NEW TOWNS BILL

HC Deb 12 November 1971 vol 825 cc1396-452

Order for Second Reading read.

11.5 a.m.

The Minister for Housing and Construction (Mr. Julian Amery)

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

The purpose of the Bill is to increase the amount of Exchequer money available for new town development.

Yesterday was an important anniversary. A quarter of a century ago the first designation of the first new town, Stevenage, was made under the first New Towns Act, in 1946. It was made by Lord Silkin, and it is pleasant to think, Mr. Speaker, that if he is lucky enough to catch your eye, his son will be following me in this debate. I hope that he will convey the best wishes of the House to his father on a Measure which has led to such satisfactory and constructive results and which over the years has commanded the support of both sides of the House.

There are now 28 new towns in Great Britain. About 200,000 houses have been built to rent or for sale on land released by development corporations; and the increase in the population in the new towns since designation is about 700,000. The towns provide 150,000 industrial jobs and a large number of other jobs in shops, offices and other service employment. Rather over half the factories in the New Towns, rather under half the shops, and a small proportion of the houses have been financed by private enterprise.

The Exchequer has financed the rest. This finance, as the House knows, is provided in the form of loans made to development corporations and to the New Towns Commission. These loans are repayable over a period of 60 years, and their rate of interest is fixed at the time the loan is made.

The four Commission towns, have for some years been generating a revenue surplus after servicing their debt. In 1970–71, revenue surpluses and the proceeds of sales were such that the Commission was able to finance such development as it undertook, without further advances from the Exchequer. This may not always remain so when further towns are transferred to the Commission; but it is a healthy state of affairs.

One or two of the older towns still in the process of development meet part of their capital expenditure from revenue, but this is still a very small part of the total requirement.

Exchequer finance for new town development has been provided under a series of New Towns Acts; and it has become established practice for Parliament to authorise enough money to cover new town development at intervals of two or three years.

The first New Towns Act, 1946, set a limit of £50 million on advances. Since then the limit has been raised, by successive Acts, to the present figure of £1,100 million provided under the 1969 Act. It was then reckoned, and, as it proves, correctly, that this would be enough to cover new town development for about three years.

By March of this year, advances and commitments had reached £990 million. There is therefore just over £100 million left of the ceiling figure. This means that if advances and commitments are continued at the present rate, the money ceiling will be reached at the beginning of the next financial year, 1972–73. If the new town programmes, therefore are to continue, the present money ceiling must be raised.

The Bill provides for an increase of £400 million. This would raise the ceiling to £1,500 million, and should provide enough money for a further three years of development, that is until about the end of 1974–75. In some ways it might seem more logical to raise the ceiling still further, particularly as there is broad agreement between both sides of the House about the new town programmes. But we have felt that the House would wish to keep control of the way these programmes develop.

Moreover, despite the pressures on the Parliamentary timetable, these three yearly debates provide a useful opportunity for reviewing the progress of the new towns. I propose, therefore, to follow the example of my predecessors and to report briefly upon it.

As I said just now, 28 new towns have been designated since the New Towns

Acts were first placed on the Statute Book. Of these, 14 were designated in the period up to 1950. Four development corporations have completed their tasks and been wound up—at Crawley, Hemel Hempstead, Hatfield and Welwyn Garden City. In these four very flourishing towns the New Towns Commission now manages assets financed by the Exchequer and currently worth about £200 million.

Of the rest of the first generation new towns, some are approaching their full maturity. Some are still building strongly. The second generation of new towns, those started under the last Conservative Administration, are now in their major development phase. For example, the five English second generation towns, Red ditch, Skelmersdale, Runcorn, Telford, and Washington have 7,000 houses under construction.

Then there is the latest generation of new towns, including such major projects as Milton Keynes, Northampton and Irvine. These are just getting into their stride.

The latest designation is that of Central Lancashire New Town. In view of my connection with Preston over many years, I am glad to have played a part in bringing the development corporation into being. The designation was originally made by Lord Greenwood, of course, and I am glad that he has agreed to become a member of the corporation. Beyond Central Lancashire New Town, we have also announced proposals to go ahead with further designations at Stonehouse in Scotland, and Llantrisant in Wales.

A primary purpose of the new towns is to relieve congestion in our great cities. New towns offer a new and often a healthier built environment to those who move from the large conurbations. Their exodus, moreover, leaves more room for those who stay and gives greater freedom of manoeuvre for urban renewal.

It is true that the population of our great cities has been dropping in recent years. Nevertheless, they still face serious problems of housing stress, no where more than in London. An inquiry covering last year shows that of the 2,300 families which moved from London to the four towns of Basildon, Bracknell, Stevenage and Harlow, 1,850 or so were either in housing need themselves, by G.L.C. standards, or had moved out of council houses which then became available for others in housing need. Here is solid evidence of the help which the new towns already give to the solution of London's housing problems.

As Milton Keynes, Peterborough and Northampton get under way, we expect the housing programme in the new towns serving London, to rise from the recent level of some 2,500 rented houses a year to more than 5,000 houses a year. The G.L.C., as the House knows, reckons to be 100,000 houses short in Greater London by 1981. If the new town programme can be maintained at the level I have just suggested, or even increased, it could make a major contribution to the relief of congestion and homelessness in the capital.

The opportunities offered by the new towns are still all too little known to the general public. Here I should like to pay particular tribute to the Peterborough Week, organised in March at the Lambeth Housing Centre. This was the result of close co-operation between the Peterborough Development Corporation, the London Borough of Lambeth, the G.L.C. and the Department of Employment. The inquiries which followed it and the applications suggest that there are many people who would like to move to Peterborough and other new or expanding towns and who did not think of it before.

A number of retired people have been moving into the new towns. I welcome this movement. They need a home, but they do not necessarily need a job, and their arrival makes a valuable social contribution to communities which, by their nature, tend in their early stages to be single-generation. There is also an increasing opportunity for people to move out of the cities to live in the new towns, while continuing to work in their previous jobs in the cities. I hope that more people will take advantage of this.

It is important in the early stages of their development that new town communities should develop a strong corporate spirit. At the same time, it would be a pity if they became too ingrowing or inward looking. But the crux of the new town development programmes is to match houses with jobs. Here we have to distinguish between two categories of new towns: those in the assisted areas and those outside.

New towns in the assisted areas are in an exceptionally strong position to take advantage of the special measures that have been taken to encourage investment there. They can and do serve as growth points. Those outside the assisted areas may not get quite such positive encouragement, but it has been the policy of successive Governments to encourage firms, particularly manufacturing industry, to move out of the cities and into new towns intended to serve those cities.

The second category of new towns enjoy what might be called a second preference, after the assisted areas, but with advantages over the rest of the country. As the reflationary measures taken by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer begin to take effect, all the new towns should see some, and it may be a substantial, growth of both manufacturing investment and service employment. In the process they may help not only to relieve housing congestion in the great cities but also to provide their share of relief to areas of unemployment.

Economic recovery is partly a process of taking work to the workers, but it is also a process of taking workers to the work. The new town machinery is particularly well suited to provide good housing to match new job opportunities. It can contribute to making our population more mobile.

The new towns have got into their stride, and as their prosperity has grown, so they are faced with new and more ambitious social requirements. There are demands for amenities such as theatres and swimming pools. There is also a growing and hitherto unsatisfied demand for owner-occupation. This is something which we shall actively encourage.

In October, 1970, we authorised the New Town Corporations and the New Towns Commission to offer their houses for sale to sitting tenants at a discount value well below vacant possession price, though not below cost. The maximum discount at the present time is 20 per cent. This is a very attractive offer, and already more than 14,000 inquiries have been received.

The volume of applications, indeed, has outrun expectation and some corporations have had considerable administrative problems in coping with the demand. Basildon, for example, met great complexities in proof of title to purchasers because their land was assembled from many fragmentary plots, some of unknown ownership. So they have had to work out with the Law Society and the building societies a special title indemnity clause for purchasers. Now sales are being completed at the rate of 10 houses a day.

In all this I should like to pay tribute to the building societies. They have recognised the demand for house purchase finance in the new towns and have taken active steps to meet it. Many of them have opened branches in the new towns. We, too, have helped.

Mr. Michael McGuire (Ince)

I endorse the policy of encouraging owner occupation in the new towns, but is the right hon. Gentleman aware that in Skelmersdale new town, which is in my constituency, many people have been encouraged to buy their houses, which were sold at less than the market rate because not enough people were taking up owner occupation. They chose a part of the town which looks towards the Beacons— I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman is familiar with the area.

They did so on the clear understanding that there would be no future development around this beauty spot. However, there has been some sharp practice. An old farmhouse which was supposed to be preserved was allowed to be demolished by vandals and the corporation has said that it would be too expensive to renovate it back to its former standard. Houses are now to be built there in clear contravention of the earlier promise. If that kind of practice is contemplated, people will not be encouraged to buy their own homes. The development has not yet taken place and I hope that the Minister will take steps to see that it does not, because it would contravene the earlier promise.

Mr. Amery

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that topic. I was not familiar with it. If my hon. Friend is unable to comment on it when he winds up the debate, we shall look into the matter and write to the hon. Gentleman as soon as possible.

As I was saying, we, too, have helped by authorising corporations to provide second mortgages in appropriate cases to bring the total advance up to the purchase price.

But the sale of public sector houses to existing tenants is only one side of the coin. We need also to ensure that houses are there to be bought by those who want them when they first move into a new town. This means that we must bring private developers to recognise the opportunities offered by the new towns, and to build houses there for sale to those who want to buy.

In all this the corporations can help significantly, both in practical ways by giving second mortgages for houses built on land supplied by them and psychologically by taking steps to attract developers in the same way as that in which they have often successfully attracted industry. In negotiating with developers they will be concerned to maintain high standards and good planning. But they will also need to ensure a very wide range of choice.

I would at this point like to salute the work of the corporations and of those who serve on them, both members and officers. I have been deeply impressed by their quality and enthusiasm. The mix of businessmen, social workers, and local authority leaders which they represent has undoubtedly helped to give all concerned a deeper understanding of each other's problems and interests, to the great advantage of the country as a whole.

Britain's new towns were a great conception, and, for the most part, the enthusiasm of their founders has been more than justified by the results. There may well be spheres of social and environmental policy where other countries are achieving or have achieved more than we. But in the development of new towns we are the acknowledged world leaders. It is significant that in 1973 the United Nations proposes holding a seminar on new towns in this country. One of its purposes, perhaps its main purpose, is to give other countries an opportunity of studying and visiting our new town development. There is on the Continent a lively and growing interest in Britain's new towns.

My Department has in recent months arranged an extended study tour of our new towns for a senior official of the Commission of the European Communities and has received numerous delegations and visitors from many European countries including Sweden, Finland, Germany and Italy. Our French friends have taken a particular interest in the new towns and I recently had the pleasure of welcoming a distinguished French delegation led by the Vice-President of the Senate, M. Etienne Dailly, who spent 10 days here studying our new towns.

The new towns have already helped our people by their exertions. They may well make an important contribution to others by their example. It is in this spirit that I commend the Bill to the House.

11.22 a.m.

