There is a point on which, Sir, I would like your ruling. Yesterday I gave special notice to the Secretary for Scotland that I should to-day ask a question of great urgency affecting my Constituents. The question was:

"To ask the Secretary for Scotland, is he aware that eleven inhabitants of the Island of Lewis were to-day sentenced to six weeks' imprisonment by the High Court of Justice in Edinburgh for breach of interdict; whether it is not a fact that no damage was done to the farm or to the cattle on the farm over which they trespassed; whether it is not a fact that they are all men of high character and have always been law-abiding, and that the proprietor of the farm did not wish or press for any punishment; and whether, in view of these facts and the fact that they constitutionally and repeatedly used every means to secure the land at an equitable rent, he will take steps to have them immediately released?"

I gave special notice of that question, and I wish your ruling on the point of Order as to whether it is not incumbent upon She Minister in charge of an important Department to be in his seat even on Friday morning when he gets special notice of such a question?

I laid down the rule (or rather I expounded the rule, and did not lay it down for the first time) with regard to questions on Friday, a year or two ago. It was this: that a private Member is entitled to give notice of a question on Friday, but that no Minister is bound to be here to answer it. It is entirely a matter of arrangement between him and the Minister as to whether the Minister is here or not.

I beg to give notice that I shall raise this question on the Adjournment.

There is no question for the Adjournment to-day. The House stands adjourned as a matter of course when the business has been gone through.

Can we not raise this question if this Bill is finished in time?

We should then have to go on with the other Orders of the Day. The Standing Order is that as soon as the business appointed has been disposed of the House stands adjourned without Question put.

Can we move now that this House be adjourned at this moment to call attention to a matter of great public urgency?

That must be taken under Standing Order 10, which, however, does not apply to Fridays. It applies only to other days of the week.

As I am not sufficiently proficient in the rules of the House, may I ask this: Suppose by any chance this Bill which is now about to be discussed were to finish by, say, half-past three o'clock, should I then be entitled to raise this question?

Then we should have to proceed with the Illegal Fishing by Trawl Vessels (Suppression) Bill, notice of which was given some time ago, and which stands next in order.

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

We must all regret very much the circumstances under which the Member for Buteshire (Mr. Harry Hope), who drew the place in the ballot and was to have moved the Second Reading of the Bill is unable to be here to-day, and we must all sympathise with him in his great bereavement. In his absence it falls to me once again to move the Second Reading of this Bill, and in doing so I may say that the occasion is a rather interesting one. On each of the previous occasions it has had a Second Reading. The first time without a Division and the second time by an enormous majority of 140. On each previous occasion, its subsequent career has been stopped by the action of the Government. I wish to admit fully that there are many Members on the other side and in the Labour party who are supporting me in this Bill, but I have never had anything but opposition and ridicule from the Government. Two years ago the right hon. Gentleman who is now no longer President of the Local Government Board (Mr. John Burns) opposed this Bill and covered it with ridicule. He said that there was no need for any further housing legislation at all. His attitude was simply this: "Leave it to me and everything will be all right." He poured ridicule upon us, who tried to get something done. He said we were economic fledglings of an East End settlement who thought we knew all about the housing question when we had driven round some London slums in a taxi-cab. He told us that we were young men—I am always rather flattered after twenty-two years in this House to find that I am still called a young man—with hearts of gold and heads of quicksilver. Last year he said that we were sentimental Thomas's, whatever that meant, and he succeeded for two years in destroying this Bill. Now there has come a great change—the Government admit the need of housing legislation. They think it is very urgent. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, in his many "land bursting" speeches, has told us that we must deal with the slums at once, and that we want 120,000 cottages in the country districts. If the Government had passed this Bill two years ago we might be building some of the cottages now. On the top of that comes this remarkable volume, the Report of the Land Committee Inquiry. I do not know what the particular object was of the gentlemen who wrote the Report on Housing, but it seems to me that their chief object was to destroy the contentions of the late President of the Local Government Board. Throughout they absolutely destroy the idea that "everything is all right; no fresh legislation is necessary; you have only got to leave it to me." Let me read to the House one or two short passages from this Report. I quote Mr. Arthur Acland, who says:—

Do the Government intend to proceed with it? Though I do not regard it as the right sort of housing reform, yet I want to see houses built. I think the Government's plan is not the best way to do it. I think it is far better to act through the local authorities—giving them assistance, helping them with subsidies, and, if necessary, coercing thorn, but letting them do the work when they are willing to do the work. Do not introduce a central office' with a horde of officials, to build houses here and there, collect the rents from the central office in London, selecting tenants, and doing repairs. That seems to me to be absolutely impracticable and unworkable, and I cannot conceive a worse manner of proceeding with any housing scheme. The third great principle on which the Bill is based is this: We admit that State or municipal action is necessary in many cases, still we must always bear in mind that, as regards the provision of houses for the people, private enterprise must continue to do by far the bigger part. Private enterprise has been held up for a time to some extent, but if you take the number of houses of the working classes in the country, you will find that the vast majority have been built by private enterprise in the past, and they will continue to be built by private enterprise in the future. Therefore, we try in one of the Clauses in this Bill to assist private enterprise by giving to private individuals, who will build, and to public utility societies, loans at the lowest possible rate of interest; in fact, to lend money to these public utility societies and private individuals on the same favourable terms as are granted only to local authorities at the present time. These are the three main principles of the Bill. Let us look for one moment at what is the housing problem. It is very serious, and it divides itself really into two. You have got the urban problem, and you have got the rural problem; they are to some extent interdependent. Owing to the scarcity of houses in the country districts numbers of people are driven into the towns, with consequent overcrowding.

While the problems are to some extent interdependent, yet there is a great difference. The chief difficulty in the rural districts is the shortage of houses. They have not got enough houses, nor can they get enough. The chief difficulty in the towns is not a shortage of houses; it is the continual existence of foul, festering slums and the difficulty of clearing them out. These problems will have to be tackled in different ways. I do not deny that there are slums in the country. That is quite true. The difficulty in that case, however, is the shortage of houses. If you close insanitary houses in the country there is nowhere to go for the persons who occupied them. In the towns there is not the same shortage of houses—not in many, I think. When we speak of overcrowding in the towns the curious fact exists that side by side with it there is plenty of vacant accommodation. That is the experience in London. The thing is that this overcrowding, horrible as it is, suits both the owner and the tenant. The owner gets more out of his property by having numerous separate families as tenants, and the tenant pays less for the individual part of the house he occupies. Therefore, the difficulty in towns is not so much shortage of houses as overcrowding in the existing slums. I do not deny that there is a shortage of houses in some towns. We have to deal with the slums in the towns and remove them, whereas, in the country, we have to provide a large number of additional houses. We drew up our Bill in order to deal with both of those great difficulties. As regards the country, we realise that the shortage is very great; we realise its growth. I do not want in any sense to make a party speech, and I know that many hon. Members opposite have supported this Bill in the past. I am not going to say that the shortage of houses has been created by the People's Budget, but I must say that a fair consideration of the figures shows that the evil has been greatly aggravated by it. The first thing we have got to do is to try to restore confidence to the building trade.

Apart from that we are up against this fact, that in many cases it is impossible to build cottage property and let it at a rent to the poorest people which they can afford without economic loss. What are you going to do? Hon. Gentlemen opposite say raise wages. I quite agree, if you could raise wages at once by a stroke of the pen, that would be the solution, and ultimately may be the solution. Certainly for my part I would be the last man ever to say a word against any possible plan for raising wages, but you have got to deal with this question now. You have not got the housing, you cannot get houses built without economic loss. I am not a believer in any Government plan, from whatever side it proceeds, whereby you are going to raise wages at once to such a point that every agricultural labourer can pay an economic rent. I do not think it is possible. Besides, if you did raise Wages, do you really think the man is going to spend all the extra wage in rent? It is the very last thing he wants to do. He would much sooner spend it in better food and clothing for his family than in rent. Therefore, you have got to deal with an existing void and to build somehow. The only way to do it is, in my opinion, to subsidise the local authorities, and where you have a necessitous area where wages are low and it is impossible to build without economic loss, then the nation should shoulder part of that loss, instead of leaving it all to the ratepayer. I know that the late President of the Local Gov- ernment Board took a strong line against uneconomic rents, "charity rents," as he called them, "outdoor relief in bricks and mortar," but he himself was the author of that. You have got charity rents now in lots of places. In the Report of the Land Government Board for 1912–13 what do we find? Loans have been sanctioned to district councils for providing houses in forty-two villages, and in twenty-one cases out of the forty-two the anticipated receipts from the cottages do not equal the expenditure, and the balance has got to be thrown on the ratepayer. What is the difference in principle between an uneconomic rent which is paid out of the rates and one which is paid out of the taxes? There is no difference whatever. The only question is whether it is fair to throw the whole burden upon the poorest parts of the country and whether it would not be more fair to let the whole nation assist in providing these dwellings at a rent the poor people can afford to pay. That is the plan of the Bill. But we try to meet the question of what ought to be done, if economic conditions change. We recognise that perhaps by some wonderful conjuring trick of the Chancellor of the Exchequer or by a change of economic circumstances it may happen in a few years hence that where people cannot pay economic rents now they may be able to do so in ten or twelve years or more. Therefore we lay down the stipulation in the Bill by Clause 15 (4) that if subsequently economic conditions in the village change that in that case the Grant-in-Aid may be reduced or even withdrawn in order that we may be no longer subsidising rents at a time when wages can afford to pay the full economic rent. That is what we propose to do as regards the rural districts.

I come to the urban districts. The difficulty which I have described is the difficulty of dealing with slums, the continual existence of those slums, and how to remove them. The right hon. Gentleman and the House know very well that there are two ways of doing it now. The local authority can buy up the whole slum and can clear it, and replan it and rebuild and house the people; or they can deal with it under what is called Part II. by means of Closing Orders, pulling down the obstructive buildings, and so forth. But in either case you have great financial difficulty. The cost of the clearing under Part I. is almost prohibitive. Lots of local authorities do it though they cannot well afford to do it and others would do it if they could. In London I do not know how much we are spending on non-remunerative capital expended on clearing slums. Where a town undertakes to deal with one of those big slum areas, it is absolutely necessary in order to get rid of the area, and nothing but complete replanning will cure in those cases. A State Grant, we say, should be available towards what is really a great sanitary public improvement. But that is not all. When you deal with Part I. you have to rehouse, but if you proceed under Part II., Closing Orders, and so on, you are not obliged to rehouse; but in any case, in my opinion, and this applies not only to the town but the country, if you turn a man out of his dwelling in order to effect a great public improvement, you are morally bound, and you ought to be legally bound, to provide him with another dwelling at a rent which he can afford to pay. You may say that is uneconomic, but after all you owe something to those people. They do not really want to leave their slums. One of the saddest things in connection with the matter is that the man loves his slum, and does not want to go or move out of his house. He is perfectly content to live there, humble though it be, stuffy, and no fresh air, no light, nowhere for children to play. If you move him out you are bound to find him another house. Therefore we propose that both in town and country alike where a local authority undertakes to deal by a Closing Order, and thereby creates a shortage, before it is made operative (this is a new Clause in the Bill), they have got to ascertain where the person displaced will live. If there is other vacant accommodation at a suitable rent in the neighbourhood for his occupation then he can go there, but if there is not then the local authority must build and let at a rent which the man displaced can afford to pay.

That seems to me of absolute primary importance. That is what the late President and the Local Government Board have been most careless about in recent years. The late President of the Board took immense pains, and I give him all credit for this, to compel local authorities to deal with unsanitary property. I quite agree that in his administration of the Act of 1909 there was more activity in the way of pulling down and clearing unsanitary property, under Part II., in town and country, than ever before. What was the result? His policy was purely destructive. He took no trouble over the constructive side of it.

Let me take again the Report of the Local Government Board for 1912–13, and what do I find. I take first the rural side and then the urban. I find on the rural side, if you take the houses closed voluntarily in consequence of representations from the local authorities and cases where the Closing Orders were made operative—and I have been very careful about these figures and deducted every single case where the order was determined and where the houses had been put into repair—that in the country they closed 2,292 houses. On the other hand, they sanctioned loans for building 331. You are simply creating a house famine. Before you proceed with your destructive policy you must take steps to see that there is somewhere for the people to go. It is bad enough for people to live in insanitary houses, but better an insanitary house than no house at all. The two things must go hand in hand. Take the urban side during the same period and taking the figures in the same way. The position is not quite so bad, but it is nearly. You closed 7,296 houses and you sanctioned loans for building 1,549. You are creating a house famine to the tune of 2,000 a year in country districts and 5,700 a year in towns. I think the House will agree that something more must be done on the constructive side. At all events, our new Clause compelling local authorities, before they make a closing order operative, to see where else the displaced people can live, is a Clause which ought to be enacted by Parliament. We are told that if we provide houses at a rent which the poor people who are turned out of the slums in the towns can pay, we are acting in an uneconomic manner, that the taxpayers and the ratepayers are contributing to provide houses for these people at less than the real rent—in fact, at a charity rent. But do we not get something back? Are these improvements not worth making? You may not be able to reckon in pounds, shillings and pence what you get back, but the advantage is enormous.

Take Liverpool. My hon. Friend (Mr. Kyffin-Taylor) is chairman of the Liverpool Housing Committee. The case of Liverpool is most extraordinary and well worthy of consideration. Liverpool rehouses the people displaced from its slums at what you may call a charity rent—at less than the economic rent. It costs Liverpool 2½d. in the pound in the rates. What has been the result? In these areas Liverpool has reduced the death rate from 60 to 26 per thousand; it has stamped out typhus altogether; and it has reduced the death rate from phthisis from 4 to 1.9 per thousand. That, I think, is a great thing. What are we doing under the Insurance Act? We are spending vast sums in building and maintaining sanatoria—"firstclass free hotels," as they have been called. I have said before, and I repeat, that, having regard to what Liverpool and London have done in stamping out phthisis by clearing slums, every penny that is spent on sanatoria would be very much better spent in clearing slums. Prevention is always better than cure. The slum is the breeding place of the very disease for which sanatoria are put up. Although I am not going to say that I am opposed to sanatoria, I do say that you begin at the wrong end. If you had taken more vigorous steps during the last twenty years, if the nation had contributed towards the local rates for clearing slums there would not have been the need for sanatoria that there is at the present time. Then take the moral side. In one area in Liverpool public prosecutions have fallen since the slum was cleared from 202 to 4 in a year, among practically the same people. Even though you may be making a proposition for uneconomic rents, what you get back in the material and moral welfare of the people is worth it over and over again. Certainly I shall always support the spending of public money to clear places which are the breeding spots of every disease and every moral disorder in the country. These, roughly, are our proposals. What is the Government policy? I hope before this Debate finishes we shall have a statement from the President of the Local Government Board. At the present moment I can only surmise from casual utterances to what that may be.

Is the Bill confined to slums?

The Bill has been circulated a week. It is practically the same Bill as last year. I know the hon. Baronet studied it carefully last year, and I hope he will do so this year.

I gathered from the hon. Member's speech that he was recommending the Bill because it did away with slum areas.

The hon. Baronet was not present at the commencement of my speech. I have dealt very fully with the rural problem. With regard to the Government policy, I hope that the central building scheme will be dropped, and that whatever the Government do will be done through the local authorities, and not through a central department. I have dealt with the policy of raising wages. I think it is practically impossible, as a present remedy, however much it may be desirable in itself. But there is a third policy, which I am told is the crux of the question. An eminent evening journal, the "Westminster Gazette," in very kindly anticipating the objections to my Bill, said:—

"The crux of the whole question is cheapening and making easier the purchase of land"

Hear, hear.

The hon. Gentleman opposite thinks that that is the crux of the situation. That, however, is not the opinion of the Local Government Board. In their Report for this year the Local Government Board say:—

"In some cases we are aware that difficulty has arisen in regard to the acquisition of suitable land, but we have no reason to believe that any such difficulty exists generally."

We have also the statement of the late President of the Local Government Board that, if you got the land for nothing in rural districts, it would make a difference of only a halfpenny a week in the rent. That statement may be a slight exaggeration, but I will give my own experience. I lay it down as an absolute axiom that the cost of land is the smallest item in providing cottages. When I was chairman of the Housing Committee of the London County Council we were developing three large urban estates on the outskirts of London. I think the House will admit that land in London and on the outskirts is dear, and that if the cost of land was a big item in this connection, it would probably be so in the case of London. One estate was the Totterdown Fields estate at Wandsworth. We were building a large number of cottages there on about 50 acres of land. We have now completed the estate and the houses are let. On an average, the rent per room is 2s. 6d. per week. I put it in that way because in some houses there are two rooms, and in others three, and in others four. How much of that rent is represented by the land? Taking the interest on capital borrowed for buying the land, and the amount necessary for the repayment of the loans, land represents only 1¾d. out of the 2s. 6d.

Are they flats or cottages?

Self-contained cottages.

How many cottages to the acre?

About twenty-four.

