Clause 8.—(MODIFICATION OF RULES FOR ASSESSMENT OF COMPENSATION.)

HC Deb 23 March 1959 vol 602 cc949-1006

Mr. MacColl

I beg to move, in page 11, line 10, after "section", to insert: and the provisions of section (Global assessments) of this Act". It would probably be helpful if we could discuss with this Amendment the next one in page 11, line 14, after "provisions", insert "of this section" and the new Clause—(Global assessments)—which is referred to in the Amendment.

The Temporary Chairman (Mr. Royle)

I am sure that the Committee will be agreeable to that course.

Mr. MacColl

To those hon. Members whose faces show the wear and tear of having borne many long and anxious hours of deliberation in Standing Committee D, this proposed new Clause will bring up a problem which is very familiar indeed. There will, however, be hon. Members who have not had the privilege of serving on that Standing Committee arid to whom I might explain very quickly what it is all about.

It takes us back to the hallowed name of Uthwatt and to the Uthwatt Report. One of the two great problems which the Uthwatt Report posed was that if one tried to calculate the value of a number of parcels of land, the sum total of the estimates of those values would come to more than the total value which one would get if, in fact, the development took place. because, owing to the optimism of each individual landowner thinking and hoping that on his particular piece of land the development would happen, each owner tended to be equally optimistic and therefore, the sum of the optimisms of all the owners came to something which might be quite an extravagant figure.

One of the weaknesses of the Bill, as was pointed out on Second Reading, is that in general it makes no attempt to deal with the problem caused by floating value—that is, that development value which is floating over the land and which may drop down on any particular piece which happens to be selected for the actual development. In order to deal with that point my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison), who has put his matchless gifts at the disposal of the Government on so many occasions in Standing Committee D, produced an Amendment to deal with it.

The Minister, with, I hope, unaccustomed unwillingness to recognise assistance from whatever source it comes, was, I thought, a little cold in rejecting the suggestions of my hon. and learned Friend, and he made some fairly valid criticisms of the details of the proposal. Therefore, we have now produced a new Clause which I think, if I may say so as I had nothing to do with its drafting, is a remarkable piece of drafting by my hon. and learned Friend at his highest achievement.

This is broadly how it would work. The problem is this. If a number of pieces of land are to be acquired for one particular operation of development, the first point is that the total value of those different pieces of land involved in this operation should be more than £5,000. That, in other words, is to cut out all the small operations which, although technically there might be a certain amount of excess value in them, are so small that the amount of work involved would not be justified by the result. It starts, therefore, by eliminating the smaller developments.

5.30 p.m.

The new Clause provides also that the Minister may alter the figure of £5,000 if, from experience of land values and of the working of the Measure, he comes to the conclusion that that should be done. In other words, there is a discretion for him to adapt the machinery to the facts of the situation. Further, if the acquiring authority wishes to apply the procedure laid down in the Clause, it is to have a discretion so that it may elect whether or not to do so. If the acquiring authority elects to do so, it serves notices on the owners of the land.

In cases where acquiring authorities have so elected, the requirement is that two operations should be undertaken. First, each of the pieces of land should be valued under the ordinary terms of the Bill. Second, the whole area should be valued as a whole although it is in different ownerships. If the sum of the individual values is greater or less than the value of the whole by more than 5 per cent., allowing for a tolerance for cases where the difference is so small as not to justify a complicated scaling down, then the amount received by the owner of each individual piece of land will be reduced or increased in proportion so that the total amount paid out by the acquiring authority will not be more than the total value of the land valued as a whole. After all, it is the value of the whole land which is to be developed as a whole which concerns the public authority.

A typical illustration is given by a proposal to develop land which is nothing but ploughed fields. Let us suppose that it is proposed by the public authority to develop the land for a housing estate with houses and shops on it. Some parts of the land will have shops on them, particularly that part which is to be the centre of the shopping area of the neighbourhood. Other parts of the land will have houses on them. Others may have only allotments on them. But the plan is one plan and, therefore, it is reasonable to say that, in the first place, it is not right that every piece of land should have the value which would be placed on it if it were used as a shopping centre. Nobody could deny, I think, that it would be wrong for every individual landowner to have the full value of his land based on the assumption that it would be used for a shopping centre. Similarly, it would be wrong in many ways, where the land is taken as a whole, that a particular owner should receive more because he happened to be the lucky one.

This principle is not a new one. It is a principle which is accepted already in the Bill in regard to redevelopment areas and new towns. All we are suggesting is that the same principle should be recognised through the machinery of this Clause. We accept the principle that fair value should be paid for land when it is acquired. We do not quarrel or argue about that. What we challenge is the idea that more than the fair price should be paid for the land. This point has come up again and again in our discussions. It is always assumed, on the one hand, that the acquiring authority is a ruthless dictator with enormous resources, and, on the other hand, that the landowner is a poor person who is being put to enormous suffering by the acquisition of his land.

What is happening, in fact, is that the people as a whole, through their elected representatives, are developing an area for the public good, doing it out of public money, the ratepayers' money and the taxpayers' money. Therefore, it is just as important that we should be astute to see that no more than a fair amount is paid out of the taxpayers' and ratepayers' money as it is that we should see that the price paid is a reasonable and fair one.

In our discussions upstairs, the Minister said that he thought that we were a little out of date in talking about floating value. He said that floating value was a valid concept in the time of Uthwatt but that, as a result of the working of the 1947 Act and the introduction of development plans, the number of cases where there would be a floating value was very small. That was an interesting point which he tossed out to us as a morsel of his thought, but he did not really develop his argument and did not give us any clear explanation why he thought it. Nor did he, even then, say that there would be no cases.

The Minister made it perfectly clear, first of all, that he admitted that there were no difficulties in arriving at an assessment of global value, the value of the land as a whole. He accepted that, as a piece of valuers' work, that was something which could be done, though it was difficult. He made it clear also that, in some cases, global value might be greater and in some cases might be less than the sum of the values of each individual piece. This new Clause meets that difficulty because it leaves it to the election of the acquiring authority which machinery it should adopt.

In moving the Amendment, which introduces the new Clause, I think I need say no more. It is fully consistent with the principles of the Bill as expressed by the Government. As the Minister said upstairs, it is administratively a workable arrangement, and it will, in some cases, prevent the public from being exploited by amounts of compensation being paid out which are quite out of reason compared both with the value which people would derive from developing the land themselves and with the loss which individual landowners might incur.

As I said earlier, the trouble is that, once one asks the question, "What is the value of a piece of land taken as an individual parcel?" the problem immediately arises as to whether it is the piece of land upon which the development is to fall. The principle has already been recognised in other Clauses of the Bill in dealing with particular types of development. There is, I think, no serious quarrel about the principle.

