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If any person at time after the third day of December, nineteen hundred and nineteen, without the permission in writing of the local authority within whose area the house is situate, demolishes or uses otherwise than as a dwelling-house any house which was at that date occupied as a dwelling-house, and which in the opinion of the local authority was reasonably fit or was reasonably capable of being made fit for human habitation, he shall be liable on summary conviction in respect of each house demobilised or so used to a fine not exceeding one hundred pounds or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding three months or to both such imprisonment and fine.
Mr. LOCKER-LAMPSONI beg to move, after the word "or" ["demolishes or uses"], to insert the words "closes or."
1561 It is quite possible that if the medical officers we-re to say that a, house was unfit for human habitation and wanted repairing, the owners would close it. As there is a very urgent need of houses, I think the local authority should also have the power to refuse permission to close.
§ Dr. ADDISONI sympathise with the intention of my hon. Friend, but I think that the words would make a great deal of difficulty with regard to administration. There may, for instance, be a house in which there is a, Closing Order, but in which we have not suggested that there should be any penalty applied. There would be a large number of cases, quite incidentally, in which houses would be closed. You may have a house somewhere in the country, very likely for sale or to let, or else left empty. If these words are put in, there would be a penalty for leaving that house closed. It would be punishable on the landlord, and we do not wish it to be that.
Mr. LOCKER-LAMPSONThe matter would be in the discretion of the local authorities, if any good reason could be shown why the house should not be closed.
§ Dr. ADDISONIf you are going to bring a lot more houses into the Bill it would be worth doing, but I do not think you will. There is the house which is closed, which is unfit for human habitation. That is right. If a man kept a house closed there would have to be exceptional circumstances. The Amendment would not apply to any great bulk of houses. There are cases where you may have hardship. I hope my hon. Friend will not press this Amendment.
§ Mr. H. SMITHI beg to move, after the word "house" ["any house which was"], to insert the words "or building."
Perhaps I might call the attention of my right hon. Friend to the fact that I think my Amendment entails two subsequent Amendments. I would like to draw his attention to the fact that the word "house" ["is situate, demolishes or uses"] should be followed by the word "building," and that the word "house" ["demolished or so used"] should also be followed by the word "building." Perhaps my right hon. Friend will give that matter his attention. I desire to include within the powers of this Clause any build- 1562 ing such as an hotel or cinema. I would like to press my further Amendment to exclude the words "which was at that date occupied as a dwelling-house, and." For the moment, however, I will merely move this Amendment on the grounds that it is to extend the powers in the case of the local authorities certifying that it is desirable that a house should be closed. I hope my right hon. Friend will accept the Amendment.
§ Mr. PRETYMANWhile I have every sympathy with my hon. Friend's Amendment, I think it would be a little dangerous in agricultural cases. Take, for instance, harvest and hopping times. Sometimes, in those seasons, barns and other agricultural buildings are temporarily used for human occupation. That is unavoidable, and also necessary. It is quite harmless. After a time, of course, those buildings are not so used. I think that the Amendment might have the effect of making a man who temporarily allows his building to be occupied for human habitation liable to a penalty.
§ Mr. SMITHI think my hon. and gallant Friend is wrong. He will find that, in the Clause, the date given is the 3rd of December. "If any time after the 3rd day of December," the Clause reads. Surely such a building would not be occupied as a dwelling-house after that date?
§ Mr. PRETYMANI was not thinking of demolishing it: I was thinking of using the building otherwise than as a dwelling-house. If any person has a barn which he allows to be occupied as a dwelling-house, he will be under a penalty if he uses it again as a barn. The Clause is perfectly harmless as it stands, but what my hon. Friend is proposing is to add the words "or building" to the word "house." The effect of the Clause would then be that, if any building which was occupied at any time as a human habitation and was afterwards occupied for any other purpose, that would be a breach of the law.
§ Dr. ADDISONI cannot accept this Amendment, because in some places it would be a great hardship. I think that the words "or building," in their wide definition, would create a vast amount of difficulties and would not help us in solving the housing problem at all. In various cases, in town and country, houses would be pulled down to make room for shops or cinemas. The Clause will enable us to deal with such cases. 1563 The number of houses in the aggregate is not great, and therefore I think we should limit the cases to houses which are demolished or put out of use as houses. That is what we want to prevent, and that is what the Clause does. If you put in the word "building," it might mean a warehouse or a factory, and it would create a lot of difficulties without diminishing the evil we, are seeking to prevent. While I am very sympathetic towards the Amendment, I think on the whole it would do more harm than good.
§ Mr. SMITHI am sorry again to intervene, but I had got the idea that my right hon. Friend was going to accept this word "building," and therefore I did not press it as I ought to have done. May I point out to my hon. and gallant Friend behind me (Captain Pretyman) that, as I think, he is wrong in the reading of that Clause? It shows clearly that it refers to any person who uses otherwise than as a dwelling any house or building which was at that date occupied as a dwelling-house, and it is impossible for this Clause to operate unless on that date, namely, the 3rd of December, it was occupied as a dwelling-house. I think, on reflection, he will see I am right in that. That is the difficulty I feel in leaving the Clause as it is. Are you going to interfere with large hotels and flats which have been occupied by Government Departments? Take the Buckingham Palace Hotel. Whereas you may not pull down the adjacent house or flats which have not been used by a Government Department, anybody can come and pull down that hotel or, as they are doing now, turn it into offices, and under this Section you cannot touch them. Under this Section you cannot touch any building which on 3rd December is occupied by a Government Department unless it is used as a dwelling-house. That is a most narrow power for a Government to take, and it ought to be extended. I hope the Minister will consider the acceptance of these words. I have very grave doubts whether the words as they stand include hotel at all, and I tell him so, not without a little knowledge, because in several Acts "house" may include a dwelling-house and in other Acts it does not. Will my right hon. Friend go so far as to include "hotel" or define "house"? In one part of the Bill the word" house" is used and in another part "dwelling-house" is used. If he will define the word 1564 "dwelling-house" I shall be satisfied with this Clause as it stands, but I would ask him to consider that.
