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

The Bill fulfils extremely practical purposes. It is a great many years since the Government set up a port authority of this kind as a single act of policy. Perhaps I ought briefly to give the history which leads up to the introduction of the Bill.

The tendency now in the sea-carrying trade is towards even larger ships, particularly for oil and ore cargoes. It may interest the House to know that at this time there are 260 tankers of more than 40,000 tons building or projected on a world-wide basis and that 59 of these are of more than 60,000 tons. It was, therefore, right to look ahead to a time when berthing and harbour facilities would be needed for these larger ships. The events of the past twelve months have taught the maritime world that it is wiser to be less dependent on the use of the Suez Canal, so, again, there is pressure for larger tankers and larger vessels of all kinds.

This tendency will continue. For example, atomic power certainly needs larger ships when it is translated into a method of ship propulsion. The Government foresaw this development, and an urgent examination was put in hand for all possible ports and harbours in this country which could be made available for these much larger ships. Milford Haven was obviously an outstanding choice. It had other benefits. It is in West South Wales, an area which has always been worrying from the employment point of view. I certainly remember its being so when I was Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour, when both sides of the House were worrying about the future of the small, hand tinplate mills and the other problems of the area.

It is only right to say that my colleague, the Minister for Welsh Affairs, put very strongly the point that this Bill is not only a beneficial development from the point of view of navigation and the berthing and harbouring of larger ships, but might offer great advantages in commercial and industrial development to West South Wales. So there was another reason why the House should welcome the Bill and why the development is essential.

There is no doubt that in the train of the Bill could come very important developments in that part of the country. I would remind the House that the British Petroleum Company, Esso and the Milford Docks Company have all received Parliamentary sanction to Private Bills which foreshadow very great industrial developments. The B.P. development, of course, is a pipeline to Llandarcy. The Esso development includes a refinery to which my right hon. Friend has recently given planning permission, while the Milford Docks Company has a most important development in major ship-repairing which could bring a new industry to this part of West South Wales. There will be further developments. The Steel Company of Wales is likely to bring forward a project at Milford Haven for the receipt of large ore ships and their cargoes.

With all this in mind, a meeting of the interests concerned, including the local authorities, fishing interests and everyone else, was called this year under my chairmanship to see how best the orderly development of this great port could be achieved. I should like to take this opportunity of expressing my thanks and the Government's thanks to those who served on the ad hoc committee which was set up as a result of that meeting. That committee has looked after the development problems while the Bill has been in preparation. It has done a very useful job in relating the projects to one another and in ensuring that they do not conflict, and I am very grateful to those who have done this work.

However, an ad hoc committee could not deal with this great harbour on a long-term basis. Therefore, following that meeting, and following the study by the Government of the whole problem, it was obvious that we must set up a conservancy authority to safeguard navigation, to regulate the movement of ships and generally to administer the harbour. That is the reason for the Bill.

I do not think that the House will want me to go through the Bill in great detail. My hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary will be only too pleased to answer any matters of detail that are raised in the debate. I should, however, like to point out one or two of the main provisions. I think the purpose is best expressed in Clause 1, which sets out that the Milford Haven Conservancy Board

"…shall be charged with the duty of taking such steps as the Board may from time to time consider necessary or expedient to maintain, improve, protect and regulate the navigation, and in particular the deep-water facilities…"

Later in the Bill the further duty is put upon the Board of doing all that it can to preserve the natural amenities and not to interfere with what is a very beautiful part of the coastline of this island.

Perhaps I should also refer to the First Schedule, which runs with Clause I and sets out the constitution of the Board. This has, I think, in general been agreed with all the interests concerned, and, therefore, the only aspect of the constitution that I wish to mention is that it was thought proper to prepare for some future date when the port was much more widely developed than it is at present. Paragraph 16 (1) of the Schedule says:

"At any time after the expiration of seven years from the passing of this Act, the Minister may by order made by statutory instrument appoint a date…"

for the election to the Board of certain members to take the place of the present nominated members.

What I want to make plain is that it is possible that that power will never be used. It depends entirely on the development of the port. I believe that this development may change the whole industrial character of West South Wales. It may lead to great developments. Therefore, I think we must prepare to bring in other interests at a later stage. The position is that election to the Board cannot happen for seven years, and it may never happen at all, but I think the provision must be made.

That in no way says that the present basis of nominated members is not one in which I believe fully and not one which I think will work very well. This is a provision purely to prepare for the time when there may have been a great industrial development and we may have a completely new set of industries there.

I have not been able to discover whether there is any close contact between the new conservancy authority and the railway authorities in West Wales. It seems to me vital, if there is to be co-operation and co-ordination and the avoidance of disputes, that the railway authorities ought to be closely connected with this development, and I do not see any reason why they should not be represented on the authority.

The hon. Gentleman's point is met in this way. The British Transport Commission already has an interest in the Haven, having a site there. I have looked into the matter carefully and I think I am right in saying—I will ask my hon. Friend to check the point before replying—that it was fully consulted. One thing of which I am certain is that nothing in the Bill in any way inhibits the Commission from going forward with its own developments in the Haven, but, as it has a separate site and is to some extent a separate interest, I thought that all we had to secure was that it was not barred in any way by the Bill from going forward with anything it wanted to do.

Frankly, at the moment I do not think that its present stake in the port is large enough to justify representation, but the situation is covered by what I have just outlined about possible developments at a future date. If the Commission decided to make large developments there, it would probably become a much more important element in the life of the port.

All I need say about the remainder of the Clauses is that they follow precedents in respect of other ports and harbour authorities. They provide the necessary safeguards and powers for such things as dredging work, raising wrecks, buoying and lighting the harbour. They provide a small sum of money to enable the Board to get to work before it raises any revenue. In general, I do not think they set any precedent. Indeed, they follow established practice in other authorities. I do not think that I need go through the Clauses step by step. As I have said, my hon. Friend will be pleased to deal with any detailed points that may arise.

We have been asked whether this is the right way to develop this great port. I think it is. I think that to have set up a more elaborate organisation, to have tried to set up, for example, a planning board or authority for the whole port, would have been wrong. Private enterprise now has a very great stake in the area. As I have said, three large concerns have already obtained Parliamentary approval to powers and are proceeding with major industrial works. The purpose of the Bill is merely to ensure that there is reasonable co-ordination between those works and that the navigation of the port and the future of the Haven as a great port are not interfered with or spoilt. I believe that to be a proper function for the conservancy authority, and I believe the Bill gives it adequate powers to carry out that duty.

I say with great sincerity that I think there is a very great future for the port, and I certainly hope and wish, as I know my right hon. Friends do, that it will have a great and beneficial effect in increasing the industrial development in West South Wales. It is in that spirit that I commend the Bill to the House.

On behalf of the Opposition, I give a general welcome to the Bill. We think that the conception of an overall body to plan this general development is absolutely right. Here we have, I suppose, one of the finest natural deep-water ports in Western Europe. We have had to wait for the very large oil tankers to make its use almost essential in the modern world.

It is probable that we shall get the larger cargo ships there as well. When one bears in mind the development of the Common Market and the nearness of Milford Haven to the Continent of Europe, I think it is possible to see that there is tremendous potential in the development of the Haven both on account of the nation and on account of the immediate locality of West Wales. The Minister has referred to nuclear powered ships. They are bound to come. I suppose the size of the ships will be much bigger than anything we have today, and the one place in the United Kingdom where they can find adequate facilities and room to manoeuvre will be Milford Haven.

We think that the instrument chosen by the Government for the development is right. We consider that a Board of this type, which seems to follow the pattern set by the Port of London Authority, represents the right approach to the situation at present. We have reservations about the balance of representation on the Board, but these are fairly minor points when compared with the general conception.

Some of my hon. Friends may feel that we on this side of the House ought to be asking that the Board should be a municipal board. Since there is no municipality covering all the fringes of the Haven, it is fairly obvious, apart from other considerations, that it could not be a municipal board. The other suggestion was that it might be a county authority board. Here again, I think this is not quite up the street of a county authority, on the one hand, and a county authority would not, I think, have been strong enough either in resources or in experience to provide for the development of the Haven.

As to whether the British Transport Commission should have been charged with the responsibility, it seems to me that the Commission has quite enough on its plate already. Moreover, this is not quite up its street either; we are here concerned with navigation on the sea, a project of gigantic proportions, and I think it right in all the circumstances that we should have a mixed Board.

It would be wrong, however, to hand everything over completely to private enterprise. This is a great public property and it ought to be under general public supervision. It is right that a waterway which is vital to our national economy should have some sort of public body to run it. We agree that it is right that the companies which have gone there and which are investing hundreds of millions of pounds in the adjacent property and in the works should be assured beforehand of maximum co-operation in the operation of the Haven and should know that the facilities they will require to make their own works a success will be provided. In that sense, it is right that the private interests should have representation on the body which will be responsible for the overall planning.

For those reasons, we on this side of the House agree with the Minister that a Board of the type proposed is right. It is a Board representing national and local public interests together with national and local private interests. The new interests have not been given rights which exclude the rights of the local, already established interests, and the small fisherman has a place as well as Esso. That is absolutely right.

The right hon. Gentleman reminded us that the constitution of the Board is provided for in the First Schedule, and I should like to draw attention to that. According to paragraph 2 the chairman and one other member of the Board will be appointed by the Minister. One is to be appointed by the Admiralty, one by Trinity House, one by the local fisheries committee. The fisheries interest is an important one; it has been important in Milford Haven in the past and I hope it will remain so in the future. A further member will be appointed by the Minister

"after such consultations as he may consider appropriate, from among persons who are, or who are members of bodies corporate who are, owners of trawlers".

We do not disagree with that.

Next, there are to be four appointed by the County Council of Pembroke

"of whom one shall be appointed after consultation with such persons or bodies representative of organised labour as that council may consider appropriate."

The Minister has had great experience in the appointment of trade union representatives, and I should like to point out to him that it will be rather embarrassing for the county council to do this job. After all, it is, as it were, out on a limb; in the Pembrokeshire area, there are no very strong trade union organisations. Such trade union organisations as are there are small, and I should have thought that having to choose among the local, small unions would be a rather embarrassing task for members of the County Council.

I would press the Minister to consider the suggestion that the Pembroke County Council should have its four members and that he should make special provision for the appointment by himself, after proper consultation, of the union representative.

The remaining seven members of the Board are to represent private interests. These proportions, which are the proportions for the long term after the appointed day as well as for the interim, put the public interest a little at a disadvantage. The public interest is to be represented by only seven persons, and the private interests are to be represented by nine persons. That is a disproportion which might be remedied by giving the public interest better representation on the Board.

The Minister for Welsh Affairs will, I am sure, appreciate that in developments of this sort it is highly important to carry with one local public opinion in Wales. I suppose that there is no part of the United Kingdom where tempers can rise so easily, and if we can avoid any suggestion of friction by bringing in more public representation so that people will know what is going to happen and, having prior knowledge, will be able to give their approval, the whole project will be made much easier. I ask the Minister to reconsider the balance of public representation on the Board.

I turn now to Clause 1, dealing with amenities. We have in Pembrokeshire what is probably one of the most beautiful coastlines in the British Isles. There are little harbours and little dales, little stretches of coastline, which have a charm hardly equalled anywhere else. It will be a shame if we allow a "Rhondda" to come about in Pembrokeshire. Therefore, I make the reservation now that, in my view, the proposals for safeguarding amenities do not appear to be quite strong enough. They are to be found in subsection (6), in which the duty is placed upon the Board that

"In formulating or considering any proposals relating to their functions under this Act, the Board shall have regard to the desirability of preserving natural beauty and of conserving flora, fauna and geological or physiographical features of special interest."