Mr. John Silkin (Deptford)

In welcoming the Bill on behalf of the Opposition, I should like to express my personal appreciation to the Minister for his very kind remarks about my noble Friend and father, Lord Silkin, who as well as being my father is, I think, acknowledged to be the father of the new towns.

If one goes back to the origins of the new towns programme 25 years ago, one comes, as the Minister said, to the figure of £50 million. That figure, which has been multiplied 30 times, was intended to apply to the first six new towns. At the time the Treasury—and I am glad that it is smiling on the Minister at the moment; it does not always smile— regarded it as a tremendous overestimate and thought that the Minister was being far too cautious in asking for so large a sum. It is pleasant to see how the basis has changed over the years. The Minister was right to have dealt with the matter in the way that he has, namely, by the three-year review. The House likes to keep in touch with the development of the new towns, and this is as good a way of doing it as any. I pay tribute to the Minister's generous and far-seeing basis of appointments to the development corporations. This is much appreciated.

The revenue figures which the Minister has mentioned are of considerable interest. They show that what was started as an experiment so many years ago has proved to be a financial success. But it has been a great deal more. It has been a revenue, as it were, in human terms on a large scale, and that is its justification. It is, however, good that the financial basis is sound.

As the Minister pointed out, it is a generation since the first new town was designated—Stevenage, which happily celebrates its 25th anniversary this week end. If I may add another personal note, it happens to coincide with the 82nd birthday of the founder of the new town of Stevenage, so that will be a happy anniversary, too. If we look back on that generation, I wonder how many of the ideas that we now believe should have been applied to the new towns were in contemplation then. Certainly this was the first major attempt in modern times to deal with the problem which Sir Thomas More had talked about in his Utopia—the suburban sprawl. His solution to the problem was the creation of 54 new towns. We are more than halfway towards it, though it has taken 450 years to do it.

At that time people were dealing with the problem of a growing London and growing conurbations everywhere. The Minister rightly pointed out that the population is declining in London, but the suburban sprawl tends to go on. Just as one might have said that in 1946 the best thing would have been to look a generation ahead, it might be best to look a generation ahead now. Let me deal with London with which I am very familiar since my constituency is situated in it.

All over Kent, Surrey and the Home Counties in general the growth of sub- urban housing is continuing at a fast and unco-ordinated pace. The new towns could play a part in dealing with that problem, even though the problem of the depopulation of London, which was the main point 25 years ago, is no longer such a pressing need. They could play a part if we realised that, despite their links with the rest of the country, they should be self-contained. They should provide all the amenities of a civilised life within their own areas

I am glad that the Minister welcomes and encourages the idea of retired people going to the new towns to live. This creates a balanced community. One of the most depressing things one can see in modern housing estates is a generation of young husbands and young wives with small children and no old people about. A dimension is lost which is necessary in wisdom and for the richness of life. I wonder whether we are being driven into creating dormitories in some of the new towns—places where people live, sleep and eat but do not work. This is contrary to the original idea of the new towns. There must be a basis of a self-contained town with self contained industry.

This is a purely personal reaction, but I have often wondered why it is received wisdom that an industrial area in a new town or anywhere else, particularly in areas where there is light industry in the main, should always be in a particular part of a new town. Why cannot the industrial areas be split and situated all over the new towns? That would mean that those who worked in industry, particularly the part-time workers, such as the women who work in considerable numbers in industry in the new towns, would have to travel much shorter distances. I do not think that we have examined this problem as closely as we should. We tend to regard industry as being necessary but nasty and therefore it should be placed away from the living areas. This is not necessarily true, especially as these days most factories, and particularly new town factories, are not only pleasant to look at but light and airy and good to work in. We should consider that.

I do not know—and perhaps the Under-Secretary of State when he winds up may give me some encouraging noises about this—whether the problem of transport inside new towns is being fully considered. One always hears of the question of transport to and from a new town, but transport inside it seems to me a major consideration, particularly when one realises that the original basis of a new town was a population of 60,000. We are well beyond that now and are talking about populations of 250,000, and the Minister or his successor may one day be talking even in larger numbers than that. I would like some reassurance on that point.

I am considering the matter on the basis of trying to see a generation ahead and what is likely to happen in that time. It is a difficult point of view, but, after all, we are planning not just for ourselves but for future generations. This leads me inevitably to the question of shopping.

I think it is right that people want to have a central shopping area, and it is perfectly understandable and to the point and, I think, right, that they should have the car parking which is necessary. In Crawley, for example, the original basis of car parking for the shopping centre was considered to be highly exaggerated; it was held that they would never be able to fill that amount of car parking space; but places like Crawley new town shopping centre—and there are many such— act as magnets to the people living around the towns, and even if they do not live in the new towns they go in from, in some cases, quite long distances to do their shopping. We must have provision for that.

However, I should be sorry to see the neighbourhood shop disappear altogether. May I put it to the Minister in this way? We have, for example, a very depressing, long street of residential houses—a pattern not broken up at all; and there is something in having a small shop at the corner, to break up the long look of the residential street. At the same time it acts as a kind of social centre where on a Sunday morning, people collect their newspapers while, perhaps, provided it is warm enough, wearing only their dressing gowns and pyjamas, and have a chat. That corner shop can not only make a visual attraction but also provide a social attraction.

I turn to housing standards. The Minister has referred to this. A large number of housing units have been created by the new towns. In 1946 the Parker Morris standard—I do not know whether it was actually promulgated at that time, probably not—provided the sort of basis which was in contemplation as the standard which housing was to have. In the next 25 or 30 years housing standards must be raised. They have to be raised to take into account living conditions and the right demands of people for what is necessary. Certainly 25 years ago the idea of providing a garage at every house would have been inconceivable, and 25 years before then, I think, the idea of providing a bathroom in every house would have been inconceivable. One has to think of the kinds of standard which will be required and the sooner we start planning ahead with those in view the better. In the Buchanan Report in 1963 Professor Buchanan said that if we had only envisaged 30 years before what was going to happen in this country we should have saved ourselves much trouble and much anguish—and much of what had been happening had already happened in the United States. I think he was right. There is a case for considering the matter now and looking ahead so that we can be as proud of the new towns of 25 to 30 years hence as we are of those we have today.

Finally, the Minister mentioned recreation. Of course he was right. Bricks and mortar, plus green fields, plus light and airy factories, do not necessarily by themselves make for happiness. There are many more things which are required, and the recreational side of a community's life needs to be encouraged. This applies very much to the arts, sporting facilities, and so on. I believe that there are programmes in the new towns, Stevenage is going ahead to try to provide an arts and sports area. It is to obtain new cinemas, and it may be able to provide theatres, and it is even to have two golf courses—25 years after its designation. It is not necessarily typical of every new town, but it seems to me that there should he far greater thought, right from the beginning in planning ahead of these recreational facilities. That was intended right from the start.

If I may—and I shall have to ask the I louse to be indulgent to me, since I have already mentioned my noble Friend twice—I will finish with a quotation from the opening speech at the Second Reading of the New Towns Bill on 8th May, 1946. I think that this is as true today as it was then. The words are these: I want to see the new towns gay and bright, with plenty of theatres, concert halls, and meeting places. I should like to see cricket and football played by the youth of the town instead of being watched by them. I want to see them producing first-class amateur teams and I should like to see golf courses made available for all…. The new town should provide valuable experience in the best use of leisure, a commodity which is, and should become, more and more plentiful."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 8th May, 1946: Vol. 422, c. 1090.]

11.37 a.m.

Mr. James Allason (Hemel Hempstead)

I am an enthusiastic believer in the whole theory and practice of new towns. I have been a member of the executive of the Town and Country Planning Association for a number of years and equally with the noble Lord the father of the right hon. Member for Deptford (Mr. John Silkin) have taken part in pressing the theory, and over even a greater number of years—in fact, for most of this century, because I think that the new town is the proper solution to the problem of the overcrowded conurbations.

For example, the G.L.C.'s programme for the relief of overcrowding in London takes very little account of new towns, and the G.L.C.'s idea, and the idea of the boroughs, seems to me to be to try to cure their problems, each within its own area. Very little of the future proposals of the G.L.C. relates to new towns. Instead of that, some boroughs in London spend anything from £150,000 to £250,000 per acre for land for council houses. This seems to me ridiculous. This is due to the distortion of housing subsidies. I do not know whether the new system of housing subsidies will have an effect on this. At least they are getting away from the idea of building tall blocks of flats as the solution to London's housing problems. Instead we are having low-rise houses. But we have the alternative of the new towns.

There is this difficulty about the new towns—that people who are wanted there to work in the factories are the skilled and semi-skilled, whereas many of those living in the worst conditions in London. and who require to be rehoused, are unskilled. I should he grateful if my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State would make some reference to this, and as to what is being done for the unskilled by way of giving them training so that they may become semi-skilled and capable of meeting the work requirements in the new towns.

The Housing Finance Bill will produce an enormous impetus towards home ownership. People who are living in new towns or going to them will see that the value of houses is rising about 10 per cent. per year. Anyone who can conceivably afford to buy a house would be well advised to buy now, rather than to wait until next year or the year after when it may cost a great deal more.

The demand for housing brings about a demand for land. I am worried whether the infrastructure is there to meet the plans, such as the South-East Regional Plan, which are coming forward. It is not much good for land to be designated for housing if within the next five years it cannot be used because drainage, water supply and roads are not available and not planned. One of the quickest ways of providing this infrastructure is by the new towns system, and this is an additional reason why the provision of new towns should move ahead as fast as possible.

I should like to hear about the progress towards the 50 percent. home ownership in new towns which was announced as a policy some years ago by the previous Government, and which I am sure has not been abandoned by this Government. There are difficulties, but a tremendous step forward was taken a year ago when the Government announced that the 20 percent. discount on the market value to sitting tenants who purchased council houses should also be available to new town tenants who purchased their homes. This has given a tremendous impetus to home ownership in new towns.

Is the 30 percent. figure to apply immediately to new towns? If it is, will it apply to houses on which there is already a 20 percent. discount offer, or will it apply only to later sales? With the delays in valuation, it may be three months after a tenant has applied to buy his home before a value is put on it. There are then delays in conveyancing. The Minister is well aware of these problems, and I should like to hear that these difficulties are being conquered.

It is essential to the whole theory of new towns that housing and work opportunity should go together, that factories should develop at the same time as houses are provided so that there is a parallel between work opportunity and houses available. This may produce a conflict with industrial development certificates, because priority naturally goes to development areas. It is ridiculous that there should be houses available in new towns and no work. Some people living in the Birmingham new towns have to travel all the way to Birmingham for their work. I am glad to see that the right hon. Member for Kettering (Sir G. de Freitas) is here. I have no doubt that he will be telling us about the grave situation in Corby, which has only one major industry. The great value of new towns is that they should have many different industries so that the collapse of one big firm does not have a disastrous effect, as has happened in Corby.

Will my hon. Friend tell us something about the future of the New Towns Commission, about which there has been uncertainty. The last Government announced that they would abolish it, but did nothing more about it. I think they recognised that, apart from housing functions, there was a need for the New Towns Commission or for an exactly similar body under a different name.

