CLAUSE 25.—(Provisions as to displacements from land acquired for purposes of this Part.) (Hansard, 5 October 1944)

§ The Chairman
The Amendments here appear to fall into two groups. The first, in the name of the hon. and learned Member for North Edinburgh (Mr. Erskine-Hill), and two in the name of the hon. Baronet the Member for Tamworth (Sir J. Mellor) appear to go together. Perhaps with the leave of the Committee they might be discussed together. The two later Amendments also appear to go together.

§ Mr. Erskine-Hill
It might be convenient to take the Sub-sections together because, although two distinct points are raised, the words fit in as amended to the later words of the Amendment and it might be convenient to take the whole lot together.

§ The Chairman
I am in the hands of the Committee.

§ Mr. Erskine-Hill
I beg to move, in page 32, line 14, after "residing," to insert "or carrying on business."
The object of the first Amendment is to allow the small shopkeeper to be replaced in the same way as the residential owner. It is as of much importance to any small trade or business to be replaced within the area from which it is ejected, as it is for any residential owner. Not only that, but it seems to me that the Committee would be failing in its duty if 1275 it did not recognise that, when a small shopkeeper or trader has lost his premises by the action of a local authority carrying out a planning scheme, he ought at least to be in the same sort of position as he is when he has been blitzed out of his property. The small shopkeeper is dependent on his goodwill in the locality in which he lives. It means all the world to him whether he is turned out to find some other place of business or whether, in fact, some niche is found for him in the locality. For that reason I think the Committee ought to consider very carefully whether it would not be advisable to put the duty upon the local authority to find him replacement in the locality as well as look after the residential owner. May I read the Sub-section as it would be with my Amendments? Where the carrying out of redevelopment on land acquired or appropriated by a local planning or highway authority for the purposes of this Part of this Act will involve the displacement of persons residing or carrying on business in premises thereon, it shall be the duty of the authority to secure that suitable alternative accommodation on terms not less favourable than those on which the premises from which displacement is to be effected are held is available for persons to be displaced. The second point I would like to make is that whatever accommodation is offered to the ejected persons, be they residents, or small shopkeepers, or any other interest, it shall be suitable and also on terms not less favourable. If the words remain as they are in the Bill, the local authority will be tempted to try and palm off on somebody accommodation which was not suitable for their purposes or which was on less favourable terms. It might take the view that a residence offered to some small impecunious person was suitable if it was larger and on higher terms. The local authorities should be charged with the duty of seeing that what is offered corresponds approximately and reasonably to the building from which a person has been ejected. Only in that way can we get substantial justice, and I feel sure that the Committee and the Government will see the necessity of giving justice not only to the residential owner but to the small trader. I feel that this is an appeal that will fall on sympathetic ears.

§ Mr. Silkin
In spite of the emotional plea made by my hon. and learned Friend 1276 the Member for North Edinburgh (Mr. Erskine-Hill), which it is difficult to resist, I feel that his series of Amendments would be unworkable. If you pull down a person's home, obviously you must give him another in its place and no compensation will meet the case. He must have a place to live in. Therefore, the obligation has properly been put on the local authority to provide residential accommodation for every family which is displaced. When it comes to businesses, you can, in the first place, meet the case to a certain extent by compensation which, I admit, is not always adequate. You have to consider how the provision of businesses in place of those that are acquired will fit into the plan and into the requirements. I have had considerable experience, which is not quite analogous to this, in slum clearance. We very often have a clearance area where there may be 20 or 25 shops. When you come to rehouse the existing population and want to provide the shops which are necessary for them, you find that possibly not more than half a dozen shops are necessary, and the others just disappear. Many of the shopkeepers have not really earned a proper living, others are not entirely dependent on their shops, and other shops are not desirable in themselves and ought not to be replaced.
Therefore, from a planning point of view, if you want to redevelop the area properly, it would be wrong necessarily to reinstate every shop or business that existed. Naturally, the local authority, wanting to save expenditure, will wish to reinstate as many of the shops and businesses as will be desirable. It will suit the local authority better to do that than to pay compensation. Therefore, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for North Edinburgh may feel satisfied that, in fact, wherever it is thought desirable or necessary that businesses should be reinstated, the local authority does its best to reinstate rather than compensate. I know that what I am saying may leave me open to the suggestion that this closes down a number of hard working and satisfactory businesses, but experience has shown that that is not the case. Very often, if the owner of a business is being compensated, he is only too pleased to go out of business and he has no particular desire to start another. In any case, it would be most unsatisfactory planning 1277 and bad business for the shopkeepers as a whole if every one were reinstated exactly as before. Therefore, I feel that, being satisfied that wherever possible and desirable businesses will be reinstated, and that in other cases they will be compensated, the Committee can safely draw a distinction between the necessity to reinstate residents and the suggestion that all businesses should be reinstated.

