HL Deb 05 February 1947 vol 145 cc403-21

THE EARL OF GLASGOW rose to move to resolve, That the policy of His Majesty's Government of moving rural villages into the nearest towns is not in the best interests of the nation, and that the siting of the new housing scheme for the village of Glenbuck, Ayrshire, in the town of Muirkirk, and for the village of Waterside in the town of Dalmellington be reconsidered and further that an alternative plan be adopted for the proposed new town at Drongan. The noble Earl said: My Lords, this Motion has been worded so that it applies to the whole country, although I propose to speak chiefly on the de-population of the rural areas in the locality in which I live. This tendency to denude the countryside may or may not be common everywhere, but it does appear to be very active north of the Border and perhaps applies more to mining than agricultural villages. I have no wish to score a point against the Government; this undermining of the social structure of the countryside has been going on for a long time and has been the policy of successive Governments.

During the last fifteen years five Ayrshire villages have been moved into the nearest towns, and sixteen other rural communities—some of them hamlets and some of them cottage rows—have suffered the same fate. In the great majority of those cases the people themselves had no wish at all to be moved. The procedure has been that where a re-housing scheme for a village is contemplated and where the services for a village such as water, drainage, electricity and so on, have to be renewed or installed, the re-housing, for supposed economical reasons, is carried out in the nearest towns, and the process is continued until only the ruins of the village are left. Lucky is a rural community which has not got a town near it.

Glenbuck—your Lordships have never heard of it, I suppose—is an Ayrshire mining village on the borders of Lanarkshire. Against the wishes of the people, the health authorities at Edinburgh propose that the new housing scheme should be sited in Muirkirk, a town four miles away, on the ground that it is not worth while spending money on the enlarging of the Glenbuck water supply and bringing electricity to the village. They have a case, but these indefatigable planners have entirely overlooked the human aspect—namely, that the village dwellers have an affection for the place in which they were born and brought up. The people of Glenbuck have no wish to be uprooted and moved into a town. An argument which the noble Lord who replies will no doubt put forward is that the coal seams are worked out and that there is no future for the village. That may be true with regard to the coal seams which exist in the proximity of Glenbuck, but unproved seams of coal exist between Glenbuck and Muirkirk, and although the larger portion of those lies nearer Muirkirk, a distance of three or four miles will not preclude the miners of Glenbuck from working in any new pits which, dependent on the Coal Board, may be opened.

Most of the Glenbuck men work in or near Muirkirk but they have not the slightest wish to live there. A few work at the Douglas coal pits in Lanarkshire, and if they were moved to Muirkirk they would have further to go to their work. There is a great community spirit in Glenbuck. If the people are moved into a town, that will be lost, and surely it is the community spirit of the villages of the countryside which we want to preserve. It is quite true that the enlarging of the water supply and the installation of a new drainage system would cost money, but it would be money well spent. Providing that the Government will give the usual grant, I am quite sure that the ratepayers of Ayrshire will not grudge their share so that these people may live where they have always lived. I ask that this matter may be reconsidered and that the provision of whatever services are required for the village may be approved.

The village of Waterside in the Doon Valley is also threatened. The authorities in Edinburgh want to re-house the people in the neighbouring towns of Dalmellington and Patna, against their wishes and against the wishes of the Ayr County Council, which has ground available near the village for re-housing purposes. It is not a particularly good site, but it is feasible and a planning possibility, and it is also agreeable to the people; but the dictators have turned it down. Eighty per cent. of the men of Waterside work at or near the village, and it is a thriving community possessing a very fine Welfare Institute. I saw a deputation, and I was impressed with the strong desire shown by the men to remain where they are. They told me that 100 per cent. of the villagers wanted this. Locomotive men who work at Waterside would be particularly inconvenienced by removal to Patna or Dalmellington because they would have to travel from those places to Waterside to start their work very early in the morning. There is nothing to prevent the communities of Glenbuck and Waterside from achieving their desire to remain where they are except the stony-hearted attitude of the Department in Edinburgh.

VISCOUNT ELIBANK

Is it the Department in Edinburgh or the Secretary of State for Scotland?

