The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Works and Buildings (Mr. Hicks)

I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."

I should be less than human if I did not appreciate the position that I am occupying here to-day, making a statement on behalf of my Ministry. I am aware of its importance: this is the giddiest height I have yet reached; and I am very grateful for the opportunity of making this statement. When my right hon. Friend the Lord Privy Seal made a statement in this House on the setting-up of the Ministry of Works and Buildings on 24th October last, he gave a detailed account of the work which the Ministry would undertake. I should like to give the House, first of all, some account of the extent to which we have taken over the functions of the Office of Works, as then described, and to give some information about some new services for which we have been made responsible during the intervening months.

First of all, we took over all the functions which belonged to the Office of Works, including their responsibilities for the erection of buildings for other Civil and Service Departments. A great deal of the work for Civil Departments which the Office of Works used to do in days of peace has, of course, been suspended now that we are faced with the necessity of limiting building operations to those which are not only urgent, but also vitally necessary for the prosecution of the war. But we have continued to press on with those works which satisfy this condition, and we have in hand a large programme of hospitals, food stores and general storage accommodation in various parts of the country. We shall also shortly be building hostels for workers in war factories; and we, of course, retain responsibility for the maintenance and adaptation, not only of all Government buildings throughout the country, but for all those which it has been necessary to requisition or hire for war purposes. This work, which amounts collectively to a very large annual sum, includes the provision of air-raid shelters for Civil Service staffs and other Civil Defence measures.

The work of providing office accommodation for the staff of all Civil Departments, although it is not a spectactular one, involves an enormous amount of detailed arrangement. Before the war, headquarter staffs of Departments were concentrated in London, except that the Scottish Department had headquarters in Edinburgh and the Welsh Board of Health in Cardiff. The war has brought great expansion in staffs, and a number of new Ministries have been created, such as Food, Home Security, Shipping, Information and Economic Warfare. A good deal of work has been regionalised, and the removal from London of headquarter staffs whose work can be performed outside it has lead to a greatly increased demand for accommodation in the Provinces. The headquarter staffs which we removed from London were removed from London in accordance with plans carefully prepared before the war and, should it be necessary, other staffs could be removed also, but we are not keeping buildings empty for this purpose. They are lent to the Services for temporary housing of personnel. Wherever practicable, new centres of work have been set up in the Provinces instead of London. Steps have been taken both in London and the Provinces to create a reserve of office accommodation with the object of ensuring that the machine of Government shall be able to function in all circumstances. At present the staff for which we are responsible for providing offices, numbers about 400,000 in London and the Provinces.

Besides office accommodation, the Government have considerable demands for storage space which it is the duty of the Ministry of Works and Buildings to provide. Food depots, training centres, A.R.P. schools, coastguard staffs and requirements for refugees are other demands which we have to be prepared to meet at a moment's notice. The number of premises which we have under our charge at present is about 15,000, though by no means all of these are complete buildings. We are paying some £4,000,000 a year in rent.

Allied to this job of providing accommodation to meet the needs of the Government is the task of acting as a clearing house for the demands of Government Departments as a whole, including the Service Departments. This is a work which we have carried on since the outbreak of war and which, I think, deserves rather more publicity than it has had. In the last war there were frequent complaints that inefficiency and waste of time were caused by overlapping between Departments in their search for accommodation, so that two Departments might mature plans to a considerable extent on the assumption that both of them were going to make use of the same building, until they discovered that two into one would not go. The Central Register of Accommodation, which we are keeping in my Ministry, has proved an essential method in this war of ensuring co-ordination between Departments requiring accommodation. In the event of a clash of interests, Departments are brought together at a very early stage before loss of time has been incurred. Some idea of the smoothness with which the system has worked is given by the fact that the Ministerial Sub-Committee, which exists as a court of appeal, has had to be called on one occasion only. At present the Central Register receives requests for earmarking of premises from Departments at the rate of about 4,500 a week, and the total number of requests we have received since it was set up is in excess of 300,000. At present the number of live entries is nearly 150,000.

The Ministry of Works and Buildings has also inherited from the Office of Works very considerable responsibilities in the way of providing supplies to cover Government needs. We have to design, supply and maintain furniture and office equipment for all Civil Departments, official residences, embassies, legations and certain consular buildings overseas. Equipment required for special purposes, for example, post offices, Ministry of Pensions hospitals, Ministry of Labour training centres, is also provided. In addition to this, we undertake the purchase and distribution of a wide range of general stores, including fittings and accessories for the engineering and building work of the Department and also the purchase and delivery of fuel to all Government buildings in Great Britain.

Besides this, we have for many years undertaken the supply on an agency basis for certain Civil and Service Departments, of furniture, equipment, household articles and fuel, and this centralised purchase has enabled us to secure uniformity and economy. More recently, the nature and extent of these services have been considerably increased, and among the more important additional services carried out are the provision of furniture and operational equipment for Royal Ordnance Factories on behalf of the Ministry of Supply and the supply of furniture, floor covering and certain domestic equipment to military and Air Force Commands. We also supply all equipment, except medical stores, for emergency hospitals on behalf of the Ministry of Health, and bedding, furniture and domestic equipment for evacuees and homeless civilians. Recently, we have been asked to provide bunks for Anderson shelters. Perhaps the most vital and urgent of our supply services is the central purchase of all fire-fighting equipment required by Government Departments, vital factories and the emergency fire brigade organisation of the Home Office. The expenditure on these agency services was £800,000 a year before the war; it was £10,000,000 in 1940 and will probably exceed £16,000,000 in the current year.

As regards Ordnance Factories, it was stated that we would also be responsible for the work formerly dealt with by the Ministry of Supply, which dealt with the building of new Ordnance Factories and the approval of plans for new private factories or extensions to existing private factories. With the exception of a few cases where the swapping of horses in mid-stream would have been unjustifiable, we have taken over the construction of new factories, and we have also assumed responsibility for examining and approving in advance proposals from munition firms to extend their works to meet expanding Government requirements as we have a large programme in hand. I know that the House will forgive me if, for obvious reasons, I do not give any figures with regard to this service.

Another important feature is the licensing of private building and the determination of priority of proposals for re- building buildings damaged by air raids. First of all, I will say a word about the licensing of civil building, since this is a service which naturally exposes us to a good deal of unpopularity. Building materials, and more especially building labour, in the country, are only sufficient for a limited programme, and it became quite clear during last summer that they were being used to quite a considerable extent for private building which might not be making any contribution towards the war. It was therefore decided that a system of licensing for private building should be established under the auspices of the Works and Buildings Priority Committee. This was then an Interdepartmental Committee presided over by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour to whose excellent work I can testify. This Committee dealt with building priority questions and other general questions which arose out of the Government building programme. On the formation of the Ministry of Works and Buildings, the secretariat of the Committee became part of the Ministry, and I took over the chairmanship from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour. The Office of Works, and subsequently the Ministry of Works and Buildings, was entrusted with the task of bringing the system of licensing into operation and a Defence Regulation was made.

The system came into operation on 7th October. Wide publicity was given at the start both in the Press and by circulars sent to architects, builders, local authorities and other interested parties. All building operations costing more than £500—which will shortly be reduced to £100—except for those paid for by a Government Department, or which consist merely of roofing repairs or first-aid repairs, require a licence from the Ministry of Works and Buildings, or in the case of local authorities and public undertakings, an authorisation from the appropriate Government Department. The Ministry of Works and Buildings has licensing offices in each of the 12 Civil Defence Regions. Our local licensing officers have fairly wide delegated powers which they are encouraged to use. Their duty is to ensure, in consultation with interested Departments, that only work which contri- butes something specific to the war effort should be allowed to continue or to be started. As I said, the operation of this Regulation—making buildings subject to licence—has not increased our popularity. Actually, the applications which we have granted exceed by many times those which we have been compelled to refuse. I would ask those who have been disappointed to remember that supplies of building materials and labour are limited and that we should not be doing our job if we did not make every effort to see that they are used in the best possible way.

