After the affairs of Manchester have had a good airing this evening, I would like for a few moments to turn the attention of those hon. Members who remain to the affairs of an even larger and more important provincial city, namely, Birmingham. I wish to raise the subject of housing repairs. It is a question which I feel is possibly being neglected, or overlooked somewhat, in view of the energy being directed to the new housing programme; but the Majority of the people in the country, certainly in Birmingham and in my Constituency, will have to live in the same house for the next 10 or 15 years at least, and perhaps in many cases for longer.

My constituency, Aston, is a typical area of Birmingham. It is a slice of working-class houses in an industrial area, and it is the case that the houses are in a bad state of repair, and a great number of them were condemned before the war. Aston is not going to be affected by any development scheme whatever—at least, not for a long time. Thousands in that constituency have no chance of getting new homes for at least a generation. There are nearly 15,000 houses in the area, and the Birmingham health department is confident in asserting that nearly every one of them requires repairs of some sort or another. There are at this moment more than 2,000 statutory notices outstanding in that area which are waiting to be carried out. These notices at the moment are issued only in respect of very serious defects, or where there is some danger to life. These houses were bad before the war, very largely owing to the neglect of the landlords of that time. Now' owing to the impossibility of carrying out repairs during the war and the bad weather at the beginning of this year. they are in an absolutely appalling condition. Thousands of them have holes in the roof; they have no spouting; there is no paint to hold the woodwork together; and in many cases the foundations are splitting. It is normal in many streets for householders to put buckets to catch the water which flows almost unhindered through the roofs.

What is the procedure when one has a house in that condition, with holes in the roof and no spouting left upon it? The tenant goes to the public health department and complains about the state of the house. The sanitary inspector goes along to look at the house to see whether or not the complaint is justified. I should mention that there is now half the number of sanitary inspectors in Birmingham compared with the number before the war, which makes their job even more difficult to carry out. After the inspector's visit, about a week later, if the complaint was justified, he serves a statutory notice, or arranges for a statutory notice to be served. Two months later, if nothing has been done—and in most cases nothing has been done—the inspector goes along to the house again; and then a further notice is served on the owner.

There is great delay after that, a delay of as much as two months. Then follows a summons which obliges the owner or his agent to go to court. A court order is made which usually gives more time to the owner in which to complete the repairs. The delay is perhaps 28 days, or sometimes more. It is only when that order has not been complied with that the local authority can step in and do the job itself. The local authorities are, naturally, very loth to bring many of these statutory notices to the summons stage because they do not have the materials to complete the job in any case. That is why there are, I think, only 30 summonses outstanding in my own constituency of Aston. Normally, the interval of time between the first appearance of the defect and the actual repairing of it is six months. In many cases the delay is as long as 18 months. I have cases which were outstanding when I became a Member of Parliament and which are still outstanding today. Delays of 12 months are quite frequent.

One of the most general excuses which the owners and their agents give is that there are no materials with which to do the job, and that they cannot get the labour. That is not always true. it is a good excuse for the lazy or neglectful agent or owner who does not intend to spend any money on these repairs. But it very often is true, and it is nearly always true in Birmingham. The chief deficiency, the chief shortage, is the shortage of slates. It is now practically impossible in Birmingham to buy slates for housing repairs. Permits are frequently issued for slates but are not honoured. Sometimes slates of 16 by 10 are available, but they are no use, because it is slates of 24 by 12 which are needed. I know of several repairers in my own area who have spent a lot of time trying to get these slates, with no result. They have tried to use asbestos sheets, but the owners have frequently refused to allow that. Another shortage is of zinc for spouting and flushings. Another very important shortage is of cement and adamant. The same applies to lavatory pedestals, and paint, for wood. There is, of course, in addition, some shortage of labour for house repairs.

One of the basic troubles in this matter is that the Ministry of Works seem to have made the erroneous assumption that jobs costing under £10 do not really require special facilities for obtaining materials because the amount of materials needed is so small; but if you have a whole street full of jobs under £10—and there are whole streets in my own constituency where one could count 60 houses in need of such repairs—at least as much material is needed as for a new house. Of course, it is not available.

I am beginning to believe very strongly that one of the troubles is that too much material is being diverted to new houses. Some will have to be diverted back again to repairing and reconditioning old houses. I think it is only fair to point out, on behalf of the people who will have to live in such houses for a great many years to come, that in my area there are still nearly 600 houses out of 15,000 which have no water laid on; that there are 3,500 which have no lavatories; and 11,000 which have no baths, let alone bathrooms. That is a typical area. Something has to be done to make them habitable if they are to be lived in for another 20 years. In Birmingham, 4,000 statutory notices are being served every month, but they are not being met, and nothing is happen- ing. One hundred and fifty licences are being issued in Birmingham every day. Ninety per cent. of these are for house repairs, but permits are not always issued, and if they are, certainly not honoured. I suggest that the Government should set in hand at an early date a complete programme for re-conditioning houses throughout the country. These people pay rates for new houses to be put up which they will not be able to live in for 20 years. It is asking very much of people to remain patiently under these conditions and to expect them to get cheerfully out of beds on which rain has been pouring all night, and then to be told on their way to work, to work harder when they are probably suffering from rheumatism as a result of the conditions in which they are living.

I think that more pressure will have to be put on landlords as well. There is a tendency for landlords to say: "The Rent Restriction Act still applies; why should we spend money on repairing a house when we cannot get it back by putting the rent up?" It is a psychological attitude which one can understand, even if one cannot sympathise with it. I feel that more flexibility is required in the administration of the present regulations with regard to materials such as plasterboards for ceilings. It would be a great help if we were able to use plasterboards for ceilings; but we are not allowed to do so because they are all allocated to new houses. There is a good supply of plasterboard in Birmingham that could be made available for repair work, but it is not allowed to be used because it is all waiting for new houses. The wretched repairer has to try to get laths and plaster and he has to try to obtain the labour to put the plaster on. I think these difficulties should be ironed out.

My right hon. Friend the Minister of Health has said on one or two occasions that slates and other repair materials are available. That is totally untrue and certainly it is not true of the other materials I have mentioned. I ask him if he will give some hope to these people, who are really desperate for want of these repairs and are living in appalling conditions, that their needs are not being forgotten and that something will be done to make more materials available.