Who is to see that the Board does that? Who is to judge the way that the Board does it? We ought, I think, to have a much stronger protection to safeguard the amenities. I am a little apprehensive because this matter is taken a little further in the provisions relating to the Pembrokeshire coastal footpath which has been defined by the National Parks Commission, which seem to place a specific obligation on the Board. If there is a specific obligation, a specific prohibition, in relation to that matter, perhaps it would not be too much to ask that there should be specific prohibitions in relation to other spots.

I am of the opinion that these industrial developments in Pembrokeshire should not cause a great deal, if any, despoliation. Industrial buildings these days are not synonymous with squalor or even ugliness. They can be designed and located in such a way as not to impair the general surroundings. Some of the new factories in my area have been so sited and built as rather to improve the look of the area, and it is quite possible with modern planning for the same sort of thing to happen in Pembrokeshire.

I would make this suggestion. Would it be wise to have on the board a representative of the National Parks Commission so that he can keep an eye continuously on what is happening and can represent to the Board at an early stage of its planning the views of the National Parks Commission? I ask the Minister to consider such a proposition.

I come now to the question of accountability to this House. The Minister has provided in Clause 18 that a copy of the statements of account and the auditors' report shall be submitted to him each year. Some of my hon. Friends, in particular my hon. Friend the Member for Pembroke (Mr. Donnelly), who, perhaps, has done more than any single Member of this House to try to get this development in that part of West Wales, will, I am sure, want to know what is happening and will wish to have the right of questioning the Minister about that. We hope that the Minister will lay on the Table of the House the annual reports, and that we may be able to keep some ministerial accountability to the House, and be able from time to time to review the way in which the work is going.

I come to my last point, and it is one which has been raised by my hon. Friend the Member for The Hartlepools (Mr. D. Jones)—

Where we have a conservancy.

—and that is about the position of the British Transport Commission in this matter. I should like to see the Commission represented on the Board for the purpose of the inland communications which require a great deal of development if Milford Haven is to be a success. It might, incidentally, have a representative not only to represent its own interests but to have some regard for the responsibilities of the Ministry of Transport.

Here is a great haven and a great natural port which, in the future, may completely reorientate the sea traffic of Britain, but it will be quite useless to develop it if the road communications are to remain what they are today. This is where the Minister of Transport must bear a great deal of responsibility. It is no use to have goods coming into Milford Haven if the bottlenecks at Port Talbot, Newport and Chepstow are to remain. I may even whisper in his ear that the desirability of the Severn Bridge will be greater than ever because of the development of Milford Haven.

Those are the representations which I wanted to make to the Minister in consideration of this Bill, to which I want to give a general welcome. We shall do all we can to facilitate its progress through the House, and I hope it will be a message to the people in Pembrokeshire that there is a great future in front of them, and that this project can mean such a transformation of West Wales as can give our people an entirely new hope and outlook.

I intervene only shortly to give a warm, whole-hearted welcome to the Bill. However, I do not think that we can be carried away by fervour, as the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Ness Edwards) has just been. I would call to his notice that there are other ports in the United Kingdom and that there are other road and rail developments needed elsewhere, particularly, as the hon. Gentleman the Member for The Hartlepools (Mr. D. Jones) will agree, in the North-East of England. So let us not overstate the case for the immediate and urgent consideration of this project irrespective of the need for developments elsewhere.

In considering this Bill the first thing that we should congratulate the Government on is that it is before the House at all. I should like to congratulate them also on learning, as my right hon. Friend said a few minutes ago, the lessons of some of the events of yesteryear, and particularly the need for the development of port facilities capable of accommodating the new type of tanker and other first-class ships which, obviously, will be in increasing use in the years to come. This project is to develop a haven and provide a new facility vital to the country on both strategic and transport grounds—on both of those grounds. The House must welcome the immediate attention which is being given to the development of this port.

I hope, however, that the House will not over-rate the immediate effect of a development of this nature on employment in South Wales. Over a long period, and if the port develops as we hope, it can have an influence on employment, but I cannot for the life of me understand the suggestion—I am not suggesting that my right hon. Friend made it—that its influence can be large rind immediate. I do not believe that it can possibly be so, because many of the developments being carried on by the oil companies are operations the mechanics of which employ relatively small numbers of people. If, however, in the future the shipbuilding industry can be developed in this part of the country, and especially if the ship repairing facilities are developed, that may have a great influence on the number of people employed in the area of the Haven.

I have my doubts, however, whether it would be technically possible to place in shipbuilding people who may fall into unemployment in other parts of South Wales, because in the shipbuilding and ship repairing industries are crafts and skills which cannot be picked up merely at a weekend school, or even at night classes, but can be gained only from long experience from working in those industries. We should delude ourselves if we were to think that this development will automatically solve the problem of unemployment in South Wales. Therefore, we should not over-rate the influence this development will have on the general employment position in South Wales.

In dealing with the amenities of this part of the coast, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Caerphilly was a little less than fair to the forthcoming constitution of the Board. I do not think that its members will not consider the amenities of the coast. I should think that people of the type designated in the First Schedule to be members of the Board will have awareness of the need for preserving the beauty of this part of the land of my fathers as well. I hope and believe that the Board will pay great attention to amenity values.

I congratulate the Government on bringing forward this Bill for this project, and I hope that it will be the success which, as sensible people, we must hope it will be and in the near future.

My constituency feels duly flattered that this Bill should come before the House this morning.

Of course, we have felt for a very long time that Milford Haven was not only the finest harbour in Europe, but in the world, and that it should long ago have been developed. The story goes back a long way, to a period when a gentleman called Mr. Hamilton married a lady called Miss Barlow, who owned a large proportion of the land around Milford Haven. Then Miss Barlow died. Mr. Hamilton and his nephew—who had very many wide and imaginative schemes for the development of Milford Haven—came down to see what could be done with Mr. Hamilton's recently acquired estates.

The nephew put forward various proposals and Mr. Hamilton recalled that the nephew had a very beautiful mistress who lived in the Edgware Road. He, therefore, made a deal with him in which he said, "You can have the land if I can have the woman". The original proposals for development were undertaken on that basis. However, the lady was not very keen on Mr. Hamilton and this complicated the position. By this time he had become British Ambassador in Naples and she was finally persuaded to go to Naples on the pretext that she would be taught opera singing. She went to Naples and married Mr. Hamilton, now Sir William Hamilton, and she became Lady Hamilton.

Then Lord Nelson, on his way back from the Battle of the Nile, met her in Naples. She always had had a feeling for the young man, and the Navy was persuaded to build a dockyard at Milford Haven so that Admiral Nelson could receive refreshment when he returned home and also so that Milford Haven would have some basis of industrial development. All needs were to be met all round.

I thought that we would be talking about the Yarmouth Naval Hospital later this morning.

That is going a little bit wide of this Bill.

That was the original background. A lot has happened since then and we now reach this position. Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Ness Edwards), I would like to welcome the Government's decision to bring this Bill forward as speedily as it has. There were many doubts in people's minds whether this is the best way to do it, but when we examine the possible alternatives this kind of Bill remains the best method at this stage of the industrialisation of West Wales. Of course, there are limitations to this kind of scheme which we should be frank enough to admit in a Second Reading, debate, because we can then avoid the difficulties later.

The first point is that this Conservancy Board is intended to be a harbour authority only, a traffic-controlling authority for what goes on in the water. But what goes on in the water is directly related to what happens on the land, and vice versa. So far, we have considered only the use of the existing natural facilities of the Milford Haven berths that are available. In practically all harbours some of the extensions are manmade. It may well be that in the initial planning of the utilisation of the harbour facilities some further consideration should be given to what might be the physical man-made development that might be implemented in the future. In this way we might now make yet better use of the existing natural facilities.

I am not sure whether I am making myself clear, but if we are considering future development on the shore or off the shore it is not only a water traffic authority that is involved. This is the first point I want the House to bear in mind.

The second point is the relationship between the Conservancy Board, the Minister and the local planning authority. May we have an assurance from the Joint Parliamentary Secretary that in all operations of the Board which affect the planning authority on the land—carrying out works, and so on—the planning authority will be consulted.

The second logical corollary of that initial argument which I have addressed to the House is that if we consider only the natural facilities available now, and not consider man-made facilities which might be created later, we tend to think in terms of only the individual users who have come forward at this stage. Will there be any proposal at a later stage for the co-ordination of the use of the existing water front as it is planned now? What steps and what powers will the Board have to group together possible users so that the best use can be made of what is inevitably the limited space available?

This brings me to the third point, a point which has been made already by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Caerphilly. That is the question of the National Park. The Minister of Transport spoke, amongst the various possible developments likely to take place, about the possibility of a large iron ore storage depot at Angle for the Steel Company of Wales. The position at the moment is that no formal plans have been submitted for this development. However, it raises very controversial issues and many people are thinking that this development is likely to do the most damage to the amenities. They are also saying that this is the test as to whether the Government are serious about the National Parks.

May we have an assurance from the Joint Parliamentary Secretary that the Conservancy Board's terms of reference, whilst they deal specifically with water control, will be to constantly take note of the amenity interest as well? I know that it is mentioned in Clause 1 (6), but I would like it to be a little more definite so far as concerns the requirement to consult with the amenity authorities. We have to look to the Minister for Welsh Affairs as a guardian of what is one of the most beautiful parts of the British Isles, and which, once destroyed, cannot be replaced.

Another amenity point which we should like to have made clear by the Joint Parliamentary Secretary is the Board's responsibility under the Oil in Navigable Waters Act. When we were considering all this development in Pembrokeshire, one of the things which concerned us most was the danger of oil pollution in the area, especially to sea birds. May we have an assurance that the Board will be required to prosecute its duties and, if necessary, to expend money on ensuring that this very important responsibility is fully discharged?

I now turn from these points to more detailed points. The South West Wales River Board is concerned about the effect of the developments further up on the two Rivers Cleddau. It is felt that the new Conservancy Board should be more clearly charged with the duty of ensuring that there is at all times an easy passage through the Haven waters for salmon to reach the spawning beds in the higher reaches of the river. May we have an explanation of what the Conservancy authority will be required to do?

The next point is the definition or interpretation as to what the Minister means by "as far as the tide flows". As the Joint Parliamentary Secretary is aware, there is a proposal to put a barrage across the River Cleddau to ensure that there is an adequate supply of fresh water for the various oil undertakings envisaged. Does the definition "as far as the tide flows" mean literally that, or does it mean as far as it flows now? If a barrage is to be put across the river, then there will be a limitation on the extension of the area for which the conservancy authority is responsible.

I agree wholeheartedly that there should be a trade union member on the Board. It is very important that the county council should not be placed in the invidious position of having to select a representative from two conflicting unions in the district. The Minister, with his experience at the Ministry of Labour, is the person best suited and equipped to appoint a trade union member, after consultation with the appropriate authorities, so that that person may be the best person to speak for the various organisations of labour in the district.

As to the chairman and independent member to be nominated by the Minister, I should like it clearly stated in the Bill that the Minister is required to appoint people who are completely independent and have no connection with any interest. I am sure that that is the intention, but I should like to see it written into the Bill so that the position of these two independent members of the Board is quite clear.

I agree about representation of the National Parks authority on the Board. It may save a great deal of trouble and difficulty. I know that we want to keep the number on the Board as small as possible, but such an appointment would get over a great deal of difficulty and would remove misunderstanding. These are detailed points about the Bill, which I warmly support in principle.

