HL Deb 31 October 1944 vol 133 cc729-62

2.59 p.m.

Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.

THE MINISTER OF RECONSTRUCTION (LORD WOOLTON)

My Lords, I present to your Lordships, for Second Reading, a Bill of some length and complexity, and described as the Town and Country Planning Bill: and I present it to you with a plea of urgency. The noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, when we were discussing the White Paper on the Control of Land Use, made some stringent observations about the language of this Bill, and expressed the wish that it had been in simpler and more understandable form. That is a wish which I, who have spent many months in Cabinet Committee on the Bill, whole-heartedly share. But the Statutes dealing with the land of this country are so deeply rooted in our history—and in ancient as well as modern history—that no short or simple Bill would meet the needs of the present situation. Therefore, in spite of the language of the Bill, I bespeak the support of the noble Viscount for its intentions. The spaciousness of the title of the Bill tends to overlay the urgency of its need: I want to put that need in simple language. The Bill is chiefly designed to make the provisions that are necessary in order that houses and shops and schools may be built, and particularly that houses may be built in those areas that have been badly "blitzed" during the war, or in those nearby areas where the long passage of time has blighted houses built to a standard that we should not to-day consider adequate or reasonable.

There are people who have told us that we ought to be content at this stage to deal with "blitzed" areas, and that the provisions of this Bill could have been accepted more easily if they had been confined to those areas. My Lords, that was a sentimental approach to the subject, though indeed it does credit to the willingness of people to make sacrifice in the interests of people who have suffered unduly from the war, and I have no doubt that, if we had been able, and if we had been content to produce a Bill framed from that restricted angle, the interests involved would have been prepared to make considerable sacrifices. But it is a bad thing to patch old garments with new cloth. Unhappily "blitz" and blight are inextricably mixed in many places, and the Government therefore decided that it was necessary to deal with the two together, in the hope that out of the calamity of destruction there might arise new housing estates, laid out in such a manner as to make them healthy to live in, good to look at, with proper access to places of work, and embracing the public and social amenities of schools and open spaces, churches and shopping centres, places of entertainment and public buildings: in short, conditions which are in accordance with our present-day thought on town planning, and indeed the conditions which are in accordance with the practice of both public authorities and the best private developers of land in the years before the war interfered with the progress of this development.

It is not necessary for me, in order to secure your Lordships' support for this Bill, to spend any undue amount of time in stressing the urgency of the need for rehousing in this country. The Government recognize that need. They are taking every step that is available to meet it. This Bill is one of the steps. We have made our plans for the future so that at the end of hostilities, when labour is available for making building materials and for using them, there shall be no delay. But it is essential that the sites shall be available and that building operations as well as rebuilding operations shall be neither retarded in time nor restricted in efficiency by lack of sites. That is the first and the chief reason why I commend this Bill to you. This Bill will make the necessary sites available. Clause 2 will give powers to purchase land for redevelopment of "blitzed" areas and Clause 9 for the redevelopment of blighted areas. In this connexion I should like to draw your Lordships' attention to Clause 10, which will give power to purchase land for certain definite planning purposes. The Bill enables local authorities to develop their "blitzed" and blighted areas as a whole. Quite obviously, in the process of doing this, it is necessary for them to obtain the sites to cover the whole of the area that is to be rebuilt. As your Lordships know, there are often in such areas very many owners, and the present process of public acquisition was doubtless deliberately planned to be slow in order that it might protect the owner of property from having his rights of possession carelessly or ruthlessly taken away from him.

When we deal with property, inevitably there arise old controversial issues on which many of your Lordships have in the past fought many strenuous battles. I hope we may avoid battle over this Bill, for it promotes machinery for meeting urgent human needs, and needs that brook no delay. Property owners have their rights and their obligations, and in the past it has been on them that the country has largely relied for the provision of houses for the people. Not a few of them, out of a deep sense of public obligation, have been in the forefront of housing reform and estate management. Such people have held land with a sense of trusteeship. But the problem of laying out and planning the very large areas that have been "blitzed" is so big that it is likely to be beyond the capacity of individual ownership, and therefore it is necessary for public authorities to be able to acquire the whole of the sites which are involved. Here, I should like to address myself to what I regard as an important issue. If the land has to be acquired, if the public interest requires it, and if indeed the ultimate result is inevitable, it is not sensible to make the process one of a long complicated and expensive battle over rights. The provisions of this Bill are designed to secure that when the Minister, who after all is responsible to Parliament, is satisfied that it is necessary in, the public interest that land shall be acquired, then it shall be acquired speedily.

I refer your Lordships to the Second and Sixth Schedules at the end of the Bill which describe this machinery. Here, as elsewhere, the Bill is carefully framed to do justice to the private citizen. It quite consistently follows the principle that every owner has the right to make his case before any decision is taken requiring him to sell his land to the local authority. But the Bill is also fair to the community. It makes it possible for land that is required in the public interest to be got with the least possible delay. Much time, labour, and expense will be saved as the result of the adoption of the principles that are in this Bill. A less formal and more constructive procedure than that of a prewar public inquiry will be available where appropriate, and a more expeditious method is provided than the present system of "referencing" (as it is called) for letting owners know that the question of purchasing their land has been raised. I hope your Lordships will give this proposal your support—that you will not only see in it practical necessity but that you will also see in it the opportunity that will be given to public authorities to build towns that are well-planned, with a proper balance of economic activity and social life, and are therefore likely to improve the health and the well-being of the people who live in them.

So much, my Lords, for the transference to public authorities of the ownership of land inside the "blitzed" or blighted area. But there is another question to which some of your Lordships I know have given great attention. It will not always be possible, it will not always be advisable, that rebuilding should take place to the same extent, for the same density of population, as was current under the old housing conditions. There is much strong argument for developing new areas of land outside of the existing urban areas in order to rectify this problem of overcrowding. I avoid the ungracious phrase, as it seems to me, about "decanting" the population into these new areas. It is important that local authorities should be empowered, under the ultimate jurisdiction, of course, of the central authority and therefore of Parliament to obtain land for this purpose and to ensure its proper development.

These new housing estates, removed from the existing centres of population, must not only be housing estates—dormitories, as the phrase goes. I remember so well seeing one of them about 25 years ago. The local authority had built it with some pride and the houses .were good, but the population was miserable. There were no shops there; no cinemas, no industry, and there was no community centre in the place; even the school was sufficiently distant to cause mothers daily periods of anxiety as to whether their children would successfully Grave the dangers of a vast motor-road which ran across the building estate. We have learnt much since then. These new estates must not be confined to "housing" people; there must be new communities with a community life and the public authorities must have powers to build, or, if they think it wise, to lease to other people to build, such services as are necessary to make a community life. There must be places to live in and places to work in and places in which people can get recreation from their work. The Bill deals with all these points. The most urgent reed arises in the "blitzed" areas; that is why the Bill is primarily concerned with them. But the Bill provides similar powers for dealing in due course with blighted areas and not only with those that are adjacent to "blitzed" areas—and it contains some general provisions (you find them in Clause 10) which apply to any area. For example, it provides for the compulsory acquisition of land needed for industrial development in towns where a proper balance of industry cannot otherwise be secured; and it gives a clear power to acquire land required anywhere for public open spaces and playing fields.

