§ " To modify the rights and liabilities of landlords, tenants and other persons interested in land damaged by war," presented, pursuant to the Order of the House this day, by the Attorney-General; and ordered to be printed. [Bill 242.]
§ 9.37 p.m.
§ The Attorney-GeneralI beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."
I think my exposition of this Measure can be brief, because it carries out in all essentials the recommendations of the Committee which was presided over by Mr. Andrews Uthwatt, and has been called the Uthwatt Committee. Their recommendations have been studied by those interested in this subject, and I think they have met with general approval. There are only one or two quite minor differences between the recommendations of the Committee and these proposals, and those differences were referred to the Uthwatt Committee and were approved. The problem dealt with by the Bill arises out of the fact that war damage being uncertain in its incidence and its extent is uninsurable in the insurance market. Under leases the obligation to repair war damage might, but for the provisions of this Bill, be imposed on the tenant or the landlord according to which party is liable to repair the structure. Clause 1, following out the main recommendations of the Uthwatt Committee, takes war damage out of the obligations under the lease, whether of lessor or lessee, imposing on the tenant, where he would be the person liable to repair the damage, an obligation to give notice to the landlord and to permit access. That is the main provision—to relieve either party under a lease who would otherwise be liable from the obligation to repair the war damage.
The Bill goes on to provide that if war damage renders premises unfit, certain notices may be given with consequences which I will briefly enumerate. The tenant may serve a notice of disclaimer or a notice of retention under Clause 4. If he does neither, the landlord may call 189 upon him to elect as to which course he desires to pursue. If and when a notice of disclaimer is accepted by the landlord and is declared valid, it amounts to a surrender of the lease and the tenant will be no more concerned; but if the tenant serves a notice of retention, that means he undertakes the repair of the war damage to render the premises fit, and that he is relieved from the payment of rent wholly or in part during the period when the premises are unfit and only as long as they remain wholly unfit. The landlord upon whom a notice of disclaimer has been served may serve a notice to avoid a disclaimer. This means that he undertakes to shoulder the obligation to render the premises fit as soon as practicable. That keeps the lease alive, but means that the tenant is relieved of the liability to pay rent during the period when the premises are unfit and before the landlord has rendered them fit again.
§ Mr. Pethick-LawrenceSuppose that under the lease the tenant is not obliged to repair any damage at all and it is entirely the landlord's duty. Do we understand that in the case of war damage, if the tenant desires to continue to retain the premises, it is for the tenant to repair the damage even though the landlord would do so in normal circumstances?
§ The Attorney-GeneralNo, that will not be so. These questions of disclaimer or retention arise when the tenant is prima facie liable. The point which the right hon. Gentleman is putting is that the tenant would not be forced, if the lease were to continue, to undertake the repair of the premises. Then there are provisions for taking to court the question whether the land has been rendered unfit by reason of war damage. That is obviously right. There are provisions for dealing with the obviously complicated case where there are sub-lessees. In some cases there may be a head lease and more than one sub-lease. Each sub-lessee will have the right to serve his notice on his landlord and the latter on his landlord again, finally the head lessee having the right to serve a notice himself. If all these notices coincide and all these tenants want to do the same thing, no difficulty will arise, but you may have the head lessee wanting to disclaim and a sub-lessee who wants to retain. If so, there are pro- 190 visions under which that matter can be taken to the Court. If the court thinks it reasonable in the circumstances, the sub-lessee will be allowed to retain his interest. There are provisions also for protecting specific claims. If the specific claimant is a sub-lessee a disclaimer by a head lessee does not automatically affect his position. There are provisions for notice being given to assignees, mortgagees and so on.
Then there are certain minor consequential matters. Clause 3, for example, deals with the case of settled land; Clause 12 allows the matter to be reopened after further war damage occurs; Clause 13 excepts ground lessees from the operation of the Act, unless the court otherwise orders; Clause 15 deals with multiple leases—that is, leases which cover more than one tenement; Clause 18 enables restrictive covenants to be dealt with; Clauses 17 and 19 relate to agricultural and mining leases; Clause 23 applies to the jurisdiction of the county courts; and Clause 24 is the Interpretation Clause. As I said before, the Bill is based on the lucid findings of the Committee, whose recommendations met with very general approval.