Another point which is germane to the whole future development of Milford Haven as a port is the supply of oil from the Middle East. Western Europe was importing oil from the Middle East last year at the rate of about 115 million tons a year, of which 75 million tons came through the Suez Canal and about 40 million tons through various pipelines. Estimates can be very inaccurate, but the requirements of Western Europe until about 1965, as far as can be reasonably forecast, will be between 175 million tons and 225 million tons.

In view of the fact that we now know the limitations of the Suez Canal, politically and physically, what steps are the Government taking to ensure alternative means for supplies of oil to come into the country? It is no use developing refineries and ports and then finding that the oil is not coming in. It is no use our being told, as one right hon. Gentleman once told us, that petrol rationing was going according to plan. We want the supplies to go according to plan. I know that this does not arise directly from the Bill that we are discussing, but there is also the political position and the Government's political policy in the Middle East. For several years now there have been serious mistakes in Government policy and, unless there is a change in that, the oil will not be available.

A debate on Second Reading is very wide, but I do not think that latitude goes as far as policies concerning the Middle East.

I agree, Mr. Speaker, but our supplies of oil are largely dependent on that, and so is this development. I leave it at that. I hope that we shall have an opportunity of discussing points in the Bill in Committee of the whole House after the Bill has been considered by a Select Committee.

Somebody once said that this harbour is the only almost landlocked water space that we have in the country into which the whole of the British Navy could be put in safety. The amazing thing to me is that this water has not been developed long before now. I welcome the Bill, but I warn the Minister and the House that it will be folly to spend large sums of public money, even in West Wales where it is so desirable, if we already have unused dock and port facilities in other parts of the country. Therefore, it seems that the Minister has done well in this case to keep complete control over capital expenditure in providing for services other than the importation of oil.

Some mistakes can be avoided if care is exercised in the composition of this Conservancy Board. Those who represent constituencies on the north-east coast have experience of the operation of commissions of this kind. There is a very excellent one on the Tees, doing first-class work, and there is a port and harbour authority at the Hartlepools which controls the estuary and does an excellent job. The British Transport Commission is represented on the Tees authority.

It is possible to put the port facilities on both sides of Milford Haven. They can be provided at Neyland, at Milford Haven or alternatively at Pembroke Dock. Therefore, the question of how material is to be got away from the quaysides is the concern of the British Transport Commission. It may well be that in the interest of rail traffic it would be better to instal the quay facilities at Neyland or Milford Haven as against Pembroke Dock, or vice versa. Therefore, if at this stage when these things are being planned the British Transport Commission had representation on the Board it would save a good deal of trouble.

Surely one of the factors bound to influence development, whether the British Transport Commission is represented or not, is the economics of development in one position or another. Therefore, representation of the Transport Commission is quite immaterial.

I should not have thought so. If the hon. Member had spent more time in his father's native country he would have realised that the provision of facilities at Milford Haven, as opposed to Pembroke Dock and vice versa, makes a tremendous difference to the haul that the British Transport Commission has to undertake. Therefore, in the interest of traffic, one site might be better than another, and the opportunity to have the technical advice of the railway experts at the earliest possible stage would be of great advantage.

I reinforce what my right hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Ness Edwards) has said about trade union representation. I should have thought that the Minister ought to assume the responsibility himself in consultation with the national trade union organisations, and by "national" I mean Welsh organisations and not trade union headquarters in London. Every trade union of importance has an office in the Principality. Whilst I hesitate to say this at this stage in the presence of my right hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly and my hon. Friend the Member for Pembroke (Mr. Donnelly), I believe that a knowledge of Welsh on the part of one or other of the members of the Board might be of considerable advantage in that part of the world.

I suggest, therefore, that the Minister ought to resume the main responsibility for consulting the Welsh trade union organisations with the aim, I hope, of appointing more than one trade union member to the Board. After all, there will be workers concerned with dock facilities, there will be fishermen and seamen and railwaymen and all sorts of other workers. However capable trade union officials might be, they are not capable of expounding the technical point of view on all these multifarious types of trades. Therefore, I should have thought that it would have been appropriate to appoint at least two people for trade union representation to the Board.

We ought to profit in the establishment of the Board by our experience of other commissions in the country. If he profits by that experience I am sure that the Minister will avoid the mistake made by other boards. I wish the project all possible success, because it is well deserved in that part of the country.

The Government are grateful for the general support and approval given to this Bill, because it is a project of the highest importance for the future of South Wales and for the transport of oil to the nation.

My right hon. Friend has explained that its main purpose is to provide the necessary framework within which the oil companies and other commercial interests can develop facilities for handling bigger and better ships, and, in particular, bigger and better tankers, and he also explained the world advance in tanker construction. No one can say at this stage what number of tankers we can expect to see arriving at the Haven when its total capacity is developed. One thing is certain, that under this scheme there will be ample capacity for tankers of the largest kind under construction. It is for this reason that the scheme is of the highest significance for the future economy of the country.

I undertake to reply briefly to the various points put by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Ness Edwards) and by the hon. Members for Pembroke (Mr. Donnelly), The Hartlepools (Mr. D. Jones) and Sunderland, South (Mr. E. Williams) in their contributions to the debate. Before dealing with those matters in detail, I want to say that we will certainly look at all of them.

It has been said that the composition of the Board could have been approached in a different way, and for that reason I shall deal with its constitution in detail. It must be remembered that this a Conservancy Board and that it will not be a planning authority for the land. So, in deciding its constitution, we had to think of certain special requirements. We must give adequate representation to the interests substantially involved. One point I will make here in answer to the right hon. Member for Caerphilly is that it is the private interests which are putting up most of the money in this case.

The Board must be reasonably balanced between the members who represent the various sectional interests and those which represent none, and provision must be made to ensure that as far as possible it is not continuously dominated by any one interest or any combination of interests. So far, I am entirely in agreement with what the right hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for The Hartlepools said. However, I think that the Board ought to be small enough to work efficiently, and that it should have sufficient flexibility to provide for the future trends of traffic and activity within the Haven. I think, therefore, that we should rest on those general principles.

Apart from the chairman, who is appointed by the Minister, the membership of the Board is made up of four groups, each of four members. One group represents the users of the Haven. One group represents the providers of docks and piers in the Haven. One group is represented by the county council, mainly because of the planning considerations which will be so important in the development of the Haven. The last group represents the official interests with responsibilities in the Haven, such as the Admiralty, Trinity House, and the local Sea Fisheries District Committee. As right hon. and hon. Members will have noted, there is provision for fishing interests, and there will be two fishermen's representatives on the Board.

That brings me to the trades union representation. We took the view that it was essential that fair and adequate provision for local trades union interests should be made in the composition of the Board. However, my right hon. Friend will look again at the point made by the right hon. Member for Caerphilly, and also by the hon. Member for The Hartlepools, as to what type of trade union representation would be the best in this case. We will look at the points because they seem to me to be important, and should be considered carefully, having regard to the vital significance of this scheme to the industrial aspect of South Wales.

I turn now to a number of other matters which have been raised in the debate. It has been suggested that the safeguards about amenities of this very beautiful part of the British Isles are not sufficient as at present set out in the Bill, and that was specially mentioned by the right hon. Member for Caerphilly. As I have said, the Board is not the planning authority for the land, but it must work carefully in conjunction with the planning authority. To begin with, the powers of the Board in that respect are bounded by the high water mark on the shores of Milford Haven and the approaches thereto. That, of course, does not obviate the necessity for the Board to have regard to the amenities of the district and its great natural beauties.

If the right hon. Gentleman examines the Bill in further detail he will find that there are a number of safeguards. First, I want to draw the attention of the House to Clause 1 (6), which requires the Board to have regard to the desirability of preserving natural beauty and of conserving the flora and fauna of the district. That is the first safeguard, of which there are a number. The second one is in Clause 4 (1, a) which requires the Board not to deposit dredged materials in such a way as to prejudice the establishment of the Pembrokeshire coastal footpath. I can understand the concern of the right hon. Gentleman about the footpath, but this sub-paragraph provides a basic safeguard for that part of the coastline.

The third safeguard is that the Board will be a harbour authority under the Oil in Navigable Waters Act. This point was made by the hon. Member for Pembroke. As a harbour authority, the Board will have full powers to enforce that Act within the Haven. That meets the point about the danger of oil pollution.

The fourth safeguard for amenities is in Clause 22 (5), which provides that for the purposes of the Town and Country Planning Act, 1947, this Bill shall be deemed to be in force at the passing of that Act. This is extremely important, because the effect is to make the Board subject—except for certain permitted de- velopments which can also be controlled—to the provisions in the Town and Country Planning Act for the planning and control of the development and use of land.

I do not desire to do so unless asked, but I could give the House details of the permitted developments that would be necessary. They involve developments required for the purpose of shipping, for the use of any land for the spreading of dredging, and developments authorised by Act of Parliament.

Finally, the composition of the Board allows, as has been pointed out, for full representation of the Pembrokeshire County Council, which is the local planning authority, and I am sure that the two bodies will work closely together. I think that the representatives of the County Council can be relied upon to ensure that the effects of the proposals of the Board on local amenities are not overlooked.

This applies, of course, to the activities of the Board itself as a harbour authority. It will not itself be erecting any major installations in the Haven. Those will be built by the individual interests concerned, which will have to obtain the normal statutory approval for doing so. I hope that what I have said will meet the points which have been raised on this important aspect. I am sure that those who know and admire the wonderful natural beauty of the Haven will be glad that there are safeguards in the Bill to meet the points which have been raised.

It was said that railway and road communications to the district ought to be examined. My right hon. Friend is urgently looking at the road problems there, and is in touch with the British Transport Commission about the railway communications.

It has been suggested that the Commission should play a greater part in these matters and should actually be represented upon the Board. We have been in consultation with the Commission about the Bill, but it has not suggested that it should actually be represented on the Board. One realises that it has certain interests in the matter, but I do not think it would have any specialised knowledge of navigational matters as such, and, although it will no doubt work closely with the Board, I do not think we should be justified in saying that it must be represented upon that body.

Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that the Commission, with its Dock and Harbour Authority, controlling nearly half our ports, has no specialised knowledge of harbours and docks?

Naturally, it has knowledge of harbour matters, and so forth, but I should have thought that the specialised harbour conservancy matters with which the Board will deal were not a matter for the Commission. At Southampton, for example, the Commission has extensive docks, but the conservancy work is done by the Southampton Harbour Board. I should have thought that was a good example that the specialised navigational work ought to be done by the harbour board and not by the Commission, and I should think that illustration meets the hon. Gentleman's point. One has to have regard to these matters in deciding what is the most efficient type of harbour authority for the conservancy work to be done at Milford Haven.

The right hon. Gentleman mentioned the publication of accounts. I should have thought that the provisions of Clause 18 were sufficient to meet the point. I am not aware whether other harbour authorities have to lay their accounts, but I do not think I could undertake to say that the Board should do that. I should have thought that examination of the Clause would show that the Board would have to keep proper accounts and that that would be sufficient for the right hon. Gentleman's purpose.

I hope that I have answered all the points that have been raised in respect of this very imaginative and vitally interesting project, and I have pleasure in commending the Bill to the House.

I wish to put a couple of questions to my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health, but before I do so, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, I wonder whether you would allow me to apologise to him and to the House for not having been able to be present last Friday when the Bill received a Second Reading.

Many hon. Members are from time to time faced with the problem of having very important engagements in their constituencies—this applies even to independent Members, who have a certain amount of support in the country—at a time when it is their duty to attend the House.

I fully recognise that the House has first call upon one's time. Therefore, I take in good part the words of the hon. Member for Bermondsey (Mr. Mellish), who said that I was very naughty not to be here but that he expected I had good reasons for my absence. It is a little odd that he himself is not here this morning in view of his, as usual, brilliant speech.

