HC Deb 13 February 1884 vol 284 cc778-87

Order for Second Reading read.

SIR HARDINGE GIFFARD,

in moving that the Bill be now read a second time, said, although it was a measure which applied primarily to Middlesex, it ought to be extended throughout the country. It was a part of a very large question, and ought to be dealt with as a whole, and not by small fragments. That was an objection which lay on the surface; but he should like the House to be in possession of an alternative which had from time to time been mentioned—namely, that the cadastral survey ought to be completed—they heard something about the prospect of that the previous night—and that there should be a complete system of registration of titles. The House would probably be familiar with certain recent cases of fraud in connection with landed property. It very commonly happened that someone of a very acute mind devised a particular form of fraud which had occurred to nobody before; but the moment the system had been discovered, and the operation of it had been made public, a great many imitators arose, and the result was that a system of fraud, which this Bill was intended to meet, developed to an extraordinary degree. He would give the House an example. There was one well-known case in which there were no fewer than 13 duplicate mortgages on the property, amounting in all to £15,120. There were four mortgages in the same set of frauds upon seven houses amounting to £9,000. There were seven mortgages upon four houses, in another case, amounting to £13,470. The aggregate sum involved in that set of frauds alone amounted to something like £40,000. It seemed to him, therefore, that this great evil required a remedy. It was a very easy matter to talk about the completion of the cadastral survey; but they ought to do the very best in their power to effectually prevent similar frauds in future. The Committee over which the Judge Advocate General presided in 1879 reported in favour of all the pro- visions of the present Bill. He would say at once that the Bill before the House was one which simply sought to embody the eighth, ninth, and tenth recommendations of that Committee. It was an unusually strong Committee, and it received a great deal of information from very distinguished witnesses. Surveyors of great experience, and many others, gave valuable evidence, and the late Lord Chancellor was one of those examined. The objection which was made to the enlargement of the Middlesex Registry was stated to be, in the language of the Committee, an objection simply of detail, which this Bill sought to remove. The Committee said that the objection which had been entertained to the Middlesex Registry arose from an objection of a small character. It was that the index of the Middlesex Registry was unsatisfactory. That was at the root of the objection made to the use of the Registry in the county of Middlesex; but it was not to be assumed that the Registry was altogether useless. Imperfect as the index was, it still afforded a considerable amount of protection against a system of fraud. The Bill before the House proposed that there should be a record not only of the names of the persons, but also of the property dealt in. It also suggested the use of what, in the absence of the cadastral survey, was commonly used—namely, the Ordnance survey—for the purpose, as far as possible, of the Middlesex Registry. He could not conceive an objection to making the Middlesex Registry as efficient as it could be made. That was one great object of the Bill, and it had been the subject of universal complaint that the index was at present useless. He did not think that complaint was well-founded for the reason he had given, but it was obvious that it might be improved. The Bill, therefore, provided that the index should furnish reference to places as well as persons, and should be completed up to the latest date. The great difficulty in this matter arose, no doubt, from an early decision of one of the Courts, a decision which the present Bill sought to repeal. The Bill sought to reverse the law made by a decision of the Judge, and to make these encumbrances and all dealings with registered estates date from the period of their registry. It prevented the opportunity of fraud, and gave persons an opportunity of clearing their titles. It seemed to him, therefore, that there was no reasonable objection to any such alteration of the law, and he did not gather that either from the Judge Advocate General or from the Attorney General there would be any objection to that alteration of the law. The Bill also proposed to abolish the valuable sinecure held by the Chief Registrar, who was a Peer, and to compensate that individual by allowing him for life a moiety of the fees not to exceed £5,000 a-year. The only other point which he thought as a matter of principle it was necessary to discuss was the question of the enlargement of the area over which this Middlesex Registry might be expected to extend. It was to be remembered that the Middlesex Registry Act was passed in 1709. Prom that date until the present time no Act had been passed enlarging or affecting it in the least, and it was obvious that that which might be very appropriate and desirable in 1709 ought to be, if it was to be useful at all, enlarged and made more applicable to the circumstances of the present time. It was, of course, obvious that where they were dealing with great cities, with what were very small plots of land covered by bricks and mortar, but having an enormous value, an opportunity was given to such frauds as described to a degree which was not applicable to a wider area. Accordingly, he sought by the Bill before the House to embrace not only the City of London, which was excluded from the operation of the Middlesex Registry Act, but also what were called Metropolitan counties. The alteration of the law which he now proposed would impose no new burden on the Public Exchequer. The Middlesex Registry Office was self-supporting. For the last two years there had been a large surplus over the expenses of the Office itself; and the operation of the Bill would probably increase that surplus considerably. The conveyancers, he believed, were not in favour of his measure. His own impression was that the system which gave most facility for transactions in land would in the result be most beneficial to the lawyers. But that was not a question to be argued in regard to the interest of any class; it was obviously for the interest of the whole community that there should be as free dealing as possible in land. The necessity of reform in that matter in every county was so manifest that it might be alleged that this partial and fragmentary measure was not the right mode of treating the question; but, he said, let them do a little good if they could not do all they wished. Any objection to the details of the Bill might be considered at the next stage; but, as to its principle, he submitted that the nature of the remedy had been pointed out by a most careful Committee; that he had endeavoured to frame the nucleus of that which might ultimately become a system of registration for the whole Kingdom; and that as in Middlesex they had an existing machinery which it was possible to improve and enlarge, it was not necessary to delay that improvement on account of the more comprehensive scheme of which it might form part. The hon. and learned Gentleman concluded by moving the second reading of the Bill.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."—(Sir Hardinge Giffard.)