Housing management is a problem. Council housing and housing managed by the Commission should be run on similar lines. Young people of the second generation when they marry and have a new house should have the same treatment whether they live in a council house or in a new town house. In many new towns there is a joint list, so that housing management is integrated

What is to happen about the ownership of houses which are still owned by the public? The tidiest solution would be for the council to control all housing, particularly when, under the reorganisation of housing finance, the rent will be fixed in advance and the housing rebate scheme is already laid down. It is ridiculous to have two bodies managing houses on parallel lines. Against that, it councils take control of houses, they will presumably have financial responsibilities under the Housing Finance Bill. Here it all depends on the return from those houses demanded by the Treasury. If the Treasury asked for historic costs it would lose out severely on new towns, such as Hemel Hempstead, which were built many years ago at reasonably low cost. On the other hand. if the Treasury demanded current market costs, as it does for the sale of council houses, the interest rates would probably be too high for the council to afford. It would he interesting to know how the Government see this developing.

The right hon. Member for Deptford mentioned amenities. I commend to him —he may well have read it—the pamphlet "New Towns come of Age" prepared by Hemel Hempstead after 21 years in existence. It gives a complete review of the amenities and sports facilities in the town and mentions all the improvements which were necessary. Those improvements were outstanding and cost a considerable amount.

There is a grant of only £4 per head to local authorities for the provision of amenities in new towns. It is commonly agreed that some years ago this grant should have risen to at least £10 per head. I hope that soon the Government will feel that they can start to meet this additional cost and, if so, I hope that it will be back-dated. In Hemel Hempstead we have already overspent the £4 multiplied by the number of new places in the town, and if we could have £10 a head back-dated we might be able to provide further amenities.

I have no doubts about the en thusiasm of the Tory Government for new towns because they make sense. They combine good living conditions, which is what we want to see for everyone, with the provision of housing at a reasonable cost as compared with the very high costs in the city. Therefore, I am glad to support the Bill.

11.50 a.m.

Sir Geoffrey de Freitas (Kettering)

I join with other hon. Members in honouring the noble Lord, Lord Silkin. I remember how very interesting were his speeches in 1946 when we were considering the setting up of the new towns. I emphasise that they were far more interesting than Ministers often are when dealing with complicated matters.

The Minister in opening the debate referred to the example new towns give to the world, and particularly to Europe. I know there are many Members of Parliament in Europe who appreciate what we have done in this field. Some four or five years ago I helped to organise a delegation from the Assembly of the Council of Europe which came to see two new towns, one in Scotland and the other in Corby in my constituency. Frequently since then I have heard them give high praise to the establishment of new towns and to the work which has been accomplished. I should like the Minister to consider inviting some Members of the European Parliament to come to see what we have done in the new towns.

The hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mr. Allason), in referring to my constituency, said that Corby was rather different from other new towns in the way in which historically it was set up. He said that the situation was disastrous, and, though I would not put the case as high as that, I would agree that the problems are serious. The hon. Gentleman is chairman of the all-party group on new towns and he knows that I have emphasised the particular problems of Corby. I regard the Government's treatment of Corby as scandalous and feel that the Government have squandered public money by not making use of capital amounting to £50 million which has been invested in Corby.

I shall refer to the facts. The urban district council and the development corporation believe the Government do not understand the particular nature of the problem in Corby. In 1950 Corby was designated a new town. Until 1967 the task of the development corporation and the U.D.C. was to provide housing and amenities for steel workers. In 1967 the British Steel Corporation notified the development corporation and the U.D.C. that it was not going to expand any more and that its labour force would level out at about 13,000.

The present population of Corby is only 47,000. It was meant to be very much more than that and there is room to support the development of a town of 100,000 The land round Corby is not particularly good agricultural land. Some £50 million has been invested in the town, but in July this year the Minister wrote to the U.D.C. and the development corporation holding out no hope of any special consideration on industrial development certificates. Again, the phrase cropped up, as it did in answer to questions, that Corby should concentrate on the expansion of firms already in the area, but 90 per cent. of the adult male workers are employed in the steel works. There are no other firms in the area of any size or significance.

To make matters worse in recent years three additional new towns and two expanded towns have been set up within 30 miles of Corby, that is before Corby's expansion has become viable. Therefore the competition for resources is very strong. We have provided houses and services, a civic centre, playing fields, a theatre, swimming pools, roads, sewer- age facilities, water, and so on, far beyond those required for the little town of Corby of 47,000 people. Now we are told we have no hope of industrial development certificates. Over the last three years successive Governments have encouraged the development Corporation and the U.D.C. to advertise for firms to come to Corby and we spent some £50,000 on the campaign. Now inquiries are coming in and yet I.D.C.'s are being turned down.

It is natural that a Member of Parliament feels worked up about an important town in his constituency and it is equally natural that the U.D.C. and the Development Corporation feel indignant with the Government. But we are all somewhat prejudiced in favour of the town. However, the East Midlands Economic Planning Council has many other matters to bother about besides Corby. Yet, following a visit by its Chairman the Duke of Rutland a month or so ago, this is what the Council said: The East Midlands Economic Planning Council is to ask the Government to re-examine the development of nearby new and expanding towns, making sure that Corby has a chance to reach its population targets and to become a properly balanced community. The Council feels that the expansion of Northampton, Wellingborough, Peterborough and Milton Keynes should be restrained a little until Corby's problems have eased. The Council went on to say that it had made this decision "because it felt the best use should be made of the millions of pounds that had been invested in Corby."

The Duke of Rutland, the Chairman, said that

… it was wrong from an economic and a national point of view. … I think it is not common sense to buy acres of good agricultural land for other towns and deny Corby the right to expand to give it a diversification which it so badly needs and which it can do comparatively cheaply … Corby has already invested millions of pounds of public money and this should not be frittered away. What is the Government's answer to the arguments of the economic council? To end on a personal note, we very much appreciated earlier this year a visit to Corby made by the Under-Secretary. Apart from the pleasure of his visit, we realise that he saw something of our problems. I hope the Minister will also visit Corby, because he will find there a vigorous, enterprising young community and will see that, because of its curious history on the investment of public money, the town deserves special consideration.

11.59 a.m.

Mr. W. Benyon (Buckingham)

My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State will be aware that the entire designated area of the new city of Milton Keynes lies in my constituency. This is an entirely new concept, the establishment of a city of 250,000 people, and, although there are undoubted difficulties ahead of us, I am certain that it can be brought to an exciting and successful fruition.

I was glad to hear the encouraging statement by my right hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Construction about the success of the new towns as a whole. Yesterday, in the Press, we saw publication of the population forecasts for the next 30 years up to the year 2001. Taking these into account and, at the same time, what we hope will be the continuing trend of new household formation as a result of growing affluence, the results of slum clearance, the destruction of various dwellings to make way for road developments and so on and the need to have lower densities, together with various other factors at work in our existing cities, we have to recognise that the success of our new towns is vital if we are to provide a reasonable environment for the future urban population.

There are, however, two problems which threaten the future of Milton Keynes. First, there is the question of cost yardsticks. Recently, my right hon. Friend raised the tolerance by 7¼ percent. But our estimates tell us that, since the date of the previous fixing of the yardstick, direct building costs have risen by about 12 percent.; so we are still 4¾ percent. down. This is a continuing problem. By increased efficiency and cutting corners where possible, authorities are managing, but if this problem continues, the standard of buildings being put up in the new towns, and especially in the high-cost areas of South-East England, will suffer; and we in Milton Keynes will suffer more than others because we are just starting.

I must say in passing that the right hon. Member for Kettering (Sir G. de Freitas) struck some terror in my heart when he suggested that progress at Milton Keynes should be held back. I know the document he was quoting from —I have seen it myself—but I must say that it would be a tragedy if this were done to Milton Keynes at this juncture, because all the initial planning work has gone ahead and at last the bulldozers are rolling and the houses are going up. If we have to hold back now, the whole project will get out of phase and the environment we want established there will be much delayed. I cannot emphasise this too strongly.

I come now to the question of the amenity allowance. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mr. Allason) said, this allowance was fixed at £4 a head a long time ago, and it should, without question, be more today to take account of increased costs. In our case at Milton Keynes however, where we are starting a city project for 250,000 people, a project far greater than anything ever attempted before, the need for pump priming in regard to amenities is all the greater. We are confident of achieving a good balance between housing and employment, but we are by no means confident of getting the corresponding amenities which we need if the future environment is to be assured.

I warmly endorse what other hon. Members have said about the need to create a better balanced population, including the elderly, in the new towns. This is very much in the mind of the Milton Keynes Development Corporation, but it may be held back in certain ways, particularly by the cost yardstick problem to which I referred, because this operates strongly when one is building houses for old people. I hope that my right hon. and hon. Friends at the Department will do everything possible to assist in the development of a balanced population in the future.

With these few observations, I warmly welcome the Bill.

12.4 p.m

Mr. William Hamilton (Fife, West)

In debates of this kind one is inclined, I suppose, to make constituency points about the new town or new towns which one happens to have in one's area, and I shall do the same. But before coming on to those points, I wish to make one or two broad generalisations about our new towns generally.

I refreshed my memory on this matter by reading again the Second Reading debate on 8th May, 1946, when the New Towns Bill first came before the House. Reading that debate, one sees how exaggerated were some of the fears, particularly of Conservative Members at that time, about this new social experiment, initiated by the father of my right hon. Friend the Member for Deptford (Mr. John Silkin). Viscount Hinchingbrooke, not, of course, the most moderate of Conservative Members at that time, said: The Bill … is frankly totalitarian in form ".—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 8th May, 1946; Vol. 422, c. 1154.] Yet today, the Minister for Housing and Construction, who is one of the most Right-wing reactionaries in the present Government, tells us that that "frankly totalitarian" Measure is so totalitarian that he and his Government propose to authorise an additional provision of £400 million of public expenditure to help these totalitarian organisations to develop further.

We all know what nonsense those fears turned out to be. The new towns are, if not the most important, one of the most important social experiments in the post-war history of the world, not only of this country. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Sir G. de Freitas) said, they have been a subject of interest to visitors from all over the world. I think that all our new towns have at one time or another been visited in that way. I remember taking some Israelis down to Crawley some years ago to let them see how a new town was planned and how it grew.

As for the new town in my own constituency, Glenrothes, I was there when it was green fields, and I was there when the first sod was cut. I have watched it grow to a population now of 30,000 or thereabouts. Glenrothes, as the Under-Secretary of State for Development at the Scottish Office knows—he visited it only a week or two ago—is in quite delightful surroundings. But I remember the time when, I think I am right in saying, all the local farming community fought violently against the principle of a new town, mainly on the ground that it would destroy goods agricultural land. I put my argument in this way. I agreed wholeheartedly that one could get magnificent crops of all kinds from that good land, but, I said, we shall get the most important good crop of all from a new town, a good crop of new children in good modern houses, educated in modern schools, going to modern technical colleges, and within a stone's throw of half a dozen universities.

That is the position in Glenrothes today. It has been done by socialism, if I dare use that word. It has been done by public enterprise, by planning right from the start, when there were just green fields, to the point reached now when we have new industries, new educational facilities and new social amenities, all provided by public money. Only when that public infrastructure has been provided does private enterprise move in for the pickings.

