ADDRESS IN REPLY TO HER MAJESTY'S MOST GRACIOUS SPEECH

§ LORD HASTINGS

My Lords, this afternoon we resume the debate on the Motion, That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty", which was so eloquently and interestingly, although perhaps not entirely uncontroversially, moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Wootton of Abinger. After rather a long week-end of refreshing ourselves, mentally and physically, it will no doubt be expected that that high standard which was maintained during the first two days of our debate, and to which the noble Lord, Lord Champion, referred, will continue this afternoon; and, looking at the list of speakers after myself, I have no doubt that that will be the case. Nevertheless, since noble Lords speaking from the Front Bench of the Government craved a certain indulgence of the House, on the grounds of their inexperience in that position, I think I might point out that my position is not very much better inasmuch as I am by far the most junior ex-Minister to have spoken from this Front Bench so far. In fact, I am only one-half of a Front Bencher, because I have one foot on the Front and one foot on the Back Bench. I realise that the noble Earl the Leader of the House, as he has said more than once before, prefers both my feet to be on the Back Bench; nevertheless, I will do my best.

Before I start on the serious business I should like, on behalf of noble Lords on these Benches—in fact, I think on behalf of everybody in your Lordships' 221 House—to welcome the advent of the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, who is to speak very soon after me and who will, in fact, be making his maiden speech from the Government Front Bench in this House. I know that the noble Lord comes up from another place with a great reputation, and I was particularly interested to hear it whispered that he has very great experience with the technical side, if I may so put it, of Amendments, especially Amendments in opposition. He will have to deal with a great many Amendments for the Government—looking at the gracious Speech, that is no doubt the case—and I hope he will feel very much at home doing that. But, of course, if al any time he likes to help us on this side with our Amendments he will be very welcome.

Another thing I would say is that I am most delighted, in spite of what has been said in the Press and by the Prime Minister on more than one occasion, that the sheer merits of my old school have not been entirely overlooked on the Government Benches, and for that reason, too, I welcome him. May I also take this opportunity of congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Stonham, who is to wind up to-day, on his appointment? Our paths have not often crossed in debate, as we tended rather to deal with different subjects, but I wish him good luck and a safe and happy return to this side of the House.

If I may now turn to the gracious Speech, I should like to read out the sentence that referred to the problem of housing. Here it says: My Government will pursue a vigorous housing policy directed to producing more houses of better quality, and will promote the modernisation of the construction industry. It is most gratifying to find that after such a short period of office the Government have come to the obvious and inevitable conclusion that they could not do better than carry out the policy of the previous Government, for that is precisely what those words mean, and I think it is just as well to set the record straight at the beginning before turning to an examination of the methods which the Government intend to pursue.

I need not go back to as early as 1951—it has already been referred to by my noble friend Lord Dundee—when we increased the speed of building after being 222 told that we could not do it. Noble Lords will remember that only at the beginning of this year my right honourable friend the previous Minister of Housing promised that we should put up the rate of house building from 300,000 this year to something getting on for 340,000 or perhaps 350,000, that next year we should get more than that number, and that thereafter, in two years hence, aim at 400,000. It is a well-known fact that we have exceeded that promise already and that this year very nearly 370,000 houses or thereabouts are going to get built—we are to reach that figure a year ahead of time. After that we should have been aiming at 400,000 and should have been confident of fulfilling that aim in the coming year. In fact, as we come out of office there are 432,000 houses under construction. Therefore I think that the figure for housing at the end of 1965 should quite easily top 400,000. Of course, the credit, as I am sure the noble Lord will be the first to acknowledge, will be to the previous Conservative Government. But if, by any chance, that target should not be reached, then, of course, we on this side should require a full explanation of why there has been a failure to reach the figure of 400,000.

The latter part of the sentence I quoted from the gracious Speech referred to better quality. Of course, the noble Lord who is going to follow me will be well aware that that was also the policy of the previous Government, and in fact a Working Party was set up by the National Federation of Registered House Builders and staffed by the Council of House Builders and the Federation of Building Trade Employers, with representatives from the Government as well, to go into this very problem of quality. The previous Minister had given his views very clearly about it before the Working Party was set up. Its report has been published and it made the recommendation that it should, if necessary, be compulsory for all house builders to register with the Council, so that the standard would be uniform throughout the private building industry, with regular inspection and a two-year guarantee. We made it quite clear that we wished to see that happen and were quite prepared to bring in legislation to that effect. Therefore, on the ground of better quality, the pre- 223 vious Government were showing the way, and I hope that the present one will bring in such legislation. If they do we will certainly support it.

When we come to modernisation, relating to industrial systems of building, the previous Government had made giant strides in this direction. We set up a National Building Agency to co-ordinate both the private and the public side of the building industry, to make sure that they were aware of the latest developments and were industrialised. Our aim was to help them, especially the smaller firms, to co-ordinate and in general to be able to make progress in these systems. Not only that, hut we had got together many local authorities with a view to forming groups or consortia. We have spoken about this before in your Lordships' House, but I think it should be made generally known at the beginning of a new Session and a new Government. In fact, there are now already, as I have no doubt noble Lords will have discovered, 68 of the larger local authorities grouped together in ten different consortia, and those 68 represent no less than 25 per cent. of the total of local authority house-building.

In addition, there are another 400 local authorities talking about these ideas, and we hope that a good many of them, perhaps most of them, will eventually get together into these consortia, thereby enabling a great group of orders to be placed well ahead, so that modern factories can be set up on an economic basis for manufacturing standard component parts and economise, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, to speed up the whole process of the construction industry. If those other 400 local authorities came in there would be no less than 75 per cent. of the whole of the building industry, in so far as the public side, the local authority side, is concerned, in these consortia; and that is the greatest advance that could be made for encouraging industrial systems of building.

Again, building regulations are being reviewed very thoroughly. The necessary consultations were being carried out by the previous Minister of Public Building and Works and the regulations and the by-laws would have been put on a national basis. I believe they are quite near the stage when it will be possible to publish 224 them. That, again, will be a great step in the direction of economy and efficiency. So, my Lords, the previous Government took all those steps towards modernisation, and I put that on the record now. I think we can agree with my noble friend Lord Drumalbyn who, when winding up on Thursday and speaking of economic trade expansion and such matters, referred to the fact that a better inheritance could hardly have been passed on from one Government to another. I think this applies very much to the field of housing.

If I may I will now turn to the methods the Government are proposing to employ to back up this policy of ours which they intend to pursue. First, I come to the important matter of the Lands Commission. We are bound to disagree fundamentally with this approach, for two reasons. First of all, we believe that if anything can wreck the previous housing policy, which is being pursued, or the intention of the present housing policy of the Government, it will be the Lands Commission, because we do not see how after a period of time, say two years, land will as readily come forward for sale; and without land housing cannot go up. The second reason is that we disapprove fundamentally of a policy which appears to be first cousin to nationalisation of the land. We need not go into that in any great detail now, but there are three questions that I should like to put to the noble Lord, and I think he should perhaps at this stage be able to answer them.

Before the General Election the impression was, I think, that all land obtaining planning permission would automatically come under the eye of the Lands Commission and be acquired. Then, during the Election it seemed to be made plain that this would refer only to urban land. I should like clarification of whether this means only urban land on which planning permission is required or all land with planning permission. If the former, how will urban land be defined? I dare say that the noble Lord already has some idea as to what that would comprise. The second question is this. If compulsory powers are to be applied in the case of the necessity to acquire land in peri-urban areas—and this is just the sort of case in which land is required for the expansion of existing communities—will these areas be acquired compulsorily if they are still agricultural land? Land 225 which is not actually built on and which is required for building normally is agricultural land. I d) not see how the Government are going to get over that point.

Thirdly, what is the real object of this Lands Commission? Is it, as we were originally told, to cheapen houses or is it simply to acquire betterment value for the State? It seems to us that these two objectives are mutually exclusive. If a reasonable price to tempt people to sell is to be given to the owners of land, so that sales will not be held up, and if the State wishes to make a profit, that means selling to the builder at market value, and obviously he will pass that on to the client, to the person who wishes to buy the long leasehold, to whom it will not be any cheaper. If, on the other hand, the Lands Commission merely covers its overheads, then it will have to control the price at which the builder sells and also the price at which t le prospective owner sells. I do not see how the Commission can attain both these objectives. Perhaps the noble Lord will be able to clarify that point.

That brings me to the question of leasehold enfranchisement. Here we find, on the one hard, that Crown leaseholds are to be up. On the other hand, it is said clearly in the gracious Speech that private leaseholds are to be virtually abolished—or, at any rate, that people owning these leases will have the right to have them enfranchised and to own the property. How can the Government reconcile Crown leaseholds with the abolition of private leaseholds? What is the logic of that? Is the Crown leasehold a moral and righteous thing and the private leasehold an unrighteous thing? I do not quite follow, and I should like to hear the noble Lord's views on that subject.