§ Sir J. Mellor
I wish to join issue with the hon. Member for Peckham (Mr. Silkin) when he says that it is less important to reinstate people in business than people in homes. I regard it as at least as important. When he sought to dismiss the claims of those who carry on business by saying that they can be compensated, he showed a complete misconception of the motives which actuate the great bulk of small traders. To them a business is something more than merely a source of profit; it is their livelihood and career. It is often a family business which has been handed down to them, and which they intend to pass on to their children. We ought not to dismiss the matter as though they can be adequately dealt with by way of compensation. If there is an interruption to the carrying on of their businesses and accommodation is not provided in advance of their displacement, their goodwill probably vanishes, and the consequences may be disastrous to their livelihood.

§ Mr. Colegate (The Wrekin)
I wish to support the Amendment. The hon. Member for Peckham (Mr. Silkin) has rather glossed over the difficulty which these Amendments are designed to solve. He stated that certain businesses were undesirable and surplus and that 25 shops might be reduced to six. Who is to decide that the businesses are desirable?

§ Mr. Silkin
The planner.

§ Mr. Colegate
I have had recent experience where a serious conflict of interests immediately arises. I have an area in my mind which has been beautifully planned with an excellent shopping centre. The question at once came up, Who is to have the shops? A certain well-known movement plumped for the whole lot, and they got about half of them. The hon. Member for Peckham knows that there are two large groups, one, the Co-operative Society, and the other the multiple shops, and they are 1278 a great source of anxiety and fear to small shops and businesses. They are terrified that in planning the small people will be pushed out by large capitalists, in the form of multiple shops on the one hand, and by large capitalists under the name of the Co-operative Wholesale Society on the other.
7.0 p.m.
To leave the possibility in many areas that small businesses and shopkeepers should lose their livelihood because of the political views of the town-planning authority concerned, will create dismay among those people. Some such provision, if not the actual words, as that outlined by my hon. and gallant Friend, is necessary to meet this case.

§ Mr. Woodburn
The hon. Member has not faced the practical problems raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Peckham (Mr. Silkin). I cannot for the life of me see how this Amendment will be practicable. If the person concerned gets compensation, he has the opportunity of seeking out a suitable place and finding a niche in which he can put himself, after the transfer has taken place. If the Amendment is carried, it will be the duty of the local authority to find him a place, and they will perhaps put him where he does not want to go. The Amendment seems to assume that you have to reproduce in some new spot the conditions that we are trying to replace. Town planning will involve a great improvement. It may remove the whole population upon which a shopkeeper depended, and the last thing he would demand from the local authority would be that they should put him back on the spot where he was, if his population had moved elsewhere. He wants to move with his, population.
Who is to decide where he is to go? Who is to say which trader is to go to any particular shop? The Amendment does not solve these problems but puts an impossible task on the planning authority. All the authority can do is to plan a place and provide the possibilities of development. The people who are dispossessed get compensation, and they must settle in some other way, by their own private enterprise, where every one of them will go. Curiously enough, we seem now on this side of the Committee to be arguing in favour of private enterprise, while my hon. Friend opposite was arguing in favour of public enterprise.

§ Mr. W. S. Morrison
I hope I may be able to assist the Committee to strike a balance in this difficult matter between the two major considerations of what we would desire and what really is practicable. Nobody would argue against the principle put forward by my hon. and learned Friend that we should do everything we can to mitigate hardship in the course of these operations, and in so far as we can mitigate hardship to the small trader we should do so. The question is, What is to be the method of doing it? The Clause lays the duty on the authority of providing accommodation for persons who are displaced from the premises in which they reside—residential premises—and to that obligation my hon. and learned Friend, no doubt with the best and most generous of motives, wishes to tack on the obligation that they should do the same in respect of business premises.
I ask him to pause and reflect, and to ask himself whether the same method of dealing with the two sorts of hardship is applicable. In my judgment it is not. There is a distinction between depriving a man of his house and depriving him of his business. The need, in the case of the house, is very urgent. The man must have a roof over his head. Without it he cannot exist. He cannot go out and search for new avenues of enterprise. He can do nothing. You must secure him a roof. That is one thing.

