HC Deb 29 June 1951 vol 489 cc1785-92
Mr. Molson

I beg to move in page 15, line 40, after "Fisheries," to insert: after consultation with any advisory committee designated by him for the purpose. After what the Minister has said in reply to the last Amendment, I am satisfied that he intends to be careful in the administration of this Bill, and to ensure that while all suitable land is restored to agriculture, there shall not be any extravagant expenditure upon land which would not be worth restoring to that purpose. It is for that reason that we thought it desirable that the Minister of Agriculture should consult "any advisory committee designated by him for that purpose."

We have intentionally drafted the Amendment in a general way because it occurred to us that the Minister might find it convenient to consult the agricultural executive committee of the local county council in the matter. It was because a good deal of the land which has been used for ironstone working was not agricultural land before it was worked —in some cases it was under trees and in some cases more or less derelict—that we thought it would be wise for the Minister of Agriculture to consult some local people with an intimate knowledge of the agricultural problems of the area.

Mr. Powell

I beg to second the Amendment. This gives the Minister an opportunity to carry out an undertaking which he gave in Standing Committee. At that time he said: I think that we could get a panel which contained people with knowledge of this technical matter which could be brought to bear upon the particular point at issue and, of course, the National Farmers' Union would be represented on it. If an advisory panel on those lines, including persons representing the interests of farmers generally were acceptable, I would undertake, if the Amendment were withdrawn, to put down something accordingly on Report Stage."—[OFFictAL REPORT, Standing Committee A, 6th June, 1951; c. 156.] It was in view of those words of the Minister that the Amendment was drawn in such wide and permissive terms which are already used elsewhere in the Bill.

12.15 p.m.

Mr. Dalton

I hope that the hon. Members who moved and seconded this Amendment may think that the Government Amendment which I shall move in a moment, in page 16, line 33, may meet their point.

I think that one of the difficulties of the form in which the Amendment has been put down is that, although my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture is very anxious in this matter to take advantage of appropriate advice, it is going rather far to require him to consult with an advisory committee in all cases covered here. I do not think that he should be required to do something, but I can give an assurance that, quite apart from any Amendment that may be moved to the Bill, he is most anxious in any doubtful cases that may arise to avail himself of competent advice. Would the mover of the Amendment be willing to withdraw it in order that we may consider the matter again on the. Amendment that I shall move?

Colonel Lancaster

I think that the general assurance of the Minister will prove satisfactory, particularly as there is a further Amendment to be moved on this point. We were concerned with this aspect of the general problem. As was said in Committee, there is a tendency to take the view that all restoration should take the form of providing these devastated areas with lush green fields, notwithstanding the fact that, in many cases, it will not be appropriate to do anything of the sort.

I understand that the general requirements of the Forestry Commission in Great Britain are such that considerable acreages will be required for afforestation, and in many ways it will be very much more to the purpose if this restored land is used in the first instance for afforestation rather than other agricultural land shall be taken over by the Forestry Commission for this purpose. It was because we were slightly concerned that there was an attitude of mind that all restoration should take the form of restoring to high productivity agricultural land that we moved this Amendment that there should be consultation with the Minister of Agriculture and with other authorities in regard to this question; but the Minister has given a general assurance on this matter, and no doubt we can explore the position further in regard to the succeeding Amendment.

Mr. Molson

With the permission of the House, may I say one or two words in reply to the Minister? I was puzzled to find that I had apparently overlooked the subsequent Government Amendment on this point. On looking at it again, I find the Amendment to which the right hon. Gentleman referred has reference to Clause 20 of the Bill which deals with the termination of tenancies, and I do not think it has a bearing upon the point which would have been covered by the present Amendment had it been accepted.

