GLASGOW (REDEVELOPMENT) (Hansard, 14 November 1967)

§ Mr. Richard Buchanan (Glasgow, Springburn)

I am grateful for the opportunity afforded me this evening to speak of my favourite city, and to raise the whole question of its redevelopment—the problems, where they originated, the present situation in which we find ourselves, and the somewhat diffuse future.

Glasgow is a very old city—not at all like Manchester or Birmingham which, by comparison, are only middle-aged. Glasgow is a city with a wonderful history, a city which has seen the arrival and fostered the growth of Christianity and has been the leader in the industrial and commercial growth of the world. In the early days, long before Bristol was thought of, Glasgow was a tobacco town. The American War of Independence killed that trade. Then there was cotton. Glasgow had cotton before Lancashire. They have a similar climate, a climate which might suit cotton but which certainly is very hard for the natives to bear. Again, the supply of the raw 397 material was cut off, by this time by the American Civil War.

Finally, it had engineering and "Clyde built" became the hallmark for quality all over the world. Glasgow's importance in the world of that era was enormous. All over the earth nations were waking up to the fact that machines could do the work faster, and sometimes more efficiently, and they came to the Clyde and Glasgow became one of the world's foremost heavy engineering centres. Engineering goods of all kinds flowed out of Glasgow and people of all kinds flocked into Glasgow, from the Highlands, the Lowlands, the North of England, Ireland and overseas. In fact it is said that there are more Highlanders in Glasgow than there are in the Highlands.

Most of the problems to which I want to draw attention tonight had their origins in the period of which I have spoken when tens of thousands poured into the city to man the factories. No doubt the Industrial Revolution caught us unawares, and the rip-roaring rumbustious unlovely Glasgow of the early 19th century has overshadowed the gentler lovelier Glasgow which existed earlier than that. Slums, cholera, typhus, smallpox, poverty and crime are all part of the tapestry of Glasgow's history, not by any means to be swept under the bed. So too are its ancient cathedral and its ancient university, which existed long before they were overshadowed by the roar and flap of foundry fires Glasgow, my native city, seems to have a masochistic streak in its composition and perversely prefers to present its worst face to the world. It is perhaps true that we have no "dreaming spires" and our history does not spring to the eye with the same immediacy as that of Edinburgh, but we are not as red-nosed comedians, tenth-rate novelists or left-wing ballet companies would have the world believe, citizens of a largely mean city. Today Glasgow is still one of the great cities in the world. It is the cradle of Scotland's industry. It is Scotland's biggest and most important city simply because many Scots choose to live there. One out of every four Scots lives in Glasgow. But, having led Scotland and most of Britain in the Industrial Re- 398 volution, we are left with the legacy of thousands of slum houses, slum factories and slum offices which were rushed up and pushed into every corner of the city. We are determined not to make the same mistake again. That is why Glasgow Town Council has tackled this problem. When the last war ended the amount of rehabilitation to be done would have daunted the most optimistic of men. Nevertheless, the town council tackled this problem in the most resolute way, submitting to the predecessors of my right hon. Friend its programme for comprehensive redevelopment of the city to be reviewed in each quinquennium.

This programme stimulated the Glasgow Herald to comment: Glasgow's programme of redevelopment is probably the most imaginative in Britain. I go further and agree with the London Observer that it was the best in Europe. Other sections of the Press were equally complimentary, but I shall not weary the House with columns of praise which were printed in the professional journals.

What it boils down to is that Glasgow Council has faced its responsibilities, for it realises, even if it has not sunk in elsewhere, that the redevelopment and the prosperity of Glasgow are of critical importance to Scotland. This tremendous programme of redevelopment is an act of faith in the future. The fulfilment of this programme will depend to a great extent on the skill, imagination and vision of the city's planners. It will depend also on the decisions of the men and women in the council chamber who have to make the basic decisions. Many of these decisions have been taken. Twenty-nine areas of the city have been delineated as separate redevelopment areas. I am certain that my colleagues on the Glasgow Corporation, at elected and at official level, have what it takes to see their plans through to fulfilment.

One thing which they have not got is adequate financial assistance. This is what bothers me, and it is the principal reason why I raise this subject tonight. This lack of finance could do irreparable damage to the whole project, slowing it down to a crawl. This should not surprise my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland, because no one knows better than he the extent of the city's commitment. The heart cannot 399 be torn out of a city, as it is being torn out here; 86,000 houses and 250 schools cannot be built, as they have been since the war; a start cannot be made on creating a multi-lane highway and developing cross-river links; provision cannot be made for recreational and cultural activities; provision cannot be made for the protection of the citizens who have to foot the bill—all this cannot be done under the present rating system without great financial injustice.

