HC Deb 07 July 1966 vol 731 cc821-34

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Harper.]

10.29 p.m.

Mr. Jasper More (Ludlow)

I wish, first, to thank the Parliamentary Secretary for his courtesy in coming to the House this evening at comparatively short notice to hear what I have to say, the more so because what I have to say to him will be of a very censorious kind. What I have to do this evening is to undertake the unpleasant task of saying that the Parliamentary Secretary was ostensibly—I repeat "ostensibly"—guilty of a major discourtesy yesterday to a large number of my constituents and members of the adjoining constituency by failing to keep an appointment which I understand had been fixed at his suggestion some days or weeks previously, and for which it is obvious that extensive preparation had been made.

My constituency includes about one-third of the area which has been designated for the Dawley New Town, the other two-thirds being in the adjoining constituency of The Wrekin. The planning of the new town has gone through a number of difficult stages. It is in the hands of a highly respected and competent development authority which had taken responsibility for all the arrangements for the expected visit of the Parliamentary Secretary. I understand that all these preparations having been made—indeed I was invited some 10 days previously, an invitation which unfortunately I had to refuse on account of duties here—the event was cancelled at what appears to have been something less than 24 hours' notice. I was informed today by one of the local councillors who had been asked to attend that it was not until Wednesday morning that the letter arrived at the breakfast table from the Clerk to the Council to say that unfortunately the whole event was cancelled.

This may seem a small matter for those who do not know the district. The reason for having a new town in the Dawley area has been partly the poor and very under-developed state of the whole area, and that is a state of affairs which has provided exceptional difficulties for the development authority which has undertaken this task. Even to find offices it has had to go five miles away to a country house, and in order to carry out the essential services in the centre of the area it has had to build a temporary building. It has had to use an old-fashioned building called a town hall.

With those rather rudimentary bits of equipment it takes immense trouble on these occasions to make visits as interesting and as agreeable as is possible. The Parliamentary Secretary knows that the Minister paid two visits to this area last year. I was privileged to be present on one occasion and I was able to see the efforts which are made. In particular, the arrangements for yesterday included a lunch, to which the Parliamentary Secretary had been invited. The Development Corporation has an excellent caterer who, in conditions which cannot be at all easy, manages to put on a quite excellent lunch. I can assure the Parliamentary Secretary that, quite apart from any other disappointment which he may have had, he missed what I am sure would have been an excellent entertainment.

The serious part of this matter is the impression which is bound to have been created locally. This visit had been widely advertised and it is fair to say that it was very necessary. In the early stages of the development of a new town a development authority obviously has one important link, and that is with the Ministry of Housing by which it is financed and to some extent guided. When a visit from a Minister is advertised, it is a local event. People feel that some interest is being taken in their problems. When it is cancelled at 24 hours' notice, clearly the effects cannot be very good.

There are a number of problems which doubtless the Minister was going down to the area to see for himself. Before I say a word about those, I must ask the question: what was the reason that justified this sudden cancellation? The Ministry of Housing is not one of the Ministries subject to sudden emergencies which require all the Ministers to be in their London headquarters or, indeed, in some other part of the country. Unquestionably, only one conclusion locally can have been drawn from this sudden cancellation, and that was that the Parliamentary Secretary was kept in London, not for any matter connected with his Ministry but with a matter connected with his party. Unquestionably, the conclusion must have been drawn that he had been ordered to remain in London in order to attend the meeting which it is known was being held that morning by the Parliamentary Labour Party.

I do not say that that conclusion is correct, but perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary will tell the House. If it was so, I suggest that it raises a number of questions. Has the Labour Party really got to the point that if a matter of policy has to be discussed all the Ministers have to be present at the party meeting? Secondly, there is the more serious question that if Ministers have contracted, as obviously Ministers have to do, appointments outside London, on important missions such as visiting what is to be, after all, the largest new town in the country, is it right that appointments should be suddenly cancelled, not for any reason of national emergency, not for any reason of crisis in the Ministry itself, but for a reason affecting the Government political party? If this is to be the rule in this country, I am bound to say that Government in this country has fallen to a very low point indeed. I hope that we may have something from the Minister on that, which is, I think, the most important aspect of what I have to say.

In view of what has happened, it is fair that I should ask the Parliamentary Secretary what he feels were the important objects of his visit. I understand from the local Press that he wished to have an opportunity to view the initiation of what I think has been called the "continuity plan". The continuity plan in Dawley is a development which has had to take place as a result of the decision recently made by the Labour Government, when it was proposed that the designated area should be enlarged by the addition of a much greater area to the north, including such places as Oakengates and Wellington.

