Lords Sitting of 15 April 1964

Preamble
The House met at half past two of the clock, The CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Newcastle
The Viscount Esher—Sat first in Parliament after the death of his father.

DEPENDENT TERRITORIES AND MERGED GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENTS
2.36 p.m.
LORD HAILEY: My Lords, I beg leave 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, since the point is not covered by the Plowden Report, they will now take steps to reassure the people of the British dependent territories that, in spite of the merging of the Colonial Office with the Commonwealth Relations Office, and the subsequent amalgamation of the latter with Her Majesty's Diplomatic Service, the Secretary of State for the Colonies will still continue to represent their interests, should they conflict with those of the countries with which the Diplomatic Service of the future will have relations.]
THE MINISTER OF STATE FOR COMMONWEALTH RELATIONS AND FOR THE COLONIES (THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE): My Lords, I am glad to have this opportunity of affirming that neither the creation of the Diplomatic Service nor the merger of the Colonial Office with the Commonwealth Relations Office will derogate from the functions at present discharged by the Secretary of State for the Colonies. The Plowden Report did not recommend that after the merger of the Colonial Office with the Commonwealth Relations Office the merged Department should be amalgamated with the Foreign Office. It will remain a separate Department, and
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the Secretary of State in charge of it will continue to be responsible for the administration of the overseas dependent territories and to represent their interests in matters of international concern.
LORD HAILEY: My Lords, I am much obliged to the noble Marquess for his reply.

FORCES IN CYPRUS AND U.N. ALLOWANCE
2.37 p.m.
THE EARL OF GOSFORD: My Lords, I beg leave 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:

(a) The United Nations Forces in Cyprus are receiving a United Nations allowance over and above their normal emoluments.

(b) If this is correct, the British contingent are receiving the United Nations allowance.

(c) If the British contingent are not receiving this allowance, Her Majesty's Government will make representations to the United Nations with a view to obtaining this allowance for the British Forces under United Nations Command.]

THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: My Lords, none of the United Nations forces in Cyprus is receiving an allowance from the United Nations.

PAY OF LONDON BUS CREWS
EARL ST. ALDWYN: My Lords, I should like to inform the House that at a suitable moment after 3.30 my noble friend Lord Chesham will be making a statement on the pay of London bus crews.

SOUTH-EAST ENGLAND
2.39 p.m.
LORD TAYLOR LORD TAYLOR rose to call attention to the White Paper entitled South East England (Cmnd. 2308) and to the South East Study 1961–1981; to the need for urgent action if the welfare of the people of the South-East of England is to be

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safeguarded; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, this Motion is concerned with a White Paper and a Study document, both of which are interesting and surprising. If I had produced the Study document and had handed it to Mr. Harold Wilson as a draft policy statement, I am quite sure that he would have had me "on the carpet" and given me a thorough "ticking off", for it is, I am afraid, a painfully amateur production. I am sorry to have to say this about the work of some anonymous civil servants—because it is written by civil servants—but the Government lave published it and it is the Government who must take responsibility for it. They have published it with a great deal of splendour, both typographical and diagrammatical splendour. But when I was young I was told not to judge a book by its cover. I would now add: do not judge a book by its diagrams. They are very good diagrams, but that does not necessarily mean that it is a very good Report.
It is a surprising Report, and the White Paper itself is a surprising document because it represents a death-bed conversion of the Conservative Government to planning. It shows that at least they are capable of learning, even if they are late developers. They are twelve years too late, and even now I am afraid their planning is rather half-baked—or, to be exact, third-baked, because one-third of the expansion of South-East England which is proposed here is to be planned, and two-thirds is to be disordered, subtopian, speculative building.
One almost feels that the Government are suffering from intellectual schizophrenia. It has been said that this year they will accept anything. Certainly they are accepting various Reports which are mutually incompatible. They have accepted the Buchanan Report. I think they were right to accept that Report, though I am sorry they did not accept the Crowther proposals which were a practical possibility. The Buchanan Report makes recommendations very different from those in this South-East Study. The Buchanan Report describes Newbury as an ideal small country town and expounds how Newbury should be developed from a traffic point of view. This Study proposes to make Newbury
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into a great new city. The Buchanan Report views with alarm the growth of outer traffic. This Report not only accepts commuting but proposes to increase it. It also looks as though the Ministry of Housing must not let the Ministry of Transport know what it is doing, and vice versa. As for Dr. Beeching and his recommendations, I am going to leave them to my noble friend Lord Stonham, who has—I will not say a bee in his bonnet on the subject; he has a hornet in his bonnet, and a very fine hornet, too.
There are only three places proposed for expansion in this Report whose rail services are not either cut or to be cut by Dr. Beeching. They are Stansted, Colchester and Chelmsford—my noble friend Lord Stonham tells me that Colchester's services are cut or to be cut, too. So this is not really quite what we mean by planning. One cannot help contrasting this Study with the classical Barlow, Uthwatt and Scott Reports, and the Abercrombie Report which I have here. Those were scholarly documents. They have some mistakes in them—we all make mistakes when we set out a plan—but I can compare them with the Robbins Report which also was an excellent, scholarly job. But this is nothing of the sort. It seems to have been something rushed out in order to get something on to paper.
To take one single example: when one is dealing with forward planning and population statistics the usual course is to take three hypotheses. Nobody quite knows what is going to happen in the future about population, so one takes a maximum figure, a probable figure and a minimum figure, and that is what the Registrar-General will supply if one asks him. But here we have only a single figure, only a single assumption without alternatives, not the three projections which we ought to have.
We do not know anything, or we know very little, about the real movements of population. This is not the Government's fault, because at the moment they do not have the new Census statistics. We guess that young people, for example, when they get married try to acquire a flat in central London and then, when they start having a family, move out to the suburbs and face commuting be-

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cause they want a garden. But this is only a guess. What matters when it comes to projecting the housing needs of the population is not the actual population itself, but the rate of family formation, the rate at which people are getting married and setting up homes for themselves. So far as I know, we do not find the words "family formation" mentioned in this document. It is all done in terms of absolute population. If we take the period up to 1981 we should be able to say what the rate of family formation will be, because almost all the children who will be forming the families are already born. It is not the children who are going to be born in this period who will be forming families and creating new homes. But we have nothing of that.
Equally, it looks as though the people who wrote the White Paper had not really considered the Study. The White Paper describes the influx into London as still continuing. As a matter of fact, the influx into London ceased, so far as central London is concerned, back in 1901—and, indeed, the Study makes this clear—and so far as Greater London is concerned it ceased ten years ago. So it is, literally, a first study and it is quite correct in saying in the preface that they are "tentative proposals". I wonder whether it was wise to publish tentative proposals. It certainly gives us an opportunity to debate them at an early stage, and that may be a good thing. But it can be contrasted with the two publications on Central Scotland and the North-Eastern area, both of which were published as White Papers, instead of as a tentative study like this.
One thing that does emerge from both publications is very important. It is that whichever Party wins the next Election, it is certain that we are going to have a planned environment, because by accepting these proposals the Government have committed themselves as much to planning as are we committed. They have been forced into this by the logic of events. It is our duty in Parliament to see that the plans are good. I have spent about 25 years of my life, first planning health services, and then helping to plan a New Town, and I have learnt two simple lessons. The first is that planning is a means to an end. It is not an end in itself; it is just a means
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of achieving something, and I think the aim and objective of this sort of planning is a good life for all the people. The second lesson I have learnt is that in planning there must be endless attention to detail. When planning fails, it is almost always because not enough care and imagination and thought have been given to the problems in advance.
The first piece of imagination that was needed was the capacity to see Britain as a whole. Britain is a tiny country. It has only moderate climatic variations compared with the United States or any of the countries of the world which are great in physical area. Yet we have crowded down into the South-East to what can only be described as a ridiculous extent There are 16,300 square miles in the South-East, in the area covered by this Study, which is 28 per cent. of the area of England and Wales. Why on earth not include Scotland and Northern Ireland when one thinks of Britain?—because any sort of physical planning ought to cover the lot. If you do that, the South-East is 17 per cent. of Britain and into that 17 per cent. we have got 18 million people, which is 35 per cent. of the population. So double the share of the population is concentrated in the South-East of England.
The first fault in the plan is the assumption that the South-East is an artificial entity. You may say, "We must deal with England in bits, and Britain in bits, in order to work out our plans". But we must look at the country as a whole as well. The second assumption on which this plan is built is that there will be 3½ million more people living in the South-East in 20 years' time and that the drift to the South is going to continue. Is this assumption true or false? I think we can take it as probable that there will be a 2½ million increase in the population, owing to excess of births over deaths, in the next 20 years. What we ought to be asking ourselves very carefully about is: is it necessary to accept a one million gain by migration from the North to the South during this period? I do not think we ought to accept this as inevitable. I think it is an absolute confession of failure to make the rest of Britain attractive. It is perfectly possible, and I think it is

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desirable, to have a slight net loss by migration. The South-East has not always been a magnet pulling people down here. There was a time, that of the Industrial Revolution, when migration was up to the industrial Midlands and the North, and it could happen again if we wanted it to happen again.
If your Lordships look at the changes in London itself—and you will find them shown graphically and, so far as I know, quite correctly, on page 31 of this document, in Figure 15—you will see that in the last ten years the population of the L.C.C. area has declined by something between 5 and 15 per cent. This is a very large figure indeed, and it is only in four areas—namely, Roehampton, Wandsworth, Tooting and Balham—that there has been a small increase. The reason for that small increase is the massive physical reconstruction in those areas by the L.C.C. of sites where there were very large dilapidated Victorian houses, a number of which were destroyed in the bombing. Then, if we look at most of the Outer London boroughs, we see that they also have shown a decline of up to 5 per cent.—places like Tottenham, Walthamstow, Greenwich, Willesden, and so on; and we have had a reduction in the population, not only of Inner London but of middle London as well.
This is not some supernatural, or even natural, change; it has occurred because we have had a planned outward migration from London, and it was planned by my noble friend Lord Silkin. He did the trick because he saw this had to be done if we were to rebuild London at decent levels for the population. From 1951 to 1961, greater London's population fell by 583,000 people, even though the number of homes in London went up. Londoners are living better because fewer of them are having to share homes; and, of those who are leaving London, a quarter of a million have gone with their work to the new and expanded towns around London. So it is not just a natural process that happens by the force of economics or something of that sort. London could have packed up its slums, just as the slums of New York have packed up, if we had not had a planned outward migration policy. The simple truth is that people go where there is
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work and money and homes: it is as easy as that.
My Lords, we have had this problem with the health service. We have had areas where we could not get enough doctors. So what did we do? We paid the doctors more to go to the under-doctored areas, and it has worked; and we stopped them from going to the over-doctored areas. Exactly the same can be done with industry and with homes and people, so long as both work and homes are provided. If we move jobs 20, 40, 80 or 120 miles out of London and build the homes, the people will go.
If a factory goes to a New Town, what happens? Eighty per cent. of the people from London will move out with that factory; and the 20 per cent. who stay behind are the old people, the people who have very tight links with their old community and do not want to leave. They are not the people who are going to have a lot of children; they are the people who are, as it were, biologically past their reproduction span, so that they are not going to add to the population of London. It is the folk who are going out who are going to have the big families. In the long run, these people who go out with their families to these New Towns are delighted with the change. Our plan ought to be to reduce the population of Greater London—and by that I mean London inside the Green Belt—to a point where every family can have a separate home, and by a separate home I mean their own front door and their own bathroom and lavatory. Those, I would say, are the ordinary human minima that we all ought to have. At the same time, our plan ought to be to reduce, not to increase, the commuting to London by car or rail until those who want or have to commute can do so in comfort.
The third mistake of the Study is, I think, that it has greatly underestimated the dwellings needed to relieve the existing shortage inside London. Your Lordships will find, in paragraph 35, that it estimates that 150,000 dwellings are all that are needed to relieve the existing shortage inside London. There is a gentleman called Westergaard, who works at the Centre for Urban Studies, and in this book, London, he makes the estimate of 300,000—not 150,000; and he thinks that the real figure may be considerably higher. Now where have

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they gone wrong? I think they have gone wrong—and I stand open to correction here, since I am guessing—because they have taken the Census figure for multiple occupancy, and I think I am right in saying that the Census figure omits people who are "doubling up" with their in-laws. It gives the figures only where two families are living together, and not where people are still living with their in-laws. It is these concealed families that account for their underestimate.
I should like next to say a word or two about London—that wonderful city of my noble friend Lord Morrison of Lambeth—and the sort of London which I, and I think many of us, would like to see. It is a unique city. Historically, culturally, economically and politically it is a wonderful place; but physically a lot of it is still a mess. The fact that much of it has been cleaned up and cleared up, and given a face-lift, is largely due to the work of the L.C.C. I think that anybody who knows working-class London well will be amazed at what the L.C.C. has achieved in the last fifteen or twenty years. The London I want to see is a London with green wedges, green fingers, extending pretty nearly to the centre. This idea is not new; it is in the Abercrombie Plan for London. We have one of those fingers very nearly in existence now. It starts at Regent's Park; then there is a gap; then Parliament Hill Fields, Hampstead Heath, Ken Wood and Highgate Golf Course.
Why should there not be five or six of these great green wedges reaching into central London, so that every boy and girl, every human being, can get into the country within half a mile or so of his or her home? It ought not to be beyond our powers to say, "We will do this, even if it takes us 40 years to do it". In our little New Town at Harlow, we have done just that. We have started from scratch, and we have got the green fingers right to the centre. What is the effect of this? Every main road to the town centre runs in a green finger, with no houses on it. Every secondary school is located on a green finger, so it has playing fields at its door—really lovely playing fields, just like Highgate or Dulwich College. I
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cannot think of a single secondary school in Inner London which has playing fields tacked on to it like this. Almost all of us who went to public schools went to schools where the fields were adjacent to the school; and what a difference it made! I should like to see this in London, for all London children. If they can do it in Harlow, we can do it here.
We in Harlow have been rather criticised for building to low densities, and I would say just a word about density, not apropos of Harlow. Architects are like ladies: they are very prone to change the fashion. It is perfectly all right with ladies, because their fashions last for only two or three years; but with architects fashions last 60 or 70 years, and if they make a mistake that is a little bad for the people, who have to go on living with a fashion for all that time. The latest fashion is for what is called "high density", but not with high buildings. The result of this fashion is that every house, instead of having a garden, has a little backyard, which is called a patio. This is thought to be very good, though I must say that I think it very bad. I believe that we should experiment with it, to see if it can be any good; and that is what we are doing in Harlow. But I have yet to meet the architect or the town planner who has brought up his family in a high-density area, with a patio and no garden. The people who have to live in these houses are being condemned to this for sixty or a hundred years; and that, I think, is wrong.
Now I want to move out of London and pause for a moment at the invention of my noble friend Lord Morrison of Lambeth, the London Green Belt, the London countryside. It is not yet properly planned and used as it ought to be. The possibilities of Epping Forest, Scratch Wood, Burnham Beeches, Thames Side, the rivers Wey, Mole, Roding and Lea, are just beginning to be realised. If you look at the other Abercrombie plan, the Greater London Plan of 1944 (and a jolly good document it is!) you will find on page 171 a picture of the Lea Valley developed as a recreation area for Londoners. It is a splendid potential place, with great areas of water, with the River Lea and plenty

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of potential parkland. We call it the Lea Valley Green Wedge, and I am pleased to see that the Civic Trust were re-proposing this development about three weeks ago. Yet the Lea Valley has not been made a lovely place for North East Londoners—simply because it is nobody's business to do it. We must tight for our Green Belt, and keep it; or, as The Times has said, it will die the death of a thousand cuts. We must extend the Green Belt and in extending it punch purposeful holes in it where we shall have our expanded or new towns. But we must not let it just be nibbled away, or the while concept will be ruined.
Beyond the Green Belt, we get into the main area of South-East England. It is in this hinterland, and beyond, that most of the new inhabitants of the area will have to live. By 1981 there will be an overspill from London, estimated in this study at at least one million, though, for the reasons I have already given, I think that this is an underestimate of at least a quarter of a million. Even if we halt the drift to the South the natural increase in population of all these towns around London—and remember that it is the younger folk who have gone to these towns—is such that we shall have to find work and homes here for between 21½ million and 3 million people in this time. This will he some job; and it will take a lot to do it.
First, is there room for it? In this so-called region there are altogether some 9¼ million acres, of which just over 1¼ million acres are already built-up. Towns for 3 million people, at 15 people to the acre (that is the net figure, including the roads and the shops and the garages; if these last items are excluded the figure is about 45 people to the acre) would take 200,000 acres of that, leaving 7¾ million acres so far unbuilton. So it will be seen that on that calculation there is plenty of room. If all the people were packed into high flats, at 150 to the acre, it would save just one quarter of this, or 50,000 acres, at the price of masking most of these families less happy for the whole of their lives. But there is room to do the job, though some people will lose their land and are bound to suffer. We can build the towns we want, with tall flats for those who want to live in
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them, and homes, and gardens, for those who want to live in those, and still leave 7¾ million out of 9¼ million acres of open country in the South-East.
The Government have at long last accepted the principle of more New Towns. I have long been urging that we should have started one New Town a year; and if only we had done that we should have come very near to solving this problem, because it is always the early stages that are so difficult in starting a New Town. Choosing the right site is not just a question of having a look round and putting out a pin: it involves a very careful study of all sorts of factors—the building of the initial services, the water supply, the sewerage and the roads. Until two or three years have passed, you do not begin to make an impression. If only we had started one New Town a year, what a wonderful situation we should be in to-day? But it is twelve years too late.
The New Town machinery designed by my noble friend Lord Silkin has worked wonderfully. It has worked wonderfully for two reasons. First when an area is designated for a New Town the land in that area can pass into public ownership, as it is required, at existing use value. This means that when we are building new roads we are not suddenly faced with enormously inflated prices which are reflected in the rents or the prices that people must pay. Here we have a simple piece of socialisation which worked successfully, and, indeed, has been commended by the Minister of Housing in another place. He has accepted it and said it ought to be extended to the expanded towns; and he is right. The second reason why the New Towns have worked so well is that they function as socialised business enterprises. They are much more like the B.B.C., as it were, than a conventional local authority with its multitude of committees and its tendency to get a play of local forces with, on occasions, I am afraid, a tendency towards delay.
However, there has been one great tragedy about the New Towns, and that is that over the last few years they have had to run down their staffs. They have got in sight of the end, and their excellent staffs have been largely, but

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not wholly, dispersed. Now a number of them must go into reverse. I have always thought that each existing New Town corporation ought to have a daughter New Town about twenty miles further out, and it ought to start planning that as it begins to complete the building of the first New Town. So here we have a group of people, a highly-skilled staff, with the necessary expertise, who are all keen on the job, and yet seeing the job run down. How splendid if they could have gone on and done the job again, with the new ideas which are coming all the time, in the daughter town a little further out. I certainly strongly commend that conception to the Government of to-day and that of the future as a way to get on quickly with this job of starting the next generation of New Towns.
I now want to say one word about the achievement of the expanded towns and what has been done by the London County Council and those boroughs who have co-operated with them. They have had a very hard job to do because the Town Development Act was not as good as the New Towns Act. Nevertheless, the London County Council has managed to get twenty of these expanded towns going, and at last it has begun to see some fruit for the tremendously hard negotiations, it had to do with all the local authorities concerned. For example, there are Swindon, with about 4,500 houses built; Bletchley, with 1,500 or rather more; Luton rural district, with 1,500. As a result, I believe that about 12,000 or so new houses have been built in, and 153 firms have moved to, these expanded towns, due to an immense amount of work on the part of the L.C.C. All that is a good piece of work, but it is equivalent to only one New Town and I cannot see that we have any hope of solving the problem of this great increase of population in the South-East by the expanded town machinery. We have to use New Town machinery to do it. And I think the Government have at last realised that.
Over the past 15 years, we have had a lot of experience in building New Towns and we ought to have kept a record of our successes and failures, but we have not done so. I want to suggest three or four simple rules which should be considered when it comes to selecting
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places for the new populations we have to look after. Easily the most important single question is water supply. One can build sewage disposal plants and meet transport problems, roads are not so difficult to build and two-thirds of industry can be located anywhere without detriment because it is what is called "foot-loose"—it is not tied to a particular locality because of local conditions.
If we look at what is proposed here and what we have done already, I think that the mistake we have made and are making is to concentrate too much on the Thames Basin. We have neglected the area of the Great Ouse, which produces so much water in its lower parts that we have had to cut a second channel to get the water away at times of flood. We have neglected the valleys of the Nene, the Welland, the Witham and the Waveney, and we have neglected the Broads. In fact, the neglect of East Anglia is an extraordinary thing, and I am glad that my noble friend Lord Wise is going to say something about this.
The second rule about New Town building is that we ought to take a conscious decision whether we are going to build on what is virtually virgin land or around an existing town. It makes a dickens of a lot of difference. If we build around an existing town, the existing town centre is almost certain to have to be pulled down in due course, because there are few existing town centres of small towns which are anything like big enough to cope with these enormous expansions of population. The only two New Towns which are built on more or less virgin land are Harlow and Stevenage, and if you look at these towns you can see how they have not been circumscribed by existing town centres, as at Crawley and Hemel Hempstead. If there is an existing town, I think it is much better to treat it as a small peripheral neighbourhood and build very much to one side. But in every case a substantial town has been chosen for the proposals in this study.
The third thing is distance between towns. I think we ought to aim at an absolute minimum of ten miles between towns, with green belt in between. Here I want to say something about the existing arrangements. The New Town area is designated, and inside that area the

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development corporation has the proper powers. But there ought to be a green belt all round—let me call it a delineated area—within which the development corporation should keep an eye on the green belt as such and do something towards upgrading the villages in the area. These villages become extremely important. One of the problems of getting industry to move to New Towns is that the industrialists do not want to live in the towns. They tend to live in the villages round about, and it would be a very great help both to the town and to the villages themselves, if they could be properly developed, rather than left to develop in a straggly, sprawling sort of way around the town.
One word about the size of the town. Nobody knows what is the optimum size of a town. One would only say that the town should be such as to bring together within a convenient space—and that means convenient for all its citizensh—home, work, shops and social services. The bigger a town becomes, the more the criss-cross journeys develop, and it is really this criss-cross travel inside a town that sets a limit to its desirable size. And just a ward about the homes in the New Town. I have already said that, when young people get married, they are only too happy, for the first part of their married lives, to live in a flat. But when children come along, they want a house with a garden and they want that for 20 or 30 years. Then, when they are getting older, they are ready to go back into something smaller, a flat or a bungalow. It ought to be this human pattern which should determine the kind of houses we should build. I am not against terrace houses or high density, if we can preserve a sufficiency of gardens for all those who need them. I would say that 75 per cent. of the accommodation of a New Town ought to be houses with gardens. The rest may be high flats, if you like.
On the whole, the neighbourhood conception of a town has worked well. Just a word about the shape of towns. All the New Towns built so far are what are called flower-shaped: that is to say, they are circular, with three or four neighbourhoods, a town centre and one or more industrial areas. The latest idea is what is called the linear town. This is another architectural fashion. We are told that the proper thing to do
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now is to build a town along a main road, stepping it back and having a series of neighbourhoods, so that everyone gets on to the main road, and the shopping centre is along the main road. You can extend such a town as long as you want it.
This is very fashionable at the moment, but it is not a new thing. It was first heard of in 1904, when it was invented by the French architect, Tony Garnier, who called it the cité industrielle. This linear town was his idea, but it was given up. Nobody really thought much of it. Now it has come back into popularity. It is, of course, ribbon development writ large. There may be occasions when it is jusifiable because of the site. For example, I would not say it was wrong at Cumbernauld. I am sure it was good also at Hook. Anyone who knows how Hook has developed may think that linear development was the only thing to do with it. But, as a general rule, it just is not a starter, and I hope that we shall not hear too much more about this particular fashion in New Town planning.
The Study proposes three New Towns at Bletchley, Newbury and at a site adjacent to Southampton and Portsmouth. My main criticism would be of Newbury, because it is in the Thames Valley area, where I should have thought that water supply would be a tremendous problem. We have to bear in mind that, as the citizens of London are re-housed, the consumption of water goes leaping up. Anyone who knows working-class Victorian London will know that one of the rarities is a bath. There are many Victorian houses which are subdivided among three or four families, with one w.c. and no bath. Put each of these families in a flat, each with a bath, and the consumption of water goes leaping up. So you can be certain that there will not be any water to spare in the Thames Valley. There will be very little water to spare in Essex. It is not until we get to the Great Ouse area and East Anglia that there is any water to spare. As a matter of fact, Bletchley is just over the watershed into the Great Ouse area, so I should have said that Bletchley is a "possible". But anybody who knows Bletchley will also know that it is a

