HC Deb 21 February 1967 vol 741 cc1503-39
Dr. Dickson Mabon

I beg to move Amendment No. 25, in page 22, to leave out lines 1 to 8 and insert: (2) The amendment made to Part I of the said Schedule 6 by virtue of paragraph 11 of Schedule 1 to the House Purchase and Housing Act 1959 shall cease to have effect, and accordingly the said paragraph 11, and paragraph 14 of the said Part 1, are hereby repealed. The Amendment corrects an error in drafting of paragraph 7(2) of the Fifth Schedule. The purpose of paragraph 7(2) is to pick up a slip in the House Purchase and Housing Act, 1959 which wrongly included within the statutory definition of "Exchequer contribution" contributions to local authorities in respect of standard improvement grants which they have paid to private persons. The paragraph as drafted goes beyond that intention because subparagraph (a) excepted Section 116 of the 1950 Act from the list of statutory provisions applying to standard grants. That exception is incorrect, since without Section 116 there would be no authority for the Secretary of State to pay contributions to local authorities in respect of standard grants paid to private persons. The Amendment accordingly sets matters right by redrafting paragraph 7(2) in the correct form. I am very happy to help amend legislation of the previous Government.

Mr. Noble

I thank the Minister of State for having observed, so long after the energetic drive he displayed on this side of the House, this error in the original legislation. I am glad that the Department has drawn it to his attention and that he has rectified it.

Amendment agreed to.

Dr. Dickson Mahon

I beg to move Amendment No. 26, in page 22, line 37, at end to add: 14. In the said Act of 1962, in Schedule 1, after paragraph 3 there shall be inserted the following paragraph:— '3A. Where, by reason of a change in the areas of local authorities, houses are transferred from one local authority to another local authority, the Secretary of State may, having regard to the gross annual values of the houses and the date and circumstances of their transfer, direct that such other method of calculation as he may consider appropriate shall be used for the purposes of this Part of this Schedule in lieu of the method of calculation specified in the two last foregoing paragraphs.'. Earlier, I formally moved Amendment No. 22 because it could be taken together with Amendment No. 26 and they have been requested by the local authority associations. They cover the difficulties which could arise in calculating subsidy under Clause 5 and Schedule 2 where there has been a change of local government boundaries.

Schedule 2 provides for machinery to decide an authority's eligibility for supplementary subsidy on the basis of various calculations of the authority's notional housing revenue account. One of these calculations, under paragraphs 6 and 7 of the Schedule is the ascertainment of the authority's total housing valuation for the relevant financial year. In the normal case, this is calculated by taking the average of the aggregate gross annual values of the authority's houses at the end of the relevant financial year—in paragraph 6(a)—and of the aggregate gross annual value of the authority's houses at the end of the financial year immediately preceding the relevant financial year—in paragraph 6(b).

Boundary changes can, however, radically alter the geographical basis of an authority's housing revenue account at one or other of the relevant dates and the normal process of taking the average of the two aggregate figures might well quite artificially affect an authority's eligibility for supplementary subsidy. This point was raised in the course of recent discussions with the local authority associations, and this is the first opportunity we have had to take, as is reasonable, powers to deal with the situation.

The Amendment accordingly provides that in such circumstances the Secretary of State may, having regard to the gross annual values of the houses and the date and circumstances of their transfer, direct that some other method of calculation may be used in order to ascertain the authority's total housing valuation for the purposes of Schedule 2.

Mr. G. Campbell

We do not object to this Amendment, but I am glad that the hon. Gentleman indicated that Amendment No. 22 should be discussed with it because, when we reached Amendment No. 22 a few minutes ago, he said that it had already been discussed. It would have been appropriate if this Amendment had been taken with the earlier group. However, this course seems more correct. Amendment No. 22 obviously goes with Amendment No. 26 and Amendment No. 27 which follows. On the question of the transfer of houses, the Amendments appear to us to be acceptable.

Amendment agreed to.

Further Amendment made: No. 27. in page 22. line 37. at end add:

15. In the said Act of 1962. in Schedule 2, in paragraph 2, after sub-paragraph (2) there shall be inserted the following subparagraph:— '(3) In the case of any house completed on or after the first day of the financial year commencing in 1968. the last foregoing sub-paragraph shall have effect as if for head (a) there were substituted the following head—

  1. "(a) 'the local authority's reduced deficit' means the deficit referred to, in relation to the local authority, in section 3(4)(a) of this Act less the amount which bears to that deficit the same proportion as the amount of the resources element of the rate support grant payable to the local authority for the relevant financial 1506 year under the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1966 bears to the authority's relevant local expenditure as certified by the Secretary of State to have been estimated according to the latest estimate made before the end of the relevant financial year, as calculated for the purposes of Part II of Schedule 1 to that Act in accordance with the provisions of paragraphs 4 and 5 of the said Part II."'—[Dr. Dickson Mabon.]

6.53 p.m.

Dr. Dickson Mabon

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

We have now come to the final stages in this House of one of the most important Bills for Scotland in this Parliament. It is the foundation for the solution of Scotland's housing problem, which we described in our White Paper of November, 1965, and which includes many elements of which I will now emphasise only two.

The first is the problem of slums, to which the recent Report of the Culling-worth Committee, the Sub-Committee of the Scottish Housing Advisory Committee, of which I have the honour to be Chairman, has again drawn attention and has confirmed the estimates we made in the White Paper. Our housing programme itself and the subsidies provided in the Bill must be more and more directed to the elimination of housing conditions which are, frankly, a disgrace for Scotland.

Here, I refer not only to the financial provisions of Part I of the Bill but also to Clause 18. This is a very valuable provision which will protect those who have had to buy an unfit house at an excessive price as the only way of finding accommodation.

The second problem I wish to emphasise is the provision of houses in support of the expansion of industry. Clause 15, which provides finance for the Scottish Special Housing Association, and Clause 8, which gives a special subsidy to local authorities for this purpose, are crucial in this respect. We must ensure that, in the centres of new industrial development, there is an adequate programme of house-building both to retain in Scotland and to attract back the skilled people we need.

The Bill provides finance to enable the local authorities, the Scottish Special Housing Association and the new towns to expand their building programmes to meet this challenge. The local authorities are working hard on this and are making great efforts to increase their forward planning to ensure continuity. The basic advantage of the new method of calculating subsidy is the confidence that it gives local authorities in their planning. They know that the subsidy will take account of future changes in costs and rates of interest and that they will not suddenly be faced by increased rate burdens because of factors outside their control.

Local authorities and other public agencies must, under present conditions, be the main providers of houses in Scotland and the Bill concentrates on them. But the Government also look to expansion in the private sector and are taking other steps to encourage this. It is worthy of comment at this stage that, as a result of what has been done so far under the Bill in view of its retrospective nature, we have had for the first time since 1960 the production of well over 2,000 houses—2,300—by the Scottish Special Housing Association as compared with an average over the last six years of about 1,600. This represents a good achievement by this excellent organisation in getting to this level and I hope that we shall be able to move steadily with it towards the 5,000 target in 1970. In respect of the new towns, again we are fortunate in seeing the highest output ever in Scotland, with a figure of over 3,800 houses, which is substantially more than anything achieved before.