I hope I have said enough to commend the general purposes of this Bill to you, and to persuade you to pass it into law in this Session of Parliament, as was fore-shadowed in the King's Speech. I will not, for one moment, minimize, or attempt to pass over, the contentious clauses of this Bill. I have dealt first with the need for speed and comprehensiveness in the acquisition by public authorities of the land they must have. I now come to the question of whether public authorities will be able to pay for the land that they require. Some of the land will come into productive use almost at once and rents will provide the income to meet the capital charges, but, in other cases, this will not be so for some time. The possession of this land will be a charge on the local authority. We propose, in these cases—and I would here refer your Lordships to Clauses 5 and 8—that the central funds of the Exchequer shall render aid. In such cases local authorities will receive a grant—which they need never repay—equal to the loan charges for the first two years, and equal to half the loan charges for the third and fourth years in respect of land acquired for the "overspill" of population. But this may not be sufficient, and in cases where it is insufficient the Bill provides that the local authority may continue to receive grants (which, if circumstances justify it they may have to repay) up to the tenth, or even the fifteenth, year after the purchase of the land. These provisions in the Bill apply only in respect of the "blitzed" areas.

On July 11, in another place, my right honourable friend, the Minister of Town and Country Planning, committed the Government to consider in due course seeking the authority of Parliament to provide financial assistance, if such proved necessary, for local authorities in respect of land required for essential open spaces and also in respect of the redevelopment of blighted areas. I may say at once that the Government have given most careful consideration to these financial proposals and having regard to all the commitments which will fall on the Exchequer in the period after the war, they have concluded that these financial provisions are adequate and that they are as generous as it is possible for us to make them.

The next, but surely the most difficult, question arises when we come to deal with the price that shall be paid for land compulsorily acquired. I am sure that many of your Lordships will want to discuss this question in detail. So much public attention has been drawn to it in another place that perhaps there is little that I can add to your existing knowledge on the subject. In commending Clauses 52, 53 and 54 in Part II of the Bill, I shall be more brief perhaps than the subject warrants, but I commend them to you with conviction. The location of the destruction that comes from war has no basis of justice or of equity. Bombs have fallen in some areas and not in others: So much destruction has taken place, and has to be overcome, that the possibility of rapid development for building purposes of any particular piece of land has been greatly reduced by the calls that will be made on our building labour for erecting houses on the land already in use as building land. Some years must elapse before the labour and the material will be available for widespread development on fresh land. Moreover, the cost of building has increased since the war, and is likely to remain greater than it was before the war for some years after the war. These factors of retarded building progress and high costs both tend to depreciate the value of virgin land. On the other hand, not only have populations moved, but the special necessity for rehousing in some areas has undoubtedly caused adjacent land to have a development value that it did not possess in 1939.

I have elaborated these two sets of questions that have arisen directly as a result of the war, and there are obviously great variations from the normal in the value of land in different parts of the country. These variations arise from the war; they do not arise from any action, or any expenditure, or any enterprise or the lack of, enterprise by the owners of the land; and we have, therefore, conceived that equity was best served by saying that we would calculate compensation by first estimating what the present value of the land would have been if there had been no war. So, we have taken the date of March 31, 1939, and said that for public acquisition—in, say, 1945—we would pay the price that the land (in the state in which it is in 1945) would have fetched in 1939. In 1939 there was a free market in land. The price in 1939 was fixed by the operations of a willing buyer and a willing seller at a time when at any rate only the shadow of war was casting its reflection on the property market.

The first principle, therefore, on which these compensation clauses of the Bill are based is that the price of land compulsorily acquired should be based on the 1939 standard of prices. There are two other principles which I will state very briefly. The second principle is that when the dispossessed owner is also the occupier, an additional payment should be made. This is designed to help the owner-occupier whose land is compulsorily purchased to reinstate himself in another house, another shop, another factory or farm, as the case may be. And this addition, which will be paid not automatically but after consideration of all the relevant circumstances of each case, will in no case exceed 3o per cent. above the 1939 value of the building or agricultural land. And the third principle is that additional payments should also be made in respect of improvements carried out since 1939 but carried out in the interests of the war effort, carried out under the instructions, it may be, of the Ministry of Agriculture, or the Ministry of Supply, efforts which have been licensed by the Government.

That is the basis that we propose for compensation. It has been called "rough justice." Some people have used that phrase in order to commend it and some people have used it a little reluctantly with more emphasis on the word "rough" than on the word "justice." I commend it to your Lordships not only on these grounds, but also on the grounds of expediency. If his land is required for public purposes, the investor in land is being bought out: but he is being bought out in the currency of 1939 values. He is placed in precisely the same position as the people who have lent their money to the State, either in the past, or, more particularly, during this war. Remember there is a gigantic number of people who have willingly lent their money to the State during this war. They will be paid pound for pound, and the investor in land will be placed on precisely the same footing as the investor in War Savings Certificates. If I may summarize this section of the Bill we have sought to give the investor whose land or property is acquired the cash value he would have obtained for his investment at the last date when there was a free market in land, a market unaffected by war to determine the value of that investment. Where a man is using his investment either by way of residence or in the pursuit of employment we have recognized that he is entitled to a hearing if he can show that the price will not permit him to get other accommodation. Further, where in the interests of war production the owner has expended capital, in making improvements or additions to his property, we think he has a right to consideration on those grounds as to the price to be paid to him if he is dispossessed. We have thus made considerable endeavours to meet the claims of those to whom the payment of 1939 prices would not have been fair.

Finally I want to suggest that the Bill is not only a Bill for the speedy acquisition of land but is an important it step towards national and positive planning. The Town and Country Planning (Interim Development) Act, 1943, extended planning to the whole of England and Wales and enlarged the powers both of planning authorities and the Minister. But it was only a safeguarding measure, to prevent the task of reconstruction from being hindered. Further legislation was promised. This Bill will make it possible to secure that, in the parts of England where the need is most urgent, necessary development is in fact carried out at the right time (that is, as soon as ever the war situation allows) and carried out in the right place. The Bill is predominantly a land acquisition Bill. But it is more than that. I have already mentioned that where replanning is most urgently needed—that is in "blitzed" areas, and in blighted areas too—the local authority will be able, if this Bill is passed, to acquire not only the area that requires redevelopment but also such land elsewhere as good planning makes necessary. This marks a most important advance in the direction of positive planning, in which I know many of your Lordships have great interests, and it contrasts with the old conception of town planning, which was a conception of negative control.