It is interesting to recall that, in 1951–52, when the Conservative Government took over from the Labour Government, we had already put on the Statute Book an Act for the public ownership of the pubs in new towns, and the first legislation of the new Tory Government in 1951–52 was to repeal that Statute of ours. So now the pubs in Glenrothes and all the other new towns are owned by the private brewers, who, as I have often said before, contributed in large measure to Tory Party funds. The brewers have now moved into the new towns; they have taken their profit, and are continuing to take their profit, out of what are essentially public enterprise ventures.

Among people south of Leeds, and even South of Newcastle, there is a gross misconception about what Scotland, and particularly the new towns, can offer in terms of space and recreational and educational facilities. Every school, from primary right through to technical college—we have a new technical college there—in Glenrothes is within daily travelling distance of half a dozen universities.

If industrialists were to come to Scotland and see the facilities which we can offer, they would appreciate the great difference between what we have and the almost obscene urban congestion in Birmingham, London and elsewhere. Industrialists in Glenrothes when asked whether they would like to go back to Coventry or other towns in the Midlands from which they have come say "Not on your life." Facilities for the education of children, recreational facilities, and the housing that we can provide are all of enormous advantage. The solution to the problem of the obscenity of urbanisation, which is really a world problem, is to be found in the kind of development that we have at Glenrothes.

The new town concept ought to be enlarged. The original population targets are too small. We should be thinking in terms of populations of a quarter million, or even half a million, for the new towns. Certainly we should be thinking of a much higher figure than 60,000 to 70,000. Glenrothes has a population of about 30,000.

The National Coal Board spent about £20 million on sinking the Rothes shaft. It was known that the coal was there, but until the shaft had been sunk and exploration had started it was not known that the area was so faulty that the coal could not be extracted. The whole concept of Glenrothes was to be determined by the growth of that pit. When it collapsed, people immediately cried, "Calamity, calamity, Glenrothes is going to be an enormous white elephant", but its collapse proved to be a blessing in disguise. Up to that time the whole social and economic history of Fife and the surrounding area had been damned by the fact that, as in so many other mining areas—and I am the son of a miner— everything depended exclusively on one industry, but that is no longer the case.

There was then the Cadco disaster, about which I had one or two scathing comments to make in the House. That matter has never been cleared up. It was one of the major scandals which were swept under the carpet by the Government of the day.

Despite what I have said so far, the latest annual report of the Glenrothes Development Corporation makes less optimistic reading. The Corporation says in its first paragraph: The year has been a difficult one and not all the progress expected has been made. The reasons are national rather than local and do not need to be enumerated. They have been enumerated often in this House, and will be again during the coming months. The report goes on to say: The Corporation looked forward, as no doubt you do,"— that is, the Scottish Office— to the time when references to unfavourable economic conditions cease to punctuate reports of this kind, but as this is being written it is announced that unemployment in Scotland has reached a figure of over 122,000", since when it has gone up by another 20,000, and is still rising.

Far too much alarm, despair and despondency has been created, and this does no good. Nevertheless, one cannot ignore the fact that there is a feeling in Glenrothes that things are not going as we would like them to go, to put it no higher. There is growing unemployment among men, and particularly among school leavers, a fact of which the hon. Gentleman was made well aware when he visited Glenrothes. There is great uncertainty in the electronics industry which, generally speaking, has taken over from the mining industry, although it is a false generalisation to say that Glenrothes is an electronics centre. It has a much more diversified industrial structure than that.

I propose to make one or two specific points about the situation at Glenrothes, and then to conclude with a generalised philosophy. My first comment relates to transport. I said at the beginning of my speech that Glenrothes was created in a green field area. There is plenty of open space there, but that is not enough. However attractive the new town is and however accessible it is to the glorious Highlands of Scotland and the wonderful East Coast of Fife, the fact is that the transport facilities there must be improved. The Government must bend their mind to expediting the building of the Fife regional road. The hon. Gentle man was made well aware of the need for it during his visit a couple of weeks ago. That is one way in which we can do something to ease the unemployment situation and help to attract industry. I am certain that more industry would be attracted if it was known that that kind of transport facility was to be provided very shortly.

The purpose of trying to get the Secretary of State for Scotland to visit Glenrothes was to pressurise the right hon. Gentleman into giving it special development area status. I suppose the right hon. Gentleman guessed that that might be our intention and he anticipated it by announcing in the House that the new towns would be given special development area status on condition that they took overspill population from Glasgow, a challenge which the Corporation was glad to take up

As the hon. Gentleman knows, the incentives provided in areas with that kind of status are great indeed, but they do not apply to existing industries which want to expand. This, too, was put to the hon. Gentleman during his recent visit. He explained the difficulties, and said that the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce was studying the problem. There seems no good reason why, while this study is taking place, and while we are waiting for the report, the Government should not consider giving at least 45 per cent. building grants as against the 30 per cent. grants which go to areas outside the S.S.D.A.s. I am informed by the corporation that if that were done industries in Glenrothes would expand almost forthwith. To make such grants would not cost all that much, and the psychological effect would be out of all proportion to the cost.

The next problem to which I wish to refer is that of the retraining of white collar workers who find themselves unemployed. This is a new phenomenon. Formerly, when unemployment has been increasing it has generally been among unskilled and semi-skilled people. But now we are getting increased unemployment among white collar workers. The Glenrothes Development Corporation has said that it has, or is willing to provide, facilities for that kind of training. I hope that the Scottish Office will explore that one.

Linked with that is the need in Glenrothes for some Government establishment, some Government office. Glenrothes, I believe, is the only new town in Scotland which does not have something of the kind. Particularly in London, or in the Midlands, there are Government establishments which have no good reason for being in London except status and prestige.

I have never understood—our own Labour Government were to blame for this—why the National Coal Board headquarters should be in London. There is no coal in London, just great prestige for office workers. Why cannot the Government say that the Coal Board headquarters must be in a coalfield or an area of high unemployment? Without that kind of decision, we are making nonsense of Government intervention and the talk about decentralisation. The same applies to steel headquarters.

Is the Forestry Commission going to Edinburgh? If so, it should not. It should go further afield, because Edinburgh, like Glasgow, is a conurbation. We should be thinking of moving those establishments to areas like new towns, with populations of no more than 100,000. This is one of the most important ways of decentralising and getting rid of our present urban obscenity.

On the question of amenity grant, I do not know whether the corporation raised this next matter with the Under-Secretary. I took part in the discussions which he had with trade union representatives. I was not in on his talks with the corporation, but if it did not make the point, I want to make it now.

As the Under-Secretary knows, the amenity grant was payable as from 1963, I think, at £4 per head of target population, which was 55,000. I think that the hon. Gentleman will agree that the Corporation has spent the money very well indeed on all kinds of amenity. A new town is no good unless one provides amenities for entertainment and social get-togethers. It is all very well building new houses and schools, but the creation of a community spirit can be done only by means of community centres, like swimming pools and other recreational facilities.

That £4 has been eroded considerably by inflation since 1963. It must now be worth only £2.50, and it is being eroded still at a constantly escalating rate. Because of that, the corporation is inhibited from providing the kind and scope of amenity that it wants. It says in its report that the highlight last year was the opening of the Physical Training and Recreational Institute, with its international swimming pool. I am sure that the Under-Secretary must have visited it and must have been deeply impressed by it. It was opened only last July, and in the first month over 70,000 people paid for admission to it. It is very important that that kind of impetus should not be retarded by the lack of extra finance for amenities.

The Minister knows the experiment in Glenrothes of beginners' workshops—an experiment which is unique among new towns. The corporation has provided what amounts to eight workshops of slightly less than 400 sq. ft., each with centralised office accommodation. It is providing these facilities for individual inventors, people with a new idea, either to manufacture a new product or to initiate a new process.

The Glenrothes Corporation is prepared to finance this, providing that the idea is sound. Of course, it is getting some hare brained schemes—this is inevitable—but it has a committee to sort these out. If it thinks that the approach is viable or has a reasonable chance of success, this could lead to the beginning of a small new industry, which should be very much in line with the philosophy of the party opposite—[HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] Yes, but again it is public money that will start it all—[AN HON. MEMBER: "Private enterprise."] Perhaps, but this is a mixed economy. The Government simply say, "Stand on your own two feet." Glenrothes Corporation says that it will help people to do so, and will not kick their feet from under them, as this Government have so often done in the last 16 months.

This experiment is unique and it has exciting potential. I hope that the Minister will give it a wide advertisement throughout the United Kingdom and the world.

My next point is even more important, and relates to labour relations. I have always believed that if footloose industries, of any standing at all, are looking for new sites, what they find most important are not the incentives provided by regional policies—whether regional employment premiums or special grant— but the kind of labour they will get and the kind of trade union responsibilities.

I am making no boast, but in Glenrothes we have embarked in the last 12 months on yet another unique experiment. In all modestry, I can say that it was due to the initiative of the local Labour Party, of which I happen to be the representative here, along with the unions, the local branch of the A.S.T.M.S. I wrote to the development corporation on their behalf and asked, "Could we not get together in informal meetings the employers and trade unions to discuss, not wages and conditions— that is for other machinery—but how best to sell this new town to industrialists and to plan its future together?".

I pay a great tribute to Brigadier Doyle. He said, "Let us have a meeting, but let us meet the employers and the unions separately first, since it is a question of 'we' and 'they'." We did that, and eventually we got the two sides together in the boardroom. The first meeting was very cold, with the unions on one side of the table and the employers on the other, eyeing one another with great suspicion and fear, wondering what it was all about.

The tension was there, bait as each meeting has progressed more and more industrialists have come. Only one was absent from the last meeting. We talk about how we should sell the new town and improve the amenities. A few days ago, we had a full day's seminar at which Sir Iain Stewart was the principal speaker. As a result, we are going to set up a residential college where employers and unionists can get together in formal discussion and informal drinks and spend perhaps a week or a fortnight together discussing problems of mutual concern. This, I think, is the kind of thing which will attract industrialists more than all the incentives which any Government of any political persuasion can provide.

I stress the need for new nursery accommodation. The Government have in their possession a report on the education of the under fives, and by the nature of things one finds in new towns which have more than the average national proportion of young people, more children. The new industries in Glenrothes are employing a large proportion of Noting women. It is of crucial importance, both economically and socially, that increased provision for nursery accommodation is made.

I regret—indeed, I could not understand the Minister's attitude—that, according to reports in the Press last weekend, this report has been rejected out of hand, apart from some additional provision in special aid areas. I hope the Minister will say that he is prepared to receive representations from Glenrothes on this aspect.

It is important that this extra provision is made in view of, for example, the new Scottish housing Measure. Rents are going up in Glenrothes and it is obvious that, whether or not women want to go to work and whether or not their men are employed, two wage packets will be required in homes in view of the rents that are likely to be charged. [HON. MEMBERS: "Rubbish."] I know what I am talking about, and the feeling in Glenrothes today is that the level of rents will be intolerable unless there are two wage packets coming in.

