WAR DAMAGE (LATE CLAIMS)

HC Deb 11 July 1950 vol 477 cc1221-73

7.10 p.m.

Sir Herbert Williams (Croydon, East)

I intend to turn the mind of the House to a different subject but one which, nevertheless, is of substantial importance. I want to make some reference to the problem of war damage claims. Hon. Members will have noticed that a number of us had a Motion on the Order Paper which has been withdrawn.

[That this House is gravely concerned at the number of claims for compensation by persons whose property suffered war damage, which have been rejected by the War Damage Commission because they were not lodged with the Commission within the prescribed time although, in many cases, the occurrence of damage can be confirmed from the records of the local authorities; and calls upon the Government to review these claims in order to reach a just and practicable settlement.]

I should like to explain why that action was taken. It was thought that it would be convenient to discuss this subject on the Adjournment and, under the Rules of the House, that would have been out of order had the Motion remained on the Paper. That was the sole reason for the action we took. In raising this issue I want to make it quite clear that I have no complaint whatsoever to make of the competence and courtesy of Sir Malcolm Trustram Eve, who was the first Chairman of the War Damage Commission, or Sir Robert Fraser, his successor. I do not wish to deal with the subject on that issue at all. My interest in this subject began a long time ago. As a matter of fact, it was some time in 1937 that a group of Members was formed under the chairmanship of Sir Alan Anderson, then one of the Members for the City of London, for the purpose of urging upon the Government I think it was the Baldwin Government—the introduction of a system of air raid insurance. We were not successful in our efforts, but we continued them with the next Government and when the Coalition came into existence.

Again we were unsuccessful until late in 1940 or early in 1941—I have not looked up the exact date—when the Government were ultimately convinced that something had to be done about the problem of compensation for air raid damage and other damage due to warlike operations. The Bill which was introduced had rather a rough passage. I was one of those who helped to give it a rough passage, because in many respects it was an unsatisfactory Bill. It had to undergo many changes. Some hon. Members will recall the row we had about the chattels part of the scheme. There were also complications about liabilities in respect of ground rent and mortgage interest. I always thought that the scheme was imperfect because it made no provision for loss of rental value. If that provision had been made the problem of ground rent and the mortage interest would have vanished.

I remember, in those Debates, drawing attention to something which had happened the previous day in Croydon, where an elderly lady had been left eight houses by her husband; she lived in one and the rents from the others represented her income. The whole lot had been wiped out by a bomb the previous night but, under the scheme, she could get nothing until the property was restored. That struck me as a great hardship.

I am afraid that those hardships cannot now be covered. In any event, I could not urge a change in the law on this occasion and, in fact, I do not ask for a change in the law. What I seek is some change in the administration. Croydon, part of which I now represent, and which I formerly represented, suffered from two. serious periods of bombardment, one in the autumn of 1940, and the other in the summer and autumn of 1944, when we had the things which were popularly called "doodlebugs."

I think we had 148 of those in the borough of Croydon and the average damage per "doodlebug" was roughly this: the human casualties were comparatively light, as compared with the earlier bombing—one and a half killed; but 20 houses were completely demolished and 200 were damaged in varying degrees. When it was all over, 90 per cent. of the houses in the borough had suffered some kind of damage. Fortunately, we had the best fireman in Britain, who is now head of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade, and he designed his scheme against fire, so that we escaped much of the damage which other places suffered because they had not organised themselves to deal with fire.

During the period of 1940, under the stimulus of the then Minister of Works, local authorities in all districts affected by that bombardment engaged a large number of men to do first-aid repairs. I think about 2,000 were sent into Croydon. I believe most of them voted against me in the General Election in 1945, because they thought I had sent them there. They should have voted against our present Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs; he sent them there, but they blamed me. They were on the register in 1945 and they had mainly come from Ireland. That is in passing, and it has nothing to do with tonight's Debate.

Because the Corporation sent men along to do the first-aid repairs people who lived in those houses said to themselves. "The Town Hall knows all about it; they have come to do a bit of the work and no doubt they will come to finish it later." Great numbers of these people never made any formal claim to the War Damage Commission. That is one of the major grievances. In addition, a good number of elderly people, quite rightly, had left Croydon and gone to live in some more salubrious parts of the world—Torquay, or somewhere else, according to their means. Often they were not aware for a considerable time that damage had occurred to property in which they were interested. In some cases, too, landlords thought that tenants had made the claim and in other cases tenants thought that the landlords had done so. I have found that in other cases both thought the property agent who looked after the property had taken action. Thus, in a vast number of cases notice was not given.

We all know that Government Departments have a most marvellous system of registration. They are so perfect that they always acknowledge a thing on a postcard, with a number on it, before they deal with it. The object of it is that they wish to lose nothing, but my experience is that they lose just as much as I do in my own office without any system at all. It is quite fantastic what gets lost in a Government Department. I am quite satisfied that the War Damage Commission must have had millions of communications and I have had letters in which both sides say that the other side did not answer a letter. I have not troubled to bring the letters with me today but there is a pile in my office. Just as in the previous Debate, both think that they are stating what happened. I am quite certain that lots of claims have not been met for that reason.

I know of a good many cases, too, where men were in the Services at the time the incident occurred. Sometimes they did not know about it for a considerable time. They assumed that their wives had made the claim and she had not. All sorts of things like that have occurred, but I will not enumerate them all because I can see from the nods of hon. Members on both sides that they have had the same kind of experience.

The Commission have said, and I have had quite a lot of correspondence about this since I was returned to the House to this effect: "We gave everybody a notice, and there were Press notices and B.B.C. notices about the final date." I am quite satisfied that a great many people never become conscious of that kind of communication. If we make an announcement in every newspaper tomorrow that if somebody fills in a coupon £5 will be sent to him, a lot of people will not fill it in, either because they are indifferent or because they think there might be a catch in it. The plain truth is that an enormous number of people in this country never become conscious of important announcements and, when the Commission say that they have made every kind of effort to tell people, I am satisfied that a great many people never became conscious of it and many who did said to themselves, "That is all right; they came round from the Town Hall and they will be coming round later to finish the job."

I think the problem of those people can be met administratively. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is the custodian of the public purse, as we all are. Nobody is anxious to impose new burdens on the State, but this is very analogous to the case of pensions for Service men except that this is physical damage as distinct from personal damage. In both cases the compensation is a monetary compensation. Although none of us wishes to see a great new burden added to the burdens which the Chancellor of the Exchequer already imposes upon the rest of us, nevertheless that is no reason why justice should not be done—and I am satisfied that at the present time injustice is being done to a great many humble folk.

Those who are used to dealing with business and filling in forms, especially those who regularly employ professional people, generally have not suffered the amount of hardship which is suffered by the humbler folk, to whom filling up a form is a terrible job and to whom writing a letter to a Member of Parliament is a terrible job. Father takes his coat off and the family bottle of ink is sent for, and a great deal of blood, toil, sweat, and tears is spent before the task is finished. We all know how it is. I have had lots of letters about this matter, and other hon. Members have had, too, and I hope very much that as a result of this Debate something will be done. I have abstained deliberately from giving any specific personal examples, because I have not wanted to take up much time, because I know other hon. Members want to speak and I am a great believer in taking only a short time and letting others take part.

7.21 p.m.

Mr. Ralph Morley (Southampton, Itchen)

I do not think it is necessary to make a very long speech on this matter because the case for a further review of these claims for war damage compensation which have been turned down by the War Damage Commission on account of too late notification is, I think, very clear and cogent indeed. There must be thousands of people in this country who paid their contributions into the fund which was instituted in order that compensation might be paid in respect of war damaged property after the war whose property and hereditaments have undoubtedly suffered damage and who have not received any compensation at all from the War Damage Commission on the ground that the loss was notified at too late a period.

Of course, there are a number of reasons, and quite understandable reasons, why the notifications of war damage were sent in after the time which had been laid down for the final notification by the War Damage Commission. The hon. Member for Croydon, East (Sir H. Williams), who made a very interesting and comprehensive speech on the matter, has referred to one reason which, I think, was a reason which affected a very great number of people and prevented them from sending in their notifications at the time which was laid down by the Commission, and that was the fact that the local authorities, in the first place, did first-aid repairs and notified the people who suffered from war damage that their damage had been registered in the offices of the local authorities.

A very great number of people thought that the fact that damage had been registered in the office of the local authority meant that they need take no further steps in notifying that damage. As a matter of fact, in some instances minor officials, at least, of the local authorities, by their statements to the people who suffered damage, rather encouraged that point of view.

I sent to the War Damage Commission a considerable number of cases and people who had notified their war damage to the local authority and thought that that notification was sufficient, and I had this reply from the Chairman of the War Damage Commission: The fact that the local authority was aware of the damage and carried out certain repairs cannot he accepted as a sufficient reason for failure to notify the Commission at an earlier date of the occurrence of the damage. Local authorities did not act as agents of the Commission for the purpose of accepting notification and carrying out repairs. So there is no doubt that a large number of people have been prevented from receiving compensation for damage which undoubtedly occurred to their property and hereditaments because they were quite naturally of the opinion that registration with the local authority was sufficient, and that no further notification was necessary. Then there is the case already referred to by the hon. Member for Croydon, East, of people who were absent from the property when the damage took place. There were cases of some men who were on active service, either in this country or abroad, when the damage took place, and did not learn of the damage until many months after it had occurred. There were also cases of people who had evacuated themselves with their families from bombed areas and were quite unaware their property had been bombed until a number of months later. There was quite a number of cases of very elderly people, nearing, perhaps, the end of their lives, who, in the circumstances, did not comply with all the formalities that were necessary.

There were cases of successive incidents. A house was bombed for the first time and damage inflicted, and the owner of the house notified the War Damage Commission in the proper manner. Then a second incident occurred, and the house was bombed for the second time; sometimes the house was bombed for the third time. The War Damage Commission laid it down that not only must they be informed of the first time the bombing occurred but that they must also be informed of the second or third occasion; and if there were no notifications of the second or third occasions compensation was paid on the repairs carried out for the damage done on the first occasion of the bombing, but no compensation paid for the repairs carried out after the second or third occasion on which bombing took place. I believe that there were actually instances in which the front part of the house was repaired because of the damage in the first incident, but the back part remained unrepaired because that damage was done in the second incident.

