HC Deb 27 February 1931 vol 248 cc2472-80

Order for Second Reading read.

Mr. LEACH

I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."

This Bill is so modest and reasonable in its scope that I shall ask the House to give it an unopposed Second Reading. It has one purpose only, namely, to allow local authorities who expend public money on the making of roads or the repairing of roads to reap the whole financial advantage of such expenditure. It is always at the public cost that highways are made or repaired, the day of private expenditure for this purpose having long since gone, and the whole cost being now borne by the taxpayer and the ratepayer together. The additional public wealth created in this way usually spreads far beyond the actual roads that may be built or improved. There arise demands for new houses, new shops, and the various amenities that go to make up village and communal life. These amenities may be demanded at a great distance away from the actual improvement which may have been made, and these demands would not have been made except For the expenditure of public money that has been involved.

The most disconcerting factor in public municipal life to-day is that of public sowing and private reaping, and this feature in public municipal experience is enough to break the heart of the most genuine public administrator. If every penny expended by local authorities in the creation of new wealth could be ensured a return to the coffers of the public authorities that expended it, there would he no rate charges in any part of the British Isles, but, on the contrary, a very substantial public income would accrue; and any Bill which has for its purpose the protection of public expenditure must surely be a good Bill, because of the existence of the element of private appropriation of things which are public.

The operative Clause of this Bill is Clause 1; all the other Clauses are purely of the machinery kind, and almost, I take it, non-debatable. Clause 2, for instance, protects Crown lands, while enabling sales by agreement to be made. Clause 3 provides that, where agreement with the owner is not reached, the Public Works Facilities Act, 1930, may be employed to provide the machinery, avoiding the cost of procedure by Bill promotion and so on. Clause 4 determines the method of serving notices on well accepted lines. The operative clause, Clause 1, quite simply and shortly provides that: Where any highway authority is authorised to improve a road for the maintenance of which it is responsible or to construct a new road that authority may acquire by agreement or compulsorily any land within two hundred and twenty yards from the middle of, and on either side of, that road. The Middlesex County Council, since 1925, has had similar powers to those for which this Bill asks. Section 44 of their Act of 1925 reads as follows: The council with the consent of the Ministry of Transport may by agreement acquire any land which they may require in connection with or in consequence of any road improvement and which is situate on either side and within 220 yards from the middle of any road in the county which for the time being is a main road within the meaning of the Local Government Act, 1888, or is certified as an arterial road by the Minister of Transport. Provision is also made in that Act that, if they cannot acquire such land by agreement, they may apply to the Development Commissioners for an Order, and they have also this further significant power, that all lands so acquired may be retained, held and used for such time and for such purpose as the council thinks fit. I do not know of any other local authority in the country which possesses similar powers to those of the Middlesex County Council. I understand that, although the Middlesex County Council has from time to time found these powers highly useful, it could have made even greater use of them than it has. I have no doubt that in years to come the opportunities of the Middlesex County Council for developing their area will he greater than ever, and the need for the utilisation of these powers will become more and more important.

For over 50 years there has always been doubt as to how far the powers of local authorities went in the matter of acquiring land for the construction of roads and for road improvements. Section 154 of the Public Health Act, 1875, enabled them to purchase premises for the purpose of widening, opening, enlarging, or otherwise improving any street or, with the consent of the Minister, for the purpose of making a new street. For many years the Ministry has in practice allowed lands to be acquired which would abut on the widened streets, although not necessary for the widening itself, but the correctness of their practice in this matter used to be challenged, and Section 83 of the Public Health Act, 1925, was inserted in order to make the law clear upon the matter.

This Section specified that land and premises would henceforth be acquired if they were needed for the improvement and development of frontages of the lands abutting on or adjacent to any street. This definition, while resolving the doubts which had previously cropped up, certainly does not go quite far enough. The word "adjacent" errs on the vague side. It is entirely a relative term. Leeds, for instance, is adjacent to Bradford, but the centre of Bradford is 9 miles away from the centre of Leeds. A court could perhaps hold that land 100 yards away from a projected highway was not adjacent. Even a less distance might be so held, notwithstanding the moral certainty that, a great deal further away than that, land would be rising in value as the result of the projected improvement. My Bill provides that the law shall be made clear on these knotty points. When fully used it will, in process of time, promise the certainty of substantial income to the ratepayers and be a means of bringing down the rate charges. It will also be of very vast importance to town planning and town planning committees.

Mr. ALPASS

I beg to second the Motion.