Further, how is it possible to ignore the protection which has already been given to lessees who have leases which were originally signal for over 21 years? They are protected, except in cases where land is needed for redevelopment or for personal occupation of the owner. I suppose that the more important aspect is redevelopment. But is the redevelopment of these houses, many of them very old ones, to be considered a crime? Surely, in this modern age, we want redevelopment. I gather that this rule 226 does not apply to Crown leases. Therefore there is going to be no choice for the private owner of a long lease. That is made quite clear. The Crown intend to develop. Why should that right be denied to the private owner of land because he leases it?

Then there is a question of rents. Here we believe that reimposing rent control over a very wide area will, in fact, reduce the number of houses available for rent in future, because whenever houses become vacant they will be sold and will not go back to renting. That is what happened before the Rent Act, 1957, was passed. This system will introduce an inflexibility and immobility over the whole country. It is all right for those who have a place to rent, but what about those coming on who want a place? How will they be able to get one? What happens when younger members of a family leave home and the older people are left in the house? How are the young people ever going to be able to get a house? There will be a situation of under-occupation. It seems to us that this is not the right way to solve the problem of providing houses to rent.

Is it the intention of the Government to bring back under control all those houses decontrolled since 1957? That is what it says in the Labour Manifesto. Yet, the other day in another place, the Prime Minister did not say quite that. He said [OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, Vol. 701 (No. 4) col. 77]: But we shall not try to put the clock back to where it stood in 1957. We see this as a great opportunity for moving forward to a new, juster and more humane relationship between landlord and tenant. Perhaps the noble Lord could interpret the meaning of those words "put the clock back", because I am afraid that I am not clear about what they mean. Are only some rents to be controlled? I do not know.

That brings me to the special situation which exists in London. The previous Government recognised this, when we set up the Milner Holland Committee to inquire into the special difficulties and cases of hardship in London. We knew that there were these special cases, but it was difficult to prove exactly where. We wanted to have all the facts and we intended to act on these facts when we had them in our possession.

§ THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF LAND AND NATURAL RESOURCES (LORD MITCHISON)

My Lords, I wonder whether the noble Lord would excuse me for a moment. We welcome help from any quarter. The noble Lord said that he does not think we have the right solution to the shortage of houses to rent. What is the right solution?

§ LORD HASTINGS

My Lords, our first solution was to build more and more houses. But we do not believe that inflexible rent control is the way to make houses available for rent, or to keep available those now existing. That is really the difference.

I was speaking about the Milner Holland Committee. Is it the intention of the Government to bring forward legislation for rent control before they have the results? We said that we would act on recommendations made and, if necessary, bring in legislation for London and for other specially congested cities where similar problems exist. But I do not believe that it is right to extend rent control over the country as a whole. At the same time, we welcome the promised review of landlord and tenant relations, because that is what we intended to do after we had had the Milner Holland Report.

Finally—or nearly finally—there is the question of offices. In moving the humble Address, the noble Baroness, Lady Wootton of Abinger seemed to imply that offices had been going up at the expense of slum clearance. But the noble Lord knows of course, that only 4 per cent. of all building is attributable to offices. When we were dealing with the Offices, Shops and Railway Premises Bill eighteen months ago, the noble Lord, Lord Latham was concerned about what he called "slum offices", which exceeded in number the slum houses. I hope very much that this standstill in office building is not going to prevent the redevelopment of offices which ought to be redeveloped. There is the question of compensation and the smell of retrospective legislation. After all, the Act which in its Third Schedule gave tolerance rights for redevelopment and existing use was laid down by the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, in 1947. Now, another Labour Government is going 228 back on that Act. I do not know whether the noble Lord would like to comment on this particular attitude.

It is difficult to get a development certificate for an office, when it is not known who is going into the office. This is bound up with the larger problem of the location of population, industry and commerce. There is no doubt that the Government want to tackle this problem, but they are proposing to do so in a way which I think they may find is heading them for a fall. If they are going to try to make people go into various parts of the country, however desirable that may be theoretically, they may come up against that old problem of the individualism and obstinacy of people. I think they need to be careful of making a paper plan and then trying to make people fit into it, especially when they are trying to deal with young married people and young married workers. The young are not noticeably tolerant of interference, and the old are of course especially obstinate. It is perhaps right to say that the only really reasonable people are those of about my age—the middle-aged people! I feel that the Government may have considerable trouble in trying to make people do things they do not want to do.

The gracious Speech refers to reforms in taxation and better arrangements for local government finance. This is tucked away on the third page where one can hardly find it. However, I am wondering whether under this short sentence are hidden all these reforms in the Labour Manifesto, of 100 per cent. loans for house purchase, of low interest rates for local authority housing, and the general borrowing powers of local authorities, which, of course, were revised earlier this year under the Public Works Loans Board. These are major matters which we have no time to discuss now, but they can bring about a vast change in the whole field of local authority administration and of national finance. We shall have to keen a sharp eye open on this question. After all, the 100 per cent. loans have been available since 1959, and 80 per cent. of local authorities use them. Therefore, I do not know why such a shout was set up about this by the Labour Party during the Election, unless they are going to 229 produce the money for the local authorities and put further charges on the taxpayer in this respect. I do not know what the intention may be.

The gracious Speech refers to various measures in the fields of housing, transport and so on, which will he directed towards meeting the needs and aspirations of the time". After reading the Labour Manifesto and the gracious Speech, and after hearing and reading speeches in another place as well as in this House, I very much wonder whether this should not read, "the needs and aspirations of the Labour Party." What I should like to see is "the needs and aspirations of the people". I think, as time goes on, the Government will find that the needs and aspirations of the people are not those which they have set out in such precise teens in the gracious Speech or in their Manifesto; when the time comes these people will show that the Government have mistaken some of the needs and aspirations, and will vote accordingly.

§ LORD AMULREE

My Lords, before I pass the few comments I propose to make on the gracious Speech I should like to join the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, in giving congratulations to the noble Lord who is to reply. I wish him very good luck in his task, which I am sure he will find no problem at all.

One of the things which I read with interest and excitement in the gracious Speech was that it was the intention of the Government to modernise and develop the health and welfare services of the country. That, I thought, was some reward for me, because I have been talking about this to your Lordships on a great many occasions over quite a long period of time. I felt that at last some of what I had been saying was going to come back. However, my feelings of joy were rather shaken when I found that under the new Government there was not to be a Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health sitting in this House. I realised that perhaps my feeling of success was not so justified as I thought. What I propose to do now is to repeat, not in quite the same words, some of the things I have been saying in the past, because we do not quite know what is proposed and 230 something that I say may put some idea into the minds of those who are considering this matter.

The really important point is that we should regard the health and welfare services of the country as one service and not as two services. This applies particularly when you are dealing with old people and with the young. Here, again, I should like to emphasise what a great similarity there can be between the problems of the old and of the young. When one comes to look at the way these services function it appears rather strange, because the local authorities have health and welfare functions, and the hospitals and Regional Boards have health functions—they are not quite the same, of course—and it is difficult to come to a real dividing line between these three types of services provided by two different kinds of authority. There are a number of local authorities at the present time which have moved a step forward and combined their health and welfare committees. I believe it has been done with encouragement from the Ministry of Health, and we trust that more of this will occur. Indeed, one would like to see things go so far that medical officers of health for the local authorities become the chief welfare officers, as has occurred in some local authorities.

Another thing one finds is the split which occurs between the hospital beds provided under the Regional Hospital Boards and the beds for the infirm and the frail which have been run by separate authorities. This causes a good deal of delay, difficulty and hardship. It occurs particularly in London, where things are not suite as satisfactory as they are in some other parts of the country. The lack of continuity which one finds in the care of some of these people who move from one institution to a hospital and back again can, I regret to say, lead to quite a lot of waste of effort and time on the part of the hospital authorities, the welfare authorities, the medical staff and nursing staff, and the auxiliary staff employed in treating these people.

I should like to quote one case in point. There was a woman admitted into one of my beds some time ago. She was, from my point of view, a comparatively young woman of about 231 67 or 68. She had suffered quite a bad stroke, and it took us a long time to get her into a mobile state where she could lead a comparatively normal life. Unfortunately, because of certain difficulties with the family, it was not possible for her to go back to her home. She was transferred to one of the local authority homes, and one kept an eye on her for a short time. One then thought that she was going on well, and did no more.

About four months ago—that is, about six months after she had been there—I received a message saying that she had become what they call one of the chronic sick (that unpleasant phrase) and would I please go and take her over as she was too ill for them. I went and saw her, and I found that she had been put to bed immediately she got there and kept in bed for six months. She came back to my hospital. I do not claim any particular credit for myself, but by our working on her again—she was a very willing person—she has now come back to being a normal and mobile individual as she was before she went away ten months ago. That seems to me to be a great waste of time, trouble and effort on the part of the various authorities, and at the same time not to be very good for the patient. I wonder whether, if we are to modernise and improve the welfare services, some of the beds which are at present reserved for the frail and infirm could not be tied up more with the medical services so that that sort of thing need not occur again.