I am sure that the Parliamentary Secretary will be glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey (Mr. Mellish) is not here this morning.

I wish that he were here.

On Second Reading my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary said:

"Thirdly, the hospital is only partly used at present while there is great need for accommodation for mental patients in the region, other hospitals being very overcrowded. As part of the National Health Service, the hospital could undoubtedly be put to better use."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 15th November, 1957; Vol. 577, c. 1301.]

For that reason, if for no other, I should have thought that the hon. Member for Bermondsey would warmly welcome the Bill. I wonder whether my hon. Friend can say what number of places is likely to become available because of the transfer. Finding accommodation for mental patients in the Eastern Region, especially in Norfolk, has been a tremendous problem for a long time.

The other matter I wish to mention concerns the cost of the transfer. I understand that the cost of running the hospital was about £60,000 a year and that when the responsibility is transferred to the East Anglian Regional Hospital Board the cost may increase to £80,000 a year. Can my hon. Friend give an assurance that in the budgeting for the East Anglian Regional Hospital Board that amount will automatically be taken into consideration when the Board's overall budget is sanctioned? That is very important, since one knows the financial methods of some people. I hope that this transfer will be purely automatic and that there will be no cutting down because the Regional Hospital Board has accepted this additional responsibility.

Yarmouth has always had a strong link with the Navy, a solid link which goes back for many years to the days of Nelson—although the history of the hospital is queer. Nevertheless, I for one cannot but welcome any Bill which will relieve the serious lack of accommodation for mental patients in the area.

I have a personal reason for welcoming the Third Reading of the Bill. My constituents in Chatham would like to see the naval hospital there come under the hospital management committee—but that is a subject which I must not pursue, or I shall be out of order.

The Minister himself has recognised that this is about the unhappiest time for the transfer of responsibility for this hospital to his Department. Hospital staffs are discontented and have instituted an overtime ban. Although it is not working—and I was among those who said it would not be very effective—it may result in the break-tip of the Whitley Council machinery and even in strikes, at a time when we are taking additional servants from an Admiralty hospital. I urge upon the Minister that this is an added reason why he should bring about a settlement of this dispute between the hospital staffs and his Department.

I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Rochester and Chatham (Mr. Bottomley), for his kind remarks about the Bill. Although I must not follow him in his reference to Chatham, I can say that when I was in the Navy during the war I was a patient in that establishment and I can well believe that his constituents may have hungry eyes upon it.

It will be generally agreed that this modest Measure will have the entirely desirable and beneficial effect of a sensible reallocation of available resources in an area where they are sorely needed. I am sure that we will all acquit my hon. Friend the Member for Yarmouth (Mr. Fell) of discourtesy in not being here for the Second Reading, because we know that, like many others of us, he is active in the country.

There are 236 beds in the hospital and at present there are 151 patients. That means that there should be a net gain of 85 beds to the Regional Hospital Board, assuming that the number of patients does not alter in the meantime. This is quite an accretion of strength and I am pleased to think that beds which could not be used under the old arrangement will become available in this way.

My hon. Friend asked about the finances of this matter. It is true that in order to cope with this additional capacity, the hospital management committee concerned will have to have additional money to run the hospital. I can assure my hon. Friend that that point is accepted and that the necessary funds will be made available. We do not yet know which management committee will be responsible for the administration of the hospital. There are three possible choices—the Norwich, Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth, the No. 7 Group and the No. 8 Group Hospital Management Committees. It looks as though the choice will probably fall on the No. 7 Group Hospital Management Committee which at present administers one large mental hospital, St. Andrews Hospital at Thorpe, Norwich.

The right hon. Gentleman made a passing reference to the differences in the hospital service. I take his point about that. We have had ample discussion of the matter in the last few days and I shall repeat only what I said on the previous occasion, that nobody supposes that the differences will be permanent and that in the meantime we should not be deterred from taking steps which in the end will be beneficial to the hospital service merely because the differences exist.

This is a technical point. Assuming that the staff concerned agree—and I am mainly concerned with the general and domestic staffs—to assimilation into conditions of service generally prevailing, if subsequent increases in pay are granted to staffs, will those increases also apply to the staff of this hospital?

Yes, that is so. The hon. Member may be interested to know that, following last week's debate, the staff of the Yarmouth Hospital sent a small deputation to the surgeon-captain of the hospital to say that they were most satisfied with the options offered to them, so we can take it that that part of the operation has got away to a good start.

I commend the Bill to the House and hope that it will be given a Third Reading.

You will be fully aware, Mr. Speaker, that the House has discussed the general housing problem on several occasions during recent months, but this morning I wish to ask it to consider a particular aspect of that problem. I refer to its aggravation, in London, by the arrival and settling here of considerable numbers of overseas British subjects. This matter is of such importance to certain local authorities that the House and the Ministers concerned should consider it with a view to coming to the aid of these local authorities.

Although what I shall say will be mainly in reference to the London position, I think that it will be found that the problems which arise in parts of London in this connection also occur in the centres of many of our large towns. We all know that the residents of our Colonies and every part of the Commonwealth overseas are free to come into the Mother Country and settle here without any restriction as to numbers and without any conditions being imposed upon them.

I shall not attempt to deal with that aspect of the problem today. Were I to attempt to raise the question of the unrestricted flow of British subjects into this country you would at once tell me that I was out of order, Mr. Speaker. I understand that any change in the present unrestricted entry of such subjects would involve legislation affecting every country in the Commonwealth. I shall not, therefore, attempt to deal with that question.

Every hon. Member will probably be fully aware of what has been happening during the last few years in regard to the inflow of these people, mainly from the Colonies but also from other Empire countries. I do not think that any Government Department can state with certainty the numbers of people involved. I have tried to get exact figures but I find that there are none. What we do know is that in the last few years there has been a very large increase in the number of people coming here from the Colonies and settling down.

In a Written Answer to a Question on 18th February last the Home Secretary gave figures of West Indians arriving here in recent years. He said that 30,400 persons had arrived from the West Indies in 1955 with the intention of settling here, and that in 1956 the number was 33,500. In think that the figure was under 30,000 in 1954 and the figure for this year will also probably be below the 30,000 mark. It is probably true to say that we have as many as 150,000 or even 200,000 West Indians here at present. That may be an exaggeration; I am in a difficulty, because I cannot obtain exact figures.

It may interest my hon. Friend to know that in yesterday's debate on the Aliens Restriction (Amendment) Act the Joint Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department stated that there were in this country 140,000 coloured people who were British citizens and therefore not aliens.

To that figure we must add the people from Cyprus, who, presumably, are not designated as coloured. My guess is that we have here at present about 50,000 Cypriots, so that we have about 250,000 people from the Colonies and other parts of the Commonwealth who have settled in this country in recent years.

What we are sure of is that the inflow has increased very considerably, and that it is now probably going on at a rate ten times that of pre-war years. It is a new feature in our population situation. We are becoming a multilateral society of many races. Most of these people settle in our towns; they are not to be found in the countryside to a very great extent. They settle especially in the large towns, as is understandable. In London, they congregate in places like Stepney, Lambeth, St. Pancras, and Islington, part of which borough I represent. They are also to be found in smaller numbers in other Metropolitan boroughs.

I say at once that most of these people are good, law-abiding citizens, and not work-shies or undesirables. They are worthy people to have amongst us. A few of them give trouble, and there are a few criminals—but every society has its minority of criminals. Generally speaking, however, the newcomers are good people, and most of them do a good job of work. In this connection, I must mention that the good work done by the coloured women in our hospitals is deserving of favourable comment, and we should thank them for doing work which, very often, our long-standing citizens would not readily do.

These people are coming here to what is, to them, a strange country. They meet prejudices. There are prejudices on both sides. They exist between coloured people who have been here for some time, the new arrivals, and our own people. It is the duty of us all to help to allay these prejudices as far as possible. I am sure that in this debate none of us would not wish to have one word said which would add to the existing prejudices and give pain to the newcomers.

I have watched them arriving in the part of London that I know best. They arrive in crowds, seemingly lost in a strange city in a strange land. I see them going along, each carrying his bag, through the streets of my constituency, trying to find somewhere to rest. It is not a happy sight to see them trudging along the streets, bewildered and seeking somewhere to stay. At almost every door in a borough that is densely populated and overcrowded they are turned away, generally with a polite negative but sometimes with anger and abuse. I wish that these people could be received in this country in a better way. Others arrive armed with the address of a compatriot and go to the house where he has already settled.

A number of these people, not only West Indians, but also Cypriots and people from other countries, have been here for a few years and have managed to acquire a little money with which they have got possession of houses. There are many such cases in my constituency and in other parts of London.

I want to digress for a few minutes to say a word about this business of selling houses to these newcomers. There is some traffic in selling derelict and semi-slum properties to these immigrants to our shores. It is largely a most unscrupulous business. The property owners, generally speculators, offer these slum houses for sale with complete or part possession. The newcomer, whether he be West Indian, Cypriot, or any other nationality, is only too anxious to get some sort of house, and often buys a property that is really not in a fit state for occupation. He is encouraged by these unscrupulous property speculators he is smilingly received by them, his deposit is taken from him, he signs on the dotted line and the derelict house, so he thinks, becomes his property. In fact, of course, it belongs to the speculator until the whole amount involved has been paid.

In many cases such houses are very dear when one considers their condition. I have the name and address of a firm in Mayfair which is doing quite a profitable and unscrupulous business in house selling in my constituency. I will not name the firm, but I am watching its activities very closely. When this debate comes to the notice of the firm it will probably realise to whom I am referring. It is difficult to know how to check the exploitation of these newcomers to London and other parts of the country.

Some social problems arise when they take part possession of houses. Many houses are sold to them with part vacant possession and they share the accommodation with the long-established residents. The newcomers regard the houses they have bought as their property, but, naturally, the people who have been living in the houses for many years do not always welcome their arrival.

There are many cases of strife and difficulty between the newcomers and the established residents. The police have full information about what is going on. The newcomers are driven to get in somewhere because there is no adequate accommodation for them. They push in wherever they can, and, by doing so, disturb the home life of many established residents. As I say, the police are fully aware that this kind of strife occurs in numerous cases, and is increasing.

I will mention just one case to illustrate the kind of thing that is happening. It concerns a widowed lady who has lived in a certain house for most of her life. Most of the house became vacant and she retained her one room. The property was sold with part vacant possession to an African. Naturally enough, he gave shelter to a number of his compatriots from Africa until the house contained ten African men and the widowed lady, who, as I say, had lived in the house most of her life. They had to share the place and its amenities, including the one toilet.

That lady wrote to the local housing authority, saying that she lived in fear and terror, as no doubt she did, not because the Africans were necessarily difficult people, but because the contrast between their code of conduct and hers was sufficient to cause her fear and terror. The local housing authority could not help her in any way because she was not living in an overcrowded condition and because it had many thousands of cases on its housing list of people who were even worse off than she was. That kind of thing is happening in hundreds of cases. Lack of adequate housing accommodation creates strife and bitterness between the newcomers and the people who have resided in the houses for most of their lives.

Before April, 1956, there existed an arrangement between the Commissioner of the Government of Cyprus and the Metropolitan borough councils under which the Commissioner notified the councils of the intending arrival of people from Cyprus and of the addresses at which they were going to live. That enabled an authority to have the place inspected and to report to the Commissioner as to its suitability for the number of people proposing to occupy it and whether or not it complied with the Public Health and Housing Acts.

