Conservatives and Uthwatt
Among the worst of the sins of omission on the part of the Government has been its failure to reach decisions about the development and control of land and its consequent discouragement of planning, as speakers in the debate on housing in the House of Commons on Wednesday very rightly pointed out. Very welcome, therefore, is a Bulletin dealing with this subject from the Tory Reform Committee, signed by Mr. Peter Thorneycroft and Mr. Hugh Molson. The signatories are in broad sympathy with the Uthwatt Report, though they do not accept its proposals in their entirety, and claim to have improved on them. They insist that the post-war housing programme cannot be worked out until the national plan is known, and that the national plan cannot be worked out until the powers and financial liabilities of the planning authority are known. This is so true that one would be inclined to say that a workable second-best policy adopted now would be better than an ideal plan indefinitely postponed. It is suggested that the Uthwatt. Report proposal to pay a global sum for development rights should be amended, and that compensation should be payable to landlords only when they incur an ascertainable loss when selling land after development has been prohibited, and that this should be financed out of fees charged to landowners licensed to develop. The Tory Report agrees, however, that no development should be permitted without a licence from the Central Planning Authority. It propounds a scheme by means of which three-fourths of all increases in land values should be intercepted for the nation. It differs from the Uthwatt Report in some important particulars, but its spirit is the same, and it has the same objectives. It brings Conservative support for a drastic policy such as, in the main, is not likely to be offered from the Conservative side of the House of Commons.
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