Lords Sitting of 22 June 1955

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

  LORD CONESFORD
  Henry George Strauss, Esquire, Q.C., having been created Baron Conesford, of Chelsea in the County of London—Was (in the usual manner) introduced.
  Several Lords—Took the Oath.

BRISTOL CORPORATION BILL
Read 2a.
CARDIFF CORPORATION BILL
Read 2a.
TAF FECHAN WATER SUPPLY BILL
Read 2a.

COMMUNIST PROPAGANDA AND INTERFERENCE
2.50 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 during the last three months there has been any diminution of Communist propaganda and interference in the affairs of other countries, and if so, where.]
THE MINISTER OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (THE MARQUESS OF READING): My Lords, I am afraid that I cannot say that there is any evidence that Communist propaganda and interference in the affairs of other countries have diminished.
LORD VANSITTART: My Lords, I thank the noble Marquess for his brief and frank reply. May we hope that this
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particular topic will receive some attention in the forthcoming conversations?
THE MARQUESS OF READING: My Lords, I certainly hope that the matters to which the noble Lord has referred in his question will take their part in, and I trust have a satisfactory outcome from, the result of the forthcoming meeting.

MESSAGE FROM THE QUEEN: THE LOYAL ADDRESS
THE EARL OF SCARBROUGH: My Lords, I have the honour to present to your Lordships a Message from Her Majesty the Queen signed by her own hand. It is as follows:
"I have received with great satisfaction the loyal and dutiful expression of your thanks for the Speech with which I opened the present Session of Parliament."

FOOD AND DRUGS BILL [H.L.]
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (VISCOUNT KILMUIR): My Lords, I beg leave to introduce a Bill to consolidate the Food and Drugs Act, 1938, the Food and Drugs (Milk. Dairies and Artificial Cream) Act, 1950, and the Food and Drugs Amendment Act, 1954, together with certain other enactments amending and supplementing Part V of the said Act of 1938 in relation to slaughterhouses and knackers' yards. I beg to move that the Bill be read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 1a.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Bill read 1a, and to be printed.

SELECT COMMITTEE ON HOUSE OF LORDS ATTENDANCE
2.52 p.m.
VISCOUNT STANSGATE: My Lords, with your Lordships' permission I should like to ask for elucidation of a point of order from the Leader of the House. I put the point to his office this morning. It is this. Yesterday, in accordance with a Notice on the Order Paper, which included the names of the proposed members, we appointed a very important

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Committee. The chairmanship of Committees is governed by Standing Order 54, which I will read:
"The Lord nominated Chairman of Committees at the commencement of every session shall take the chair in all Committees of the Whole House, and in all other Committees of the House, unless the House otherwise directs."
There was no notice yesterday that the House was to be invited to make any other direction and, in point of fact, the Motion which was put by the Leader of the House was in these terms:
"That a Select Committee be appointed"
and so on; and then:
"and that the Lords following be named of the Committee …"
The Minutes of Proceedings record that the Motion was, "after Debate, agreed to"; and then are added these words which have no warrant, so far as I am aware, from any Question put from the Woolsack:
"The Committee to meet on Tuesday next, at half-past four o'clock, and to appoint their own Chairman."
That is to say, what is set down in Standing Order 54 as the duty of the House appears to have been arrogated by some other party. It is net a matter of detail; it seems to me it is a matter of great importance. I would ask the Leader of the House to give us sonic enlightenment as to how those words came to be included in the Minutes.
THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY): My Lords, of course, the actual appointment of the Chairman of the Committee will not be made until the first meeting of the Committee. It is perfectly true that the Standing Order is as the noble Viscount has said; but, at the time when this matter was under discussion, the Lord Chairman, as we all know, was, unhappily, in bad health, and it was doubtful whether he would be able to occupy this position. I therefore made unofficial inquiries of the leaders of the other Parties and they were agreeable that, in the circumstances, another Chairman should be appointed. That is the position as it stands. Obviously, if the noble Earl, Lord Drogheda, is not on the list of names of the Committee, then he cannot act as Chairman. Therefore, it
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would be for the Committee to appoint the Chairman that they think right. Naturally, in the circumstances—it is an important Committee—I did make soundings of the leaders of the other Parties as to which noble Lord would be suitable to occupy the position, and I believe there was a general measure of agreement as to who it might be. But the final step will be taken by the Committee itself.
VISCOUNT STANSGATE: My Lords, may I direct the attention of the Leader of the House to the words of the Companion to the Standing Orders, which says, at page 72, apropos of the point that the Chairman of Committees is not named among the members of this Committee:
"If the power of appointing their chairman is not expressly conferred on a Committee, the Chairman of Committees (whether named of the Committee or not) is the chairman."
I never doubted for a moment that the Lord Chairman, who presides over these other Committees, would be Chairman of this Committee. That is the first point.
The second point is that no substitution of what are called "usual channels" for the House seems to be satisfactory. Standing Order 54 says that the Lord Chairman shall preside
"unless the House otherwise directs."
But the House has never given any such direction. What will the Committee do when they meet? Suppose the validity of this Minute is challenged and someone says: "The House has never decided that the Committee shall appoint its own chairman and therefore Standing Order 54 applies."
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, as I say, the Chairman has not yet been appointed. He will be appointed in due course. Clearly, it could not be the Lord Chairman of Committees, because he is not on the list of members. The circumstances were unusual at the time when the discussions originally took place. After; all, if it had not been for the General Election this matter would have been settled perhaps a month or six weeks ago. I am quite certain that the noble Earl, Lord Drogheda, would agree that at that time he was not, unhappily, in a condition of health to allow him to sit. Therefore provisional arrangements were made to enable this Committee to sit as soon as possible. If the noble Viscount feels that this matter should be confirmed by the

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House, I do not think there is any objection to the matter being referred to the House, and I suggest that it should be done after the first meeting of the Committee—I do not see any objection to that, if that is, in fact, the correct procedure. Obviously, we all wish to keep to the correct procedure, but I feel that the noble Viscount is making rather a mountain out of a molehill.
VISCOUNT STANSGATE: That is exactly what I was afraid of in raising this point, that someone would say that I was making too much of a small thing. But it is not a small thing. If the House is to be deprived of the power of making the decision giving the appointment of the Chairman to the Committee—if it is to be deprived by some private arrangements—then it is an infringement of the ordinary powers of the House. Of course, we all regret the ill-health of the Lord Chairman very much, but the noble Marquess the Leader of the House says that as the Lord Chairman is not a member of the Committee he cannot be the Chairman. That is specifically contradicted in the Companion to the Standing Orders, which at page 72 used the words
"whether named of the Committee or not."
I am conscious of the fact that it would be quite easy to answer me by saying that this is just an attempt to create difficulties—but it is not so. This is a matter which concerns all Parties in the whole House, and if the power to appoint the Chairman of the Committee is to be withdrawn from the House as a whole and the appointment is simply to be made "on the cuff" in some way I think it is a pity. However, I have raised the point, and I shall say no more about it.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: I can assure the noble Viscount that, if that is the wish of the House, and if it is indeed the correct procedure, there will be no difficulty at all in bringing the matter to the attention of the House. I shall be happy to do so. But I would say to the noble Viscount that there are a great many Committees of which the Lord Chairman is not a member, and in this House it is not invariable that he should be.
VISCOUNT STANSGATE: I am quite satisfied, and I am very grateful for the leadership of the noble Marquess. He has said that the words "and that the
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Committee appoint its own chairman," should have gone into the substantive Motion. Had that happened, and had the Contents had it, the Standing Orders would have been complied with. But, as it was, the words were put in as a sort of appendix, without the authority of the House. That is my whole point. The noble Marquess has conceded the point most graciously, and I am satisfied.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, I can assure the noble Viscount and the House that the last thing I want to do is to offend against the Rules and customs of this House. I do not in the least complain that the noble Viscount should have raised this question. Perhaps he will now allow me to look into it to see what is the best way in which it can be dealt with.

THE HOUSING SITUATION
3.2 p.m.
LORD SILKIN LORD SILKIN rose to call attention to the housing situation; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, it is becoming almost platitudinous to begin a discussion on housing by saying that the two most human needs are food and, in this climate and country, homes. I think, therefore, that it is appropriate that at the earliest opportunity in this new Parliament my friends and I should have decided to initiate a debate on housing. It was an interesting phenomenon of the Election that little interest was, in fact, taken in the subject of housing, or, one might say, in any other subject; in the course of a fairly lengthy campaign I do not remember a single question being put to me or to anybody else on the question of housing. Nevertheless it is, as I hope to establish, a very important subject. At this early stage I should like to say to the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Burleigh, who is in his place, that this is in no sense an attempt to anticipate the important debate which he proposes to initiate next week. I hope I shall not cover the ground that he intends to cover—certainly, if I do, I shall not do it intentionally.
In formulating a housing policy it is an essential prerequisite that we should make as reliable an estimate as possible of what are likely to be our housing requirements for some time ahead. I

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would commence by saying that I would define "housing requirements" as the provision of a separate, self-contained, modern home for every family in this country. Attempts have been made in the past to arrive at some figure of what the requirements are. I remember that the last one was made in 1944, in the days of the Coalition Government, and at that time it was asserted, I am sure with every good faith, that our requirements were three-quarters of a million new houses to meet the demand for additional families, and something like l½ million to deal with such things as slum clearance, overcrowding, obsolete houses and so on. As we all know, that was a hopeless underestimate, but it was based on such information as was then available.
Since then we have had the 1951 census and it has been possible to arrive at a much more reliable figure of what our requirements are. The Government have themselves published a document called Houses—the Next Step, which sets out in some measure what our housing requirements are like]) to be in the course of the next few years. I do not seriously challenge the figures contained in this document, although I think they are incomplete. I should like, if the House will have patience with me, to go through the various housing requirements, as I see them, and see what they really add up to. There are to-day something like 14 million houses in this country of which more than one-third are over 65 years of age, a time of life when some of us who have reached that pinnacle begin to feel that we are getting a little creaky and in need of careful attention. There are 2½ million houses that are over 100 years old. There are a large number of houses in this country that are lacking in separate baths, or bathrooms, where families are sharing W.Cs., kitchen sinks, cooking stoves or other necessary amenities of life. These are all set out in the document published by the Government in the last Parliament.
In addition to these things, there are many houses which suffer from acute congestion on the site or are otherwise insanitary or unhealthy. Some hundreds of thousands of these are definitely slums—we do not know how many at the moment, but we anticipate that by the end of this year, as a result of the survey which has been initiated by the Govern-
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ment, we may be in a position to know more accurately. But apart from existing slums, there are many others that are rapidly becoming slums and which ought to be demolished as quickly as possible. Of the remainder of these old houses, probably the majority have a life of not more than twenty years. Moreover, there is considerable overcrowding inside dwellinghouses Several families occupy a house which was originally designed for one family. In the County of London itself, two thirds of the population are living in houses of that kind—that is, sharing a house which ought to be occupied by one family alone. This, I understand, is the problem of a great many of the large towns.
Then I would ask the House to consider the effect of the rising standard of living which we have been promised and which we have every hope will be realised. One of its effects is bound to be to encourage families to spread themselves out, to occupy a little more space, to enjoy more privacy. This will have the effect of reducing the existing amount of sub-letting, and more separate houses will be required. I believe this point to be controversial, but consider that this same rising standing of living will, before very long, render out of date some of the houses which we are actually building to-day. I want to be quite frank with the House and say that I fully understand the reasons which have prompted Her Majesty's Government, and which prompted Mr. Dalton when he was Minister, to adopt a simplified type of house consisting of less space and a reduction in amenities. I appreciate that that has a balance of advantages; that more homes can be built with a given amount of labour by the simplification of housing designs than if one kept up the previous design. But these houses are very small indeed and in my view unsatisfactory, and probably will not be as acceptable to Eater generations as they are to-day. I believe that, to a great extent, these houses will have to be used for smaller families than were originally contemplated. The type of three-bedroomed house that we are building to-day—the simplified type—may be all right for a married couple with one child; they would not feel cramped. But I am convinced that it is much too cramped for a family of husband, wife and three children, and before very long

