CAB129-53 — Page 182

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I hope that, even if it is found possible to retard the import of timber, it will not be publicly announced. Such an announcement would not help the economy. It will merely throw doubt on the future housing programme. It would not transfer building capacity elsewhere. It would merely slow up production. The mere whisper of it would cause a fall in productivity. It would be a policy of more cups of tea and less building.

8.

Still less can I agree to any action to slow down the programme for 1952 and 1953. We must complete 230,000 houses in 1952 and 260,000 houses in 1953. All this is arranged. To achieve this programme, some of the houses are already starting; some are in various stages of construction; for others the tenders are arranged. To stop would benefit nobody and injure us greatly. Nor can I agree to any financial "ceiling" calculated to reduce this programme. There is no purpose in such a ceiling. I think that any intellectual faith in this so-called Capital Investment Programme is now more or less abandoned. At several meetings of Ministers no one has seriously supported it.

9.

Meanwhile, we are trying to find substitutes for timber. We must be allowed to use our ingenuity. This experimental work is already begun. The first designs of a "timber-saving house" (as it is formally named I call it "the boneless wonder") are on the way. We may fail. But we must at least have a chance to succeed, if we can.

10.

The other main materials for housing except timber, viz., bricks and cement, can be pushed up in this country without injury to anyone. The steel can be used more intelligently and economically. The Minister of Works and I have circulated a note to the Economic Policy Committee on all this. The statement that coal now used for brick making could be shipped abroad is incorrect. Such coal is of a quality and character as to make it unsuitable for export.

11.

12.

So much for housing.

Part III. "The Grand Design"

*

With regard to the great question with which we are again confronted that is to say the future of sterling I would venture these comments. As an objective, convertibility is, of course, right. A currency in which half the world trades cannot do its full duty unless and until it becomes convertible, But the timing is vital. Any such proposal must spring and be seen to spring from strength and not from weakness. It must be the coping-stone of a policy and not the sign of a retreat. To act now, and to try to support such action, by widely advertised reductions in armaments and housing and social policies seem to me very dangerous. It is playing the old bankers' game. It is the same thing we were asked to do in 1931. It will advertise not our strength but our weakness.

13.

Convertibility should be the culminating point of the grand design when Britain is set upon a new and upward path. It should not be risked at a moment of apparent decline.

14.

Such a policy of development and renaissance I have tried to outline in my paper of 17th June (C. (52) 196). I am indeed glad to see the references to Commonwealth economic policy in the Chancellor of the Exchequer's paper (C. (52) 223).

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