Lords Sitting of 24 June 1953

Preamble
The House met at half past two of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers

LORD FITZWALTER
2.35 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD SIMONDS): My Lords, I have to inform your Lordships that Her Majesty having been pleased to determine the abeyance existing in the Barony of FitzWalter in favour of Mr. FitzWalter Brook Plumptre, His Lordship stands at the Bar with his Writ of Summons. His Lordship is the nephew of Henry FitzWalter, Lord FitzWalter, in whose favour the abeyance then existing in the Barony was determined by His late Majesty King George V, and who took his seat in your Lordships' House on the 3rd December, 1924.
The Lord FitzWalter was then called in, and took and subscribed the Oath, pursuant to the Statute; and was placed on the Barons' Bench next below the Lord Hastings.

METROPOLITAN WATER BOARD BILL
Read 3a, with the Amendments; a further Amendment made; Bill passed, and returned to the Commons.
TYNEMOUTH CORPORATION BILL
Read 3a, with the Amendments, and passed, and returned to the Commons.
BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
EARL FORTESCUE: My Lords, I have to inform your Lordships that we have to interrupt the Business a little after half past three o'clock as there are two Statements to be made—one by the noble Earl, Lord Munster, on Colonial Development and Welfare, and the other by the noble Marquess, Lord Reading, on Germany.

NURSES AND ANTIBIOTICS
2.38 p.m.
LORD HADEN-GUEST: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Crook, I beg to ask the Question which stands in his name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they are aware of the number of nurses who have left their employment consequent upon allergic reaction to penicillin, and if so, what is the number.]
THE EARL OF ONSLOW: My Lords, the number of nurses who have left their employment as a result of allergic reaction to penicillin is not known, but a recent sample investigation showed that in seventy local health authority areas, seventy-three nurses Lad developed sensitivity to penicillin, and that in seventy-six hospitals seven nurses had been similarly affected. Larger numbers (eighty-six in the local health authority areas and 102 in the hospitals) had been similarly affected by streptomycin. The Minister of Health's Standing Medical Advisory Committee has now advised the Minister on the precautions which should be taken by nurses and others when giving injections of antibiotics, and this advice is being issued by the Minister to local health authorities and others concerned as a matter of urgency.

EAST GERMAN DISTURBANCES
2.40 p.m.
LORD VANSITTART: My Lords, I beg to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether information is available on the numbers killed or executed during the recent protests in East Berlin and the Soviet Zone of Germany against Communist tyranny.]
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (THE MARQUESS OF READING): My Lords, no official figures have been published, and as these events took place within East Berlin and in the Soviet Zone it is unlikely that full and

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reliable information will become available. At least seven persons died in the Western sectors of the city after being brought in wounded from the Eastern sector. At least one German citizen has been executed in Berlin by the Soviet authorities under martial law, and there are unconfirmed reports of similar executions at many places in the Soviet Zone.
LORD VANSITTART: I thank the noble Marquess for his Reply. I quite appreciate the difficulty of getting accurate information.

NEW TOWNS
2.42 p.m.
LORD SILKIN LORD SILKIN rose to call attention to the reports of the new towns development corporations for the year ended March 31, 1952; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name. As noble Lords will see, the Motion relates to the reports of the new towns development corporations for the year ended March 31, 1952. We are now in June, 1953, but the accounts are the latest that have been published. While, therefore, the Motion relates to those accounts, I hope your Lordships will allow me to take a somewhat broader view of the Motion and deal with the affairs of new towns generally. For the sake of convenience, the reports of the new towns development corporations have been incorporated in one volume. Under the New Towns Act, each development corporation is required to publish a report of its activities each year, and as a matter of convenience these reports are assembled by the Minister responsible and published in one volume. There are twelve development corporations functioning in England and Wales and two in Scotland, and this volume relates to the twelve development corporations functioning in England and Wales. Though it looks a rather formidable and forbidding document, I hope that your Lordships who have read it will have found it interesting and informative.
The New Towns Act was passed in 1946, and the first of the development corporations was set up in 1947. Under this Act we became committed to a very considerable expenditure of money. I believe that in connection with the fourteen
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new towns which are at present being erected, this country is committed to an expenditure of something like £250 million. I hasten to say that all Parties accepted the policy of the New Towns Act, and, I believe, still accept it; and only recently the present Minister came to Parliament and asked for sanction for the additional expenditure of £50 million. I mention these large sums because it is remarkable that, in spite of the large amount involved, and the great importance of these projects, which are novel and, I hope, imaginative, and which have aroused a great deal of interest throughout the world, the fact is that we have never discussed new towns in this House since the New Towns Act was passed. I think this is the first time we have discussed the principles of the New Towns Act. It is true that we had a short discussion on the measure for providing the further £50 million, but that was not regarded as an appropriate occasion for discussing the policy generally. Therefore, in spite of the paucity of speakers to-day—indeed there are no speakers from the Government side of the House, except Lord Mancroft—I feel that this subject is well worth while debating.
I should like first to remind the House of the purpose of the new towns. What was it that we sought to achieve by means of the New Towns Act? There were a variety of purposes; I will mention them briefly. First, there was the purpose of providing accommodation for those families which could not be re-housed when development of a built-up area took place, because of the congested nature of the existing development. In the case of London alone, it was estimated that there might be a million people who would have to be accommodated outside the London area when re-development took place. And the same applies to other congested areas like Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Leeds, Glasgow, and so on. It was felt that it would be wrong to attempt to re-house such persons either by putting up large numbers of fiats inside the towns or by continued expansion of the existing towns. In many cases, the existing towns have expanded so far that it now takes one almost a day's journey to get away from the town itself. Anyone who has tried to get away from one of these large towns—I will not refer to London but such towns as Manchester, for example—will appreciate

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what I mean. It is a very long journey from the centre of Manchester to the countryside. The same applies to Birmingham, where the problem is rendered even more difficult by reason of the complication of one-way streets. And similar conditions exist in other towns.
As to London, in some directions the whole of the area between London and the sea is now completely built up. If you go by road to Southend-on-Sea—I do not know whether any of your Lordships ever have to make that journey—you find that along the South end road there is only about a mile of undeveloped land between London and the coast. In other directions the same thing is to be found. So it was felt that the only way to re-house either the growing populations of these towns or the existing populations for whom accommodation could not be found inside them was to build entirely new towns some distance away, which would be not dormitory towns but towns where people would live and work and enjoy their recreation. That was one of the purposes of building new towns. But there was another. In a number of cases industries are being set up in different parts of the country—for instance at Corby, in Northamptonshire, where you have an iron ore industry carried on by Messrs. Stewart & Lloyds, or Aycliffe in Durham, where a Royal Ordnance filling factory is now being used as a trading estate, or Cwmbran in Monmouth, near Newport, which is now largely an engineering site. In each of those cases the industry is there, but there is no accommodation, or quite insufficient accommodation, for the people working in those industries. In these cases, again, it was felt that something should be done in a proper, co-ordinated, planned, way, to provide new accommodation for the workers employed in those industries. So we have the new towns of Corby, Cwmbran, and Aycliffe, in Durham.
There is a third type of new town and that is the new town which is being provided in areas where the mining industry is carried on. Your Lordships will know that in a great many parts of this country, where intensive coalmining is taking place, the miners are housed in wholly unsatisfactory conditions. In many cases they have to live close to the pits, amidst the smoke, the grime, the noise and the dust arising from the mining operations.
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Their homes are situated in some of the most dreary conditions that could be imagined. It was felt that it would be a good thing if new towns could be built for the mine workers, and that these should be towns which would afford employment for the mine workers themselves and also attract additional industries for the families of the mine workers, for their daughters, and for those members of the population who, for one reason or another, were unable or unwilling to work in the pits. We have a number of examples of that kind of new town—one is Peterlee in Durham and Glenrinnes in Scotland. These are the types of new towns to which we are committed. There are fourteen towns in all and it is intended that ultimately they should house a population of something like 600,000 persons.
The reports which have been published for the period ended March 31, 1952, indicate the progress that has been made up to that date. If your Lordships have taken the trouble to read those reports, you will perhaps be somewhat disappointed at the slow progress which they record, but I think a certain amount of reflection will satisfy you that progress has not been so slow as it might appear. It is true that some corporations are publishing their fifth annual reports, but inevitably in projects of this kind it must take a considerable time before rapid development can take place. The site has to be designated: an inquiry has to be held to see whether the site designated is suitable or not; plans have to be prepared—and to prepare a plan for a town of 60,000 people is no mean task; the plans have to be published and opportunities given to those interested to mike any objections; there is usually a public inquiry and it is only after that—and these preliminary proceedings may take some considerable time—that the development corporation who are entrusted with the task of building the new town can set to work. Then they have to acquire the necessary land and plan for the making of roads and sewers. It is not until all these things are done that they can begin building operations. Up to the time when these reports were published the existing development corporations together had erected a total of some 12,000 houses—by no means an unsatisfactory contribution to the housing problem, and there is no reason why this

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number should not be increased as time goes on.
I believe that within the time that was contemplated—that is, some fifteen years from the creation of these new towns—most of them will have been substantially completed. I think it would be useful to examine the progress that has been made from the point of view of what was expected of the new towns. First of all, they were expected to be completely self-contained towns. To the extent that people living in new towns travelled backwards and forwards to the place from which they came originally, the new towns would be regarded as failing in their purpose. The intention is that people should find their employment, their recreation, their social activities, indeed, their whole life, within the new town itself. The results so far are somewhat mixed. Inevitably greater consideration has been given to the building of houses than to the building of other social and recreational facilities. There is a considerable shortage of buildings in the new towns for carrying on these activities. While I would pay my tribute to those already living in the new towns for the genius of improvisation they have shown in creating facilities for themselves without the necessary accommodation, I feel that much better results would have been achieved if the operations of the development corporations had not been restricted so far as communal buildings are concerned.
But I observe that in the case of one new town—Aycliffe, of whose corporation my noble friend Lord Beveridge is the very distinguished chairman, and which has a relatively small population—there are no fewer than thirty-five different clubs and organisations already in existence. Of course, that includes the two political Parties, but it also includes two darts clubs, two football clubs, a cricket club, a women's institute and other kinds of organisation, all of which are carrying on under considerable difficulties. If the Minister concerned could relax the present arrangements and allow the development corporations to build pari passu the necessary social buildings required, I am sure these new towns would develop much more satisfactorily.
In many cases there is a shortage of school accommodation. I think that the
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county councils who are responsible have done their best, and in all some twenty new schools have been built. Nevertheless, to a considerable extent the primary schools are overcrowded and the secondary schools are carrying on under considerable difficulties. I do not want to make a speech which might be regarded as even remotely political. I regard the scheme for the new towns as something which has been accepted by all Parties, and if I make a criticism, I should have made exactly the same criticism if my own Party had been responsible for their administration today. The fact remains that in many cases the new towns are desperately short of schools.
The question of education is a great problem, because in the nature of things the people who come to the new towns are younger members of the community with young children. The requirements of education to-day are far different from what they are going to be later on, when the families living in these new towns become older. Moreover, we have to provide accommodation for the products of the higher birthrate of 1944 and 1945, a phenomenon which is taking place all over the country—what is known as the "educational bulge." The child population of to-day has been abnormally increased and will be so for a number of years then it will decline, because the birthrate has declined since 1946–47 and has become very much what it was before the war. The problem is how to get over these intervening years. In spite of that, I feel there is room for a certain number of additional schools and I was glad to note that the other day the Minister of Education made a statement that a certain degree of priority would be given to schools in the new towns. Then there is the question of health facilities. There again, I feel that we are somewhat lacking, although I do not propose to dwell on that aspect of the matter because I understand my noble friend Lord Haden-Guest will be speaking about it.
I want to say a word or two about industry. The keystone of the success of these new towns is in the question whether the necessary amount and kind of industry will be provided. In some cases the industrial requirements are being reasonably well met. I would instance Crawley and Hemel Hempstead as two towns where