I would like to say a word or two about factories and stores for Service Departments. In his statement the Lord Privy Seal accounced that we might arrange, by agreement with the Service Departments or the Ministry of Aircraft Production, to erect on their behalf new works and buildings not of a highly specialised character, such as storage or depots, or houses and buildings of an architectural nature and for the supervision of contracts for the erection of private factories or the extension of private factories required for war production. We are at present doing a number of camps for the War Office and supervising a very large aircraft factory scheme on behalf of the Ministry of Aircraft Production. Work is also under construction for the Ministry of Supply, Air Ministry and Admiralty. On the basis of the work that we have already undertaken, we shall be carrying out new works at the rate of over £1,000,000 a week.

With regard to building priorities, it was next stated that the Minister of Works and Buildings would determine the application of the directions of the Production Council to the appropriating of particular buildings subject to appeal, if necessary, to the Council. As hon. Members are aware, the Production Council has been superseded by the Production Executive. Although my Noble Friend is not a member of the Production Executive, he has access to it and receives from it instructions as to priorities to be accorded to various component parts of the Government's building programme and the methods by which these priorities are to be applied.

The Priority Department of the Ministry of Works and Buildings was creates at the end of October with sections to deal with the examination of proposals. estimates, designs and labour statistics Since my Ministry has taken over this question of buildings priorities, we have made a radical change in the system which will, I hope, make for better results all round. Previously a priority system in the strict sense of the term had been operated, by which I mean that certain classes of work were given specially favoured treatment as regards labour and materials as compared with others. The danger of this system, as we found to our cost, is that it is almost impossible to prevent such a large number of works getting priority that the whole system defeats its object. In other words, the number of jobs that had priority labour attached to them was so great that there was hardly any priority in labour or materials. By the end of last year we found that we were trying to build considerably more than the capacity of the building industry could carry. It has been estimated that we were putting upon the market at least 30 per cent. to 40 per cent. more than the resources of the industry would be able to execute in any one year.

We have, therefore, instituted a new system which is just coming into operation, whereby we first estimate the total quantity of building of which the resources of the country is capable in each given period. We measure this by value and, in accordance with the instructions of the Production Executive, we allocate it between Departments so that each Department knows what share of the building capacity of the country it will have at its disposal for a given period—three, four, or six months, whatever the period may be. It is the job of the Departments to arrange within their own allocation which jobs are to be speeded up, which to be stopped, and so on. We are limiting the programme so that the amount of construction work to be undertaken will be as closely as possible related to the labour and materials available, and, as far as possible, only those works which will be effective before or by the end of the summer are being proceeded with. Works requiring a longer period for their completion or new works, are only being permitted if they are of great strategic importance. Let me say here that the more efficiently Departments use their labour, the more of their programme can be completed.

I should like now to say a few words with regard to the control of building materials generally. Bound up with this task of arranging building priorities is the job of controlling building materials to which the Lord Privy Seal referred in his original announcement. When my Ministry was formed, timber and steel were already rationed, the control being vested in the Ministry of Supply, and this position has remained unaltered. The Ministry of Supply still control steel and timber. The Materials Committee, which is presided over by my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Aircraft Production, gives us a block allocation of these materials for distribution among the various building Departments. As regards the remaining building materials, the basis of control is at present the willing co-operation of each industry. For the purpose, each industry is being in turn invited to turn itself into a unit for war purposes under the direction of the Controller of Building Materials. No statutory control has been established, but all are aware that it would be at once if found necessary. We have appointed Directors to deal specifically with cement, bricks, roofing and other building materials.

The question of cement supplies has aroused considerable public interest and I hope the House will forgive me if I give them a few facts about this all-important commodity. After the shortage last summer, which was due to a number of factors of which I have already informed the House, we have taken all possible steps to see that no such thing can ever occur again. Very large stocks have been built up and we have seen to it that these are distributed in such a way that in the event of difficulties with transport, we hope cement would be available all over the country. I am aware that allegations have been made in various quarters that the output of cement is being restricted by a ring of fat, top-hatted and frock-coated gentlemen who watch their own bank balances swell while the man in the street suffers the full rigours of enemy bombing which he could have escaped had cement been available to build him an air-raid shelter. I can assure the House that there is very little truth in this grisly picture. What we need from the cement manufacturers is an output of cement as great as, or possibly a little greater than, the total which the building and civil engineering industry of this country can possibly use; and that we have got. None the less, my Noble Friend is well aware that when the war ends, the capacity of the building industry will be largely increased and that when this time comes the output of cement might not be equal to the demand made upon it. He has, therefore, appointed an independent committee under the chairmanship of the hon. Member for Hampstead (Mr. G. Balfour), which has already held many sittings and from which we hope to get a report next month. As soon as a report is available the results of that examination can be announced either by Question and Answer or by a statement in the House.

Bricks, too, were giving trouble last autumn. There was a serious shortage in many districts, mainly due to maldistribution and transport difficulties. This shortage has now been largely cured. The Director of Bricks is organising the industry on a national basis. Reports and statistics are becoming available for the first time, and it is hoped that the future allocation of orders and the rational control of brick works will prevent any shortage recurring. We are accumulating stocks in zones or regions at the present time, so that if transport difficulties should arise as the result of some circumstances at present unforeseen, these stocks will be available in the various regions to supply building jobs not only with bricks but with other materials as well.

Then, on the question of roofing materials, the weight of enemy air attack on various parts of the country has been such as to produce a considerable shortage in this respect. We have, therefore, appointed a director to deal with these commodities, and arrangements have been made for a control of specialist roofing contractors so as to avoid shortage of labour which has impeded air-raid damage repair. We are also developing methods of emergency roofing repair. We have built up an organisation of specialists, both employers and operatives, to deal with this problem. In passing I ought to say with regard to the Service Departments that they have been most helpful. They have assisted us to get the necessary personnel, although it meant that a number of men had to be released from the Services. This has helped us considerably in building up the organisation which is necessary to meet the demand, particularly as far as roofing materials are concerned.

Another feature to which I am sure the House would like me to refer is the efforts which are being made to bring about standardisation in the building industry and thus to help towards greater efficiency. As an essential part in the control of materials, the Standardisation Department has been created, the object of which is to secure the maximum and most economical use of the raw materials and building materials available. The standardisation of roofing felts has, for instance, at once increased output by 25 per cent. with an actual reduction in the raw materials required. We shall follow this policy through every field of work and type of material. A good deal has been done, but there is plenty more to do, and this section of the Ministry, like every other section, is hard at work.

In passing, I can assure the House that every one at the Ministry of Works and Buildings is engaged full time on his job. Among other major steps, we are hoping drastically to reduce the number of sizes of bricks manufactured in the country. At present there are 16 or 17 different sizes. We hope to be able to standardise bricks so as to make bricks available equally for the North and the South. Some of my hon. Friends are probably aware of the many different sizes of bricks now manufactured. My hon. Friend the Member for Plaistow (Mr. Thorne) worked at brick-making in his early boyhood—so I understand from his life-story. I do not know what size bricks he was engaged in making, but he would appreciate the fact that there are variations in size. We think that is all wrong and ought to be rectified at the earliest possible moment. Extensive consultations on this subject have already taken place and a great measure of agreement has been arrived at, and my Noble Friend expects shortly to be able to make a statement on the subject.

Mr. Mathers (Linlithgow)

Will these standardised bricks be known as "Hicks bricks"?

Mr. Hicks

I do not know what name will be applied to them. I have had some experience in connection with this matter and as an illustration of the existing state of affairs I would mention one actual case. One particular type of bricks was being used on a job in a certain part of the country. The job was brought to a standstill because there was not a sufficient supply of bricks of a particular type, yet in an adjacent neighbourhood there were at least 500,000 bricks available which could have been put into that Job. But, because the sizes did not properly interlock, the work had to be interrupted.