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we shall find ourselves in the position of having to build something better. The present houses have low ceilings, which I very much deplore, and small rooms.
Another factor which we must take into account and which is often overlooked is the contemplated increase in our population. If we assume (and I think it is an under-assumption) that the population increases by about a quarter of a million people every year, that, in itself, creates a need for something like 70,000 to 75,000 additional houses a year. So that nearly one-quarter of the number of houses which have been built during the last few years are merely catering for the increased population. Then we have to consider the special problem of the old people. Many of them are either living in very difficult conditions or are in houses which are too big for them; and with the increased proportion of old people to which we must look forward in the next few years we shall have to build an increasing number of special types of houses for the old folk. Finally, I want to draw the attention of the House to the need for much greater mobility. At the present time people are often inhibited from changing their jobs because by so doing they cannot get another home; if a man has one home he must stick to it, otherwise he cannot get another. That is not good for the productive life of the community. There should be much greater freedom of movement, and to enable this there ought to be a certain proportion of houses available—5 per cent., if you like. I do not mean there should be specific houses but a "slack" of something like 5 per cent. to enable mobility to take place, so that if a man gets a job in another part of the country he need have no fear of taking it up.
It is very difficult to assess each of these factors in making a total, and every noble Lord can come to his own conclusion; but my own estimate (and I have gone into this matter carefully) is that in the next twenty years there will be a need for some 6 million new houses; and even at the end of twenty years there will be an additional number of houses which will by then have qualified for demolition or other treatment but which to-day are perfectly all right. Now I agree that a number of these houses will be provided by private enterprise for sale, or very
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largely for sale, but we must face the fact that it is not open to the majority of people for whom these houses are needed to be built, to buy their own house. Their income would not permit of it nor does the necessary mobility in connection with their work permit them to do so. Nor, with all respect to the doctrine of ownership of houses, is it desirable that people should be too tied to a particular house, bought on mortgage for repayment over twenty or thirty years, and which they will be reluctant, or unable, to move out of because of the mortgage hanging over them. So, whatever our doctrinal views on that subject may be, I do not consider that the erection of any substantial number of houses by private enterprise for sale is going to meet this problem.
We have to face the fact that the vast majority of the 6 million houses that I have estimated as being required will have to be provided by public action. Obviously this means that for the next generation there will be a colossal task in building houses, a task on which we shall be unable to relax. But there is another point to which I want to make specific reference—it calls for long-term planning. We cannot go on from year to year, or look at this problem, as I am afraid we have done in the past, as a short-term one. The problem has to be regarded as one which will be with us for the whole of the next generation and longer, and we ought to deal with it on that basis. I want to ask the noble Earl, Lord Munster, who is going to reply to this debate, a rhetorical question: Are Her Majesty's Government really giving thought to this housing question on the basis of a long-term problem? It was very nice to set as one's target 300,000 houses in one year. The Government have achieved it, as I knew they would if they really wanted to, at the expense of many other things—
THE CHANCELLOR OF THE DUCHY OF LANCASTER (VISCOUNT WOOLTON): No.
LORD SILKIN: Yes. My Lords, I should have to make my speech longer than it otherwise would be to prove the point; but I am going to act with great restraint and not prove it. I am merely going to assert it; but it is so, I think. I am not necessarily condemning the Government even for that. It is a matter of balance, and if they, in their judgment,

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decided that housing must have the highest priority—well, it is a matter upon which one can disagree but not necessarily condemn. I want to emphasise the point, however, that it is not good enough today, with this vast problem confronting us, for Her Majesty's Government merely to say that they are going to build 300,000 houses a year and that is all, and not to treat this as a long-term programme. I want to ask the noble Earl seriously whether Her Majesty's Government recognise the magnitude of the problem. It is a fact that, since the war, we have built over 2 million new permanent houses, and yet the housing lists seem to be as long as ever.
I wonder whether the Government really intend to go on, even at the rate of 300,000 houses a year in the course of the present Parliament; because I see that the number of permanent dwellings under construction by local authorities, for instance, has declined and a number of local authorities have had their programmes cut down by the Ministry. Those of Bristol, Leeds and Exeter, among others, have had their programmes cut down. They had submitted figures of the number of houses they wanted to build in the present year, but the Ministry—no doubt for adequate reasons—cut them down. It looks as if there is a tendency to switch from houses built by local authorities to houses built for sale, because at the same lime as houses to be built by local authorities and the number of houses under construction are being restricted, private enterprise has been given the word that it can go ahead without any restriction. What we are finding is that private enterprise will be building increased numbers of houses, while, so far as one can judge, the number of houses to be built by local authorities will be decreased.
I have already referred to one of the reasons why the housing lists are as long as they are, in spite of the large numbers of houses that have been built since the war—namely, that the increase in population has absorbed a substantial proportion of these houses. But, in addition, we have tended to neglect repairs, and, consequently, considerable numbers of houses have fallen into decay and been lost to the community. The fact is that since May, 1949, the number of men engaged on repair work has been reduced to about
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half. The men engaged on repair work in May, 1949, totalled nearly 300,000; the last available statistics show that the figure is now about 150,000. I recognise that in the last Parliament Her Majesty's Government did face the question of the loss of housing caused by houses going into decay. But, in my view, having faced the problem they ran away from it—or, at any rate, took inadequate action. They introduced the Housing Repairs and Rents Act, but the effect on the problem has been negligible.
I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Wolverton, is not here to-day. In his remarks on the gracious Speech he referred to the fact that this Act had failed to provide for owners of this type of house the necessary incentive to enable them to deal with repairs. We have toy face the fact—and I hope that the noble Earl will be able to say something on the subject—that this Act has largely failed in its purpose of encouraging landlords to carry out repairs in the future. Admittedly, it has rewarded landlords for having carried them out in the past. Though I make no complaint about that, that was not the purpose for which the Act was passed. Its purpose was to ensure that repairs should be carried out in the future. Nor has the response to the increased facilities provided by improvement grants been very encouraging. The Government have increased the size of the improvement grants, and have eased the conditions under which they become available, to encourage landlords nor merely to carry out repairs but to make necessary improvements such as installing baths, W.C.s and so on. Even in that connection the response seems to be very unsatisfactory. So unless more drastic action is taken, it looks to me as if we are going to lose a number of houses in the next few years from this cause.
The Government have considered the question of slum clearance, and, as I understand it, are proposing that each year accommodation should be provided for some 200,000 persons who will be cleared from slum areas. That will call for something like 60,000 dwellings, and I should like to ask the noble Earl whether these 60,000 dwellings are to come out of the normal allocation of houses to local authorities—that is to say, will it to that extent reduce the number of new houses that will be available for families on the waiting lists? I presume that that will

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be the case. To the extent that houses are diverted from the normal purposes to the special purpose of slum clearance, it will, of course, lengthen the time that people on the housing lists will have to wait for new accommodation. As it is, I am told that if you are about to get married, and you put your name down on a housing list, you stand a chance of getting a house by the time your eldest child is 21. Probably that age will be extended as the result of slum clearance operations. I ask if Her Majesty's Government realise the size of the task, and I think I have given some indication of my own view as to how big that task really is.
Next I Wish to ask the Government whether they appreciate what all this means in terms of money. We are subsidising housing at the present time to a very considerable extent. I wonder whether your Lordships appreciate the true extent to which we are subsidizing housing. The ordinary subsidy ranges from £29 8s. a year (that is the combined subsidy from the Exchequer and the local authorities), or something like 11s. or 12s. a week, in the case of the ordinary cottage or two-bedroomed or three bedroomed house, to £108 7s. a year in the case of flats built on expensive sites. This last means a contribution of over £2 out of public funds to the rent of flats built on expensive sites, such as, for instance, flats in Pimlico. Indeed, in many cases, it is worse than that, because some local authorities are making an additional contribution out of their rates, over and above the amounts required of them.
If we assume that the average combined subsidy is £50 a year on each dwelling (that is, taking houses and flats together; and I do not think it is an unfair assumption), then at the end of twenty years if we have built, say 5 million houses (and that is not an impossible assumption) we shall be paying out in subsidies each year £250 million. And that will be going on for the next forty years. Furthermore, it will be increased by any additional number of houses that are built after the period of twenty years. So, in those circumstances, we, or our successors, may look forward to a minimum subsidy towards housing out of public funds of something of the order of £250 million a year. I ask whether we, as a nation, can face this, and what are we doing about it. What are the Government
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doing about it? Do they realise what we are going to be confronted with?
As I have tried to pose this question, I suppose that I ought to give some headlines of the suggestions I can make for dealing with it, but I am conscious, especially after the observations that were made yesterday about the length of speeches, that I can deal with these suggestions only in brief outline. I want to emphasise that these suggestions are entirely my own. In this matter I think the issues are far too serious to endeavour to deal with them by dogmatic or doctrinal means. Indeed, it has always been a matter of regret to me that in a problem of this kind both sides should look at it too much from a Party point of view. Perhaps at this stage in the life of this Parliament we may be able to introduce some fresh objective thinking without the intervention of Party.
These are some of the things which I think should be done to reduce the burden on the community. First, I am sure that we ought to pursue more energetically the improving of our building methods. We all recognise that an enormous amount can be done in the way of improving these methods and we know that they are being improved in other countries, particularly in America, where the output per man-hour in the building industry is 50 per cent. higher than it is in this country. Surely the Government ought to give some encouragement and some inducement to the building industry to improve their methods.
Secondly, I think that a great deal can be done by prefabrication. By prefabrication I mean making houses in factories and assembling them on the site. When we talk of prefabrication, we talk very loosely and some people regard prefabrication as merely making door and window frames in a factory and delivering them on a site. I see no reason why a whole house should not be manufactured in the factory and delivered for assembly on the site. If your Lordships will forgive me, I should like to tell you of my own experience. I had a house of this kind built for myself in April of this year. The foundations had to be made, but the house was assembled in four days. It had the roof on in one day. I left for town on Monday morning and saw two lorries arriving with the house, and when I got back on Thursday evening the house was