THE EARL OF GLASGOW

The Secretary of State for Scotland approves of what the Department in Edinburgh does. I therefore ask that the whole question of the re-housing of the people of Waterside be, as in the case of Glenbuck, reconsidered and that the county council be permitted to go ahead with their alternative plans. Let me now turn to another aspect of planning—new towns. A town to house 40,000 people, and to cover 2,000 acres is to be built on the plains of Kyle, eight miles (too close in my opinion) from the Burgh of Ayr. Five mining villages are to be done away with and the people re-housed around the mining town of Drongan. The houses in these villages are in a bad condition, and it is difficult: to re-house the people where they are—that is what they want, of course—owing to the mineral situation. There is a strong case here for careful planning which should take into consideration, so far as possible, the wishes and the sentiments of the people who have to be uprooted. The people themselves do not wish to be moved into a town, although they would not object to being transferred to existing villages.

The county council plan, which was turned down, had the merit of preventing the de-population of the countryside. The county council has been forced to agree to the principle of this new township, but it much prefers its own plan. The Secretary of State has accepted the view of the planners in Edinburgh, and no doubt he thinks he is taking the long view in agreeing to a town of 40,000 people-a number nearly double the population of the area which the town is supposed to serve. He has given no consideration to the de-population of the countryside or to the wishes of the people, and he has brushed aside the plans of the local authority. His plan must go through.

If your Lordships will bear with me for a moment, I will state what the county council proposals are. The county authorities plan is to re-house the people from the Drongan area in the existing villages of Tarbolton, Auchinleck, Mauchline, Cumnock, Ochiltree and Coylton. They want these villages to be developed on modern lines, introducing light industries and public facilities for a mixed community of agricultural and other workers besides miners. Further, they propose to build a new modern village near Drongan, allowing for a community large enough to justify the provision of communal facilities. Almost all these villages which the County Council wishes to expand are on the fringe of the potential coal field. They would be safe from subsidence, and the miners would be near their work. Also this plan would ensure that they would be rehoused in moderate-sized country communities. This scheme for the expansion of existing villages should be supported—and I hope your Lordships will support it later on—for the following reasons. It is not a good policy to lift people out of village life which they are used to, and place them in a town. It is unsound in the interests of the future generation. Everyone agrees that the isolation of a mining community is a bad thing, and that living in the present old row of miners cottages, the miner has never had an opportunity of mixing with his fellows in other walks of life.

That is one of the objects of the proposed new town, but that aim can also be achieved by the original county council plan of bringing the miners into an agricultural village and by introducing into the village the appropriate light industries so that a community life will be built up which would justify the expenditure in the necessary public services. The scheme of the Edinburgh planners means the elimination of twenty-one dairy farms containing boo cows producing 380,000 gallons of milk a year. The plan of the local authorities for expanding existing small villages would interfere much less with complete farming units than the sterilization of the huge area envisaged in the Government scheme. Then there is the danger that in a large town the younger generation of miners would drift into other occupations, and above all it is a fact that people living in rural communities are healthier and often happier than those in towns, and few, if any, of these miners want to become townsmen. Surely, that should be the crux of the matter.

That is the local authorities' plan, and I venture to say that it is a better plan than that made in Edinburgh. What is to be deprecated is this dictatorship spirit. The local authorities are the people on the spot and they have to submit to having their ideas swept aside and their careful planning turned down by gentlemen sitting in Edinburgh. The county council might just as well give up their executive powers and consider themselves as advisory committees.

VISCOUNT ELIBANK

Is that the Lanarkshire County Council?

THE EARL OF GLASGOW

The Ayrshire County Council. I have another criticism. A considerable part of the proposed town will be within the parish of Coylton, which contains a very old community, and it is disagreeable, to say the least of it, to Scotsmen to think of this parish, with its historical and sentimental traditions, being merged into a town. The poet Burns (of whom some of your Lordships may have heard) was born within ten miles of the parish of Coylton. His footsteps have trod the banks of the Coyle. This is a burn which will run right through the centre of the new town, and which Burns has immortalized in these lines: I thought upon the banks of Coil, I thought upon my Nancy, I thought upon the witching smile That caught my youthful fancy. At last I reached the bonny glen, Where early life I sported, I passed the mill and Trysting Thorn Where Nancy aft I'd courted. The mill and a trysting thorn are still there, and if this plan is to go forward then I hope that this spot, dear to all Scotsmen, will be preserved against the encroachments of a modern town. I do not want to boom my part of the world too much, but Ayrshire is the Mecca of Scotsmen throughout the world. There are between 700,000 and 800,000 Americans of Scottish ancestry in the United States, and before the war many of these came to Ayrshire. No doubt after things have calmed down a little they will come again and bring their dollars, but there is no doubt that there will be a strong feeling of frustration amongst them when they look for the trysting thorn and the mill and find they have been incorporated in a modern town, however well-planned that town may be.