May I quote another example, which is rather more encouraging? There was a man who had been admitted to a local authority home quite a long time ago, and they approached us saying that he was terribly sick, that he was a complete cripple, suffering from bad chronic bronchitis, and could we admit him. He did not seem too bad when I saw him, and when he came into hospital one soon found that he was not a cripple at all. He was perfectly mobile, so much so that one day he put on his clothes and left, saying he was going for a walk. He went down to Sandown Park to the races and came back with £25 in his pocket. Two days later he did the same thing. He went to some other race meeting and came back with £70 in his pocket. I do not call him a person who should be regarded as 232 chronic sick and taken care of at public expense in some hospital. He has now gone back to a welfare home, where I expect he is still making money when he goes out. That is one thing to which I should like to draw Her Majesty's Government's attention.

There is another point I should like to mention briefly. Is it not time that the cumbrous structure of the Ministry of Health, Regional Hospital Boards and hospital management committees was changed into something rather more modern and developed in some better way? A great deal of time is wasted in projects moving up and coming down this great staircase. I think I am right in saying that when the National Health Service Bill was first talked about in Parliament it was said that it was not the intention that the Ministry should keep a real financial stranglehold upon the Service; but that, unfortunately, is going on now. One wonders whether that situation could not be improved. There have been various suggestions made, one by my own Party and one by the Report of the committee under the chairmanship of Sir Arthur Porritt, which suggested area health boards which would comprise the local authority, the general practitioner and the hospital service, making one service for the people in need of medical and welfare care. I admit that it would involve some change in the local authority functions, and might be rather difficult to do, but I think it is something which is well worth thinking about seriously.

There was something else mentioned in the gracious Speech which I was pleased to see. It said that steps were to be taken to increase the number of doctors in the country. We need more doctors in the country, first, because the population of the country is increasing and, secondly, because in some of the town areas there are definitely not enough doctors to go round. They have far too much work to do. Too many patients go to their surgeries, and they cannot give them the proper attention they would like to give. If the Government really persist in their intention to create more doctors, I trust they will not just train more doctors in the same medical schools. Medical schools are full to capacity, and if we are going to push more students into a school which is full it merely means that the standard of teaching will fall. What we want to see is a great many more 233 medical schools started. I cannot make a prophecy about the number we shall need, because it is difficult to find out what the increase in the shortage of doctors is going to be. We certainly want five or six more medical schools.

And we must not forget that it takes a long time for a doctor to be produced. So one cannot wait too long for the medical schools, because the supply of doctors from foreign and Commonwealth countries may not be quite as big as it was. We want to produce our own doctors to replace those excellent people who come from India and other Commonwealth or foreign countries. They come here because they can learn a great deal that they can take back to their own country. Finally, supposing that more medical schools are to be con. structed, I hope there will be some place in them for a certain number of students from Commonwealth countries, and even from foreign countries. There is a great demand for such people to come here and carry out their medical training in this country, and one would like, if possible, to meet it.

§ THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, DEPARTMENT OF LAND AND NATURAL RESOURCES (LORD MITCHISON)

My Lords, may I begin by thanking, most warmly and sincerely, both the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, and the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, for the personal remarks they were kind enough to make about me? These things are sometimes said with grace and sometimes apparently without conviction. In this case they were said with so much grace that I feel there must be some conviction. I am exceedingly thankful for that.

May I also confess to your Lordships a difficulty about which I think I must ask for some indulgence? I am not quite sure how virginal I am. I am here to answer for the Government on a variety of matters, and Lord Hastings, while kindly and courteously appreciating my difficulties as a maiden speaker, asked me a number of questions to which he required replies. I am not quite sure that the replies can be given at this stage, and that I will say in a minute. But I have a suspicion that behind the velvet glove there lay an iron hand, and that these questions were 234 designed, not only to elicit information but also to show me how misguided I was. We all know about misguided virgins, but they are a very difficult case to deal with in practice.

I should like to refer first to the points put by the noble Lord, Lord Amulree, because all I can say to him is that I listened to his speech with the greatest interest and attention, but that I think my noble friend Lord Stonham will more conveniently deal with it at the end of the debate, and I hope to the noble Lord's satisfaction.

To the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, may I say this? I much appreciate the difficulty in which your Lordships may be put by any conventional reluctance to interrupt me. I rather like being interrupted. If I had had that more in recollection at the time I feel sure that I should have refrained under some provocation from interrupting the noble Lord, Lord Hastings. But these are surely matters on which legislation will have to be introduced, and which will have to be discussed when they appear in legislative form.

The noble Lord very kindly referred to my own crude attempts at drafting, but these are apparently unnecessary in Conservative circles, since he expected a Junior Minister, at a very early stage in Parliament, to be able to deal with matters many of which would be the concern of skilled draftsmen, upon which expert advice would be needed and, I hope, consultation with public bodies and others who may be affected by them. That, I have always understood, though I have never been a Minister before, was the proper course for legislation, and I feel that to deal with it without those preliminaries would certainly trap me into all kinds of awkward statements and would not really satisfy the noble Lord, Lord Hastings—he would have shot a very small rabbit indeed.

Therefore, I should like to take up one thing he said which, I must say, surprised me. He told us, if I have the words correctly, that in the field of housing a better inheritance could hardly be imagined. I must say that I think that will surprise a great many people. I do not wish to be contentious—I am trying, so far as I can, not to be—but when I think of the people who are looking for houses in and around London, 235 and of the people who have to live under what are really disgraceful conditions, both in London and the larger cities, I can only imagine that the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, has not met many of them lately. Perhaps he would like to tell them what he told us to-day.

My Lords, I want to deal, as briefly as possible, with quite a number of subjects, and to begin with housing. I would say, with respect, that this involves the most intimate human problems, and I had hoped that the Government would have the sympathy and support of your Lordships in the attempts they propose to make to deal with the many difficulties of housing. I still hope so. I feel sure, too, that we shall be able to discuss them without undue prejudice, agreeing that neither landlords nor tenants, neither housing authorities nor developers, are all good or all bad, even if their interests inevitably sometimes conflict. I trust that we shall regard housing as a field where the main impulse will have to come from a partnership of the Government of the day and the housing authorities. But there remains ample room for the constructive help of housing associations and other voluntary bodies.

I do not think your Lordships will expect me at this stage to say much about policy or about the measures required to implement the statements in the gracious Speech. They are, I repeat, matters in this case for my right honourable friend the Minister of Housing and Local Government, and they are also matters which require detailed consideration and detailed explanation. But I should like to say a few words about the present position, with little comment on my part on what has happened or has not happened in the recent past. I cannot, however, refrain from pointing out that the target set by Conservative Governments varied from time to time. In May, 1963, it was 350,000 houses, and then, by the autumn of 1963, it was 400,000. These figures are really quite beyond anything that has actually been attained during the thirteen years of Conservative Government. The figures in those thirteen years have varied one side or another of 300,000, the highest figure being reached, oddly enough, at about the time of a previous Election in 1955.

236 One, of course, welcomes the coincidence of policies in many respects. Housing is, after all, a grave public responsibility, and it is good to know that during the last year, at any rate, of the previous Government there was a great deal of coincidence between measures which we had been advocating for some time and those which they had found it right to adopt. Quite sincerely and without any backwash, if I may put it like that, I say that one welcomes that. This is a matter in which conditions change and policies must change from time to time with them.

I should like, therefore, to turn again to what is the present position. The last Report of the Ministry of Housing and Local Government pointed out, quite rightly, that, in spite of what has been done under successive Governments, of both Parties, since the war, there persists a severe shortage of houses, especially in and around the main centres of employment. In Greater London, for instance, there are about 215,000 more households or families, whichever you like to call them, than there are dwellings. This means shared dwellings which are sometimes overcrowded and a good many families in the care of the London County Council as homeless. Most of the larger Provincial cities have substantial waiting lists. I must repeat, I can hardly call this a particularly good inheritance.

But I am afraid that that is only part of the story. For those who want to live in London and, indeed, for those who have to live there because of their occupation, accommodation is hard to find and unduly expensive. In terms of human relationships such a situation offers tempting opportunities to landlords who are more concerned with the financial aspects of what they do than with the personal and social consequences. The effect of the Rent Act, 1957, particularly the decontrol of houses on new tenancies, commonly called "creeping decontrol", has not been to increase the supply of available accommodation. In too many cases it has removed the security of tenure inherent in the original idea of control of housing. To stop unjust evictions has become an urgent necessity.

I now turn to some questions which particularly affect the activities of local authorities. Whatever estimate we may 237 make of the total number of houses required to be built in a year, I hope that we shall all agree that there must be a proper balance between houses built by public authorities and those built by private builders. In 1951 there were about eight houses built by public authorities for every one built privately. By 1963 the proportion of public authority Houses had fallen to a startling extent; there were only about five houses built by public authorities for every seven built privately. Houses built privately are not, as a rule, built to let, and I am driven to the conclusion that no proper balance has been kept between the requirements of those who, for one reason or another, can ill afford to buy, even with the help of a loan, and those who can buy and are prepared to face the uncertainty of mortgage rates. One result has been to oblige many young people to buy houses when they would have preferred to rent them, and the shortage of houses to let interferes with the mobility of labour that may well be required if we are to modernise industry.

The gracious Speech mentioned central or regional plans to promote economic development. with special reference to the needs of the under-employed areas of the country. However attractive to developers it may be to provide more accommodation around London, it is clear from the words I have just quoted that there will be at least as great a need for new housing in and around centres of industry existing or to be established in other parts of the country; and much of that need will have to be met by public authority housing in one form or another, no doubt including New Towns. In this connection there will have to be an early review of housing subsidies, which in recent years have failed to encourage a sufficient proportion of public authority housing.