Of course, the bulk of Scotland houses are to be provided by the local authorities and we look to them to do everything possible to reach the figures that we know that they are capable of achieving, given that we get the right organisation and the right drive behind their efforts. My noble Friend is meeting the housing convenors this week. When I met them, I was very impressed by what they told me about what they thought they could do in the months between September and December last year. They promised that they would try to secure approvals of between 23,000 and 26,000 houses. In fact, although I thought that they would get their 23,000, they managed to get within 500 of the outside figure. This is a remarkable effort which I am sure the whole House will commend.

Our discussions have shown that the basic principles of the Bill are not controversial. Both sides of the House agree that a great step forward is required to solve the housing problem and the financial assistance that the Bill provides is essential. We have had many valuable debates on a number of aspects of the Bill and have made many improvements. This is a Bill which we can pass with confidence and I commend it to the House.

6.59 p.m.

Mr. G. Campbell

The Bill, as the Government have pointed out many times, brings in a new system for basic subsidy in Scotland. This is, perhaps, its most important provision, and the first three Clauses govern it. But the clear point remains that the amount of the basic subsidy due to local authorities for new housing will vary from year to year and that the rate is to be decided by the Secretary of State himself in relation to the previous year's interest rates. It has been argued that this will be helpful to the local authorities because it will give them assurance for the future against rising interest rates and against high interest rates. Clearly there is advantage for the local authorities when interest rates are high, and certainly, in the last two years, when the rates have been continually high during the period of economic crisis, a basic subsidy related directly to interest rates is an advantage.

The question which we want to ask—and I hope the Minister will be able to give me some attention because this is an important question—is, does the Minister expect this state of economic crisis to continue for the whole period of the Labour Government? He has been speaking as if there will always be interest rates of 6½ per cent., or 7 per cent., or even higher. I can assure him that the country, almost unanimously, hopes that interest rates will come down. That is what people in all walks of life and in all trades and professions are hoping. If interest rates come down, then there is uncertainty as to what will be the actual amounts payable in subsidy each year.

To sum it up, local authorities have the advantage of the subsidy being pegged to 4 per cent. interest rate. That is quite understood, but in return for that they have the uncertainty about the amounts they will actually receive, depending upon how interest rates will vary or may vary in the future. Houses will qualify under the Bill for this new form of basic subsidy, in many cases where proposals were submitted on or after 1st January, 1965—that is, over two years ago. We have already discussed this retrospection. Most of those ought to have been completed, certainly if they are not multi-storey, during 1966, but the Government appear during that year to have lost touch entirely with the public authority housing programme. Indeed, they appeared to be completely at sea with the housing programme during 1966.

In March, the Government, through the Labour Party's manifesto, categorically stated that at least 40,000 houses would be built in Scotland in 1966. The manifesto said that the Conservatives had a target of 40,000, and it went on to say, We will beat it this year". We know the result. We know what, in fact, happened. The figure was just over 36,000. What happened to the other 4,000 houses? I hope that the Minister will tell us. We know, having seen last month the figures for the year, that the figure of 36,000 was considerably assisted by the private sector, which built about 200 more houses than in 1964. That is something which, in itself, is welcome, but the correct statement which the Labour Party should have made in its March manifesto less than a year ago should have been, "We will build about 36,000 houses and we will be considerably assisted in this by the private builders". That would have been a true statement, and a true prediction of what, in fact, happened. That is what should have been said. How could the Government have been so wide of the mark in March? Were they just hopefully guessing? Responsible Ministers do not usually allow such statements unless they are founded on some solid facts or information. If the Government were not simply hopefully guessing, then this was a misleading statement to the electorate. To put it bluntly, it was a swindle. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will say that it was the economic crisis. But that economic crisis has been with us for two years. It was no good making this prediction in March if it was subject to the economic crisis continuing. If the hon. Gentleman says that the July measures affected that prediction, that statement, that pledge, in March, we know that the July measures were drastic for Scotland. But if that is put forward as the excuse, why was the Minister of State still so confident last November? On 1st November, in the Scottish Grand Committee, when I mentioned the statement concerning 40,000 houses, he intervened to say The year has not finished". So, on 1st November, the Minister was still thinking in terms of 40,000 houses being built by the end of the year. Within two months of the end of the year he was out by 4,000. That is why we naturally doubt and wonder whether the Government know what is happening, or is likely to happen, with the building of new houses. Can we believe these statements, or the pledges, or the forecasts, on housing in Scotland which they put out? I hope that the hon. Gentleman will tell us something about this, because this is the first opportunity since those figures came out for the Government to explain why they were so hopelessly wrong with their predictions during the year.

The Bill does away with the favourble differential, as we see it, in the basic subsidies in Scotland, because the basic subsidy amounts for houses, unless the hon. Gentleman can tell us something different, will be the same in England and Wales as they will be for Scotland.

Previously the figures have been higher for Scotland. Where a house qualified for £32 subsidy in Scotland, it was £24 in England. Where it was £12 in Scotland, it was £8 in England. The system now adopted for Scotland on the one hand and England and Wales on the other means that this differential for basic subsidies disappears. I agree that a differential occurs in some of the special subsidies, but not in the basic subsidy.

The Minister may explain that this is adopted for England as well as for Scotland because subsidies are now altogether higher, but again we revert to the point about interest rates. They are higher now because interest rates are at crisis rates and we hope that they will not continue at present levels.

Regarding special subsidies, there are reductions under Clause 4 for multi-storey buildings, a point which we touched on during the Report stage, and, under Clause 9 for expensive sites. The Bill makes reductions in these two special subsidies.

Dr. Dickson Mahonindicated dissent.

Mr. Campbell

Reductions from £40 to £30 for multi-storey flats. The hon. Gentleman will talk again about adding to that the basic subsidy, but in certain cases the basic subsidy could be nought. I hope that the hon. Gentleman realises that these are reductions in the special subsidies.

Time will show how the new basic subsidy system will work. I hope that the hon. Gentleman—I see him muttering there—will not again say that I am taking an Oliver Twist attitude. I pointed out earlier that the point about the Oliver Twist requests was that they were eminently reasonable. Time will show how the new basic subsidy system will work.

It is our concern—and we are concerned about this—that despite all the pledges, the priorities, the forecasts made, and general ballyhoo which the Government have put out, they have done very little to help the housing situation in Scotland.

7.10 p.m.

Mr. Edward M. Taylor

What has been noticeable during the discussion of the Bill on Report has been the statesmanlike and reasonable way in which the Minister of State has answered our questions. He has adopted an air of lofty superiority and of genuine concern with Scotland and its housing problems. But we have to remember the background to the Bill, the background of the Government's existence, because they owed their shaky and miserable existence in the last Parliament to a series of disgraceful pledges—

Mr. Speaker

Order. There is nothing about that shaky existence of the last Government in the Bill. This is a Third Reading.

Mr. Taylor

I was at once coming to some of the provisions in the Bill, but we have to remember its background. The Minister of State said that we could see the reasons for the Bill's provisions and especially for some of the subsidies, in the success of the housing programme since the provisions of the Bill were announced. After deluding the electorate in 1964 and 1966, the Government must now be deluding themselves, because the figures for the period covered by the Bill show the very reverse.

Surely by now we should have seen some indication of an improvement in the number of houses started, for instance, because of the subsidies for which the Bill provides. Local authorities know about them and these provisions are retrospective. Surely by this stage there should have been some indication that thing were improving. We all know that completions have failed to reach the figure of 1964 even yet. The Government may say in all fairness that this is for partly historical reasons and that many of the houses being completed were started before the subsidies were announced, but even so we ought to be seeing some signs by now. Instead, the number of houses under construction which were begun in 1966 totalled 36,000 compared with a figure of well over 42,000 in 1965. These are official figures from the Housing Return for Scotland and instead of an improvement, instead of the number of starts being increased, there is a fairly savage decline to 36,000.