Some of your Lordships may think this is all sentiment and nonsense and should not be allowed to interfere with a planned scheme, but sentiment and ideology are strong forces in the world to-day and must be taken into account. What is being done in Ayrshire is being done throughout Scotland. I saw in the Press that the charming little village of Fordell in Fife is to be moved, with its population, into another town. I am indebted to the County Clerk of Fife for an interesting graph of the increase and decrease of the parish populations of the county, which showed how important the distribution of industry is for the development of the land and for the prevention of the de-population of the rural areas. As it pointed out, a well balanced mixture of industry within the rural districts will improve the conditions in those districts, and a good transport system will decongest the over-crowded mining areas, or in fact any over-crowded area, thus establishing a steady increase of wellbeing, evenly distributed over the whole land. This in my opinion should be the long term view in planning the countryside, and would greatly help to stein the flow from the country to the town. It is in pursuance of this general idea that Ayr County Council formulated the scheme for the Drongan area, which has been overruled by the super-planners in Edinburgh.

To sum up, since the objects of the proposed large town can be met by the alternative local authority plan, the building of the town is unnecessary. The county council plan has the advantage of resettling the people in the villages and small towns scattered throughout the countryside. Any further increase of the population in the area through bringing workers from Lanarkshire, for instance, could be met in the same way. If the new town is to be proceeded with it will take at least twenty-five years before it gets its whole population. During that period a large part of the 2,000 acres of agricultural land will be sterilized. Although the expansion of the villages under the county council scheme will take land from the countryside, the process will be gradual and more land will remain productive daring the bad times which lie ahead than would be available if the Government's plan were carried out and the new town built. Above all, it is the wish of the people to be moved into villages and not into the new town.

I think it is a matter of regret that the Government cannot be more elastic in their planning and that they should press their schemes through regardless of these considerations. It is true that the Ayr County Council did not formally object to the plan. The Ayrshire County Council has a Labour majority and they would hate to go against the Government in a strong way. As in other cases, they reluctantly agreed, in order not to delay housing. Your Lordships can imagine that if they did not agree at once to the Government's scheme it would mean a long period of delay and they could not go forward with the housing plans, and that is the reason why they agreed to the Government scheme. I sit on the Housing Committee, and I know that every member of that committee in his mind favours the expansion of existing villages instead of the installation of the people in a complete new township against their wishes. I ask the noble Lord if he will represent to the Secretary of State for Scotland the strong desire of these miners to be re-housed in villages, and their equally strong objection to being moved into a town, and that the county council plan be reconsidered with a view to its acceptance.

What is to be the end of all this? There are many reasons why it does no good service to the interest of the nation for the sturdy folk of the country to become town dwellers. It is the men from the villages of Scotland and the yeomen of England who, due to the surroundings in which they live, provide the strong physique and healthy constitution so necessary for the continuance of our race. A countryman has many attributes which a townsman, through no fault of his own, lacks. The countryman lives close to nature, and his character and outlook are often more serious-minded and stable. He and his women-kind work hard, and his capacity for work is not undermined and dissipated by the distractions and sometimes harmful influence of the towns. It is possible that we would have no country at all if it were not for the villagers. The men from the villages were a deciding factor in stemming the tide during the war, as the percentage of these men who passed their medical examination A was a great deal higher than that from the towns.

Some of the finest of all countrymen are miners, for the great majority of men who work in mines are countrymen. They may work at the bottom of the shaft, but when they come up they see the blue sky and the wild flowers of the countryside; and what is more important is that that is what their children see, instead of the streets of the town. It is a long way for me to go from Ayrshire to Sussex, but I would like to ask why the new town of Crawley could nit have been built on waste land, of which there is plenty in those parts. This country will shortly be faced with a serious economic situation when it will become difficult to pay for the food we are buying abroad. To keep the people alive, we shall want every bushel of wheat we can grow; and, as corollaries to that, every acre of land that will grow the wheat and the people to cultivate that land. Therefore, if, by sacrificing a beauty spot in Sussex or in Kent, thousands of acres of land can be saved, the extra money required would be money well spent.