Without, for the time being, going into the complicated questions of improvement grants, general reconditioning and slum clearance, I should like to point out that much remains to be done by way of plans for urban renewal. The connection with transport problems is obvious and was well illustrated by the Buchanan Report. Similarly, if new industry is to be established in parts of the country where it has not hitherto existed there must obviously be co-ordination 238 both with transport and with housing. I feel sure that your Lordships will appreciate that if industry and our economic problems are to be regarded as a national matter, the strategy of housing and transport must also be founded on national requirements. After all, if we want a man to take a job in some particular place, and perhaps to acquire a new skill for the purpose, we must provide him with a home reasonably near his work and, let us hope, with less difficulty in travelling between his home and his work than he meets under present conditions. I would admit at once that these are aspirations, but we can make them targets and do our best to move towards them.

The gracious Speech mentions the control of rents and the establishment "as rapidly as possible of a Crown Lands Commission". Your Lordships will not expect me at this stage to make more than the most general observations on either of these topics, which are of course connected. It is the possibility of getting a high price for urban accommodation, whether on sale or by means of a high rent, which had led in a few cases to the most reprehensible steps to evict sitting tenants and in many more cases to pressure on them one way and another to get out of the house they have occupied for so long. One underlying cause for this is, of course, the shortage of houses to which I have already referred.

Another cause of rising rents, whether paid to the private landlord of to a housing authority, is the high price of land, for of course a private landlord can get higher rents if the alternative is a house to be built on expensive land. As regards local authorities, the high price of land is reflected in higher rents and rates, and it affects not only housing but the buildings required for their other services, such as those in connection with education and health. No one can promise an immediate or startling reduction in the price of land, but some action in this direction is imperative. The object of the Lands Commission, which will be within the province of my right honourable friend the Minister of Land and Natural Resources, is to deal with the problem which has troubled us all since and before the Uthwatt Committee; that is, to ensure that some part of the development value of land will ensure to the community, since it is the community and 239 its actions which have brought the development value into being.

I know the interest that your Lordships take in National Parks, and I should like to add that they, too, will fall within the province of my right honourable friend the Minister of Land and Natural Resources.

There are two other matters I would mention in connection with housing. The price and the rent of houses depend, of course, not only on the cost of land but also on the cost of building, and I hope your Lordships will welcome on general social grounds, as indeed the noble Lord. Lord Hastings, did, both the reference in the gracious Speech to the modernisation of the construction industry and—here perhaps we part company—also the recent statement about offices in and round London. It has been generally realised that if London housing conditions are to be improved some check is needed on the growth of offices in the metropolis, and I can only say how glad I am that firm steps have been taken without delay; it was high time for them. The construction industry is, of course, concerned not only with housing but with other calls on it; and the number of houses built, as well as the extent to which demands for more schools and other public buildings can be met, must depend, whatever figures Governments may give from time to time, on the capacity of the industry and on its full utilisation. There is clearly, I think, a duty to review the position. We shall have to see what improvements can be made.

Lastly I turn to the field of social security. Your Lordships will recollect the passage in the gracious Speech in which we make it clear that we think that our existing schemes of social security need radical changes. We are starting a review of these schemes at once and this will be comprehensive and far-ranging. We have already indicated the broad lines on which, in our view, changes should be made. We shall give high priority to working out our plans for ensuring to people already retired and to widows an adequate minimum income received as of right. Means of improving the retirement pension scheme for those retiring in future and the possibility of introducing short-term wage-related unemployment and sickness benefits will also be considered. But these are 240 inevitably longer-term measures. Meanwhile, social justice demands that something should be done as soon as possible for the old, the sick, the widows and other members of the community suffering misfortune. Their needs cannot be expected to wait while major measures of reform are worked out, and we intend, therefore, to introduce early legislation to provide for a general increase of flat-rate benefits on the present pattern and for the necessary increases in contributions. The amounts and other details will be for my right honourable friends to announce, but I do not expect that your Lordships will have very long to wait.

My Lords, may I say personally that I hope I have not been more contentious than the occasion required. I cannot claim to have been non-contentious. I have done my best to obey that very fine piece of Jacobean English in your Lordships' Standing Orders and not to he offensive. If I have gone too far, it was no doubt through lack of experience, but I think your Lordships would forgive me a little indiscretion in that respect if I went as far as I could to give the information required, although I must repeat that most of the questions I was asked seem to me to be matters which we shall have to consider at a later stage with legislation before us.

§ LORD HASTINGS

My Lords, may I just say that I restrained an almost overwhelming impulse to interrupt the noble Lord on at least half a dozen occasions.

§ LORD MITCHISON

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, and regret that he did not do so.

§ THE LORD BISHOP OF CHICHESTER

My Lords, the noble Lord who has just spoken has already been very generously and very sincerely welcomed by Members of the two Benches opposite, and it is my own privilege in following him to speak from the rather more sparsely occupied Bishops' Bench but with no less sincerity. Indeed, I hope that the noble Lord, when he hears the reply of the Bishop, will not accuse me, any more than he did the other two speakers, either of a lack of grace or a lack of conviction. But, in welcoming and congratulating a noble Lord on his maiden speech, however much we are apt to say that we hope he will on many other occasions address us, in 241 this particular instance it is quite clear that the requirements of either his own Party or the Parties opposite will ensure he does speak on many occasions. I need only add that we shall look forward to these occasions with great anticipation in view of his past record, and the able and felicitous way in which he has spoken to us this afternoon assured us that we shall listen to him with great profit.

I should like to take up the point with which he and the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, began, a id say a little on this matter of housing, because, as has been rightly said, this a human problem. One of your Lordships twitted the Government, I think during the earlier stages of the debate on the gracious Speech, on trying to chase too many top priorities at once. But housing is a top priority; it is a bread-and-butter matter of life; and while there are many other matters which concern the lives and the amenities of people which come within the compass of this debate, none of them can take the place of a house, a place where a family can live. We might be in danger of being rather like Marie Antoinette suggesting a diet of cake to a breadless populace if we were to suppose that other things could ever take the place of or be a substitute for adequate housing in a community.

We are aware indeed—though we do not stop often enough to think of it—of what it would be to face a houseless future, of the plight of a young couple trying to make a home when they cannot get a home, or of a family which has to try to preserve family life in decency and privacy, if not in comfort, in overcrowded conditions. And, of course, we are aware of the hopeless prospects, which have been referred to, of many old people who dread the time when they may be taken away from the normal life of the community into some quarters where they feel isolated and cut off. It is fair to add that part of the sting of Smethwick, on which so much has been said, not always wisely, was a housing and not a racial problem: and although housing involves a great deal more than merely building houses, it is first of all simply on the matter of houses that we must be concerned.

The noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, referred kindly to the part played by voluntary housing associations. They fluctuate to some extent in the response 242 they obtain from the public, in the same way that public opinion fluctuates on this whole issue. Sometimes we are quiescent. Sometimes when the lid is taken up by somebody and we realise the actual conditions under which some people have to live feeling is then aroused. I believe that the present moment is a time when the public conscience is seriously exercised about the conditions of housing—at a time when there is so much prosperity in other fields. The part played by the voluntary, non-profit-making societies is a long and an honourable record; it is largely local, largely intimate and personal. I am happy to say that only recently, under the initiative of the British Council of Churches, a new housing trust has been started, hacked by the London County Council, backed not merely by individuals but by the Churches themselves, whose purpose is to stimulate the formation of local housing societies and, of course, to stimulate public opinion about it. I am sure your Lordships would all wish them well in this new venture.

However, it is not really on the voluntary side of this matter that I should like to speak, because this is only touching the fringe of the main problem. Surely, what is disquieting at the present time about the housing situation is not merely its size, but the fact that we never seem to keep pace with it. The requirement of new families is going to grow. Young people marry younger, and people live longer. This is one factor. There is a "bulge" coming up from the educational world which has been its headache over the past ten and fifteen years; it will now become a housing headache in its turn as these young people marry. And I suppose that, as conditions and standards of housing are raised elsewhere. so by contrast the quality of some of the older houses diminishes, and what believe is technically called the obsolescence rate rises. Then there will be an increasing demand for new houses by new families, and side by side with this there is the problem of replacement. This, I would say. is the most disquieting feature of all.

It is the plain fact that over the last few years the target of slum clearance which local authorities have set themselves—something like 80,000 to 85,000 houses a year—has never yet been reached in any one year. Slum areas, 243 some of them near to hand but certainly some in the North of England, at the present slum clearance rate will take not two or three years to deal with, but two or three generations. Indeed, at our present rate we shall never catch up with slum clearance. That, of course, means, as has been indicated this afternoon, that we must raise our sights and have a larger target. We are grateful to hear from, and to be reminded by, the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, of the higher target which the Conservative Party has set. I noted a slight doubt in his own description of this target, as to whether this would have been reached, or would in fact be reached, this year, and perhaps a desire to unload some of the responsibility for that if it did not happen. In fixing large targets we may be trying to call "spirits from the vasty deep" and not getting them. I am not sure whether the present Government have yet fixed their target. Perhaps they are not yet fully confident enough to do that. But there is no doubt on all sides that the old target of something like 300,000 new houses per year, will simply not add up to our present need, and it must be increased to something like 400,000 at least.

