§ THE EARL OF SELBORNErose to call attention to the overcrowding in the parish of Farnborough, Hants, and to move for a Return of the number of civil employees of (a) each Government Department: (b) each factory or dockyard under the control of a Government Department, whose wages bring them within the scope of the operation of the National Insurance Act, and the number of houses in each case provided for them by His Majesty's Government.
§ The noble Earl said: My Lords, last week this House was engaged in considering a very important aspect of the rural problem—that connected with wages. I would ask your Lordships' permission to bring before you to-night the kindred subject of housing accommodation. As was stated from both sides of the House last week, wages and housing are intimately associated problems. Every member of your Lordships' House will agree that in dealing with agricultural properties it is the duty of the landlord to provide good housing accommodation for all those who are employed upon his land. And when I say good housing accommodation I mean not only a good house but a good garden attached to the house, because the difference to an agricultural labourer between a house without a garden and a house with a garden represents far more in his annual economy of living than any one unconnected with the country can really appreciate. But I would add that there is a further duty incumbent upon the landlord. Where land is required for housing persons who are not employed upon his own property, it is his duty to be ready to part with that land on fair terms in order that houses may be built upon it for those who serve or work in the neighbourhood but do not actually work on that landlord's property.
§ Although I do not deny that part of the housing problem with which we are confronted has arisen from the fact that some landowners have either been too poor to build the necessary accommodation or unwilling to do so, being unmindful of their obligations, yet I say that the number of those cases is in proportion a small one. Far the greater amount of the difficulty has arisen from this fact, that a population has grown up in the country in the last half century that does not work on the land in the sense in which that term used to be used. I allude to the policeman, the roadman, the railwayman, the postman, and other employees of that kind. If there had been sufficient provision in that matter and if as those services grew up accommodation had been provided, I think in many cases, at all events, the problem which exists now would have been far less acute. What we recognise on both sides of the House is that there is a problem to be dealt with, But I submit that landowners are not the only people concerned with this problem, 1067 Employers of labour are concerned with it too, and on them rests a duty. It has become the custom in Parliament to set up Government employment as a standard. It has been said that the Government should be "model employers." Well, my Lords, have they been model employers in this matter of housing accommodation? And if the Government should be model employers, surely the Government ought to be model landowners. I would ask the Government whether they can show that their record, either from the point of view of employers or as landowners, is quite what they would wish it to be in this matter of housing accommodation. That is why I propose to move for a Return of the number of civil employees of each Government Department and of each factory or dockyard under the control of a Government Department whose wages bring them within the scope of the operation of the National Insurance Act, and the number of houses in each case provided for them by His Majesty's Government.
§ It has been no wish of my friends who sit on this side in either House of Parliament to turn this question of rural housing into a Party question, and certainly nothing we have done hitherto can be brought up against us as tending in that direction. I do not think noble Lords on the Front Bench opposite will deny that their chosen spokesman has not approached this question exclusively from the point of view of keeping it out of Party politics. Mr. Lloyd George has laid great stress on the inadequacy of housing accommodation in the country districts. He has taken the figure, which I think is generally admitted to be about the truth so far as it can be ascertained, that there is a shortage in agricultural districts of some 100,000 cottages. The noble Lord opposite is an authority, and he will contradict me if that is wrong; but I think that is about the figure at which the shortage is generally estimated. Mr. Lloyd George has harped on that shortage. He has endeavoured in every way in his power to raise the impression that it is due to selfishness and dereliction of duty on the part of landowners. He has never mentioned, so far as I know, that whereas there may be 100,000 cottages short or of insufficient quality, there is a vastly greater number of very good cottages which have been built at the expense of the landowner.
1068§ If any intelligent foreigner tried to get an impression of rural housing in England from Mr. Lloyd George's speeches, he would be quite unaware that the country was covered with many hundred thousand splendid cottages which had been built by landowners because they conceived it to be their duty to build those cottages. Nor has Mr. Lloyd George ever drawn attention to the fact that these good cottages have been built by the landowner at a personal loss and not as a commercial asset. If any noble Lord opposite says that this system of letting cottages below their commercial value is a bad one, I entirely agree. The right system, when we can achieve it, will be that the agricultural labourer shall receive a wage sufficient to enable him to pay a commercial rent for a sufficiently good cottage. But it is not the fault of the landowner that agricultural wages have been so low. I wish to say nothing in derogation of any other class, but is there any other class in this country which has recognised its obligations to its poorer neighbours as landowners have? Is there any other class of employer who has sunk millions in providing good houses for labourers, although those millions brought in practically no return at all? That is where I blame Mr. Lloyd George.