It is common knowledge that the War Office have reserved large tracts of agricultural land all over the country. In view of the years of food shortage which are undoubtedly coming, I think the taking up of all this agricultural land is deplorable. The only thing to be said for it is that, in a crisis, this land, or most of it, can quickly be brought back into agriculture. That would not have been possible if a new town had been built there. I presume that in such a town as that proposed at Crawley all housing schemes for workers will be earmarked for families in whose interests the town is being built—families from the neighbouring big city. One cannot stop the countryman from coming in, but he can be discouraged by the provision of proper facilities in the villages and by expansion of those villages.

Finally, my Lords, I want to emphasize that in the interest of the maintenance of our food supplies the prevention of the de-population of the countryside is as important as the rehabilitation of townsmen. There is a fear that in carrying out this important task for the towns and cities the authorities may lose sight of the equally important aspect of keeping intact the social structure of the rural districts and the prevention of their de-population. I beg to move.

Moved to resolve, That the policy of His Majesty's Government of moving rural villages into the nearest towns is not in the best interests of the nation, and that the siting of the new housing scheme for the village of Glenbuck, Ayrshire, in the town of Muirkirk, and for the village of Waterside in the town of Dalmellington, be reconsidered; and further that an alternative plan be adopted for the proposed new town at Drongan.—(The Earl of Glasgow.)

3.24 p.m.

VISCOUNT ST. DAVIDS

My Lords, I want to speak to the first part of this Motion. I do not normally speak on Motions to do with Scottish affairs, as I believe these things should be left to the Scots themselves. There was a time before I entered this House and when I first entered this House when I was prepared to speak in all Scottish debates, but I very soon came to realize what the words "Scotland for ever" meant; and since then I have not added to the length of debates by speaking myself. Besides, I have no experience of these various places with quaint names mentioned by the noble proposer of the Motion, and I think that they are much safer left in his charge.

In the first part of the Motion, I read: that the policy of His Majesty's Government of moving rural villages into the nearest towns is not in the best interests of the nation. I do not recognize that as the policy of the present Government. I cannot conceive that it would be the policy of the present Government, and if it were the policy of the present Government I myself would not support it.

THE EARL OF GLASGOW

It has been the policy of successive Governments.

VISCOUNT ST. DAVIDS

It may be that it was the policy of other Governments, but I have no knowledge of that. I certainly hope it is not the policy of the present Government. It seems to me that much the best organization, not only for Scotland but for the rest of Great Britain—and I usually speak for Wales—is the assembling of workers as far as possible in small communities, either small towns or reasonably-sized villages. We have already heard from the noble Earl in this debate many of the reasons why it is a bad thing for workers to live in large towns. There is a very good reason why they should live in small towns, or in villages; that is, of course, that in communities of that size they can receive the proper treatment which everyone demands in these modern days. Housewives are able, if they all live reasonably close together, to enjoy facilities such as modern shopping centres, electricity, water supplies, decent communications, and all those little things which make such an enormous difference to the average people of this country.

I know what it is like in Wales. I would like to tell you what a difference it makes in those parts for the ordinary worker if he is able to live in a reasonably small community. We have near my place a little village which is reasonably close to a bus route and although at the moment we have no piped water, I understand that water and electricity are very soon to be laid on for us. These facilities can only be brought to us because we are a fairly small, close-knit community. It is very difficult and very expensive to lay on those facilities to separate houses, cottages and homesteads which are scattered about the deep countryside.

What is more the housewife, who in our day likes to get fairly often to neighbouring towns or villages in order to shop, finds great difficulty in getting away from a homestead which is miles away out in the wilds. She has to take the children with her and probably she has to abandon her husband to fend for himself if, as in a great many of these rural communities or small farms, the husband comes in to dinner every day. What is more, the country worker in our days likes to get into a neighbouring community for a bit of community life; it may be to go to the pictures, it may be to attend a local meeting, or just to meet up with friends in the market and chat and generally to take part in normal community life. This is remarkably difficult for those who dwell in scattered homesteads. Therefore, for these and for a large number of other reasons, which I am sure your Lordships can think of for yourselves, this Government is, so far as I am aware, encouraging the growth of village life.