Dr. Dickson Mabon

I have difficulty following all this, but the hon. Gentleman must remember that about one-third of the houses in the present programme are multi-storey houses and that multi-storey houses cannot count in starts until at least nine months after the laying of the foundations. That is the difference between multi-storey and low-level houses.

Mr. Taylor

I agree that that fact would be reflected, but is the hon. Gentleman arguing that there has been a dramatic increase in the number of multi-storey houses over the previous seven years? I hope that he will produce figures to substantiate that, because it is not my information. I am told that there has not been a very large percentage increase over the figures for the previous seven years.

But what concerns me is the incidence of these figures. The Minister spoke of the achievements of the Scottish Special Housing Association this year, but those figures are even more alarming, because instead of 2,000 in 1965, we have only 1,000 in 1966. In the new towns, instead of 3,600, the figure was 3,100. Only the private sector appears to be showing any stability, and starts in the private sector are about the same.

The Minister says that the Bill is the answer to the housing problems of Scotland, but all the indications in the number of starts and completions are that that is not the case. The Minister spoke of multi-storey building, but if what he says is correct, we should be seeing some sign of an improvement in the number of tenders approved and here also there is a reduction from 31,676 in 1965 to 30,704 in 1966.

Dr. Dickson Mabon

1965 was a record year for approvals. The comparison would be better stated by taking the number of approvals for 1964.

Mr. Taylor

I will take not the figures for 1964, but those for 1963, the year before. [Interruption.] The figures are almost identical. Over a period of about five years there has been a variation of between 25,000 and 30,000.

Dr. Dickson Mabon

The year 1964 is more pertinent to the argument inasmuch as we are building or completing houses which were approved in 1964, whereas those approved in 1963 have long since been built. The year 1963 was a bad year, as the hon. Member for Moray and Nairn (Mr. G. Campbell) will agree.

Mr. Taylor

The figures vary between 25,000 and 30,000 over a period of five years. These are official Government figures which are available to everyone. I could give the figures for each year, but it would not be right to take up the time of the, House. I will say only that over the period of five years they were approximately 27,000, 30,000, 27,000, 31,000 and 30,000. Today we have the situation in which, according to the Minister's argument, there ought to be a dramatic improvement, and yet we are not seeing any signs of it.

Certainly many of the provisions in the Bill will assist local authorities when interest rates are high, and we have had a very unfortunate experience of extremely high interest rates under the present Government. But that is not the answer to our questions, because there has been no apparent sign of an increase in the number of tenders approved and houses started.

I do not in any way suggest that the Bill is useless or that it will give no assistance to anyone, but I counsel the Government, and especially the Minister of State, to remember that while in serious economic times the Bill will relieve the burden of local councils—and there is no question about that—even at times of high interest rates it will not be the whole answer and that local authorities could still be in serious difficulties. The number of completions is down by 4,000 and that of starts is down by 6,000. While the Bill may be of marginal advantage, Scotland's housing, problem needs far more drastic measures.

While not wishing to be more controversial than necessary, I must say that if the Minister studies the Cullingworth Report, he will see the desperate need for a kind of military operation and the need for a dramatic increase in housing provision. He should not by any means think that the Bill will deal with the long-term problem. Local government in Scotland needs security in general spending and it also has to deal with the problem of the availability of land. If those two problems were tackled more seriously, that would make a much greater contribution to a solution of Scotland's appalling housing problem than the Bill will make.

We certainly welcome the Bill's objectives and agree that it will bring relief to local authorities in certain circumstances, but it is not the answer which would be provided by sound economic policies pursued by a sound Government. Such policies would make a far greater contribution to a solution of an appalling problem. Although the Bill will provide relief in times of serious economic difficulty it will not provide the general boost which Scottish housing needs.

7.18 p.m.

Mr. Alasdair Mackenzie (Ross and Cromarty)

This is a very important Bill and most hon. Members will agree that housing is one of our major problems. This is true even in the north of Scotland and it must be doubly true in the industrial belt where there is a much greater density of population. We hope that the Bill will be the means of speeding up a solution of housing problems in all parts of Scotland. A recent report clearly showed the very depressing housing conditions in some parts of Scotland. That report came as a shock to many of us. If it is as fruitful as we are promised, the Bill will go a long way to allaying the fears of many hon. Members.

It is rather strange that in areas where depopulation at a steady rate is occurring there is still a housing problem. Many people want to live in the larger villages and the smaller burghs, and there is a constant demand for more houses. In discussing housebuilding it is import-'ant to stress how essential the private sector is, and I hope that this Bill will not be the means of reducing the number of private houses. In my part of the world more and more young people are very anxious to build their own house and this should be encouraged.

Multi-storey building does not affect us. We do not want this type of building in the Highlands, or anything else that would spoil the beauty of the landscape. We hope that the Bill will be as good as the Minister of State promises and that it will be a means of arresting the depopulation which has been taking place for many years. The reason for this depopulation is often the lack of adequate housing, and, for that reason, I, on behalf of my party, give a very cordial welcome to the Bill, and hope that it will live up to the promises of the Minister of State.

Mr. Eadie

I want to associate myself with the remarks of the hon. Member for Ross and Cromarty (Mr. Alasdair Mackenzie) and to welcome this Bill. A welcome for the Bill is something of a change of climate, bearing in mind some of the remarks made by hon. Gentlemen opposite. I have not quite made up my mind about the hon. Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Edward M. Taylor) but whenever we start to discuss housing, not only in the Chamber but in Committee, he dons the mantle of the prophet of gloom and doom. Some of his criticisms are perfectly valid but I hope that in making them he realises that he is indicting his own party.

Mr. Edward M. Taylor

I appreciate what the hon. Gentleman has said about me and my remarks in Committee, but I was not a member of this Committee.

Mr. Eadie

I was not meaning this Committee. We are all well aware of the gloomy remarks often made by the hon. Gentleman. He even makes them on television. My constituency welcomes this Bill. For the first time in history the local authority of the County of Midlothian is investing £15 million in housing. It is a housing programme unequalled in its history.

When one considers this, one begins to realise what this will mean to the people living there. I know that some hon. Gentlemen are familiar with the area and the housing needs. I find it very difficult to understand the hon. Gentleman, because I have a long experience of housing matters as a member of a local authority. I can remember when the party opposite destroyed the three-tier subsidy in a Housing Bill before this House. I can remember that it provided, in the Bill, an incentive for local authorities to build smaller houses. I see some hon. Gentlemen here who reside in the Edinburgh area, and I can remember—

Mr. Speaker

Order. A passing reference is in order, but the hon. Gentleman must relate his remarks to the Bill.

Mr. Eadie

I did not mean to incur your wrath, Mr. Speaker. I was trying to point out, since some hon. Gentlemen opposite have been criticising the subsidy provisions of the Bill, that they are responsible for destroying the principle of the subsidy according to the cost of the house. In introducing this Bill my right hon. Friend has restored this principle, inasmuch as if the house is larger a bigger subsidy will be paid.