That is too many.

I agree; I think it is rather too many. Another estate was at Tottenham. There, again, the rooms reach 2s. 6d., and the cost of the land is 1¼d. Take the estate of Old Oak, Hammersmith. I will give the one instance, though there were a good many other cottages to let. This is a three-roomed house. The rent is 7s. a week, and the cost of the land 2¼d. I appeal to the common sense of any hon. Member opposite, how on earth are you going to solve the housing question by slightly cheapening the cost of land? Say you half it; it is still perfectly ludicrous. I yield to no man in my desire to see the local authorities getting land on the easiest possible terms. I perfectly well agree that very often they have had to pay too much, yet I still say you are not going to touch even the fringe of the question by cheapening the cost of the land. That is a complete mare's nest. The principal value of this proposal is for platform purposes, and that the Chancellor of the Exchequer knows. Take some further cases in the country. Here again I am indebted to the Report of the Local Government Board. We have, the details of loans made to rural district councils for cottage building. The Report shows how much is the cost of the land and how much the cost of the building, how much for roads and sewers, and also the probable rent. I agree that in this case it does not work out as the late President of the Local Government Board said. In the case of private individuals it very likely would have done so; but with local authorities it does not. Take the Rural District Council in which is the village of Gedney Drove, East Elloe. The cost of the land is more here because there are fewer cottages built. Eight cottages have been built and the proposed rent is 4s. per week. The cost of the land is 4d.—which is more than in London. It is rather a curious thing that land is a bigger item in the rural districts than in the towns, not because the land costs more but because you put fewer houses to the acre. [An HON. MEMBER: "Exactly."] Yes, you get more land. Still take it that 4s. is the rent, and 4d. the cost of the land, 4s. is a high rent for an agricultural labourer who probably cannot reasonably pay more than 2s. How, in this case, are you going to solve the question of halving the cost of the land? It is impossible. Even if you provide the whole 4d. you would not solve the question. I do not suppose the hon. Gentleman opposite expects land-owners to give their land for nothing, and at the same time give a large sum for an endowment of the cottages? Many, I agree, have offered land, but we have no right to assume that it is going to be transferred free in many instances. Take another case. The district council of Lambourne, Hungerford, in Berkshire. Six cottages have been put up. The proposed rent is 4s. and the cost of the land 3¾d. Here again, how are we going to solve the question by cheapening the cost of land? Take Broadway, Evesham; this is a very big scheme of sixty cottages. The average rent proposed is 3s. 11d. and the average cost of the land 3d.

Will the hon. Gentleman say how many cottages are to be built on the land? That is, how many cottages to the acre?

I could look that up, but I have not got that particular figure. In each case, I think, roughly speaking, in the country districts not more than seven or eight cottages are planted to the acre. That can be verified.

Does the term land include all the expenses of acquiring the land—the legal and other expenses—or is it merely the first cost of the land?

I include in the cost of the land the actual cost of acquiring the land, but I do not include the cost of the development of it, the cost of sewering, and so forth. I include simply the cost and trouble of acquiring the land. Anxious as we are to solve the housing question, eager as we are to see local authorities get land at the lowest reasonable possible cost, how can I, or anybody else, be told that you are going to solve the question by cheapening the land?

May I ask the hon. Baronet what is to be the rent per week in the case of ten cottages on the acre, or twenty-five houses on the acre, with land at about £300 per acre and money at 4 per cent.?

That is a thing that is not very easily worked out on the spur of the moment. I have not worked it out, and I think I might ask for notice of that question, but the hon. Member, who is an eminent statistician, I rather imagine, can work it out far more quickly than I can! The proposals put forward by the Government up to the present time do not seem to me to meet the case at all. Meanwhile, our Bill holds the field. I noticed another curious criticism in the "Westminster Gazette." That journal said that this Bill, like all Tory measures, was designed to relieve the land-owners of their burdens.

Hear, hear.

I do not know whether the hon. Member knows the reason given by the "Westminster Gazette." I will tell him. It was because it is compelling local authorities to undertake the burden that properly belongs to the land-owner, namely, to house the people. Does the hon. Member realise, or say this, that it is the duty of the land-owner at a loss to himself to house not merely his own people but the whole of the countryside? Hon. Members opposite here objected to a landlord housing his own people because, they say, that creates the tied cottage system. Surely they do not expect him to house the whole countryside? I appeal to many hon. Members opposite who are rich employers of labour. If they were as careful to house their employés as most land-owners are, we should not have this great housing difficulty. I appeal to the Government. I would ask the right hon. Gentleman opposite who, till quite lately, was Postmaster-General, what has the Post Office done to house its people? Even now the postmen in many cases cannot get a cottage, and where postmen have got cottages they have displaced other people. The Government have been most careless in this matter, as in the Rosyth case. But I want to deal out blame quite impartially. The local authorities are very careless about housing their people. We have a Clause in the Bill this year which I think is a good Clause so far as it goes. It ought to go further, but I do not know how we can coerce the Government. Where the local authority has created, or is likely to create, a housing difficulty, by not housing its own people the Clause says that the Local Government Board shall compel that local authority to find houses for those people. I apologise to the House for having taken up so much time. We hear talk of raising wages and altering the land laws. I do not believe, having studied this question, that either by raising wages or altering the land laws you will get the results you anticipate. We must do something to get rid of the slums of the country. It may be that we may impose on the country a heavy burden, it may be we may sanction municipal buildings which undoubtedly is an evil, but I say in all seriousness, almost any price is worth paying to get decent homes for our people, which is the real road to social reform. Let us try to get rid of the slums with all their horrors, and let us try to do something to elevate the people who dwell in those slums. I beg to move.

I beg to second the Motion.

We all deplore the sad circumstances which have prevented my hon. Friend the Member for Bute (Mr. Harry Hope) for being present to-day to introduce this Bill. By the death of the hon. Member's father Bute has lost one of its most valuable citizens, and Scotland has lost one of her most prominent men who, throughout a long and useful life, has done so much to advance the interests of Scottish agriculture, and generally to improve the conditions of all engaged in that industry. This is no new Bill, and it has been ably and comprehensively introduced by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Dudley. There are some improvements to which he has referred, but the main principles are identical with those contained in the Bill he himself introduced in 1912, and also with those of the Bill introduced last year by the hon. Baronet the Member for North Dorset. But in my opinion these Bills had both one vital blemish. Scotland was excepted from their application. In adopting the main principles of the previous Bills, my hon. Friend the Member for Bute has remedied the defect by Clause 21. This Bill is, generally speaking, to improve the machinery and facilitate and speed up the operation of the Housing Act of 1890, the principal Act as it, is commonly called, and also that of the most extensive of the various subsequent amending Acts, namely, the Housing and Town Planning Act of 1909. In both these Acts there are Clauses adapting their provisions to Scotland, and I do not think it is necessary for me to labour the argument, that Scotland would wish to participate in any improvement of those Acts, under which at present the housing problem in Scotland is dealt with.

As the memorandum on the Bill suggests eventually a consolidating enactment of all the various complicated Housing Acts should be placed on the Statute Book, and then I think it would be worthy of consideration whether a separate Bill for Scotland would not simplify the housing laws in Scotland. But in the meantime Clause 21 is a short simple Clause, which certainly will not increase any present complication of housing law in Scotland. It adapts to Scottish procedure the important Sub-section (1) of Section 3, and provides that if the Court of Session decide that any local authority has failed to carry out its duties under the principal Act, the Court of Session may by some decision authorise the Local Government Board to themselves carry out the duties of the defaulting local authority at the expense of that local authority. It saves the necessity of two separate legal proceedings which are now required in extreme cases under the Scottish Adapting Clause of the 1909 Act. Clause 21 suggests that this House should be invited to grant from Imperial sources a sum proportionate to that suggested for England and Wales. It is calculated on the recognised rough basis of £11 Scottish grant for every £80 English grant. It also actually defines what are rural and what are urban areas, instead of leaving the definition to the Local Government Board as is, I understand, necessary under English conditions.

1.0 P.M.

In all other respects, with the substitution of the Scottish Local Government Board for the English Local Government Board, the provisions of the Bill can and do apply to Scotland. I regard that for Scotland as for England the most important provisions of the Bill are the giving of the central authority the power to themselves act in default of local authority; the compelling, with certain safeguards of local authorities to rehouse in case of closing orders; the provision of money to assist local authorities, especially in poor areas, to carry out their duties under the Housing Act. At present I believe it is not so much that local authorities are apathetic and not alive to many deficiencies of housing in their districts, as that they are deterred from acting by fear of increasing local rates, thereby, while assisting to provide new cheap houses, actually raising the rent of existing houses.

I am convinced the central authority will find that their new power to assist pecuniarily local authorities will result in their seldom having to make use of their other new power of coercion. That the housing problem brooks no delay in Scotland, I need only quote the Chancellor of the Exchequer at Glasgow last month. He said:— But by this action of the local authority some 800 men, women and children are rendered homeless, and at the present moment they do not know where they can get houses within a reasonable distance of their work. They are employed by various employers and there is no question of the employers owning these houses. I believe eventually the local authority may provide accommodation under Part III. of the 1890 Act. But these people will be turned out of their homes in May, and certainly there is not now time to build the houses by that date. May I ask the House to consider what would have happened if this Bill had been law two years ago? Two years ago the Housing Department of the Local Government Board would have been able to compel the local authority to pronounce a closing order, and also, under Clause 8 of this Bill, to provide housing for the displaced inhabitants. Under Clause 15 the Local Government Board could, if they thought fit, have assisted the local authority by means of an annual Grant towards the possible expense placed upon the rates. The Grant need not have been permanent. If in the future the advance of wages in the district became such as to enable occupiers to pay an economic rent, the Grant could be withdrawn and applied in a similar manner in another necessitous and urgent case. No doubt if these West Benhar houses had belonged to a company employing the inhabitants, under Sub-section (4) of Section 8 the local authority could neither have compelled nor assisted rehousing.

The Bill does not propose either to subsidise employers by providing houses for their workmen with public money or even to artificially extend the system of tied houses. But at present owners in declining to put houses in repair can, if they wish, play on the known reluctance of local authorities to enforce Closing orders, which will result in a shortage of accommodation in the district. If you avoid shortage resultant from closing of non-tied houses, you strengthen the lever of local authorities in dealing with insanitary tied houses. Even now it is more easy to apply pressure on owners of tied houses than non-tied houses. In ease of tied houses owners have the double motive to spend money to avoid closing orders, both the loss of workmen necessary to their business, and the loss of rent. In case of non-tied houses there is only the motive of loss of rent. In the West Benhar case, if the houses had belonged to a company, I am inclined to think they would have gone to the expense of putting them in repair rather than allow the closing order to be pronounced. Anyhow, the only other solution is the adoption of the principle—employers must house their workpeople or a universal system of tied houses. This Bill endeavours to improve workmen's dwellings, but does not propose to revolutionise the system of housing tenure. It does not lay down hard and fast rules to be administered by one central authority, which cannot be conversant with all the varying conditions as regards wages and state of houses in different districts of the country. It allows local authorities with their local knowledge to continue the elastic system of dealing with the housing problem, but if these local authorities neglect their duties it gives the central authority more power to enforce action on town councils and district committees.

May I suggest to Scottish Members opposite that it proposes to facilitate and accelerate the machinery of present Housing Acts, much as their Bill of last Friday was designed to speed up the machinery of the Small Landholders Act. But it asks this House to provide an essential which was omitted from their Bill, money or the grease for the machinery. As I pointed out then, without this their Bill would fail in its objects, so would my hon. Friend's. We are not asking a large sum; in previous Bills the sum was ridiculed as a drop in the ocean towards the purposes designed, though our drop is refused. By careful administration and distribution in the most necessitous areas I believe much can be effected even with this money. Suppose that the £570,000 of the rural grant were all expended in grants of full four-fifths of annual deficiency in cost of rehousing, that annual deficiency was an average of £5 per house, this would assist in the providing of some 140,000 cottages in rural areas, which is not a negligible quantity. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Dudley has already dealt with the contention that the price and difficulty of securing land impedes the erection of small dwelling-houses. May I, in addition, quote from the last Memorandum of the Scottish Local Government Board:— for comparative failure of present Housing Acts. The Memorandum says:

I beg to move, as an Amendment, to leave out the word "now," and at the end of the Question to add the words "upon this day six months."

I am sure that we all on this side of the House sympathise with the hon. Member who was to have moved the Second Reading of this Bill in the cause of his absence. I have also another reason for personally regretting that the Bill has been moved by the hon. Member for Dudley (Sir A. Griffith-Boscawen). I should have liked to have put one or two questions to him, because upon the answers to those questions depends very largely my attitude towards the Bill. Perhaps I may get answers from somebody entitled to speak on behalf of the official Opposition. I have a vivid recollection of what happened with regard to this measure last year. The hon. Member for Dudley, while advocating this proposal for a State subsidy, told us that he thought the other provisions, even without the subsidy, were extremely useful, and that Members of the House of all parties should co-operate in discussing them and endeavouring to put them on the Statute Book. I have no doubt that as a result a number of Members on this side of the House were induced to go to a Second Reading of the Bill, but, when we got in Committee upstairs, the right hon. Gentleman the member for the Strand Division (Mr. Long), speaking on behalf of the official Opposition, stated that if there were to be no subsidy, as we had been informed by the President of the Local Government Board that there would not be, it would be utterly useless to proceed with the Bill. The words he used were, "The Bill would now be a complete sham." Under those circumstances, he advised his Friends not to proceed with it, and, after occupying about an hour of time upstairs, the Bill was abandoned. I should like to know whether this year it is still held that the Bill would be a mere sham if the Government are not prepared to provide a subsidy, because, if that be so—

I have not got the words I used with me, but I think the hon. Member is in error in saying that I used the word "sham." What I think I did say, and I think it was generally accepted by the Committee, was that the main object was to expedite the building of cottages by the aid of an Imperial subsidy, and, without that subsidy, evidently the main object of the Bill could not be obtained. I certainly did not describe the Bill as a sham, because I remember well pointing out there, as I pointed out here, that there were several Clauses, quite apart from the Subsidy Clauses, which would be of immense value in the future building of cottages.

I am quoting from my recollection, and I need hardly say that do not desire to dispute with the right hon. Gentleman the exact words he used, but I think there is no difference between us as to what happened. The right hon. Gentleman advised his Friends not to proceed with the consideration of the other Clauses, which a number of us, at any rate, were perfectly willing to discuss, and which might have been placed upon the Statute Book last year.

Two years we carried the other Clauses through Committee, but when they came back here they were obstructed by hon. Members opposite. Therefore, as you took the subsidy out last year, it was not worth while going on with them again.

I can only say for myself that I did not obstruct these other portions of the Bill two years ago. I should like to ascertain what view the hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite take now with regard to the desirability of proceeding with this Bill, if, in the view of the Government, the State subsidy is not to be provided, because, so far as I and my immediate Friends are concerned, we are perfectly willing, not necessarily, to accept these other proposals without inquiry or examination, but to go into Committee to consider them with a view of expediting the work of the local authority, and, so far as we are agreed, of placing them upon the Statute Book. So far as the State subsidy is concerned, there is on this side of the House, at any rate, a strong body of opinion that it would not conduce to the erection of any large number of houses, and would not help materially to solve the housing problem, but that it would only mean subsidising the land-owners of this country. Holding that view, we oppose and oppose to the utmost this particular proposal, and if the same attitude is to be taken this year, as I believe was taken last year, and there is to be a similar fiasco, then I think it is utterly useless for those of us who take that line to vote for the Second Reading of the Bill. If, however, when the Bill goes upstairs hon. Gentlemen are quite willing to proceed with it, whether the Government give the subsidy or not, then, so far as these other Clauses are concerned, I am quite prepared to advise my Friends not to divide, with regard to this matter. If that line were taken my view would be exactly the view which was expressed last year by the hon. Member for Dudley. The remainder of the Bill certainly would not solve the housing question, and would be no material contribution to the solution of the housing question, but to some extent here and there it would help the local authority and ease it a little. We are quite willing to assist in any work of that kind.

The hon. Member endeavoured in advance to meet the objections which he thought might be raised to this Bill. He devoted some time to dealing with what one may call the land difficulty, but he only dealt with half the case which has always been presented by those who take this particular view with regard to the housing question. There is a land question and there is a rating question, and, if you solve the land question and the rating question, there will be no housing question left to solve. The hon. Member, when endeavouring to prove that land might be bought very cheaply, altogether omitted to deal with the converse side of the proposals which we have always made, namely, that not only should we make land cheap by shifting the burden of rates from improvements to land values and so forcing land into the market, but that we should in the same way take the burden of rates off improvements, and so make it much easier to deal with this housing question. With regard to the rating question, the hon. Member for Dudley, so far as his speech is concerned, would have led us to suppose that the burden of rates had nothing whatever to do with the great deficiency of house accommodation in this country at the present time. In our view, the present system, which throws the burden of rates so largely upon houses and enables the land value to entirely escape, has a material bearing on the solution of this question. The hon. Member dealt with two aspects of this subject—the rural and the urban. With a great weight of experience, I am indeed astonished that, at this time of day, anyone can suggest that the large expenditure of public money on these schemes of slum clearances does anything material to solve the housing problem. Nor can anyone deny for a single moment that the expenditure of public money has as its only effect to largely increase the amount of money paid to the owners. Let me take the case of the city of Glasgow. I know it is a common view on the opposite side of the House that we on these benches are merely theorists in regard to this question—that we are mere doctrinaires with no practical views.