With the exception of the large question of reconstruction, I have, I think, now covered all the points which arise out of the Lord Privy Seal's statement, and I would like to go on to give the House some account of the further steps which we have taken to meet the changing situation. One of the difficulties which faces us in getting through the vast programme of building with which we are dealing at present is the extent, scope and complexity of the building industry. I have been in the building industry for nearly 50 years and can claim to know something about it. It is one of the, most important industries in the country and yet until the appointment of my Noble Friend as Minister of Works and Buildings there was no Minister specifically charged with the duty of seeing to its efficiency and welfare. Before then a number of building departments on the Works and Buildings Priority Committee did this job jointly. I would be the last to underrate the value of what they did, but I think it is, as far as practicable and possible, a job for one Minister to have charge of and one Department to deal with.

I do not think enough has been said about the work which building trade operatives are doing for their country at the present time. We have all read of and admired what has been done by munition workers, police, Civil Defence and the Fighting Services. I do not mention Members of Parliament—they can speak for themselves. None of these could get on without bricklayers, carpenters, masons and the rest, to put up buildings for them to work in, or factories where their weapons are to be made. The building industry has a fine tradition dating back over centuries, and it is my belief that the British craftsman of to-day is capable of work every bit as good as his predecessors who built our great cathedrals and public buildings. The building or civil engineering worker of to-day is faced with sterner tasks than his predecessors, particularly at the present time. They built churches and cathedrals; he must build munition factories. They laid out parks and squares; he must lay out runways in aerodromes.

It is to the problem of how to guide and assist the building industry in performing this great task which the country expects of them, that my Noble Friend and I have given our close attention— not casual attention, but deep and concentrated thought. At this stage I should like to pay tribute to the organisation, both of employers and workers, and to the professional bodies for the great assistance they have given us. I am not sure that the House realises what a great value it is to the country at the present time to have labour organised and helpful. But our load is becoming heavier, and we have fewer men to bear it; this means that every man's work must be organised with the maximum of efficiency if he is to do what is expected of him. My Ministry will work in understanding and co-operation with the great industry. Therefore, my Noble Friend and I, with my Right Hon. Friend the Minister of Labour, are at present in close consultation with the industry, discussing proposals which I hope it may be possible to announce in the House before very long. As the basis of these proposals, we are trying to get a complete census of building capacity, and the aim of the proposals will be to increase efficiency, particularly by avoiding senseless competition between firms for work and for labour. We hope also to bring in the smaller builders for work which they can handle. I should like to give the House fuller details of what we are planning, but I think it will be agreed that we should not bring the dish out of the oven until it has been cooked or bad digestion might follow.

Next I should like to give some account of what we have done by way of first-aid repairs, both to houses and factories. When the Government were making their plans for dealing with air raids in the days before the war, it was decided that local authorities, under the direction of the Ministry of Health, should be responsible for what came to be known as "first-aid repairs" to houses. The coming of the "blitz" proved that insufficient account had been taken of the fact that modern aerial bombardment makes temporarily uninhabitable a vastly greater number of houses than it actually destroys. The result was, after a few weeks of '' blitz '' that a number of local authorities in the Metropolitan area found themselves overwhelmed with repair work. My Noble Friend, therefore, made arrangements, with the active and willing co-operation of the War Office and Ministry of Labour, for the withdrawal from the Army of a number of building trade operatives, who would be formed into a mobile corps of house repairers, working directly under the Ministry of Works and Buildings. While I am speaking a squad is on its way to Scotland to give assistance in temporary first-aid repairs to houses which have been bombed there. If a local authority wants help, it applies to the Ministry of Health, which in turn asks us to take over part of the field of work. We have at present about 3,000 men working in London and upwards of 1,000 in provincial towns. These men are employed strictly in accordance with the rules of the building trade, with the exception that they are guaranteed a 44-hour week and paid fares home once every six months during their period of work. They are also paid subsistence allowance where they are compelled to maintain two homes. We do not discharge these men, except for misconduct, but, if we no longer require their services, they are recalled to the Army. The men started arriving early in December, and tools and equipment were provided for them. A number of depots were set up for the London area, and during the last three months we have been hard at it. We have thus a select corps of shock troops which can be rushed in at any point where the enemy attack becomes too much for the first-aid repair organisation of the local authority.

So much for houses. For the repair of factories, there has been in existence for some time an excellent organisation which was worked out at the Ministry of Aircraft Production by the hon. Member for Edgbaston (Sir P. Bennett). With a view to helping this organisation, we have set up a Department of Emergency Repairs. We are establishing a nation- wide organisation with emergency works officers in all important target towns and areas which are controlled by several assistant directors covering one or more Civil Defence Regions. These officers are highly qualified men whose duties are to give technical advice to the local reconstruction panels of the Emergency Services Organisation, and to war factories and others whose work is of national importance. They have also studied all available sources of supply of materials in large demand after air attack, and my Ministry will arrange, in conjunction with the Ministry if Labour, for an adequate supply of labour for first-aid repairs. They direct the use of any military units which may be brought in to assist and organise the supply and release of materials from outside sources, and ensure the most economical use in both materials and man-power.

The organisation, if required, is at the disposal of local authorities and other Departments. In connection with this organisation, we are making use of an arrangement which was made at the outbreak of war, whereby what was then the Office of Works set up dumps of building materials in target towns for air-raid repair. These are being extended, and arrangements are being made for the creation of strategic dumps, located so as to be able to serve more than one of the great industrial areas of the country. Materials will be released and labour allocated in accordance with priorities decided by the Regional Commissioners as between civil and war factory requirements, and by the local reconstruction panels and area officers of the Supply Ministries as between one war factory and another. As part of this scheme, lists of architects, surveyors and engineers are being prepared, who will be instantly available to the emergency works officers of my Ministry, to assist in giving technical advice and watching repair work through to completion with a view to ensuring that it is done in the most rapid and economical way.

Mr. Cary (Eccles)

Will men be taken away from important Government work to do these emergency repairs?

Mr. Hicks

It depends whether the men will be able to continue their important Government work unless the emergency repairs are put in hand. Where men have been taken away from other work for a temporary period to give assistance in repairs they will be returned. This section of the Ministry has only been in existence a short time, but a number of appointments have been made, and the organisation is rapidly taking shape. It has already been in operation in certain areas and is proving to be of considerable assistance. We have undertaken to be responsible for selecting, sorting and disposing of all salvaged building material.

Mr. Silkin (Peckham)

Will the hon. Gentleman explain this? Does he mean that his Ministry will take over from the debris disposal authorities the waste and salvaged material which they collect?

Mr. Hicks

That is what we are hoping.

Mr. Thorne (Plaistow)

Does it apply to private property?

Mr. Hicks

Yes. We have established a statistical department, which in the first instance collects facts, figures and data of this great, widely ramified industry. The industry can do with detailed examination, and everyone will be the better for it.

I have left the subject of reconstruction until the end because I feel that we should deal with immediate issues first before turning our thoughts towards the time after the war to which we are all looking forward, but which we must not allow to distract our gaze from the more immediate and urgent problems. As hon. Members may be aware, my Noble Friend recently gave an account, in another place, of the progress which we have so far achieved, and I will not go over again in detail ground which he then covered. Broadly, the functions which the Minister of Works and Buildings will undertake in connection with reconstruction have emerged as part of a general framework of post-war planning, which will be under the general control of my right hon. Friend the Minister without Portfolio, and we have labelled this group "The Physical Reconstruction of Town and Country." We have to remember all the time when we are dealing with this vast and complicated subject, that the results of our deliberations have to emerge some time in the future in the shape of bricks and mortar, streets and terraces, towns and cities. But as we are, or try to be, first and foremost a practical Department, we have to think of the practical details and difficulties first. All of us must have thought, when looking upon the results of the brutal and savage attack to which our towns have been subjected and to which for some time to come may continue to be subjected, that here in the midst of destruction is an opportunity such as never occurred before of making a bold and challenging start. So far, well and good; but as soon as we begin to examine the problem more closely difficulties begin to show their heads and the best way of dealing with the problem is to hunt out these difficulties and run them down. It is with this end in view that my Noble Friend has appointed a special expert committee, under the chairmanship of Mr. Justice Uthwatt, to investigate compensation and betterment problems and the difficulties which may arise from speculation in land values. I informed the House of the appointment of this committee on 29th January.