I was drawing an analogy between what happened because of the disastrous policy of hon. Gentlemen opposite and our present scheme. With the introduction of the small subsidy—the removal of the principle reintroduced by this Bill—smaller houses were built with terrible consequences for Scotland. This is a legacy left to us by hon. Gentlemen opposite. I was a housing convenor in 1964, and when the Labour Government were elected we were looking around the country for plasterboard, of which there was a shortage because of the policies of hon. Gentlemen opposite. Thus the party opposite was responsible for delaying and retarding the 1964 house building programme. Hon. Gentlemen opposite cannot run away from this respons>C9'ibility.

Mr. William Baxter (West Stirlingshire)

My hon. Friend will also recall that there was a considerable shortage of cement for two or three months, also retarding house building considerably.

Mr. Eadie

I appreciate my hon. Friend adding strength to my argument.

Mr. Brewis

Does the hon. Gentleman not admit that in spite of these shortages, rather more houses were built in that year than last year?

Mr. Eadie

This showed great initiative and enterprise on the part of the Labour Government.

I want to deal with that part of the Bill which extends the activities of the Scottish Special Housing Association. It was even agreed in Committee that the Association made a special contribution to house building in Scotland.

Mr. Edward M. Taylorindicated dissent.

Mr. Eadie

The hon. Member for Cathcart disagrees, but he is always different from everyone else. This Bill provides not only for housing subsidies, but also for an acceleration of house building by the Association which will be of great help in my constituency. I warmly welcome the Bill and I hope that other hon. Members will speak very strongly in its favour.

7.30 p.m.

Mr. Brewis

The Bill is clearly designed to be a weapon in the Government's housing programme, and its provisions have been well known at any rate since the end of 1965. It is therefore sad to see that so far this Bill has not been reflected in the success which one would have liked to have seen on the ground. Some of the figures have been given by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Edward M. Taylor), but it is very disappointing to see that tenders in 1966, which amounted to 30,704, were down compared with the previous year, when the figure was 31,676. It is true that houses under construction are up fractionally on the previous year, but they are down in the fourth quarter compared with the second and third quarters, and, as has already been said, constructions begun last year are down considerably.

I know that the Minister of State intervened during the speech of one of my hon. Friends to say that this did not include starts on multi-storey flats. This is perhaps a valid point, but it would apply equally to the figures which he has always said were not high in 1964. I have a suggestion to make about this. It is that in the housing return there is a table, No. 6, which analyses tenders by the size of houses, and I wonder whether it would be possible in that or in a similar table to state how many of them are multi-storey, and how many storeys there are in those houses?

Dr. Dickson Mabon

We expect that the figure for the current month will be about 37 per cent. in respect of multi-storey constructions, which only reinforces what I said about these approvals. The figure for tenders approved in 1966–30,704—was higher than any figure before under the Conservatives. I take the hon. Gentleman's point that we should have a growing volume of houses under construction and approvals, but if he says that it is down in the fourth quarter, I must point out that the figure of 50,550 for the number of houses under construction is higher than anything achieved under the Conservatives. Unfortunately, with multi-storeys, it takes nine months before we put them on the schedule of starts because of the work on the foundations, and thereafter we get the bunching effect. It is this which gave the result in December which so shocked the Opposition.

Mr. Brewis

I shall not bandy figures with the hon. Gentleman. In the fourth quarter the number of houses under construction was down on the previous two quarters.

I welcome the way in which the basic rate of interest has been reduced to 4 per cent., but at the same time the Government have done very little to hold down the cost of house building. It seems to me that with one hand they are helping local authorities, but with the other, by putting on taxes such as the iniquitous Selective Employment Tax—

Mr. Speaker

Order. That is right outside the Bill.

Mr. Brewis

I bow to your Ruling, Mr. Speaker. I was merely making a passing reference to the fact that the cost of houses had gone up.

My hon. Friend the Member for Moray and Nairn (Mr. G. Campbell) has already inquired what will happen if the country, under this Government, gets more prosperous and interest rates fall. The answer is that the subsidy may well disappear altogether, but I should like to dwell for a moment on the reverse, and perhaps more likely effect, and that is what will happen if the country gets less prosperous and interest rates tend to rise higher and higher? If this happens, the Bill will be a built-in incentive for local authorities to build more houses when things are tight nationally than when things are prosperous nationally. This might well be to the detriment of other local authority projects, or the repair of houses, which is very important, and it seems to me that the system of subsidy under this Bill might work very disadvantageously from a national point of view.

I have one other question to ask because I was not on the Committee and therefore was not able to ask it then. I notice in Clause 7 that there is to be an extra subsidy for the use of stone and other architectural means to try to ensure that houses fit into their surroundings. What is the Secretary of State's policy on this? If rather special designs are submitted to him, there will be an extra subsidy for such houses, but if applications for ordinary houses come in, will the Secretary of State cut down on the cost of the houses and get local authorities to accept only those tenders which show the cheapest possible construction cost? I have heard it suggested that this will be the case. I do not think that it will be, but I would be grateful if the right hon. Gentleman would give us some idea of what his policy is on slightly more expensive but architecturally more worthwhile buildings.

7.36 p.m.

Mr. Doig

The hon. Member for Moray and Nairn (Mr. G. Campbell) has talked continually about the uncertainty of the amount of money which local authorities will receive by way of subsidy. I can only say that I wish I had had this uncertainty when I had to find money in my constituency to pay for housing and housing loans.

What is this uncertainty to which the hon. Gentleman referred? It is in fact a stonewall certainty that for the first time they will know exactly what it is going to cost them. Surely this is what everyone wants, to keep on harping about uncertainty is sheer nonsense because, as I have said, for the first time there is a stonewall certainty. They know that the rate of interest will be 4 per cent., and no more, and I am sure that every treasurer in every local authority welcomes this "uncertainty".

It has been said that the housing figure for 1966 was achieved by including more private houses. The fact is that there were only 317 of these houses, and I suggest to hon. Gentlemen opposite—and in particular to the hon. Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Edward M. Taylor)—that they should look at another column in this housing return, the one for conversions and improvements. if the hon. Member for Cathcart looks at the figure for 1966, and then at the figure for 1964 of which he is so proud, he will see that the number of houses becoming available on a modern estate totalled 2,800 more than those in 1964. If we include this figure, we see that more good modern houses became available for tenants in 1966 than in any previous year in the history of this country, including 1964. The hon. Gentleman ought to look at the whole of the Report and not merely select parts of it which suit him.

The hon. Member for Cathcart also suggested that we should turn the housing programme into a military operation. Because now for the first time, there are to be fixed interest charges, my local authority has done just this. This year the number of houses completed will be more than double the number completed last year. The reason for this is the so-called uncertainty about how much subsidy the local authority will receive, and how much interest it will have to pay in interest charges. I have no doubt that many other local authorities will take similar action, and I am convinced that this year there will be another record in house completions.

The provision for an increase in S.S.H.A. houses is welcome to local authorities. Apart from providing additional houses it will relieve local authorities of a liability. Every local authority to which I have spoken welcomes the Bill.

7.40 p.m.

Mr. Patrick Wolrige-Gordon (Aberdeenshire, East)

I agree with what the hon. Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Doig) said about the S.S.H.A. The provision concerning that Association is one of the most welcome in the Bill. I noticed that in his speech at the annual general meeting of the Scottish Council in December Lord Clydesmuir spoke of the importance that the Scottish Council attaches to the work of the S.S.H.A. and local authorities—and all those concerned in providing housing—for the economic development of different parts of the country. Anything which will encourage and develop that has my strongest support.