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there, with all services and everything else. I am not trying to advertise this particular house. It was one that suited me. The fact is that it was made entirely in a factory and all that had to be done on the site was assembly. My family were living in it the week after.
One of the essentials of this kind of building, and one of the reasons why the policy for prefabricated temporary houses broke down, was that we never gave any factory a sufficiently long run to enable them to build houses by mass production methods. I know there were many difficulties about obtaining labour and materials. I am convinced that if we, as a nation, set ourselves the task of producing factory-built houses in sufficient numbers to make it worth while for a factory to engage in mass production, we should get a large number of houses at less cost and in quicker time. Just to complete my own story—I hope your Lordships will forgive me for talking from personal experience—I may say that the cost to me of this permanent house, which has been passed for land sanctions and subsidy, was less than the cost of a traditional house, and it is in every way as good, if not better. My point is that it is possible to embark on a programme of prefabrication, and I am sure the Government ought to give far more attention, and far more encouragement, to this method.
I want to be a little controversial. We have assumed all along that this great task of building nearly 6 million houses must be done by the normal method through the local authorities. We have 1,450 local authorities, every one of them with housing powers and the local responsibility of building houses. I should be the last person in the world to say anything against our local authorities. I spent a great part of my life with local authorities and I have happy recollections of them. But if we think of efficiency, is it necessarily the most efficient way to have houses built by local authorities? Some of them are mast efficient. Authorities like the London County Council, and the Corporations of Manchester and Birmingham and the other great cities are doing a magnificent job. They have great organisations and it would be a pity to interfere with them.
But, speaking of the smaller authorities all over the country, are they really the best means for prod icing houses in large
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numbers and in the speediest and most economical way? Without expressing any dogmatic view on the subject, I feel that this is a matter which ought to be considered afresh. The noble Viscount, Lord Woolton, has asked for fresh thinking on many subjects, and I approve very much of what he said. I think we ought to indulge in some fresh thinking on this subject as well. We ought not to assume that because rural district councils have been engaged in building houses for a long time—merely because we can find no other job for them, and if we took away housing from them they would just collapse—they ought necessarily to go on building houses. Perhaps when the time comes for the reorganisation of local government we may find a more efficient way of producing the houses we need.
We want to give much more thought to this policy of building on expensive land. Is it really economical to take a site costing £30,000, £40,000 or £50,000 an acre, build on it, and give a subsidy on it, the capitalised value of which over sixty years ranges from £2,059 to £2,572? I know it is not easy. We have to provide accommodation for people near their work; there is all the pressure against using good agricultural land—the conflict between agriculture and housing—and so on. Nevertheless, it would be definitely cheaper to take agricultural land at £25,000 an acre and build on it than to build on these expensive sites.
LORD BALFOUR OF BURLEIGH: At what price?
LORD SILKIN: At £25,000 an acre. Of course, we shall never have to pay that: I am taking a fantastic figure, to show that, from the point of view of the national economy, it, would be more worth while to pay £25,000 an acre for agricultural land and build on it than to buy this expensive land in the large cities and build flats on it. I seem not to have made my point clear.
VISCOUNT WOOLTON: No, it is not clear.
LORD SILKIN: It is difficult to elaborate in a speech of this kind, but I would refer noble Lords to an article which has been written by Mr. E. J. Osborne, called "How Subsidies Disturb Housing Development." The noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Burleigh, will be familiar

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with that article, or ought to be, because it was published in Lloyds Bank Review for April, 1955. This point is elaborated and, I think, made abundantly clear in that article. Mr. Osborne's solution is the new town and the greater use of the Town Development Act. I do not want to elaborate on that point now, but possibly the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Burleigh, will do so next week when he comes to speak on the subject.
There is one other matter that I believe might be considered—and again this is very venturesome. Is it necessary to borrow the whole of our money for housing operations and to go on paying interest on it for sixty years? When I was Chairman of the Housing Committee of the London County Council I had an inquiry made as to what would be the effect if we paid for our houses, not out of capital, but out of revenue, as we went along. I found, as one might expect, that for the first ten years it would have imposed a heavy burden on the ratepayer, but that after ten years the saving in interest would have caught up; and the conclusion we came to was that thereafter it would have paid us handsomely to suffer in the first ten years in order thereafter to pay only for the houses we built each year. I have tried to do a quick piece of arithmetic to see what this would mean in terms of 300,000 houses a year, and I am bound to admit that it would be a heavy burden on the present taxpayer and ratepayer if we tried to do it all. But is it not possible to compromise and spend more out of revenue to-day, in the hope of saving a great deal in the future? I feel that that would be worth considering. Lastly, ought we not to do far more than we are doing? If necessary, should we not even admit that this Housing Repairs and Rents Act has not worked, and start all over again and see what we can do to stop the rapid deterioration of houses?
Time has not permitted me to deal with many other aspects of housing which I recognise are important. I would only mention, without going into detail, the question of the siting of houses, and the difficulty of securing sites in large built-up areas, which is of great importance. One other thing I would mention, and that is the design of houses. I am glad to find that the design of the modern house is an enormous improvement on
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that of the pre-war house. I feel that perhaps we have limited ourselves a little by restricting the size of houses, but even the smaller house to-day is an enormous improvement on the pre-war house. The pre-war house is something of which we might well feel ashamed, if we had any sense of shame in these matters, but I think we can look on the post-war house with a good deal of pride. In my view, it would bear comparison with similar houses in any other part of the world. The only drawback is that they do become a little monotonous. If something could be done to get greater variety, I believe we should have gone a long way towards solving the problem of design.
That is all I have to say. I have tried to be non-partisan in putting this survey before your Lordships, although I do not pretend that I have been uncontroversial: indeed, on a subject of this kind, unless one is controversial one does not generally make any contribution to the discussion. I recognise that I have put forward a number of controversial solutions, but the problem is so great that no solution ought to be ruled out, and certainly not for doctrinal reasons. As I have said, new thinking is becoming fashionable in all quarters, and there is no subject to which this new thinking could be more appropriately applied than to that of the housing of the people. I beg to move for Papers.
3.46 p.m.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, is able to speak on the subject of housing with unrivalled knowledge and experience, not only as a former Minister of the Crown but also as one who has devoted a great part of his life to the service of local government. It is always instructive to have the privilege of listening to the noble Lord and, if he will allow me to say so, I think he has succeeded in avoiding all the more controversial and vituperative allegations and epithets to which many of us became accustomed during the Election campaign last month. I was a little surprised to hear the noble Lord say that during his own part in the Election campaign he was never asked a single question about housing. I think the noble Lord must have been lucky—or perhaps potential hecklers were deterred by his authoritative and imposing appearance. My own impression during the Election was that some members of the noble

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Lord's Party were a little embarrassed by the not altogether accurate prediction of their leaders a few years before, that it was impossible to build more than 200,000 houses a year unless fewer schools and fewer factories were built. I believe that there were one or two Labour candidates who found it a little difficult to be always quite polite in their attempts to explain to the electors how it had come about that the Government had managed to create a record in all three.
I was a little disappointed to hear the noble Lord say that he thinks the modern, slightly smaller house—called, I think, the people's house—was too small to be satisfactory. I do not want to go into details of the question. It is true that, in the case of a three-bedroomed house, the former minimum of 900 square feet has been departed from, but I think I am right in saying that the dimensions of each individual room in the modern people's house do conform to the requirements laid down by the Housing Manual of 1949 which was issued by the Government of the noble Lord's Party.
My knowledge of the housing question is vastly inferior to that of the noble Lord, but I should like to follow his example for a few moments in trying to deal with the question in its broader aspects, and objectively, as I think he has done. Before the war, in Great Britain we were building houses at the rate of 450,000 a year; and in Scotland, at least, there was every prospect that the Scottish share in that figure would soon be substantially increased. At that time the cost of a four-apartment house was usually somewhere in the region of £400. It is not altogether an idle regret—indeed, on the contrary, I think it is a useful consideration—in trying to understand our present housing problem, that we should reflect on what would have happened in housing if the war had not taken place. In fact, since 1939, we have built in Great Britain barely 2 million new houses, of which about half have been built in the last three and a half years. If there had been no war, and if we had continued to build at the rate which we had reached in 1938—which might well have been increased—we should by now have built since 1939 not 2 million but 7 million new houses. In 1955 there would now probably have been no slums left in Great Britain; and overcrowding, as defined by
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the 1936 Act, would probably be fairly negligible.
The war has struck a very hard blow at housing progress in Great Britain and, of course, the deterioration in our position now, compared with 1938, cannot be measured by the difference between 7 million and 2 million houses. Unfortunately, it is far worse than that, for in the last sixteen years, except for the patching up of houses damaged by enemy action, very little has been spent on repairs. The slums, which were already condemned in 1939, are now much worse than they were then. New slums have came into being, and a great deal of house property which is still good property and capable of being saved is in danger, owing to inadequate expenditure on repairs, of degenerating into slum property.
The reason why we could not deal with this problem after the war was simply that it was vital to our national life that we should devote nearly the whole of such resources as we had to building new factories, increasing our industrial production and our export trade. That was absolutely necessary, in order to enable us to live; and nobody can be blamed for that circumstance. I have always deplored Party controversy on the housing problem. I do not think it has ever done much good, and I believe that it often does a good deal of harm, although I feel bound to say that a great deal of the Party controversy we have had was engendered, in the first place, by members of the noble Lord's Party in 1945, who promised that they were the only Party who could build houses. One of them even went so far as to say that they could easily build 4 million or 5 million houses in a very short time. When politicians on one side win an Election by promises of that kind, it is rather too much to expect politicians on the other side to keep entirely silent about it. But I think the post-war Labour Government were right in concentrating on our most vital economic needs, even though the necessary price of hat was that we all had to endure the agony of seeing our slums getting worse, and the queues of disappointed families who had nowhere to live getting longer and longer.
If we are going to refrain, as I most certainly refrain, from making any major attack on the housing policy of the Party opposite, then I think it is only fair that we should pay some tribute to the genius

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and labour of the present Foreign Secretary who was Minister of Housing until a short time ago. I think the successful application with which he addressed himself to an extremely difficult task is one of the most creditable examples of post-war statesmanship. Not only was the problem with which he had to deal a prodigious problem, but the opportunities for misjudgment and miscalculation were almost unlimited. How much of our precious resources in labour and materials could we devote to housing as a whole? How much could later be switched to reconditioning or to slum clearance, and so on? These questions did not always depend on us. To some extent they are outside our control, because it is necessary that we should import some of our most essential building materials from abroad, so that the terms of trade, which have the most unpredictable habit of going up and down, to the advantage of one Government and to the embarrassment of another, have an important bearing on our housing problem at home.
I believe that the White Paper of 1953 which was produced by Mr. Macmillan was undoubtedly the most courageous and statesmanlike exposition of this very difficult problem and of its remedies which we have had since the war, and on it the present policy of the Government is based. Its proposals fall into a number of different parts, all of which have to be carefully reconciled with each other. There is the question of building new houses, the question of reconditioning, the question of slum clearance and the question of temporarily patching up old slums, about which I should like to say one word, because it is an entirely new idea. This idea would have been unthinkable before the war and, naturally, a great many people have criticised it: the idea that time and money should be spent on temporarily improving this horrible old property, which ought to be demolished and swept away at the earliest possible moment, is repugnant to them.
I think the right way to look at the matter, however, is this. Unfortunately, we cannot get rid of all our slums within the next five years, partly because the magnitude of the problem has grown since before the war, and partly because we are poorer in economic resources than we were then. I believe that the only practicable objection to the Government's
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policy—I think it is called deferred demolition; that is to say, temporarily repairing condemned unfit property—is that by using up a certain amount of labour and materials it may defer the time when this property can be demolished and when the occupants can be rehoused. But if we consider a family living in a slum area who cannot be rehoused for more than five years, what are we to do? Are we to leave them in this unfit house, in conditions of the most acute squalor, let us say, for six years, and then give them a new house; or is it better to leave them for a year longer, say, for seven years, with a little more comfort, a little more decency, and a little more chance of domestic happiness? I think the answer can be given only by the local authority who have the duty of planning their slum clearance programmes and of deciding which clearance area shall have priority. I think the Government are right in giving the local authority the power, with the aid of the 50 per cent. Government grant, to say that in the case of areas which come near the bottom of the programme, even though it may mean a slight delay in the process of rehousing, they may improve for the time being the comfort and the decency of these unfit dwellings.
I do not want to say anything about reconditioning because this is a United Kingdom Motion and I do not want to introduce Scottish matters, but the problem is so different as between England and Scotland that one cannot allude to reconditioning without mentioning the difference. In England, much of our old house property was built under 99-year building leases. The people who built them usually built them of brick, and perhaps did not mean them to last for longer than the duration of the 99-year lease. Some of them are now good, and some are bad. In Scotland, on the other hand, where the feudal system has never been abolished, a great many old houses were built under a perpetual feu charter which lasts for ever, and the people who built them built them of stone, with walls two or three feet thick. Some are now bad and some are good. Those which are good are so durable that, if properly reconditioned, they will provide first-class homes which will last longer than many of the new houses now being built. In both countries, England and Scotland, not all the 7 million old houses privately