MR. ARTHUR ARNOLD

said, he believed that there was nothing that was more needed than a reform of the law in reference to land registration; and he felt certain that the Government would regret that this Parliament was likely to close without a measure on that question emanating from the Treasury Bench. He congratulated hon. Gentlemen opposite upon the fact that all the reforms they had on that subject came from their side. It might be better to have such a system as existed in Middlesex than to have no land register at all; but there were very patent objections to enacting a measure, supposing it were an improvement for the Metropolitan district alone. The House had received a warning against such a proceeding the other night. They agreed to extend the hours of polling in the Metropolis; but when it was proposed to extend the privilege to the whole of the Kingdom Members for the Metropolitan boroughs voted in opposition to the proposal. The hon. and learned Gentleman said that this Bill imposed no fresh charge upon the Exchequer. That was to its advantage; but the House was well aware that there was another office, the Land Registration Office, which did impose a very wasteful charge upon the Exchequer. It was highly desirable that the Government should deal with the question; and he did not think that the Attorney General could offer any remarks on that occasion without pledging them in some way or other to do so. The Government could not afford to neglect so important a subject. They could not accept a Bill so objectionable and so limited in its scope as that of the hon. and learned Gentleman opposite; and he trusted that, if it were referred to the Standing Committee, it would be accompanied by some larger, more useful, and more promising measure introduced by the Government. The office of Chief Registrar in the Middlesex Registry, held by a Peer, was a very valuable sinecure, worth no less than £5,000 a-year. It was proposed by this Bill to place the Chief Registrar on one side; and the House was asked to consent that in future a moiety of the fees, to the amount of no less than £5,000 a-year, should be secured to the Peer who held the office for the term of his natural life. He did not wish to treat any official with injustice; but he should be sorry that it should be supposed that by reading this Bill a second time any section of the House gave their consent to that arrangement. He was sorry that this limited proposal should not have been anticipated by the Government with some larger and more useful measure.

SIR GEORGE CAMPBELL

said, he thanked God that he had never had the misfortune to live in a country where there was no registry at all. He had lately had occasion to look into the system of registration in Scotland, of which they were very proud; and he hoped that that registry would soon be as complete and as perfect as any mere registry of deeds could be. But the result of his looking into the question had been to convince him that, proud as they were of their Scottish registration system, they never could have a really satisfactory system—one that would give sufficient facility for the transfer of land in small parcels—until they had a registration of titles as distinct from that of deeds. He quite agreed with the hon. and learned Gentleman (Sir Hardinge Giffard) that it would be hard that a considerable improvement should be delayed until they had obtained for the whole country a registration of titles. He thought that time, even in Scotland, owing to the complications of the question, was far off; and he would suggest that if they were to begin with the county of Middlesex, it would be an excellent opportunity to make an experiment with regard to registration of titles; and if the experiment succeeded the system might be extended to the whole of the Kingdom. This was a great work, and he hoped the Government would undertake it.