§ If any of us say that the chosen spokesman of the Government is a chosen instrument for setting class against class we are accused of partiality and of unfair statement. But, my Lords, who, from reading Mr. Lloyd George's speeches, would ever dream that there was a good side to the landowner of England or that he had ever attempted to do anything but oppress the poor? Noble Lords opposite sometimes, I must say, do surprise me. They do not want to set class against class; they are quite as well aware as we are that Mr. Lloyd George's speeches consist of a long string of suppressio veri and suggestio falsi; yet they hardly ever supplement his speeches by those words which would give the public a truer idea of the real perspective of these rural problems. Therefore when the chosen spokesman of the Government, knowing, I venture to say, at first hand nothing whatever of the real problem, and with the whole of his information drawn from inquiries which are not official, or from the gossip of his henchmen—when that is the chosen spokesman of the Govern- 1069 ment of the day it is not unfair to ask what the performances of that same Government have been the words of whose spokesman convey so harsh a censure on the land-owning class of this country. How do the performances of the Government compare with their speeches? Because words are not deeds in this matter, though many of the political supporters of noble Lords opposite sometimes give the impression that in their opinion there is no real distinction between words and deeds.
§ I happen to have a little experience, a local experience, in this matter which made me put down the Motion which is on the Paper. I live in the county of Hampshire, and within the last few years the Government have started an aircraft factory in the village of Farnborough. That aircraft factory employs, according to an answer given in the House of Commons just before Easter, 1,089 boys and men. Of those, as far as I can make out, somewhere between 800 and 900 are civilians, the rest being soldiers. At any rate it is quite certain that the Government, as employers of labour, have imported into the village of Farnborough between 800 and 900 civilian employees in their aircraft factory; but up to the present time the Government have not provided one single house—not one—for all these mechanics and artisans. The state of overcrowding in the village of Farnborough is something frightful. I am informed that a builder the other day, having four cottages on the eve of completion, received no fewer than 100 applications for these four cottages; and the first and only sign which this very censorious Government have shown of any appreciation of this matter is that in the current Estimates for the year 1914–15 a Vote is to be taken for the supply of forty-five houses for these nearly 900 operatives. Is that the case in other Government Departments, too? My noble friend Lord Salisbury is going to draw attention to the case of Rosyth, not entirely on all fours—though a very glaring scandal—because the inadequacy of the housing accommodation at Rosyth has hitherto principally been in connection, not with the direct employees of the Government, but with the employees of Government contractors. But at Farnborough we have the case of a factory directly under the control of the Government. Yet here are the Government, for whom Mr. Lloyd George speaks in terms of such scathing censure as regards a class 1070 who, on the whole, have been proved to have done their duty in this matter—here are the Government responsible for one of the grossest cases of rural overcrowding which exists in England, and they have only at this moment as it were wakened up to the knowledge that they have any kind of duty in the matter. If the matter were not so serious it has its comic element, for the man who makes these speeches is the Minister at the head of the Treasury, who is presumably responsible for finding the money for Government expenditure in these matters.
§ This is not the only case which has come to my notice. Another article in Mr. Lloyd George's indictment against landowners has been this, that where land has been required for public purposes landowners have been grasping and land has not been obtainable for public purposes except at the most exorbitant rates. When my noble friend Lord Lansdowne was Secretary of State for War a camp was formed at Bordon, in Hampshire, and nearer to me than Farnborough. Bordon was then a piece of absolutely derelict common land, the poorest possible description of land, nothing but gorse and heather; and in the course of fourteen years a military camp of considerable importance has been formed there. I suppose there are between 3,000 and 4,000 soldiers at Bordon Camp and a considerable civilian population has grown up around it. As a result there is a very urgent call for a police-station and a police-court, a natural result of such an aggregation of population, although I have the greatest pleasure in saying that the soldiers behave admirably. Yet you cannot have a mixed civilian and military population of some 4,000 or 5,000 without requiring a police-station and a police-court. Now the only land available for these purposes is Crown land in the camp, and that land, I venture to say, has no real value at all, because nobody would go and establish a residential property in the middle of a camp.