I hope the Government will continue the experiment of new towns. Indeed, they cannot go back on this experiment. I hope they will continue to look for new sites and give new town corporations all the help they can. Above all, they must do nothing to destroy them, whatever they may do in local government reorganisation. I beg them not to destroy this concept. They should, rather, enlarge it because it is one of our hopes for the future.

12.32 p.m

The Under-Secretary of State for development, Scottish Office (Mr. George Younger)

I am glad of this opportunity to intervene briefly in the debate, especially as the subject we are discussing also affects Scotland. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton) for giving me an excuse—not that one is necessary, but it is a convenient word to use on this occasion—to comment on the Scottish position.

I assure the House at the outset that the Government have absolutely no intention of in any way devaluing the work of the new towns. Indeed, we regard the new towns of Scotland as a major source of attracting new industry, which is of the greatest importance to us at this time. The hon. Member for Fife, West can rest assured that we shall do all we can to help the new town corporations to continue with what has generally been excellent work done by them over the years.

I will not go through the whole history, as the hon. Member for Fife, West did, of the new towns. I was at school for most of the time to which he referred. Nevertheless, we can feel proud that our new towns have made a notable contribution to improving the standard of living as well as the environment for many people who live and work in Scotland, and we hope and believe that that process of improvement will continue and expand.

As this debate gives us an opportunity to discuss new towns, it is right that I should refer to an addition to the stock of new towns that has taken place since we last debated this subject. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister announced in Glasgow last March our intention to establish a sixth Scottish new town in the Stonehouse area of Lanarkshire. This is mainly designed to help the redeployment of the Glasgow population as well as to serve as an additional focus for new industry in that part of Scotland.

The designated area will be sufficiently large to accommodate a population of about 35,000 with the necessary facilities and appropriate provisions for industry and so on. This population target was selected bearing in mind the needs which are already apparent and the need not to prejudge further than can be avoided the various choices available to the new planning advisory body that has been set up and which is known as the West Central Scotland Plan Steering Committee.

The target population for Stonehouse is much less than the total capacity of the area and our plan will be sufficiently flexible to take into account wider development possibilities later. Good progress is being made in the drawing up of details relating to the designation area and it is expected that the necessary draft designation order will be published early next year. I hope that the area will be able to be formally designated about the early autumn of next year, following, of course, public inquiries, if these prove to be necessary.

There is a further, I think interesting, innovation which has taken place recently. We have introduced, following consultation in the past year or more —in fact, the arrangement was implemented on 1st October—a new system of management accounting linked with new procedures for the control of expenditure in the Scottish new towns. These arrangements enable my Department to appraise financial and other plans for the development of new towns up to target completion dates and to monitor performance in a way that has not previously been possible.

An interesting point is that subject to individual projects meeting criteria which have been accepted by my Department and the Treasury as representing a reasonable return on investment, development corporations can now proceed with projects without obtaining specific ap- proval on each occasion to incur expenditure.

I hope that the result—this is certainly the intention—will be a substantial reduction in the detailed involvement of my Department in the affairs and detailed projects of the new towns. I hope that this will also lead to a greater acceptance of responsibility by the corporations in dealing with their individual schemes.

This fits in very well with the general philosophy in which we and most people believe—that it is a basically good thing if we can reduce the amount of detailed interference in the day-to-day affairs of, among other things, new town corporations. I hope that this new system will work to this end and benefit all concerned.

I was delighted a week or so ago—I am grateful to the hon. Member for Fife, West for mentioning this—to pay a visit to Glenrothes, so completing my series of visits to the new towns; I have now visited them all since taking office about 15 months ago. Among the members of the development corporations I have found in every case strong enthusiasm for the job they are doing, with a keenness to innovate and attract new industry to their areas. I have discovered with pleasure that while the members of each development corporation are fiercely protagonistic about the affairs of their own corporation, they are prepared, indeed anxious, to co-operate with other corporations if that is considered to be to their mutual benefit.

I am particularly grateful for the public-spirited joint action which the new towns in Scotland have taken in supporting the efforts which the Scottish Council is now making to attract investment from abroad to Scotland. The new towns are of course assisting in this process. They have been doing so on a joint basis and I am sure that this will be of great benefit to them all.

The hon. Member for Fife, West spoke in an interesting way about Glenrothes. I agree with him that all concerned there —not only the members of the corporation but those who work in the area and those who are concerned with businesses and industries in the town—are anxious to work together as a team. I was particularly impressed with their efforts and it was obvious that they are anxious to co-operate.

I was glad that the hon. Gentleman mentioned the Joint Committee on Labour Relations. Its activities were explained to me when I visited Glenrothes and it is clearly an extremely valuable body. I hope that it will continue to be as successful as it has been in the past. All concerned on the trade union and employers' side and those involved in the corporation expressed to me their pleasure at the way in which this Committee had got off the ground. They deserve a lot of credit for what has been achieved in this context.

The hon. Member for Fife, West went on to point out the difficulties which the development corporation of Glenrothes mentions in its annual report. These difficulties have been mentioned in many other such reports. I entirely agree with him. The hon. Member for Fife, West said that the main reason for these difficulties was national rather than detailed new town difficulties. The first thing that can change the climate for the new town, as we all know, is the pick-up in the national economy, towards which the Government's policies have been working. It is at that stage that a place like Glenrothes will reap the benefit of its foresight in preparing itself with ready-to-use sites, with factories waiting for industrialists to walk into them.

It is by no means entirely a picture of depression, even now. In recent months there has been a noticeable increase in interest by industrialists inquiring about sites for factories. Although this is too short a period from which to draw any long-term conclusions it is a movement in the right direction. One result has been the securing by Glenrothes of a Dutch-American consortium, Brand Rex Limited, which will build a 60,000 sq. ft. factory to manufacture wire for computer and data processing industries. It will sell this throughout Europe. This is a particularly good type of factory to have secured because it employs a large proportion of male labour, and male unemployment is the great problem everywhere. I am glad that we managed to find a suitable formula for the inclusion of Glenrothes and Livingston, the other Eastern Scottish new town, in the facilities for special development area incentives.

I have given every encouragement to the development corporations to go out with all the strength that they can to get the incomers from the West Central Scotland area. These are the criteria we hope they will be able to meet to qualify fully for these special development area incentives. I am certain that this can be done, and they can be assured that I will do all that I can to encourage the West Central Scotland local authorities to co-operate with them, because this is so often the key. It is not only required of new town corporations that they should be keen on the idea; they must also have enthusiastic co-operation from the local authorities in the area from which people come. I will do all that I can to encourage and help Glasgow particularly to co-operate.

The hon. Gentleman raised the question of the extension of S.D.A. incentives to existing industry. I shall pass on what he said to my right hon. Friend at the Department of Trade and Industry, under whose responsibility this properly comes. We are well aware of the feelings on this point, not only in Glenrothes but in many other parts of Scotland. The Government are studying carefully the report which Mr. Robert MacLellan of the Scottish Chamber of Commerce has prepared and presented to us, to see whether it can produce suggestions how the problem can be overcome.

I shall mention to my right hon Friend the hon. Gentleman's suggestion about a building grant, but at present, and under the existing legislation, this applies only to S.D.A. areas and, in that context, refers to incoming industry only. I will also explore with my right hon. Friend at the Department of Employment the particular point which the hon. Gentleman raised about retraining of white collar workers. This was not raised by the development corporations when I visited them recently.

On the need for a Government office, raised by the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues the other day, we are well aware of the desirability of having Government offices in Glenrothes, and in other similar places in Scotland. The Government are in course of reviewing the main criteria and possibilities that exist for getting the main Government offices out of London. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that when the results of that review become available the Scottish Office will have strong suggestions to make. As regards amenity grants, I shall look at the particular point raised by the hon. Gentleman, which was mainly whether the £4 per head had been eroded by inflation so much that it ought to be looked at again.

It was a pleasure to me to be able to open this inventor's workshops at Glenrothes. This unique experiment reflects the greatest credit on the Corporation which, with suggestions from local people, thought out and developed the idea. I hope that we shall see people coming from far afield to Glenrothes to start up new ideas which in the next 10, 20 or 30 years may develop into big industries.

I was told by the Chairman of the Corporation only a few days ago that since the opening of the workshop it has been deluged with inquiries of one sort or another. Some of these inquiries may prove impracticable but I hope that, out of the total, the inventors' workshop facilities will be well used and produce good results.

I agree with the hon. Gentleman about the wrong impression that many people have in the South about what life is like in Scotland. If they came they would find that there were tremendous attractions in the area, that there is so much more space and recreational facilities than there can be in other more congested areas. Anything I can do to help in this regard is well worth doing. It is worth recording that those who have moved, for instance in the Post Office Savings Bank, have been very happy. We have been happy to welcome them.

The hon. Member for Fife, West mentioned nursery schools. I have taken this up with my right hon. Friend and asked him to look into it. He also referred to transport, which I accept is critical in a place like Glenrothes. We have been making good progress with the M90 which is important to Glenrothes and which helps the general transport in the area. The M90 is up to schedule, and we hope that within a few months the present stage will have been completed and opened. As to the East Fife regional road our studies of the route and feasibility are proceeding well. There are considerable difficulties particularly as regards the ground in that part of Fife. All I can tell the hon. Gentleman is that the work is proceeding well and that there will be no delay on our part.

12.48 p.m.

Mr. Michael McGuire (Ince)

I want to pay my small tribute to the father of my right hon. Friend the Member for Deptford (Mr. John Silkin) whom he rightly described as the father of new towns. It is noteworthy that all who have spoken from the Government benches in this and previous debates dealing with New Town Bills have stated that they are firm believers in the concept of new towns. My right hon. Friend can feel justly proud that his father's beliefs have been vindicated by successive Governments.

I regret that the Bill does nothing to alter Section 2(1) of the original Act which limited the members of the development corporation to nine. The limit was imposed, I believe, for no particular reason. There is nothing magical about the figure nine except perhaps that it is a biblical figure and is also one much loved and much quoted by fortune tellers. One can certainly make out a reasonable case for increasing the number to the unbiblical and not-so-much loved figure of 11.

These boards have to represent wide interests. The Reith Report, which led to the setting up of new towns, said: Members should include persons who among them have experience of land development, of economic and social conditions, labour relations, of business and of local government, and appreciation of cultural requirements. The object should be to gather together a group of people with varying qualifications who will work together as a team. The field of choice should not be restricted to `safe' men with established public reputations; we recommend that the field should be widened to include younger people with drive and imagination and a desire to enter public service. That was the idea behind the original proposal for the membership of these boards.

I suggest that that was also meant to include women. But if there is one bad feature of these boards it is the lack of younger people among their members. These new towns essentially cater for the young, yet the young have not been well represented on the boards. If the boards are to be representative of the diverse interests involved, it is all the more important that membership should include people who live in the new towns, so that those who have put down or are putting down roots in the new towns will have a voice in ensuring that the legacy they are establishing is a good one. They will have a practical conception of what a new town should be for those living in it.

When I spoke during the debate on the Gracious Speech, I referred to "participation" and "involvement". These are "in" words today. I practised the concept when I was a pit secretary. But the residents of new towns have no say in the selection of members of the boards. We know that soundings are taken with the local authorities and other bodies but, as I have said before, it is time to look seriously at the question of having some form of direct representation. The Cullingworth Report mentioned the election of people to the boards.