A fact which is of great importance from the point of view of agriculture (and I mean agriculture in the whole of Great Britain) is that if this great industry is really going to advance it must mechanize to a degree hitherto unknown, and, really, it can only mechanize efficiently from very small centres. This is partly because its mechanization depends on electricity and partly because tractors and such like machinery will break down. When they break down they almost inevitably break down at the most awkward moment, and they have then to be repaired. A farmer who lives out in the wilds has to get his broken tractor towed, it may be a considerable distance, to a machine shop; or else possibly weeks may elapse before someone can go out to his farm to repair it for him. In the meantime his farm work goes to the devil.

On the other hand, the fanner who is farming in a small community probably lives just across the road from the local machine-shop where his machinery can be put right with the minimum delay, or from which he can get a mechanic, or a welder, or whoever it may be, to cross the road to his premises and do the necessary repairs there. The result is that after a breakdown it is often possible to continue working with the repaired machine the same day. For these reasons, I think, we must accept and encourage the assembly of agricultural workers so far as possible into small communities. It is because I have this matter so much on my mind that I have risen to speak to-day. But I would like also to say that I support the noble Earl and I sympathize with him and with his small and outlandishly named Scottish villages. I hope that they will succeed in their fight against the bureaucrats of Edinburgh, who, I am sure, are not carrying out a policy which is approved either in Edinburgh or in Whitehall.

3.34 p.m.

LORD MORRISON

My Lords, the noble Viscount who has just addressed your Lordships' House commenced by making a general statement to the effect that, generally, Scottish affairs were better left to Scottish people. I did not hear any dissent from that view expressed in the House, and it puts me in a slight difficulty, because, as some of your Lordships may be aware, it is many years since I resided in Scotland. I was born there and, so far as I have been able to ascertain—delving back to the early part of the 17th Century—I am the only member of my family who ever was foolish enough to cross the Border and make his home in London. We all do foolish things, especially in our youth, and, unfortunately, it is now much too late for me to retrieve that which was lost and to make a new beginning. So it is that I find myself on a somewhat unequal footing with respect to the noble Earl who has raised this interesting discussion, inasmuch as—if I may use our own language—his foot is on his native heath, and he is speaking about places which are, obviously, much more familiar to him than they are to me. But I will do my best to reply.

Before doing so, may I say that I think that my noble friend who has just addressed your Lordships was not justified in poking fun at the quaint names of Scottish villages, particularly as he comes from Wales. My noble friend the Earl of Glasgow has done a useful service in raising this matter this afternoon, because it gives us an opportunity of discussing a number of important questions affecting, in a very direct way, the prosperity and social well-being of the people of Scotland. Towards the end of his speech, the noble Earl referred to a place in England—Crawley in Sussex. In doing so he touched on a question upon which I find myself in very keen sympathy with him, namely, the danger, in building these new towns, of taking agricultural land. With regard to such places as Crawley, I am satisfied that the Ministry of Agriculture in England and, equally, the Department of Agriculture in Scotland are fully seized of the importance of this consideration of not giving up any agricultural land if it is possible to avoid doing so. While I have no special knowledge in that connexion, apart from what I have gained through communication, I have some special knowledge of another of the new towns that is going to be built in England—the one at Hemel Hempstead. The noble Earl may have noticed that, after a public inquiry had been held, the Minister announced that while the new town is going to be built at Hemel Hempstead the dimensions are to be reduced by nearly 2,000 acres. That is to say, 2,000 acres—or almost 2,000 acres—that were included in the original plan have now been restored and will be retained for agricultural purposes.

With regard to Crawley, before a decision was reached to designate an area of land for the establishment of a new town, the effect upon the surrounding countryside and upon agricultural interests in particular was very carefully considered, in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture. Much of the land in the Crawley neighbourhood was, however, already lost to agriculture as the result of a considerable amount of scattered building development of suburban type which had taken place in the area between the two wars. Villages in the district had, moreover, lost their separate identities owing to urban developments which had occurred between them. As much as possible of this scattered development and as little as possible of farm land has been included within the designated area, so that at Crawley the effect of the new town on farmers and village communities has been reduced to a minimum.

