some explanation, and, secondly, give us some idea of how he sees this sort of development from both the local government and the planning points of view. I hope he will treat my questions seriously. I think the country wants an answer on how the planning functions of his Ministry will be strengthened by diversification between it and that of his right hon. Friend the Minister for Land and Natural Resources. If it is not being strengthened, could he give some other good reasons why there should be this division, or proposals by which he could put the matter right? Because we on this side of the House believe, and a great many of the professional bodies which take an interest in planning believe very firmly, that this Government have weakened rather than strengthened the ordinary planning powers, by diversifying between more than one Ministry.

1.10 a.m.

The Minister of Housing and Local Government(Mr. Richard Crossman)

I will try in the short time at my disposal—[HON. MEMBERS: "The right hon. Gentleman has plenty of time."]—to deal with the very large number of points raised. Maybe the most convenient method will be to work backwards and start with the hon. Member for Gloucestershire, South(Mr. Corfield).

The hon. Gentleman began his speech with some slight arrogance about it. After all, the hon. Gentleman who had proposed to start the debate failed the House. He abstained. But we came to answer him. After a great deal of cajoling and urging—

Mr. Corfield

The right hon. Gentleman will, I hope, know—at least, his hon. Friend will so inform him—that I took the trouble to ring up his hon. Friend—I thought I was doing the right hon. Gentleman a favour—to tell him what we were going to do. If there has been any slip-up, the row is between the right hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friend and not between the right hon. Gentleman and me.

Mr. Crossman

I must point out that this is a subject of the widest interest to the House and many hon. Members on this side of the House had come here keen and anxious to take part in the debate. They were profoundly disappointed when, suddenly, those who were promoting the debate drew out, apparently for no proper reason. Then there came an astonishing intervention from the right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone(Mr. Hogg), who burst into the Chamber to announce some strange talk about the reason why the debate was taking place. I was relieved that at the end the hon. Gentleman came here and, in his charming way, put to me a number of questions which will take a time to answer. The hon. Gentleman has enabled us to have from his side at least a contribution with which we can deal. After I have dealt with that, I will deal with the contribution from the Government side.

I cordially agree with one thing that the hon. Gentleman said. He began by saying that there is no absolute right and no absolute wrong in planning. I would say to him that there is no absolute right and no absolute wrong in planning a green belt or in making a planning decision. There is no absolute right and no absolute wrong in Whitehall either. All these things are questions of balance and proportion and choice of evils and choice of advantages.

I will start with the question which the hon. Gentleman raised about the Bristol conurbation. I wish that he had given me notice of it. On his other questions, of which I had some idea, I was able to get some information and prepare myself in advance. But I have to reply as it were off the cuff about Bristol. Therefore, if the reply is not in full detail it is partly his fault for not warning me in advance.

This is an issue of what we do—first of all, I talk in terms of the Local Government Commission—what we do in terms of boundaries in respect of great boroughs which begin to splay and sprawl into counties, when we decide—or how one decides—whether an area which overspills into a county has reached a point of contiguity with the outlying districts, and may be amalgamated with areas which have become part of it. That is something which every boundary Commission has to worry about, and which every Minister has to concern himself about who has to decide what to do about a boundary Commission's report.

I would tell the hon. Gentleman that when I looked at the Local Government Commission's Report on Bristol I was a little surprised that so little thought had been given to the possibility of extending Bristol's frontiers to take in some of the new urban areas which have grown up around the city. The reason given, I understand, was that there was no great interest in this in Bristol. As he knows, there were eleven points of reference, or factors, which the Local Government Commission could balance in taking account of the matter. One of them was local interest. Another was contiguity. Another was genuine economic interest binding the areas together.

I agree with the Commission, and that is why I upheld its decision. In the case of Bristol there are these considerable suburbs outside, and although in certain cases they nearly join Bristol, it can be said that in terms of their life one can still distinguish strangely enough those which lie in genuine Bristol and those which lie outside. This is a somewhat subjective judgment. It is one of the most difficult sorts of judgment for a Minister or a boundary Commission to make.

I have had trouble in Bath, where I announced a decision. I did the same thing for Bath—but against the Local Government—as the Commission had done for Bristol. I said that the people in the suburbs did not really belong to Bath, that they were living a separate, different life. I said that those were genuine villages which had expanded. I said that these communities had their own village integrity which had grown up outside Bath, that they were not just parts which had splayed out from the county borough. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that it is extremely difficult to come to any conclusions. That is why it is possible for the Minister to agree or disagree with the Local Government Commission and for hon. Members opposite to disagree with the Minister, and no one will ever say that one is absolutely right or absolutely wrong on this.

I agree with the hon. Gentleman that there are great dangers about the green belt, and certainly the future which he foresaw is not one which I should like to see. We have been faced with tremendous pressures, as he will appreciate, and I hope that I have made it clear that in making our decision it was not our intention that it should lead to the awkward or wholly deleterious development which he suggested. I am grateful that he has given me the opportunity once again to re-assert—and I hope that it will be printed in the local Press—that that is certainly not something that we want to see and that we certainly regard it as essential to keep the green belt in this area and not to allow a splaying and sprawling.

The hon. Gentleman went from questions about Bristol and the green belt to questions about my Ministry. I had a shrewd suspicion that he would, but he was courteous enough to inform me anyway. He was bound to raise the subject because he always does and the Opposition always do, put these interesting questions about the relationship between my Ministry and the Ministry of Land and Natural Resources. I am only disappointed that I was not asked questions about our relationship with the First Secretary and the Department of Economic Affairs and with the Board of Trade and one or two other things which I could have dealt with in the course of a quiet evening together. I will therefore take the opportunity to explain one or two things, because the hon. Gentleman is obviously not clear about the structure of the new Government and how it is working and why it is working so smoothly.