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very dreary sort of place; it is a terrible place. Whoever has the job of redeveloping Bletchley has his work cut out: it is a real "stinker" to do. But that does not make it any less desirable to tackle, and it may even be just the place to tackle.
The next major proposal is for a New Town of 100,000 at Stansted Airport. This is a very strange choice. Those of your Lordships who know Stockholm or Helsinki will know that the airports there are located well away from the cities in the forest. That seems to me to be an excellent place to put an airport. Anybody who works at an airport, or has to go to an airport has to get into a car, bus or train. You cannot walk to your work at an airport; it is not "on." So if you have to get into a car or train, you might as well live five, ten or fifteen miles away. It is quite reasonable to say that you will have a New Town seven or eight miles from Stansted, say, at Dunmow or Thaxted or Stansted Mount Fitchet; I suppose those are starters. But to build a New Town at Stansted because the airport is there seems to me to be a most extraordinary proposal. But let us hope it is not as silly as it sounds.
We then have a series of extensions of 50,000 to 100,000—Ashtead, Northampton, Swindon, Ipswich and Peterborough—which I take it would be done by New Town Development Corporations, though it will be a bit of a job working in with these large communities. There are then twelve for expansion up to 30,000; and then we have the expansion of existing New Towns. We had a long debate about Stevenage recently, and I must not talk too much about Harlow; but Harlow could be expanded practically to take all that the Ministry wants it to take. However, the Government have to make some basic decisions about whether they want expanded towns or New Towns; and I think the real answer is that they must have both.
I should like to say a word now about commuting. It is planned to have over this period an increase of 450,00 people commuting into London. I think this is a confession of social failure. Why on earth is it proposed? I think I know why it is proposed, but if I have it
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wrong, no doubt the noble Viscount, Lord Blakenham, will tell me when he comes to speak. I think the reason is that the Government have allowed for only one-third of the expanded population to go into New Towns and expanded towns. Two-thirds of the expanded population are to go into expansions of existing towns without any particular planning. It is part of this two-thirds that has to commute in and out of London, because it is going to be unplanned private development. This is the most serious criticism of the whole plan: that the Government have accepted planning and the control of land values for the New Towns and expanded towns, but for two-thirds of the increased population there is to be no control over land values. They are to be allowed to grow, and we know that prices will go soaring. There will be no planned exodus of industry to these places; it will be pure chance if they manage to get some offices there; the prices will go up and up for the people who live there, and many of them are bound to commute.
The second reason why I think they have assumed continuation of growth of commuting is to do with the location of offices. The plain fact is, so far as I can discover, that planning permission has already been granted in the London area for more than 170,000 extra jobs in offices. This is a terrible thing, and it would be worth our while to cancel these and compensate the people in order to stop this from happening. It really will be a tragedy if it is allowed to happen. Location of offices is determined largely, in my experience, by the location of the dwellings of the directors of the company. I do not say that this is bad or wrong. You will find that when firms are prepared to move out, it is because they are going to move somewhere near to where the directors and many of the office staff already live. That is fair enough. But I should say that the movement of offices depends not only on building offices, but on providing adjacent homes for the people who are to work in the offices. This has to be a planned operation. There are some offices that you cannot move out. In these cases very often a pied-à-terre in London must remain, but most of the office must go out. A very good idea has been put forward for

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developing offices along the main railway lines, say, fifteen or twenty minutes journey out from London, for roofing over the London termini and having the pied-à-terre offices there, so as to cut down the amount of travel the office staff have to do between headquarters and the London periphery.
This proposal, we can be sure, will lead to bottlenecks. That is not the Government's fault; it is inevitable in the work. But there is a bottleneck now, and it is due to the shortage of technical staff to do the job; that is to say, a shortage of architects, town planners and civil engineers. In preparing for this debate, I read through the Report of the University Grants Committee on university development, 1957 to 1962, including a section on the universities' and national needs. There is not one word about architecture, town planning or civil engineering, or if there is, I missed it. So far as I know, only two of the universities are interested in this—namely, York and East Anglia. Yet this is one of the most important functions that we must have. We have to produce the architects and planners if we are to do it.
To sum up, this plan is open to severe criticism. In my opinion—I am open to correction and to be "shot down" if the Government can do it—it is open to criticism on grounds of sloppy demography; on the assumption of the failure to check the drift to the South; on the increase in commuting and the increase in offices in London; on the haphazard selection of places for development; and on the failure to deal with the problem of land for two-thirds of the new development outside London which is envisaged. Once planning consent is given a "pot of gold" is released to the owners of that land. I quote from the Financial Times of November 7, 1963, what happened at Bishop's Stortford. Land at £200 an acre went up to between £5,000 and £10,000 an acre as a result of just the grant of planning permission.
At last the Government have recognised the need for more New Towns and cities. That is a good thing. But I am afraid it is too little and too late. I am afraid this plan will have to be entirely redrawn, with better demography, better geography, better hydrography, better
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economic considerations, better social considerations and better politics. The only answer is better politics, and I am sorry we have to wait until October for that. I beg to move for Papers.
House adjourned during pleasure, and resumed by the Lord Chancellor.

LONDON BUS CREWS' PAY AND CONDITIONS
3.30 p.m.
THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF TRANSPORT (LORD CHESHAM): My Lords, I think this might be a convenient moment for me to make a statement, similar to that which is now being made by my right honourable friend the Minister of Transport in another place, about the Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Pay and Conditions of London Bus Crews.
The Committee's Interim Report was published on December 16, 1963. In accordance with proposals in that report the London Transport Board immediately offered wage increases ranging from 8s. 6d. to 15s. a week to bus drivers and conductors, with effect from December 19, 1963. These were accepted by the Transport and General Workers' Union.
The Committee's Final Report is being published this afternoon. Copies have been placed in the Printed Paper Office. The Government would like to express their thanks to Professor Phelps Brown and this colleagues.
The Report analyses in detail the problem and prospects of the London bus service, and recommends that the Board and the Union should negotiate a comprehensive agreement for a term of years providing for improvements in pay and conditions, as well as measures for increasing the efficiency of the service.
The Report also makes a broad assessment of the cost of the improvements discussed by the Committee. They regard some rise in fares as the unavoidable price to be paid for an adequate service. But they stress that it is the duty and interest of both the Board and the Union to keep the rise in costs as low as possible, and to increase receipts by making the service more attractive.

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Considering the national interest, the Committee emphasise that their conclusions had sole regard to the special circumstances of the employment of busmen in London and to the fact that an adequate public transport system in London is essential to meet the problem of increasing traffic congestion. It is for these reasons the Committee recommend what they describe as "a non-recurrent adjustment" of the position of bus crews in the London wage structure.
The Committee point out that the future of the London bus services now rests in the hands of the Board and the Union. They stress that both parties must be ready to examine and experiment with new methods, and to adopt them. The Government strongly support this view. We accept that in London there is a special case for improving pay and conditions for busmen. But there is likewise a special need for improving service to the public. The public have a right to expect the two to go hand in hand. The Government therefore expect both parties in the negotiations that will now take place to recognise this and to reach a settlement that will ensure the efficient and economical service which is essential in the public interest.
The Committee's Report has been sent to the Board and to the Union.
LORD CHAMPION: My Lords, we are grateful to the noble Lord for giving us this statement. Clearly, before we are able to grasp its full import we shall have to study the Report, which I gather is now available. It would seem to me, from the statement immediately before us, that this is a complete vindication of the men's case of last year that it was impossible to maintain a service in London unless there was a considerable alteration in the rates of pay and conditions of the men concerned. We hope that, following this Report, the Union and the Board will be able to negotiate with their hands completely free from Governmental interference. I believe that this is an essential factor to the success of the negotiations which must follow.
The only other point I would make is that we support the Government's plea for co-operation between the parties. From this side, and certainly from my
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trade union background, I make the strongest possible appeal to the trade union concerned to work fully with the Board to achieve what the Government and Londoners are asking for, namely, an efficient and economical service.
LORD OGMORE: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Lord for the statement. I would also support the noble Lord, Lord Champion, in what he has just said about the necessity for the two sides to go together, hand in hand, in the future, in the interests of a satisfactory service for London. I have great sympathy with the busmen and think that they do an extremely good job, very often during the winter in the most difficult and sometimes dangerous conditions. I think the Government are quite right also in saying that there is a special need for improving the service to the public. In view of the fact that one small point in the wider context of this Report may be overlooked but is important to the public, might I ask the noble Lord whether he could persuade whoever is responsible to put up more bus shelters for people who have to stand out in English weather in London, waiting very often considerable periods for a bus?
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Champion and Lord Ogmore, for the way they have welcomed this Report. I think it is a very useful Report, and for the moment, until we have studied it rather more deeply, I should not want to say much. It may well prove, when we come to study it, that we may find that more ideas are vindicated on a wider basis than those mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Champion.
On the point of bus shelters, while I am glad to think that the noble Lord's words will go to those responsible, I do not think it comes strictly within the scope of this Report. But I have no doubt that what he has said is a useful thing, and will be taken notice of. In reply to the noble Lord, Lord Champion, on the subject of what he termed Government interference, I would only say that my right honourable friend and, indeed, those others of my right honourable friends who have responsibilities for nationalised Boards, have repeatedly made it clear that they regard these matters as matters of management for

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the Boards concerned. Of course the Boards know—obviously they do, because I think everybody does—what is the Government's policy on the general issue of incomes; but, none the less, they take their decisions themselves in the light of all the factors that are relevant in the circumstances.
LORD DOUGLAS OF BARLOCH: My Lords, would the noble Lord care to explain how it is going to be possible for the Board to provide a reasonably adequate passenger transport service in London so long as most of the principal thoroughfares are blocked by parked cars, and are obstructed by innumerable private cars carrying only one or two individuals?
LORD CHESHAM: No, my Lords, I should not like to explain that, because I do not want this turned into a debate on London's traffic. What I can say is that I agree that that is an aspect which is of the greatest importance. This Inquiry was into the pay and conditions of London bus crews, and the question of traffic control as a whole did not, of course, form part of the terms of reference of the Committee. This is the point I really want to make. We are aware that the action resulting from this Report, whatever it may turn out to be, is not necessarily the be all and end all in achieving a proper efficient London bus service.

SOUTH-EAST ENGLAND
3.39 p.m.
Debate resumed.
THE CHANCELLOR OF THE DUCHY OF LANCASTER (VISCOUNT BLAKENHAM): My Lords, we listened with the greatest possible interest to the noble Lord, Lord Taylor. This is the second time within seven days that I have had the pleasure of following him. Of course he speaks with immense knowledge from his own experience of one of the most successful of our New Towns. I had the pleasure of being taken round Harlow (which is so dear to him) by him, and I shall always remember the enthusiasm and the great interest which he showed in all that had been achieved in Harlow. I will forgive the noble Lord for starting off somewhat politically and, in his last few sentences, ending
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somewhat politically. Otherwise, I would certainly say that he spoke with knowledge, and that he covered a great deal of ground which was of interest to all who listened to him. I hope he will forgive me if I do not follow him in detail on all the comments he made. I should like to take up some of his points, and my noble friend who is winding up the debate will certainly deal with those which I do not cover myself.
The noble Lord indicated that, of course, the South-East is but one part, a very important part, of this island. I would point out, to begin with, that White Papers have already been published for Central Scotland and the North-East of England, in addition to the White Paper and the Study for the South-East of England which we are discussing this afternoon. Your Lordships should know that five more studies are, in fact, in progress; two covering the rest of Scotland and the others covering Wales, North-West England and the West Midlands. These investigations are not all of the same kind, because different parts of the country do not present the same problems. The first two programmes published were those for Central Scotland and North-East England, and those two have a great deal in common. In both these regions the problem is to get a greater diversification of industry and to ensure the provision of jobs to replace those which have been lost in the declining industries in these regions. I am not going to enlarge upon that at this moment.
In the South-East conditions are different. As your Lordships know full well this area is one of strong prosperity and growth and, as the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, pointed out, contains the unique problem of London itself. The main problem in the region is to find room for its increasing population. The basic aim of the South-East Study is to make a realistic long-term assessment of land requirements in South-East England and thereby to assure the well-being of all those who live there.
Population and employment have been increasing a good deal faster than the post-war plans envisaged. The pressures that these increases have set up have been at the root of several of the problems which this House has discussed over the past few years—the growth of

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office employment in central London; the increase in commuting, which was mentioned by the noble Lord; the demand on the Green Belt; rising land prices; and the growing number of planning appeals. These are all subjects which have been discussed in your Lordships' House.
Let us look first at the population problem. National trends have changed strikingly in the last decade. In 1948 it was thought that the population of England and Wales would increase by about 2 million during the two decades 1951 to 1971. In fact, natural increase in the first decade alone came to almost 2 million people. It is now expected that this rising trend which we have seen over the last ten years will continue. The present forecast is that by the end of the century the birth-rate in England and Wales will be running at the rate of over 1,100,000 births a year, almost double the birth-rate in the 'thirties, on which a great deal of our immediate post-war planning was based.
There has also been a change in the pattern of migration. In the early 1950s this country was experiencing a net emigration—more people going out than were coming in. In the middle 'fifties there began to be a reversal of this trend; and it is now expected that we shall continue to experience a net annual gain by migration, although at a reduced level. As a result of all this the population of England and Wales in 1981 is likely to be 7 million more than it was in 1961. I do not think we can blame the experts for getting their figures wrong. There was no reason why, when making their forecast, they should expect the boom in babies—no one else did. I think instead we should take a warning of the difficulties faced by all those who try to plan as far ahead as twenty years. I think we should also take a lesson that we must constantly review trends to see that, as factors change, policies should be reviewed. It was because of these emerging national trends that the Government decided in 1961 that the land requirements of the whole South-East over the next twenty years should be re-assessed, and I think the noble Lord was a little inclined to be less charitable than he is normally when he talked about this "painfully amateur production" and said that it
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was rushed out to get something on paper. It was set in motion some years ago as a result of very considerable and detailed investigation and work by experts who know their jobs.
The Study deduces, as the noble Lord made clear, that the South-East's share of the national increase in population in the period 1961–81 is likely to he 3½ million. I should like to say more later about this figure, and also to comment on some of the things the noble Lord said on this. But I would straight away emphasise that this figure is a conservative estimate and not a projection of recent trends. Just for the moment, enough about the size and total population increase in the South-East.
Equally important—and here I know the noble Lord is with me—is the distribution of this growth; and it is here, of course, that employment becomes a crucial factor. Much of the growing employment in the South-East is concentrated in and around London. In London itself, as was said, the important factor is office growth, and outside there is strong growth in manufacturing industry. This concentration of jobs brings with it these formidable problems of housing and transport which have been giving us so much food for thought. The Study considers how these problems can be tackled in and around London, how more land for housing can be found in London itself; and how the commuter railway services can be improved. But I hope your Lordships will agree with me that the only long-term solution must lie in getting at the root of the problem—namely, the dominance of London in the field of employment; and this solution must cover not only London itself but the ring of country around it—what the Study calls the "outer metropolitan region".
A great deal of this region is covered by the metropolitan Green Belt, and the extensions to it which the local planning authorities have proposed. Some critics—and this was not said by the noble Lord—have suggested that the Study simply accepts the outward spread of London, and is the end of the Green Belt. As the noble Lord realises, this could not be further from the truth. The Study, in fact, starts from the assumption that there should be no

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general extension of the built-up area of London, and it is based on the Government's intention to preserve the Green Belt as a vital part of planning policy.
The essential questions, my Lords, are how can the dominance of London be reduced and how can the distribution of growth be changed? Part of the answer lies in the Studies for the other regions which I have already mentioned. But, whatever is done elsewhere, there is still the problem of getting a better distribution within the South-East. This, of course, is the main aim of the proposals in the Study.
At first sight, the Study's proposals, it could be said, do riot look very novel: more New Towns, welcomed by the noble Lord, and expansion of existing towns, again, I think, welcomed, with some reservation, by the noble Lord. It was said that we lave had these over the last fifteen years, yet the problems that are with us have certainly grown no less. What, in fact, the Study proposes is on a much larger scale than anything attempted before. Your Lordships will remember that in the ten years 1951–61 planned expansion schemes for the South-East, which included New Towns and town expansions, housed 265,000 people. The Study suggests a new programme to accommodate 1 million to 1¼ million people by 1981. I think this difference in the scales of the operation goes with an important difference in function. The present expansion schemes have been designed up till now simply to take London's overspill population. I am not saying this was not an important function. It was a very vital function, but it is in itself a limited one. The Study proposes that the new expansion schemes should have a wider rôle, that they should be centres of self-generating growth with lives of their own. They should not be merely satellites of London, but independent centres in their own right.
This concept of self-generating growth centres independent of London has important implications when it comes to choosing places for expansion. The first essential is economic potential. The Study's proposals are based on finding places that offer a firm prospect of sound and prosperous growth and on finding places where there is physical scope for really large-scale growth. I
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was interested in the reservations which the noble Lord had about the possible water supply difficulties at Newbury; those are certainly matters which will have to be gone into in far greater detail than has been possible up till now. Only places that can compete with the attractions of London, especially for commercial employment and offices, can in fact meet the need, and only large growth centres can develop an independent existence.
It is these factors that underlie the proposed new cities, each, as your Lordships realise, looking to an eventual population increase of about 250,000. The Study, as the noble Lord indicated, suggests three possible sites for expansions of this order: the Southampton-Portsmouth area, where the economic potential centres on the port and on the two towns themselves, which are the largest in the South-East outside Greater London. Then there is the Newbury-Hungerford area which I have just mentioned. This has the advantage of being strategically sited on the route of the M.4 motorway, halfway between London and Bristol. Then there is the Bletchley area. The noble Lord, Lord Taylor, mentioned this; I do not know whether the inhabitants of Bletchley will welcome his remarks. It is on the main lines of communication, including the M.1 motorway, between London and the great industrial centres of the West Midlands.
There are two other proposals. One the noble Lord mentioned—the third international airport for London at Stansted—and the other proposal, which is again linked with a development of great economic significance, is the Channel Tunnel, if that goes ahead. It is essential to the strategy of the Study that the places chosen should be as far as reasonably possible from London. There are many places in the outer metropolitan region which, on purely economic grounds, could be said to be good choices. But as far as possible suggested expansion schemes have been kept out of this area of the outer metropolitan region, and I think this is right. They have as far as possible been kept out of this area or confined to its outer fringes, so that most of the big expansion schemes proposed are well away from London. Three—Swindon, Northampton and Peterborough—are in fact

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outside the South-East as defined in the Study.
These then are the Study's chief conclusions and proposals. The Government's initial conclusions are stated in the White Paper. We have accepted the figure of 3½ million for the population increase for the South-East by 1981 as the basis for planning to meet the future land need. We have accepted the need for new and expanded towns to accommodate 1 to 1¼ million people in ways which would provide effective relief for the pressures on London and the need to achieve a redistribution of the population growth to preserve the Green Belt which would otherwise be subject to the most intense pressures.
There are two important points to bear in mind. The first is that the Government have yet to reach final conclusions. The noble Lord was rather critical, saying that we were wrong to produce these tentative proposals. But there is a great deal to be said for consulting public opinion, consulting planning authorities and those affected; therefore I think the Government were right not to come to final conclusions before publishing the Study. Decisions of this magnitude affect many people—and I believe the noble Lord, when he thinks about it, will agree—and require full public discussion, as well as consideration with local authorities. The Study is therefore published as a basis for consultation and discussion. Secondly, we shall keep a close watch to see how things work out in practice. Twenty-year population forecasts will need, and will in fact be given, as I indicated earlier, frequent review. If the trends change we must be ready to change our own plans.
The noble Lord suggested that the South-East survey would trigger off a new round of land speculation, and this has been said by others who have criticised the plan. But I do not believe this to be true and I think it is disproved by the facts. In the case of land release, of course, there is no sudden accretion of value as a result of the Study. The local authorities and the public always knew they faced a growth of population; all the Survey has done is to put the figures to this. It remains for the local authorities to decide where their local growth
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is going to be, and it is no easier now than it was before for speculators to know in advance where the growth will be. It is the planned expansion schemes that have hit the headlines. Again the noble Lord is very fair in pointing this out. The land required for these will be bought up in advance by public authorities as necessary, and, as under existing law, the price paid will not include any additional value attributable to the expansion scheme or even to the prospect of it. So anyone who buys land at any of these towns at a fancy price, hoping he will in the end get a still fancier price, is likely to find he has made a bad bargain.
Two-thirds of the additional 3½ million people will be catered for in a less dramatic way, by reviewing the local development plans. Here the noble Lord criticised strongly that such a large proportion should be dealt with in this way. I think again he did less than credit to the local planning authorities and to the planning machinery for which they are responsible, which was set up by the noble Lord, Lord Silkin. Therefore I think that that again is a point which the noble Lord exaggerated. What the Study aims to do is to show to the local authorities the scale on which they need to plan and to encourage them to allocate enough land in their development plans. Allocation of more land will not make the price of building land rocket.
The only practicable way to restrain house prices is to meet the pressure of demand by building more houses, and that means seeing that enough land is available for houses in the right places. That, again, is the responsibility of the local planning authorities. The main purpose of the Study, as I have said, is to show the authorities the size of their problem so that they will approach it with an adequate idea of the amount of land that will have to be released to meet foreseeable demands. Surely this is the realistic, practical way to look at this question. I think that to talk about "doing something" about land prices in isolation does not make sense.
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, may I intervene.—
VISCOUNT BLAKENHAM: Perhaps I may finish this point, because it is