If housing were just a matter of passing legislation the Government would already have housed the people of Scotland. If all that was needed to do the job was charm and ability to present an active impression, the Minister of State would deserve his promotion. But in March last year the Government were saying that they would build 40,000 houses in Scotland in 1966. Many Scottish people voted for them on that basis. They were quite right to do so, because that had been the programme of the Conservative Government. But what happened? The Government were elected and the housing programme slowed down.

The Government now claim that the figures were a record all the same, and take great pride in them. Every year, as the normal progress goes on, they claim a record and are very proud of it. But that achievement is the result of Conservative planning and Socialist execution. When we have Conservative planning and Socialist execution the thing that suffers is Conservative planning. In this case the housing programme was reduced by about 4,000 houses—homes for at least 8,000 people—so this Government, in their friendly fashion, promoted the Minister most responsible and declared the whole business to have been a stupendous success.

Whether this Measure will improve the position dramatically, I doubt. The Government are very proud of their generosity in allocating the vast amount of other people's money that they have collected in the last two years. It means that subsidies under the Bill will be the highest ever. No one can oppose that, especially in view of the tremendous burden placed on local authorities because of the Government's policy of high interest rates. I hope that we shall not see the serious drop in starts in 1967 that we saw in 1966. I share the concern expressed by my hon. Friend about the unfortunate response, in terms of the housing programme, that the Bill seems to have gained so far in Scotland. I hope that this situation will not continue, and that the new subsidy arrangements will not lead to great delays in administration, either among local authorities or in St. Andrew's House, causing, as has happened in the past, an increased charge on ratepayers and a non-payment of builders.

Mr. Manuel

I do not want to stop the hon. Member for too long in his vigorous attack, but does he not agree that a Government in power for 13 years, as the Conservative Government were in power, would, if they had been really keen, have built up a motive power for the erection of houses and should have been producing them in enormous numbers, instead of which the tempo was reduced because of the impact of the financial burden placed upon local authorities. Some cut down their housing programmes, and some were not building at all. We had to reverse that trend. The Bill will enable us to go on to a greater success.

Mr. Wolrige-Gordon

If that was the trend that the hon. Gentleman saw in the Conservative Party he was the only one who saw it. The Conservative programme of house building in Scotland was for 40,000 houses in 1966—a figure that has not been achieved by the present Government.

Housing is a human problem and we are all united in our aim to solve it. The. fact that the Conservative Party is prepared to spend much more money in helping to solve the problem is indicated in the general acceptance that we have given to the Bill, in spite of our differences of opinion about its details.

7.45 p.m.

Earl of Dalkeith

During the debate the temperature has varied from time to time. Possibly the warmest moment came when my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Edward M. Taylor) succeeded in triggering off the hon. Member for Midlothian (Mr. Eadie), who gave us a fruity harangue at one point, including our shortcomings in the supply of plasterboard. Despite the fact that the Bill has been in embryo for some months, the Government cannot escape the fact that they have thrown the building industry into a state of confusion.

There are now 8½ million surplus bricks in the brickyards. I am told that if these were placed end to end they would reach two and a half times round the world. These are not producing the extra houses. Whether it is a shortage of plasterboard or a surplus of bricks, the hon. Gentleman cannot seriously claim that the Government are producing houses faster. They are not continuing the rate of increase in house-building that we witnessed between 1963 and 1964. The momentum has been lost.

To the extent that the Bill may encourage the faster production of more and better homes, I welcome it. The Minister of State told us how important it was from the point of view of attracting back to Scotland many of those who had left. Even more important is the production of houses, particularly for the young marrieds, so that they will be discouraged from wanting to leave Scotland. That is one of the basic reasons why the appalling exodus is taking place—to the extent of 90,000 in the last two years.

The hon. Member for Ross and Cromarty (Mr. Alasdair Mackenzie) referred to the erection of multi-storey blocks of buildings. I support him, in the hope that he will support me. I should be as loath to see multi-storey buildings going up in the Highlands as in the new town of Edinburgh, so perhaps we can get together on this.

One of the great points in the Bill is its provision for dealing with the problem of interest rates. The hon. Member for Midlothian said that his constituency welcomed the Bill because it will provide for interest rates at a fixed level. But no one welcomes the fact that at the moment we are in a period of high interest rates. None of us has been able to discover what advantages to local authorities will arise when interest rates are lowered. What help will they get?

There will not be much sign of generosity when and if that ever happens. Government spokesmen have placed too much emphasis on the generosity of the Bill. I am not sure whether this does not even amount to dishonest propaganda—

Mr. Eadie

Would the noble Lord not agree that he is, to some extent, contradicting the speech of the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire, East (Mr. Wolrige-Gordon) who said that the Conservative Party welcomed these subsidies to ratepayers and local authorities?

Earl of Dalkeith

That is not in line with what I have been saying, but is a red herring.

Too much emphasis has been laid on "generosity" by the Government, but they are being generous only so long as interest rates are high. The Government are beating the daylights out of everybody in the country with the heavy stick of interest rates and all they are doing now is offering a "cushion" to those bodies building houses. But surely everyone would much prefer a sound Government with sound economic policies running the country, so that we could dispense with high interest rates and the need for the cushion. This is a serious point.

I am distressed by the impression given by the Government spokesmen that we are to expect high interest rates for evermore. They have refused again and again to give us any indication of how local authorities will be better off if and when interest rates fall.

To end on a more cheerful note, 1 congratulate the Government on their great success with housing during the last few months and on having produced such a marvellous climate. There has never before been such a long winter of uninterrupted progress in housing and it is pleasant to congratulate them on that.

7.52 p.m.

Mr. Alick Buchanan-Smith (North Angus and Mearns)

I return to the Minister of State's point about housing costs, which is vitally important if house building in Scotland is to increase. Any local authority approaching the problem of building more houses will relate these subsidies to the cost of doing so. Far too often, we forget the relationship between the rate of subsidy and the cost of the house. The Minister of State admitted that the cost of new houses in Scotland is higher than in any other area of Great Britain, with the exception of London and the South-East.

This must be considered, because it is bound to affect our housing programme. I am worried not only by the costs of houses but by the rate at which the costs are rising. Costs of houses are increasing faster in Scotland than in any other area in Britain, and this is very serious. Attention was drawn to this fact last week in the publication of the Cooperative Permanent Building Society's Report, to which the Minister of State referred, which stated that, although in the last five years the rate of increase in prices of new houses in Britain as a whole went up by 41 per cent. and in London and the South-East by 42 per cent., in Scotland they rose by 55 per cent.

When we realise this relative disadvantage in Scotland, it will put our problems in perspective and help us to get our housing programme under way. It is a waste of time to talk about subsidies unless the Government are ready to tackle the rising costs of building. If we can stabilise these costs or help builders to bring them down, subsidies will be far more effective—

Mr. Manuel

I agree with the hon. Gentleman that we should try to keep costs down. We have been trying to do this for a long time. I hope, however, that he appreciates that, no matter what the cost or the size of a house, there is no increase in the on-cost for the local authority or the rates, whereas under the legislation of his Government, the more costs went up, the more the local authorities had to pay. The bigger the house, the more they had to pay. The subsidy was static at roughly half what the Bill provides.

Mr. Buchanan-Smith

I appreciate the hon. Gentleman's point, but it is a narrow one and we should take a wider view. If we allow the cost of houses in Scotland to go up faster than anywhere else, we shall price ourselves right out. If costs were stabilised or brought down, less overall resources would be needed, and resources would create more houses, which is what must concern us. My hon. Friends are right to dwell on this, because if the Bill does not create more houses, no legislation will answer the present problems in Scotland.