Dr. Russell Thomas
He cannot keep his roof over his head unless he has his business.

§ Mr. Morrison
Now we come to the monetary part of it. Loss of a man's house is the loss of the roof over his head, and deprives him of his base of operations, preventing him from doing anything. When we come to his business, we assume that he has a house somewhere in which to live. When you interrupt his calling and decrease his business, the remedy for that is compensation. The hon. Member who preceded me drew attention to the difficulties that the Amendment would impose upon the reconstruction of these areas, if we were to try to replace shop for shop.

§ Mr. Erskine-Hill
Suppose there is a case of a man who has lost both his house and his shop in the same area. He had his house near the shop, so that it would be 1280 convenient for his business. Under the Bill, his house will be put somewhere else, but no arrangement is proposed for his shop. I do not think that is fair.

§ Mr. Morrison
In such circumstances it might be thought desirable by the local authority, if they were giving him a house in the same region, to try to provide him with a shop, if the business were of that character; but an obligation upon the local authority to provide shop for shop would be very difficult to discharge without slowing up all plans for new development. When a man is displaced from his business he gets compensation for loss of his income, for such elements as disturbance and for loss of profits, and if his goodwill is valuable, that is taken into account. The whole of his loss as an earner from being displaced from his business is assessed by the tribunal and compensated for in money. We say that when a man loses his house the local authority must find him a roof over his head, and that the proper way to deal with loss of earning capacity is to pay monetary compensation.
I ask those who support the Amendment this question: Would not most of these small business men prefer to be dealt with in that way? I honestly believe they would. Give the ordinary trader the option by saying: "We are bound to take the shop and we will give you somewhere else which we say you must take because we think it is a reasonable place to be in"; he would say, "I would rather take the money and look out for myself," assuming the compensation to be fair. In these areas, one shop is not like another. Shops vary tremendously as to position and frontage. If a man had a corner shop, would he be satisfied if he got a shop in the middle of the street? Really the task of reconstructing, so as to mirror in the minutest detail the frontages and situations of shops, would be impossible. If you can secure that a man gets adequate compensation, that is as far as you can go, and I hope that my hon. and gallant Friend will not press that point any further.
The point in the other Amendments is that of requiring the authority to secure that alternative accommodation is available on terms not less favourable than those which the displaced person formerly enjoyed. The obligation is already im- 1281 posed on the requiring authority to secure that the provision of other residential accommodation is on reasonable terms. I hope that my hon. and gallant Friend will, on consideration, think that that is better. To have the type of requirement for which he is asking would be impracticable. Reinstatement of people in exactly comparable property will be the exception rather than the rule. I ask him to imagine the weekly tenant of a tumbledown cottage, paying 3s. 6d. a week; he is bound to be replaced by the local authority, acting as a housing authority, in premises of a much superior character. They cannot reproduce the tumbledown cottage. He might have to pay a bit more for a better house. This would be reasonable treatment, but that may not be from his point of view equally favourable treatment. He might be a type of man who is equally happy in the tumbledown cottage, yet the local authority would be acting wrongly as a housing authority to create a lot of tumbledown cottages. The whole of these matters depend rather on the administration than on the strict words one tries to insert in the Statute. I am sure that to agree to this would be impracticable and would hinder planning. In our administration we all ought to do our best to secure that justice is done to the small trader as well as the resident.

§ Mr. Colegate
In a large number of cases in my area the vast majority of the people we are concerned with live over their shops. If in a new plan the local authority very wisely provides for the building of a number of shops is a man who is compulsorily moved, moved as regards his residence or as regards his business and residence?

