NEW TOWNS

HL Deb 24 June 1953 vol 182 cc1195-210

2.42 p.m.

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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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- 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.