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there is a reasonable amount of industry. In the case of the new towns which were started to provide accommodation for existing industry, there is, of course, substantially no need for much new industry; but in the case of other new towns there is a shortage of the appropriate kind of industry, and I believe that more could be done in this direction. What is needed is more industry and a greater diversification. Take a new town like Corby, which is substantially a one-industry town and a heavy industry town at that: it is essential that industry should be found for those who are incapable, for physical or other reasons, of employment in heavy industry, and particularly for the young women who are living in the town and who have to travel considerable distances to surrounding towns like Kettering and Leicester to find work. There are the cases of the mining towns, Glenrinnes and Peterlee. They, again, need industry of a diversified kind to give the towns the necessary balance. Therefore, it is a matter of great regret that hitherto the Board of Trade have not been as sympathetic to the requirements of the new towns as they might have been.
Here I should like to say a few words about the general attitude of the Departments to the new towns. I have indicated that these new towns constitute a great project—great from the point of view of expense, but great, also, from the point of view of imagination, of doing something which is new and trying out an entirely different kind of development in this country. These are Government projects for which the Government, as a whole, are responsible. Nevertheless, one has formed the impression that the different Departments are not looking at these projects as national projects, but are looking at them purely from a departmental point of view. As a result there is a shortage of industry in certain towns. We find the Board of Trade refusing to give certificates; and we find the Ministry of Works refusing building licences for industry which is essential if the new towns are to function successfully. The Ministry of Transport have not always been as helpful as they might be. New roads are necessary, and these have not been facilitated as they could have been.
I want to mention one particular instance where I believe the Ministry of Transport are actually functioning in
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opposition to the interests of one of the new towns—namely, Crawley. Your Lordships will be aware of the project for building a new airfield at Gatwick as an alternative to Heathrow. I do not desire to enter into a discussion of the merits of that; it may well be a desirable project, and even a necessary one. But there is no doubt about one thing—namely, that to build a large international air station at Gatwick will have serious repercussions upon the welfare of Crawley. Many industrialists have been induced to go to Crawley in the belief that they were going to a quiet country town, away from the hustle and bustle of London, and that their business would thereby benefit. It will be a serious deterrent to any further industrialist if an international air station is located outside Crawley. I would ask—as I think was suggested in a leading article in The Times a few days ago—that before the Ministry commit themselves to this vast project there should be a full inquiry into all the repercussions of building this new airfield: the repercussions on the Government project of Crawley itself, as well as the advantages of the new air station. I cannot help feeling that at the moment the matter is being looked at purely from the point of view of civil aviation, and not from that of its repercussions on the new town of Crawley.
Agriculture is another case in point. Of necessity you cannot build a new town unless you use a certain amount of land, but the Ministry of Agriculture fight a "last ditch" battle over every acre of land that is necessary for the purpose of building a new town. The Government have committee themselves to these new towns, and it is no good the Ministry of Agriculture now being difficult. Having decided on the new towns, we must make the best of them; and any land necessary for the purpose of building them in the most satisfactory way should be readily available, without all the complications of inter-Departmental battles. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, when he comes to reply, will be able to give the House an assurance that this internecine strife will end, and that all the Government Departments will co-operate and work together to carry these great public enterprises through to a successful conclusion.
I should now like to say a few words about cost. I have mentioned the figure of what it is at the moment estimated the new towns will cost. It is unfortunate that ever since the New Towns Act was passed costs have been rising. Building costs have risen; interest rates have risen. And what would have been an expenditure, I am told, of something like £400,000 in 1948, to-day involves an expenditure of £500,000. Moreover, as a result of the increase in interest rates the annual charge on such expenditure would to-day be £21,500, as against £12,000 in 1948. Nobody can be held to be responsible for that, but it is a substantial increase in cost. It might be asked, therefore, whether to-day it is advisable to go on with this full project, or to go on with it to the extent that was contemplated when it was first begun. I would point out, if the alternative is to build high flats in the congested towns—and I cannot think that there can be any other alternative; that is the only one that has been seriously put forward—that on the present subsidy basis it would cost this country very much more by way of subsidy to build high flats than to carry on with the building programme of new towns. A calculation has been made which indicates that it would cost from £10 million to £15 million more to build 10,000 high flats in London than to build 10,000 dwellings in the new towns. Therefore, from a financial point of view it is definitely more economical to build houses in the new towns than to build flats in the existing congested areas.
One of the difficulties which confronts the new towns at the present time is the question of rents. Of necessity the new towns have to charge economic rents—by "economic," I do not mean rents which produce a reasonable return on the outlay, but rents which take account of the Exchequer subsidy and the local authority subsidy. But even allowing for both subsidies, the rents, generally speaking, are considerably higher than comparable dwellings erected by local authorities. There are a number of reasons for this. One is that local authorities usually have a pool of houses—very often pre-war houses—which they can take into account, on which they are not making any losses at all, and they
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can average the loss over the whole housing field. Moreover, local authorities often disguise some of their housing expenditure by not charging it up to the housing account. For instance, they may have a good deal of expenditure in connection with housing which is charged not to the housing account but to some other account. In a great many other ways they can cover up the housing expenditure.
Furthermore, a number of local authorities openly recognise that they have to provide a greater rating loss than is required under the Housing Act. For instance, the London County Council make a much greater loss than the normal rating loss required of them by the most recent Housing Act. For all these reasons, the development corporations are in some difficulty in the rents that they charge, and these rents are in many cases not comparable with those which the local authority charges. On the other hand, there has been a certain amount of exaggeration about the rents which the development corporations are charging. A good deal has been made of the case of Stevenage. Some flats have been erected there for which the rent charged is £4 a week, or £200 a year. Some of us who have to live in London in a flat would not regard that as being unduly excessive, especially if one wants to live in this part of London. Of course such a rent is excessive if it is charged to members of the working classes. But these flats were never intended for members of the working classes.
One of the purposes of the new towns was to provide balanced communities. As I said earlier, the new towns would fail if they became dormitories, but they would also fail if they were housing merely one section of the community and were shunned by everybody else. It was the hope of those responsible for the new towns to get all sections of the community, all those engaged in carrying on activities in the new towns, to live in them. We did not want any commuters in the new towns. We want people who earn their living in the new towns to live in them and take their part in them. Therefore, it was necessary to build a certain number of flats for members of the so-called middle classes. In Steven age, in particular, it was hoped to get the Department of Scientific and

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Industrial Research to carry on some of their activities there. The people taking part in those activities can afford to pay a higher rent, and would wish to have the rather better accommodation which is provided. It seems to me grossly unfair that Stevenage should have been criticised because the development corporation there were doing the very thing which was in accordance with the spirit of the new towns—that is, providing for other sections of the community. I imagine that these things arise through lack of understanding, and I am glad to have the opportunity of saying a few kind words about Stevenage because, of all my large progeny, that has been perhaps, owing to a series of misfortunes, the most backward. If one could see the last report one would find that Stevenage has come forward a little, and although it was a late starter it is now doing much better.
There is so much that one could say on the subject of new towns and these reports that my problem is to know what to leave out. I wish, however, to say a word or two about the administration of the new towns. The purpose of building the new towns by means of development corporations was to get interested and concerned with their erection people who would have ideas of their own, each trying out the kind of things which he thought most desirable, thereby avoiding the awful monotony of building fourteen new towns all designed by one Government Department, however excellent, and all bearing on them the stamp of the Ministry of Housing and Local Government. I am very conscious of this, because in the County of London large numbers of blocks of flats have been built in the Georgian style, each excellent in design. But when you get 100 or 200 "excellences" all bearing upon them the stamp of the London County Council, it becomes a little monotonous and tiresome; and that was the kind of thing one wished to avoid in the case of new towns. Moreover, one regarded these new towns as laboratories In the next fifty years there is bound to be an immense amount of re-development of existing towns. Many of our towns are to-day hopelessly out of date. Of course, we cannot re-develop them all at once,—the physical facilities are not there—but there is no doubt that in the great cities of Lancashire, the West
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Riding of Yorkshire and in the Midlands, many towns will have to be almost completely rebuilt in the next generation or two; and we have a great deal to learn about the way in which the re-development should take place. It was felt that the new towns could serve a useful purpose in enabling us to carry out research and development on a relatively small scale—possibly even to make mistakes in some cases, but at any rate to avoid making the same mistakes all the time, and to make them on a small scale, rather than on a big scale.
If that is accepted as the case for development corporations, my criticism is that they have not been allowed their head as much as they ought to have been. There is a natural tendency for the person in Whitehall or St James's Square to feel that he knows better than anybody else how to build towns. He may do. But we do not want him to build all these new towns; that was not the idea. In some cases those people in London have felt that perhaps their own conception was better than that of other people. They did not like high blocks of flats, or they did not like this or that. The trouble is that too often their ideas have been imposed on the development corporations—not always, of course, by direct means There are indirect ways of imposing your ideas, if you know how to do it, and Whitehall is very skilful, as I know, in imposing its ideas indirectly, as well as directly.
I feel that we ought to give the development corporations as much scope and as much freedom as we can. I am not suggesting that we should allow them to do just what they like: the Minister, after all, is answerable to Parliament; he is given a certain amount of money to spend and he has got to account for it to Parliament. The question may be raised at any time, and he must be in a position to explain. This situation requires a very careful balance. It is not an easy matter: a balance has to be drawn as between the freedom that we want to give to the development corporations and the ultimate responsibility of the Minister. With wisdom and tolerance, however, this balance can, I feel, be reasonably drawn. And while I do not put it as a first-rate grievance I do say that too often development corporations have not been allowed their