That observation, I notice, is cheered by hon Members opposite as well as by my hon. Friend the Member for Northants (Mr. Chiozza Money). I am aware that exchanges of experiences between Members of the House with respect to their experiences are not always profitable, but I say this, after an experience of twenty years, during which all the time that I have been able to spare from my own business concerns has been devoted to work in urban district and county councils—I was chairman of the urban district council for my own district and of the county council of my own county—and of all questions which came before us those to which I devoted the most attention were housing, sanitation, and small holdings. I have endeavoured, as no doubt many hon. Members opposite have endeavoured, to try and find if not a solution, at any rate an amelioration of present conditions by devious means. I have endeavoured to see that the law as to overcrowding was enforced. Hon. Members will admit that, time after time, people come to us, and ask us to stain our hands by stopping closing orders. These people are not the owners of the houses, but the poor unfortunate persons who are overcrowded in these places, and who know if they are turned out, there is no other place for them to go to. I have had experience in endeavouring to solve these questions, when theorists and doctrinaires and private enterprise have failed. I have endeavoured to solve the question by the building of houses by local authorities, and I have found that, by that measure, it was impossible for us to do more than to touch the mere fringe of it. I have endeavoured in connection with the county council to work the Small Holdings Act, though I knew that that Act, standing alone under the operation of our system of rating, could do very little indeed to resettle the people on the soil. My experience in my own county is that very few people have been settled, however energetically the Act may have been administered, and we have still on our books approved applicants who sent in their applications a year after the Act was passed. I have tried all these various things. I have known individual men whom I have wanted to take out of bad conditions and put into better ones, and I have always found that what blocked the path was the present land conditions of this country and the present system of rating. Perhaps the hon. Member for Northants will tell us when he gets an opportunity of speaking, how much practical work of that kind he has done personally in the field of local administration.

I apologise to the House for having been led away to make these personal references. I now desire to proceed to show by the experience of one of the greatest municipalities in this country how this scheme of slum clearances has failed, and how entirely the experience of that great municipality bears out the argument I am endeavouring to adduce to this House. Again I say I am not talking as a mere theorist. These facts were given to me last night by a great administrator of the city of Glasgow, a gentleman who was for many years a member of the City Improvements Trust, which endeavoured to deal with the matter in this way. He was a member of the city council, and has been for many years a magistrate of the city of Glasgow. To make quite sure that no statement I advance to this House should be challenged as a misstatement I have gone through the facts again this morning with the hon. Member for Linlithgowshire (Mr. Pratt), who also is a member of the corporation of the city of Glasgow, and a magistrate there, and who has done a great amount of social and housing work in that city. He agrees entirely with the facts which I propose to submit to the House. In the early seventies, the Glasgow corporation started what was called an improvement scheme, and it constituted itself a City Improvement Trust, for the purpose of carrying out the work of the scheme. I admit that it was not entirely concerned with the questions of housing and slum clearances. It did some work in connection with the provision of parks. But it cleared out a number of slum areas, and dealt with the sites after the slums had disappeared, trying, as far as was possible, to deal with the housing difficulty.

What has been the result? In the intervening years, under that scheme, the corporation of Glasgow has spent, I was going to say millions, but at any rate nearly two millions upon the scheme, and they lost tens of thousands of pounds. With what result? I do not deny that in the districts which were cleared you have now, in the place of rookeries, fine splendid buildings erected. From that point of view, it may be said that the scheme has been a success. But when the corporation had cleared these sites, they found it was impossible to erect houses upon them and to let them to the tenants that had been dishoused at rents which they could pay, because of the prices the corporation had had to pay for the land upon which the buildings had been erected. Having cleared the sites what did they proceed to do? In some cases they proceeded to erect buildings upon them themselves; in other cases they proceeded to dispose of the sites to builders. The sites have been cleared of all these unsavoury spots, and that fact has naturally affected, not, only the price of the land itself, but it has enhanced values in the whole neighbourhood of the clearances. The result was one of the most marvellous booms of land speculation that ever took place in the city of Glasgow. Every other person who de- sired to buy land in Glasgow—at any rate, in working-class neighbourhoods—found that the price had gone up, and, however successful the corporation may have been in their object, the result for every other person who proposed to solve the housing difficulty by building houses was that the work was rendered more difficult than before, because the price of land was so much higher. These wild schemes of land speculation which ensued upon this enterprise resulted in men making fortunes and losing fortunes; but I do not think it is the object of this House, under the specious cover of housing schemes, to promote land speculation of that character. What was the result upon the people? Are they better housed to-day than they were before this large sum was spent? Has it had the effect which the hon. Member for Dudley said was the result of slum clearances, of reducing the death-rate? Of course, if you take the areas where slums were cleared from which the people have departed and where houses put up—

May I explain to the hon. Member that in the case of Liverpool, which I cited, the same people are put back on the area from which they were removed.

Did you state the cost?

I will deal with that when I deal with the question of removal. I do not admit that all the people who were removed were put back. For the moment, I am dealing with Glasgow. What happened there? In that area, of course, the death-rate has gone down, because you have now got warehouses where you used to have people living in these insanitary conditions, but so far as the people themselves are concerned, all that has happened is that they have been driven from the High Street, from South Market and from Briggate, where these slums existed, to the Cowcaddens and Anderston, where you have reproduced, after all that expenditure, the same state of things. To-day in the city of Glasgow you have thousands of what are called "ticketed" houses. What is a "ticketed" house? It is a house where the conditions are so bad that it is necessary for somebody from the corporation to go round and put a ticket on the door, saying how many people are allowed, having regard to the air space, to sleep in that house. You have thousands of those ticketed houses, which are probably the poorest housing conditions to be found in this country. There are tens of thousands of people in them. Whenever the inspectors go round they find that, although the corporation has required a minimum air space, the regulations are being evaded always. Even the minimum set up by the corporation is not adhered to. After all this expenditure, and after the work of forty years in slum clearances in Glasgow, there are still 60 per cent. of the people living in one and two-roomed houses, and the problem is as acute to-day as it ever was. The Glasgow Corporation have tried all the roads except the one road that is not open to them. They have no illusions as to what is the real remedy. Having tried all these schemes, they have found them fail. Finding still that the population for which they are responsible is housed under these abominable conditions, what do they say? They say, and they repeat by resolution from year to year, that what they want is the power to put their rating on the land values of Glasgow, in order to make the improvements. They appeal to this House to give them that power, and they appeal to the great municipalities of the country to assist them in their great campaign. The hon. Member for Dudley, when he deals with this slum question, might at least devote some attention to a proposal which comes with such weight, authority, and experience from a great corporation like the corporation of the city of Glasgow.

With regard to London, where I admit his experience is very great, what has he himself told us in this House? He told us that for the purpose of removing 40,000 slum dwellers, without rehousing them, the cost was £2,000,000, or £50 per head of the population. What is your £500,000 Grant per annum going to do for the problem in London or Glasgow alone, if you have to pay a price like £50 per head in London, or £250 for a family of five, not for building houses, but for getting the people out of the houses in which you live? Your proposed £500,000 dole will not touch the fringe of the question. As a matter of fact, it will indirectly find its way into the hands of the Glasgow or London land-owners, as experience has shown. I have no doubt that the hon. and gallant Member for the Kirkdale Division of Liverpool (Colonel Kyffin-Taylor) will speak to-day of the conditions in Liverpool, as he did in the very interesting speech he delivered on the last occasion. It will be presumption for me to endeavour to controvert what he will be able to say to us from personal experience, but here again all the information I have gathered comes from first-hand sources. I have not got this material quite lately for the purposes of this Debate, and I have not got the exact figures, but as to the general proposition I shall put, I shall be glad if the hon. and gallant Member will deal with it when he comes to speak. I am informed by a member of the Corporation of Liverpool, who has taken a keen and active part in this work, and who is one of the most respected Labour members of the corporation, that again and again in the course of the corporation clearances, having carried out one scheme, and having found, as they have, that the scheme was a success, they desired to extend it and take in an adjacent area, but they found that the mere fact that they had cleared one area raised the price of the adjoining land so as to make it impossible to go on with the new scheme. The hon. and gallant Gentlemen will be able to tell me whether that is right or wrong.

Knowing what the difficulties of municipal work are under the present conditions, I would not be the last to yield my tribute of admiration of the hon. and gallant Gentleman and those associated with him for the work they had done. But does he suggest, and does the hon. Member for Dudley suggest, that even this Liverpool experiment, which we are told has done more than any other in this country, has solved the housing problem in Liverpool? We are told not. My acquaintance with Liverpool is very slight, but I have walked down endless miles of shabby, squalid and sordid streets. If you could hand over to the hon. and gallant Member the whole of this £500,000, it would take him a generation before on these lines he could solve the housing question in Liverpool. They are imposing a rate of 2½d. in the £ to carry out their present scheme, small and partial as it is. Will the hon. and gallant Gentleman tell the House what rate he thinks it will be necessary to impose on the citizens of Liverpool if they are to carry out a complete scheme which will provide housing for all the inhabitants of Liverpool up to an adequate standard; and will he tell the House, when all that is carried out, what in his view would be the difference between the land value of those sites to-day and the land value of the sites after this work is carried through? Will he also tell the House why, if that expenditure is carried out, the whole of it should go into the pockets of the private land-owners, while the corporation or the State—if it is done with the State's £500,000—should pour out their money merely for the benefit of the landowners who will reap the benefit of it in increased land values? They are carrying on this scheme by letting the houses at uneconomic rents. That means practically a subsidy from the rates. I do not know, and it is not fair to ask for figures without notice, but perhaps the hon. Gentleman can tell me whether if the Liverpool Corporation insisted on giving a direct subsidy, and passed a resolution not to levy any rates upon the houses, would there have been any loss on the houses at all? [An HON. MEMBER: "Yes, a considerable loss."] At any rate, so far as it goes, it would have materially reduced the loss, and if you had been able through these schemes to get for the community the benefit of the value of the land upon which the houses were built, and at the same time relieve the owners of improvement, you would have done more to solve the housing question in Liverpool than you have done under the present conditions.

I should like to say a word with regard to the smaller urban areas with which I have been more particularly connected. I have no doubt the hon. Gentleman (Sir A. Griffith-Boscawen), who has been connected with a great corporation, thinks it is a mere matter of amusement to talk of one's experience in a small urban district of 10,000 or 20,000 people, but the housing question has to be dealt with by the people in small communities as well as those who have to live in the great community with which he has been associated. I want to draw attention to how this particular question affects these smaller communities and how a subsidy would be of no benefit whatever in these districts unless it be intended, which I do not allege, that it is to be a subsidy to the landlord. I take first the case of Croydon, which is a growing municipality. In the case of Croydon it was thought desirable to have some allotments for working men who are living in the town, and naturally the ground was taken some distance from where the mass of the population live. The price which had to be paid for the land was quadruple the price which it had been producing in rent for agricultural purposes. That is the first thing the corporation had to deal with. Notwithstanding the fact that the men had to trudge a long distance from their homes to do their work in the allotments, they were taken advantage of. In spite of all the talk about men not being willing to work on the land, it shows that they take advantage of it when they get the chance. They were town workers, and after the day's work was over, they had to walk a long distance from their allotments, but they went there in large numbers. A number of them thought it would be better for them to get their houses nearer the allotments and save the walk, and they appealed to the corporation to build houses on land adjoining the allotments. They again negotiated with the landowner. The sum now was not merely quadruple the agricultural value. The value had quadrupled again. Having no option, the corporation took the land on those terms. The scheme was a success even on those conditions. Then they wanted to extend and build further, and then up went the price again. The result of these schemes always inevitably is that you force up the price of land for the municipality itself and for everyone else who proposes to build.

I take next a case which will be interesting to the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Pretyman), the case of Chelmsford. I remember two or three years ago one of his constituents, who apparently thought there was no particular use sending the question to him, sent to ask me to put a question as to the housing conditions at Chelmsford, which were so abominable that men who were in regular employment had to go into the workhouse and take their families there because they could not find houses anywhere. I put down a question for the purpose of obtaining information, but I found on communication with my correspondent, that while perhaps he was not in entire agreement with the hon. Gentleman he was not particularly enamoured of my remedy for dealing with this state of things either. He was a member of the town council, and his view was that private enterprise had failed, and that there ought to be public enterprise, and that the corporation of Chelmsford should build houses for the workers and bring this scandal to an end. Apparently, though according to his own showing he was in a small minority on the council, he has brought the other councillors round to his way of thinking, because I find, from a Return made to this House, that the corporation of Chelmsford have purchased six acres of land for the purpose of building houses. They have paid £1,706 for the six acres. What was the value of the land before the corporation purchased it for housing purposes? In answer to a question we were told that the rateable value was £16 10s., and the rental value was £18 before the corporation purchased. So the corporation paid rather over 100 years' purchase.

I should like to put one or two cases in the county in which I live, Monmouthshire. In all these mining districts we do not want money for the purpose of clearing slums. As a rule the collieries have been sunk within the last quarter of a century, and the houses are not old. Slums have not had time to grow. What we are suffering from there is the terrible overcrowding which is taking place. Again, the theorist knows more than the practical man, and the man who lives many miles away knows better than the man who lives on the spot, and has to deal with the problem at first hand. In all these mining districts what is happening is the terrible shortage of houses and the consequent frightful overcrowding. There is no need for money for slum clearances. There is no need for money to assist building unless you are to say that the landlords' demands are to be unchecked and that public money is to go to him. If we were able to buy the land at the price at which the land is rated we would solve this question without the slightest trouble. Indeed, there would be no question to solve, but what have we had to face? One or two questions were put recently in the House. The first case I take is the Bedwelty Urban District Council, which bought four acres for housing purposes. They paid £800. The assessment for the Poor Rate, according to the answer given, was approximately £2, so that they paid 400 years' purchase.

How much was it in weekly rent?

I have not worked that out. There may be an answer to our case, and if there is I hope some one will give it. But the hon. Gentleman is missing our case all the time. When he comes to these agricultural areas he says a penny. I said last year in a rural district it ought not to be more than a penny a week. You ought to get one-eighth of an acre for 4s 4d. a year. Agricultural land is not worth any more. What the hon. Gentleman misses is that immediately you come into the market and want land for houses you drive the price up. You do not get it at a penny. I have a case here at Evesham, where £120 an acre was paid. It is not an isolated case.

That is the case I quoted, where the cost of the land works out at 3d. per week.

I cannot do the sum in that way. I do not know whether there is an eighth of an acre in that case, but it does not matter for my point. Would the hon. and gallant Gentleman do me the honour of dealing with my argument. It has been said that the President of the Local Government Board stated that, under ordinary conditions, it should be a halfpenny only. Perhaps it ought to be a penny.

I quoted what was said by the President of the Local Government Board. He did not say that it ought to be a halfpenny per week, but that in most cases it was a halfpenny.

This is a matter of phraseology, and it is quite aside from my argument. I say that in the case of average land you should get it at a penny. Hon. Gentlemen, acquainted with agricultural conditions will admit that is pretty fair. Now I come to a case which the hon. and gallant Gentleman himself quoted to show how light the grievance is, but it appears to me to show that the more public money you spend the more the price of land leaps up. There is no end to it. That is the point which the hon. Gentleman entirely fails to meet. Immediately you go into the market the price goes up, and therefore your subsidy goes into the landlord's pocket, instead of helping to build houses. I should be be very much surprised to find that if you paid £800 for 4 acres it did not materially increase the rents. The assessment of the 4 acres prior to that was approximately £2. Take the case at Ebbw Vale. They could not buy on any terms. The landlord would not sell, but they eventually secured 1 acre 2 roods for ninety-nine years at £64 per annum. When the clerk of the urban council was asked to give the figures as to the rateable value of the land, he said he had endeavoured to find out, but had been unable to do so, because the land did not appear to be on the rate-book at all. Then there is the case at Abersychan. The price was £1,109 for a little over 3 acres. That was part of a large property. In this case the price was 250 years' purchase. That is the whole story there. A member of the district council, who is a labour leader in the district, speaking at a labour conference called to discuss the housing question the other day, pointed out that in this very district they had to pay £375 per acre for what was bare and barren mountain land, and that now, when they wanted to build more houses, the price of adjoining land had gone up to £500 per acre.