§ THE EARL OF SELBORNEIn the middle of the camp?
LORD LUCASAldershot started by being a camp, but is now a large town with very valuable land in it.
§ THE EARL OF SELBORNENobody would go and build a private dwelling-house in the middle of Bordon Camp. That is what I am talking about. The only person who would gladly buy land and build there would be a tradesman if he was allowed by the Government to prosecute his business there, but the Government do not sell land to tradesmen for that purpose. Therefore the only persons who could wish to buy land in this camp at Bordon would be the county council for the purpose of establishing a police-station and police-court, and you cannot imagine more public purposes than those. Now what sum does the Crown—whether it be the War Office or the Treasury I do not know—ask the County Council of Hampshire to pay for a piece of land in Bordon Camp for the purpose of fulfilling these essentially public purposes? The Government ask £1,000 an acre—£1,000 an acre for land which fifteen years ago was not worth £20 an acre, and which could not by any possibility be used at the present moment for any purpose whatever except a military purpose or a public purpose of the kind I have mentioned. And this is the Government whose chosen spokesman holds up landowners all through the country for being grasping Jews and for asking extortionate sums whenever land is required for a public purpose!
Unless these things are brought to light the public has no chance of judging between the words of the Government and their deeds. The worm will turn, and when we are attacked, as we have been attacked, we have a right to reply. It is not our wish to make this a Party question, because we are too conscious of the reality of the problem; we are too conscious that in some of our country villages it is almost impossible for a man on the wages he receives to get a sufficiently good house, and often when he can get a house he has not that garden which your Lordships have agreed with me by your assent to be such an important economical asset to him. Therefore we are all agreed that the problem is a very real one. But I would suggest that the solution of it is not assisted by the kind of treatment it has received from the chosen spokesman of the Government; and although noble Lords opposite will not acknowledge it, I believe it to be absolutely true that particular land taxes are not assisting at the present moment the provision of accommodation in the 1072 rural districts. If the Return for which I ask is granted by the Government, perhaps it will reveal to them a state of affairs within their own responsibility rather different from what they have suspected.
I do not for a moment suggest that the whole responsibility in respect of the housing of Government civil employees of this class rests on the present Government. If the Return discloses, as I think it may, a very wide dereliction from that standard which the Government themselves have set up, the blame may attach to previous Governments as well as to this Government. But when we come to works like Rosyth or aircraft factories like that at Farnborough, which have grown up exclusively in the life of the present Government, then the blame must rest with them; and therefore, my Lords, in order that we may have the matter on which to form a judgment I beg to move the Motion which stands in my name.
§ Moved, That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty for a Return of the number of civil employees of (a) each Government Department: (b) each factory or dockyard under the control of a Government Department, whose wages bring them within the scope of the operation of the National Insurance Act, and the number of houses in each case provided for them by His Majesty's Government.—(The Earl of Selborne.)
LORD LUCASMy Lords, a great many crimes are ascribed to my right hon. friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but I am quite certain that no one will be more surprised than he will be to hear that he is to blame for the overcrowding in the village of Farnborough. I do not suppose that he has ever heard of the village of Farnborough, and I am quite certain that nothing that my right hon. friend has said or done has in any way contributed to the present overcrowding which exists there. However, before I go on to the question of the actual conditions at Farnborough, I would like, if I may, to say one word about the position that the War Office finds itself in with regard both to land at Farnborough and other places, and especially at Bordon.
