3.47 p.m.

Mr. Duncan Sandys (Streatham)

On the occasion of his first Debate as Minister of Works, I should like to express my best wishes to the right hon. Gentleman opposite. We sincerely hope that, with the vigour and practical experience which we know he possesses, he will be able to infuse a sense of urgency and reality into the handling of the building problem by the Government. The importance of today's Debate is greatly heightened by the fact that we have now in our hands the recent Reports of the Working Party on Building set up by the Minister of Works, and of the Anglo-American Productivity Team set up on the initative of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. There has also been published this morning a new Report on the Costs of House-building. I hope that we may have a separate occasion on which to Debate that last and most recent Report.

These objective technical reports confirm in the plainest fashion the grave criticisms which have been made in Debate after Debate from these benches. In one paragraph after another, the Working Party tell of the confusion, exasperation and loss of output which have resulted from the manner in which the Government have misapplied their powers over the building industry. It is, in fact, a grave indictment of the Government's whole administration in this vital sphere. The Working Party's Report is dated 11th January. It is a pity that the Government were not able to publish it before the last General Election, but we can comfort ourselves by the thought that it will be all the more fresh for the next, and, after his week-end at Dorking, the right hon. Gentleman will perhaps be able to tell us when that is going to be.

The broad verdict of the Working Party's Report is that the building industry is running at a level of efficiency which is 20 to 25 per cent. below the pre-war standard, and that this sorry state of affairs is attributable to factors which are to a very great extent within the Government's control. Since building and civil engineering amount to nearly 60 per cent. of the gross fixed investment of the country, this loss of efficiency is very serious indeed. Apart from the direct effect upon the rate of house building, it adds, of course, to the cost of production throughout the whole range of the building industry and is a contributory factor in the general rise in the cost of living.

From a recent remark made at Question Time by the Minister of Health, it would seem that the Government would like to hide behind the building industry and to put upon it the blame for anything that is not going well. I say straightaway to the right hon. Gentleman that it will be no good his trying to pass the buck. The industry must do all in its power to raise efficiency and output, and I am glad to know that the Minister of Works has already asked those concerned to consider what action they can take, but we cannot get away from the fact that the building and civil engineering industry today come under the very closest Government control. The Government lay down the building programme for the whole country. The Government and their officials decide what may be built, when it may be built, who may build it and with what it may be built. At every stage, the Government have a finger in the pie. If the conditions are such that the industry is prevented from producing the output of which it is capable, I say that the Government cannot escape the main responsibility.

If, after five years of peace, the building industry has not yet got back into its old stride, it is in large measure due to the fundamental changes in the building programme which have necessitated frequent and disruptive alterations in the whole planning of the nation's building. The Opposition have constantly stressed the importance of maintaining a stable overall building programme so as to give the industry the assurance of continuous work ahead, and the Report of the Working Party makes precisely the same point. This is what it says in paragraph 60: A programme of future building work, if it can be depended upon, is of the greatest value both to the building industry proper and to the manufacturers of building materials. Unfortunately the building industry, more perhaps than any other, has in the past suffered on account of recurrent failure to implement announced programmes. The Report goes on to say: … we greatly hope, therefore, that in the interests of efficiency it will be possible to avoid further abrupt and violent changes in the programme. It is quite incredible how much chopping and changing there has been. Immediately after the war, as we can remember, the Government launched out on a programme of building which was obviously beyond the capacity of the industry. Far too many projects were started and far too few were completed. Rather belatedly, the Government made some hectic attempts to adjust their plans, and the Working Party remarks that these efforts were unsuccessful and only led to still further disequilibrium in the industry.

A little later, the building programme underwent another violent change, when, in December, 1947, the Government issued that deplorable White Paper called Capital Investment in 1948. This announced, with little or no previous warning, that owing to shortages of building materials, building work of all kinds was to be severely restricted and that the labour force was to be cut. This plan, like many others, proved to be quite unworkable in practice, and after a few months it became a dead letter. In fact, £130 million worth more building work was done in 1948 than was done in 1947. That is an example of Government planning.

Mr. Mikardo (Reading, South)

The Portal houses set a fine example.

Mr. Sandys

The harm done by this White Paper was considerable. The severe and sudden cuts in the industry undermined the confidence of both employers and operatives, and the effects lasted for a long time afterwards. The policy of the 1948 White Paper was very properly reversed in the Economic Survey for 1949. This provided once more for the expansion of the building programme, but devaluation came along a few months later and the policy had to be reversed once again. This time, the building programme was reduced by £70 million, including a £35 million cut in housing.

These cuts were confirmed in the Economic Survey for 1950 issued by the Chancellor of the Exchequer last March, in which he announced that houses would be built at the rate of 185,000 a year. Only three weeks later, in his Budget speech, he told us that all this had been changed again. The Government, he said, had now decided to fix the house building programme upon what he described as "a more stabilised basis," whatever that may mean, and he reverted again to the previous programme of 200,000 houses a year for the next three years. Having seen the Chancellor change his programme without explanation in three weeks, how can the industry place the slightest reliance upon his plans for the next three years?

The complete state of insecurity and uncertainty created by these constant reversals of policy has made the smooth running of the building industry and its material-producing industries quite impossible. As the Working Party say in their Report: If building is to be looked on as a 'tap' which can be turned on and off for economic reasons, then efficiency cannot be expected. As in the factory, so on a building site, the aim must be to secure a smooth flow, without hold-ups or dislocation. Both the Report of the Working Party and the Report of the Anglo-American Productivity Team stressed the importance of a high degree of pre-planning, but that is only possible if the builder can rely upon the materials needed being available in sufficient quantities and in good time.

The Working Party consider that the factor which, perhaps more than any other, has lowered the productive efficiency of the building industry has been the constant shortage of building materials. The recurrent shortages of bricks in the last few years could, with a little forethought on the part of the Government, have been avoided. There need have been no brick famine in 1946 if the Government had not, by an extraordinary oversight, forgotten to demobilise the brickmakers until several months after the end of the war. [Interruption.] It is perfectly true, but hon. Members opposite do not like to be reminded of it. If there was again a shortage of bricks in 1949, it was due to the cutting of the building programme in 1948. Manufacturers, naturally, reduced their capacity and their labour force. It has taken two years to build up again the labour force of the brick works to the strength at which it was before the cuts. One cannot expand a large industry with the same ease that one can change a paper plan. If only the Government will now give the industry an assurance of a stable and continuing programme, they will get all the bricks they need.