Thanks to my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kettering, we have now reached a solution of a problem which worried us on Second Reading and during our long deliberations upstairs. I hope that the Minister will take this opportunity to express his appreciation to my hon. and learned Friend for what he has done to help the Government in this matter and to accept the new Clause for the value it will give to the Bill.

Mr. A. J. Irvine

In supporting the Amendment, I wish to draw attention to the extraordinary attitude which the Government have adopted to the whole problem of floating value in the course of our consideration of the Bill. As many of us recall, they have, first of all, represented floating value as something of academic significance only, a conception which was important to Lord Uthwatt but of rapidly decreasing importance since. At the same moment, they have under one heading or another revealed that they still attach great importance to the conception. Their attitude to this has been wholly inconsistent throughout.

We all remember that the Government have paid the most careful attention to this matter in their treatment of compensation for acquisition of sites in areas of comprehensive development. It remains true, even at this late stage in our consideration of the Bill, that in paragraph 15 of the Explanatory Memorandum (Cmnd. 562) we have an impeccable and classical statement of floating value and what ought to be done about it. This seems to many of us very inconsistent indeed.

I remind hon. Members, further, of this interesting circumstance. Some of us desired that the Bill should be amended to make provision that, when there were special assumptions about planning permissions under the machinery of the Bill, it should not only be assumed that permission would be granted for uses that were uses set out in the current development plan as uses to which areas would be primarily allocated and zoned, but that there should be, equivalently, an assumption of planning permission in the case of ancillary uses.

We had in mind such cases as the petrol filling station or the garage in the residential area. It can often happen, if a person owns a site in an area zoned for residential use, that he will get permission to develop the site, not for residential purposes, but for a purpose like a petrol filling station, a use which is regarded as ancillary to residential use.

When we tried to get the provisions of the Bill altered to take account of that, the Parliamentary Secretary was as bold as brass and said that it would never do, because if the Amendment were carried every owner of the piecemeal properties in the area would be compensated for the chance that he would have that the more valuable use might arrive upon his land, with the result of excessive compensation being paid to the owners concerned. That was breathtaking. There was a good deal of force and substance in the argument. Many of us acknowledged that. The whole argument, however, was founded upon the reality as a matter of valuation of this concept of floating values. It is fair to remind the Committee, therefore, of the inconsistency of the Government in this connection throughout their treatment of the Bill and to ask them to consider it once again, even at this late stage.

There is the additional point to be remembered that to introduce the conception of global assessment is not to introduce a compensation that would be favourable only to the acquiring authority. It is undoubtedly—possibly, the hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Page) will recognise this as readily as any—a concept, as the hon. Member has gone so far as to admit, which may often benefit the owners of interests in land. That does not make it an any the less irrelevant or fair concept in our view of this matter.

If an owner of an interest in land is having land acquired and if, say, he owns a plot of land which, by reason of its acreage, is well suited to provide the site for two houses but is too small to provide room for three, it may well be to the advantage of the owner of that interest that, instead of applying to his site a piecemeal valuation, one should take into account the global assessment and give him thereby the value to the balance of his land which is attributable to its potentiality as a site for a third house overlapping an existing boundary.

5.45 p.m.

Therefore, we are not putting forward in the Amendment an argument for a change that would always take effect to the advantage of the acquiring authority. It is something which will take effect with general fairness and sometimes to the advantage of the owner of the interest. In principle, we consider it to be fair, workmanlike and businesslike.

The only depressing feature in these matters is that the Minister is so unpersuadable. He shows no indication of preference for ideas which are offered to him. There is no hint of selectivity or preference whatever. He is simply stonewalling the whole time until we are threatened with tedium in the matter. If only he would indicate that some our propositions are more welcome to him than others, that would help us.

We cannot, however, get even the faintest academic encouragement or discouragement. It is a kind of Jokari. Let the Minister, therefore, consider this matter somewhat academically and a little more sympathetically. Bearing always in mind that this is a change that sometimes would accrue to the advantage of the owner of the interest, let him show a more yielding and responsive frame of mind.

Mr. Arthur Skeffington (Hayes and Harlington)

I should like briefly to support the arguments so eloquently put by my hon. Friend the Member for Widnes (Mr. MacColl) and by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Liverpool, Edge Hill (Mr. A. J. Irvine). In doing so, I should like to quote two small sections from the Final Report of the Uthwatt Committee, for certainly, in all our deliberations upstairs, we never had a valid argument to show that the basis of the Committee's theory about floating value and the effect of it in assessing compensation over a large area no longer held good under today's conditions.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Widnes indicated in moving the Amendment, to quote this extract from paragraph 23 of the Final Report, the conception that the Uthwatt Committee had in mind was this: If we assume a town gradually spreading outwards, where the fringe land on the north, south, east and west is all equally available for development, each of the owners of such fringe land to the north, south, east and west will claim equally that the next development will settle' on his land. Yet the average annual rate of development demand of past years may show that the quantum of demand is only enough to absorb the area of one side within such a period of the future as commands a present value. In paragraph 24, the Committee went on to say: Potential value is necessarily a 'floating value,' and it is impossible to predict with certainty where the float' will settle as sites are actually required for purposes of development. That process happens in just the same way today, even though there may be a general plan for the whole of the area. Paragraph 24 goes on to say: In practice where this process is repeated indefinitely over a large area the sum of the probabilities as estimated greatly exceeds the actual possibilities, because the float,' limited as it is to actually occurring demands, can only settle on a proportion of the whole area. There is therefore over-valuation. The Committee later, in the development of the argument which led to its conclusions about global value, not only refers to compulsory purchase, but also to some of the planning powers, which, though permissive, existed even before 1939, whereby local authorities, or in those days the Minister of Health, could, for the preservation of the countryside make orders which have the same effect as the powers under the Town & Country Planning Act, 1947. If that be the case, one cannot see how the Minister can say that the conception of global value has no relevance because of the planning powers contained in the 1947 Act. I think that the Committee would be very grateful if the Minister could show the fallacy of the argument that I have been developing. It is true that planning is now on a much greater scale than in 1939, but nevertheless the Committee referred specifically to planning in paragraph 29, and this very distinguished Committee, probably one of the most influential committees of experts in land which has ever met, still came to that conclusion about global value being the fair way to compensate individual owners.

Our new Clause as drafted would apply only to cases where compensation would involve more than £5,000 and would thus cut out the large number of small claims, which usually do not present the difficulty. There is provision whereby this sum could he varied if the Government felt later that it was unsuitable. The machinery of applying the global valuation is very simple. The individual parcels of land would be valued under the principles of the Bill and one would then only compare their collective value with the global valuation of the whole area. It is only if there he a difference of more than 5 per cent. between the total of the individual parcels of land and the global value of the land that an adjustment would be made in the price of individual parcels of land to be compulsorily acquired.

