Orders of the Day — Local Authority Housing

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 18 June 1959.

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Photo of Mr Reginald Bevins Mr Reginald Bevins , Liverpool Toxteth 12:00, 18 June 1959

With respect, Mr. Hoy, I did not say anything that contradicted the view that the hon. Gentleman has just expressed. If he is successful in catching your eye, I am sure that he will develop his argument involving the Newcastle City Council. Therefore, perhaps we might leave Newcastle out of this for the moment and come to the gravamen of the charge against the Government.

As I understood it, the hon. and learned Gentleman's allegation against us refers to our inhumanity—that is what it amounts to—in the housing of the people and, in particular, refers to our alleged indifference to council housing. I must say, if the hon. and learned Gentleman will allow me to, that I have a rather higher opinion of his unquenchable eloquence and untiring tenacity for bad causes than I have for his selective arithmetic in this debate—although I agree that with so thin a case as that presented this afternoon he must be selective with his figures. Nobody minds that.

I should like to concentrate for a moment on the arithmetic—and the arithmetic is perfectly straightforward. Between 1947 and 1951—and here I refer to England and Wales, and not to Great Britain—the total number of houses built each year averaged less than 170,000. Between 1952 and 1958, a period of seven years, the average annual figure has been over 265,000 houses—an increase of 55 per cent. Those figures, however impressive, can never reveal how much happiness has been brought to Millions of men, women and children by the success of the housing drive—