Then there were instances of people who bought property just after the war had ended and did not discover that there had been any war damage to the property until a month or two after they had bought it. These cases were sent up to the War Damage Commission. They took the view, caveat emptor. They said that the buyer should have satisfied himself when he bought the property that there was no war damage there, or that, if there had been war damage there, it had been notified to the War Damage Commission.

Those who remember the position in 1945 and 1946, and remember how difficult it was then to get any place in which to live, will realise that people who had the chance of buying a house at something like a reasonable rate at which they could afford jumped at the chance of buying a house and, perhaps, did not inquire as carefully as they should have done whether there was any war damage inside the house.

I represent one of the worst bombed towns in Great Britain. In Southampton we not only had a number of all-night, concentrated raids, but we also had a number of raids during the day-time. We also had a number of tip and run raids in which one or two planes would come over, drop a few bombs, and fly away again. At one period of the war we had more alarms in Southampton than any other part of the British Commonwealth except Malta. Altogether there were some 5,000 houses totally destroyed in Southampton by enemy action, and there was hardly a street in Southampton where some houses were not either destroyed or very severely damaged.

Therefore, I sent a number of cases of late notification to the War Damage Commission. Last year, I think, I sent nearly 300 cases of late notification up to the War Damage Commission, and there was no doubt, I think, that in all those 300 cases actual war damage had occurred. Of those 300 cases only about 10 were admitted by the War Damage Commission and repairs carried out and compensation paid.

The reason why these claims were not admitted was not that the War Damage Commission stated there was no truth in the statements that war damage had occurred. They did not question there had been war damage. What they said was that final notices had been given to the people concerned of the last date upon which a claim had to be made, first by means of advertisements in the local Press, and, secondly, by means of B.B.C. broadcasts.

With regard to the first method of giving notice, by advertisements in the local Press, in Southampton we have a very good local newspaper indeed, the "Southern Daily Echo." In fact, I think it is one of the best conducted local newspapers in the country. It has a fairly considerable circulation, but I should say that out of 180,000 people in Southampton not more than 30,000 at most read that newspaper regularly. A very large number of people would have missed the advertisements telling them of the last date for notification to the War Damage Commission which were inserted in the "Southern Daily Echo."

So far as broadcasting notice is concerned, it may be rather unpleasant for hon. Members on both sides of the House who add to their Parliamentary stipends and enhance their political reputations by broadcasting to realise that a very large number of people never listen to broadcasts at all. I think that must have been very much the case with the notices that were given on the air of the last date of notification to the War Damage Commission. There is, therefore, real reason why a very large number of people failed to notify the War Damage Commission by the proper date. These people, many of whom are poor people who did not have the benefit of professional advice, are being penalised for an informality, because they did not fill in the right forms at the right time.

I am glad that the hon. Member for Croydon, East has raised this matter, but I am bound to inform the House that it has been raised by hon. Members on this side of the House over the past three years. Nearly three years ago we sent deputations to the Financial Secretary to the Treasury and to the Chairman of the War Damage Commission and raised this matter of late notification. Unfortunately, we got no satisfaction from either the Treasury or the War Damage Commission, so we introduced a Private Member's Bill, the War Damage (Amendment) Bill, which was moved and seconded by my hon. Friend the Member for the Sutton Division of Plymouth (Mrs. Middleton) and myself.

That Bill was debated in this House for four hours, and on both sides there was an almost unanimous opinion in favour of another review of these cases which had been turned down owing to late notification. I do not think that in that four hours' debate there was more than one dissentient voice. There was agreement on both sides of the House. The only people from whom we do not seem to be able to get agreement in this matter are the representatives of the Treasury sitting on our own Front Bench. It appears to be a case of Winchester versus the rest of England.

I hope that on this occasion anyhow, when the opinion on both sides of the House has again been very clearly expressed in this Debate, my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor will be able to announce some concession along the lines of the Motion which has been put down by my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton, and other of my hon. Friends:

[That this House, while recognising that the War Damage Act lays down the principle of a time limit for making war damage claims, and that the War Damage Commission have allowed very great latitude to claimants, requests the Government to continue the policy of admitting late claims for recognisable unrepaired war damage of a substantial character in cases where the claimant advised the local authority of the occurrence at the time, and the authority have a full record both of the damage and of repairs carried out by them.]

If he can do that, I do not think it will cost the Treasury very much. It would, I believe, remove a sense of injustice—and a sense of legitimate injustice—under which a number of people are suffering because they paid contributions towards the fund, suffered undoubted war damage, and have not been able to get any compensation from the War Damage Commission.

7.35 p.m.

Lieut.-Commander R. H. Thompson (Croydon, West)

The arguments in favour of a more forthcoming attitude on the part of the right hon. and learned Gentleman towards late notification claims have, I think, been admirably deployed by the earlier contributors to this Debate, but there are one or two points I should like to make which I believe to be pertinent. First of all, the type of persons who are really being hit by this failure to accept late notification claims is in most cases, quite humble people who have probably all their savings locked up in a little house which just about represents everything they have in the world. They may live there, they may let out lodgings but to them it is their stake in life.

My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, East (Sir H. Williams) has pointed out that larger landlords and owners of property are, on the whole, well able to look after themselves in this matter. They employ agents and professional advisers to look after their interests. But as regards those who have not the benefit of this professional advice, I could quote many cases of unfortunate people who have actually had their homes seriously damaged while they themselves were evacuated to another part of the country.

The constituency which I have the honour to represent has been particularly badly hit in this respect, and nearly all the people on behalf of whom I have taken up this matter are very small people, several of whom were not even in the constituency at the time. To suggest that these people, many of whom are elderly and infirm, can go through this whole bureaucratic process—necessary, I agree, but very difficult for people like that—and make their claims in the prescribed manner within the prescribed time is, I think, asking too much of sorely tried human nature in time of war and immediately afterwards.

We know that the Financial Secretary has only so much cloth and a very large coat to contrive out of it, and 1Ihope that nobody will feel that a more forthcoming attitude towards these late notification claims will mean that the plug is to be pulled out of the bottom of the bath and millions of the taxpayers' money squandered. I do not think it will be.

Surely it is not impossible to get together with the local authorities, who keep the most complete and adequate records of all the incidents where they have administered first-aid and patched up bomb damaged houses, to sift the genuine cases of bomb damage which, for one reason or another, have not been notified in time, and to keep them apart from those other cases where there is some doubt whether the damage which it is sought to have repaired is, in effect, war damage or not. I should have thought that could be done with the material at our disposal without very much difficulty.

I hope that the Chancellor of the Exchequer will look again at this matter, because I think that a grave social injustice is actually being done at this time. Of course, it may be that a more forthcoming attitude in the matter of late notification claims will mean that a certain number of people whose claims are, perhaps, not wholly sound may squeeze in through the door, as it were. But surely it is better that a few goats should get mixed in with the sheep rather than that the fold should be shut to sheep and goats alike.

I hope that whoever replies to this Debate will realise that this is not a party matter; that hon. Members on both sides of the House feel very strongly about it: that a large number of unfortunate people who, as has been pointed out, have paid their contributions, have lost nearly everything, and are not so situated that they could employ agents and surveyors to look after their affairs; are, in fact, suffering grave injustice, and that something ought to be done to improve their lot.

7.40 p.m.

Mrs. Middleton (Plymouth. Sutton)

Those of us on this side of the House who, as my hon. Friend the Member for Itchen (Mr. Morley) said, have been struggling to get recognition of genuine, late war damage claims for some three years, welcome the fact that so large a number of Members on the other side of the House have associated themselves with us and have come to our assistance in this struggle. Even though the Motion of the hon. Member for Croydon, East (Sir H. Williams) has "gone with the wind, we know not whither," we welcome the fact that his Motion was the reason why we were able to have this Debate and another look at this vexed question.

During the three-year period in which we on this side of the House have at intervals raised this matter, there have been some honourable exceptions on the other side of the House to the otherwise general neglect over there of the case that we have put. I should like to mention the support given to us, among others, by the hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) and the hon. Member for Bodmin (Mr. D. Marshall), who is not here today, and who, even at the height of an election campaign, when asked what Bill he would introduce if he had the good fortune to introduce a Private Member's Bill, had the courage to tell his constituents that he would reintroduce the War Damage (Amendment) Bill which my hon. Friend the Member for Itchen once introduced into this House.

Then there has been the support of the hon. Member for Orpington (Sir W. Smithers), whose support, I confess, caused me the only doubt that I have ever experienced as to whether or not I was right in this matter. Thinking it over, I realise that even with one so consistently reactionary as the hon. Member for Orpington—and we all admire his consistency, even if we do not admire his views—there is always the one exception that seems to prove the rule.

Hitherto, the case has been argued almost exclusively from this side of the House, and the initiative in regard to it has always come from this side of the House. We are glad that our campaign has been so persuasive to the other side. I was touched almost beyond telling by the fact that humble words of mine might even have persuaded the Opposition Chief Whip to put his name down to the hon. Gentleman's Motion, and I hope that our speeches today will be equally persuasive with the Treasury Bench, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and also with the War Damage Commission.

I do not intend to cover all the ground which was traversed in the contributions which I made in the Debates on 11th June, 1948, 16th December, 1948, and 18th March, 1949, and in a wide variety of Questions that had been put to Ministers from time to time. These are all on record, and anyone who is interested to know about them can find them in the volumes of HANSARD. I must remind the House, however, of one or two facts in connection with the history of this matter.

Up to 1946–47—and the dates vary from town to town, which has been one of the major difficulties in this matter—the repair of war-damaged dwelling-house was almost completely in the hands of the local authorities. They were responsible for the repairs. When the builders went from the pool to which the hon. Member for Croydon, East has already referred, to repair properties along a street, no question was asked as to whether or not the damage had been notified to the War Damage Commission. The building was entered, the damage was there to be repaired, and the damage was repaired.

No notification to the Commission was demanded of the owners of the bombed properties in order to get their properties repaired up to that point, although, of course, it would have been notified to the local authority and, almost without exception, would have been notified by the local authority to the War Damage Commission; but not by the individual owner. It is, I thing, important to remember that no evidence of notification was asked for from the owners of property up to that time. Under those circumstances, I think it must be obvious to everyone of us that the local authorities, in the first place, had a far more intimate knowledge, and still have a far more intimate knowledge of these questions of war damage to dwelling-houses, than any other body, not excluding the War Damage Commission or the Commission's assessors.