The problems to which we hope this Committee will offer some solution are ones which go right to the root of our economic life, and I know that some quarters of the House hold strong views about them. These I would ask not to press me too closely at present. We cannot solve these difficulties in a few weeks, and for that reason any answers which we are able to give to-day are likely to be uninformative or premature. As a further step in the direction of finding out the difficulties which lie before us and in order to surmount them, my Noble Friend has had test surveys made in co-operation with the local authorities in certain heavily damaged areas. We have the first reports now; and when they are fully examined we shall be in a better position to see exactly what legislative and administrative changes may be necessary to enable redevelopment to be undertaken. In this work we are receiving the full and active co-operation of the other Departments concerned. A wise man once remarked that genius was an infinite capacity for picking other people's brains, and this is at present what we are trying to do. In particular we have invited to assist us a Consultative Panel, consisting of some of the best-known experts on the subjects with which we have to deal, and we are steadily recruiting a small nucleus staff inside the Ministry.

I have tried to give the House some picture of how the Ministry is tackling its problems, present and future. Naturally, it is the present to which we must devote our full energies, but I do not think on that account that there should be any criticism if we spend a little of our time thinking ahead. I think it would be one of the greatest incentives we could have to put our best foot foremost in the march to victory if we could have before us an ever-clarifying picture of the Britain which we want to build up after this struggle and the time when we shall have a great and victorious people worthily housed. If we can achieve this ideal it will be our proud boast that after beating the most powerful enemy from without which has ever come against us, we have gone on to win an ever greater victory at home.

Mr. Denman (Leeds, Central)

The hon. Gentleman asserted that his function was the physical reconstruction of damaged areas. Will he make it clear that that includes planning?

Mr. Hicks

Yes.

Mr. Lawson (Chester-le-Street)

The House very much appreciates the thorough review which the Parliamentary Secretary has given it, particularly the detailed explanation of the functions of his Department, and it appreciates that the business of the Minister, of himself and of the Department is to deal with immediate things. But, as he himself appreciated before he closed his remarks, what the Department does to-day and during the war will to a great extent affect what happens after the war. I gather that the functions of the Department cover practically the whole range of building, some of it to be done directly on behalf of Departments, but even private buildings to be under the control of the Ministry of Works. But there is one outstanding exception to that arrangement, and that is that the Defence Departments, as far as specialised work is concerned, are outside the control of the Ministry of Works. I know that there has to be some discussion between the Ministry of Works and the Defence Departments as to what are specialised works. One quite understands that, if the War Office, for instance, is building fortifications, generally speaking that would be specialised work, for which they have specialised knowledge. Then there are the Air Ministry and stores for the Navy. But I suggest that even these Defence Departments ought not to be allowed to go where they like, building where they like, even with their specialised work, unless there has been very close collaboration and all the social implications of their action have been taken into consideration. I realised this at once when the Lord Privy Seal made his statement, for the simple reason that the Defence Departments have been the biggest sinners in the lack of planning and in placing works where they ought not to be. Those of us who have been in the Special Areas for years and have looked at this thing have seen it more pointedly than a good many other people. We saw it, for instance, before the agricultural element began to feel the weight of it. We had an instance in White Waltham, where the Air Ministry proposed to build a shadow factory in an area of the best agricultural land in the country. They were going to do it without any regard to the fact that there were no houses in that area, no schools, and practically no services.

Mr. McGhee (Penistone)

It is still going on.

Mr. Lawson

I agree, but I am pointing the moral by this particular case. There was to be a population at this place of about 20,000, school buildings and all kinds of services would have had to be provided, and it was only because the agricultural elements in the House joined with the representatives of the industrial areas in the North that we were able to stop that outrage upon the social life of the country. It has been going on on a wide scale, and it is going on still. That is why I say that the Ministry of Works ought not to accept, merely because the Defence Services are doing a great work which we all appreciate, the mandate laid down by these Departments that they are specialised works and must be placed in certain parts of the country. What the Ministry of Supply, the Ministry of Works and the Defence Departments decide in this matter to some extent decides the trend of the population in the future. Communities grow up and have to be looked after, and I say that this is not merely a matter of building immediately but a matter of deciding what is to be the future shape of this country.

I want to make another point, which I think is important. It looks as though the contracting side of the Ministry's work is getting into a few hands and into the hands of monopolists. It also looks as though those monopolists are financiers. I would ask the Ministry to have a proper look at that matter. There is a good deal of ill-feeling and, I think, righteous indignation among highly experienced contractors about the fact that financial companies can be formed and, by using the names of certain contracting companies, get tenders and great orders. In the long run the financiers have to go to the actual men who are capable of doing the work and ask for their material, plant and equipment. One case is that of the Bernard Sunley Company. They were in financial difficulties before the war, and financiers took them over. They had an aerodrome to build, but they had not sufficient equipment. They tried to use the powers at their disposal to get lorries and excavators from certain people who, when they knew the work was in the national interest, were willing to lend the equipment, but then they found who the company were, and it was a horse of another colour. Then there is Earth Movers, Limited, which has now become Bowmakers.

I want to warn the Ministry that if they are not careful, they will find themselves in the hands of monopolists who are not familiar with the contracting business. I will not say anything about material except that my hon. Friend was right when he said that it was not a question in the cement world of fat gentlemen in top hats finding great satisfaction that they were getting profits by taking no notice of the people above. As a rule some of these people are rather slim than fat, but there they are, and you cannot with regard to the immediate needs of the nation, and particularly with regard to the work that has to be done in the future, allow equipment and material to get into the hands of monopolists so that they can use them in order to get their full price and perhaps hinder development.

The right hon. Gentleman the Minister without Portfolio is to speak at the end of this Debate, because his Department is closely interwoven with the Ministry of Works. In the two years before the war there sat a great Royal Commission which was a kind of inquest upon the state of the nation socially and economically. That was the Royal Commission on the Distribution of Population, and its business was to inquire into the geographical distribution of the population, its probable direction in future, the social, economic or strategical disadvantages arising from the concentration of industries or of the industrial population in large towns. The evidence given before that Commission covered a wide range. If the war had not broken out before they reported, their findings would have been among the most important matters of discussion and controversy in this nation. As a matter of fact, their Report was a Domesday Book of social and economic conditions in this country. Every Department gave valuable evidence before the Commission.

I will not go into the findings of the Commission except to say that every member of it agreed that there ought to be a central planning authority in the country. The majority, I believe, suggested that the authority should be an advisory body, but a minority proposed that it should have executive functions. Is there anybody now who has any doubt, in the light of our experience, that we need that authority and that it should have power to act? Local authorities have been doing a good deal of planning themselves, and under the Town Planning Act a few of them have done extremely well, but a good many have simply passed resolutions without implementing them. All of them, or at least most of them, had their eye on the fact that they not only wanted to provide congenial living conditions for their people but wanted to attract industry to their areas.