I do not want to reopen a controversy which has been many times discussed by commenting on the wisdom of the policy 1073 of choosing the most barren and deserted and unfriendly district that you could possibly find anywhere in the South of England and at enormous expenditure of money planting upon it a number of barracks, which to the eye of the unhappy soldiers who have to go and live there look more like penal settlements than anything else. It was the policy which was pursued when places like Bordon, Bulford, Tidworth and places like that were built. They involved an enormous expense to the taxpayers, and created frightful difficulties to recruiting owing to the extreme unpopularity of them and the large number of soldiers who deserted when sent there. But when a policy of that kind is carried out a number of difficulties at once arise, and one of them is the fact that you have no kind of civil buildings of any sort, and you are at once faced with the difficulty with which the Government was once before faced when it started with Aldershot—that the necessity arises for erecting civil buildings to enable whatever slight amenities can be given to the camp to be set up, and also for public purposes such as those to which the noble Earl referred. But in permitting a town to be created you are destroying the very purpose for which you originally started your camp—namely, to have a large training ground. The training area at Aldershot is very seriously interfered with by the town that now exists there. Still the problem is at the present moment being faced on Salisbury Plain.
Then comes the question as to what has to be done to meet these demands for land. I myself had a good deal to do with the administration of the Lands Branch at the War Office for some time. The first thing that confronts you when you are there is that the Treasury, quite rightly as the guardian of the public purse, insists that when the War Office parts with land it should part with it at its market value. The noble Earl referred to a certain plot of comparatively barren land being assessed by the War Office at £1,000 an acre. I am perfectly certain, from my knowledge of the very competent officers who work for the War Office in this matter, that their valuation of the fair market price of the land was an accurate one. I can only say that if £1,000 an acre seems a little high for land of that nature, it is the price that it is the common practice of landowners in this country to put upon land of that sort 1074 when it is sold, and the War Office does not differ from the majority of private landowners in the fact that it does not differentiate much between private persons and public authorities as to the purpose to which the land is to be put, except in some cases to the disadvantage of the public authority.
The noble Earl referred to what he called the duties of model employers, and he seemed to include in those duties the obligation of finding housing accommodation for all employees. May I suggest to him that there are two methods of carrying out the duties of so called model employers. One is to give your employees such a wage that they can afford to pay an economic rent for cottages which would then be built by private enterprise; the other is to pay them so low a wage that they cannot possibly afford to pay an economic rent, and that therefore one of the duties of the model employer is to provide cottages as well for the people he employs. The noble Earl seemed to be thinking entirely of the latter class of model employer. I humbly submit to your Lordships that, on the whole, that type of employer is less entitled to be described as model than the type who gives a living wage to his employees. It is the class of employer who pays a good economic wage to his employee and enables him to pay a decent rent for his cottage—it is that type of employer that the Government has always been. Therefore with regard to the housing of the people who work for them—I am talking now of civil employees, because the accommodation of soldiers is an entirely different question—the Government have always taken the line that they should pay a good wage and that the employee should find his own accommodation.
As the noble Earl refers in his Motion to the different Government Departments, perhaps I may state to your Lordships the answer that has been given to me by the Admiralty. I have shown this answer to the War Office, who entirely concur in it; and the Admiralty and the War Office are the two Departments most largely concerned, in that they have the largest number of employees working for them. As regards the general question, the Admiralty have adopted the policy that they do not provide or assist in the provision of accommodation for workmen in 1075 the vicinity of naval establishments except in very special circumstances, it being considered that local enterprise should be sufficient to provide such accommodation. At Portsmouth the dockyard and the town have grown up side by side, and so far as the Admiralty know, the men have always been able to find sufficient housing accommodation. Hence at that port the Admiralty have not embarked upon any housing scheme. There are exceptions to the general rule. Men whose services may be required in the dockyard outside working hours are provided with cottages; and, again, in the case of contractors carrying out large works in isolated positions the Admiralty have expressed the opinion that they should provide proper accommodation for their workmen. Lastly, should local enterprise fail absolutely for any reason to provide the accommodation required, the Admiralty would, without prejudice to the general principle, provide a certain number of cottages. This has been done at Haul-bowline and other places. That sums up the policy of the Admiralty and of the War Office. Generally speaking, they leave it entirely to private enterprise, but when they find that private enterprise, for any reason, is not meeting the demand they are perfectly prepared to consider the question upon its merits and, if necessary, step in and provide cottages.
