HC Deb 11 February 1959 vol 599 cc1295-306
The Solicitor-General for Scotland

I beg to move, in page 30, line 41, to leave out "(which" and to insert: and any land held in connection therewith (all of which The Amendment is designed to meet a point raised by the hon. Member for Glasgow, Maryhill (Mr. Hannan) in Committee when he moved an Amendment which had the same intention but went a little too wide inasmuch as it would have applied to land which was not in the same ownership. We have to limit the land over which the charge is to be a burden to land in the ownership of the person who owns the actual building, and that is what this Amendment does.

Amendment agreed to.

The Solicitor-General for Scotland

I beg to move, in page 31, line 7, at the end to insert: ground annuals, stipends and standard charges in lieu of stipends". Under the Bill at the moment the prior charges laid down in sub-paragraph (a) are feu duties and teinds. The Amendment would extend them to: ground annuals, stipends and standard charges in lieu of stipends". The ground annuals, although they have a rather different history from feu duties, are from a practical investment point of view very much in the same position. There are technical legal differences, but the Church of Scotland has large investments in feu duties and ground annuals, and they are treated by trustees as being, broadly speaking, in the same position as investment and they are equally charges on the land in question.

With regard to stipends and standard charges in lieu of stipends, the stipend is the annual payment which is made to the clergy or the Church in Scotland, originally out of teinds, but under the 1925 Act we have what is called a standard charge in lieu of stipends as well as stipends, and the standard charge is a direct burden on the land.

What we are doing is to give existing charges their existing priority and to make the charging order come after the existing charges which are set down in the Bill as it stands and in this Amendment.

Mr. Woodburn

Are all the researches of the Solicitor-General for Scotland completed? Could he not find any other prior charges to come between the local authorities and the recovery of their money? This sounds like "Uncle Tom Cobley and all." Surely the right hon. and learned Gentleman could have found some other obstacles to the local authorities getting the charges for their expenses? Has he exhausted the list, or will he be able to discover some more later?

9.30 p.m.

Mr. Rankin

In Committee, we resisted an Amendment which merely governed teinds and feu duties. Obviously, when the Government extend the burden still further our opposition will be intensified.

As I pointed out last week on the Deer Bill, the Government are the political vassals of the land trust, and here we have the land trust in operation. It is the interests of the trust which the Government are serving. We started on the first page of the Bill by serving one vested interest which operates in the City of Glasgow, and now, at the end of the Bill, the Government extend their services to another vested interest.

That is the situation with which we are faced and which we have to consider in view of what is happening in Edinburgh, Dundee, Glasgow, Aberdeen and all over Scotland where these burdens which go to the superiors of the land are inflicting heavy charges on property in places like the Gorbals, an area which is notorious all over the world. Once the demands of the superiors have been satisfied there is not sufficient left to the property owner to keep the property in a decent state of repair, and it therefore begins to deteriorate.

As a result of Bills like this, local authorities have to bring such property into a decent state of repair. They have to make a falling investment into a good one, and while they are entitled to recover their expenses in making the property a sound investment they are at the end of the queue, while the person who ranks first in the demands on the income which may come from the property after it has been repaired is the one who did nothing to help that process, the superior.

The superior sits levying his charges almost as a toll. He is the Dick Turpin, although we designate him today by a grander title. He is making a levy in a nicer fashion and from a more gilded chamber than that in which Dick lived in his day; but that is what is happening. We believe that it is wrong and that the public authority which spends public money on the property so that people can continue to live there should have first claim on the revenues to come from the rehabilitated property.

The Government say that the superior of the land must get his "cut" before the local authority touches the money. It may well be that when the long queue which the Government have created is satisfied there will be nothing left for the local authority which made it possible for the property to produce an income, and that the income will be swallowed up by the persons who should, at least, not have first call on the money.

We were opposed to this business in the first place and we oppose it more vigorously now that the queue is to be extended. I hope that before we leave this schedule the Government will have second thoughts and in another place—and what other other place could be more suitable; it would be almost an act of redemption—bring forward an Amendment to reverse the process and give the local authority the first call on the money.

Mr. Willis

I am amazed at this tenderness on the part of the Government towards the ground superior and, like my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Govan (Mr. Rankin), I cannot understand why such tenderness has to be shown to the ground superior, the owner of the feu, or, for that matter, the owner of the ground annual. If there is anybody who has done nothing at all, it is the owner of the feu. These people have done nothing at all to maintain or to earn their income and yet they are put as the first people to have a claim upon the income. Incidentally. I do not think that they will be the first people to have a claim.