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owned are slums; not all are unfit. A great many of them, by careful reconditioning, could economically, at reasonable cost, be made into, not second-class but first-class homes which will last for a very long time. It would be folly not to devote a certain part of our resources, with proper Government grants, to carrying out that work.
Then with regard to slum clearance itself, although it may be said, "But think how much worse and how much more formidable our task is now than it was before the war," at least it is a very great advance that we can now contemplate a major drive against the slums considerably sooner than was thought possible a few years ago. It is necessary that this drive should be caried out, not only for the sake of the inhabitants of the slums but also for the sake of many of the great cities in which they are to be found. We cannot go on letting these cities sprawl out with new housing schemes to an indefinite distance, taking up agricultural land, far away from the work of the people who are put into them, while we leave this festering sore of slum property in the centre of the cities themselves.
I quite agree with the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, that cost may be a formidable obstacle. But, after all, even if one has to pay £25 an acre for agricultural land, we need the food; and for the sake of the civic life of our great cities, even if it costs a great deal of money, it is necessary that they should be decently and well developed in the centre. Not all the inhabitants can be housed on the same sites: some will have to go further out. A great many of them, however, can be housed in large blocks and apartments the disadvantages of which are at least partly outweighed by their proximity to the work of the inhabitants. I hope that the local authorities, in carrying out these rebuilding schemes, will be more ready than some of them are at present to employ first-class architects in designing their bigger housing schemes. I was glad that the noble Lord mentioned that point. The most beautiful housing schemes are by no means always the most expensive. If you employ a good architect, you will of course have to pay him a high fee; but the economies in design which may be worked out by a skilful architect will often repay the local authority many times over the amount of his fee.
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There is one other point to which I want to allude—and I am lot quite sure at the moment how important or unimportant it is—in relation to the Government's policy as a whole. One of the things which the present Foreign Secretary, Mr. Macmillan, did before he left the Housing Ministry about a year ago was to inaugurate a financial scheme under which tenants of houses might purchase them, through the medium of the building societies, but with a larger loan than the building societies are accustomed to advance. As a rule, the building societies do not go beyond 80 per cent., but under the Macmillan scheme loans can be, in some cases, as high as 95 per cent., the difference being guaranteed jointly by the Government, the local authority and the building society. In a recent publication of the Building Societies' Association it is stated that during the first few months of this scheme, up to September, only £500,000 was issued in loans; during the second quarter, from September to December, the amount rose to £4 million; and during the most recent quarter, from January to March of this year, £7 million was advanced for this purpose. It is also stated that the present Minister of Housing and Local Government is considering whether the scheme can be extended.
I do not want to bother the noble Earl, Lord Munster, who is going to reply by asking him a lot about this matter now, because I know that he will have many other things to which to reply, but at some time or other I should very much like to know what kind of houses so far have been principally dealt with under this tripartite scheme—what type of people are buying them; is there any chance of the scheme being extended, and will anything be done to publicise it and give it the fullest advertisement?
LORD GREENHILL: If I may interrupt the noble Earl for one moment, in what sense is that scheme a tripartite scheme? Is it not the case that the guarantee is by the Government and by the local authority, and that the building society is almost completely secure?
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: The word "tripartite" is the word used by the Building Societies' Association, who assert (whether or not it is correct I do not know) that all three share in the guarantee. As I say, I do not know whether

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or not that is so. It seems to me that the Government guarantee is the essential part of it. That is what I should like to be told something more about. We are often told that the great majority of wage earners in this country do not want to own houses and would prefer to rent them. Of course, there are many people in all classes of the community who, for one reason or another, may not find it convenient to own a house and who would prefer to rent one. But there are also a great many in all classes who would like to own a house. I think there are a great many more who have never thought about the subject at all but who would think about it seriously if it were brought to their attention that they had an opportunity, with the aid of a Government credit, of becoming the owner of their house on favourable terms. If this could be done on a larger scale it would be to the advantage of everybody and to the disadvantage of no one.
From the point of view of the owners, when I have advocated a policy of this kind, as I have done sometimes in Scotland, I have sometimes been asked "Is it not a little unfair, is it not even a little sharp practice, that we should take advantage of the artificially depressed value of rent restricted property which is caused by the Rent Restrictions Act itself to encourage, by Government credit, by a Government-guaranteed credit scheme, the acquisition of these houses by the tenants at a considerably lower price than the owner would be able to get if he could sell in an open market with vacant possession?" I do not think it is unfair, because it is most unlikely, so far as we can foresee, that houses on lower classes of rents will be decontrolled for a very long time, if they ever are. Owners have great difficulty in keeping them in repair. Is it really likely that their selling value, as a whole, will ever increase? There are so many owners who find their house property more of a liability than of an asset. I am sure that there are a great many who would be only too glad to take a small price in order to get rid of it.
From the point of view of the tenants, I see that at page 7 of the Government White Paper of 1953 a typical example is quoted of a rent-controlled house with a rent of £15 a year, and it has been
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pointed out that the rent might be increased to £30 a year under the Housing Repairs and Rents Act, on condition, of course, that the balance is spent on repairs. My Lords, if a house is commanding a net rent of only £15 a year, its selling value can hardly be much more than £300, and the annual instalments which it would be necessary to pay to a building society would not be very much more than the rent that the tenant is now paying. He would, of course, have to pay the cost of his own repairs, but he may have to do that anyhow under the Housing Repairs and Rents Act. There are many tenants of rent-restricted houses who, if they are earning good wages, are now very much better off than the owners. Many of them would probably be eager to take advantage of Government credit to purchase their houses if they were properly informed of the opportunity. In the White Paper, we are told that out of the 13½ million houses in this country (it must now be about 14 million) fewer than 4 million are privately owned, about 2½ million are owned by local authorities and over 7 million are conducted on the landlord and tenant system. That is far too high a proportion of landlord and tenant houses, and far too low a proportion of owner-occupied houses.
It would also be of great advantage to the community if purchase by the occupier could be carried out on a larger scale. When a man becomes the owner of his house there is a great psychological change in his attitude. The resentment, which unfortunately is fairly widespread in many urban areas, on the part of tenants towards landlords general, immediately disappears when the tenant becomes his own landlord. He can usually be trusted on the one hand to carry out necessary repairs promptly and efficiently, and on the oilier hand not to waste his money on anything which he considers unnecessary. Therefore, it seems to me that, from the point of view of the community, we should preserve this national asset in the shape of our old housing property more economically and efficiently if a larger proportion of it were owned by the occupiers than is possible under the present not, very satisfactory landlord and tenant system.
I have been talking only of old rent-restricted houses, but I should like to see

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this principle applied to new houses, too. Of course in the case of a new house the cost is very mach greater, for the four-apartment house in England may cost £1,500 and perhaps rather more in Scotland, and the annual premiums necessary to purchase that house through a building society would often be beyond the means of the average wage-earner. But what are we doing now? We are spending in England a subsidy of £30 a year on a three-bedroomed house, and in Scotland a subsidy of £56 a year on a four-apartment house, with higher subsidies in cases of special expenditure. I think that if it could be arranged for this subsidy, which we have to pay anyhow, to be deducted from the annual premium which the purchaser would pay to the building society, then we should bring a large number of these houses within the means of a great many wage-earning families. I do not say that they would all want to own them, but a great many of them would, and we should gain a great deal in social contentment and also in the promotion of savings, for there is no kind of saving which is more beneficial to the country than the saving of a man who is trying to buy his own house.
Last Thursday I noticed that some of your Lordships were listening in another place to the speech of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the debate on the Address, in which he hinted that the Treasury might accord some kind of favourable treatment to co-partnership and profit-sharing schemes in order to promote the Government's policy of establishing a property-owning democracy. What an excellent thing it is that a wage-earner should be helped to acquire this intangible asset in the shape of some direct financial interest in the business for which he is working! How much better it is that he should be helped and encouraged to acquire the most tangible piece of property which any human being can possess, which he can see and enjoy every day of his life—the home of his own family!
4.16 p.m.
LORD WISE: My Lords, I am sure that the House has listened to the last two speeches with considerable interest. They were speeches which were full of
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matter for consideration, not only by the House but by the Government, and were speeches dealing, first, with the general situation, and secondly, with the position in Scotland. They were speeches which I am certain will be read, with very deep, interest indeed by many folk outside the walls of this House. It is not my province to speak this afternoon for very long, but I wish to pose to the Minister who is to reply to the debate one or two questions, which arise in ordinary day-to-day dealings with the housing situation in the country. Before I do that, I should like to endorse a point to which the mover of the Motion referred—namely, the importance and the vast coverage of the problem from a national point of view. Whilst we may be able to deal with the matter as at present, obviously it is one for long-term consideration, and we must think of the new generation which is arising. In the generation which is now passing and which has passed, housing conditions have been such that we have deplored them; but, whatever efforts may have been made to put them right, I think we must at this particular point, certainly after ten years of house building since the war ceased, turn our thoughts to the position which may exist in this country in the future.
It is quite possible that there may arise an era of irresponsible thought and action, and growing youthful dissatisfaction with everything and everybody may be approaching. We do not know whether this may happen; but it is a possibility. Therefore, at this stage I think we must take steps which appear appropriate to us to counteract such an evil if it should ever arise. Bad lives, bad thinking and a lack of parental discipline are apt to breed and to thrive where housing conditions and surroundings are themselves bad. Therefore, I think one aspect of the work of any Government must be to provide healthy, pleasant and attractive homes for the people. Self-satisfaction with our own blessings and a blind eye to the needs of others must inevitably lead to distrust, unrest and undesired trouble for us all. This we must avoid at all costs.
In the opening speech there was some reference to figures of the production of houses, but we should not be deluded by figures of progress. Surely this national house-building operation is not

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a competition in numbers. The only satisfaction that we can obtain is that, as a nation, by our efforts, we shall fully cater for the needs of the people; and we must build according to those needs. It has been said that we can increase the total of houses built by building houses of the wrong type or size or in other ways, but I hope Her Majesty's Government will realise that, as a nation, we have to attempt to plan building operations so that the needs of those who want houses are satisfied at the earliest possible moment. Reference has been made to England and Scotland, but at this stage I want to mention East Anglia. I am particularly anxious that those living on old aerodromes, in huts which are neither windproof nor weatherproof and are not really habitable, should be rehoused at the earliest possible moment. Those people are living in deplorable conditions. I cannot conceive that any of us in this House would think much of it had we been compelled to live under such conditions. I am certain that our reaction against society would be the same reaction that those people no doubt hold at the present time. Some of these huts are due for demolition and the people in them are due for rehousing, but difficulties have arisen in regard to the acquisition of land in neighbouring districts of which I have knowledge. Negotiations have been held up for an interminable length of time. I hope that Her Majesty's Government will take whatever action they can to hasten the acquisition of suitable land and to make arrangements for the rehousing of these people as early as possible.
As these are rural areas the question of the acquisition of agricultural land has arisen. Although an acre of agricultural land may play its part in the productive life of the nation, we must keep in our mind the fact that an acre of agricultural land will house at least thirty people, possibly more; and because houses have been built on that land and the gardens are cultivated the area will produce, perhaps, more than it would if it were in the occupation of a particular farmer.
LORD BALFOUR OF BURLEIGH: Hear, hear!
LORD WISE: That may sound a strange statement coming from myself, a member of the farming community, but I am most anxious that stress on the use of agricultural land should not retard the
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housing of those who are in need, because I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that there are many thousands of acres of land in this country which could be brought back into cultivation in order to counteract the loss of agricultural land which it may be necessary to acquire for housing purposes.
Another question which arises in regard to country housing is that of sewerage. I am biased in the view that in some cases Her Majesty's Government are not very helpful on the question of the provision by local authorities of sewerage systems for village houses. I believe it is a fact that sanction is given for sewerage systems to be brought into operation in regard to council houses, but except in very exceptional cases those sewerage systems cannot be extended to cover other houses either in close proximity or elsewhere in the villages. I believe it is a fact that there is in existence a circular, No. 54/52, which can be regarded as ambiguous. Her Majesty's Government should, I feel, give it a more liberal interpretation and allow local authorities to bring into operation sewerage systems for several villages. It is important to remember that people living in the countryside are entitled to the same amenities as are other people, and certainly water supplies and sewerage systems should now be operating fully in our countryside.
The Minister may be able to give information on a subject which I have met with on one or two occasions. It is a dual point. The first is the question of the transfer or allocation of houses in the case of an applicant who lives in one area and works in an adjoining area. If he wishes either to change his house or to obtain a house in an adjoining area he is debarred from doing so because, at this particular time, although he works in an area he lives outside that area. The second point relates to the transfer of council tenants from one area to another, or the "swopping" of houses. Might I ask the Minister one or two questions on future building allocations for local authorities? I believe that some local authorities at the present time are rather in the dark about the number of houses for which they are likely to receive building sanction, and also about how many will be in respect of slum clearance and how many will be for subsidised letting for the ordinary applicant on the waiting list. And, in regard to the last point, if