I do not know whether the Commission meant to be humorous in their Report, but they pointed out that, totalling up the number of people for which the local authorities were planning, they found that they had planned for a population of no fewer than 291,000,000. Each area was looking to its immediate interests. There were differences between the Ministry of Agriculture and some of the planning authorities as to whether we should have what is called fringe building or distribute the population through the country. One thing did stand out, that whatever virtue there was in whatever town planning authorities had done, they had not had the slightest regard to the national interests as regards planning the nation as a whole, for example, saving agricultural land or directing certain industries to places where they should be located, so far as it is possible to regulate them. In some cases their work had been actually adverse to the general principle of planning. For one thing, there was no control.

I was pleased to hear my hon. Friend make a statement about the appointment of the Uthwatt Committee. The report of the Royal Commission had something to say upon the exploitation of land values, and suggested what was pretty much a development commission. Although it is finished for the moment, I hope that both Ministers will make up their minds that there is to be no more ribbon-building in this country. I have spent a great part of my life in colliery villages and, in fact, spent half my life in a colliery house. Critical things have been said about some of these colliery villages and rightly so, and bitter things have been said about them by colliers, but I tell the House that I would rather live in a colliery area than in one of these ribbon-built areas. One can at least get away from a colliery area, get into the fields, get among the woods and forget it for a short time; but who can forget the Great West Road, that monstrosity of our present-day social life? I hope there will be an end of that business once and for all. What hypocrisy there was when this House put through the ribbon-building Act. Everybody knew that the local authorities, the county councils, could not give the necessary compensation. The Act was meant to be a kind of moral gesture. I think the only effect of it was to expedite the race along the roads, and if it had not been for the war, we should hardly have been able to see a field by now.

It may be the business of the Minister without Portfolio, but I hope that some Ministry is keeping a register of the woods which are being destroyed as a result of the demand for timber. In some industrial areas, sometimes through the wisdom of the local authority, sometimes because landlords had good sense, woods have been left here and there, and they break the harshness of those areas. I spent a great part of my life in an area in which there were no woods. Then it happened that I moved into another mining area where there were fringes of woods. They broke the harsh effect of the long lines of dull houses, sometimes they hid the pit-head gear. Boys and girls and men and women could go into the woods in the Spring, see a few flowers, and watch for the blue-bells coming. I saw a wood destroyed in my immediate neighbourhood. I remember a little boy of 10 years of age watching, as beech trees were being cut down. Why they should cut down beech trees I do not know, because the wood is not hard. The boy was almost in tears, and he said: "They are destroying our woods, Mr. Lawson."

After the destruction of timber all round this country during the last war, very few of the places affected were re-planted. We reafforested on a very limited scale. I remember the Comission suggesting that we should plant 100,000 acres a year. Then came the axe, and it was decided to plant only 10,000 acres a year. In 1935 we were told by the right hon. and gallant Member for Rye (Sir G Courthope), who sits here as head of the Forestry Commission, that we had to grow the proper seed. In 1931 no fewer than 50,000,000 saplings were destroyed. I want the Departments responsible for rebuilding to take stock of the places where timber has been destroyed. In whatever way we plan to rebuild in future, let us give the youngsters some trees. Let us give them some of the amenities. Let us get away from the idea that trees are only for some gentlemen's parks; let us have regard to the deeper spiritual needs of our people.

There is the question of drainage. It was discovered that there is no central drainage system in this country, and no central water authority. I was present at a discussion some months ago, I will not give details of it, but it was of great importance to the area concerned and to the nation. Representatives of the electricity authority were asked what reserves they had in hand for use if destruction came to certain land. They said they were all right because the Central Electricity Board had promised to arrange to supply what was needed. We turned to those responsible for water supply in the area, and asked, "What is the position with regard to your reserves?" They said, "I am sorry, but there is no central water board." The reserves were there, but it was clear that centralisation in this respect would be of very great value indeed in the hour of the nation's need. There certainly needs to be consideration of a central authority for drainage.

A great deal of discussion has taken place about the aesthetic side of building in the future. No one undervalues that matter, and I sometimes think it is a very cynical comment upon modern civilisation that we have to go back to the buildings of 1,000 years ago for anything of real grace and beauty. [Interruption.] I am not ignoring the fact that attempts have recently been made to alter this position, but the results are prominent by their exceptional character.

Mr. Henry Strauss (Norwich)

Does the hon. Gentleman, with a great deal of whose speech I agree, entirely ignore the glories of the 18th century? Does he wipe out Bath?

Mr. Lawson

I was well on in my teens before I saw a beautiful building. Then I emerged, like one from a far journey, to see Durham Cathedral. I remember, too, when I had the privilege of a little education, how overwhelmed I was by the High in Oxford. The beauties of 18th century architecture are limited to certain areas. The great bulk of the working-class population of this country are utterly poverty-stricken in respect of architecture of any beauty at all. They set: endless miles of squalid streets. There are whole towns without a building of which we might be proud. I agree with those who talk about the need to build beautiful and gracious buildings, but I hope they will bear in mind that such rebuilding should not be limited to certain parts of the country, such as older areas that have hitherto had the privilege of possessing great architecture. Regard must be paid to the people who do the rough and ready work of the country and who have hitherto been starved of good architecture.

In this age of wealth, which is so great that we have had to destroy great masses of it, it is remarkable that we have produced hardly anything worth while in the realm of architecture. I hope that landlords will not be allowed to make profit out of the coming times. If you are to prevent exploitation in this respect, I do not see any way out of it but by frankly and simply nationalising the land. Whatever the Government do, I hope no profit-making will be allowed to take place out of the nation's need in the days to come. We have heard a lot from Germany about wanting more room, but no one wants more room than do the people of England. The report of the Royal Commission on the Distribution of Population pointed out the comparison of the population of Europe per square mile. Belgium had a population of 702 people per square mile, France 197, Germany 353, Italy 360, and Great Britain 518. I believe that the population per square mile in England alone was 766, as a matter of fact.

The right hon. Gentleman has a very difficult task in trying to shape the community of the future and spreading it out over the country. There may have to be some fringe building and also some dispersal, with due regard to the needs of agriculture. I do not want to see Britain all straight lines. I want to see the rural areas preserved, as far as possible, on the lines of those old lanes in England, Scot-land and Wales. The personality of a country is as important as the personality of its people. We need playgrounds, preserved areas of mountain and fell, in order that the industrial population may find recuperation.

I do not wish to take up too much time, but here is the economic side of the matter. I do not envy the right Hon. Gentleman nor the Government their jobs, but I would like to point out that after the last war this country did some stupid things. Take my own industry. After bitter struggles and much suffering in the mining industry, right up to 1939, the Government of the country have been driven back stage by stage to do the very things that they were asked to do after the last war. It has been my lot recently to go very closely into the history of this matter. It is a remarkable fact that personal and capitalist interests resisted not only what they have had to accept but what they asked for as the result of their own doings. I do not see any way of avoiding the situation in which the nation owns—let it be in what form it likes—the land and the great industries and takes some very strong control over finance. This is the first of our Debates, and I think it is a tribute to the House and to the country that when we are fighting for our lives we should try to look into the future and make our contribution towards deciding what things are to going to be.

To-day we live in a very exalted frame of mind. We are not a people who wear our hearts upon our sleeves, but I think that if the hearts of the people in this country—rich and poor, in cottage and palace—could be read, there would be found there a sense of faith and duty, and a capacity for sacrifice almost unparalleled in the world's history. But some of us in some areas in the years since the last war have gone through woe and bitterness. We have seen neighbours, workmates, friends and old schoolmates go to pieces before our eyes. We have felt neglected and bitter at times. There is all the danger in this war of the development of more Special Areas. The experience which we have had during the last 20 years ought to be of service to us in teaching us to avoid the sufferings and bitterness of those years. I sometimes think that it is a marvellous thing that in those very areas, somehow or other, by a veritable miracle, the sense' of faith and loyalty to the nation and a belief in things that matter have survived. If we can maintain our present mood and prosecute peace in the same spirit of adventure and determination as we are prosecuting this war, there is no problem over which we cannot triumph, and we can give the world in the future as we are giving it today a story of achievement which will be worthy of these days of our testing. If we have the same courage, vision and capacity for sacrifice in the days to come as we have now, I think that we can give the world a lesson and something to wonder at for centuries to come.