I welcome the fact, as indicated in the terms of the Motion which has since been withdrawn, that that point of view was expressed by the hon. Members of the Opposition who put their names on the Order Paper. I realise—and I know that my right hon. Friend will make this point—that there is difficulty at this late stage in differentiating between dilapidations and genuine war damage, but I think I have a right to point out that that is not the fault of those of us who for three years have been pressing this matter and the importance of it, and have been urging that some attempt should be made to draw upon the records and the knowledge of the local authorities in determining these claims.

In the City of Plymouth, which I have the honour to represent in this House, I am quite sure that the corporation and its very fine body of local, government officers are far better able to assess damage done to property in that city than any other person and, for myself, I would confidently leave this matter in their hands. I want to recapitulate some of the reasons why we who were in negotiation with the Treasury, not only during the last Parliament, but, as it happens, even when the Motion of the hon. Gentleman was put on the Order Paper, felt that we must press this matter and still feel that we must press it.

In the first place, there is the point to which I have already referred, that at the time when the damage occurred, and for a number of years afterwards, the local authorities were in fact, if not in theory, the responsible war damage authorities in the localities, and in the eyes of the little man—and I agree with hon. Gentlemen opposite that it is mainly for the little man that we are talking tonight—the local authority was the authority to whom he turned in his difficulty with regard to war damage, and it is quite reasonable that he has continued to look to the local authority in the days that have since passed.

Then I would put the further point that when a change-over took place and because the Minister of Health wanted, quite rightly, the local authorities to concentrate on their housing problems and their housing programmes instead of upon war damage, houseowners became responsible for negotiating with the Commission, and with building firms for the repair of their houses. The changeover extended over a very considerable period of time—I think almost over a period of 12 months from one part of the country to the other. The dates when the change-over took place varied from place to place, and I need not emphasise the point already adequately made that the notification of the change whatever may have been thought at the time, has proved to be inadequate to bring to the notice of all the people concerned the procedure which they must now follow.

The third point is that despite all that has been said in the Motion on the Order Paper which stands in my name and the name of some of my hon. Friends about the work of the War Damage Commission, we have to face the fact that since that period many claims have been unceremoniously turned down by just a duplicated form stating that the claim was out of date, and nothing has been done to explore the validity of that claim with the local authorities or to inform the claimant that if he can satisfy certain criteria his claim may be even yet admitted by the War Damage Commission.

On this side of the House we desire more than anything else, as I am sure the Chancellor does, to get finality on this matter. I do not want to be known personally, as I have sometimes been called in this House, as the hon. Mem- ber for bomb damage. I do not want it to be thought that because I have necessarily had to be primarily preoccupied on this and other questions arising out of war damage, that it is the only contribution which I can make to the Debates of this House. I regret very much that I have had to spend so much of my time during the period I have been in this House on this and kindred questions.

My hon. Friends and I have tried to set out in the Motion on the Order Paper our very minimum demands, something which we feel affords a basis of compromise between the Treasury, the War Damage Commission and those who are interested in this matter in this House—something upon which we can all agree. Those Members of the House who have examined the Motion will perhaps have noticed what we are pressing.

The first point upon which we lay great emphasis is that the word "structural" should be eliminated from the formula of substantial structural damage, to which the War Damage Commission have up to now been working. The reason for that is that in our view it is quite intolerable that, as has happened in my constituency, in the same street one houseowner has had internal walls and ceilings of his property damaged but there has been nothing which has been classified as major structural damage and his claim has been disallowed, while on the other hand, some other person in the same street, in whose house an external crack has appeared, had had his claim admitted, because it has fulfilled the qualifications of structural damage. It is quite intolerable that cases of that sort—in some instances the damage has been done by the same bomb—should result in one case being admitted and the other case being turned down. So we attach very great importance to the elimination of that word "structural" from the formula, to which the War Damage Commission has hitherto worked.

The second point to which we attach great importance is that the opinion of the local authority should be obtained in every case as to the validity of every claim before its refusal on two grounds—(1), the local authority having been aware of the damage in the first place, and (2) the extent of the repairs, either first aid or otherwise, which the local authority has done to that property in the days when they were responsible for repairs to dwelling-houses.

Indeed, I should like to go further than that. I should like to see the local authorities made the sifting machine of these claims. Every one of them should go to the local authority first of all, and from their large and very expert knowledge the local authority could advise the War Damage Commission whether, in their view, the claims put forward were valid claims or not. I think great help can be given in the solution of this problem if some kind of screening by the local authority in that way were introduced. I very much hope that my right hon. and learned Friend tonight will be able to accept these two principles, which are embodied in our Motion, and so put an end to our discussions in this House on this matter.

There is one other point I want to deal with before I sit down. Some hon. Members in conversation have said to me—indeed it has been occasionally stated in the Chamber itself—that there is no need to be continually raising this matter, that our agitation is not justified, and that it is only the very minimum of cases in which any injustice has occurred, if, indeed, any has occurred at all. I heard that point of view expressed by an hon. Member of the House only last evening. I want in conclusion to quote one case with which I have been dealing since October of last year. The papers are at the present time in the hands of my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, and so I hope I have the facts absolutely correct. If there is a little deviation I am sure he will excuse me.

In October of last year I wrote to the War Damage Commission regarding the case of a certain Mrs. Thomas in my constituency. The bare facts of that case were—this lady went to the War Damage Office of the local authority to notify the damage which had taken place to her home. She gave them all the particulars for which she was asked. She went home and a few evenings afterwards when she was listening to a broadcast—she was one of those who listened to broadcasts—she heard that when notifying war damage a person ought to fill up a form for the War Damage Commission.

During the course of the week she went back to the local authorities' office with a friend of hers, fortunately, and saw the clerk who was in charge of the office at that time. She said she had come back to fill up a form for she had heard on the wireless that she had to fill up a form in order to substantiate her claim. The clerk told her that she had done everything she needed to do, and there was nothing further that she required to do with regard to it. She argued the case, and said, "Oh, but I heard on the wireless that I must fill up and send a form to the Commission," and the clerk said, "I tell you, Madam, you have done everything that there is any need to do, your claim will go forward and there is nothing more you need to do."

So Mrs. Thomas, who is one of those women who never jumps the queue and never wants to get an advantage over someone less well placed than herself, let the matter drift. She thought that the damage would be put right at some time, and then she found that nothing was being done about it. She made inquiries locally about the matter first of all, and she was told that the claim was out of time and could not be admitted. Then she came to see me about it, and she told me all this. I verified with the local authority that this conversation had taken place and, with her friend, who was prepared to swear before a magistrate that she had heard the conversation. I sent the information on to the War Damage Commission only to meet with the same refusal that Mrs. Thomas herself met with when she went to the War Damage Commission locally.

I was so angry about this case that I went to my right hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Mr. Glenvil Hall), who was then the Financial Secretary to the Treasury. He argued the case with the War Damage Commission, and he was turned down. Then came the General Election. Mrs. Thomas then came back to me with her case. I was trying to get the Adjournment Motion to present this case, but I am afraid that I was unsuccessful. My hon. Friend the Financial Secretary, realising the injustice that was being done, took the matter up once again with the War Damage Commission, and I hope that he has been successful where hitherto we have failed.

If my right hon. and learned Friend were pleading in a court of law what a magnificent case he would put for Mrs. Thomas, a case not to be compared with the poor words I have uttered tonight. We know that there are similar cases of injustice that has been done with every good intention in the world, and it is because of that we beg the Chancellor of the Exchequer to accept the two points in the Motion to get a final settlement, and to see that justice is done to those who suffered as a result of enemy bombing.

8.2 p.m.

Mr. Geoffrey Hutchinson (Ilford, North)

I am sure the House will be glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, East (Sir H. Williams) has raised this question tonight in a form which will not embarrass anyone later by having to select into which Division Lobby he will go. The hon. Lady the Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Mrs. Middleton) will be particularly glad of that. There is really nothing between the two sides of the House on this question. and I hope that this Debate will be instrumental in persuading the Government to recognise that there is a very large number of persons who suffered damage to a greater or lesser degree and today justifiably entertain very strong feelings of injustice at the treatment they have hitherto received.

Those of us who sit for constituencies which suffered severe damage during the war have received a large number of letters drawing our attention to the sort of circumstances to which the hon. Lady referred in which claims have been rejected by the War Damage Commission. I do not propose tonight to read any of these letters. I have brought them with me, and I shall be pleased to show them to anyone who cares to read them. The constituency which I represent suffered very severe war damage. It is almost inconceivable, but of 43,000 houses in the borough of Ilford, 40,000 were damaged to a greater or lesser extent during the war. It is really not surprising, where so many cases of damage have taken place, that many claims have not been submitted within the prescribed time to the War Damage Commission.

My hon. Friend mentioned some of the reasons advanced for the failure to submit claims to the War Damage Commission within the prescribed period, or within the period when the War Damage Commission were prepared to accept claims outside the time stipulated by the War Damage Act. There were, in most of the constituencies which suffered severe war damage, a very large number of persons who were evacuated for one reason or another. Some were evacuated with Government Departments, some with schools and, certainly in the borough of Ilford, there were a large number of people who had to leave London in connection with their businesses.

Then, again, there were those in the Forces. There were people whose houses were occupied by tenants during the war and the occurrence of war damage was not known to the owners until they returned. There is also another class of case, of which I have had several examples, where damage was done to property on several occasions, the appropriate notice being given of the first war damage but the owner assuming that that was sufficient when later damage took place. In consequence, no further notice was given, with the result that he realised too late that notice should have been given of the successive damage done to property.

In most of these cases, the local authorities possess records of a fairly reliable character identifying the particular properties that suffered damage during the war. The records do not in every case identify the extent and nature of the damage, but they do show the particular properties that suffered damage at some stage during the war. 1 do not doubt that when the Minister comes to reply, he will dwell on the fact that notice was given in the newspapers and on the B.B.C., as well as in other ways, by the War Damage Commission calling upon persons to make their claims. I hope the Government will not attach too much importance to the fact that a claim was not made within the prescribed time.

It is apparently impossible to ascertain the extent of these claims, or the number of late claims the War Damage Commission have rejected. I put down a Question the other day, and I was told that it was impossible even to make an approximation of the amount that might be involved. Most of these claims are small. I have looked through the large number of letters I have received, and the largest claim I have in my correspondence is for £200.