I hope that the Secretary of State, with the Scottish Housing Advisory Committee, will consider costs. It is easy to say that more elaborate construction is necessary because of climate. We all accept this. As the Secretary of State told me in a Written Answer today, there is also the problem of complying with the new Building Regulations standards, I ask the right hon. Gentleman to review these Regulations regularly to make sure that they are reasonable.

In my experience in local government and personal experience with housing, Regulations tend to be interpreted too rigidly. They should be interpreted flexibly. The Scottish Development Department deals with the relaxation of these Regulations in particular cases and, I believe, does very good work. There should be no unnecessary bureaucratic Regulations on the building industry, which tend to raise costs. This will be to the industry's detriment.

Tenders are another serious matter. The number of tenders is falling and it has been said that there is also an increase in the number rejected by the Scottish Development Department. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman can clarify this. I have nothing to base it on, but there has been talk of this. If this is the case, it reduces the number of houses being built and I hope that there is good reason for it. We should not overlook the speed of the machinery in the Scottish Office for approving tenders. If the process takes too long, this can hold up the housing programme.

It is also said that many grants to local authorities which have been approved for houses which have been completed are still not paid because local authorities have not completed certain formalities. This often means a delay in paying the contractors and, in some cases, a higher burden of capital and interest charges on money laid out by the local authority. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman can tell us whether this is the case. If so, it is another small factor which may be holding up our housing programme.

The hon. Member for Ross and Cromarty (Mr. Alasdair Mackenzie) pointed out that while the Bill deals specifically with the question of subsidies to be paid to local authorities for housing, one must view this against the background of the housing programme as a whole. As the hon. Gentleman rightly said, one must also view it against the provision of houses by private builders and others in the private sector. We are aware of the desire of many people, particularly young married couples, to own their own homes. In some local authority areas they are unable to get their names on housing lists before they are married and, in those circumstances, they must find rented accommodation if they can. Often that cannot be done, so that the only alternative is to buy their own homes. If sufficient houses are not built for private purchase, more families are forced to live with in-laws or find rented accommodation.

We should reflect that about 25 per cent. of our total stock of houses in Scotland is privately owned, as against 43 per cent. in England and 48 per cent. in Wales. These figures highlight the worse position that exists in the private sector in Scotland. Last year about 8,000 houses were built privately in Scotland, and that figure has been static for a number of years. Until we can properly harness the private sector of the house building industry and ensure that it is encouraged to build as many houses as possible, we shall not obtain a break-through and solve our housing problem. As my hon. Friends have pointed out, it is difficult for the private sector to make its full contribution when it is faced with all sorts of charges, including S.E.T.

The Cullingworth Report referred to the question of improvement grants. In Scotland we have a great stock of older houses which are structurally very good and which need not be demolished. The outer shell of them is good and all that is required is money to bring them up to modern standards. I hope that the Secretary of State will indicate that he is reviewing the whole question of improvement grants for people with older houses, since the rate of grant has been static for a number of years.

All hon. Members are aware of the need to increase the momentum of the housing drive in Scotland. As my hon. Friends have pointed out, we must view this need against the sombre background of falling starts and the reduced number of tenders. When my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Edward M. Taylor) gave the figures, we were made aware how sensitive are hon. Gentlemen opposite on this matter. They kept intervening in an attempt to refute the figures. They cannot deny that the statistics are there in black and white and that their record does not stand up to close examination.

Only this week the noble Lord the Joint Parliamentary Secretary responsible for housing reiterated that the target of 50,000 houses by 1970 still stands. Does the Secretary of State consider that that total will be achieved? The record of the Government in the last two years gives us reason to believe—even worse, makes the people of Scotland believe—that there is very little hope of our housing problem being solved.

8.4 p.m.

Mr. Noble

In opening the Third Reading debate the Minister of State said that he believed the Bill was an important one and described it as the foundation of the solution to Scotland's housing problem. When he used those words I thought that this was rather like the beginning of the building of a multi-storey block of flats. It seems to take such a long time before anything gets off the ground—nine months before one can start counting the storeys—rather like waiting for the arrival of a baby.

On many occasions when we have debated housing, affecting England or Scotland, the discussion usually centres around the exact numbers of houses built, completed, tendered for or approved. Figures showing the achievement or otherwise of both parties are given. This is an obtuse type of argument, because if the numbers are up hon. Members say, "But they were smaller houses", while if they are down hon. Members say, "The weather was very bad that year". While a discussion of such figures is important within these four walls, what really matters is the number of houses actually built and ready to be occupied. That being so, anything we can do to help the Government of the day to achieve a quicker rate of completions—because nothing else counts—we will do. We will encourage them when They are successful and prod them on when they are not.

The hon. Member for Ross and Cromarty (Mr. Alasdair Mackenzie) gave the Bill a rather doubtful blessing when he said that he hoped that it would be as good as the Minister said he thought it would be. As one of my hon. Friends pointed out, the Minister's record in housing—for which he was directly responsible as a Parliamentary Secretary—has not been particularly good, so perhaps the hon. Member for Ross and Cromarty was extending a rather backhanded compliment.

Mr. Manuel

It was his Highland way of complimenting the Minister.

Mr. Noble

I suggest that it was his Highland way of saying that while he hoped something would happen he was not certain that it would happen.

I do not quarrel with the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Edward M. Taylor), who often stirs up a good deal of animosity on the benches opposite. The hon. Member for Midlothian (Mr. Eadie) described him as a prophet of doom and gloom. [Interruption.] I do not know why hon. Gentlemen opposite are so touchy about this. After all, when one talks about prophets of doom and gloom one is entitled to think of the attitude of the present Secretary of State for Scotland for some years when he was in opposition.

Certainly my hon. Friend the Member for Cathcart goes to a lot of trouble to study the figures. Even if figures are difficult to argue one way or the other, their presentation certainly stops Ministers from making airy-fairy remarks about everything going splendidly, and it brings them back to their main task of completing the required number of houses. As long as my hon. Friend does that—whether the Conservatives or Socialists are in power—Ministers will be kept up to the mark, and I applaud my hon. Friend for his action.

Mr. Manuel

The big complaint of my hon. Friends—and I understand that this applies to some hon. Gentlemen opposite—is that the hon. Member for Cathcart does not study the figures. It is sometimes appalling to wonder, after he has said something, what he was getting at. It is all surface thinking on his part.

Mr. Noble

My hon. Friend may be different in his manner of speaking compared with, say, the hon. Member for Ross and Cromarty. My hon. Friend does not have a Highland approach to these things. Instead, he adopts a machine gun approach—and if hon. Gentlemen opposite do not always get the point he is making straight away, we need not spend the time of the House explaining it to them.

My hon. Friend the Member for North Angus and Mearns (Mr. Buchanan-Smith) raised three important topics. Although they are not dealt with specifically in the Bill, they are important if we are to get the number of houses that we need and if we are to get them in the right way. It is not just a question of subsidies, although I agree that local authorities being tied to a 4 per cent. interest rate is important. Indeed, they would not have welcomed it if it had not been to their advantage. Nevertheless, costs are rising, and I trust that the Secretary of State will consider my hon. Friend's point about the length of time it takes to get approvals through. He made two or three very important points. He spoke of the help which the private house building sector could give to our total effort, of the improvement grant and other things.

