§ 2 56 p.m.
§ THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF YORK asked His Majesty's Government what it steps they are taking to provide the large number of houses urgently required for the health and happiness of the people; and moved for Papers. The most reverend Prelate said: My Lords, I am anxious to ask the Government sonic questions as to their housing programme, but in doing so I have no intention or desire to harass them in any kind of way. They have inherited a rich legacy of unsolved planning and housing problems. The new Minister of Health has publicly stated that he himself, from personal experience, knows the discomfort of an overcrowded home, and he is throwing himself with the greatest enthusiasm into the effort to solve this problem. This, of course, is no Party problem. Every one of us, whatever Party we may belong to, is anxious to see the largest number of houses bunt in the shortest possible time. There ere differences on certain matters. There e re differences, for example, about the best methods to be followed, but there is no difference whatever about the end which we all desire to attain.
§ The problem is indeed one of the greatest domestic problems that this country has ever had to face. Before the war there were something like 4,000,000 826 houses which had been in existence for over eighty years—the normal healthy life of an ordinary house. During the war, as we have heard, some 200,000 houses were destroyed and a very much larger number were badly damaged. Furthermore, houses have been rapidly deteriorating during the war, and the position to-day is that men coming home from the Front, and looking forward to having homes of their own, find it impossible to secure houses, and, consequently, have to live with others in crowded conditions. I think that the most significant fact showing how grave is the position is this: basement and insanitary houses which long ago have been condemned, and which ought to have been destroyed completely, are now crowded with people because these people have nowhere else where they can live. I am one of those who have always denounced the slums, and have always urged that they should be pulled down and destroyed. To-clay, I would not ask for the destruction of a single slum house, because I know that there is nowhere else where the people dwelling in that house could live.
§ The first question I wish to ask the Government is this: What is their housing target? We all welcome the statement which was made by the Minister of Health that he resolves to concentrate on houses to let for the lower-income classes. The very remarkable housing programme which was carried out between the two wars—and it was a most remarkable programme and a remarkable achievement—certainly failed in one respect. Houses were mainly built for the middle classes, and while middle-class accommodation increased by 75 per cent., working-class accommodation increased by only 3o per cent. Two-thirds of the working-class accommodation was built by the local authorities, one-third by private or speculative builders, and one-twelfth of the houses built by the private-builders—only one-twelfth—were for letting. If these are the facts it means that the Minister is right in putting in front of himself the determination to build as many houses as possible to let to those who have lower incomes. I hope it will be possible later on to build houses which the man with the small income can buy. The greatest ambition that a large number of people with small means have, is to possess 827 houses of their own. I hope the full cooperation of the private builder will also be called in, but at the moment I think the Government must concentrate on the building of houses to let to those who have the lower scale of income.
§ But what is the target? The last Government told us what their target was. They were aiming at building four million houses in ten or twelve years. Five hundred thousand of those houses were to be built in two years after VE-Day, but we have not yet had any statement from the Government as to the number of houses they are aiming at building. I believe that the statement of a definite target would give encouragement and would be an incentive to authorities up and down the length of the country. I hope that a considerable number of the houses which are to be built will be built for those living in rural areas. We often talk of the housing programme as if it concerned only the towns, but as a matter of fact in the country you have your slums, an insufficient number of houses and people living in overcrowded conditions. I am told that while in the towns one person out of every four lives in a house which has been built only twenty years, in the country the proportion is one in ten. Unless you have a sufficient number of houses in the country you cannot have a continuation of the revival of agriculture. Young married farm-men will not remain in the country. They will move away to the towns. Men who are demobilized and thinking of working on farms will not do so unless they can have suitable houses. We all owe it to the farmers, and the agricultural community who have done so magnificently in this war in producing food, to see that they are properly housed.
§ I hope the Government will be able to tell us what it proposes to do in the way of rural housing. Three hundred thousand houses is a target which has been mentioned. It will not be possible to build all these houses at once. It will be necessary to recondition a number of existing houses, and I am bound to say that I felt considerable anxiety when we were told that the Government was not going to proceed with the Housing (Rural Workers) Act. That Act did a great deal of good. I know something about it. I was Chairman of a Committee appointed 828 by the Ministry of Health some years ago to consider whether that Act should be renewed. From different parts of the country we hear how it is working. It has not been used anything like sufficiently in England. Scotland, always knowing a good bargain, has been much wiser. But it has been used up and down the country. A number of houses have been reconditioned and used by those working on the land. I hope the Government have not reached a definite negative decision on this matter, for by the renewal of this Act they will not only provide the houses for those working on the land, but they will also give employment. I am told by local builders that this is the position. A number of their men in the Forces have just come back. They do not wish to come to London or to great towns to work on the repairing of houses. There is no new building in the country, or at any rate only on a very small scale, and the local builders can only use these men, if they are allowed to use them, on reconditioning and repair work. I very much hope that the Government will take this into consideration and renew the Act either in its present form or in some improved form.
§ My next question is: What kind of houses are there to be and in what kind of state are they to be erected? The Minister of Health said that he proposed in the future that we should avoid the segregation of classes. That was one of the mistakes of our programme in the past. You had one district in which there were wage earners, another district in which there were clerks, and another district in which there were people a grade above them, and they lived entirely separate lives. There was a monotony in that existence and often the dullness of those places was reflected in the dull ness of the architecture. I think the Minister was right when he spoke of these as being unbalanced communities or twilight villages. I hope we shall not build dormitories, but places with community lives of their own, in which there are found representatives of different classes all making their own special contribution to the life of the whole community, just as you find happening in the ordinary healthy village to-day. Every class feels that it has some responsibility towards the village.