When I am asked why my Ministry is giving certain of its functions, I can say to the hon. Gentleman, because he understands and knows the Ministry, that even though I have given up much, there remains a very large Ministry, a very scattered empire. I am always discovering new corners of the empire of which I am in control and of which I was not aware until I poked my nose around a building in Tothill Street. The amount of things of which I am still in control is large enough.

If I have lost control of Wales and do not have to make that monthly weekend visit which Englishmen before me who had been selected to win the confidence of the Welsh had to make, I thank God that the Prime Minister should have had the wisdom to say to me, "You shall be the first Englishman liberated from the responsibility of trying to placate the Welsh after refusing to give them what they have asked for and what has now been given to them".

To be perfectly serious, this has given a good deal of satisfaction in Wales. I think that the process will go further and that Wales will be able to evolve the same kind of administrative structure as Scotland. I happen to believe in this kind of decentralisation where there is a genuine culture and a genuine difference, because there is everything to be said, even in a small country like the United Kingdom, for giving not regional, for we do not go as far as that, but national decentralisation. I think that this will be found to be advantageous.

The only question the Welsh have asked is whether they could not have more powers rather than fewer, and whether, as I heard yesterday, my right hon. Friend the Minister of Health will cede his powers in the way that my Ministry has so gladly and so generously ceded our powers to the Secretary of State for Wales. I have not felt the loss of these powers in any way. I have felt only a great relief. Nor have I found the faintest difficulty in the relationship between my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales and myself. This new arrangement seems to have developed perfectly smoothly, and it is difficult to remember the time before there was such a situation. This has become a most natural part of the Whitehall arrangements and our relationships outside.

I do not believe that the hon. Gentleman will squabble with me about this extremely sensible decision not merely to talk vaguely about decentralisation for Wales, but to do something about it and to set up a proper Department for Wales with a Secretary of State. The arrangement has worked extremely well and I am grateful for not having to continue to try to do the job of Minister of Housing and Local Government and Minister for Wales.

There are two other sides to this Ministry which the hon. Gentleman did not mention. From my point of view, I say quite candidly, there is more uncertainty about the relationship of my Ministry—and there will be in future—with the Department of Economic Affairs than about that between us and the Ministry of Land and Natural Resources.

The Ministry of Land and Natural Resources arose to start with out of one simple and practical fact. I am beginning to realise the experience that a Minister has in launching one major Bill, and there is another major Bill coming, on the Land Commission. Again I am grateful that my right hon. Friend the Minister of Land and Natural Resources is responsible for this tremendous measure of reform which, when it is completed, will alter the balance of power in the Government. When we have created a Land Commission, it will in itself be a very important factor in planning.

I am not going to predict what the exact balance of power will be in Whitehall when the Land Commission is in full operation, but it will be different from today, because it is not possible to create a Land Commission without making big changes in the structure of Whitehall. It will not be possible to have it all under the Ministry of Housing and Local Government as it was before.

That is the basic reason why there are two Ministries. It is because we have foresight. The Government foresee that if big changes are being made it is necessary to create the structure into which the changes can fit. There is this difference between hon. Gentlemen opposite and ourselves. They did not have much interest in creating great changes. We have made more changes in Whitehall in our short time in office than they made in 13 years, or anybody did in the previous 25 years, but we did not make those changes for fun. We made them so that the great social changes outside will be carried out by an instrument in Whitehall suitable for the new things that we are going to do.

Why did we want the Ministry of Land and Natural Resources on one side of the Ministry, and the Department of Economic Affairs on the other? First, because we were creating a Land Commission to develop a new form of land control and land planning. Heaven knows the burden that I have with the day-to-day tactical control of planning, which is my main preoccupation. It is quite sufficient without my having to do the long-term strategic planning. Although I regret losing anything, I must say that on balance it is sensible.

The public ownership of water will become an important issue in the next year. We are faced this year with the likelihood of a drought. This is the second winter without rain, and it may be that the nation will have forced on it a really serious situation in which, despite the considerable improvement in the regional control of water, it will have to be controlled nationally. I give credit to my predecessors. The Ministry has slowly done work in gradually co-ordinating water to give bigger and bigger regional groupings. The fact remains, however, that the South-East, which is a relatively waterless area, is far removed from the North-West, which has plenty of water, and what we want is the national control of water. We shall find the need for this in the summer if we are faced with a major drought. The need will be not for regional grouping of water, but for its national planning.

The Minister of Land and Natural Resources is responsible, and is actively preparing plans, for the public ownership of water. That is a job which I do not do. I do the ordinary administration of water. I deal with the problems of what to do, and what instructions to give, when we have a drought, whereas my right hon. Friend deals with how to prevent a drought, by preparing plans in advance. It seems sensible that, having a Land Commission, we should ask one Minister to concentrate on the long-term job of planning ahead for water, and to ask the other Minister to do the whole time job of the day to day routine administration. The hon. Gentleman knows enough about planning administration to know that the unfortunate Minister who has to take all the detailed planning decisions, and decisions about compulsory purchase orders, has enough to do without having to plan the nationalisation of water as well. I want to give the hon. Gentleman a pretty clear explanation of how we divide our functions on that side.