To return to Scotland in general and Ayrshire in particular, to which my noble friend the Earl of Glasgow devoted the main part of his speech, as your Lordships are aware, he speaks with a wide background of knowledge and experience in these matters, particularly in the county of Ayrshire, to which he has specially drawn your Lordships' attention in the terms of the Motion. Needless to say, I would not presume to deal with these local questions with quite the same degree of intimate detail as my noble friend, particularly on this, the first occasion on which I have had the opportunity of expounding in your Lordships' House some aspects of the planning policy which my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Scotland is working out in association with the local planning authorities concerned. The noble Earl's Motion, however, is of more than purely local value and local interest. The questions which he has raised involve the wider issues of planning future development in many areas of Scotland in a manner which will ensure that the provision of employment, the provision of homes and the provision of the ever-increasing range of social facilities and services can be fitted together to form a real community pattern.

My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Scotland fully appreciates the need for preserving Scottish rural villages as healthy and vigorous communities, and his aim is to secure that, in appropriate cases, these villages are developed and extended and equipped with the full range of social facilities. The areas in the county of Ayrshire to which my noble friend made reference are not, however, rural villages in the ordinary sense of the word, but small isolated centres in which the principal, if not the sole, means of livelihood is coal mining. These centres were created substantially as a result of the industrial revolution of the 19th Century, at a time when there was no other planning aim beyond the simple provision of a sufficient number of houses near the pit-head to house the miners and their families in a collection of miners' rows, with no other facilities and services. My right honourable friend feels quite strongly that the sense of social and physical isolation which this type of 19th Century development involved is one of the worst heritages of the mining industry, and has been more responsible, I perhaps, than any other single cause for the tragic misunderstandings that have so often affected the miner in his relationship with his fellow industrial workers and the community at large.

My right honourable friend fully shares the views of the Scottish Coalfields Committee that, in future, in planning our new housing and other developments, the aim should be to create mixed communities in which the miner and his family can live in association and in human fellowship and can share the interests of their fellows in other trades and occupations. By community groupings of this kind better communal facilities and social services can be provided, a proper balance of employment can be secured, and the group centres can be made more attractive places to live in. In general, the local planning authorities in the existing mining areas of Scotland fully endorse this view, and they are working in the most harmonious relationship with my right honourable friend to give effect to these general objectives of policy.

Some of these conditions of physical isolation were present to a marked degree in the particular cases in Ayrshire to which my noble friend has referred. Glenbuck, for example, is a small centre comprising only about roc) houses, situated in the eastern part of the county and purely mining in character. The county council surveyed the area. They found that about eighty houses would be required to re-house families living in slum cottages and to provide for additional purely local needs. When my right honourable friend investigated the mining position in consultation with the Minister of Fuel and Power, it was ascertained that, while there were unwrought seams of coal in the Glenbuck area, these seams are so badly cut up by faults that the extraction of the coal would not be economic and that, broadly speaking, when the present mining operations had been completed—and this would be in a comparatively short period of time—there were no immediate prospects of further coal production in the Glenbuck area. In these circumstances, the county council were advised—and it is understood that they are in general agreement with this view—that the question of further housing provision at Glen-buck should be deferred, and that the housing need of the area should be made as part of the group community needs of the much larger settlement of Muirkirk, about three-and-a-half miles to the west.

As regards Waterside, this centre is the smallest of the three main communities in the River Doon valley which, in very many respects, closely resembles in its physical characteristics the much more familiar mining valleys of South Wales to which my noble friend Viscount St. Davids referred a moment ago. These three communities are in close physical relationship to one another—in fact, they are not more than two miles apart—and further development at Waterside would mean the danger of a complete ribbon of housing development, purely for the miners and their families, extending up the valley and closely hemmed in on all sides. In these circumstances, the county council were asked to consider preparing a development plan for the whole valley, with the broad object of concentrating further housing development at the villages of Patna and Dalmellington at each end of the valley, where much better group facilities already exist and where the topography will permit of expansion on really good lines. It was also hoped that a plan prepared in this form would enable suitable sites to be selected for new industries to balance and diversify the present character of the valley and to provide other sources of employment. My right honourable friend is aware, however, that although the county council fully appreciate the merits of a scheme on these lines there have been local expressions of view about the desirability of providing further housing accommodation at Waterside, and he is prepared to pursue this aspect of the matter further with the county council.