It seems to me that this proposal would he extremely fair to everybody. It would be fair to the local authority, to the ratepayer and, I should have thought, to the landowner. If any right hon. or hon. Gentleman thinks that it is right that a landowner should get a greater proportion than the total value of the whole area justifies, I hope that he will justify it. It seems to me to be an entirely new proposition that we are prepared to see the public and local authorities pay £X+ to a landowner even though it can be proved conclusively that the total value of land in the area is equal to only £X. If any hon. Member holds that view, I hope that he will justify it. We heard no justification for that view in Committee and the public would be glad to hear justification of it now.

I hope that the Minister will take the view that this is a reasonable Amendment and that he will accept it in this or some other form.

Mr. Brooke

The hon. and learned Member for Liverpool, Edge Hill (Mr. A. J. Irvine) said that this was a perfectly fair Amendment. He referred to the words "greater or less" in subsection (3) and indicated that it might work both ways. What he did not say, however, was that the operation of the new Clause starts with an election by the local authority, and it would seem to be astonishing that any local or public authority would make an election to operate this new Clause if the result would be that it would have to pay more for the property which it desires to acquire than it otherwise would have to do. This is a proposal which would in certain circumstances enable a local authority to elect to claim that it should buy land at a lower value than it would have to pay on the basis of totalling what are called the individual amounts relating to each of the separate interests in that land.

The hon. and learned Gentleman also said that I was undiscriminating in my attitude towards ideas. Let me rebut that statement straight away. I consider that this is a much better Amendment than the Amendment moved on 27th November. This is an occasion when four months' thinking have done the Opposition a lot of good, but it still is not a good Amendment for reasons which I will seek to explain.

With regard to floating value, I must now repeat what I said in Committee, namely, that the magnitude of floating value is wholly different from what it was when the Uthwatt Committee reported. I say again that the Opposition do not appear to have realised how effective their 1947 Act has been in eliminating floating value. I do not say that no floating value exists anywhere, but clearly the problem is different from what it was when the Uthwatt Committee reported and before the 1947 Act.

The new Clause is an attempt to enable a local authority to buy a piece of land as a whole as though it were all in one ownership, when in fact it is not all in one ownership—when there are various interests in the land and when the sum of the amount which it would have otherwise to pay for acquiring each of those interests would exceed the value of the land considered as being in one ownership.

First, that is a departure from market values. One can no longer say that the owner is being compensated on the basis of market value. I understood on Second Reading that that basic concept was accepted by the Opposition, although sometimes some of my hon. Friends in Committee may have wondered whether that was so.

Mr. Willis

The Government must have accepted it.

Mr. Brooke

But by moving the Amendment the Opposition are clearly departing from the basic principle that the individual shall be compensated for his interest in land on the basis of market value.

Mr. MacColl

We are only following the advice of the Minister in Clause 8. He has done the departing and we are learning our lesson from him.

Mr. Brooke

I cannot congratulate the hon. Member on the way he learns lessons. The practical side—

Mr. MacColl

Why is it not the same thing as Clause 8, in so far as it is a departure from market value?

Mr. Brooke

Because Clause 8, in general, deals with the conception that where land is being purchased for a new and special purpose one ignores the detail consequent on that purpose in the calculation of market value. What the hon. Gentleman is seeking to do by the Amendment is to import the purely artificial conception that all this land is to be regarded as being in one ownership if thereby the local authority could buy more cheaply.

Mr. Mitchison

Has the Minister got his own Clause right? What it does ignore is the development of other land adjoining the relevant land. In effect, it makes a global assessment in particular cases and in relation to special circumstances. But it is a departure on the lines of this Amendment from what the right hon. Gentleman has been saying is the principle of the Bill.

6.0 p.m.

Mr. Brooke

No. I think the hon. and learned Gentleman has got the lines crossed. I grant that I was simplifying and abbreviating the purpose of Clause 8, but I think that when my words are read they will be seen to be not an unreasonable summary of it.

However that may be, we must examine this new Clause on its practical merits and demerits. One of those demerits as in the previous Amendment of 27th November, is that nothing would ever get settled. This procedure of incredible complexity is here laid down simply and solely to ensure, as I understand it, that what the Uthwatt Committee said about floating value is taken fully into account. Under this new Clause every owner, quite clearly, would have the right not only to contest the individual amount of the assessment in respect of his own land, but also the global assessment, because what he would receive eventually might be affected by that. None of the final amounts which anyone would receive could be arrived at until all those disputes were settled.

I must tell the Committee that the provision for payments on account does not meet or overcome that difficulty in any way. If I read the new Clause aright, the individual owner would not have a right to intervene in the assessment of the individual amount for other interests. It seems strange that he should not, because, quite clearly, his own compensation might be affected by them. So that would be, as it appears, an act of injustice to the owner concerned. Nevertheless, even if the man intervened there would still, as I say, be almost indefinite scope for delay in settling all the other disputes which must have been settled before any individual owner could receive what was due to him.

So in that, too, the new Clause would not work satisfactorily in practice; and, as I put to the Standing Commttee, we do not want to frame a Bill which will have the result that it becomes considerably harder for public authorities to get on with projects which are desirable in the general interest simply because the Bill, as the Opposition would amend it, would create a system of compensation whereby the scope of dispute would be so vast as really to deter anybody from embarking on it at all.

It is most important, and surely both sides of the Committee must accept this, that if one is going to have compulsory purchase at all—and both sides, I think, accept that there must be compulsory purchase in certain cases—the procedure by which the compensation is to be settled shall nor be so protracted as to cause inordinate delay, not only maddening to the owner who will not receive his money, but frustrating for the local authority engaged in this prolonged disputation.

I go back to what I said at the beginning. Are we to compensate the individual owner on the basis of market value or not? Clearly, this new Clause would not do that.

The hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (Mr. Skeffington) was fearful, I think, lest under the Bill as it stands every individual owner could claim the benefit of floating value. I think he was referring back to a matter with which I sought to deal in Standing Committee. He seemed to have in mind that if land were being bought for housing purposes, each individual owner could claim successfully that the plot of land which he possessed would be the plot of land on which the corner shop or small shopping centre would go up. If the Bill emerges from this Committee and from the Report stage with the Amendments which stand in my name, that certainly will not be so. They seek to safeguard against that happening.

We have sought to secure that where a man is having his land compulsorily purchased, and where he claims that there might be a small shopping centre on his land although the whole area around is being bought for housing, the most that he can get is not the value of that land for shopping purposes but that fraction of the shopping value which represents his chance of being the lucky one to have this shop on that land. If, indeed, in a whole big housing estate there are to be a dozen shops built, he will get that very small fraction of shopping value which is related to his chance of having a shop built on his land in relation to all the other chances of all the other owners. I can assure the hon. Gentleman of that.