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dealing with what I think the noble Lord wants to say. He and the Labour Party, I believe, have always felt that you can deal with land prices by administrative gimmicks, and it was the noble Lord—and I will give way to him in a moment—who introduced the development charge in 1947. With respect to the noble Lord, the effect of that again was to make land more expensive, to keep land off the market and in fact to hold up house building.
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, I am tempted to intervene in this debate for the sole purpose of dealing with this last interjection, but I am most interested to hear what the noble Viscount is saying about land costs not rising. Is it not a fact that, if you designate an area as a New Town, you can then acquire the land at its existing use value, but apart from designation as a New Town, you cannot? The noble Viscount was assuming that whatever land a local authority requires for building can be acquired at existing use value; but that is not the case.
VISCOUNT BLAKENHAM: No, I did not say that, and I hope nobody thinks I did. I said that land for New Towns and for new expansions of towns, under the same arrangement as New Towns, would in fact be dealt with in the way that New Towns deal with it now. I said that, so far as the rest are concerned—I was speaking of the 3½ million whom we shall not be dealing with under the special arrangements—the local planning authorities, by being given the size of the problem which they have to cope with, will be encouraged to release more land, and by the provision of more houses and more land there will not be these rocketing prices which many of the critics of the Study have in fact suggested. Also on this point, I will say that the Land Commission that is now advocated by the Labour Party would in fact be no better, unless of course they intend to have a massive use of compulsory purchase powers. As I see it, the delay, the confusion and the immense bureaucratic machine necessary to make such a Commission work really hardly bears thinking about.
LORD MORRISON OF LAMBETH: My Lords, may I ask the noble Viscount
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whether it is not the case that, directly the local authority ceases to paint green on the map by way of prohibiting building development and releases land for building, the land value will move up, it may be dramatically? What is he going to do about that?
VISCOUNT BLAKENHAM: My Lords, I was countering this accusation that land prices will rocket. I maintain, and I believe it to be true, that by the release of more land this will in fact stabilise land prices rather than make them rocket. This, I think, is a sound point, and although noble Lords—
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, if that is so, will the noble Viscount say how it was that in 1951 the average paid by the L.C.C. for land was £8,800, and in 1963 it was £61,800, per acre?
VISCOUNT BLAKENHAM: That is hardly relevant. I am talking about the future. I would say that, now local authorities will have a far sounder idea of what the likely requirements for future building are likely to be, they will be in a position to release more land. This is a point which is perfectly simple and straightforward.
I should now like to relate this South-East Study and the White Paper to their wider context. It has been argued, for example, that it is an admission of defeat to plan for the growth of 34 million people in the South-East; and also that the creation of new and expanded towns would increase the attractiveness of the South-East at the expense of other regions. I know that noble Lords who come from further North feel this acutely. I should like to deal first with the figure of 3½ million. The Study explains at some length how this figure was arrived at. There are two elements: natural increase, estimated at about 2½ million, and net immigration, forecast at about 1 million. The noble Lord, in his introductory speech, accepted the fact that natural growth of people from within the region would be about 2½ million. What he quarrelled with was the net increase of about 1 million.
LORD TAYLOR: My Lords, I also quarrelled with the fact that it was an expression of birthrate, and not of the family production rate.
VISCOUNT BLAKENHAM: My Lords, that is quite right; the noble Lord did. So it will be seen that over two-thirds of the population increase will be people who are born in the South-East. Almost one-third would be caused by immigration. And here, I think, is the main point of criticism.
The first thing we have to ask ourselves is, how does this figure compare with past experience? The Study starts from the Government Actuary's official estimate of future migration into England and Wales. If past trends continue, this would lead to a migration gain in the South-East, not of 1 million, but of nearer 1½ million. This is a continuing expansion trend. But, of course, the measures which the Government have put in train elsewhere, particularly in Scotland and the North-East, are aimed at securing a more even development of economic activity throughout the country. These measures will have their effect in reducing the total of migration from those areas; and of that smaller total, the South-East's share will therefore fall, too. But the figure cannot be reduced beyond a certain point. People change the place where they live for more than one reason—and, incidentally, they come from more than one direction. Some of the migrants are not easily influenced. For instance, many people, when they retire, are attracted by the warmer climate of the South—and the Study indicates as many as a quarter of a million by 1981. In addition, the South-East must expect its share of the migrants coming into this country from overseas.
But the fact remains that the population forecast does envisage some continuing migration for work from elsewhere in the United Kingdom—here the noble Lord is quite right. It is this migration which, some have argued (the noble Lord did not go quite so far as arguing this wholeheartedly), the Government should seek to stop altogether. But the Government do not believe that this is a realistic approach. Strong and long-established trends in our national economy have led to a faster rate of growth of employment in the South-East, and this, in turn, has fostered migration into that area. These trends can be influenced, and we are influencing them; but they just cannot
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be stopped or reversed overnight. Indeed, I think it is right to say that economic strength in the South-East makes a substantial contribution to the national total. It is not suddenly to be cut back to fit into an arbitrary pattern. It would not help other parts of the country to stifle that growth in the South-East which must take place there, or not at all. To plan on a basis of the figures in the Study is not, as has been suggested, an admission of defeat: it is based on the belief that our efforts to help other regions will succeed.
There is the criticism, too, that the new expansion schemes in the South-East will draw people and jobs from other parts of the country. But the schemes will be taking the people moving out of London. They will also take some of the people who would otherwise gravitate inevitably towards London. The schemes will help to ensure that the growth that is going to take place is dispersed and spread more evenly within the South-East as a whole, and not just squeezed into one particular part of it.
The Board of Trade keep a tight control on industrial employment in the South-East. New industry cannot hope for industrial development certificates there. Not even existing factories are permitted to expand if they can possibly carry out the expansion elsewhere. Indeed, the South-East has provided an important source of industry for moving to the development districts. Our rigorous examination of future expansion proposals will therefore continue, and if a factory can move to help in a development district, it will not be allowed to set up in one of the New Town expansions in the South-East. There will be work enough in the South-East without that. In this way we shall carry out our policy: we shall help relieve pressure in the South by expansion in the North.
Where does this booming, prosperous South-East fit into the national framework? A prosperous South-East helps to make other regions prosperous too. Do not let us be ashamed of its prosperity. Our purpose must be to make this prosperity nationwide. There is no advantage in growth outstripping the resources in one part of the country, while resources are under-used in other

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parts. Here I strongly disagree with the theories expounded by a distinguished ex-colleague of mine. We intend to remedy the situation where employers are hunting for labour in one place while workers are looking for jobs only a few hundred miles away. This problem has preoccupied this Government and the Labour Government before it for many decades past. Many different remedies have been tried. Some of them have worked out well. I am thinking, for instance, of the transformation of South Wales, as a typical example. But some problems, in some areas, have not yet been solved. So we decided on a fresh approach. We shall certainly not take our eye off the ball in the North. Central Scotland and North-East England have a flying start, and we shall ensure that they forge ahead.
Noble Lords will be interested in what my noble friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer said yesterday, in his Budget speech, when he stated that seven times as many applications for assistance under the Local Employment Act have been made this year as were made in 1962–63. I can assure noble Lords who may have doubts on this point that the programme in Central Scotland is being vigorously implemented by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Scotland. Two-thirds of these applications for assistance under the Local Employment Act are for Central Scotland and for the North-East.
In Scotland there are a number of examples of recent progress for all to see. Abbotsinch Airport terminal building will now be going ahead. The first road scheme has been approved for Livingstone New Town. Development of the important growth point at Irvine is under discussion. My right honourable friend the Minister of Labour is arranging for training facilities to be improved, and to increase his existing plans here. New technical colleges are coming along. Thirteen new local authority factories are to be built, in four different centres. So it will be seen that the Central Scottish programme has made a good start, and, what is more important, is being pushed ahead.
Similar progress is being made in North-East England. There has been a great deal of improvement there lately. Since the White Paper was published in
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November, some fifteen more firms have either decided to open up in the North-East or are, we believe, on the point of doing so. Over 5,500 more jobs are estimated to flow from this. The stress which the White Paper laid on better roads in the North-East, is being followed through by detailed route planning with local authorities. In my opinion, some of these instances in Scotland and the North-East show that progress is being made and will continue to be made. In other regions these studies are now under way. I have tried to show your Lordships' House that the Government's resolve is to spread prosperity to all regions, and that this is, in fact, being implemented. I can give an assurance that this will continue.
Meanwhile, in the South-East the Government intend to discuss fully with those concerned the proposals suggested in the Study, and, though this will be pressed ahead it is bound to take some time. Thereafter it must, in any event, take some years before approved schemes can be got going on the ground. The Study involves a dynamic new approach to the whole of the South-East, with the virtual creation of three major new cities, six big new expansions and twelve other schemes on a substantial scale. The new city concept, in particular, reveals the radical nature of the Study. These are not designed just to take London overspill and provide employment for the newcomers: the idea is that they would be major new centres of growth in themselves, acting as counterweights to London and thus accommodating some of the newcomers before they even get to London.
Whatever the merits of some of the arguments of those who try to say that nothing should be done, or think that we should rely purely on economic trends, such arguments fail on social grounds. The Government have therefore rejected that sort of approach. We believe that growth in the South-East is inevitable, but that the pressures on London must be relieved and that action must be taken to secure a better distribution of this growth. We believe that the basic strategy of the South East Study is the right one to achieve the radical change in the pattern of development that is required. As the terms of Lord Taylor's Motion remind us, we have to think of the 18 million people living in this area.

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We have set the process going, but we must do this without prejudicing the welfare of the nation as a whole. I believe that we shall be able to achieve this only in the sort of way I have outlined this afternoon.
4.15 p.m.
LORD TANGLEY: My Lords, in a debate about South-East England, of which Greater London forms so important a part, it would be idle for me to hold myself out to your Lordships as an uncontroversial person. None the less, I feel that there are things in this Study which are so wide in their scope, and have so many aspects, that I can, without any breach of the decorum becoming to someone who is addressing your Lordships for the first time, lay certain suggestions before you for your consideration.
I should like to start by congratulating the anonymous authors of this Study for having expressed their ideas in clear and plain English, without any technical fads and without any jargon. There must be a tremendous amount of technical material behind this Report, but I am glad to see that they have kept it out of the Report, so that the ordinary man can read and understand what is being proposed. I find this Study in many respects a heartening and, indeed, in some senses, historic piece of work. This Study looks to the future. It contemplates a generation of abounding and vigorous life. Population will grow; trade and industry will grow; the standard of living will grow; and so will the demand for education and a fuller life for all. The declared object of this Study is not to cramp or stifle that growth, but to find ways and means by which that growth can take place within the framework of a civilised social life.
I believe that that is a true picture of the state of our nation to-day. There are no doubt many ways in which we fail or fall short of our chances of envisaging the opportunities which lie before us. In an extremely interesting debate last week, initiated by the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, we examined some of the ways in which we are falling short of our industrial opportunities in the field of automation. But when one has made allowance for all that, ought we not also to recognize and rejoice
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in the undoubted vitality of our people and of our institutions? What a contrast between the spirit of this Study and the scene and the spirit contemplated by the planners of a generation ago! I have no doubt that many of your Lordships have on your study shelves, as I have, books written a generation ago. They were full of gloom: the great days were over; the population would become static and aged, or even dwindle; it would be impossible to maintain our export trade at a level which would maintain even the then existing standard of life for the then existing population. I used to find that very gloomy reading; but to-day I find it most cheerful reading. It is always cheering to read about disasters that did not happen.
It was inevitable that the planners of those days should have been influenced by the then prevailing mood and outlook. They planned for stagnation. They were inevitably affected by the failure, as I believe it to have been, of the national spirit during the 'thirties, and I think your Lordships will agree with me, that the planners now feel bound to provide for the vital consequences of our resurgence as a people. When one makes all the allowances one should make, for failures of vision and moral lapses, for short-sightedness and human selfishness, surely this resurgence is a fact; and it is to me a very heartening thing that the planners should feel bound to take account of it.
I suggest to your Lordships, also, that this is an historic document. It shows that we are capable of learning the lessons of history. Would that we had had such a study as this in the days of the first Industrial Revolution, when this land was being transformed from a rural into an industrial country! Then we had just such an upsurge of industry, of population, of growth, as we are experiencing now. What would Lancashire and Yorkshire and Tyneside and the Black Country have been like to-day, if the growth of industry based upon steam power had been foreseen and provided for, as this Study seeks to foresee and provide for the phenomena of the Second Industrial Revolution?
I believe, also, that this Study is historic in another sense. It explicitly recognises that the location of industry has been, is, and must mainly always

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be the result of economic forces. Industry has always been located where production and distribution are cheap. That is inevitable, my Lords, and it is right. Cheap production is essential if we are to maintain our export trade and so provide and sustain all the benefits to which we are looking forward. Is it not the case that tie economic factors which cause industry to settle in one place rather than another are these four—access to raw materials, access to markets, access to labour and access to power supplies? Sometimes one of those factors seems to outweigh another, but at all times all four of them exert their force.
If one goes back in history, one finds that industry was concentrated in South-East England. Cloth weaving—the greatest industry—found its raw material near at hand on the Downs and in the Cotswolds. It was conveniently transported and it found itself near to the ports that gave access to the great Continental market. The same four factors caused the iron working industry to be found in the Weald of Sussex. Then, with the invention of steam, which enormously increased the productive power of industry, proximity to the source of power—that is to say, coal—became the overriding consideration, and the great manufacturing towns grew up close to the coalfields. The adaption of steam to transport in the form of railways made it possible for raw materials to come to the new manufacturing towns and for the finished products to be sent to the ports of export.
I recall that the original main line of the old Midland Railway was from Birmingham to Bristol, and the original main line of what subsequently became the Great Central Railway was intended to link Lancashire and Yorkshire with the Humber ports; and that the extension for passenger services to St. Marylebone, London, was a late afterthought. There was no drift of industry to the North in those days, but the number of jobs available and, consequently, the population which could be supported increased in the North and Midlands at a far greater rate.
During our own day we have seen the same factors working in exactly the opposite direction. During my own adult lifetime I have seen electric power
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become available almost everywhere, at prices which vary very little as between one part of the country and another. I have seen the internal combustion engine revolutionise the transport of both raw materials and finished products. Industry is no longer anchored to the coalfields but, so far as power supplies are concerned, can settle anywhere. It is access to labour, to the ports and the markets which are now the decisive factors. In consequence, we are seeing exactly what happened in the first Industrial Revolution happening in reverse. The number of jobs and the level of population are not falling in the industrial North; they are rising faster in the South-East. I believe it is a great merit of this Study, that it recognises the existence of these historical forces and seeks not to obstruct their effects, but to provide for them in an orderly civilised manner.
My Lords, I am taking, I know, rather a broad view of this South-East Study. May I conclude by asking your Lordships to consider how effect is to be given to this Study or, indeed, to any other study of the kind? In particular, may I inquire whether our machinery of government is adequate for the purpose? As to this, my Lords, I confess that I feel much less happy. The South-East Study, or any other similar Study, will not, of course, have any direct legal effect, but it will have a strong persuasive effect upon the development plans presented by the planning authorities for the approval of the Minister. This persuasive influence derives from the fact that every planning authority will know that it has no hope of getting its development plan approved unless it conforms to the general ideas of the Study as finally accepted.
The initiative in producing development plans and in many other matters will lie with the local government bodies. It is therefore essential, first, that local government should properly be organised to carry that burden. That is the primary requirement, I suggest. I believe that the work which has been done in London, and is being done in the provinces, is producing a local authority organisation capable of bearing the burdens. I hope that there will be no thought of establishing yet another sort of government, under the guise of

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regional government. Regional government is, to me, a very tempting sounding phrase; but when one looks at it, in my submission it has no meaning at all. It is the duty of the Central Government, is it not, having regard to national considerations to lay down the general conception of what a region should be? It is for the local authorities, properly organised, to take the initiative in fitting their own parts of the region into the conception of the Central Government. The regional authority, if there were one, would either be yet a third tier of local government, or be an arm of Central Government. Neither of them, I suggest, is necessary, and either would be confusing.
Nevertheless, my Lords, I believe that the Central Government itself faces a serious problem in the machinery of government. Local authorities will be the initiators in regard to town and country planning, and also in respect of the provision of schools and roads, sewerage and many other essential services. They will have to provide for parks, concert halls and theatres, and for all sorts of other amenities. For some of those activities they will pay entirely themselves, though they will have to get loan sanction from one Minister or another. For some, services grants will be available from one Minister or another. The Minister of Housing and Local Government must approve the development plans. For the schools the local authorities will be dealing with the Minister of Education; for roads, they will be dealing with the Minister of Transport; for the police, they will be dealing with the Home Office; and in other matters they will be dealing with other Government Departments. They will be asking for loan sanction, and in some cases for grants, and each of the Ministers concerned will have to satisfy himself about the policy of the local authorities making the application.
Then, outside the local government world, the construction, extension and maintenance of ports will be the responsibility of the Committee under the chairmanship of the noble Viscount, Lord Rochdale, which will deal with the Minister of Transport; and the supervision of road transport services is a matter for the Minister of Transport.
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The provision of railway services will be the responsibility of the Railways Board, and the Minister will have to decide the extent and scope of the railway services to be provided, and whether or not they are to be dealt with purely on an accountancy basis. Then, for hospital and medical services, there is the Minister of Health.
My point, my Lords, is that there is a multiplicity of Government Departments, a whole series of them, each with the responsibility of providing or sanctioning the provision of money for one or other of the various projects which are essential parts of the implementation of such a Study. I suppose that each Minister would do his best for his own protégé, so to speak, and ultimately the Treasury would have to come to some reconciliation of conflicting claims upon the national resources. I gravely doubt whether such a system is adequate to weld into a whole the innumerable individual projects which, between them, will go to implement the principles of this or any other study. I hope very much that the Government are giving serious attention to this problem, and perhaps the noble Lord who winds up this debate will be able to give us some reassurance. For it would be a tragedy if such a scheme as this, or any other scheme taking its place, were to be held up, postponed or impeded because of the inadequacy of the machinery of government. I do not wish to keep your Lordships any longer. I trust that I have not been misled into becoming controversial in any way, or misled into a breach of any other tradition of your Lordships' House; and I offer your Lordships my most sincere thanks for the patience with which you have listened to my first effort.
4.33 p.m.
THE LORD BISHOP OF ST. ALBANS: My Lords, I welcome the opportunity of congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Tangley, on his maiden speech. I am grateful to him for setting this South East Study in an historical perspective, and for his carefully-weighed words about the dangers of regional government and the responsibilities of the central Government. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Tangley, will often address us again and that we shall have the advantage of further speeches from him. I share his view in thinking well

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of this South East Study, and I want to pay my tribute to the author, if there is a particular individual who is largely responsible for it. I could have wished that it had taken its place in the line of succession, following the Beeching, Buchanan, Robbins and Newsom Reports, with the author's name attached, for then that person would have the opportunity in the Press, on TV and on the radio of developing his views and of clarifying our thinking. If this Report be largely the work of one mind, then may the debate in your Lordships' House convey to that author our appreciation of his work, which is not the less sincere because it is blended with criticism.
As I read the Report and considered the chart of live births from 1946 to 1962, and the sharp increase in birth trends in 1955, I specially noted the soaring birthrate in the outer metropolitan region, and it is because I live in that region that I put my name down for the debate this afternoon. I welcome the Report, for I do not believe, in the light of post-war experience, that it is prudent to let things take their course. We want a larger and a fresh programme, both of new and of expanded towns, and, I would add, villages: but must they be within relatively close range of London? I endorse what the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, has said, and plead that consideration be given to siting towns in North Bedfordshire or East Anglia.
I am particularly concerned about the outer metropolitan region. The Study admits that there are strong arguments for keeping further planned expansion schemes out of this area, but it goes on to say that in practice this is not likely to be possible. The noble Lord, Lord Taylor, has reminded us of the debate on New Towns earlier this year, when the proposal to expand the New Town of Stevenage to a figure of 140,000 was heavily criticised by many of your Lordships. Since then, I am thankful to note that the Minister of Housing and Local Government has modified his proposals, and I gather that the gap between Stevenage and Luton is no longer threatened by expansion.
Chapter 11 of this Study states
"that places should be chosen for expansion which will have a firm prospect of rapid, sound and prosperous growth …";
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but the same chapter goes on to support the arguments we put forward in your Lordships' House two months ago:
"A rapid build-up produces an unbalanced structure, with too many families of the same age and background, leading to a series of bulges that may take several generations to even out."
My Lords, I fear that this is the position in our New Towns, but they do not look as though they are going, to be allowed several generations in which to even out.
I turn to certain factors which concern all the New Towns in Hertfordshire and, I have no doubt, elsewhere. The proportion of young people in New Towns is more than twice the national proportion of young people in an ordinary community. For example, some years ago a survey was taken at Hemel Hempstead, when it was found that over 45 per cent. of the population of the town at that time was under the age of 19 years, as against just over the normal 20 per cent. of an average population. To provide facilities in New Towns is so expensive a business that we ought to look at both the existing towns and certain villages. The expansion of facilities in older towns would, I submit, be a cheaper, easier and, in many ways, a better provision to make.
The Green Belt has come under fire, and doubtless it will continue to come under fire. Here is a lung stretching into the country, and the countryside helps a man to accept his roots and his location. The restoration of natural ways of living, it has been said, is perhaps a first condition of the recovery of a Christian Britain. The Ministry of Housing and Local Government seem a little inclined to encroach on the Green Belt, and it is much to be desired that this tendency should be resisted.
I want to say a word or two about conditions in Bedfordshire, for shortly before the South East Study was published much interest was aroused in Bedfordshire by an interim report to the Bedforshire County Council on ways and means of providing an addition of 117,000 to the population of that county by 1981. The South East Study is concerned with large numbers, and with an extra 30,000 population for Bedford; but I hope that, in the years before us, there will be closer consultation so that

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relatively small increases in village population may receive more attention. Therefore I welcome the assurance of the noble Viscount, Lord Blakenham, that the White Paper will be a basis for discussion and contains only tentative conclusions.
A number of villages, not only in Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire but elsewhere in this region, would, I am certain, benefit by some modest increase of population. The increase of artisans, rather than commuters, can bring new life to many villages, and yet too large an influx can, and does, unsettle the roots of a community and spoils its growth. If growth comes, it should come with employment—industry if at all possible, but, if not, offices and service industries. I have in mind several villages where there is a more balanced community life because of such development.
My Lords, there are two or three concluding observations that I would offer. The first concerns our homes. We are debating the need for urgent action in the interests of the welfare of the people in South-East England. Our homes need kitchens large enough to contain labour saving and modern food storage requirements; our homes should have appropriate room space for looking at and listening to television. This month the B.B.C. starts its Channel 2 programme. It is a programme launched in the interests of further education, and there should be the opportunity of listening to the programme in a setting where there is a tolerable amount of quiet.
In this House last week automation was debated and the forecast was made that we might be in sight of a working day of two hours only. More leisure gives more chances of study. But few young people find it easy to study at home, and few old people find room enough for them to live in their children's homes. If we are to have contented people in well-designed homes in South-East England, I plead for a closer relationship between the housing and planning authorities and the families who are to live in the houses, which are often rather ill-designed, and ill-advisedly designed, for us.
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I would say one word about migration. This has already been referred to by the noble Viscount, Lord Blakenham. Migration is to be faced; but how are we to face it? Should provision be made for West Indians, Pakistanis and Italians to be integrated in the South-East, with our standards? Do we expect them always to adapt their ways to our ways, or should we give further thought to adapting both cultures so that there is a new synthesis? I feel we are in the debt of a number of these people and that we should give thought to these considerations. When I say that we are in debt, I have in mind the courteous and cheerful services that so many West Indians offer us in London Transport. I hope that this Study will lead us to a richer community life in South-East England, a life which the Channel Tunnel may help us to share with increased numbers of nationals from other countries. Community life in the South-East should be such that we are sensitive, appreciative and imaginative in our understanding of others. Christians need to be alive to these responsibilities.
4.45 p.m.
LORD MORRISON OF LAMBETH: My Lords, the House will have been pleased to hear an expression of opinion about this debate from the right reverend Prelate the Lord Bishop of St. Albans. It is right that the view of the Church, or, at any rate, a Bishop of the Church, should be heard on such an important matter as this. I cordially agree with him that the Green Belt, in whose creation I played a part, is really a testimony to Christian doctrine that we should not be cut off from the countryside for too great a distance; and I think the implication of what he said was that anybody who damaged the Green Belt, or nibbled at it, cut it about or ruined it, would be guilty of an un-Christian act; and with that I entirely associate myself.
The noble Viscount the Deputy Leader of the House said that, in addition to this Report, the Government had produced Reports on Central Scotland and on North-East England, and that is true. But he said the conditions in the South-East were entirely different from conditions in those places. That also is true because in Central