2.0 P.M.

So long as that state of things continue it is utterly impossible to suggest that by this Bill, or by any means analogous to the Bill, you are likely to do anything to help to solve the housing problem. We are told that private enterprise has failed, and you ask that public enterprise should deal with the housing question. The question which I think hon. Members should address to themselves is: Why has private enterprise failed? [An HON. MEMBER: "Hear hear."] The hon. Gentleman who cheers that statement may give the House later on the benefit of his own experience, which, I have no doubt, exists in connection with this question. My own experience, I admit, is quite limited. So far as my means have admitted I have endeavoured to put what savings I have got into house property. At present some of my cottages are very old, and I would like to rebuild them. Why do I not rebuild them? That is not the question of a theorist, but the question of a practical man trying to look at the subject from a business point of view. If I pull these houses down and build new ones in this particular district, I will have to pay rates of 10s. in the £ every year on that expenditure, and it is utterly impossible for me to get any return if I let these houses at rents which the tenants can permanently afford to pay. Therefore, I refrain from carrying out that work under these conditions. That is the reason why all over the country private enterprise has not grappled with this question. It is not because men are not willing to put their savings in bricks and mortar. On the contrary, there is no investment so attractive as an investment in cottages and house property. A man likes to see the fruits of his labour, and not merely a piece of paper. When he walks down the street he likes to see his property there. Given fair conditions, money will flow into house building as it did before, and to a greater extent than ever before, but so long as a man who proposes to build has, first of all, to pay a monopoly ground rent, an ever-increasing ground rent, for the land on which he builds, and finds at the same time that the person who draws the ground rent makes no contribution to local assessments, and that the assessments all fall on the cottages he has built, private enterprise will fail to solve the question, and public enterprise will fail also if it has to face the same conditions. If a community is in the hands of a landlord, the mere change now proposed will do no good. My last words to hon. Gentlemen opposite are these: I admit that there is a house famine in this country. There was a time when there was something approaching a famine in this country in the bare necessaries of life—a time when food was so dear that little children had to go without the necessaries of life. What did the Liberal party say was the true method of dealing with that question? They said that if food was so dear, the best way was to take taxes off food. That was the policy which the Liberal party advocated, and which was adopted by Sir Robert Peel, who said that what he hoped to be remembered by in the cottage homes of the people was that he was the man who helped them to get un-taxed bread. If that was the method by which the food famine was dealt with. I say that the way to end the house famine is to take the rates off the cottages and put them on the unimproved value of the land, to take your rates from the building and improvements, the work of man's hands, and to put them where they ought to lie—upon the unimproved value of the land, which is the creation of the community and not of any individual. When that is done, you will have solved the housing question. Until that is done, it will always remain an insoluble enigma.

I beg to second the Amendment.

In the main we criticise this Bill because it does not go in any way to the root of the matter. If you want to solve the housing problem you want to cheapen cottages, and to cheapen the land on which the cottages are placed. Hon. Members opposite are always telling us that the system of land values taxation emdodied in the Budget of 1909 has lessened the value of land. Is not that precisely what we want to do if we want to get cheap cottages? Therefore, if the object is to provide cheap cottages, and first of all to get cheap land, they should be supporters instead of opponents of the taxation on land value. I oppose this Bill because I believe that it means side-tracking the real reform which is essential for the provision of cheap cottages. The hon. Baronet the Member for Dudley (Sir A. Griffith-Boscawen) mentioned several cases in which land has been acquired cheaply for rural housing, and proceeded to suggest that in all cases land could be so acquired, and that the land monopoly had no influence whatever on the question of housing in the rural districts. I have spent a great deal of my time and travelled a great many thousand miles inquiring into conditions in English villages, and I have found that the land monopoly and the restriction on the use of land is very largely the factor which determines the condition of rural housing. I may give one example from the county of Sussex. I use the name of the land-owner concerned because I have used it in the public Press and none of the statements which I have made have ever been challenged.

I take the case of a village where they have a housing problem, the village of Petworth. That they have a housing problem is shown by the fact that not very long ago a man was brought from the village workhouse and charged before the magistrates with being a burden on the rates. His plea was that he had work and wages of £l a week, that he had searched the whole of the surrounding district, and he had been unable to get a cottage. The magistrates gave him a fortnight to find a cottage. He searched for a cottage, and at the end of the fortnight came back again charged with the same offence. He said that he had searched diligently for the fortnight but there was no cottage in the district. The magistrates ordered him to pay a fine of £1 or go to gaol for a fortnight. He went to gaol. And as further proof of the existence of this problem, I may mention that not long ago a builder went to Petworth with the object of erecting cottages. Three or four acres were put up for sale. The builder went to buy this piece of land, to put up the cottages which were so much required, but the agent of Lord Leconfield also went to the auction room, and he put up the price of this land to £700 an aero, and added it to some thousands of acres adjoining. The problem still exists in Petworth. I understand that the rural district council are going to erect cottages now if they get the land, and if they get the land a handsome subsidy will go for the benefit of Lord Leconfield.

Similar cases can be multiplied by the thousand throughout England as regards cottages for building. In reference to houses for miners, pretty much the same thing prevails. I may recall the case which attracted so much public notice two or three years ago, when the district council of Walbottle got a closing order against the Duke of Northumberland in respect of certain cottages of his in which miners were living, and which had to be closed down. Some time before that the North Walbottle Mining Company had determined to erect cottages for its men. All the land around, thousands of acres, belonged to the Duke of Northumberland. They went to the Duke and asked him what price he demanded for land around the pit for the purpose of erecting cottages. He refused to sell the land in freehold, but said that he would lease land so that at the end of some terms of years the capital expended in cottages on the land by the company would return, to his estate: and the company, being business men, refused to build on those terms and went to a place a mile and a half or two miles away an another estate where they could purchase land. I have myself seen the miners tramping four miles, backwards and forwards to and from their work at the; pit, because it was impossible to have them housed near where they work owing to the terms demanded by the Duke of Northumberland. The Duke owns 180,000 acres in the county, and you can understand that his methods as regards leasing land determine the conditions of housing all through the mining area controlled by him. You could not find housing conditions worse than those that prevail in Northumberland anywhere else except in the county represented by my hon. Friend the Member for Durham.

The question of land is a great determining factor in the matter of housing. But another factor which hon. Members on the other side do not fully realise is the effect of the rates upon the cottages. The hon. Member who talks of the low value of the land in proportion to the total value: of the cottage and land, was giving as the very best evidence that he could have provided of the benefit that would come to the cottager if we trans- ferred the rates from the land and the building on to the land alone, because if the value of the land is so infinitesimal, if it amounts to only 4d. a week; if we transfer the rates on to the land alone, it is evident that the cottage will have to pay in future very little indeed in rates. Take the case of a village cottage. Hates and taxes are levied on this cottage. I was talking the other day to a builder in a small village in Sussex, and he pointed out that the difficulty in getting land was owing to the price demanded for land which was up to £400 an acre. The only man who had land to sell was the man who checked him in that direction. He had already put up some cottages and told me that he let these cottages to labourers at an inclusive rate for land, houses, and rates, and he said that he passed on 10d. per week for rates, and 3d. per week for Income Tax under Schedule A. It is to that 10d. or 1s. or 15d. per week that we desire to draw hon. Members' attention, and we say that if you want to cheapen cottages the first thing to do is to abolish the tax on the cottages. As my hon. Friend said, when we wanted to cheapen bread we took the tax off bread. We can cheapen cottages in the same way. [HON. MEMBERS: "And cheapen land."] And if we cheapen land by taxing land hon. Members opposite would not oppose the taxation of land.

Another cause of the housing problem is the fact of the low wages which are paid in the countryside. An hon. Member said, "Do you expect us landlords to house all the countryside?" No, but we intend to make the landlords pay a wage which will enable the workers to house themselves. What does this Bill propose to do? It proposes that where wages are low, and the worker cannot afford to pay an economic rent the district shall be subsidised—that is to say, where the landlord is paying starvation wages, and the worker cannot afford to pay the rent of a cottage, then the district council will apply for a subsidy, which will have the result of enabling the landlords to continue paying low wages, and to get their virtual serfs housed at the cost of the community. Where the landlord pays decent wages, the labourers are enabled to pay the rent of a cottage, and in such a district there will be no question of a subsidy out of the public funds. Obviously, this is a measure to subsidise the district where low wages are paid. We hold that there should be a process by which to relieve the cottages of the present burden of taxation, while compelling the landlord to use the land and let others use it, and to pay wages that will enable the labourers to pay economic rents. It is in that way we suggest that a solution of the problem should be sought, namely, by raising the wages of the tenants and relieving them of burdens of taxation, so that they will be put into a position of obtaining houses for themselves.

This appears to me to be one of those questions in regard to which a contribution of the kind to which we-have just listened takes us no further forward. The strong practical bent with which the people in Scotland are generally credited probably accounts for the practical interest which in that country is taken in the fortunes and misfortunes of this Bill. To a great extent we are in agreement as to terms, but I am content to take the statement about them from the Front Bench on the other side. The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer said:— Member for Midlothian, who said that from the point of view of the landlord, the cheapest thing to do with this class of property often is to shut it up. Yes; the cheapest to the landlord, but what about the tenants? The interests of the tenants are interests which must not be overlooked. In Edinburgh we look back with a great deal of pride to one of the greatest and most useful reconstruction schemes of any urban district, the great scheme with which is associated the name of the eminent Dr. Chambers. It was worked out without the assistance of a horde of outside officials, and it remains an example to this day of what can be done and the way in which a problem of this kind should be dealt with. Apart from our own experience in the capital of Scotland, we know what was done in Birmingham many years ago. We know what has been done recently in Liverpool. We know also what has not been done in Dublin. To add to that experience of the work in towns, there is the experience of what is going on in the country districts.

There, again, the Member for Midlothian did well to remind the House of the condition of things which exists in the raining villages of Ayrshire. The statements which appeared in the "Scotsman" newspaper have not been denied in any responsible quarter. Apart from experience in the past in Scotland, our interest in this Bill centres on the future. We believe that prevention is better than cure. In some of our towns in Scotland, not in such measure as in England it is true, we are face to face with conditions created by the existence of a third generation of slum dwellers, or quasi-slum dwellers—associated with, to a certain extent created by, and at all events certainly compatible with, Free Trade conditions in this country. We are afraid that in Scotland more of these slums will be created unless steps to prevent it are taken. That is the great attraction of the Bill to me, from the point of view of Scotland. In regard to tuberculous disease in Scotland, I think it is to the credit of the poorer classes that it can be said of many men and women there that they would both live like a dog and die like a dog rather than enter the poorhouse. This Bill is calculated to do something useful to prevent the evils of tuberculous disease. At present what is happening in many parts of Scotland is that unfortunate people, who were led to expect very different things, when attacked by tubercu- lous disease are invited to go to that institution, which they regard with unspeakable hatred. It is true that within the last few years, in one or two towns in Scotland, certainly in Glasgow and in Edinburgh, the evil of overcrowded conditions has to a certain extent been mitigated by emigration on a wholesale scale. Although that must be admitted to be the case, yet I do not admit that it represents satisfactory treatment, and I hope in any case that it is a very temporary treatment of the evil.

Why do existing methods lead to so much failure? Why is it that our present facilities for dealing with this difficulty are wasted and lead to nothing? The reason can be summed up in a few words: It is that our existing system has no proper financial understructure, and until it is provided with that it is doomed, in my judgment, to a large measure of failure. It is true that we cannot do everything by this Bill, or by any Bill, but I submit to the Government that that is no reason why we should not attempt to do something. I know that, on the one hand, it is contended that the pig makes the sty, and, on the other, that the sty makes the pig; but I think that is a very barren controversy, because in a measure both statements are true. The question has got into a vicious circle, and this Bill is a practical effort to get it out of that rut. I listened to the highly coloured and, in many ways, very imaginative statement of the evils existing in certain towns. I do not deny that there are great evils, but I think the statement to which I refer was too highly coloured; but, whether that be so or not, I confess that what those accounts suggested to my mind were one or two practical reflections. In the first place, if those harrowing conditions are in existence, and to a great extent I say they are, should we not conclude that what we want is an attempt, such as this Bill is, to make some alteration in these conditions? The more these terrible pictures are true, the more I think the hon. Members who drew them should feel inclined to support this Bill and not the less. Again, if it is the case, and what is more it is the case, that 50 or 60 per cent, of the people in Glasgow live in one or two rooms, I draw exactly the same conclusion, and I would like to ask those in charge of the Government policy how is it that, after this country has made a very fair experiment in their land legislation, those difficulties have not disappeared and have not begun to disappear? That appeared to me to be a very pertinent question when I listened to these highly coloured strictures. It is admitted that in order to provide cottages or small dwellings, urban or rural, of the kind which we agree are wanted, some loss must be faced. Is it not the case that the gain is to be a national one, and that therefore the loss should very reasonably be a national one also? I think it is. When I consider the lavish kindness with which gifts have been strewn in the path of people who show a disagreeable tendency to be horribly ungrateful, I confess I am disappointed that there should be opposition to the question of providing a small amount of money towards making a safe and cautious beginning in dealing with a clamant necessity in the country. I would appeal to the Government to depart from the idea of dealing with this matter by any central scheme of housing, which we have only too good reason to think merely means that the country will be flooded once more with hordes of officials doing work, or professedly doing work, which, in our judgment, would be much better done through local machinery, which has at its disposal the necessary knowledge of varying local circumstances and of local problems, and, what is equally important, of varying local resources. Those all require to be dealt with, and I say they will not be if the administration of this scheme is anything like the administration of some other Government schemes, which is not so satisfactory as it might be.

I am quite prepared to be told, as I have been told before, that we are fighting and waging an impossible battle with economic laws. I am not sure we are. I do not think we are. The economic difficulties are great, but I am sure of this, that a partial understanding of them is much better than no understanding at all. I see no reason why this Bill should be sneered at, as it has been, on the ground that the money it seeks to provide is trifling compared with difficulties which will not be solved under it for a generation. I do not think anybody who knows what the difficulties are thinks they will be solved in a generation. It is those who realise that it will be a longish process who are most likely to make a beginning. I do not think this Bill can be fairly regarded as on its trial. It has stood its trial more than once, but I think something else—and I believe feeling in Scotland is very strong on this point—and that is, the sincerity of the Government in dealing with these schemes of social reform is the thing which at present does stand on its trial. We have heard sometimes of the deep and abiding sympathy of those responsible for the Administration with the poor. Here is a practical chance to do something by facilitating this Bill and showing they are in earnest in that deep and abiding sympathy. I invite them to do that. We have now reached that stage when we can compare many promises as to social reform with results, and we have come to one of those partings of the ways where it is possible by a concrete ease to test the sincerity of the Government in wishing to promote social reform. I urge, unless the Government provide some facilities and extend different treatment to this Bill from what has been extended before, that, judged by that test, they are likely to stand condemned at no distant date.

This Bill and its promoters, if they have done nothing else, have at least aroused hon. Gentlemen opposite to seeing that something ought to be done. Even last year there was a common understanding that not only in the towns, but also in the country districts of Great Britain, a growing evil had arisen, not only as to the necessity for new houses, but also as to the destruction of insanitary cottages and slum areas throughout the country, which have long been a blot on our civilisation and a menace to the moral and physical health of this country and a continual drain upon the public purse. Nothing has happened since to change the conditions of housing, but something has happened to effect a considerable improvement in the attitude which the Government has adopted to wards the House. I do not suppose, when the Report of the Land Inquiry came out that many hon. Gentlemen on this side of the House had cause to show much marked affection for it. I am not sine that anything has taken place since to heighten their appreciation of the bulk of that very substantial volume, but there are scattered here and there throughout its pages proposals which can meet with their complete approval. After all, it is difficult to compose four or five hundred closely printed pages without stumbling on the truth sometimes. Some of the passages to which I refer bear with singular effect on the proposals of this Bill. The Report emphasises intensely the impotence of the Local Government Board to stimulate the local authorities in this matter of housing reform. The Committee declared that their inquiry has shown that the housing department of the Local Government Board are even unable to secure the effective administration of the housing Acts. The Board is a supervising and controlling one, not an initiative or creative one. Even if the Board was regarded as such, and was able to stimulate local authorities, the staff at its disposal is most inadequate. There is a staff of only eighteen persons to control 1,800 local authorities, and the scope of its activity extends not only to the matter of housing, but also to the great quesion of town planning. If, said the Committee, inquiry did anything to stimulate town planning in our greater towns, the inspectors would be insufficient. The work in connection with housing in England and Wales cannot adequately be performed by the existing inspectors. The Committee found that the powers of the staff are as inadequate as the personnel. The staff have no powers of initiation; nothing effective can be done unless complaint reaches them from the local authorities. If no complaint reaches them they can only offer suggestions or write letters. Even if a complaint reaches them the only means in their power for dealing with it is the old cumbrous device of a mandamus. The Committee, therefore, concluded that the Local Government Board should be given further power, that the staff should be increased, and that the Board should be given some financial control over local authorities. The Committee contemplated that this should be done by financial aid from the Imperial Exchequer, provided the local authorities were able to carry it out properly.

