Mr. J. JONES:

To those of us who are members of local authorities which are not merely responsible for finding more houses for the people under the Housing Acts, but are also responsible for the conditions under which existing houses are occupied, the decision of the Minister in charge of the Bill appears to be a very unfortunate one. What is the position in most of our industrial centres to-day, apart altogether from the position in rural areas? In my own district, during the past 12 months, we have conducted, under the existing Public Health Acts, a house-to-house inspection, and what have we discovered? We have discovered overcrowding on a wholesale scale, insanitation, and conditions under which human beings ought not to be compelled to live. No less than 14,000 houses in our borough are registered as not reaching even the minimum requirements of the present Public Health Acts. We, as a local authority, are trying to do our best under existing circumstances, but we are cribbed, cabined, and confined by the technicalities of the existing law. We had hoped that, in the new era of reconstruction promised to us by the statesmen of to-day, we should be given, not the power to introduce a new heaven and a new earth, but such opportunities as would enable us to carry out the intentions even of the existing Public Health Acts. In my own Constituency nearly every street has been visited, and we have found families of, sometimes, as many as eight people living in one room. We have power, under certain conditions, to visit houses and to inquire into the sanitary arrangements, and we have certain other powers under which, if the landlord does not do the things that he should do, we may be able to do those things ourselves. That, however, means a long process of law, with great technical and legal difficulties, and in the' meantime children are dying in that district, at the rate of 200 out of every 1,000 born, before they reach the age of five years. I have heard preachers in churches and chapels drawing tears from the eyes of their congregations when they described the massacre of the innocents by Herod and people of that type, but our modern Herods get elected on our local authorities and keep on murdering children, and nobody says them nay; and they can get Gentlemen here in the House of Commons to defend them in their depredations and in their massacre of the children of the people.

We ask in this Clause that we shall have power to deal with this position, and the right hon. Gentleman says that reluctantly he is compelled not to accept it. Why reluctantly? Is there a power behind the throne? Is there one set of statesmen who can get up and promise us a new heaven and a new earth, that the sun of prosperity will rise over the hilltops of poverty, and that we shall have an England fit for heroes to live in, and is there someone behind the scenes who decides that "So far shalt thou go and no farther." Are we going to be told that all the fine promises that were held out to the people in regard to these great problems of reconstruction are going to be blasted by private and vested interests? I know, as a member of a public authority, that the best sanitary inspector is the man who does not inspect at all; the man who takes his job easily and does not visit is looked upon as the best visitor, because the people who sit on the Public Health Committee are, in the main, owners of property, and do not want to see the inspector. In one district with which I am well acquainted, the chairman of the Public Health Committee was himself prosecuted five times for owning insanitary property. That is the kind of thing that we are up against—the interests of those who think that the only interest they have in the people is the interest they can make out of them. We are asking for this Clause because we want to give to the public authorities some power to see that the legislation which this House has passed shall be properly put into effect. As I have said, there are 14,000 houses in our borough to-day which are registered as being unfit under the Public Health Acts for occupation by the people. We cannot find further accommodation—there is no room; and yet we are told that we must not have a private inspection, but that we must wait—"Live, horse, and you will get grass"—and expect the Amendment of the Public Health Acts. This Clause would give the power now to the local authorities to do something effective. All that we ask is the right to put into operation the intentions of those who carried the original Public Health Act, and I am very sorry indeed to hear the Minister say that he cannot give us that.