I do not want to take up the time of the House for more than a couple of minutes. I feel very indebted to my hon. Friend who has raised this question because, as a member of the Birmingham City Council for 26 years, I know something about this awful property repair problem, and there is a great need here. My hon. Friend has not stressed the fact that there are five great central areas in which people are living in the most appalling conditions. As I think I said in my maiden speech, there is a need because it may be quite a number of years before we can house the 59,000 people who will require houses after we pull down the slum houses.

There are 32,170 houses in these slum areas. Over 19,000 are back-to-back houses, many of which have been standing for nearly 100 years in back streets, and 24,600, that is, 76 per cent., have been declared unfit by the medical officer of health. Four thousand are without separate water supply and over 18,500 are without separate sanitary accommodation. It means bad enough sanitary arrangements in a house that has one family using the sanitary convenience when it needs to be repaired, and more especially is it so when 30 or 40 people are using one convenience. I spent part of my time living in courtyards for a number of years, and used to do street by street, courtyard by courtyard, trying to get repairs done. What is the matter? The law wants tightening up. There is not the slightest doubt that if we find a butcher who is selling bad meat, we seize that meat and fine him. Yet we allow landlords to own slum property which is detrimental to the health of the people. We impose only a small fine on them and let them excuse themselves and say they are unable to find the materials and are unable to get the labour to carry out the work.

I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Ladywood (Mr. Yates), who represents a slum district, and was a colleague of mine on the Birmingham City Council, wishes to say a few words. I would emphasise that it is time that the Public Health Act, 1936, was altered. We ought to be able to take over the property if the excuse is that the landlords are refusing to repair houses. Thousands and thousands of houses need slates, extra spouting, eave spouting and down spouting, and one can go into any house in the central area and find people having to use buckets, and living under inhuman conditions. I hope the Minister will see that in Birmingham, where thousands made a good war effort, houses will be given a little patching up until we can sweep the slums away. A little bit was done by the Germans. I wish they could have done more without the loss of life.