I have dwelt at length on the Report of the Committee, because I feel that nowhere can stronger support for the administrative changes proposed by this Bill be found. The Report of that Committee has had much influence in bringing about the change of attitude in the Government towards this question and even towards this Bill. The workings of fate are indeed strange. Who would have thought that the first fruits of the Land Committee would be the elevation of the late President of the Local Government Board, and that it would also bring about a distinct improvement in the attitude of the Government towards a Bill originating on this side of the House? I can well understand that the holder of the economic passes against the "sentimental Thomases" on this side of the House found his position untenable when his flank was turned by equally "sentimental Thomases" among his own party. The net result is that a great advance has been made. On former occasions the evil was admitted, but there was no agreement upon the nature of the remedy. We are now a stage further. The nature of the remedy has been clearly indicated; the only remaining point is whether this Bill is adequate in applying it. The two Bills which preceded this one were in some measure cheap and convenient sacrifices to propitiate the hungry deities of the single-taxers. It looks very much as if this Bill would find its way to the altar of the fetish, called the minimum wage.

Meanwhile, the arguments used, both against this Bill and against its predecessors, are mutually destructive. It is urged at one moment that the financial provisions are totally inadequate to deal with the actual shortage of houses. At the next moment attention is called to the fact that there are large numbers of empty houses, not only in the towns, but also in the country districts, and that therefore the effect of this Bill will be to promote inquiries and add burdens to the rates. It is impossible for both those arguments to be valid; it is not impossible for them both to be false. On this point I am willing to accept entirely the evidence of the Committee to which I have referred; it is that in purely rural districts private enterprise has failed to meet the demand for new cottages, and that some sort of State assistance is absolutely necessary. The action of local authorities has proved absolutely inadequate in the past, and I see no reason why it should be more adequate in the future. As to the question of cost, it is at least arguable that the loss to the country from the continuance of a large part, of the population under conditions which must necessarily breed disease and crime, is, in the nature of the case, quite as expensive as, if not more expensive than, the burden which would be imposed by the building of 120,000 new houses at a cost of some £3,500,000. The fact is that the argument that the financial provisions of this Bill is inadequate, and the converse argument that it involves enormous expenditure are both extravagant exaggerations. On the one hand, the results of the Census of 1911, which were not available to the Committee of the Land Inquiry, show that as far as rural houses are concerned, there is actual overcrowding—that is, houses in which there are more than two people in a room—to the extent of about 60,000 tenements, and these are inhabited by a population of something under half a million, working out at an average of about two and a half persons to each room. It follows that some 14,500 four-roomed cottages would relieve the pressure in those tenements, and over-crowding in the technical sense of the word would cease. Compare these figures with the 121,000 cottages proposed by the Liberal Committee, and the fears as to the expense will lose a great deal of their importance.

Moreover, it is not for one moment suggested that the moneys of this Bill are to meet the cost of whatever cottages may be required; they are to prevent the deficit arising from cottages let at less than economic rents from falling entirely on the rates. It seems to me that the money asked for by this Bill can be spread over a great many more than the 6,000 or 8,000 cottages a year to which reference has been made in previous debates. It has also been urged that the Bill is likely to set up a system of doles to landlords. This argument would have more force if it were not urged by people who are at the same time arguing that the Bill will establish a practice of letting at charity rents. The Bill cannot well err in both those respects at the same time. It is ridiculous to maintain that a sum of money which is to be applied for a specific purpose, with hard and fast safeguards for its application, can be used for the benefit of landlords, and not for the benefit of the community. It is equally vain to inveigh against the practice of charity rents, when half the land of this country is, in fact, so let at the present time. As for the argument that the taxation of land values is a cure for the housing evil, if that is not already abandoned, we have the authoritative statement that if generous landlords were to give any quantity of land to put on houses, which private enterprise or the local authority was to build, the saving would not be more than a halfpenny a week. On a consideration of the arguments advanced against this Bill on the one side and on the other, I am driven to think that the objection of hon. Members opposite is on a par with the attitude of the devout but timorous divine who, when a storm arose at sea, exclaimed fearfully that he did indeed want to go to Heaven, but he did not want to go by water. Hon. Members opposite say they want housing reform, but they will have nothing to do with housing reform proposed in a Unionist measure. There is a passage in the works of Lord Beacons-field in which he declares that he had always felt that the best security for civilisation lay in the dwellings of the people. He said that upon properly appointed and becoming dwellings depends more than anything else the improvement of mankind: such dwellings are necessary to the domestic virtues, and without a becoming home those virtues are impossible.

If anything effective is to be done to remedy these acknowledged evils, the creation of an active central body, commanding the financial support of the State, is necessary in order that when hotbeds of disease are destroyed and new sanitary cottages are erected, the old tenants shall be able to afford to go back and enjoy in full measure the improved conditions. Experience has proved that this is the only way to prevent a sore which is being healed in one place from breaking out in another and hitherto uncontaminated place, and the money which is being spent being spent in vain. The effect of charging an economic rent is to exclude from the benefits of the housing scheme those people for whose benefit primarily housing schemes are undertaken. It is because I feel that the Bill before the House now makes a serious attempt to grapple with a deplorable state of things in the only practical way, it is because it is clear that its object, and in Part its methods, have now the support of all parties, that I urge that this Bill should not be considered as a party measure, but rather as a definite attempt to remedy an evil, the magnitude of which must override all political considerations.

I welcome this opportunity of speaking for the first time in this House to support a Bill which not only touches vitally the problems of the present, but, if passed, will have far-reaching effects on generations to come. The magnitude of the evil which it is sought to remedy is not remotely grasped if one may judge by a past legislation and the treatment of new. Do we realise that every year numbers representing an army are lost by preventible disease due to bad housing and overcrowding? In order to drive this point home I would like to quote some statistics from the Report of the Registrar-General for 1904 in regard to five well-known areas in the British Empire, all with practically the same population of between four and a half and five millions. Taking the Australian Colonies as a standard, the excessive deaths in three of the other areas are London, nearly 24,000, Scotland 26,361, and Lancashire 34,198, or in each case more than the total number of deaths from casualties of all kinds during the whole of the South African War in the British Army. That is to say, that in these three districts alone we have practically the preventible deaths of 75,000 persons. If we take the whole of the United Kingdom, those deaths must reach very nearly a quarter of a million. The statistics show how urgent is the need for fresh legislation to deal with the question of housing in this country, and if the House will pardon me I would like to touch on a few significant facts to illustrate this point.

It is a remarkable fact that according to the Census Returns of 1911–12 more than half the population of Scotland did not know the decency of a three-roomed dwelling. In Scotland in 1904 the Census showed 280,470 families living in two-roomed dwellings. The number of inhabitants returned as overcrowded is more than the whole population of New Zealand. We have this remarkable fact—and that is why I take the liberty to quote it again—135,000 more families lived in one-roomed dwellings, and the number returned as overcrowded is more than the population of Western Australia. The modification in respect to these numbers since 1904, I am sorry to say, is very small. I would like to take these five areas, all practically with the same population, and compare their infantile mortality. Just as the thermometer tells us the heat, and the barometer the air pressure, so it is infantile mortality that gives us an unfailing indication of what are the housing conditions of that particular town or district. The districts I wish to take are the Australian Colonies, the English rural districts, London, Scotland, and Lancashire.

In the Australian Colonies the infantile mortality was 80 for every 1,000 births in the year; in London it was 146; in the English rural districts it was 117, in Scotland 120. and in Lancashire 176. I am well aware that in Lancashire there are governing industrial conditions of women's employment, but it must also be remembered that similar high death-rates occur both in Durham and Carmarthenshire, and that in many of the districts in which these un-favourable conditions exist high wages also prevail. I would ask hon. Members of this House just to look at this map [the hon. Member held up a map] and note the portion marked black. This map is in the Forty-second Annual Report (for the year 1912–13) of the Local Government Board. The dark portions show that the death-rate is bad. Hon. Members will notice that in these dark places that overcrowding and a state of bad housing exists. Therefore, I have the greatest hope that all hon. Members who represent constituencies that are in these dark areas will support this Bill and help to remedy bad housing conditions. We shall see that good wages do not necessarily carry good housing, though we are told they do so. I mention, Durham in particular, because in this county they have a minimum wage, and there an ordinary miner can sometimes earn as much in a day as an ordinary agricultural labourer can in a week. Here the death-rate is very high amongst the women and children because of the bad housing. I live in Yorkshire. I know a coal company in the immediate neighbourhood of Bradford, and I know this particular company is finding the greatest possible difficulty in obtaining labour. The reason of that is that at the present moment in the west of Yorkshire, and elsewhere, there is a migration of people to Doncaster, where a seam of coal has been found from 6 to 7 feet in depth, where the men can earn very large wages as compared with the 30-inch seams of the Low Moor and Bradford coal seams, and I venture to make the prophecy that in ten year Doncaster will be one of the largest mining cities in the North of England. Are the Government taking any steps to deal with this great problem beyond examining the plans of the local authorities in regard to roads and building lines. We know that large committees have been formed all over Yorkshire, and that the Archbishop of York has sat on one of them, dealing with the housing problem and impressing upon the Government the necessity of seeing that good houses are built in these districts. I hope they will do so, because I think this is a vital national importance.

I turn now to a portion of this great city. What would have been the effect at Bethnal Green and other overcrowded areas had the Boscawen Bill of May. 1911, been in operation now? On the 4th April, 1912, the medical authorities, with the consent of the Bethnal Green Borough Council, made complaint that Brady Street area was insanitary. The Local Government Board instituted inquiry on the 24th October, 1913. The hon. and gallant Gentleman the Assistant Postmaster-General was in the chair. Since then nothing has been done. The reason given, I believe, was that further legislation was coming. The Boscawen Bill had a Clause providing the rates should not fall upon the borough. What would have been the effect in Bethnal Green if the Boscawen Bill had passed. I venture to think that there can be no doubt already that the housing conditions would have begun to show an improvement, and in a few years would have become much better, and in consequence the death-rate would be greatly reduced. I think no one can possibly deny that. As an example of this, we see in Liverpool to-day, where, owing to the better housing, they have had a wonderful reduction in the death-rate. To my mind, and I know it is the Unionists' view too, legislation on matters of health must be more in the nature of prevention than cure, because we believe it is more important to do all in our power to prevent conditions arising under which diseases are probable than to cure them when they become well advanced. Such money as may be available will be more wisely spent in prevention rather than cure. As a concrete case, let us take the enormous amount of money poured out under the Insurance Act. Had a subsidy been given to help the housing question there would have been a great diminution in the rate of phthisis, and therefore in consequence far less strain on the insurance fund. Part II. of the 1890 Bill—which is the law—though slightly amended, allows the authorities to close a house without a thought of what will be the result to the inhabitants. This policy has been the cause of great hardship and overcrowding in the past two years. The result of the Unionist campaign seems to me to have developed the growth of public opinion, and to have put new heart into housing reformers. But, alas, from the point of view of how it has reacted on the present Government and the Local Government Board, who have been pushed from one reluctant and tardy step to another, they have made great attempts, and, in fact, succeeded, in turning many people out, but have made very feeble attempts, with still more puny results, to house them afterwards.

3.0 P.M.

We all know from local experience that we are always being faced with this problem of houses, obviously insanitary, which one cannot close as there is no other accommodation for the inhabitants. The clinch of my argument is this: the Government have done nothing to remedy it; and Clause 8 of this Bill does propose a remedy. What is responsible for the large death-rate in overcrowded areas, and the diseases there? Unquestionably bad housing conditions. Who is responsible for finding a remedy? If we say the Government they would say the local authorities, or one might get the answer given by the Assistant Postmaster-General last Monday, when he said "the Government at large." The Government's attitude towards this great and all-important question has been, up to date, a very passive one. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has proposed remedies and has made many promises. Would it not be better that, instead of building castles in the air he should come down to earth and build cottages. The Government's attitude upon this question can be best described by modifying the poet Browning in a few lines he wrote "In Pippa Passes":— imagine that a central body sitting in Whitehall can build cottages all over the country without local assistance.

The second point is that, to go behind the back and ignore the willing local authority, especially when the authority exists for this particular purpose, is entirely opposed to all Unionist principles, and, moreover, to the principles of all sound government. What every man who has studied this problem would wish to impress and emphasise on the present Government is that they ought to

The hon. Member who has just sat down commended this as a non-party measure, but he claimed it as part of the Unionist policy. I am not going to follow him in that direction, because I want to surround this measure as far as possible with a non-party atmosphere. Those with whom I am associated have given this Bill due consideration, and they have decided to support the Second Reading. We do not do so because we think this Bill is going to fulfil the very high expectations of some of the speakers in this Debate. I do not think if this Bill is carried out in the full spirit desired, that it is going to remove all the ills that have been referred to to-day. After all, the housing question is but one phase of the great poverty problem, and I feel that in the course of my observations I shall have to prove that even the plentiful supply of houses will fail to solve this problem unless it is accompanied by better wages for the workers. I am not going to follow the controversial paths submitted in the form of an Amendment to this Bill. If I were inclined to do so, I would have to say that the proposal is one which, if adopted, would equally fall short of the expectations desired. I can quite see that it is possible for the same monopolists in land also to be the monopolists in housing. I am not anxious to pursue that point. I might advance from these facts the theory that so long as we have private ownership of land or housing, we can never really have justice to the working classes; but that would simply be the statement of ultimate aim, and would not assist the immediate question before us.

I am going to support the Second Reading because of the extreme urgency of this problem, not because I feel that it will solve the great housing difficulty, but because I honestly believe that it will palliate a terrible evil in our midst. I do not think it is necessary to adduce many facts in support of the plea of urgency. Reference has been made to Scotland. Recently we have been acquainted with a revelation of what exists in the metropolis of Ireland. This shows that the problem is not confined to any one district. I would like to make a particular reference and lay special stress upon the circumstances with which I am personally familiar, and I want to interpolate this point to those who are urging the Amendment. I am going to give one or two illustrations drawn from rural districts in which I reside and with which I am familiar. There is no scarcity of land in those districts. I do not believe that there is any intention to hold up the land, and therefore, if that particular panacea were adopted, I do not think it would solve the problem in so far as these rural parts are concerned. I will read one or two extracts in order to emphasise this question of urgency, and to give very clearly the reasons why my hon. Friends are going to support the Bill. We do so in order that this Bill may become law, or that we may compel the Government to submit something which they regard as better and more acceptable to the House as a whole. That is my reason for supporting this Bill, and it is the reason which animates my colleagues. The "Eastern Daily Press," of 23rd February, gives the report of a housing inquiry. The extract I want to read is the evidence of the chairman of the parish council, who was asked if he had any comments to make, and he said:— and I have always declared in this House and elsewhere that those values which are created by the public ought to be appropriated for public purposes, but I do respectfully submit, when we are considering this question of housing, particularly in its rural aspect, that the question of land does not assume that great importance that some would have us believe. I had intended dealing at some length with that view, because I know it did emerge in very substantial fashion last year, but the hon. Member who introduced the Bill seemed to me to effectually dispose of the theory that land was the great determining factor in this housing question. I gladly acknowledge, and am bound to emphasise the fact, that the cheaper we are able to get the land the better, and therefore we cannot altogether ignore that consideration, but, on the other hand, I am convinced that it has assumed a larger significance in the minds of some people than rightly attaches to it. After all, it is simply a question of a 1d. or 2d. per week, and this housing problem is not going to be solved by petty considerations of 1d. or 1½d. per week.

The great point that emerges, in my view, is the inability of a great mass of our people to pay what are called economic rents, and we are told that, if we treat the problem by State aid or by public subsidy, we shall be simply helping land-owners and others to increase their powers of exploitation. I said last year that type of argument might be advanced against any social reform proposal. When we proposed to give our children free schooling, it might have been said that it would enable a man to work for lower wages, and thus increase the profits of those who employed him. When my colleagues on these benches advance a claim for the feeding of necessitous school children, then, of course, we are immediately confronted with the same kind of argument. Equally so, when we demanded old age pensions, we were told, not perhaps so much from this quarter of the House, but unfortunately from the other side of the House, that after all it was a subsidy of low wages, and the real solution was for the workman to get a larger share of the wealth which he creates. I agree that all these remedies are necessary, because of the fact that hitherto the State has been unable to assure to any worker the means of maintaining himself and his family with a sufficient margin to make provision for the various periods of ad- versity which inevitably beset people from the cradle to the grave. Therefore, I am not convinced by that argument at all. I am in favour of what an hon. Member calls the fetish of a minimum wage. I hope the Government will very shortly deal with the matter, and that the standard set will be a living standard, a standard that will allow a man to maintain himself and his family in a state of decency and comfort week after week, and leave him with a margin to enable him to contemplate the last years of his life with reasonable security; but you are not going to reach that standard in the course of one year or five years. What is happening in my own part of the country? His Majesty the King has recently set an example to farmers, and is paying 16s. per week. Nobody will even claim that is a living wage, although it is an example that we wish every farmer in the district would follow. We have the fact that others will not follow it, and we shall have men out on strike for 16s. a week.