What, therefore, I have to say to the Committee is that floating value has been to a very large extent eliminated by the 1947 Act; that it certainly would not be desirable or, in my view, practicable to try to legislate to deal with it by the extremely cumbrous method which is indicated here; that it would lead to very long-drawn-out disputes; and it would end up by not compensating the owner on the basis of market value. If com- pensation on the basis of market value is what the whole Committee desires, then this Amendment cannot be accepted.

Mr. Skeffington

Would the right hon. Gentleman indicate the Amendments he has in mind so that I can study them?

Mr. Brooke

I mean the new Clause (Assumptions as to planning permission), particularly the first part of subsection (3). I think the hon. Gentleman will find the point there.

Mr. Mitchison

As is usual, the right hon. Gentleman is courteous, misguided, and unnecessarily gloomy. A chucker out, as the right hon. Gentleman is, should be more cheerful. On Second Reading of the Bill we pointed out to him that he had thrown the Prime Minister out altogether—chucked him into the pond. We pointed out that what he was doing by the Bill was to get rid of some of the errors into which the Prime Minister had fallen in 1954. He has now added to the contents of the pool no less a person than Mr. Justice Uthwatt, as he then was, and the professional body which advised him about floating value. They have gone by the board, too. They have disappeared, not with an outright splash but by a sort of vanishing process. They have become so small that they can now be neglected. Floating value no longer matters.

Perhaps, in the circumstances, I need not inflict on the right hon. Gentleman again the quotations from paragraphs 24 and 25 of the Uthwatt Report, as, no doubt, he has them in mind. He will remember that what floating value arises would be out of the possible use of a piece of land in the middle of a larger area of land which is being acquired. The owner of the smaller piece of land thinks, as does every other owner of a small piece of land in the middle of the large area, that the more profitable use will alight on his land. That, I think, is a correct and short description of what the surveyors told the Uthwatt Committee and which that Committee accepted. My hon. Friend the Member for Widnes (Mr. MacColl) was perfectly right in saying that to a limited extent the right hon. Gentleman has accepted the same thing in his own Bill.

I quote from paragraph 15 of the Explanatory Memorandum which deals with areas of comprehensive development and says: It would be quite wrong for the acquiring authority to buy one person's land cheap because it is to become (say) part of a road, and the next person's land dear because it is to become (say) part of a departmental store. That means that, notwithstanding the particular use contemplated in the future—and that is what floating value is concerned with—and notwithstanding the effect that use would have on market value if it were regarded piece by piece, recourse must be had to a larger unit.

Accordingly, the next sentence sets out the right hon. Gentleman's conclusion. It says: The solution set out in the clause is that in valuing the land account is Lo be taken of the new uses envisaged for the area, but the scheme itself and the proposed distribution of uses is to he ignored. On the very narrow description of market value which the right hon. Gentleman put forward just now, this would be just as indefensible as he finds the new Clause. The fault is not in the scope of the Clauses but in the right hon. Gentleman's view of market value.

The local authority is buying a piece of land of a certain size—in this case a rather large size worth al least £5,000—and from its point of view it is immaterial whether it buys from 100 owners or from one. Therefore, if we are to be fair—and fairness is what we are trying to obtain—from the local authority's point of view it ought not to be made to pay more, or less, because it is buying from many owners instead of from one. It may affect I he individual owner either way just as it may affect him in the case of an area of comprehensive development, and as the right hon. Gentleman has provided in the Bill.

We say that if we are to be fair we must be fair to both sides. When we arrive at open market value we cannot arrive at what is simply the market value for one person concerned in the transaction without regarding what is the market value for the other person as well. And where any difference between them depends on the size of the area bought and on the number of individual owners, the right way of valuing must be considered. We approach the Uthwatt problem—and this is what that Committee exactly had in mind—from that point of view, and we accept than Committee's conclusion, based as it then was on the expert opinion of surveyors. I see the hon. Member for North Angus and Mearns (Sir C. Thornton-Kemsley) sitting opposite like the Delphic Sybil, with the Sybilline books before him, either preparing to tell us the date of the General Election or to tell us whether I am wrong in what I am putting forward.

Sir C. Thornton-Kemsley

I was exercising my mind on what check there was on the global valuation of the district valuers of the Inland Revenue, because where they are valuing individual property the hon. and learned Member will be aware that the valuer acting for the individual can challenge the valuation. I was wondering, in relation to the Amendment, what check there was on the district valuer's unilateral assessment of the global value.

Mr. Mitchison

The hon. Member will recollect that it was not the Delphic Sybil but Socrates who was accused of thinking of too lofty things. I will leave to the hon. Member meditation on that subject, which to my untutored mind is not relevant to the principle which I am trying to establish. I have said "my untutored mind" and the hon. Member must not be too hard on me.

6.15 p.m.

The exact point is that which the Uthwatt Committee raised. The Minister said that there was nothing in it nowadays. It was practically all gone. He said it in Standing Committee, and he said that he had Departmental experience behind him. We on this side of the Committee have no Department behind us. We have to grind out our Amendments slowly and learn from the wisdom of the right hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends. When he said this in Standing Committee I asked what experience there was behind him, what bearing it had on the question and whether he could give us an instance.

In this respect, the right hon. Gentleman himself was something of a Delphic Oracle. He replied: I will take note of what the hon. and learned Gentleman has said. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman kept the note. Has he found some other use for it, or did he seek out the information for which we asked? A similar question was asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Willis) about Scotland, and the right hon. Gentleman replied: I appreciate that this matter is of interest to Scotland as well as to England and Wales."—[OFFICIAL. REPORT, Standing Committee D, 27th November, 1958; c. 48.] I hope that it is, but we have not had the information yet.

The right hon. Gentleman was asked for the Departmental experience on which he was relying and for a little substance to what he was saying, and we asked him, when replying later, not to repeat what he had said before and to tell us what it amounted to. But we have not been told. I suppose that I have a suspicious mind. My opinion is that the Departmental experience does not bear out the sweeping statements which the right hon. Gentleman made in Standing Committee and which he has repeated today.

If I may put it another way, the right hon. Gentleman has the weight of this impartial, experienced and well-advised Uthwatt Committee and he has not produced any repudiating evidence to show that what it says is wrong in principle. We on this side of the Committee take the view that in the majority of cases, if nothing is done about this, the local authority will get into the same difficulty that the right hon. Gentleman saw in connection with areas of comprehensive development. In fact, the local authority will be made to pay more, simply because everybody will think that their particular area will have a specially useful future use—the old business of floating value—with the result of a higher total value made out of the individual items than there would have been if the area had been taken as a whole.