In Skelmersdale, there are three vacancies and I hope that the Minister will take note of what I say when he fills them. I ask him not just to look for safe men or women but to look for young people to serve—more particularly for young people who actually live in Skelmersdale. A new town should represent par excellence all that is best in community life.

I was interested to listen to the hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mr. Allason), with whom we have had differing views in the past on this subject. He mentioned tall blocks of flats and the terrible conception which used to prevail —fortunately no longer because the Government do not subsidise these huge, very high industrialised type of blocks. They were the very negation of planning in a new town. I thought that the concept was advanced only for congested areas, where land is so scarce and where good houses could not be built for good people. I believe that these flats were a system of building poor houses for poor people. I remember that on a similar Bill in 1969 I incurred the displeasure of my right hon. Friend the present Opposition Chief Whip, who was then Minister of Public Building and Works. He said that my ideas were wrong, but obviously both Governments since then have concluded that my ideas were right after all because they have abandoned the idea of subsidising these huge blocks.

In Skelmersdale, we have had planners who have gone mad. They have not planned in the early stages very well. This is not something which an ordinary hon. Member like myself can say with impunity and one must pray in aid certain things which have happened. In Skelmersdale, a considerable number of houses were badly designed—so much so that they had to be evacuated. The alignment or pitch of the roof was so shallow that they had to be re-designed at great cost to the new town. These houses were literally only months old.

I have raised this matter in questions and in correspondence with Ministers. I believe that the extra cost involved should not be borne by my constituents in Skelmersdale, that hidden away as it is in the book accounts the debt should not in the end have to be subsidised by my constituents. I was assured that this would not be so and I mention it again now in order to make sure.

I go to Skelmersdale nearly every week and my impression is that there are not enough green fields for the young, particularly the boys, to play on—for example, to kick a football around. I know that there are some creditable sporting facilities which we boast about but there is still a serious lack of playing fields for the young. I fancy that the planners were not people with young children living in such close community conditions. It has been said that no man should plan kitchens and I believe from my own observations that men should not plan houses at all. I think that if we could get a school of trained women planners, most women would be delighted.

But the success of a new town, no matter how well it is planned, will depend ultimately on a high level of employment and high wages. Unfortunately, that is not the position in Skelmersdale. No Government, Labour or Conservative, can allow new towns to he planned by Departments which are isolated from one another. There is a strong case for saying that Department should consult each other at a high level before decisions are implemented.

I will give some examples. Skelmersdale is now going through a bad period of tremendous social problems. There is a large amount of unpaid rent outstanding and there are eviction notices for far too high a proportion of the rented accommodation. This is true of between 5 and 10 percent. of all the rented accommodation. It is essentially a social problem and the development corporation is trying to attract more social workers to deal with it.

It must be remembered that young people with bright hopes are coming from Liverpool to Skelmersdale. They cone from poor housing, cheap as it is, into bright new homes, and they necessarily incur considerable expenditure because they do not want to bring their old three piece suites and so on with them. The result is that they incur tremendously high weekly repayments.

There is also severe unemployment and wages are low. The bright hopes are dashed and the young people quickly get into debt. They do not have the maturity of older people and they react accordingly. That is why I am delighted that the development corporation, helped by the county council, is getting in people experienced in these problems and able to deal with them before they reach the stage of eviction for non-payment of rent.

It is essentially a matter of planning. One Minister is planning the dispersal of Government offices. In the North-West generally, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, we are badly off for skilled office employment and it is practically non-existent in Skelmersdale. The Minister responsible for the new towns should encourage the Minister responsible for the location of Government offices to send a big Government office to Skelmersdale. The building of the new hospital should be started quickly. It has been delayed a little too long. The local hospital board has decided that the new town is the best site for it and the Government should act on that advice.

Serious consequences have followed the decision of Pilkingtons not to establish a factory at Skelmersdale. It is reported that Pilkingtons paid substantial compensation, but it should not be left at that. Pilkingtons' withdrawal was a disaster for the new town. Over the years, about 2,000 jobs would have been created by a good company which is now a public company, and it would have attracted satellite firms. We all know that when a big works is established, satellite firms quickly spring up to service it.

When Pilkingtons told the corporation that it would not proceed with the building of the new factory, the Departments concerned should have been alerted and they should have questioned Pilkingtons about their decision, which has put the new town in jeopardy. Pilkingtons have never said why they took that decision and I should like to give my reasons. I think that it followed the disastrous strike in St. Helens, which was purely a local affair. One or two of the prominent leaders of that strike were reported as coming from Liverpool. We all know that the newspapers and the other news media do not report ordinary run-of-the- mill events and want to fill peoples' minds with popular concepts, including that of Liverpool persons as leaders and initiators of strikes and the most hardened men involved in them.

It happened that a Liverpool man was involved in that strike and much of the publicity was directed at him. One of the banner headlines was: Scouse Power Behind St. Helen's Strike". Skelmersdale will attract most of its citizens from the Liverpool area, and I believe that Pilkingtons were frightened of having trouble in a works in Skelmersdale. There was a misconception about the cause of that strike. The strike record and the industrial relations record of Skelmersdale people, most of them Liverpudlians, although with a mixture of people from Skelmersdale and the Wigan area, are better than the national average, not just better than the bad records in some parts of the country. That cannot be emphasised too much.

I believe that the reason that Pilkingtons and others do not want to come to Merseyside or Skelmersdale is that they fear that labour relations will be intolerable. However, anyone who asks the development corporation or the Department of Employment will find that that is not so. However, Pilkingtons' decision, because of the high unemployment and the arrears of rent, resulted in a social problem and in Skelmersdale Corporation carrying forward a deficit bigger than that of any other new town.

Big companies cannot be allowed to consider moving into new towns and almost to reach a decision and then to withdraw simply on the payment of compensation. The effect on Skelmersdale has been disastrous. Some firms have not set up as a result of having wrongly interpreted Pilkingtons' decision. The Government should investigate the matter closely and not allow these things to get out of hand. If they had had a word with Pilkingtons, they might have reassured them and made them under- stand that their interpretation was unjust and that their decision would have calamitous effects on the new town.

I come finally to the plans of the Department of the Environment for local government reform. The right hon. Gentleman will know of the strong representations made by Skelmersdale and Holland Urban District Council to remain within the orbit of Lancashire County Council and not be included in District C of the Metropolitan District of Liverpool. I do not know the implications of the plans for other parts of the country, but I can speak of this area with certainty. There is no community interest between my home town of St. Helens, which, I suppose, will be the centre of District C, and the Skelmersdale and Holland Urban District Council. There is, for instance, no bus service.

There is a dozen other areas with which Skelmersdale could be linked, although once could argue that they should not be linked because of the special problems of the new town, the only new town in Lancashire which will be taken out of the county orbit. All the other new towns in the region will remain in the counties because of the close connection in building up the services between the development corporations and the counties concerned.

There has been much co-operation and liaison, and this view is reinforced by the county council. It is resigned to the fact that it will lose many of its outlying areas, but Sir Patrick McCall, clerk of the county, Alderman Lumby, Conservative chairman of the Lancashire County Council and the urban district council have made out a strong and overwhelming case for the area not being linked with District C. If it is not to be left in the county, it will be more sensible to link it with the Wigan area, or the Southport area, even if it created, perhaps in the mind of hon. Members, some imbalance in the Wigan section, which is in the Greater Manchester Metropolitan Area.

It does not make sense to link Skelmersdale with District C of the Metropolitan County of Merseyside. I hope that the Minister will consider the evidence and will have second thoughts about this matter. I hope that we shall not have to debate it when we discuss the question of local government reorganisation. There were second thoughts about Southport which at one time was to come within the county. I think that it is now to be in District A of the Merseyside Metropolitan District. There should be second thoughts about Skelmersdale, which should remain within the county.

If Skelmersdale comes within District C it will be involved with areas which have no community interest with it. Huyton and Kirby have made a similar plea not to be linked with St. Helens. If they go into the new district C, they will be so engrossed in their areas' affairs that they will have neither the expertise nor the money to ensure the success of the Skelmersdale new town. Everyone wants to ensure that success and to give a better, richer, brighter and fuller life to all the people who have been encouraged to go to Skelmersdale from the Liverpool area. This proposal will not ensure the success of the new town, whatever area it is in. What will ensure its success is a high rate of employment and a high wage rate.

I ask the Minister or the Under-Secretary of State to give me a reply to some of the points I have raised.

1.13 p.m

Mrs. Connie Monks (Chorley)

I represent a constituency which is part of the designated Lancashire new town. I wish to express my frustration and that of all the local councils involved after 6½ years of waiting.

It was in February, 1965, that the then Government announced the intention to base a new town on the Chorley-Leyland area. Subsequently Preston was included. During this period my constituency has been overshadowed by this proposal, and our local authorities are as much in the dark now as they were then. We are to be second tier authorities—and I am speaking of Chorley borough, Chorley rural and Leyland—so our power will be restricted. We have always had much help from the Lancashire County Council and we are prepared and happy to remain with it in the new local government set up. But the fact that we are a second tier authority has caused a great deal of frustration. We have had the proposal for a new town hanging over us for a very long time, but we are still in the dark as to the part we shall be allowed to play.

Our planning has been completely stultified. For example, Leyland has wanted a new library for very many years. It is a growing area. The idea is that it will be the centre of our education set up in the new town. The new sixth form college is being built in Leyland. Yet the area has been waiting for a library for many years and the site for it cannot be settled until the new town corporation gets on with its job.

We have heard a lot about Skelmersdale today. The area of our proposed new town is north of Skelmersdale. Skelmersdale has development status. To the north-east of the proposed central Lancashire new town is north-east Lancashire which has intermediate status. But our proposed new town is to have neither development status nor intermediate status, which, I assume, means that we must stand on our own feet. We would not have much minded that up to recently because our unemployment figure was under 2 percent. But now is is over 4 percent. and we feel that the matter should be reconsidered.

I should be glad to have the Minister's observations, particularly on the last point.

1.17 p.m

Mr. Thomas Cox (Wandsworth, Central)

I speak as a Member who represents, not a new town, but an inner London constituency. I am sure that Members on both sides of the House appreciate the advantages which new town developments have brought to many people in inner London constituencies who formerly lived in deplorable housing conditions. The main issue about which I shall hear this evening at my advice centre is housing, and especially the housing problems of young people with young families living in deplorable housing conditions and who are forced to pay very high rents.

The local authority which covers the constituency I represent, is the London Borough of Wandsworth. It has embarked on extensive housing redevelopments because it rightly believes that unless families live in decent housing conditions every other aspect of its social policy cannot succeed. In spite of the work which it has been doing, there are still some 6,000 applicants on the current housing list. This gives some idea of the kind of problems we face in inner London, such as the shortage of land, plus the unfortunate reluctance of many outer London boroughs to face up to their responsibility to help to overcome some of the housing problems of the inner London boroughs. Only with the help of new town developments can we offer any hope to the many people with housing problems.