MR. GREGORY

said, that until some Member of the Government had declared his views on this question, it was difficult to contemplate the course which they would take; but, as far as he could gather, the opposition to the Bill was based on two grounds—1st, that the Government intended to deal with the question; 2nd, that the registration should not be of deeds, but of titles. Now, as regarded the first of these he had been met by the same assurance when he attempted to deal with the matter 13 years ago; but 13 years had gone by and nothing was done, nor did he see how any action of the Government would be prejudiced by the present Bill, as it would be just as easy for them to deal with the Middlesex office in its improved, as in its present state. He did not therefore attach much weight to the first of these objections. The second opened out a large question. A registration of titles was no doubt a very good thing in its way, and in a newly-settled country or a colony where you could start with a grant from the Crown, and the subsequent dealings with the property were simple, it might be established without great difficulty. But we were dealing with an old country, and a complicated system, under which land was dealt with in various ways, and made subject to all sorts of limitations and charges. Now, a registration of titles must either be of indefeasible or of qualified titles. The first of these were comparatively exceptional, although they might be made so at some trouble and expense; but, whilst this was the case, there were few bad titles. The majority were titles subject to some qualification, although they were substantially safe. It was obvious that there would be great objection by holders of these titles to having them investigated by a public officer, much more to have their defi- ciencies put upon record, or to have the labour and expense of supplying them, even if it could be done. For this and other reasons, which it was not then necessary to go into, he objected to a compulsory registration of titles, and it was clear that a voluntary one would not be adopted. But a registration of deeds was a much simpler matter; and in process of time this became in effect a registration of titles. This was the case in Scotland, where a registration of deeds had been in operation for many years, and where the system worked admirably. He had the advantage of seeing the indexes and search sheets which were kept in the Registry Office at Edinburgh, and which rendered searches easy and effective. The consequence was that they were enabled in Scotland to dispense with our system of abstracts of titles and examination of deeds, and to rely for a title on the searches in the Registry; and so complete was the system, that there were gentlemen who were accustomed to making these searches, and could give a certificate of them, and of the title as it appeared on the register in a simple form, and at a moderate expense. We had done much here which would facilitate the system by reducing the period of limitation; and if a conveyance was placed on the register now, an indefeasible title might be deduced from it on the register in 20, or, it might be, in 12 years from that time. Now he (Mr. Gregory) would be glad to see such a system applied to the whole country; but he was quite willing to accept and to support the present Bill as an instalment of it. No doubt the present state of the Middlesex Registry was very unsatisfactory. The form of registration was antiquated. There were no maps, the indexes were insufficient, and in the cases of large owners of Metropolitan property a search was hopeless; but the system might be improved, and the Office utilized, and this was the object of the present Bill. There were one or two points in detail which might require attention. The boundaries, in his opinion, should have been defined directly, and not by reference; and he did not think the protection to devisees, in case of wills not being registered, was sufficient; but these and other matters might well be dealt with in Committee, and did not affect the principle of the Bill. Before he sat down he might, perhaps, be allowed to point out one or two beneficial effects of registration. In the first place, it was a singular fact that, as stated by his hon. and learned Friend (Sir Hardinge Giffard), none of these fraudulent dealings with land which had been such a scandal had occurred in a register county, one where no register exists being always selected for them. Again, it saved the search for, and production of title-deeds, very often a matter of much trouble and cost upon the sale of property. For instance, where portions of a property were sold, the owner of the main estate retained the deeds. He might have parted with them, or mortgaged the property, and sometimes you had to trace the deeds through two or three solicitors, all of whose charges had to be paid; and in the case of a mortgagee, before the late Conveyancing Act, you could not compel him to produce his deeds at all. Lastly, registration put an end to the system of tacking—he was sorry to be technical, but he could hardly avoid it upon this subject, and would endeavour to explain what he meant to the House. It would, perhaps, hardly be believed that, in a case of three successive mortgages, a third mortgagee had the power of squeezing out or destroying the security of the second, providing only that he had not notice of the second security when he took the third. For instance, in the case of A, B, and C, although B had advanced his money in perfect good faith, and with ordinary caution, C, if he found his security defective, could require A to transfer his to him, and could tack or connect the two as against B, and this, notwithstanding that at the time he did so 0 knew of the security of B, and that it was one taken in perfect good faith. He hoped he had now said enough to substantiate his preference for a registration of deeds, and his support of the present Bill as a contribution towards it.

