HC Deb 24 January 1949 vol 460 cc693-703

Considered in Committee under Standing Order No. 84.—(King's Recommendation signified.)

[Major MILNER in the Chair]

Motion made and Question proposed, That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to provide in certain cases for the determination by a Tribunal of standard rents for the purposes of the Rent and Mortgage Interest Restrictions Acts, 1920 to 1939, and for other matters, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament of any increase attributable to the said Act of the present Session in the sums payable out of such moneys under subsection (3) of Section one of the Rent of Furnished Houses Control (Scotland) Act, 1943, and paragraph 5 of the Schedule, to the Furnished Houses (Rent Control) Act, 1946."—[Mr. Bevan.]

10.13 p.m.

Mr. Charles Williams (Torquay)

The Opposition would not be doing its duty if one or two hon. Members at any rate did not take some interest in a Financial Resolution of this kind. I am particularly attracted to do so as I have had the privilege during the Recess of reading a violent attack on the Opposition because they did not take some of these opportunities. The attack was made by the Leader of the House who is so often like the Duke of Plaza Toro—he leaves early and bids his followers stay and fight. I fully realise that the Minister of Health, who has a very shrewd Parliamentary understanding, has gone very carefully into these financial estimates in the pursuit of his duty, and would naturally wish to give some explanation of this estimate. It may well be, of course, that the Financial Secretary to the Treasury may also intervene on this matter.

It will be noticed from the Explanatory Memorandum at the beginning of the Bill that it is expected that the cost of these tribunals will be somewhere in the nature of £50,000. The amount is left comparatively vague. The words are: would be of the order of £50,000. I quite understand that it is not really possible to have a very precise estimate on this matter, but the Committee are entitled to know what additional work this is likely to impose on the existing tribunals. It must be very considerable. From the speeches which we have heard today, it looks as if the tribunals will have to operate on a very large number of cases. These tribunals are already overburdened with existing cases. That means that we shall have to add very considerably to the number of tribunals, and therefore we shall have to find more people of high legal understanding to deal with these matters. We are entitled to know whether at the present time we are likely to get such people with their assistants and clerks, and what addition there will be in terms of actual numbers.

A further question I want to ask is whether the Government are certain that they can get people of high understanding to deal with this matter quickly. It is no good saying that a tribunal is to be set up unless we have men who are sufficiently highly trained to deal with these matters. I am sure that some answer can be given on that point. I notice the Secretary of State for Scotland is here. On behalf of England, I want to know precisely what proportion of the £50,000 is going to the English tribunals and what proportion is going to the Scottish tribunals. It would be quite wrong if a disproportionate amount went to the Scots compared with the amounts which went to the English and the Welsh. I am sure that on that point I shall have the sympathy of the Home Secretary and of the Minister of Health whom I am actually helping to protect from being over-ruled and over-burdened by his Scottish colleagues. I have raised these points so that the Committee might know whether we are justified in accepting this Financial Resolution.

10.18 p.m.

Mr. Renton

Those hon. Members who are now in the Chamber, having kindly turned up for the Division, will appreciate, or they may not appreciate, that powers are being given to the rent tribunals under this Bill which will cost the taxpayers, their constituents, £50,000. [Interruption.] The Financial Memorandum to the Bill says: of the order of £50.000. If it does not mean that, what does it mean? It says something very close to it.

Mr. Bevan

If the hon. Gentleman will look at page iii he will see that it says in perfectly plain English which can be understood by anybody who reads it: If as a result of the passing of the Act the number of cases to be dealt with by Tribunals is doubled previous experience suggests that the additional annual cost to the Exchequer would be of the order of £50,000. We do not say that it will be £50,000; we do not say that it will be of the order of £50,000. We say that on certain assumptions it would be so.

Mr. Renton

The right hon. Gentleman, with that ingenuity which we are beginning to expect from him, has put forward in a Financial Memorandum a mere hypothesis as a guide to future expenditure. Surely we are entitled to take it that his hypothesis represents a reasonably good estimate of what is expected. He would not wish us to have it otherwise, and I am taking him at his own word in using his own Financial Memorandum. Whether it is to be "of the order of £50,000" or to be a much greater or a much smaller sum matters perhaps very little. The point is that a fairly substantial sum, running into some tens of thousands of pounds, will be spent by the Exchequer at the taxpayers' expense on the employment of these rent tribunals. I suggest that this money could very well be saved. If county court judges were employed, as they are under many other Acts of Parliament dealing with very similar matters, they would not have to be paid any extra; they would take this extra work within the scope of their present salaries and would make no complaint about it. I submit that it would not be right to vote this money when we know perfectly well that we can get this work done more cheaply and just as well, if not better, by county court judges.

10.22 p.m.