As frequent Questions on the Order Paper show, there are at present in many districts shortages of cement which are slowing down house building and building of all kinds. These shortages are due to the fact that the estimate of requirements for the last few months turned out to be too low, but that is certainly not the fault of the industry. The Minister of Health laughs, but it is not the fault of the industry. The Government which plans the overall building programme of the country tells the cement makers the amount of cement required for home consumption. During the last four months of this year, the industry actually supplied the home market with 140,000 tons of cement more than the target set by the Government. I have no doubt that the Government will blame the warm weather for their miscalculation; when in difficulty the Government usually blame the weather. These temporary or local shortages of cement, damaging as they are, will no doubt right themselves before long.

What is much more serious is the outlook for timber. Before the war, with a building force very much the same as it is today, our stocks of softwood at this time of the year rarely fell below 700,000 standards. It appears that at present our stocks amount to no more than 170,000 standards, lower than they have ever been in our history before, and, possibly they are even below that figure. The position is, in fact, becoming precarious. We have already reached the point where the timber trade is finding it almost impossible to supply builders with the timber they require for current contracts, including important local authority housing schemes. To keep some of these jobs going, the Timber Control has had to release timber from the Government's own small emergency reserve which at this rate will very soon be exhausted.

As the Minister knows, the importers of timber have recently warned the Government that in their opinion, if things go on as they are now, there will be a complete dislocation of our timber supplies in the course of the next few weeks. In view of the anxiety which exists, I would ask the right hon. Gentleman to tell us precisely what is the state of our present stocks of timber and whether he is satisfied that the full requirements of the national building programme will be met during the next three months. Apart from the Government's reluctance to spend dollars upon Canadian timber, our present difficulties are largely due to the breakdown in the negotiations with Sweden. These have been hopelessly mishandled by the Government's bulk buying organisation.

Last November, the Swedish timber industry informed us that it was ready to sell to Britain up to 250,000 standards of softwood. Despite the warnings that other large buyers were in the market, the Government delayed sending any mission to Sweden until the end of February. When they got to Stockholm, they found, as they had been warned, that large purchases had already been made by Germany and by other countries, and that these purchases had been made at prices about 12 per cent. above the November level. The mission decided not to buy any timber at all at these prices and came back empty-handed. Last month the mission was obliged to go back to Stockholm to try again. They found that, meanwhile, further large quantities of timber had been bought by other countries, and they only managed to obtain a small lot of some 30,000 standards.

Under the Anglo-Swedish Trade Agreement we could have had 250,000 standards this year, but owing to the extreme slowness and inept haggling of the Timber Control's buyers it now seems that even if we are prepared to buy at the highest price, the most we can hope to get from Sweden this year is about 80,000 to 100,000 standards. Of that—and this is perhaps the most serious part of it—the greater part will be in sizes which are unsuitable for housing since the more useful sizes have already been sold.

While all this has been going on, the ample supplies of timber which could have been obtained a few months earlier from Canada have also, in large measure, been sold to the United States, so that, even if we were now willing to spend the dollars, it is not by any means certain that we should be able to get all the timber we need. That, I submit to the Committee, is a measure of the failure and futility of the Government's bulk buying methods.

On the subject of bulk buying, the Working Party's Report could hardly have been less enthusiastic. It points out all the difficulties and drawbacks of this system without advancing any single argument in its favour. Amongst other things the report says: The expenses of storage and additional transport might well exceed any saving which could be made in the purchase price quite apart from the difficulties of getting goods to the site at the right time. The report concludes with the damning remark: When the materials concerned are in short supply, bulk buying tends to accentuate the shortage. In view of the conclusions of this report and of the Government's own experience of failure, does not the Minister consider that the time has come to hand back the business of buying and importing timber to experienced traders who can operate with greater speed and flexibility than this cumbersome Government machine?

So far, I have referred mainly to building in general, but it is, of course, house building which gives us the greatest cause for concern. All through the election we asserted that many more houses could be built, and we said that the cut in the housing programme introduced last autumn was entirely unnecessary. We repeated our complaints in the Debate on the Address in March. The only answer we got from the Minister of Health was: The amount of the national resources that we have given to housing is what we consider in the circumstances that we can afford."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 13th March, 1950; Vol. 472, c. 864.] He argued that if house building was to be increased, some part of the national investment programme would have to be cut, and he asked in a jeering fashion whether the Opposition intended to cut schools or factories, or power stations or old people's homes. He added that the Opposition lacked "the intellectual and moral discipline" to say where the cuts should fall—[HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] It is all very well for hon. Members to cheer.

Today, our positions are reversed. The housing cut of which we complained has been restored in the interval. It is we who ask the right hon. Gentleman to tell us whether this increase in the house building programme has been made at the expense of some other part of the national investment programme. Will he tell us whether he intends to cut schools or factories or old people's homes? When he replies will he show that, at any rate, he has "the intellectual and moral discipline" to explain how it is that we can now afford some 20,000 more houses than we could a few weeks ago? I hope he will answer that point.

In Debate after Debate speakers from this side of the House have urged the Government to make much fuller use of private enterprise house building methods which, in the past, though hon. Members opposite do not like to admit it, proved fast and economical. It is significant that the Anglo-American Productivity Team make precisely the same recommendation. In paragraph 65 they say, in regard to housing by private enterprise that: … the results achieved in the United States … confirm pre-war experience in Britain that the highly competitive nature of the market for such houses results in high productivity and continually lower costs.

Mr. MacColl (Widnes)

The right hon. Gentleman does not seem to observe that each chapter begins with a paragraph numbered I and therefore it is difficult to follow which paragraph he means.

Mr. Sandys

I am referring to page 65, paragraph 11. The Report goes on to make its recommendations to the authorities in Britain. This is what it says: The responsible authorities are urged to take all possible steps … to ease or remove the existing onerous restrictions on private enterprise housebuilding, for sale and rental. That is the considered opinion of a team of experienced and practical men, which includes operatives and employers in equal numbers. I realise, of course, that this recommendation must be exceedingly unpalatable to the Minister of Health. He, perhaps more than any of his colleagues, has nailed his colours to the mast on this issue; but let that not deter him. The issues at stake are the happiness and health of countless families in this country and I ask the right hon. Gentleman for their sake, if for no other reason, not to be too proud to allow private enterprise to come to his aid.

In the Debate in March the right hon. Gentleman taunted the Opposition for not specifying what proportion of the houses should be built by private enterprise.

The Minister of Health (Mr. Aneurin Bevan)

No.

Mr. Sandys

Yes.

Mr. Bevan

I am sure the right hon. Gentleman does not want to misquote me. If he will look back over that speech, he will see that, over and over again, I said that practically all the houses were being built by private enterprise. What is at issue between us is how many should be built for sale and how many for rent.