Further, local planning authorities will be empowered themselves to carry out development of acquired land. But positive planning is a process in which all must play their parts. The Minister of Town and Country Planning and the local authority have most important parts to play, but so has private enterprise, and this Bill will enable private enterprise more effectively to serve the common interest. This Bill expects private enterprise to act as an important agency for carrying reconstruction into effect, and it expects that private enterprise and public authorities will, each of them, be working together to a common plan and to a common end. Thus, whilst the local authority may build many houses on the land acquired it will, perhaps normally, certainly in many cases, lease portions of the land it has bought, in some cases after developing the land itself, to men who will build and operate shops, factories, public-houses, cinemas and other places of general entertainment for the community.

But the Bill also marks a further stage in the making of national, as well as positive, planning more of a reality. Thus, the Minister of Town and Country Planning will be responsible for collaborating with the local authorities throughout their planning work. His consent will be needed for the local plans. He will confirm the purchase orders authorizing the local authority to purchase land compulsorily, and will thus be able to control the extent and the location of such development. Furthermore, the Minister will be empowered by subsection (7) of Clause 17 to direct local authorities to dispose of land, subject to certain safeguards, where he decides that this is in the interests of local development. And, though his relationship with the local authorities will no doubt be such as to render it necessary to use such compulsory power but seldom, it is essential that he should have this reserve power if he is to discharge his statutory duty of securing good planning in the positive as well as in the negative sense. I refer your Lordships on this issue to Clause 28 of the Bill. In future, the Minister of Town and Country Planning will be able to call upon a local planning authority to produce a plan for its area. This, again, is an essential power for the Minister to have in reserve for use when local planning authorities fall behind in their planning work.

I should have to make an even larger call upon your Lordships' patience if I were to attempt to cover in any detail the wide ground that falls within the ambit of this Bill. But I judge it to be more appropriate that this should be done in the Committee stage rather than on the Second Reading of the Bill. I have sought, therefore, to outline to you the intentions of this Bill. I hope that I have said enough to persuade your Lordships to share the conviction of my colleagues in the Government, and certainly my own conviction, that this Bill ought to become law, and ought to become law soon. This is an urgent and necessary measure. It comes nearer to doing justice to all the interests concerned than any alternative plan—and indeed there have been many—that we have considered or that we could devise. It is a workable measure that puts first things first, and enables them to be done. And it is a further instalment of the Government's proposals for ensuring that the land of this country is used in the national interest, and that the planning of those areas that have suffered war damage, and of the areas that have consequently to be rebuilt, shall be of a positive character and in line with modern thought. I beg to move.

Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Woolton.)

3.36 p.m.

LORD LATHAM

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Woolton, has shown considerable talent and ability in submitting this Bill to your Lordships for a Second Reading. He has exercised his considerable arts of salesmanship in displaying in the shop window some of the attractive features that this Bill may possess. But many even of those features, I think it is not unfair to say, are somewhat ersatz in character and poor in quality. This Bill could, I think, fairly be described as a "might have been." It might have been a Bill for the really large-scale, comprehensive planning of the towns, cities and countryside of our land. It might have been a Bill through which could have been realized the assurances which, from time to time, have been given to the people of this country, by many Ministers, as to the intention to make this country, and, notably, its towns and cities, more worthy for citizens to dwell in. It might have been a Bill under which the location of industry, the provision of housing, the provision of open spaces, the location of schools, and the projection of safer and better roads could have been dealt with as one unified conception and plan. It is nothing of the kind. This Bill is, in fact, not a town and country planning Bill. It is, as the noble Lord himself said in the course of his speech, principally a Bill for the acquisition of land, and, in so far as that is concerned, the emphasis is upon the acquisition of land in areas of extensive war damage.

The Bill will require that war damaged areas and obsolete areas are dealt with in a different way, and not, as the noble Lord said, as one single whole. There is in fact in the Bill a financial advantage if, in the next five years, a local authority concentrates its activities principally in areas of extensive war damage. I shall refer in more detail to the relevant provisions a little later on. It is a great pity that planning as it was conceived and expressed in your Lordships' House by Lord Reith, as far back as 1941, and by others of your Lordships at later dates—planning of a really comprehensive character—should have been in fact "sold down the river" in 1944. It is an ironical circumstance that it will not be the people of this country or the legislative institutions of this country that will determine most of the activities of planning and reconstruction in the next five years; it will be the fortuitous circumstance of where Hitler's bombs have dropped, because the financial inducement to the local authorities is to deal with areas of extensive war damage to the prejudice of other areas, and without necessarily considering the other areas in a comprehensive large-scale plan.

When this Bill was first introduced in another place, the associations representing all types of local authorities in this country, including rural district councils, the City of London and the London County Council, issued a statement setting out in firm but moderate language the objections to the Bill. I propose to invite your Lordships to consider to what extent those objections and those submissions have been met in the Bill as it left the other place. Take first the areas of extensive war damage. It is unhappily the case that the provisions with respect to those areas are not better but are worse than they were in the Bill when it was first introduced. They are worse in at least two respects, both of them important. The first is that the expedited procedure under Clause 2 (2), which when the Bill was introduced was to operate for a period of five years from the enactment of the Bill, has been altered to operate for two years, but, to be fair, I must say that that will be two years not from the date when the Bill becomes an Act, but from the appointed day fixed by the Minister. It is, however, a definite shortening of the period during which that expedited procedure of acquisition can be used. Secondly, there was introduced into the Bill a new provision that a local authority contemplating acquisition under Clause 1 must give two months' prior advertisement. That means that two months have been added to the time necessary for local authorities to acquire the land, even in areas of extensive war damage.

The next point upon which the bodies representing the local authorities made representations was that of the limited power Lo acquire land. The local authorities asked for power to acquire land compulsorily for all statutory purposes. The Bill does not provide that. It is fair, however, to say that the Bill does provide, for the first time, power to acquire land for open spaces; but the other statutory purposes for which local authorities need to acquire land are not dealt with in the Bill. With regard to procedure, I should like to say—and I say it with some satisfaction—that there has been a notable improvement. When the Bill was first introduced it provided for a number of different procedures where land was required for different purposes, but now they have been more or less unified into a common procedure which, by and large, should be simple and quick in action. That procedure, however, is not for all statutory purposes: it is only for the purposes of this Bill. Local authorities contemplating the acquisition of land for other purposes, such as housing and schools will have to follow the less speedy procedure laid down in legislation regarding hot: sing and other matters for which the acquisition of land is required. That, I think, is a defect. If it is right to have speedy procedure for the purposes of the Bill, it is equally right to have it for the acquisition of land for housing, schools and other purposes.