Sir Percy Harris (Bethnal Green, South-West)

I would like to congratulate my hon. Friend, whom I have now known for a good many years, on his most interesting survey of the activities of his Department. If he would allow me to say so, his is a case of poacher turned gamekeeper. I remember on one occasion going with him in critical attitude as an independent Member to see certain Ministers and to press their Departments into greater activity. Now he has the opportunity to carry out the work himself. No one is more qualified. During his half-century's experience in the building industry he has always taken a wide view of the industry, and has stood up not only for the operatives but the architects and engineers. The Noble Lord who presides over his Department is lucky to have a practical man with a wide knowledge to represent him in this House of Commons.

I was interested in many of the details he told us of the activities of his Department. I was particularly pleased by his reference to the shock salvage workers who are to go down to the destroyed areas and help the local authorities. He has many difficult tasks which want tact and wise handling, particularly the difficult task of deciding on priorities. I am satisfied that as an old politician and an old trade union leader he will show impartiality and wisdom in discharging that part of his work. I would like to see his Department even more glorified, and to see the new Ministry of Works and Buildings working for all the Service Departments. In doing contract work, the Admiralty, the War Office, the Air Ministry and the Ministry of Supply, instead of starting their own sections and engaging emergency staffs, would be much wiser to employ the Ministry of Works and Buildings to carry out all their building work. The old Office of Works—if I may be allowed to call it by its former name—has accumulated knowledge and experience; it has competent experts, and I believe that many of the scandals connected with some of the building work which has been improvised under the most difficult circumstances would have been' avoided if it had been allowed to carry out the work. I have myself seen excellent work done by the Ministry for the Admiralty in the design and construction of camps, and this shows that it would be wiser to make this the building Department for all Services except under exceptional conditions. I am speaking now as a member of the Select Committee which has issued voluminous reports on all kinds of contract work. My hon. Friend, in his excellent speech, made some reference to the big contractors who are carrying out some of the jobs, but if we had one Department coordinating the whole of the building effort, I believe that not only would these scandals be prevented, but there would be greater efficiency, and competition for labour and material would be avoided. Further, there would be more planning in the location of camps and in the creation of new factories.

I know that a great number of hon. Members are anxious to speak, and I believe that almost every Member present is capable of making a contribution if he has the opportunity, and so for a few moments I wish to concentrate on the very difficult problem of reconstruction which we shall have to face when those happy days come—I am afraid we shall have to wait some time for them—when peace is declared. We can learn from the experience of the last post-war years. I was a Member of this House during the last war, and directly afterwards I was a member of a great local authority. We had great expectations. We were going to make this a land fit for heroes, and those were not merely empty words; we really believed it. But what disappointments. My hon. Friend painted a very lurid picture of some of the tragedies of ribbon development and so on. I remember the tremendous difficulties we had. There was a terriffic housing shortage. For four years during the last war building had stopped, and from the ordinary wastage, and various other causes, there was a house famine. The whole country was determined to build a new and pleasant land, but when we began to get to work we found a shortage of everything—of skilled labour and of material, as my right hon. Friend will remember, because he was then very active in the building industry. We could not get bricklayers, joiners or plasterers; in the same way, there was a shortage of bricks and tiles. We even had to import tiles from abroad. There was a shortage of light castings and inevitably of timber as well.

All these things will recur, unless very great foresight is shown when we begin reconstruction after this war. The prices of houses soared up, and you can still see to-day working-class houses which cost £1,250 or £1,300 each, and not too well built at that. We tried all sorts of substitutes; we tried building timber houses, concrete houses, steel houses—all kinds of fantastic houses—but when it came down to bedrock we found that on the whole, except in certain areas like the Cotswolds, where stone is available, no real, comfortable substitute for British brick houses could be found.

I am glad the hon. Gentleman is in his present position, because he is no idle dreamer, but a realist of practical experience. I hope he will work out his plans now for the supply of material and the necessary skilled labour. Perhaps in some ways he is more fortunate, because to-day more building is going on, and there is not likely to be the same diversion of skilled labour to other industries during this war as there was before. But undoubtedly connected with the problem is the question of local government and the purchase of land. We in London had big ideas. I remember that we bought some 3,000 acres, now entirely built over, at that delectable spot called Becontree. We had large views, and we wanted to create there a new town with all the amenities of local government and variety of development, but we found ourselves up against a brick wall. We were not allowed to have a local authority; we had to divide responsibility for all our services between three local authorities—Ilford, Barking and Dagenham. We had all sorts of difficulties which held up our development, difficulties of water supply, drainage and education. We had vision and understanding of the problem, and if Parliament had authorised the setting-up of a brand new local authority for the area, we should have had proper provision for industries and factories on garden-city lines. As it was, when the first few houses were built, there were the homes, but there was nothing for the people living in them to do. There was no employment, and people had to pay very high fares to go into the City of London to get work. In many cases they were unable to get employment at all. It was only an accident that Ford brought his works down to that particular area, thus providing the necessary employment. It was almost a miracle when that happened, and if it had not, we might have had Becontree as a distressed area.

I want to plead with my hon. Friend to learn from experience and to try to avoid some of the mistakes made after the last war. The problem after this war will be considerably greater and perhaps more difficult, because, in addition to the stop-page of house building, we have colossal air-raid damage done by the enemy. I do not think we can yet visualise all that destruction. Whole streets have been destroyed, and in addition to providing the normal number of additional houses, we shall have to rehouse the people whose homes have been razed to the ground. A solution may be found for all this appalling suffering caused by the "Blitz," for it may compel us to make bolder plans for reconstruction. Also, it has been a revelation, to many people who have visited these areas, of the conditions under which people live. We have talked a lot ever since the last war about slum clearance. Nothing has so much emphasised the necessity for reconstruction of a large part of the towns as the visits which the Prime Minister and other Ministers have paid to these desolated areas after air raids. It is a serious thing to say, but we have almost felt in connection with those areas that it was a blessing in disguise that buildings that were not worth preserving should have been demolished, and that Hitler had done a useful piece of work in destroying such buildings.

Mr. Hannah (Bilston)

Do you include Coventry Cathedral?

Sir P. Harris

No—I assume that the hon. Gentleman has some intelligence—I was referring to buildings that were not worth preserving. Coventry Cathedral was worth preserving. I am not defending the brutal acts of the arch-enemy of mankind, Herr Hitler; but I was making the point that some of that destruction was useful if it brought home to the country—as I hope it does to the hon. Gentleman—the necessity for rebuilding on bold lines. The hon. Gentleman who spoke before me showed great wisdom and understanding of the need for town planning. A tremendous opportunity was missed in the seventeenth century, after the Great Fire. Wren saw the need for bold planning, but the City fathers and private interests made it impossible for him to carry out his schemes. You will have those vested interests at work again. Let us not under-estimate the difficulties. It is not always a matter of selfishness or of desire for personal gain. It may surprise hon. Members to know that people are attached to their own boroughs, and even to their own streets, When I have come forward with schemes to reconstruct my own constituency, people have said, "Why pull down my house? I have lived in it all my life; my father lived there before me, and my grandfather. Why pull down our streets? "It is not going to be easy, with the best will in the world, and even with the best system of land taxation, to make people see why their streets should be swept away, and nice, well-planned streets put in their place. Then there is the question of finance. I am glad that the Minister has had the vision to appoint this committee, under a very capable judge. I hope that their terms of reference will not be narrow, and that it will include such matters as rating.

