The branch of the land question to which the Government called the greatest attention in their election promises was Housing. On this subject the Government have placed many pages of legislation on the Statute Book. One can only wish that the houses occupied as much space. They began by informing us, probably accurately, that up to the time of the Armistice there was an accumulated shortage of 500,000 houses; in pre-war days new working-class houses were required, and to a certain extent provided, although the shortage had then already begun, to an average number of 90,000 a year. According to the official figures in July last, 123,000 houses had been completed by Local Authorities and Public Utility Societies; 37,000 by private builders with Government subsidies; 36,000 were under construction, and as the Government have now limited the total scheme (thereby causing the resignation of Dr. Addison, its sponsor) there remain 17,000 to be built. This is the record of four years, so clearly the Government have not even succeeded in keeping pace with the normal annual demand, and the shortage has not been attacked, but actually accentuated.
The cause of the failure was mainly financial. Without attacking the roots of the evil in our land and rating system, and without attempting to control the output and supply of materials and building in the way in which munitions were controlled during the war, the Government brought forward gigantic schemes to be financed from the supposedly bottomless purse of the tax-payer. At the same time the demand for building materials and labour in every direction was at its maximum, and unfortunately both employers and employed in the building and allied industries took the fullest advantage of the position to force up prices without regard to the unfortunate people who wanted houses. The Trade Unions concerned seem to have overlooked the fact that if wages were raised and output reduced houses would become so dear that their fellow-workmen who needed them could not attempt to pay the rents required, and the tax-payer would revolt against the burdens imposed upon him; thus the golden era for their own trade was bound to come to a rapid end, and, so far from employment being increased and prolonged, unemployment on a large scale was bound to result. With the Anti-Waste panic and the Geddes Axe, social reform was cut first, and, in their hurry to stop the provision of homes for heroes, the Government is indulging in such false economies as leaving derelict land acquired and laid out at enormous cost, even covering over excavations already made, and paying out to members of the building trade large sums in unemployment benefit, while the demand for the houses on which they might be employed is left wholly unsatisfied.
Land for Public Purposes
The Acquisition and Valuation of Land for the purpose of public improvements is a branch of the question to which a great deal of attention was drawn during and immediately after the war. The Government appointed a Committee, of which the present Solicitor-General was chairman, and which, in spite of a marked scarcity of advanced land reformers amongst its members, produced a series of remarkably unanimous and far-reaching recommendations. These recommendations dealt with four main topics:—
(a) Improvements in the machinery by which powers may be obtained by public and private bodies for the acquisition of land for improvements of a public character;
(b) Valuation of land which it is proposed to acquire;
(c) Fair adjustment as between these bodies and the owners of other land, both of claims by owners for damage done by the undertaking to other lands, and of claims by the promoting bodies for increased value given by their undertaking to other lands; and
(d) The application of these principles to the special subject of mining.
The Government in the Acquisition of Land Act, 1919, has adopted a great part of the Committee’s recommendations under the second head, and this Act has undoubtedly effected an enormous improvement in the prices paid by public bodies for land which they require, although, most unfortunately, the same immunity from the extortion of the land-owner and the land speculator has not been extended to private bodies such as railway companies who need land for the improvement of public services. Moreover, it has not attempted to bring the purchase price of land into any relation with its taxing valuation.
The whole of the rest of the Committee’s recommendations dealing with the other three points which I have mentioned, the Government has wholly ignored. Powers for public development can still only be obtained by the slow, costly and antiquated processes in vogue before the war; private owners of lands adjoining works of a public character are still in a position to put into their own pockets large increases in value due to public improvements to which they have contributed nothing, and which they may even have impeded; the development of minerals is still hampered by the veto of unreasonable owners, by the necessity of leaving unnecessary barriers between different properties, and by other obstacles which were dealt with in detail in the Committee’s report. An illustration of the importance of this aspect of the question was put before the Committee and has been emphasised by recent events. It was stated on behalf of the railway companies that they were prepared with schemes for the extension of their systems in various parts of the country, which would not only provide temporary employment for a large number of men on construction, and permanent employment to a smaller number on the working of the lines, but would also open up new residential and industrial districts, but that it was impossible for them to find the necessary funds unless they could have some guarantee that at least any loss upon the cost of construction would be charged upon the increased value of land in the new districts which would be created by the railway extensions. Remarkable instances were given of the way in which the value of land had been multiplied many-fold by the promotion of new railways, which, nevertheless, had never succeeded in paying a dividend to their shareholders, and the capital cost of which had been practically lost.