On the other side, and this is where the big change has taken place, we have the Department of Economic Affairs, whose job it is to do something which has never been attempted before, and that is to promote a broad national economic plan and broad regional plans consistent with it. It is on the regional side of the D.E.A. that there comes the relationship between that Department and ourselves. I deal with local government. My right hon. Friend deals with regional planning and regional administration. There has to be careful co-ordination, and here a great deal of thinking and action are taking place, in which we are looking ahead and trying to create new shapes and forms. He has power to create regional councils and divide the country into regional administrations, but they are being created without affecting our local authorities, whose relations with me remain the same. I am still responsible, together with my Ministry, exactly as was the case when the Conservative Government were in power, in terms of the ad hoc administration of physical planning. But it is obvious that when we have got our national plan, and when it has been broken up into six regional plans, we can begin economically to assess how we divide the nation's resources. But when this is so in terms of six or seven regional efforts, we are getting to the point where there is a new type of regional approach, which is not the same as the Whitehall approach or the local government one.

How this develops is something that we shall watch. We do not know how it will develop. In Britain, if one is wise one lets these things evolve in this way. It would be ludicrous for us to say today that we are going to create regional government. Of course we shall still have local government as it is today, but we shall try to create regional institutions and to adapt these to give extra vitality to our local government. It will not be so easy to fit them in, but at least we are trying to do a difficult thing. We need regional government, and we need to make sure it has live institutions. For 13 years our predecessors did not try it.

It is difficult precisely to define functions. There will be times when regional councils are thought to be doing things about which local authorities are jealous. That will be natural. But it will prove that we are doing something about the problems and trying to create a genuine regional organisation. I have been brief in my reply to the hon. Member, but I have many other subjects to deal with, and he must excuse me for my brevity in dealing with this point.

I was gratified to learn that my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea, South(Mr. Perry)—and I am sorry that I was not here to hear him say it—said that there were better relations between London boroughs and my Ministry now than before. I understand why. It is because of the excellent work done by my other Parliamentary Secretary, the hon. Member for Bermondsey(Mr. Mellish). He has been doing a job of work in London for which I give him great credit, especially on the question of railway land. It is true that not all railway land was being sold off before we came to power, but until we came in there was always a risk of its being handed over to private developers. My hon. Friend found that in the case of the airports some of the land went to the public sector—to local authorities—but bits of it went to private developers.

If one thing was clear from the Milner Holland Report it was the disastrous effect on London of handing over larger and larger areas to private developers. It is not that we are against this, as such, but because the class of house or flat that private developers were building were luxury or middle-class, far out of reach of the pockets of those who needed most to be housed. Therefore it was essential to claw back for the public sector, for building, every single acre of land we could get hold of within Greater London.

We cannot afford not to use the land for this essential function. I do not have to repeat this, because it has been demonstrated by the Milner Holland Report, but if the functions of the great conurbation of London are to be adequately carried out it is clear that we have to have a considerable number of people who are earning relatively low wages, and these people need to live near the centre of the conurbation. They cannot afford to live forty miles away and commute daily. These people's houses have to be subsidised and therefore built by local authorities and housing associations.

Our concern has been to take what little land is available. Now we have land in Croydon, Woolwich and Hendon, and we shall build on every acre—by means of public enterprise—the houses we need at rents people can afford. This is our biggest single job in London, and outside it in the overspill areas.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea, South, that a real difference has entered into relationships between local authorities and my Ministry. This is because the people in the boroughs understood the need for this kind of housing and were desperate for it, because in the last thirteen years the Tory Government did not do anything about it. Now they have a Government which is far more sympathetic to their view of the kind of houses they need. If we can provide not only sympathy but a certain realisation of their financial problems there will be a perfect relationship between them and us. That would be a perfect relationship, but not a relationship which we can discuss at this early hour of the morning.

I turn again to the hon. Member for South Shields(Mr. Blenkinsop), who made a fascinating and interesting speech, and I want to make a number of comments on it. First, he asked me some questions about the South-East Study. I am very glad to have the opportunity at this early hour of the morning, which I would not have at other times, to say something about the future relationship of this Government to the South-East Plan.

The South-East Plan was a product not of my Ministry but of a group of Ministries, and it is a document prepared by officials. As that it really ought not to be called a plan. It would be wiser to call it an investigation, a survey which points the way. In a sense, it is presumptuous to call something which is so much a sketch as that a full-scale plan and give it that dignity.

Mr. Corfield

With respect, it is always referred to as a Study.

Mr. Crossman

Yes, I say it should be referred to as a Study. This is the first investigation of this kind, which we shall no doubt improve on in the future. It is a brilliant Study as far as it goes, and very stimulating. The method has not basically been challenged since then, and it demonstrated the right way to approach the problem. First one starts with the population estimates, and then one goes on to tackle the other problems.

For the first time that plan, or rather that Study, got across to the people in a popular form the fact of the population explosion. It got people to understand that since 1956–57 a completely new situation had entered into this country with the double factor of the birth-rate and the reduction in the age of marriage. Added to it has been the motor-car revolution in our commuter areas. We were fond of Abercrombie, we always admired Abercrombie, but everything that occurred before that resolution is obsolete. Everything has to be based on the population for which you have to cater.

No one really challenges the figure of one million Londoners for whom homes will have to be found outside London by 1981. Some people have tried to; they have argued in terms of density and suggested that we can avoid sending them out of London by building thicker in London. I have had this looked into carefully. As far as I can understand, it is true that the L.C.C. tended to under-estimate under-accommodation. On the other hand, there is a very severe limit to the amount of dense building which can be done to reduce the need for overspill. Something can be done in this way, but unless we are to use areas of public open space which are required by the people, the solution must be to crowd people together and make buildings go higher and higher and become more expensive, the only effect of which is sharply to reduce returns after initial gains and push the spiral of costs higher and higher and steeper and steeper.

