HC Deb 16 May 1933 vol 278 cc216-25

4.18 p.m.

Sir FRANCIS FREMANTLE

I beg to move, in page 17, line 1, column 1, after "1920," to insert the words "as re-enacted by Section four of the Act of 1923."

This is only a matter of the clarification of the Bill, so that when it becomes an Act people may be able to refer to it. It is a masterpiece of legal hiding of the provisions of an Act. On the Second Schedule, we have been asked to make some amendment to Sub-section (7) of Section 5 of the Act of 1920. I referred to Section 5 of the Act of 1920, and I found that there is no Sub-section (7). Therefore, anybody who referred to this Bill when it becomes an Act, and were to go to the Library of the House of Commons or anywhere else, and then to the Act of 1920, he would be unable to find Sub-section (7) or to know what we were dealing with. I put this point to a certain gentleman concerned with the drafting of the Bill, and I said: "They have made a blot." He said: "Not a bit of it." He pointed out to me how, in the Act of 1923, Section 4 says: The following section shall be substituted for Section five of the principal Act. If we look at the substituted Section we find that Sub-section (7) had been added to it. Therefore, we have to know the whole of the contents in detail of each of these Acts, and then know that when this Bill says "Section 5 of the Act of 1920," it does not mean Section 5 of the Act of 3920 as it appears in the Library of the House of Commons, but that Section which has been substituted in a later Act. I am asking for pity for the poor lawyers who make their hard-earned money out of these Bills. I should not like them to be similarly bewildered and delayed in their proceedings. They are not always as quick as possible, and they would not be able to find their way. One of them said: "As a matter of fact the lawyers do not refer to the original Bill. They refer to a 3s. 6d. manual on the subject." Are we to depend for the law of England upon a 3s. 6d. manual? I think it is most demeaning- If, as I am told, this is the ordinary procedure in the draftsmanship of Bills, I can only suggest that those who draft Government Bills should go to school again, or should take a research course, in order to study how Bills should be drafted, and that they should adopt a nomenclature and a terminology that will be understanded of the ordinary people. I am proposing that ordinary explanatory words should be put in after the words "Section 20."

4.22 p.m.

Major LLEWELLIN

I was not, in practice, in the same plight as my hon. Friend the Member for St. Albans (Sir F. Fremantle), because I had the book to which he referred, but I notice that it cost 6s. 6d. and not 3s. 6d. If the simple words that he proposes were added to the Bill, they would make the Bill far clearer. I am speaking not merely on behalf of the legal profession, but on behalf also of those laymen who try to see their way round these Rent Restrictions Acts, as many of them have to do. I see no harm in adding these few words, and I hope that the Minister will see his way to concede this small Amendment.

4.24 p.m.

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of HEALTH (Mr. Shakespeare)

I am glad that the hon. Member for St. Albans (Sir F. Fremantle) has been making an attempt to simplify the Anglo-Saxon of the Bill. I hope that he will also make an attempt in another direction, by persuading the medical profession to write out their prescriptions in English. I am not so sure that the position has been clarified by the method which he has adopted. It is not necessary to buy a 3s. 6d. text-book; one has only to consult the Act of Parliament, and wherever you find reference to Section 5 of the Act of 1920, provision is made that for that Section is substituted Section 4 of the Act of 1923.

Major LLEWELLIN

Does the hon. Gentleman say that if one looks at the Statutes printed in 1920, one will find that reference?

Mr. SHAKESPEARE

I presume that if one is going into the subject of rent restrictions one does not confine oneself to one Statute. One must be up-to-date and see the whole law as it is to-day. The Amendment does not raise a big point, except that this is the usual method of drafting. Sub-section (3) of Section 13 of the Bill makes it perfectly plain in the simplest language, simpler than I could state it in words. I will read it. It is on page 13 of the Bill, and is as follows: References in this Act to the principal Acts or to any of them or to any provision of those Acts or of any of them shall, unless the context otherwise requires, be construed as references to those Acts, that Act or that provision, as the case may be, as amended by any subsequent enactment including this Act. That ought to be plain. If we are to adopt the method suggested by the hon. and gallant Member we shall have to go through this Bill, and wherever a Clause has been altered we shall have to make a special cross-reference, and confusion will be worse confounded. On the new Clause, where the Minister has to add to the Bill provisions about the half-crown recoverable rent in respect of agricultural cottages, reference is made to Section 5 of the Act of 1920. You would have to insert a reference at the side in this form: Section 5 of the Act of 1920, which was substituted for the original Section by Section 4 of the Act of 1923, as amended by Section 1 of the Prevention of Eviction Act of 1924, and as further amended by Section 3 of, and the First Schedule to, this Act. Life is complicated enough as it is, but it would be intolerable if we had to make all those references. What is more, I can assure my hon. Friend, that whilst this Clause is correctly drafted, his Amendment is not correctly drafted, because the Act of 1923 has Since been amended by the Act of 1924.