§ I was a little anxious about one statement made by the Minister the other day 829 in which he said that he was going to try to persuade some of the local authorities or some of the great cities to make the experiment of erecting high buildings with the rural country round them. He said that just as the spire of a church might add to the beauty of a landscape, so there was nothing inconsistent in a high building conforming with the beauty and attractiveness of the landscape I myself doubt whether the most Cubist of architects could build a high building rather like a church spire which was both ecnomical and attractive. The one justification for great tenement buildings, and many of us dislike them intensely, is that they enable people to live near their work. They are built in places where land is very costly and where there is insufficient land. That is their one justification; but when you move these buildings into the country I can see no justification for their erection there at all I have seen some of these buildings in Italy and elsewhere, as no doubt your Lordships have. They rapidly deteriorate into slums. Far better build attractive small villages or cities outside rather than these great high tenement buildings. I hope very much that the Minister of Health was throwing out an interesting suggestion for stimulating discussion rather than stating what was intended to lot a matter of policy.
§ If a large programme of housing is to be carried out there are three conditions which are necessary for its working. There must be sufficient labour, them e must be sufficient material at a reasonable cost, and there must be machinery which works easily and smoothly. There must be sufficient labour. That is essential. that is the bottleneck of the whole matter. None of the most eloquent speeches, or the most attractive, programmes on housing will effect anything unless there is sufficient labour to carry out these building schemes. Before the war, there were 1,000,000 men in the building trade. During the war, that number went down to 337,000. The Government proposed to bring that number up to 800,000 within twelve months of Germany's defeat. What is happening at the present time? That is what I felt was the most disappointing feature in the very remarkable speech mode by the Minister in another place the other day. He did not tell us how many it was expected to demobilize from the Forces for 830 this purpose in the next few months. I know there are great difficulties, and that the demobilization of men out of their turn may cause intense bitterness. But let the men in the Forces be told the difficulty and then, I think, if they find there is some change in the order of demobilization, they will understand and appreciate it, if they realize it is for the building of the homes they hope to occupy.
§ Next, there is the anxiety over materials required for the building of these houses at a reasonable cost. The White Paper which was recently issued, shows that for temporary buildings the cost has gone up by £268. But it is not only the temporary buildings; for permanent buildings the price has gone up by 120 per cent. since 1938. The cost of a house in 1938, £550, has now gone up to £1,200. In an answer given in another place a few days ago, we were told that the cost of building materials had gone up from £274 to £472, and the largest increase was in connexion with timber. The noble Viscount who leads this House knows how serious this was immediately after the last war, when the cost of a three-roomed non-parlour house was £930, and which, in ten years, had gone down to £350. Why are these prices going up? People write and tell me there is a ramp. I am always uncertain what is meant by that phrase. I looked up the word "ramp" in a dictionary, and the first definition it gave was: "Standing on hind legs with forepaws in the air." It is rather a vivid description of people trying to grab something to which they are not necessarily entitled. What I would say is that—I realize I must stop at the end of this sentence; I have little more to say—if there is a ramp, if any class of the community, whether it is the capitalist class, the landlord class, or a trade union which is trying to make excessive profits out of the national emergency, that is a most unpatriotic action, and I trust the Government will use all the power they have to stop such reprehensible processes. I think your Lordships would wish me to finish now. I can do so in three minutes.
§ VISCOUNT ADDISONThere are still five minutes.
THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF YORKMy last point is that, for the carrying out of a large housing programme, you will 831 need not only labour, not only materials at a reasonable cost, but also a smooth and swift working machinery. I have asked local authorities what they find the greatest hindrance in the way of getting on with their schemes, and I almost invariably get the same answer: they say they find it almost impossible to work quickly when they have to work with so many different Ministries. One local authority tells me they had to deal with six Ministries. They got through five of them, and were held up by the sixth. Another told me they got through the six Ministries, and had their scheme approved, and then, unexpectedly, the Ministry of Education stepped in with a claim to some of the land. Swift working is impossible with this machinery when matters have to be referred always to the Ministries of Health, Works, Town and Country Planning, Supply, Labour and Agriculture and, occasionally, Education, and I think there is another Ministry the name of which I have forgotten.
How can you carry on business quickly when you have to deal with all these different Ministries? It is a kind of obstacle race. The local authorities, understaffed at the present time, are baffled by this endless correspondence with endless Ministries, receiving, sometimes, replies which need further correspondence, and then, after months and months and months, they find they have to start again. I believe the Minister himself feels this difficulty, and is anxious to find some remedy. For Heaven's sake let us get rid of some of this red tape, so that we may be able to get on quickly with this problem. I hope you will not feel I have been over-critical. I have attempted to condense my remarks within the time for the general convenience of the House. I feel terribly anxious about this whole problem, and the whole position of housing. We cannot build up home life in this country unless there are houses in which the people can live. The happiness and contentment of the country during the next two years largely depend on the success of this housing programme. I can assure the Minister that if he adopts a wide and clear-sighted policy, and carries it through with vigour and determination, he will receive the support of the whole country. I beg to move for Papers.