But while we solve one major issue by rehousing people we invariably create many others. The majority of the people who go to live in the new towns come from our large cities where facilities are readily available. When they go to live in the new towns, because many of these towns are sited in very rural areas, they find that there are not the kinds of facilities to which they have been used. This has been touched on here this morning. There has been an improvement in the provision of facilities, especially for teenagers. Teenagers who live in inner London are used to being able to go to cinemas, dance halls, swimming pools very easily. When they go to live in a new town, while, obviously, they enjoy the benefits which the new housing gives them, they are very critical of the lack of facilities for recreation. The hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mr. Allason) made reference to this. There has been a speeding up of developments of this sort, but the criticism still persists long after a person has gone to live in a new town. I would hope that this would be one of the top priorities of the new town development corporations.

There are other problems which I find from the contacts I have with people in my area. To me it is most regrettable that when somebody has been rehoused, after living in difficult conditions in inner London, and when I had thought that I had been able to help to solve that person's housing problem, and thinking the solution satisfactory, I find that, after a few months, that person comes again to see me. I say, "I thought you had been rehoused in one of the new towns". The regrettable thing is the answer," I was, but I cannot stick the place because it has not the facilities I have been used to."

I have spoken mostly so far of entertainment and recreational facilities and the lack of them, but there is another matter that needs to be emphasised again. That is that the wage rates paid in many of the new towns are at a much lower level than those paid elsewhere and certainly in inner London. There is the added fact that unless a person is skilled he has difficulty in finding work in a new town. It is a very real problem for someone who is unskilled and who has commitments. He moves into a new house with all the additional expenses involved. Possibly he has been living in only one or two rooms and has very little furniture, but having had to pay an extremely high rent, so that he has not been able to save any money for the sort of commitments he finds involved in moving into a new house. Then on top of that he finds that the wage rate at which he is to be paid in the new town is lower than that he had before, and, unless he is skilled, he may have difficulty in finding a job at all.

Many of the new towns have failed very badly in making nursery provision for young children. Young children have a right to nursery education. However, there is a further consideration. I have mentioned the expenses of moving into a new home in a new town. The man may find it necessary for his wife to go out to work as well, because it may be only by the combined incomes of husband and wife that they can start to furnish their home to the kind of standard which they want. We are all fully aware, I am sure, that many young people have as their top priority getting their homes to the standard which they want, but it is very expensive. So the wife wants to go out to work, but she has a young child and she finds that in the area there is no provision for the care of her young child while she goes to work. This, obviously, is a source of a great deal of discontent within a family, and it is one of the reasons why families come back to places such as inner London even though they know they are coming back, very often, to appalling housing conditions. They do so simply because of the lack of sufficient provision in the area to which they had gone. This is something to which I hope much greater consideration will he given.

Another problem which needs to be looked at is that of transport facilities. We are often told nowadays that most people have their own transport. This is by no means the case at all. Many people who go to live in new towns want ultimately to own a motor car but their first priority is the furnishing of their own new home. Therefore, for transport they have to rely very much on public transport facilities. They often find only very poor train facilities, even if there is a train service at all, and so it is very essential that there should be good bus services by which people can travel, not only to work but to commute to other towns if they wish.

The Minister, in his opening remarks, made reference to the excellent scheme which was organised by the London Borough of Lambeth and Peterborough. It was an excellent idea. There is in the minds of many people living in London a fear of what the future will hold for them if they move into a new town. Possibly they have never been to that part of the country where the new town they are thinking of going to is. It is regrettably a fact that many Londoners think when they get out of Greater London that they are going to a country like Siberia. The scheme which was proposed by the London borough of Lambeth and Peterborough provides information to people as to the facilities which exist in Peterborough, and it gives them an opportunity to visit Peterborough if they wish to. It is an excellent thing, and something which I would hope would be developed by many of the new town corporations. It is a good idea to twin a London borough with a new town. It would enable people living in overcrowded boroughs of London to have an awareness of the facilities in the new town where they might be rehoused.

I welcome this Bill because, as I say, as an inner London Member I believe that the more new town developments there are the greater will be the opportunity for me and other Members of Parliament to be able to help the people who repeatedly come to see us about their problems and trying to improve their own housing conditions. But I hope that we shall realise that we are dealing with human beings. We are not dealing only with houses, with bricks and mortar. It is very important to develop a community feeling wherever people live. We should ensure that there are available for them adequate social facilities in the area to which they go to live. If we do that we shall go a long way to building the kind of happy, modern environment in which people have the right to expect to live in this day and age.

1.27 p.m

Mr. Norman Tebbit (Epping)

I shall try to be brief, and, as ever, utterly uncontroversial. As some Members present may well know, I represent both a part of a Greater London borough and a new town. My interest in new towns antedates that, in that it was only shortly after our marriage that my wife and I set up home in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hampstead (Mr. Allison) at a time when Hemel Hempstead was still at the gum boots to the shops stage and lacked so many of the facilities which the hon. Member for Wandsworth, Central (Mr. Thomas Cox) has been mentioning.

I would follow very briefly some of his remarks because they are very near to my own heart, and I shall refer to the problem which arises in Harlow. Harlow is now certainly well endowed with facilities and my hon. Friend the Under- Secretary of State, I know, will have noted with pleasure the opening recently of the Playhouse, which he inspected when it was under construction when he visited the area. We are also fortunate in having the Lea Valley park development.

However, there is still a terrific number of all sorts of social problems which arise from the sudden uprooting of people into a new environment and at a time—point made by the hon. Member for Wandsworth, Central—when they incur large new expenses. It may be that at some other time I should like to speak in the House about the activities of some of those who prey on these people. In Harlow at the moment we have an unhappy rash of loan sharks who are doing a great deal of damage, but whose activities, fortunately, are now being well documented in the local Press, and being countered by a financial counselling service of a voluntary nature, one of the first of its sort I have encountered in any part of the country.

The main points I want to make are local ones. I once again impress upon my hon. Friend the need for no unnecessary delay in discussing and coming to a conclusion—a favourable one I hope—on the expansion of the Harlow new town. I put in a plea for the private owner, the owner-occupier, when that decision is finally made. I ask that the edges of the new town will be softened, so that there is not the sudden transition from an agricultural area into a high density residential area which occurs with new towns but in few other parts of the country.

From my experience of Harlow and from living in Hemel Hempstead, I have found that enormous numbers of people want to trade up in the housing market. They do not want to move far away from the new town because they are beginning to put down roots there. We need people with roots in the new town, and I hope our policies will always make it possible for them to trade up in the housing market, close to or within the new town.

A recent meeting was held in Harlow on the subject of co-ownership building. Those who organised it expected about 20 people, but well over 200 turned up. This is a mark of the interest shown in co-ownership in the town, and I hope there will be provision for it.

I emphasise how deeply sorry we all were in Harlow in suffering the tragic loss of the Chairman of the Development Corporation, Sir John Newsom earlier this year, and also how anxious we are that there should be an early announcement of his successor.

It would be unnatural if I did not mention the sale of homes when on my feet in the House. In Harlow there is a tremendous demand from tenants to buy their homes. We know all about the block at the Land Registry in registering land and making it possible for these sales to go through. I believe that there are ways in which we could guarantee the position of would-be purchasers, even allowing for the delays which occur at the Land Registry; but I hope that we shall do every thing that can be done to speed up the process in the Land Registry.

We hope that the M11 and the D-ring road will make Harlow much more attractive to industry. We are pleased that those roads are no longer far-away dreams but are firmly programmed roads, and that the Ml1 is well advanced in its pre-construction stages. I hope that my right hon. Friend will let Harlow take advantage of those new roads. All of us who live there and nearby want Harlow to be the stable and prosperous town that it should be, and the growing town that it should be, and we hope that before long it will get the ultimate British accolade of no longer being a new town but a town.

1.33 p.m

The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Paul Channon)

I am a little distressed at winding up this debate after the remarks of the right hon. Member for Kettering (Sir G. de Freitas) in which he complained about the dullness of Ministers' speeches on new towns. As he is not yet here, perhaps I shall survive for a little while.

I join with other hon. Members in saying what a pleasure it was to hear the right hon. Member for Deptford (Mr. John Silkin) speak from the Opposition Front Bench. At the 21st anniversary celebrations at Corby in May this year I had the pleasure of speaking immediately after his father, who was received with acclamation as the father of the new towns and of Corby in particular. He made a remarkable speech, as fluent and as far-sighted as that of his son who spoke this morning. I was impressed by the remarks of the right hon. Gentleman. I suspect that he has had expert briefing from someone who knows the problems very well indeed. He is in the vanguard of thought in the new town movement.

The right hon. Gentleman raised three major points—employment, transport and shopping structure, all of which are very much in the minds of planners of new towns. I think hon. Members will agree that these considerations are uppermost in the minds of those who are responsible for preparing master plans and developing them for approval. Some very interesting developments are taking place in transport. My right hon. Friend told me of a visit he made to Stevenage to see the experimental bus system. There is an- other experiment in Runcorn. I shall deal with the right hon. Gentleman's other points a little later.

In the 18 months or so in which I have been connected with the new towns I have enjoyed the opportunity of visiting many of them. I have visited the new town of every hon. Member who has spoken, except, for obvious reasons, that of the hon. Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton) and that represented by my hon. Friend the Member for Chorley (Mrs. Monks), which has not yet come to fruition. I have had the pleasure of visiting Hemel Hempstead, Milton Keynes, Skelmersdale, Corby and other new towns which have been mentioned in the debate, and I am immensely impressed with the energetic way in which the corporations are pressing ahead with their task. There is general agreement on the excellent work which is being done and on the need for the Bill to enable the finance to be forthcoming so that the work can go forward.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mr. Allason), whose chairmanship of the parliamentary group and long interest in new towns is well known, raised a number of important points. He asked how owner-occupation was going. I think there is general agreement by hon. Members on both sides of the House that the proportion of owner- occupied houses in the first generation new towns is not high enough. We are nowhere near the 50 per cent. owner-occupation target, but we are anxious to proceed towards that and with private enterprise building for sale in the new towns. Earlier this year we had a seminar, when my right hon. Friend addressed the new town corporations and builders and discussed further how to expand private enterprise building in the new towns.

I have here figures of the number of completed sales of rented houses in the new towns. The number is not large, because it has taken some time to get the sales through the pipeline. The total number of sales from October, 1970 to 30th September, 1971 is 708, but thousands of house sales are in the pipeline, and many thousands of people in the new towns wish to buy their houses. The difficulties about which my' hon. Friend has written to me on many occasions are being overcome, and there will not be the delays which were inevitable in the first few months. I hope that the backlog in the sale of Commission houses will be cleared by about Easter, and that we shall then be able to proceed on a more even keel. I think there are about 14,000 house sales in the pipeline overall.

On the question of the future of the New Towns Commission—

Mr. Allason

Will my hon. Friend answer my question on the 20 and 30 per cent. discount?