§ Dr. ADDISONI will consider that. I am afraid we did put in the word "dwelling-house" deliberately.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
§ Sir H. HARRISI beg to move, to leave out the words "occupied as a dwelling-house, and which."
I have been asked to move this Amendment by the London County Council. The object of it is to extend time prohibition to dwelling-houses which are actually unoccupied on 3rd December. There are a large number of empty dwelling-houses in London, and for a long time there has been an urgent demand that they should be used for the purpose of housing people who are urgently in need of house accommodation. Therefore it is suggested that the power of prohibiting house being demolished should be extended to houses which were actually unoccupied on 3rd December.
§ Dr. ADDISONI think this does add to the purpose of the Clause. On the whole it is an improvement and I will accept it.
Amendment agreed to.
Further Amendment made: Leave out the word "was" ["was reasonably fit"].—[Sir H. Harris]
§ Mr. H. SMITHI beg to move, at the end, to add the words
and if the offence of using is a continuing offence to a fine not exceeding fifty pounds for each day during which the offence continues.I think I have very good reason for adding these words. Under Clause 5, dealing with the prohibition of building operations, these words, or words to this effect, are to be found in order to punish a person who continues deliberately using a building when he ought not to do so. I had a case come within my professional knowledge of a very large company who, under an order from the Ministry of Munitions, were prohibited from erecting a building exceeding the value of £500. They had started to build and had, in fact, completed the first two storeys of an enormous building, and they used it during the whole of the War, and the utterly inadequate penalty in that case was a fine of £100. I would point out, further, that the penalty of imprisonment 1565 is quite inoperative when the offender is a company. If a company has broken the law the penalty of £100 is quite inadequate.
§ 5.0 A.M.
§ Dr. ADDISONI do not quite understand what is the object of the words "of using."
§ Mr. SMITHThe reason for those words is the presence of the words "demolished or so used." It is obvious that demolition could not continue, and therefore the words "of using" must be added, as was done in Clause 5. It is obviously only to the use that the word "continuing" can apply.
§ Lieut.-Colonel ROYDSI hope the right hon. Gentleman will not accept this Amendment. The case has been referred to of a firm which erected a building during the War and was fined £100, but I am thinking of the case of a man who has got a building, and may use it. I think a fine of £100 is far too high.
§ Captain ORMSBY-GOREAn Amendment ought not to be accepted in manuscript form which involves a fine of £50 a day on citizens of this country. At least it ought to be in print on the Paper, and I should vote most strongly against a proposal of this kind.
§ Mr. PRETYMANI think we are too much in the habit of lightly putting heavy penalties upon people, without looking carefully into the matter. In my opinion, no offence, other than a wilful offence, ought to be the subject of penalties of this kind. I do not think we ought, at this late hour, to pass a Clause subjecting people to these penalties. I would rather subject myself to an extra attendance here. If we look at this Clause we shall see that the offence to be punished is that of doing a certain act without the permission of the local authority, and I venture to suggest to my right hon. Friend that that act might be quite inadvertent, in that it might be the simple use, otherwise than as a dwelling-house, of some house which has been occupied as a dwelling-house on the 3rd December. By the Amendment proposed by my hon. Friend who speaks for the London County Council (Sir H. Harris), that is to be extended still further, to cover unoccupied houses. That would mean that an individual who happened to own an unoccupied house, and happened to use it for some private purpose, quite 1566 inadvertently, otherwise than as a dwelling-house, would be liable to a fine of £100 and to imprisonment for three months, That is really ludicrous, and we cannot do things in this light-hearted fashion. It ought only to apply in the ease of a willful offence. I do not much object to the principle of a continuing penalty where a wilful offence is continued after due notice has been given, but there is no notice provided for here, and, at any rate, we ought to have some Amendment, which I hope my right hon. Friend will consider before Report, to provide that the penalty should only apply to cases in which the Act is done in defiance of a law passed in this House. But there should be notice given, and attention should be called to the fact that things are being done which are subject to penalties. Whatever my right hon. Friend may do in regard to increasing penalties, I hope he will very carefully consider this Clause before Report, so that people may not be subjected to penalties for acts which may be quite innocently committed.
§ Mr. SMITHI do not think the hon. and gallant Member for Stafford (Captain Ormsby-Gore) can have read his Bill very carefully, because these precise words have already been passed in respect of a previous Clause. I do not think he need be embarrassed by this manuscript Amendment, because the words are already in Clause 5, and I am asking that they should be added also in Clause 6. This penalty will only be imposed if a person has broken the law, and not if he has done something merely by accident, and, moreover, it is a maximum penalty. No one imagines that a penalty will be inflicted for a merely inadvertent act; it is only where a person has deliberately broken the law, and continues to use a building, that such a penalty will be imposed; and it is only where a fine of £100 is grossly inadequate, and not calculated to stop a person from pulling down a building in defiance of the law, that the Bench would have power to convict him of the offence of continuing to use it.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.