If you are to have replanning, there must be no limit to the size and scope of your conception. It must not be limited by either borough or county boundaries. That applies particularly to London. We have to consider not merely the housing problem, but the industrial question. I was glad that my hon. Friend referred to the Royal Commission on the Location of Industry. There is a danger of their report being pigeon-holed. I hope that the Ministry will keep that most inspiring volume constantly before them. Housing must be considered not as an isolated question, but as part of the industrial and social life of the country, and linked up with the question of transport. It is as much a part of industry now as are the wages paid. In Greater London a large number of people have always worked in and lived out, but in recent years we have seen the reverse, with a great number working out and living in. Transport makes a tremendous addition to the cost of living, and then there is the question of traffic congestion and delay. Workers have to strap-hang every morning on their way to work, and, after an exhausting day, they have to strap-hang again going home at night. I sometimes marvel at the patience of the people.

In any new conception of town planning, we have to consider all these problems—where the industry ought to be, and how the people engaged in it may go to and from their employment. If we were starting to envisage a new land we might have new conceptions of our industrial and economic life. However, we can improve our conditions. We can endeavour to reduce the congestion in the centre. In my view the only way to do that is to reduce the number of people per acre. I hope that my hon. Friend will not be persuaded by the arguments of some architects in favour of skyscraper building-up instead of spreading-out. That is one of the dangers we have to be very careful about. I am a land taxer myself, but we want to be careful to avoid putting up these 60 or 70-storey buildings, which will create congestion around them.

Mr. Stokes (Ipswich)

Land taxation would have exactly the reverse effect.

Sir P. Harris

I hope that is so. But I hope that we shall not be too much attracted by American standards and American ideals.

Mr. Stokes

The method of taxation in New York is to impose a tax on the improvement, as well as on the land; and that is why they have skyscrapers in the centre.

Sir P. Harris

I hope that the Committee will allow my hon. Friend to come before them, and to discuss those points. I have, for a great number of years, been in favour of the satellite town and the garden suburb. I should like to see my borough, with which I have been associated for many years, have a colony 30 miles out, with a new social life. Just as Greek cities had their colonies in ancient days, so, under the aegis of the hon. Gentleman's Department, there should be a town-planning department, arranging for the creation of these garden suburbs. We have towns like Port Sunlight and Letchworth, which, on the whole, we can say after 30 years, have justified their existence. But if we are to do these things it will be no light task. We must have not only experts, but bold and wise leadership. The hon. Gentleman very rightly inferred that the test of statesmanship is to pick other people's brains. He has plenty of experts ready to give their advice, but there must be one directing genius at the head. There must be a supreme town-planning authority, with adequate powers.

I hesitate to recommend the creation of another Government Department. We have too many Departments and too many Ministers, and sometimes, if you have a multiplicity of counsel, it leads to confusion. I would be content for the new building Department to become the town-planning authority. It is not a town-planning authority now; the Minister of Health is really the authority. But whoever it is, let it be one authority. Let there be a Minister with adequate powers to override local authorities and to take a national view of this problem, so that when peace comes we can really make this attempt a success instead of a failure as was the case after the last war, and then, with the interesting combination of a distinguished engineer and a practical builder, we should be able to show some very fine results after the war is over.

Mr. Hutchinson (Ilford)

That part of the speech of the Parliamentary Secretary to which I think the House probably listened with the greatest interest was the final passage, in which he gave us some indication of the steps which his Department is taking to deal with the problems of reconstruction which are likely to arise after the war. Although, as my hon. Friend very rightly said, a wise cook does not bring the dish out of the oven before it is cooked, still I think the House would wish that my hon. Friend's oven should be that type of oven which has a little window in it, so that we can peep through from time to time and see how the cooking is going on.

I listened to the excellent account which my hon. Friend gave to the House of all the things that he is doing, of the committees that are being set up, the consultative and the advisory panels of experts who have been brought in from all sorts of places to express their views, but I could not help feeling that there is a danger that my hon. Friend's Department will suffer the same fate that has overcome similar Departments in the past, and, in the end, lose itself in a complete morass of committees and experts. It is a real danger—one has seen it happen in the past—and I cannot help feeling that it is a danger against which my hon. Friend must be very careful to safeguard himself. Indeed, he stands, at the very outset of his task, in the difficulty that there is at present, as I understand the position—the House will forgive me as I have been a little out of touch with these matters recently—a great danger that the functions of his Ministry may become confused with those of the right hon. Gentleman the Minister without Portfolio. When one comes to explore his tasks one finds that the Minister of Health is also concerned, and the more one looks into it the more one carries away the impression that, in all the mass of overlapping which looks like taking place, there is a very great danger that the main function of my hon. Friend's Department is going to be lost.

The Parliamentary Secretary rightly said that this was not a time when energies which ought to be devoted to the prosecution of the war should be devoted to the consideration of problems which will arise when the war is over. Up to a point, we shall all agree with that; but only up to a point, because my hon. Friend has a very good opportunity now of considering, without the need for immediate action, these problems of reconstruction which the country will have to face when the war is over. I would remind him that it is a very great advantage to have an opportunity of considering these matters free from the necessity for immediate action which has so often intervened and promoted ill-considered and hasty action in matters of this nature in the past. He can sit back in comparative comfort and consider at his leisure many of these problems, which, in past time, have had to be considered under the pressure of urgent necessity.

Let me say a word about the question of land speculation. In all these questions of town planning, of building, of reconstruction and matters of that sort, questions of land speculation and the activities of the undesirable type of speculator loom very large. I am very glad that my hon. Friend's Department has set up a committee with a very learned and experienced judge as chairman to consider what steps we ought to take about this important question. Nevertheless, at the back of my mind, I cannot help thinking that the result of this committee will be that some scheme may be formulated for intercepting the profits of the speculator and diverting them into better channels; that this House will set it up, full of confidence that it will provide a solution to the difficulty of the speculator; but after all is said and done, only a very small mouse will emerge from a very large mountain. I think the House sometimes forgets, in discussing these matters, that this country has been town-planned, and in recent years very elaborately town-planned, and we have a considerable volume of experience of the working of these town-planning schemes.

Mr. Wedgwood (Newcastle-under-Lyme)

How many of them have been made compulsory and are authorised at the present time?

Mr. Hutchinson

Certainly, they are compulsory schemes.

Mr. Wedgwood

They are not compulsory in any way.

Mr. Hutchinson

Oh, yes; in many cases schemes have been approved.

Mr. Wedgwood

Name one.

Mr. Hutchinson

The County of London.

Mr. Wedgwood

There is no compulsion.

Mr. Silkin

The hon. Gentleman has referred to approved schemes, but very few final schemes have been passed.

Mr. Hutchinson

Certainly the approved schemes are effective; my hon. Friend knows that very well.

Mr. Silkin

I know that approved schemes are not effective.

Mr. Wedgwood

That is the whole difficulty.

Mr. Hutchinson

My right hon. Friend knows that the development of the County of London is controlled by the draft schemes, and it has been for some years. What I was about to say was that my experience of the working of these schemes has been to a very large extent that, if the provisions of the scheme, or of the draft scheme, are made effective, that is to say, if they are made effective by the local authority insisting upon them, then to a very large extent the speculator is eliminated. The local authority says in its draft scheme, "We will allow you to develop a certain area in a certain way." That excludes the speculator, who desires to develop it in another way. What the speculator is always concerned to do is to persuade the local authority to relax its town-planning requirements, and his speculation is successful in so far as he is successful in persuading the local authority to do that. If he cannot persuade the local authority, then very often he goes out of business. I myself have seen it done many times in the County of London. The difficulty in London was to get the local authority to have the courage of its convictions about its draft scheme, and insist upon its provisions. I suggest, therefore, that when my hon. Friend comes 'to consider this question, he should attach the importance which it deserves to effective town-planning restrictions upon the development of land. If that is done, it will go very much further to eliminate the activities of the speculator than any ad hoc scheme that we are likely to formulate.