The hon. Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Doig) has left the Chamber, but I would suppose that the biggest single disincentive to private house building—and we may as well face this quite squarely in the House—is that local authorities, of one of which the hon. Gentleman was a very prominent member at the time, are apt, for reasons into which we need not now go, to keep their council house rents so low that it is quite impossible to encourage private builders to provide housing at anything like reasonable rents.

The Secretary of State must not allow the various arguments advanced from time to time from both sides of the House about the difficulties of house building to blind him to the fact that in March he and his party said that they would build 40,000 houses. That statement was not based on something that we had done before or anything else. It was said in March by the right hon. Gentleman, with the full knowledge of the Department behind him. He knew that this was possible, and I am certain that he hoped to achieve it. I do not regard it as satisfactory, either to the House or to the country as a whole, to hear him—or, indeed, the Prime Minister, who tried to do it last Thursday—say that the result is better than some average that someone else got at a different time.

That is not the point. The point is that in March, in the full knowledge of what was happening, with all the necessary information about bricks, plasterboard and the rest, the Secretary of State said, "We will build 40,000 houses." From the point of view of the weather we have since then had probably the best building period in history—wonderful weather. That being so, I very much hope that the right hon. Gentleman is looking very critically at the arrangements that were made by private builders, local authorities, whoever it might be—I do not care—to see why, in these perfect conditions, with everything set, with the knowledge available of the tremendous drive the Government intended to make in house building, with a substantial victory at the election, they failed by such a considerable amount to reach that target.

The right hon. Gentleman must also ask himself something else that is highly relevant. Any Government, if they want to go particularly for one class of product, whether it be houses, roads or schools, can have remarkable achievements. The Secretary of State and his colleagues said that housing was their first priority, and we in Scotland saw that it was because school building was cut back, and so were roads, technical colleges and universities. There is not a big bridge being built in Scotland. That makes a difference, because a lot of steel is used in modern housing, and also in building a big bridge.

This year the Government have had probably the best chance they ever will have—at least I hope so—of achieving, and even beating, their target, because there was very little competition from anything else. They cut down on office building. Everything during this year was concentrated on achieving what was in any case a fairly modest housing target. Yet they failed by so many thousands of houses to achieve it.

It is not sufficient for the people of Scotland to be told by the Secretary of State that the Government did marginally better than someone else in other years in different conditions. He can make it as a political point if he wishes, but I hope that he will look very seriously at the reasons for that failure, with all the underlying advantages he had this year, and make quite certain that the houses are built more quickly and better in future.

8.15 p.m.

The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. William Ross)

I had thought that I might find a certain amount of difficulty in answering some questions related to Third Reading—which is supposed to be related to what is in the Bill—because I have not myself been a member of the Committee. I do not think that I shall have very much difficulty there, having listened to practically the whole of this debate—and I apologise to the hon. Member for Moray and Nairn (Mr. G. Campbell) if I did not hear all his speech.

The right hon. Member for Argyll (Mr. Noble) referred to my undistinguished past when I was on the other side of the House. He said that I was then a prophet of gloom and a prophet of doom. He came to the House in 1958, and I came into it in 1946. In 1953, 39,000 houses were built in Scotland. Year after year under a Tory Government, while hon. Members opposite were singularly silent, that figure went down—from 39,000 to 37,000 to 35,000 to 30,000, until in 1962 it reached 26,000. This is the expanding housing programme of which we hear.

Interest rates were rising, and the subsidies were cut. I can remember the former Minister of State telling us not to worry; because interest rates were high in 1957 it did not mean that they would remain there. They never came down. What were hon. Gentlemen doing then? Where were they?

Mr. Edward M. Taylor

At school.

Mr. Ross

Then the hon. Gentleman did not learn very much. I want to say this about the hon. Gentleman. We hear many speeches from him on every conceivable subject. The figures fall from him like rain from a broken gutter—with just about as much political dirt. It is not the first time that he has had to apologise in this Chamber for quoting figures about which he has already been corrected. I suggest that if the hon. Gentleman wants to quote figures, let him quote them all. There are only two Tory Members left in Glasgow, and the hon. Gentleman is one of them. The other was in charge of housing in the Scottish Office from 1959 to 1962, and it was while he was there that we struck rock bottom. I do not know whether the hon. Member was speaking for his hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Hill-head (Mr. Galbraith), but let him be conscious of what he must live along with when he allies himself politically with his hon. Friend.

Let us all remember that hon. Gentlemen opposite have never shown any great belief at all in local authority housing. On one occasion we heard council house dwellers called second-class citizens. At all stages of this Bill hon. Members opposite have refused to name a sum that they would have in subsidy for local authority houses.

Let us remember what we are replacing by this Bill—a basic subsidy which in relation to local authorities was on a needs formula. If the local authority came down on the wrong side it got f12 a house, and it did not matter whether the house was of two apartments or five.

How many local authority houses have been built in the constituency of the hon. Member for North Angus and Mearns (Mr. Buchanan-Smith)? How many houses are at present under construction in the constituency of the hon. Member for Galloway (Mr. Brewis)? Do not let him come here and lecture us. Let him go to his local authority. The number is known—

Mr. Brewis

A good many are being considered.

Mr. Ross

And I am glad to see that a good many are being considered, but that is because we are now providing the finance. That is the reason.

All this gloom about this Bill—that it will not do this or will not do that—is not borne out by the mood of the local authorities. The local authorities have all welcomed the Bill because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Doig) said, they now have certainty. The one thing that has created a burden for them has been the weight of interest rates. Hon. Members opposite suddenly discovered this.

If hon. Members opposite would like to take advantage of some of my recollections and studies they will find that it was discovered by the hon. Member for Hill-head, this old chestnut which we always drop like a hot potato. The English is not mine, nor the mixed metaphor, but his. He regarded it as having no effect on house building, but suddenly hon. Members opposite are concerned about it and local authorities are concerned about it. We are able to do something for them.

I have always said that our target is 40,000 houses. I said that we hoped we would reach it last year. We did not, but have never given an estimate that we would. The hon. Member asked me in the summer, and I think I annoyed him very much by saying that it would be somewhere between 35,000 and 40,000. He said that we would not even get the 35,000.

Mr. G. Campbell

rose——

Mr. Hector Monro(Dumfries)rose——

Mr. Ross

I do not mind giving way to the hon. Member for Moray and Nairn (Mr. G. Campbell), but we have seen the hon. Member for Dumfries (Mr. Monro) in this debate only in the last few minutes. I shall be glad to give way if he rises, but rudeness is not something which should be granted a dividend.

Mr. G. Campbell

I am interested to hear that, because the right hon. Gentleman has been very rude in the past. That is one of the things he has been very good at. As he did not hear the beginning of my speech and he was good enough to make an apology about that, may I point out that I was referring to Scottish Estimates and he on one side was saying, "We shall beat 40,000 this year."

Mr. Ross

It was our hope to beat 40,000 this year. We built about 1,000 more than in the previous year. Our hopes were pinned on to an increase in private building which did not come off. A few weeks can make all the difference in the world in these things. Multi-storey flats can add to the total very quickly. The right hon. Gentleman should know that more than anyone else.

Hon. Members opposite are always talking about the figures for 1964 as though they were in Government for the whole of that year. They know that the hest building completions figure for 1964 was in the last quarter, when we were the Government. This is true; it is a fact. If we are to be given "credit" for holding back, we should be given credit for speed in getting completions as well. When we took over the number of houses under construction was 47,043. Those that had been approved and were awaiting a start numbered 8,118, a total of just under 55,000. At the end of this year the total under construction was 50,550 approved and waiting to start there were 15,993, making a total of 66,543.

