Subsidy to Builders in England.

Progress, Volume XV, Issue 8, 1 April 1920, Page 771

Subsidy to Builders in England.

The . subsidy to builders of £l5O per house that is referred to elsewhere in; this issue, seems to have aroused a deal of opposition in some quarters. Major Barnes, in speaking in the English Parliament on the subject, complained that by this proposal the jerry-builder and the speculator were to be sub--sidised. He insisted that the pressure which had produced the Bill came from landowners and land jobbers who had got land on their hands which under the Housing Act was unsaleable. Mr. Lorden, a London builder in. a large way, expressed the hope that the application of the Bill would be so extended as to encourage the building of middle-class houses, of which there was just as great a scarcity as of working-class.'houses. He warned the Government that, instead of the middle-classes going up to better houses, they would have to come down to the houses proposed to be erected under the Bill. Sir J. Tudor Walters, who replied for the Government, gave away the whole case for the original Act. He is the new broom whom the Prime Minister has appointed to clear up the housing muddle. He gave it as his opinion that they could get their 100,000 houses built by men who were not contracting for local authorities, and at least 70 or 80 per cent, of the men they employed would be a new contribution to the housing construction of the country. As for the local authorities’ housing schemes, ! he believed there was never so much profiteering in the building trade as was going on under them. Three classes of people were profiteering the people who supplied the materials, the contractor who was. carrying out the work, and the workmen who were laying the bricks. He affirmed his belief that any contractor who wanted to could build these houses or at least £3OO less than they were doing to-day. " - After this candid •confessionand several appeals to' the Government to encourage the building of wooden houses, on the Canadian model— House .had no alternative but to vote the second reading without a division, f C