POSTWAR PLANS

Dominion, Volume 36, Issue 25, 24 October 1942, Page 8

POSTWAR PLANS

Need For Machinery To Be Settled Now

LORD REITH’S PLEA

(Special Correspondent.) (Received October 23, 7.5 p.m.) RUGBY, October 22. The submission that the machinery for national planning after the war should be settled now was made by Lord Reith, former Minister of Works and Buildings, when the House of Lords today debated plans for postwar reconstruction. Lord Reith called attention to the machinery of planning advocated in the Uth watt and Scott reports and declared that it was quite impossible to wait till all the points in those two reports had been studied and analysed and decisions taken on them. He believed that any machinery was better than none. It was impossible to separate social and economic planning from physical planning. Planning in both: the social and economic spheres and also the physical sphere required interdepartmental machinery. Planning should not be the prerogative of any one department. Ultimately there should be one non-departmental Minister of sufficient authority to be able to co-ordi-nate and reconcile the various departmental projects and, above all, get things done. Lord Addison confessed that the long delay in setting up a central planning body for land control was very depressing, because it was evident that at the end of the war immense issues would thrust themselves forward, dud it was impossible to think that any decisions could be reached unless a body of men long beforehand had given sustained thought tp them. Lord Snell, for the Government, said it accepted the principle of planning. The proposals in the Scott and Uthwatt reports were being continuously studied. ? The. Government was not prepared to announce a decision regarding them till their investigations were further advanced. ■ Lord Snell said'the Government accepted the recommendation that the registration of title to land should be made ■ compulsory over the whole of England and Wales. The Lord Chancellor had appointed a committee to consider the recommendation. It would be presided over by Lord Rusbcliffe. '