I come next to the question of financial assistance. The associations of local authorities said that this was inadequate, and indeed it was. It is still inadequate—very inadequate. The only alteration or improvement that I can discern in the Bill is that whereas when the Bill was originally introduced overspill acquisitions received no grant beyond the first two years, they are now to receive a further fifty per cent. grant for the third and fourth years. The financial assistance proposals, however, apply only to war-damaged areas and to overspill areas which are acquired in connexion with war-damaged areas. In the development and replanning of many of the densely-built-up areas in many of our cities and towns much overspill land will have to be acquired, as the noble Lord himself admitted in the course of his speech; but there is no proposal for any financial assistance in respect of the replanning and redevelopment of obsolete, outworn, decayed areas. Moreover, the assistance proposed to be given by way of grant in respect of open spaces, whilst it is improved slightly in the Bill, is not improved to anything like an adequate extent.

First of all, the proposed financial assistance does not apply (except to the extent to which I shall refer later) to new open spaces. It applies to open spaces in replacement of open spaces which are diverted to other purposes in extensively war-damaged areas. It is true that there is power in the Bill for the Minister to make regulations as regards new open spaces required in connexion with war-damaged areas, but in the light of the specific limitation provided in the Bill, that only replacement open spaces will attract the grant, I have the gravest misgivings as to what the regulations, when they are made by the Minister, will be. Furthermore, this financial assistance is limited, as I have said, to projects in extensively damaged areas, and is limited to five years, because the power to deal with extensively damaged areas under Clause 1 and the related clauses is limited to five years from the appointed day. Therefore it may well be the case that wherever portions of such areas have not been dealt with at the end of that five years, the local authorities will not only be without the special powers to deal with them, but will be without any right to receive any assistance from the Exchequer. That, I feel, will leave a good deal of the war-damaged areas untouched, and it will induce a scramble as the local authorities approach the end of the relatively speaking short period during which they can get financial assistance. They will be induced to put forward schemes and to take action which further reflection might show to be unwise.

The local authorities were very disturbed at two other proposals in the Bill as introduced. The first was power in the Minister to direct a local authority to dispose of land which it had acquired. This power remains, with certain unimportant (if I may say so) limitations in the Bill as it comes to your Lordships' House. The local authority associations are strongly opposed—all of them and in equal measure—to this power of a Minister to direct a local authority to dispose of land which it has acquired, and has acquired under the consent and with the permission of either this Minister or some other Minister, because a local authority normally cannot acquire land without the consent of some Minister unless it is prepared—as it seldom is and is more rarely able—to pay for the land out of rate income rather than out of borrowed money. At the proper stage we on this side will invite your Lordships to consider an Amendment in that respect.

The second point is the power in the Minister to prohibit a local authority from developing land which it has acquired for development, unless the Minister is satisfied that there is no other person willing and able to develop it. What does that mean? It means in practice that the local authorities will be left with the un-remunerative development, because there will be no person willing and able to do it—developments such as the provision of open spaces for the use of which there is no charge; but if there is any development which is likely to be remunerative then there will .be a person or persons or undertakings that will come along and express their willingness, and give assurances as to their ability, to carry it out. The Minister has power to say to the local authority, "You shall not carry out this profitable development; you shall not have an opportunity of off-setting profits against losses on other developments. This profitable section of the development must go to private enterprise." I submit that in the year 1944 that is an untenable position. It is unfair to the local authority; it will result in development by local authorities being mostly of the unremunerative kind. Then critics of local authority activities will come along later on and say that local authorities cannot do anything on a profitable basis. Opportunities will be taken to invite your Lordships to consider an Amendment to that provision in the Bill.

I come next to compensation. The provisions of the Bill, in so far as they have been altered since its introduction, are worse than they were. They will result in the local authorities paying considerably more for the land than they need for public purposes. In the first place, as the local authority associations said, the Bill as introduced did not give effect to the promises of Ministers. The promises of Ministers, repeated time after time and up to as recently as March of this year, were an acceptance of the Uthwatt Committee's recommendation of a ceiling, that ceiling being the price at March 31, 1939. That ceiling in the Bill became also a floor, although in terms the Uthwatt Committee said it was not recommending a standard price, it was recommending a maximum price; and the Committee went on to say that there might be land which, after the war, would be of less value than it was in 1939. That was the first distortion of an acceptance by the Government of the Uthwatt Committee's recommendation of July, 1941. But the position is now worse. In the rather tempestuous passage of this Bill through another place there has been added the power to pay a supplement up to 30 per cent. I readily agree that there are limited classes of owner-occupiers in which cases a supplement would be a fair way of treating them, but until a fortnight ago nobody really assumed that the term "owner-occupier" would apply to multiple stores and multiple owners, to people who are in fact investors in property and not owner-occupiers at all.

The owner-occupier has been envisaged by all of us as being a man in ownership and occupation of his residence or the man in the ownership and occupation of a shop, and such-like cases. Now the term "owner-occupier" has been extended, as I have said, to include multiple stores and indeed multiple owners—all at the expense of the local authorities; because it is the local authorities that will have to pay this additional price for the land. As the noble Lord said, there is no justice as to where bombs have fallen, but there is much injustice, therefore, if these cities and towns where they have fallen should be forced by the Legislature to pay these higher costs for the land which is needed to repair the damage, leaving aside the question of redeveloping their obsolete areas. I do not know whether the noble Lord, the Minister of Reconstruction, is yet able to make a statement with regard to the suggestion made in your Lordships' Housed thought with a general measure of approval—a little time ago that the Government should buy the land needed by local authorities and lease it to them at a rental appropriate to the purpose for which it is to be used. Has that proposal received, as he said it would receive, the further consideration of the Cabinet? If it has, it would be encouraging in connexion with the financial and compensatory provisions of this Bill to have some indication as to what has been the result of this reconsideration.

I wish you to consider what we are seeking in the matter of planning. If you judge this Bill by the conception of planning which existed before the war, or the need for planning as it was accepted before the war, this Bill might be regarded as being only partly inadequate; but in relation to the new conception of planning, the new and additional need for planning which will exist after the war, this Bill is utterly inadequate. It will of course enable us to repair what has been damaged. It will enable us to replace more or less to the same pattern what has been destroyed. It will enable us to tinker with obsolete areas, putting a patch on here and a patch on there, but it will not enable local authorities to plan on a large-scale, comprehensive basis. The whole approach to this problem from the very start has been wrong. The approach has been that you could deal with war-damage areas differently from other areas, indeed that you could deal with areas which have been extensively war-damaged differently from areas which have been only slightly war-damaged. That is the defect of this Bill.