Is that all told?

The weekly standard set by the King is, I believe, exclusive of the harvest money, with a half-day on Saturday, and I rather apprehend that the conditions of employment there will be more secure than perhaps in the case of the ordinary farmer. Although an example has been made by the highest personage in the State, it has failed to induce others to follow it, and these men are fighting to-day for a 16s. per week rate, which is not a living rate in itself. I presume everybody would say that a guinea a week is not too much. Somebody may argue that agriculture cannot afford it, but for my part I say that if an industry cannot afford a living wage it had better go out of existence. I am entirely opposed to sweating, whether in town industries or agricultural pursuits, but, supposing we agreed that a minimum wage of one guinea a week ought to be enacted, you are not going to reach that immediately. It would only be obtained by slow gradations. Therefore to advance the minimum wage theory as a reason why you should not embark upon a scheme of State housing is simply to give a device for shelving a great problem that ought to be faced at once. Last year I went pretty fully into the minimum wage consideration, and, as far as I am concerned, I felt that I had very well disposed of it, and I should not have referred to it again if it had not emerged in the Debate to-day. As the hon. Member who introduced the Bill pointed out, if a minimum wage Act were passed by this House stating that wages should rise by a certain amount year after year you would have no right to say that those first instalments should be earmarked for landlords. The great need immediately is for better clothing, and better physical life. Therefore, I feel that we are perfectly justified in asking for State intervention, if only as a temporary expedient to deal with a temporary evil.

After all, I cannot see why it is good to do a thing in Ireland and wrong to do it in this country. Some of my colleagues proceeded to Ireland last autumn for the purpose of prosecuting inquiries into the conditions which prevail there. I am not going to relate all that we gathered there. I am simply going to sum up our conclusions. We found that the Irish labourer is being better housed, is living in cleaner and more healthful circumstances, and, for the first time, hope fills his breast; he can see the possibility of a better and fuller life, and the great thing you have created by that experiment is a sense of manhood and womanhood amongst the people. We know full well that the most reactionary types in the community are the most depressed—the class who can see no prospect in life whatever, the class who herd in your filthy slums and fever-stricken alleys. They are people whose lot is one of despair, and out of whom all hope has been hammered possibly a generation since. In Ireland you are taking an analogous class out of mud huts and placing them in decent little cottages. We found a demand for better furnishing and a desire to decorate their houses. It is true that some were not as cleanly as one could desire to see them, or as we are accustomed to find in our own circumstances, but further inquiries revealed the fact that even this condition constituted an immense improvement upon what prevailed prior to the adoption of this policy.

I go among agricultural labourers. I explain to them the Irish experiment. I tell them that in Ireland they are getting a decent cottage and half an acre of land for a rent of about one shilling per week. "Ah," but you will say, "that is uneconomic." But if a labourer can get his half-acre or acre of land and a decent cottage for an uneconomic rent, he not being a professor of economy, does not sit down and argue whether by paying an uneconomic rent he is in receipt of State charity; he simply makes the best of the circumstances with which he is surrounded; he become a better man, he is stirred into activity; he does not want charity, but once you endow him with the means of achieving better comforts and a decent wage, he is quite willing to pay a reasonable rent for the accommodation he requires. Last year I had to explain that while I intended to support the Second Reading of the Bill, I could only do so with one or two reservations. Everybody will agree that if I have convictions I ought to have the courage to state them, and it would not be a fair thing if I led the House to believe I was prepared, on behalf of my colleagues, to give unreserved support to this Bill. I have a very strong objection to public funds being placed at the disposal of private individuals, and on that point my colleagues will have to move Amendments in Committee. I am not enamoured of the mandamus proposal, because I apprehend that the Local Government Board does not need it. It is already in possession of it.

May I explain that they have the power of mandamus. What we do is to substitute for it the power of acting in default; they have not that.

Well, I hope we shall be able to devise speedly methods of doing this. I think we are going in the right direction in asking the State to lay down a standard of national housing and to compel local authorities to conform to that standard, supplementing that with willingness to assist even to the extent of financial help in the manner prescribed in the Bill. There are many other points one might refer to. I object to the idea that it is the duty of employers to house their workpeople. I have a very strong objection to that being set up as a standard in this House. My colleagues and myself have long protested against the tied-house system. There is a strike of agricultural labourers now proceeding in Essex. What has occurred there? The men simply exercise their ordinary right to join a union. Their employers had preceded them in that matter by joining the Farmers' Federation. The men had not formulated any wages proposal or embarked on any movement whatever, but had simply joined the union, and when the employers became aware of that fact they gave them a week's notice to leave their employment and to leave the cottages, which are tied to the farm. We are not going to do anything to perpetuate that sort of thing. Again, it is said that a public authority is to have thrust upon it the duty of housing its own employés: that the Postmaster-General, for instance, should house the postmen. I object to that idea of segregating workpeople according to their occupation. The other day, in jocular fashion, I said I objected to adjusting one's friendships according to public opinion. On the same lines, I object to segregating workpeople according to their occupations. It is the duty of the community to make provision for ample housing accommodation, and to allow the people to mix together, without regard to occupation or private speculative opinion.

That is about all I need say in the way of reservations. I want to criticise the fact that, although we do not think this Bill is going to solve the whole housing problem, we do admit it to be an honest attempt to ameliorate a great evil. We are not concerned with any party considerations in the matter. I do not know whether this is a great expression of Unionist policy. I can only say this: Here is a Bill put forward by a party. We consider it to be one, from our point of view which, while it has grave defects, has in it, nevertheless, very much to be commended, and we are going to support its Second Reading and get it before a Committee, and there submit such amendments as we think desirable. If the Government, on the other hand, say that the Bill is worthless, and not calculated to achieve the high purposes aimed at, then we reply: "Submit your alternative, and if that alternative proves to be preferable to the Bill, naturally we shall support that which commends itself to us." But, as the hon. Gentleman said who introduced the Bill, this at present holds the field, and as such we are prepared to consider it in the spirit of the observations I have offered, and we are prepared also to support the Second Reading.

I do not propose to make more than a very brief demand on the patience of the House. I have very often spoken upon this subject, and I do not think there is anything new I can say today, but I do desire to re-enforce one or two of the arguments I have put forward on previous occasions, and I desire to say a word with reference to one or two state- ments made on the other side of the House. In the first place, may I say how impressed I am with the, to my mind, wholly satisfactory fact in connection with this Debate that, for the first time in my experience in this House, three hon. Gentlemen have addressed it for the first time—three of my hon. Friends behind me. I had not the good fortune, having other calls upon my time, to hear the first two speeches, but I did hear the third, that delivered by the hon. Member for Bethnal Green (Sir M. Wilson), and I think that all who heard him will agree that he made an admirable impression on the House of Commons and gave good proof of the fact that he will be able to contribute to our Debates with usefulness and advantage. The fact which I desire to draw the attention of the House to is that for the first time, I believe, we have had the appearance of three hon. Gentlemen making their maiden speeches, and all in connection with a great social problem—a problem of the first magnitude, which directly affects the happiness and comfort of the people. I draw from this a very happy augury as to the work which new Members of this House are likely to look upon as the most important labour they desire to undertake. The speech to which we have just listened from the hon. Member for Norwich (Mr. George Roberts) is in every way encouraging and helpful to those who desire to deal with this problem, not as if it were the only problem connected with social discontent, not as if this Bill were going to remove all the obstacles to social progress, but as a step in the right direction.

The hon. Gentleman who moved the rejection of the Bill asked me if I would explain our attitude on a previous occasion before a Committee upstairs, and what our attitude was likely to be to-day. On that occasion we were face to face with two clear statements from the Government. One was that they would have nothing to do with the proposal that there should be a State Grant, and the other was the attitude adopted by the then President of the Local Government Board in regard to the Bill as a whole. Hon. Gentlemen who were present at those Debates will remember that he did not confine his objections to the State Grant, but that he poured cold water on the whole scheme. He made it perfectly clear that while the Government would not entertain by any possibility the question of a State Grant, for the rest of the Bill he had nothing but contempt, and in these circumstances I gave to my hon. Friends upstairs the advice they were good enough to follow, and which I shall give them again in similar circumstances, namely, that it would be a waste of time to ask any Committee to discuss a Bill the attitude of the Government towards which was as I have described. The hon. Gentleman asks if we demand that the House to-day should read the Bill a second time with the intention of adopting the same attitude. The Government have not yet spoken, but I cannot help hoping that the two years which have passed over their heads have brought to them some added wisdom in regard to this particular question. I think it has brought them some experience, and out of that experience wiser counsels may, I hope, come. I ventured then to say that they were making practically a very great mistake, and that it would have been better, apart altogether from the general question, in their own interests and in the interests of their party, to have given some assistance to the passing of that Bill. For a short time they took no action, but it was soon evident that this question was attracting more public attention than, apparently, they had anticipated.

The objection to this Bill most strongly entertained by those who are opposed to it rests mainly upon the proposal that there shall be a State Grant in aid of the provision of housing for the working classes. We have had, and I suppose we always shall have as long this House and the world lasts, some hon. Gentlemen on the opposite side of the House who never can see any proposal without discovering in it some malign intention to benefit the owners of land. We have had strong denunciation poured upon the proposal to find money in aid of the provision of houses. The hon. Gentlemen who have offered this criticism are, for the moment, forgetful of their own position and the position of their own party. During the recent Recess they have not, so far as I know, criticised their leaders in this respect, nor have they abstained from the chorus of cheers which, as we gather from the newspapers, has greeted the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the interesting series of journeys he has made through the country. He has been disclosing, as we all know, a great social programme which is going to bring untold blessings to the homes of the working classes, and one of the ways in which these advantages are to be obtained is the provision of houses. How does the Government, whom hon. Gentlemen are here to support and whose support is constantly given, propose to deal with this question? How do hon. Gentlemen propose to deal with it?

My complaint, if I may venture to make one, of their attitude on this occasion is that when a practical scheme is produced by my hon. Friends, having for its object the furtherance of this great question of the provision of suitable houses for the working classes, they evade altogether the real issue, they make no contribution of a practical character to our Debates, but they ride off on a totally different issue and take advantage of a discussion upon housing to discuss another question which is only remotely, if at all, connected with it. Their objection is that we are giving State aid, whereas we ought, as the hon. Gentleman who moved the rejection frankly said, to force the land into the market by some process of taxation. I said to him and his Friends before, and I say it again to-day, that no doubt they are enthusiasts in their cause and will be able to put their case before the country; but are they enthusiasts in the general cause of social progress and reform, because, if so, are they most likely to prove their enthusiasm by devoting their energies and talents to the discussion of the practical form which the question takes to-day in the shape of this Bill, by raising these side issues, to which they have only a handful of adherents even on their own side of the House. It is as a practical question that we are asking the House to discuss the Bill.

I am going to vote for the Second Reading.

I am very glad to hear it, but I would point out to the hon. Member that voting for the Second Reading does not always constitute all that the promoters of the Bill desire at the hands of those who profess to be its friends. I suppose that many hon. Gentlemen opposite will vote for the Second Reading of this Bill. Two years have gone by. There is some handwriting on the wall which it is not always pleasant to contemplate, and the time is coming very soon when hon. Gentlemen may be asked awkward questions by those who have sent them here, who may not be prepared to send them here again if they cannot answer those questions satisfactorily. Therefore, I am not surprised to hear that hon. Gentlemen are anxious, when that ordeal comes, to be able to say, "I voted for the Second Reading of the Bill; what more could I do?" The hon. Gentleman and his Friends can do a great deal more, and we to-day ask them to do it. The hon. Member for Norwich made the position of those with whom he generally works in this House and in the country perfectly clear. He is prepared to support this Bill in the main, but he has certain objections to some of its details, which he would like to see amended in the Committee stage. I am not now going to discuss with him the difficult question of the provision of houses by employers for the employed, nor the much more difficult question of tied houses. I will only say this by way of entering a caveat: there are certain industries, amongst them agriculture, in which you must give the man undertaking the conduct of that industry accommodation for the workmen whom he employs, otherwise ho cannot possibly carry on the industry.

But the hon. Gentleman took objection to another part of this Bill, and it is because of that Clause that I am here principally to support it. He said he objected to what he called the mandamus powers in the Bill. As the hon. Gentleman (Sir A. Griffith-Boscawen), whose labours on behalf of this question are so well known and worthy of all honour, pointed out, he had made a mistake. That is exactly what the Bill does not propose to do. It proposes, instead of a mandamus, to give the central authority the power to act. I have been in my time responsible for the Local Government Departments of both Great Britain and Ireland, and I do not hesitate to say it would be very largely to our advantage in local administration if the Central Department of the State here had some of the powers of actual interference which are enjoyed by the State Department in Ireland. The mandamus power is not worth the paper on which it is written. It means that you have to go to a Court of Law and get an order of the Court which enables you to call upon the local authorities to do something you are not prepared to do. Hon. Members opposite may reiterate until they are tired the argument that if you give a State contribution you are going to put money into the hands of the land-owners. I wonder, estimating as I do so highly the intelligence of these hon. Gentlemen, at their repetition of this silly old woman's tale. It is nothing else. Even if it were true, it affords no argument against the suggestion that you have got a great evil to face and must take some practical measure to deal with it promptly. What is the difference between a mandamus and the power of the central authority to act? There is all the difference in the world. The mandamus power breaks in your hands. The power to act enables you to go to a local authority and say to it, "If, after inquiry, we ascertain that you have failed, we shall deal with it in our own way." It is quicker, it is more satisfactory, and, as I believe, it is like many others of these powers. Once you clothe the central authority with it they will never have actually to exercise it, because the fact that it is there will be sufficient for the purpose in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred.

What is there in the provision of houses for the working classes which, in the minds of hon. Members opposite, so completely differentiates it from almost every other question of local government? It is the duty of the local authority to see that this is done. It is in the first interests of the working classes that this should be done. There is public health, there is education, there is the administration of the Poor Law. In every one of these branches of local work the States comes in and makes its contribution to the central authority. When you give the central authority the power to make these contributions in aid of the administration of the Public Health Act, or the Poor Law, or education, or even the maintenance of your police force, you give the central authority at the same time certain powers, not merely of superintending and deciding what is to be done, but of laying down standards of their own and seeing that they are acted up to. Their actual experience in the administration of the Public Health Act and the power of the central authority to interfere in the question of salaries has already operated, not as satisfactorily as we should all like to see it operate, but still very satisfactorily, and has wrought a very beneficial change. In elementary education you pay at present over 60 per cent. of the cost out of Imperial Grants. Not the same figure, but the same statement has been made in regard to every branch of local government. What remains of your opposition? Nothing remains except the threadbare argument to which I have just referred, that you will be benefiting the landlord. I am quite content to make this offer to the Govern- ment: If they will accept this Bill, and if they and their hon. Friends behind them are going to vote for it—not merely accept the Second Reading here, and make friendly speeches, but do all in their power to secure the passing of the Bill during the remainder of this Session with these powers in it—if there is any suspicion in the mind of anybody that some owner of land would derive benefit because he would have cottages built for him that he ought to build for himself, have your Local Government Board inquiry, which would be an inevitable precedent to any action under this measure, and if the result is to prove that the land-owner whose land is used for farming purposes of any kind fails to give to the farm the necessary equipment of cottages, amongst other things, by all means prevent your Grant going to his benefit, or in any way providing those cottages. I have no objection, whatever to a provision of that kind.

But hon. Members opposite are on the wrong tack. I beg of them to disabuse their minds, if they can, of this unfortunate prejudice against the owners of land. This problem of the provision of housing for the working classes is as serious as it is to-day through no fault of the owners of land as a body. In the vast majority of cases they have provided the cottages which it is their duty to provide. It is not to their credit that they have done this. They have done it as a matter of business in order that their land may be properly cultivated, and their farms may be successfully occupied. The problem which you have to face is the one referred to by the hon. Member (Mr. George Roberts), and I think he and his Friends somewhat hurriedly condemned the suggestions that we made. What happens in these Debates? We are told there is a shortage of houses. We are told that more houses ought to be provided by private enterprise. It is not possible now to go into this question of the effect upon private enterprise of some of our recent legislation, but the facts are undoubted. You have stopped, in many of your districts, private enterprise putting up houses of different kinds. But I am not suggesting that that is the real trouble in connection with the provision of houses for the working classes. You say here, quite rightly, that it is the duty of the owner to provide cottages for those who are employed upon his land. The hon. Member may not like it. He may think there are great objections to it. But until you provide some totally different system which the wit of man has not conceived, you will have to submit to this, that the man who owns land and buildings which have to be occupied for agricultural and industrial purposes must provide the houses in which his workpeople are to live. But the difficulty does not consist in non-provision by these large owners. It consists in the fact that State Departments, county councils, district councils, do not provide houses in which their workmen have to live, and although the Chancellor of the Exchequer did not think it beneath his dignity or his reputation for accuracy to go to the country and attack landlords individually, yet within a few days of these attacks being delivered, one of his own colleagues on the Front Bench said it is not possible for the State to provide houses for their own people.

indicated dissent.