Although one should certainly continue to look for new building techniques, let us realise that open space and public building in cities is something we must have in the future. If we make a mistake, let us make a mistake on the good side of giving ourselves too much space and not too little.

Mr. William Yates

The right hon. Gentleman will have seen some of the rebuilding of the German cities such as Frankfurt. Surely some building of that kind could be done in London?

Mr. Crossman

I must say I am fascinated. I have, indeed, seen the chaos of the German cities. They are building themselves rabbit hutches. The average cubic space per person in Germany is far smaller than here. I do not blame them. They had all their towns destroyed, and they were driven by their need to build flats which were much too small and houses far too crowded together. I would not select Cologne as being a good example. Dusseldorf is good. Cologne is miserable. Frankfurt is miserable—look at the failure to replan it properly and how it was rebuilt roughly as it was before. It is one of the disappointments of capitalist enterprise.

If we are to see really radical replanning we have to cross to the other side of Germany. At Rostock and Warsaw, too, some radical replanning can be seen, because it is easier for the Communists to do it; but West Germany is not the place to go to for imaginative town planning. It is a great disappointment to anyone who studies planning. It seems to be a place where they put things up as fast as they could, which did not hold together.

Mr. William Yates

The right hon. Gentleman knows that Cologne and the other cities he has mentioned were completely rebuilt. But greater mistakes were made in Cologne. They did not get the density right, and now they have not got the traffic right. He is correct, too, in the assumption he makes about East Germany, where the cities were rebuilt later.

Mr. Crossman

East Germany does not need to build for traffic because it has none. West Germany has the traffic but has not built for it.

One can praise Germany for many things. As a matter of fact, before 1914, in the Bismark era, they were perhaps the first great town planners. However, I would not have thought the Germans were proud of the post-1945 era when they look at town planning. When they come to see our new towns here they think we have done better than anything they have done in Germany.

Mr. Palmer

Is it not possible that they had more State enterprise in Germany before 1914?

Mr. Crossman

Yes, I think they were were a highly centralised militarist State, and they did plan cities with industry in mind. The green belt, too, was conceived in pre-Weimar Germany. However, I do not think we should get into an historical discursus. We must press on with this debate, because there are many other Members anxious to take part in further debates—this festivity of intellectual edification we are giving ourselves free of charge owing to the magnificent opportunity given to us this evening.

Mr. Robert Cooke

The right hon. Gentleman has given the game away. Does he not realise he is unwittingly taking part in an exercise designed entirely to kill tomorrow's business? The facetious remarks he has made have completely given the game away.

Mr. Crossman

What I am doing and what my hon. Friends are doing is to take the opportunity available to us to discuss a number of subjects which we do not very often get a chance of discussing. I am disappointed in the hon. Gentleman. I had hoped to have a discussion with him about the classification of ancient buildings, and I had worked myself up to give him a proper reply. I know that he cares about the subject of my Ministry and the classification of ancient buildings. However, I will give him my reply although he did not make his speech. Even though he did not bother to make his speech, I have the reply ready. That shows a generosity of spirit which I am amazed to have after such a crude, inelegant attitude by him on a subject about which he cares. Does he not want to discuss it? Why was it that only yesterday he was keen to discuss the subject of the classification of ancient buildings? Suddenly, in the course of today, the hon. Member's enthusiasm melted away. Mine did not. It remained as keen as ever. I am still keen on the subject, even though the hon. Member upsets me almost by the way. For purely political reasons he is thrusting down his own good taste, suppressing his best instincts, and letting political gerrymanderers simply exploit him. I am deeply shocked.

Mr. Robert Cooke

I should hate this piece of political manoeuvre on the part of the right hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends to damage the good relationships which, I hope, will exist between him and myself and my friends on the subject of historic buildings. Will he take it from me that the reason why I did not raise it tonight, delighted though I am to hear the Minister talking about it —I might have taken a couple of hours—was that I got wind that hon. Members on his side would use my subject to waste a great deal of time to try to kill tomorrow's business?

Mr. Crossman

It is not for me to adjudicate upon the value of subjects. We on this side are anxious to discuss a number of subjects which are dealt with by my Ministry. I was asked to come here with my hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary and be ready to answer questions which were to be put to me in a series of perfectly serious speeches embracing a long series of extremely interesting points. I am delighted to have this rare opportunity to answer.

It is insulting to suggest that this subject is less interesting than something which will take place later today. We have the right, when we come to this place, to discuss this subject. We have the right to do it under the constitution of the House. The Consolidated Fund Bill gives us the chance. We are using it for private Members' time and as a Minister I have been given a chance to discuss with hon. Members, on both sides, the subjects which they have raised with me in relation to town and country planning.

I wish that the hon. Member would not delay me. I want to hurry on with my work. We are on the South-East Study and I had got only halfway through what I was saying about it. When I was interrupted, I had reached the important point about the million Londoners who were being driven out of London, and the problem of dealing with them.

I was asked by my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields about the quality of the Study and our estimate of it. We have not by any means completed our revision of the Study, but I can already say two things about it. First, the revision has certainly impressed on all of us the imaginative quality and the insight of the work. It is an extremely remarkable job. In certain points, however, as was inevitable, we have found, for instance, that the estimates and figures are modified by later information.