Lord Portal, speaking in this House on December 1, 1942, in announcing the intention of the Government to set up the Ministry of Town and Country Planning, said: This Minister will be a member of the Ministerial Committee already referred to His main function in association with the Departments concerned will be to ensure that the translation of the agreed national policy into terms of land use and physical development is conceived as a single and consistent whole. This Bill does not so conceive it. This Bill does not make it possible to deal with planning as "a single and consistent whole." The Act which created the Ministry in February, 1943, charges the Minister with the duty of securing consistency and continuity in the framing and execution of a national policy with respect to the use and development of land throughout England and Wales. This Bill fails to do that, and it fails to put the necessary powers in the hands either of the Minister or of the local planning authorities, in order to achieve a national consistent policy of planning. So far from this Bill permitting national planning, it will not even permit of regional or area planning because local authorities will have to approach the problems of areas extensively war-damaged differently from, and on a different financial basis from, other areas, the slum areas, the over-built areas, the decaying areas, and the obsolete areas. That is not a single conception of planning, and it is not unfair to say it is tinkering with it.

Take the position in London. The position in London is no different from what it is in many of the big cities of the provinces. There has been prepared a County of London plan in which the problems of London are examined and the causes and defects indicated. Then proposals are put forward, principles are laid down, by which the defects of the County of London can be remedied—over a long time, I agree—proposals which must be flexible, which must be capable of adaptation to conditions as they may exist in thirty years' time, but proposals and principles conceived as one, with one single purpose, and that is, making the County of London a place in which the citizens of London can live a decent existence. None of the proposals in that plan can be, in my submission, even realistically and satisfactorily commenced under the provisions of this Bill. What I am saying about the County of London is also true in many respects, though I agree, happily, to a smaller extent, of other cities in this country.

What are our problems in the County of London? There are vast areas of out- worn property, decayed property, obsolete property, courts and streets into which the sun never enters, in which industry and housing are indiscriminately mixed, in which houses have been diverted from their original purpose and are now used for small untidy industries. No open spaces. It is the sad and tragic fact that in Southwark there is only one-fifth of an acre of open space to every thousand persons. Consider that in the light of the recommendation of the County of London plan that there should be four acres of open space per thousand persons—and that was not considered sufficient by the Minister of Town and Country Planning. In Shoreditch there is less than one-tenth of an acre of open space per thousand people. In ten boroughs of London there is less than one acre of open space per thousand persons. In some of the boroughs the only open spaces they have are disused graveyards. Yet we have this completely inadequate provision for the acquisition of open spaces. How is that to help those responsible for planning the County of London when land may cost £20,000 to £40,000 an acre in the very areas where these open spaces are most badly needed?

Then we have in London bad and wasteful use of land, a shocking use of land, having regard to the scarcity of land in the County of London. There is an obsolete road system. I ask any member of your Lordships' House to contemplate how far any planning authority could get with regard to a new road system similar to that recommended by Bressey under the provisions of this Bill. Not very far. Then there is the question of the railways, the road bridges, the tunnels, and the embankments. Add to that the fact that not only is there overcrowding of people in London in many areas, but there is overcrowding of buildings. There are not only slum dwellings in London, but there are many factories which are slums, many workshops which are slums. Therefore anyone approaching the problems of London must have a legislative instrument much wider, much more comprehensive than this Bill. When I refer to the County of London plan I wish to make it quite clear, as I have done before, that the London County Council has not yet pronounced upon that plan, but there is in the plan a comprehensive project for the reconstruction of an area of 1,500 acres in Poplar and Stepney. Those of your Lordships who know these districts will know how much they need reconstruction. The whole area requires to be replanned—streets suppressed, courts suppressed, new roads made, open spaces, proper housing, and necessary schools provided. How can that be done under this Bill? There will be parts of that 1,500 acres which will be areas of extensive war damage. There will be parts which will be areas of war damage but not of extensive damage, and there will be the rest, obsolete badly laid-out areas, falling within completely different sections of this Bill. There will be first the extensive war damage attracting an inadequate grant, and then the rest attracting no grant at all except such grants as are appropriate to the particular social services.

It is not only Stepney and Poplar. If any of your Lordships go into Shoreditch and Bethnal Green, to say nothing of certain parts of Hackney, you will see the same conditions existing. These conditions cannot be dealt with by the legislative machinery which is proposed under this Bill. If your Lordships think that this County of London plan is a mere dream, is a fantastic proposal of planners who are not realistic, may I remind you, as I have already said, that the Minister of Town and Country Planning has indicated his view that four acres per thousand persons which the plan proposes is not enough and that the Minister of Education has said that the two acres of playing fields contemplated in the plan is not enough? Yet two acres for a school playground is a revolution in London. There are very few schools indeed, especially elementary schools, which have two acres of playground. In some of the three-decker schools there are a thousand children with less than an acre. The Minister of Education, viewing the matter from the point of view of education, has said, quite rightly, that two acres of playing fields is hardly enough. The plan proposes a density varying according to certain areas of the county but takes as a rough mean 136 persons per acre. To achieve that would mean that half a million of the people of London would have to go out. But the Minister responsible has told us that this 136 is high and will require reconsideration, and that in the case of flats and cottages—it is two-thirds flats and one-third cottages—the number need not be so high.

So not only should you not consider the County of London Plan as being an extravaganza, but you should remember that it is regarded by the Ministries as being inadequate in some respects. Yet in my view it cannot be realistically commenced unless the planning authorities are given more effective and more comprehensive weapons than this Bill will give them. Planning is not wasteful. I wish somebody could find a convenient and compendious word as a substitute for planning. A good deal of nonsense is talked about planing, and much obtains credit because it is described as planning. Planning of the land of this country is no more than good estate management. So far from planning being wasteful it cart be a great investment. Loss of health, disease and the deaths which result from the slums and the injuries and deaths arising from accidents on the roads (be cause mainly our road system in London at all events is obsolete in relation to traffic) mean a loss of wealth and loss of social productivity. These things arise because we have not properly planned the land in our cities and in our towns.

This Bill must be given a Second Reading faute de mieux. To me it is a pretty sorry result of nearly two years' activities of the newly-created Ministry of Town and Country Planning. I think Lord Samuel reminded this House that the Minister was to be mounted on a racehorse.

VISCOUNT SAMUEL

Sir William Jowitt said that.

LORD LATHAM

The noble Viscount reminded this House that Sir William Jowitt had said that the Minister was to be mounted on a race-horse.

VISCOUNT SAMUEL

For triumphantly careering round the course.

LORD LATHAM

I will leave the noble Lord to develop that; it will be an attractive exercise. In conclusion may I say that I had hoped we could have put planning above Party, above faction, and above sectional interests? All citizens of good will really wish to make this country a green and pleasant land in which our people can dwell. In war we have accomplished the impossible, yet for peace we decline even to attempt the possible. If this is the best that the Government can do it means (does it not, my Lords?) that we are refusing to take advantage of the greatest opportunity ever presented to any generation to make our countryside, our towns and our cities worthy of our people. We need faith and courage but this Bill shows that we lack both. That will be the judgment of posterity and I greatly fear that posterity will be right.