Mr. Sandys

What I said was that the right hon. Gentleman has taunted us for not giving our view of what the ratio should be for private enterprise.

Mr. Bevan

No, may I be permitted? It is rather important to be clear on this matter, because it seems to me the trouble is that hon. Members opposite continue to believe the headlines of their own newspapers. The issue between us all the time is how the resources of private enterprise should be shared as between the building of houses for renting, by local authorities in the main, and for sale to private citizens for their own occupation. That has been the issue all the time and not whether it should be private enterprise or public enterprise.

Mr. Sandys

I think the right hon. Gentleman is trying to draw a red herring. He gave the answer himself. He said: Oh, I am giving the answer—one in 10."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 13th March, 1950; Vol. 472. c. 865.] for houses to be built by private enterprise. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] That is the proportion to be built by private enterprise under licence.

Mr. Bevan

Under licence, yes. It is exceedingly important to understand this. The term "private enterprise "is being used all the time tendentiously. I have always used the phrase," Housing to be for sale or housing for rent." Private enterprise builds both categories. The right hon. Gentleman came near to me in the last sentence in which he said, houses under licence for sale.

Mr. Sandys

We are getting back to the same point. These are houses which are being built by private enterprise. I really do not know what the right hon. Gentleman is complaining about. The right hon. Gentleman said that one in 10 should be allowed to be built by private enterprise under licence. The great majority are built for sale. That is not the argument. What I was saying was that the proportion which the right hon. Gentleman laid down in that Debate was that one out of every 10 should be built or might be built under licence by private enterprise. The right hon. Gentleman went on to say that even so, he considered that to be unduly generous for private enterprise. He referred to the case of Birmingham.

Mr. Porter (Leeds, Central) rose——

Mr. Sandys

I think we have exhausted the matter now. A few weeks later, to everyone's surprise, the right hon. Gentleman came back to the House and told us he had scrapped the one in 10 ratio and had gone back to the earlier proportion of one in five.

Mr. Bevan

No.

Mr. Sandys

Of course he did, in his statement the other day to the House. This is the fifth time that this ratio has been changed, and we cannot help gradu- ally coming to the conclusion that the fixing of the ratio has more to do with the right hon. Gentleman's state of digestion than with any statistical estimate of needs. Experience has shown that it is quite impossible to fix for the whole country a ratio which has any meaning at all. The Minister in his announcement the other day—and we are glad of it—said that he would allow more flexibility in the application of this new ratio.

Mr. Mikardo

You were just complaining about flexibility.

Mr. Sandys

Surely the sensible thing would be to do away with the ratio altogether.

Hon. Members

Oh.

Mr. Bevan rose——

Mr. Sandys

Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will allow me to explain what I mean. In some places—and the right hon. Gentleman will agree with me—very little private enterprise house building is needed. In other parts of the country the ratio could, with advantage, be very much higher. I suggest to the right hon. Gentleman that local authorities should be left free to propose how the building resources in their area should be allocated as between council work and private enterprise and that the Minister should normally accept their recommendation.

Mr. Bevan

I should like to know whether this time the statement of the Opposition policy is firm, because it has been changed five times in the last four years.

Mr. Sandys

I like that, coming from the right hon. Gentleman! We are prepared to have our standards of firmness judged in comparison with the standards of the right hon. Gentleman.

Finally, I should like to speak of the new house-building target. We are naturally gratified to see that, in response to the pressure of this House—for that was the reason—the Government have restored the cut in housing needlessly introduced by them last autumn. But that, of course, only puts us back to where we were before. According to the Chancellor's latest announcement, the rate of house building is to be frozen at the hopelessly inadequate level of 200,000 houses a year for the next three years.

It should be remembered that houses do not last for ever and that each year large numbers become obsolete and have to be condemned. The Minister of Health himself, in a most readable book, entitled, "Why not trust the Tories?" which I commend to the Committee, estimated that before the war obsolescent houses required replacement at the rate of 200,000 a year. As a result of the stoppage of house building during the war and the lack of adequate maintenance, the rate of deterioration has greatly increased, as I am sure he will agree. It will be seen, therefore, that in setting a housing target of 200,000 houses a year for three years the Government are, in fact, according to the right hon. Gentleman's own estimate, stabilising house building at a level which may not even be sufficient to keep pace with the rate of deterioration.

The Government are, in fact, budgeting for a housing deficit. This new three-year plan is nothing else but a public confession not only of failure but of despair. It means that the Government have abandoned hope of making any improvement in the housing situation for at least three years. We on this side of the Committee refuse absolutely to accept such a position. The need for homes exists as never before; all are agreed that it is the most urgent of our domestic problems. What, then, is keeping the house building target down to this pathetic level of 200,000?

The Minister of Health gave us the explanation, which I have already quoted— … that the amount of the national resources that we have given to housing is what we consider in the circumstances that we can afford."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 13th March, 1950; Vol. 472, c. 864.] What he says in effect is that it is all a question of priorities. If the Government were to give higher priority to housing we should get more houses. The Government say that they have given to housing as much priority as they think it deserves and that if there are not enough houses then the people must lump it. That is, in effect, what the right hon. Gentleman has said.

Mr. Mikardo

What has that to do with the Working Party Report?

Mr. Sandys

The Working Party Report has a good deal to do with housing and the Government failures which are brought out in practically every paragraph of the Working Party Report are the reasons why we are not getting the houses.

Is this situation really necessary? The labour is available and our industries are capable of producing all the materials needed, with the exception of timber; and it seems that rather than spend a little more foreign currency on timber the Government prefer to let the building industry go on running at low pressure. I submit that to build up a large labour force and then to starve it of materials is one of the silliest forms of economy.

In the Debate on the Address the Minister of Health, whilst admitting that timber was the immediate bottleneck, argued that even if we had more timber we should still find ourselves up against labour difficulties in the housing field. Those were his words. But the right hon. Gentleman seems to overlook the fact that labour requirements have to be measured not just in numbers but in output. It is impossible to exaggerate the damaging psychological effect which shortages of materials have upon labour output, and the reverse is equally true.

If adequate supplies of materials were made available, the whole morale and productivity of the industry would undoubtedly improve. Employers would be able, as the Report urges, to plan their work in much greater detail and to eliminate wastage of manpower which now causes delays and uncertainties. When the operatives see sufficient materials on the site they will be more willing to exert themselves to earn the incentive bonuses. At present many of them hesitate to do so for fear of working themselves out of a job.