I agree that if we are to deal with this problem it will involve some more machinery. There is no getting away from that. All I say to the right hon. Gentleman—and I think that he has recognised it—is that we have tried to get out of some of the difficulties which he put against our first Amendment. We have tried to get out of the difficulty inherent in distributing future value by reference to existing value, and to get out of the difficulty which the hon. Member for North Angus put to us in connection with new towns. We have dropped the new town part of the Amendment altogether and have limited the Amendment to the land authorised to be acquired. That will mean a substantial housing estate, or something of that kind, on the fringes of a large local authority and even, in some cases, on the fringes of a rather small one. The right hon. Gentleman can modify the Amendment as he likes. If he thinks that we allow for too large or too small a purchase, he can vary the figure of £5,000. The point is that the provision is intended to apply to substantial purchases.

I am all for people getting a fair price, but it should be fair to both sides of the bargain. Let the right hon. Gentleman recollect what will be the result of making local authorities pay too much when they are trying to put a new housing estate, or whatever it is, on the outskirts of their town. It will be paid for by two people —those who live in the houses, who will have to pay higher rents, and those who pay rates in the area, who will have to pay higher rates. They are the people concerned in the long run.

Let him remember, too, that there is the more need to be fair because the Parliamentary Secretary told us that hardly any owner-occupiers would be affected by the Bill. Substantially, it is a landlords' Bill, and in a case of this kind the landlord is likely to be, I would not say enormous in the sense of wealth but, at any rate, one with a great many acres in most parts of the country or with valuable land in other parts of the country. Now £5,000 is really something when we are considering site valuation. The hon. Gentleman can put it higher if he likes.

Therefore, what would be done by this Amendment would be to be fair to the ratepayers and the tenants of the council houses. They are the people who will be mostly affected, as against the landowning interests who will, as regards this Bill, be landowners on a large scale. If it is an appeal to fairness on behalf of the man who has fewer resources, I would put up the rent payer and the ratepayer in an ordinary town and in relation to council houses, as just as deserving of consideration as the large landowning interests. who may have bought land for speculative or other purposes on the fringes of the town.

I agree that it necessarily involves some machinery. I do not accept all the right hon. Gentleman's criticisms, but that is not the real point. The real point is that this is fair as between two parties, and the objection to not accepting this Amendment is that if we are to be unfair nominally to the acquiring authority and practically to the rent payer and ratepayer round about the town, we will be that in favour of what are on the whole largish landowners.

I do not believe that is right and I do not believe that is what we were told was the intention of the Bill. I hope, therefore, that the Committee on a Division will accept the Amendment.

Question put, That those words be there inserted:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 161, Noes 195.