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no houses are allocated for subsidisation and none can, therefore, be used by the ordinary applicant who is on the waiting list and who is not in a position to take an ordinary rented house—that is an un-subsidised house—what is likely to be the position of that particular applicant? He, or she, may have waited many years, and if there is no allocation of subsidised houses in the local authority's quota, that applicant is in an extremely difficult position.
Another matter which affects the allocation of houses and which is detrimental to those who are in need of houses is the use of furnished houses, or parts of furnished houses, by newly married couples or others. These people are generally in furnished houses at high rents, rents which it may be beyond their means to pay. But whilst they are in furnished accommodation, it is extremely difficult for such applicants to obtain council houses. I know that they may appeal to the rent tribunal, but if an appeal is made to the rent tribunal, although the rent may be reduced, there is then the possibility that within a period of months a notice to quit may be received. Therefore the numbers appealing to the rent tribunals are comparatively small. But the fact remains that consideration should be given to people who are in that position.
The noble Earl, Lord Dundee, referred to the question of the building and the spread-over of cities. I am afraid that cannot speak with any great knowledge of city development, but I think that in dealing with our housing problems we should aim at arriving at what I like to think is a balanced community. We should not consider building entirely in the cities; we should try to spread our building operations according to needs, and, so far as possible, where we are able to do so, with a view to preserving in the small country towns and larger villages their rural character. We should strive not to bring to these small country places industrialisation, or matters of that sort, however attractive it may be from the point of view of reduction of rates or improvement of the capital value of the places concerned. We should endeavour to plan all building according to the circumstances of the particular city and the particular country area. I wish to finish by stressing once again—and this is the note
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on which I started—the immensity of the problem which is before the Government. We understand—and I agree with what has already been said on the point—that this is not a Party matter. So far as I am concerned, I say it is a matter upon which we should all agree and we should all seek to do our best to solve the problem in the course of the years ahead.

THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE
4.34 p.m.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, before the noble Lord, Lord Quibell, rises to speak, I hope that the House will forgive me if I interrupt the business to make a statement which is being made in another place by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister. It relates to the Council of Europe. It 1s as follows:
"The Consultative Assembly will meet at Strasbourg on the 5th of July and I have appointed"—
I am reading the words of the Prime Minister—
"eighteen delegates from the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The distribution of the appointments between the Parties is the same as in the previous delegation: that is, nine Members of the Conservative Party, eight Members of the Labour Party, and a representative of the Liberal Party. I have also appointed a number of substitute delegates.
"The appointments of the Labour and Liberal representatives and substitutes have of course been made on the basis of nominations by the Leaders of those Parties. It would perhaps be more convenient if the names were circulated in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
"The same delegation will represent the United Kingdom Parliament at the new Western European Union Assembly which is also expected to meet at Strasbourg on July the 5th. In the course of its meeting, this Assembly will, no doubt, adopt its own rules as regards substitutes. It seems probable, however, that the substitute delegates for the Council of Europe will also serve as substitutes for the Western European Union Assembly."
I shall see that the names are circulated in due course.
Following are the names referred to:
United Kingdom Delegation to the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe
Representatives from the Government Benches: The right honourable Member for Renfrew, West (Mr. J. S. Maclay); The honourable Members for Aberdeenshire, East (Sir Robert Boothby); Belfast, South (Sir David Campbell); Darwen (Mr. C. Fletcher-Cooke); Glasgow, Scotstoun (Mr. J. R. H. Hutchison); Bebington (Mr. H. D. Oakshott); Birmingham, Edgbaston (Miss Edith Pitt); Winchester (Mr. Peter Smithers), and the noble Lord, Lord Chesham.
From the Labour Party: The right honourable Members for Lewisham, South (Mr. Herbert Morrison); Brighouse and Spenborough (Mr. John Edwards); Derby, South (Mr. Philip Noel-Baker); The honourable Members for Coventry, South (Miss Elaine Burton); Bermondsey (Mr. R. J. Mellish); Dundee, East (Mr. G. M. Thomson); The honourable and learned Member for Northampton (Mr. R. T. Paget), and the noble Lord, Lord Henderson.
From the Liberal Party: The noble Lord, Lord Layton.
The following substitutes have been appointed to act for the delegates when they are absent from Strasbourg:—
From the Government Benches: The honourable Members for Wells (Lieutenant Commander S. L. C. Maydon); Bournemouth East and Christchurch (Mr. Nigel Nicolson); Harrogate (Mr. J. E. Ramsden); Sutton and Cheam (Major Richard Sharples); and the noble Lord, the Viscount Stonehaven.
From the Labour Party: The honourable Members for Goole (Mr. George Jeger); Stechford (Mr. R. H. Jenkins); The Hartle-pools (Mr. David T. Jones); Newcastle-upon-Tyne, West (Mr. E. Popplewell).
From the Liberal Party: The honourable and learned Member for Cardigan (Mr. Roderic Bowen).

THE HOUSING SITUATION
4.36 p.m.
Debate resumed.
LORD QUIBELL: My Lords, I almost feel that I should apologise for intervening in this debate, as it is such a long time since I last attempted to address your Lordships' House. But this question of housing happens to be one which interests me very deeply. I have been associated with it actively for between fifty and sixty years. Therefore many of the things that have been said in the discussion which has taken place here today on the relative merits of houses that we built many years ago and the houses that we build today were already known to
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me. There are more causes than one for the differences between these two kinds of houses. I myself, round about 1913–14, built houses with three bedrooms, a bathroom and hot and cold water, and sold them for £250 each. Of course our overheads at that time were not what they are today; and we had not what is known in these days as the Welfare State. But I venture to tell your Lordships that these houses, which I pass every day when I am at home, compare very favourably with the council houses that were built after the First World War. They are still there and they do not need a lot of repairing. What is more, I believe that one of the reasons for their not needing much repair is that nearly all of them are owned by the people who live in them, and who are quite able to carry out themselves such repairs as are needed. So it is nothing new for me to say that I agree entirely with the idea that a man should own his own house, and, for the future, so far as I am concerned, he would also have to build it—I do not propose to do it.
In my view, one of the great causes of the increased costs of housing is not so much that the men are not working as fast as they used to in my day. In the days of which I am speaking, I used to work with them from the time they started in the morning until they finished at night. Naturally, it was my business to get as much out of them as I possibly could. That was what practically every building employer did at that time, and we were very successful, as a consequence, in producing a good article and a cheap one. What is it that to-day prevents a lot of improvements from being carried out by private owners? It is the tremendous expense involved. I recently calculated that if an owner wants some slight repair done, such as two new slates on a roof, it will run him into quite substantial expense. A man is sent to have a look at the roof; he sees what length of ladder he wants; if he wants a creeper he will go back to get it. He will fetch two or three slates and a bit of lead to fasten them with, and he will get his labourer along to help him. When the job is finished it will be found that it has cost about £2 to put a couple of slates on a roof. And that is a very small job. It is all very well for people to say, "But the owners ought to pay for it." The

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fact is that the cost of repairs has increased so enormously that many of the people concerned simply cannot afford to carry out repairs.
All the costs of building generally have risen enormously. We know that we have millions of tons of the raw material needed for doing concreting. It is all in the hands of four firms. At one time you could get as much as you pleased for one shilling. Now, if you ask a number of firms to give a price, you get the same price from every inquiry, with not a penny difference. And, as your Lordships know, the waste material from blast furnaces—mountains of it—is available; yet to-day it costs an enormous amount of money. In regard to cement, I know of a firm which had the experience of getting a contract with a distributor under a little more favourable conditions titan usual, but after he had delivered one or two loads, the distributor received orders from the superior court, which is the ring, that he must cease at once or there would be no more supplies of cement. So that contract was torn up and was of no further avail. Then we have tar, which is used in foundations, in roads and footpaths—and here the local authorities also come in. The prices are exactly the same. The materials used in the foundations are completely controlled.
There is a nice story to be told in regard to bricks. Bricks cost about £6 10s. a thousand. I think this is a scandal which the Government ought to look into. Near many villages and small towns there are local brick works, near the spot where the clay is being hewn, yet local building contractors have to pay exactly the same price for the bricks made on their own doorstep as they would have to pay if they got them from Peterborough, many miles from the building site. But there is one thing about it; the brick makers do consider contractors a little. I know a man who asked a firm of brickmakers whether there would be any consideration if he placed an order for a few million bricks. The firm said, "Yes; 6d. a thousand." As bricks cost £6 10s. a thousand, that is slightly less than a penny in the £ to encourage the contactor to get on with the job. That is a lot worse than the "Co-op," but that is private enterprise at work—a penny in the discount, no matter how many tricks you order and
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no matter how you pay. If you ask them to send a pro forma invoice and pay straight away for half a million bricks, you still get a penny in the £ discount—a piece of encouragement to help you along the road and keep you out of the bankruptcy court!
The next item, steel windows, again is controlled. There are fixed price agreements among those who manufacture them: there is no competition there. Then there are tiles. I notice that Marley Tiles did very well this year and declared a greater profit than they have done for a very long time—I should say greater than they have ever done. Here again we have no remedy; we have to pay the price. Now I come to sewage pipes, which again are controlled, and again the general contractor has to pay the price asked, because he has not the slightest remedy. In the case of cast-iron goods, I am sure that many of your Lordships know that these prices are fixed. Lead and electric fittings are also controlled. Sanitary fittings and toilets are all price-controlled—and not only price-controlled; most contracts provide so much money for sanitary goods, which is at the disposal of the council's surveyor or engineer or architect. In regard to timber, I remember that a Minister in another place (perhaps I had better not say who he is), who I suppose, like myself, had good intentions, thought he was going to reduce the price of building materials. But one of the first things that happened was that the price of timber was raised £19 per standard. As it takes two standards to build a council house, that meant an increase of £38 in the price of the house for timber alone; and nothing whatever was done about it. That was when timber was supposed to be controlled. I have very grave doubts of the honesty of the control in some of these things.
Anyone who looks at building prices to-day is amazed at the size of them. A little house—what I would call a paltry cottage—costs £1,500 or £1,600. In my view, that is ridiculous, and I do not think there is anyone who would not admit that it is ridiculous. But what can the building contractor do? No matter where he is, how big he is, or who he is, the fact is that the prices are laid down; the only difference between one contractor and another is in efficiency; and I do