Sir F. FREMANTLE

Section 2 of this Bill begins: Subject as hereinafter provided, Section two of the Act of 1923 (which provides for the exclusion of dwelling-houses from the application of the principal Act in certain cases). Is not that a matter of explanation which, in his words, "leaves confusion worse confounded"?Why should an explanation not be given in this case?

Mr. JANNER

Would the hon. Gentleman give the House an assurance that when this Bill becomes an Act he will take into consideration the difficulties that exist at the present time, and that he will bring the matter before the consolidating committee in order that we may have a consolidation act of all the Acts relating to rent restriction?

4.28 p.m.

Sir W. DAVISON

I was not at all convInced by the speech of the Parliamentary Secretary. He suggested that this was the usual method of drafting. Acts of Parliament are meant for the information of the public as to what is the law, and, even if this is the usual method of drafting, the Amendment, if it does not make the matter absolutely clear, it makes it a little bit clearer. It gives notice that you have to refer to the Act of 1923. An ordinary person reading this BUI. says, "Oh, Sub-section (7) of Sec- tion 5 of the Act of 1920,"and the first thing he does is to go to the library and to look at the Act of 920. He may not have a textbook. Lawyers sometimes think they know better about the law than the writer of a textbook who is often a person junior to themselves at the Bar. If these words are not sufficient let us have any further words in order that anyone who is reading this Schedule may know exactly what it is to which he has to turn. Surely, the law is for the information of the ordinary members of the public, and I cannot understand why the usual method of drafting in the past should be followed in the future when it is obscure. I appeal to the Government to accept this Amendment, even though it may be a breach of some of the traditions of drafting. I think that all legislation by reference is deplorable, and not at all in the interests -of the general public, and, when attention is drawn to something which is extraordinarily misleading, the Government are acting in a peculiar way if they refuse, because these obscurities have obtained in the past, to deal with them in the present circumstances.

Amendment negatived.

4.32 p.m.

Major LLEWELLIN

I beg to move, in page 17, to leave out lines 24 to 30.

Consequential upon this Amendment, if the House see fit to adopt it, will be a later Amendment of mine to the Third Schedule—in page 18, line 8, column 3, to leave out from the word "provisos" to the end of line 16. The Bill as drafted seeks to repeal a provision which for 13 years has given security to a large number of occupiers of small houses in this country against excessive rating and against differentiation in rating. Perhaps I may be allowed to direct the attention of the House to what is contained in Sub-section (9) of Section 12 of the Act of 1920. That Sub-section provided that, in the case of houses which were erected after, or in course of erection on, the 2nd April, 1919, if such a house formed part of a housing scheme under the Act of 1919. the greatest value of the house for rating purposes was not to exceed the rent actually charged by the local authority; and, in the case of any other house built after April, 1919, the greatest value for rating purposes was not to exceed the rent charged by the local authority for a similar house built by them.

These provisions give a certain amount of security to the occupiers of these small houses, and I would ask the Minister why it is sought to make this change, and why is it sought to make it for England only? If the Government's Bill goes through as it is, the small occupiers of such houses in Scotland will still have the same protection which they have always had, but those who live in England will be denied that protection. There may be, in a number of cases, an actual raising of the assessments of these small houses, and the effect of the words which the Government have put into the Bill here will be to take out that part of Sub-section (&) of Section 12 of the Act of 1920 which says that the gross rateable value shall not exceed a certain figure.

I know that an anomaly was introduced into the rating law by the Act of 1920, and that the Central Valuation Committee have drawn attention to the existence of this anomaly. If the anomaly exists in a large number of cases, then the House and those who support the Government should know what they are doing. What they are doing is to alter the law so that a large number of assessments may be increased, and we shall be faced with the same position in which we were at the time of the Election of 1929, that is to say, that immediately a large number of increased assessments will be served on occupiers in the area. If, on the other hand, it is not a big anomaly, why make any alteration at all? In my view, at any rate, the anomaly is not a bad one, and I think the matter should remain as it is for two reasons. In the first place, it gives a certain amount of security to the man who builds a new house, because he knows that his rating assessment cannot be larger than the amount for which the house will let. He knows what his outgoings will be, and, if he takes advantage of the new Government scheme of building houses through the building societies for owner-occupiers, it is a very good thing that he should know that, if he occupies one of these houses of about the same size as a council house in the neighbourhood, his assessment will correspond with the rents of those council houses. In the second place, the second part of Sub-section (9) of Section 12 of the Act of 1920, which the Government are now seeking to repeal, ensures that privately-owned and privately-built houses in the area shall be assessed at the same rates as council houses in the area.