That was a helpful arrangement, but, as I say, it was discontinued in April, 1956. There was a similar arrangement between the Government of Malta and the local authorities. It was not an identical arrangement, but it enabled the Metropolitan borough councils to watch the position. That arrangement, too, has ceased to operate. Perhaps the Minister can give some attention to the possibility of reviving those arrangements. If the Minister could also use his influence to begin a similar arrangement regarding arrivals from the West Indies, he would be making a contribution to the easing of this problem. This arrangement would not solve the problem, but it would help the authorities to have a better knowledge of the situation and to ease the problem to some extent.

I have dealt with the main problem of the local authorities. When these people arrive in this country they know nothing of our public health and housing laws. Most of them are ignorant of our laws, customs and usages. They proceed to occupy houses in such numbers that those houses become overcrowded. It is quite impossible for the local authorities to deal effectively with this recurring offence of overcrowding by newcomers from overseas. This applies to most of the Metropolitan 'boroughs, though it applies to some in greater measure than to others.

I should like to quote a short extract from an article which appeared in The Times as long ago as November, 1954. It is by a special correspondent of The Times who has obviously studied the matter carefully and is well-informed of the problem. He said:

"When it is learned that ten coloured men are paying £1 each a week to share one room, or that 22 coloured people are living in one small house, the only course a local authority might follow would be to consult the medical officer of health about forbidding overcrowding. If a certificate were granted"—

that is, a certificate to abate over-crowding—

"the onus would be on the authority to provide other accommodation to those displaced; and, of course, no other accommodation exists."

I think that that quotation puts the matter in essence.

These good people do not know that they are committing an offence, and proceed to overcrowd the houses they occupy. Whether they have possession of the whole house or only part of the house, they almost always grossly overcrowd it. That quotation which I have just read is as true today as it was in 1954. It has been true for three years and it remains true now.

This is a matter to which the Minister should give his attention. In my own borough it is indisputable—I can say on good authority—that 70 per cent. of the penal overcrowding known to the medical officer's department concerns settlers from the Colonies. There is the size of this overcrowding problem. I think that a similar situation obtains in other Metropolitan boroughs as well as in Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester and all the other large cities.

Local authorities, of course, have no knowledge of the arrival of these people from other countries and, consequently, the first time they learn of overcrowding is when they receive a complaint. Complaints are numerous. When a complaint is lodged, the health inspector goes to the premises and if he finds that gross overcrowding is taking place it is the duty of the local authority to deal with the problem. Parliament has laid on the shoulders of local authorities certain responsibilities relating to overcrowding and it is the duty of the local authority to cause the overcrowding to be abated.

In fact, local authorities cannot carry out their duties. They cannot enforce the provisions of the Act for the simple reason that there is very little, if any, alternative accommodation. Powers are given to the local authority under the Housing Act, 1957, Part IV. Reading that Statute, one would think that it is simple enough, that the local authority only has to operate the law and the overcrowding will be solved. But it is not so simple as that. Under Section 78 of the Act overcrowding is not an offence if suitable alternative accommodation is not offered to the offending party.

I should like the Parliamentary Secretary to consider, even if the local authority were in a position to offer alternative accommodation, whether it would be right and helpful in the broad sense if the local authority offered all the alternative accommodation it had to the newcomers. We should have the spectacle of perhaps a whole street or a new block of flats being occupied entirely by the newcomers. Many of them, of course, would be coloured and could easily be distinguished from the local residents. We should have that spectacle of this property, which had been built at great expense, being occupied by newcomers, whilst thousands of families who had waited many years for adequate accommodation would have to wait. It is a fair point: should the local authority, in order to carry out its duties to abate overcrowding, use what small amount of accommodation is available to accomodate the newcomers whilst allowing the long-established residents to wait in their sub-standard accommodation?

Section 90 of the Act deals with overcrowding of lodgings, and the position here is extremely difficult. It is found in practice that the local authorities cannot enforce this provision. The Section provides a right of appeal to the county court against a notice to abate issued by the local authority. If the right to appeal is used, and the offender goes to the county court, the judge can decide as he thinks fit. He can give any decision he likes. He can give his decision in favour of the council or of the offending person, or he can come down between them. But mostly the judge is quite unsympathetic to the local authority in its effort to abate overcrowding if he is told, as he must be told, that there is no alternative accommodation. As a result, the local authority is unable to enforce the provisions of the Act.

Usually the matter does not go to the county court. Therefore, the offending person who is overcrowding the house becomes liable on summary conviction to a fine of £5 in the magistrates' court, and a further fine of £2 a day whilst the offence of overcrowding continues. When the local authorities go to the magistrates and ask for a conviction for overcrowding, the magistrates are powerless to move if the local authority says that it cannot offer alternative accommodation. The overcrowding provisions of the 1957 Act cannot be enforced. If the local authority had enough alternative accommodation it is even then questionable whether it would be right in the interests of the community to go ahead, secure convictions and rehouse the newcomers.

The problem derives from the influx of people from overseas, and local authorities in certain parts of London cannot tackle it. It is not enough for the Minister to say that the local authorities have the duty to abate overcrowding. That is an unrealistic and impracticable attitude, which evades the issue. The Minister ought to know the hard facts about the lack of accommodation in certain parts of London which prevents the local authority carrying out its duty.

The Minister tried to insist upon compliance with the Housing Act as recently as last Thursday. My hon. Friend the Member for Clapham (Mr. Gibson), who is now sitting beside me, put a Question to the Minister of Housing and Local Government, asking

"what powers are enjoyed under his Regulations by local authorities to deal with the overcrowding of houses by landlords who exploit the housing needs of coloured immigrants in London."

The Minister replied:

"Section 90 of the Housing Act, 1957, empowers local authorities—in London both the London County Council and the metropolitan borough councils—to serve notices upon landlords fixing, at their discretion, the number of people who may sleep in a room. Appeal lies to the county court."

My hon. Friend put a supplementary question, in which he asked the right hon. Gentleman:

"In view of the difficulties which this problem is creating in some of our towns, will the right hon. Gentleman call the attention of local authorities to these powers and ask them not to wait until complaints are made by white people, which is what they are doing at the moment?"

The Minister replied:

"The hon. Member himself has a local authority background. These are discretionary powers already enjoyed by local authorities, who do not, I think, need any direction from me."

Then my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) rose and asked the Minister:

"Has the right hon. Gentleman any suggestion to make to local authorities as to where the surplus occupants of overcrowded houses are to live?"

The Minister replied:

"That is clearly something which a local authority must take into account when considering the exercise of its powers."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 19th November, 1957; Vol. 578, c. 195.]

It will not do for the Minister of Housing to take that line. He knows that the problem is there and that local authorities cannot solve it. It will not do for him to try to evade the issue by referring the local authorities to the Act and telling them to bear in mind the question of alternative accommodation. The problem is baffling all of us: Members of Parliament, local authorities and the Minister himself. It is time that he said frankly that the problem is there in certain parts of London and in other great cities, and that the housing situation is such that the local authorities cannot carry out their duty.

The position is quite different in the country generally. I hope that the Minister will cease to talk vague generalities about supply and demand and other ideas which are beside the point. Let him consider the housing problem as it is. He should "come clean" about this matter, admit that the problem is there and try to devise a means of helping the local authorities, who expect him to come to their aid.

I would add a few words to the able speech which has been made by my hon. Friend and colleague the Member for Islington, South-West (Mr. A. Evans) who has rendered a great service in bringing the problem to the notice of the House. The matter has caused me personally a great deal of distress for a long time.

It is an acute and growing problem. My hon. Friend has stated the matter very sympathetically. There is in Islington a growing coloured population consisting of immigrants from Colonies, including the West Indies, Cyprus and Malta. There is no point in blinking the fact that this situation causes hardship, pain and suffering. The immigrants themselves suffer by having to live in overcrowded conditions while the English people suffer because a large number of tenants have to share unwillingly the existing accommodation with immigrants from overseas.

Hardly a week goes by but I, in my "surgery", deal with problems of this kind. Let me cite one which is typical. A week or two ago the mother of two young girls aged about 8 and 10 came in great distress to see me. She and her husband had been occupying one part of a tenement house during the whole of their married life. They had been living happily in that house with another white family consisting of a married couple and one child, who then moved. The house was sold by the landlord, with part vacant possession. In this instance it was sold to Cypriots; in another case I have in mind, a house was sold to Jamaicans. Before very long there were, first, five or six Cypriots sharing the house with them, then eight, nine, and now ten. There is only one lavatory, which they all share; and they share other parts of the house.

No one wishes to say anything which would in any way exacerbate the very deep feeling which exists on this subject. It is nobody's fault that people from overseas are content to live in conditions different from those sought by white people. Some of them do not object—perhaps it would not be much use if they did—to sleeping five and six in a room. They have different habits, through no fault of theirs. I am sure that any hon. Gentleman here will agree that if he had to share a house having one lavatory with nine or ten coloured people, conditions could become very unpleasant however deeply he may feel the duty and obligation of brotherly love and affection for all people. There are circumstances in which this situation, which is not an uncommon one, produces tension.

The mother of the two children I mentioned lives in a state of terror. Perhaps her terror is unnecessary, but she has been brought to a state of distraction. Hers is one case out of dozens I could cite. It would not be so bad if people could find somewhere else to go, but, of course, they cannot. Eventually they will have to go, because the tendency is for things to become so intolerable that they must go somewhere else. In Islington, and in other boroughs too, I have no doubt, we are now finding groups of houses which are wholly occupied by immigrants, and that does provide some easement of this problem of shared accommodation which is so unsatisfactory.

Something must be done about the problem, for it is becoming acute. Overcrowding is causing colour prejudice. Colour prejudice is not spontaneous in this country—British people are very friendly to coloured immigrants—but the degree of prejudice is growing as a result of these housing conditions. As my hon. Friend has said, the conditions in which immigrants come to London inevitably involve a breach of our housing laws. They know before they come that there is no room for them unless they live in conditions which violate the Housing Acts. An intolerable burden is put on local authorities in trying to enforce the law, and the Minister must tell us what he wants done.

The problem is aggravated by the fact that, very often, immigrants occupy property already condemned and due for demolition and shortly to be demolished or acquired for demolition by the London County Council. There is, therefore, an obligation on the London County Council to rehouse the coloured people there in advance of many thousands who have been waiting on the housing list for years. Because these coloured people are living in condemned houses in such large numbers, the numerical obligation when the properties are pulled down is three or four times as great as it would have been if the premises had remained occupied by their previous white tenants. A feeling of deep grievance is growing up among Londoners who have waited on the housing lists for years, because they find that, through no fault of theirs, priority is now being given to coloured people who have acquired and occupied premises due for demolition. I hope that we shall hear some definite proposals from the Minister about it.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South-West (Mr. A. Evans) for his courage in bringing before the House this extremely urgent and delicate problem. It is claimed that we have in my borough a density of population higher than any other in London and, it is sometimes claimed, higher than in any part of the world. This arises not so much from immigration as from the necessity, to which I shall revert in a moment, for there being available near the centre of London accommodation for large numbers of people who have to work there. In present circumstances, when that problem is exacerbated and intensified by the influences to which my hon. Friends have referred, balanced judgment can be overthrown in favour of prejudices and hatreds which ought never to have a chance of rearing their heads in the capital of the Commonwealth.

At the outset, I hope that the Minister will recognise that the problem is not at bottom one of colour or nationality. It is not at bottom a problem arising from one influx after another of people from outside. The problem arises from the need to have accommodation for lower-paid workers near the centre of London because London needs such people.