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not think that the difference in efficiency accounts for much. There is a little bit in the erection of a house. It may be that there is a saving by prefabrication, but most people in this country, believe me, my Lords, would prefer one of the old kind of houses, even though it costs a bit more money. Generally, there is nothing so good as a brick house in this country, though I agree that there may be a case for prefabricated houses in remote parts of the country, such as the areas owned by the Forestry Commission. I always thought the Government were slow in this matter. Having regard to the cost of transporting workpeople at the various stages of erecting a permanent type house and of transporting materials to remote places, there may be a case for erecting prefabricated houses in these places.
In regard to rural housing, which my noble friend Lord Wise has just mentioned, I would submit that in some districts they should exercise a little care about building these houses. I do not say that there are not in some places rotten old cottages that ought to be replaced, but I have in mind the experience of a friend of mine, a farmer, who, at his own expense, has built 160 houses. They are a real credit to him, for he has given them a bit of character. He has put a bit of stone under the windows or on the gables to make them fit in with the old village. I saw him a fortnight ago. He has fourteen of these houses to let, and they are houses that must have cost him at least £2,000 each. Why is that? It is because there are no labourers in the countryside to go into them. This man is an efficient farmer, who owns something like 8,000 to 10,000 acres; he is one of the best employers, and yet he has these houses standing empty because there are no labourers to go into them.
Of course, some of the labourers are being displaced by machinery, and how far machinery is likely to be used still further in agriculture, I cannot say; but this man has these fourteen surplus houses which he wants agricultural labourers to occupy. They are to let at 6s. a week, and they are far superior to any council houses that I have seen. Money did not seem to enter into the matter; all he wanted to do was to build a quality house so that he could
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attract the best kind of agricultural labourer. So far as the rural areas are concerned, I think the waiting lists should be brought up to date. I have seen one of these lists brought up to date, and it is obvious that people who previously had their names down for houses had found accommodation elsewhere. I feel that, in their present state, the lists are not always very reliable and that the number of houses said to be needed in some of these villages should be looked into. I believe that we should go a little slowly.
I am partly out of step with some of the things that have been said to-day about agricultural land and houses; on that aspect there is a conflict of opinion in this House. But there is no room for two opinions about this: that we must produce the maximum amount of agricultural produce possible for the people of this country. In my view, therefore, we should conserve as much of the agricultural land as we can. I do not mean to suggest that houses should be built so close together that there is scarcely room to breathe, but I have seen some cases in my own area where the amount of land—and it was some of the best agricultural land in the area—used to build a few houses was shameful. In some places, and particularly on low-lying land, the building of flats or flatlets of about three storeys would save land. They are very comfortable, and make a nice home—I happen to know that, because I have built some. If the ironstone is taken out, as has been done in Corby, I cannot see why flatlets should not be built, instead of houses that take good agricultural land. It is a great mistake, in my view, for authorities to go sprawling about for miles and putting in pipes for sewage disposal, gas, electricity and road making (all this adds to the cost), and building houses, as they do in some cases, six and eight to the acre.
What we need in this country, and what we shall continue to need, is a larger population to grow as much of the food required for our own consumption as we possibly can. All these things are important. There may be a conflict between the Ministry of Housing and Local Government and the Ministry of Agriculture, but there can be no gainsaying the fact that we should not waste an acre of our good agriculture land,

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which has been going out of cultivation at the rate of over 50,000 acres a year. The population is increasing, and I am pleased that they have sufficient wages to buy more food. But lightly to destroy the agricultural land by building houses on it is a shame, and in many cases it is a scandalous waste of the land. In several cases I know, land has been wasted in the type of roads built leading to the estate.
This matter is far more important than some of my fellow Peers seem to think. I was brought up on the land, and there were more than six -louses to the acre in our village. The only man who could afford a good house at that time was the fellow who could afford six acres to the house—never mind six houses to the acre. Some of the houses in these villages had low roofs; I could not walk upright in the one I was brought up in. I sometimes look at myself and think that under those conditions I have not done too badly. I can tell your Lordships that at one Election some supporters of mine went into a street of these houses and started condemning the houses. But they were little palaces inside; they had small rooms, and the ceilings were low, but they were sweet and clean and a real home. The women from those houses chased my supporters out of the street with clothes props, and they had to retire and leave the women in their little homes. A great many people like these little old homes, especially in the winter time.
I think it was the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, who spoke of some of the little homes. If they were properly repaired and had water supplied and a sewerage scheme—they are now getting gas in some of the little villages—some of these little houses would last a good deal longer than some of the improvised houses we have put up, especially what we call the, Portal house. In the Portal house if you raise your arms they are up to the ceiling, and you have to get down on your knees to take your shirt off. They should not be built so low, because houses of this type ought to be described as slums. They are new houses, and breathing space should be provided in them.
Finally, I hope the Government will not forget that the main reason why I have said a word or two is to deal with
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the price controls. It is nothing less than a scandal that for bricks and cement, and even slag that is on your own doorstep, you have to "pay through the nose." Ultimately it comes into the bill for the building of the house, and then it must appear in the rent. And it may be that, ultimately, some of those who are occupying those houses, if there is any financial stringency in this country, may be called upon to bear a greater proportion of the rent than they now pay.
5.0 p.m.
LORD GREENHILL: My Lords, I found it extremely refreshing to listen to my noble friend Lord Quibell, because one had the feeling that he was speaking from personal experience. But what occurred to me was this. While my own feeling is that he is quoting quite truthfully what is happening in connection with prices of building material, why is it that those committees who have sat in order to inquire into the costs of housing have not been able, so far, at any rate, to get prices reduced, in spite of the kind of evidence that a noble Lord like Lord Quibell could bring forward? One has the feeling that, although there is at the moment a tendency for prices to come down, those falls in prices are by no means satisfactory from the point of view of those who have to pay for the erection of houses.
I was interested, too, in what the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, said in the course of his remarks. None of us wants to be really controversial this afternoon—this subject is far too great and important. But I must admit that when, during the Election, I heard certain speeches and certain remarks, to the effect that some 300,000 houses had been built, there came into my mind this thought. Remembering the hundreds of thousands of pounds that are being paid in transport charges for the purpose of taking children from their houses to distant schools, when schools could have been at walking distances; and remembering the amount of money and time spent in travelling from places of residence to places of work, it seems to me that, in order to achieve that figure of 300,000 there has been some kind of neglect in the proportion of schools, hospitals and factories to the number of houses built. One feels that, for reasons which some of us can guess, there has been almost a distortion of the country's

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economy in order to get that kind of unbalance so that the boast could be made later that 300,000 houses had been built.
However, that is not the purpose of my rising this afternoon. It is rather because of what has been said about housing in general. Bad as are the conditions which have been described of English houses, I think they are even worse in houses in Scotland. The White Paper which the Government published in relation to housing in Scotland shows that 41 per cent. of the houses were built before 1880, and that only 12 per cent. of the 1,473,000 houses in Scotland were erected between 1945 and 1952. I am told that, despite the 255,000 or more houses built in Scotland, there still remains a need for some 470,000 houses, and that dilapidations are now taking place at something like 11,000 a year. In Glasgow, of 314,000 houses, 143,000, or 45 per cent., are still houses of one or two apartments—not one or two bedrooms, but one or two rooms for the whole house. That, obviously, is a condition which ought not to be tolerated in these days. One does not want to stress what we all know of the relationship between bad housing and bad health.
We know, too, as my noble friend Lord Silkin pointed out, that we are faced with an increasing population and less ground upon which to build houses. I know, for example, that in the case of full employment the labour force is immobile, and cannot be expected to shift up and down. We know that families are smaller and, therefore, the number of houses needed is larger than ever. We know about an ageing population who want, and rightly want, accommodation for themselves and not merely to be tolerated by their relations. When I think of all these problems, I confess that in my more pessimistic moments I begin to imagine that the problem is almost insoluble. I agree with what my noble friend Lord Quibell has said: that it is sacrilege, it is economically suicidal, to destroy good agricultural land in order to erect houses. I well remember how in Glasgow, a city that I know a little about, an area of good agricultural land, the size of Perth, was laid out, beautifully but, in the light of present-day requirements, wastefully, as a reaction to the very had conditions they were trying to
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remedy. Therefore, one comes to the conclusion that the dreams of the town planners in the immediate post-war years have now become the nightmares of local authorities, because local authorities are finding it extremely difficult to cope with this immense problem.
My purpose in rising this afternoon is to make one mild suggestion and to deal with another problem. The suggestion is this. In a large city such as Glasgow, where the authorities are doing their utmost to utilise every building site they can, and where they are proceeding with slum clearance as rapidly and as effectively as they can, I have the feeling—and this must apply equally to other large cities—that there must be large areas of land which are today almost sterilised for any use—I refer to land which was formerly part and parcel of, for example, the railway companies, which was used at one time for storage purposes, warehouse purposes, and so on, and which could be far better and far more cheaply utilised for the erection of houses. I believe that if a survey were made of land of that kind which is still available, it would to some extent prevent the necessity of trespassing on this much more valuable agricultural land.
The other point I wish to raise, which may be somewhat controversial, is this. The burden of interest which local authorities have to pay on the loans that they raise for housing purposes alone is becoming unbearable and, in my view, a definite hindrance to the continued building of houses. For example, of the £102 million of capital debt which Glasgow has piled up, £78 million has been borrowed for housing purposes alone. The rent received by the local authority for the 80,000-odd houses they own is actually less than the amount of interest payable upon the money borrowed for housing purposes. That is not an isolated case. It applies, I think, to all the four large cities in Scotland, and in any event appears to be a ruinous charge upon the local authorities.
I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Burleigh, will not "jump" at me if I say that the question of finance nowadays, so far as internal finance is concerned, is largely a matter of bookkeeping; that the question of currency is largely a matter of the controlled output of the printing machine and that, therefore, there should not be so great a hesitation

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in considering ways and means whereby the finance required for housing purposes can be dealt with by a form of book-keeping different from the general kind of book-keeping for commercial and industrial purposes. In other words, if it were possible to provide local authorities with the capital necessary to cover the cost of erecting houses at either a nominal figure of interest or, if one wants to be extreme, completely free of interest, there seems to be no real reason—one knows of other reasons, of course—why that problem cannot be solved.
Indeed, there is a partial precedent in the Housing Repairs and Rents Act which was recently passed, because there, where local authorities are asked to pay for some of these older and dilapidated houses for the purpose of improving them sufficiently well to permit, say, of a life of five or ten years or so, the Government are prepared to cover half the loan charges for the period that the house is occupied. If they can do that for those houses for a period of five or ten years why cannot they do it for new houses being erected, instead of continuing the loan charges to the local authorities, as they now do, for a period of sixty years? One cannot but sympathise with members of local authorities who bitterly resent that a house costing the very high figure of £1,900, for example, should actually cost, over the sixty years, something like £5,000. While in ordinary business practice no one would suggest any kind of revolutionary treatment of interest charges of that kind, when it comes to a problem of this sort some measure other than the routine methods ought to be adopted in order to ease the burden placed upon local authorities and upon those who have to pay rates for these houses. I hope that these two suggestions will be considered by the Government, and that something may come out of them which will have the effect of relieving local authorities of the heavy burdens now placed upon them.
5.14 p.m.
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: My Lords, some of your Lordships, including the noble Earl opposite who will reply to the debate, will remember the debates we had on housing before the war. In those debates the speeches that will be remembered and not forgotten by those who heard them were not made from either Front Bench. They were the speeches of the most reverend Primate the Archbishop
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of York (who was then Lord Bishop of Winchester and who would be with us this afternoon if his health permitted) and of the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of I3urleigh, on the Back Benches from the opposite side of the House. We are all delighted to see the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Burleigh, in his place this afternoon. He is one of the few noble Lords who have listened to this debate from start to finish without leaving the House even once for a quick cup of tea, and that is most encouraging for the mere tyros in housing, wherever they may sit. What we learned from those debates before the war, and particularly from the speeches of the two noble Lords whom I have just mentioned, was the urgency and seriousness of the housing problem. At that time there was only one other social problem of the same magnitude—mass unemployment. That problem has been solved, we all hope for ever; but it is far from a comforting thought that to-day, twenty years later, we are still discussing the housing problem.
This is only partly explained, as the noble Earl, Lord Dundee pointed out, by the setback during the war years. I do not think that any of us can feel completely satisfied that everything possible has been done, in the years of peace before and since the war, to meet the housing need. It is indeed a confession of failure, of failure of the whole society in which we live, and we shall have remedied this failure only when housing is no longer a difficult and intractable social problem. The improvement in the general standard of housing since the war has emphasised, by contrast, the backwardness of housing in certain areas. The fact is that most of our people have a higher general standard of living. They are earning and spending in the twentieth century, but they are living and sleeping in the nineteenth century. Their homes have been left behind in the advance into modern times. They work by day in a steel and concrete factory, in a modern shop or store, but they go home at night to a dwelling that dates from the Victorian era, if not earlier, and which is steadily deteriorating, in most cases because the landlord cannot afford to do the repairs.
The success of the Government in increasing the number of new dwellings tends to obscure the extent of our present

