Clause 60. — (Amendment as to buildings in clearance area on ground of bad arrangement, etc., and repeal of provision for reduction of compensation.)

Part of Orders of the Day — Housing Bill. – in the House of Commons at on 20 May 1935.

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Photo of Mr Valentine McEntee Mr Valentine McEntee , Walthamstow West

The statement made earlier by the Minister does not at all satisfy me. The Government contemplate a position in which slum landlords shall be able to get the fullest price in the open market for the site value of their land. But what is the real value of any land? It has no value unless it is to be used for some purpose and labour is to be applied to it. Having no value, if it is used for agricultural purposes, it will have a very small value; if it is used for building working-class houses, it will have a somewhat higher value; and if it is used for the purpose of building factories or for some other industrial purpose, it will have a very much higher value still. The Minister, because of his desire to see that the slum owners get the fullest measure of compensation, gives assessors the opportunity of valuing the land at its highest possible measure of value. I think that is grossly unfair, and I would like to remind the Government that in a great many of these cases the slum property has been in the same ownership for many years. It was probably purchased at a time when its site value, either as agricultural, housing, or factory land, was very much lower than it is now, and as a consequence of the general increase in the value of land, that value is to be given to the present owner, who is a slum owner.

The Minister himself asked not very long ago, at a certain conference, "Would you compensate a purveyor of rotten meat?" You would not, nor would you compensate the purveyor of rotten property, or the Minister would not have done so then, but since then apparently he has not only become willing to compensate the purveyor of rotten houses, but he is now contemplating the compensation of slum owners on the highest possible site value that can be got in the open market. This Bill contemplates a site value, not for factories or workshops, but for housing purposes, and the Minister himself, or his Department, would never sanction the purchase by a local authority of land at the rate of £400 or £500 per house if such a purchase were contemplated by a local authority. In this case, however, it may work out in that way. If a site somewhere near the City of London in a slum area is to be assessed at the value that it would fetch in the open market for the purposes of industry, it will amount for housing purposes to a high price per house, and an altogether unfair price which will more than adequately compensate the owner. The whole thing is so grossly unfair and has been admittedly unfair in the past. It is amazing that the Minister of Health, particularly after the utterances he has made to the public in the last 12 months or so, should have changed his mind to such an extent as to bring this Clause before the House.