It is possible, when discussing planning, so to organise things that the bigger industries employing large numbers of workers can be re-located, but one can never overcome the problem that a great capital city needs two types of workers. First, it needs those with the highly specialised skills who work in establishments, perhaps no larger than workshops, of a particular industry or trade which is of necessity situated in the capital of a country. Secondly, we need enormous numbers of lower-paid, unskilled or semiskilled workers—semi-skilled, perhaps, only in the sense that the job they do can be learned only on that particular job. That sort of servicing of the work of a great capital city requires workers who must live near their places of work. Their times of starting and finishing the various shifts vary. Wherever one goes about in London, by day or night, one finds people going to or leaving work, and of course, they must live in London.

The Minister will understand that the worst effects of his Rent Act—I will not say more about it now—will be felt in areas like Paddington. There is great resentment against the Act and against the effect of Government policy. In particular, there is in Paddington a local problem, to some extent shared in other boroughs but particularly intense in Paddington, which arises from the use or misuse of the fag-ends of leases.

The Minister once said, in one of those moments when he was trying to impress us with his sincerity, that whenever he went for a walk through London he could not help thinking of the bricks and mortar and the people living behind them. I should like to invite him to come for a walk with me through Paddington, when I could show him some things which would move him not only on the general problem, but on the particular problem as well. I wonder whether he would come with me to No. 39, Lydford Road, which is a specimen of the sort of houses to be found in the Harrow Road Ward of my constituency, where the leases are running to an end. As I have said before, our problem in Paddington is intensified by the fact that Paddington Station was completed just over 100 years ago and many of the ninety-nine-year leases of the houses in the area which were built following that development are now running out.

The lease of No. 39, Lydford Road—the freeholders, I think, are still the Church Commissioners—has about six years to run. The present owner of the lease has gone back to Nigeria. He has a pal who collects the rents for him. There is one family there which has lived there all its life and is now surrounded by the sort of problems of overcrowding and the difficulties of association with people of other habits and customs such as my hon. Friends have been describing.

The house needs considerable repair. The roof leaks and there is a whole list of defects which, of course, will be put on Form G and as a result of which, in due course, I hope, my constituents will have to pay only part of the increase in rent which the Minister has imposed on them. The owner of the lease, who is in Nigeria, will none the less be collecting a certain amount of extra rent because of the Minister's Rent Act, not one penny of which will be spent on the house—of course not.

My hon. Friend the Member for Islington, East (Mr. E. Fletcher) mentioned the problem of the one lavatory in the house. It is a very real problem and a common one, but it is one which, I think, something could be done to remedy. In this case, there is a little girl in the family. For some years she has been frightened to go downstairs and use this communal lavatory—and so, Mr. Speaker, would you or I. She has used a little chamber pot in the couple of rooms that the family occupies and her elder brother has been accustomed to go and fetch it for her when required. If the Minister accepts my invitation, perhaps we will arrange to avoid that embarrassing moment. The little girl, however, is growing up. She is about 10 or 11 years of age. Her elder brother is growing up too. Would the Minister like to give some advice as to what time and at what period that arrangement should cease? This problem has been brought to me again and again.

Never, in any of the cases that have been brought to me at my advice bureau, has the opening of the conversation been other than, "Mr. Parkin, do not get me wrong. I have no prejudice against coloured people, or I had not to begin with. I realise that they are unfortunate, that they have to live somewhere, that we owe them something in the Commonwealth" and so on. Always, the first attitude of the ordinary working people has been one of sympathy and welcome. It is only the close association of different habits and customs which has sometimes produced a nervous tension which is intolerable.

Sometimes, the difficulties are exacerbated by the fact that the new owner of the lease has paid far too much for it, has borrowed the money and now finds himself impelled to exercise every kind of pressure to get old statutory tenants out so that he can make more money to repay his loan. There is the appalling position that if the local authority should rehouse an old family in these circumstances, it is at the expense of the accommodation available to people on the long waiting list, and all that is done is to hand over vacant accommodation which will be re-let, so-called furnished, at four guineas a week—

Six guineas.

—or more in the first place.

The irony of the situation is that the family at 39, Lydford Road—and, of course, the families in so many others of these houses—were offered the lease; at least, they had the same opportunity as anyone else to buy it. What the people are afraid of in all these instances is that when the lease comes to an end, they will have to face the schedule of dilapidations and a very large bill for repairs.

Therefore, all over the Borough of Paddington—and, I am sure, the circumstances must be the same in the rest of London—people of substance get out from the ownership of these ends of leases lest they be caught with the demand that repairs be carried out; and they are replaced by people of no substance, or people who will leave the country and cannot be chased up, as the owner of this particular house cannot now be chased up because he has left the country.

No problem has caused me more anxiety and distress than this one. No problem has caused more anxious discussion concerning the means that could be adopted. One had wondered whether it would be possible for the local council to make much more use of the Small Dwellings Acquisition Act and the 1949 Housing Act to provide loans for an occupier to acquire the whole property. The situation becomes complicated, however, when, in the first place, the property is already in a bad state of repair, and secondly, when the occupiers would themselves be the landlords of sub-tenants on other floors.

People like these working people in my constituency are not smart enough to avoid their obligations in the matter of repairs and the lease. A device which is all too frequently used is to put the ownership of the property or of the lease in the hands of a company—a purely nominal company, with a capital of £100 and £2 paid up. I could quote a number of examples. Sometimes it is done, I think, on accountants' advice to help with the tax problem, but in other cases it is done deliberately so that the last halfpenny can be wrung out of the property.

If there are any demands from the local authorities upon the freeholders for repairs, unfortunately the company is insolvent. The company pays out all that it extracts—it pays it away—and has no assets and cannot be forced to do anything to the property, while the real owner is sitting happily collecting the proceeds. That, surely, is not an intractable problem.

The price of the leases is, naturally, inflated, because those who will not stay to the end of the term and those who are wily enough to evade their obligations through the misuse of the Companies Acts can afford to pay a much higher price than could anyone who was acting at all responsibly in the ownership of the house.

I have given one example of what happens when the owner is not in this country. In this prospective walk-around that I hope we are to have, I should like the Minister to come with me now to Warwick Avenue Underground Station. That is a very nice part of the world. It is quite a mistake to suppose that these dreadful conditions exist only in ugly, broken-down properties. They exist in stately, well-laid-out streets, which could have been centres of gracious living, but have been allowed to deteriorate. Many of them could still be rescued and preserved.

Come to Warwick Avenue tube station. Let us go up the steps and across the road to No. 52, Warwick Avenue. I do not know who owns the lease. The freehold is still owned by the Church Commissioners. No. 52, Warwick Avenue is managed by a firm called Martin East of Oxford Street. There are, I believe, family associations with another very substantial property company. This company manages No. 52, Warwick Avenue. As I say, I do not know who the owner is; he may be a nominee.

I was interested in this property because of an Irishman who had the temerity to take a case to the rent tribunal. What happened was this. In the basement of No. 52, Warwick Avenue lived an old lady over 80 years old who died, and no relatives of hers were found and nobody collected the few sticks of furniture there. So the house was let furnished to the Irishman, who, of course, comes under the subject of this Adjournment debate about overseas British nationals who come here to work, and do some of the semi-skilled work.

In the same road Irishmen with families pay half the wages that they get from British Railways in rent for accommodation of the kind I am describing. Four guineas a week were paid by this Irishman. He took the matter to the rent tribunal, which reduced the rent to 30s. Of course, when the tenancy ran out they chased him up, and they induced him, I am sorry to say, to leave the premises.

I thought that at least the ruling of the tribunal would stand and that the place could not be relet at more than 30s. a week, the rent laid down by the tribunal, but, of course, I reckoned without the ingenuity of the Minister of Housing and Local Government, who has given so much time and thought to improving the conditions of landlords. They can now announce a new tenancy; they can now announce they are letting unfurnished and can make the poor wretches who come in pay the same amount of money and pay for the furniture as well. Indeed, the new tenant paid £6 for the dirty, stinking old mattress which had been there since the old lady died.

These are facts. I am sorry that the Parliamentary Secretary has gone out. I do not know whether he has gone out to be sick or to collect some information, but he has my sympathy. All these are facts of life, and one needs a strong stomach to face them. I hope that he and the Minister will come to Paddington to have a look at what goes on.

The basement of No. 52, Warwick Avenue is now occupied by Jamaicans, and I went to see them. It can be understood that, very politely and very nicely, they would not let me in. The tenant said, "No, I should not like you to come without the permission of the agent, because I do not know your country very well. We paid a lot of money in other accommodation and we have always been asked to leave. Now we have got this place to ourselves and do not want any trouble."

The chairman of the local Labour Party and a member of the Council came with me. He said very nicely, "Of course, we have nothing against you. We want to see that the place is fit to live in and that the sanitary regulations are in force. Is it damp?" "No, no," they replied. "It is not damp. It is very nice, very nice indeed." It is a paradise for them compared with what they had to put up with before.

On the ground floor of the same house lived an old gentleman who became a widower. The agents of the firm went to him and said, "You will not want all the accommodation now. If we reduce the rent a bit you can let us have the back room. You will not mind sharing the kitchen, will you?" The old boy gives way and lets them make that change. They put a man and his wife and two children in the back room. There is one lavatory for the whole house. All the cooking goes on on the landings.

On the top floor of that house are two rooms. The people there were very unwilling to admit that there were six people there. They said, of course, "There are only two." I got them to admit there were six people there. I went up and there were thirteen people in two rooms, paying £1 a week each. They sleep by shifts in the beds. They are not crooks. They are hard-working people who come here to try to save money and they are always afraid of people asking questions. Incidentally, they were all missing when it came to making the voters' list. They are not on the register.

I talked to one of them. I asked, "How much a week can you save?" He replied, "£3." He was a young boy over from Jamaica who got a job, I believe, as a kitchen porter somewhere and, presumably, gets his meals at work. All he needs is a bed somewhere and he puts £3 away in the bank waiting for the time when he can go back to Jamaica—or, perhaps, be tempted to join in competing with the whites in this horrible sort of exploiting of other coloured people.

I have said that the freeholds of many of these premises belong to the Church Commissioners. A few doors away they are actually exercising a control they have found over one of the leases. They have always complained, when I have taken these cases to them before, that they have no power to control the sale of the leases, and that is true. I want the Parliamentary Secretary to co-operate with the Church Commissioners and with the local authorities to find out what powers exist for exercising a control over the use of premises.

I am not going to say much about this now because I have handed an instance to the new representative in this House of the Church Commissioners, the hon. Gentleman the Member for Chelmsford (Mr. Ashton), with whom I had a discussion yesterday. He wishes me to express his regret that he is not able to be here for this debate today. He has undertaken to convey to the Commissioners what is said in this debate on matters which concern them, and to see what can be done.

I think a lot more can be done than they have thought possible up to now, but, of course, we know the difficulty which has already been mentioned by my hon. Friends, that we cannot start by rigidly applying overcrowding tests and turn these people out into the road. They would then have to be rehoused by the London County Council or some other authority, to the disadvantage of people who have been on the waiting lists for many years.

What we can do to prevent the problem from getting worse is to make an announcement that forthwith no further overcrowding of this kind will be permitted, and if it occurs powers will be used to withhold from those who break these rules any profit they are making. I am sure the Minister could find a way to do that. I am sure he could find a way to help the local councils in matters of compulsory purchase orders. I am sure he could find a way to encourage the councils to make wider use of improvement grants related to short-term leases.

Some of these improvement grants, especially those for bathrooms and lavatories, would make it possible to house almost as many people as are at present in the buildings if the conditions were made tolerable. It may not sound a very good business proposition to install lavatories and bathrooms and so on in a house with a 17-year lease.