The Milner Holland Report has given one example: we have found that the estimates in the South-East Study of Londoners in need of a home were overoptimistic. They were too low. I should like to quote to the House what the Milner Holland Report states at page 99 about a revision of the South-East Study: A shortage estimate of at least 150,000 is given in the Ministry's South East Study, using the above method, but since very little of the 1961 Census data was available at that time, the adjustments to the "crude net deficiency' had to be based largely on 1951 data. That is something to which I referred the other day when I spoke of the inadequacy of data in Whitehall. It may be that even this Study would have fallen apart had not Milner Holland done the really thorough survey to see how many Londoners were in need of homes, because he was not basing his findings on 1951 figures. To continue the quotation: Using 1961 data, the Ministry recently made a revised estimate, which gave a shortage of 185,000. The Ministry has also attempted to bring this estimate up to date by examining changes in the stock of dwellings and the number of households between 1961 and 1964, and concluded that the housing shortage in London had grown worse since 1961—from about 185,000 in 1961 to perhaps as much as 230,000 by 1964. These are important modifications of some of the figures in the South-East Study. It is probable that, as it is studied further, some of its figures will have to be modified. After all, it is two or three years out of date in some of its facts. The main value of the Study is in its basic approach, which shows that even if we built all we could inside London, and used all the sites available, and even if there were no immigrants from anywhere outside, the natural increase of London would require homes for one million people. I think that that has been substantiated; no one has challenged that fact. That is the fact which must be the basis of any policy of any Government in the South-East. They have to say to themselves, "We may succeed in stemming the flow into London. Even if we stopped it altogether, we should still have to find a million people room in the towns."

This is why we have to decide on our huge new plan of double size new towns to be started around London. I have announced one already; we shall be announcing a series of other towns later on, when the Study is completed. Perhaps a quarter of the million will be placed in Buckinghamshire, some perhaps in Harlow and Basildon, others in the new twinned concepts of Ipswich, Peter-borough and Northampton. This is the first round; we have to do that three times over, after which we shall have completed the planning to take the over-spill. If we do not do that, we shall find the commuter sprawl sprawling out into the Green Belt.

Mr. Arthur Woodburn (Clackmannan and East Stirlingshire)

As well as this picture which my right hon. Friend is drawing of the million people going outside London, there is also the problem of them coming into London. Whose responsibility is it to plan the roads, and the possibility of transport in and out of London to cope with these great numbers of people, and see that, once they have got in, they can get out again?

Mr. Crossman

My right hon. Friend knows that the co-ordination of transport planning with housing planning and other forms of planning is done in general planning studies, and the South-East Study was a general study. It took account of Buchanan thinking, and went into the question of transport very fully. I do not think that the transport study was inadequate. Our aim is not to transport many more people into London; our aim is to halt the flow into London. This is why we have the halt on office building. We knew that some firms had to have their headquarters in London, and that though London had stopped growing industrially, it was growing officewise, and that growth was encouraging the growth of a white collar salariat in and around London.

Mr. Atkinson

My right hon. Friend has raised a very important matter here, and a serious one for London Members. That is that one of the weaknesses of development has been the creation of factories within the community, and because of the creation of factories, involving skilled labour, it has been necessary to get a balance. How does my right hon. Friend suggest that the new towns and London could stop skilled people coming in? How will he stop the practice of allocating jobs to skilled people via the factories? In other words, factories are being built in the new towns and a factory is allocated a certain number of houses according to the skill of the occupants.

Mr. Crossman

When the town is completely new, this is unavoidable. If a new town is built which has to attract industry, a certain number of key jobs have to be allocated to the industrialists, and a percentage of those who hold them do not come from Glasgow, London or Liverpool overspill, but from outside. What is striking is that when we made a re-estimate of the number of Londoners in the first round of new towns, we found that they represented over 80 per cent. of the population. This is a successful achievement. When we increase, as we probably shall, the size of Basildon and Harlow, say, we shall certainly hope to get a higher percentage—up to 90 per cent.—of Londoners, because the need for new factories is less essential when one is increasing the size of a town which already has 60,000 inhabitants, than if one is starting a town in the middle of a field. I believe that if we are to get 90 per cent. of genuine Londoners for the overspill, we should have to include them in a pretty good mixture with the key workers who would be necessary.

Mr. Atkinson

I am sure that my right hon. Friend is aware of the figures, but he is now talking about a tremendous difference. The figure now is between 50 per cent. and 55 per cent., although he is speaking of 90 per cent.

Mr. Crossman

We will have to check the figures later. It is my impression that if we look at the new towns around London we see that, roughly speaking, 80 per cent. of the people there are Londoners. Some of them are selected key workers, but they come from London. I am saying that when we made our survey we found that about 80 per cent. came from London and about 20 per cent. from outside. I was pointing out that we want to move the figure to 90 per cent.

When we consider the position in Scotland—in, say, Cumbernauld—with a new town only about 14 miles from Glasgow, there is the tremendous difficulty of preventing it becoming a commuter town. That is why I would not have started Redditch, only 10 miles from Birmingham, because to me that would seem far too close. It is, after all, on top of the original town and is a kind of commuter town. There is, however, a reason for that. Manchester, for example, insists on it because it says that it wants slum clearance. It wants to re-house its people living in the slum areas and give them a new life—but the people from the slums will not go further than, say, 14 miles outside because the sort of work they do can only be done in the City.

This sort of thing is a great difficulty. The opposite to that is to have a new town right away; say, 50 miles outside an existing town. That gives people a new life, and they undoubtedly do a higher level of work and have a higher level of skill to man that kind of town. In this connection, I am thinking of Harlow or Stevenage. That is much more the case than in a new town that is related to slum clearance.