With regard to new houses, I think that these provisions are good and should remain, now that local councils are very largely the builders and owners of houses themselves. One has to remember that the actual rating authority which does the assessment is a Committee of the Council, who are large property owners in the area, and it is just as well that there should be in our Statutes a provision which will not allow of any differentiation of rating as between council houses and other houses. Indeed, if this provision is altered, even such councils may find the assessments of their own houses put up, because we now have the County Valuation Committee, who can come in with any proposal that they like. It seems to me that the House of Commons would be well advised to leave the law as it is with respect to these small assessment\s, because they all relate to houses to which the Rent Restrictions Acts would have applied had they been erected before April, 1919—that is to say, to leave them on the simple basis of rent, so that the: occupiers of such houses will have no difficulty if they want to contest their assessment. They will know that, if they are assessed at a figure not higher than the rent which they pay, that is a fair assessment, and they will not have to go into all the questions of whether they are assessed higher or lower than their neighbours; and one knows that people of that sort cannot afford to go beyond the Assessment Committee if it comes to a question of appealing against their rate assessment. I would ask the Government, therefore, to consider the matter very thoroughly before they insist upon leaving these words in the Schedule. The effect, as I have said, can only be to raise assessments—it cannot be in any case to lower them—on small houses within this class, and to that I, at any rate, am opposed, because I think that the matter should be simple and certain, and that there should be no differentiation between privately built houses and council houses in the area. For these reasons I hope that the Government, even if they are not able to accept these two Amendments here and now, will at any rate promise to give them full consideration before the Bill goes to another place, and I hope that, as a result of that consideration, they will decide to leave matters where they are, and not to let the Ministry butt in as it unfortunately did before the 1929 Election, with such grave results to a large number of us.

4.42 p.m.

Sir F. FREMANTLE

I beg to second the Amendment.

I desire to put this matter broadly on the general question of policy. Unquestionably, local authorities may have in certain cases from time to time to raise their assessments, and I am afraid that certain local authorities who wish to exalt their own houses at the expense of private enterprise, and who object to private enterprise, may increase the assessment on similar houses which have been erected by private enterprise. I may not understand the point rightly, but, if so, no doubt the Solicitor-General will explain it. As it appears to me at the moment, however, it looks as though the provision in the Act of 1920, which was inserted in order to see that these tenants are equally treated on the same lines, whether they are in council houses or in private enterprise houses, is going to be done away with, and local authorities will have power arbitrarily, according to their own desires, to raise the assessments of one kind of houses as against the other. The provision in question has been useful and satisfactory, and I do not think it should be done away with.

4.44 p.m.

The SOLICITOR-GENERAL (Sir Boyd Merriman)

This is a rather complicated technical point, and I think that the simplest way to explain the necessity for the proposed Amendment of the Act of 1920 is to remind the House of the reasons why the words which it is now proposed to omit were inserted in that Act. I think it is fair to say that it was assumed, at the time when the Act of 1920 was passed, that it was impossible for rating authorities to assess controlled houses at a greater annual value than the controlled rent, and on that assumption Parliament naturally thought that, where there would be side by side controlled houses and newly built houses which were not controlled, but which, except for the difference in respect of control, were to all intents and pur- poses the same class of property, it was unreasonable that the rating authority should put a higher assessment on the one class than on the other. Therefore, this provision was inserted, which, in effect, made the local authority's housing estate the test of what the rateable value should be.

The idea was to produce uniformity of assessment. That was the basis upon which the thing was clone. But it was decided a year or two later the House of Lords that an assessment committee was not in the least bound by the top limit of a controlled rent in assessing the annual value of property, and that in the case of controlled property, as in the case of decontrolled, they could find out for themselves what was the value which the hypothetical tenant would be prepared to pay, unlimited by the controlled rent. So that really was the whole basis on which this Clause was inserted in the 1920 Act. The Marley Committee recommended that it should be taken out, and the Central Valuation Committee have recommended that it should be taken out in the interest of getting the very uniformity which it was origiNaily put in to attain. In these circumstances the Government think that it would be right to follow the recommendations of the Committee. I do not say this is impossible that it may result in the raising of assessment. It is impossible to deny that. All I can say is that that is a matter of pure speculation and guesswork. Theoretically there is no reason why it should result in the raising of assessment. But it certainly will result in greater uniformity, and that was the object origiNaily aimed at by the words that it is now proposed to take out.

Amendment negatived.

Mr. SHAKESPEARE

I beg to move, in page 17, line 30, column 2, at the end, to insert the words: Section 18 of the Act of 1923.—In Subsection (2) there shall be substituted, for the reference to paragraph (ii) of Subsection (1) of Section five of the principal Act, a reference to sub-paragraph (ii) of paragraph (g)of the First Schedule to this Act. This is purely a drafting Amendment and requires no explanation. The 1923 Act contains a reference to the notorious Section 5 of the 1920 Act which was repealed, and this Amendment simply corrects that reference and refers it to Clause 3 of this Bill and the Schedule to it.

Sir F. FREMANTLE

I understand that this is a matter of explanation, and we have been told that explanation would make confusion worse confounded. I beg to oppose.

Amendment agreed to.