The question that concerns so many of us who do not understand the technicalities of this is: are we capable of reaching this larger figure? We have never reached it yet. Indeed, we have rarely come up to our target of 300,000. The average lies well below that. Are we capable of advancing it if we want to do so? Do we take seriously enough the necessities which would be laid upon us if we were to achieve that target? We are dealing with limited commodities. We are dealing with land, money and building resources. These are all in their own way limited. But the policy or the choice as to how to deploy these resources is a national choice and not a matter of leaving it to circumstances to work out. The way in which we use—control, if you like—the land and land usage, the amount of money we release for housing, and the way in which we deploy our building resources seem to rest with Government and national policy about which many of us, as I say, do not understand the technicalities. I feel gravely concerned about all this.

I do not want to detain your Lordships long on this matter. An observer 244 looking at our situation as it is at present and as it has been for the last two years, would, I think, note and feel concerned on three particular issues. Knowing the need for houses, and side by side observing, shall we say, the multiplication of prestige office buildings in the middle of London, he would be inclined to say that here was a great distortion of priorities. I cannot conceive what are the feelings of an overcrowded family from the East End of London when it sees so much of the building resources of our country harnessed to erecting monuments to commerce against the skyline. Some action has been taken; and, indeed, I welcome this. I am not certain whether banishing offices from a certain area necessarily solves the problem; it is a beginning of doing so. But it is a national choice as to how much we are prepared to put the human values of housing beyond the claims, not of proper industrial development, but of profit or of status or even of convenience, and to decide which comes first.

The second fact which would strike the observer is that although the total number of houses which are being built, or which have been built, has remained fairly constant in the past few years, the balance has varied and altered very definitely. I am not denying the needs of owner occupiers and the increasing number of those who want to purchase and rent privately their own houses and live peaceably in their own habitations. That is a very laudable objective. But I have seen calculations, based on proportions of income, which suggest that in regard to buying by mortgage, a house of the value of £3,000 (and one cannot get a house for much below that), the number of people who are able to do that out of income, on a reasonable basis of proportion of income to be spent on mortgage, is something like 6 per cent. of the community. Perhaps not much more than twice that percentage would be among those who would be able to rent privately owned, and therefore privately financed, houses of the same sort. This means that something like four-fifths of the country are not in a position to buy or to rent privately built houses of their own. Yet I do not think we can deny the fact that many of them are in the greatest need.

Side by side with that is the plain fact that the proportion of local authority 245 housing in these years has diminished, and the present proportion is variously calculated as something between 20 and 40 per cent. of the whole building operation. Some of this no doubt is due to other reasons and causes outside our control, but some of it, at least, is surely due to official national policy. It is something on which many of us are bound to feel concerned when we think of the need, and when we think that the hands of the public authorities—who alone, I believe, can deal with the problem on a basis of need rather than of profit—are to some extent tied, or at least handicapped, in what they can do at present.

When all is said and done on this issue the plain question remains—this lurks in my mind, and had been mentioned in the gracious Speech: with the best will in the world, whatever one does about land, or whatever money one releases for it, would any Government be able to achieve a target of something like 400,000, unless there are radical alterations in the building industry or in building construction methods? This is something which has been referred to in the gracious Speech, and I welcome it.

Last week a local paper carried a report of a meeting of a housing association at which this very question was raised: whether the local authority might not use different methods and different construction materials in order to build houses more quickly and more cheaply. The reply was given that the use of these new materials was a risky thing in the English climate, and that it would seem better to push on as best they could with traditional methods. The English climate may be in some ways a liability; but so is the Englishmen's innate reluctance to change in this matter. As to what can be done, we have much to learn in this from many of our Continental neighbours. We may not want to "go Red," but we seem to want to remain "red-brick" in this country, ignoring some of the possibilities that are open, in terms of modern construction, if only they can be properly geared into the whole operation.

Some of these houses might not last so long, but I am not certain whether that would matter. We have fixed a certain age which is the right age for a house, something like three score years and ten, or four score years, if I may borrow the human equivalent. But I wonder whether 246 that is necessary, when one thinks of some of the houses that were built in the first half of the last century and are still being occupied, so that one only wishes that they had fallen down earlier. Such is the fluid condition of our day that a different and more experimental approach to this problem seems to be desirable on other grounds quite apart from urgency. At any rate, I welcome what might lie behind the references to this, hinted at on both the Opposition and the Government Benches this afternoon.

§ VISCOUNT WEIR

My Lords, I trust that your Lordships will extend your usual kind indulgence to one addressing your Lordships' House for the first time I have been greatly tempted, since hearing the speeches of noble Lords and the right reverend Prelate, to follow in a field about which I do know a little—that of housing—but I will not do so, and will carry on with the theme upon which I had intended to speak.

I have been unable to find in the gracious Speech any reference to a problem which is, I believe, of considerable public concern and interest: that of our water supplies. In most of the world's older communities pressure of population increase, advancement in standards of living and increased industrial uses are all imposing a heavy burden on existing water resources. Nor is the problem confined to established communities. In a report published this year by the United Nations it is clear that water shortage is going to be a growth-controlling factor for the developing countries. It is therefore not surprising that increasing attention has been given in recent years to schemes for drawing on that inexhaustible source of water supply, the sea, and converting sea water into potable water.

The process requires a very high degree of efficiency. Sea water contains 33,000 parts per million of dissolved solids, and for healthy human beings this content must be reduced to 500 parts per million. We are therefore aiming at attaining water purity greater than 99.8 per cent. Various methods have been suggested, such as separation by freezing or by electro dialysis, but it was the process of distillation which was the first to be adopted and which, up to now, has been the most successful. Indeed, it 247 is quite fair to say that whereas there have been a number of sizeable distillation plants at work for some years, the other processes have hardly yet emerged from the pilot or demonstration stage.

My Lords, it is not my intention to say more than the minimum on how the distillation process developed. It had its origin on board steamships, where it was obviously convenient to use the sea as the reservoir and to draw on it at will. The process was refined and improved; and it should be noted that by 1955 the best and most efficient plants could produce some 4 lb. of distillate for 1 lb. of steam supplied as the initial source of heat. A number of plants—some quite large—were supplied to arid parts of the world where it was clearly cheaper to produce water locally than to transport it from some less arid territory.

By 1956, however, a very substantial advancement, amounting, indeed, to a technical break-through, was achieved by the development of what is now generally referred to as multi-flash distillation. Curiously enough, this process was developed practically simultaneously by two British engineers, Dr. R. S. Silver and Dr. A. Frankel, although both were working quite independently. I am not going to try your Lordships' patience with technical detail, but will refer only to the striking improvement in performance that this process achieved. Through it 1 lb. of steam can now produce 11 lb. of distillate, and, of equal importance, capital costs have been approximately halved. This materially stimulated demand and led to the increased adoption of distillation plants abroad.

Between 1959 and the present year the two British companies involved—Messrs. G. & J. Weir and Messrs. Richardsons, Westgarth—who pooled their resources in 1962 as Weir Westgarth, were able to secure orders for 40 installations; this being rather more than 70 per cent. of the available market. These plants were for communities widely scattered all over the world; from Peru on the one hand, to the Persian Gulf on the other. This outstanding British achievement is less widely known than it ought to be, and I think we can take some measure of 248 pride that in a new and growing engineering field we are the leaders.

So far I have traced the development of the distillation process, and briefly referred to the significant contribution Britain has made. It is natural that it should have been adopted and found its readiest applications overseas in arid or semi-arid communities. But even on this island, my Lords, abundantly supplied as it is with rainfall, we have our problems. In the past our catchment schemes have served us well, but, as they become more distant from the demand centres they serve, their distribution costs will rise. They will also press increasingly on our limited land resources and threaten the remaining beauties of our countryside. As an alternative, or, as I refer to regard it, as a supplementary source, we have sea water conversion, using the sea as our reservoir and making minimal land demands.

A cost comparison must be made between the two systems. In this connection, it is gratifying to note the announcement earlier this year that the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research has given a grant to the Water Research Association which will inter alia be used to investigate the true incremental costs of additions to conventional water supply. It is to be observed, however, in comparing the two systems, that we already have our extensive network of reservoirs, and so on, for rain water. While these systems are continually being extended, it is difficult to know precisely the true cost of such extensions, since they undoubtedly benefit from the existence of facilities constructed in times of cheaper labour and capital long since written off or paid for. While welcoming, therefore, the approach by the D.S.I.R. to provide and start and set on foot this investigation, I hope that these factors will be very substantially borne in mind. I hope that these inquiries and investigations will be pursued, as only when they are available can we make a proper comparison with the alternative of supply by sea water conversion.