We say: Let the Government provide the money to buy the timber needed. Let them lay down a long-term building programme and give the industry, for the first time, the confidence which they need to stick to it. Let them mobilise the energies of private enterprise as well as of the local authorities and they will soon find that, with the same labour force, they will be able to achieve a large increase in the rate of house building. It is no good the Government telling us that houses cannot be built. It is a question of how they go about it. The Government's policy stands condemned by their own technical inquiries as well as by the common verdict of the people. Unless they rapidly and radically alter their methods the homeless families throughout the land will hold them responsible for their misfortunes.

4.29 p.m.

The Minister of Works (Mr. Stokes)

After what I think was 13 years' constructive work below the Gangway I find myself in a strange position today, more especially because it is such a very long time ago since I made a speech in this Chamber; and I almost feel like claiming the indulgence of hon. Gentlemen as a maiden speaker—at least, at this Box. I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Streatham (Mr. Sandys) for his kindly words of welcome. It is just possible I may have something not so kind to say about him in return a little later on; but that is as may be.

I should like to start by paying some tribute to my immediate predecessor. The Department over which I have the honour to preside is not a politically spectacular one, and a great deal of hard work goes on behind the scenes that no Member of this Committee can have any knowledge of who has not been connected with it. I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will agree. It is on account of the hard work which my predecessor did behind the scenes that I have found it possible to take over with the least amount of inconvenience.

I am afraid I cannot satisfy the right hon. Gentleman regarding his inquiry as to when the General Election will take place. It happens that I have not the slightest idea. In fact, I am surprised that he asked me. When he complains about the control which the Government exercise over the industry as a whole, I want to say—because I propose to deal with his comments, for the most part, in the course of my own speech, rather than pile them all up at the beginning—that it is not true that the Government control the industry at every point. What the Government do—and very sensibly in the circumstances, as I shall endeavour to show as I go on—is to lay down the overall programme. A great deal is left to the industry to decide, subject, of course, to the total availability of material and labour. It is quite wrong to give the impression to the public that we control at every point.

Before I tackle the main subject of the Debate, as it is so long since my Department was discussed in this Chamber, I should like to say a few words about the work of the Department. It really is a fascinating job. Few people who have not been connected with it realise its scope. We travel from parks and royal palaces to embassies overseas, picture galleries and all one likes looking at in the form of ancient monuments. What people do not realise sufficiently is the tremendous scope of the Department in the buildings it looks after and the amount of new construction on which we are engaged, especially in atomic energy research; on top of which of course there was that major operation which took four years to do, and that was the temporary housing programme.

Hon. Gentlemen have no doubt looked at the figures of personnel in the Department. Whereas before the war we looked after something like 8,000 buildings, today we look after 23,000, and added to that is this immense building programme which takes an immense number of technicians. The gratifying feature is this—and for this I pay tribute to my predecessor—that though there were 21,000 people on the staff in 1947, that number is down now to 17,000, a reduction of 17 per cent., which is something very considerable. I want to assure the Committee that we are looking out always for economy. We realise the need for it. More particularly—I speak of course as an engineer—we realise the essentiality of making 100 per cent. use of all the technicians we employ so that the maximum use of their energies may be made, and freed, as time goes on, to go into industry.

The only other point about the work of the Department on which I should like to touch before coming to the main point of the Debate is in regard to the parks. I have had a lot of letters from various Members who are interested in allotments in the parks. We are taking the view that it is quite time that the parks were cleaned up—that the parks were meant for the enjoyment of the people, that there is no necessity to keep any of them at all for the purpose of allotments, and that as soon as they are cleared out of the way and the parks returned to their proper object the better for all of us.

I know what the Committee is waiting for me to say, and that is what are my reflections both on the Working Party Report and on the Anglo-American Productivity Report, and what I hope to try to do in guiding and helping—because I do not control—this very complex industry. The main object is obviously to get output up and costs down. Any proposal that is put forward that has the slightest chance of helping to do that will be most closely examined by me personally. But, of course, we are going to achieve both objects—increased output and decreased costs—only by collaboration from all sides of the industry, and to this end I want to use the Working Party Report and the Anglo-American Report constructively, and not in any destructive way.

An immense amount of harm can be done if they are used destructively, and, therefore, I do not propose today to indulge in a lot of recriminations about what has happened in the past—except possibly to say this in answer to the right hon. Gentleman who opened the Debate. The criticism and the main complaint that is made is about overloading in 1945 and 1946 and thereabouts. When peace came it was essential to get as many houses built as possible; it was essential to load up to the hilt; but in this veritable haven of private enterprise nobody had the slightest idea of what the hilt was, and the Minister of Health was, therefore, in a dilemma. I am tempted to ask what the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Streatham himself did. He preceded me in office. I am tempted to ask what he and his colleague the then Minister of Health did in order to lay forward plans and lay forward figures, so that a close and accurate estimate could have been available in order to get the biggest production out of the industry as soon as peace broke out.

Mr. Sandys

The right hon. Gentleman asks what we did. We made very careful, thorough, detailed arrangements to put the present Government—we did not know it would be this Government, of course—or whatever Government it was that came in at the end of the war, in a position to start in conditions in which they could get into their stride. We provided for a programme of houses which was described by right hon. Gentlemen opposite when they were sitting on these benches as "chicken feed," and which they themselves have entirely failed to fulfil or even to approach.

Mr. Stokes

Of course, I cannot answer for my right hon. Friend's Department. My right hon. Friend is going to speak later tonight. All I can say is that there is no shadow of a sign in my Department that any preparation of this kind was made at all. It was mainly covered by withdrawals as some of my hon. Friends have indicated.

However, I do say, having studied the Working Party's Report, and studied it with very great care indeed—it was put in my hands the moment I was appointed Minister to the Department—that I think that the Working Party are wrong in thinking there was overloading. I think the trouble was quite different. There was material scarcity; a lot of brickfields had closed down; it was impossible for my right hon. Friend to wait for stocks to be built up before he started. One does not know what one can do until one tries. [Laughter.] I know, but my own experience in industry teaches me that it is better to overload, rather than to underload, if one wants to get the maximum return.

There was a complete lack of coordination in the industry. I do not say this offensively. I blame the party opposite. An immense amount of the industry seems to belong to that party in some curious way. There are 125,000 different companies. in this industry; 52,000 of them are one-man companies employing no operatives at all except on occasion; and the industry has a most complex structure. It does not lend itself very easily to co-ordination which makes it all the more important to try to co-ordinate it. [Laughter.] Well, that is so. Added to which, they were not accustomed to the idea of pre-planning, which everybody now stresses so much. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] It is refreshing to hear that the anti-planners opposite have now become such ardent pro-planners. Then there was the great disinclination of labour which had shifted away from the industry to return to their jobs. When the war ended the house building industry was down by 50 per cent. compared with pre-war, and the situation was even worse in the materials industry. In addition to that, there was a great deal of obsolete plant and machinery still in use.

