§ (1) Where—
- (a) any person is entitled as working lessee under two or more leases to any coal or mines of coal; and
- (b) the Coal Commission grant to him or to another person for his benefit, in substituation for the existing leases, a single lease of coal or mines of coal comprised therein (whether or not the single lease comprises also property not comprised in the existing leases, or does not comprise all the property comprised in some of those leases);
the stamp duty on the single lease shall be reduced by such amount as appears to the Commissioners of Inland Revenue to be just, having regard to the duty paid on the existing leases and to the length of the terms thereunder unexpired, and the rights of the working lessee thereunder, at the date when the term under the single lease takes effect
Provided that no lease which is unstamped or which would, apart from this section, be insufficiently stamped, shall be deemed by 1523 virtue of this section to be duly stamped unless it has in accordance with the provisions of Section twelve of the Stamp Act, 1891, been stamped with a particular stamp denoting that it is not chargeable with any duty or that it is duly stamped, as the case may be.
(2) In his section the expression "working lessee" means a person carrying on the business of coal mining who is entitled to work coal, or to use for coal mining purposes a mine of coal, under a coal mining lease held by him or by another for his benefit.—[Major Lloyd George.]
§ Brought up, and read the First and Second time, and added to the Bill.