The hon. Member for Itchen (Mr. Morley), as he reminded the House, introduced a Private Member's Bill in the last Parliament in which he sought to transfer from the War Damage Commission to the Treasury the duty of determining whether a late claim should be admitted. If the Government were prepared to accept that solution, those of us who have been pressing these claims upon them would not be dissatisfied. I suggest to the hon. Member, however, that that is not really the right approach. I do not think we ought to attach too much importance to reasons why a particular claim was or was not made.

The important aspect is not the reason why a person failed to make a claim, but whether there is any independent and reliable evidence that his property suffered damage during the war. If it can be established from the records of the local authority or from some other source that a particular property suffered damage during the war, then surely, whether the owner made his claim within the prescribed time or failed to do so, his claim in whole or in part ought now to be met. I am sure that the feeling on both sides of the House is that this volume of claims ought to be accepted and settled now, either in part or in whole, quite irrespective of whether anybody made a claim at the right time or failed to do so.

I say to the Financial Secretary that a great deal of time has been spent on debating whether or not there was good reason for putting in a claim. The claims which exist concern mainly persons of comparatively moderate means, and sometimes of very modest means; they are the cause of a sense of injustice, not only among persons whose claims have not been met, but also among their friends and neighbours.

The Government would be much better advised to approach this problem from an entirely new angle and to ask themselves what the volume of these claims is likely to amount to and whether there is any independent evidence that the properties in question were in fact, damaged during the war. If they are satisfied about these two matters, then let us abandon this method of debating with one another whether claims ought to have been put in when a broadcast announcement was made or whether it was reasonable for people not to have received notice of the Press and radio announcements by the War Damage Commission.

If it can be established that there is a volume of war damage claims which can with reasonable certainty be attributed to incidents during the war, then surely it is the wish on both sides of the House that the claims should be met now and that the sense of injustice which is felt by so many people should be ended.

8.15 p.m.

Mr. Hopkin Morris (Carmarthen)

I should like to reinforce the plea which has been made from both sides of the House. In many of these cases the line of demarcation is, I think, made perfectly clear. Where the claims have been made within the stipulated time, although to the wrong quarter, there ought not to be any difficulty about admitting them.

There is one particular case from my own constituency, in which, although it was not, happily, very much bombed, one isolated bomb caused considerable damage. The owner of the property in question notified the local authority in July, 1940, within the stipulated time of 30 days. The claimant thought that his notification would, in turn, be sent to the War Damage Commission but before that could be done the person to whom it had been sent died, although he had made a record of the claim. The result is that the notice did not reach the War Damage Commission in time. The Commission now say that the notification, being out of time, cannot be met.

I think that that is as clear a case as could be made by the hon. Lady the Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Mrs. Middleton) of a claim which should he admitted. It was submitted in time and was admitted by the people who knew the facts to be due to war damage. Although it was not made in due form to the proper quarter within the proper time, yet in justice the whole of the requirements of the law have been met, although not formally. Cases of this sort should be met wholly and the damage paid for.

8.17 p.m.

Mr. Frederick Elwyn Jones (West Ham, South)

I support the plea for the reconsideration of war damage claims which have been rejected on the ground that they were made out of time. I do not want to enter into a competition in suffering, but 1 speak as one of the representatives of West Ham, which regretfully, and in no spirit of boasting, can claim to be the worst blitzed township in the country. I, as a supporter of the Government, am deeply conscious that in this matter we are making further demands upon the public funds, and when we on this side do that we feel inhibitions, which if I may say so, are not always manifested by the representatives of the Tory Party when they are in opposition. Far be it from me, however, to cast a pebble of discord into the charming pool of agreement which has appeared in the House tonight.

Those of us on this side who have been pressing for a long time for a more generous attitude in this matter of belated war damage claims by the Treasury want to make it quite clear that we do not desire to open the floodgates. But we do feel that concessions should be made in cases where not only has injustice been felt by the applicants, but where injustice has properly been felt by them and by those of us in the House who have intervened on their behalf.

I must confess that I was shocked to hear of the case referred to by the hon. and learned Member for Carmarthen (Mr. Hopkin Morris), because my own experience of putting up such cases to the War Damage Commission has been that they have shown considerable latitude in dealing with them and have met such exceptional cases in full generosity. I am very surprised that the result of the intervention by the hon. and learned Member was not as fruitful as it should have been.

In this Debate there is a danger of exaggerating this matter. My own experience, in the many cases I have put up from my constituency, has been that generally the War Damage Commission have dealt with the claims generously and, of course, always courteously. But there have been instances where I, too, have felt there have been hard decisions and where inevitably the constituent concerned has felt injustice has been done. But that is exceptional. The fact that it is exceptional surely makes it possible for the Treasury to meet us on that point.

I agree with the hon. and learned Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Hutchinson) that it is difficult to ascertain the exact number of cases where there has been a refusal owing to late notification, but there cannot have been many. My hon. Friend the Member for Southampton. Itchen (Mr. Morley) referred to 300 cases. Presumably, they were not all from his own division, but came to him from all parts of the country as he sponsored a Private Member's Bill in the last Parliament.

I feel that because instances where injustice has demonstrably been done are few that is a good reason for the Treasury to re-open the matter, particularly in the kind of case referred to by hon. Friends and hon. Members opposite where some authority, local or national, has been seized of the information regarding the damage at the time it took place, even though the War Damage Commission itself may not have been seized of the information. If that were so and if the victim concerned had information as to the damage to his property conveyed to the local authority, or some other authority, surely in this matter we can take a generous view and say that, although the letter of the law has not been strictly complied with, we should allow some latitude so that real justice can be done. I speak as the representative of a heavily blitzed area. It is really not enough that in war-time there should be noble words of exhortation to blitzed areas to "stick it." Fine words butter no parsnips. Nor do they repair war damaged houses. I implore the Treasury to look at this matter once again particularly in cases where the local authority was undoubtedly seized of all the relevant information, where that information can be checked and where, by taking this more generous view, justice can fully be done.

8.23 p.m.

Sir Austin Hudson (Lewisham, North)

As a London Member, representing, like the hon. Member for West Ham, South (Mr. Frederick Elwyn Jones), one of the areas which suffered very much during the war, I wish to occupy the time of the House for not more than five minutes to make a plea to the Government that where some slight amelioration can be made in these war damage cases it should be made.

Any London Member will be able to tell the House that the bulk of his correspondence still, after this distance from the end of the war, is occupied by war damage cases.I do not want the whole matter opened again, but I do want cases where there is a good excuse for the person who has suffered war damage to be allowed to have it examined afresh by the Commission. I pay this tribute; I suppose that every week I write three or four letters to the War Damage Commission and always find them extremely helpful, courteous and ready at any time to take any amount of trouble to get to the bottom of a case, however trivial it may seem.

I will tell the House of the sort of case I want looked into. First, quite a number of people say they thought a claim was put in by the tenant, or someone else. During the war they were away from London and they had the idea that the claim had been put in. Another case which we have all had is where the person has notified the borough council and had the idea that that was the same as notifying the War Damage Commission. People are not always very clever in these things and I am certain we have all had that experience. I do not know whether this matter could be dealt with, but another type of case I have quite frequently in letters and interviews is where a person has had extremely faulty work done, probably while somebody else was the tenant of the house, and the so-called war damage repairs have not been done at all. I must say that in those cases the Commission will nearly always send a representative to go into the whole matter.

Another case of which I have had quite a number of instances is where someone else signs the certificate to say that the work has been completed satisfactorily. I have had such cases where sometimes the previous tenant has done it and I know of a case going through now where the wretched person alleges that his original signature was forged. We get quite a number of cases where someone else has signed the certificate of satisfactory completion whereas as a matter of fact nothing satisfactory has been done.

I reiterate that I have no complaint whatever, in fact nothing but praise, for the War Damage Commission and the work they are doing, but if the Government could allow a little more latitude where there is a prima facie case in which, perhaps through stupidity, a person has not put in the claim in time—it would not cost the Government a great amount to help alleviate the great amount of distress.

8.27 p.m.

Mr. Daines (East Ham, North)

I join with the hon. Member for Lewisham, North (Sir A. Hudson) in what he has said about the War Damage Commission. I have always found them extremely courteous and always prepared to give a re-examination if some case can be established. I do not know whether the Chancellor is to reply to the Debate. I was informed that he would do so. I can imagine that when he comes with his brief he will put up a devastating show, blind us all with logic and put up a perfectly satisfactory case in these terms.

I admit, and we might as well face it, that if any substantial concessions are made tonight on the points raised in the Motion on the Paper, they will be bound to cause considerable untidiness in administration and are bound to mean a vast new organisation being created which I can well imagine the War Damage Commission and my right hon. and learned Friend are not anxious to see. But what we are primarily concerned about is not whether there is an administrative mess or not, but whether there is an injustice that can be put right. I am glad that it is from that point of view that this Debate has been initiated by Members of the Opposition tonight.

I can well imagine that one of the points which my right hon. and learned Friend will make is that if the point is conceded that the local authority records should be accepted there are many areas in the country where such records are faulty, and that it will mean injustice as between one set of people and another. I would argue, and I think it is a perfectly reasonable argument, that if cases are established in which there are true records, the fact that there are cases in which there are no records available is no reason why the people concerned in those cases in which there are true records should be debarred.

I have found, as I am sure most Members have found, vast numbers of cases in which the first incident was reported, and in which constituents have assumed that the local authority looked after the rest and in which consequently no subsequent claim has been made. I submit that where there are clearly established local authority records the subsequent cases should be admitted.

My final point arises from one which was made by the hon. Member for Lewisham, North. He dealt with the cases of people who have signed to say that the war damage repair is complete. We are already beginning to find a whole series of consequences arising from those cases. There are among my constituents, and I know that this is true of other constituencies, cases of people who have signed to say that the damage has been put right. So far as they know it has been put right, the repairs are there and visible. The paper and the woodwork have been replaced.

But bombs and blast are awkward things, and those people are now beginning to find after five or six years that serious structural damage is beginning to show. They are beginning to find that the drains are going and that there are all sorts of other effects, very often in the case of houses which are 30 or 40 years old, when there is no evidence of subsidence in the district and where every atom of evidence is to the effect that the damage is due to the blasting.

I appreciate that there must be some finality. I will be frank, and say what everybody else knows but which no one else has said tonight. There are hundreds of thousands of people in this country who have "got away" with money under this scheme to which they are not entitled. While that is so, and while I agree that it may make the Chancellor and the War Damage Commission want to be tough, it is to my constituents a source of further grievance and injustice. I admit all these difficulties. I know that from the standpoint of logic the Chancellor has a far stronger case than we have. But I beg the Government to reconsider this problem and give what easement they can from the standpoint of common simple justice.