In the event—and right hon. Gentlemen opposite ought to realise it—by 1947, despite all the muddle that was imposed upon us on account of their incompetence, we had got a really balanced programme. [Laughter.] That really is so, and anybody who takes the trouble to study the figures instead of reading the pious nonsense in some of the newspapers can see for themselves that the load has been steady for the last three years. The number employed in the building industry has been round about one million; it has varied up and down by 15,000 to 20,000 during the last three years.

Lieut.-Colonel Elliot (Glasgow, Kelvingrove)

Have the houses gone up when the numbers came down?

Mr. Stokes

Apparently all these private enterprise gentlemen are very busy paying people in full for standing about doing nothing. That is the only conclusion I can draw—which of course I do not accept.

Lieut.-Colonel Elliot

Answer the Committee's Report.

Mr. Stokes

I am going to deal with that in a minute.

Lieut.-Colonel Elliot

Hear, hear.

Mr. Stokes

There is plenty of time. I am surprised that the Opposition did not put the right hon. and gallant Gentleman up to speak.

It is very interesting that the Working Party Report plumps absolutely wholeheartedly for planning, and I hope the party opposite will take note of that. The main criticism of the party opposite has been that we have built too few houses, not too many. They are now apparently complaining that we are over-loading the industry, which is a completely anomalous situation. I am very glad that they realise what the real position is. The situation would not be nearly so difficult for us if efforts had been made before the end of the war to get matters a bit straighter than they proved to be.

Anyway, I welcome the Debate. [Laughter.] Yes, and I shall get better at it as I go on. Quite seriously, I hope hon. Members will realise the difficulty I am in. [Laughter.] It is not, of course, what they think it is. My difficulty is, as they all know, that I started deliberations with the National Consultative Council a fortnight or ten days ago; I am meeting them again this week, and the success of what I can do depends entirely on the good will of those with whom I am seeking to co-operate, because there is no compulsion about it at all. It is therefore very difficult for me to overstress, or to discuss in too much detail, many of the points in the Reports. In the main, taking the two Reports together, action is called for under three heads: there is action to be taken mainly by the Government—[HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] That is all right. Then there is a great deal of action to be taken jointly by the Government, industry and the professions; then there is some very serious action to be taken by the industry and the professions jointly.

Let me say at the outset by way of generalisation on costs and productivity, that housing and housing costs are not my responsibility. They are the responsibility of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Health, and he will deal with the housing situation when he winds up the Debate. On the general side, the Report very naturally starts with this criticism on productivity and costs. I know, of course, that costs have gone up. As a businessman of some years standing I know that there is no such thing in the world as perfection; there are lots of ways of getting improvements, and we propose to use these Reports to that end.

However, I do issue this word of warning. Having spent most of my life in engineering production, I am extremely shy of these percentages of measurement of productivity when there is nothing but a monetary yardstick to use as a basis of measurement. I do not believe they really mean anything, and one can argue any case one likes from those figures. It reminds me very much of a remark made by, I believe, Lord Fisher to the Leader of the Opposition who had asked him for some figures: "All right, I will get them for you, but you must first tell me what you want me to prove."

I assure the Committee that I am not complacent about it. I am determined to do whatever I possibly can to improve production and to get costs down, but, as both Reports say, success depends on better management and on better collaboration all round. Make no mistake about it, the men are not to blame for low output if there is not good management nor proper collaboration there to help them. The men on the job can, of course, influence results, but they can only influence results in so far as management, organisation and the rest of it serve them. Here, let me pay a tribute to the trade union leaders in the industry, Sir Luke Fawcett and Mr. Coppock, for what I consider a quite remarkable achievement. In this widely varied industry of over one million men there have been 25 years with no serious industrial unrest; they have proved themselves most adaptable under all sorts of circumstances, without any trouble at all—in temporary housing, for example—and there has been no organised resistance, as there has sometimes been elsewhere, to the introduction of mechanisation, and so on. I am naturally looking forward to collaborating very closely with them in their efforts.

Mr. Derek Walker-Smith (Hertford)

Would the right hon. Gentleman include in his commendation the employers' organisations in the building industry, who have always co-operated so well in these matters?

Mr. Stokes

Certainly. The hon. Gentleman has saved me the trouble of saying what I was about to say if only he had waited. That was precisely the next thing I intended to say, but as he has said it for me I will save the time of the Committee by not repeating it.

The second point of complaint and general observation in the Report concerns the delays and uncertainties caused by licensing and controls. First, it is essential to have some order of priority so long as shortages continue. It is hopeless not to. Nobody but a lunatic would embark upon a huge building programme of the kind we are trying to have, both industrially and in housing, without taking control of the shortages and seeing that first jobs come first. That has got to be done. It is equally essential to keep some form of control, so long as it is considered necessary, in the interests of avoiding that frightful thing known by the term "inflation," and to limit the over-all investment programme.

Certain things have already been done since the Report came out. Simplifications have been made by my right hon. Friend the Minister of Town and Country Planning with regard to certain planning requirements. Today, my right hon. Friend the Minister of Supply announced the abolition of the steel control. We are still studying and will continue to study, simplification of procedure and the removal of small annoyances. I am quite sure that what the Minister of Town and Country Planning has done will be of great benefit there. All the same, it is ridiculous to think that control is going to disappear altogether just because this has happened. We have to keep it on as long as necessary, place first things first and limit ourselves in our over-all investment programme. Despite what the Working Party Report says, it is a fact that there has been a pretty steady programme since the war. As I said when the right hon. Gentleman scoffed at me just now, the labour force has not varied much in the last three years.

I do not want to bore the Committee by going through a whole lot of detail on all the recommendations. Perhaps I can say with regard to the recommendations as to the standard form of contract, the greater use of British standard specifications, the revision of by-laws which is taking place now, building research—which was the result of procedure before I took office—and concentration on technical advice—all these matters are actually being examined and dealt with at the present time.

I want to confine my attention to some of the more important things which seem to me to require action, and action soon, and then to deal with the points raised about the building material supplies, which the right hon. Gentleman asked me to do in his opening speech. With regard to the action required by the members of the industry and the professions, there are a large number of things such as the application of a costing system, the use of mechanical aids, etc., all of which are in hand or being studied.

