Orders of the Day — Armed Forces (Housing Loans) Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 29 November 1949.

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Photo of Mr William Ross Mr William Ross , Kilmarnock 12:00, 29 November 1949

I should not like it to be thought that the voice of my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgeton (Mr. Carmichael) was a Scottish voice crying in the wilderness, as suggested by the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (Mr. Orr-Ewing). I feel that the hon. Member did my hon. Friend less than justice and neglected entirely the very great housing problem which we have in Scotland, and particularly in Glasgow. We must take that problem into consideration when we consider a Measure like this. I say at once, however, that although I sympathise with, and in many ways support, the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgeton, I feel that on balance I must support the Bill.

The point is—do we or do we not need an Army, and if so, have we not a responsibility, when we get young men to join as Regulars, to give them decent housing conditions and security and peace of mind when they are going from place to place and are posted away from home? Anyone who has any knowledge of the present married quarters in salubrious places such as Maryhill Barracks will recognise that they are far from being worthy of this nation, which prides itself on doing so much for its fighting men, and that certainly there are not at present nearly enough of them.

That state of affairs can be applied to every section of the community, and that is why the feeling arises that this Measure, which we recognise to be an emergency Measure, is only that, and that unless this matter is properly handled and controlled it will cause resentment among all the other sections of the population, because of this division and sub-division of the population into special categories. There are special houses for agricultural workers, special houses for miners who are being moved from one locality to another; we have heard suggested tonight that there should be special houses for meteorological workers, and in. this Bill provision is made for special houses for soldiers.

It will cause resentment if these houses are to come out of a fixed global number of houses, and that is the point to which I wish to refer, because what has troubled me most of all about this Bill was the admission by the Minister of Defence last week that these houses will not be additional houses but will come out of a fixed global total. The point about the houses for miners and agricultural workers in Scotland is that when the local authority has permission to go ahead with such houses, they are additional to the normal allocation. If the houses with which this Bill deals could be additional to the normal allocation, I do not think there would be anyone in this House who would be prepared to voice any opposition to the Bill.

I urge the Minister of Defence to do his part, in co-operation with the Secretary of State for Scotland, to build up a labour force, because we are told that that is what limits the number of houses which can be built in Scotland. The Minister can do a certain amount by delaying for a time the call-up of a sufficient number of young building workers to build this additional number of houses in Scotland. If he did that, I think that the critical voices from Scotland would certainly be silenced on that point.

I do not want to emphasise a point which one or two hon. Members have made, but when these houses are built they must be built in co-operation and close contact with the local authorities. Otherwise we shall have a clash between the local authorities and the Army, and I do not think it desirable that we should have that kind of friction, particularly between those two bodies, which ought to get on quite well together. I repeat that the one point which has troubled all hon. Members for Scottish constituencies is that while we are not concerned about this emergency favouritism for people in the Army, we are concerned that these houses are, at least so far as Scotland is concerned, to come out of a global figure which is already inadequate for ordinary civilian needs. We want these houses to be additional to that global figure.