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heads; they have not been allowed to give of their best. I think that in administration there is too much meticulous control, and that too much time is wasted in satisfying the meticulous requirements of the Departments. The functions of the corporations could have been very much speeded up if there had been less red tape than exists at the present time.
The Minister has stated that it is not his intention to start any more new towns. That I regret very much. I can, to some extent, understand it; I do not pretend that it is a wholly unintelligible point of view. But the point is that if we accept the purpose of the new towns, then there is a need for many more of them. If we accept their purpose, and accept the fact that to build these new towns is a proper way of providing accommodation, then we cannot just stop at the present number: we have got to go on and carry out the same action and the same purpose in many other parts of the country. The case for the new towns is very strong—both those around London and also the others which have been built. Take Manchester and Salford, which really constitute one town. They have a problem of providing accommodation outside their own area for something like 275,000 people. This cannot be done, unless we continue the existing congestion, without building new towns. The only solution is new towns. I am, of course, taking into consideration the Town Development Act, which provides for the expansion, the considerable expansion, of existing towns. I always had in mind, indeed, that the two things went together—they constitute one aspect of the same problem; in fact, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between what is a new town and what is an extension of an existing town. Take, for instance, Hemel Hempstead, which started with a population of approximately 20,000 and is going to have 60,000. There are other towns about London which are to have their populations substantially increased. That might be possible to a considerable extent, perhaps, round about Manchester. Nevertheless, there is a great need for a considerable number of additional towns around Manchester and elsewhere.
If we are not going to build these new towns, we shall be saying to Manchester, in effect, either "Re-develop your city in the old way"—and in perhaps twenty or thirty years time another Government will be seeking to undo what is being done to-day—or, "Do nothing at all." If they are really desirous of re-developing their city, and providing accommodation for their people in the good conditions of the new towns, we ought not to call a halt to the construction of new towns. We ought to make it possible for the new towns to be built wherever they are needed. If the Minister is fearful of incurring great expenditure, he ought to know by now that in fact very little expenditure is incurred in the first few years; it is only later, when housing gets into its stride, that considerable expenditure begins to be incurred. The same thing applies to Leeds, Glasgow, Birmingham, Liverpool and many other large towns scattered over the country. They are all incapable of providing accommodation for their people inside their areas; they have got to go outside; and we are satisfied that the construction of new towns or the extension of existing towns is the only satisfactory way of doing it.
My Lords, I have been somewhat critical, but the new towns have had their successes, and it would be wrong to conclude this speech without saying something about the successes, as well as about the shortcomings. They have been successful in providing new ideas for the Government. Whether we like them or not, at any rate we can see them: here they are in being. In the case of Stevenage, Harlow and Crawley, they have pedestrian shopping centres where traffic is not allowed to go, and where people can do their shopping in complete safety; and in many cases under cover, in arcades. That is the kind of thing which many of us have talked about in the past. It is one thing to talk about it and another to see it in action; and here it is in action. If we are contemplating doing the same thing in re-developed towns we can see here how it is working and can get reports on it.
Then there are new ideas on the layout of housing. We talk of "twelve to the acre," or of some such artificial figures of that kind. But here we have the new towns actually in being. Some are already taking shape, and we can see

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what "twelve to the acre" really means. I have never been able to understand from paper reports whether twelve to the acre or, indeed, any other figure, was really satisfactory or not; and I imagine that many of your Lordships are in the same position. Here we can see for ourselves, and make up our minds what is the right kind of development for these new towns and for the existing towns when rebuilt. There are also new ideas about housing. The corporations have had to improvise a great deal, and cut their coats according to the amount of cloth available. Many excellent ideas have been forthcoming with a view to cutting down the cost. Many types of new building have been put up—improvised schools and technical colleges and so on—and to-day people are coning from the Dominions and from all over the world to the new towns to see for themselves what we are doing. I do not want to make exaggerated claims, but these towns are already becoming quite important dollar earners. If you look at the reports of the development corporations you will see that quite an important function of theirs is to show overseas visitors over the new towns, so that they may see what is being clone. This will increase and continue.
In conclusion, I should like to say a word about those who are responsible for the carrying out of this great task, the members of the development corporations and the officers. Many of the members have been in office since the beginning. They are persons whom I myself appointed, and they have all done a wonderful job. It requires a great deal of devotion to undertake a thankless task of this kind. There is no publicity attached to it; there is only hard work. Many members of corporations, and many chairmen, have undertaken the task under conditions of great personal sacrifice, because they believed in what was being done and felt that they would like to play a part in doing it. I think that, by and large, they have done a magnificent job, and they do deserve the thanks of all of us for the part they have played.
I should like to say the same about the officers of the corporations: in many cases it has not been a job to them at all. I know of a number of officers who have accepted positions on the develop-
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ment corporations only at financial sacrifice. They have sacrificed their chances of superannuation, and even accepted a reduction in salary, in order to be able to play their part in this great public enterprise. I am sure that we should be right in expressing our gratitude to them. It is fortunate that this country produces persons of that kind whenever there is a need for them, because without such persons the ideals for which we have been striving, the purpose at which we have been aiming, would have completely failed. In the end, everything depends upon the personnel. With such people, we can feel confident that we shall go forward to complete success; and in the new towns that are at present operating, and in those which are to come, we shall be building up for future generations conditions of which we may well feel proud.

COLONIAL DEVELOPMENT AND WELFARE
3.32 p.m.
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (THE EARL OF MUNSTER): My Lords, will your Lordships pardon me if I intervene at this moment in order to make a statement on Government policy towards the Colonial Development and Welfare Acts? My right honourable friend the Colonial Secretary is asking Colonial Governments and other authorities concerned to provide him with material on which Her Majesty's Government can approach Parliament for further funds for Colonial development. He hopes it will be possible to introduce the necessary legislation early in the 1954–55 Session. Meanwhile, he is telling Colonial Governments that they may proceed on the assumption that the period in which the £140 million sterling provided under the Colonial Development and Welfare Acts of 1945 and 1950 may be spent will be extended by legislation beyond the period to March 31, 1956. He is also telling them that, where necessary for essential development, they may enter into commitments extending beyond 1956 and over and above the £140 million already provided, on the understanding that Her Majesty's Government will in due course ask Parliament to vote the

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necessary moneys. Such advance commitments will be limited to a total of £7 million and will not be made without the concurrence of the Treasury.
There is a further matter of which I should like to inform the House. Because of the serious world rice shortage, Her Majesty's Government have thought it necessary to make funds available to a maximum of £3 million for promoting the production of rice in the Colonies. Expenditure on such schemes is proper to the existing Colonial Development and Welfare Acts, but we do not wish it to displace desirable developments in other directions. These special schemes for growing rice may, therefore, in due course, involve allocations and ultimately expenditure in excess of the existing statutory limit of £140 million. The legislation to which I have referred will also, if necessary, provide cover for expenditure up to £3 million which may be incurred under these arrangements.
I should make it clear that there is no question of authorising in advance of the new legislation actual expenditure in excess of the existing statutory limits. But the House should be aware that Colonial Governments may in the interim be entering into commitments, to the extent to which I have indicated, on the understanding that the necessary funds to meet these commitments will be provided by Her Majesty's Government under the new legislation. My right honourable friend can see no other way of ensuring that the continuity of Colonial development is not interrupted, and he feels confident that he will have the full support of your Lordships' House in the action he is taking. I should like the House to be reminded also that the expenditure of Colonial development and welfare funds also opens up further fields for private investment.
3.37 p.m.
VISCOUNT HALL: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friends on this side of the House, I should like to thank the noble Earl for making that statement, a statement which we welcome, as we do the proposal for the introduction of legislation for a continuation of the Fund next year. I should like to ask the noble Earl whether he can give your Lordships some information as to the amount of expenditure which has already
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been incurred out of the £140 million; also the amount which has been approved and any surplus that there may be at the expiration of the existing legislation. Can he give us some information as to what proportion, if any, of the £7 million to which he has referred in his statement will be used for the purpose of research?
THE EARL OF MUNSTER: My Lords, may I tell the House, in as brief a period as I can, that of the original sum of £140 million which was allocated under the Acts up to the year 1956 some £71 million has been spent up to date. Schemes have been approved for the expenditure of £110 million, and a sum of about £30 million has been earmarked for additional schemes which have not yet been wholly approved. The noble Viscount will see that the rate of expenditure has been £15 million a year, and it might conceivably rise within the very near future, including this and other years up to the end of 1956, to a figure of about £18 million a year. At the end of the period—that is to say, when the existing Act expires in about 1956—it is estimated that at that rate of expenditure some £4 million odd might be left as surplus, but I should not like the noble Viscount to tie me to that figure. It may well be that between now and the expiration of the Act the total sum may be, not spent on, but approved for, schemes which it is intended to bring into operation.
VISCOUNT HALL: I am grateful to the noble Earl for that information. I wonder whether he could give some estimate as to the expenditure of the Colonies themselves on objects for which the Fund was provided? He may not have that information and, if not, perhaps he could let me have it in correspondence.
THE EARL OF MUNSTER: I have the figures, which again I would ask the noble Viscount not to tie me down to firmly; they are the nearest figures which I think will be appropriate in reply to the question which the noble Viscount has addressed to me. We have estimated that the total Colonial development and welfare plan amounted to a sum of about £470 million. Of that figure the Colonial Development and Welfare Funds have provided about £100 million; loans on

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the market—that is, the open market—amount to the figure of £160 million, and the territories themselves have provided a figure of some £220 million. It is true that the debits and credits there do not actually balance, but those are the figures which I think as nearly as possible answer the query which the noble Viscount has addressed to me.
VISCOUNT HALL: I am much obliged.

EAST GERMAN DISTURBANCES
3.40 p.m.
THE MARQUESS OF READING: My Lords, if I may further delay the course of an interesting debate, with the permission of the House, I should like to repeat for your Lordships' information a statement on the disturbances in the Soviet Zone of Germany which has just been made by my right honourable friend the Minister of State in another place. According to my information, the events in Berlin last week were preceded by strikes and demonstrations at many points in the Eastern Zone of Germany against the repressive Communist régime. In Berlin itself a spontaneous protest strike on June 16 developed on the following day into a widespread demonstration against the East German Administration.
When, late on June 17, the authority of the East German Administration had broken down completely, the Soviet occupation authorities moved three divisions of troops into East Berlin, imposed martial law and took firm measures to restore order. Although the Russians appear to have behaved so far with restraint, a number of East Berlin citizens have been killed and wounded. In addition, a West Berlin citizen has been summarily executed, at least seven people died in the Western sectors after being carried in wounded from the Eastern sector, and over a hundred wounded are now in the Western sector. All communications between East and West Berlin were severed, with serious results upon the life and economy of the city. In fulfilment of their duty to protect the interests of the population, a firm protest was made by the three Allied Commandants to the Soviet representative in Berlin on the evening of June 18. Since the week-end, the situation in East Berlin appears to be gradually returning to
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normal. The Soviet and Allied authorities in Berlin are now in touch regarding the early resumption of communications. The picture of events in the Eastern Zone as a whole is not yet clear.
So far as we are aware, no British subjects have been involved.
Contrary to Soviet allegations, these demonstrations were neither provoked by, nor directed from, the West. In expressing sympathy for those who have suffered, and admiration for their courage, Her Majesty's Government must equally counsel prudence and restraint so that further bloodshed and suffering may be avoided. The Prime Minister has received a personal message from the German Federal Chancellor appealing to Her Majesty's Government to do all in their power to realise the unity and freedom of the German nation. He intends to inform Dr. Adenauer in reply that Her Majesty's Government are in full accord with the spirit of this message. We have frequently made clear that our aim is a Germany reunited in freedom. We believe that the only way to achieve this is on the basis of the practical proposals contained in the note of the three Western Powers to the Soviet Government of September last year, but to which no reply has yet been given. The resolution passed in the Bundestag on June 10 shows that this is the policy of the German Government Coalition and also of the Social Democratic opposition.
Meanwhile, I repeat that Her Majesty's Government are resolved to adhere most faithfully in the spirit as well as in the letter to their commitments to Western Germany, and that Western Germany will in no way be sacrificed or cease to be master of its own fortunes within the agreements we and other North Atlantic Treaty Organisation countries have made with her.
3.45 p.m.
LORD HENDERSON: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Marquess for the statement which he has just made, and, on behalf of noble Lords sitting on this side of the House, to join in the expression of admiration for the courage and steadfastness of the workers of the Russian sector of Berlin and of the Eastern Zone; and also to join in the expression of sympathy with those who lost their lives in this very remarkable

