HC Deb 20 June 1951 vol 489 c591

Lords Amendment: In page 8, line 12, to leave out subsection (4) and to insert: (4) In section three of this Act the expression 'assignment' does not include a disposition under which no beneficial interest passes; but the reference in that section to the tenant shall, in relation to a tenancy so vested or held as aforesaid, include a reference to a person beneficially interested as aforesaid.

The Attorney-General

I beg to move, "That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment."

This Amendment is designed to cure a slight defect in what was previously subsection (4) of Clause 8. That was defective in two slight respects. In the first place, it was not so worded as to cover the case of an assignment, in the case of a new trustee being appointed to a lease, from the old trustees to the new trustee together with the continuing trustees. The change made would still bring in that kind of case.

There is also a means of evasion which is prevented by the new subsection—an evasion which would take the form of the tenant's transferring the ownership of his tenancy to a trustee and then assigning, not the tenancy itself, but the equitable right to the tenancy. Clause 3 operates only in respect of assignment by the tenant, and the "tenant" means the owner of the tenancy, and such assignment would accordingly not have been caught by the Clause as it stood before, since the assignor in those circumstances would not be the tenant. This is to cure those slight defects.