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Scotland and in the North-East of England, in Merseyside and in Northern Ireland there is a danger of industrial decay, and I do not want to see them decaying. But what I complain about is that this Report on the future distribution of population, industry and services in Britain should have been confined to South-East England. I do not like this regional approach, separate and ad hoc, to a problem which in many respects is a national one—namely, the question of the distribution of industry, of population and of housing.
I think that in this matter the Government have made a mistake similar to the mistakes they made in respect of the Buchanan Report on roads and of the Beeching Report on railways. They were both ordered separately, both produced separately, both published separately, although they were complementary to a common problem of British transport. Now we have separate examinations of the industrial problem of Central Scotland, of North-East England and of the South-East; and I think it would have been better if there had been, at any rate, either first of all or in addition to these publications, a Report on the future distribution of industry, of our economic resources, our population and housing for the whole of Great Britain.
It is exceedingly difficult to judge this Report on South-East England without having in mind the problems of the North-East of Scotland, of Merseyside and of Northern Ireland. I have read all this Report. It takes a bit of doing; there is a lot of it; but I have read it all. I am glad that I have done so and I am therefore able to make a few observations about it. May I say straight away that I think the whole House is indebted for the speech of my noble friend Lord Taylor in opening this debate? It was a masterly exposition by a man of acute intelligence who has some practical, on-the-ground experience of New Town development in South-East England. I listened with great pleasure and with general agreement, and I think we are indebted to him for the speech which he made.
There are, of course, two problems of immigration here. One is the immigration into the South-East (even though it may be argued it is limited, it is noticeable) from the North, from Scotland,
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Wales and Ireland. In principle I am not complaining about it. It is the economic consequence of it to the other parts that I am anxious about. As a matter of fact, half the population of London are perhaps not of London origin at all: they may be Scottish, Welsh, Irish or perhaps of other origin. They have settled down in London, and in the course of a generation or two they become Londoners. And we Londoners do not feel jealous of the fact that they have a different accent from ours. On the contrary, we find it charming. But what arises is that the problem of the population in London is accentuated by the migration of folk from the North, from Scotland, Wales and Ireland, and the problems of those countries are accentuated because under economic pressure, people have found it difficult not to leave then countries or the neighbourhood of their birth.
Taking our country as a whole, migration from overseas has to be limited. I do not think there is any doubt that there has to be some limitation of the number of people who can come into this country. This is a small island, with a population of about 50 million, and we cannot stand an unlimited immigration, not, at any rate until we have solved the housing problem. We have a long way to go before that is done, and this is a factor which has to be kept in mind. I should like to see some of our people emigrating to the Commonwealth and doing good work there, and some of them are doing so.
The Green Belt was established for the purpose of putting a physical Green Belt between built-up Greater London and possible built-up areas beyond, and also to enable people living in London and in the built-up areas outside to reach the countryside, without spending too much time and trouble in travelling, to enjoy natural scenery. It did not follow that it would be made up of public open space, although some of it is. Much of it is farm land. When the Green Belt was proposed the L.C.C. suggested that there should be a joint committee with the Outer London authorities to run it collectively, but the outer authorities did not like that, and I do not blame them. Instead the L.C.0 gave them a grant of up to £2 million towards acquiring land, on the condi-

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tion that they would preserve it as Green Belt, and then they had to run it themselves, which I think was the easiest and simplest way of doing it.
It is a little difficult to decide whether this Study regards the Green Belt as substantially sacred or not. It speaks with two voices. It says that the Green Belt should be preserved, but we must not be too sticky about it. And it says that the Green Belt must be enlarged, there must be an outer Green Belt added to the existing one, but we must not be too sticky about that. I think that the Minister is speaking with two voices about this. I regret to say this—I would sooner say something else—but I have the fear that he is not as wedded to the Green Belt as he ought to be. It is vital that this should be so, otherwise these vast populations will be cut off from God's countryside, or will get there only by long journeys by car, poor things, and probably end in a queue at Dorking and have a job to get back home. That would be a great misfortune. I invite the Minister to "come clean" about this, and not to be edgy and a little bit "dodgy" in his approach, as are the terms of this Report.
My noble friend Lord Taylor raised the question of land values, and my noble friend Lord Silkin intervened. He has had great experience of this matter in handling the Town and Country Planning Act, under which the Labour Government sought to prevent land values from being exploited by private speculators and to see that the public interest was defended. The noble Viscount, Lord Blakenham, said that the Government were taking care of this problem. Unfortunately, he did not tell the House how. It may be that he did not know, in which case we must have a certain degree of sympathy with him. I always sympathise with a Minister who has not the facts to argue a case. But, at any rate, he did not tell us.
After my noble friend Lord Silkin had got through Parliament legislation which held out a reasonable prospect of putting a curb on inflated land values, the Conservative Government, when they came in, promptly changed that legislation; and since then there has been this shocking increase in land values, to which my noble friend Lord Stonham also has referred. It really is a serious
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matter that land values should soar up without limit. Not only is it a bad thing for local authorities, who are landed with inflated capital costs in respect of housing schemes and schemes for open spaces, but it is a dreadful thing for young people of the lower middle class who want to buy a house and get married—many of whom probably vote Conservative, though I imagine that they will begin to think again about doing that. I put it to the noble Viscount, Lord Blakenham, whose main occupation is that of Chairman of the Conservative Party organisation, that he had better keep in mind those young people about to get married, who are landed with these shockingly inflated costs, not only if they are buying a house but also if they are called upon to pay high rents. They are nice people, even if they vote Tory—misguided, but nice—and it is a dreadful thing that this Government should punish these supporters of theirs by landing them with these enormous payments, which burden them for many years to come.
Some of these inflated land values are terrible, dramatic, brutal. I would invite the Government to say what they are going to do to end this state of affairs, which is doing such injury all over the country. The noble Viscount said that they are going to take care of this matter, but he has not told us how; and in so far as he tried to show how, he was promptly knocked over by my noble friends Lord Silkin and Lord Taylor. The only people who are benefiting are the speculators, the parasites; the people who do nothing in return for these inflated prices; who buy land for the purpose of selling it at a much bigger price. They are not useful citizens. The Government ought not to worry about them, and should deal with this problem of inflated land values as soon as they can.
The Study deprecates the amount of commuter travel, and I agree with it in this respect. I am a commuter, but within the London County area. When I first lived down at Eltham Well Hall, I could join a train at rush hour and there was plenty of room; but join a train at rush hour now and you are lucky if you get a scat. It is not the fault of British Railways, except in so far as, when they electrified the railway, that development stimulated building; but that was bound to happen.

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I would praise the Southern Railway for what it did. Sir Herbert Walker, the manager of the Southern Railway under private ownership, was a great railwayman. He did it, and he never asked for a penny of State subsidy. I like a chap like that: enterprise without any State money. Now, when I go down at night, sometimes in the peak hour, many people are standing—and, what is much worse, sometimes I am standing. But if you can hang on, although you get a bit tired, you survive.
But whereas people used to get out in substantial numbers at St. John's, Lewisham and Kidbrooke, whereupon the straphangers could sit down, they nowadays do not materially depart until they get to Eltham Well Hall, Eltham Park and Falconwood, where a great number get out. So the population is moving out, and the problem of commuting is becoming increasingly difficult, both for the travellers themselves and for the transport undertakings: because the poor transport undertakings, whether the main-line railways or London Transport—whether it was the old companies or the new public concerns—have to run those railways all day, even though the only fully occupied period is at the peak hours, morning and evening. Consequently, it is difficult for them to pay their way. This situation is partly brought about by the past wrong development of London and Greater London, which, so far as I can see, this Report, far from discouraging, is, if anything, at any rate up to a point, encouraging.
It is true that it is proposed to start some new cities—Portsmouth—Southampton, Bletchley and Newbury—but that still means an increase in the population of south-east England. And they are all to be built within accessible distance of London. It is significant that in the Report the accessibility to London is spelt out in terms of roads, rather than railways, which indicates that my right honourable friend the Minister of Transport, about whom I had a few harmless observations to utter the other day, has had a hand in the compilation of this Report. It is not the railways which are going to connect these towns with London, but the roads, and especially motor roads.
Another problem is that of offices. Here I understand that the London
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County Council have done their best to diminish—they could not abolish—the rate of expansion of office building in Central London. I shall be corrected about this if I am wrong, but I understand that if there is a building, especially if it contains offices up to a limited height and the owners or purchasers propose to pull it down and put up another building twice, or even three times, the height of the original one, if the London County Council say: "No, you cannot because we are not having any more offices built in Central London", the London County Council, as the planning authority, may be involved in compensation payments of a substantial order. As I say, if I am wrong about this I shall be glad to be corrected, but I understand this to be the case, and that the compensation payable may be considerable.
There is a suggestion that additional transport will have to be provided. Here we come to another problem. If the additional transport is by private car, it is bound to lead to the additional congestion of the highways of London and the approaches to London. Even to-day we are getting to the limit of that sort of thing, and, as some of us said in the debate on the Buchanan Report, something will have to be done about it. The Buchanan Report, or the Report of the Working Party under Sir Geoffrey Crowther, urged that possibly it would be well to subsidise public transport—buses and Tubes—in order to encourage the private motorist to give up travelling into Central London by private car and to go by Underground, suburban railway or bus.
My Lords, this really is no solution. If anybody thinks that knocking off 2d, or 3d., or even 6d., off the fare to London is going to stop a man with a private car from driving into Central London, he is living in a fool's paradise: it just will not do it. The real answer is to say to the private motorist that, unless he can show good cause why he should come into Central London by private car, he will not be allowed to do so. We shall have to come to this. It sounds dreadful, and I admit that, at a time when we are within sizeable distance of a General Election, the Government cannot be expected to do it. I do not blame them; they have enough trouble with their Conservative waverers

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at the moment, without adding to it. But it is right that this will have to come. And when it comes, that is the way to make public transport increase its traffic, its receipts and its commercial viability. We cannot have the best of two worlds that are mutually killing each other. We cannot have a steady growth in private motor transport and flourishing public transport at the same time. That is the situation we must face, and it is bound up with this whole problem of commuters in London traffic.
When it comes to building Tubes, with which this Report flirts, as well as railway improvements, I must point out that Tubes are very expensive to build. It is highly probable that the new Victoria Tube will not pay on its own—I do not know; but I should think it unlikely. If it could be carried by a prosperous London Transport, as a whole, that would be desirable. I do not ask that every section of London Transport should pay on its own; I like the "show" to pay as a whole, if it can be done. It is therefore probably right that the Victoria Tube should be built; and it may be socially right that some other Tubes and Underground railways should be built, as well. But let there be no under-estimate of the cost involved, and of the difficulty of making these undertakings pay, so long as public transport is made the victim of a free-for-all of other forms of transport. This cannot be done.
I used to drive to Parliament in my little car—it was even smaller then than it is now, and it is not big now—and it used to take half-an-hour from Eltham to the House of Commons. But now, according to the degree of congested traffic, it would take probably an hour or more to do that journey. As I have never learned to drive a car and read blue books at the same time, I have given up driving and I come more quickly by public transport. I am a good customer of the Southern Electric: I am better off and I can read. These are the things that are happening, and the poor commuter who drives up on his own every day, foolishly, as I think, if he is not compelled to, is fatigued and tired out when he gets to work; and probably fatigued, tired out and bad-tempered when he gets home to his wife—poor
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thing! All this is wrong, because we are not thinking enough about the social consequences of this kind of thing.
There is another consideration which must be kept in mind and with which the Report deals, and that is water supply. I often marvel, as the world's population grows, that somehow water is provided—not in all countries, because some are short of it, and it is a terrible thing for them when that is so. But look how the population of our own country has grown! Somehow the water is still there. Whether it will always be so I do not know, but up to now we have survived. The Report says that there must be more water supplied for this growing South-Eastern region, but it does not tell us anything about the public machinery of administration or organisation whereby the water is to be obtained.
When the London Government Act, of unhappy memory—notwithstanding the last election—was passed, the Government intended to bring in a Bill to make the Metropolitan Water Board area the same as the Greater London area, but they found that it needed a Hybrid Bill and they dropped it. I hope that, if this legislation goes on—which I trust it will not—that that will not be forgotten. It will be necessary that the Metropolitan Water Board should become part of the Greater London Council, if the Council remains, and that its area should be correspondingly increased, especially in the light of these proposals.
There is one other point I wish to mention, and that is on agriculture. This is not easy of solution, but the noble Viscount, Lord Blakenham, is a former Minister of Agriculture. I remember that when the Labour Government was in office I was instrumental in requiring that there should be an annual report on the degree and places of encroachment on agricultural land, including the quality of the land. I hope that that still goes on—I do not know whether it does or not—because it was a check on Ministers being indifferent about encroaching on agricultural land. I know the difficulties of not doing so, but this South East Study does not pay enough attention to this question.
After all, apart from the interests of the farmers—and their interests are entitled to be taken into account—it is a question of amenity, because farm land is

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land which contributes to amenity. Apart from that, the growth of British agricultural production from the war onwards, including the, period of the Labour Government, when my noble friend Lord Williams of Barnburgh was Minister of Agriculture—and here I think the noble Viscount, Lord Blakenham, will agree with me—has afforded not a solution, but a contribution towards rectifying the balance-or-payments problem, because before this growth of productivity we had to import more food than we do now. The consequence of being able to import less food and still get the people fed was a contribution to the balance of trade and the balance-of-payments problems. Therefore this problem of agriculture is a factor in this Report.
I am glad that we are having this debate. It is one of the advantages of your Lordships' House that we are able, through the usual channels, to arrange at short notice these debates on matters of current and important public interest. That was how my noble friend Lord Taylor was able to get in. I congratulate him on having got in, and on his speech, and I congratulate your Lordships' House on having been able to grant facilities for what I think has been a useful debate.
5.15 p.m.
LORD MESTON: My Lords, I think the factual situation has been fairly stated. To-day 18 million people—that is to say, 35 per cent. of the population—live in South-East England. It is anticipated that during the next 20 years the population in the South-East is likely to increase by another 3½ million. I venture to think—and I am quite prepared to be corrected if I am wrong—that of that figure some 2 million at least will further congest the area of London and the area immediately surrounding London. Of course, Her Majesty's Government and their successors in title can do nothing about the increased population in itself. What the Government can do is, in effect, to arrange in what areas that increase may find accommodation and employment.
In my view, the situation to-day in the South-East is almost alarming. If I were a dictator, which unfortunately I am not, I would draw a line from London to Bristol and prohibit any new building
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South of that line, and also within a radius of 50 miles from Charing Cross in all directions, for at least the next five years. There would be an exception in favour of continuing the building of existing New Towns and upon work which has been commenced, and there would also be an exception in favour of building on the sites of demolished slum property. Subject to those exceptions, there could be no new building within the areas I have indicated for at least the next five years.
But people must be housed, and as quickly as possible. In this connection, the policy of the Government should be not to draw people towards London but to draw people as far away from London as possible. This is best done by the construction of New Towns. I would suggest commencing work on at least twelve more New Towns, at least 150 miles from London. The South-West of England comprises some very beautiful country, but there is no evidence that the inhabitants of that part of the country would object to at least one New Town being constructed in the South-West. Then there are the Midlands. Some rural towns could carry two or three New Towns. Speaking for myself, I would sooner see horses and hounds in the countryside than New Towns, but unless people are going to live in the sea some of the countryside must be dedicated to the sites of New Towns.
Then there is the North of England. I should imagine that three New Towns would be welcomed in the North-East of England, especially in Durham, from which all the best people come. As for the North-West of England, the position may be slightly different. It may be that the rebuilding and extension of Manchester and the surrounding district will be inconsistent with the creation of more New Towns in that area. What about Scotland? I have not heard anybody mention Scotland.
LORD MORRISON OF LAMBETH: I did.
LORD TAYLOR: I did, too.
LORD MESTON: I am not suggesting any further extension of Glasgow and the county of Renfrew. But is it beyond the bounds of reason to build a couple of New Towns on the East

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coast of Scotland? Perhaps some of your Lordships who know that part of the world in modern times will have some views on the matter.
LORD MORRISON OF LAMBETH: My Lords, I hesitate to interrupt the noble Lord, but there are at least two New Towns, if not three, in the North-East, and there are at least two New Towns, if not three, in Scotland. My noble friend says four. Anyway, there are a number in Scotland, all built under the Act which was brought in by my noble friend Lord Silkin.
LORD MESTON: I am glad to hear that, but what I am suggesting is this. If we are to have an increase of 3½ million in the population of South-East England, before that increase becomes effective or difficult, we should have accommodation for them in twelve more New Towns in other parts of the country. I only ask that you do not put a New Town in Aberdeenshire. I know that when I go there and walk along Deeside and Donside I bellow like a bison's delight. I can walk 20 miles from Deeside and Donside without running into anybody, or without seeing a motor car.
My Lords, in conclusion I would make only one observation of a somewhat personal nature, because an inquiry was made of me in connection with the Channel Tunnel and I hope I may be permitted to pass it on to Her Majesty's Government. I am asked to urge that a decision should be taken at the earliest possible moment to ensure that the planning operations for Kent will take fully into account all the requirements of the Channel Tunnel terminal. I have no doubt that that point will be taken up by many other speakers in your Lordships' House, and I am delighted to sit down now and hear them.
5.21 p.m.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, I am very glad that both the noble Lord, Lord Tangley, on whose excellent maiden speech I congratulate him, and the right reverend Prelate the Lord Bishop of St. Albans gave some praise to this South East Study. I say that because I think that all of us who have read it realise that it deals with some
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very important matters and gives us some very important information. Having said that, I must add that I join most heartily with the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, to whom the House is indebted for initiating this debate, in requesting the House not to give any exaggerated respect to this anonymous Report, and to realise that nothing could do more good than to subject it to fairly vigorous criticism.
I think this Report, though in many ways useful, certainly begs many questions. It makes some unproved assumptions; it contains some very obscure passages; and, above all, it contemplates, without being apparently too much worried, that the Government will carry out, or allow the carrying out of, some developments of quite preposterous folly.
I agree, of course, that some of these regional Studies can be very useful indeed as a source of information and as a basis for the subsequent making of policy. Nevertheless, we should not forget that the definition of the region itself is arbitrary. Some of us who have long been concerned with the problems of town and country planning can remember when the local planning authority was the county district. It fell to me, as Parliamentary Secretary at the Ministry of Town and Country Planning, to introduce in another place the first Act of Parliament that made the county the planning authority. Now, in course of time, we have found that for many purposes the county itself is too small in considering the whole problem, and Her Majesty's Government have discovered the region. But for many of these problems the region, too, is too small. The real unit is these islands.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Tangley, and others, in not suggesting for one moment the setting up of a regional authority, but I wish to remind the House that there are some assumptions made in this Study of the South-East which, though they may be correct, should not be assumed without proof to be correct; and certainly it is very much to be regretted that certain alternatives were not even considered.
The authors of this Report assume, in general, that the South-East region must provide for a natural increase of

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population of 2½ million between 1961 and 1981, and also for a net inward migration of one million. The noble Lord, Lord Taylor, rightly, in my opinion, challenged that last figure. I am inclined to go further than he did, because I challenge the assumption that it is wholly obvious, without any proof whatever, that more or less the whole of the natural increase must be provided for in this region. I wonder whether I might quote, and adopt as part of my argument, what wa3 said, in a letter in The Times of April 3, by my noble friend Lord Esher. I am delighted to see that he took his seat this afternoon, and I hope it will not be long before he enriches our debates on these topics. This is what he said in his last paragraph:
"This is not to say that we should be content with the South East Study's defeatism about emigration out of the region. Its failure to state the arguments for and against such emigration is far more serious than any assumptions it or other people may make about residential densities".
With that proposition I cordially agree.
Perhaps I might mention, although it is a slightly different topic, the other matter with which this admirable letter deals. He is entering a little discussion on densities that followed Sir Geoffrey Crowther's letters in The Times. He very rightly did not wish to get involved in these discussions on densities, but he reminded all concerned of this, I think, very important truth: " Sir Geoffrey Crowther … writes that 'the problem is not 3,500,000 more people in 20 years; it is something like seven or eight million people in 40 years.' This may or may not be so, but we must remember that in the eighties the economic life of miles and miles of inter-war suburbia will reach its end, and we shall for the first time be able to redevelop a great part of the conurbation at a considerably higher density than at present."
Then come the important words which I wish to commend to the attention of the House:
"Thus the next 20 years are essentially a great holding operation; and it would be a pity during this critical but short phase to rebuild at higher densities than future generations will find tolerable."
With that proposition I have no doubt that both Her Majesty's Government and the authors of the Report will agree; but it does mean that it is extraordinarily important that we do not
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make any major mistakes in planning now.
I have frequently addressed this House on the appalling consequences for our future that must result from the further increase of office accommodation in Central London, if we allow it. I did so very recently, in our debate of March 4. It would be wrong for me to repeat what I then said. I abide by every word of it.
Because there are many other speakers I wish to confine myself to a few topics; therefore, I now come to the two chapters which I think contain the greatest folly in the whole of this document. They are Chapters 7 and 8, "London employment and the office problem" and "Travel to work in London". It is mainly Chapter 8 with which I wish to deal. As I think noble Lords have already reminded the House, it is stated that there will be a further 170,000 office jobs, additional to those that we have now, in London—something that will enormously increase the daily travel into and out of London. Chapter 8, as I say, deals with this problem of travel to work in London. The noble Lord, Lord Morrison of Lambeth, quite rightly drew our attention to some of the conditions at present obtaining on the railways and on the roads. But, of course, the main cause of this increase is the proposed further increase of office accommodation in London. That is the whole cause.
What is so fantastic about Chapter 8 of this Report is that it assumes that this must happen; it assumes that there will be this immense increase of commuter traffic, and then proceeds to deal with possible methods of carrying it both by the main-line railways and by the Underground railway system of London. I am not going to repeat all that chapter. I ask anybody to read Chapter 8, and he will find that the authors are not in the least confident that that problem can be solved, even if we indulge in what the noble Lord, Lord Morrison of Lambeth, quite rightly said would be extremely expensive schemes. Even if enormously expensive schemes are indulged in, both by the main-line railways and by the Underground railways of London, there is no proof whatsoever that it will be physically possible to deal with the com-