§ Mr. Morrison
When a man's residence comprises a dwelling and shop the local authority are obliged to reinstate him in a dwelling. If they can get him alternative accommodation they would do their best to secure him premises roughly equal to what he previously occupied. They would give him a roof over his head. No money can replace that and that is the right way to do it—

§ Captain Cobb
The whole discussion has taken place from the point of view of the interests of the small trader who is to be displaced by one of these schemes. Surely the point of view of his customer 1282 has also to be considered? Those of us who know these small traders realise they are doing a very real and valuable service in the communities in which they have their business, but I think the customer's point of view is also worth some consideration. My right hon. Friend has said that in his judgment the majority of these people would prefer to have compensation rather than alternative accommodation. I wonder whether it would be possible, since I realise there is great force in the argument he has used, for them to have the alternative presented to them of compensation or of alternative accommodation.

§ Mr. Morrison
I do not think that would be practicable for the reasons I have stated What we want to do is to give a man enough money to compensate him for his loss of earning power so that he can start up somewhere else or maintain himself with a view to getting back to the area where his friends and neighbours are.

§ Commander Galbraith (Glasgow, Pollok)
I think there is very great weight in the argument which has been put forward that you cannot redevelop an area and put the same number of shops there as before, but the hon. Member for East Stirling (Mr. Woodburn) has suggested to us, and I think he is probably correct, that a lot of these shopkeepers would like to follow their population out to the new area. I do not suppose there will be a really big difference between the total number of shops to meet the population so that there must be places available for people who have been displaced in the original area or area of overspill. In these circumstances I ask my right hon. Friend to consider what has been suggested to him by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Preston (Captain Cobb). Surely it would be possible to offer the alternative either of compensation or one of these shops in the new district? At the present moment we do not know what is to happen to these new shops. I think there should be some indication that people who have been displaced should get an opportunity of following the population they have served if it is in any way practicable.

§ Mr. Woodburn
As I understand this Amendment it would, if carried, hold up the whole planning if the local authority 1283 could not fulfil these new conditions. In many cases it seems to me quite impracticable and might prevent the planning authorities from carrying out parts of the plan at all. I sympathise with the problem, but it is impossible for the local authority to guarantee that it can reproduce the same shopping or business condition in the new area as in the old one. For instance, if someone is a coal merchant operating from a backyard, is there to be reproduced in the new planning area not less favourable conditions for that merchant, is he to be allowed to sell coal from a backyard in a new planning area? We must have a sense of practicability. I sympathise with the problem that we cannot hold up planning.

§ Mr. W. S. Morrison
As regards alternative accommodation, if the local authority were carrying out these operations and had a certain number of premises suitable for shops which would be accepted by these displaced shopkeepers as suitable, it would be wise to give him the accommodation so that the authority could cut down its bill for compensation. Local authorities are anxious to reduce the bill for loss of profits, and the sooner they can reinstate a man under these conditions the better. I can conceive cases where you might not want to reproduce shop for shop in a new area.

§ Mr. Colegate
Could these displaced shopkeepers be offered the first refusal? They feel they are being ousted in favour of other people.

§ Mr. Bartle Bull (Enfield)
I should like to support my hon. and learned Friend who moved this Amendment. I think I have in my constituency at least as many small shopkeepers as he has or I had until the Ministry of Labour started calling them all up. We all ought to do everything we possibly can to help and protect the interests of the small shopkeeper. I am saying nothing against the co-operative societies but their position is vastly different. Theirs is a big organisation, and they can use the number of employees they have to carry on, but it is more difficult for the small and individual shopkeepers. I think it is up to us on both sides of the Committee—

§ Mr. Woodburn
This would cover coops, as well.

§ Mr. Bull
Perhaps the hon. Member would let me finish and then have his say. 1284 It has been mentioned that the small shopkeeper might be moved with those in the vicinity. I think the suggestion put forward by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Preston (Captain Cobb) is a very good one. To say to a man that you will compensate him for his business means to say that he shall be compensated but that it is not for him to say whether or not he agrees with the compensation. Under these circumstances anyone will accept money offered to him if he realises that he cannot get any more. I think he might be allowed the opportunity of having either a shop, or the compensation. The small shopkeeper depends for his business on his known friends more than on anything else. If he is taken away from them, he has largely lost his business to something like a co-operative society, or a multiple store. I think it would be a bad thing for the future of England, if we were to lose the small shopkeeper.