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and spontaneous demonstration of popular devotion to the cause of peace and the unification of Germany. I think it is clear that the Administration in Eastern Germany speaks for nobody but itself, and that but for the introduction of Soviet force in connection with this demonstration that Administration would no longer exist. We also welcome the re-affirmation of Her Majesty's Government's policy with reference to the basis for there unification of Germany, and also the statement that there will be no sacrifice of the present rights to freedom and political independence of Western Germany. There is just one point about which I should like to ask the noble Marquess. I think I am right in saying that on Saturday there is to be a meeting of the High Commissioners in Berlin, and it may be that as a result of their discussions other action or representations may be proposed. May we take it that the noble Marquess will keep the House informed of any further development?
THE MARQUESS OF READING: My Lords, I am obliged to the noble Lord for what he has said in approval of the attitude that we have adopted. Naturally, if there is any further information which the House should have, it shall be at its disposal at the earliest possible opportunity.

NEW TOWNS
3.47 p.m.
Debate resumed.
LORD LAWSON: My Lords, it is no light matter to follow a speaker of Lord Silkin's calibre, speaking with such knowledge and experience of this subject, particularly since it was he who was responsible for the shaping and bringing to birth of the Act under which the new towns and their corporations are coming into being. The noble Lord has given a wide review of the situation which has compelled this nation finally to consider the creation of new and separate towns to meet separate problems. He has been particularly responsible for handling the problems arising out of a vast population such as we have in London, and he has shown, in very choice language, the needs which have compelled us to take this step. I think it is correct to say that, without any previous experience gathered
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from any other country, we are marking out a new road over which we should travel in dealing with our particular section of industrial civilisation.
I have noticed that there is a tendency for the population of the country to think of the new towns as communities which affect certain parts of the country but have little directly to do with them. One never knows, however, what changes will take place in any part of the country in consequence of the development of modern industry. Only last week I paid a visit to my own county where, lone ago, when I was a boy, a certain kind of mineral was worked. The works where that industry was carried on were closed down sixty years ago, and everyone thought that was the end of it. But modern science has now made it possible to make use of many elements in the mineral in question, and on such a scale that to-day vast works have grown up in the district. Of the possibility of one of these places being started, certainly no one would have dreamed half a century ago.
I mention these matters at the beginning of my speech, which will not be a long one, because I want to submit that what the new towns are doing is winning for Britain experience which may have to be used in almost any part of the country—sometimes without the citizens who live there in the least expecting it. I speak particularly for the areas where heavy industries are carried on. Heavy industry, as Lord Silkin has pointed out, has separate considerations of its own attaching to it. I think he described three different sections of such industry. When I was a very small boy I went from a little village to a part of the world largely devoted to heavy industry, and I well remember the profound impression which the change made upon me. Leaving, as I did, a place from which one had views of sea, mountains and open spaces on a vast scale, it was a great shock to see before me a great coal mining area, and I have never forgotten it. But that sort of experience is not peculiar to people living in Britain. Under modern industrial civilisation it is a common experience of mankind.
We are all familiar with Butler's Erewhon, and the works of various philosophers who have demonstrated the logic of modern industry. If I may, I

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should like to quote from a book that I wrote, published about 1932—that is some twenty years ago. These were the words I wrote after much pondering upon this problem, whilst performing my normal everyday tasks:
"if we rationalise the world in terms of modern industry, can we remain rational? … This submergence of the personality;"—
which is a fact—
"this shutting out of Nature by iron and steel erections; this cutting off of men, women ad children from fields, woods and seas, affects the imagination, intellect, and spirit so keenly that it is questionable whether you can have a really rational outlook on life under a so-called rationalised industrial order."
Your Lordships will remember that those words were written twenty years ago. I also wrote that:
"modern transport and new forms of power which give more scope for location should tend to 'naturalise' conditions, if the will and vision is there."
It is a good thing for this country, I think, that the will and the vision have been there to deal with a matter of this kind.
I can tell the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, and your Lordships generally, that in the early stages of the new towns project one was led to wonder whether anything in a really practical form was going to emerge from the idea. I know that there were many problems to face, but it was a long-term affair, involving, almost, the mapping out of the whole country. Lord Silkin has specially mentioned Peterlee. May I say that the man, Peter Lee, was a native of Durham, who rendered very great service to his fellow men and whose work had a profound influence for good in many ways. It improved the health of the community. He laid on pure water to old villages which for something like a century had been without it, and which, in consequence, had had their populations decimated by disease—particularly by illness affecting youngsters. If I were to tell your Lordships in statistical terms of all the changes which the great efforts of Peter Lee brought about, you would find the statistics almost incredible. He never spared himself, and he was always inspired by a passionate zeal for the public well-being, especially in his own county. It is good that the people have been sufficiently grateful to him to ask that a great new town should be named after him.
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These new towns are now emerging, and I may tell your Lordships that within a short time—a fortnight at most—I shall have the honour of opening the one thousandth house in that new town of Peterlee. The bulk of the population in the county of Durham—whether in those parts where the industry is steel, or in those concerned with coal or shipbuilding—live within sight sometimes of slagheaps, sometimes of great industrial undertakings that almost overwhelm the vision. The new towns of Peterlee, Aycliffe, and similar towns in these heavy industrial areas, have their own particular problems, of course, but it is a good thing that the people are being removed 'from the old areas. Those of your Lordships who have not seen them would hardly believe that such streets and houses as those in some of these areas, which were built up in the early nineteenth century, could exist to-day.
In all these new towns the hard outlines will be softened by a warm neighbourly spirit, just as it was in the old towns. The problem will be to build up a corporate life similar to that which the people of the new towns left in their old towns and villages. I can imagine that there will be much heart-searching and longing for the old neighbourliness, and it seems to me that the great problem is to build up a corporate life that will satisfy the inward longings of those who have been born in the old neighbourly ways. Of course, those who go to the new towns will be living in open spaces, and in better houses, and will be free from much that was unsatisfactory in the old conditions—I am speaking particularly of the areas of heavy industry. They will take a pride in their new houses and in their new towns. It must not be forgotten that there is no greater measure of house-pride to be found in what we call the great houses than there is to be found among those who come to live in these new and improved houses. I think that the development of this corporate life is one of the main tests of these new towns, but we must always remember the slow rate at which it can be built up. I do not want to speak too long, because I have to leave to travel; but I repeat that this experiment is one that affects not only a corner here and there of the life of this country but the whole life of the

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community. Britain is honoured in leading the way once more in matters affecting industrial life, as she has led the rest of the world on more than one occasion. I trust that this great experiment will not only be successful but also will be understood by the people of this country.
My noble friend Lord Silkin dealt with the various items on which it would be necessary to spend money. I hope that the Minister and the Government understand that they will have to be generous in carrying out the ideal, if these new towns are to be a success. I trust that there is going to be no limitation in that respect. It is true, as my noble friend Lord Silkin said, that the question of rent will be a difficult problem for those who go to homes in the new towns, as I know from what I have seen in the two new towns in Durham. I trust that much thought and generous feeling will be given to the building up of the necessary light industries round about the new towns. A light industry is one thing and a heavy industry is another. I have seen some light industries down the Great West Road that looked to me like toys, compared with the establishments that I have been accustomed to calling industrial. I hope that very generous thought will be given to the establishment of the new trading estates to meet the needs of the new towns, and that the different Departments affected will co-operate to do a real job. In fifty years' time there may be a greater understanding of the effort that has been made, and of the facts that have compelled the British Government at last to face the logic of modern industrialism. To-day we wish well to the great efforts that are being made. There will have to be much patience and understanding of their object. Britain is once more leading the way. I believe that we are experimenting to try to solve the problem not only for ourselves but for industry in a great many other countries in the world.
4.8 p.m.
VISCOUNT HUDSON: My Lords, before I pass one or two comments on the speeches to which we have listened, I should like to make a preliminary observation. I wish to call your Lordships' attention to the conditions under which we are carrying on this debate.
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We have here a volume of 430 pages, and how the Department concerned expect busy men, as the bulk of your Lordships are, to read this through, passes my comprehension. In the old days the reports were published separately and mostly read locally. That was all right. Now they are published in a single volume, and it seems to me the negation of everything that public relations should be that we should be presented with this book, without any summary of its contents or conclusions, or any indication where anyone interested in education, for example, can find the relevant passages in the relevant reports. I venture to hope that the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, will make a special point with the Department to see that in future they should mend their ways.
The other criticism I have to make of this report arises particularly out of what the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, has just said: that, taken as a whole, it conveys little information about what I, at all events, believe to be one of the most important matters connected with these towns—namely, the change in the personal relations of the people living there. I confess I have not a great deal of personal knowledge of these new towns, but it so happens that some two or three years ago, in another place, I was chairman of a Party committee on town and country planning. The then Minister of Town and Country Planning said that he wanted to have a debate on new towns. I thought it would be as well, before we had that debate, to acquaint myself with the conditions. I went down to Crawley; and I asked the other members of my committee to go and see other towns and report to the meeting, with a view, quite frankly, to "ragging" the then Minister, as, indeed, it was my duty to do as a member of the Opposition. I went down at that time to find cause for criticism, but came back with nothing but cause for praise with one exception. As I say, that was at Crawley.
I was particularly interested in the social side of the subject. I believe that the public at large would be equally interested to hear details of the sort about which I was told there: of the way in which factories in London were visited and the management were asked if they would like to move to Crawley; of a list of their employees being taken,