Thus we have those two kinds of town; one close and taking a large proportion of people as a result of slum clearance, and one further out with the skilled workers who go there. There is a different kind of atmosphere to be found in a town like Stevenage compared with towns elsewhere. These are some of the problems with which we must deal.

I hope that I have managed to answer the questions of my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields on the South-East Study. I come to his second question; the effect of land prices on planning. I would, in reply, like to give him a reflection—if one can reflect at this time in the morning—on the effect of planning on land prices. We have heard about an hon. Member who bought a farm in Buckinghamshire the other day and who wrote a sensational article saying that he was able to sell off 10 acres of it and thereby make the whole cost of his farm. If it is suggested that that is the result of planning, there is some truth in that. When he said that there was a simple way of bringing land prices down—by abolishing all planning control; then prices would slump—I think that he was speaking the literal truth. If one abolished all planning control, land prices would come down, although I do not know by how much. However, in addition to land prices coming down we would soon be looking like America; the whole countryside ruined and—

Mr. William Yates

Like Los Angeles?

Mr. Crossman

Yes indeed—the whole area would become a super Los Angeles. We must remember, therefore, that we have to pay the price for planning, and part of the price at present is inflated land prices. That is why we are concerned, in the Land Commission, to tackle this problem of inflated land prices. We must remember that if we are not going to do away with planning control we shall always have the tendency to have frozen land at one price and land with planning permission soaring to another price. These are the difficulties. It is a matter of looking at a town map and seeing land that could make one a millionaire and land belonging to the ordinary farmer. These are the differences inherent in any attempt to plan the country. These problems arise. Price inflation arises and do we say to the speculative builder, after denying him large areas, "You shall not build here"?

All these things concern us and in the Land Commission we shall be trying to tackle them and saying, "We believe in planning. We cannot get prices down by the old laissez-faire method. We must plan as rigorously as anyone can, but we must get another method of dealing with the inflated value of land created by planning." That will be done through the Land Commission and its method of buying and its method of dealing with values accruing. We shall deal with these things, but I think that even at this hour I should not now speak of new legislation—

Mr. Graham Page

Of course, the problem, if the right hon. Gentleman is looking at betterment from the moral point of view, is that the planning permission value should go to the man who creates the betterment on the other man's property.

Mr. Crossman

I do not feel that—on the contrary. I live in the country, and I doubt whether these people who live on their land really feel that this extra money belongs to them at all. I suspect that if it is denied them they are perfectly prepared to give it to the community. They will say, "If I can get the honest value for the land, the other value can go elsewhere". I think that this is the one tax that people will accept. If one said to people with land on the town map that it had quadrupled in value and that they would thereby benefit, most of them would feel that it was an ill-gotten gain which the community had some right to acquire.

It is one of the easiest taxes to persuade people to accept, and if it were not we would not have the Conservatives coming crawling along behind when we lead—

Mr. Corfield

I would refer the right hon. Gentleman to an article I wrote two years, I think, before Signposts for the Sixties.

Mr. Crossman

We can always find amongst the Conservative Party incipient Socialism in the most surprising places, and I am glad to pay my tribute to an article I have not read, though I might call it premature, because it will be printed in the Spectator, and it will give the hon. Gentleman a meed of praise.

Next, my hon. Friend asked me about central redevelopment. I agree about the cost of central redevelopment. Whereever I go about the country this is the first thing I am asked about by every local authority. One of the troubles in the post-Buchanan age is that local authorities are great planners. They say, "We have a great plan for the four square miles in the centre of the city, and nothing will do but the complete demolition of this part and that". If I add up all the plans of local authorities for total redevelopment, I am staggered by the aggregate cost of it all.

Though I am quite clear that the central Government will have to give extensive assistance to local authorities, this is one of the things we have to think of. It does not come under the general grant at all, but must be found in some way. Central development is one of the most important things, but spending on that scale will get out of gear with reality, so that we shall simply not be able to do it all like that. That is why I am shortly sending a circular to local authorities advising them to re-think their planning in two parts: have central redevelopment, but also improve existing property.

If houses have 20 years' more life, we cannot afford to throw them away or let the private developer pull them down. There is a way of improving a city that combines the brilliantly new with renovating the old—and we in this country are very successful renovators. If we do things in that way we can get our central redevelopment at enormously less cost than by talking in terms of total demolition, and the construction of tall buildings. We cannot rely on the central Government to find everything. We must think in terms of the scale which we can possibly afford.

It is here that the point my hon. Friend made about experts and a pool of architects is of such importance. This kind of thinking requires more architectural expertise, not less. If we are to have the kind of mixture to which I have referred, we shall need architects of the greatest skill. System building, for instance, calls for better, not less skilled, architects, if we are to have system-built houses which are not like barracks. All the other considerations of landscaping, background, tree planting and the rest—the areas where we now have to concentrate—call for a supply of skills not readily available.

Mr. Blenkinsop

In this connection, does my right hon. Friend agree that it is most important to ensure, if possible, that any outside architects who come in to help on central features should work together with the local architects who may be doing much of the rest of the detailed work, improving existing properties, perhaps, and preserving the old and valuable?

Mr. Crossman

I agree, and it is important for us at the centre to make a register and let local authorities know of the limited amount of skill at their disposal and even, perhaps, put them in touch. I have just appointed Mr. Hugh Wilson to a new part-time job in my Department. He will be the inspirer and centre of this operation. One of his tasks will be to advise local authorities about talented young architects whom they can employ as consultants in special ways and to train the architects themselves how to fit into the local authority structure because, as my hon. Friend says, they have to work under the authority's general plan. I think that local authorities would be well advised to parcel out parts of central redevelopment, giving one area to one group of architects and another to another group so as to have competition and variety in development.