Mr. Bevan

In reply to the last part of the intervention by the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Renton), it might easily be that we should be able to obtain the services of the existing tribunals and of their officials also without any additional expenditure. It depends entirely upon the extent to which the Act is invoked. If the Act is invoked hardly at all, existing tribunals will be able to manage it with their existing machinery. If the Act is invoked on a much greater scale, necessarily more money will have to be spent. I should have imagined that is precisely the situation we wish to arise, because if people want to invoke the Act in order to obtain redress, it is the duty of the State to provide the machinery by which that redress may be given, so that the amount of money which will he spent under the Act will depend entirely upon the extent of the grievances which exist.

At this stage it is quite impossible for any one to say how much money will have to be spent, because no one knows the extent of the grievances which are to be redressed. All we can do, therefore, is to take certain assumptions. The cost of hearing certain cases before the tribunals at the moment amounts to a certain sum. That forms the basis of an estimate. We say that if about twice as many cases are invoked under this Measure as are invoked under the Furnished Houses (Rent Control) Act, then the cost will be so much; if it is invoked more, then it will be more. No one providing machinery such as this and not knowing the extent to which that machinery will be invoked by citizens can tell exactly what amount of money will be spent on providing it. I imagine that is a reasonable reply.

With regard to the question about England and Scotland, in this case, as perhaps is not always the case, I think much the larger proportion will be spent on England and Wales, because this is much more a London problem than it is a Scottish problem, and London is more likely to invoke the aid of the tribunals. Therefore, more money will be spent in England and Wales than elsewhere.

Mr. Renton

Would the right hon. Gentleman allow me to suggest that when the national finances are in the state they are in at present—in other words, when it is essential that we should save every penny we can, if only to provide such money as is possible for the National Health Service—it would be better to insure against the possibility which he has envisaged when he says that if these tribunals are used to a very great extent this sum of £50,000, or possibly an even larger sum, will have to be incurred? Shall we not be insuring, indeed over-insuring against that by employing county court judges instead of rent tribunals?

Mr. Bevan

I think the answer is that I should be out of Order in arguing whether county court judges should be employed for this purpose. The Bill itself says that these matters should be dealt with by the tribunals, and I should not be in Order at the moment in arguing the wisdom or otherwise of employing county court judges. Therefore, I am afraid I could not answer the hon. Gentleman.

Hon. Members

Oh.

Mr. McKie (Galloway)

I think the last sentence of the right hon. Gentleman's reply was rather unfortunate—that in which he attempted to reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Torquay (Mr. C. Williams). I think that my hon. Friend's remark about the presence here of the Secretary of State for Scotland on the Treasury Bench was singularly appropriate in view of what the Minister of Health has just said. The Minister said quite deliberately, regarding the allocation of this £50,000 between Scotland and England and Wales, that it would be chiefly in England and Wales. I am certainly not a jealous nationalist, but I think that the right hon. Gentleman spoke rather too quickly, if I may say so without offence. I am sorry my hon. Friend raised the point at all in one sense, because as a rule he tries to be absolutely fair as between the two Kingdoms.

Mr. C. Williams

Let me assure my hon. Friend that I had no intention of being unfair between the two Kingdoms. I wanted an exact balance. I was trying to be sure that the Scots had their share as well as the English. I am as deeply disappointed in many ways with the reply of the Minister of Health as is my hon. Friend.

Mr. McKie

The last thing I should wish would be to be unfair to my hon. Friend. If he had listened a little longer he would have understood that I was paying him a singular compliment on his fairness on every occasion. I thought his remark was rather unfortunate in the first instance, but I am glad that he made it because it drew from the Minister what I thought was a rather unhappy admission. I think it would have been much better if the Secretary of State for Scotland had seen his way to say a few words about the matter, because—and in saying this I do not want to be offensive—the Minister of Health is a little ignorant about this matter in relation to Scotland. He seemed to indicate—quite naturally, of course: I admit at once that the distribution of the population is such that there are more people in England and Wales than there are in Scotland—that the greater part of the allocation of the money will be in England and Wales. But then, England and Wales have more people than the 5,000,000 in Scotland.

That, however, is not the question. The question is the proportion, not the total amount. I think it is on that question of proportion that the right hon. Gentleman has shown himself to be somewhat lacking in his knowledge of the facts. If he had gone into the matter a little more closely, or, if, perhaps, the Secretary of State had been able to prompt him or to give him advice on the point, he would have seen that the rent and mortgage issue—that is the point I want to stress—is far more acute north of the Border than it is in England and Wales. I only hope that the law will not be invoked—to use the right hon. Gentleman's own word—as continually as he seems to think it will be. However, it may be; possibly in Scotland there may be proportionately more hardship and suffering than in England and Wales. Therefore, I should be very pleased, and all the Scottish Members present in the Committee would be very pleased, to have a word, some advice, some expression of opinion from the Secretary of State for Scotland, or from the Lord Advocate, who may have more legal knowledge—more specific legal knowledge—than his right hon. Friend in that connection. We should like from one or the other, some words of advice and opinion on this very important point that my hon. Friend the Member for Torquay has raised.