The price to be paid for waging total war on slums of all kinds in the city is becoming increasingly expensive. If increased aid is not given to the people of Glasgow, all the city's great hopes will be disappointed, all the great possibilities that are in the project will not be realised, the plans will be stunted; and the people will be frustrated by the gross injustice of it all.

At the very beginning of this exercise in massive redevelopment one of the major obstacles to be overcome was to find elbow room in the city to allow us to keep moving. The virgin sites on the perimeter of the city and most of the suitable sites in the city had been built on. There was still desperate overcrowding. Over 20 years we had to replace 100,000 houses, 50,000 of them in the very urgent category. Land was needed for industry and commerce. Education was making more and more demands. The problem was desperate.

Equally desperate was the solution offered. The solution which was thought up was overspill. Overspill means that Glasgow has to export 200,000 of her population and a proportion of her industry, because it became clear that the receiving towns and boroughs which were taking Glasgow's overspill population were more interested in its industry than in its people. This is justifiable. So Glasgow had to export its people and its industry to the towns which were willing to receive them.

Just over 14,000 citizens have moved out of the City under these agreements. Many more have made their own way into the overspill areas and elsewhere. The paradox of this policy is that Glasgow's ratepayers have to pay £14 per annum for ten years for every family nominated under one of these agreements. I have always felt that this was taking 400 a rather mean advantage of Glasgow's plight. My hon. Friends the Members for Glasgow, Maryhill (Mr. Hannan) and Glasgow, Provan (Mr. Hugh D. Brown) have already raised this matter in the House. We have paid out £577,000 in this way and our annual expenditure is running at over £140,000.

Overspill and migration seem to be working, because Glasgow's population has dropped from 1,083,500 in 1957 to 979,798 in 1967, a drop of 103,707 or 9. per cent. Glasgow's population is declining. I mention this deliberately, and I repeat it for the benefit of my hon. Friend—Glasgow's population is declining. I recall leading a delegation from Glasgow Corporation in 1963 to the then Secretary of State for Scotland, the right hon. Member for Argyll (Mr. Noble) to discuss the tremendous burden being laid upon the ratepayers of Glasgow by the redevelopment programme. I submitted a graph to the right hon. Gentleman showing the rating burden at the costs then in being in 1963. The graph shown Glasgow's rising expenditure over 40 years in 10 year phases in respect of housing, education, planning and highways. I think open spaces were included in that graph. It was shown clearly that there was an intolerable burden about to be placed on the citizens of Glasgow. I said that consideration ought to be given to Glasgow on two grounds; first, on her declining population, and secondly, because of the high density in the city. The right hon. Gentleman promised to consider the points, and he made sympathetic noises. But in Glasgow we get so used to people making sympathetic noises when they hear our problems. Nothing was done.

Time passed, and the present Government came into power. They introduced their rate support grant, which was a decided improvement on what had gone before. But it has the same inherent defect of any grant which does not take into consideration the needs of a local authority being required to spend huge sums of money in remedying the social and economic evils present in their areas. Glasgow got a raw deal in this instance because when the working party was considering what help could be given in the review of local government finance, Glasgow did not get the special consideration that she merited. I am sorry 401 about this because I have the greatest possible respect for the integrity of the people who serve so unselfishly on various working parties. But because of the nature of the considerations in this instance it was well nigh impossible for them to be completely objective.

One only has to cast one's mind back to last year when Glasgow did not receive the expected amount under the Exchequer Equalisation Grant. There was jubilation in every other town hall in Scotland because what Glasgow had lost was everyone else's considerable gain. Glasgow presumably lost its share of the grant because of the increases in valuation which took place. In my judgment, there was a justifiable storm of protest from the commercial undertakings in the city whose valuation was increased by 80 per cent. as against 48 per cent. for the rest of Scotland. That storm passed unheeded. It might never have taken place for all the attention that was paid to it. One can remember the English revaluation. It provoked a similar storm. But somebody paid attention to the English protest because England got the Allen Committee which inquired into the whole question.

It is wrong to assume that we can continue taxing these people to this extent. This is surely the way to kill the goose. It is chasing business out of the city and it is a hindrance to us when we are trying to attract business back into the city. The English review of local government finance was much more basic. In that formula there is almost everything that Glasgow requires to keep going with its development. Their formula was weighted for declining population and high density, and for good measure another factor—metropolitan weighting—was added. If that is the position in England and Wales, why not Scotland? Are we not a united Kingdom? It may be that we are not a united Scotland, because I do not think that many of my hon. Friends and hon. Members opposite representing other towns and burghs would agree with me. It may he that we are not united in this respect.