The things to which I particularly want to refer are pre-planning and manage- ment—and may I say that I was appalled when I became acquainted, even remotely, with the industry by the absence of planning. It seems to me that to get good conditions on the site there must be three vital prerequisites: The building owner must make up his mind and not change it; there must be as everyone will agree materials in plentiful supply, and, above all, the management must be planning conscious. Even in the mechanical trades one finds great difficulty in changing what I call the Victorian mind, or the Edwardian mind, into a more proper attitude of really getting down to the job and planning in detail.

Unless plans are made before the work starts—and I agree with what the American Report says about this—the building operatives on the site have not a chance of turning out a good job so far as costs are concerned. Then there are the incentive schemes. The right hon. Gentleman referred to these, but they are not employed to anything like the extent they should be, in my opinion—[HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear"]—I know; but it is mostly the employers who will not do it. Oh, yes, make no mistake about it. I see their difficulty, and I admit that at once. I see that there is no uniform sort of unit; it is a widely variegated industry and what suits one particular set of circumstances does not suit another. We have to study, not each job but a very wide variety of groups and grouping, in order to arrive at a properly adapted system, and we shall not get costs down and better pay packets unless at the same time as maintaining a high standard of work there are incentives to encourage people. Therefore action depends on better planning and better understanding by the men of what is wanted.

It is everyone's experience in industry that when the men do understand what is wanted they naturally give better results. The time has gone by when people can be used as slaves, and men must be made to understand what the requirements are. One of my hon. Friends sent me an example the other day of an incentive scheme used in the London County Council, where they got the staggering result of a reduction of £63 a house in labour costs, which is a great deal higher than anything mentioned in either of the Reports under con- sideration, or in the Report that came out this morning.

My next point, which follows directly on the other, concerns the joint production committees. If we are to get a proper co-operation there must be a better use made of the joint production committees on the job. I do not believe in having a number of people sitting in armchairs, talking about jobs which they probably do not understand. We want to get them down on the spot wherever that can be done. There are a lot of important jobs which can be done, I think, with the operatives forming part of the committee.

May I say that we read a lot of nonsense about the dangers of full employment. We read that the situation in America is better because there are 4½ million unemployed. I say that the cure for what might be regarded as mentally backward people is not the scourge of unemployment with all its beastliness but education. The way to make them understand is by getting alongside and explaining to them what it is we want. The best way of achieving that is to get this joint production committee system going as widely as possible throughout the industry.

I do not want to say much about the costing system. I think that it applies much more to the big jobs than the small jobs, and economically it is probably not practical even to go into the kind of costing system which the Working Party Report contemplate where the jobs are small. My Ministry have already published booklets on this subject and have given lectures which are well attended, and that policy will be carried on.

With regard to the use of mechanical aids, I think that there is a great deal still to be done. A far greater use of plant is always being encouraged by my Ministry, but there are economic difficulties. The small builder very often cannot afford the capital cost of plant. I am looking into the whole of the question of how that can be remedied, so that the biggest possible use of these mechanical aids may be made by the operatives throughout the industry, whatever the size of the job.

I want to remind the Committee that the whole matter has been before the National Consultative Council. They have been asked by me to make confidential reports on what they recommend and another meeting will take place this week. There will be a continuous series of meetings until we get solutions to the problems, which, of course, we shall publish from time to time as decisions are taken.

With regard to material supplies, I want first to make this quite clear; I think that the right hon. Gentleman really ought to know this himself already. I control neither the production nor the distribution of these things. If the right hon. Gentleman wants me to, I suppose that we could introduce a suitable Bill——

Mr. Sandys

When the right hon. Gentleman talks about building materials, obviously the one with which we are most concerned is timber, which is controlled by the Government, although I know that it is not controlled by his Department, and that is why in this Debate we put down Estimates on different Departments, including the Board of Trade, in order that we might discuss this matter as a whole.

Mr. Stokes

I apologise. I did not mean timber. I meant cement, bricks and all the rest. The right hon. Gentleman is perfectly right. Timber control is much more in the Government's hands. I was referring particularly to the production and distribution of cement and bricks. What we do is to give the best possible advice we can to the industry as to what the essential requirements will be. The Committee should know this: We make estimates one year in advance. We naturally cannot make them for the current year, and the estimates for 1948–49 worked out very correctly indeed.

It is perfectly true that on the brick side, at the end of 1949 there was a bit of a run-down of stocks owing to sudden demands. It was not very much, only some 100 million bricks or so. But, by and large, the estimates have worked out very well. It is impossible to say in broad terms, on the four months or so of this year, what precisely is happening in 1950. I should not like to say. The right hon. Gentleman laughingly suggested I might say that the mild winter and spring had something to do with it. It certainly had. At the time when normally our cement and stock reserves should have been building up, nothing of the kind was happening. I know that in industry it is customary to shut down on concrete from the middle of January to the middle of March, but in this case the demand went right through the year. I was not in office at the time, which, if I remember correctly, was during the General Election.

Secondly, there were the defence needs, details of which I cannot go into, which drew very considerably on the material supplies. Some people ask why we do not stop exports. It sounds easy enough to do it, but when one looks at the problem involved, one begins to get into a mess. Exports cannot be stopped at short notice, and any such step would only become effective in six or eight weeks' time. What we have done is to purchase an amount of cement from overseas, which is beginning to arrive now, preventing the necessity, we hope, of interfering with our exports, mainly to dollar markets and to sterling countries which would otherwise have to buy from dollar markets. Therefore, we hope to have the best of both worlds.

On the figures, there should not be a shortage at all. I know that there is no need to tell people who are short that they are not short. All I can do is to see what I can do with the trade. I have done all I can in having talks with people in the trade, assuring them of the seriousness of the situation and telling them that the steps I have taken are right and sufficient.

Major Legge-Bourke (Isle of Ely)

The Minister has mentioned that a certain amount of cement has been used by the Service Departments. I am not asking him to tell us the nature of the work, but can he say whether the estimates of the Service Departments for the amount of cement required for building purposes were known to his Department at the beginning of the year, or whether it was a sudden demand which resulted in the shortage in East Anglia and elsewhere?

Mr. Stokes

I am afraid I do not know that one. I will find out and let the hon. and gallant Member know. I certainly became aware of it only recently.

The timber question is not my responsibility, but that of the President of the Board of Trade. It is true that stocks today are not as high as we meant them to be. There were certain difficulties in dollar purchases last autumn, which everyone will know about, and after that there were blizzards on the Pacific Coast of North America which delayed shipments. The stocks are lower than the minimum amount aimed at of 250,000 standards. My right hon. Friend has asked me to say that there is a small reserve of timber in the hands of the Timber Control from which issues can be made to prevent work on building sites being stopped. There are some 38,000 standards in reserve, from which only 1,000 standards have been drawn.

