HC Deb 08 February 1966 vol 724 cc201-3
Q1. Mr. Costain

asked the Prime Minister whether he will place in the Library a copy of the public speech he made at Bletchley on 4th December, 1965, on the subject of building and housing.

Q2. Mr. Murton

asked the Prime Minister whether he will place in the Library a copy of the public speech he made at Bletchley on 4th December, 1965, on the subject of building and housing.

Q3. Mr. Allason

asked the Prime Minister whether he will place in the Library a copy of his speech at Bletchley on 4th December, 1965, about housing and building.

The Prime Minister (Mr. Harold Wilson)

I spoke from notes, so that no complete copy exists. But I am arranging to place in the Library that part of my speech which dealt with building and housing.

Mr. Costain

Does not the Prime Minister admit that between 1960 and the average level of housebuilding rose by 6½ per cent. and that between and 1969 the Government propose to increase it by only 5½ per cent.? Is he satisfied with this increase? Can he not do something to improve it?

The Prime Minister

Yes, Sir. That is what we are doing. I also recognise that in the last eight years of Conservative rule, there were five years in which they did not get 300,000 houses.

Mr. Allason

How does the right hon. Gentleman reconcile his denial that controls would restrict new housing with the fact that, in the event, controls had the effect of cancelling or postponing £76 million worth of new housing, which is the equivalent of 15,000 houses?

The Prime Minister

The hon. Gentleman is very wide of the mark. What I said in that speech was that how the party opposite voted on the Building Control Bill would be a test of its sincerity about housing, because one could not both build all the houses needed and all the non-essential building which had up to that time gone unrestricted.

Mr. Murton

Does the Prime Minister recollect that in his speech he referred to the Conservative housing target as a paper target? Will he say what happened to the 434,000 houses that were left under construction in 1964, of which only 383,000 have been completed? Will he not admit that his own target of 500,000 is, if there ever was one, a paper target?

The Prime Minister

The Conservative target was a paper target because, in the first place, at the time when they left office they had not provided for the necessary materials—[Interruption.]—and housing was held up all over the country for that reason. Secondly, housing was desperately held up for several months by shortage of labour, and the position was improved only as a result of the stringent controls we put on last July. With regard to the number of houses they left under construction when they went, the numbers are higher now than they were then.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter

How can the right hon. Gentleman say that the target left by my right hon. Friend was a paper target, when not only were there 434,000 houses under construction but, by the end of the year, there was a surplus of materials?

The Prime Minister

We have been over this matter at four successive Question Times, and I am happy to go on for another four provided that I do not have to repeat everything I said last time, which the right hon. Gentleman still has not understood. It was a paper target for the reason I explained: that to start houses does not mean that one gets them finished. But if the right hon. Gentleman says that the figures the previous Government left behind prove that it was a real target and not a paper target, he will automatically agree that we now have a real target, and the number of houses started is now 450,000.