A circus is coming to descend on Westminster on Thursday, the feast of St. Margaret, the patroness of Scotland. Many of us will not welcome it, but we see the reasons for it. One of them is 402 that I do not think we are getting a fair deal in this matter. By deliberate decision in co-operation with—indeed, encouraged by—Her Majesty's Government, Glasgow is steadily reducing her population even faster than was anticipated. It is calculated that the net loss of grant due to the reduction in the city's population between 1963 and 1967 was around £3 million.

On the assumption that the population will continue to drop as it has been dropping, the cumulative net loss over the next five years could be in the region of £12 million. This is because the Scottish grant distribution formula assumes that expenditure on rate-borne services remains broadly in proportion to the weighted population and that a fall in grant will be matched by a similar fall in expenditure. That is just plain bunkum. If my experience is anything to go on, a fall of 20,000 in the population, assuming constant prices and no expansion of services, would face Glasgow with a yearly rise of 1 per cent. in rate-borne expenditure. This would mean an annual increase of 3d. on the rates. Thus we have the situation of the most important city in Scotland doing its utmost to face the future, rebuilding from away behind scratch and doing so in terms of financial injustice which make it well nigh impossible for her to win through.

I therefore repeat to my hon. Friend the Minister of State the plea which I made to his predecessor that he should please consider Glasgow's position with regard to the payment for declining population. By every calculation which one cares to use, Glasgow would qualify for the grant and it would amount to £1,202,000.

Another aspect, which may seem to be something of a paradox, is that we ought by right to qualify for a high-density payment. Glasgow has twice the population of Edinburgh and of Sheffield yet it is no larger than either of those cities. If we were a city in England in similar circumstances, there would be no doubt about our getting this payment. The formula specifies that grant will be payable for one-half of the amount by which the number of persons per acre exceeds 18. Glasgow, with 24.6 per acre, would be entitled to £441,000.

403 It may be argued that to make that payment would encourage Glasgow to retain its population—in all probability at the expense of new towns, because there is a powerful new town lobby at work. It is argued that if Glasgow got such a payment, it would hold on to its population. What a silly, selfish notion that is, as if such a grant would in any way stop the outflow of people. It simply cannot be avoided in such a programme of redevelopment.

Knowing that the situation has assumed such urgency, Glasgow is even considering what are called out-county estates and is contemplating building houses at Erskine, Kirkintilloch and Larkhall and charging the rent for them. It is building 100,000 houses, 50,000 high rise and 50,000 low rise. There would be an annual deficit of £3 million to be met by the ratepayers of the City of Glasgow—a further nail in her coffin.

The way to deal with this problem is that if the rates are to be paid to Renfrew or Lanarkshire, they should be under the auspices of the Scottish Special Housing Association or the Government should deal with them as they deal with new towns. It may be that my hon. Friend is projecting his views to overtake the views of the Royal Commission on Local Government in projecting towards a greater Glasgow and the problem might be solved in that way, but there is a problem to be solved in the interim and I should be grateful if he would look at it.

Since I endeavoured to make the case in 1963, a new element of possible assistance has appeared. Glasgow is a metropolitan city. If proof of that is needed, one has only to look at the cities chosen to take part in the "Centennial Study of Metropolitan Problems" undertaken by the Bureau of Municipal Research of Toronto. Of the 41 cities chosen the only two British cities chosen were London and Glasgow.

This metropolitan weighting arises because it is generally accepted that a metropolitan city has to spend more than a non-metropolitan city to achieve the same level of services. The payment is simply 5 per cent. of the basic grant, which would bring into Glasgow a further £662,000.

404 I have given my hon. Friend three doors he can open if he has a mind to. Here is a city with a vast programme of reconstruction, rehabilitation and redevelopment without equal in the whole length and breadth of Britain. The Highways Plan envisages an expenditure of £54.3 million up to 1975. In education 50 projects are under construction and a further 60 are at various stages of planning at a cost of £37 million. Despite this, let me mention in passing, Glasgow gets less than the proportion of the one-fifth of the school investment programme she appears to be entitled to.

In the 30 areas, including my own area of Springburn, now delineated in the comprehensive development plan so much is going on that many of the rotting tenements, factories, schools and offices are but fading memories. Tremendous efforts are being made to give the city a better and more secure industrial base. We are making progress, but it is not easy. I have always held the view that some well-intentioned Government policies have gone agely inasmuch as they have tried to achieve growth in the Scottish economy at the expense of its industrial heart. Just as it is quite inconceivable that any general growth is likely to take place unless Glasgow's economy is put firmly on its feet, so it is equally inconceivable that this magnificent plan for redevelopment should be placed in jeopardy because we fail to give Glasgow the financial help which she so much merits and by every measure is surely entitled to.