The right hon. Gentleman must not shake his head, because I took careful note of the answer, and in order that there might be no mistake we repeated the question. We were told quite plainly that inquiries were being made, but that the State was not prepared and did not see their way—

The Post Office.

Is not the Post Office part of the State?

Yes, but only a part.

It is a very important part. This is really trifling with it. The Post Office is one of the very few departments where this question is of any material importance. The War Office does provide people with houses, and the Admiralty provides sailors with houses. The other Departments, the Foreign Office and the India Office, have not got to do it. It is the Post Office which is the main sinner. In nearly every village—I am talking especially of the rural branch of the question—you will find that the postmaster lives in a house which is the property of the squire of the district who has to pay the entire cost of the building and its maintenance, and also to make it suitable for post office work. You will find that the same thing applies to employés in other branches of the Civil Service. If you are to get beyond that, and if you are going to deal with this question from a practical point of view, you will have to provide money. The House will realise that modern invention has made it possible to travel from the centre of towns and from one village to another perfectly easily. Every day you will find hundreds of workmen travelling miles on bicycles between the places where they work and their residences, and you will find that this is not a local but a central and national question. You have to deal with the question from that point of view.

You have got a large number of owners of cottages in the country who are poor people—working men and women who have put their savings into cottage property. All they have to live upon is the rent they get from these cottages. Unless you are going to deal in a wholesale way with the question and tell them that their money is gone, you must face the problem before you, and you must say that a central authority shall have power where, after inquiry, it has been proved that house accommodation is necessary, to make contributions to enable local authorities to deal with the question. On the occasion of the last Debate, a case was mentioned in my own part of the country. That case was specially quoted, and it was not a satisfactory one, but it was not nearly so bad as was represented here. What happened? You have had a whole series of negotiations, and you have had three local inquiries, with the result that orders have gone forth from the central department that a certain number of cottages will have to be erected. The result of these inquiries has been to cast no blame on any local owner. It has been shown that the condition of things arose from circumstances over which they had no control, and that the case was not one that they should meet. We plead for prompt measures and prompt action. We ask for this Bill which will enable something to be done—that there should be a little less talk and more work. You have got a surplus population in certain districts and you have not got houses. You have issued your order and mandamus, and told the local authorities what they are to do, and they are willing to do it. But what remains? The question is being debated now between the rural council on the one hand and the parish council on the other. Each one claims that their area should not be burdened with the cost.

4.0 P.M.

The hon. Gentleman says that if this Bill passes it will only touch the fringe of the question, and provide for the building of a small number of cottages. Is it not better to have a small number than none at all? Is it not better to have machinery to make some provision than none? At present you are held up by the fact that, while you can give orders to the local authorities, you cannot say to them, "We will give a Grant which will enable you to distribute the cost over the rural council and the parish council areas." The Local Government Board and the local councils have considered this question, and the Local Government Board has laid down the broad proposition that the houses of the people must be satisfactory. We have had it recognised in speeches that this is a great national question, but you have stopped with your speeches on Second Readings of Bills. We have been content to make speeches here which are no doubt pleasant reading for our constituents. What has been done? Many Members of the party opposite who are not here to-day have made this the subject of their platform oratory, but they are not here to give effect to their Second Reading speeches, and recitations, and pious opinions as to what is to be done. All this is useless. If you wish to make real progress and put aside foolish alarms, you must say to the local authorities, "It is your duty to see that this work is done; we will give to the central authority a certain sum for the purpose, and the distribution is left to you under a scheme of your own devising, which will enable you to deal with many cases which are now held up, and to take some small part of the burden off the shoulders of those who should not be called upon to bear it, and who will not bear it so long as they can put off the evil day."

We believe a practical proposal is made in the Bill. We believe, if the House would pass it into law, if the Government would give it their benevolent assistance, if they would move as they alone can move, in two years' time some sensible progress will have been made. The responsibility is with His Majesty's Ministers. I do not say that because I desire to turn this in any way into a party or controversial matter; I say it because it is the simple fact. It is for them alone to say, "We are convinced this work should be done. We have proposals of our own, but they will take a considerable time to fulfil. Our hands are full enough of work, and we shall hand over this work." What will be the result? If this House is again debating this great social question two years later, then it will be possible to say that, in consequence of our action, some progress has been made in this one branch of reform. Then it may be possible to remove the reproach that rests on this House and on Ministers, namely, that two years ago they refused to take advantage of a similar proposal, and that nothing has been done. I say, again, it is better to do this, and do it promptly and effectively, than in the future, as in the immediate past, to stand with hands folded, apparently always willing to work but not taking action. I ask you to make this practical reform, which alone can deal in a practical way with this great social question.

Hon. Members who have brought forward this Bill to-day have directed the attention of the House to a matter which, by common consent, is one of the most important to which Parliament can devote its attention. Commission after Commission and Committee after Committee have sat and reported that the housing problem is vast and urgent, and demands effective attention both from Parliament and local authorities. To-day, from all quarters of the House comes further evidence of this admitted fact. I have listened with great interest to two maiden speeches from hon. Members opposite, the hon. Member for Bethnal Green (Sir M. Wilson) and the hon. Member for Leith Burghs (Mr. Currie), and though I cannot pretend that on this side of the House we view with any satisfaction the circumstances in which those hon. Members have made their appearance here, yet if anything could reconcile us to their advent it would be speeches of such great interest and force as we have had this afternoon. It is unnecessary for me to add anything to those facts which we have heard. I do not propose to detain the House by quoting, additional figures or additional evidence. I will, however, give a single further instance, in addition to those which have already been given. Following a statement made in this House by the Chancellor of the Exchequer two or three weeks ago, I took steps at once to set on foot a housing survey throughout the whole country, and asked the local authorities to send to the Local Government Board particulars in answer to a series of questions as to the number of houses that were unfit for habitation, and the number of houses which, while not actually unfit, were seriously defective, from the point of view of structural defects or danger to health. We requested them to give particulars of "very such house, stating its defect. The replies are coining in. I will refer to one communication from the medical officer—it was not a reply but a question—of a great urban district in South Wales, who wrote to the Board to say, "Is it really necessary that I should give particulars of every house which is seriously defective from the point of view of being a danger to health or owing to structural defects—for in this district it would involve my giving particulars of 5,000 houses of the 26,000 houses?" That is in the Rhondda Valley district.

It is admitted the number of overcrowded houses is great, and that the shortage of good houses is vast, and the question remains one of the greatest magnitude and urgency. The question of housing is even wider than the question of the provision of houses. Whoever goes through the industrial quarters of our great cities and sees those vast stretches of dreary, mean, treeless streets, must realise how far removed our industrial towns are from any ideal which we may form in our own minds as to what the dwellings of a civilised nation should be. No wonder in these circumstances that there is continued and possibly even growing social discontent among vast portions of the population. The effect on health is, of course, obvious. We know that these districts of our cities breed a population great numbers of whom are undersized, anæmic, and of low physical efficiency. What is needed for them is not compulsory military service, but more air and plenty of food. Further, the nation is becoming gradually more and more aware of the economic loss that follows from these conditions. To put it on a sordid basis, health pays, and whenever a practical people, such as the English people, come to realise that, they will be perhaps more energetic in finding a solution of the problem than they now are. If only the whole of our population were housed in such conditions as already happily prevail in the Garden City at Letchworth, for example, the Garden Suburb at Hampstead, Bourneville, Port Sunlight, and the Garden Suburb at Hull—all of which I have had from time to time the opportunity of visiting—what a different state of things we should have in our land, and what a different outlook vast numbers of the population would have on life.

The problem which faces us, and the generations to come after us, is something little short of this. It is to undertake practically the rebuilding of a very large proportion of our industrial towns. And, in the country, in the rural districts, there are, as everyone knows and admits, great numbers of small, old, insanitary, damp, ill-provided cottages. There is in a large proportion of the villages a great shortage of cottages, causing hardship and inconvenience to thousands and tens of thousands of families. There is also the evil of the tied cottage, which has, in our view, a deleterious effect upon the independence of the rural population. All these things demand not merely attention but our effective action. Much is being done. I hope the Opposition will not think that I am leading up to the conclusion that what is now being done is adequate: far from it. I hold rather the opposite view. But the House, in taking a review of the whole of the circumstances, should realise what is now proceeding in dealing with these matters. Since I have entered upon my present office, some few weeks since, it has been long enough to make me realise, even more than before, the greatness of the work which is being done by nearly one hundred thousand men and women, who are now serving as members of our local authorities. With immense devotion and energy, all these persons, to the great advantage of the State, are devoting time and labour to the management of our local affairs, and through their efforts, especially perhaps in the boroughs, much is already being effected. What is needed is not only the pulling down of houses which are so bad that they cannot be repaired, but also that some houses, not quite so bad as that, shall be put into a fit state for human habitation. And there are large powers under the existing housing laws to that effect since the year 1899, in England and Wales, 166,000 houses which were unfit for human habitation have been made fit to the satisfaction of the health authorities in the various localities; and the number has been increasing with extreme rapidity in recent years. Until 1910, the number in each year was about 3,000. Something has been said to the effect that my right hon. Friend and predecessor, now President of the Board of Trade, had a policy which was destructive and not constructive. That is not so. He was continually at work stimulating the local authorities to take action under their existing powers, and guiding their activities. In 1911 the figure rose from the previous average of 3,000 to 19,000 houses; in 1912 it rose to 47,000; and last year it rose to 64,000, showing a growth of remarkable rapidity. Nearly half of these cases were in rural districts; and, in addition to that, there were a number of similar cases in which action was taken, not under the Housing Acts but under the Public Health Act, in regard to which I have not the figures. Then, again, considerable loans of public money are now being devoted to building new houses. Since 1910, up to the present time, up to the 14th of this month, the Local Government Board have sanctioned, or have now under consideration the sanction of loans to urban districts for the provision of houses, under Part III. of the Housing Act, amounting to £1,680,000, and in rural districts to 368,000—a total of over £2,000,000. The figure, of course, is large in money, but translated into houses it is not large. The number of houses to be built with this money in the urban districts is 7,200, and in the rural districts 1,747. But it must be remembered that private enterprise, happily, is by no means dead. [An HON. MEMBER: "Very nearly!"] The hon. Member says "very nearly." In the last four years, the latest four years for which we have figures, in houses under £20 annual value, which is the figure always taken for this purpose, the increase, due almost entirely to private enterprise, has been 212,000 houses.

What about the average previously of 135,000 per year?

I think that was the maximum. The average now is lower than it was. I do not propose to detain the House now by going into the reasons, except to mention dearer money, the very large increase in the cost of building materials and the increase in the interest which the speculative builder has had to pay on capital, and perhaps the hon. and gallant Member for Chelmsford (Mr. Pretyman) may have frightened some of the investors from building houses for fear of unreal dangers. The fact remains that there are 212,000 houses more—

Can the right hon. Gentleman say what the relative decrease is per head of the population?

I am afraid I have not the figures here, but if the Noble Lord will put down a question I will supply them. A certain number of houses are being built now in the rural districts under Part III. of the Housing Acts, and they are not all being built at a loss. In fact, taking the average of all those, of which I gave particulars, costing £368,000, the loss is 2d. per week per cottage in the rural districts—

Can the right hon. Gentleman give the average cost and the rents?

Yes, in the rural districts the average rents are from three to four shillings, and some 2s. 6d., and some in the mining districts and elsewhere rather more than that. Those rents include rates, and the average loss, as may be worked out from the Report of the Local Government Board, which gives the particulars, is about 2d. per week per cottage. The reason of course is, that when you are considering rural housing you need not look at it solely from the point of view of providing cottages for the poorest paid people in the village. If there is a dearth of houses in a village, and if a certain number of labourers cannot find cottages, and if the general conditions are unsatisfactory, you will find in that population a certain number of persons, very often a large proportion who are not receiving the exceedingly low wage which the agricultural labourer receives, who are ready and glad to pay an economic rent for the cottages which are provided. There are railwaymen, carpenters, and policemen, and there are postmen—and I am going to deal with this later—and various classes of men in the community other than the agricultural labourer who receives twelve or fourteen or fifteen shillings per week. If your authority, whatever it may be, whether it is the State or the local authority, chooses to put up houses, it can make arrangements before hand to let houses to those persons. They are very glad to move, frequently to a new and better house, with a garden. They vacate their old house, and the agricultural labourer is enabled to leave his insanitary dwelling, which ought to be closed, and is then closed, and takes the house that has been vacated by a man who belongs to a social order slightly above him. Along that line I believe much may be done in the rural districts to solve the housing question. In addition, when I am speaking of what is being done, I ought to mention that under the Housing and Town Planning Act we have knowledge of 220 town-planning schemes which are in various degrees of development, and which have been proposed by nearly 200 local authorities in various parts of the country.

How many are passed?

Only a small proportion are passed, but there are 220 schemes which are on the way. The matter is complicated and difficult, and the interests of owners have to be considered. The plans take time to mature, but there is, I am happy to say, great activity proceeding among local authorities, and the Local Government Board is using all its efforts to expedite the conclusion of those schemes and to lay the foundation of the better planning of our towns in the future. But when all this is done, with the best will in the world, with the utmost energy of the Local Government Board and the local authorities under their existing powers, still the problem remains. The steps that have been taken and are being taken are, in my view, wholly inadequate to meet the need. Many of the Clauses of the Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Dudley, in the absence, which we all regret, of the hon. Member for Buteshire (Mr. Harry Hope), are useful Clauses which it would be of advantage if we could pass into law. I have never treated any of these social questions as party questions, and I never will do so. When I sat on that side of the House, and right hon. Gentlemen opposite sat here, I for one, as a humble private Member, gave all the support I could to such social legislation—there was not so much of it as we could have wished—as was submitted by the Government of the day. I shall certainly never regard proposals of this kind from any narrow party point of view, and, for the sake of those useful Clauses in the Bill, I shall certainly not offer any opposition to the Second Reading to day. At the same time, I should not be candid with the House if I did not say, in regard to the most important proposal in the Bill, namely, the grant of a million pounds a year from the taxes as a Grant-in-Aid of rents, that the view now held by the Government is the same as that which was expressed by my right hon. Friend who is now President of the Board of Trade. He opposed these proposals of a subsidy, not only because he personally entertained strong convictions on the subject, but because he was expressing the considered opinion of the Government as a whole.

I asked the Prime Minister a supplementary question one day, as to whether the speech of the President of the Board of Trade necessarily meant that the Government as a whole were against the question of Grants-in-Aid, and I was told that it did not.

I do not remember either the supplementary question or the answer. The fact remains that the matter was considered by the Government as a whole, and that the attitude taken up by my right hon. Friend in respect of this particular proposal of a subsidy for rents—there may be other forms of Grants-in-Aid—represents the view of the Government. Our reasons are these. It is always the easiest course, whenever there is some social evil, to say, "Let the Treasury pay for the remedy. Here you have an evil—people are badly housed, they are very poor, their wages are low, they cannot pay for better houses. Put a million pounds on the Estimates and help them to get them." That is the easiest and most attractive course. In our view that would merely lead—I am speaking now especially of rural districts—to the perpetuation of a bad system which, in the course of centuries, has gradually grown up in the agricultural districts, and which the State ought not to assist to maintain. The system is this: The labourer is paid a low wage; the fanner is in consequence able to pay a higher rent for his farm, because he has to pay less to his labourers—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh!"] That is so far as the question of wages applies. The whole case of hon. Members opposite is that you must give this subsidy because the labourers are too poor to pay a rent which would enable houses to be built. That is the argument. If they are able to pay an economic rent, why should you propose this subsidy? Why should the houses be built at a loss at all? They cannot afford to pay a proper rent because their wages are low. I am not making an attack upon the landlords. If hon. Members had allowed me to finish my sentence, I was going to say the labourer is paid a low wage; he is not able to pay the full rent for his cottage. Because he pays a low wage, the farmer is able to pay so much the higher rent—whatever the amount may be—for his farm, and the landlord in return lets the labourer the cottage at much below its real value. That is what now occurs, has long occurred, and has become a custom.

I do not want to interrupt the right hon. Gentleman—

Then why do it?

Hon. Members on the Opposition side have had full opportunity to state their case, and therefore there is no occasion to interpolate objections.

It has become customary in the villages, and the consequence is that so far as men are concerned who are not employed by the landlord and are not employed by the farmer, they are unwilling to pay a higher rent than their neighbours who are employed by the farmers or by the landlords: consequently there is a shortage of cottages in the villages for the whole population. Low rents have become customary for the population. No speculative builder, local authority, or other person is willing to come forward and make good the shortage because it does not pay them to do so. So you are in a vicious circle from which there is at present no escape. You come to Parliament and say, "Help out of the taxes to pay part of the cost of housing rural labour." That is what it comes to. Our view is that the cost of labour which is necessary to conduct an industry ought to be the first charge upon that industry, and in the cost of labour must be taken into account as a prime element the cost of housing the labourer; therefore the proper economic cost of housing labour ought to be the first charge upon the agricultural industry of this country. I believe that you ought not to take any step which would in any degree make agriculture a subsidised industry, and—if I may use the term without offence—parasitic in the economic sense on the rest of the population of the country.