§ Mr. Manningham-Buller
I think the Committee ought not to hurry over the consideration of this very important provision. So far, we have only really considered the provision in this Bill from the point of view of the small trader, but some of the things that the Minister said with regard to the owner-occupier of residential premises rather concern us. This part of the Bill, as I see it, can apply only to the powers acquired under Clauses 1 and 2 for overspill areas, land acquired under Section 9, on the ground that it is over-ripe or obsolete, and land incidentally acquired under the other provisions. We ought to be very careful about what we do with regard to the sitting occupiers. It seems quite impossible to divide them into two parts, as my right hon. Friend did—to treat the residential person as being quite distinct from the small shopkeeper. I would like the Committee to consider the position of the person who is displaced from his house. My right hon. Friend says it is all right if he is offered another place, with a roof above his head, but that offer means nothing to him if he cannot afford to pay the rent.
Take the case of a man with a large family, living in quite a proper house in the middle of an area which has been condemned as obsolete. That mad is going to be dispossessed. Is he going to to be offered another house with the same 1285 provision for his family, subject to the Rents Restriction Acts, controlled; or an other house with more accommodation, at a much higher rent? The only people who are going to decide are the local authority, and there is going to be no appeal from them. They are the people who say, "That is the house we offer you. It is offered on reasonable terms. It may be that the rooms are larger; it may be a larger house; but if you do not take it, you must fend for yourself." That is not good enough protection for the small man who is living, it may be, in an obsolete area, if he is going to be dispossessed by the action of the State. And what about the small shopkeeper? The argument has been used by the hon. Member opposite that the local authority would be very keen to reinstate him, because of the rateable value. I cannot help wondering whether the rateable value which is obtained from these big multiple stores and co-operative societies—

§ Mr. Silkin
The point I made was that they would be very glad to do it because, among other reasons, it would save compensation. I did not mention rateable value.

§ Mr. Manningham - Buller
Rateable value was mentioned, if not by the hon. Member. Rateable value is a point of interest to local authorities, and it may well be that consideration of the rateable value will mean that the small trader goes somewhat to the wall. It is said that compensation for the small trader will be all that is required. You can offer the small trader another home at a higher rent, and say that he should rest content with that; although he has no means of earning his livelihood in the immediate neighbourhood, and no means of keeping contact with his old customers. I wonder very much, when we consider some of what has been said this evening, whether this planing is for the benefit of the British people or for the pleasure of the planners. We should consider very carefully what we do with the people who are bound to be dispossessed, deprived of their property, deprived of their businesses, and deprived of their livelihood, against their will. Is compensation going to enable them to start another business? Is compensation going to enable them to maintain their homes? That is a question which is vital in the consideration 1286 of this matter. I would ask the Minister to reconsider this a little more. I appreciate the difficulties about fitting in all the shopkeepers, but I am not satisfied that, under this Clause as it stands, the best has been done, either for the small shopkeeper who has been dispossessed or for the resident in any of these areas.

§ Lieut. - Commander Joynson - Hicks (Chichester)
When I first met this Amendment on the Order Paper I was exceedingly gratified, and I said that something had been omitted from the Clause which this would put right. The more I thought about it, the less could I see how it was to be carried out in practice. I do not want to traverse again the arguments already advanced as to its impracticability—I do not think that half the available arguments have been advanced, but I do not wish to detain the Committee on that point, because the impracticability, when one considers it, of picking up the occupants from one area and giving them alternative accommodation, not less favourable, in another area, which must, in the majority of cases at any rate, be already occupied in the transitional stages, is overwhelming. The original Clause, as was distinctly pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Mr. Manningham-Buller) just now, does not make any provision as to the type of alternative accommodation to be provided. I think the Bill falls short there at what might reasonably be expected. It is merely provided that, where displacement is involved, it shall be the duty of the authority, in so far as there is no other residential accommodation available on reasonable terms, to secure the provision of such accommodation. That is a very wide provision, and it may be subject to a vast number of interpretations, many of which may be limited very greatly by such alternative accommodation as may be available.
So far as I can see, there is no condition whatever as to the district in which the alternative accommodation is to be found. It may well turn out—because the authority is not required to provide accommodation within its own district, or within any definite radius—that the alternative accommodation which the local authority of Plymouth, for instance, might suggest, upon reasonable terms, would be within the constituency of my 1287 hon. and learned Friend the Member for North Edinburgh (Mr. Erskine-Hill). The people would have a very long way to go, and would be very unhappy; but, so far as I can interpret this Clause, the principles which are being imposed on the local authority would have been properly carried out. I ask the Minister to give more attention to that point, because I feel that the drafting of the Clause leaves a great deal to be desired in order to carry out the intention which the Minister has already expressed.