That had rather serious repercussions on the plans of the development authority, because it meant that in the northern part of the designated area—that part which is not in my constituency—there really had to be a standstill. The Authority had to switch all its activities to the southern part of the area, which is in my constituency—that is why this matter particularly concerns me. The Authority had to revise all its original arrangements. It had to make what has appeared to be a major change of plan, and one which it is very necessary that the Minister should view on the spot—the question of the allocation of a particular area for a possible university.

Dawley new town is to be a very large place when it is completed. If we have this additional area which the Government now propose, it may be an area containing 150,000 people, and clearly might justify a university. There is in the southern part of the designated area a site which suggests itself as being ideally suitable to be reserved for a university site. It is on a plateau overlooking what must originally have been a very fine scene of the Severn Gorge, and which now might be restored to its original beauty. In the continuity plan, all that has had to be scrapped and the area has had to be allocated for housing. I am far from certain that that is a wise decision. It is not in any case one that would, I should think, need to be implemented or finalised immediately. Surely it is a decision which, before it goes beyond recall, would justify a visit from the Minister. Indeed, that was specifically mentioned as a possible objective of the hon. Gentleman's visit.

Other matters which must be in the forefront of the Minister's mind in any such scheme would include the interests of those living in the area, particularly the settlements of Madeley, one of the centres in my constituency, where the proposal is to compulsorily purchase large numbers of houses and, in effect, redesign what is now the urban centre.

I have had a number of letters from present occupiers complaining of the prospects threatening them. In fairness to the Development Corporation, however, I must say that it has taken, in my view, great pains to study the interests of he present residents. It is remarkable not that I have had letters but that I have had so few. But this is a matter which would surely be in the forefront of the mind of a Minister visiting the area.

What is more important to the future is the whole question of industrial development. To what extent is this the responsibility of the Ministry of Housing and Local Government and to what extent is it that of the Board of Trade? To what extent is it a joint responsibility? This subject has been brought up by the case of the important firm of Archdale which was very anxious to move into this area. I am not acquainted with all the details of the negotiations and the dealings with the various Ministries which took place, but he upshot was that the firm did not come.

This has created considerable concern among a number of people in the area, notably some of the councillors, who rightly think that, if the new town is to get off the ground, the basis of it must be live and powerful industries. The firm concerned seemed to many people an ideal industry to be brought in to the new town at an early stage and it is disturbing that a firm of this kind should have been prevented from moving in, apparently for the doctrinaire reason that it did not come from the right area.

I should be grateful if the hon. Gentleman could say something precise about this because it carries serious implications for the future, particularly the early future, of Dawley if it must be the rule that every industry which wishes to go there must come from a defined area. What is important, too, is not only the area from which it comes but also what is the technical designation of the Dawley area itself. Is it or is it not a development area? The main question is, I repeat, to what extent it is the responsibility of the hon. Gentleman's Ministry and to what extent it is the responsibility of the Board of Trade.

Two other matters are outstanding and are of importance. The first is the report, sent to me from the Ministry in February, of a housing study undertaken under its aegis. It was to be published "in due course". I do not expect the hon. Member to be able to answer now but apparently the report had special reference to new towns. I would be grateful if he could say something about this, however.

Secondly, and more important, is the report of the consultant advising on the northern area. The hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mr. Fowler) asked a Question about this a few days ago and the Written Answer to him appeared to be that the report is being slightly delayed for various reasons. Delay has been a bugbear of the new town from its inception. I should be grateful to be given some idea of when it is hoped the report will appear.

My primary objective is on behalf of my constituents and the Development Corporation. Although I have complained, however, I have not been asked to do so. I am saying what I would be saying if I were one of those responsible for arranging the hon. Gentleman's visit.

I also want to say that I cannot believe, unless the Parliamentary Secretary tells us so, that he was in any way personally responsible for what has happened. The right course to adopt over this unfortunate incident is for the Prime Minister or the Minister of Housing and Local Government to appear at the Dispatch Box at 11 o'clock tomorrow morning and publicly apologise to my constituents and all those inconvenienced.

10.45 p.m.

Mr. Gerry Fowler (The Wrekin)

I am a little surprised that this matter should have been raised tonight by the hon. Member for Ludlow (Mr. More), not least because, as he has told us, he had not intended to be present yesterday on the occasion of this important visit to his constituency, and to mine, of one of the Ministers concerned with the development of the new town. I had intended to be present. The local paper tonight records that the Minister was not there to meet the list of distinguished guests, including myself, but not including the hon. Member.

Before I was informed that the visit was cancelled, I found that I would have been unable to go. This was not because there was a Parliamentary Labour Party meeting—I set the interests of my constituents above that. It was because the Front Bench opposite, led by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Enfield, West (Mr. Iain Macleod), had decided to censure, not the conduct of the Government or the conduct of any Minister, but the conduct of the Chairman of Ways and Means, and to censure him in a singularly half-hearted, weak-willed manner.