The right hon. Gentleman opposite who spoke a little while ago said, "But you do the same in regard to education; you pay school fees out of the taxes." Yes, but then you treat the whole of the population equally. It is not a subsidy specially going to persons in receipt of low wages. [An HON. MEMBER: "Nor is this."] Indeed, it is a subsidy specially given to persons in receipt of low wages! That is the reason why the Government have objected, and still object, on the ground of general principle to this policy. "It has been done in Ireland," said an hon. Member opposite; "you have already adopted this plan in Ireland." That is so. In Ireland 52,000 cottages have been built by local authorities at a cost of eight and a half millions. This very principle, we are told which we suggest is undesirable for this country, is now in force in portions of Ireland. Under what conditions? Loans are made at a rate of 2¾ per cent, interest with ½ per cent, for sinking fund, and for a period of sixty-eight and a half years. This is a good deal below what money can be borrowed at. There is in addition a State subsidy of a considerable sum every year, and certain losses fall upon the rates. The average total cost, all told, of a cottage in Ireland, is within a few farthings of 3s. a week. The labourer pays on an average 1s. 1d. per week. The rates contribute for each cottage 7d. per week, while the taxes contribute 1s. 3d. per week, of which 9d. is subvention and 6d. the loss upon the floating of the loan. I do not say that is necessarily wrong in the case with Ireland, because it may be urged, and it can be truly urged, that before this was effected cottage building had absolutely ceased in Ireland, and there was no other course to be taken in order to provide houses for people, but at the cost of the rates and taxes. Further, at that time the suggestion of a Minimum Wage Act had not been made, and Parliament had not contemplated the alternative method of raising wages to meet rents instead of lowering rents to meet wages. I think the further we can keep away from the Irish example in this country the better, and we had better not set our feet on the slippery slope which leads from accepting the general principle that able-bodied labour should be housed largely at the expense of the ratepayers and of the taxpayers. It would be a very unfortunate thing if the Irish connection were to be allowed to infect our healthier financial system here, and that we should be influenced by the bad principles inevitable in the case of Ireland. There are three other objections to this proposal. The first is that the hon. Member proposes that four-fifths of the loss should be paid by the State.

Up to four-fifths.

It would be very difficult for the Local Government Board to refuse to pay if a figure is put into the Act which contemplates that four-fifths of the loss should be borne by the State. If that is done there is no possibility of adequate control over building to secure the minimum of loss. One authority is building in a district while another authority has to pay up to four-fifths of the loss, and no inspection by the Local Government Board, no detailed control could enable the State adequately to secure that too much is not paid for the land or the building of those cottages in particular localities. Secondly, in regard to towns, the hon. Member proposes that half the cost of further improving the slums, effecting clearances and so forth should be borne from the taxes. That would mean that most local authorities would refuse to proceed unless they got half the cost from the State. They would say the Act contemplates that half the cost is to be borne by us and half by the State. As in all these cases there is some local opposition, that local opposition would seize upon this and say, "Unless the Local Government Board give half the cost of the improvement, the town council ought not to carry it out at the cost of the rates." Therefore, the effect of this Clause would be to slow down existing urban improvements to the measure of the State Grant. The third objection is this: that the districts which have put their houses in order, literally, and carried out the necessary improvements to see that their people are properly housed, would get nothing. The districts that have been neglectful and refused to build are to get the new State Grant at the cost of the country as a whole. The right hon. Gentleman who has just spoken when this matter was last before the House put forward a sound doctrine. He said:—

"I urge that if Grants are to be made they should be made on a somewhat different principle from that contemplated by the Bill. One district does its duty, and does it well, while another district fails to do its duty. The main object of the Bill is to compel and to drive those who are slow and reluctant to do their duty, but it may be going, at the same time, to punish those who have done their duty at the expense of those who have failed. I wish the distribution of the Grants to be on a plan which would reach all concerned, so that those who have done their duty should have an inducement to go on in the path of progress, and not be called upon to pay for those who have failed. These are changes which could easily be effected in Committee."

But these changes are not effected in this Bill. The Bill is now introduced with the very vice in it which the right hon. Gentleman himself denounced, and the effect of it would be that districts which have been active would be taxed like all other districts, and districts that have been inactive would be subsidised. Some districts in which high wages are paid, of course, do not need this provision, but districts which are content to go on paying low wages would be the ones in which cottages would be built under these proposals, and would be subsidised. The well-paid districts are not only to be subjected to the competition of the ill-paid districts, but would be asked to pay taxes in order to provide houses in the ill-paid districts for the people at less than cost price. Those are the main reasons why we object to this Clause of the Bill. Clause 3 enables the Local Government Board to act in default. The hon. Member for Bethnal Green said it was against all sound principles of government for a central authority to take these matters out of the hands of the local authority, and the hon. Member who moved the Second Reading said that one of the most important principles of the Bill was that the central authority was to act through the local authority and not take the matter out of their hands.

Except when in default.

That is a very important point. Some hon. Members have supported this Bill because it enables the central Government to take the matter out of the hands of the local authority. The hon. Member who moved the Bill laid emphasis on Clause 8, which is a new proposal, and he says that that will have the effect of causing any local authority, before they make a closing order and turn a man out of an insanitary house, to review the whole circumstances, and it puts upon them the onus of building fresh houses to replace those they are closing, if there is no adequate accommodation. That Clause is clearly unworkable, because in the county boroughs the orders are made on the average once a week, and in those boroughs it would be necessary for the whole machinery of this Clause to be put into operation weekly, and the decisions of the local authority would become a mere matter of form. But I do not emphasise that point because I can see what the hon. Member was driving at. I suggest that this Clause would not affect that purpose, because he says they need not take any action if they pass a resolution that there is some reasonable ground why they should not do so. The obligation is simply laid upon them to act—

There may be an appeal against that.

An appeal may or may not be effective, but the Clause does not really put any effective obligation on a local authority other than that which now exists. With regard to Clause 6, which deals with the relaxation of by-laws, that puts on the Local Government Board the duty of going into the merits of every case of relaxation of by-laws throughout the whole country in any town where new houses are built by almost anyone. That, of course, is a task which the Board could not undertake; they could not undertake to see whether these houses are properly built or not. Another Clause requires that a Department of the Local Government Board shall be established to deal with housing. That Department already exists, and deals with housing and town planning as well. Clause 14 is also unnecessary, because it is covered by the Local Government Act of 1871; Clause 17 is unnecessary, because such an annual report as is there required is already made. I notice that one Clause which was in the previous Bill when it came back from the Committee has been omitted, and it is a very desirable one, which was put in by the Standing Committee, and it provided that when any land is taken in future for housing purposes it should be taken at a valuation based upon the public valuation under the Finance Act. I very much regret that the hon. Member has dropped the Clause from his Bill.

I may say that I dropped it because in my experience on the county council I found that if you took the Government valuation you would be paying a great deal more than you would pay otherwise.

There was an option to the Local Authority. You would, of course, to some extent, have to modify the valuation, if only to bring it up to date. So far with regard to the Clauses of the Bill to which I wish to take some exception, there are, as I have said, many useful Clauses in the Bill. I do not propose to tie myself to details. Clause 2, so far as it gives initiative to the Local Government Board, will be a valuable power; Clause 4, the use of land for other purposes than housing; Clause 5, the power to acquire land in advance; Clause 7, re-housing may be in other districts; Clause 12, reduction of compensation in certain cases of overcrowding; Clause 18, penalty for letting a house against which a Closing Order has been made; and Clause 19, which contains certain minor amendments are all useful Clauses which, in principle, I should be glad to see carried into law, and on account of which I for one should not oppose the Second Reading of this Bill. But, taken as a whole, even with those Clauses, the Bill in our view is quite inadequate to meet the need. If its central proposal, which is the subsidy in aid of rents and improvements from the taxes is taken out, the Clauses that remain—though many are in our view good Clauses—are, I hope I shall not be regarded as too unfriendly towards the Bill by saying, somewhat unimportant Clauses, while the important Clauses in the Bill are, in our view, bad ones. The House will be entitled to ask, if this is our opinion of the Bill, what are our own proposals, and when we intend to make those proposals to the House. In the first place, we attach, so far as the question of rural housing is concerned, first importance to the proposal to enact a minimum wage. When the minimum wage is enforced, then so much of the difficulty as arises from the inability of people to pay an economic rent will to a large extent disappear. The House will be offered a choice between acquiescing in low wages and making up the difference by casting a burden on the rates and taxes, and insisting on higher wages without imposing such a burden upon such public funds. Secondly, we attach prime importance to the relief of rating upon housing and improvements. So far as these buildings can be relieved from rates, so far the cost of providing them and the weekly charges in respect of them will be reduced, and the Government, as the House is aware, is now actively at work upon the preparation of a Bill to be laid before Parliament this Session for dealing with the question of local rating. Our view is, in the main, that you will never be able to solve the housing question by trying to deal with each particular case in isolation. You may deal with each particular case so far as you can in isolation, but it will never carry you to a solution of the whole problem. You might as well seek to empty a swamp by a bucket, or a hundred buckets, as try to solve the housing ques-question merely by treating each particular case as it appears. You must drain your swamp; and, with regard to housing, you must set in force a move- ment and stimulate great economic forces which will enable the main needs of the population with regard to housing to be met, as they have been met in times past, and as they are being met in other countries at the present time, by the ordinary means of supply and demand. And further, in so far as there will still be default—in spite of the action which we hope may be stimulated on the part of individuals, companies, and societies—then the local authorities must be encouraged to step in. I agree with hon. Members opposite that where the local authorities are in default the State also must seek to make good the deficiency. That is one of the proposals of the Government, that the State should co-operate with the local authorities, should supplement their efforts and supply houses in their default, and directly through its own agencies build the houses that are needed.

I interrupted the right hon. Gentleman when he was speaking. He was mentioning the Post Office, and said it had been asserted that the State ought not to build houses for its own employés in the Post Office. I do not think that was said. What was said was that the Post Office, being the employer of these men, for many reasons it might be considered undesirable for it to do so, and that the matter should be taken into account by the State when, as a whole, it was dealing with this question. There is much to be said against a direct employer of a man being also his landlord, and that applies to the case of postal servants as well as to other people. When I was at the Post Office I went into this matter in much detail, and with much reluctance I came to the conclusion it would not be advisable for the Post Office to build houses for its employés on account of its relation to the staff. Difficulties might arise in relation to men not provided with cottages at the cost of the Post Office, and difficulties also regarding the adjustment of rents and so forth. I agree, and my colleagues agree, that when we come to consider the question of housing by the State generally we cannot omit from our consideration the fact that very large numbers of persons, especially an the rural districts, where the shortage is greatest, are themselves in the direct employment of the State. Two other things, in our view, are essential. One is, that the powers of purchasing land by local authorities should be greatly widened. I agree that in the rural districts this is not a point of the first importance. It is true that the cost of the land is not a very large item in the rent of the cottage built upon it. But it is not so in the towns, and the cost of land in the central quarters of our towns is one of the main reasons why local authorities are so relutant to embark on large schemes of slum clearance and rebuilding. In my view our municipalities ought to be given very wide powers indeed for the purchase of land for whatever purpose they think it desirable, and at whatever time they think it expedient.

The old corporations of England under their charters had almost unlimited powers, and we find such a town as Doncaster in possession of many thousands of acres from which it derives rents and profits which enabled it for many years to dispense altogether with levying on its population any Borough rate at all. In Germany, again, the hands of municipalities are quite free except with regard to borrowing powers, with respect to which all our municipalities ought to be subject to restriction by a central authority. We find that towns like Cologne and Munich own something between 30 and 40 per cent. of the whole of the land on which they stand; Frankfort, 50 per cent.; Heidelberg, 60 per cent.; and the authorities of Greater Berlin have in ten years bought 20,000 acres of land at a cost of £17,500,000, for the purpose of securing proper housing for the population and the proper development of its suburbs. They are required to pay a full value, but not a speculative value. The immense advantage to town planning, the provision of parks and open spaces, and generally the amenities of life in our towns, if our municipalities were able to become on a large scale the owners of the site of the cities which they control, will be obvious to the House.

The next point, to which we attach the greatest importance is the improvement of the methods of transit. The housing question can be solved more easily than in any other way by spreading your population over a larger area. I think it was Swift who said that he was the greatest benefactor of mankind who made two ears of corn or two blades of grass to grow where but one grew before. The greatest benefactor of mankind in this matter of housing, so far as our cities are concerned, is he who makes one person to dwell where two dwelt before. The more you can cheapen and expedite the transit facilities from the centre of a town to the suburbs, the easier you make travel along the radii of your circle, the bigger can be the circumference within which your community lives. My right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade is now investigating the whole of this aspect of the problem, and we hope to be able to lay our proposals before the House in the near future. Further, I agree with the hon. Member who introduced the Bill, that it is very desirable to remove the restrictive by-laws which now hamper public utility societies and others in building houses in various localities. In spite of the circulars of the Local Government Board, and the exhortations to the local authorities, many authorities have far too rigid and, in many cases, obsolete by-laws. We must be careful not to allow, in the name of town-planning jerrybuilding to reappear. The whole question is one of great complexity, and my right hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Local Government Board has accepted the duty of acting as Chairman of a Departmental Committee which I am now setting up to go into the whole question of local by-laws, and, after consideration of all the interests concerned, to make proposals for legislative and administrative action.

Other proposals which are now under the consideration of the Government are these: The Report of the Departmental Committee on Local Taxation will be in the hands of Members in a very few days. It will be found that among its proposals the Committee suggest that there should be a uniform Grant from the central Exchequer to all local authorities to assist them to deal with questions of public health, based on the principle of population, the Grant to be conditional on the due performance of their duties in respect of public health. I am not in a position to pledge the Government on this matter, because it has not yet been under the consideration of the Treasury, but it is one of the proposals which will certainly receive their consideration. The conditions of loans for public utility services, the powers of local authorities over the re-planning of existing areas, the pooling and redistribution of land under various ownerships, the planting of trees in new streets, the conversion of houses that have been built for a single family into tenements for a number of families, the security of the position of medical officers, of health and sanitary inspectors—all these are matters which are now engaging the earnest consideration of the Government. Last, and I am afraid I must say least, are a number of minor Amendments of the Housing Acts, such as those which form part of this Bill. The Government are engaged on the investigation of these several matters and several aspects of the problem. A Bill on lines such as I have sketched is about to be prepared. The preliminary steps are now being taken, but the actual drafting has not been begun. I hope to be able in the course of the present Session to lay before the House the Bill which was forecasted in the King's Speech, which will enable the House, as I believe it desires to do, without any distinction of party, to bring an effective remedy to what has long been an acknowledged evil.

The speech to which we have just listened has come as a very profound disappointment. The right hon. Gentleman began his speech by approaching the question of the housing of the working classes in a spirit of friendship very different from the bluff, outspoken methods of his predecessor in his present office. But, on the whole, I am inclined to think that I prefer the bluff, outspoken hostility of the late President of the Local Government Board to the soft words of the present President. Soft words butter no parsnips. My hon. Friend has produced in the Bill parsnips which are well worth buttering. We appeal to the Government to give us the butter. The right hon. Gentleman has flatly and blankly refused. He said towards the end of his speech that practically all the important Clauses were bad. The right hon. Gentleman has torn the very vitals out of the Bill which he got up ostensibly to commend. He pays lip-service to it and stabs it in the back. If he really entertains the opinions with regard to its proposals which he has expressed, the only honest course open to him is to vote against it. He dare not do it. He dare not put Government Whips on against it, for he knows that it would only lead to his own defeat in the House and in the country. So he says at the beginning of his speech that he will treat this as a non-party measure, and then he proceeds to cut it into ribbons. His support of the Second Reading is not worth having. The Government have made certain proposals with reference to housing, and the proposals which the right hon. Gentleman has sketched clearly prove that nothing whatever is to be done to this question for several years to come. His own colleagues admit that it is urgent. Hon. Gentlemen who have spoken from every quarter of the House also admit that this question is urgent. They say, "Let us have something to go on with while you are considering and debating about your proposals," and if you were in earnest you would give all the support that you can to this measure, which will do something at any rate for the amelioration of the conditions of the working classes. I am driven to the conclusion, and I repeat it with reluctance, that the President of the Local Government Board is playing with this question. He is studying rather the fortunes of his own party than the interests of the working people.

Question, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question," put, and agreed to.

Main Question put, and agreed to.

Bill read a second time, and committed to a Standing Committee.

The remaining Orders were read, and postponed.

Whereupon Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to Standing Order No. 3.

Adjourned at One minute after Five o'clock, till Monday next, 23rd instant.