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muter traffic which these two chapters contemplate coming into existence.
My Lords, why have we to face these appalling problems, which will do intolerable injury to London and create problems of travel that can be solved, if at all, only at enormous cost? What are the reasons? Let me tell your Lordships what the reasons are, in the words of the Report itself. It is because of "new offices in the pipe-line". I am not trying to be funny. It is because of "new offices in the pipe-line". For certain purposes "the pipe-line" may be a useful metaphor, but sometimes the indulgence in a metaphor conceals a singular absence of thought. And if it is really suggested that offices are in the pipe-line—meaning that it is essential that they should all come out as offices in Central London—that seems to me to be an absolute denial of the use of the human reason. If there are these offices in the pipe-line, let the Government blast them out of the pipeline. That is the only remedy that will suit the future of London and the future of this country, and provide tolerable conditions in the capital.
It is sometimes supposed that those of us who point out these horrors—which seem scarcely to alarm civil servants at all, and alarm Her Majesty's Government very little, except when they have to answer debates in this House—fail to realise that London is a great commercial and trading city. Of course we realise it; of course we glory in it, and of course we realise that London must have up-to-date offices to conduct the enormous trade and commerce which it does for itself and for the whole world. Of course, all that is true. Nevertheless, the reputation of London as a commercial city will not be well served if it grinds itself to a standstill by its own stupidity over offices.
LORD GLADWYN: My Lords, I am a child in these matters, but will not these offices of which the noble Lord complains mostly take the place of existing rabbit warrens?
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, if the noble Lord will read the chapters concerned he will find that that is not so. Their replacement has been provided for, and most of this is something
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very much greater. I repeat, it will not add to the reputation of the City of London, or to the commerce of this country, if London grinds itself to a standstill. The Government themselves say that they wish to divert offices elsewhere. One of the objects of this Report, the claimed objects, is to provide rival centres to attract people who wish to build offices. I say they will be attracted to build offices elsewhere if, but only if, you stop building them in London. To entertain the idea that you can go on building in London to this fantastic extent and that people will still at some distant future be attracted to go elsewhere, is really to live in Cloud Cuckoo Land.
Before I leave this topic, I must come to one of the points on which I disagree with the distinguished maiden speech which we heard earlier. I do not find the language of the Study uniformly clear, and I am going to give, as an example, something that I am going to ask my noble friend, when he comes to wind up, to explain. He will find on page 45, in a discussion of how this immensely increased commuter traffic would be dealt with, these wonderful words. It will be dealt with by a
"general reshaping of the pattern of train movement".
I have not the remotest idea what those words mean. No other commentator who has written to the Press seems to have the remotest idea. They completely defeated the Guardian. My noble friend may have his own ingenious ideas, or it may be that he has one of the authors of the phrase readily available to tell him what it means. But I honestly think that we ought to be told how you reshape the pattern of train movement.
LORD HAWKE: They go backwards.
LORD CONESFORD: Perhaps.
There is another point to which I would invite the attention of noble Lords who are interested. The immense alterations and developments in the London Underground that will be required to cope with the increase of employment in Central London, if we are mad enough to allow it, will not, I gather, be expected to produce an economic return for the railways. This point was briefly dealt with by the noble Lord, Lord Morrison of Lambeth. But,

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in this connection, I wonder whether I might read a couple of sentences of Professor Peter Self, published in the Economist of April 4 this year:
"Indirect relief to the roads may be the principal justification for the Victoria Line, but a subsidised underground would amount to a general subsidy for access to central London. Such a notion sits strangely indeed with a desire to entice London offices to new cities, for it suggests that central area employers may be simultaneously bribed to leave and subsidised to stay".
I cannot improve on that comment.
If I may revert for a moment to the point on which I disagree with my noble friend Lord Tangley, although there is a great deal in this Report that reads quite agreeably, there was the phrase which I have already asked the Minister to explain, and I should like to make the plea to the Government—though I am certain it will be ignored—that, before documents of this kind are published, some civil servant should read them through and remove the more obvious illiteracies. We start off with one under the map of London which faces the opening of the first chapter. It say:
"These divisions are comprised of standard regions."
It does not mean that. It may mean they comprise standard regions, or are composed of standard regions. What it cannot possibly mean is that they are comprised of standard regions. That is one of the elementary howlers that is dealt with in one of the admirable works of my friend Sir Ernest Gowers. I think that Sir Ernest Gowers ought to be compulsory reading for those who compile these documents.
Needless to say, the adjective "overall" is spread over the face of nearly every page. Any Minister who was tough enough to give an order that the adjective "overall" was to be struck out of every document before it was submitted to him would achieve two admirable results: it would be omitted in those cases where it meant nothing, which constitute nine-tenths of the cases, and in the remaining one-tenth the right word would be substituted and obscurity would be avoided. I once pointed out that the Treasury uses "overall" to mean "average", "maximum" and "total". That does not lead to clearheadedness at the Treasury; nor does the
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use of the word "overall" throughout this Report lead to clear-headedness in the document.
The expression "commuter overspill" is, I understand, part of our celebration of the four-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Shakespeare. I do not particularly complain of that, because the writers of this Report are good enough to refer to it as "jargon" and provide a definition. They have also invented—it is the first official document in which I have seen it—a rather charming new expression, namely, "pepperpotting" which your Lordships will find on page 57. That, I think, is a really constructive invention.
The only other topic that I should mention is one that many others have mentioned—namely, the Green Belt. There are words in this document about the Green Belt which really rather alarm me, as showing the sort of approach that some people have to this problem. At page 89, which is at the beginning of the chapter dealing with the Green Belt, they say:
"Critics argue (with some force) that the popular idea of the Green Belt as a playground for Londoners is belied by the facts; that much of it consists of airfields, hospital grounds, water reservoirs and agricultural land, to which the public have no access."
The conception of the Green Belt was always a far better and nobler thing than the idea of providing a playground for Londoners. It was that the countryside had a life of its own which was of value, and it was good for people in cities to be not too far from it and to see it. The conception of a playground is not the conception of the Green Belt entertained by those who care for it most. If that is not the right conception of the Green Belt, still less is it right to suggest that it is any derogation from the usefulness of the Green Belt or from the benefit that the public derive from it that part of it is devoted to agriculture. I always thought, in the days when I was responsible for town planning, that one of the most extraordinary things in the whole jargon of town planning was that when you devoted land to the most productive of all uses—namely, farming—that was described as sterilising the land. I have no doubt that the lunacy of that jargon, which really marked the lunacy of a great deal that was done and is still

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continuing to be done, must have struck all those who have been concerned.
My Lords, I apologise if I have detained you too long. The main point I want to urge is that we need not adopt the extraordinarily pessimistic conclusions of this Study. I agree entirely that it contains things of great value. I am inclined to think that the authors are right in thinking that some of the new cities they choose must be bigger than many of the New Towns we have hitherto considered. On all those points I think that they have valuable suggestions. There is a great deal that is good. But the criterion whether or not the Government wish to save London will be what they intend to do about the threatened increase in office accommodation in Central London, with the demonstrably certain consequence of creating a commuter problem which cannot be dealt with by any tolerable means and which it is the duty of Parliament to stop.
VISCOUNT BLAKENHAM: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do adjourn during pleasure.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
House adjourned during pleasure.
House resumed.

ROYAL COMMISSION
6.0 p.m.
The following Bills and Measures received the Royal Assent:
Agriculture and Horticulture,
Continental Shelf,
Legal Aid,
Holy Table Measure, 1964,
Faculty Jurisdiction Measure, 1964.
House adjourned during pleasure.
House resumed.

SOUTH-EAST ENGLAND
6.15 p.m.
Debate resumed.
LORD WISE: My Lords, it is obvious from what the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, and subsequent speakers have said that the problems of the future in regard to the proper planning of London and the South-East are perplexing and difficult. Some have already arisen, and more will follow. This generation is on trial, and the solution of these problems will test our ingenuity, imagination and confidence in our own ability. Our task in setting into motion the necessary operations is not impossible of achievement. We must act with care and, above everything else, must not lay ourselves open to any charge of vandalism by subsequent inhabitants, not only of London but of our fair lands outside its boundaries.
Amidst the needs of development and conversion for residential and industrial purposes, amenity and respect for what is good and pleasant are of equal importance. We do not want to become a country of skyscrapers or of towering tiers of glass-fronted, balconied flats and offices. In the same way, vast colonies of caravans and bungalows, although each serves its purpose, may jar a bit if they become too prevalent. We must endeavour to strike a happy medium and bring to our aid, use and service those buildings, appurtenances, materials and modern appliances which will serve our purpose to the advantage of the whole community—and I should like to put particular stress on the words, "the whole community".
I want to speak mainly about East Anglia. My interests lie in the two counties Norfolk and Suffolk. East Anglia has been grouped with other counties and included in the South-East. Why, I do not know, except possibly because of its proximity to London and the suburbs in Essex. We certainly do not want to become a satellite of London. As the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, said, it has received sparce reference in the Study and White Paper. That is why I am going to say something about the two counties I know so well, and I make no apology for doing this. We apparently come into the picture without much comment,

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praise or criticism, and it is as well that those who compiled the Study or the White Paper should be told something about us.
In past centuries our area was considered to be one of the most prosperous and productive regions in this country. It may have been the foremost. It can again be so. Our people have always been industrious, dour, determined, level-headed and loyal. They tilled the land, tended the livestock, fished the seas, worked the ports and docks, manned the ships, formed the militia, and always answered the call to service; and have been willing and ready to help when and where needed. These are, of course, activities which have also been found in the decent folks of other counties, and really throughout Britain there are comparatively few who are of no credit to themselves or others, and whom we could well do without.
If developments have to take place within the next ten years or so, we in East Anglia, as part, for that purpose. of the South-East, have a contribution to make and merit consideration. Neglect by successive Governments—and that of the last twelve years has not been blameless—has made our progress difficult in many directions. We have pleaded for much, but received very little; and, to add to our troubles, we are at this moment being divested of most of our rail services. One Minister calls for expansion, and another closes down our ma in means of communication in the rural areas, and thus helps to defeat any possibilities for immediate local expansion.
The folly of this is really unbelievable. Have those who are responsible no foresight or intelligence to set the present in a proper perspective with the future? It is a blunder of the greatest magnitude and must be remedied if and when East Anglia is called upon to play a part in schemes which must be evolved. It has been said that our roads do not lead to the industrial Midlands and the North-but only to the sea; that the country roads are not conducive to the speedy traffic of goods. But they have the great advantage of slowing down the dangerous driving of some impatient and selfish motorists. Congestion in our cities and town centres increases day by day, but we have waited in vain for
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by-pass roads to be constructed to ease the flow of through traffic. Our needs have been set upon one side for the limelight of constructing motorways, fly-overs and suchlike.
In spite of pending and actual rail closures, East Anglia has real and great advantages to offer to those whose task it will be between now and the 1970s to plan our future national developments. Already there are four expanding towns, each for over 2,000 persons, under construction, and two others have been agreed upon. Several more small towns are suitable for overspill development. We have acres and acres of heath land and low-priced land available for New Town development and, naturally, for the saving of good productive land there and elsewhere. Norwich and Ipswich are growing industrial and residential cities, and Ipswich and King's Lynn provide excellent dock and port facilities. Trade in these two East Coast ports is increasing. The noble Lord, Lord Taylor, mentioned the rivers and included the Broads in his reference to water supplies in East Anglia. Our main rivers also receive mention in the Study, and water supplies and their reserves throughout the counties would create no difficulties. In fact it is suggested that water from East Anglia might be acceptable for the development of North Essex.
The noble Lord, Lord Taylor, also spoke of new schools. In siting some of our new secondary modern schools in the counties the question of adequate playing-field space has found a foremost place. I know of two new schools in Norwich which share an adjacent playing field of over 30 acres—a wonderful advantage to any school. Unfortunately, we still have to tolerate small playgrounds for some village and other schools. The noble Lord spoke also of the universities. The university of East Anglia is already functioning, and another is in contemplation just over the southern boundary of Suffolk. Both would serve as a useful adjunct to industrial and residential developments around them. More mechanisation in agriculture may mean less manual work for farmers and their workers. This will release labour for small industrial units which are now commencing operations in several of the small towns and around.

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For the benefit of all it is hoped that this process will extend.
Here is a problem which the Government will soon have to tackle. What is to be done with the American base at Sculthorpe? What non-military future has it? Apparently it is closing down so far as the Americans are concerned and, if so, here is the ready-made nucleus of a small New Town. The future industrial buildings, the houses and all the services are already there. It must not be allowed to fall into decay and disuse. That could easily happen, and it could happen through a conflict of views and intentions of two or more Ministers. One may wish to retain it for the R.A.F. or for civil aviation purposes; another may wish to occupy it for residential and industrial purposes to fit it into developments in the South-East; but a third Minister will be able to say, "You cannot do that because there are no rail facilities". One station at Fakenham, the prosperous small country town which adjoins Sculthorpe, has already been closed and the track removed; and the Government in their wisdom are about to close the other. There will thus be no means for anyone at Fakenham or Sculthorpe to travel by rail. Can any noble Lord find words suitable for such an ironical but possible situation?—and it is arising throughout Norfolk and Suffolk.
East Anglia has its fair share of seaside towns and villages, which would provide relaxation and pleasure for the families of the newcomers to the area. This is an important aspect of our problem as, with shortening working hours and days, provision must be made for the enjoyment of the time when we are not at work. We can also provide recreational and sporting facilities in variety and interest. I have tried to remedy some of the shortcomings of the Study and White Paper in a brief manner, but I wanted to add to the knowledge of those responsible. Although the timing of what may be a great experiment in national development may not be now, what we have been able to say in this discussion may be read and studied later at the appropriate time.
6.28 p.m.
LORD HAWKE: My Lords, this Report is a very interesting survey of the
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possible needs of the future of South-East England. It is based, of course, on guesses as to the future population of England, and of that area in particular. These guesses may be right; they may be wrong. In the past, as we know, we have been led astray because guesses were wrong. On the other hand, I think it is fair to say that there is every indication that the figures put forward may be minimum, rather than maximum. But when we get to a period beyond the immediate 20 years with which this Survey is dealing, when we get 50 years ahead, as the noble Viscount, Lord Blakenham, said, and have a projected birthrate of 1,100,000 a year—if, indeed, those figures are realised—it is difficult to visualise such a population being comprised within these islands; and emigration on a much larger scale will undoubtedly take place.
Another difficulty, of course, is that of taking the South-East in isolation. One cannot just draw a line across a map and say, "This is the development for this particular part of the country". We are trying to turn industry to Scotland and to the North-East. Also, I submit that we should try to return the population to the under-populated areas of the country, which are mid-Wales and East Anglia. But, until the Minister of Transport gives more attention to lateral communications, we shall not make such headway. All communications in this island tend to run to and from London. When the Minister gets down to building a motorway from Cardigan Bay to Yarmouth, then we shall begin to see small towns and villages springing up along that route and the population of the Midlands spreading out sideways, and possibly the South-East area will spread in that direction. But, of course, London is the main topic of this survey and the assumption in the survey appears to be that population must be decanted out of London, that office employment must be encouraged to leave London in order to make way for other office employment to come in to fill its place. That seems to me to be a curious conception.
Are these assumptions sound? I do not think so. Architects and fashion have made it possible for space to go much further than it used to. We know that anything up to 70 per cent. More

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office floor space can be created when an old Victorian building is pulled down. In the case of dwelling accommodation, we know that the modern trend is towards the small flat and maisonette, and the house in which Edwardians and Victorians were brought up is practically out as a dwelling in London. This applies to very large areas in London and to large sections of society.
We know that the population of London fell by 189,000 in the decade 1951–61. We know that the existing transport facilities were severely taxed two years ago. And we know that office building in sight totals 154 million square feet, as compared with 87 million square feet before the war, and it is conceivable (I am not technically informed) that there are also large areas which may have claims for redevelopment as office areas over and above that 154 million square feet. I submit, from all these symptoms, that there are too few people living in London and too many people commuting in. The Study would have us believe that there is little hope of more housing accommodation in London itself.
I prefer to turn back to what I call a more workmanlike document, Command 1952 of February, 1963, London—Employment: Housing: Land. In paragraph 51, the target is set:
"If half a million houses can be built for London, this should during the next ten years do away with the present housing shortage, enable the slums to be cleared, and provide for its additional households.
In paragraph 53 it is said:
"As many additional houses as possible must be built inside London".
Then, in paragraphs 55, 56 and 57, are listed the possible sources of supply. In paragraph 55 it is said that
"… about 250,000 dwellings (including 100,000 extra dwellings) could be provided in London itself by using such building land as there is, by re-allocation of land at present used for non-residential purposes, by increased densities (as provided for in the recent review of the County of London development plan), and by conversions."
Then the document goes on to point out the additional sites which are coming into sight—Croydon Airport, Erith Marshes and Woolwich Arsenal, and British Railways' surplus land—and, I would add, Covent Garden. Out of that
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long list of possible sources, I should think that it was not unreasonable to expect that the major portion of the half million housing target which the Ministry gave could be met over the next ten years.
I agree that the real obstacle is finance, particularly for land to carry houses to rent. When one reads the Study, one is conscious that the authors are well aware of this background, and to my mind they wash their hands of the whole financial problem because they thought it was insoluble. At the moment the dice are loaded against renters of dwellings. If you rent an office, you charge the rent against your tax. If you want to buy a dwelling and borrow the money, you can charge the interest on that money against your tax. But the renter has to pay his rent out of his taxed income. The bulk of people who want accommodation in London want to rent. The consist of two major classes: those who would look to local authority subsidised housing, and the other large class, who would regard themselves as independent of that type of housing, but could not afford to pay rents of more than £200 to £400 a year out of their modest incomes. This means that if anybody planned to put up flats to rent within that range anywhere in the more central parts of London, there would be so small a margin left to pay for the site cost that, without some form of subsidy, such rented accommodation just could not be provided. Yet the same site, if developed for those purposes for which the Exchequer already gives a subsidy in the shape of tax relief—either on the purchase of a dwelling with borrowed money or on the renting of office accommodation—will be profitable. That is the problem.
As the result of not being able to solve this problem, the renter has to move out of London, buy a house and commute. The Government have to provide capital for transport to enable him to commute. The Government have to provide tax relief on the money he will borrow to buy, and the richer man who replaces him in buying in the centre of London will get tax relief on his borrowed capital. Any schemes for dealing with those pushed out of London will be desperately expensive in building costs, water supply, communications and amenities in general.

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I do not think that we should commit ourselves to vast new schemes outside London until we have seen what can be done in London, where we have one of the most attractive cities in the world and where an increase in living population would save us money to set off against the cost of solving the land value problem in London. Unfortunately, what we lose on the financial swings cannot easily be offset by what we gain on the roundabouts, for they are nebulous and not easily calculable. Nevertheless, if it is correct that huge areas of inner suburban London will come up for renewal at higher densities within the next twenty years, it is obvious that we must do all we can, as a holding operation, to re-house in London itself those people for whom the problem is an immediate one. If in so doing we can manage to solve this financial problem in London, we may not require to do much in the way of new cities and towns.
In any case, I am rather dubious about starting new cities from scratch. They have to grow and acquire a soul. It is difficult enough in New Towns of 50,000 inhabitants; but when we are to have 150,000 people grafted on to Newbury, I do not think it will be easy. It would be better if there were some basic attraction there already. The sea is a great attraction, and for that reason I should regard Southampton as a much better starter as a nucleus for a larger population than places such as Newbury and Bletchley, to which I think people would have to be dragooned to go. It is rather a pity that some more prominent role cannot be found for Hastings. Hastings is rather the Cinderella of the South Coast towns. Brighton and Eastbourne are immensely popular for dwellings, offices and everything else, but Hastings appears to be in a slight degree of decline. No doubt my noble friend will be able to explain exactly why Hastings feels like this.
The communications in the South-East are not what they should be. North and South they are not too bad, but East and West they want improving. I presume that the Government will scrap the Beeching plan to close the Reading—Tonbridge railway line, in view of the Channel Tunnel, because this seems the obvious goods route to the Channel
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Tunnel. But they still seem set on closing the other Sussex commuter lines, which carry a lot of commuters and school children and, indeed, Dr. Beeching himself at times.
One noble Lord mentioned London Tubes. This question of Tubes in London has been crying out for solution for years and years. I am only one of many who have pressed for a solution of this problem, and all the time one is up against the Treasury mentality that it is no good building a Tube unless that particular Tube can be shown to be going to pay. Apart from the more enlightened theory which seems suddenly to have struck the Treasury, that the Victoria Line receipts can be pooled with the whole of London Transport's, I should have thought it was by now fairly obvious to the financial brains of the Treasury that any capital sunk into the London Tube—and presumably there are other projects, besides this one, in the pigeon-hole—will certainly be written off to a considerable degree by inflation in the course of the next ten years. In other words, we pay now, and although it may not pay to-day, it will certainly pay in ten years' time.
6.45 p.m.
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, I must apologise for not being here until after four o'clock. I was in the process of attending a Committee considering an unopposed Private Bill, and thus deprived myself of the pleasure of hearing my noble friend Lord Taylor initiating this debate. I will remedy that by reading to-morrow what he had to say, and I hope to find that among his remarks he will have said something which will allay some of the fears I have in relation to this Survey, and which have not by any means been dispelled by the Government's White Paper (Cmnd. 2308) on South-East England.
I think it is quite true to say that in Scotland this survey on South-East England—and I should imagine the same applies to North-East England—is looked upon as potentially the greatest danger to the development and redevelopment of those areas that has emerged at any time during the last decade. I may say that this feeling is not a political one. It is felt by all the bodies who were so gratified a year ago when, in the Budget, the Government put into operation a number

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of the proposals which had been pressed on them for some years by so many organisations, and which as the Government have stated—and they are entitled to state it—are beginning to show substantial results. But my fears in relation to this document have not by any means been dispelled by certain references in one or two parts of the Government's White Paper.
For instance, in paragraph 5 it says:
"The Government have already shown by their development programmes for North-East England and Central Scotland their determination to build up the prosperity of other parts of the country."
Then, in paragraph 15 it says:
"… in the meantime development of Central London and North-East England, to which the Government have given priority in public investment, will be going ahead."
Lastly, in paragraph 26 it says:
"In particular, there will continue to be a rigorous examination of individual firms' proposals for industrial expansion in the South-East."
These statements, reiterated in this document, if they were all we had to consider, would be encouraging to Scotland and North-East England. But there are other things in the White Paper which are much less satisfactory.
I must admit that I have been tremendously encouraged on hearing the speech of my noble friend Lord Morrison of Lambeth, who emphasised the need to consider the problems of the country not region by region but nationally, and to fit them into a pattern—I hesitate to use that word, but the noble Lord, Lord Conesford, is not in the Chamber at the moment, and provided I do not attach a lot of other things to it, he probably will not object. I was also encouraged by the speeches of the noble Lord, Lord Meston, and the noble Lord, Lord Conesford—particularly the latter. I was extremely pleased to hear him challenge the assumption that the 2½ million of natural growth of population must, of necessity, be accommodated in south-east England; and I was particularly pleased that he poured scorn on the suggestion that the 1 million of migration must also be accommodated in this area.
The noble Lord, Lord Conesford, had something to say bout the rather less intelligible phrases that appear in part of the Report. But there is one to which
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even he could take no exception in the simplicity of its language, yet it conveys just as little, in real information, as some of the more abstruse phrases of the document. In a reference to the Government's acceptance of the need for new and expanded towns to accommodate the 1 million to 1¼ million people, the authors of the Survey go on, at the beginning of paragraph 15, to say:
"The processes necessary to bring about this development will take some years."
There is not a difficult word in that sentence. But what is meant by the words, "will take some years"? Do they mean two years, three years, five years or twenty years? If the more logical explanation is taken, that the phrase "some years" has relation to the period 1971 to 1981, then the fears of Scotland and north-east England are by no means groundless.
The noble Lord, Lord Meston, in speaking of the desirability of adding still more (I think he mentioned another twelve) New Towns to the expanded programme, spoke of the desirability of having them in Scotland. He was not aware that in Scotland there are four New Towns which are being created at the present time: East Kilbride, Glenrothes, Cumbernauld, and Livingstone. The last-mentioned is just beginning; East Kilbride is about halfway to its target, and by 1970 it will still not have reached its completion. Glenrothes has a population now of 15,000, and by 1970 it will only be halfway to its target. Cumbernauld has a population of about 10,000, and by 1970 it will be only halfway to its target population. Livingstone will be only one-third of the way.
I mentioned the success which had attended the Government's activities since the new measures stemming from the Budget of last year. The success which has attended these efforts has in a large measure been the encouragement which industries in the South have received to locate themselves in these New Towns. It was not that every one of these industries wanted to locate itself either in Scotland or the North-East of England; but one of the difficulties about expanding factories, even if they had room on which to build, was in getting labour. Added to that, the financial inducements offered have persuaded a number of firms to come to

