Land and Houses (Prices)

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 27 April 1972.

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Photo of Mr Graham Page Mr Graham Page , Crosby 12:00, 27 April 1972

It has been recognised throughout the debate by all who have spoken that our present difficulties arise out of the substantial increase in the demand for owner occupation. One example to illustrate this situation lies in the fact that in 1969 loans by building societies amounted to 460,000, whereas this year and last year they numbered 650,000. This is a good thermometer of demand.

I doubt whether anybody would advocate any direct or deliberate damping down of the demand. At the end of 1969 and the beginning of 1970 the demand was damped down as was the rise in prices, but this had little to do with the Land Commission at that time. It flowed from the general policy of the Labour Government in that money for house purchase was not available in the banks and building societies. In the last few months we have been partially meeting the demand for homes by increasing the supply. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment gave figures of housing starts for the first quarter of this year as compared with the same period last year. There is an increase of 26 per cent. on the starts of last year, and that is a very substantial figure.

We must go further to meet the demand by increasing the supply within sound planning policy. I do not think that any hon. Member has asked us to adopt any panic policy, except perhaps the hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Hull, North (Mr. McNamara) who said that we should pass some emergency legislation. There have been one or two other solutions from the back benches opposite to restore and even to raise betterment levy. We were urged to take direct control of the price of land. The right hon. Member for Fulham (Mr. Michael Stewart) wanted to give local authorities an option over all houses, and then he suggested that we should put land into public ownership.

All these suggestions would only be restrictive of the supply, and it is an increase in the supply that we must seek. The only solution offered by the right hon. Member for Deptford (Mr. John Silkin) was the exhumation of the cold and rigid body of the Land Commission—