1221
and the employees being visited in their homes and taken down in charabancs to the new town; and of the wives being shown half-a-dozen different types of house which they might choose to occupy. Even more important than that, although the rents were substantially higher than they had been paying in London—they were of the order of £2 a week and over, as compared with 5s. and 7s. 6d. a week—the housewives were unanimous in saying that they were financially better off, without any increase in wages, than they were in London.
Inquiry on my part elicited—I take no credit for it; it was well known—first of all, that the cost of keeping their children well, quite apart from the National Health Service, was substantially less in Crawley than it had been in the slums in London; that their husbands did not have to pay large sums every week for transport to their work; that they did not have to pay for canteens, because they were within live minutes' bicycling distance and could go home for dinner every day; and, what was particularly interesting, that their husbands, instead of being so disgusted with their home conditions, having to live in one or two rooms, with a family, and therefore immediately they had had their dinner on Saturday inevitably going off to the British Legion or "what have you" and spending the rest of the day arid most of Sunday there, with the necessary concomitant of standing each other a drink, spent all their time in the garden, except that probably once during the week-end they went off to have a convivial glass of beer. The net result, as put forward by the housewives, was that they were infinitely better off, in spite of the rents making a much bigger hole in their income.
The final fact that interested me was that several of the manufacturers I spoke to said that, to their great astonishment, their shop stewards had come to them and asked if the men could work an extra hour; and when asked why it was, they said they were so much less tired working at Crawley than they were when working in the factory in London, with the amount of travelling that they then had to do, that they would like to work the extra time in order to earn overtime to enable them to pay the high rents. That is a remarkable picture of what
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these new towns can do in the way of alleviating overcrowded conditions. So far as I know, you can search these reports without finding a trace of what, in my view, is one of the real justifications for the expenditure of this large sum of money.
There were only two things I found which might be regarded with criticism. I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, will be interested to know that the corporations responsible told me that they had only one serious criticism to make, which was that they were pinned down by the meticulous care with which proceedings were examined by the then Minister of Town and Country Planning, and the amount of red tape that was involved in getting the smallest possible deviation from any existing plan. The other criticism, which I think is far more serious from the costing and especially the agricultural point of view, is the frightful waste of land and money involved by putting schools in a central position, instead of on one corner. They put the schools and the playing fields in the centre of each block of the town, with the inevitable result that everything is spread out—the roads are longer, the drains are longer, and the water supply is longer. I have forgotten the exact figure, but the extra cost of developing Crawley, as the result of putting the schools in the centre rather than on one corner, ran into thousands of pounds per acre. That, of course, was shown in the rents that had to be paid. I feel that that is a matter which ought to be examined carefully.
A further point in the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, on which I should like to comment is his apparent disregard for agriculture. I, on the contrary, as may well be imagined, take an intense interest in the question of agriculture. I was pleased to see that in the case of Bracknell agricultural considerations were taken into account and the location of the town was moved slightly, without, so far as I know, any deleterious effect on the development of the town. But what I think is more important is that although today we are talking about new towns specifically, the actual problem of rehousing the people is not limited to new towns. Unfortunately, the big corporations, like the London County Council, are building all over the Home Counties satellite towns

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with none of the amenities of the new towns, having selected in only too many cases perfectly good, first-class agricultural land.
There is one case in the east, which shall be nameless, which happened while I was Minister where some of the best remaining market garden land around London was taken. A mile or two away there was quite indifferent land, but, because the London County Council had set their eye on this particular site, they took it, despite my violent protests. I see that to-day they are building a new satellite town outside Slough, again on first-class agricultural land and, what is more important, first-class horticultural, market garden land, with the inevitable result that the cost of growing vegetables and horticultural products generally is bound to increase the price to the Londoner, because this good peripheral land, of market garden quality, is being built over for this satellite town. Therefore, I think it is a matter of great importance that the powers of the Ministry of Agriculture should be increased, rather than diminished.
There is a great deal in what the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, said. He and I know a lot about mining areas—I had the honour of representing one for many years. It is the fact, as he so rightly said, that when you move people out of rows of houses, or even out of slums, into these better surroundings represented by twelve houses to the acre, it does destroy something of the social life that they have been used to living. Slums are the very devil, and terraced houses may be; but everyone who knows the conditions there knows that there is a great social convenience in being able to lean up against your doorpost and gossip with your immediate next door neighbour, instead of having to put on your best bib and tucker and walk down the garden and up another garden path. It is a very real problem to get re-established in these new towns the same communal spirit that used to exist in spite of all the drawbacks and difficulties of living together in a narrow space. Again, no reference is made to that in these reports. I am sure that is the sort of thing in which the public are interested, and we should be glad to know to what
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extent the corporations are overcoming some of these drawbacks.
My final comment is on the question of rents. It is obviously grossly unfair that corporations should be tied by the Rent Restrictions Acts when local authorities, in the same conditions, building the same sort of houses in satellite towns, are free from restriction. I think the time is long past when legislation should be introduced giving these corporations the same freedom as local authorities to raise the earlier rents, in order that the weight may be spread more evenly over the whole of the inhabitants of these new towns.
4.22 p.m.
LORD MACDONALD OF GWAENYSGOR: My Lords, let me at once join with the noble Viscount, Lord Hudson, in making reference to this document. I have been perusing it now for days, and I should much prefer to have twelve separate documents dealing with each of the corporations separately. Moreover, it must be remembered that the cost of this document is 15s. That is a high price for certain individuals, especially if they do not want the whole document. They want separate parts of it, and I hope the noble Lord will make representations regarding future reports of these various corporations.
Let me say at once that it is a little unusual to hear an ex-Minister moving a Motion referring to what he did when he was a Minister. Not every Minister dare do that. Many ex-Ministers that I know are quite prepared to remain quiescent regarding the efforts they made. But not Lord Silkin. He is proud of what he did in 1946, and, if I may say so, rightly proud. If no one else was prepared to look at what he did, he was, and he placed the Motion on the Order Paper. I compliment him also on the speech he made in submitting the Motion. He covered a great deal of ground, not leaving much for anyone else. He dealt with almost every aspect of the problem in the masterful way of which we know he is capable on this question.
To me, the interesting feature of the reports is their similarity. Here we have twelve separate reports on townships separated by hundreds of miles; and yet they are similar. They differ in some things. I notice that in the list of contents

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one or two put housing before engineering services, and vice versa. But in the contents as a whole these reports are wonderfully similar. What is made clear is that the corporations were faced with similar problems and their experiences have also been similar in all the areas. When I look at certain aspects of these problems I find that the anticipation was remarkable. This House and another place, when dealing with the New Towns Bill, were able to anticipate what would happen when the Bill became an Act. What they anticipated has actually happened. They saw the difficulties referred to by my noble friend Lord Lawson and the noble Viscount, Lord Hudson. They knew that it was difficult to decide at what rate we should build houses, having regard to the need for shops, schools, churches, chapels, community centres and health centres.
The town I know best is Cwmbran, in South Wales. The development corporation there decided to divide the town into seven separate areas. They said, "We will build a town for roughly 35,000 population. We will have seven areas of 5,000 each, and in each we will have a shopping centre, churches, and community centres, et cetera. We are told that this was done in order to balance communities. I sometimes wonder what a "balanced community" is. Who decides? Do you decide on figures? Do you say, "So many in business, so many secretarial, so many managerial, so many workers, so many middle class and so many lower class?" How do you decide? It was vital that we should decide in order to solve the problem. If you decide in the Cwmbran case that you should have 5,000 houses for managerial and the lower-middle classes, and 30,000 for the ordinary artisan what is your position? You have to provide those houses for the ordinary artisan at a rent approaching what he can be expected to pay. I am fully aware of the differences between local authority houses and development corporation's houses: the tenants of the latter houses are not safeguarded, and they are not assisted in any way. When I find rents of £2 5s. 0d. a week being charged in Cwmbran for a corporation house and 27s. 6d. a week for local council houses, and men with the same wages and similar families living in each, I can well under-
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stand the grievances and discontent. The sum of 17s. 6d. is a big difference, and it is actually happening there. It is true that they are better houses, and it may be that we shall be obliged to consider how to get houses at a rent within the range of those for whom the houses were intended and, at the same time, get these balanced communities.
I find that there are criticisms in Cwmbran of a different character. Just before the House sat to-day I was able to bring to the notice of the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, a reference in the South Wales Argus of Friday last, June 19. I was only able to show it to the noble Lord for a short time to glance at it in order to give him some idea of what I was going to raise. The headline says:
"Bricklayer would be ashamed to stand by new town houses."
Those are the houses in this new town of Cwmbran. I have here the correspondence between the Pontypool Rural Council and the Director of the Cwmbran New Town Development Corporation. Let me read what the local council has to say regarding the houses being built by the new town corporation:
"… members had described the new houses as less satisfactory than those which were erected before the Rural Council came into existence in 1894."
Let that be clearly understood—that the houses being built in 1952 were poorer than houses built before 1894. It goes on:
"The Council appreciate that attempts are being made to expedite the production of houses, but are of the opinion that quality has given way to quantity. They have been told that this type of house has been produced by your corporation, and in fact other housing authorities, under pressure from Government Departments, but are of the opinion that some stand should be made to protest.
"Proof of this policy has been provided by the Ministry itself, sending round inspectors to tell the local councils that the production of essential materials, such as bricks and cement, could not keep pace with the building programme, and advocating alternatives, which in the humble opinion of this Council, afford an unsatisfactory structure with a shorter life than the period of loans which is being kept up to assist in bringing rents within the power of the tenants to pay."
Here is another aspect which the council criticise, and to which we need to have regard:
"Having regard to the fact that at no very distant date your corporation will be handing over these houses to the local councils, the

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latter have a direct financial interest, and press your corporation to take up the matter with the Government Departments concerned on the lines suggested above."
I hope the Minister will be able to ask for this correspondence, and see the copies; and I hope also that he will have regard to the complaints made. After all, quantity is important—very important indeed. I agree that regard must be had to quantity as well as to quality; but in a case of this kind the quality should be such that the rents of the dwellings are within the capacity of those people who should be tenanting the houses.
I know that this question of new towns has been well covered, but I want us to be quite clear that this problem is of vital importance. Take the case of this one new town in Wales. I do not know how many of your Lordships have spent much time in South Wales, and in particular in these mining areas where there are these hundreds of thousands of miners huddled together on the hillsides and in the valleys. I was certainly sorry to hear Lord Silkin's hint that a decision had been made that no further towns would be started. I hope that the reasons for the starting of the fourteen towns that have been begun were good reasons: I am certain that there are equally good reasons for others to be started in the very near future. I remember that Lord Silkin, in his speech on the Third Reading of the New Towns Bill in another place, said that he approached his task with very great humility and very high hopes. I am not prepared to say that his hopes have been fully justified, but I am prepared to say that events have fully justified the venture made.
4.32 p.m.
LORD HADEN-GUEST: My Lords, we have been listening to a most interesting debate initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, who in fact proposed that he would ask for a debate of this kind at a very much earlier date. There was a debate in your Lordships' House on May 27 last year, when Lord Silkin made a statement about the fourteen areas where the new towns were being built, and of the money which was being spent and which would be spent in the future. Now the programme is getting further and further from fulfilment, although such a large amount of money has been spent. This point is made in The Times
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of to-day. This is an interesting point of view which I think ought to be answered by the Minister to-day. Lord Silkin said that it would be helpful if at some time in the future we had this debate, and he has certainly redeemed his promise to-day. We now want the Minister to tell us how the Act is working as regards attracting industry to the new towns.
When one reads this rather cumbrously produced volume of reports of the development corporations (I say "cumbrously," because it does not give the information one would like to have in regard to the towns and is not conveniently arranged) one does not get a very clear picture of how the Act is working. I hope that the Minister will be able to give us his views on this matter of how the Act is working as regards attracting industry to the towns. Some of the new towns apparently have very little industry. Crawley, which was mentioned by the noble Viscount, Lord Hudson, is an exception: it has a considerable amount of industry; but others have not. How are the arrangements working as regards the provision of schools for the children now in the towns and for the children who will shortly be there when the population increases? What arrangements are being made with regard to medical and dental services for the people living in the towns now, and those who will live there in the future?
Most of the new towns, says The Times this morning, differ but little from housing estates. I wonder whether the Minister thinks that that is a true statement or not. I hope he will express his opinion on that matter. The Times also refers to "the diffuse architectural form" of the towns, due to their having only twelve houses to the acre. I must say, for my part, that I agree with Lord Hudson; I think that a town should be built not like a suburb but like a town—and a town does not have twelve houses to the acre, at any rate not inmost parts of the great cities of this country. A town should be built as a town, with playgrounds and playing fields round about it. It should not be built in a garden suburb kind of way. Take the question of children and the schools. I have, with some difficulty, extracted a good deal of information out of these reports of the development corporations on new towns. I