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areas which they would not otherwise have considered. If they see the possibility that within three or four years' time they may be able to expand in some area within 100 or 150 miles of London, the prospect of their going to one of the New Towns of Scotland or the North-East of England is to that extent diminished.
It was therefore encouraging to hear the noble Lord, Lord Conesford, say so definitely that the Government ought not to accept the premise that the 2+ million natural growth of population must be accommodated in the South-East. And unless the conception put forward by my noble friend Lord Morrison of Lambeth—that there must be a national solution to what is a national problem—is accepted, the Government must inevitably go from one set of difficulties to another. We have seen how easy it is for one region to be played off against another. The decision of the Government to transfer the Post Office Savings Bank Department to Glasgow has provoked violent reactions in the North-East. They felt that, for political reasons, they had been deprived of a "plum". I must say that I admired the answer which the Postmaster General gave in another place yesterday, when he said that if he had been thinking of political reasons he could not have done better than to locate the department in his own constituency, where he has a majority of some 3,000. So I think we can discount the suggestion that he has put it in Glasgow for electoral reasons, and accept that the real reason is the fact that Glasgow has an unemployment figure in excess of 5 per cent.
The North-East and Scotland, both of which need so much to be done, ought not in any circumstances to start fighting between themselves for what is done. I was glad to read a speech made the other day by the Secretary of State for Scotland in which he announced that the North-East had no occasion to be displeased, because two other projects of Government Departments would be transferred to the North-East in place of the one which got away. A great deal more positive action of this kind must be carried on by the Government. But if it is to be done region by region, then we have this pattern of the North-East
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and Central Scotland fighting for a particular development.
We have the feeling in Scotland, in the Highlands and the Borders, that we are being sacrificed to the centre. If this proposal for the South-East is adopted, the rest of the country must inevitably feel that they are being sacrificed to the South-East. The Government say in this Command Paper that much of our national prosperity depends upon the prosperity of South-East England, and the distribution of its population and employment must therefore be planned so as to promote its maximum efficiency. I accept that the country depends upon the prosperity in the South-East of England, but I challenge the implication in this White Paper that the prosperity of South-East England must necessarily take priority over every other part of the country.
The Survey on the growth of employment shows how the country is divided into two sections. In the Midlands, the South-West and the South-East the figures for the proportions of employment are appreciably in excess of the average in the North of England and in Wales, where employment is substantially below the average. The writ of the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, who are the anonymous authors of this document, does not extend North of the Border, so there was no occasion for them to quote the figures of unemployment in Scotland. Suffice it to say that the employment figures in Scotland are very much lower than even the least satisfactory of the English figures.
So if the national prosperity relies on the distribution of South-East England's population and employment, and it must therefore be planned so as to promote its maximum efficiency, the Government will fail if they accept this Survey but act on this White Paper on the basis that they are going to carry it out inside this triangle of ground in the South-East. They will fail for many reasons, but particularly because by doing so they beg the point to which the noble Lord, Lord Conesford, referred: that the 2½ million of natural growth of population to be accommodated in this area is only the 2½ million to 1981, and the period from 1981 to 2001 will produce another 3 million. If

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it is essential that the growth during this 20 years should be accepted, it would be equally logical that the succeeding 3 million in the next 20 years, and the succeeding 4 million in the 20 years after, should all be accommodated in that area.
Now that is obviously an impossibility. If, therefore, it is impossible that these people can be accommodated in the succeeding 20 or 40 years, it is quite reasonable to say that now is the time to start on the process of getting them to go elsewhere. The first and greatest difficulty which will confront the Board of Trade, the Government, or any authority concerned, when they seek to move people from one area to another, is getting them to move. I mentioned that I had been prevented from being here by sitting on a Committee. The Committee were considering proposals for some road works, among other things in Wandsworth. One of the difficulties which face the Government is the fact that people do not want to move out of Wandsworth to some of the surrounding areas in order to live.
It is a real problem, when added to some of the things which have been said by the noble Lord, Lord Hawke, on this subject of London housing; because what is a comparatively minor scheme of road improvement in connection with Wandsworth Bridge will cost £5 million or £6 million and in the process will destroy some 450 houses which will not be replaced at all in that area because the ground will be taken up entirely by road works. This is going on all the time. So we spend a great deal more money, we have fewer houses, and the problem becomes worse.
As my noble friend Lord Morrison of Lambeth pointed out, the document implies that the moving of the increased population will be a movement by road. It will be no kindness to the people presently living in the South-East of England, and to those who might live there in the next 20 years, to get them to accept that this pattern must continue. Once they accept the decision that they have to move from their area, whether it be a particular street, a particular London borough or a particular part of the country, it matters fundamentally not one iota whether they move 50 miles or 450 miles,
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provided that they get a job with proper wages, good working conditions, a good house in which to live, proper facilities for the education of their children, and reasonable recreational and cultural facilities for themselves and their families. These conditions can be created anywhere where New Towns are to be built or the expansion of existing towns is to be carried out.
One of the first of the attempts in Scotland to deal with such difficulties concerned the Glasgow overspill, and obviously I should not have a leg to stand on if, having made some attempt to help deal with the Glasgow overspill, I objected to equivalent measures for the London overspill. Obviously some of these people must be reasonably accommodated within this area, and I would not for one moment suggest—although perhaps I should like to do so—that none of the 2½ or 3½ million people should in fact be accommodated in this area. But the whole project will fail unless the Government attack it in a much more fundamental way.
While I think the noble Lord, Lord Meston, was perhaps going to extremes when he said that he would prohibit all building, except for slum clearance and one or two other comparatively minor reasons, within the next five years, something along these lines is very definitely necessary. There should be definite moves to cut down office building in London; and there should be not just negative discouragement of the expansion of industry in certain areas, but positive encouragement of its expansion in the under-developed parts of the country, because the prosperity of the United Kingdom must in the end depend on the extent to which we make the best use of our resources. I suggest that the most effective way of making sure that we get the best results out of South-East England is by working it in as part of a development of the United Kingdom as a whole.
7.3 p.m.
THE EARL OF PERTH: My Lords, I am particularly happy to follow my noble friend Lord Hughes, who has just spoken, because not only do I find myself in agreement with almost everything he said, but I, too, want to speak on this Report from the angle which may appear to be only that of Scotland but

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is perhaps the angle of the rest of Britain. Frankly, I am dismayed at The South East Study and the White Paper and the Government's acceptance of it. I am dismayed not because the Study itself may or may not be a good Study (I am a little mistrustful of it because of its glossy cover; I am with the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, on that) but because of the readiness to accept the basic assumption—I know I am going to repeat what other noble Lords have said, but it is so important that it has to be said again and again—that not only is there going to be the suggested natural growth of the area over the next twenty years but there will be the migration of a million people from other areas in the country.
There can be only one reason why the million other people will be coming to the South-East from other areas in the country, and that is that the South-East is more prosperous, has better conditions and is more attractive to them. If that is right, surely it means that the whole of the Government's policy, which has been to try to achieve overall prosperity throughout the country, has failed. I know no greater confession of failure than accepting this assumption. Once we accept this assumption, let us see what is to happen.
We see in paragraph 10 of the White Paper that there must be fresh and much larger programmes, and more and expanded towns, bigger than those of to-day—and all of this to get away from London. Incidentally, I am not even sure that it is right to get people away from London. I do not want to argue it now, but I think that many eminent people, Sir Geoffrey Crowther among them, argue the other way. I do not think we should just assume this is a right policy.
I know that at this moment the Scottish Council (Development and Industry) are studying the Report most carefully. Indeed, one of the reasons why my noble friend Lord Polwarth is not here to-day to speak on this subject is that he is, in fact, taking a Council meeting on the Report itself. They will undoubtedly make their representations about it, and I am equally sure that those representations will not be what
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I would call "dog in the manger" representations.
However, my Lords, the two things do not hang together. Despite the arguments of my noble friend Lord Blakenham, we cannot have the development of the South-East, with all its dangers of over-boom which may affect the rest of the country, when at the same time we are trying, or say we are trying, to get the rest of the country going better. Either one part goes better and we do not have people running into the other, or it does not go so well and does not attract them. I appreciate what my noble friend Lord Blakenham said, that the Government are determined to press on with what is being done in Scotland and in the North-East, but if that is really carried out there is not room for doing the other thing at the same time.
It is not for me to try to anticipate what may be the recommendations of the Scottish Council, but I have two points which I should like to make which I think illustrate how one can perhaps get round this problem or help to avoid a million people flowing into the South-East. Let us take the question of scientific knowledge. In this day and age nothing is more important for new industries than scientific knowledge. What do we find? We find that almost all the laboratories in whose location the Government have some say are in the South. Whether these laboratories are for the Defence Ministry, for the Atomic Energy Authority, the D.S.I.R., the Post Office or nationalised industries, almost all of them have their main base in the South—very convenient for Whitehall, but very difficult for those who want to keep in close touch with them for the development of new industries.
Then we have the second leg of that factor: 60 per cent. of research expenditure is dictated from Whitehall. When that is the case, can noble Lords be surprised that we find the constant wish of people or industry to stay around Whitehall, like bees round a honey pot? I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Tangley, who said he thought there were four reasons why industry might over the years have developed in different places. I believe, in this day and age, there is a fifth: Whitehall and all that

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it stands for. The Government try to stop industrial firms from developing in the South, but when it comes to some of their new Departments which they are themselves creating, I am afraid one has quite a different experience.
I recall to your Lordships that about six months ago the Government announced that they were going to form the National Building Agency, and we tried very hard to persuade the Government to put that Agency, which was a new Government department, in Scotland or, at any rate, in the North-East. We failed, and I think it is of interest to your Lordships to know the reply and the reason I was given, because I think it is symptomatic of much that is dangerous in this connection. The reply says:
"The Minister … appreciates the importance of this Agency for Scotland. … He points out, however, that there is even greater scope for its work in England and Wales … there are some 1,200 local housing authorities in England and Wales which seem to need the Agency's help, whereas the corresponding number in Scotland is much smaller. And the other groups with whom the Agency will have to work—private building clients, architects, building contractors, component manufacturers and development groups in Government Departments—are also much more numerous South of the Border. The location of the Agency's central office must be chosen to facilitate ready contact with all these groups, and only a location South of the Border meets this requirement."
It seems to me that the Government's policy is perhaps one law for industry and quite another for its own affairs, and this is not good enough.
The second point I want to touch on is the importance of a study of what makes industrial growth. I do not think this subject has really been studied. So far we have had regional studies for one reason or another. I feel very much with the noble Lord, Lord Morrison of Lambeth, that what we want is an overall study, and I suggest a study of the cause of industrial growth. I think we might find some very interesting things. We certainly should not necessarily find that the South is more attractive to new industry than, say, Scotland. I believe my figures are right when I say that in the years 1959 to 1561 there was a 6½ per cent. increase of new industries in the South-East and there was a 6 per cent. increase in Scotland. The reason Scotland did not do better overall was because some of the older industries
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were running down. I suggest that a study like this is of great urgency. We know what otherwise is going to happen—there is going to be this snowball effect of population increase in the South-East which cannot be stopped.
There are already signs of an inclination to go down this slippery slope. If your Lordships look at page 99 of the Study you will see the words:
"… if a handful of attractive schemes can be got going quickly it will ease the pressure on London".
There we are, my Lords, "Let us start it all now, not even in a few years; let us ease the pressures now". I feel very strongly that if the basic assumptions of this Study are accepted and if one starts now to do this, to follow it up, to build New Towns, with new industries and all that goes with it, nothing could be more effective as a policy to stimulate further growth in the South-East. I beg the Government to think, and think again, to dwell on what has been said in your Lordships' House to-day, to await the representations of bodies such as the Scottish Council and then to study the whole situation again; and not to act on the defeatist basis that is represented in this Study and this White Paper.
7.14 p.m.
THE EARL OF HUNTINGDON: My Lords, while we accept, I suppose, the advantages, and the great advantages, of democracy, it has one possible drawback: that it does lead to delay; in other words, we have usually to wait till the crisis arises before the Government can face it and take the necessary measures to defeat it. An obvious example is the traffic problem, which should have been dealt with many years ago. I must confess that this Paper entitled South East England (Cmnd. 2308) is to me a very frightening and alarming document when it says, in the Foreword, that we are going to have this enormous increase of 3½ million in the population in the South; that this is all going to drift into the South-East of the country; and a large part of it is due to the increase in the birth-rate but that another large proportion is due to infiltration from other areas. To one who has connections with the South-East of England this is a very alarming situation, and, as I think has been expressed in this debate, it is a sad situation for the rest of the country that

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this matter is looked at in isolation, as this Report does.
One point which has not been mentioned in this debate, so far as I know, is a very fundamental matter, and that is the rise in population in this country. That, as we know, is one of the great problems of the world to-day: the enormous rise in population in relation to the production of food to feed them. In the days of Queen Elizabeth I when the population of England was something like 6 million, and when we were faced with gigantic enemies on the Continent, we could produce all our own food, and then there was a very good case for every encouragement to be given to increase our population and for people to have larger families. It was a policy of survival. Now, with this Island staying the same size, with this huge explosion of population, instead of a climate of opinion which, one might say, encourages large families and looks on a mother of ten as almost a heroine, the climate of opinion should now turn towards discounting large families; and people having more than, say, two children should be looked on as indulging themselves in a luxury which is possibly to the interests of neither the children nor the country.
Probably it will be said that the Government can have no control of this. That, I submit, is nonsense, because if the Government give a lead on these matters it will have a very big effect indeed. For instance, one of the major steps which should be taken is the actual encouragement, rather than discouragement, of family limitation and birth control. For years this has been fought for hard, with every official discouragement. It is now being slightly allowed, but more or less with an atmosphere of "under-the-counter". The new English invention, the Volidan, one of the greatest oral anti-conception devices, which is safe and effective, is practically unknown. I suggest that if the Government could go behind this climate of opinion, as the Government of India has done, to try to get people to limit their families, we should not have what ultimately may be a disastrous situation with an enormous growth going on and on; and even sterilisation, I think, should be allowed and not necessarily discouraged.
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The second point is that, however much that idea may go forward, there will be a very big increase in population in the near future. That we have to face. There is one line in the Report with which I thoroughly agree, where it says:
"At the same time a balance must be kept between the growth of the South East and the needs of other parts of the country."
I wish the rest of the Report had better carried out that feeling and opinion. The trouble in the last few years has been almost entirely due to allowing industry to expand in London at a time when we needed houses. Instead of houses we saw these office blocks rising everywhere. Office blocks mean more people working in them, which means more homes, more commuting, more congestion on the roads, more discomfort and more waste; because there is nothing more wasteful than our system of commuting. It is wasteful of energy, of people's health, and, above all, in economics and money. I suggest to Her Majesty's Government that they should now take all steps they can, not only to encourage industry to go to the places we have heard of in the debate—East Anglia and Scotland—which really need them, but to take a very firm hand in controlling any further construction of office blocks in Central London.
The point which does not seem to have been stressed in the White Paper is that if there is to be this enormous increase in population, inevitably it will need an enormous increase in food. There will be more people; they must eat. The alternative is to cut down the standard of living, something that I hope none of us wants to do. We have seen in two world wars how we were nearly starved out. I suppose I am right in saying that we are the only country in the world in the extraordinary situation of depending so much on the import of food, for which we have to pay with our goods; and if the terms of trade go against us and we cannot sell our goods sufficiently, or if other nations have not enough spare food to supply us, we shall be in a most serious situation.
The Minister who is to reply to the debate can perhaps give the figure of how much agricultural land now is going out of production every year. I have been told that it is around 50,000

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acres. I do not know whether or not that is an accurate figure.
THE EARL OF IDDESLEIGH: My Lords, with the noble Earl's permission, may I say that Professor Dudley Stamp recently stated that between 50,000 and 75,000 acres are going out of agricultural production every year.
THE EARL OF HUNTINGDON: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Earl. The figure is even greater than I thought. That is a terrible situation, when we are getting this increasing population; when the whole prospect of the outside world is not one in which food is going to become more plentiful and in which we can all the time cut down on our areas of good food-growing land. The trouble is, I think, that when an ordinary planner wants to develop something or to build a new city, he realises that it is much easier, pleasanter and cheaper to take a nice flat area of virgin land and to build on that. He can much more easily plan his roads, his drainage system and everything than if rocky or derelict land is used. It is so often the case in many towns of England that there are large areas of slum land which ought to be cleared. There are some areas where rubble ought to be cleared away from the middle of the towns, and the area rebuilt. But again that is much more trouble and more expensive.
In view of our situation, I would suggest that we must try to keep our good agricultural land at whatever price. It will be a disastrous thing if we allow that land gradually to go for use as airfields, playing fields or whatever it may be. I have some support for Sir Geoffrey Crowther's thesis, that in our towns we should build upwards much more than we do. I know that, on the whole, the English character likes the development of small houses, with their own gardens, semi-detached houses of one or two storeys. These are certainly very nice, but I do not think that, in the situation to which we are coming, we can afford such places on the scale that we have had in the past. In any event, I see no reason why building up should not be quite pleasant and why, in time, people should not only tolerate it but even get to like it.
One of the great examples of this kind of thing, done well, is the Roehampton
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building estate, which was an L.C.C. building estate. There they have built up, and the advantages are that many more people are accommodated in the area and they have quite a large green space all around them. If our towns were planned more on these lines, it would have the great advantage that people could be near their work. In other words, we ought to have big areas of green space, building going upwards, and the factories or offices fairly near, so as to do away with this chronic waste that is involved in commuting which I regard as one of the greatest diseases of this age. I rather suspect that many industries are moving South because, as has been mentioned in this debate, the directors and managers like to live in the South, near London and adjacent places, and, if possible, the industry comes nearer to where they live. However, that is a minor point which I do not want to stress.
To come to a criticism of detail, one thing I rather deplore is the idea of the development of the South coast. I think I should declare an interest here, which I have done before in this House. I am the President of the Solent Protection Society and, as such, have an interest in this area. In the first place, it seems to me unfortunate to think of the idea of a town between Portsmouth and Southampton. I do not know the exact situation of the town: I do not know whether it is yet known. But a great deal of the land there is good land, some of it good market garden land, some of the best we have, and it would be sad if it were taken.
But, more than that, my Lords, I think we must try a little more not to give the economic interest the final predominance. We must provide a little for people's leisure. As time goes on, and as automation comes, there will be more and more leisure, and people will want to find things to do with that leisure. Water is one of the great vehicles by which one can deploy oneself and enjoy leisure—whether in swimming, sailing, fishing, bathing or whatever it may be. For all those hobbies, of course, water is needed. In the Solent area of the South coast we have perhaps the only unspoiled piece of sheltered water in the South of England where people can sail. It has lovely beaches. There is the Isle of

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Wight; there are good camping and holiday grounds. It would be a thousand pities if this area is to be completely industrialised.
It is tragic to realise how much of our coast has already been built up and how little is left. Our Society aims to keep this area of the New Forest and around the Solent intact. Sailing is no longer just a rich man's sport; it is an activity that everyone enjoys nowadays. This is an area much frequented by hikers, bird-watchers and campers. The great threat to the area comes in the Rochdale Report, where the aim is to develop Southampton into a far bigger port. The Report goes on to say that to do that, to make the enlarged port viable, there must be much better communications and a large industrial area to feed it. In practice that would mean that the whole of Southampton Water would become a second Merseyside. That seems to me tragic when this is one part of the New Forest where we have some chance of allowing people to take their holidays, to amuse themselves and to enjoy their leisure. Should this become an absolutely industrial area none of that would be possible. For this reason, I urge the Government to consider long before they develop the Southampton area.
I do not wish to keep the House any longer. I should like Her Majesty's Government to consider the problem as a whole, and not to be stampeded into allowing this huge explosion into the South-East when there are other areas which badly need industry; and, above all, I urge them to keep London from growing even bigger.
7.29 p.m.
THE EARL OF GOSFORD: My Lords, it is most encouraging that in the course of the last month or so your Lordships have been able to discuss transport, urban renewal, and to-day the South-East Study and the White Paper that goes with it. Like the noble Lord, Lord Tangley, to whom I would add my congratulations on his excellent maiden speech, I thank the Government for publishing what I think are excellent documents, and also for saying that they provide a basis for discussion and are by no means sacrosanct. I am going to confine my remarks to transport, and to
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two particular points at which I hope the Government will look again.
Paragraph 14, on page 30 of the Study, draws attention to the importance of the motor car and the future need for more roads, more parking spaces and more garages. In view of these factors, it is disappointing that the urgency does not seem to spill over into the section on "Communications in the South-East". This section appears to be entirely concerned with the present, both as to facilities and plans. If I have read the Report correctly, the authors are saying that we have known road achievements and known road plans for the future, including motorways. But hardly anything is said of the new planning, which will obviously be called for—the only exception being the welcome call for a first-class road, probably a motorway, from Southampton to the Midlands. Incidentally, such a road was suggested by the County Surveyors' Society over two years ago. But even on this matter there is no call for a study to be started now.
An earlier paragraph in the Study demonstrates on what an inadequate base the authors—and, I am afraid, the Government—hope to build in future. Road communications for such a great population in the South-East surely require plans to be made now. Paragraph 19, on page 60 of the Report, tells us that there are over 1,500 miles of trunk road in the Study area, and further—and here I am quoting:
"Since 1955, nearly 80 miles have been completely reconstructed or been improved …."
Only 80 miles in over eight years! Furthermore, the limit of the present Government road programme—this applies only to motorways: we know less about other roads—is the early 1970's. But The South-East Study extends up to 1981. Furthermore, Professor Buchanan, in his excellent Report, Traffic in Towns, and the Road Research Laboratory have extended their forecasts up to the end of the century. I beg the Government to bear in mind the fantastic time that elapses from the conception of a road scheme to its final appearance on the ground. We cannot wait till the opening day of the last motorway before starting plans on the motorways and roads which will be needed beyond the 1970's. Forward

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planning of these roads must at least coincide with the 1981 of the Study paper and should, in fact, go on to the end of the century.
That brings me to my second point, which concerns what I regard as a serious omission from the Study. There is one particular future need which is not matched by any recommendation in the Study—I refer to the road access to the Channel Tunnel. In paragraph 18, on page 59, the Report says:
"In the present climate, it is not realistic to expect major new railway developments in the South-East. An exception to this is, however, the proposed Channel Tunnel, which offers prospects of improved communications with the Continent, not only from the South-East, but from the country as a whole."
I entirely agree with that—but why leave out the roads? The volume of total traffic in 1980 is expected to be double what it was in 1960, and perhaps nearly three times as great. Yet there is not one word in the Study about a road link to the Channel Tunnel. The authors may have assumed that there would naturally he a link-up with Maidstone by-pass or the Medway motorway, but they have not said so. Even if there is a link, then, unless there are substantial motorway links from the Channel around London to the North-East, any advantage, from the road transport point of view, which the Channel Tunnel may have will he confined to the South-East.
In view of the growth of our trade with the Continent of Europe, efficient road and rail links will have to be provided, if the Government are to promote a high rate of growth in the North of England and in Scotland. There must be a plan to take the best possible advantage of the link across the Channel, and this link must include road and rail access from the North. I would ask the Government to look at these two points before finalising their plan.
7.36 p.m.
THE EARL OF IDDESLEIGH: My Lords, I have had the pleasure of hearing all the speeches delivered this afternoon, with one exception. Of those speeches, only one—the excellent maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Tangley, who spoke with that moderation that the House expects in a maiden speech—could be considered favourable to the White Paper and the Study that are under discussion—apart, of course, from
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the speech of the Government spokesman. I have prepared a speech on very much the same lines as those which I have heard from other noble Lords. Your Lordships will be relieved to hear that I am not going to deliver it; it would be otiose to do so. I wonder what difference these debates in your Lordships' House make. Are we really going to effect any indent at all on the monolithic departmental policy? Will the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, when he comes to reply, promise us at least consideration, and perhaps some reconsideration by the Government of their hasty acceptance of this regrettable document?
There is one part of my prepared speech which I feel justified in inflicting on your Lordships. It concerns the question of the taking of agricultural land, and in this matter (though not in other parts of his speech) I gladly follow the noble Earl, Lord Huntingdon. The noble Earl told us that the country around Southampton is fertile. I do not know this, but the Study itself tells us of the fertility of the land around Newbury, where it is still proposed to establish a New Town; and I would draw attention, as illustrating the attitude taken by departmental planners to the agricultural question, to the form of words in which this fertility of the soil is recognised. The planner goes down to these glorious Berkshire Downs, where the valleys stand so thick with corn that they do "laugh and sing", and observes—these are his words:
"One drawback is that much of the surrounding area contains farmland of high quality."
One drawback, my Lords! Instead of praising the bountiful Jehovah for his gifts to a world which is yearly more and more in need of food, it is discarded as a "drawback".
It is natural that that attitude should be adopted. Since the war we have had it very easy in the matter of food. If we want more milk, we pay the farmers 2d. extra. If we want more meat, we order it from Australia. New Zealand or the Argentine. If we want more wheat, the granaries of North America are bursting. All this we can obtain and more, at a price we are well able to pay. So we have accepted steady erosion of British agricultural land and that erosion will continue at an in-