Mr. Bossom (Maidstone)

Was there not too long a delay in starting negotiations with the trade?

Mr. Stokes

That can only be a matter of opinion. The difficulty with soft currency imports is that these countries are trying to charge us too much. If we did what Members opposite would like us to do, to set the whole thing free, I do not think our imports would increase. I would point out that prices are already up some three times. At any rate, there should be no real cause for anxiety. My right hon. Friend assures me that if the licensing authorities behave with discretion, and if the merchants do not demand more than they ought to have, and if it is not spread about that there is an unusual shortage which always set up a panic and makes things worse, there is no reason why we should not get through our immediate programme in the next few months. Our stocks will build up, and are planned to build up, to a much higher level by this time next year.

Mr. Sandys

Is that all the right hon. Gentleman is going to say about timber? I did ask him a specific question. The right hon. Gentleman said that there should be no anxiety, but there is anxiety, very great anxiety. Will he tell us what is the present state of our stocks? Will he tell us precisely the number of standards, and whether he is satisfied that there is not going to be a grave shortage of timber during the next few months?

Mr. Stokes

I am perfectly satisfied. The question has been before me and my Building Materials Advisory Council long before the right hon. Gentleman referred to it in the House. From the investigation I have made, and from the assurance the President of the Board of Trade has given me today, I am quite satisfied that if people will behave quite reasonably, there will be no shortage of timber on any building site in the next two or three months, but if people behave unreasonably and make a lot of noise about shortages which do not exist, it will create shortages.

Mr. Sandys

The right hon. Gentleman says that if people behave reasonably there will be no shortages. Is he aware, to give one example, that on the L.C.C. Estate at Romford, the building contractor was not able to get timber from the ordinary sources of supply but had to go to the small emergency reserves to get it.

Mr. Stokes

I know that difficulty. The merchants do not like short-circuiting because they do not make anything out of it.

Mr. Sandys

Can the right hon. Gentleman give us the figure of our stocks?

Mr. Stokes

I do not know the total figures, and doubt whether my right hon. Friend would give them, because I do not think it is customary to give these sort of figures.

Mr. Bevan

Hear, hear.

Mr. Molson (The High Peak)

When the Minister of Health says, "Hear, hear," does that mean he agrees it is not customary to give the figures?

Mr. Bevan

At the moment when negotiations are continuing in a highly competitive world, we ought not to handicap them by giving the figures.

Mr. Molson

The right hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well that the stocks are published in the B appendix of every housing report.

Mr. Stokes

If the figures are there, then the hon. Member can look them up. I have not got them with me at the moment. I am sorry if Members opposite do not think I have adequately dealt with the situation, but, as my right hon. Friend has just said, negotiations are going on and it would be the height of stupidity to put too many cards on the table. Surely the assurance that this immediate iron reserve is available should be good enough. There are 38,000 standards available, and they have been available for the last two or three weeks, but only 1,000 standards have been drawn. If people who are short will only make it known, instead of grumbling and grousing, their requirements will be met.

Mr. J. Enoch Powell (Wolverhampton, South-West)

Will the right hon. Gentleman ask the President of the Board of Trade to look into the machinery whereby timber merchants obtain access to that reserve, because, while I understand the importance of not making releases too rapidly, there is a general feeling that the present machinery is too difficult?

Mr. Stokes

I shall certainly call the attention of my right hon. Friend to the hon. Member's remarks.

That more or less concludes what I wanted to say, and I end up where I started, by saying—[Laughter.] It is not a bad thing to do at all, especially if one starts on the right foot I started by saying that I realised the need for the utmost efficiency and economy, and that is what I am going to go for. I welcome every form of criticism that will help me to that end. I want output up and costs down with advantage to all. I am confident that this very variegated and widespread trade, with all the professions which are mixed up in it, will co-operate together both to get output up and costs down and to get that extra effort which is required from every one of us—and I mean every one of us not only in the building trade but elsewhere as well—to secure greater production. It is only by greater production that we can maintain our existing standard of living and have any reasonable chance of putting it up higher in the future.

Mr. Marples (Wallasey)

On a point of order. As timber is the most important commodity of the building materials which we need today, could we have a representative of the Board of Trade present——

The Deputy-Chairman

I do not understand how that could possibly be a point of order.

Mr. Marples

The fact is the name of the President of the Board of Trade is associated with this matter, but I cannot see a representative of the Board of Trade present.

The Deputy-Chairman

That is not a point of order.

5.12 p.m.

Major H. Johnson (Brighton, Kemptown)

In speaking here for the first time I crave the customary indulgence of the Committee, which I shall most certainly need. I welcome the report of the Working Party, and I do not belittle it in any way when I say that there is nothing very new in it which was not well known to those of us like myself who are even remotely connected with the building trade. The criticism and proposals contained in that Report have been made by many of us for some years past. If by seeing the printed word, it will imprint on the minds of all of us the urgent need for carrying out the reforms and the proposals in that Report, then it will be a good thing. The simplification of the cumbersome licensing system, the simplification of controls and the amendments to bylaws which are envisaged in that Report will accelerate the building of homes which all of us in this Committee want to see.

The Minister of Health has described the National Health Service as being sacrosanct. I do not think that that is a particularly happy word. I know full well what he has in mind, namely, that the National Health Service now forms an integral part of the social services of this country. I am not at all sure, however, that a good housing policy is not a condition precedent to the National Health Service Scheme. We may be in danger of putting the cart before the horse. Is there much point in spending many millions of pounds on a National Health Service when, in spite of the skill of surgeons, physicians and nurses, the patients have to return from hospitals and convalescent homes to houses which are almost hovels, hardly fit for cattle to live in let alone any ordinary human beings?

Some Members who come from constituencies in the industrial North and the Midlands may think that we in Brighton have not got a serious housing problem. They are wrong. In Brighton we have a waiting list of over 5,000 persons, and unless anyone might think that the waiting list is due to an influx of persons wishing to live in probably what is the most desirable town in Great Britain in which to live, I should add quickly that no one can go on the waiting list unless he or she are Brightonians in the full sense of that word.

