§ 76. Mr. Awberyasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will give an assurance that, in considering his plans for the provision of air-raid shelters 160W for the public, he will take account of the demands for professional and technical building and engineering staff for the purposes of other parts of the defence programme.
§ Mr. de Freitas:Yes. As the House is aware, local authorities in the areas concerned were asked last November to undertake a survey of their shelter requirements, but so far no instructions have been given to local authorities to go beyond the preparation of general plans. I am advised that, as a general rule, local authorities can undertake this work without any reinforcement of their technical staffs, but there may be a few cases where the survey cannot be completed by the end of June, as originally contemplated.
Any further preparatory work would involve the diversion of resources particularly technical staff from the more immediately urgent parts of the defence programme which are concerned with improving the readiness of our Armed Forces.
In these circumstances, further preparations for shelter construction must be deferred for some time, though it may be possible to agree to some limited exceptions where no heavy demands on our resources would be involved. I am considering in consultation with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland the possibility of erecting a small number of prototypes of shelters of new designs for the assistance of local authorities at a later stage.