I am entirely satisfied with the verbal assurance that the right hon. Gentleman has given about the way in which the provisions of the Bill will be administered, and I think that he is probably right that the Minister of Agriculture should not be under an obligation to consult any advisory committee, since he will, in fact, inform himself of the best local opinion on the subject. That being so, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Mr. Dalton

I beg to move, in page 16, line 33, at the end, to insert: (6) Where the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries proposes to issue a certificate under subsection (1) of this section in the case of a tenant, he shall, in accordance with regulations made by that Minister under this section, afford to the tenant—

  1. (a) an opportunity of making representations in writing against the proposal to that Minister;
  2. (b) if the tenant so requires, an opportunity of being heard by a person or persons appointed for the purpose by that Minister, and consider any representations made by the 1788 tenant in accordance with the regulations, and any recommendations made by a person or persons appointed as aforesaid for the purpose of hearing the tenant.
I propose to say a word or two about this Amendment although the subject has been mentioned on the previous Amendment. This Amendment fulfils the undertaking which I gave during the Committee stage. What I offered in Committee to consider was what could be done to meet the criticism that the Bill gave the tenant no right of appeal against the decision of the Minister of Agriculture. It was then suggested, as has been recalled this morning, that something in the nature of an advisory panel might be appropriate, bearing in mind that the restoration of ironstone land was a rather cumbersome undertaking and was a special study understood by rather few people. It was for that reason that we rejected the idea that the Lands Tribunal would be a suitable body.

I have had consultations with my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, and he was very sympathetic to the object which hon. Members had in mind in Committee. He will offer a tenant an opportunity to make written representations against the termination of the tenancy, or if the tenant prefers being heard by a body of persons appointed by my right hon. Friend for that particular purpose, he would be quite prepared to consider what such a body had to say, but he could not be bound by it. In the last resort he must exercise his own discretion.

With regard to the arrangements for such persons to hear the representations which the tenant may wish to make, my right hon. Friend is prepared to consult appropriate agricultural organisations like the National Farmers' Union to endeavour to secure that the selected persons include some who have expert knowledge of this particular restoration problem in the area. I would hope that this explanation, together with the terms of the Amendment, remove any fear that hon. Members may have that the tenant will not get a proper hearing in any case of that sort.

Mr. Derek Walker-Smith

On the whole, and speaking entirely for myself, I prefer the procedure suggested by the right hon. Gentleman to that under the preceding Amendment, because administratively speaking it is difficult, I imagine, to the point of impossibility for advisory committees which are constituted by the appointment of part-time persons to give detailed attention to individual cases. I am not very well convinced that the reference to advisory committees is entirely helpful in these matters.

I am very glad that the Minister is incorporating the provision he now proposes to incorporate to give the right of representation and of hearing. As the House will appreciate, this procedure also gives rise to difficulties in practice, and raises some rather fundamental problems on what is known as administrative law, the difficulty being, of course, that to some extent the Minister must be the judge in his own case. I agree with what the right hon. Gentleman has said that since, in effect, these decisions are quasi-judicial and retain their administrative aspect, it is probably impossible by legislation to ensure that the Minister is bound by the report of the tribunal, body, inspector, commissioners, or persons to whom such representations are made and before whom they are heard and argued.

Nevertheless, under the procedure as contemplated and as it will be formulated in the Regulations, if the Minister pursues the ordinary traditional path in these matters, there will be a hearing, evidence, argument and cross-examination. I trust that the Minister will ensure that there is no effort at these hearings to exclude cross-examination, which is very valuable in these matters. However, there will not, of course, as far as the aggrieved person is concerned, be anything to link up the decision or report of the tribunal hearing the matter with the ultimate decision of the Minister of Agriculture.

Having conceded that it is impossible to legislate that the Minister shall be bound by the decision, could we not at least agree on a half-way stage? Could the Minister not consider inserting in the Regulations a provision that there should be access to the report or decision of the people who hear the actual representations? If the thing follows its customary form, what happens is that there will be a reserved judgment at the actual hearing, and a written report will be presented to the Minister or whoever undertakes the functions on his behalf within the Ministry. Then the decision will be made, and the aggrieved person will not know what relation that decision bears to the impression formed and the conclusions come to by the person or persons who hear the evidence, see the witnesses and hear the arguments.