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creased pace. Consider the demands that the new universities are making and will make on our agricultural land. Last week The Times newspaper published a photograph of the layout of the new Warwick University, and in a subtle and Times-like comment published underneath it a photograph of the site as it is at present, with green fields and well-trimmed hedges. That building is to be begun. Year by year the amount that is taken will rise and rise.
What about the position of our overseas suppliers? I have been reading a publication of the Stationery Office under the title of Meat, a very valuable publication. Are your Lordships aware that the United States and North America are becoming large-scale importers of meat? In 1954 the United States took 0·2 per cent. of Australia's beef and veal. In 1962 they took 81·4 per cent. of Australia's beef and veal, 77·2 per cent. of New Zealand's beef and veal, and in addition 40·8 per cent. of Australia's mutton and lamb. We are within sight of a time when there will be competition for the world's supply of meat, and what means shall we have to compete with these North American carnivores with their insatiable appetites and bottomless purses?
As for wheat, last year we saw Russia relieving those bursting granaries on a large scale, and Mr. Khrushchev, who at least realises the complete failure of his country's agricultural policies, has given up, and no doubt very wisely given up, his attempt to plough the Steppes. Is it not very likely that the U.S.S.R., which has a large and, it is believed, very rapidly rising population, will increasingly compete with us for North American wheat? We can increase, and we have increased, the home supplies of meat, and no doubt the dairy farmer, though he is becoming a little tired of changing his method of farming year in year out, will respond to the extra 2d. on milk. But these things are grown on land. They are not to any great extent, thank heaven!, broiler-house produced, and I am wondering whether our children twenty years hence will not greatly blame the improvidence with which we are casting away our heritage of agricultural land.
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As for Newbury, it has almost every other disadvantage. It is, as the London County Council Planning Department—that very experienced body—has pointed out, much too close to London. One can get from Newbury to London by train in something like 80 or 85 minutes. It will inevitably become the home of commuters, and what effect is that going to have on Paddington station? It has been decided to put all the West Country expresses on the old Western line. Paddington station is already overstrained, and is totally unfitted to take the large commuter traffic which will, I fear, be quite inevitable if Newbury is taken for this purpose.
I believe, in view of the agricultural situation, that we shall really be compelled to think in terms of high density housing. I know the disadvantage. I know that it is bad for children and bad for family life. It increases immensely the traffic difficulties. I know it is un-English. We as a nation insist on the right to compromise between town and country, to live in a town and have a garden, and to have the best of both worlds, and high density housing is hateful to us for that very reason. Like other countries, we must live as we can afford to live, and cut our coat according to our cloth. I fear that the spacious and expansive planning in new towns, beautiful though it is, satisfactory though it must be to the eyes of the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, will have to give way to agricultural necessities, for of what value will his green fingers be when the towns are filled with bread queues?
7.48 p.m.
LORD ST. JUST: My Lords, I shall not detain your Lordships for more than a few moments as there are only one or two points that I wish to raise. I should like to say just a few words about the question of roads and road transport. I think the noble Earl, Lord Gosford, mentioned the time it takes from the moment of planning for roads to be built. I think a very big problem comes up, especially South of London, on the whole of this point. We have a series of good arterial roads from the coast up towards London, but it strikes me that one of the great problems is going to be travelling from East to West. I do not know whether any of your Lordships have travelled from an area

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such as Rye across the country towards Petersfield, but it is almost a nightmare journey. You cross over a series of main roads the entire way and I think, with the development that goes on in the South, that this situation is going to get worse and worse. If the Government could keep this situation in the front of their minds, and have some form of plan for getting a motorway operating across the South of England, it would relieve the problem a great deal.
The only other point I want to deal with in the few minutes I wish to speak for is the question of access to the sea. This area is really from the Wash down to Lyme Bay, and to most of the area North-East of London the coast is easily accessible. I think it is now becoming a general fact in this country that one of the great sports of the young is sailing in every type of craft, or swimming from beaches. Now we are going to be faced with the problem of this big New Town in the area of Southampton and Portsmouth. This is a development that may have to come. All one can ask is that the Government keep in the forefront of their mind that available access, al least, towards the Solent area should always exist.
I think it is very important, from every angle, that people should be able to get down easily to the coast. Whether it be for sailing or whether it be merely to get on to the beaches, it is of the utmost importance to have free access. In fact, the same thing applies when one wants to travel across country. Gliding has now become one of the great sports in the country; and if the whole of this area, which is already fairly festooned with towns in all directions, is going to be sealed by New Towns in the area around Southampton and Portsmouth, there is a grave chance you are going to have great difficulty in getting down to one of the best sailing areas of the country.
Another point I should like to make before I sit down is to ask whether there is a possibility that something can be done about commuters. I know the whole idea of this survey and Study is that, in a sense, commuting should be stopped, but, as several of your Lordships know, there are already a great many people who commute from the
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South of England, working right round from the Winchester area eastwards. If one goes to any of these stations on any day, one finds lines of cars stretching for miles down the road. It should not mean a great expense for, say, waste land to be turned into a car park, so that middle-aged executives, and so on, would not find themselves having to hare towards trains after being compelled to park their cars possibly half a mile or a mile away from the station. It is not a big point, but I think it is one that local authorities and the railways could look into: because this problem is not going to recede; if anything, it is going to increase.
I should like to say just one more thing. I agreed entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, who I know is a great expert on these matters, about the desirability of not expanding too greatly towns that are already in existence. May I quote one example abroad?—because I think it is a very good example. I do not know whether many of your Lordships have been to Munich recently but Munich is a city whose population has expanded by 1½ million, since the war. It was nearly flattened. The Germans had great chances to widen the streets—in fact to build an entire new centre to the city of Munich. This was not done, and buildings just grew up, really in a sort of higgledy-piggledy state. If any of your Lordships were to go to Munich now, you would find it quite impossible to move about in any part of the centre of the city in a car between seven and nine o'clock in the morning and between five and eight o'clock in the evening. And yet half a mile outside the centre of Munich, there are these superb new housing estates. That, I think provides a very good example of the sort of thing we must try to avoid in this country.
7.54 p.m.
LORD SOMERS: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, for allowing me to speak for a moment or two before he winds up. I had not intended to speak in this debate, but I have been asked to say a few words by the London and Counties Tenants' Federation, who are very concerned, as I am, about the immense growth of population in the South-Eastern counties. I have now lived in Surrey since before the war, with a short

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break, and I have seen it grow more and more crowded. Indeed, the northern part of Surrey is rapidly ceasing to be a rural area at all. Incidentally the commuter traffic is becoming heavier and heavier.
The trouble is that so much industry, whether it be factories or whether it be office blocks, is centred in London that those who work there have to live in the adjoining counties because the prices of houses or rents in London are so terrific that nobody but practically a millionaire can afford them. There have been many times when I have thought to myself that I should like to live in London, but when I have looked at the prices of houses I have realised how impossible it is. So this commuter traffic will go on; we do not want it to get any larger.
Why must we develop an area which is already over-developed? It seems to me that there are many other possibilities. After all, we have other major cities in this country besides London—Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester; all sorts of places—which might be developed and where communication would be a great deal easier. My noble friend Lord Perth pointed out that much of our business is centred in London, and considered it a mistake that we do not spread our business over the country much more widely. I entirely agree with him. As the noble Earl, Lord Huntingdon, pointed out, office blocks are going up all over London, and activity is gradually becoming greater and greater.
I think it is time that the Government took very firm steps to put a stop to that. After all, when one lives even in the North of England one is not isolated now, owing to the rapidity of communication, either by telephone or by railway or even by aeroplane. There is no isolation about living 100 or even 200 miles from London. Indeed, there is no necessity for a great many firms even to be in touch with London at all. Possibly very suitable places would be the major ports, such as Southampton, Liverpool, the Clyde and other places like that, which could be developed on a large scale. The noble Earl, Lord Huntingdon, spoke about the clearing of rubble from various possible areas as being a factor which holds back development. My Lords, in this House serious
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strictures have often been passed on the Government on the question of unemployment. I am not in a position to quote many figures or to say whether those strictures are justified; but if there is unemployment surely here is a very good way of alleviating it. I sincerely hope that the Government will think twice before developing an overdeveloped area.
8.1 p.m.
LORD BOSSOM: My Lords, I did not intend to break in on this debate, but no speaker has so far touched on a point which I feel is of tremendous importance. That is, when work starts on the vital roads that they intend to build, will the Government consider the work being done for 24 hours a day? Though no doubt the cost will probably be double, by so doing we should get the results that are so vitally needed. If they could do that I am sure the country would gain by it. Let the work proceed for 24 hours a day and not just for 8 hours a day as we so often see to-day. I should like to put that suggestion to the Minister.
8.2 p.m.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, I am sure that the whole House will agree that we are deeply indebted to my noble friend Lord Taylor for giving us the opportunity of having what was an absorbing debate of high quality, in which there have been so many notable speeches that I find it almost impossible to particularise. But we are particularly indebted to my noble friend for what I thought was a masterly summary of the whole South-East Study and of the White Paper. The noble Earl, Lord Iddesleigh, ventured to ask whether it might be possible that we could dent what he called the Whitehall monolithic mind.
This debate has been remarkable for a number of things. One of them is that we started with eighteen speakers. While it is true there was one scratching, we have had two late entries which, according to my count, made the total number of speakers nineteen. Of these, apart from the noble Viscount, Lord Blakenham, who can be forgiven for his opinions, and the noble Lord, Lord Tangley, for whom we were indebted for a very interesting maiden speech, and to whom we extend our congratulations while hoping that we shall hear him frequently

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and have the benefit of his advice, every speech we have listened to has been either highly critical of the plan, or has been devastatingly so.
It seemed to me very early in the debate that the anonymous civil servants who, so we are told, produced the Report, came in for rather more than their share of what has been a pretty hefty "shellacking"; but, having heard the whole debate, I think that that perhaps would be quite an unfair summary. It is true that my noble friend Lord Taylor referred to the Report as a painfully amateur production; and the noble Lord, Lord Conesford, almost out-devastated my noble friend by his caustic, penetrating and even sometimes hilarious references to the Report, and especially to the "pepperpotting" of small schemes which he found so undesirable. I think my noble friend Lord Taylor showed that even the cities and major extensions which have been planned seemed to have been done on the "pepperpotting" process or by the throwing of a dart at random in different parts of the country.
Despite those criticisms, addressed as it were to the unnamed gentlemen who produced or were responsible for the technical production of this Report, the real and basic criticisms have been addressed by every noble Lord to Her Majesty's Government. Because the first and basic criticism of this Report is that we are once more presented with a partial, piecemeal piece of reasoning which might be the basis eventually of very important action and even of legislation. It is obvious that no thought has been given to the fact that this is, as my noble friend Lord Morrison of Lambeth said, a national problem that can be dealt with only on a national basis. That same theme has been echoed time and again by many noble Lords who have taken part in the debate—not always in the same way, but on the same theme.
My noble friend Lord Hughes said that the plan for the South-East is regarded in Scotland and the North-East as the greatest threat of the last ten years to the development of those areas; and he went on to prove his point. He was followed by the, noble Earl, Lord Perth, who said that he agreed with almost everything my noble friend had
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said; that he was frankly dismayed by the South-East plan and by the Government's ready acceptance of it and its basic assumptions. He added that you just cannot have over-boom in the South-East and the necessary development in other areas. He agreed with my noble friend that what is needed is a comprehensive national study. In different terms, the noble Lord, Lord Hawke, was on the same point when he said it was difficult to deal with the South-East in isolation, and that we should try to encourage the flow of population to East Anglia, and to the West Country, including Wales. He and the noble Lord, Lord St. Just, drew attention to the immense difficulties in what I think the noble Lord called, "lateral travel", or East—West travel, with which we are so familiar but on which this Report says not a single word.
Over and over again we have had the points which my noble friend Lord Taylor first made: that there has been this haphazard selection of places for expansion; that the Government have tamely accepted this extraordinarily pessimistic conclusion of the Report, as the noble Lord, Lord Conesford, called it. Indeed, what has appeared from this debate (and I hope the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, will have recovered from his depression by the time he gets to his feet, and will deal with this particular point) is that the overwhelming opinion of noble Lords is that we utterly and completely reject the basic assumption in the Report that there must inevitably be in the South-East in the next twenty years a population expansion of some 3½ million, of which one million or more would be a net import into the area from other areas of the country.
That, indeed, is the most dangerous assumption made in this Report, and the one which has been clearly rejected by almost every noble Lord who has spoken in the debate. Indeed, even some of the lesser assumptions of the Report have been rejected, including this "pepperpotting" of small schemes. I thought that the right reverend Prelate the Lord Bishop of St. Albans made an extremely valid point in his plea urging relatively small increases of population in the villages. I think that is a very sound idea, particularly if, as he put it, the increases can be of artisans, so that

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we can complete and maintain these invaluable communities which are really, whatever we say about the towns, the essence of the British way of life.
I feel that this South-East Study which has been so constantly referred to in the Press (not in this debate) as the long-range plan which will be needed to accommodate an estimated growth of 3½ million population in the South-East is not, in fact, planning at all, but only a device to dispose of the appalling situation created by the absence of planning over the last thirteen years. It is unplanning which has meant deprivation for the North and strangulation for the South. I heard the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Maudling, boasting last night on television of a sevenfold increase in industrial inquiries in Scotland. He did not say how many—and seven times one is still only seven. But the Government helplessly accept this further net migration to the South-East of over 1 million. The A.73 from Scotland is called by some "Heartbreak Highway", because thousands still travel South with one-way tickets in search of jobs and many thousands of Scots still living in the North come down to visit their relatives in places like Birmingham, Corby, Stevenage and London.
Real planning, as my noble friend Lord Taylor and the noble Lord, Lord Conesford, demonstrated so clearly, would create conditions to induce a net migration away from the South-East to other parts of the country. My noble friend Lord Wise, in what I thought was an extremely notable speech, said that there could be a New Town in East Anglia, where conditions of water supply are satisfactory and where heathland would not be expensive. And the noble Lord, Lord Meston, pleaded for twelve New Towns in the West Country and other parts of the country. As has been generally agreed during the debate, that would be a much better way of dealing with the problem than some of the ideas put forward in the plan. Indeed, it would be vastly less costly to the nation, because the White Paper admits that the essence of the problem is the provision of more land.
I very much agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Hawke, said about
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the practability of building more dwellings in London. We should utilise more land in central London, because land is the one commodity we cannot manufacture in the South-East and which is to be found elsewhere in the country. In the White Paper, the Government talk of finding land for building houses in an area of such land famine that prices have increased more than sevenfold in twelve years. I thought that the noble Viscount, Lord Blakenham, made an extraordinary hash of this business, when he was interrupted by my noble friend Lord Silkin.
It is the case that in 1951 the average price paid for building land by the L.C.C. was £8,800 an acre. In 1963, the average price was £61,800 an acre, and most of the increase, some £40,000, has been in the last five years. This means that the tempo is increasing and the whole of the plan we are considering today seems to be expressly intended to increase this at an ever faster rate for the benefit of the speculator. Think of the effect on our whole economy of the increase in land values during successive Conservative Governments. In 1951, the average cost of land per dwelling house provided by the L.C.C. was £270, and in 1963 it was £1,550. Imagine the effect of this on those who would qualify for an L.C.C. house or flat. Imagine the effect on the demands for wage increases.
And all the time the impetus was the failure of the Government to take any steps whatsoever to control or keep down the prices of land, except, of course, in the one case of the New Towns, where in fact they did not disturb the arrangements made by my noble friend Lord Silkin under the Labour Government. But only one-third of the total housing required is planned to be provided in the New Towns, so that only one-third of the land which will be required for houses will have existing use value taken as the value of the land. In the other two-thirds, the play of the market, the huckster value, will be the deciding factor.
Last Saturday I was delighted to read in my local newspaper, the Somerset County Herald, that my former milkman, who used to deliver milk in Taunton, had received the thanks and congratulations of Taunton Borough Council for

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his kind co-operation. He owns a rather small farm, with a few cows, and runs a milk round. I felt a glow because of this commendation of my former milkman. But in addition to the commendation, he received £140,000 from Taunton Borough Council. Even when I was there a few years ago, that land could have been bought for a couple of thousand pounds. These are the kind of things we are putting up with now.
Of all the failures of the present Government this is the most disastrous, this is the most vicious. This is the greatest failure of all. This has the most far-reaching consequences. And there is not a word in this White Paper which suggests that anything should be done about it. I do not blame the compilers of the White Paper. The blame rests on the Benches opposite. On the ground of enormous increases in land values alone, the proposals in the White Paper which we are considering are impossible of acceptance. Even if we look within the proposals, there is a complete absence of comprehensive planning. The proposed new cities and expanded towns will all need vastly improved transport facilities. The noble Earl, Lord Gosford, who sent me a note to say that he unavoidably had to go and could not wait to hear what I had to say, drew attention to the need for more road facilities. He said that in the last eight years there had been only 80 miles of road reconstructed, and he pointed to the enormous time it takes between the conception of a motorway and the time when it is ready for use. The noble Lord, Lord St. Just, also mentioned this problem. And we fully support them from these Benches.
But there is a further respect in which there is need for improved transport and to which reference has been made in this debate—I refer to railway facilities. My noble friend Lord Morrison of Lambeth said that keeping non-essential traffic off the road will push business back into public transport. But in all the towns mentioned in this White Paper as new cities, or those planned for major expansion, and even medium expansion, there would not be any railways; because in every case, except two, in all the long list, the railways have either gone, are on the Minister's desk for withdrawal or are still threatened under the Beeching
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Plan. My noble friend Lord Wise spoke about Scunthorpe and the possibility of a New Town there, but as the station has been closed that is virtually impossible.
LORD HAWKE: My Lords, surely the noble Lord is being carried away a little by his own enthusiasm. In the list of these towns I see Ashford, Kent. There is no closing of the railway there. Then there are Ipswich, Northampton, Peterborough, Swindon, Aylesbury, Banbury, Bedford, Chelmsford, Colchester, Hastings, Maidstone, the Medway Towns, Norwich, Poole, Reading and Southend. There may be some local closures, but surely they have their main railway.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, I am delighted to have the noble Lord's intervention, because it enables me to go through the whole list. I was even pleased to hear him put in a plea, during his own speech, for his own local branch line. He said: "Surely the Government will not now shut down this line"—the Tonbridge-Ashford-Redhill line, in which he apparently has a commuter's interest.
Let me deal with the list, since the noble Lord challenges me; and let me take the new cities. First of all, there is Newbury. That is a town of 20,000 people which was specially considered in the Buchanan Report, and in this Report it is expected to increase to 170,000. As it stands, it is in a key position for development because it is at the intersection of two main roads. But the Newbury-Lambourn and the Didcot-Newbury-Southampton lines are already closed.
LORD HAWKE: I give the noble Lord his branch lines. But these places are not being cut off from their main communications. He said that they would have no railways. That is an exaggeration.
LORD STONHAM: In some cases they are not going to have railways, and it is not an exaggeration. If the noble Lord will allow me, I will tell the House. The other North-South link which used to connect Newbury with Birmingham, Cheltenham, Winchester and Southampton was withdrawn three years ago, and much of the track has been torn up. Another is the Southampton-Portsmouth

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link, which has been highly commended, except by my noble friend Lord Huntingdon, who fears that the Solent may be turned into another Merseyside. In my view, this is a sound suggestion. But Dr. Beeching wants to close all the local railway services between Southampton and Portsmouth, Southampton and Winchester, as well as the whole of the Isle of Wight railways, which are invaluable for residential purposes and can, and do, carry 100,000 passengers every summer Saturday.
It is no use saying that you "plonk" down a station; that it is on a main line and that is enough, if you are going to have an expanded town. People do not live just outside the main-line station. They want communications and transport over distances of five, ten and fifteen miles in order to get to their work or into the town. It seems to me (I think my noble friend Lord Wise said this) that the left hand of the Government does not let the right hand know what it is doing. I wonder whether they know—or even whether the noble Lord, Lord Hawke, knows—that the two direct routes from Southampton to the Midlands, via Swindon and via Newbury are already closed.
Bletchley came in for some adverse comment. I have a great affection for Bletchley, because it is a railway junction at which I always had to change when I was a small boy going to a farm in Buckinghamshire, where I used to spend about four months out of every twelve. Bletchley I have always thought of as a wonderful place. But, in any case, it has been chosen in this Report for expansion to a town of 167,000 people. Of course, it lies on the main railway between London the West Midlands and the North West, and the Report declares:
"It would be difficult to find an area which would be more attractive to industrialists."
But here again, the Bletchley—Buckingham line has been all but closed—it is not yet quite closed. That serves Banbury, which is earmarked for expansion to 30,000. The Oxford—Cambridge line is up for closure. That is a line of some 47 miles, which runs through Bedford, another town mentioned in this Report for increase. In the words of the noble Lord, Lord Conesford, it
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seems an absolute denial of the use of human reason to close these lines now, or to take further action to close them down before we know if they are needed.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, on this particular point the noble Lord is being slightly unfair to the Government. He does not seem to have read paragraph 22 of the White Paper, which deals specifically with this subject.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, I am coming to paragraph 22 of the White Paper. I will miss out some of the other lines I was going to quote, and I will summarise it in this way. There is no town that is proposed for a new city or for major expansion, and only two among those proposed for, shall I call it, minor expansion, that will not have a number of railway facilities, either stations or whole branch lines, removed. Peterborough, Northampton, Welling-borough—all those towns will. And over the whole of East Anglia the railway closures will have a most important impact, because 20 whole railway lines and over 50 stations are to be closed in the area. I feel that to do this now is an absolute denial of human reason.
But the point I think the noble Lord, Lord Conesford, was on was the statement by the Government that all these matters would be carefully considered before any railway lines were closed in the areas affected. That is not an actual quotation, but it is the gist of the assurance given by the Government. I would particularly draw the attention of the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, to the fact that a month or six weeks ago the Minister of Transport announced his approval of 21 railway closures. Most of those will take effect next month, and several of them on May 4. One, for example, is the line from Colchester to Brightlingsea. Colchester is one of the towns marked down in the list for expansion, and many local stations in the area are to be closed. If the Government give an assurance that there will be no closures until these points have been carefully considered, surely they should take action now to stop closures which the Minister has already approved. I ask that that should be done.