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housing problem and the enormous amount that remains to be done before we have a satisfactory standard even for the majority of our people. Of course, it is not just an urban problem. We are all aware of the unsatisfactory conditions, often aggravated by lack of a piped water supply, in many of our towns and villages. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Wise, who was speaking from his own knowledge of East Anglia, pointed out many difficulties of this kind which he hoped the Government and the local authorities would be able to remedy.
Nor is it just a question of finding a cure in the towns for the old evils, slums and overcrowding. It is no less important to prevent old property from becoming new slums and to disperse the population of our overgrown conurbations. Slum clearance, relief of overcrowding, dispersal, reconditioning and rural housing all require fresh thought, as the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, pointed out, and a more vigorous drive. The Government should push forward simultaneously in all these directions. There is, I feel quite certain, no need to wait for public opinion. Every one would welcome a bolder and more comprehensive housing drive. I suggest—and perhaps the noble Earl opposite will ask his right honourable friend to consider it—that the Prime Minister should be invited to initiate such a policy by addressing a representative meeting of local authorities and the representatives of the building industry. This is surely the time, at the start of a new Parliament with a long programme of work in front of us, for such an act of imaginative statesmanship.
But the success of this new policy which we all hope to see initiated will dep,end on a reconsideration of certain features, and certain features only, of present housing policy. I fear that we shall not get the dwellings we all want without some change of emphasis on private building. No one denies that free enterprise can contribute usefully to the supply of houses and certainly to improvements in architectural design. We on this side of the House do not object to private building, or to the owning by people of their own homes. I thought that that point was made very clear by my noble friend Lord Quibell, to whose speech we all listened
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with great pleasure, based as it was on a lifetime of experience in the building industry. He brought out some extremely important and rather alarming points regarding the factors which keep up costs in the building industry. But however that may be, the fact is that private building still caters in the main for the lucky few who can afford to buy a house or pay an economic rent.
The main emphasis was placed on private building by Conservative Governments between the wars. More houses were built than ever before, but they were not occupied by people in housing need. The same misplaced emphasis may result in a similar misdirection of housing effort. Here, I would say how heartily I agree with my noble friend Lord Silkin, that we must get away from doctrinal prejudice on both sides and look at this problem purely from the point of view of expediency and of the best and most effective methods of forwarding the housing drive. It is quite true that the total number of new dwellings has increased from year to year, but (and this, I think, is somewhat alarming) the proportion of those provided by local authorities has fallen. It is misleading to measure progress by the number of new dwellings, flats or houses built every year. What really matters is not how many flats and houses go up, but whether they are built in the right place, at the right cost, for the right people. The only valid criterion is how much of our new building is contributing directly to housing need. I am not sure whether this criterion is accepted by the Government.
May I mention one respect in which they appear to disregard it? The Government favour the sale of houses by local authorities, the result of which is to take dwellings out of local housing pools and to lessen the number available for families in need. We believe that the main emphasis, for the present at any rate, until there is a much greater supply of houses, should be placed on municipal enterprise. It follows from this that the local authorities should be enabled to get the sites and other facilities they require to expand their housing effort. We regard housing as a social service which can be effective only if it is given priority over other demands on the resources of the building industry.
The other thing in the Government's attitude which, to my mind has been

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hampering progress, is unnecessary delay before policy is carried out. The lengthy procedures connected with slum clearance should be curtailed so as to remove these black spots more rapidly from our great urban centres. I hope the Government will initiate discussions for this purpose with the local authorities. An even more serious ground for complaint has been the dilatory and hesitating way in which the Government has dealt with town development. This matter will be discussed next week on the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Burleigh, and I shall therefore touch upon it only lightly this afternoon. The expansion of small towns is so vital to the housing plans of our great cities that it could hardly be omitted completely from a debate of this character on housing policy. The fact is, as your Lordships know full well, that our largest centres of population are rapidly running out of housing sites within their own boundaries: they must go outside or stop building. The only alternative is to increase density on the central sites, and this, I think your Lordships will agree, is objectionable on social grounds, as well as encountering the obstacle of cost to which my noble friend Lord Silkin referred. Hence the really imperative need for new towns and expanded towns to take the surplus population of our conurbation.
Everyone welcomed the New Towns Act of my noble friend Lord Silkin. This was followed by the Town Development Act, 1952, and we in London certainly felt new hope for our own city and for other great cities in this country. But after that we were faced by inertia instead of by the lead that we had expected and hoped for from the Government. In the past three years little has been done to carry out the policy of expanding these small county and country towns, in spite of continuous pressure from the large urban authorities. The half-heartedness of the Government is clearly expressed in a statement referring to London made by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government in April of last year. I hope your Lordships will allow me, as this is a ministerial Statement, to read the Minister's words. They are as follows (OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, Vol. 526, col. 1391):
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"In the expanded towns programme we intend to move only in a small way, so that we may see how it goes. Only a few schemes, probably not more than half a dozen, are expected to start within the next few years or so, and they will go ahead at a modest rate."
Fortunately, this estimate of not more than six schemes for London has already been falsified. Schemes for ten towns to be enlarged from London are already approved, or likely to be approved, by the Minister. But the statement of the Parliamentary Secretary last year reveals pretty clearly the state of mind of the Government at that date. It shows, I think, why so many local authorities have been pressing without success for Government action for such a long period of time. I hope that the Minister's decision of April 26, to give more generous financial assistance to the receiving authorities, indicates a change of heart. But this decision might have been taken a year or more ago, in which case the preliminaries to new building in these small towns would have been well under way by now.
Let us not forget the importance of the time factor, the need for speedy action, the imperative urgency. Let us not forget that any unnecessary delay in getting on with the housing programmes of local authorities is paid for in preventable suffering. In the London County Council area alone we have a waiting list of 150,000, of whom some 50,000 have been suffering for a long period of time in mind or body as a result of the housing conditions in which they live. But at the present pace of our building programme not more than 30,000 of these desperately urgent cases will be rehoused by 1960. My Lords, the only hope for these unfortunate people is a speeding up of the arrangements for building in expanded towns. I have not mentioned the many thousands of families in slum clearance areas whose need is equally urgent. I am sure we should all welcome, if we could hear it from the noble Earl, Lord Munster, the assurance that there will be more vigorous and more urgent action by the Government to meet the pressing need for better housing.
5.28 p.m.
THE MINISTER WITHOUT PORTFOLIO (THE EARL OF MUNSTER): My Lords, I am very glad that the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, has seen fit to put down this Motion for discussion in your Lordships' House. As he and other noble

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Lords have rightly said, it is a very important subject indeed. It is, moreover, one with which he is well acquainted, and on which he is particularly competent to address your Lordships. The noble Lord and other noble Lords have been good enough to give me some information about the questions which they intended to ask, and I will certainly endeavour to do my best, in the shortest possible time, to reply to as many questions as I can.
At the beginning of my observations I should like to remind the House that at the conclusion of this last war the greatest task with which any Government was faced was that of providing as soon as possible an ample number of homes for the people to live in. The problem was made all the more urgent by the havoc and destruction which had been wrought during the war years and by the complete cessation of all building throughout those years. From the end of the war to October, 1951, the Labour Government built 979,000 houses. I do not wish to be controversial, but I must bring out this fact, in view of the observations which the noble Lord made in introducing his Motion. The House may recall that as far back as 1946 Mr. Bevan, who was then in the Labour Government the Minister responsible for housing, assured the electorate that by the next Election there would be no housing shortage so far as the mass of the British people were concerned. That was certainly not the view expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, to-day.
LORD SILKIN: To be fair to Mr. Bevan, as I am sure the noble Earl would wish to be, he was basing his remarks as I well know, on the assumption that the estimate of three-quarters of a million more houses being needed to meet the shortage was correct. He had no reason to assume otherwise. The survey had only recently been made, and he felt that three-quarters of a million more houses could be built by the time of the next Election. That was the point of his statement.
THE EARL OF MUNSTER: I will not push or press the matter any further, but it still seems to me to be a very weird remark from the Minister who was responsible for housing in the Labour Government.
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The noble Lord, Lord Silkin, now realises that this is a vast problem. I will not try to equal the estimate which he has made, but he suggests to your Lordships that over the next twenty years we shall require 6 million more houses in this country. The forecast which was made by the Labour Government of that time proved to be wrong, and noble Lords will recall that it was the Conservative Party who expressed great dissatisfaction with the rate of house building during the years immediately after the war. They announced that, if they were returned to power at the Election in 1951, they would aim at a target figure of 300,000 houses a year. From November, 1951, to April this year no fewer than 1,047,000 houses were completed; and in the years 1953 and 1954 the figure of 300,000 was reached and exceeded. It is perfectly obvious that, as a Government, we recognised the magnitude of this problem and quickly determined to do our best to meet it. Moreover there is every prospect that the number of houses which will be completed this year will be of the same order. I cannot give the House any reliable estimate of the number of people who have been rehoused since the end of the war, but I understand that a figure of 7 million is reasonably accurate. During the time that we were building these 300,000 houses a year, industrial buildings and schools were also being put up in increasing numbers, and it was only last year that we started again to build new hospitals in this country.
From 1951 onwards, the housing programme that we have followed can be divided into two distinct phases: first, the expansion of the building programme, about which I have given the House some figures; and secondly, the consolidation of that programme and the start of a campaign to repair, improve and modernise existing houses and to demolish the slums. During the first phase local authorities have been encouraged to enlarge and increase their housing programme, while the expansion of private enterprise house building was assisted by the relaxation of many licensing restrictions. At the same time, I think entirely through Government effort, the supplies of building materials increased and the best use was made of the resources available by the adoption of

