§ 1.2 p.m.
§ Mr. Cyril W. Black (Wimbledon)In the all-too-brief time available to me I wish to raise with my hon. Friend the Assistant Postmaster-General the compulsory purchase orders which have been served, on behalf of the Postmaster-General, on three owners respectively of Nos. 21, 23, and 25 Worple Road, Wimbledon, in my constituency.
Mr. Pearson has for many years been the owner of No. 25, Worple Road. The information I shall give the House relates particularly to his site, but in many particulars the circumstances of the other two owners and the other two sites are not dissimilar to his.
Mr. Pearson feels a deep sense of injustice at the way in which he has been treated, so much so that he has felt it right to circulate to hon. Members a detailed statement of events leading up to the compulsory purchase order. The facts as disclosed by him have received much attention in the national Press and great local concern has been expressed about it. The comments made by the Press and by the public have been almost uniformly unfavourable to the action taken by the Postmaster-General. The history of the case is, briefly, that Mr. Pearson owned the site in 1937, in which year, more than twenty years ago, he first contemplated the redevelopment of his land. In 1937, he made a planning application, which was refused. The matter did not proceed further owing to the gathering of the war clouds between 1937 and 1939. In 1941, Mr. Pearson suffered severe loss when his property was almost completely destroyed by enemy action. He was left virtually with a clear site. He was unable to rebuild or redevelop in any way while the war was in progress. Shortly after, in 1946, when conditions were beginning to be normal, Mr. Pearson was contemplating renewing his planning application, when a notice was served upon him by the local planning authority. Wimbledon Borough Council, prohibiting him from rebuilding on his land without consent of the council. The prohibition did not matter very much because, in 1406 1946, it was extremely unlikely that Mr. Pearson would obtain a building licence. Therefore, the redevelopment of the site was not then practicable.
In 1951, when conditions were returning to normal in the building trade, Mr. Pearson made a further planning application, which was refused. He appealed to the appropriate Minister, and his appeal was granted. He was given consent to the development of his site. In 1952, a compulsory purchase order was served on him by the Wimbledon Borough Council. There was a public inquiry, and the appropriate Minister decided, following the inquiry, not to confirm the compulsory purchase order.
In 1953, Mr. Pearson's site was designated for compulsory purchase in the draft development plan. Objection was lodged, and the designation was withdrawn as a result. In 1955, Mr. Pearson entered into joint arrangements with the two other owners for the development of the three sites as one complete unit. An application to redevelop was made and was refused, but an appeal was made and was allowed.
In 1956–57 the Postmaster-General came actively on the scene, and notice of intention was given on his behalf to make a compulsory purchase order. This led to a public inquiry. Following that, in the early part of this year, the Postmaster-General intimated that he had decided to make a compulsory purchase order, but he declined to publish the report of the inspector who had conducted the inquiry.
That is as much as I can say about the long chain of unfortunate events, lasting more than twenty years, in which Mr. Pearson has been involved, because I have agreed to take only about half the period available for the debate. I want my hon. Friend the Assistant Postmaster-General to have an adequate opportunity to deal with what I have said and with any further observations I make. It must be obvious that I have been able to give only the barest outline of the complicated and frustrating chain of events, and that Mr. Pearson has been subjected to intolerable delay, great expense and to treatment which can only be justified if it can be shown that there is some supremely important public project connected with this land. Only that could justify the overriding of private interests by public interests.
1407 There has been great public interest and public concern in this matter not only in the area of the site, but nationally. The onus is upon the Minister to satisfy the House of the reasonableness and the necessity of his actions. I would, therefore, put to my hon. Friend five questions which will enable him to judge of the considerations which Mr. Pearson has in mind and of the rebuffs from which Mr. Pearson has suffered. Perhaps my hon. Friend may, in reply to these five questions, be able to reveal more of the motives of the Postmaster-General than has up to now been made clear.