One aspect of this problem has already engaged your Lordships' attention. On July 15 this year, my noble friend Lord Wakefield of Kendal asked a question in this House on the possibilities of distillation of sea water, utilising, as a heat 249 source, nuclear reactors. As a result, my noble friend Lord Bessborough, then Joint Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science, made arrangements whereby Weir Westgarth have been able to discuss with both the D.S.I.R. and the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority the feasibility of such a project. This has been very welcome and heartening to the company, who will be glad to collaborate in the investigation. It is also satisfying that the D.S.I.R. has set up an advisory committee and is financing research and studies of desalination economics. This will enable a broader survey of the whole field to be undertaken and will involve consideration of alternative techniques, although my personal view is that distillation currently enjoys a considerable lead and may well increase it.

The subject of sea water conversion has attracted world attention and was, indeed, mentioned specifically by the late President Kennedy and, again, by President Johnson. Your Lordships may be familiar with the work of the Office of Saline Water in Washington. This is a division of the Department of the Interior and has already promoted research on a large scale involving very substantial expenditure. Mr. Khrushchev also indicated Russian interest in the matter and, indeed. I believe there is the possibility of collaboration between the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. on this subject.

British leadership in this field will be hard to maintain in the light of the challenge of these two major Powers. The success of the two companies and their associate, Weir Westgarth, has attracted much attention and provoked wide and strenuous international competition. The company has welcomed the evidence I have cited of support and encouragement, and I have drawn attention to the relevance of their work to our domestic water problems. I hope that as a valuable contributor and leader in a growth field, the Government will find the company worthy of their support and encouragement, and will follow on the good start made by their predecessors.

My Lords, I may have omitted to declare an interest at the beginning, but I do so now. I thank your Lordships for your kind and patient hearing.

§ LORD SILKIN

My Lords, this House always welcomes speeches from noble Lords who are able to talk to us with knowledge, authority and experience. We therefore welcome very much the speech of the noble Viscount, Lord Weir, who obviously speaks on a subject of which he has had great knowledge and experience. We hope that we shall hear more about the topic on which he has spoken. Water is not a very exciting subject. It is not a thing which one talks about until we are short of it; then, of course, it is a great topic of conversation. Even though this matter is not mentioned in the gracious Speech, I hope that Her Majesty's Government will allow themselves some flexibility in dealing with this vitally important subject.

We have had another maiden speech this afternoon—the speech from my noble friend Lord Mitchison. He was not quite sure how virginal he was. Well, he ought to know; but I could only say with certainty that he is a not inexperienced maiden. Certainly, he has had very considerable experience in making speeches in another place. He showed from his speech here this afternoon that he was not unduly overawed by speaking here, although I can well imagine that the first speech is always somewhat of an ordeal. I hope it was not too much of an ordeal for my noble friend.

Now I should like, in his absence, to congratulate my noble friend Lord Longford on his accession to the leadership of the House; my noble friend Lord Gardiner, the noble and learned Lord Chancellor, on his attaining his very high office; and all my noble friends who sit on the Front Bench, who richly deserve their elevation, and particularly those noble Lords who are here for the first time. Some of my noble friends have worked their passage very hard. I see one of them, my noble friend Lord Stonham. Nobody deserves office more than he does, and I am quite sure that he and they are going to do well at it. I am quite sure also, in spite of what the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, said, that they are going to be there a long time. The noble Lord, Lord Hastings, rather gave me the impression that he was not quite accustomed yet to being in Opposition. At times, I rather felt as if he thought 251 he was speaking for the Government and explaining the Government's achievements, their aspirations and expectations, and so on. I hope he will have a very long time to get over that feeling, and I am sure he will. I am also sure he will render very valuable service in that place in Opposition, and no doubt, when the time comes, he will learn something from my noble friend about drawing up Amendments.

Last Wednesday my noble friend Lord Attlee told the House that it was 43 years since he made his speech from the Back Benches. I cannot claim to emulate that record, but it is 23 years since I spoke from the Back Benches and it is, therefore, to me, somewhat of a novelty after all this time. I take courage from the fact that my immediate predecessor in the seat in which I sit was the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, who made a great many interesting, effective and important speeches from these Benches. I hope I may do the same. I will speak in general support, I hope friendly support, of Her Majesty's Government, but I hope that, sitting this distance away from the Front Bench, I may be allowed at times to speak with a little candour. It will be friendly candour, and always in the hope that any advice I give to Her Majesty's Government may be acceptable to them.

Now I propose to speak particularly on two aspects of the gracious Speech. The first, which will not surprise your Lordships, is on housing; the second is on law reform. I want to say at once that I do not expect a reply to my speeches, especially after the little statement we had from my noble friend Lord Mitchison during the course of this debate. I fully understand that most of the questions and most of the proposals that I want to put forward on both the subjects on which I want to speak are matters which can best be dealt with in legislation, and that the legislation will require a good deal of consideration when we come down to preparing the details of it. All I hope is that Her Majesty's Government may be pleased to take note of what I say, and possibly take it into some consideration when drafting the legislation.

First, my Lords, on housing: in the gracious Speech there is a reference to more housing of better quality. Of 252 course we need more housing, and we need housing of better quality. But we have to remember that houses and other buildings are erected to last 100 years or more. I think it is time we asked ourselves, perhaps, whether we need to build houses to last 100 years. After all, the conception of a house to-day is, I hope, a very different one from what will be the conception in even 25 or 50 years' time. What was regarded 50 years ago, or 40 years ago, as a very fine, modern house is to-day regarded almost as a rabbit warren. The houses are tiny. The living room of 150 to 160 square feet, meant to house a whole family—a husband, wife and perhaps three or four children—is quite ridiculous in these days. When we talk of having raised the standard of living in the past 25 years or more we surely must mean, in that term, an improvement in the quality of our houses. Therefore, I hope that when we come to build to-day we shall look ahead and remember that houses are intended to be occupied not only by the present generation but by generations to follow.

At the same time, I wonder whether it is not possible so to design a house, not necessarily of to-day's materials, that it is not intended to last the full period that we assume to-day of 100 years; that it could last, perhaps, 50 years or thereabouts, and then be demolished—and, of course, it would be a cheaper price, using possibly less expensive material, than an existing. house. My Lords, I am glad to see the noble Lord, Lord Bossom, sitting in his place, because I am sure this is a subject in which he would be interested. I believe he has given some thought to it, and if at some time we can get the benefit of his ideas and the ideas of others on this particular problem, it would be of great value.

There has been a good deal of competition about the number of houses built or intended to be built. The noble Lord, Lord Hastings, proudly boasted that one day the Conservative Government would have built 400,000 houses in a year if they had been given the opportunity, and said that if we do not get 400,000 houses in 1965 he will want to know the reasons why. I think these numbers are quite irrelevant by themselves. They are a measure of something, but they are not a measure of 253 the way in which we are satisfying the needs of the community. I was driving through Chelsea and Westminster this afternoon, and I saw large numbers of luxury flats for sale. They have been up for some time—I think well over a year, and some of them much more than that—and they are still empty. If the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, likes to go to Brighton, Eastbourne and Bournemouth, he will see literally hundreds and hundreds of flats which have been built in the last three or four years and which are still empty, waiting for people to occupy them, to buy them. I should like to ask him, as he is boasting of the number of houses that the Conservative Government built in those years, what contribution those properties are making to our housing needs. What is the value of including them in the number of houses we have to build?

I submit to the House that what is relevant to this issue is not the number of houses you have built but the number of houses you have built to meet the needs of the community—and that is a very different thing. That implies, as I have said before—this is not a new thought; a have said it to the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, on many occasions, but he has never answered me—not only counting the numbers but where these houses are, the types of houses they are and the prices at which they are being made available.

The gracious Speech refers to the retraining of people who may be rendered redundant as the result of improvements in production and of making them available for other types of production. In many cases, that must mean making them available in other parts of the country. But what is the use of retraining people, making them able to take on jobs in other parts of the country, if the housing is not available for them? I was glad to hear my noble friend Lord Mitchison make some reference to the need for mobility. But I want to carry this a stage further: the need for mobility means that houses must be provided in the places where they are needed and at the right rents. I beg the Government to give particular attention to that aspect of the housing question.

And we should recognise that if they do so there must be some element of 254 direction. If it is left entirely to every local authority, and particularly if it is left to every private builder to build wherever he likes and whatever he likes, we shall not get either mobility or the stock of housing we require. While I certainly should not wish the Government to embark on a wholesale policy of direction, I must confess that, without some element of direction, of encouragement (perhaps they could do it by way of subsidising houses that are required and not subsidising those that are not required); or, at any rate, without some influence of that kind—and I use the term "influence" as a generic term—I cannot see that we shall get the right type of house in the place we want it.

I was glad that my noble friend Lord Mitchison referred to housing associations; and I was rather surprised that the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, did not. I believe that they have a great part to play. I am not sure that we on this side of the House have always been as encouraging to housing associations as we might have been. Nor, incidentally, have the Party of the noble Lord, Lord Hastings. If he looks at the record of what was achieved during thirteen years of office he has nothing to shout about. The numbers of houses built by housing associations have been very tiny in comparison with the numbers built by the local authorities. But let us agree that it should be a non-partisan, or bi-partisan, policy to encourage housing associations in the future; and I hope that in that we shall have the co-operation of noble Lords opposite.