§ 9.47 p.m.
§ Mr. Lees-SmithIt has been quite impossible for any really close examination of this Bill to be made by my hon. Friends, but one or two of those who have some acquaintance with the subject have gone into it, and we think we can safely allow it to pass, and, indeed, that we need not occupy a great deal of time in discussing it. But it appears to raise one important question. I gather that in the case of a lease which imposes liability to do repairs, this Bill now says that if the damage is war damage the liability will not be incurred. After all, this loss is going to be incurred by someone sooner or later. This Bill raises the question, what is the intention of the Government with regard to losses of this character? It would be desirable, that, before we leave this Bill, the Attorney-General should tell us whether he is in a position to let us know what steps the Government have in mind for dealing with this whole question of damage to property as a result of war.
§ Mr. PriceI understood the Attorney-General to say that agricultural land is, 191 prima facie, excluded under this Bill. Am I to understand that to mean that damage to farm buildings would be excluded too?
§ The Attorney-GeneralNo, I went on to say," except in respect of buildings."
§ Mr. FootThere is one point on which I would like the Attorney-General to give us more information. It relates to Clause 20. It is quite a small point, but the whole machinery of this Bill, as I understand, depends on the service of notices. It is provided here that it is a good notice if it is sent from the landlord himself, but it is also an equally good notice if it is left at his last known place of abode, or if it is sent to his last address. In the circumstances which we are envisaging that is liable to raise some difficulty. A vast number of people will leave their normal addresses. They may, in some cases, have to leave their homes for long periods. Their houses may be empty; they may have been completely evacuated. It seems rather strange in these circumstances that it should be sufficient simply to leave the notice at a house which may be completely empty. I do not see why the more normal procedure should not have been followed in this case of seeing, when you want to serve a writ, that you serve it on the man personally, or else get an order for substitution of service, the court itself deciding whether it is reasonable to leave it at the man's last address. Difficulties must arise in the circumstances which we are likely to encounter in the near future. Under the Bill the tenant serves the landlord with notice of distraint, and then the landlord has a month within which he can go to the court and say that, after all, the property has not been made unfit and therefore the tenant is not entitled to distraint. You may have a landlord who may be completely unaware, because he will not receive the notice, and we ought to have some explanation as to the reason why Clause 20 has been drafted in this form.
§ 9.52 p.m.
§ Sir Ralph GlynI would like the Attorney-General to give an answer on two points upon which I am not clear. He stated that only buildings relating to agricultural land will be covered by 192 this Bill. There is the question of reservoirs, land drainage schemes, culverts and water. If these are damaged, I assume that they would be covered although they could not be put into the category of a building. If a reservoir was damaged it might have a very adverse effect on the management of property. This Bill is called "War Damage," but I do not see any explanation of what war damage is to be. I assume that, if an aero-plane of our own crashed and caused damage, such position would be covered?
§ 9.53 p.m.
§ Mr. BellengerI want to ask a question, for it is obvious that we cannot do more than ask questions on these Bills. It arises out of the point which was made by the right hon. Gentleman as to the intention of the Government with regard to compensation or methods of compensation for war damage. I happen to know of a case where a freeholder has already written to a leaseholder and asked him what provision he is making for insurance against damage arising out of war. I take it that that will be covered by the terms of the lease under which the leaseholder holds. As most leases provide only for fire insurance and not for war damage, I take it that the lessee is not under any obligation at the present moment, unless his lease specifies it, to insure the property against war damage. Perhaps the Attorney-General can elucidate that point.
§ 9.54 p.m.
§ The Attorney-GeneralThe right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Edinburgh (Mr. Pethick-Lawrence) asked a question in the course of my exposition, and I think I gave him an incorrect answer. The provisions as to disclaimer and detention are general and do not depend upon the liability being upon one party or the other. If the landlord is under a liability to repair war damage, and the place is rendered unfit for habitation, then, if the tenant desires to reclaim, he can only reclaim on the basis of making himself liable. That only arises when the premises have been made completely unfit by war damage.
§ Mr. Pethick-LawrenceIt seems to me to be grossly unfair that if the tenant is prepared to go on paying rent, even after the property has been damaged, the obligation should be put upon him of putting the property into repair again.
