Clause 12.—(PAYMENTS NOT TO EXCEED VALUE OF CLAIM HOLDING.) (Hansard, 22 November 1954)

§ The Solicitor-General
I beg to move, "That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment."
I think that a little more explanation would be for the convenience of hon. Members. This is really a drafting Amendment to deal with instances of competing claims. Where two or more payments fall to be due in respect of either the same part or overlapping parts of the land to which the claim holding relates further provision than is now contained in the Bill is required. That is precisely all that is here provided for.
Hon. Members will see the method adopted. The object, of course, is to see that, in the aggregate, such payments do not exceed the value of the claim holding. This is merely a method of ensuring that object in circumstances such as I have described, where two or more payments fall to be due in respect of the same or overlapping parts.

§ Mr. MacColl
A new character seems here to come, at a late stage, into this somewhat turgid and glooming drama—the authority determining the amount. I do not remember meeting him before, and it might be a help to us if we could have just a few words of introduction. He is obviously a kindly and avuncular character, because he will have in front 815 of him a sort of row of little boys, all with bits of a claim holding and all demanding a share of the kitty, and he will apportion the amount in such manner as appears to him to be proper.
There is something Victorian about that. There is no nonsense about legal rights, and no nonsense about calculating it on the basis of any formula or anything of that sort. The authority, whoever he or she may be, will hand out the share purely on his judgment of the characters of the people concerned, taking into account, no doubt, any moral delinquency of which any of them may have been guilty, or possibly any political views they may hold. It seems to be entirely arbitrary. I think that what the Government are really doing here is just giving up in despair—as my hon. and learned Friend said earlier. They cannot work out a rational way of doing this so they are to hand it over to the absolute discretion of someone else to decide the amount he can pay out and get away with. I do not blame the Government. I think that they have probably been forced into it, but it seems an extraordinary refuge for the House to take.
Is the authority determining the amount to be the board, or the Lands Tribunal, which generally takes an active part, or someone else? If it is to be the board or the tribunal, could not the Bill say so, so that the unfortunate practitioner who has to interpret this provision will not have to go through the Bill until he finds out?

§ Mr. Sparks
Will the Solicitor-General carry this matter a stage further? I really do not understand in what circumstances it would be possible to pay out more than the original claim holding. The claim holding is determined on the basis of values existing in 1948. One may have a piece of land which has an established claim. In the course of time it may be divided and subdivided, but the original claim is there.
Surely if, for various reasons, payment is made on only a portion of that claim there must be a record of it somewhere—it is not completely lost—and in the event of any subsequent claim proceeding the information is available to those whose responsibility it will be to assess it. 816 In the event of any subsequent proceedings, surely the information is available to those whose responsibility it will be to make the assessment. They would surely have knowledge of the additional claim.
When the hon. and learned Gentleman tells us that there is a possibility of sums being paid in compensation which are greater than the established claim, I cannot understand why that should be the case. I confess that I do not understand the Bill in detail. Will the Solicitor-General tell us the cases which he has in mind in which it would be possible for a sum greater than the original established claim to be paid?

§ The Solicitor-General
Perhaps I may reply, by leave of the House. I wonder whether the hon. Member for Acton (Mr. Sparks) has in mind the kind of case for which provision is made in Clause 2 (3). It is a long time since we were considering it. Paragraph (a) states that the aggregate of the values of all claim holdings representing parts of the benefit of the Blame established claim shall not exceed the amount of that established claim;". This is a parallel case arising in circumstances where two or more payments have to be made on the same part of an area for which the claim holding exists or where there are two or more payments in respect of physically overlapping parts of the land. AH that is done here is to enable the scaling-down process to take place in a parallel form to that which would be required under Clause 2 (3, a), in order to bring the aggregate of the values claimed down to the total value of the claim holding and to see that they do not exceed it.

§ Mr. Turner-Samuels
In my view, there is more in this provision than quickly meets the eye. We have only to reconsider what it deals with to make that point good. This is the question of an amount which is to be distributed amongst the various claimants. As my hon. Friend the Member for Widnes (Mr. MacColl) has said, this is a departure from what was previously in the Bill.
First, the provision does not stipulate who the authority is, and I should have thought that people would want to know who was the authority who would decide their case. Secondly, how is the case to be decided? It seems to me extraordinary that a person who is entitled 817 to £x will have the question completely settled without being told who is settling it or how it has been settled. No machinery whatever is either adumbrated or provided in the Clause to deal with these vital matters.
No one knows on what principle the distribution is to be made, whether it is to be made on considerations of merit or whether it is to be, as used to be said about the Order of the Garter, on the basis that "There's no damn nonsense of merit about it." In provisions of this kind, where people's interests are concerned, it ought to be made absolutely clear, first, who is the authority who will decide; secondly, how it is to be decided; and, thirdly, what machinery there is to deal with the matter. Not one of these essential features is contained in these provisions, and I think the Solicitor-General should consider it again in order that the matter might be put right.