I hope that the Government will be prepared to encourage the housing associations to the fullest possible extent. One of the last things the last Government did purported to make £300 million available to the housing associations for the building of houses at rents which tenants could afford to pay. I hope that some money at least will be made available by the present Government and that, if need he, more money will be made available for housing associations. The big part they have to play is that they cater for families who are not eligible for local authority housing, who do not need or qualify for subsidised housing, but cannot afford, or to whom it is not convenient, to buy a house. It may be that they want to rent one for a few years. Possibly they have large families who are growing up, and 255 when the time comes they want to leave their present house and go into something smaller. There is a large demand for houses of that kind—houses which can be let at an economic rent but without providing a profit for the developer. This is the function—and it is a very important one—of the housing associations.

I am very glad that there is a reference in the gracious Speech to the repeal of the Rent Act. I have never used strong language in this House—and I am sure noble Lords will bear me—out but I think the Rent Act, 1957, was one the most wicked Acts ever passed. As my noble friend beside me remarks, it was a scandal. At a time of acute shortage of houses, it put in the hands of landlords a power to force out those who were most helpless in connection with their house; that is, those with large families and people of small means who happened to come within the scope of definition of those whose houses became decontrolled.

I never thought the justification for that Act was even plausible. The justification was that it would make more houses available to let. But that could happen only if people were forced out of their existing homes, and the Act could be of advantage if only they were able to get something else. What has in fact happened, is what we said would happen, and what anybody who had given one moment's thought to the problem would have anticipated: namely, that the Act enabled landlords to force tenants out and to sell their houses with vacant possession. It rendered a large number of people homeless and forced overcrowding.

I am very glad indeed that the present Government will reimpose control. They call it "rent control": I suppose that is a term of art. The important thing is not so much rent control—although that is important—as giving the tenants security of tenure, so that the landlord cannot arbitrarily turn them out. There is proposed machinery for ensuring that a landlord gets a fair return. Nobody wants to provide security for the tenant at the expense of the landlord. Like any other owner of property, he is entitled to get a fair return on his property, and the machinery will be created which will enable this fair return to be settled. I hope that this machinery will not be too cumbersome, or too difficult for the tenant to take advantage of it.

256 I hope also that, coupled with the granting of security to the tenant and a fair return to the landlord, there will be provision for ensuring that the house is in good condition. In any case, I should hope that the rent that would be charged would have some relationship to the condition of the house. Although I want to give noble Lords opposite credit for having introduced the Housing Act, 1964, which enabled some improvement to take place in the conditions of houses, I criticise them severely for not going quite far enough and for enabling landlords to get possession of their houses by wholly improper means—by what we described as "Rachmanism". I hope that all that will go, and that we shall now have the opportunity of giving tenants security, at a fair rent, with their houses in reasonable condition.

The "fair rent" condition may cause some difficulty, and I would suggest—and this is only a suggestion—that it might be possible for the Government to give some guiding principle on what is a fair rent. We have recently had all our properties re-rated, and there are new rateable values which, in theory, are supposed to have some relationship to the rental value. A fair rental value might prima facie be so many times the rateable value. That need not be conclusive, but, unless there are exceptional factors, the Government might suggest that so many times the rateable value should be the normal rent to be charged for a house which becomes decontrolled.

I want to say a few words about the proposed Crown Lands Commission. This, I recognise, is something which fundamentally divides the two sections of the House. I do not know why it should. The noble Lord, Lord Hastings, asked what was the object of the Commission. The object is that the community should get some part of the value of the improvements which the community itself creates. All this is quite elementary. It is merely repeating what I said in 1947, when the Town and Country Planning Bill was introduced. In that Act, provision was made for the payment of betterment to the community. I was very distressed when, in 1953, the present Government repealed the financial provisions of the 1947 Act, and even more distressed when they put nothing in its place. I could have understood if they had said, "We have tried this and 257 we do not like it", or "It does not work", or something of that sort, and if they had put something in its place which was better. But they did not.

§ LORD MITCHISON

My Lords, to prevent misunderstanding, may I point out to my noble friend that he inadvertently said the "present" Government?

§ LORD SILKIN

I seem to have fallen into the same mistake as the noble Lord, Lord Hastings. I am sorry. In a sense, this proposal is going back to 1947, except that it is not intended to give the community 100 per cent. of the increase of a development value.

Let me give the House an extreme case of how this operates. A man owns a piece of agricultural land fronting an arterial road, which is possibly worth £200 an acre—I will be generous and say, £500 an acre. This person has the bright idea that it would be a good thing to have a petrol filling station on this road. He applies for planning permission and gets it. Well, he has had a bright idea; he deserves to be patted on the back and to receive some financial recompense. Immediately on getting planning permission that bit of land becomes worth (I will be modest and say) £10,000 an acre. I have known cases where it was much more. It has increased in value because there is a demand for a petrel filling station from motorists travelling along an arterial road which was built by the community. None of these things has been contributed to by the owner of the land himself. Nevertheless, at present, he is able to put in his pocket £9,500 an acre, merely for the bright idea that it might be a good thing to have a petrol station on his piece of land. The same applies if he has the idea that it would be a good housing site, though he may not get quite so much.

Is it really fair to the community that this man should be able to pocket the whole of that money, when it was the community who made it possible for this development to take place by spending money on services? It seems to me right, and I am glad that it seems to the present Government to be right, that the community should get some part of the increase of value due to the granting of a planning permission. This 258 comes into operation only when planning permission has been granted for development or for redevelopment involving a change of user. That surely answers the question which the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, asked about whether this is to apply to urban or rural land. It applies to any land which is about to be developed, on which planning permission has been given and which involves a change of user.

§ LORD HASTINGS

My Lords, I do not think that that answers the question at all. There is a fundamental difference between agricultural land and urban land. As the noble Lord knows very well, a third party, who does not even own the land, can get planning permission. It makes a great deal of difference whether the land is urban or agricultural.

§ LORD SILKIN

My Lords, I recognise that these are points, but, as my noble friend has said, they are points which might be put in Committee. Of course, this would not operate, if a stranger who had no interest in the land got planning permission and the owner had no intention of taking advantage of that permission. But I cannot imagine that a complete stranger is going to apply for planning permission, unless he had some expectation of acquiring the land. But this is a point which has to be provided for and will be dealt with.

I would say to Her Majesty's Government that this is certainly controversial. We must face it. This was a big issue in the Election. I am not sure that it is not a very popular thing to deal with land, because, as I have said, it is an attempt to give the community the benefit of the expenditure incurred by the community, and because it is also an attempt to bring down the price of land; and that is something which affects everybody.

I would suggest that when we introduce a scheme we make it simple, easy to understand by everybody, and incapable, so far as possible, of misrepresentation; and, secondly, that we make it as fair as possible—I would even err on the side of generosity to the owner of land, so that at least he cannot complain that this is not a fair scheme. If we do that, I think it would remove the argument, which I regard as somewhat fallacious, that landowners will hold back arid not 259 apply for planning permission, in the hope that there will be an early return of a Conservative Government which will "knock all this nonsense on the head". I do not believe that there will be an early return. I believe that noble Lords on that side are there for a very long time. And any landowner who holds back the development of his land in the hope and expectation of an early return of a Conservative Government is just fooling himself. But I would remove even the temptation on the part of some people to hold back by giving them a fair return for the trouble and expense they have been put to in getting planning permission.

Therefore I would suggest that we give to the owner of land half of the development value, while the community takes the other half. I think that that would be generally regarded as generous and fair, and I believe that most owners of land would be very happy to settle on that basis. I may say, in passing, that in the past few weeks I have discussed this matter with at least a dozen developers. I put the question to each of them: "What would you think of a scheme of that kind?"—and every one of them, without exception, said that he would be very happy to back a scheme of that kind, that he would certainly not hold back. and would be quite satisfied if he could get one half of the development value of his land. I ask the Government to consider this seriously, and I am sure it will save them a great deal of trouble. I also ask the Opposition to consider it and see whether it is not a fair solution to the objections that they have raised.

§ LORD WOLVERTON

My Lords, I hesitate to interrupt the noble Lord, but a person who is going to build a house under that system would never get the freehold. An Englishman likes to have his castle and own his freehold. The danger I see is that the Lands Commission may be asked to give 50 per cent. of the development charge to go towards the general taxation.

§ LORD SILKIN

Is that not another point from the one I have just made? I was coming to the question of freeholds later, and if the noble Lord will have patience he will find that I will 260 deal with it. On the scheme itself, I think it would be fair.

The gracious Speech deals with the question of leasehold enfranchisement. The noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, did not have a lot to say on this matter, and frankly I am not surprised, because it is a most difficult subject. I must confess that I have sympathy with some of the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, on this matter. I see some conflict between a scheme which, on the one hand, creates leaseholds on a large scale, and, on the other, enfranchises leaseholds. It would appear as if existing leaseholds might be enfranchised and every other tenure now created would be a leasehold tenure. I find it a little difficult to reconcile these two aspects. I suggest to the Government that they give a lot of thought to this subject.

