REQUISITIONED HOUSES (Hansard, 29 March 1955)

§ Mr. Glenvil Hall (Colne Valley)
Surely we should have a Minister from the Department concerned on the Front Bench opposite. I know that the Financial Secretary to the Treasury has his name to the Motion and that technically he is responsible, but we are often told when we make a complaint that he is not on the Front Bench that we have the Minister from the Department and therefore have all that matters. Tonight we have no one from the Department. Surely this is a gross discourtesy to the Committee.

§ The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Henry Brooke)
I think that I can help the Committee. This is not an ordinary Money Resolution in Committee of the whole House. This is one of the rare occasions when a Resolution has to be considered in Committee of Ways and Means. As the right hon. Member for Colne Valley (Mr. Glenvil Hall) knows, there is a difference in that case, and the Financial Secretary to the Treasury is the Minister in charge of all Ways and Means Resolutions of this character. The right hon. Member has asked me to speak, and I gladly respond by explaining how this matter arises.
The Committee will see that the Order Paper contains a Motion by my right hon. Friend the Minister of Housing and Local Government to re-commit the Requisitioned Houses and Housing (Amendment) 277 Bill as amended, in respect of certain Amendments. One of these Amendments, which I believe is of interest to hon. Members on both sides of the Committee, would be out of order if a Ways and Means Resolution of this character had not been previously carried in Committee of Ways and Means and reported to the House, because the purpose of that Amendment is to put beyond doubt that certain sums received by the owner of a house from the local authority shall be liable to Income Tax in his hands.
I do not think that there is any dubiety anywhere that they should be liable to tax. I do not want to prejudge that Amendment. All that I say now is that it is desirable that if the Bill is recommitted the Committee should have an opportunity to consider that Amendment. Unless the Committee of Ways and Means agree to the Resolution this evening, it would be impossible for the Committee to do that because it would be out of order.

§ Mr. G. R. Mitchison (Kettering)
This is rather an odd business. If this Resolution means anything, it means that the hon. Gentleman is committing the supreme sin for a Financial Secretary of anticipating his right hon. Friend's Budget. I strongly suspect that the real truth of the matter is that these payments would have been liable to Income Tax anyhow. Perhaps, as has been suggested, the Resolution is only to put the matter beyond doubt, but in fact the doubt, if there is one, or the tax, if there is one, does not arise because of any amendment of the Bill. It is merely concerned with the question of the times at which payments should be made.
If there is now any doubt about the matter, there was exactly the same doubt when the original Bill was introduced. The Treasury watchdog must for one moment have been sleeping in his kennel, since when, he has no doubt awakened and we hear his bark tonight. What it comes to is that the Treasury were asleep. Let us note the occasion.
Question put and agreed to
Resolved, That where, under any Act of the present Session to repeal the power to requisition land for housing purposes under Defence Regulations and transfer to local authorities in 278 England and Wales the right to possession of requisitioned houses for a limited period, any sums are payable by a local authority to the landlord of a dwelling on account of rent which, by virtue of the said Act, is irrecoverable from the tenant, those sums shall be deemed for the purposes of the enactments relating to income tax to be received by the landlord as rent paid by the tenant. To report Resolution and ask leave to sit again.—[Mr. Redmayne.]