I was kept here, and I have little doubt that my hon. Friend was kept here too. because the right hon. Gentleman decided that yesterday was a suitable occasion for leading the troops on the benches opposite, not only towards the sound of gunfire, but into the gun barrels of my hon. and right hon. Friends. That is why I am surprised that this complaint should come from the benches opposite. I have been on the telephone to various members of the Dawley Urban District Council and have found that there was every understanding why the visit was cancelled. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Ludlow rightly draws attention to the fact that the development of the area has been affected by delay in deciding whether to extend the area of the new town northwards. I too have raised this matter in this Session.

The point I wish to make is that this delay would never have occurred if the correct decision about the designation of the new town area had been taken in the first place, before my right hon. and hon. Friends formed the Government. Delay is essentially the result of a failure of political conviction in the last Conservative administration.

10.48 p.m.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (Mr. Robert Mellish)

I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman the Member for Ludlow (Mr. More) saw fit, when he initiated this debate, to accuse me of what he called major discourtesy by failing to attend Dawley yesterday and imputed, by those words, that I had taken a deliberate action which had caused such grave offence to his constituents. He knows me well enough by now. I have been a Member of this House for 20 years and I might be almost the last person to be involved in an incident of that kind, unless there was an absolutely justifiable reason for it.

As my hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Mr. Fowler) has said, the reason is that I was informed—after having made all the arrangements with the usual channels in view of what the business of the House for the coming week was going to be—that Her Majesty's Opposition had put down a major Motion of censure against the Chairman of Ways and Means and that there would be a Three-Line Whip. I was told that a vote was expected from 5 o'clock onwards. Obviously I could not get to Dawley and do the job which I had to go down to do, to see these very important people, doing a very important job, and be back in this House by 5 o'clock. I did not know of these arrangements until 24 hours before my intended visit.

Therefore, I had no alternative, as my hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin rightly mentioned, but to send telegrams, and make phone calls, including a personal phone call to the chairman of the Development Corporation at his hotel, expressing my profound regret. After that to be told by a member of the Opposition that initiated what I call the "glorious disaster" of yesterday—when, in fact, there was not a vote—that I am the one responsible for this major discourtesy, is just about more than even I can take.

Let us get this on record for those who read matters of this kind, and I hope that the local Press in Dawley will at least print this part of my speech. I am terribly sorry that I was not able to get there, because I was looking forward to meeting them and the local authorities there to hear about their problems, and not least to talk with those many people who are inevitably engaged in such a major project as building a new town.

I want straight away to deal with some of the points raised by the hon. Member for Ludlow and the overall picture of Dawley and nearby towns following the West Midlands Study, which was published in July, 1965. At that time the Dawley new town was to be planned for a population of some 80,000 to 90,000 people. The West Midlands Study recommended that consideration be given to taking on a further 50,000 overspill from Birmingham and the Black Country in the neighbouring towns of Wellington and Oakengates. It seemed sensible to my right hon. Friend that the planning studies of Wellington and Oakengates could not ignore the plans already in course of preparation for Dawley.

He decided, therefore, to appoint consultants to prepare reports in two stages. First, the consultants were asked to recommend for my right hon. Friend consideration of an appropriate area founded on Wellington-Oakengates for further development, in conjunction with development of the existing Dawley new town, and they were asked to report on it during this month.

Secondly, the consultants were asked to submit proposals by November, 1967, for an overall plan for development of the Dawley and Wellington-Oakengates areas. By that time the consultants already engaged by the Dawley Development Corporation had gone quite a long way in preparing a master plan for the new town. It therefore seemed sensible to appoint the same consultants for the further two studies, and the terms of reference for the assignment were finally drawn in December, 1965.

We are conscious of the—if I can have the attention of the hon. Gentleman who took so much trouble in raising this debate, so that he can have a smear campaign against some of us on this side of the House, he might hear things that matter to his constituency. We are conscious of possible hindrance to the Dawley new town as a result of these studies, and therefore the terms of reference specifically required the consultants to advise the Department and the Dawley Development Corporation on what areas could be developed over the next four years without prejudice to the overall plan, so as to achieve continuity of development at a high level. The consultants did this quickly, and I am glad to say that the Development Corporation has already embarked on a continuity programme which is likely to keep it going for at least four years, during which time some 3,000 houses are programmed for completion.

Within this continuity programme is the redevelopment of the community of Madeley. The existing Madeley could hardly provide in its present state a district centre for the 26,000 people who will eventually live in and around it. In its redevelopment, which will be expensive, it will be necessary, unfortunately for some, to pull down or improve a number of obsolete properties. The proposal involves making a traffic-free centre of three linked squares, with shopping, housing, car parking and other communal facilities.