THE ATTORNEY GENERAL (Sir HENRY JAMES)

said, this Bill had been correctly described as a Bill to extend the provisions of the Statute of Anne establishing the Middlesex Registry to the whole of the Metropolitan district. The question, therefore, to be considered was whether the Middlesex Registry had been attended with satisfactory results. It had been tested by experienced persons. A Commission, composed of Lord Romilly and others, reported in 1870 that they considered that the Registry led to considerable expense, and caused no additional security or other special advantage, and it ought, therefore, to be abolished. In 1875 a Committee reported that the Middlesex Registry was unhesitatingly condemned by every witness that had been called. And yet they were now asked to extend its scope. It appeared to him that if the Bill were a good one it did not go far enough; but the registration of deeds or titles in the country had been a failure. The fact was, if a man's title was good, he did not wish to register; if it was bad, he did not want the world to know it. Between February, 1878, and March, 1879, only seven deeds were entered in the Registry existing under Lord Cairns's Act, or an average of one title for two months; since then the number had gone on steadily diminishing until it dwindled down to nil, and the grass had been growing in the court opposite the office door. This Bill left matters very much as they were, only it proposed to appoint a new staff and pension off the old Middlesex Registry staff. The Government could not accept the Bill; but out of courtesy to the hon. and learned Gentleman who had brought it forward, and regarding it as an honest attempt to deal with the question, he would have no objection to it being read a second time, upon the understanding that the Government did not intimate that any further support would be given to it. In the Bill which the Government intended to introduce with regard to the Middlesex Registry, it might be that some of the provisions of the present Bill might be considered. So eminent a man as Lord Westbury had attempted to establish some satisfactory scheme of registry of titles, and so had Lord Cairns; but their attempts had been as hopeless as the attempts to discover the North-West Passage. He had not heard any explanation of the cause of the failure.

MR. ARTHUR ARNOLD

Want of compulsion.

THE ATTORNEY GENERAL (Sir HENRY JAMES)

said, that was the answer of the theorist. Compulsion might do in a new country, such as that which the hon. Member had in mind.

MR. ARTHUR ARNOLD

Germany.

THE ATTORNEY GENERAL (Sir HENRY JAMES)

said, he thought the hon. Member referred to Australia; but in Germany there were not those intricate titles which existed in England, and which would render compulsion unpopular and unjust, as being exceedingly costly. The real way to deal practically with this subject was to go to the root of the matter. What they ought to do was to simplify titles, to render conveyances shorter, simpler, and cheaper, and not to require a public registration of deeds. A great deal had been done in the desired direction of late years, and he recognized the great services in this respect which had been rendered by Lord Cairns. The Government would not refuse consideration to any measure affecting this question, and therefore he would not say "No" to the second reading, with the understanding he had already named.

MR. WARTON

said, every one who listened to the speech of the hon. and learned Member for Launceston must be convinced that this was a good Bill, introduced for an honest purpose—the prevention of fraud. He believed there was a great deal to be said in favour of it, and that, if passed, it would, on the whole, work well.

MR. HINDE PALMER

pointed out that at present there existed a somewhat expensive staff for the registration of deeds which had had comparatively nothing to do. In his opinion, it would be a very good plan to utilize this staff by turning the Middlesex Registry into a branch of the General Registry. He thought, however, after what had fallen from the Attorney General, it was unnecessary to continue the discussion.

SIR HARDINGE GIFFARD

said, he thoroughly recognized what had just fallen from the hon. Member. As to the somewhat ambiguous remarks of the Attorney General, he certainly should consider that if the Bill passed the second reading the House had affirmed the principle of the Bill.

THE ATTORNEY GENERAL (Sir HENRY JAMES)

said, that he only meant that he assented to the second reading on the same ground that Lord Beacons-field had assented to the second reading of the Irish Land Act—namely, that some alteration in a system was needed.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time, and committed for Thursday 21st February.