4.17 p.m.

VISCOUNT SAMUEL

My Lords, this debate takes place between two discussions. A month ago we had a two-day debate on the Government's White Paper on Land Use in the course of which this Bill, then already before Parliament, was freely referred to and next week we shall be engaged in the Committee stage of this Bill. I do not propose to repeat to-day the observations that I made to your Lordships at the end of September. This Bill undoubtedly contains many very valuable provisions, indeed necessary and indispensable provisions, which have been laid before the House with great lucidity and convincingness by the Minister of Reconstruction. But I wholly agree with what has been said by my noble friend Lord Latham that this is not the great measure of town and country planning which the times require. It is indeed not only inadequate but it is in my view constructed fundamentally on wrong lines. I agree there also with the noble Lord who has just spoken and my remarks on the previous occasion were mainly directed to that point.

The Bill starts by dealing with the war-damaged areas, adds to them certain obsolescent areas and, while drawing a careful distinction between these various areas, presents a measure that is highly technical and greatly involved. In my view a quite simple, general, comprehensive Bill of a few clauses might have been introduced which would cover all the areas together and include the war-damaged ones with the rest. However, that has not been done and it is too late at this stage to suggest that the Bill should be altered so fundamentally as that. I do not propose therefore to dwell upon that which is indeed the fundamental point. In the Committee stage next week we shall have an opportunity of going into the several matters that have been raised by the noble Lord who has just spoken and others of comparative detail. He has spoken with a wide knowledge and experience to which I cannot lay claim and I do not propose to-day to speak on any of the particular points which will arise on the Committee stage. I therefore need detain your Lordships for a very short time.

I have only one thing to say but it is fundamental and it should determine, I submit, the general attitude of your Lordships to this Bill taken as a whole. It will enable us also to understand the strength of feeling that has been exhibited both in the House of Commons and in the country over certain proposals of this Bill. This is the latest outcome of a controversy which at intervals has played a very large part in the political history of our country. I will refer to three examples drawn from the past because the present case is really the fourth example of one and the same problem. At the time of the industrial revolution and the rapid development of the coal measures of this country, those fortunate individuals or families who were the owners of the farms and moorlands under the surface of which the mineral happened to be, received immense fortuitous fortunes at the future expense of the community as a whole. That has been one of the underlying causes of the great social bitterness that has been manifested ever since among the miners. Now in our own day the ownership of the minerals has been nationalized so that in future no such situation can occur, but if only that had been done a century ago what heart-burnings would have been saved and how much of what is really social wealth would have been preserved to the nation.

The second example was when, also as a result of the industrial revolution, the railway system was created. It is a notorious fact always mentioned in the social history of Great Britain, that the price paid to the landowners for the land needed for railway construction was most excessive. Ever since every passenger and every ton of goods has had to pay a toll in respect of that excessive charge. In each particular instance, of course, it is small, or even infinitesimal, but in the total, over the long period of years, it has been immense. A third example, and even greater than either of the others, has been the consequence of the rapid growth of our great cities during the last two or three generations, made possible by the improvement of urban communications, of which the most striking instance has been the creation of the London tube railways with the consequent enormous increase in the value of land lying along those railways and in the neighbourhood of their termini. The original owners sometimes, or more often speculators who have passed the ownership of land from hand to hand, have received tens of millions of [pounds, the whole of which will be a charge for all time upon the lessees of shops and the dwellers in the houses built in those areas.

Now we come to a fourth example. After these questions of the coal, the railways and urban land in general we have the consequence of the destruction of so many areas in our towns, and further the stimulus that has been given to replanning of our towns all over the country by the general recognition that the destruction of so many areas has been rather, viewed in the long run, an advantage than a disadvantage. The situation is this, that the town councils in those destroyed areas must have land for replanning. Owners, naturally, are not obliged to sell and if the whole matter is left to the ordinary operation of the law of demand and supply obviously prices would become exorbitant. If councils must pay the owners now hanging back prices would soar, and consequently it is obvious that the State must intervene.

The principle was laid down at the outbreak of the war that, during this war, unlike the previous one, no fortunes should be made out of it by private individuals. An Excess Profits Duty was at once imposed amounting to zoo per cent. That was found to have a deleterious effect upon enterprise and it was modified, and 20 per cent. is repayable, but 8o per cent. is taken away in taxation. Further, there was an immense Surtax imposed on all large incomes whether derived from the war or not. Now the question arises whether those who happen to be owners of land which is required through circumstances directly or indirectly arising from the war, should be the one exception, and whether they should be enabled to make considerable profits above what they would otherwise have attained; for, if there had been no war, construction in those areas would probably have been postponed for years, if indeed it were ever to be undertaken.

Consequently the Government, with great wisdom and courage announced as long ago as 1941 that no higher price should be paid than would have been obtainable in March, 1939. To that there was no general protest, but there has been a most extraordinary procrastination. I remember reading of an international conference held, I think, in the eighteenth century, where Austria found herself in a very difficult diplomatic situation, and the historian said that the Emperor of Austria sent to the conference "his skilled procrastinators." I am afread that in this instance there has been at work somewhere behind the scenes a number of very highly skilled procrastinators. I do not believe it has been the inherent legal difficulties that have delayed this matter during the last three or four years, and I am certain it is not want of ability on the part of be Government and their advisers generally, because they have shown in so many spheres the highest competence and skill. The culmination of this procrastination carried on year after year—which was seen also in the hesitation to create a Ministry of Planning, although it was obviously necessary, for two years—was the White Paper, in which it was actually proposed that the settlement of sums in compensation should be pat off for five years and not be undertaken until 1950. That has been the background behind the vehement controversies in the other House and the discussion in the country.

When we come now to consider the Bill, as it, arrives here, it would no doubt be easy to indicate, with respect to this matter of the 1939 price, many hard cases, and to pick holes in the particular proposals. I dare say there will be a margin of hardship in special instances; but what of the greater injustice to the whole community for generation after generation in the course of ordinary administration? This Bill now comes to the House with a considerable measure of general agreement. It appears to be the best that can be done at this moment. To some proposals, such as those made by the noble Viscount, Lord Astor, dealing with compensation, and with other large issues, your Lordships' House will give its most careful consideration; and, indeed, many of the points of detail, such as those raised by the noble Lord, Lord Latham, will demand close attention. But generally, so far as prices and compensation are concerned, it appears to me that the House has no alternative, at this stage, but to accept the proposals more or less as they stand. The controversy has already put a strain on the cohesion of the Government which at one time threatened to become serious. I think we are all agreed that at the present stage of world affairs this Coalition Government is essential to the national safety, and for the accomplishment of the task for which that Government was originally formed, and that all such questions as these, compensation and betterment, good planning or bad planning, pale almost into insignificance compared with that great task. An accommodation has been reached in the other House with great difficulty, and I am sure that your Lordships would hesitate before, in essential matters, you would see that accommodation disturbed or imperilled.