8.33 p.m.

Mr. H. A. Price (Lewisham, West)

In intervening in this Debate I am greatly strengthened r)y the fact that this evening, as when the subject was last discussed in the autumn of last year, a feeling transcending all party difference has been manifested. It is a feeling that the position is extremely unsatisfactory and that widespread injustices are being inflicted. I represent a London constituency which suffered heavily, particularly during the flying bomb period. During the few months in which I have been a Member of this House I have, like other hon. Members, received dozens of letters on this topic.

I have read and heard and know perfectly well all the arguments which have been put forward on behalf of the War Damage Commission and the Treasury. know all about the notices that have appeared in the Press, posters which have appeared on the hoardings and outside town halls and announcements which have been made on the radio. I am fairly well satisfied that these steps have been sufficient to apprise the majority of the population of what had to be done to cover themselves in this matter.

As has been said this evening, more than once, business men, civil servants, etc., men who are accustomed to keeping themselves abreast of current affairs, have had every opportunity to cover themselves, and have no right to expect sympathy if they have failed to do so. But there are thousands of other people who have been referred to this evening, who hate the sight of a buff form; who go to bed at 8 o'clock; who never listen to the radio; who cannot read, who are deaf and so on—literally thousands of them. And the proof of the pudding— [HON. MEMBERS: "All Tories?"] Yes, in my constituency, they are all Tories now; they voted Socialist in 1945. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and the complaints we are receiving of injustice are sufficient evidence that this particular pudding is not only proving rather indigestible, but in a good many cases is causing heartburn.

It has been said that we ought not to quote too many cases, but I make no apology for quoting two and I do so for this reason. It has been alleged, and I support the view, that the present administration of the War Damage Acts, is not all it might be. Having made that charge, I must produce evidence to support it, and I wish to quote these two cases because they show two separate and distinct ways in which, to my mind, the administration is unsatisfactory.

The first case concerns a lady who lives in my constituency, and owns a house at Gravesend. It is, or it was, let to a tenant. During the war the lady, who was in Lewisham, wrote to her tenant in Gravesend, not once, but many times, asking whether the house was all right. Each time she received a letter back saying that the house was perfectly all right, and that there was nothing to worry about. Imagine her astonishment when, after the war and quite by chance, she discovered from a man who had been living in that house as a boarder that the house had, in fact, been damaged.

The War Damage Commission refused to accept this late notification, and allow me to tell the House why. It was because they did not consider it reasonable for the lady to rely on the statement of the occupier. I wonder if the House realises what the War Damage Commission have done? They have charged the owner with being an inefficient landlady; they sat in judgment upon her. The War Damage Commission prosecuted her; the War Damage Commission was the jury and found her guilty; the War Damage Commission was the judge and sentenced her to pay for her own war damage. The War Damage Commission was an interested party and there was no appeal. I cannot imagine the Chancellor of the Exchequer approving such a situation. It would be abhorrent to his legal mind. It is ludicrous that the War Damage Commission should be in a position to take such action, or be in a position in which they have to take such a step having had such a responsibility thrust upon them.

The second case I wish to quote is one about which I feel very strongly indeed. It is a case in which late notification was accepted. It is the treatment after the late notification to which I wish to draw the attention of the House. It is a case familiar to the hon. Member for Itchen (Mr. Morley), although it happened in my constituency. Two blind people, a man and his wife, always blind since their birth, lived in a house in my constituency. The property was damaged several times. There is no dispute about the first damage, that was notified. The subsequent incidents, and I believe there were six, were not notified, according to the War Damage Commission.

I will ask the House to note that these two people are blind. They could not possibly notify the damage themselves, but had to rely on other people to do it for them. They cannot swear on oath that those incidents were in fact notified. They can only swear that they asked someone or other to notify them; but it is not without relevance that in each case the Part II claim was notified and has been met. Despite that fact, the War Damage Commission were unsympathetic. They did eventually agree to accept a late notification, and against a claim for over £1,400 they agreed to accept responsibility for £415 leaving this blind couple to shoulder the burden of £1,000. They have not a thousand shillings.

As it was a late notification case, the procedure of the War Damage Commission was to send their inspector and to accept responsibility only for what he advised was indisputably war damage. He cut out £1,000 worth of work. Included in that work was the repair of the front bay, downstairs and upstairs, which according to the technical adviser was not due to war damage. But the house immediately opposite had been completely destroyed and the occupants killed.

There is no appeal and the Commission refuse to allow their technical adviser to meet the claimant's adviser on the site to discuss the claim, because that is not their procedure in cases of late notification. How can anybody maintain that that is justice? How can anybody wonder that I feel bitter about it and want to see such a situation remedied? I know the difficulties.

I agree with those hon. and right hon. Gentlemen who say that the Commission have a difficult duty to perform. I have always had the greatest courtesy from them and from Sir Robert Fraser; I know that there have been many occasions when claimants have got away with dilapidations as war damage; I know how difficult it is at times to distinguish between the two; and I appreciate the financial problems which face the Commission. I believe that they have spent something in the nature of £900 million against an estimate of £400 million; but I also believe that it would require a comparatively minute sum of money to put these injustices right. I call upon the Government here and now to recognise the spirit of the discussion which has taken place in this House and to do something about it.

8.42 p.m.

Mr. Weitzman (Stoke Newington and Hackney, North)

It is impossible adequately to convey to my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer the immense amount of feeling there is upon this matter. A considerable number of Members have spoken, and I am sure that my right hon. and learned Friend will have noted that there has not been one single voice expressing dissent. I, too, represent a very large London constituency which suffered a great amount of war damage. In the course of my Parliamentary duties I have received many letters about claims made by people who have suffered war damage and I have conveyed those letters to the Commission. Most of them were from people who were very poor and who could ill afford to expend the money necessary to repair war damage.

Many of the letters dealt with claims of people who had certainly notified the local authorities and who were under the impression that, having done that, they had done everything necessary. Some were about houses where damage was suffered and the first notification of the damage was given, but damage was suffered again and no further notification was given. I have had instances of soldiers returning from service who, after demobilisation, were unable to put in claims because they were too late. The damage had occurred whilst they were abroad. There were many instances of that nature.

I agree that the War Damage Commission have acted with courtesy, have considered these matters and have been anxious to help. Though one has received favourable replies in a very small number of cases, in the vast majority the usual reply has been, "We have gone into the matter; we are extremely sorry, but there is a late notification and nothing can be done." I earnestly plead with the Chancellor to assist. I should like to point out that the basis of dealing with these claims ought to be this very simple one: either there is a genuine claim or there is not.

If these people have suffered war damage and their claim is a genuine one. I would suggest to the Chancellor that their claims ought to be met, unless it can be shown that the claimants have been guilty of some sort of misconduct which would disentitle them to receive the amount which would otherwise be due to them. When we look round all the various constituencies which suffered war damage and see the number of claims put forward in that way, when we remember the period of war-time and the difficulties which there were in the way of people appreciating the regulations and giving the necessary notification, when we realise the perplexities of family life then, surely we would agree all these factors ought to be taken into consideration. This Government, which I strongly support in the work it has done, surely prides itself in the fact that it will not see injustice done, and it is in the confident hope that, recognising that injustice is being done in these cases, the Government will give way and make some concession, that I make this appeal tonight.

8.46 p.m.

Brigadier Medlicott (Norfolk, Central)

I am glad to have the opportunity of intervening very briefly, following the example set by other hon. Members, on a matter which perhaps causes more anxiety to Members of Parliament than any other subject. Constituents write to us in cases where war damage has been suffered, where notice has been given to the local authority and where the premiums have been paid, and yet, when the time comes for the claim to go forward, these people are told that they are too late, because of some announcement in a newspaper which they have never read or on the radio which they never heard.

I would stress the fact that we are largely pressing and relying upon the cases where notice has been given to the local authorities, and I would go so far as to suggest to the right hon. and learned Gentleman that, if we were discussing this matter along the lines of the ordinary civil law, there would be a very strong case to be made out that the Treasury had, in fact, held out the local authorities as their agents, and that notice given to a local authority ought to be binding upon the Treasury.

The principal point I want to urge is the extreme unsuitability of the method adopted to notify members of the public as to how their claims ought to be made. The Chancellor, with his long and distinguished record at the Bar, will know how extremely careful the courts are that no man's position shall be altered except as a result of process served upon him personally. The situation must be brought to his personal notice, and the courts are strict in insisting upon proof of service in every individual case, so that no man can be disadvantaged except by proof that he has had an opportunity of protecting his own rights. These "hit or miss" methods of a broadcast announcement or an announcement in a newspaper are a departure from the previous practice which I deplore, and they have brought about a wide sense of injustice.

The second point is that we are not dealing with the general body of taxpayers, but with people who have paid premiums. In the old days, whet, certain insurance companies allowed policies to lapse because of the late payment of premiums, they were accused of something very near to sharp practice, and that is something which we deplore in any aspect of our public life. Tonight, the speeches made have all had a certain friendliness towards the Chancellor and a certain moderation, but I suggest here that the good faith of our State is in issue. These people have paid the premiums, and are entitled to the benefits which should accrue to them from the payment of those premiums. We may be short of money, but we ought not to fall short of the highest standard of ethics in this matter.

8.50 p.m.

Mr. Snow (Lichfield and Tamworth)

Unlike other hon. Members who have spoken in this Debate, I feel that the Chancellor is capable of regarding this matter other than from the purely legal point of view, and it is on the more human side of this problem that I want to make an appeal tonight.

In dealing with these late claims, one must remember that many of the people who should have submitted claims but did not do so, are very ordinary people who, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, view the filling up of the documentation necessary for these claims in much the same way as, possibly, you and I regard the filling up of Income Tax returns. They are complicated forms, and, in many cases, people left them to others to fill up for them. I remember very well, in Portsmouth, a poor old lady coming to see me and stating, as her excuse for not submitting a claim form, that the damage took place while she was in a shelter, that she was in a very distressed condition just after the bomb incident, and that a priest had come round and told her that he was going to see to it, and that the council would be informed.