The first question is: why was the Post Office so dilatory in coming to a final decision about the site? One of Mr. Pearson's important complaints is that he has been left for a long period of years in suspense in which he could do nothing about developing his site. It is intolerable that landowners who are anxious to develop should be subjected over such a period to frustration and delay, which necessarily involves expense. The series of public inquiries has involved Mr. Pearson in enormous expense for legal costs, payment of fees to expert witnesses, and the preparation of plans, not to mention the interest on money locked up in the site, and many other items which I am sure my hon. Friend will understand are at stake when the owner of a site is deprived for a long period of the opportunity to develop his land.
The second question is: cannot the Post Office find some other site which it can purchase from a willing vendor for a telephone manager's office? What steps have been taken to find an alternative site? I understand that the building which the Postmaster-General wishes to erect upon this site is not a building which is in any way restricted to the operations of the Post Office service within the confines of the borough of Wimbledon but is to be, as it were, an area office or an area headquarters from which Post Office work will be undertaken which will serve the requirements of a widespread area.
It only happens that the Postmaster-General's eye has lighted on a site in Wimbledon, whereas a site further out might have been equally suitable for the purpose; and if such a site further out could be found in a less congested area, 1408 the value of the land would be less, possibly a willing vendor could be found, and the deprivation, the loss and the sacrifice in which Mr. Pearson is to be involved could be avoided.
The third question is: why does the Postmaster-General refuse to publish the inspector's report? I know that my hon. Friend is as well acquainted as are other hon. Members with the recommendations of the Franks Committee. The attitude of the Postmaster-General in this matter is directly at variance with the recommendations of the Franks Committee. The main conclusions of the Franks Committee have been accepted in principle by the Government and I do not understand, nor does Mr. Pearson understand, why there is this reticence, this unwillingness, this reluctance to publish the inspector's report on a matter which is not only of great concern to Mr. Pearson, but is of very great interest to the public both locally and nationally.
It is probably hardly necessary for me to remind my hon. Friend of the dictum which is quite properly often quoted in the House—that it is necessary not only that justice should be done but that justice should appear to be done and should manifestly be done. It seems to me that there has been an infringement of that principle in the circumstances of this case.
The fourth question is: what is the overriding necessity which compels the Postmaster-General to acquire this site and to erect a large building, which, I understand, is designed to house about 1,200 office staff? This is a serious matter in a fully built-up town like Wimbledon, where the shopping centre is already overcrowded. As I said a few minutes ago, it appears to me, and it certainly appears to Mr. Pearson, that a site a little further out in a less crowded area would have very many advantages over this site in Worple Road, Wimbledon.
The fifth and last question is: is my hon. Friend aware of the views of the Wimbledon Chamber of Commerce, which were made known at the public inquiry and which have been given considerable publicity since? They are that any building erected on this Worple Road site should contain shops on the ground floor and adequate public and private parking space. If the Postmaster-General is insistent on proceeding with 1409 this project—and I have attempted to voice some of the criticisms of it—what does he intend to do about these two vitally important questions raised by the Chamber of Commerce?
The Chamber of Commerce holds the view that this site is the obvious and natural site for the extension of the Worple Road shopping centre. It feels that further shops would be advantageous from the point of view of increasing the shopping facilities of the town, and the Chamber therefore emphasises that in its view—and it is the unanimous view of the Chamber—there should be shops on the frontage on the ground floor.
I do not think that I need remind my hon. Friend of the importance of the parking problems in a town like Wimbledon. Part of this site which it is proposed shall be developed by the Postmaster-General is already a parking site, and this will be lost if the Post Office building is erected. There will obviously be many vehicles used by the 1,200 workers who will occupy this great office building if the scheme proceeds. Does the Postmaster-General propose to incorporate in the building adequate parking space, both for the general public and for the Post Office employees?
§ 1.16 p.m.
§ The Assistant Postmaster-General (Mr. Kenneth Thompson)The indictment made by my hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon (Mr. Black) of the actions of the Post Office in dealing with this very difficult problem sounds very formidable. My hon. Friend is in a difficult and embarrassing position in that he has to try to co-ordinate his responsibility to Wimbledon as a whole, and to his constituent, with his responsibility, which I know he takes very seriously, to the general public weal.
