HC Deb 03 June 1957 vol 571 cc1013-8

9.0 p.m.

Mr. Ross

I beg to move, in page 14, line 31, after "afforded", to insert "by the receiving authority".

This Amendment would improve the Clause and make perfectly clear exactly where the initiative lies in respect of the modifications made here. Clause 17 allows the exporting authority, which of course will be Glasgow, to meet an obligation to people who are being cleared from a particular area that they should have, as far as is practicable, a right to be offered a site within that area.

The Clause proposes that the obligation shall be met if there is afforded to a dispossessed person a site in or near an area where housing accommodation has been, or is being provided … by the receiving authority. It is only fair to make perfectly plain that it will be the receiving authority which will afford the opportunity in respect of the site, and these words should be inserted after the word "afforded".

Mr. Willis

I beg to second the Amendment.

Mr. J. N. Browne

The obligation on the exporting authority, if it wishes to take advantage of this Clause, is to ensure that a dispossessed person has—then we turn to page 14, line 29, so far as may be practicable an opportunity to obtain accommodation … in or near the housing development. As the hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) said, the Amendment limits the opportunity to one afforded by the receiving authority, but the exporting authority might well find other means of affording the opportunity, although I agree that in most cases the most likely afforder will be the receiving authority. For example, the Board of Trade might have a vacant factory, or a private owner of a suitable piece of land or buildings might be prepared to sell or lease his facilities to the incoming tenant. The site offered might fulfil the statutory requirements as to propinquity and still not be in the area of the receiving authority. I hope that the hon. Member for Kilmarnock will appreciate that it would not be in the best interests of overspill as a whole to limit the afforder to a receiving authority.

Mr. T. Fraser

I have tried to follow the explanation of the Joint Under-Secretary, but I have found it difficult to do so. I cannot see how at this point where the Amendment is proposed to be made the afforder could be any authority other than the receiving authority. The Joint Under-Secretary did not read on: if there is afforded to the person an opportunity to obtain, on land in or near an area where housing accommodation has been, or is being, provided in pursuance of any such arrangements as are mentioned in subsection (1) of section eight. … What arrangements are those? Those are arrangements to take overspill population from Glasgow.

Surely this part of this Clause provides for the person who is displaced by the planning authority, which is Glasgow, and its statutory responsibility to find alterna- tive land will be fulfilled if an authority such as is dealt with in Clause 8 (1) provides land in or near an area where housing accommodation is to be provided for the overspill population. If it does not mean that, I cannot see what it means. I cannot see that any authority other than a receiving authority could possibly build the houses to take the overspill population. Surely that obligation is here being discharged if the land is made available in or near, readily accessible, to the area where the houses are to be provided, which, presumably, would be by the receiving authority.

Mr. J. N. Browne

This is only a technical point. The afforder could be the Board of Trade or it could be the local planning authority, if it were not the receiving authority, which had independent powers to make sites available. We feel that the acid test is that the exporting authority should give the displaced person an opportunity—

Mr. Ross

Is the Joint Under-Secretary withdrawing from the position he took up in Committee when he said that this could not be done unless the receiving authority agreed? Has he departed from that altogether?

Mr. Browne

It could agree but it need not necessarily afford the opportunity. This is a minor point. Other persons than the receiving authority could afford the opportunity.

Mr. Ross

This is not a minor point. It deals not only with factory accommodation but with public houses and businesses, and I hope that the hon. Member will look at it again from that point of view. The Board of Trade does not trade in public houses. I think we should have fresh consideration of these aspects in another place. I do not think we want to argue it all out here at this stage, but I do not think it has been covered by the original answer we were given.

Mr. T. Fraser

I was about to call the Joint Under-Secretary's attention to the fact that the accommodation, the land, is being afforded in circumstances in which the person who is having the land made available to him will get the land at a price which has regard to the compensation which he received from the exporting authority. This is an arrangement between two local authorities. The Board of Trade does not own that land in the receiving area, whether it is Kilmarnock, or Hamilton, or anywhere else; it is the receiving authority which will make this land available. The land can be for a public house, or an ordinary dwelling-house, or factories, or shops, or a garage or anything else. It can be one of many sites for which the Board of Trade has no responsibility.

Surely the whole point is that the receiving authority might discharge the responsibility which an exporting authority would normally have under the planning Acts to afford land as far as may be practicable, taking into account in determining the price which will be paid for the new land the compensation which the person receiving the new land received when he vacated his previous land. Surely that necessarily involves some agreement between two local authorities.

Mr. Browne

There would be agreement, but it might be an empty factory which does not belong to the receiving authority or it might be a factory which is outside the area of the receiving authority. For that reason we cannot limit the opportunity by stating that it is afforded by the receiving authority.

Mr. Fraser

How could the receiving authority or the exporting authority relate the price which either would pay for this empty factory to the compensation which the man received earlier, if the factory were made available by some one other than one of the two authorities?

Mr. Browne

That is a matter for the exporting authority.

Amendment negatived.

Mr. J. N. Browne

I beg to move, in page 14, line 32, to leave out "near" and to insert: in the vicinity of and readily accessible to. I prefer our Amendment to that put on the Notice Paper, but not moved, by the hon. Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Willis). Neither the word "near," which neither of us likes, nor the phrase "within easy reach" had that sense of propinquity' which we value.

Mr. Ross

We certainly do not like that word.

Mr. Browne

I will use the word vicinity, if the hon. Member prefers it. It is the conception of vicinity which we want to achieve. We want to make it clear that if a site is not within the housing area it must be in the same general neighbourhood and readily accessible, so that there is an association between the home of the employee and his place of employment.

Mr. Woodburn

If this goes on we shall be suspicious that the Government are amenable to argument. I am glad to see that, even to this small extent, the Government have been converted by the reasonable suggestions of my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross). The words seem to meet the argument put forward, and we are obliged.

Amendment agreed to.

The Solicitor-General for Scotland

I beg to move, in page 14, line 35, to leave out "is" and to insert "are."

Mr. Woodburn

I hope that the Solicitor-General for Scotland will, during the course of our consideration of the Bill, place on record his indebtedness to my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock for putting the grammar of the Bill right on so many occasions.

Amendment agreed to.