Obviously, that will not wash in law. It does not sound very convincing, but as she told it to me I was convinced that she had thought that the priest, who, later, I tried to trace, but could not, had seen to the matter for her. The Treasury, quite rightly, is preoccupied with the difficulty of dealing with fraudulent claims, but, on the other hand, many ordinary people confuse local government with Parliamentary Government. When they hear that the council is looking after the problem, they think that is all that is necessary.

But I must warn the House that some of the assumptions made this evening are going to lead us into very deep waters. Two or three hon. Members have said that if this concession is allowed by the Government, it will not involve very much money. I must dissent from that view. On the contrary, I believe there will be a large number of claims. While some may be frivolous and others downright fraudulent, a large number will be these marginal cases, which, by and large, the War Damage Commission will probably allow. It is only right that the House should realise that a very large sum of money may be involved.

There is another point on which the House should be warned. One hon. Member said that local authorities had reasonable records of the incidents when the damage took place. We looked into this matter very carefully in the last Parliament, and I am bound to say that it is not really true. Many local authorities have very good records; some have indifferent records, and many have no records at all. It would be a very difficult problem indeed to lay down that claims should be considered or allowed on the basis of local authority records. I think that probably the best thing would be—and I am right behind the promoters of this Motion—to ask local authorities for their advice as to how claims could be screened, even where local authorities have no records to go by.

I wish to conclude my remarks by paying tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Mrs. Middleton), whose initiative and drive were an inspiration to many of us in the last Parliament. I feel that we ought to pay that tribute to her because without that inspiration many of us would have given up hope during the last Parliament.

8.54 p.m.

Mr. Black (Wimbledon)

I wish to say a few words about my experience of the serious problem which the House is debating tonight. To give some idea of the magnitude of this problem in some areas, I would mention that in the town of Wimbledon, forming part of the constituency which I have the honour to represent, there are some 15,000 separate houses and flats, of which no fewer than about 14,700 were damaged by enemy action during the war, some of them on several occasions. The residue of these cases which are outstanding, and which the War Damage Commission will not meet on the ground of failure of notification or of late notification, are causing a very real sense of grievance in the communities which were particularly affected by war damage.

During the comparatively short time I have been a Member of this House, I have been asked to help a very large number of constituents faced with this particular problem. It would be fair to say that I have had less success in obtaining concessions from the War Damage Commission than I have had in dealing with any other kind of problem on behalf of constituents. The feeling of injustice on the part of the people concerned is something that must be experienced at first hand to be fully realised. The point cannot be too strongly emphasised that, in substance, the war damage scheme is an insurance scheme. Not only is it an insurance scheme, but it is a compulsory insurance scheme to which every property owner was compelled to contribute his share.

Where reasonable evidence of war damage can be established, I think the House would hold the view that every property owner, who qualifies, ought to be able to draw a proper amount out of the pool; and he should not be deprived by merely technical reasons or considerations. In fact, what has been happening in regard to the administration of the Act in these cases has worked out, in the majority of cases, in the nature of one law for the rich and another law for the poor. The big property owner has been able to command the services of surveyors and legal advisers, who have taken the necessary steps to see that all forms were duly completed and lodged with the War Damage Commission by the required date and the claims, therefore, properly kept open.

On the other hand, the small owner, the man who, perhaps, has laboured for the best part of a lifetime to buy the home in which he lives, has not had the benefit of the help of lawyers and surveyors and, owing to ignorance of the law or misundertanding as to what steps it was necessary for him to take, has been deprived of the benefits of the scheme, for technical and legalistic reasons. That is a very deplorable condition of affairs which I hope the Chancellor of the Exchequer will do something to alleviate when he comes to reply to the Debate.

I suggest that the principle to be followed ought not to be the principle of judging whether a claim should be recognised or not recognised simply according to whether the claim had or had not been made at the proper office of the proper authority by the proper date. But it would be quite reasonable for the War Damage Commission to say, in cases of doubt or difficulty, "We are not able, at this late stage, to judge whether this particular disrepair or damage was due to war circumstances or not because, by failure to notify the damage, we were deprived of the opportunity of inspecting at the time when we could have judged." In a case of that kind it would be reasonable for the War Damage Commission to reject the claim.

Where it is clear from the evidence available that the damage is, in fact, war damage and that the only defect in the claim is the failure to lodge the claim at the right office at the right time, then I suggest that justice requires that in such cases the claims should be recognised and equity should be done.

9.0 p.m.

Mr. Moeran (Bedfordshire, South)

I wish to make one short point in this Debate, because I believe the hardship cases of which we have heard from both sides of the House arise largely from the fact that the War Damage Commission has now no discretion whatever allowed to it. Until some time ago they could exercise discretion in admitting a claim which had not been notified within the time. Today, according to my information in cases which I have handled, they are in no circumstances allowed to admit a claim, however deserving and however just.

I know that hard cases make bad law, but the instances which we have heard from both sides of the House show that sometimes bad law makes hard cases. I plead for a very simple remedy, namely, that discretion should be restored to the War Damage Commission. I will cite one case from my own personal experience of a young couple who bought a house in August, 1947. They made inquiries of the War Damage Commission. Their solicitors wrote and asked for a notification form. First-aid repairs had been carried out by the local authority, and the couple were sent back a claim form—the second form which has to be filled up—from which they assumed that the first-aid repairs had been notified and that the War Damage Commission had notification of the claim. There was then delay in preparing the claims form—it is not only public bodies and Government offices which delay. When the claim form was sent in, they were informed that the claim had not been notified in time, and that they were shut out completely.

The kind of remedy in these cases of hardship does not demand legislation. It only means that the War Damage Commission should be allowed discretion so that in these cases of genuine hardship the Commission can act. We cannot expect every official to understand all the implications of every letter that is sent in, but in the case which I have cited, as in other cases, there is no doubt at all that failure to make a claim in time was at least contributed to by the War Damage Commission itself and by the action it took. It is that kind of case, of which I am informed there are many, that is crying out for treatment and for a wider discretion than the Commission now exercises.

I would add my plea to the Chancellor to open the door to these genuine cases which demand treatment for reasons of not less than simple justice. As we have heard from all quarters of the House, a sense of injustice is genuinely suffered, and I ask that injustice should be remedied for at least some of our citizens.

9.4 p.m.

Captain Ryder (Merton and Morden)

Those of us who have listened to this Debate will be aware that there is a widespread grievance in this matter.

I am very gad therefore that this request is so fully supported on both sides of the House. At the same time, we should appreciate that there are two sides to this problem and that very large sums of money may be involved. We should, therefore, extend some measure of sympathy towards the Chancellor of the Exchequer who, I have no doubt, would like as much as anyone to see these claims met, but who has the responsible task of guarding the public purse.

On the other hand, it should be appreciated that when the War Damage Act was originally passed through this House it was then clearly intended that those unfortunate people who had received damage to their houses should be fully and fairly compensated and not deprived of this compensation by any small legal formality. May I read an extract from the speech of the then Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir Kingsley Wood on the Third Reading of the War Damage Bill? He said: We have also worked out a scheme for indexing the claims and correlating them with the reports which are furnished by local authorities of damaged buildings in their respective areas. That is a very significant passage. Later, he said: It is our ideal…to interpret this complicated Measure in the simplest possible way. As regards those who have already submitted claims on form V.O.W. I to the Inland Revenue District Valuer, arrangements are being made for those forms to be handed over to the War Damage Commission…Anyone who has sent in such a form will not be asked to renew his claim, though he may, no doubt, receive from the Commission a request for further information or be given instructions as to his future procedure."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 26th February, 1941; Vol. 369, c. 547.] I feel that there was a clear indication that there would be a link-up between the local authorities and the War Damage Commission.

The House should bear in mind the ordinary human frailities of humble people, who are not expert in filling up forms, and the state of mind they might have been in after having received a near miss. It may be that they were aged folk and were suffering from shock from subsequent disasters of war and, at the time, they may have had to fill in quite a number of other forms—demanding new ration cards and clothing coupon books and identity cards. The question we must ask ourselves is this: Is it reasonable to expect these people, some years later, to know whether they filled in form V.O.W. 1 and, if they did, whether they handed it to the Inland Revenue Valuer of the local district or to somebody else at the local council offices?

That is the substance of my complaint, but I feel that first and foremost, if we are to give an opinion it is most important that we should have some idea of the size of the problem, the number of people whose claims have been rejected and the sum of money likely to be involved. It was with this in mind that I put down a Question to the Chancellor of the Exchequer last Tuesday and also intervened with a supplementary question earlier today. He took that occasion to accuse me of abusing the courtesies of the House. I have no wish to make a personal matter of this, but I thought it was quite a reasonable question and, indeed, was essential if hon. Members are to give full consideration to the problem.

I feel that the Chancellor's replies were somewhat curt, in the circumstances, and that we were entitled to a better reply, in view of the fact that this is a matter of widespread grievance. I hope that the right hon. and learned Gentleman will not feel that I bear him any malice and that he will be able to give us a more considered reply in this Debate. My request is that we should ask the Government to have the whole subject fully and carefully examined, seeking also the comments of the War Damage Commission, so that the House may be better informed of the nature of the problem which we face.

9.9 p.m.

Mr. Arthur Lewis (West Ham, North)

I am very pleased indeed to be able to take part in this Debate even though the time is short. I will follow your request, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, and sit down in time to allow the right hon. Gentleman to put the Opposition point of view. I particularly wanted to take part in the Debate because of the fact that I represent an area which probably had more war damage than any other area. I heard my colleague the hon. Member for West Ham, South (Mr. Frederick Elwyn Jones) speaking and I tried to give him the figures so that they could be used in the Debate.

In West Ham the number of buildings that were destroyed or so badly damaged that they needed to be demolished was 14,000, or 27 per cent. of the total number of buildings in that one borough. In addition, another 11,000 were damaged beyond human habitation, and a further 29,000 were damaged in some way or another and needed repairs. I want to ask the Chancellor, can he really imagine what the feelings of those people were in that particular borough during that period when the bombers were coming over from 6 o'clock at night to 6 o'clock in the morning, night after night after night? Can he wonder that many of them never had time to think about notifying the War Damage Commission of the damage to their property?

Many of them, obviously, never took the trouble. Many of them were of the opinion that, in view of the fact that the local borough council came round almost immediately and commenced what was then termed first-aid repairs, in fact the notification had been made for them by the local borough council. Many of them were not even in the area. They were evacuated, or were away on war work, and it was only subsequently that they found that, in fact, their particular houses had been damaged, and that the notification that had been given to the council in fact was not in accordance with the Act.

