I also am grateful to the hon. Member for Aston (Mr. Wyatt) for raising this matter. We Members of Parliament for Birmingham have felt for several months past the tremendous anxiety the people are experiencing in the City of Birmingham, and for that reason, having sent many letters to the medical officer of health regarding the unhealthy conditions of the houses, we felt it necessary to raise the question in this House. On 23rd June, the hon. Member for Moseley (Sir P. Hannon) and I raised the question with the Minister of Works, who was asked if he was aware of the shortage of necessary materials for carrying out essential repairs. His reply was: I am not aware of any serious difficulty in meeting these needs. I must say I was extremely amazed at that answer, and I want to ask the Parliamentary Secretary to note particularly that, as a result of many complaints we received, I wrote a letter to the medical officer of health for the City of Birmingham, Dr. Newsholme, asking him what the position was, and this was his answer: There is at the present time very great shortage, in particular of slates, so that we have the utmost difficulty in getting repairs, even to serious damage to roofs. I understand from the chief sanitary inspector that builders are obtaining substitutes in the form of asbestos sheets. In other cases, we have knowledge that builders have had to take slates from outhouses in order to repair holes in a roof, rightly regarding the latter as the more urgent requirement. That is the opinion of the medical officer of health, and I have also with me the report of an agent, responsible for many hundreds of back-to-back houses, in which he says in one instance:— We are applying for a licence to put the work in hand, and in the meantime we have given instructions to the builder to strip the washhouse roofs, salvaging the slates for use on the main roofs, and to cover the washhouse roofs with corrugated iron. I say it is a misdirection of labour, and I ask that an inquiry should be made so that this great anxiety shall be removed from the people of Birmingham.