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find with regard to Aycliffe, in Durham, a statement that the younger children have to travel daily to schools in neighbouring towns and villages because there are not adequate schools in Aycliffe itself. In Harlow, which is one of the most successful of the towns, and which rates very highly as a successful project, the children are crowded in the schools, whilst others have to travel considerable distances from their homes in Harlow to school. In another place, Basildon, in Essex, the corporation is concerned lest school building will not keep pace with the growing population. I will not quote any more, but that is a fair sample of the views which are held by many of these corporations, and the difficulties which face them with regard to schools.
Now there is the question, how can this situation be remedied? One point which has not, to my knowledge, been mentioned in the present debate, is the fact that at the present time higher rates are being paid to builders for building houses than for building schools. It is part of the Government's programme, I think, to put up as many houses as possible, and apparently higher wages are being paid for house building than for school building. A witness of the Ministry of Education said with regard to this matter:
"If one were to pay the labour on schools the kind of bonuses and incentive payments which are paid on houses, the total cost of school building would be increased—but presumably there would be more schools."
It is absolutely essential that in the new towns there should be not only industries but also schools, and, of course, medical services. I believe that in this matter there is need for closer co-ordination of policy between Government Departments than there has been up to the present. I should like to quote here Recommendation No. 1 of the Select Committee on Estimates, which bas been published in the last two or three days. This is what the Committee say:
"Closer consultation should take place in the future between the Ministry of Education on the one hand and the local education authorities or their representative body on the other, so that a more accurate estimate of the number of school places needed may be agreed upon"—
and I want to emphasise the next words—
"by less haphazard methods."
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It is a fairly drastic condemnation of a Government Department to say that their methods are "haphazard."
I suggest that it is also necessary to approach the problem of the supply of medical and dental services in the new towns. You do not solve this problem by saying, "Build a medical centre." I have seen in the Report a photograph of the medical centre at Harlow, Essex, a place I know very well and through which I frequently go. This photograph looks very businesslike, but you do not get medical and dental facilities by putting up a medical centre: you get it by having the doctors. You have to be sure that you have them in the new towns. You have to be sure that in the new towns you have the medical, dental and other treatment that is necessary for the men, women and children who live there. A medical centre may be a very good thing in appropriate circumstances, but it is not the first thing. The first thing is the organisation of the doctors and the dentists. It is the doctors and the dentists who are essential. The places in which they work are secondary. I say this because it is necessary to see that medical and dental services are available; you should not await the erection of a medical building before you arrange for their work in the new towns. I do not think it is quite certain, from the reports which I have read, dealing with the new towns, that there is, in fact, a wholly adequate and satisfactory service in the new towns. I hope that that state of affairs will soon be improved. Consultations with the medical profession in those areas, through the British Medical Association, which is the recognised medium of consultation, would probably help considerably in getting better medical treatment. Similarly, consultation with the dental authorities would assist in getting better dental treatment.
In my view, the Government should also see to it that, as regards the setting up off industries, the provision of schools and the provision of medical services, the appropriate Departments are fully informed. I want to ask the Minister whether he can give us now a statement to the effect that the Government are taking steps to see that industries are attracted to the towns. I also hope that we can be assured that all those concerned in the question of the administration of

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the new towns or the helping of the new towns in any way, through one Government Department or another, are fully informed of what is going on, and that there is real co-operation, from the Ministerial level at the top—several Ministers are involved—to the skilled and unskilled labourers working on the sites of the new towns. I hope that the Minister will be able to say that the problem of industries and schools and the supply of doctors and dentists is being satisfactorily solved.
4.43 p.m.
LORD MANCROFT: My Lords, I should like to begin by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, for giving us the opportunity of debating this extremely interesting—to me at any rate—and extremely important subject this afternoon. I should also like to thank him for the most moderate and constructive way in which he phrased his remarks. He speaks with great authority: none greater. He probably regards the development of these new towns rather in the way of a proud father, a father quite willing to chastise if need be. I am glad also that he opened his remarks by pointing out that these twelve reports in this rather criticised volume are, of course, reports of varying degrees of advancement. They all differ; they are not reports about housing estates but they are reports about the building of towns, which is quite a different thing. They cover a very wide range of subjects: social, economic, industrial and financial. All these towns are at different stages in their career, and that may account, to a certain degree, for the bulk of the Report. I am sorry that the noble Viscount, Lord Hudson, who is not here at the moment, found the actual size of the Report distasteful to him, as did the noble Lord, Lord Haden-Guest. The various reports always have been published together, not only for the sake of convenience but also for comparison and because it was slightly cheaper. There has been nothing in the past but praise for the convenience of having one volume. However, I note the criticism that has now crept in, probably because the Report has become a little unwieldy. I will certainly refer these criticisms to the proper quarters, and perhaps in future there may be both a consolidated Report and an unconsolidated report for
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the convenience of those who like their reading matter slightly lighter.
Before I go on to deal with the individual questions which the noble Lord has raised, I should like to make two general points. The first is this. Her Majesty's Government feel neither complacent nor apologetic about what has been achieved so far. We do not suggest for one moment that there have not been mistakes and that opportunities have not been missed, but equally we say, quite firmly, that a great deal has been achieved and there is very little indeed to be apologetic about. That does not alter the fact that we are perfectly prepared to listen to all reasonable criticism and, if at all possible, to act upon it.
My second point, of a general nature, is this. I think that it must be a matter of great satisfaction to everyone concerned—and I am certain it will be a matter of satisfaction to nobody more than to the noble Lord, Lord Silkin—that some of the strong local feelings, even bitterness at times, which accompanied the setting up of these new towns has died down and, in many cases, completely disappeared. I cannot pretend for one moment that I have visited more than a very few of these new towns. I wish I had had the opportunity to visit more. Those I have visited in the London area have all impressed me greatly by the absence of ill will and by the determination of everybody engaged on the project or living in the towns to get along well together. I think that allays successfully some of the fears which many of us had when these towns were started, that a certain amount of acrimony and even a certain amount of, I am afraid, political backbiting, might stand in the way of their progress.
Now I turn to what I think has been the question uppermost in most noble Lords'minds—hardly any speaker failed to mention it—that is, the position of industry in relation to rival interests in these new towns. Of course, although industry is one of the most important aspects, it is only one of the fields of development in these new towns. Perhaps, therefore, I can summarise briefly what has been achieved by the corporations up to the end of last month—and your Lordships will, of course, remember that this Report does not go anything like as far as the end of last month.

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Up to the end of last month, as the noble Lord suggested, over 12,000 houses have been built and nearly 9,000 are under construction. Just over 200 shops have been completed or are under construction. One church has been completed and nine are under construction—I shall have a little more to say about that later. Seventeen community centres and halls have been completed or are under construction, and eight "pubs," I am glad to say, have either been completed or are under construction.
Here I should like to interrupt my remarks in order to refer to the leading article in this morning's Times newspaper, to which the noble Lord, Lord Haden-Guest referred, a leading article with which I am not able to find myself in agreement. This article says:
"Most of the new towns differ but little from housing estates"—
that was the actual remark to which I think the noble Lord referred. It goes on:
"They are neither well enough equipped with industries to provide balanced employment locally nor with public buildings to allow them to be self-sufficient socially."
I think your Lordships may agree that I have already said enough to show that this allegation is very wide of the mark. Over 2,500,000 square feet of factory space, nearly 10,000 square feet of offices, over 200 shops, 10 churches and 17 community centres and halls—all of these things are completed or are under construction. Surely that is something which goes very much beyond a housing estate. The last one I have seen is Hemel Hempstead. That is the only one of which I have recent personal experience. I would ask the writer of that article to go to Hemel Hempstead and comeback and say whether he still thinks that it has got no further than the category of a housing estate.
The writer goes on to suggest that there is not sufficient variety of industry in our new towns. In this regard there is some justice, I think, in his comment in respect of at least some of the new towns. The corporations and the Government Departments concerned are doing their best to correct this condition. Your Lordships will have noted the strict economic tests which until recently governed the issue of building licences in new towns, as elsewhere. Their strong emphasis on
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defence and export industries tended, of necessity, to produce this result. The position in this regard I hope will now become easier, and there is ground for believing that in the not too distant future it will be possible to redress the balance. The article goes on to say that none of the towns has got very far with its main town centre. That, I think, is true. But I should be very surprised if it were otherwise. The construction of a town centre at any time, let alone in these difficult days, could scarcely proceed as appreciably as the development of the main fields of housing and factory construction. But in point of fact, following a great deal of work on drawing boards in back rooms, proposals for town centres have been received and indeed a start on their actual construction has been made in many cases. I want to refer particularly to Hemel Hempstead, Corby, Welwyn, Crawley, Harlow and Peterlee. In each of those towns the necessary site works have begun, and in three of them buildings are actually going up.
The noble Lord, Lord Haden-Guest, in dealing with the Article in The Times, referred also to the question of low density planning. That same article refers to low density planning and speaks of a garden suburb policy. Her Majesty's Government, and indeed the corporations, readily agree that such a policy (if either wished to pursue it, which neither does) would involve a great waste of land, unnecessary expense in regard to services and drainage, to which the noble Viscount, Lord Hudson, referred, and long trips for the housewife. The position to-clay is very different. The fact is that the corporations are working to densities which compare very favourably indeed with densities of modern urban development. Broadly speaking, the aim at the present moment is a density of at least 13 houses to the acre, and in the case of many current proposals this figure is being exceeded. Speaking generally, I should have thought that a figure of 12 houses to the acre would hardly produce a garden suburb.
I have deviated from my main argument to deal with those points that the noble Lord, Lord Haden-Guest raised from The Times. May I go back to the original question of industry, to which the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, rightly devoted some attention? Not all the new towns will require the provision