Mention has been made of the sympathetic way in which the War Damage Commission has dealt with some of the late notifications. I can here pay tribute myself to Sir Robert Fraser. I think that if he had the opportunity he would admit far more claims than he has done in the past, and I think it is wrong that the position should be as it is now, in which surveyors, builders, architects, and even the War Damage Commission's surveyors themselves are saying, "Yes, we know it is war damage. We agree that the whole lot is war damage. We think that it should be met by the War Damage Commission, but because the dear old lady—or the dear old gentleman—omitted to notify the War Damage Commission within the requisite period he—or she—is not entitled to have the money paid to her."

Mr. Weitzman

Shame.

Mr. Lewis

My last word is this. It is true to say that, in the main, the heaviest blitzed areas have been the working class, highly industrialised and over populated areas. It is true also to say that, in the main, they are the poor and ordinary working class people who live in those areas, and it is those, in the main, that can ill afford to meet these hundreds of pounds, and, in many instances, thousands of pounds, that have now to be found for repairing and rebuilding their property. I would ask the Chancellor to give some concession, even if it is only to have the matter again looked into, so that these people who, through lack of knowledge, did not notify the Commission at the time, may be entitled to get from the Commission—and, in fact, shall get from the Commission—the money that is rightfully theirs.

9.15 p.m.

Mr. Derek Walker-Smith (Hertford)

Like others who have taken part in this Debate, I recognise the difficulty in which the Chancellor is placed in being asked to add any further, and to some extent undefined, burdens on the national finances. I recognise also, as others have done, the courtesy, helpfulness and efficiency of the War Damage Commission. But because these cases are exceptional it would seem, as so many hon. Members have said, that some concession might reasonably be given.

The classes of difficulty are really two: first, those where people have had good reason to suppose that somebody else has made a valid notification on their behalf and it has turned out not to be the case; and secondly, where the information is in the possession of the local authority and the owner has thought that that was sufficient. It so happens that, though I do not sit for one of the heavily blitzed areas, within the last week, and quite independently of this evening's proceedings, I have received letters from my constituents illustrating both those two problems.

The first is concerned with the trustees of a charitable concern whose property was managed by a firm of estate agents in my constituency. In that particular case, by a clerical error in the department of the estate agents' notification for one of the properties was not made. The effect is that a precisely comparable property

next door, in respect of which the due notification was made, is in receipt of payment, but not this one which was by an oversight omitted. At that time, both partners in the estate agency were serving overseas, one actually being a prisoner of war in a Japanese camp.

There is a case in which owners obviously thought the estate agents would make all necessary notification, and but for the circumstances of war it would clearly have been made. Surely a presumption can be drawn from the fact that payment is admitted for the next door property that exactly similar circumstances apply to this property.

The second case is that of a requisitioned property. A constituent of mine owns property in London which was war damaged when under requisition. What clearer case could the ordinary citizen have for thinking that the business of notification was taken care of than that at the time the property was actually requisitioned under the Defence Regulations for the use of His Majesty? Surely in those cases, if there is any reasonable evidence or presumption that the damage was caused by enemy action the question of notification should be waived and the matter looked at on its merits. I promised to be very short, and those are the only points I have to make. I add my voice to those asking that the Chancellor give sympathetic attention to this question.

9.18 p.m.

Squadron-Leader Kinghorn (Yarmouth)

It would not do for this Debate to close without an appeal being made for the two towns of East Anglia which are so near the Dutch coast and which came in for such a lot of heavy bombing, and very frequent bombing, especially in the early years of the war. Those are my own constituency of Great Yarmouth, and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Lowestoft (Mr. Edward Evans).

In 1940, the two main industries of the town I represent just vanished overnight— the seaside resort industry and the fishing industry. The people were told to get out. Loudspeakers went round the town and urged them to get out at once, to leave things more or less as they stood, and so they did. Later the troops and the Navy came in. I have had the same experience as the hon. Member for Hertford (Mr. Walker-Smith) among a number of my constituents who left their houses and went somewhere else in the country— especially elderly people—and whose premises were requisitioned by the Army, Navy or Air Force.

If one assumes that since the war ended all these people came back to live their normal lives and that these two great industries were revived at once, then the time limit set by the War Damage Commission would be all right; they would have had ample time in which to go to their lawyers, their uncles, or to whatever friend they go to for the purpose and have their papers signed. But many of these people are still coming back to Yarmouth to take up their residence. The electoral register is getting bigger every week. It is quite likely that if we have an election, say, in four years from now, another alteration will have to be made in my constituency, because there will be enough people in the borough by then to make an electoral change necessary.

That is the position which has gone on since 1940 when people were hounded out of the town, and no allowance has been made for that state of affairs, especially for the poorer people. It is the poorer people who are suffering. Those who are better off have their solicitors and accountants, and in my recollection I do not think I have had any difficulty in the constituency with regard to people who could employ a solicitor or accountant to present their war damage claims within the prescribed period. It is the other people who come to see me week after week—people who have just enough money to pay their rent and rates and cannot embark on the expenditure necessary to put right houses some of which have perhaps been left to them and in which they had hoped to spend their days.

One person came to me last Saturday, after receiving a disappointing reply from the War Damage Commission in respect of a claim which I had sent through for her. She was an old lady and was looking after her mother aged 98. The person for whom she had put in a claim was her aunt aged 99. This old lady's means were very slender and she could not possibly embark on the repair of her house at present day prices. I could give any number of similar cases.

I saw one of my constituents tonight. His father had one of the biggest boarding houses in my constituency, which was hit by the first bomb dropped in the town. The damage was assessed at £15,000. For 10 years, until this year, it had been open to the weather and deteriorating rapidly. This year the War Damage Commission have allowed him to spend £4,700 on one wing of the property which will be completed in October. But it will be completely useless as a boarding house until the other wing is put right because the kitchen is in the other wing. Let us look at this matter from a common sense point of view.

The Minister of Pensions last year told us that we could tell our constituents that if anyone felt that he had an injustice after fighting for his country and thought that his claim for a pension should be reviewed, he could send it through. He said that it did not matter whether it was in connection with the last war or the war before. That caused a great deal of gladness among our constituents. Cannot we do the same thing with regard to these claims? Why cannot we say to the old lady I have mentioned, whose house was knocked about by enemy action and who has done as much for the country as the fellow who had a wound at Dunkirk, that her claim will be reviewed? I think that we should do everything that we can to help these people and to try to soften some stony hearts.

9.25 p.m.

Mr. Assheton (Blackburn, West)

All the Members of the House are grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, East (Sir H. Williams) for succeeding in raising this topic this evening. This Debate has been entirely non-controversial so far, and I see no reason why it should not remain so until it comes to an end. I notice that most of the Members who have spoken have been those whose constituencies suffered most from war damage. That is perhaps not to be wondered at, and it was a little bit innocent for one Member on the other side of the House to refer to the fact that every speaker in this Debate was pressing very strongly on the Chancellor the views which had been, put forward in the Motion which was on the Order Paper a few days ago.

I represent now a constituency, which, happily, did not suffer great war damage, but in the last Parliament I represented a constituency which did, and I think it is the duty of this House, and, of course, of the Chancellor of the Exchequer—which, I know, he will carry out—to hold the scales evenly between the claimants, who have not been satisfied, and the taxpayers, who have to find the money with which to satisfy them. As has been pointed out, although this war damage scheme was an insurance scheme, it must not be forgotten that the contributions made by those who paid them were not anything like sufficient to meet the very heavy claims which the community as a whole has to meet. That is a point which we must always bear in mind.

Everyone in the House has paid tribute to the work of the War Damage Commission, and all those who have had experience of it would like to join in that tribute. They have been doing a very difficult job, on the whole extremely well. I know what difficulties they are in over this question of late claims, and I know very well what difficulties the same gentlemen are going to be in when late claims for development value under the Town and Country Planning Act begin to come in in one or two years' time. We will meet the same problem then.

It is absolutely true that there are numbers of people who never hear the wireless and never read a newspaper, and who do not know when to take some particular action which concerns their own interest. It is a great mistake to think that all people in this country read the newspapers although a large number of newspapers are sold, and it is also a great mistake to think that everybody listens to the wireless. It is almost impossible for a department like the War Damage Commission to get over to the public the message they want to get across, except by personal communication to people. That is really the only way of achieving it completely. In consequence of that there is no doubt that there has been a great deal of hardship owing to the fact that many claims should have been made which have not, in fact, been made.

Hon. Members on all sides of the House have given many illustrations to prove hardship has been suffered. The principal points covered have been these: there were owners of property who were absent on Service overseas; there were owners of property who were absent from their property because it was tenanted and who did not hear about the damage; there were those whose property suffered damage on a number of previous occasions, who thought that when they had once reported the first instance, that that covered their claim, as it were, for the whole of the war; there were some who were very old and infirm, and some even, who, during the war, were bowed down with sorrow, and who had other things to think about.

Then there are the cases where the damage did not really become apparent until later. Those cases are bound to cause great difficulty, because it is always hard to distinguish between damage which has been the direct result of the war and damage which has accrued subsequently from neglect of property or something of that kind. There have been occasions when temporary repairs have covered up war damage and its true extent has only been apparent when something has been opened up subsequently. The temporary repairs were, perhaps, executed by the local authority in the absence of the owner and the more extensive damage never came to his notice at the time.

There is one other point which is of great importance. No doubt a good many local authority bomb repair organisations gave the impression that once they had been called in no further step was necessary on the part of the owner of the property. Although they ought not to have given that impression and had no authority to do so, none the less that is the impression which was gained.

So it comes about that a large number of hardships are being suffered. I think that hon. Members have been right when they have said that, on the whole, these hardships are suffered by the owners of small property. The larger property owners, who have had the advantage of good organisations to manage their property and have been able to employ skilled technical advisers, have not suffered to the same degree as the owners of small property. It is for those small owners that we plead especially tonight, and I beg the Chancellor to give every possible consideration he can to these claims.

We are very loth indeed to add further substantial burdens to the Exchequer and we will naturally listen with great care to what the Chancellor may say. On the other hand, we wish to avoid great injustice being done, not only to small people, but to all property owners if they are suffering hardship.