I hope that my hon. Friend will not think it patronising of me—and I do not intend it to be—if I say that no one could have done more than he has done to try to harmonise the widely diverging interests which form the basis of this case and which give it its peculiar and difficult characteristics. I should like him to know that our position in the Post Office is as difficult and as embarrassing as I am sure he must have found his position.
There has been a good deal of public criticism of the Post Office both in 1410 Wimbledon and, as a result of Mr. Pearson's correspondence, over a wider field. We are proposing to use powers in the Post Office which we are very loath to use, which we have refrained from using in cases where it has been possible to find alternative means and which we do not want to have to use any more than is absolutely necessary.
I hope that I may claim that the record of the Post Office as a public authority in the matter of compulsory powers of this kind is extremely good. Over the last two years the Post Office has been concerned in the acquisition of no fewer than 750 sites and properties, and in the whole of that complicated operation we have had to call on compulsory purchase powers in no more than six cases. Of those six, the compulsory purchase powers were necessary in three cases because the owners could not be traced and there was no other way in which we could have been allowed to proceed.
I hope that it will meet the convenience of the House if I deal with the points raised by my hon. Friend in an historical setting of what has been a long and difficult matter. Indeed, I think that the major charge which can be laid against the Post Office, and which was laid by my hon. Friend, is that we have taken a long time. "Dilatory" is the word which my hon. Friend used. The objector, Mr. Pearson, has complained of the consequences to him of the long time which the Post Office has taken in this matter. I say at once that he has very good cause to complain of the consequences to him of the long time which has been taken in reaching a decision in the matter.
To a large extent, in fact, Mr. Pearson is a victim of our great reluctance to use compulsory purchase or to disturb him at all. It is because we have gone to very great lengths to avoid placing him in this difficult and compromising position that time has passed as it has, and, if the House will bear with me, I propose to show the very great lengths to which we have gone to to find an alternative solution to this problem in a way that would enable us to spare Mr. Pearson the torment and difficulty to which he has been subjected.
My hon. Friend gave the history of this property in a very fair and comprehensive way, but there are one or two 1411 corners of the history that I think I ought to fill in. The Post Office has not suddenly descended on Worple Road, seeking a victim upon whom it could wreak its vengeance. We have been in Worple Road for a very long time, at Nos. 29, 31 and 33, and, since 1943, we have been at No. 3 Raymond Road, just round the corner and part of the same site. As my hon. Friend said, we have been trying since 1951 to acquire the remainder of the site to enable us to build the sort of building that we need.
We have not done this by trying to drive Mr. Pearson, or any other owner, into a corner and then exercising the power of a compulsory purchase order on him. We have tried by negotiation, by designation—to which my hon. Friend referred—and by the other process of definition, to get some agreed procedure by which this whole property could become available to the Post Office. Nos. 21, 23, 25 and 27 Worple Road have all been caught up in this long and difficult process of trying to purchase by agreement with the present owners. Nos. 21 and 23 were occupied and, of course, we were reluctant to use powers there Ito disturb the existing owners. Of the other two, we are now trying, and have been trying since 1956, to buy No. 27 by voluntary negotiation. We have, therefore, made very real efforts, right through this present case, to conduct ourselves with reasonableness and a proper consideration for the interests of the present owners.
While we have been doing this all this while, we have also been conducting a very wide and extensive search for an alternative site. We have looked at any number of alternative places in which we could put the kind of building we have in mind. A very large number of sites have been examined. Some have been mentioned at the various inquiries that have been conducted, but all, either by reason of present use or of present condition, have been found to be unsuitable—some because of the nature of the site itself, and some by reason of the place in which the land lay. A very great number of inquiries have been made. I hope that that answers the second, I think, of my hon. Friend's questions. We have gone on over a very long time, and over a very wide area, searching for a suitable site.
1412 Why is it so difficult for the Post Office to find a suitable site? What are our requirements, and why are they so pressing that, in the end, we have had to come back to the site in Worple Road? We propose to build a telephone manager's office on this site; an office that will house the staff of the area telephone manager. A telephone manager's office is a very highly-organised, highly-integrated unit of administration. The building to be erected will have to house a staff of 1,200 people, of varying grades, conducting the telephone business of a very large area. The population of the area is about 1,850,000, we have 227,000 subscribers already in the area, and we estimate that over the next twenty years that number will just about double. There is, therefore, a very large, complicated business to be conducted from this office, wherever it is to be placed.
