§ THE PAYMASTER-GENERAL (LORD STRACHIE)My Lords, perhaps you will allow me to follow the example of my noble friends, and to explain to you what has taken place in the other House this afternoon regarding the Housing (No. 2) Bill. Several Amendments have been inserted in Committee, and as I was present and heard what took place I will explain them. I may say that this is a temporary measure for one year only; it is not part of the 100,000 cottages scheme put forward by the Government some time ago. Its object is to meet possible distress in the building trade either in town or country. As far as towns are concerned the Local Government Board is the authority, and the powers of the Board 496 of Agriculture only come in as regards agricultural districts. There is no definition in the Bill as regards agricultural districts, but it has been arranged between the President of the Local Government Board and the President of the Board of Agriculture that their Departments will decide what is an urban and what is a rural district; but the bulk of the Bill will be under the jurisdiction of the Local Government Board. The object is, where there is unemployment, that instead of having unremunerative employment, instead of employing carpenters and bricklayers to wheel stones across a road in order to give them employment, they should be employed on remunerative work which will be some good afterwards to the community at large. The Local Government Board have no intention of themselves building houses. Their idea is to advance money either to local authorities or to public utility societies, and it will only be where it is impossible to get either of those bodies to deal with this question, and where, of course, there is great distress and it is necessary to employ money for building houses in a particular district, that the Local Government Board will intervene.
An Amendment has been put into the Bill in the other House to-day providing that neither the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries nor the Local Government Board shall, in the exercise of their powers under tins Bill, in any case themselves build any dwellings unless they are satisfied after holding a public local inquiry that in that case there is insufficient dwelling accommodation for the working classes or that the existing accommodation is unsuitable, and that dwelling accommodation cannot be otherwise satisfactorily provided. So that in that way there is no chance of anything being done unreasonably in this matter. As regards the taking of land, there are no compulsory powers; it can only be taken by agreement. A desire was expressed on the Opposition side in the House of Commons that the Development Commissioners should have intervening powers. In the other House to-day the President of the Local Government Board agreed fully to carry out the negotiations between Lord Robert Cecil and the Government, and the words "after consultation with" were struck out from subsection (1) of Clause 1, 497 and the words "with the concurrence of" were inserted, thus giving the Development Commissioners a complete veto in the matter. To meet an objection that was raised, after "maintenance" in sub-section (1) of Clause 3, the word "improvement" has been inserted. The object of this Amendment is to enable the two authorities or either of them to spend money upon buying cottages and improving and so rendering them fit for habitation. I think I may say that this Bill is now an entirely agreed Bill in the other House. In fact, Mr. Herbert Samuel said that unless it was treated as an approved Bill and had the entire consent of the Opposition he would not proceed further with it. Therefore I hope that when the Bill reaches this House your Lordships will pass it through all its stages to-day.