§ The Attorney-GeneralHe would not be liable for the rent, in our view. The point is that under the Bill the tenant is given the right to disclaim, and therefore, to get out of the liability to pay any further rent. In many cases, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, the landlord is under no obligation to repair, neither is the tenant and the tenant cannot get out of his obligation to pay rent because of the failure of the landlord to do repairs. All that he can do is to sue for damages. If the premises are rendered completely unfit, then the tenant is given the opportunity to get out of his lease and any further liability to pay rent. There is, of course, nothing to prevent landlord and tenant coming to any agreement which they like. If, however, the tenant desires, although it would seem extremely unlikely, to retain the lease of an unfit house, under which he had no obligation to keep the property in repair, then he must take upon himself the liability to repair the war damage.
§ Mr. Pethick-LawrenceLet me put a case. Suppose there is a considerable block of premises and that in one small part of those premises war damage is done, not to any immense amount which renders the whole of the premises unsuitable but which renders only part of them unsuitable. The tenant in these circumstances might not wish to abandon the lease covering the whole of the premises, but he might be prepared to go on, even though one part may have been rendered unsuitable. Surely, it is grossly unfair in those circumstances to say that if the tenant is to go on with his lease, and nine-tenths of the premises which it covers are undamaged, he must bear the whole of the cost of repairing the war damage. It may be that he has only two more years of his lease to run. It seems to me grossly unfair to make him pay the additional burden.
§ The Attorney-GeneralI agree, but that might not be so. In the case which the right hon. Gentleman has put, where part only of the premises is damaged, there are two possible positions and whichever was the position the tenant would be protected. If the premises were single premises, used by a single tenant, then the premises would not be unfit because part only of them was destroyed. That is clear in the definition. If the premises could be properly regarded as covering more 194 than one tenancy, then there is an expressed provision in Clause 15 for enabling the tenant to retain the lease in respect of the premises which have not been damaged.
The right hon. Member for Keighley (Mr. Lees-Smith) asked me whether I was in a position to make a statement on the general question of war damage. I am not in a position to make any such statement. The question of war damage goes far wider than this Bill, which deals with landlord and tenant and houses subject to leases. We have houses of all kinds which are not subject to leases at all but which are equally liable to war damage. The hon. Member for Dundee (Mr. Foot) dealt with Clause 20, which in fact follows the precedents of the Housing Acts which have been approved by this House and have been proved to work. He says, and I quite agree with him, that war might lead to more departures than take place in times of peace, and I will certainly look into the point. So far as notice is concerned, it is unlikely that a landlord will not be in touch with his tenant for the purpose of collecting rent and, therefore, the landlord is unlikely to disappear completely into the blue. It seems to me that notice served on the agent of a landlord would in ordinary circumstances be notice served on the landlord, but I will look into the point he made, and if it is right and reasonable to extend the provision as to notice on the lines suggested by the hon. Member, I will give an undertaking that the point will be considered.
My hon. Friend the Member for Abingdon (Sir R. Glyn) dealt with reservoirs. I do not know whether reservoirs are subjected to leases; it is a point which certainly had not occurred to me, but I will look into the matter and see whether the provisions of the Bill with regard to agricultural land in Clause 19 cover reservoirs where they are the subject of leases. My hon. Friend also said that war damage is not defined. That is so.
§ The Attorney-GeneralYes, the hon. Member is correct. It defines war damage as meaning:
damage caused by, or in repelling, enemy action, or by measures taken to avoid the spreading of the consequences of damage caused by, or in repelling, enemy action.195 Those are rather general words, and if any detailed point arises I can at least safeguard myself by saying that the detailed point is not defined. I have not a note of the point raised by the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Bellenger).
§ Mr. BellengerMy point was that, in the absence of any Government scheme for insurance, I have known an instance where a freeholder has asked the leaseholder to insure his property against war damage. My assumption was that, unless the lease specifies that the leaseholder is responsible for that, he is not bound to insure the property.
§ The Attorney-GeneralThat is quite right. If you cannot insure, obviously you cannot carry out an obligation which purports to put on you a liability which cannot be carried out.
§ Question, "That the Bill be now read a Second time," put, and agreed to.
§ Bill read a Second time; considered in Committee, and reported, without Amendment; ((King's Consent signified) read the Third time, and passed.