This, in my view, is a defect in the whole process of administrative law running through all these Acts, and, as this is a new provision, I ask the Minister whether sympathetic consideration cannot be given to going that far at least to provide for the availability to the interested parties of the report of the person or persons who actually hear the proceedings. I do not think it is an unreasonable request. I do not suggest that the Minister must be bound by the report, but I submit that it would remove the feeling in such cases that the decision may not have followed the report, and that it may have deviated from it for reasons which are not known to the parties. I should be very glad if the Minister could give an assurance that consideration is given to that point in the framing of the Regulations, for I consider it to be a very important aspect of administrative law.

Mr. Mitchison

I am not going to take up much time except to warn my right hon. Friend—I doubt if he really needs a warning—that what we have just heard was an attractive but an insidious and exceedingly far-reaching suggestion. The hon. Member for Hertford (Mr. Walker-Smith) knows perfectly well that there are many cases in our legislation of public inquiries of various sorts and kinds the lines of which, for good or ill, are pretty well established by now. What is here proposed is to apply those lines to this case. I have always felt that the difficulty is that in the last resort the Minister has the responsibility for the decision. It is an administrative or political one. He makes his decision, and the kind of plea that is put forward by the hon. Member is really subject to the fallacy that the Minister is making some form of judicial decision.

Mr. Walker-Smith

I expressly refrained from making that point. I said that even at the highest he could only be acting in a quasi-judicial capacity, and for that reason I could not suggest that the Minister should be bound by the decision of the Tribunal. I think that in all fairness the hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) should remember that.

12.30 p.m.

Mr. Mitchison

I did not for a minute suggest that the hon. Member used that language. Let me put it this way: he skirted all round the fallacy without lifting up the skirts. He made matters worse by describing this person or these persons as a tribunal. That was going a bit too far, and I think that this point is perfectly well known to everyone. I only hope that in a matter with which I am personally as a Member very much concerned, we shall not take this opportunity of adopting the rather remarkable and, I think, very doubtful step which has been suggested.

Mr. Dalton

I cannot undertake that we could accept the proposal in this case, which is, after all, a very small case, whereas the principle to which the hon. Member objects covers a very wide field, including all the inquiries under the 1947 Act. I do not think that on this light peg we could with advantage hang so heavy a garment.

Mr. Nugent (Guildford)

In Committee I moved an Amendment asking for the Agricultural Lands Tribunal to be the body to deal with these cases, and I recognise that the right hon. Gentleman has offered something here as a sort of halfway house. My hon. Friend has, of course, drawn attention to the weakness of the tenants' position in these cases. That really was the point with which we were concerned in Committee: the giving of a reasonable assurance.

We have to recognise that this is a very special form of tenancy. The farmer who accepts a tenancy in these circumstances knows that it is a very special form of tenancy, in which he is bound to be under the supervision of the Minister, because he is taking part in the process of restoration. Interested as we are, on the one hand, in seeing that the land is adequately restored and, on the other hand, that the tenant has a reasonably fair deal, we have to keep the right balance between the two interests. Quite clearly, the tenant cannot have the same full rights as a tenant would have in the ordinary way. I recognise that, and I am not, therefore, prepared to go quite as far as my hon. Friend in asking for the assurances that have been asked of the Minister.

I was glad to hear that m setting up this body, which would be used to advise the Minister and to hear the tenant, the Minister proposed to consult farming interests. That would help to give confidence. The practical point is that unless there is machinery which gives a reasonable assurance to the tenant, there is obviously a danger that farmers will not be prepared to accept the tenancy of these lands; so much will depend on the operation of the arrangement in practice. In the circumstances, the Minister has made a reasonable offer. Its effectiveness will, of course, depend on the sympathy with which it is operated in practice, and I trust that when it is operated it will be done in the right spirit.

Amendment agreed to.