I believe this to be a very useful, necessary and beneficial Measure as far as it goes. Naturally, as one who has been associated with the Labour and Socialist movement a good many years, I should like to see the transfer of all land from private to public control but that, perhaps, is not within early materialisation. To me the principle of the Bill, the securing to the community of the greater part, if not the whole, of the increased value which the expenditure of public money has caused, is an extremely important principle and I think the benefits and the necessity of the Measure are fairly obvious. Local authorities are continuously spending money in improving their highways and constructing new ones and it is a common experience, especially when this is done by county authorities, that land through which a new road is made often has very small and only agricultural value attached to it before the improvement is completed, but immediately afterwards it seems to rise in value, and I have known it rise ten or more times the original amount.

There is a great moral claim that can be advanced on the part of the community that this increased value should be used in the public interest and not be exploited by private owners of landed property. I represent a city which has spent a great deal of public money in making new roads and now has further schemes under consideration. It is felt by a very large number of those whom I represent, and by the citizens generally, that it would be a very wise provision if the City had power, when making these new roads, to acquire a fairly big stretch of land on either side of them so that when future development comes to take place the City should be able to secure for the ratepayers the full increased value of the land. In order to confirm that view, I wrote to the town clerk of Bristol this week and asked his opinion of the Bill. He referred to what has been done in certain instances and makes this very direct reference to the question that we are discussing. Any Bill which would facilitate the purpose of frontage land upon the construction of a new or widened highway would be most beneficial to local authorities. I think that view will be confirmed by everyone who looks at the question from an impartial, unbiased and public point of view. I have been associated for some time with the Gloucestershire County Council, and we have seen what I have referred to take place there. We spent very large sums of money on our main class A trunk roads. I have witnessed the land adjoining those roads soar in value from somewhere in the neighbourhood of £30 to over £300 an acre.

There is another aspect of the Bill that commends itself to me. Local authorities, in carrying out their increasingly important civic duties, are confronted with the difficulty of finding the necessary funds. I regard this as a new source of revenue for that purpose which is very sadly needed. It will enable people who are engaged in business to be relieved of what is sometimes a burden in the way of rates, because the money for carrying out the necessary public administration can be derived from the source of revenue indicated in the Bill. I hope it will have a favourable reception and that the Minister will he able to spare some little time in order that it may be carried to completion, because I believe it will enable very great progress to be made by local authorities in developing social services.

Mr. C. WILLIAMS

This Bill is so hopelessly bad that it is very difficult to conceive that even the hon. Members who have their names down to it should be so deficient of knowledge as to propose it. It is an amazingly bad Bill. Everyone in the House must sympathise enormously with the Minister of Transport, who has been dragged out of his office to listen to the collection of sentences that we have just heard. He could not by any conceivable stretch of imagination accept a Bill of this kind. There is hardly any necessity for him even to get up and say it is thoroughly bad. I was amused to hear the hon. Member who has just spoken say that anyone who looks at it from an impartial and unbiased point of view would accept it.

Let us take one or two points from the Bill and from the speeches that have been made. The mover apparently could only find one instance throughout the length and breadth of the world where a similar provision was in operation, and that is under the Middlesex County Council. Rules and regulations of this kind vary in different parts of the world. Apparently, the Middlesex County Council, by some obscure backstairs means, has been able to get in these rules and regulations.

Mr. PALIN

That is a reflection on the Standing Orders of this House. The Middlesex County Council got their powers from this House, and surely that statement is a reflection upon this House.

Mr. WILLIAMS

I think that every hon. Member who knows me realises that I would never reflect upon the powers of the House. I said "some obscure backstairs means," which is a perfectly legitimate and ordinary Parliamentary expression. They were extraordinarily lucky in getting it through without very much notice being taken of it.

Mr. EDE

On Tuesday of last week the hon. and gallant Member for Oxford (Captain Bourne) moved the rejection of the Surrey County Council Bill which contained this very Clause,—Clause I of this Bill—and he had not the pluck to go to a Division, although he drew the attention of the House to the wording of the Clause.

Mr. WILLIAMS

That is another case which the hon. Gentleman has brought up. I gather that there is another Bill going through with another somewhat similar Clause. Is that what the hon. Gentleman means?

Mr. EDE

It passed a Second Reading.