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of additional industry under the ægis of the corporation. With regard to the others, the position is that up to the end of last month just over a million and a quarter square feet of factory space occupied by 56 firms had been completed in the new towns, and just over a million and a third square feet will be occupied by 28 firms and is under construction at the moment. I am not suggesting for a moment that this is all we need. We have had our successes—I think Crawley and Hemel Hempstead would meet with the noble Lord's approval—but I will not go so far as to say we have had failures in the others.
I am asked by one noble Lord what we are doing to increase the appeal for industry to go to the new towns. My Lords, the answer is everything possible; but it is obviously not enough. That appeal must be increased. I hope that this debate and what your Lordships have said, and any thing that I can now add to the appeal, will have some effect in encouraging industry to settle in these new towns. We need to encourage industry to do that. I am thinking particularly of the towns around London, and of Peterlee in County Durham. Industry and all types of employment have nothing to lose and everything to gain if their workers do not exhaust themselves by long journeys in crowded transport to and from their work. In the new towns they can be given good houses and decent living conditions. The industries and the workers who have gone there so far have not only contributed to the financial and social success of their towns but have themselves no cause whatever to regret it. All our evidence from all the towns points to that. It is vital in the interests of all concerned, employers, workers and Government, that these facts should be known and that the trend of industry towards the new towns should be increased.
I now come to the next subject which I think caused most discussion this afternoon—nearly all noble Lords referred to it—and that is the question of communal facilities, as I suppose they can be called in the jargon of to-day. No one would dispute for one moment that the provision of houses, factories, homes and working places in the new towns, though fundamental, is clearly not enough. There must be communal facilities where
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people can chat and lean over the garden fence, and engage in sport, recreation and worship. In easier times a great deal of these facilities would have been provided through voluntary bodies. There is, of course, still room for more work by them. Let me emphasise one or two points which might interest your Lordships in regard to what has been done so far from the communal aspect. Ten of the twelve new towns have started or will very soon start making provision for community centres or community halls. Nine centres or halls have already been completed and eight are under construction.
The provision of churches is of particular interest. I referred to that a few moments ago. One is already completed and nine are under construction. Those include Anglican, Methodist, Baptist and Congregational churches, one for the Salvation Army and a Roman Catholic church under construction or at least being planned. In times when we read of churches being pulled down or burnt and religion being denied to those who would have it, there is some pride to be taken from the fact that we are busy building churches and providing facilities for people to worship as they wish. I emphasise that, because these new towns have produced the ingredients for what may be an encouraging future. There has been great co-operation between the various religious denominations. The planning and siting of churches and the general conduct of religious planning in the new towns has been conducted on a markedly friendly atmosphere.
I want to make one remark now which I think may be news to your Lordships and I hope will give encouragement to the noble Lord, Lord Silkin. My right honourable friend has given this question of community buildings his personal attention for some time, and I am glad to say that, as a result, he has been able to conclude arrangements with the other Ministers concerned whereby licences for substantially more expenditure, of the order of £1½ million in the next eighteen months, will be allocated to churches, church halls and other community buildings in new housing projects, including those in new towns. I am certain that that will meet with the noble Lord's approval.
I mentioned the question of public houses, which was once a matter of fairly

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acute, I will not say "bitter," controversy in regard to tied or free houses. I have been into two of the licensed premises in the new towns. Speaking for myself, I must say that I found them remarkably uncosy; but I suppose it is better that they should be in keeping with modern architecture rather than with "Ye Olde Tudor House." There is one remarkable public house which is neither tied nor free, but is supplied by three rival breweries, and it will be interesting to see how that experiment finally works out.
These new towns offer a wonderful opportunity to the planners and architects, and I join with the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, in deploring any possibility of a standard type of new town architecture in the mass, just as we saw in the mass of flats which were put up in the bigger cities in the twenty or thirty years before the war. There is a wonderful opportunity in these towns for the local inhabitants and the local authorities to come forward as patrons of the arts. All the old towns, such as Bruges, Ravenna, Norwich and Winchester, were great patrons of the arts, which would not have flourished had the burghers and the rich and the poor of these great cities not patronised and fostered them. I very much hope that when they settle down the new towns will give some encouragement to sculptors and painters to come and beautify them. Harlow, one of the new towns, did, I think, buy Miss Barbara Hepworth's statue which stood outside the South Bank Exhibition. I think it was called Contrapuntal Forms," and in my view it is a perfectly horrible piece of work. That is a strictly personal opinion, and in putting it forward it may be that I am inspired by a somewhat smug pride as a citizen of the Borough of St. Marylebone, which has recently set up on a public site the statue of the Madonna and Child by Jacob Epstein which I—and I am glad to think many others also—regard as the finest piece of public sculpture which has been put up in London since the Charles I statue was erected at Charing Cross.
I turn now to the extremely interesting subject of mixed development. The last thing we want in connection with these new towns is to have one type of person making up the bulk of the population. Consider, for a moment, two old towns
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which are roughly of the same size—arid, as it happens, the size we are talking about—Exeter and Gloucester. I take them as examples because, as I say, they are about the same size, each having a population of somewhere in the neighbourhood of 67,000. Both have great and ancient histories. Both have seen great industrial developments of varying sizes. I think they may well be taken as not a bad parallel to our new towns. They have each a strong corporate sense which they owe as much as anything to the fact that the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker, the duke and the dustman have all lived alongside one another, drunk together at the same licensed premises, served on the same magisterial bench, and sat on the same borough council. If you did not have that you would have no soul in a town—on that we are ail agreed. But this corporate feeling is not so easy to achieve as all that. Lord Lawson talked about neighbourliness and corporate life, and Lord Hudson mentioned lack of any reference to this in the Report. I am bound to confess that I have not gone through the Report carefully enough to notice that. But I will certainly look at it again to see whether some suggestion can be put forward to ensure that a reference is included next year.
Lord Macdonald of Gwaenysgor talked about balance of the population. You cannot tot these things up mathematically, and say how many butchers, bakers and candlestick makers and so on you need in each particular town. But I think that, as a matter of fact, we are very near achieving a proper balance in this matter.
LORD MACDONALD OF GWAENYSGOR: By what method?
LORD MANCROFT: I was going to say that I think we are achieving it, but I do not know whether I can tell the noble Lord by what method. I have a suspicion that it may well be that there has been a considerable element of luck in this. I think, however, that the planning of the type of houses has also had its effect. It would be no use saying, first of all, that you want so many butchers and bakers, doctors and the rest of it. You have to put up houses, and houses of the proper sizes and types to meet the needs of industry, the needs

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of commerce, and the demand for doctors and so on. So I think that in the housing programme you have some means of keeping the balance of population roughly in the proportion you want—if you want a proportion, and I think you must have it. That, I am afraid, is the only answer which I can give the noble Lord upon that. It is not, I admit, a conclusive answer.
In connection with this question, however, I have some figures for one of the new towns, Crawley, which I think are interesting. These show that 17 per cent. of the male householders at Crawley consist of professional people, industrial directors and managers, people of the managerial classes generally, executives and public officials. Some 62 per cent. of the population consist of foremen, clerical workers and skilled craftsmen, and 21 per cent. of semi-skilled and unskilled workers. Those are the figures for Crawley, and I am afraid that they are the only ones that I have in this connection. The interesting point about it is that those figures are almost exactly the same as the figures for the whole of the country, so it looks as though we are getting roughly the right answer. Let me hasten to add that I do not want to be complacent about this. I am not suggesting for one moment that we can afford to sit back and allow matters to take their course. I agree with noble Lords who have put this forward that if we are to keep this proportion as we want, we must not only seek to encourage industry to go to these towns, but must encourage our own friends, doctors and lawyers and so on, to live there, in order that the balance is kept right—that is, kept roughly as it is in Exeter and Gloucester which, after all, as I have said, are not bad parallels to these new towns. I repeat, I do not want to be complacent about this. I am not certain that we have found a proper answer to the problem, but I will look very carefully again at what the noble Lord has said about this matter. I will look at the figures and at our plans, with a view to seeing whether everything is being done that can be done.
LORD MACDONALD OF GWAENYSGOR: Relating it to the rent?
LORD MANCROFT: I talked just now about the size of houses. I certainly
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agree that that should be related to the rent. The two matters are very closely related.
LORD GIFFORD: May I interrupt for the moment and put this to the noble Lord? The new town of Crawley is, perhaps, different from some of the other new towns because it is being built in and out of the existing town. It was a town which had a very large professional element in its population before the new town project was started, and an analysis at the present time might show a percentage which would give a false impression regarding the numbers of professional people who have gone there.
LORD MANCROFT: It might, of course. That is a perfectly valid point. I think each town varies a great deal. I took the case of Crawley because it is the one town in respect of which the figures chanced to be available. I do not suggest that there is any great satisfaction to be drawn from the fact that we have produced, apparently, what is roughly the correct proportion in this case. I entirely agree with noble Lords as to the necessity of getting this balance right. At the same time, I may perhaps go so far as to say that, while it would seem that we are on the right lines, I recognise the need for examining these matters very carefully.
I think the provision of more new towns was the next subject which was raised, and I will try to deal with that. I am afraid that I must, with apologies, give almost the same answer to Lord Silkin as I gave him when he put forward a request for more national parks when we discussed that topic a few weeks ago.
LORD SILKIN: I did not want any more national parks.
LORD MANCROFT: I must be mistaken—on second thoughts, I think it was Lord Chorley. I feel that for the time being we should try to make the existing new towns work really well. Here we see a very bold experiment—and all credit should be given to the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, for the part he took in it. Apart from the great extra cost which would be involved in embarking on new schemes, it must be remembered that we had not attempted for some 500 years such a