The Corporation hopes to buy much of the land in Madeley by agreement, but in dealing with cases where this, regrettably, may not be possible, it has submitted compulsory purchase orders for the area to be covered by the first phase of redevelopment. There have been objections, and if they are not withdrawn there will be an inquiry. In these circumstances, the hon. Member will understand if I make no further comment.

I now come to the difficult problem of getting industry into Dawley. Those new towns built to take overspill from conurbations must have industry. Everyone learnt when the first new towns were being built how important it is to match houses and jobs, for otherwise the houses will remain empty or the inhabitants will travel far to work. No one on this side of the House, or, I imagine, anywhere in the House underestimates the difficulties of getting the right industry from the right places into the new towns and of phasing the movement of that industry to match the building of houses. But this is not to say that the Government can ignore the needs of the development districts. We must have a proper regard for priorities. But, having said that, let me assure the hon. Gentleman that it is our aim, in conjunction with the Board of Trade, to make the new towns a success.

Let it not be thought that no industry has yet been got for Dawley. There are a few firms already going there. At the moment, they amount only to a trickle, but I hope that firms in the Birmingham conurbation which have the right qualifications to go to Dawley will not just think that there is plenty of time but will go into action and try to get into Dawley as quickly as they can, because otherwise they will find that the trickle has turned into a torrent and they will not get the chance. I urge those firms which are interested to get in touch with the Development Corporation and the Board of Trade. The first generation of new towns were successful. The second generation towns will be even more successful and great places in which to live and work.

I want to say something about the slight delay there has been in producing the report on the first part of the consultants' study. This delay has been the subject of three recent Questions by my hon. Friend the Member for Wrekin, for whose intervention tonight I am much obliged. I know that in Dawley, Wellington and Oakengates, quite justifiably, people are anxious to know what is to happen in the future. I ask them to be patient for just a little longer, but I am able to announce tonight that the first part of the consultants' study, on which my hon. Friend has asked his Questions, will, it is understood, be available in September.

We are anxious to see that we get these reports right. To publish hastily might be to publish wrongly, which no one would want to happen. This is a diffi- cult situation, with a number of areas involved in the new town development, and we want to make sure that, before we start on this enormous development, we are doing the right thing for the whole area.

I am much obliged to the hon. Gentleman for raising this matter tonight. Having been critical of me in his earlier remarks, he ended on a rather nice note, and I do not see why I should not do the same. I am grateful to him for drawing attention to the problems of the Dawley new town. I can assure him that I have already made arrangements to visit Dawley. I very much hope to manage it some time this month. I shall go down there myself and apologise personally to those I inconvenienced. But I remind the hon. Gentleman—I do not have to remind anyone else—that my first duty is to the House of Commons. It is inevitable that Ministers, in the course of their jobs, take on appointments in advance which the business of the House then demands that they alter. That I have expressed by apologies is quite clear to all.

I must add that the hon. Gentleman is in no position to make comments about the activity in making visits of my right hon. Friend the Minister or of myself as Parliamentary Secretary. In the last year and six months we have been in power, we have visited more new towns, more county councils and more conurbations than was ever done before in the history of the Ministry. That is a fact. My right hon. Friend, for example, has not had a weekend in London. He has spent them all in doing the job for which he was appointed as Minister. I can also claim, with modesty, to have visited 40 or 50 outside authorities, trying to do the same sort of job. If our record is being challenged on this, I would compare it with that of our predecessors and say that it is pretty good.

10.58 p.m.

Sir Harmar Nicholls (Peterborough)

It is a pity that the Parliamentary Secretary did not go to the Midlands to learn a little of their problems, which London Members do not always understand. London Members are pretty clear about their own problems and usually very full of them, and it does no harm to visit the Midlands, particularly the part represented by my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr. More), to see what is going on there.

I wish to comment on the hon. Gentleman's reason for not going to the meeting to which he had been invited. We know that there was a three-line Whip out, but we know also that it is not unknown for Ministers to be allowed to ignore three-line Whips in order to do I heir jobs. How many of the hon. Gentleman's colleagues on the Treasury Bench were, in fact, doing Ministerial jobs yesterday? The names in the Division lists which followed later that evening show that they were not present.

Mr. Mellish

There was then a two line Whip, after six o'clock. The hon. Gentleman can get up to all kinds of mischief, but let him not confuse the issue about what happened yesterday in the first part of business. There was a three-line Whip for a Motion of censure on the Chairman, and after that Conservative Members were willing and able to pair. Until then, on the three-line Whip, as we know only too well, there was no pairing allowed by the Conservative Opposition, though that was not the attitude of the Labour Party.

The Question having been proposed after Ten o'clock and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at one minute to Eleven o'clock.