Mr. Channon

I will deal with that now, as my hon. Friend has raised it. We have no plans to increase the discount from 20 to 30 percent. in the new towns. The special concession of 30 percent. has been given only on few occasions. It is a limited concession which does not apply to the generality of tenants. It applies only to a few local authorities, notably Manchester, under the former leadership of Mr. Fieldhouse, whose scheme this was. I wish to make it clear that there is no question at the moment of extending this to the new towns because, if it were thought that we were extending it to the new towns, there would be a danger that the sales would dry up. I cannot say that for all time the figure will be 20 per cent.—it may one day be increased to 30 per cent. —but at the moment there is no suggestion in the Government's mind to do so. I have my right hon. Friend's authority for saying that. There is an enormous demand for houses at the 20 per cent. discount and there is no shortage of purchasers. Indeed, this represents one of the best bargains one could ever find, and I hope that there will be many more sales in the new towns.

I should like to turn to the future of the New Towns Commission. The Government made clear in answer to a Question earlier this year that at present they did not envisage any change in the arrangements of the Commission. Indeed, my right hon. Friend has recently appointed a new chairman, Mr. Pilcher, who I am sure will be a most excellent and energetic chairman and who has already given signs of great activity in the new towns. I do not know whether my hon. Friend has had an opportunity to discuss problems with him, but I am sure Mr. Pilcher would be only too willing to discuss any suggestions about closer liaison in the Commission new towns between councils and the Commission.

The last thing we want is for there to be any uncertainty about this matter. There was some uncertainty under the Labour Government, but we do not envisage any changes in the Commission as at present constituted. As other new towns come to the end of their period of expansion, my right hon. Friend envisages that in due course they will be transferred to the Commission. Therefore, so far as I can see, the Commission will remain a permanent feature for the new towns.

My hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Mr. Benyon) mentioned cost yardsticks at Milton Keynes. I will look into this matter again. As my hon. Friend knows, we have been much more flexible about cost yardsticks. Indeed, an increase in such yardsticks was announced on 30th September. We already have an annual review, and the review at the end of September was additional. Therefore, we are keeping the yardsticks under constant review. If there is any evidence that they are frustrating Milton Keynes Corporation in its plans, this would give us some concern. Therefore. I have carefully noted what my hon. Friend said.

A number of hon. Members raised the question of the £4 amenity grant. The more one thinks about the present arrangements, the more anomalous they appear to be. I do not at present envisage any change in the £4 allowance, but the whole question of how justified such expenditure is needs to be looked at, and perhaps we need a different way of arriving at the correct formula.

I do not want to disappoint my hon Friend the Member for Hemel Hemp stead, but the present scheme relates to the new towns which are growing rather than towns which have come to the end of their period of expansion. Although I should be delighted to help my hon. Friend I must point out that he will have to make a strong case for Hemel Hempstead to get an increase in the grants. One of the first things I had to do when taking up my office last summer was to see a deputation from Crawley which raised the same point. It will be difficult, in view of the purpose of the amenity grant, to imagine that that could be done.

It was fitting that a London Member, the hon. Member for Wandsworth, Central (Mr. Thomas Cox), should take part in this debate. It is important that the new towns should continue the programme of overspill which is now taking place, and there is a continuing need for such activity. My right hon. Friend recently set up the London Action Group to deal with the problem of London housing, and I am chairman of the Group. Therefore, I know that it is crucial to go on with the work of new towns. There has already been a substantial programme involving 42,000 houses in expanding towns, with a further 60,000 houses in the pipeline. In addition, the new towns are expected to produce on average 5,000 houses a year to take in people from London, a large proportion of these houses being in Milton Keynes. There will also be a substantial number of houses for sale. There are already proposals for additional town development schemes—not new towns—and there is a continuing need to cater for overspill from London.

I do not accept all the other comments made by the hon. Member for Wandsworth about London housing, but I certainly accept what he said about overspill. Perhaps Wandsworth would like to twin with one of the new towns since this might make a contribution to solving the problem. It would be a change from some of the things I read in the Wandsworth Press about activities in the housing committee. Some action on the overspill front would be welcome, but I look with some concern at some of the remarks which have been made by Wandsworth Council.

The right hon. Member for Corby—

Sir G. de Freitas

For Kettering.

Mr. Channon

I beg the right hon. Gentleman's pardon. I meant to say the right hon. Member for Kettering but for the purposes of this debate Corby is the most important part of that constituency. As the right hon. Gentleman said, I have had the opportunity of visiting Corby, in his company, on two occasions within a week. They were enjoyable visits and I agree with him about the vigour of life and the number of amenities in Corby. He knows that my right hon. Friend has been carefully considering the future of Corby and wrote to the chairman of the corporation earlier this year.

It is true that the East Midlands Economic Planning Council has now raised the question afresh with my right hon. Friend and I hope a reply will shortly be sent to the Duke of Rutland. I cannot anticipate that reply, but the Government's view on Corby has been made well known. It is true that the unemployment level in Corby is unfortunately higher than any of us would like, but it is about the national average. Therefore, bearing in mind the Government's regional policy, it is difficult to imagine special I.D.C. treatment for Corby, which is already accorded special treatment as a new town taking in London overspill. Before making any further comment, I ought to await the detailed answer which my right hon. Friend will send to the planning council.

Sir G. de Freitas

The point is that there has been enormous investment in Corby—this was the point made by the Duke of Rutland—which is in danger of not being used, it is a waste of public resources. That is the point on which the Duke was particularly concentrating.

Mr. Channon

I do not want to anticipate what my right hon. Friend will say to the Duke. It is true there has been immense expenditure in Corby, as indeed there has been in every new town, but most of the expenditure is on assets which can be seen and which are being used. The largest amount of investment is in housing. Therefore I do not see how it can be said that there has been a waste of public money in Corby. The money spent there will continue to provide a great return to the nation. The vast majority of the money has been spent on housing and on building other facilities, which are already in use. I am confident that the town will continue to grow with the switch to the positive encourage- ment of private housing which the Corporation has recently been asked to make. I assure the right hon. Gentleman that his comments will be carefully studied by my right hon. Friend before he replies to the Duke of Rutland. It is hoped that he will be able to reply very shortly and then no doubt the right hon. Gentleman will consider the position.

The hon. Member for Skelmersdale—

Mr. McGuire

For Ince.

Mr. Channon

Again I apologise. I meant of course the hon. Member for Ince (Mr. McGuire)—for this purpose again Skelmersdale is to be regarded as the most important part of his constituency—raised one point in an intervention with my right hon. Friend. Though I do not wish to be taken as accepting the exact terms of what he said in that intervention, I am aware of the case to which he referred and which is being considered at present. No doubt there will be some objections to what is going on at present, and we shall have to consider how to deal with them. We shall keep in touch with the hon. Gentleman. The hon. Gentleman has done a service to his constituents by raising the matter this morning.

Mr. McGuire

I do not want to trespass on the hon. Gentleman's time, but this is an important matter. There are people who feel that the development corportion is indulging in some sharp practice. I want an assurance from the hon. Gentleman that this will not be allowed to happen. That is what my constituents want. If we can agree on that, it will be all to the good.

Mr. Channon

As I say, I cannot accept everything which the hon. Gentleman said. As at present advised, I certainly would not say that here had been any sharp practice by the corporation; my advice is that there is no suggestion that any such thing is likely to have taken place.

Mr. McGuire

I am going on what my constituents tell me.

Mr. Channon

I understand that, but I cannot accept the entirety of what the hon. Gentleman said, although I acknowledge the seriousness of the question which he raised. I shall consider the matter carefully.

The hon. Member for Ince raised several other points regarding the reform of local government. I had a very pleasant meeting with the Skelmersdale and Holland Urban District Council, and I know its view on this matter. The hon. Gentleman has reinforced them today, and I shall ensure that those views are drawn to my right hon. Friend's attention during the passage of the Bill through the House. For his part, the hon. Gentleman will have an opportunity to express his views again on that occasion.

In a most interesting speech, the hon. Gentleman raised a number of other matters. I think that it would he best for me to say that I shall examine carefully what he said and write to him if need be. He and I have already had a discussion about the future of Skelmersdale. I have noted carefully what he then said, as I have today noted his further observations on the same point, as well as what he said during the debate on the Queen's Speech. I am well seized of the point which he made in the debate on the Queen's Speech on the question of nominations to the corporation. As he knows, confidential discussions are now proceeding. I do not wish to be drawn further on that matter now.

My hon. Friend the Member for Chorley rightly raised the question of the future of the Central Lancashire new town. I accept that there has been too much delay, though I do not agree that we can be held responsible for it. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, when he came into office, immediately set in train an examination of the central Lancashire new town scheme, and a decision was announced by this Government at the earliest practicable moment. The decision was to go ahead with the new town, and as I say, we cannot be blamed for the delay. Any blame for delay must fall on other shoulders.

My hon. Friend asked, also, about development area or intermediate area status for her part of Lancashire. I shall ask my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry to note what she says on that score, it being a matter for him rather than for the Secretary of State for the Environment. Her observations have been noted and will be taken into account.

The corporation has been set up, the chairman, members and general manager have all been appointed. They are now pressing forward, and I hope that my hon. Friend will soon see signs of activity and evidence that some of the difficulties of the past to which she referred will be overcome. Matters are now progressing fast.

My hon. Friend the Member for Harlow—[Laughter.]—for Epping (Mr. Tebbit)—though for Harlow today, if I may so put it—raised a number of important questions. I agree about the great loss not only to Harlow but to our new towns generally through the death of Sir John Newsom. I join in the tribute which my hon. Friend paid to Sir John for his distinguished career not only in new town matters but in so many other sectors of public life.

I assure my hon. Friend that consultations will shortly begin with the local authorities about the appointment of a Chairman for the new town corporation. As regards the expansion of Harlow, as he knows, my right hon. Friend recently announced that he wishes to consider the expansion of Harlow separately, and the development corporation has been asked to up-date its earlier proposals. There will have to be consultations with the local authorities, and public advertisement of proposals if an Order to extend the designated area is to be made. If objections are received, a public inquiry will of necessity be held. I assure my hon. Friend that, although I cannot forecast what the decision will be, there will be no unnecessary delay in pressing on with this matter.

My hon. Friend the Member for Epping raised an interesting question regarding the Land Registry in relation to the sale of houses. We have asked the new town corporations the extent of the problem in this respect. As soon as we have the information, we shall try to deal with the matter with the Land Registry. I think that the problem varies very much from corporation to corporation, but I assure my hon. Friend that the point is very much in mind and we are taking action about it.

If I have not covered all the points which hon. Members made in the debate, I shall, if I may, write to them. The most encouraging feature of the debate has been the general support and good wishes for their future which the new towns have received from hon. Members on both sides. This is a clear sign that we all wish the new towns to go ahead to a great future. I have noted with interest the suggestion from the right hon. Member for Kettering that we should invite some members of the European Parliament to come and see our new towns, and I shall consider that.

The House is agreed on the importance of the new towns and about the need for their continuance. I hope, therefore, that the Bill will now be given a Second Reading. I should be very willing to allow the right hon. Member for Kettering the right to speak again if he wishes to exercise it. I am sure that my hon. Friends would be only too delighted to hear from him again. However, as that is, apparently, no longer the custom of the House, perhaps we should now come to a decision and give the Bill a Second Reading.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Bill committed to a Standing Committee pursuant to Standing Order No. 40 (Committal of Bills)