Orders of the Day — Housing (Temporary Accommodation) Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 26 September 1944.

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Mr. Stewart:

I am sorry that I am interrupted by the Government in this way. I was commenting on three different types of temporary houses. They are all to be of the same design. I will quote the opinion of an official in a well-known coalfield on that point. He said that when he saw it—meaning the Portal house—it looked well in the surroundings of beautiful beech trees and rhododendron bushes in flower, but what would the houses look like in a mining community with the coal-bings as neighbours? They would look like a row of hen-houses.

I wonder if the Government will be prepared to extend the accommodating spirit they have shown to the House and move away from this strictly temporary principle of these houses. There are to be various types of temporary houses, but must a temporary house be temporary in every respect? I will quote to the House from a very remarkable leading article on the matter which appeared in "The Times" of 20th July. It puts in words, upon which I could not improve, precisely what so many of us feel about this matter. It says: Must the unavoidable temporary dwellings be temporary in every respect, and therefore wholly replaced after a brief span of years? Or is it possible to adopt one or other of the methods of construction with which a number of local authorities are now experimenting, methods which might permit the building of more spacious houses, combining permanent foundations and skeletons with temporary walls. I ventured to write a letter to "The Times" previous to that date on this same point, because it happened that I had been rather closely concerned with the development of prefabricated houses. I know, as many hon. Members of this House know—as those who come from Hull, Manchester and Glasgow know—that there are a whole lot of new types of houses of a semi-permanent character— a type of house, prefabricated, which can be almost as quickly built as the Portal house.