I now turn to the question which my noble friend raised about the siting of the proposed new town in the parish of Coylton. Whatever local feeling there be in relation to the housing needs of existing small communities in Ayrshire—and my right honourable friend is fully conscious that local loyalties and local traditions in this historic county are very strong—he feels sure there will be no doubt in the minds of your Lordships that any new community in the area designed to meet substantial new coal mining developments must be planned in a comprehensive way, to provide real industrial diversification and a full range of social and community facilities. Two new sinkings in Ayrshire are planned as part of a comprehensive programme of new mining developments in Scotland which the National Coal Board have in contemplation. One will employ upwards of about 2,000 miners and the other about 500 miners. Both are situated in close relationship to the site proposed for the new town. The larger pit will, in fact, be about two miles from the new town and the other a mile nearer.

These pits will not come into operation until 1953 at the earliest, but there is an urgent need in the area for about 500 houses to replace unfit and overcrowded houses which are reaching the obsolescent stage in neighbouring small villages. In addition, 500 new houses are urgently required for other miners who could be employed to increase production at existing pits. My right honourable friend has gone into this whole matter very closely with the Ayrshire County Council, and he has proposed, after these consultations with them, a site in the Coylton parish of the county for a new town to meet these needs. Some of the existing villages whose needs are being taken into account in planning the proposed new town are simply collections of miners' rows in which the houses are in a most deplorable condition. The vast majority have no water supply and no drainage and the houses themselves are condemned as unfit for human habitation. The county council propose to make an early start with the building of 500 new houses in this area. These houses will form a first instalment, as it were, of the proposed new town, and will be laid out in conformity with the new town plan.

The site of the proposed new town is very well situated for road and rail communication. It has a most attractive natural setting, and the Secretary of State is confident that it can be developed as a prosperous and thriving community and that new industry to provide alternate sources of employment can be attracted to the area. In this latter respect he is working closely with the President of the Board of Trade and the other Ministers concerned. Formal steps will be taken by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State in due course to prepare a draft Order under the New Towns Act designating the site as the site of a proposed new town, and there will be full opportunity of hearing the views of all interested parties on the proposal. In conclusion, may I add that there is no intention of regarding the proposed new town as a rigid and cast-iron plan which can in no circumstances be varied. We all know that no plan, however good it is, can possibly please everybody. Similarly, we know that no plan can be so perfect that it cannot be improved. Therefore, I can give my noble friend an assurance that every constructive suggestion from the county council, from other bodies and even from individual citizens, will be fully considered.

3.52 p.m.

THE EARL OF GLASGOW

My Lords, before I briefly refer to what the noble Lord has said, I am sure that all noble Lords who live north of the Tweed will be delighted to know that Scottish questions in your Lordships' House are to be answered by a Peer from Scotland—namely, the noble Lord, Lord Morrison. I understand that Lord Morrison is an Aberdonian. Aberdonians throughout the world are admired for their shrewdness, and also, although some people doubt it, for their sense of humour.

I am very sorry, but I am afraid that I cannot accept the explanations—quite sympathetic in some ways of the noble Lord. Some of the things to which he made reference are things which our county council in their plan intend to carry out. But, as I said before, the point about our county council plan is that we want to carry out the wishes of the people, as well as to keep the population in the countryside. With all respect to the noble Lord, he did not make much reference to the wishes of the people. To my mind this is a very important point. Not one of these miners desires to be moved into a town. They all want to go into the existing villages. They much prefer to go into a small community rather than into a large town. The noble Lord mentioned that the new town was going to have facilities for the wives and daughters of these miners, and so on. That is exactly what we want. That is what the county council wish to set up in these existing villages which are close to the minefields.

I was told before I left Ayrshire that the distance from the new town to some of the coalfields was further than were the coalfields from some of these villages which the noble Viscount from Wales said had unpronounceable names. It is quite true that the miners, if they work in these villages, would be very near to their work. I am quite prepared to say, and I do not think I shall be taken up upon it, that I am representing thousands of miners and their wives in Ayrshire. I am representing their wishes. Although the county council have agreed officially to the Government plan, I do not believe that it is in their thoughts. I think that they would much prefer to have the miners housed in the existing villages. The noble Viscount, the Leader of the Opposition, does not like unnecessary