Division No. 69.]	AYES	[6.25 p.m.
Ainsley, J. W.	Hamilton, W. W.	Owen, W. J.
Albu, A. H.	Hannan, W.	Padley, W. E.
Allen, Arthur (Bosworth)	Harrison, J. (Nottingham, N.)	Palmer, A. M. F.
Bacon, Miss Alice	Hastings, S.	Pannell, Charles (Leeds, W.)
Bellenger, Rt. Hon. F. J.	Hayman, F. H.	Pargiter, G. A.
Benson, Sir George	Healey, Denis	Paton, John
Beswick, Frank	Henderson, Rt. Hn. A. (Rwly Regis)	Pearson, A,
Blackburn, F.	Herbison, Miss M.	Pentland, N.
Blenkinsop, A.	Hewitson, capt. M.	Popplewell, E.
Bottomley, Rt. Hon. A. C.	Hobson, C. R. (Keighley)	Prentice, R. E.
Bowden, H. W. (Leicester,S.W.)	Holman, P.	Price, J. T. (Westhoughton)
Boyd, T. C.	Holmes, Horace	Price, Philips (Gloucestershire, W.)
Brockway, A. F.	Houghton, Douglas	Probert, A. R.
Broughton, Dr. A. D. D.	Hoy, J. H.	Pursey, Cmdr. H.
Brown, Thomas (Ince)	Hunter, A. E.	Randall, H. E.
Burton, Miss F. E.	Hynd, H. (Accrington)	Roberts, Albert (Normanton)
Butler, Herbert (Hackney, G.)	Hynd, J. B. (Attercliffe)	Roberts, Goronwy (Caernarvon)
Butler, Mrs. Joyce (Wood Green)	Irvine, A. J. (Edge Hill)	Robinson, Kenneth (St. Pancras, N.)
Callaghan, L. J.	Janner, B.	Rogers, George (Kensington, N.)
Carmichael, J.	Jones, Rt. Hon. A. Creech(Wakefield)	Ross, William
Castle, Mrs. B. A.	Jones, J. Idwal (Wrexham)	Silverman, Julius (Aston)
Champion, A. J.	Jones, T. W. (Merioneth)	Silverman, Sydney (Nelson)
Chetwynd, G. R.	Kenyon, C.	Simmons, C. J. (Brierley Hill)
Cliffe, Michael	Key, Rt. Hon. C. W.	Skeffington, A. M.
Coldrick, W.	Lawson, G. M.	Slater, Mrs. H. (Stoke, N.)
Collick, P. H. (Birkenhead)	Lee, Frederick (Newton)	Slater, J. (Sedgefield)
Craddock, George (Bradford, S.)	Lewis, Arthur	Smith, Ellis (Stoke, S.)
Cronin, J. D.	Lindgren, G. S.	Snow, J. W.
Crossman, R. H. S.	Logan, D. G.	Soskice, Rt. Hon. Sir Frank
Cullen, Mrs. A.	Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson	Sparks, J. A.
Dalton, Rt. Hon. H.	McAlister, Mrs. Mary	Spriggs, Leslie
Darling, George (Hillsborough)	MoCann, J.	Stonehouse, John
Davies, Harold (Leek)	MacColl, J. E.	Summerskill, Rt. Hon. E.
Davies, Stephen (Merthyr)	Mclnnes, J.	Sylvester, G. 0.
Diamond, John	MoKay, John (Wallsend)	Taylor, Bernard (Mansfield)
Dodds, N. H.	MoLeavy, Frank	Taylor, John (West Lothian)
Dugdale, Rt. Hn. John (W. Brmwch)	MaoPherson, Malcolm (Stirling)	Ungoed-Thomas, Sir Lynn
Edwards, Rt. Hon. John (Brighouse)	Mahon, Simon	Viant, S. P.
Edwards, Rt. Hon. Ness (Caerphilly)	Mallalieu, E. L. (Brigg)	Warbey, W. N.
Edwards, Robert (Bilston)	Mallalieu, J. P. W. (Huddersfd, E.)	Weitzman, D.
Edwards, W. J. (Stepney)	Mann, Mrs. Jean	Wells, Percy (Faversham)
Evans, Albert (Islington, S.W.)	Marquand, Rt. Hon. H. A.	White, Mrs. Eirene (E. Flint)
Evans, Edward (Lowestoft)	Mason, Roy	Wilkins, W. A.
Finch, H. J. (Bedwellty)	Mellish, R. J.	Williams, Rev. Llywelyn (Ab'tillery)
Foot, D. M.	Mitchison, G. R.	Williams, W. R. (Openshaw)
Fraser, Thomas (Hamilton)	Moody, A. S.	Williams, W. T. (Barons Court)
Gaitskell, Rt. Hon. H. T. N.	Morris, Percy (Swansea, W.)	Willis, Eustace (Edinburgh, E.)
Gibson, C. W.	Mort, D. L.	Woof, R. E.
Gordon Walker, Rt. Hon. P. C.	Moss, R.	Yates, V. (Ladywood)
Greenwood, Anthony	Moyle, A.	Younger, Rt. Hon. K.
Grenfell, Rt. Hon. D. R.	Mulley, F. W.	Zilliacus, K.
Grey, C. F.	Neal, Harold (Bolsover)
Griffiths, David (Rother Valley)	Oliver, G. H.	TELLERS FOR THE AYES:
Griffiths, Rt. Hon. James (Llanelty)	Oram, A. E.	Mr. Deer and Mr. Short.
Hale, Leslie	Oswald, T.
NOES
Agnew, Sir Peter	Barter, John	Birch, Rt. Hon. Nigel
Aitken, W. T.	Batsford, Brian	Bishop, F. P.
Alport, C. J. M.	Baxter, Sir Beverley	Body, R. F.
Amory, Rt. Hn. Heathcoat (Tiverton)	Beamish, Col. Tufton	Bowen, E. R. (Cardigan)
Arbuthnot, John	Bell, Philip (Bolton, E.)	Braithwaite, Sir Albert (Harrow, W.)
Armstrong, C. W.	Bennett, F. M. (Torquay)	Brooke, Rt. Hon. Henry
Ashton, H.	Bennett, Dr. Reginald	Brooman-White, R. C.
Baldwin, Sir Archer	Bevins, J. R. (Toxteth)	Browne, J. Nixon (Cralgton)
Balniel, Lord	Bidgood, J. C.	Bryan, P.
Burden, F. F. A.	Hinchingbrooke, Viscount	Osborne, C.
Cary, Sir Robert	Hirst, Geoffrey	Page, R. G.
Channon, H. P. G.	Hobson, John(Warwick & Leam'gt'n)	Pannell, N. A. (Kirkdale)
Chichester-Clark, R.	Hope, Lord John	Partridge, E.
Clarke, Brig. Terence (Portsmth, W.)	Hornby, R. P.	Peel, W. J.
Cole, Norman	Homsby-Smith, Miss M. P.	Peyton, J. W. W.
Conant, Maj. Sir Roger	Horobin, Sir Ian	Pickthorn, Sir Kenneth
Cooke, Robert	Hutchison. Michael Clark(E'b'gh, S.)	Pilklngton, Capt. R. A.
Cooper-Key, E. M.	Hyde, Montgomery	Pitt, Miss E. M.
Cordeaux, Lt.-Col. J. K.	Iremonger, T. L.	Pott, H. P.
Corfield, F. V.	Irvine, Bryant Godman (Rye)	Powell, i. Enoch
Courtney, Cdr. Anthony	Jenkins, Robert (Dulwich)	Prior-Palmer, Brig. O. L.
Craddock, Beresford (Spelthorne)	Johnson, Dr. Donald (Carlisle)	Rawlinson, Peter
Crosthwaite-Eyre, Col. O. E.	Johnson, Eric (Blackley)	Redmayne, M.
Crowder, Sir John (Finchley)	Kerr, Sir Hamilton	Remnant, Hon. P.
Crowder, Petre (Ruislip—Northwood)	Kershaw, J. A.	Renton, D. L. M.
Dance, J. C. G.	Kimball, M.	Ridsdale, J. E.
Davidson, Viscountess	Lancaster, Col. C. G.	Robertson, Sir David
Davies,Rt.Hn.clement(Montgomery)	Langford-Holt, J. A.	Robson Brown, Sir William
D'Avigdor-Goldsmid, Sir Henry	Leavey, J. A.	Roper, Sir Harold
Deedes, W. F.	Legge-Bourke, Maj. E. A. H.	Ropner, Col. Sir Leonard
Digby, Simon Wingfield	Legh, Hon. Peter (Petersfield)	Russell, R. S.
Dodds-Parker, A. D.	Lindsay, Hon. James (Devon, N.)	Sharpies, R. C.
Doughty, C. J. A.	Lindsay, Martin (Solihull)	Smithers, Peter (Winchester)
du Cann, E. D. L.	Linstead, Sir H. N.	Spens, Rt. Hn. Sir P. (Kens'gt'n, S.)
Eden, J. B. (Bournemouth, West)	Lloyd, Maj. Sir Guy (Renfrew, E.)	Stevens, Geoffrey
Elliott,R.W.(Ne'castle upon Tyne.N.)	Loveys, Walter H.	Steward, Harold (Stockport, S.)
Emmet, Hon. Mrs. Evelyn	Lucas, Sir Jocelyn (Portsmouth, S.)	Steward, Sir William (Woolwich, W.)
Errington, Sir Eric	Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh	Stoddart-Scott, Col. Sir Malcolm
Fell, A.	McAdden, S. J.	Studholme, Sir Henry
Finlay, Graeme	Macdonald, Sir Peter	Summers, Sir Spencer
Fisher, Nigel	Mackeson, Brig. Sir Harry	Sumner, W. D. M. (Orpington)
Fort, R.	Macleod, Rt. Hn. lain (Enfield,W.)	Taylor, William (Bradford, N.)
Freeth, Denzll	Macmillan, Maurice (Halifax)	Temple, John M.
Gammans, Lady	Macpherson, Niall (Dumfries)	Thomas, Leslie (Canterbury)
Garner-Evans, E.H.	Maddan, Martin	Thompson, Kenneth (Walton)
Gibson-Watt, D.	Maitland, Hon. Patrick (Lanark)	Thompson, R. (Croydon, S.)
Godber, J. B.	Manningham-Buller, Rt, Hn. Sir R.	Thornton-Kemsley, Sir Colin
Goodhart, Philip	Markham, Major Sir Frank	Tilney, John (Wavertree)
Gough, C. F. H.	Marlowe, A. A. H.	Vane, W. M. F.
Gower, H. R.	Marshall, Douglas	Vaughan-Morgan, J. K.
Graham, Sir Fergus	Mathew, R.	Vlckers, Miss Joan
Grant, Rt. Hon. w. (Woodside)	Mawby, R. L.	Vosper, Rt. Hon. D. F.
Green, A.	Maydon, Lt.-Comdr. S. L. C.	Wakefield, Edward (Derbyshire, W.)
Grimond, J.	Medlicott, Sir Frank	Wakefield, Sir Wavell (St. M'lebone)
Grimston, Sir Robert (Westbury)	Milligan, Rt. Hon. W. R.	Walker-Smith, Rt. Hon. Derek
Gurden, Harold	Moore, Sir Thomas	Wall, Patrick
Hall, John (Wycombe)	Morrison, John (Salisbury)	Ward, Rt. Hon. G. R. (Worcester) Ward, Dame Irene (Tynemouth)
Harris, Frederic (Croydon, N.W.)	Nabarro, G. D. N.	Webster, David
Harris, Reader (Heston)	Nairn, D. L. S.	Williams, R. Dudley (Exeter)
Harrison, A, B. C. (Maldon)	Neave, Airey	Wills, Sir Gerald (Bridgwater)
Harrison, Col. J. H. (Eye)	Nicholls, Harmar	Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick
Hay, John	Nicolson, N. (B'n'm'th, E. & Chr'ch)	Yates, William (The Wrekin)
Heald, Rt. Hon. Sir Lionel	Noble, Comdr. Rt. Hon. Allan
Heath, Rt. Hon. E. R. G.	Noble, Michael (Argyll)	TELLERS FOR THE NOES:
Hicks-Beach, Maj. W. W.	Oakshott, H. D.	Mr. Hughes-Young
Hill, Rt. Hon. Charles (Luton)	Orr-Ewing, C. Ian (Hendon, N.)	and Mr. Whitelaw.