Mr. Corfield

Will the right hon. Gentleman bear in mind the even greater shortage of people who have a clue about development in the countryside, in the villages?

Mr. Crossman

I shall come to the villages. I have been given all these points to answer, and I am being delayed on the way.

Mr. Woodburn

My right hon. Friend is giving a most interesting picture of what is happening. Will he explain this point? Throughout both England and Scotland, the Historic Buildings Councils and the National Trust are trying to preserve characteristic features of our towns so that the Britain of the future will not be a land of cement boxes. In the centres of many towns there are interesting buildings which are, virtually, history in stone. We wish to preserve them. What organisation will exist to see that there is not a spoilation of some of the fine features which should be preserved for the future?

Mr. Crossman

I must apologise for delaying the House. This point was made in the debate. One hon. Gentleman devoted the whole of his speech to that subject, and I shall come to it in due order.

I have dealt with the idea of having a pool of architects. I turn now to leisure facilities, the final matter raised by my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields. I agree that this is a subject on which we have scarcely begun our advance planning. Several of my hon. Friends referred to the possibility of combining planning for leisure with the salvation of derelict land. This is an obvious possibility. The Civic Trust has done some fine work. The Lea Valley scheme is a magnificent example of an imaginative idea, the taking of an absolutely derelict area and transforming it into an amenity area and a place for sport and recreation, with the possibility of having some housing as well.

In various parts of the country, in Lancashire, the West Riding and elsewhere, I see these derelict areas where, if one is prepared to spend money and effort in clearing and cleaning them, the potential for amenity is gigantic. Around London, the most obvious examples are the gravel pits. I contrast the present condition of these sites with what we now require of the National Coal Board. When the Coal Board does opencast mining, we insist on a high standard of reinstatement. We require the Board to put the land back into a good state, creating an amenity for the community, giving it a golf course, perhaps, and some model mountains for the children. If one is reinstating, there is no reason why, if some thinking is done in advance, open-cast mining should not actually provide amenities for the area, and the same could be done after gravel extraction.

There is nothing in which we are advancing quicker than in water sports. Whether it be water-skiing, boating or sailing, an enormous number of people are anxious and willing to take part. I do not think we have even begun to exhaust the use of gravel pits if they are properly planned in advance. The trouble so far has been that gravel has been taken first, a hell of a mess has been created and then we have considered what can be done to restore the site.

The more sensible way is that we should not allow people to take the gravel unless we have first planned with them how the amenity is to be made afterwards. If we planned amenities in this way, combined with pragmatic things like gravel collection, we could make enormous advances and save great sums of money.

Every local authority says to me, "Clearing derelict sites is something the Government pay nothing for. We have to pay for it all out of the rates." I have been looking into this. I see no reason why this heroic job of clearing and restoring derelict sites around Wigan or in the Black Country, for instance, should not get subsidy or grant. A grant or subsidy for clearing derelict land is well worth considering.

Mr. William Yates

But one of the greatest achievements of the last Government was their decision to create a new town at Dawley, in my constituency. There, old coal pit areas are to be cleared and restored for the new town centre. There will be these amenities that the right hon. Gentleman describes.

Mr. Crossman

I do not believe that there is anything new in the world. But when I go round the country and see places like the gravel pit at Egham I am not convinced that we are doing all we can. Dawley has scarcely started. It is a nice idea but we want to make reality and not merely have nice ideas.

The speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Mr. Bishop) was long and interesting. He spoke movingly about the need for town centres to become more than cemeteries with traffic lights. I have already spoken about the need for building housing in town centres. But we cannot build there unless we put up a lot of money and have subsidies, otherwise rents will be too high. It is a case for planned building to ensure a proper balance between houses at working class rents, houses at middle class rents—a mixture of housing association houses at cost rents and council houses at low rents. We must ensure that they have a community life so that these centres do not die at night. The only way to make them live is to plan consciously.

I come now to the question of the preservation of ancient buildings. One of the most important aspects here is co-ordination between my Department and the Ministry of Public Building and Works. I do the classification of ancient buildings while the Ministry of Public Building and Works does the maintenance and gives the grants. We work together fairly happily.

When I arrived at the Ministry, I faced the situation that buildings are classified individually. What I think is more important than an individual building very often is a group of buildings. Very often, a street has, for instance, eight buildings classified—perhaps Nos. 1, 3, 9, 10, 11, 16, 18 and 19, as Class 2 buildings, for which preservation orders must be secured. But the buildings in between are not classified. Then these latter are pulled down and the whole street line is broken.

Thus, the whole aim of preserving a street or a town centre is destroyed because someone has taken bits of it and pulled them down. If we continue to preserve only bits here and there, we find that we are not preserving the real heart of the place. One can think of instances in Cotswold villages. There is the case of Stamford. In such cases, all too often odd buildings are pulled down. A developer can literally take over and pull down, for example, No. 23 in a street and put up a Woolworth's, thus destroying the overall beauty and interest of the street. We are very busy at work with our advisory committee to make sure that we have group classifications. It will be difficult to do this to a very high standard because we cannot have the whole of the Cotswolds as a group classification, for example, or it would be meaningless.