My experience is—and this is why I am surprised that the Solicitor-General has come here with this suggestion—that the people who take the first claim on any estate are the lawyers. Lawyers charges are always deducted before any of the other charges. I do not think that anyone with any experience of this would quarrel with that view. I would have thought that the Solicitor-General, if he is going to be as tender as all this, might have been honest and included the lawyers.

Why should the feu superior be given a priority over local authorities which have expended money in the interests of the citizens, in the interests of maintaining the property, and in the interests, in fact. of maintaining the value of the sites and the property? They cannot get their money. Why should a local authority be treated like that?

A local authority is acting in the interests of the community. By its actions it is benefiting these people. Having protected the community, the Government then say, "You must not get the money you have spent". The first charge in this list is to be the feu duty payable to somebody who, as we know from experience, has descended from somebody who probably has not even a title deed to the land. This seems to be quite wrong. Surely a local authority has as much right to be treated fairly as the owner of the feu duty or the owner of the ground annual What are the reasons why this is to be done? I cannot understand this. It seems most unfair to the local authority and to the ratepayers in the district that they should be compelled to pay some thing and unable to claim it back until every Tom, Dick or Harry who has done nothing at all gets his payment. That is a curious sense of priorities.

One of my hon. Friends said that Socialism is the language of priority. I hope that it is not this type of priority. The priorities are all wrong. They may be in accordance with the political and philosophical concepts of the party opposite, but they are not in accordance with ours. I, like my hon. Friend, am very much opposed to the Amendment.

The Solicitor-General for Scotland

I have been accused of pandering to vested interests. I think that was the phrase used by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Glasgow, Govan (Mr. Rankin). I would have put on record that the only representations I have had from any interest concerned have been from the Church of Scotland, the Free Church of Scotland and the Episcopal Church of Scotland. If the hon. Member for Govan regards these as vested interests which ought to be put down in some way, I would profoundly disagree with him.

I wish that to be placed on record because the Church of Scotland is the largest holder of feu duties and ground annuals in Scotland. The Free Church of Scotland holds very large holdings. The Church of Scotland holds them, in many cases not because it wants to, but because under old settlements and old Acts it had to hold these particular investments in order to endow parishes. These are the people to whom hon. Members opposite are referring as vested interests. The whole thing is disgraceful. It shows the way in which the Opposition are approaching the Bill, and it disgusts me, particularly when I remember that when hon. Members opposite were in power they did exactly the same thing. They gave priority to persons who owned the feu duties and the teinds.

Mr. Willis

That does not make it right.

The Solicitor-General for Scotland

That does not make it right. I merely say that I would like to hear a little consistency in these matters and not the filibustering nonsense that we have had in our discussion of the Amendment so far.

Mr. Rankin

To give the right hon. and learned Member time to regain his temper—

The Solicitor-General for Scotland

I have not lost it.

Mr. Rankin

We apologise for having rattled the Solicitor-General so badly, but surely he is not going to take the churches, as one example, from the list which appears in the Amendment?

The Solicitor-General for Scotland

I am merely saying that the churches are the largest individual holders of feu duties and ground annuals, and that they and they alone receive stipends and standard charges in lieu of stipends. I merely say that if the Amendment is not accepted the main damage done will be to the Church of Scotland and the Free Church of Scotland. If hon. Members opposite are going into the Lobby to vote on the Amendment I hope that they will bear that fact in mind and be prepared to face the consequences of so doing.

Mr. Willis

Why does not the legal profession wait for its fees until the other interests are paid?

The Solicitor-General for Scotland

There is no mention of the legal profession. Legal charges are not real burdens on land, as are ground annuals and stipends. The lawyer very often has to whistle for his money, as I know very well myself.

Mr. Willis

Not in these cases.

Mr. G. M. Thomson

We are not accustomed to such heat from the Solicitor-General, but we ought to welcome any sign of life that comes from him. He has accused the Opposition of behaving badly over the Amendment, but I thought his speech rather disgraceful, because it attempted to smear the Opposition and impugn their motives in raising the matter. The right hon. and learned Member used one of the oldest and most demagogic of tricks. Out of a group of people he took one group—the churches —which he knows will arouse an immediate emotional response.

The Solicitor-General for Scotland

I chose that group because I had been accused of pandering to representations made by certain vested interests, and I wished to state precisely from whom they had come. They came from the churches, and from the churches alone.