Sir C. Thornton-Kemsley

I beg to move, in page 13, line 14, at the end to insert: (7) Where there is attached to the relevant land an unexpended balance of established development value the amount thereof shall be taken into account in determining market value in accordance with Rule 2 of section two of the Act of 1919. Even those hon. Members who had not what the hon. Member for Widnes (Mr. MacColl) called the privilege of serving on the Standing Committee—some of us might call it a rather doubtful privilege in view of the time that was taken—will recognise that the intention of the Bill is that market value as determined in terms of Section 2 of the Acquisition of Land (Assessment of Compensation) Act, 1919, should supersede the present basis of compensation where land is compulsorily acquired; that is to say, the existing use value plus the amount of the Part VI claim. When I refer to the Part VI claim, I include also the Part V claim relating to Scotland, and when I refer to Section 35 of the 1954 Act, I refer also to Section 36 of the Scottish Act.

What that amounts to for all practical purposes is that the only value of the Part VI or Part V claim for unexpended development value is that it can be claimed in the case of refusal of planning permission. That is all it will be used for in the future. If when the Bill is passed I as a valuer am asked to assess what the market would give for certain parcels of land, I should naturally take into account whether or not there was a Part VI claim, and I should depress or raise the value according to whether or not there was a claim for loss of development value.

I am not honestly sure whether I should be in order in doing that when the value is required for the specific purpose of valuing land which has to be compulsorily acquired, because where land is to be acquired compulsorily it is taken under the new basis, and, therefore, no question of a Part VI claim arises. It is in order to avoid doubt on this important matter that I seek to ensure that the words which I propose are inserted in the Bill.

The Minister may say one of three things in reply to the Amendment. He may say that it is not his intention that any such assumptions should be made. He may say that the fact that land has a substantial Part VI claim is to be disregarded where it is being compulsorily acquired in future. He may say that because Part VI claims have relevance only to cases where planning permission is refused, it should be disregarded altogether.

If they have worked this out at all, many hon. Members will be aware that a great many people who in future will have their land acquired compulsorily will be worse off under the provisions of the Bill than they would be if they were allowed to claim as they are at the moment for the existing use value of their land plus the Part VI claim or a Section 35 supplement in lieu.

Mr. Sparks

How can they possibly be worse off if they are getting the highest market value for the land?

Sir C. Thornton-Kemsley

I could give many examples. They can be worse off if the land is undeveloped or comparatively little developed and if under the 1947 legislation, as amended by the 1954 Act, the land had a high claim for loss of development value attached to it. In such cases, cases broadly of underdeveloped land with a high Part VI claim and planning permission for a new use which is of very little value—for playing fields, say—there is no doubt that the claimant will be better off under the present position than he will be if the Bill becomes law.

If that is not accepted, I can give examples. Let us take the example of an acre of agricultural land with an existing use value of, say, £80 and an unexpended development value of £1,480. This is an actual example. The development value of £1,480 was calculated on the basis that the land had some potential high value, because it could have been used for industrial purposes as it was adjoining an industrial area. The assumption is that this land is to be acquired for housing development.

Under the terms of the 1954 Act the vendor will get £80 as the existing use value for agricultural purposes and the unexpended development value of £1,480. In addition he will receive interest of £211, which in this case is calculated at 7½ per cent in accordance with the terms of the 1954 Act. These three elements together total £1,771. If the Bill is carried through, the market value, having regard to the certified planning permission for housing purposes in terms of Clause 4(1), will be about £750. No unexpended balance of development values can be added and the compensation will therefore be £750 as against £1,771. These are factual examples, but I hope I am wrong as to the intention of the Government. I hope that what the Government mean is that in valuing the land the valuer shall have regard to any Part VI claim attached to the land.

I said that I thought my right hon. Friend might give three answers to the Amendment. I will deal with the first answer which I said might be that this was not intended at all. If it is not intended—and the avowed purpose of the Bill is to pay fair compensation to owners of land which is compulsorily acquired—we ought not to legislate in a way which would leave uncertainty in the minds of owners as to whether they will receive less than they would under the present circumstances.

Mr. Sparks

It would be asking for more than the market value, which is not fair in the light of the passage of time.

Sir C. Thornton-Kemsley

We ought to make sure that the market value includes the unexpended portion of the Part VI claim. It is to avoid doubt that I want that to be made clear.

The second thing that my right hon. Friend might say is that it is the intention that this very thing shall happen, that the valuer in making his assessment of the market value ought to take into account the figure of the Part. VI claim which attaches to the latter. If my right hon. Friend does intend that to be the case—as I think he does we ought to be clear about the very useful phrase imported from the 1947 Act—and which has been used in legislation before" for avoidance of doubt". If my right hon. Friend does not like the Amendment because those words are not in it, I would be happy if he indicated that he sees the point but would like to add some such words as "for avoidance of doubt".

6.45 p.m.