4.32 p.m.

VISCOUNT ASTOR

My Lords, when I first went into public life, I used to think that it was possible to get Utopia by legislation. I found that that seldom happened, then I went through another stage where I felt that unless certain things were done, or if certain things were done, disaster would follow. I have now reached the stage where I am grateful for small mercies. The noble Lord, Lord Woolton, introducing this Bill, said that it was urgent and necessary, and explained why it could not be limited to the planning of "blitzed" areas. I agree entirely. We who are visualizing the task of replanning bombed and "blitzed" cities have been living on promises for some years, and this is the first time—I welcome the Bill therefore—that we are going to have some measure of security, on which to build. You cannot plan unless you know what powers you are going to have and what the financial help is going to be. Lord Latham expressed regret at the absence of co-operation on a national scale. I do not know what his experiences have been on his council, but my own experiences of the last few months have shown me that attempts to get co-operation in a municipal council, when you are tackling controversial problems such as are raised by planning, are heart-breaking.

A great deal of the criticism which has been levelled against the Government recently has, I think, been due to the fact that they have been proceeding piecemeal. I want to submit to your Lordships one point which I consider should underlie all our efforts in dealing with planning. I think there are three things to which every citizen, every dweller in our towns, is entitled. First of all I think that he is entitled to have a proper place to live in, a proper place to work in, and proper amenities. Lord Woolton explained that planning, in fact, meant amenities and better surroundings, quite apart from rehousing. In the second place, I maintain that everybody is entitled to adequate public services. There is great talk about the burden of rates and taxes. No burden is so heavy on the ratepayer as that of paying rates and not getting first-class public services. I think that that has a bearing on what I am going to say. The third point is that everybody should be encouraged to take an interest, and have a responsibility as a voter, in the city in which he lives and works, and where he is taxed. If any Bill deprives a considerable section of our people of any one of those three essential fundamental rights, I submit that the Bill to that extent fails in its object.

I said just now that the Government had been dealing with this matter in a piecemeal manner. When they decided to set up the new Ministry of Town and Country Planning they took some of the officers from the Ministry of Health, the Department which, up to then, had been responsible for housing and town planning, and transferred them to the new Ministry. But at the same time, the Ministry of Health, which, noble Lords will remember, used to be the old Local Government Board—that is to say the Department dealing with local authorities—was still left as the Department responsible for the provision of assistance to local authorities. The Government have made one great error, which I think is becoming apparent now. They ought, a year ago, two years ago, or three years ago, to have gone in for a measure of local government reform. I think that their not having done so is a sin of omission. What is happening in connexion with the new Education Act produces new responsibilities and duties for local authorities. Then there are great problems concerning transport and water and the zoning of hospitals. All these public services raise acutely the question of the nature of local authorities and this is relevant to town and country planning because it is the local authority that has to plan, and it is the local authority that has to administer these services.

The Government, as your Lordships will recall, promised this summer to introduce another measure very shortly dealing with a review of the status, boundaries and areas of local authorities. I am not going into that at any length to-day, but it is essential to bear in mind what I indicated as the three fundamental rights of every citizen, and to see that, in connexion with town planning, they are not deprived of any of those rights. The noble Lord, Lord Woolton, referred to overspill. He put aside the expression "decanting." We, in Plymouth, have, after two years of careful consideration, produced a plan which has met with universal approval and support. Unless this Bill can be amended, or unless amending legislation can be passed very soon after it, the effect of that will be that 20 per cent. of our people will lose the right of voting in their city. If we carry out the plan which has been universally acclaimed, it means that unless there can be a measure of reform—I hope added to this Bill—four-fifths of our existing population will have to carry the whole financial burden of the city in future if it is planned as we would like. I claim that the Town and Country Planning Bill should itself contain powers to enable local authorities to plan without disfranchising a fifth of their people and without damaging their finances.

Before coming from Plymouth yesterday I studied the early clauses dealing with procedure with the principal officers of our city. So far as we can understand the matter, it will be one to two years before we can start reconstructing our main redevelopment area. That is a considerable time, but, as noble Lords have already indicated, and as others will perhaps emphasize in the course of the debate, finance is largely the crux of the problem. There are bound to be hardships. What the Government have to do is to see that the financial clauses of the Bill produce as few hardships as possible and are as fair as possible, and also that they are sufficient to enable the local authorities to deal with the interests and the problems which face them.

Let me quote cases which we are finding in Plymouth. Under our plan we propose to acquire a central area of over 5o acres and make it into a shopping centre. I have been approached by firms representing similar businesses, sometimes situated on opposite sides of streets, in some cases damaged, in other cases undamaged, in some cases able to rebuild on the existing sites, in other cases obliged to move because a new road has to go through the place where their premises were first situated. Because of the interlocking of compensation under the War Damage Act and compensation under this Bill, we find similar firms situated close together receiving totally different sums in compensation. That has a very vital bearing upon the whole question of a local authority being able to go ahead.

It is a novel experiment when the business community of a city are no longer allowed to have their buildings on freehold property. I am not saying whether it is right or wrong, but large numbers of firms have grave misgivings about the provision in this Bill which compels them to have only leasehold where formerly they had freehold. There are firms who are now in doubt whether they should return when the war is over to a city where there is public ownership of the land, or whether they should move elsewhere where there is not that degree of control, or where they are offered Government factories. I am not saying that I agree with the fears or doubts or opposition of these business people; I am only explaining that those are some of the difficulties which a local authority finds when it has to replan a large district on a drastic scale.

The extent to which we can carry out our desires and the desires of those who are backing this Bill will really depend upon the, nature of the financial assistance which the Government are able to give us. We are grateful for the powers which this Bill gives. We are grateful for such assistance as is given, but I am doubtful whether the Treasury assistance is sufficient to enable local authorities in cases such as the one that I have in mind to plan as boldly and as constructively as they would like to do. In the Committee stage I shall ask for your Lordships' help in trying to preserve the three rights of which I spoke just now. I want to retain the right of the citizen to preserve his vote in the city in which he lives, and the right of the ratepayer to have a public service not less than that which is provided in other localities. Unless the Town and Country Planning Bill can be amended to meet those needs it may well be that some of the cities which are most anxious to go forward will not be able to carry out the intentions of the Bill, and the scheme on which they have set their hearts.