I do not know whether it is too much to ask that this matter should be looked at afresh by the Chancellor. My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, East, who opened the discussion, said that he did not seek any alteration in legislation—he was wise not to do so considering that we are on the Adjournment; and it is well within the powers of the Chancellor to make a good many administrative easements which will help the War Damage Commission to meet some of these most difficult cases. That is the case which I wish to put to the Chancellor on behalf of my hon. Friends on this side, and I hope very sincerely that he will do his best to meet it.

9.33 p.m.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Sir Stafford Cripps)

I can assure hon. Members that it is a very much easier task to press for more money to be paid to one's constituents than to stand up for the nation as a whole in resisting expenditure of this kind. I also remind the House that too, come from a city which was very heavily blitzed during the war, so that I am perfectly conscious of the problems that arise.

I should like to remind the House, first, of the origin of the Commission and of its powers. The Commission was set up on purpose to separate the payment out of this very large sum of money that was contemplated from the immediate impact of political influence. Obviously, this is a case in which it is most dangerous that one should allow direct political influence to play, where so many people in so many constituencies are concerned, and it was particularly provided in the Act that the Commission should have power in their discretion to extend any limit of time specified so far as the notification of damage was concerned.

This I think was a very wise precaution which Parliament took. It did not leave it to Ministers to vary in particular cases the time of notification; it left that to a non-political body, the Commission, which could examine it impartially without any danger of political pressure. It is that fundamental structure with which we are dealing. The hon. Member for Bedfordshire, South (Mr. Moeran) asked that we should give back this discretion to the Commission. I would point out that it has never been taken away. They have it today and are indeed today exercising it and have been from the commencement of the operation of the scheme.

The question is, and this must really be the question we are considering, whether they have exercised that discretion wisely, or in such a way that we should take it away from them because they have not exercised it wisely. I think everyone admits—I would certainly like to pay my tribute—that the War Damage Commission have done an immensely difficult work with the greatest efficiency and, on the whole, with the greatest humanity. As the House knows, the receipts from war damage amounted to £200 million. We have so far paid out £900 million and this year we shall pay out another £75 million, making nearly £1,000 million, something like £90 for every family in the country, and it has been provided by every family in the country in order to hand it over to people whose houses or properties were damaged.

This is an immense insurance scheme and one can hardly imagine, with the most perfect organisation in the world, such an immense insurance scheme being carried through with no complaints. I am perfectly certain that there are some cases where people have not received that which they were entitled to and I am equally certain there are many cases where people have received that to which they were not entitled. What we have to do is to try to guard against that kind of demand being made upon the War Damage Commission and why in this case, as in every case of insurance, a reasonable period of notification must be insisted upon is because the paying body must have an opportunity of testing the circumstances while yet they are fresh.

I am sure everyone remembers, for instance, in the old days of workmen's compensation the need to give immediate notice if one were to get it. If one did not give immediate notice one went without. With motor car accidents and all these things one must give notice which will enable the insurers to test the facts while the facts can be ascertained. That is what the Act lays down and the initial period was 30 days.

It became pretty clear that 30 days in war circumstances obviously was not enough and the result was that that was completely abandoned and up to the end of 1942 there was no limit at all. At the end of 1946 the only limit was that if one was more than three months late with a notification one was asked to make a statutory declaration that it was true and that led to the withdrawal of a large number of notifications, but every person who was prepared to make a statutory declaration had his notification admitted, however late it was, even though it was years late. That was the position up to September, 1946, 18 months after the last bomb had dropped and the last bit of damage had been done. The House will realise that an enormous latitude was already being given at that period of time.

It was at that period that the Commission took the view, and I think rightly, that they must really start to apply rather more strict supervision as regards late notifications, not that they were going to exclude them altogether, but that they must be rather more rigid as regards the circumstances. In the spring of 1947 the Commission reviewed the position and then decided that, in view of this growing lapse of time since the last bomb fell, the repeated publicity that had been given and the very great difficulties that were beginning to arise in distinguishing between war and other damage, it was necessary for them to impose more severe restrictions on new notifications.

It has been suggested that the difficulties with local authorities, the changeover from which occurred about this period of time in some areas, was that the local authorities took to themselves the notification and did not pass it on. I do not think that can really be true because in the vast majority of cases the forms for notification were issued through the local authorities. Of the 3,400,000 notification forms that were received, 3,200,000 referred to houses and house property, and the vast majority of them had their origin in forms issued by the local authority. If one could find an area where there were no such forms coming in, one might say that the local authority had neglected their duty, that they never gave out any forms, that they never told people that they should notify the War Damage Commission, and that one must assume that everyone was misled. That does not happen. It is isolated cases that are complained of in a large number of areas.

It is, therefore, quite impossible to say that one has to go back upon that system of notification and adopt some quite different system, as is suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Mrs. Middleton)—that we should adopt the local authority record as being a notification. If that were done a great many people would suffer greatly because in many cases there are no records. In other cases some records are comparatively concise, while others are in this sort of form—"a fair amount of damage," "very considerable," and words of that kind which convey nothing of any sort, kind or description.

I have samples here and have looked through many to see what sort of records they are. One sees a whole row of a street against which appears "very considerable," "very considerable," "ditto," "ditto," "ditto," down to the bottom of the street. Obviously that sort of information cannot be of very great value though the War Damage Commission always use these records wherever they can in order to check up the claims put in and to see whether they are substantiated by any local authority records.

Mrs. Middleton

In the Motion to which I referred the phrase used is: where the claimant advised the local authority of the occurrence at the time, and the authority have a full record both of the damage and of repairs carried out by them.

Sir S. Cripps

It is obviously impossible to apply to one or two local authorities quite a different procedure from that applied to the rest. One or two authorities have quite good records. They would not themselves say that those records are complete but what there are are quite good. But one cannot pick out people in particular areas and say, "We will apply this system to you and another system to others." These records can be used as the War Damage Commission use them in order to confirm or otherwise claims that are put in. They cannot possibly be substituted for the notification laid down in the regulations.

I was saying that in the spring of 1947 a more rigid system was introduced as regards the acceptance of late notifications. That system was continued with a perhaps gradually increasing severity as time passed. We have now reached a period more than five years after the last bomb was dropped. This matter was discussed in the last Parliament on a number of occasions. I can assure the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Blackburn, West (Mr. Assheton) that the whole matter has been frequently gone into and I myself have looked at it three or four times to see whether it was desirable or possible to make any substantial change.

The position now, after these five years since the last bomb damage could have occurred, is that the Commission are still accepting late notifications where there is some acceptable reason for the extraordinary delay—because the delay must be over five years now—and where there is substantial structural damage still unrepaired which is agreed to be, or admitted to be, or found by the Commission to be war damage. Those cases are still being admitted, and during the six months ended 30th June, 1950, some 1,200 to 1,300 new notifications were accepted in whole or in part.

There is another class of case. There are certain special cases where the reason for delay is quite exceptional—I think that one such case was mentioned by an hon. Member—where the Commission may accept notification for non-structural damage; that is, repairs to plaster and decorations, which are of the nature of ordinary maintenance repairs and therefore very difficult to distinguish as war damage. Such, for instance, as a case where property was requisitioned before the bomb was dropped and the person had not an opportunity, because it was still requisitioned, of seeing that a bomb was dropped. Those exceptional cases are still admitted. In these circumstances the House will understand that this discretion which is specifically left by the Act to the War Damage Com- mission must certainly be left with the Commission.

I am sure that that is right because I am sure it would be wrong to expect Ministers to deal with each of these individual particular cases and decide, whether for their own supporters or for the Opposition, that they should admit a particular case in a particular constituency. Certainly I would never be prepared to discharge such an onus or such a liability, because I am sure it would be wrong to ask Ministers to do it. Further, I think we can say we are all content that the War Damage Commission should, for the present at any rate, continue to admit late claims on the basis upon which they are now admitting them, though some day we must, of course, come to the end of this process. We cannot go on for ever and ever admitting claims, and before too long we shall have to fix a definite date and say, "No more claims at all." We shall have to give proper notice before that is done so as to get in the final claims.

The only area in which I think we might ask the War Damage Commission to look into the possibility of some slight alleviation is in those special cases where the reason for delay is quite exceptional. That is to say in a case as mentioned by the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton, of non-structural damage, which they now admit. She will be glad to know that the case of Mrs. Thomas has been admitted as a very special case because there was thought to be satisfactory proof that Mrs. Thomas had been completely misled by a local government official. Though perhaps the right thing would have been to bring an action for damages against the Plymouth Council for their negligence and callousness, we thought that rather hard on Mrs. Thomas and that perhaps hers was a special case.

I think the War Damage Commission would be quite prepared to look at these very special cases, and quite exceptional cases, in which they can accept notification for non-structural damage; not with a view to any broad or wide extension, because that would at once let in an absolute flood of new claims, many of which would be false claims and many of which it would be absolutely impossible to check up; but to see whether, in the hard cases that are brought forward, there are any individual cases where this principle could be applied and so grant some slight alleviation in addition to what has already been granted.

I think if we leave the matter like that, leaving the discretion with the Commission and asking them in special cases to examine a little more carefully whether perhaps, in a few cases, they should not be admitted where they have held rigidly hitherto that they could not be admitted, we should satisfy the justice of this case both as regards those who claim and, let me say it, those who have to pay.

Do not let us ever forget that in our generosity it is not our money we are giving away but that of somebody else. When I come to collect that money and ask for the powers to tax in order to get it, the atmosphere of the House is quite different from what it is tonight. Therefore, I hope that my hon. Friends and hon. Gentlemen opposite will feel that we can all be satisfied that the War Damage Commission has done a first-class job; that the vast majority of the people who have been claimants have got a square deal and that, though there may be some hard cases as there must be in a complicated system of this kind, the Commission will do their utmost to see that those hard cases are as few as possible in future.

9.52 p.m.

Brigadier Clarke (Portsmouth, West)

I am sure that hon. Gentlemen on both sides of the House will feel great disappointment at what the Chancellor has told us about not countenancing any more claims at this stage. I have enormous numbers of bomb damage cases sent to me every week. The Chancellor has raised hope in many people's breasts tonight, and we will be inundated with lots of applications. He has not told us what cases the Commission will or will not accept. Of all the instances which I have put to the Commission the only one which was approved was where a lady is both blind and deaf. That was considered a reasonable excuse for not having filled in the form. Apart from that, I have had no success whatever. I think that the right hon. and learned Gentleman should have told us on what grounds he is prepared to approve claims in future.

Mr. Pearson (Treasurer of the Household)

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.