Mr. Thomson

I did not hear the remarks about pandering to representations. I may not have been listening very carefully at that stage. Although the churches may have made their representations—and nobody is more entitled to do so than they—the fact is that the feu duties that we are talking about are owned only in small part by the churches. There are many other owners of feu duties who do not have the same popular support as the churches and whose mention by the Solicitor-General would not arouse the same response.

I have always understood that hundreds of square miles of the area from which I came is owned by one of the oldest and noblest families in Scotland. That family has been drawing its feu duties from this for many centuries. If its name was used by a Government spokesman, I should not think that it would rouse a great deal of enthusiastic support for the proposition that a ducal landowner should have priority over a local authority trying to do work of local welfare in rescuing property.

9.45 p.m.

This sort of proposition from the Solicitor-General for Scotland will not bear examination. Surely it is quite immoral to put the land superior before the local authority in circumstances in which local authorities and ordinary citizens are dipping into their pockets to rescue property and to make something of it. So far as the churches are involved in these feu duties as land superiors they must face that argument.

We go on to the other source of the churches' revenue, which is indicated as ground annuals, stipends and standard charges in lieu of stipends. I wish to seek information from the Solicitor-General for Scotland, if the right hon. and learned Gentleman may have leave of the House to speak again. I wish to know what sort of proportion of the whole is involved in these things and I should be glad to be enlightened about how the process works, It has always appeared to me an indefensible method of financing the work which the churches do.

No one would disagree that the stipends of ministers of the churches involved are not excessive. I take the view that one of the hardest hit groups of people in the country in relation to their work is the ministers. Their incomes, more than the incomes of most people, have remained low and they have certain expenses. Hon. Members who have had their own difficulties in this respect can sympathise with individual ministers. But that does not mean that we should justify this kind of system.

I have not wide information about this matter, but a few instances come to my mind. I can think of one distinguished constituent of the Secretary of State for Scotland—I do not know whether he votes for the right hon. Gentleman, I am not at all sure that he would vote for the right hon. Gentleman's Labour opponent —a man with a long record of service in Scotland, whose habit, on principle, from time to time when teinds were sought from him was to oppose the paying of the teind on the ground that he did not see why he should be forced to pay money towards the maintenance of a church of which he was not a supporter. That person, whose service to Scotland was a fine one from his point of view, was himself an agnostic, yet he was forced to pay to help to maintain a church which he did not support.

I recall another family which I knew well over many years, a farming family and one of the finest I have ever had the good fortune to know, whose members were strong Free Church people. They found themselves—I do not understand how this came about; perhaps the Secretary of State for Scotland can explain it to me—in the position of having to pay teinds for the support of the Church of Scotland, which was not their church. On principle they strongly resented this.

Giving priority to these churches raises the question of the whole system which is involved here. It is a question of principle which I think is involved. We are entitled to more rational support for this Amendment from the Solicitor-General for Scotland than we have had, and to more information. On such a matter as this it is not good enough for the right hon. and learned Gentleman to make the sort of cheap debating points which he has made.

Mr. Ross

I hope that the Secretary of State for Scotland, who has been listening to this debate, will think over the arguments which have been presented I hope that he has observed the display of temper on the part of his right hon. and learned Friend and has made duo note of it as something not very becoming in a Law Officer of the Crown—[Laughter.]

Mr. Rankin

Why that rude laughter?

Mr. Ross

We are not dealing with some academic position, but with a Schedule which refers to sections nine, ten or twelve of this Act". The Government, supported by the Solicitor-General for Scotland, have laid the responsibility upon a local authority where, under Clause 9, a building has been constructed without a warrant or the life of a building has expired and requires work to be done upon it, to spend money, not a hundred years ago or five hundred years ago, but when the Bill comes into force. Under Clause 9, local authorities are to require buildings to conform to building standards and are to spend money to that end, and under Clause 12 they are given power to take action in respect of buildings found 10 be dangerous. We shall presumably agree to pass the Bill without a Division because we all want it so as to ensure the safety of buildings, and to see that they conform to reasonable standards in line with modern ideas, and are not dangerous. We therefore require local authorities to spend money.

When the local authority has spent money in doing what it should do, then the sum of money is commuted into an annual charge, at £6 for every £100 expended. We may discover then that there are already annual charges, not on the property but on the land. If they are on the property, they are discounted. Am I right? Perhaps the Solicitor-General for Scotland will tell me. If there are annual charges on the land, they do matter and get priority. The local authority has just spent, say, £200 and requires to get £12 a year. If there is a feu duty on the land for some land superior it takes first place. Who the land superior is, is beside the point. This is a matter of principle.