§ Viscount Hinchingbrooke
The hon. Member for Daventry expressed a fear that current legislation was going to result in small traders being planned out of existence, but I am afraid that, as a result of this Amendment, the small trader is going to be planned into a kind of existence which he does not want to be in. I think many of my hon. Friends on this side of the Committee have missed the point of the time factor in this matter. It is obviously going to be the case that, when these areas are demolished, the small trader will have to move into alternative premises in some other part of the town, or, indeed, into another town altogether. There will then ensue a long period while planning takes place and the new buildings are put up. I quite agree with the hon. Member for Peckham (Mr. Silkin) that we must see that the new towns are planned and buildings put up with due regard to proper planning considerations, and without necessarily replacing the shops entirely as they were before. But what will be the effect of that? There will, no doubt, be shops in the new planned areas, but they will not resemble in the smallest degree the kind of shops that were there before, and who can say, after all this period of time, and after the small trader has moved away and established new connections, and has taken away, one hopes, most of his goodwill with him, that he will go back to his old surroundings and take premises where he lived before. I think this time factor very important.

§ Mr. Colegate
What does my Noble Friend mean when he says that the shops may not resemble the others? They may not, exactly, but people have still got to get their groceries and other things.

§ Viscount Hinchingbrooke
If a new town is planned on modern planning lines there cannot be the least doubt that they will not resemble in any degree the kind of premises that were there before.

§ Mr. Erskine-Hill
My Noble Friend must surely realise that what matters to the small shopkeeper is not whether his shop resembles his old shop, but whether he is in a locality in which his customers can go and get their goods from him.

§ Viscount Hinchingbrooke
But one thing he does not want to have is a certain type of premises made available to him into which he does not want to go. What he does want is compensation in money and freedom of choice to do what he wants and not to be put back into the kind of existence which local authorities may impose.

§ Captain Cobb
Can my Noble Friend tell us what sort of authority he has in mind?

§ Viscount Hinchingbrooke
I should have thought it was obvious to any individual that the small trader, or anyone else, will want to have money and a freedom of choice to get premises, rather than be given premises which he does not want.

§ Major Studholme (Tavistock)
I am sure the Committee will realise that this Amendment is promoted with a serious and genuine desire to safeguard the interests of the small trader. I am bound to agree with something which, my hon. Friend the Member for Peckham (Mr. Silkin) said. From experience gained on the L.C.C. in rebuilding, I know it is not possible to provide shops for all the small shopkeepers who are displaced, but I want to support the suggestion by the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mr. Colegate) that small shopkeepers who are displaced should be given first refusal of the shops which are available.

§ Mr. W. S. Morrison
I am very sorry that with all my endeavours to convince my hon. Friends that their Amendment was impracticable I have not succeeded. It must be because of the late hour at which we are sitting. I thought that the case I have put against their Amendment was conclusive. It may be that I have missed something in the arguments which might have made me change my mind 1289 and it is obviously a case where I ought to consider afresh what has been said. I do not see my way to meeting them yet, but the whole matter will be reconsidered by me if hon. Members will consent to withdraw their Amendment. They will understand that in saying this I cannot give a pledge that I can see any way of meeting them. I have listened to what they have said and I have failed to find any method of meeting them, but as they attach so much importance to it it is obvious that I should look at the whole thing again. If my hon. and learned Friend will consent to withdraw his Amendment, that is what I shall do.

§ Mr. Erskine-Hill
Before asking leave to withdraw the Amendment, I want to point out to my right hon. Friend that the reason why I consider this to be of prime importance is that we should exhaust every means of seeing if we could help the small trader. The particular type of trader we want to help is the person not yet hit by the enemy and whose house is going to be destroyed by the local authority. In these circumstances my right hon. Friend ought to see if there is any way possible in which he can help the small trader. It is for that reason we have proposed this Amendment. It is a matter of first importance, but in view of what he has said I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.