That is the extent to which we have expanded the housing programme and the extent to which we should see in coming years a greater and greater number of houses being completed in Scotland instead of as in the miserable Tory years the numbers going down. Hon. Members opposite keep talking about 1964, but the number of houses completed in any year rightly depends on the number approved and in the programme. How many were approved in the last two quarters before hon. Members opposite left office? In the second and third quarters of 1964 approvals were among the lowest for a very long time. In no way could it be suggested that this was leading to an expansion in completions about 16 to 18 months thereafter. This is one of the things we have had to live with.

When we take the number of tenders approved since we became the Government, we find that there were no two years in the last 10 years to compare with our two years of office. We have expanded the housing programme and, as hon. Members opposite have admitted, local authorities are not only beginning to approve far bigger programmes but are looking ahead for five years instead of living from hand to mouth. We have the advantage of knowing how hon. Members opposite hoped to achieve their delayed programme because we find that in 1963 it was 35,000 and that was on the basis of getting a greater number of private houses. To be honest, they should tell us whether they had any hope of getting money from the Treasury for the year in which we stepped in with an expanded local authority programme.

There is a certain amount of infertility about these arguments. We should never forget what we are faced with in Scotland's need for houses. Some hon. Members have spoken about the Cullingworth Report as if it were something new which discovered that there were slums in Glasgow. If they look at the figures in the White Paper which was the prelude to this Bill they will find there numbers just as high, if not higher, for houses to be dealt with. Because of this we have been pressing local authorities to appreciate what depends on the success of our housing programme.

Some suggestion has been made about the flow of tenders to the Department being held up. The flow of tenders in the last two months has substantially increased. They are rejected only if they are too high. The Opposition cannot have it both ways. They cannot say that the cost of houses is rising and what are we doing about it and at the same time say that we should not hold up tenders. I remember saying in the Second Reading debate that we had paid special attention to the cost of houses. We are meeting the point which has rightly been made by my hon. Friends the Members for Central Ayrshire (Mr. Manuel), Dundee, West and Midlothian (Mr. Eadie) that now the bigger the house, the bigger the cost, and the bigger the subsidy.

We must ensure that the local authority pays true regard to economy in the cost of the house. This we are doing, but we are not doing it in a way which will hold up approvals. For many of the houses where there is either totally or partially industrialised building we have instituted an appraisal certificate so that a local authority which is considering any particular type of industrialised house knows exactly whether the house has already been appraised for cost by the Scottish Office. In that case, it goes through without any hold-up.

I do not think that there is any disproportionate increase in the number of tenders which have been rejected. We may well ask them sometimes to renegotiate on a particular type of house —perhaps multi-storey construction. The price of such a construction may determine later prices, so we must watch carefully to ensure that the negotiations are right.

The right hon. Member for Argyll seemed to think that the only things we had been building in Scotland were houses. I do not know where he gets that idea from.

Mr. Noble

I did not say that.

Mr. Ross

The right hon. Gentleman said that it was possible to concentrate on one thing only and that we have concentrated on houses to the detriment of other spheres, and that we should have done better. I think that I am fairly interpreting his argument. Has he seen how much industrialised building is going on in Scotland and has been going on there in the past two years? The amount under construction last year by the Scottish Industrial Estates Corporation was double what it was in 1964. There is much more industrial and factory building. The right hon. Gentleman was wrong in thinking that office building in Scotland had been stopped. It has not. The only place which is subject to licence is Edinburgh. I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman appreciates the exact extent of the work which is still going on in hospital building and buildings for education as compared with other parts of the country. The Scottish building industry has had a go-ahead.

Mr. W. Baxter

Have not the Opposition Front Bench and my right hon. Friend failed to realise that a considerable amount of the labour force which could be devoted to building houses, schools and hospitals has been used at the Polaris base in the Gareloch to the extent of almost the £45 million that that project has cost.?

Mr. Ross

That is always a possibility, but it only proves my point that we have set the building industry a task to which we expect it to respond. Indeed, in some cases it has responded.

The hon. Member for Ross and Cromarty (Mr. Alasdair Mackenzie) spoke about high flats in the Highlands. I will watch this question, too. Meantime, I thank the hon. Gentleman for expressing his hopes for the Bill.

My hon. Friend the Member for Midlothian spoke of the cost of the house and the subsidy. He also spoke about the S.S.H.A. I do not know whether my hon. Friend appreciates that those who have been in the House as long as I have can remember a time when it looked as though the Tory Government wouid wind up the Association and dispense with it. If my hon. Friend studies the extent to which the number of houses built by the Association declined, he will appreciate exactly how real our fears were at that time.

The hon. Member for Aberdeenshire, East (Mr. Wolrige-Gordon) also welcomed the Association, but talked about Conservative planning. That is one thing the Conservatives did not have. The only plans they had were to cut down on houses for at least ten years. They managed to fill the shop wirdow only in 1964. The clamp-down in cost of which the hon. Gentleman spoke is one of the matters confronting us.

The hon. Member for Edinburgh, North (Earl of Dalkeith) spoke about the lost momentum. After he has listened to me, he will realise that there was no momentum to lose. It was a question of our getting things going and building up momentum. I thank the hon. Gentleman for the cheerful note on which he ended.

The hon. Member for North Angus and Mearns spoke of bureaucratic regulations. He is a new Member. The right hon. Member for Argyll introduced them. The right hon. Gentleman will remember that he introduced them, because he had to take them back again when one of the Committees of the House told us that they were not properly laid.

Mr. Buchanan-Smith

Will the right hon. Gentleman please not misrepresent what I said? I did not say that the regulations were bureaucratic. I asked that they should not be interpreted in a bureaucratic way, which is quite different.

Mr. Ross

It is different, and if the hon. Gentleman had said it the first time I should have written it down, What 1 wrote down was "bureaucratic regulations". The hon. Gentleman may, perhaps, have elided the phrases together. I assure him that the regulations were drawn up by a working party which spent a long time on preparing them. They were introduced by his Government, they were operated by his Government, they have been operated by us. We certainly look to see whether there can be flexibility in their application. Regulations of a similar kind were later introduced by the English Ministries, and at that time we prided ourselves on being before them because our regulations were of advantage to people who were buying houses and to local authorities which were building houses.

I am concerned about the cost of housing, of course. Undoubtedly, this has been a feature of Scotland not just over the past few years but for a long time. I drew attention to it when I was a member of the Opposition. Part of it is due to the fact that we require different standards of housing, and it tends to be much more expensive. The question of scarcity may come into it as well. If we had continued from 1953 to build 39,000 or 49,000 houses a year, had that expanding housing programme continued through the 1950s and the 1960s, there would now be less scarcity, and scarcity itself tends to drive up costs.

The figures which were quoted related mainly to private building. They were building society figures. But what we want to achieve by the Bill is a greatly increased programme of public authority building, by the local authorities and the S.S.H.A., and we hope also to see, as a result of help given not under this Bill but under another Measure, conditions which will ensure that private building too, will meet Scotland's needs.

Only by an all-out effort shall we be able to come near satisfying the people of Scotland that we are beginning to tackle the problem. My regret is that it has been too long since we had a Bill which measured up to the financial needs of those who have to do the building.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.