The annual payment in respect of the tenure of that land, payable to a land superior is, say, £12 a year and it must be paid rather than the £12 to the local authority, which has just spent the money. That is what it comes to. The Solicitor-General for Scotland knows as well as I do that the local authority, which has just spent, say, £200, has yet to receive a penny piece for its work, while the feu duty has been paid year after year and century after century—

Mr. Speaker

A feu duty is not in the Amendment, is it?

Mr. Rankin

Yes.

Mr. Ross

I do not know whether you appreciate, Mr. Speaker, exactly what we are discussing. We are discussing an Amendment—

Mr. Speaker

The Amendment before the House is that in page 31, line 7, at the end, to insert: ground annuals, stipends and standard charges in lieu of stipends". That is all the discussion can be confined to.

Mr. Ross

I have no right to talk about feu duty?

Mr. Speaker

I said that there was nothing about feu duties in the Amendment. The hon. Member was talking about feu duties.

Mr. Ross

I shall be glad to talk about ground annuals. Ground annuals were introduced for lands on which there was a stipulation against sub-infeudation. It may have been that the land was entailed and so, as it could not be feud because of the actual objections to alienation laid upon it, the superiors of the land got round that by leasing the land. The annual payment in respect of the lease was called a ground annual, so I presume I am now in order in talking about a ground annual. There was an element of perpetuity in some of these ground annuals. We may take some in the part of the world from which I come, in which a lease was granted for a piece of land for 9,999 years. If there were any difference between the ground annual and a feu duty I should like to know what it is. In all respects they are the same thing. However, I shall talk about the ground annual.

We should appreciate that some of these lands were leased in this way, or a tack—to use a Scots expression—was given, very often because it was felt that the person prepared to give the tack was not anxious to answer many questions about his title to the land. We get this in respect of lands which formerly belonged to the Church, not the Reformed Church, but those lands proved quite an attraction to the barons of Scotland at the time of the Reformation. As I said last week, the gleam in their eyes was not so much zeal for a new religion as for a new land grab. Those lands belonged to the various abbeys.

These ground annuals, in the same way as the feu duty, have been paid for centuries to particular families. We had discussions about them in this House over a long time. The Government dealt with the subject in 1914 and again in the 'twenties in relation to feudal casualties which included this question of ground annuals. Here we are on the same old business. When the Government decided that this payment should be commuted into the question of an annual payment, they were faced with the problem that there were already encumbrances on the land and there arose the question of giving priorities. The Solicitor-General said that no representations had been made to him by landed interests. We do not need to make representations to a Tory Government to look after the landlords. It becomes an automatic action with them.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman was quite right in saying that the only representations made to him came from the Church of Scotland. The Government forgot the Church and that is why we have this Amendment. If anyone forgot the Church, it was the Government. Our concern is not about who are the holders of these things, but about the principle of the matter. This matter does not arise unless a local authority has spent money. It has spent money through an Act of Parliament which had the support of the Solicitor-General. They having spent that money in respect of property in connection with which, by its very nature, there is difficulty in obtaining payment now, the Government say the local authority must take its place at the end of the queue. The first person who must be served in relation to annual charges is the land superior. It is not the Church of Scotland which is the land superior in Kilmarnock but the Lord Howard de Walden. After that there are to be the tiends. There are not very many of them in Scotland. The same applies to stipends. The Solicitor-General for Scotland has not justified the priorities at all.

10.0 p.m.

If the Solicitor-General for Scotland wants the Bill to work and local authorities to take necessary action, the local authorities are entitled to look forward to the possibility of a return for their money. It is not fair for the right hon. Gentleman to give this list of A, B and C, all taking priority over the local councils in respect of money that is immediately spent. By this means the Solicitor-General for Scotland is discouraging local authorities from taking action.

I ask the right hon. Gentleman to think again about feu duties. I do not know why feu holders should be given priority over local authorities, when local authorities have just spent the money, whereas the title to feu duty is lost in the mists of antiquity. Though the feu holders may have bought their rights over the past few years, they retain them in respect of something that happened a long time ago. Mr. Tom Johnston, a former Secretary of State for Scotland who I am sure the present Secretary of State would like to emulate, described the holders of feu duties as "the baronial old men of the sea". They are evidently still on the shores and dear to the heart of the Solicitor-General.

Amendment agreed to.