That brings me to the case of Farnborough. As the noble Earl has said, the overcrowding at Farnborough is due to the creation of the aircraft factory there, and the very rapid way in which the number of men employed has been increased. Before that there was, I will not say no overcrowding, but a very small amount of it. In connection with the men employed at the Royal Aircraft Factory, two years ago the number of people, male and female, who had to be accommodated was 382. That was in April, 1912. In April of last year the number rose to 666, and in April of this year it has risen to 1,173. Apparently at first that did not cause any very serious overcrowding. I have here the annual report of the medical officer of health for the Farnborough Urban District Council for the year 1913, and he reports that six cases of overcrowding had been dealt with in the year. That is the overcrowding which the noble Earl referred to as "frightful"!
§ THE EARL OF SELBORNEThat may be perfectly true, but at what price has that been secured? By the men's wives being in other places.
LORD LUCASI dare say a certain number of their families were not there, but at the same time the overcrowding at Farnborough had certainly not assumed serious proportions at the time that this report for 1913 was made. Therefore the overcrowding at Farnborough is of extremely recent occurrence. It is being met—and this is the important point—in the following way. There are at the present moment in the village of Farnborough 50 cottages in process of construction by private enterprise; the rural district council of Farnborough are themselves erecting 30 cottages; and, as the noble Earl has mentioned, provision has been made in the Estimates by which during the present year 45 quarters are to be erected, and more will follow in subsequent years. That is to say, in the present year a total of 125 cottages are going to be built; so that I do not think it is possible to say that the position is being neglected in any way. While the aircraft factory itself has been in existence for some years, it is the recent very large increase of it which has produced the bad overcrowding. It is not either the fact to say that the matter has been neglected for a considerable time.
I turn from that to the question of the Return for which the noble Earl asks. He wants the Return to deal with each Government Department. As regards the factories and dockyards under the War Office and the Admiralty the Return can be furnished, but I am instructed to say that there will be considerable difficulty if the noble Earl wants the Return to apply to the employees of all other Government Departments. It has been the practice of these Departments only to provide residences for their employees when this is necessary to protect public property or to secure the constant attendance of an adequate staff. There are only two Departments, the Home Office and the Office of Woods, which find it necessary to house any considerable number of employees of the class referred to. The Home Office provide prison warders and criminal lunatic attendants with quarters in the institutions, or with pay in lieu 1077 thereof. The Office of Woods provide cottages for about half of their subordinate employees on Crown lands, this being necessary in the interests of good management. In the case of other Departments the provision of residences is quite exceptional, being practically confined to a few officekeepers and caretakers, and these employees as a rule have only quarters inside a Government office and so are not strictly within the scope of the proposed Return. In these circumstances the time and labour involved in the collection of information from all Government Departments would be very heavy, and it is hoped that if it is found necessary to grant any Return it may be confined to the War Office and the Admiralty, to whom this question, of course, chiefly refers. I hope, therefore, that the noble Earl, after what I have just said, will find it possible to confine his demand for a Return to that part of his Question which is marked (b). I say that partly for the reason I have given, but partly also because, as I set out by saying, it is the general policy of all Departments not to provide quarters unless for some special circumstance, but to give a wage which will enable the employees to pay an economic rent for quarters such as will stimulate private enterprise. It is only in exceptional circumstances, where for some reason private enterprise does not come into play, that Government Departments as a rule provide quarters for their employees.
§ THE EARL OF SELBORNEI do not want to cause a great deal of unnecessary work for an inadequate object, and therefore, while reserving my discretion for the future, I am willing at present to accede to the suggestion of the noble Lord by confining the Return to the number of civil employees of each factory or dockyard under the control of a Government Department.
LORD LUCASI am exceedingly obliged to the noble Earl. But if there are factories under Departments other than the War Office or the Admiralty and if there is a difficulty about providing the figures in those cases, perhaps he will allow me to communicate with him.
§ Original Motion withdrawn, and amended Motion moved as follows—
1078§ Moved, That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty for a Return of the number of civil employees of each factory or dockyard under the control of a Government Department, whose wages bring them within the scope of the operation of the National Insurance Act, and the number of houses in each case provided for them by His Majesty's Government.—(The Earl of Selborne)
§ On Question, Motion agreed to.