Let me say a word or two about what seems to me to be the major problem which really lies at the root of these questions of reconstruction. That is the problem of the distribution of population. 1 was glad to hear my right hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bethnal Green (Sir P. Harris) dealing with that question in a very practical way. What has been happening in recent years has been that the centre of industrial and commercial direction has gradually moved away from the provincial cities, where it was once located, to a central position in London, with the result that a great population has spread itself in the outer suburbs of London until to-day London has reached dimensions which some of us thought alinose unmanageable in the days before the war. That is the major problem of reconstruction which we have to face. The conditions which existed in the outer parts of London were that there were progressive increases in the rates, due partly to the improvement and development which were going on in the suburbs and partly to the progressive concentration of population on the outer edges. The increases in travelling expenses to which the right hon. Baronet referred were contributing to a progressively increasing cost of living for those classes who are dependent upon the daily journey into London for their livelihood. One question which my hon. Friend's Department has to consider is whether this process should be allowed to continue after the war or whether some measures should be taken to check it and return in some form, at least, to the system which existed 20 to 25years ago, when the direction of major industries was not concentrated in London but was dispersed throughout the great urban centres of the provinces.

Another matter to which the right hon. Baronet referred was the question of the future form and area of local authorities. There again, this is a matter which really lies outside the scope of my hon. Friend's Department. But it is a matter which is most intimately linked up with what he has to do, and I notice that the Minister himself, in his speech in another place recently, drew attention to this point. He said that we would have to consider whether the functions of local authorities ought not to be exercised over a. wider area than at present. Before the war it was extremely difficult to obtain any indication from the Departments concerned with this matter as to what the future policy was to be with regard to the development of local Government areas. There are some towns which are growing up, with populations of 200,000 or 250,000, which are not county boroughs, and other towns, a quarter or a fifth of that size, which have been county boroughs for over half-a-century. Before the war nobody could find out what the future policy was to be. Now it is necessary that there should be some outline of this policy before we can undertake effectively proper consideration of the major questions of reconstruction. It is essential that we should know whether we are to expect local government areas to be on a wider and more populous basis than they used to be or whether there will be a redistribution of their functions so that certain functions will be exercised over broader areas, and certain functions over a more restricted area.

Before I sit down I should like to say a few words about the form of the new buildings which we hope to see rising to replace those which have been destroyed. I would remind my hon. Friend that the successes of British planning and architecture in the past have not been accomplished by consultative committees or advisory bodies, or even by special panels of experts. Invariably they have been associated with one name; there were Sir Christopher Wren and Nash, and, perhaps, Decimus Burton. It has always been the genius of one man which has produced the result. However distinguished the members of these committees may be, somebody must take the decision about the form which the new areas to which we look forward are to take. I think my hon. Friend the Member for Chester-le-Street (Mr. Lawson) paid scant justice to modern building when he said that good architecture had not so far penetrated to the working classes of this country. Yesterday I had occasion to ride long distances in some of the Northern and Midland counties, and again and again in the course of my journey the housing estates which have been developed by the local authorities stood out for the merits of their building and planning in contrast to those estates which have been developed by private speculators. That is something which is most noticeable throughout the country. I hope that full justice will be done to the local authorities, which in many cases have produced buildings the design and planning of which are admirable.

Another matter to which I wish to refer in this connection concerns the reconstruction of London. I want to remind the Parliamentary Secretary that one good building does not make a good city or a good street, or even a good terrace. When one comes to plan or replan urban areas, it is essential that they should be re-planned over fairly wide areas and that there should be somebody whose duty it is to ensure that there is some uniformity of style and material within that area. The policy of piecemeal construction that went on before the war was not a policy which will give us a city worthy of being the centre of a great Empire. Some of us who were very much concerned about the reconstruction of London in the days before the war feel very strongly that grave mistakes were made: some of them, I am afraid, being attributable to the failure of the town-planning authorities to stand up to the merits of their schemes. I am sure the House looks forward to the time when those mistakes will be corrected and we shall see London grow from its present misfortunes into a city worthy to be the capital city of this great Empire.

Sir Jonah Walker-Smith (Barrow-in-Furness)

I will not say that I was entirely disappointed by the statement of policy made by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Works and Buildings—a statement that we had awaited with interest—but I must confess I was disappointed that it was not delivered in that cheerful and breezy manner which we have become accustomed to associate with the speeches of the hon. Gentleman. His statement left me unsatisfied. I thought he adhered too slavishly to the ministerial brief with which he had been furnished, because he had to reflect the policy of the Ministry. He was most interesting whenever, and to the extent that, he departed from that brief.

References have been made by the hon. Gentleman and by other hon. Members to certain statements, made by the Minister in another place. I have read those statements, and frankly, I was disappointed with them. They dealt with many matters, but not with those matters which I consider to be of the utmost im- portance to the Ministry of Works and Buildings during the immediate period of the war and the post-war activities of the Ministry. The Minister seemed to be a little obsessed with other matters which were somewhat extraneous to, or at any rate secondary to, the specific duties of the Ministry. He was concerned with the matter to which the hon. Member for Ilford (Mr. Hutchinson) referred, the re-organisation of local government; he was concerned with such matters as the place of agriculture in national planning, the location of industry, the nationalisation and utilisation of land—all of them matters of importance, all of them debatable, and some of them highly controversial, but not, it seems to me, matters which should firstly concern the Ministry of Works and Buildings. They seem to me to be far remote from the work which should naturally fall to such a Ministry. The Parliamentary Secretary has told us of certain activities of the Ministry, the appointment of committees, the appointment of controllers, the appointment of officials of all kinds and descriptions. I am sure those facts were given to impress us, and I have no doubt that they have impressed us, but whether favourably or not is a matter for the consideration of each one of us. All these functions of priorities, licensing and controlling tend to restrict output and slow down the wheels of production. I believe that policy to be fundamentally wrong. Instead of encouraging and fostering means of restricting output, the reverse policy should be adopted, and everything possible should be done to increase and improve output, thereby saving the man-power of the country.

I do not propose to comment upon those matters which I do not think primarily concern the Ministry of Works and Buildings. I will comment only upon two phases of the Ministry's work which I think are eminently and primarily the duty of the Ministry. I refer to the manner in which they will deal with Government requirements for building for national purposes during the period of the war, and the manner in which they will prepare for the immediate post-war problems that we shall have to face. I think that all the other matters which I have mentioned more properly fall to be dealt with by the Minister without Portfolio, who will perhaps wind up this Debate.

He has been charged with the duty of considering national replanning as a whole, and I have no doubt that in doing so he will allocate to the various Departments certain duties which accord with their proper and appropriate functions— to the Board of Trade questions concerning production and export trade, to the Ministry of Health matters concerning town-planning and the direction and supervision of local government activities, to the Ministry of Transport questions concerning transport, roads, and so on; and to the Ministry of Works and Buildings things concerning works and buildings. It is to those matters that I am anxious the Ministry should devote their attention and cut themselves clear from those extraneous matters which are not their primary duties and responsibilities.

Dealing with the two points to which I want to refer, I presume that the Parliamentary Secretary has read some of the Reports of the Select Committee on National Expenditure, particularly the 18th Report of the series which the Select Committee have issued. That report is something which greatly concerns the Ministry of Works and Buildings. It is a very disturbing report, for it indicates that there has been indifference, incompetence, extravagance, and it may be something worse. I have no doubt that in the fullness of time—I understand not just now—there will be a searching inquiry into the matters that have been raised by the Select Committee. I have no doubt that, having considered all that the Select Committee have reported, the Parliamentary Secretary will consider that certain changes are necessary. I have no doubt that certain changes are necessary, but I am hopeful that the changes will be practical and for the purpose of improving and avoiding all those conditions to which the Select Committee have adversely referred.

I know that the Minister is in no way responsible for Press comments or for what are termed in the Press "intelligen