Housing

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 13 March 1950.

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Photo of Mr Aneurin Bevan Mr Aneurin Bevan , Ebbw Vale 12:00, 13 March 1950

I should like to join with the right hon. and learned Member for West Derby (Sir D. Maxwell Fyfe) in offering my congratulations and felicitations to those Members who have spoken in the House for the first time this evening. I think that all who heard them enjoyed their speeches very much, and I must say, casting my mind back over more years than I care to recollect, how very much higher the standard of maiden speeches is than when I made my own in this House.

I know that after a General Election there must be a temptation when any Member of Parliament opens his mouth to start making his election speech over again. As they used to say about the old Trojan cars before the war, if they got on to the tramlines they went straight to the depot. I was hoping that we should not hear the same pre-election speeches over again. I have listened to most of this Debate, and I can assure hon. Members who were not in the last Parliament that practically all the speeches we have heard from the other side of the House were an almost exact repetition of what we have had before.

As a matter of fact, the hon. Member for Hertford (Mr. Walker-Smith) was so bard put to it that he treated us to a repetition of his own speeches. If he will look at HANSARD tomorrow he will find that most of his speech consisted of a recitation of what he said in 1946—[Interruption.] I do not wish to be discourteous, but the right hon. and learned Gentleman had 40 minutes and I have 30 minutes, and I think that I am entitled to make my speech. The same kind of speech fell from the lips of the hon. Member for Wallasey (Mr. Marples). He has made it over and over again. His speech consisted in proving conclusively that private enterprise left to itself cannot serve an overriding social purpose, but must be allowed to pursue the profit motive otherwise it will not work efficiently at all.

We have had that speech from him over and over again, with the exception that today he gave us an explanation of what was responsible for the extraordinary appearance of private enterprise houses that were built along the great speedways before the war. He said that when a private enterprise builder goes short of a bit of material, he alters the design of the house. If he went short of a bit of wood, he just altered the design of the roof. This is the one and only credible explanation of what has been called the marzipan-period of architecture. Indeed, right hon. Gentlemen opposite have, during the last four and a half years, been trying to persuade the people of Great Britain that the best service that can be rendered to the face of Great Britain is to let The speculative builder do in the post-war years what he did in the years between the wars.

I notice that right hon. Gentlemen opposite, when they can avoid it, do not live in those houses, or near them. They always select the most delectable parts of the country to live in, and they do not live in the areas where they let loose the speculative builder. If the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition, who, as we know, is a most versatile artist, wishes to leave something to posterity as a living monument of what the speculative builder has done, he ought to paint some of those houses. I assure him that that would be a first-class example of rococo architecture. That may not be as good as some of the architecture, of which I know he is very fond and in which I delight, but I want to say this and to put it on record here, that if I go down in history for nothing else, I will go down at least as a barrier between the beauty of Great Britain and the speculative builder who has done so much to destroy it.

I am surprised at hon. Gentlemen once more doing what they did before the devaluation Debate. After all, we have some justification in taking pride in the fact that in Great Britain we have succeeded in making more progress since 1945 than any other nation in the world. Is there anything wrong in that? I know very well it has some party advantage about it, but we are surely entitled to mobilise the truth on our own behalf It happens to be a fact—and it is not a fact upon evidence of partisans in this country but as witnessed by other people in other parts of the world—that, apart from Sweden, the housing record of Great Britain is better than that of any other nation in the world. We might as well claim it for ourselves as a nation, and it happens to be a fact that Sweden has a Socialist Government, too. It also happens to be a fact that the average house in Sweden has got 600 superficial feet and ours has between 900 and 950. If we take these facts together, they show that as a piece of administrative organisation the housing programme of Great Britain is the best in the world. The trouble with the Opposition is that they will persist in coming to the House of Commons inspired by the headlines of their own newspapers. The result is that when they come face-to face with the actual fact, they are taken by surprise. They find it difficult to learn that the country is as good as it really is.

We have left that and we are now in a different condition. We have left what might be called the administrative complexities of the housing problem. My hon. Friends will cast their minds back to 1945 when we had a position of the utmost complexity. I hope the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition will not again in this House speak about the necessity for taking forethought, for we were not guilty of the incredible folly of spending £100,000 in two and a half years in planning steel houses to be built with steel that was not there, I will pursue that no further because I do not want to rub it in any more, but the Leader of the Opposition, when he made his speech over the radio, had not realised the extent to which private enterprise in the British steel industry had failed Great Britain. Instead of having steel in Great Britain to rescue the population from the housing difficulties after the war, we had to buy steel from America, and we are still buying steel from America. As this is not a discussion about steel, much as I would like it to be, I just remind him that that is a fact.

What we are now in is not what might be called the administrative difficulties of the housing programme. We are now in what might be regarded as the priority stage. What has first demand upon our national resources? This is where, speaking quite frankly, I find the attitude of the Opposition so profoundly immoral. They have put up placards all over the country—financed by secret sources, financed by sources they have never disclosed—in which they say, "Let the builders build you a house now."

That was a very cruel poster, because it led those people who needed houses to believe that all that stood between them and a house was Government policy. [An HON. MEMBER: "It is true."] Now, no one knows that is a falsehood better than do the party opposite. Everybody knows very well that in fact the size of the housing programme is not decided by even the quantity of timber available, because even if we had more timber we would still find ourselves up against labour difficulties in the housing field; but we are up against the disposal, in a prudent way, in the interests of the nation as a whole, of the total national resources of the country.

I wish to ask one or two questions. They are not the same questions as I have asked before, so my hon. Friends will not be apprehensive. We have had so many different stories from the Opposition that we should like to know now where they stand. Whenever there has been a semblance of a financial crisis in this country, the Opposition have immediately come to the House and demanded a reduction in the capital investment programme. I should like to ask the Leader of the Opposition this question. I am bound to tell him that I did ask it during the General Election, but the newspapers did not report the question. Lord Woolton said in 1947: I ask in these days of over-full employment for the postponement of all works of a public nature and for the discouragement of all capital expenditure, whether by Government, or by private industry. Did that represent the policy of the Opposition in 1947? [HON. MEMBERS: "Answer."] This means that in 1947 the whole of the housing programme of Great Britain was to be brought to a standstill. I am going to ask one or two questions and I think the House and the country are entitled to know the answers, because the Opposition will not be able permanently to escape from this dilemma by the consistent lying of the Tory Press. Is that a fact: did Lord Woolton express the point of view of the Tory Party?