On Thursday, Nove mber 27th, Mr. Neville Chamberlain, the Minister of
Health, made a really admirable speech about the functions of his Department and about housing. The Unionist Party, he said, regarded themselves as " trustees for the national welfare " ; unless they genuinely tried to improve the condition of the people they would be false to their trust and would deserve the fate which -would assuredly come upon them. He divided the housing problem into two parts, first over- crowding and secondly " the condition of decay of many of the existing houses "—in other words, slum conditions. The Act of 1923 had exceeded his expecta- tions in developing private enterprise and owner-occupier- ship. It was not generally recognized what progress had been made in re-establishing the machinery for building houses, and how nearly the best pre-War rate of house-building had been reached. In 1905, 129,000 houses had been built, but for the twelve months which ended on September 20th, 110,000 had been built. That was a figure not seen in the newspapers, as the Press figures referred only to the number of houses completed under the subsidy scheme of 1923.
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