We found—and, indeed, this is common experience with businesses of all kinds—that dispersal of this integrated unit over a large area, or in a number of buildings is inefficient, uneconomic and expensive, and the consequence of its being inefficient, expensive and uneconomic falls on the generality of our subscribers. The building has to be readily accessible, both to the general public, all of whom have good cause, for various reasons, to go to the telephone manager's office, and easily accessible to this not inconsiderable staff, who must be able to get to and from their work. We must have road and rail transport of all kinds in order to conduct our complicated business efficiently, and we must be able to build in an area where such a building is not either an outrageous abortion, or out of place, out of style, or out of character in some other way.
We are in Wimbledon at present, and we have been there for more than twenty years with this administrative unit. Wimbledon meets all the other requirements. It is accessible to the rest of the telephone area, there is good road and rail communication with Wimbledon from the remainder of the area, and all the odds are in favour of our having a telephone manager's office, of the kind I have described, in Wimbledon itself. In Wimbledon, despite the most diligent search over a very long time, we have been unable to find another site. Indeed, I think that it has come out of the various inquiries that have been held that 1413 Worple Road is, in fact, the only site available for the kind of building that we find it necessary to erect.
The facts have been canvassed a great many times. They all came out in the public inquiry to which my hon. Friend has referred, in September, 1957, and they are dealt with at great length in the report of the inspector. That brings me to my hon. Friend's question: why do we not publish the report of the inspector, consequent upon his inquiry? My hon. Friend referred to the recommendation of the Franks Committee which, as the House knows, has been accepted by the Government, that the reports of inquiries should be published.
This report was prepared following an inquiry held before the Government decided that inquiry reports should be published. The Government, therefore, had to decide whether they would make this practice retrospective and publish reports prepared before such publication had been decided on, or whether they should draw a line and, from the date of that line, publish reports, and withhold those prepared before. It is not just mischievousness that has decided the Government not to publish this report, which happened to be prepared before the line was drawn. The House has to remember that reports prepared before that date were prepared by inspectors in the belief that they were not to be published. That, of course, is not to imply that they contain either secret or damaging references of any kind. It is simply the nature of the report, and the basis on which it was prepared.
This report comes within that category, but even that is not the only deciding factor against publishing it. A great many such reports are being prepared every day. I am advised that between 5,000 and 6,000 inquiry reports are prepared every year as a result of this and similar processes. If one of those prepared before the date-line were to be published, there would be no good case for not publishing them all. The Govern- 1414 ment would be faced with a problem of machinery which the present arrangements simply could not satisfy, so I hope that my hon. Friend will believe that the reason for withholding this report is an honourable one, and certainly does not, or should not, imply that there is anything about it that we do not want to have known.
But I can say this. The inspector was satisfied that Worple Road was suitable from a planning point of view—this relates to the point raised by my hon. Friend about the views of the Wimbledon Chamber of Commerce—and that it was the only available suitable site in Wimbledon. Although the report has not been published, the announcement of the decision by my right hon. Friend covered a great deal of the ground with which the inspector's report dealt.
Why cannot we meet the request of the Chamber of Commerce about building shops on this site and allowing the rest of the building to be used by the Post Office? The truth is that we cannot erect a building of the right size for our requirements on this site if a large or important part of it is to be taken up by shops. We are proposing to include in our plans suitable accommodation for the cars of our own staff and for a number of cars brought in by the public, and we hope that that provision will be adequate for the need.
The point to which my hon. Friend has drawn attention highlights what is a classic case of the conflict between a legitimate personal interest and a legitimate public need. It is not the first such case, and I do not suppose that it will be the last. Power to decide these conflicts rests with the Government, and I am sure that it is right. It is a heavy responsibility and we take it, in this case, in the full recognition of what it means to the present owners. If the outcome is, as I am sure it will be, that it will enable us to give a better service to our subscribers in the area, we will be justified and all in Wimbledon will be the gainers.