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Secondly, there are quite a number which have been considered and are on the Minister's desk, where he has not yet given a decision. It is surely reasonable to ask that the Government should carry out their assurance given in this White Paper by making a statement that the closures being considered which are in the areas affected will not at present take place.
Finally, there are a number of other railway lines mentioned for closure in the Beeching Report, where there has as yet been no public hearing. In all these cases, local authorities are put to an immense amount of trouble in opposing these closures. If the same authorities are being asked to plan expansion of their population and to prepare a whole plan which must include transport, surely in those areas the Government will immediately say that they will suspend the closure procedure until the whsle matter has been considered. Some of these lines may at present be losing money, but their losses are insignificant compared with the enormous future losses to which their closure will give rise. I ask the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, when he comes to reply to-night, to deal with this point if he possibly can, or, if not, to give an assurance that he will approach his right honourable friend on this point so that a statement may be made as soon as possible. If the Government really mean to plan the development of the South-East in a sane and comprehensive way, the question of transport facilities and communications is of paramount importance, and I think they will have to give an immediate "Yes" to the three questions I have asked.
8.32 p.m.
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF HOUSING AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT (LORD HASTINGS): My Lords, even if it were not obvious before, it is quite clear from this debate that we have been discussing a problem of immense interest and of vital importance to the whole of Great Britain. We are most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, for introducing this Motion and for giving us all an opportunity to discuss and criticise, either constructively or destructively, the
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South East Study. The solution of the problems set before us by this Study will undoubtedly affect prosperity, health and general welfare, and the whole way of life, not only of those living in the South-East, but also of many other people throughout the country.
Such is the importance of this matter, and such is its nature—economic, technical and social—that I was hoping at the beginning of this debate that it would be treated in as objective a manner as possible, and without undue political bias. I think on the whole I can say that my wishes have been realised, although I suppose it was inevitable that the noble Lord who has just resumed his seat felt it his duty to launch a particular attack upon the Government for their failings. But, apart from that, I think we have discussed this matter pretty objectively, and I shall endeavour to do so myself.
During the debate we had a most welcome intervention and distinguished maiden speech by the noble Lord Lord Tangley, whom, on behalf of the Government, I should certainly like to welcome to our debates in the hope that we shall hear him very many times. I much enjoyed the robust common sense he brought to bear upon this subject; his speech was like a breath of fresh air amongst the gloom of the Jeremiahs whom we have heard this afternoon. As the right reverend Prelate, the Lord Bishop of St. Albans, said, he set the problem in its historical perspective, and I think that was very valuable. At the same time, he put his finger unerringly on the fundamental importance of industry to any national or regional exercise in planning, and, indeed, upon its limiting factors—and I shall have a good deal more to say about that during the course of my speech.
I said that the solutions to these prolems will affect the whole country. The Government are very much aware of the national implications of this South East Study, and of the other studies which have been made or are to be made. This brings me straight to one of the two main criticisms that have been made during the debate—namely, that there is no national plan and that this Study in particular, therefore, lacks the necessary imagination and is even in many respects

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irrelevant. The noble Lords, Lord Taylor and Lord Morrison of Lambeth, in particular, made this point, and it has been reinforced by the noble Lord, Lord Stonham. In the first place, I wish to make it perfectly clear that the South East Study is not a plan. It is, as my noble friend said, a basis for discussion and consultation, as a result of which a firm plan will eventually be produced. This Study is designed to present us with the facts of the present situation and to force us in Parliament, and in particular the public at large, to face these facts. In this respect it has succeeded quite admirably. The noble Earl, Lord Huntingdon, even described it as very frightening and alarming, but it has forced everybody to face the facts.
It was not the duty of the authors of this Study to make a national plan: that is the job of the Government, and I will deal with that now. Before I do, however, I would refer to what the noble Earl, Lord Iddesleigh, said. He asked how much use is this debate in your Lordships House? Is it really going to affect planners or the civil servants who produced this Report? My Lords, this is a study, and the purpose is to have a thoroughly good discussion, such as we have had this evening, and then the Government and the planners can go away and think more about it, at the same time as getting on with the necessary discussions and consultations. That is the purpose of this debate, and I think it has served that purpose very well. I can assure the noble Earl that this Study, as produced, is by no means a final plan, and that all your Lordships have said will be read most carefully by those who will have to deal with this matter.
I am glad indeed that the noble Lord, Lord Tangley, and the right reverend Prelate, gave a special welcome to this Study—and other noble Lords have remarked upon it favourably, too—as it has, as the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, said, received a great deal of criticism. I think it would be unreasonable to let noble Lords have the idea that many of their criticisms have not already been foreseen or thought of, and I propose to apply the rest of my speech to answering those criticisms in such a way that noble Lords who have made them will themselves be obliged to think the subject
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through rather further, and perhaps more deeply, than they have at the moment.
The South East Study itself is highly relevant to any consideration of a national plan or pattern. Nevertheless, our critics contend that the various studies, reports and plans produced by the Government, or under Government auspices, do not amount to a national plan. We are told that we must start with a national plan and develop regional plans from that; that we must consider all forms of transport as a whole before considering any part of it separately; that we must determine the location of population and industry and mould everything to fit in with that predetermined design.
How would our critics produce such a plan? Would they arbitrarily decide a plan, in order to save time, and produce a pattern perfect in theory, no doubt (which is not, after all, a very difficult proposition) but unworkable in practice? I hardly think they would do that. More likely they would appoint a large Commission, perhaps a Royal Commission, to find out the facts upon which to base the plan. This Commission would almost certainly ask for a series of regional studies, for reports on railways, roads, ports, airfields, water resources and power, upon population and employment trends, upon land and land use, and upon the construction industries. In other words, they would do what the Government have already done, or are in the process of doing. But there is this important difference: that all these studies and reports would remain private to the Commission and would not be published; not, at any rate, until the master plan was produced. Such a process would take many years and, in the meantime, no action whatever would have been taken in any of the fields of activity which I have mentioned.
The Government have produced plans for Central Scotland and the North-East, and these plans have been in operation for some months. So far as the North-East is concerned, a professional man in the field of planning and administration in that area, a man whom I would describe as non-political, told me a few days ago that the "Hailsham Plan", as it is known up there, will become recognised as the turning point in the history of the North-East. Plans for reorganisation and modernisation of the ports and

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railways are in operation. A Report for a third London airport has just been produced and has been linked with the South-East Study. The Water Resources Act was passed last year in readiness for the massive development expected over the next twenty years. It would not be surprising if the passing of the Water Resources Act were regarded in days to come as one of the major achievements of this Government.
Now we see the South-East Study as a basis for another major plan, all the aspects of which will be co-ordinated with the requirements in mind not only of the South-East itself, but also of the other regions; and these will, of course, include transport, communications and water supplies. There is no justification for suggesting that these plans are not being, and will not be, co-ordinated. The Government approach is pragmatic and workable, based on facts and realities. Above all, the Government are getting a move on with all these things; they are taking action, and not merely talking about it.
The noble Lord, Lord Tangley, asked me about the machinery of government. How will all these things be co-ordinated? Is something really effective being done? How can such multifarious activities be controlled when they represent the responsibilities of so many different Departments? The Secretary of State for Industry, Trade and Regional Development is specially charged with responsibility for regional development. As part of his general responsibility he is in close touch with his colleagues to ensure that development is co-ordinated in the South-East, and that it is not allowed to prejudice growth in other parts of the country. To assist him, as he told another place on December 3, he has established an inter-departmental steering group, under Board of Trade chairmanship, composed of senior officials from the other Departments concerned. One of the tasks being undertaken by this group is to maintain oversight of the implementation of regional plans—and that would include the South-East Plan when the Government have taken their decisions.
So there is a co-ordinating steering group; there is a political Minister in charge of this development. That is really the answer to the questions put
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to me by the noble Earl, Lord Gosford, about road links with the Channel tunnel. There will be not merely rail links, which are mentioned in the Study and White Paper, but road links as well. It is also all the answer I can give at the moment to the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, in respect of railway closures, apart from what is said in paragraph 22 (I think it is) of the White Paper. I will, of course, bring his remarks to the special attention of my right honourable friend the Minister of Transport. But these matters are to be co-ordinated, and there is very close co-operation between the Departments concerned and also the Minister responsible for this co-ordination. So much, I hope, for the question of an overall national plan.
It seems to me that the next major criticism—in fact, the greatest criticism of all—has been that it is not desirable or necessary to plan for the reception of 3½ million people in the next 20 years in the South-East. This contention. I admit, may seem at first sight to be borne out by the figures in the Study. The Study says that we must expect a natural increase of 2½, million, and at the same time suggests that most of this number can be accommodated by the ordinary processes of planning, through local authorities making more land available. But an extra million or more will be migrants into the area. Why, it is asked, cannot these people be kept out and located in their own regions? If this were done, perhaps then new cities and expanded towns in the South-East would not be needed, and more of the countryside would be preserved. Some noble Lords have gone so far as to say that even some of the natural increase could be pushed out of the South-East into other regions. This point was strongly nut by the noble Lords, Lord Taylor, Lord Morrison of Lambeth, Lord Meston, Lord Hughes, Lord Conesford, Lord Perth, and perhaps others as well.
In the first place, I think this criticism partly misunderstands the nature of the problem. We are not dealing with a temporary problem, requiring only a temporary expedient for its solution. We have to face a problem of growth not only over the next 20 years, as the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, pointed out, but as far as one can foresee, up until

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the turn of the next century. If we build no New Towns now, where, then, will the natural increase of the future in the South-East go? It is essentially right now to create new centres of growth generating their own prosperity and way of life which will build up into centres of attraction and countervail the natural null of London which the capital city is always bound to have. We shall have to do this in the South-East, whatever else may be planned for the rest of the country, and we must begin with this task now; otherwise it will be too late.
In the second place this criticism oversimplifies, I think, the economic problem. No doubt it sounds very simple and very attractive to decree that Newcastle-upon-Tyne, for instance, should be built up into a city, not of some 330,000 as proposed in the Local Government Commission Report on the Special Review Area after certain amalgamations, but of 1 million; and that cities of a similar size should be created in the North-West, the Midlands, the West and the South-West and even in Scotland; or to decree that a particular number of people should live in a particular region and that many more towns should be built in each region. It is no use building houses if people are not there to occupy them. They will not be there, as many noble Lords pointed out, if there are no jobs.
Such a plan would entail the enforced direction of industry, irrespective of economic benefit to the industry itself—I put this forward for consideration by noble Lords who made this form of criticism—irrespective of efficiency and of the economics of production either for the home market or, more important still, for our export markets. The prosperity of our country depends upon getting this problem right, and the Government believe that industry should be guided in certain directions by a process of incentives but not given arbitrary instructions. Furthermore, enforced direction of industry—I think this must be thought of seriously—would, in my opinion, inevitably lead in the long run to a system of work permits. People would not be allowed to move freely from one region to another, and 1 suggest that that is a proposition which the people of this country would never be likely to tolerate.
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The other day I tried out this idea on some prominent businessmen in the North-East, thinking that the prospect of Newcastle-on-Tyne becoming a metropolitan city of 1 million would appeal to them. But not a bit of it. They were convinced it would be madness and that London would always exert a pull to the South-East, whatever was done in the North; that there would always be a drift of population to the South; but that that would not inhibit the growth of prosperity in the North-East provided the Government programme is carried through.
I think I must come now, before linking up at the very end of my speech those two major criticisms I have dealt with, to one or two points of obvious major interest and major difficulty. The outstanding one is that of offices in London and commuting. The noble Lord, Lord Conesford, was very confident that office building should be stopped in the future in Central London and that even what is now in the pipeline should be pushed out of the pipe—backwards, I think, to the other end and should not come forward.
LORD CHAMPION: He said, "Blast it out"
LORD HASTINGS: Blast it out. The noble Lord, Lord Morrison of Lambeth, of course, treated this subject with a great deal more caution, realising that any such action would let in the L.C.C., and its successor the G.L.C., for a great deal of compensation; and that is a thing that has to be faced. The noble Lord, Lord Taylor, was the only noble Lord who faced it and actually suggested that, in order to prevent this future office development and the problems of commuting it brings with it, compensation should be given. No estimate has been made of what the total compensation bill might come to, but it is clear from examination of only a few selected examples that it would quickly run into millions of pounds, a great many millions of pounds. Really, the Government do not feel that this is a realistic solution, but that we have to accept that, for good or ill, permissions which have already been granted are beyond recall. It has been suggested that we should be tougher about forcing existing offices out. Well, it is all very well to say that, but the

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people who say it are not usually very specific about the way in which they think it should, or could, be done.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, before my noble friend passes from this question of cost, can he give us this figure? He said it would cost many millions in compensation. Can he give any comparable figure of the cost in millions that will he necessary for alterations to the Tube railways in London and the mainline railways if these permissions go through?
LORD HASTINGS: No, I cannot give the sort of figure my noble friend is asking for, but the likely, or suggested, costs of railway extensions and alterations on London Transport and so on have been put in, as a guess, in the South East Study. I think a good many of these costs will have to be incurred for the railways and London Transport in any case, although perhaps not to the same extent. Twenty-five million square feet extra of office floor space is the net figure. Much of this, we must remember, is due to redevelopment; the gross figure would be more. I cannot say exactly what it is, including space redeveloped for offices. Noble Lords know the difficulties created by the Third Schedule to the Town and Country Planning Act. After amendment, these provisions now refer to a 10 per cent. increase in floor space, instead of to an increase of cubic capacity. In spite of that, we are saddled with this extra 25 million square feet, and the compensation for revoking the relevant permissions would, I believe, heavily outweigh the extra costs of improvements to railways in London, many of which, I am sure, as the future development of this country goes ahead, will have to be modernised in any case. So this problem is by no means so easy as it seems.
LORD HAWKE: My Lords, before my noble friend leaves that point, he has been talking, presumably, of millions of pounds for pushing out a certain proportion of the permissions which are already "in the pipeline". Does this apply also to future demands for development?—because the whole of London is cluttered with old-fashioned little offices. Must very heavy compensation be paid to all those people before they can be made to develop these
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offices as housing; or, with the amount in the pipe-line at the moment, does he come to a full stop?
LORD HASTINGS: My Lords, I do not think it will come altogether to a full stop. There are zoning plans for each area: setting out what is allowed for commercial development and for housing. I should like to confirm it, but I believe that a person who at present owns an office building has the right to build the same thing again on redevelopment, with the extra 10 per cent. floor space. I think we shall come, in due course, to a time when the trend will reverse itself; but that is not likely to occur for a number of years. But when, as a result of creating these New Towns and expanded towns, many more offices go up, and when the same thing occurs in the outer suburbs of Greater London, we shall expect a reversal of the trend. But until then I think it would be very difficult to force offices now here out of London and interfere in that way with private business. Certainly that has never been suggested; it has not been done in the past.
There is just one point in regard to commuting. Of course not all the 450,000 (I think it is) mentioned in the Study as the number which could possibly be carried as a result of improving the railways are actually concerned in this. I think we foresee some 200,000 extra commuters, if our forecasts are accurate, in the next 20 years. But by reorganisation and improvements the rail capacity would be double that.
Perhaps I might now say one word about agricultural land. Of course it is said very clearly in the South East Study that it is fully recognised that there may be cases where the agricultural land is so good that development should not be carried out at all, or must be deferred for as long as possible while some alternative place is found.
LORD CONESFORD: My Lords, if my noble friend is passing to the different subject of agricultural land, I should like to ask whether he is going to answer one question I put. If all these offices described as "in the pipeline" are to be permitted then, in the words of the Report itself, this can be catered for only by a
"general reshaping of the pattern of train movement".

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Can he throw any light on what is meant by that phrase?
LORD HASTINGS: My Lords, I did not wish to go into all the details of the noble Lord's criticism of English literature and language. But in this case I think I can perhaps cast a ray of light on the gloom which surrounds the noble Lord. I think that sentence means a reorganisation of schedules, and a different use of starting points and terminal points for the trains—in fact it is what we might call traffic management—which would bring about a substantial improvement. I hope that will clarify the point for the noble Lord. May I return to the point of agricultural land, which, of course, is very important? The South-East Study recognises the difficulties—it appears on page 68 of the Report.
In reply to the noble Earl, Lord Huntingdon and the noble Earl, Lord Iddesleigh, among others, who referred to the question of densities, I would say that it is estimated that if these proposals in the South East Study were agreed to in toto—and there is absolutely no guarantee that they will be—only 2 per cent. more of the land in the South-East would be built on by 1981. So, although there will be a loss of agricultural land, it will be only 2 per cent. That, I believe, makes it sound rather less frightening.
Then, I must refer once again to the question of land values. We well recognise that noble Lords opposite and we on this side are not agreed, and will never agree, upon this subject, but I am tempted to ask how noble Lords really think they can deal with this matter. The complaint is that two-thirds of the land is left to the so-called free market, although of course there is no absolutely free market owing to town and country planning which produces the scarcity of land. Our contention is that, by making far more land available, we are materially affecting the price. Noble Lords talk about speculators. Do they really mean the developer who ultimately builds on that land, and whose profits as a result are readily taxable? Does the noble Lord opposite mean the original owner of the land who has, in a way of speaking, come in for a windfall? Because whatever he does he is not a speculator, he is the original owner of the land. I
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would say that the speculator is the man who, in between, buys from the original owner, and sits on the land and does nothing, and then sells to a developer. He, I agree, is a speculator. But I think that the number of times that that happens is small in comparison to all the land sales in this country.
I would say in regard to the original owners, the farmer or the landowner, that the farmer has to set himself up again, and that money is not going to be wasted. He has to set himself up again, probably at much greater expense than when he originally started, and if he has any balance, presumably that goes into investment and into the productive capacity of the country. Then, if the landowner gets a good profit on the land, it is going back into the modernisation and improvement of his farms and into investment as well. I do not think it is right for noble Lords to speak as though anything paid was so much money wasted down the drain.
I do not think they have proved yet, excepting in certain cases—and one admits there are some—that the price of land really much affects the price of the house. That is what noble Lords want to tackle. They believe they can affect the price of the house by controlling land. But the only way they can really do it is to control the whole process.
Noble Lords talk about present use value. They want people to have only present use value, or very little indeed above it—probably not enough to compensate them even for disturbance. In that case they have got to control the prices which are paid to the men who build, to the developer, and to the owner afterwards if he ever wants to sell it. That, we contend, is not practicable or reasonable, and we feel that noble Lords and their Party opposite are more interested in preventing private profit simply because they are against private profit. Their Leader only a week or two ago talked of the Conservatives as the Party of private profiteering and landlords—coming back to the old, boring class warfare slogan. They are really more keen on preventing private profit than on getting the houses built, because if they do the one, they will not do the other.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. What we complain about is the enormous difference in twelve years between the £8,000 and the £60,000 per acre paid by the L.C.C. You cannot treat the fact that land, which ten years ago was worth £2,000 for agricultural purposes, is now sold for housing for £140,000, because of the needs of the community, as just a matter of profit. It is exploitation, and of course it affects the cost of rent of the houses.
LORD HASTINGS: We have had our argument on this and, if I may, I will pass to my final words. We were talking previously about these two main criticisms: that there was no national plan, and that we must place far more of these people outside the South-East. I hope that I have dealt with that in such a manner that noble Lords will think more about this. It is suggested, on the one hand, that more should and could be done, both in the South-East and in other regions—the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, refers to the urgency of the matter—while, on the other hand, it is said that the proposals of the South East Study, if implemented, will inevitably ruin the chances of those areas where unemployment is highest. The noble Lord, Lord Hughes, and my noble friend Lord Perth were much concerned about the position in Scotland.
In answer to the first point, there are limitations other than purely financial ones to the speed at which New Towns or large expansions can be carried out. The South East Study tells us that experience has shown that it is difficult to sustain a building rate of more than 1,500 houses a year in any one place. There is not only the question of building capacity and availability of labour, but also the equally vital matter of achieving a balanced programme of all kinds, not only housing but jobs as well, not to mention the provision of social services and amenities; and, of course, water, which is dealt with in Appendix I of the Study, is not the least of these. These matters affect the time factor, as I have said, and they also have a considerable bearing upon the question of whether we should attempt to create a few super-cities or a larger number of reasonably large or middle-sized ones.
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May I deal for a moment with the question of my noble friend Lord Bossom, about building techniques and a 24-hour working day? We hope that by this method we should be able to improve quite substantially on the figures I have given. This is being studied, as my noble friend knows well, by my right honourable friend the Minister of Public Buildings and Works, by the National Building Agency, and by the Secretary of State for Regional Development himself, not to mention my own right honourable friend the Minister of Housing. In answer to the second point, I would say that it is perhaps not enough merely to point out that the North-East and Scotland have a head start over the South-East, although others have said that this start should be reduced substantially owing to the urgency of the problems of the South-East.
The real answer lies in the realm of investment, both private and public investment, and especially the latter. There will be no public investment in the South-East additional to the normal needs of the population for housing and the usual social services which go with those needs. Indeed, by having a properly thought out plan for the South-East, we shall get better value for the investment that will be needed. So far from demanding additional investment which could be avoided, the plan which will follow the Study will help to keep investment within reasonable limits.
In the North-East and Scotland large amounts of additional public investment by way of improvement and modernisation in order to raise standards generally are being pumped in, and private investment in industry in those regions is also being encouraged by various fiscal measures, whereas it is being discouraged in the South-East. The Government have control over these matters, and they have control over the timing and synchronisation of the various regional programmes. They will exercise their control in such a way that regional development is coordinated so as to form a national design for the benefit of the country as a whole, and in particular they will carry out public investment and development in accordance with priorities and within the national re-

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sources of the nation. It is no use at all decreeing that development shall take place irrespective of the national resources which are available to pay for it.
That really brings me back to the starting point, and that is the inescapable fact that all development plans, whether national or regional, must depend to a large extent upon the location of industry and population. Only thus can the nation produce the wealth which is necessary for the implementation of the ambitious plans which the Government have in mind and which evidently the people of this country so urgently wish to see come to fruition.
9.10 p.m.
LORD TAYLOR: My Lords, my noble friend Lord Stonham reminded me of one thing that I must say, and that is a word of apology to Bletchley. It so happened that he stopped at Bletchley for a nice reason. He stopped there as a young boy on his way to visit a farm. I stopped at Bletchley on the way to school, and perhaps this gave me a jaundiced view of Bletchley. I do not really want to upset the inhabitants of Bletchley. I know they have battled manfully to improve themselves and it is a better place than it was. They have done remarkably well in very difficult circumstances, and I hope that one day it will be a lovely city.
I should like to thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate for making it a very good and interesting
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one. I should particularly like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Tangley, for his excellent maiden speech and for sitting through to the end—which is more than some maiden speakers and other speakers sometimes do. We are very grateful to him and look forward to hearing him again on many subjects. I should like to thank the two Government spokesmen. They will not expect us to agree with them, but I thought they deployed their case very well, though I did not agree with it a bit. As the noble Lord, Lord Hastings said, there are lots of things on which we shall never agree, and it depends upon who is in power as to what happens. We can go on arguing about land values until the cows come home.
However, we have certainly succeeded in having a most interesting debate, and I should like to thank all my colleagues on this side of the House for their helpful contributions, particularly my noble friend Lord Stonham for winding up so vigorously. I asked him to hit all round the wicket, and he did. I should like also to thank the noble Lords, Lord Conesford and Lord Hawke, and all the other noble Lords who have helped to make this such a stimulating debate. My Lords, I beg leave to withdrawn my Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

BRITISH RAILWAYS BILL
Reported, with Amendments.
House adjourned at thirteen minutes past nine o'clock.