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task as this building of new towns, complete, whole towns, in particularly difficult conditions. We know that we have made some mistakes, and we can claim that we have met with some successes. But let us, in a sense, sit back for a bit. As I have said, these new towns cost a great deal. I am not advocating a policy of inaction, I am saying. "Let us be content with the scheme as it is for the time being." The time may come when we shall be able to see our way to further developments of this character; but let us now devote our energies to making these new towns work really well. In this connection, let us bear in mind that we have not entirely neglected old town development. I am not suggesting for one moment—and I think the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, perhaps pushed his case a little bit high on this point—that we want to go back and rebuild slums. But there is a happy medium. There are in the big cities re-housing schemes which are a compromise between the old slumdom and the new towns. It is a different aspect of the housing effort, and a different aspect of the social problem, and it is taking much of our energies at the moment. Therefore, I must answer this question about the possibility of more new towns fairly and categorically, and say that I can hold out no hope whatever, at the moment, of any further new towns being considered.
I was asked about the actual machinery of the New Towns Act, which we inherited from our predecessors. The question was raised whether we thought it was working efficiently. The fact remains, of course, that if it is not working efficiently it will require legislation to put it eight. I was asked whether I thought there was not some internecine strife between Government Departments. I do not suppose there has ever been a day in our Parliamentary Sessions when some Opposition spokesman has not cheerfully suggested that there is a suspicion of such strife and a Government spokesman has stoutly denied it. I would not cross my heart and say that one Department has not occasionally clashed its interest in this subject with that of another Department. But I can say that Her Majesty's Government are wholeheartedly behind this scheme. They inherited it; they have taken it on, and they are wholeheartedly supporting it. It is to their interest lo do everything they possibly can to see that
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it works. If there is internecine strife between Departments—which I do not for one moment admit—then I am sure that the noble Lord's words will have put a little conscience into some people—sufficient to make certain that the Government Departments which are concerned with this matter will go forward in future as one Department.
My Lords, I am afraid that I have been an unconscionably long time in replying to this debate. I have not answered the question which was put to me on the subject of Gatwick—and let me say at once that I am not going to attempt to tackle that question to-day. It is far too big a question to deal with in a debate like this; it involves too many considerations and, moreover, is a little outside the scope of this debate. I would, however, remind the House that this question of Gatwick in relation to these new towns is attracting the greatest consideration from the Government.
The noble Lord, Lord Macdonald of Gwaenysgor, read an extract from the South Wales Argus of June 19. He was good enough to give me a quick glance at it before we came into the House. I had heard about the article some days back, and was not vastly impressed by what was going on. I did not think a good case had been made out, but I will refresh my memory. I am given to understand that a deputation is coming from that part of the world to the Ministry, and I will certainly look at the correspondence again and read the article again, if the noble Lord will be good enough to lend it to me afterwards. I will make certain that if anything has gone wrong and can be put right, it shall be put right.
Schools are making good progress, but nothing to be complacent about. Altogether, eight schools have been built and seventeen are building. Medical services are adequate, but again, nothing to be complacent about. I suppose the answer is that, to a doctor like the noble Lord, Lord Haden-Guest, there is no such thing as an adequate service, because he always wants perfection.
LORD HADEN-GUEST: I never asked for perfection. I am a realist.
LORD MANCROFT: The noble Lord wants the next best thing and we give him the best we can. In the same way,

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the educationist wants as many schools as possible. These are conflicting claims. As I have said, we are making pretty steady progress, but these two questions are uppermost in our minds.
I will not keep your Lordships much longer. This has been an interesting and most useful discussion, and I think that all the speeches made this afternoon have been extremely fair. The technical points that I have not been able to answer—and I am afraid there are many—I will certainly have looked at. I repeat what I said at the beginning of my remarks. We want to do everything we can and show every encouragement to people, to communities, to firms, to industries, to come to these new towns—of course, from London, and not from the middle of the country, where they can get a more desirable home: that would spoil the whole conception of the scheme. The Government are not complacent about this scheme, because much remains to be done, and the novelty of the enterprise necessarily raises great problems for local authorities, the corporations themselves, Government Departments and, indeed, for private individuals. I am not suggesting for one moment that we have solved them all. We shall not fail to grapple with them and I hope we shall not fail to solve them.
We are not apologetic, because I think no fair man could say that the machinery which we inherited has rusted in our hands. It is well geared up and has developed considerable, indeed formidable, and, in one or two cases, impressive, momentum. But, like everything else, its future depends on the security and solvency of the country. These two things are linked inextricably. We too often forget how close we ran to economic and financial collapse only eighteen months ago, and our progress must be attuned to that. I think that we can look over the last five years—and the noble Lord, Lord Silkin can look back with us, because he is as much in this as we are—and agree that what we have achieved and are going to achieve is something of which we have to be proud.
5.15 p.m.
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, this has been a most satisfying debate from my point of view, and I believe from the
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point of view of the whole House, because every speaker, without exception, has completely supported the conception of the new towns. If ever this was a Party question—and I do not think it ever was to any considerable extent—it has now risen above Party. We are all proud of this country's achievement in new towns, and every single speaker spoke with the sole desire to make our achievements more successful than ever.
I should like to refer to one or two points that have been raised in the course of the debate. I was interested in, and delighted with, the speech of the noble Viscount, Lord Hudson. I should be less than human not to be gratified by the fact that after starting out with the idea of commencing a campaign against the mismanagement and waste of money involved in the new towns, he became, as the result of his investigations, one of their most ardent supporters. I agree with a great deal of what the noble Viscount said. It was useful that he should criticise the form of this report. That is one of those matters about which one might well become complacent. One starts off with an idea of what the report should be, and goes on year after year until shaken up by someone like the noble Viscount. I think he is right. I would remind him, however, that all these reports are not issued at the same time; they are issued from time to time, as they are ready. When I was Minister I thought it would be convenient to have them all published together, rather than have people go along to the Vote Office and ask if such-and-such a report was ready. Since then they have been multiplied in number and increased in size and I imagine that the next volume will be even more unwieldy than this one.
I would make three suggestions. The first is that the Minister should provide an introduction, drawing attention to some of the interesting and salient points in the reports. The second is that there should be an index. I believe that that would answer many of the noble Viscount's difficulties. If there were an index, he could read the pages dealing with that aspect of the new towns in which he is interested; and no others. My third suggestion is that, in addition to publishing the report in one volume, it should be possible for anyone who is interested in one particular town to buy

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the relevant report separately. There, is no reason why he should pay 15s. for a large volume when he is interested only in Basildon. The report on Basildon may cost only a 1s., and it ought to be possible to get it for that.
I did not speak about agriculture altogether in disparaging terms. I am a bit of an agriculturist myself, and the last thing I should do would be to speak in slighting terms about agriculture or its importance. It is true that the size of Bracknell had to be curtailed because of representations made on agriculture, but the noble Viscount, Lord Hudson, may be aware that, since I left office, representations have been made by the corporation that the reduced size of the town is inadequate for its purpose, and they have now come forward with a fresh application for additional land. I hope that the noble Viscount will not assume that all land devoted to new towns is necessarily depriving agriculture of essential land that it requires. We have to face the fact that the population of these islands is increasing. As between the last census and the last census but one, there was an increase of 1,500,000 people, representing something like 400,000 families. They have got to be housed somewhere. We also have to face the fact that, generally speaking, our towns are overcrowded. The whole trend of modern re-development is (if I may use a most ugly word) to de-congest the towns, thin them out arid provide accommodation for the people outside. Both those operations require additional land; that is unavoidable. All we can do is to ensure that we do not take the best agricultural land. I entirely agree with the noble Viscount, Lord Hudson, that that should be our object, where we have a choice, even if it involves using slightly less desirable land for the purpose of new towns or housing. But that is a counsel of perfection.
In my view, the noble Viscount was also right in drawing attention to the fact that a great deal depends upon psychological factors. Nothing was said—although I believe it to be most important—about the importance of the relationship between the people who have been exported to the new towns and the original residents. I can quite understand the reluctance and suspicion, and even the hostility, of the people in the
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existing small towns to the idea of taking unknown people into the new towns—people about whom they know nothing in relation to their habits and ways of life, who are not acclimatised to the way of life of the small country town, and who have come from slum areas, and so on. One can also feel sympathy for those who have gone to live in those small towns because they want the peace and quiet of the small place and now find themselves about to be absorbed into a large town with 60,000 or 80,000 population.
It may well be that in the early stages the Ministry, and in particular the Minister, did not pay sufficient attention to the art of public relations. I want to admit quite freely that I made a great mistake in the handling of Stevenage; certainly it could have been done much better. It was just foolish to go to Stevenage—I can say this now, seven years after the event; it is Statute-barred—and try to persuade those people that it was a good thing for them to be bought out at 1939 values, when, if they wanted to acquire other premises, they would have to go out and buy them at the existing market value. Even my persuasiveness was not equal to convincing them that it was a good idea; and shortly after that we had to revise the conception of acquiring land at 1939 values, plus 60 per cent.
We have all learned a good deal in the intervening years about public relations. What has been happening is that the development corporations have taken the existing population into their confidence; they have brought them on to committees, and consulted them about the way in which things are done; they have even put members of the existing organisations on to their committees, and some have been put on to the corporation. The result is that there is a great deal of harmony, and some of those who had been most bitterly hostile to the idea of new towns are now proud of what is being achieved. In particular, the people of Stevenage are now proud of the achievements of the development corporation; and I have little doubt that if a census were taken now of the views of the people of Stevenage about new towns, as compared with what they were when the project there was first started, it would show a great difference. There is another thing of which we can all feel proud—namely, that our people have a

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genius for accepting a thing once it is a fait accompli. They may fight and argue and resist as much as they possibly can; but once it is an established fact, then they settle down and do their best to make it a success. That is what has happened in so many of the new towns that have been set up.
I have very little more to say. I may express one regret at the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft. I am sorry that he has had to say—I quite understand that those are the instructions he has been given—that there are to be no more new towns for the time being. As I said, and as my noble friend Lord Macdonald said also, the reasons for these new towns still exist. The case for new towns has not been met by the provision of fourteen new towns. I remember that when I introduced the New Towns Bill I was of the opinion that we should need something like twenty new towns to start with, and possibly some more in the next five or ten years. I think that that estimate is not far from the truth to-day. I did not suggest that the alternative was that Manchester would go back to slum-land. I do suggest that in providing new towns we are merely building in the right way and in the right places, as against the alternative of building the wrong way, in the wrong places. If you do not meet the Manchester problem, or the Leeds problem, and the problems of the other towns, by building new towns, or expanding existing towns, you are inevitably driven to building in the bad old way, and creating congestion—not slums, which is a different thing—by building in the wrong places, extending your towns unduly and causing what has been described in the famous Barlow Report as "social and economic problems."
I am grateful for the statement that £1,500,000 is going to be provided for churches and communal buildings.
LORD MANCROFT: For licences.
LORD SILKIN: Yes, for licences. I must qualify my gratitude, because I have to consider how far that amount will go among the fourteen new towns. But it is a gesture, and I am grateful for it. I am quite sure that the Minister, having given his approval in principle to the idea that the new towns need these things, if he should find that more of them are
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necessary, will not hesitate to press for more licences for the purpose. I am well aware of the disputes that arise between different Departments, and I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, that there always have been, and always will be, disputes between Departments. What I was hoping was that, in the case of this great national project, of which we are all proud, and of which we all want to make a success, the Departments would subordinate their own distinctive points of view in the interests of the greater whole.
LORD MANCROFT: I am sure they will.
LORD SILKIN: I hope that they will, and I should like a definite assurance of it. I should like, for instance, a definite assurance from the Board of Trade that they really will go all out to provide the necessary industry. I appreciate that they have their own difficulties, but they have not always been forthcoming, either in giving the necessary certificate for industry in the new towns or in pressing for the necessary building licences. I do not wish to weary your Lordships, but I could quote a number of cases of quite considerable industries which have been anxious to go to the new towns but which have been unable to get the necessary licences and permissions. They could have got them if the Board of Trade had been really helpful. The problem of Gatwick is another point. I quite understand that it is a difficult subject, and I appreciate the noble Lord's reluctance to deal with it in this debate. But it must be settled, and in the meantime it is prejudicing at any rate the further success of one new town. I conclude by expressing my gratitude to all those who have spoken, and for the temperate spirit in which the speeches have been made. With that I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

TEES VALLEY WATER BILL
Reported from the Select Committee, with Amendments.
House adjourned at twenty-nine minutes before six o'clock