Mr. WILLIAMS

I did not take any part in that debate. I did not on that occasion interfere in any way, because—I think I am right in saying it—that Bill will go to a committee in which this grossly irregular practice will, possibly, be ruled out, in which case that Bill will not be so bad. I come back to the Middlesex question which the hon. Gentleman has said is an example. He said that they did not make very much use of it and that he hoped that in the course of 20 years they would make more use of it. What is the good of having a Bill which may conceivably be necessary in 20 years' time. Surely, at the present time there is sufficient congestion of legislation in this House without having to pass this Bill which conceivably in an area close to London may be useful in 20 years' time. I do not wish to stand between the House and the Minister, but I wish to contest the first Clause of the Bill, which the hon. Gentleman has brought in, and which, he said, was the operative Clause of the Bill. I do not deny that that is probably the Clause in which you get in the main the whole principle of the Bill. Take the question of 220 yards from the middle of the road on either side. That means that on practically every high road in Great Britain local authorities can obtain 440 yards, 220 yards on each side. Therefore, for half a mile strips going right across the country in every direction almost can be taken.

Mr. EDE

440 yards is only a quarter of a mile.

Mr. WILLIAMS

Did I not say a quarter of a mile?

Mr. EDE

No, you said half-a-mile.

1.0. p.m.

Mr. WILLIAMS

I beg the hon. Gentleman's pardon, and I am very glad of his interruption. It is only a quarter-of-a-mile, but the Clause may be amended is Committee to make it half-a-mile. I say that a quarter of a mile is too much to allow on every road in Great Britain. Think of the colossal loans the local authorities will have to obtain before they can put this proposal into operation. [An HON. MEMBER: "They can obtain rent for it."] As far as my experience goes, when local authorities acquire land, the amount of rent they get is very little in proportion to the amount which they spend upon it, and it generally means the pouring out of ratepayers' money which might be put to a more productive use. Although they may get something in return in the way of rents, the luckless ratepayer has to find more money to make up deficiencies which occur under those Acts which enable the local authorities to acquire land. In taking this land, it may be possible that you may be cutting through farms all over the country, in many cases taking out the farm buildings which are close to the sides of the road, taking out great strips of farms all the way along the roadside, just at a. time when we ought to do everything possible to encourage the farmer and, in fact, all our industries near the roadside.

It is necessary in days such as these to have your factories fairly close, in fact very close, to many of the roads, and it is necessary that a factory should have absolute certainty of tenure, which can only be obtained by means of the ownership of the land. I do not for a minute want to see factories erected in such a way that they will endanger the road. I think—and I have always supported the idea—that you should keep buildings well back from the centre of the road and give the road a change of being wide and really efficient for the means of transport, but for goodness sake do not go back 220 yards on either side or compel some luckless persons to take this land off the hands of the local authority. Whatever else you may do in this respect, I hope you are not going to set up a system—which I believe would happen under this Bill—in which thousands of farmers throughout the country will be half tenants of a county council and half tenants of private owners.

When I rose I said that this Bill was anything but a sensible Bill, but, the more I look into it and think about it, the more I see the complications which are inevitably bound to arise under it. Nothing is more hopeful for the speedy end of the Bill than the fact that it is so funny that even the Minister of Transport is almost in convulsions about it at the present moment. I have no doubt that he will, in due course, come forward and riddle the Bill from end to end, and will say that, whatever the hon. Gentleman who proposed the Bill said in a sentimental way about public sowing and private reaping—a phrase which he repeated one or twice at least—

Mr. PALIN

The phrase was not really a bad one. It was quite equal to the hon. Gentleman himself.

Mr. WILLIAMS

It was not quoted as coming from me. If he had quoted anything that had come from me, I agree that it would have been a good phrase. The hon. Member really ought, in bringing forward a Bill of this kind, which is going to revolutionise the country if it is passed, to have brought forward some substantial facts in its favour. I did not want him to come here armed with piles of blue books or with a whole series of theoretical pictures such as we might expect from the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George), but I want some practical details why this Bill is necessary either now or at any time. Unless we have such details, he is not even entitled to receive a Second Reading of his Bill.

There are two other points which I should like to make with regard to Clause 1. The hon. Gentleman said nothing whatever about what it is proposed to do with the land when it has been acquired. You give local authorities the power to acquire land, but you do not tell us, or you do not know or may not have thought about it, what the local authorities are going to do with 220 yards of land on either side of the roads which run, for instance, through some of the great moorland districts of the country. I suppose you would just leave it as it is.

Notice taken that 40 Members were not present; House counted, and 40 Members not being present—

The House was adjourned at Eight Minutes after One of the Clock, until Monday, 2nd March.