Let us consider what will happen. I am thinking particularly of the 17-year lease on a house in Warwick Avenue for which over £900 was paid. Before that lease expires, £17,000 will have gone into the pockets of the owner of the lease. Surely it might be worth while to make arrangements by which a couple of thousand of that money would be spent on improvements. After all, we know that in other parts of London there are houses with very large rooms which were white elephants in their original state, but which have been very successfully repartitioned and fitted up as flatlets, single room habitations and so on.

There is a demand for this sort of accommodation. It is possible to make use of the houses by partitioning them, provided that sanitary facilities, bathrooms, cooking facilities, and so on, are installed. This is being done frequently as a business proposition in other parts of London. It is not being done only in the areas where this dead hand of paralysis lies over these fag-ends of leases where no one has any control and no one cares.

I abate nothing of what I said in opposition to the Rent Bill. I abate nothing of the anger which my constituents and I feel at the failure of the Government to face the fact that their general housing policy and their policy of reducing subsidies and forcing up interest rates are unmitigated disasters for my constituents, whatever colour or nationality they may be or whatever income group they may be in. They are all united in their detestation of the Rent Bill.

I do not wish to develop that point now, but I beg the Minister to do something on this narrow front, in consultation with local authorities and with the Church Commissioners, to see whether or not we can make a sensible business proposition of saving part of the remaining lives of these houses and making them into places fit to live in until the bigger development plans can work themselves out.

So far, the speeches have come from hon. Members whose constituencies are in North London and where there is a very bad social problem. But it exists in other parts of London. It is a sore problem in south London, and there has always been a problem of this kind in west London. The problem has been in East London as long as the London Docks. It is becoming a little more pressing than it was in the days before the war.

It is difficult to talk about this, because nobody wants to overthrow the British principle of freedom of travel between countries of the Commonwealth. There is no tinge of colour bar in what we on this side say or feel about the problem. There is no doubt that there is a social problem, which has become intensified since the war.

In my part of London, Wandsworth, where the people say that there has been an overspill from Lambeth, and in Brixton, this problem is stirring up local people, but I can get no action of any kind either by the local authority or by the Minister.

To substantiate that, may I quote from a petition which was sent to me from a part of my constituency where I did not expect to get a large number of votes? It says:

"In this road "—

Narbonne Avenue, Clapham—

"however, West Indians, by living in unlimited numbers in a house are apparently able to raise and repay the sum necessary to purchase any house that becomes unoccupied."

The petition says, later:

"Here it seems that we may well have a repetition of what has happened in Brixton, and the Rent Act, contrary to its intentions, will be helping these immigrants to create further slum areas."

That is the feeling of a considerable number of people who signed this petition in a part of my constituency which is notoriously Conservative in political outlook. I mention it because it indicates the growth of strong feeling.

I have another letter, in which a man says that he knows of Jamaicans who sleep eight to twelve in a room, and that if overcrowding is an offence, why should Jamaicans be allowed to do this? All of us who have spoken this afternoon have the same kind of experience from people who come to us in our "surgeries." What worries me is the complete complacency which appears to exist in the Ministry. There is a strong feeling growing up. The officers of the local authorities admit that there is a problem. They say, "We cannot do anything, even under Section 90 of the 1957 Housing Act, unless someone complains."

We cannot expect a coloured man to complain. I have complained, but apparently that is not good enough, and the local medical officer of health says that he is unable to take action. Of course, the truth is that if he took action these people would be out on the street and would have to be rehoused in a workhouse, or half-way house, or something of that sort. There is not the accommodation available in south London to rehouse these people if they were turned out, people who, it is admitted, are living in greatly overcrowded conditions. It is to be regretted that there is so much complacency about this matter in the Ministry.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South-West (Mr. A. Evans) said, it is not sufficient to say that powers exist under Section 90 of the Housing Act. That is quite true, but they are permissive powers and are not bound to be operated. Most of the officers will not operate those powers unless the trouble becomes so bad that there is a public outcry, or a riot, or something of that sort, or unless they are encouraged to do so by the Minister. I want to appeal to the Minister that he should encourage the boroughs in London where this problem exists it does not exist in all boroughs—to get together to see what can be done to ease not only this housing problem, but the social problem. It is not right that these people by the tens of thousand—there are over 30,000 Jamaicans in London—having been drawn here, as though by a magnet, because of full employment, should have to make their own way and social contacts, thus leading to some of the housing difficulties which are facing some of the London boroughs today.

The State, with the local authorities, has a duty to see that coloured immigrants who come to this country are cared for and that reasonable accommodation is provided for them. I suggested once to the Minister that he should develop a system of hostels to accommodate them when they first come here until we could spread them out in employment and decent housing conditions. The responsibility for doing that, or something else in that connection, ought not to be left to the council of the locality in which they happen to land when they have found a job, or even sometimes before they have found a job.

Many people are helping already. In some localities there are voluntary committees to help these people to become easily merged into the social life of London. The trade unions are helping. The railwaymen and the transport workers' unions, in particular, are doing good work and hundreds, if not thousands, of these people, men and women, become full members of the unions. A report which appeared in the Press this week of a move made by a branch of a railwaymen's union shows how very anxious people are to help. There is no difficulty on economic grounds. While the immigrants get the proper rate for the job the unions will encourage them and try to help them, but the unions can do nothing about housing and they cannot help them to find lodgings. That is a problem which, inevitably, can be solved only if the Ministry gets together with the local authorities to try to do something about it.

I know that the Government's present policies make that rather difficult, but we must do something like that or watch this problem fester and become worse and worse. I cannot see why arrangements which apparently once existed in relation to Malta and Cyprus have broken down. There should be some discussions and a joint agreement between Her Majesty's Government and the Government in the West Indies which would control the entry of these people into this country by mutually agreed means. That would help to solve the problem which arises when they arrive in such large numbers that we cannot house them. Fortunately, at present they can find jobs, but who knows how long that will be possible if the Government's policies continue to operate for another twelve months? If these people cannot find employment I doubt whether even the trade unions will not object if coloured people are here to get jobs when white men are unable to find work. However much we feel in principle that that is all wrong, it is a quite human and natural reaction on the part of people when they are themselves suffering.

Efforts should be made to enable these immigrants to be merged happily into our social community, and we should do something to prevent the terrific overcrowding of houses by coloured people. They overcrowd houses not because they like to do so, but because they have no choice, although I believe that in most overcrowded houses they are still living in better conditions than those in which they lived in some of their villages at home.

I should like to give the House an illustration of the present situation. An old lady came to me with her daughter of 18 and said that coloured people, who, incidentally, were not Jamaicans, had bought the house in which she lived. She had rented and lived in the ground-floor rooms of that house for thirty or forty years. Her husband was dead but, with the help of her daughter and with her pension, she could struggle along. Then a new landlord arrived and started at once to do all sorts of annoying and miserable things to drive her out.

Someone told her that I met people on Friday nights and she came to see me. I found a way of putting some social pressure on that coloured owner and he moved out and took his wife with him, but he put four coloured Jamaicans in the same room and since then the numbers have increased. Legally, he cannot be stopped. He owns the place and is entitled to let it as he likes, and it is good Tory policy to squeeze as much money out of every job one does and every property one owns. That is happening all over London.

No Government are doing their duty unless they admit that the problem exists and do everything they can to alleviate it. If the Ministry would consult the borough councils in London and give them some encouragement to operate the conditions under the housing laws governing overcrowding and be prepared to assist them financially, and had discussions with the Government in the West Indies over the whole general problem, we should be doing something to relieve from the minds of many people in London a fear which is there now and which may blow up to something much worse if nothing is done.

This is indeed a unique debate. No fewer than five Labour Members, representing different parts of London, have told the Government what is going on. I feel very angry about the whole situation and I am sorry that for the moment there is not a representative of the Ministry of Housing and Local Government present. We in Brixton and in the Borough of Lambeth saw what the dangers were likely to be a long time ago, and I raised the matter in the House in 1954.

At the end of 1954, or the beginning of 1955, we sent a deputation to the Colonial Office on this very problem. The deputation from Lambeth consisted of the mayor and other members of the Borough Council and myself and we made representations that it would be desirable, because of the nature of the problem, that representatives of the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Housing and Local Government should also be present at the meeting. They were present, and we told them that an impossible situation was beginning to develop even then. We said that we, as a responsible local authority, were unable to carry out the law. We were unable to enforce the legal provisions on overcrowding.

The reason we said that was very simple and it has been explained already by my hon. Friends. If the Lambeth Council, three or four years ago, had insisted upon carrying out the law relating to overcrowding it would have meant people being compulsorily moved out of the overcrowded premises. These people, coming from Jamaica and other parts of the Commonwealth, would have had to go right up to the top of the housing list and would have had to be rehoused by the local authority in preference to local families who had been on the housing list for many years.

The Government knew about this. They had been told about it, but they have done nothing at all about the prob- lem, because they have sheltered themselves behind the excuse that this is a local government matter. The people of London are the most tolerant and good-natured people in the world, but when they see the kind of thing going on, which has been described so clearly by my colleagues today, they cannot be blamed if they begin to feel a little impatient.

It so happens that only two or three years ago I raised this matter in the debate on the Loyal Address, and I drew attention to some of the serious difficulties that were developing out of the emigration of British subjects from various parts of the Commonwealth into this country. The Minister of State, who was the official spokesman, said:

"I can assure the hon. and gallant Member and the House that the Government are very conscious of the urgency of this matter and are doing their best to deal with it as rapidly as possible."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 15th December, 1454; Vol. 535, c. 1681

I ought to say, in fairness, that, as a result of the speech I made in the House on 6th November last, I received a letter from the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, to whom I am obliged for his courtesy. The reason the hon. Gentleman wrote was that there had been no opportunity for a Government speaker to reply to the remarks I made on that date about the problems of West Indian immigration into the United Kingdom. The hon. Gentleman wrote as follows:

"…there has been further immigration into the United Kingdom during the past three years, but…the rate has been declining recently; in fact, for the first nine months of this year it has been under 13,000, as compared with some 25,000 for the corresponding period in 1956."

I do not want to do the Colonial Office an injustice, but it is not a solution of the problem to say that the rate of immigration into this country is falling and that, as a result, somehow or other, in some way that has not yet been divulged to us, the problem will solve itself.

One of the difficulties mentioned in the letter from the Colonial Office is that many West Indians tend to congregate exclusively in certain districts of London. Also, many of them are content to live in grossly overcrowded conditions, with consequent opportunities for landlords to exploit these difficulties. The Under-Secretary went on to say in his letter:

"…the bulk of the evidence which has reached w, hardly seems to support the view that West Indians, as such, are bad tenants, bad landlords, or are in any real measure contributing towards a lowering of living standards, either generally throughout the country or in these particular areas where they settle. There have been a number of complaints of bad landlordism brought to our notice here, and these have been investigated by the British Caribbean Welfare Service, which is an organisation of officials maintained by the West Indies Governments, accommodated in the Colonial Office."

One man.

My point is that there is no British Government official or civil servant or Government Department which is interesting itself in this problem. I know that the British Caribbean Welfare Service, within the limited resources placed at its disposal—not by the British Government, but by the West Indies Governments—is doing what it can, and any approach to that service will not be ignored. I agree with the Under-Secretary of State that it has done an immense amount of first-class work in connection with the reception, settlement and general welfare of West Indians who, in so many ways, are making a happy and valuable contribution to many departments of the commercial and industrial life of the country. I accept all that, and all my hon. Friends on this side of the House will agree with it, but it does not solve the problem that we are now once more bringing to the notice of the Minister of Housing and Local Government.