10.30 p.m.

Sir William Darling (Edinburgh, South)

I am glad to support what the hon. Member for Galloway (Mr. McKie) has said. I feel sure the Secretary of State for Scotland would like to say something on this matter. I should have thought this would be a comparatively trivial amount, but what the right hon. Gentleman has said, indicates that it would not be a trivial sum that Scottish taxpayers would have to pay. Here, apparently, if I understand the Minister rightly, is a major matter which London is specially concerned with; there will be very few claims before tribunals elsewhere, and Scotland and Wales in the main would be responsible for finding the money for the maintenance of these tribunals. This is a very relevant matter in Scottish public opinion and as no Scottish Member has been called today to speak on this subject, I would like to elaborate a little on this matter of the Financial Resolution. Only a few days ago the Scottish taxpayer was outraged to learn that a theatre was to be built in London at the expense of the Scottish taxpayers. I mention this merely as an illustration, and will make no further reference to it.

There is a growing feeling that moneys voted by Parliament for the whole country to be paid by the taxpayers should be more definitely allocated to the areas in which they are expended. It is not unreasonable for the Committee to learn how this sum, vague and indefinite as the Minister himself says it is, is likely to be allocated. He says it depends on the number of complaints brought before the tribunals, but before a Resolution on this matter is passed, some evidence must be collected, some estimate made, of the possible cost of this transaction. The Minister, in all sincerity, is asking the House for a blank cheque. He may have blank cheques in other fields, but not in this field. I press very strongly, together with the hon. Member for Galloway, for more definite information. May I ask the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State what he thinks he will require from the Treasury for these tribunals? We should like to know.

10.33 p.m.

The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Woodburn)

I must say we were under the impression, until the hon. Member for Galloway (Mr. McKie) spoke, that this kind of exploitation in Scotland was much less than in England, but I gather from what the hon. Member says that he thinks that landlords in Scotland are exploiting people to such an extent that we shall require far more money than has been mentioned in the Bill.

Mr. McKie

It is a great pity that the Secretary of State, holding his great office, should deliberately try to misrepresent me. What I did say was—and I said it twice, with great emphasis—that the mortgage question in Scotland was much more acute than in England. If that is exploitation, I am sorry I do not understand what the word "exploitation" means.

Mr. Woodburn

I gather that we are talking about different Bills. The present Bill deals with a different kind of exploitation, and the reason my right hon. Friend said that he expected Scotland would not need very much out of this money was that he was paying a compliment to the landlords. They would not be committing the abuses that exist in London. I do not want to cast any reflection on Scottish landlords until evidence proves something to the contrary, and I shall be very pleased if the honour of Scotland is upheld by our requiring very little of this money for the purpose for which it is destined.

10.35 p.m.

Lieut.-Colonel Elliot

I think this is a point of interest and of some substance. The statement is made by the Secretary of State for Scotland, who has just paid a tribute to the landlords of Scotland, that he considers that exploitation is practically negligible in Scotland and that a very small sum will be required. Both the Minister of Health and the Secretary of State pointed out that whatever might be said about this Bill, about its benefit or otherwise so far as England is concerned, it could not be expected to bring any benefit to speak of to Scotland. That is very interesting. Members should take note of this, especially Scottish Members. This is a very remarkable tribute to the landlord and tenant system in Scotland, out of the mouths of those who very frequently condemned it in the past.

Mr. Woodburn

What my right hon. Friend said is perfectly true, but he pointed out that while in other parts of the Bill, Scotland would benefit, Scotland was not very much involved in this particular item.

10.36 p.m.

Mr. C. Williams

I apologise to the English Members for having brought Scotland into such prominence at this time of night, but it enabled the Secretary of State for Scotland to pay a well-deserved tribute to the Scottish landlords, and it enabled the Minister of Health to pay a well-deserved tribute to the majority of English landlords, because he was kind enough to say that for practical purposes London was the key to this thing so far as the tribunals are concerned. It is only the cost of the tribunals to which I am referring. I am not dealing with any other matter. It really boils down to the fact that these tribunals are largely required for London and that there will not be much work for them to do outside London. But the right hon. Gentleman did say one thing which interested me very much, namely, that no one really knows the extent to which the tribunals will be required. That was his main defence against our attack. We want to know what their work will be, how many of them there will be, are there sufficient of them at present. That defence can be seen quite clearly in HANSARD. He tried to make out that very little money would be required. He has completely upset the whole position, and has really told the House that it is a complete and absolute waste of time bringing in the Bill. Therefore the Money Resolution is absolutely unnecessary today.

Question put, and agreed to.

Resolution to be reported Tomorrow.