Both as a Member of this House and as, until recently, a member of the Brighton Corporation, I have interviewed scores of persons who are on the waiting list. I am not going to weary the House with details of some of their problems, but I think it is only right to say that we have in Brighton families of five living in a room 10 ft. by 10. We have families living in accommodation where there is no light, no gas, no electricity, no water and no sanitation. These persons have to go to the nearest public lavatory, and that in Great Britain in 1950. It is not in any way the fault of the Brighton Corporation or the Brighton housing committee. I am sure that the Minister of Health will agree that the Brighton Corporation and our housing committee are amongst the most go-ahead in this country. I am sure that he will also agree that in Brighton we have always used up our housing quota in very quick time and we have found it is quite inadequate for the needs of the people.

The only control we need to continue to impose is one on the size of the dwelling-house which can be built, and possibly for a short time, until the freer air of competition is got going again amongst builders, a control on the price which may be obtained on the sale of any house. It will be said that today that would not obtain the building of houses to let. That is not true. I can give to the Minister of Health the names and addresses of a number of companies who are willing and anxious to build houses to let on their own land with their own resources at no charge whatsoever to public funds. If we were to give them that opportunity they would be able to let their houses at a lower rent than the councils have to charge. How much better to allow land to be used to show a small return rather than allow it to lie idle, sterile and useless to the community.

I do not believe that the conscience of the people of this country is yet fully awake to the awfulness of this housing problem. As a new Member in a maiden speech, may I say that I bitterly and deeply regret the fact that the housing problem has in any way become a political issue. I believe that all right-minded men and women only want one thing—to see houses erected whether by private enterprise, by the municipality, by housing societies or by any other means whereby houses can be built in the quickest possible time. It should not be a political issue.

I envy the Minister of Health his job. He has it in his power and ability to do the greatest good for a large number of persons, for he can relieve the sufferings of a great mass of humanity. I ask him and the Government to deal with this problem not with partisanship, but to permit all the means of building to take part in the task. The Minister of Health is fond of quotations and even at times he likes a Biblical quotation. I do not pick any quarrel with him about that, but I wonder if I could with all humility use a quotation which I think would fit the bill. It is more recent; it is four lines from a poem by John Masefield. Here it is. And he, who gives a child a treat Makes joybells ring in Heaven's street, And he who gives a child a home Builds palaces in kingdom come.

5.20 p.m.

Mr. Baird (Wolverhampton, North-East)

It falls to my lot to congratulate the hon. and gallant Member who has just concluded his speech. He made a very able speech, and his manner was very easy. The fact that he made a speech with very few notes is an outstanding example to his own Front Bench. I should also like to congratulate him upon the constituency which he represents. Sometimes when I am going down to Wolverhampton, in the Black Country, I wish that I had a constituency by the sea, especially the hon. Gentleman's constituency where many of my constituents and myself have spent happy days. I, therefore, congratulate him and thank him.

There has been much talk in recent housing debates that if only private enterprise were allowed its head—the right hon. Member for Streatham (Mr. Sandys) made a general statement of this character today—we should get many more houses and more cheaply than we get them under the present régime. For the life of me I have not been able to detect a single argument to back up that statement. I have been studying the housing position in my division. I cannot go further than that. I am not an expert on housing but I can see what is going on around me. Only last week end I visited a private enterprise housing estate. I was called there because the tenants had all signed a petition asking me to see the condition of the road there. The estate was built in 1938. The builder had immediately gone bankrupt and the road was still unadopted. We are going to do something about it.

What struck me most was not the condition of the road but that the houses built in 1938 were already like slums. They had very few conveniences such as we expect in houses today, and which I believe are one of the major reasons for the high cost of housing. The houses I saw had no out houses such as we get in modern, post-war houses, where the husband can go and potter about and the wife can keep her pram. There were no outside lavatories or outside fittings. I believe that one of the major reasons why the private builder wants control is that he wants to lower the standard of housing.

One point was brought home forcibly to my notice when I was discussing this question of housing with some building trade leaders. I would like to illustrate it by reading a passage from one of the latest reports upon incentive schemes. It says: Considerable experience of operating incentive schemes has now been gained and, with the co-operation of both parts of the industry in all parts of the country, incentive schemes can be more generally applied and can play an important part in securing a reduction of man-hours and some reduction of costs. I find in my area that only about 25 per cent. of the builders are working incentive schemes and that the workers generally welcome such schemes. Many builders, however, are working bonus schemes, which are an entirely different matter. There is a shortage of building labour, and some builders try to attract labourers from other builders by paying a bonus. We should distinguish between these schemes. Bonus schemes put up the price of houses and incentive schemes bring the prices down. There is a lack of co-operation on the part of a large number of building employers in this matter of incentive schemes.

The main reason why I wished to take part in the Debate was because of one particular experience that we are having in my area. The argument, to which I have already referred, is that if only private enterprise were given its head we should get houses built faster and more cheaply. I have come to the conclusion that in my area the inefficiency of private builders is chiefly to blame for the high cost and slowness of building at the present time. In 1946, Wolverhampton, part of which I represent, set up, under a Labour Council, a direct labour building department. That department has been able to build houses faster and more cheaply than private enterprise. The Department was set up in 1946. In April, 1947, it got its first contract for 50 houses. It built them at a cost of £1,245. Early in 1949 it got its second contract for 58 houses. It built them at a cost of £1,170, as against the average suggested in the Girdwood Report of £1,250. It built houses at £1,170 despite increases of wages and in the prices of materials and it paid a bonus of more than £4,000 to its workers, while also employing an incentive scheme.

This department employs 400 men, of whom some 140 are employed in the construction of new houses. They are now building houses at the rate of 100 a year. The latest example of the efficiency of this department occurred in October 1949. By that time we had a Conservative-Independent majority combined, on the Wolverhampton Council, and they very reluctantly agreed to carry on the direct labour building department. because of its efficiency only, and after a struggle. In October, 1949, tenders were put out for 100 houses to be built. The lowest tender was from a private enterprise firm and the second lowest was from the direct labour department of the council. It does not always happen that the lowest tender works out cheapest in the end. As a result of a debate in the council chamber the council agreed to build 200 houses and to give 100 of them to the direct labour department and 100 to the private enterprise firm.

That happened in October, 1949. What is the position today? The direct labour building department and the private firm are building the houses on the same site and of the same type. The direct labour department has 30 houses ready for occupation and another 18 are roofed in. The remaining 50 or so are in various stages of completion. The private enterprise contractor is at present commencing to lay the foundations. This is an example of a Conservative council with a small majority benefiting from the prevision of a labour council in setting up this department. Hon. Gentlemen opposite have said time after time what would happen if private enterprise were given its head. I am now giving the Committee proof, in this one instance at least of municipal enterprise building houses much more cheaply and faster than any private enterprise firm could do in that district.