§
Lords Amendment: In page 50, leave out from first "of" to "estimated," and insert:
the value of the site on the first day of April, nineteen hundred and forty-nine.
§ Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment."—[Mr. I. Edwards.]
§ 10.45 p.m.
§ Mr. Walker-SmithThis Amendment is concerned with the important question of the method of valuation of private dwelling-houses and the effect is appreciably to diminish, in one respect at any rate, the difference of treatment between the local authority house and the private house. The original wording of this Clause added, in respect of these private dwelling-houses, 5 per cent. of the site value at the time when the value was computed, whereas the local authority sites were valued at the fixed pre-war valuation. The merit of this Amendment, in the eyes of those who sit on these benches, is that it does peg down the value of the private dwelling-house. It is true that it pegs it down to the postwar value as at 1st April, 1949, but it has the effect of preventing the possibility of an ascending scale of values of sites in respect of private houses, whereas the local authority houses are pegged down to a fixed value. As far as that prevents an increasing discrimination against the private dwelling-house we are glad it has been incorporated in the Bill by the other place.