Reference has been made by previous speakers to the evasive answers we have been getting from the Minister to questions such as those put by my hon. Friend the Member for Clapham (Mr. Gibson), in which the right hon. Gentleman is just wriggling and pretending that the local authority has the powers but that they must be used with discretion, that the local authorities must bear in mind the possibility of having to rehouse people compulsorily removed, and so on.

The problem is of too serious a nature to be fobbed off with slick answers of that kind. I am sorry to have to say it, but we have a Government of artful dodgers in power, and of all the members of the present Administration I would say that on this issue the Minister of Housing and Local Government is the most slippery customer of them all. The time has come for the Minister to recognise that the Government have responsibility in this connection, because the Metropolitan borough councils are now placed in a position in which there is nothing they can do.

The situation is bound to become aggravated for all kinds of other reasons into which I will not go now. The tail-ends of short leases are being bought up by people who have no other means of providing themselves with accommodation, and who are prepared to take the chance of buying property of that kind and disappearing when the time comes for the dilapidations to be carried out.

There are firms of estate agents operating in south London doing nothing else but buying for a song the short leases to which my hon. Friend the Member for Paddington, North (Mr. Parkin) has referred. They are selling these at grossly inflated prices to coloured purchasers, who either borrow or get the money somehow to buy the properties. Only yesterday I received a letter from a constituent of mine in which she referred to the remarks I made in the House two or three weeks ago.

In that letter, she said that all the while these various firms of estate agents are allowed to buy cheaply houses that are in a bad condition, and they sell them to coloured people at a price which ensures that there will be coloured slums in Brixton. She said that the house next door to hers was sold for £600 in a not very good condition and resold to coloured people for £1,800. This is what happens; the person buying that house for £1,800 on a short lease must, by hook or by crook, get his money back as quickly as possible, and that results in an even greater degree of overcrowding.

The first thing that happens is that a gas cooker is put on the stairs, one family goes into each room in the house and they all try to do their cooking on the landing. There is one dustbin put on the front doorstep for five or six families, and it remains there from the beginning of the week until the end of it. These are the conditions under which coloured people are having to live, and alongside of which white people have to live.

I urge the Parliamentary Secretary to realise that there is a great and growing problem, particularly in London, because it is bound to grow so long as immigration into this country continues. It is bound to grow so long as building by local authorities is restricted. What makes it even more impossible is that at a time when the provision of housing accommodation is being restricted, and, in some areas, disappearing altogether, immigration is going on which is adding to the pressure in certain specified areas.

I know that the Government say that if we compared all the rooms available throughout the country with the number of people needing accommodation, there is a balance, but that does not apply to special areas like Brixton, Paddington, Clapham and Islington where, as far as we can see, the problem will continue and will worsen until the Government realise that they have a responsibility in the matter.

Various ways have been suggested by which the Government could deal with the matter before any very serious consequences arise. I beg the Government to take the necessary action, which is within their power, and not pretend that the problem is impossible of solution.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Islington, South-West (Mr. A. Evans) for raising what is, after all, a very important social problem, especially in London. Also, I am glad that he and his hon. Friends have spoken in the main with such commendable restraint. I forgive one or two hon. Gentlemen who have been a little less restrained in their references to the Rent Act, which invariably raises the temperature in this Chamber. This is the first occasion on which I have been described as an artful dodger. I have often been described in less flattering terms, if that is any comfort to the hon. Member for Brixton (Mr. Lipton).

A great deal has been said about the subject and its many aspects today. My home is in Liverpool where there is a similar problem, though it is not of the same dimensions as that in the metropolis. I have seen in operation in Liverpool many of the abuses which have been referred to. Obviously, on a subject like this one has to speak with a good deal of circumspection, but I would straight away assure hon. Members that everything that has been said in the discussion will be most carefully studied by my right hon. Friend. It certainly is our intention to look in a very thorough way at the whole problem. If, as has been suggested by the hon. Member for Clapham (Mr. Gibson) and other hon. Members, we think it would be profitable and helpful to have discussions with the metropolitan boroughs, and perhaps the London County Council, and to collaborate with interested Ministries, we shall not hesitate to do so.

Having said that, I think it is important that we should neither understate the extent of the problem nor exaggerate it. It is true that in the 'fifties, as was said by the hon. Member for Islington, South-West, there was a very large increase in the immigration of coloured people, particularly from the West Indies.

The hon. Gentleman is right in saying that there are no exact figures of immigration available. The best information that I can get is that in 1954 the total increase in the number of coloured immigrants was 10,000. In 1955 the figure grew to 35,000 and in 1956 to 40,000, most of whom were West Indians, and it is estimated that in April this year the total British coloured population—I emphasise "British"—was about 120,000, about 80,000 of whom were West Indians. There are, of course, some coloured people in this country who are other than British.

As was hinted by one or two hon. Members, there has been a decline in the immigration of coloured people during the last twelve months. I believe it is correct, as the hon. Member for Brixton said, that in the first nine months of 1957 a total of about 16,000 West Indians came into the country compared with about 26,000 in the corresponding period of 1956. Therefore, it is true to say that the extent of the problem has not assumed the dimensions that many people feared or thought it might a few years ago.

We reckon that in London itself there are at present about 48,000 coloured people. To see this in its proper perspective, one has to set that figure against the total population in the metropolitan boroughs, about 3¼ million. Thus, the percentage of coloured people in the population in the metropolitan area is a very small one, about 1½ per cent.

It is true that many of these coloured men and women are drawn to London by its various attractions, not excluding its great diversity of trades and employment. We ought to recognise that a large proportion of these people coming to London and our provincial cities succeed in finding useful work and make a very valuable contribution to the nation's economy. It is true, however, that the tendency of the coloured people, as has repeatedly been said in the debate, is to congregate in areas such as Islington, Kensington, Lambeth, Paddington and St. Pancras, and it is because they tend to congregate in certain areas which are attractive to them that a great deal of public interest becomes focussed on the problem.

It is difficult to measure the extent of the problem in the areas which are so well represented on the Opposition benches this afternoon, because there is no static pattern to the problem. It is shifting all the time. Many of these people come here intending to stay a long time, but then stay only a short time and return to their native land. Many remain here. Some fail to adapt themselves to conditions here, both socially and from the point of view of employment. On the other hand, others are very successful in adapting themselves to the conditions that exist here. It is a fact, however, that a problem exists, and it is a difficult one. The more I have listened to the speeches which have been made, the more it has been impressed upon my mind how difficult and intractable the problem is.

The hon. Member for Paddington, North (Mr. Parkin) referred to the very vexed question of what commonly happens not only in London but in Liverpool and other places, relating to the fag ends of leases. He described how these leases are very often purchased for a song by unscrupulous people five years or so before they are due to terminate, how these people are prone to exploit not only coloured immigrants but very often English people as well in certain circumstances, and how at the end of the day those concerned try to evade their responsibilities in respect of dilapidations.

It is a problem not only for London, but for Liverpool Corporation which has been a very large ground landlord in that City for many years. It is a difficult problem and I listened with the utmost care to what the hon. Member said. I shall certainly take the earliest opportunity of having a discussion with my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr. Ashton) to see whether any positive steps can be taken to improve the position in that respect.

References were made to the use of overcrowding provisions, and one or two hon. Members seemed to suggest that the Government ought to encourage, or even to compel, local authorities to use the overcrowding provisions of the Housing Act, 1957, more rigorously than is being done at present. There can be no doubt whatever that in these localities there is an enormous amount of overcrowding involving coloured people, but the difficulty of local authorities and the reason they are not over-zealous in applying and enforcing these provisions is that they know full well that if they do so a certain result will follow and that they are not in a position to provide alternative accommodation for the people liable to be displaced.

In fairness to him, the hon. Member for Clapham made one or two suggestions, including the possibility that the Government should take some initiative in encouraging local authorities to construct or improvise hostels for accommodating many of these people. That is certainly a suggestion which we shall investigate. As a general principle, it is fair to say that most local authorities are reluctant to use these provisions too freely because they have no alternative accommodation to offer.

Will the hon. Member say whether he can take further the matter of enforcing improved sanitary facilities which would abate some of the evils of overcrowding, as in many houses the present numbers would be tolerable if the amenities were adequate?

Yes, indeed. I saw the force of that argument. I have taken note of it and I will most certainly consider it.

In some districts immigrants do not qualify for the housing list because, very often, they lack the residential qualification necessary to get on the list. As a general rule, local authorities are willing to accept coloured applicants for their lists and do not distinguish between one applicant and another on the ground of colour. That is not to say that some local authorities have not accepted immigrants as tenants, but it would be unrealistic to expect local authorities to give priority to immigrants over other overcrowded families who have been on the waiting lists for many years. To do that would clearly be most unwise.

I believe that several local authorities in the London area have successfully settled some of these people in older houses.

How can the Parliamentary Secretary square his assertion this afternoon, that there is substantial overcrowding in many houses in most provincial cities as well as London, with the speeches he made in support of the Rent Act when he said that by and large the housing situation had been met?

The hon. Member must not try to convert a debate of this sort, in which we are trying to help each other and in which we are discussing a subject impartially, into a revival of debates on the Rent Act. I have never made the statement which the hon. Member has attributed to me and I should be glad if he would be good enough to turn it up in HANSARD, or elsewhere. I am not an academic politician. I try to keep my feet on the ground.

I was saying that several local authorities have been successful in settling some of these people in older houses which they have acquired and which they have a perfectly legal right to acquire if they so wish. That has certainly been done in the Boroughs of Paddington and St. Pancras. I do not say that it has been done exclusively for the purpose of housing coloured people. It has been done for housing people who are in need. Clearly, that is a possible avenue in which progress may be made in this matter.

Some of the larger employers of these people, especially transport undertakings, have been very helpful in providing these workers with housing accommodation or lodgings of a suitable kind. That is true of the London Transport Executive. I certainly hope that anyone, whether a large or small employer, who is taking advantage of the services of these coloured immigrants will be prepared, as a matter of social duty, to do what he can to assist them to get decent housing or lodgings, whichever suits their circumstances.

I was asked about the arrangement with the Cyprus Government by which, before families emigrated to join a mem- ber of the family in this country, the local authority in whose area accommodation existed was notified. That arrangement undoubtedly did exist, but I am sorry to say that it broke down in practice because, as members of families came here and overcrowded the rest, undesirable results flowed. That arrangement no longer exists and there has been no recent suggestion that it should be revived.

A further possibility may offer the promise of progress. I understand that in one provincial centre a housing association has been formed primarily to provide accommodation for immigrants by converting existing old houses for their use. I hope that this small start will be emulated by comparable societies in other parts of the country.

The hon. Member will agree that that scheme is at present only on paper and that nothing has been done about it. It is obvious that some time will elapse before any building can be done through that scheme. Any such initial step will be on a very small scale and not sufficient to meet the size of the problem.

I entirely agree. I was simply mentioning it as a possibility which offered a hope of some sort of provision, if not on a major scale.

I regard the discussion today very much as an exploration of the problem. That it is a difficult problem has become clear from speeches by hon. Members opposite. Indeed, the Metropolitan Boroughs Association set up a committee about two years ago to consider the problem, but the committee became bogged down because of the difficulties. I hope that I am not being offensive in saying that.

I conclude on this note: there is a problem and we certainly intend to scrutinise it most carefully in the light of what has been said today and in the light of information which is available to my right hon. Friend. When we have done that, we will consider the wisdom of initiating discussions with the interested local authorities and perhaps with other Ministries to see whether we can make a contribution towards the solution of what I admit to be a very human problem.