4.45 P.m.

EARL MANVERS

My Lords, in spite of the eloquence of the noble Lord, Lord Woolton, and of the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, I am not quite happy about Clause 52, which deals with the 1939 ceiling, in parts of the country where there is no war damage. Let me trouble the House for a few moments by giving my personal experience. I succeeded to the dignity of a seat in this House in April, 1940, and one of my first duties was the not very pleasant one of realizing some 43 per cent. of the family property to pay the Estate Duties. I had to part with some property which had been in the family for no less than seven hundred years. I do not say that to excite your Lordships' sympathy, but merely to demonstrate that there was nothing speculative about the sale. It was not even a voluntary sale, but was exacted from me by the hard necessities of the situation.

The auction sale took place in January, 1942. It was quite successful. The auctioneer thanked me afterwards, and congratulated me and himself on the result of the sale. We realized something like 282 years' purchase of the rent-roll of the property. There are two possible reasons for that. Land was fetching high prices, and possibly it was too low-rented before, which I am told often happens in the case of an old property. In any case the money did not go to me; it merely passed through my hands on its way to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Nevertheless, it was better to make a good sale than a bad sale, which would have necessitated further sacrifices. What is troubling me, however, is the position of the buyers of that property. They were not, so far as I could judge, men of great wealth; they were quite small men. Some of them were tenants of farms who wished to buy their farms; some were Nottingham tradesmen who had put by a few hundred pounds and thought well to invest it in landed property. Much of the land in question is in the near vicinity of the city of Nottingham, and it may very well be required by the local planners of the city council or of the county council. What is to happen to the buyers in those circumstances? Is a buyer to be expected to take less than he paid me in 1942? The injustice of that seems to me to cry to heaven. There may be two buyers living side by side, and the land of one of them, but not of the other, may be coveted by the local authority. Is the man whose land is coveted to be bought up at a loss, while his next-door neighbour is left in undisturbed possession, or in the alternative may sell his land in the open market?

I hope that the House will consider the invidious position of the planning committee of the county council and of the city council. What is the position of a committee which has to decide which of two neighbours it has to ruin and on which of the two it shall confer what may perhaps be a substantial benefit? I therefore urge the Government, so far as any words of mine carry weight with them, to take such administrative action as may occur to them to stop flagrant injustice in connexion with the 1939 ceiling.

4.50 p.m.

LORD HEMINGFORD

My Lords, I want to draw attention to an anomaly which causes hardship and injustice, and which I do not think was realized when this Bill was being discussed in another place. I am going to raise the matter first of all from the point of view of the licensed trade, and perhaps I ought to say what my interest in that is. I do not hold a single share of any kind, unfortunately, in any brewery company unless it be as a trustee, and I am doubtful about that, but I am a trustee for debenture holders in a fairly large brewery, in which the mortgage security which I hold as a trustee consists of a very large number of houses belonging to that brewery company. As the noble Lord will know, there are two systems on which breweries deal with their licensed houses. One, I think the more old-fashioned, is to put managers into the brewery's various houses and to sell its goods through them. These houses, therefore (I think I am right in this) will be owner-occupied and will be entitled to the extra 3o per cent. But the more modern, and I believe the majority, of brewery companies now work on a different system. They let their houses to tenants, and they therefore will not receive the 3o per cent.; they will not be entitled to it, as the houses will not be owner-occupied.

Those who have made a study of these matters will, I think, realize that this much-abused but still lawful business of licensed victualler is carried on much more for the benefit of the people of the country whom it serves if it is carried on by letting to tenants, rather than through managers of the brewery company. So far as I am concerned it will, of course, be obvious that the security which I hold as mortgagee will be very much poorer, and we shall be very much worse off through our having adopted the more modern and the better practice than we should be if all those houses had been occupied by managers of the company instead of by tenants. I think probably most of your Lordships will agree that it would be a misfortune to discredit that better method of carrying on the trade. The investors in what are supposed to be high-class debenture securities are a very considerable body of people, of all sorts and kinds, who were simply seeking a good investment for their money, and they cannot be said in any way to have been speculating. Those are really the people who are affected very largely by this particular hardship, and I hope that my noble friend Lord Woolton and those who are concerned with him in this Bill will be able to pay some attention to this point and allow us to give some consideration to it when we come to the Committee stage.

I am most unwilling to move any Amendments in Committee without consultation beforehand with the responsible Minister or somebody connected with him, who could give me some assurance that my Amendment would be regarded at least with some sympathy, and not treated as a means of putting difficulties in the way of the Government. Incidentally—to deal with quite another aspect of the Bill—I am a much firmer supporter of it since I listened to the speech of Lord Latham this afternoon than I was when I first came into the House. Therefore I am by no means unfriendly disposed to the Bill as a whole. But I am going to take this question a bit further and ask that it may be considered, because I must confess that I am not quite perfect about some of these points. I think there are a great many other cases where there is hardship on the owners of property through their not coming within the definition of the owner-occupier. Another big body of business people consists of the banks and their staffs. The banks, with the very large number of their offices or places of business, have to provide housing accommodation for their branch managers, and in most cases the branch will have a manager's house, belonging to the bank and held for the purpose of housing the manager. Often that house is not a suitable one for the manager if he is, as some of them fortunately are, possessed of some private income besides the very substantial remuneration which he receives, and he may also have a big family. The house may not suit him, and in very many cases he lives in his own house and the bank therefore lets the bank manager's house. If that is taken, I think I am right in saying that the bank will not get this 30 per cent. supplement.

There is a further case that I am even more doubtful about, but perhaps the noble Lord will be good enough to give some attention to it, and that is the case of the small owner of his own cottage. They are called cottages in the country, though they would sometimes be called houses if they were in a town. A very large number of houses of that kind have been bought by the men who live in them, and during this war the man has had to go al service. His wife may be remaining in the house and keeping it on for him; hoping for his return. On the other hand, she may be, and in very many cases—in cases that I know—she is also on service, and she is not living in the house because she has to go and work in a different place altogether. In those circumstances this man's home, which he has bought with his savings and to which he hopes to return after the war, will not be owner-occupied, and I think he will fail to be entitled to this 3o per cent.

LORD WOOLTON

No, he is covered.

LORD HEMINGFORD

I was not quite sure about that; I had some doubt about it. There is only one other point I want to put, and that is this. In those cases which I have mentioned, the cases of the licensed trade particularly, the number of properties which will be taken under this Bill is probably very considerable indeed. Take, for instance, these licensed houses. They will, over and over again, be taken entirely, perhaps, because of their corner position, for street improvements and things of that kind, and to a large extent they will have slices of property taken off for road widening and similar purposes. I hope attention will be given to this, that it will be looked into very carefully, and that we may have sympathy if we manage to produce an Amendment which will do away to some extent with this anomaly and ease the hardship and injustice of it.

THE EARL OF LISTOWEL

My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Addison, I beg to move that the debate be now adjourned.

Moved, That the debate be now adjourned.—(The Earl of Listowel.)

On Question, Motion agreed to, and ordered accordingly.

House adjourned at five o'clock.