There is no urgency about introducing leasehold enfranchisement. It is promised in the gracious Speech, but it is not promised for the present Session, and I think it will need a great deal more consideration than appears to have been given to it so far. If there is any urgency, would make two suggestions. The first is that the Government should introduce a measure to give lessees under a system of leasehold enfranchisement the same protection as is given to-day under the Landlord and Tenant Act to occupiers of business premises. That would enable them to carry on without fear of being evicted when their lease comes to an end. Secondly, there could be a provision for enlarging existing leases for a period of, say, three years, to enable the Government to make up their minds about leasehold enfranchisement. I am sure that a great deal more consideration needs to be given to this subject, pressing though it is. One must realise that it is a burning question in many parts of the country, and particularly in South Wales, where leases are coming to an end and tenants are tremendously worried about losing their homes and the benefit of the leases under which they have lived, or of having to "pay through the nose".

I want to mention, also, the question of payment for enfranchisement. This is a difficulty that will have to be faced. If the payment is to be at the recognised price for the reversion—that is, the shorter the term the bigger the price—and it is to be at the market price, 261 then the tenant may not be in any better position than if he bought the leasehold in the open market. Alternatively, if the reversioner is going to get something less than that, it will be unfair to him. The Government have to reconcile that, too. I do not expect art answer to that either to-day or to-morrow, but it is a matter which requires much more consideration than I think has been given to it.

The gracious Speech promises that the Government will promote modernisation of the construction industry; and I hope they will. The previous Government tried this, but not very successfully. The noble Lord, Lord Hastings, made a statement of what has been done in the past few months, but in actual practice we have not seen the results in any modernisation. I am not so sure that house production has materially increased in efficiency in the last half century or even century. I remember when I first became a member of the London County Council, nearly forty years ago, when I was appointed to the Housing Committee I was told: "You can expect one house to be built per annum for every person employed in house building." Applying that test to-day, I find that there are 287,000 men employed in the housing industry in this country, and there were 270,000 houses built last year. That is less than what I was told we might expect forty years ago. There was no sign of any improvement then—I think the noble Lord, Lord Bossom, who I believe was a member of the Housing Committee at that time, will bear me out—and there has been no improvement whatever in those forty years. We have to get bigger production of housing. If that is what modernisation means, then good luck to the Government in trying to bring it about!

If am afraid I have been a long time, but I want to say a few words on the second aspect of my speech—namely, law reform. First of all, I am glad that it is proposed to facilitate the introduction of a Bill for the abolition of capital punishment. I have a personal reason for wishing this, because I wound up the debate that we he d some years ago on the subject, and I am afraid we were badly beaten, possibly on account of the bad speech I then made. I should like to get my own bark and get this House to agree to the abolition of capital punishment. This, I take it, will be on 262 a Private Member's Bill and not official Government business, although the Government will facilitate the passage of such a Bill.

It is proposed to appoint "Law Commissioners to advance the reform of the law". That is a general term, and I am not clear as to what exactly is meant by "reform of the law". Is it reform by simplification of language? Is it reform by means of consolidation, codification and modernisation—that is, by bringing laws up to date to meet modern requirements? If that is so, then it is simply a matter of people devoting themselves to the task, recognising the need for it and so on. We have far too many Acts of Parliament dealing with the same subject, and there is a real need for codification and consolidation. I see that I referred to this matter when we discussed the Housing Act, 1964—that during their term of office the last Government had introduced 23 Bills dealing with houses and rents. I pity the poor lawyer who has to make his way through 23 Acts of Parliament to find out what is the law on a particular subject. So there is plenty of scope for the activities of these Commissioners. But is that what they are going to do, and is that solely what they are going to do?

I feel that there is an equal need for a reform in the language of Acts of Parliament. After all, no self-respecting Act of Parliament is really effective until there has been a decision of the House of Lords on almost every clause that it contains. One cannot make out what an Act says until the House of Lords has decided. I always thought it was Parliament who decided what was intended, but in reading an Act of Parliament what was intended has no relevance whatever. But when an appeal comes before the House of Lords you are not allowed even to quote what was intended, or to read what was said in support of a Bill; or even to quote the memorandum or the sidenotes in an Act of Parliament. All you can do is to take the Act literally and read it as if you were coming fresh to the subject, and make what you can of it. That seems to me preposterous. If the Law Commissioners are to have some function in trying to make laws intelligible, trying to bring in aid what was really intended in the introduction of a Bill, they will be of very great value.

263 I also want to complain—I have complained many a time—about the complexity of the language in Acts of Parliament. I know that it is said to be necessary to provide for every possible contingency, however remote. But is that really so? If, somehow, the intention of a particular section of an Act could be made clear, could it not be left at that? However, I do not propose to go further into that aspect. I am really asking whether, when the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor comes to reply to-morrow, he can give us a little more information as to what he proposes the Law Commissioners should have to do, and how they propose to set about it.

I am very glad to know that we are going to have somebody who will be able to carry out an "impartial investigation of individual grievances". That is a long term for what has become known as the Ombudsman. Some three years ago, I introduced a Motion into this House asking the Government to consider the desirability of appointing an Ombudsman. Naturally, I received no encouragement whatever from the Lord Chancellor of the time. I am not at all sure that he fully appreciated what I was after. But at any rate he certainly gave me no reason to think that the Government had any intention of doing it. But it is the case that there are many grievances from which the individual citizen suffers for which he has no remedy at all. There is no court, there is no tribunal, there is nobody—except his local Member of Parliament—to whom he can go to get a grievance remedied. If his local Member of Parliament happens to be a very busy man, the sufferer will not get much satisfaction there. It is therefore suggested that there should be some individual, or group of individuals, regional or otherwise, to whom a person in that position could go, to put forward the grievance that he has suffered, at the hands of the Administration or otherwise, and have it properly considered. As I say, I am very glad that the Government are contemplating making that provision.

We have all had cases of that kind. We had the Crichel Down case where there was no remedy in the ordinary way. There was no tribunal that one could go to; no appeal. There was the Bognor Regis case, which I brought up some months 264 ago, where a local authority exceeded its functions and obtained compulsory purchase orders and then sought to act on quite other grounds. There are many cases of that kind. This is not an unknown experiment. It has been tried in New Zealand and the Scandinavian countries and in other countries with considerable success.

My Lords, I have referred only to a very small part of the gracious Speech: matters which, if they stood alone, would constitute a busy Session's work. Your Lordships are going to be kept very busy in the coming Session in dealing with the various measures which will be brought forward. I know that your Lordships will act in a responsible spirit in not attempting to frustrate the efforts of Her Majesty's Government, and will be prepared to look at each measure strictly on its merits, and with the sole desire of attempting to improve it. Everything with which I have dealt will have to be the subject of full discussion and debate; and has been, of course, during the recent Election. I would suggest that all these matters are matters which the electorate has approved, and the Government can be considered to have a full mandate to carry through these reforms. As I have said, it will be hard work, but the results will greatly benefit the community, especially those least able to help themselves, and will contribute to the happiness and welfare of countless families in giving them a feeling of security and justice. I promise the Government that I will give them every possible assistance to achieve these ends.

§ LORD MANCROFT

My Lords, I have often thought that if I were a Communist agitator or, better still, an anarchist, the best way in which the economy of the country could be brought to a standstill would be to promote strikes in the works of the British Oxygen Company, because their product is used in nearly every major industry of the country. If, on the other hand, I wanted to bring the work of the Government to a standstill, the correct way would be to promote strikes in the office of Parliamentary Counsel, because a mere glance at the Queen's Speech this Session, and listening to your 265 Lordships' debate this afternoon, show that they are going to be most tragically overworked.

Your Lordships, in the topics that have been discussed this afternoon, have mentioned several of the matters which will obviously be the subject of long and complicated legislation. Most of the matters mentioned have affected the citizen in his everyday life and his liberty. Therefore, I was glad to hear the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, developing with comfortable fullness the theme of the liberty of the subject. It drew our attention to this particular portion of the Queen's Speech: They "— that is, Her Majesty's Government— will propose the appointment of Law Commissioners to advance reform of the law, and will propose new measures for the impartial investigation of individual grievances. It goes on: In so doing they will be acting in the spirit which has always animated Parliament, whose seven hundredth anniversary will be recorded in this Session. It may have animated Parliament, but it has not always animated Government Departments.

The noble Lord, Lord Silkin, referred both to the Ombudsman and to the Law Commissioners, and I should like, if I may, for a few minutes to take him up on both those points and examine them with a little care from a different point of view. Of course, the Ombudsman is superficially an extremely attractive proposition, and particularly at Election time. There is, on the face of it, much to be said for it. But we shall hear more of this, I expect. The case has, in my opinion, not yet been fully made out; neither the need for the Ombudsman nor the nature of his work, nor its scope. It may well be that there is a solution to the problem. But do not let us be over-persuaded by what has happened in Scandinavian countries which have enjoyed the dubious privilege of a more or less permanent Socialist Government, or in other countries of two or three millions population only. I have studied this with some care, both in Scandinavia and New Zealand, where I was recently, and many people there have expressed doubts whether the system would work as well in a country of over 50 million people. It may, but it wants very careful examination.

266 When I first saw the Socialist Party in their Election Manifesto putting this proposal forward I was fearful lest it meant that they realised that many of their proposals would undoubtedly give rise to such injustice that an Ombudsma