The classification does not in itself preserve the building. I classify, and that means that one cannot then pull it down without notifying the planning authority. The authority can slap on a preservation order if it wishes, but, in justice to local authorities, I must point out that one cannot slap on preservation orders unless someone is prepared to pay for the preservation. If the building is of such value, the question must be asked—who pays? Are we to put the cost solely on the owner of the building? The owner of a famous building perhaps ought to pay; if he chooses to buy a place of that sort he should be prepared to maintain it. But many people who live in these houses could not possibly be expected to pay. Here we need careful consultation. Having classified and put orders on the buildings, we have to decide how to pay for the preservation. We have the famous example of Worcester, where the centre of the town was gutted because no particular building was good enough to be classified and the whole lot was lost. We are putting out a new bulletin and new instructions to try to see that the group character of the centre of our towns is preserved.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary has passed me a note to remind me to deal with another type of building, for another important question to decide is how modern buildings may be and yet be classified. How modern may they be and still be ancient buildings worthy of preservation? We have carried it forward to 1914, and I have ordered the Ritz to be classified. Anyone who has had a drink there will know the atmosphere which we are trying to preserve. The food there is not good, but one is taken back 50 years or so in the atmosphere; it is a museum, something worth preserving, taking one back to the days of the Café Royal grill room, and to the Edwardian atmosphere. We have gone forward to 1914, and we should welcome the advice of the House on this point.

Mr. Robert Cooke

rose—

Mr. Crossman

The hon. Member, who was so angry with me for wasting time half-an-hour ago, is now joining me in this evening together.

Mr. Cooke

No doubt the right hon. Gentleman's dinner jacket indicates that he has just come back from classifying the Ritz, but I have a serious point to put to him. I am sure that the House is very pleased to hear the progress which he is making in the classification of groups of buildings. Many of us have been interested in this for some time. What about the historic building which has been preserved by a private owner or in respect of which there has been a grant from the Historic Buildings Council or some similar body? What of the building the future of which is threatened because of its surroundings? The land may not be in the same ownership. This problem should be tackled. The Gowers Report recommended that the building and setting should be preserved. Have the Government any proposals about that?

Mr. Crossman

I could not agree more with the hon. Member. The more I look around the Ministry, the clearer it becomes that little was done by my predecessors here. I am glad that the hon. Member thinks that I have done so well in the first five months in office. In the next five months we shall go further and we may even tackle that problem, too.

Mr. Robert Cooke

I did not say that.

Mr. Crossman

I had a feeling of appreciation emanating from across the Floor.

I am sorry to have detained the House, but this been an unusually successful debate. I do not often have as many constructive points to answer. My hon. Friend the Member for Newark was right when he said that it is essential that we get the local community to plan. It is no good just issuing orders from London. It is no good just making classifications for ancient buildings in the Ministry and assuming that that is enough. We must make the classification and then approach the local authority and convince them that it is sensible—and discuss the cost with them. Without this it does not work. This is true of all forms of preservation and all forms of planning. We must get down to the roots and get people to care about planning.

Mr. Bishop

There is one thing about which I am very anxious, and I think I touched on this in my speech, and that is the penalty where people have buildings that have been graded I and II but they have failed to maintain them. If they fall into a state of disrepair and the site is cleared, then, of course, something is lost. I heard that the penalty for allowing a site to be used for other purposes is about £100, which is a very small price to pay when speculators are prepared to pay a fantastic price for the land.

Mr. Crossman

I did mention this point. I said that one of the most difficult questions was the question of repair and maintenance of ancient buildings. Is it possible with a group classification to lay the whole burden of preventing the dilapidation of a building, which we are asking them to undertake, on the individual? Certainly, a lot of them will have to leave their homes if we do that to them. Quite often, they are going to be quite humble people who are living in these places, and they will not be able to afford it. This is something which we have to consider—local government and national government together—because classification by itself does not prevent dilapidation.

Therefore, we come to this point about community care. It really will depend on how much we are prepared to pay for it, because of course it is far cheaper to pull down a building and put up some monstrosity. This business of preserving our heritage is expensive. I really cannot claim that it is cheap. Of course, it is infinitely better if we get people to feel that it is worth while. This is why we have to realise that whatever we do for planning, whether it is planning for the preservation of ancient buildings, or planning for new ones, or planning for amenity, it all depends for its success on community participation. I was delighted that the hon. Member made that point and, just as he ended his speech with that thought, so I should like to end my reply with the same thought as well.

Sir D. Glover

Before the right hon. Gentleman sits down, I should like to say that I go a long way with him in what he has been saying. But let us suppose that there is a piece of property which is the only piece of property which, say, widow Jones owns. Then, because of the desire to replace it with a block of flats or something like that, a property developer is prepared to offer her £10,000 or some very grossly inflated figure, but the difficulty is that the community is only prepared to offer her £2,500. The whole sympathy of the House, I am sure, would be with the widow Jones who wants to get the maximum amount of money for this site on which this historic building is situated and is offered a very inflated price by the property developer. How, in fact, does the State reach a decision between the property developer and the widow Jones, who wants to get the £10,000 which the property developer has offered, and the local council who say, "We think that this is a very fair offer of £2,500", because you really cannot expect her willingly to sell to the local council for £2,500 when somebody else is offering her £10,000? I think this is one of the problems, with regard to the preservation of ancient buildings, to which we have never really been able to find the complete answer.

Mr. Crossman

Certainly, the complete answer has not been found. I can spell out the routine answer, which is, of course, that the mere classification of the building by my Ministry simply means that before it can be pulled down or modified the planning authority has to be informed. It does not prevent the building being pulled down. To prevent it being pulled down, either the planning authority or I have to slap on a preservation order. When the preservation order is slapped on it cannot then, of course, be pulled down. The Ritz is a very good example. It is not only the widow but the owners of the Ritz who might want to pull it down. The question is whether a preservation order will be slapped on the Ritz. These are real difficulties. I think I will sit down and stay down.