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more economical designs in house building.
It is, I think, obvious to everyone that the predominant task which met the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, and his Party after the war, and the predominant task which faces us today, is the provision of houses to rent to the people. Although there has been a continual rise in the number of houses for sale—that is to say, those built by private enterprise—last year, 257,000 houses were bulk for letting, a figure that is an all-time record. I feel sure that the noble Earl. Lord Listowel, will at once recognise that we are not dilatory but are a competent Government who are perfectly prepared to enter this matter with vigorous action. When we decided to expand private enterprise building we did it for the reason that we believe that in a property-owning democracy the more people who own their own homes the better.
In addition to removing these licensing controls, Her Majesty's Government have also taken steps to help those with limited means to buy their own homes. The noble Earl, Lord Dundee, asked me whether I had any figures which I could give him. This scheme of house purchase was produced in May of last year, and it enabled building societies to make loans in excess of the amount they would normally advance to would-be house purchasers. The scheme applies to those cases where local authorities have undertaken to guarantee the advance in association with the Exchequer and building societies, so that it is now possible to obtain a loan of 95 per cent. on houses whose value does not exceed £2,000. In May of this year it was stated that up to date 8,254 cases had been completed, involving a sum of £11,691,000. Nevertheless, it was suggested that the success of the scheme up to that date was only a beginning, and that as the scheme received further publicity there would be many more people who would endeavour to purchase their own house under this particular scheme.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: Can the noble Earl say whether these figures are mostly in relation to new houses or to old ones? I was not quite clear from his statement.
THE EARL OF MUNSTER: I could not do so without notice.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: But the figures include old houses?
THE EARL OF MUNSTER: I think that probably the majority would be new houses.
We now come to the second phase of the housing programme. In November, 1953, we published a White Paper, Houses, the Next Step, which has been mentioned this afternoon. Noble Lords will remember that at this time the housing plan which Her Majesty's Government had adopted had resulted in the building rate being increased to a figure of over 300,000 houses per annum completed, but in our opinion the time had come when attention should be paid to the state of many of the existing houses. Although I have no doubt that a considerable number of them, mostly owner-occupied, were in a good state of repair and suitable for occupation, some had undoubtedly been neglected; others were obsolescent, and many were unfit for habitation and ought to be demolished. Legislation was therefore introduced, and the Housing Repairs and Rents Bill, now the Act of 1954, amended the previous Housing Acts, carrying the whole story one stage further.
Without going into any detail I would briefly remind noble Lords of what that Act did. It directed local authorities to submit proposals for slum clearance to the Minister; it relaxed the statutory conditions for improvement grants, and it further enabled councils to fix reasonable rents for improved houses—that is to say, houses which have been repaired and improved under this particular Act. Part II of the Act enabled landlords to raise rents of rent-controlled property if the property was in good repair and if the landlord could produce satisfactory evidence of having spent money on repairs generally. It was, I think, the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, who asked me whether I could give him any figures. Unfortunately, I am not able to give the noble Lord any figures whatever, because the Act made no provision for records to be kept. Nevertheless, the information which has been given to me indicates that the number which have been repaired is probably substantial. The noble Lord will realise, in spite of his critical remarks upon this particular Act, that it has been operating for only nine month. It is far too early to jump

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to any conclusion, but I have reason to think that, as time goes on, and as landlords hear more about this particular Act, they will take fuller advantage of it.
As regards Part I of the Act, I think I can give the noble Lord some indication of what happened. As he will remember well, improvement grants have been available for this kind of work since 1949, but practically nothing was done under the Housing Act of that year because of the very difficult conditions which then prevailed. Indeed, from 1949 to the end of 1953 only 6,000 houses qualified for grants, but between September, 1954, and April of this year nearly 18,000 houses qualified for the grant. The figure is now running at the rate of 3,000 a month, and it may well be bettered as knowledge of the benefits continues to increase. I might add at this point that it is interesting to note, in passing, that half the number of grants which have been made have been for the improvement of houses in rural areas.
I turn from that matter to the question of slum property, about which the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, and other noble Lords asked me many questions. This is a matter, as Lord Silkin well knows, which has been before successive Governments for a great many years, and local authorities have long had statutory powers to deal with slums, though, naturally enough, they were unable to exercise these powers in the war and early post-war years. The 1954 Act added to local authorities' powers, and under its provisions they are required to submit to the Minister by the end of August this year the estimated number of slum houses in their areas and their proposals for dealing with them during the next five years. Every clearance and compulsory purchase order made under the Act requires the confirmation of the Minister before it can become operative. Slum clearance in prewar days was being undertaken on a fairly substantial scale by local authorities, although it took them some time to get into their stride. However, as I say, considerable progress was made, and some 244,000 houses have been demolished or closed as being unfit for habitation, and about 955,000 persons were displaced in the five years up to the beginning of the war. There has also been a very limited amount of slum clearance since the war, though the main effort, as we know, has
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been devoted to the building of new houses. Nevertheless, last year some 20,000 houses were demolished or closed, and the figure will increase as local authorities advance with their programmes.
Her Majesty's Government have announced that we now intend to remove 200,000 persons per annum from the slums in our effort to tackle the problem as a whole. This figure has been described, I think, by the noble Lord, as inadequate; and other derisory remarks have been made about it. But I think it is worth remembering that only 288,000 persons were displaced from slum property in the year immediately before the war, at a time when the normal housing programme was not so intense as it is to-day. That target which we have set ourselves, the removal of 200,000 persons from slums, is a target, not a ceiling. It is our firm intention to reach that figure as quickly as we can, and more will be done if opportunity permits. I think I ought to add that that estimate has been drawn up with great care and with the full realisation of some of the many difficulties which we know lie ahead. For instance, there is a shortage of sanitary inspectors, whose normal job it is to undertake the survey of slum areas. And, of course, the shortage is far more serious in big towns and cities than anywhere else. It must also be remembered that every scheme involves a large number of owners, occupiers and so on, and a considerable time is always involved in tracing people who must receive notice of the order which is being made by the local authorities. As a rule, I understand, it takes some six months before a scheme is sufficiently advanced for submission to the Minister. But with the knowledge that we possess of what obtained in prewar days, we believe that we ought to be able to accomplish the target which we have set ourselves, that of removing 200,000 persons from the slums, which will involve building something between 50,000 and 70,000 new houses a year. May I here say this to the noble Lord, Lord Silkin (I think the noble Lord, Lord Wise, also raised this point), with regard to allocations to local authorities? I think the noble Lord will see at once that, with this scheme coming before the Minister by the end of August, it is not possible for me at this moment to give

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noble Lords any indication of what allocations for local authorities will be.
The noble Lord raised the question of the erection of houses or flats on expensive sites. The noble Lord, Lord Silkin, will be well aware that this is one of the most complicated and extremely controversial subjects that we could possibly be faced with in housing generally. But I should have thought that in the redevelopment of the old towns—that is to say, the moving of slums from the old towns—some flats to take the place of old houses are absolutely essential. I have been told that the centres of many of our older towns were developed with a density of from 40 to 60 houses to the acre, and if a large proportion of the people who live in those over-crowded areas are to be re-housed under slum clearance schemes, a number of flats will have to be built. In some cases, which the noble Lord, with his knowledge of this subject, can easily envisage, if many people are to be re-housed on a small portion of land in or near the centre of a town, the building of blocks of flats may be the only solution.
I am well aware—I think the noble Lord himself gave some figures—of the expense of this proposition. There are a number of housing experts who would agree with the noble Lord's views and who might even go further, but the advocates of the view he has expressed too often tend to ignore the full cost of developing a new town where in most instances all the necessary services have to be provided. It is extremely difficult to lay down a hard and fast rule that the provision of flats on expensive sites is either more, or less, economical than building small houses in new towns or on the outskirts of big cities, which in many cases would require a great deal of agricultural land. I shall certainly convey to my right honourable friend the Minister of Housing and Local Government the views which the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, and other noble Lords have expressed on this controversial subject, but, as I have said, noble Lords wall be well aware that there are definitely two schools of thought.
I will do my best to answer as briefly as I can the other questions addressed to me. The noble Lord, Lord Wise, questioned me about expenditure on housing. The subsidies on houses which were built in pre-war and post-war days are now running at £47 millions in
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England and Wales for this financial year. This figure will increase as more council houses are built and we estimate that the figure may go up by a further £5 millions next year. That brings me to the cost of houses, which was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Quibell. Building costs have not increased during the last three years, though the number of houses built has been increasing and the costs of both materials and labour have risen. I think that the reason the costs of house building have not increased is the efficiency of house building generally, which has absorbed the rise in costs. But that is no reason whatever why we should not examine with great care the observations made by the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, about the need to see if it is possible to produce other houses at a cheaper rate than we are doing to-day. He talked of our having fresh thoughts on this subject.
The noble Lord, Lord Quibell, asked me about price rings in the building trade. Of course, the observations he made are perfectly correct. On May 12 of this year my right honourable friend caused a circular to be sent to all housing authorities throughout the country, drawing their attention to the building industry restrictive practices. I can let the noble Lord have a copy of that letter, if he should so wish. I certainly hope it will have the effect which he and other noble Lords on both sides of the House are anxious to see.
I think I have answered the greater part of the questions which have been addressed to me, and in conclusion would add this. In our opinion, the building of houses by local authorities and private enterprise must be continued. We intend to maintain an output of at least 300,000 houses a year, a figure which, of course, will include the houses required under the new slum clearance programme, That is an enormous programme, but it is one which I believe we shall be able to follow during this present Parliament. I would not he brave enough to suggest to the House what might occur five or ten years hence, but for some years to come the figure of 300,000 houses, which we selected in the days of the last Government, is one to which we intend to cling. I trust that in three or four years' time we may have; added something considerable to the s elution of this very distressing problem.
LORD WISE: My Lords, before the noble Earl sits down, would he convey to the Minister concerned the question which I raised about rural sewerage?
THE EARL OF MUNSTER: I will most certainly ask my right honourable friend to look into that matter.
5.56 p.m.
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, the speech I made in introducing this Motion did not lend itself to a detailed and immediate reply, and I am content that some of the things I said should be considered seriously hereafter. I believe that they will be, and if they are, then this debate will have achieved the purpose I had in mind. I certainly did not intend to make a political debate of it. I think the noble Earl rather anticipated that I would, and therefore fortified himself with figures indicating that this Government had done better than my Government. I never tried to compare the two.
THE EARL OF MUNSTER: No, not to-day.
LORD SILKIN: I am sure that if we had sought to compare them, the mere statement of figures on both sides would not be the complete story. We have to take many other things into consideration. During the four or five years immediately following the war we were building up the organisation necessary to produce the houses. That was not quite the same as the period following, when all the spade work had been done, and all that the Party opposite had to do was to step in and take full advantage of all the efforts we had made. That was not the kind of speech I made, but I can well understand the noble Earl, thinking that that was the kind of speech I might make, therefore coming here and producing these figures, which would have been of value at Election time but are not really of much value here. I am sure the noble Earl will not mind my saying that. Except for that, the noble Earl has dealt as satisfactorily as possible with the points raised in the debate, and I am satisfied that it has served a useful purpose.
Since we have set up a Select Committee on attendance at the House, I should like to say that it is a little disappointing that the interest supposed to be shown in housing has not been manifested by any contribution from the other side except that of the noble Earl, Lord Dundee. I
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cannot believe that the amount of interest is reflected in the amount of speaking that has been done, or that we can measure the interest by the volume of speeches; but I should have thought that something could have been said from the other side apart from the speeches of the two noble Earls. I am a little disappointed that in a debate which is of the greatest importance, as noble Lords will agree, we should have had so little from the Benches opposite. After all, it is a subject on which so many people must be thinking, and they have a contribution to make; it cannot be possible that noble Lords have nothing to say on it. It is disappointing to me that we have not had a more effective debate than we have, although that is not at all the fault of the noble Earl who has replied.
There is one point on which I must take up the noble Earl, and that is the question of flats and houses. I did not take an extreme view about that matter. I am not one of those who say that you ought not to build flats. I quite understand the case for building fiats in large towns; indeed. I have been responsible, possibly, for building more, or certainly as many, flats in London as anybody else. That was not the case I was making. But I do feel that we should hesitate and see what the cost is, both socially and financially. The noble Earl may be right, and there may be nothing in it; but I think it was he who, when we had a debate on the new towns, pointed out that the new towns were on the verge of being self-supporting. I am convinced that the new towns will not be a burden on the community, and that they will all in the course of time repay to the community the whole of the cost incurred in building them, plus interest. That is a factor which one ought to bear in mind in comparing the two. I do not think that subject ought to be lightly dismissed. It is one that should be considered seriously, and it may well be worth while having a debate on that subject alone. Having said that, I feel that the purpose that we on this side had in mind in raising this matter has been achieved, and I believe that the various suggestions will be considered by Her Majesty's Government. Therefore, I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.
House adjourned at three minutes past six o'clock.