In answering the first Amendment my right hon. Friend said that there was a need for a set of rules. I did not intervene in that debate because I agree that there is a need for a set of rules by which valuers can be guided. Many assumptions have to be made and it is right that rules should be laid down in the Bill. My right hon. Friend said—and I took down his exact words—that "uncertainty should be avoided as far as possible". There is uncertainty in the minds of valuers over what is intended about these Part VI claims.

Mr. A. J. Irvine

As I understand it, the hon. Gentleman is proposing that the acquiring authority should pay something for this element which he describes as belonging to open market value. Can the hon. Gentleman indicate how he proposes that the acquiring authority should realise this unexpended balance of development value? He ought to explain that. Apparently they will be paying for something which can be of no real value to them.

Sir C. Thornton-Kemsley

I am not suggesting that the acquiring authority should pay more than the market value. In. Rule 2 under Section 2 of the Acquisition of Land Act, 1919, it is to be assumed that the term "market value" shall include any Part VI claim which may become lodged against the land.

Mr. Irvine

Surely there is still a question to answer. If "market value" includes the unexpended balance and the acquiring authority pays the market value, it means they are paying for that unexpended balance. What can they do with it? What use is it to them?

Sir C. Thornton-Kemsley

Surely the hon. and learned Member realises that if the acquiring authority wants the land it ought to be prepared to buy it at a fair market value.

Mr. Irvine

I am suggesting that we ought to be enlightened as to whether market value should or should not include a Part VI claim for this purpose.

Mr. Sparks

It should not.

Sir C. Thornton-Kemsley

That might be the division between us.

The third thing my right hon. Friend might say is that while he agrees, as I hope he does, that the Part VI claims should be included in the compensation which the market will give for any piece of land under consideration by the valuers, yet to insert a specific reference to one particular element in the valuation of that land would be to cast doubt upon other matters to which specific reference has not been made.

I have known that line of argument advanced before by Ministers seeking to defeat a proposition of this kind. If there are any other aspects of valuation left in as unprecise a position as is this, they ought to be picked out and put in the Bill. Nothing could be quite as unprecise as this, and it is to avoid doubt that I have moved the Amendment.

Mr. James McInnes (Glasgow, Central)

The hon. Member for North Angus and Mearns (Sir C. Thornton-Kemsley) has put a number of hypothetical questions to the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland. I do not know what reply the Joint Under-Secretary will make, but I do know what my reply would be. Candidly, it is absolutely impertinent of the hon. Member to suggest that acquiring authorities ought to be made to pay additional money for something which is of no use to them. It is no answer for the hon. Member to say that an acquiring authority need not acquire the land concerned. The hon. Member wants all the benefits and all the advantages of legislation preceding the Bill, that is, the advantages of all the legislation back to 1919—

Sir C. Thornton-Kemsley

The Bill is based on that.

Mr. McInnes

I know, but the hon. Member is not content with the Bill; he also wants the highest form of compensation ever known in the history of land acquisition to be paid.

Mr. F. V. Corfield (Gloucestershire, South)

The hon. Member might care to look at the Land Clauses Consolidation Act, 1845.

Mr. McInnes

I could go back to that, but I shall content myself with dealing with the Bill. The hon. Member for North Angus and Mearns wants all the advantages under the 1947 Act, where the basis was existing use value, to be applied to the high current market value of today. This is a piece of impertinence, and I hope that the Joint Under-Secretary will deal very firmly with it.

Mr. Corfield

I support the Amendment, but not on the same grounds as those of my hon. Friend the Member for North Angus and Mearns (Sir C. Thornton-Kemsley). To judge from the speech of the hon. Member for Glasgow, Central (Mr. McInnes), there is a good deal of misunderstanding about what the unexpended balance is.

When this matter was raised in Committee, in another context, my right hon. Friend put forward the view that the unexpended balance would be a factor taken into account in the ordinary process of practical valuation, for compensation or anything else. Since my right hon. Friend made that statement I have had a number of letters from valuers, entirely unsolicited, to the effect that they would not agree that that was the case.

What we are asking my right hon. Friend to do is precisely what he has done in a new Clause in which, having said in the White Paper that there was no need to make provision for existing planning provisions—with which I Agree because they are for the benefit of the land—presumably for the avoidance of doubt, he is now making those provisions. We are asking him to do precisely the same thing in a matter which appears to be open to doubt in the minds of valuers.

My hon. Friend the Member for North Angus and Mearns was worried about people getting less under the present Bill than under the present system. I cannot say that that will give me sleepless nights, so long as they get fair value. If the anomalies of the provisions were such that they got more than fair value, I should not worry very much.

The trouble arises from the fact that the unexpended balance is the compensation for the loss of development rights under the 1947 Act, after various adjustments have been made under the 1954 legislation. The difficulties arise, for instance, where there are two pieces of land in different occupation but having precisely the same unexpended balance. One owner may apply for planning permission and be refused, in which case he would get compensation for loss of development rights up to a ceiling dictated by the amount of the unexpended balance. There is no question of asking the acquiring authority to pay for something it does not want. It does that when it compensates for loss of planning permission.

In the other case, there might be compulsory acquisition with a certificate under Clause 4 stating that in the opinion of the local planning authority there would be no permission for any development other than the relatively valueless development for which the acquiring authority wished to acquire the land. The owner of the development rights would thus be deprived of those rights which are represented by the curious formula of the unexpended balance.

I suggest that there would be a considerable anomaly because in one case the man refused planning permission would get the sum, and if the land were subsequently acquired that would be taken into account, while in the other case he would not get that sum and would be that much worse off.

The Amendment is designed to avoid doubt. If my right hon. Friend is satisfied that this matter is already taken into account, as I submit it should be, there can be no harm in including such a provision in the Bill.

Mr. Sparks

This proposal is outrageous. The very purpose of the Bill, of which the Clause is an important part, is to establish a new basis of compensation for the acquisition of land by local authorities. The case for that is that the existing basis is unfair. The existing basis is the 1947 use value of the land plus the development value of the unexpended balance, plus one-seventh.

The argument for removing that basis is that it was unfair and that it was necessary to establish a fair basis. However, we believe that the proposed basis is not fair to the public interest. It was intended to establish market value as the basis, but hon. Members opposite now want to have the best of both bases. Where the 1947 compensation figure would be higher, they prefer that to the 1959 compensation figure.

Mr. Corfield

I do not think the hon. Member understands the argument. It is quite clear that where the certified or assumed planning permission is for a development of considerable value this question does not arise. It is only in cases where there is an assumed planning permission which deprives a man of his development rights to which he had established a claim under the 1947 Act that this provision applies.

7.0 p.m.

Mr. Sparks

I have heard that, and I also heard what the hon. Member for North Angus and Mearns (Sir C. Thornton-Kemsley) said. He put a somewhat different complexion upon the Amendment than that which the hon. Member for Gloucestershire, South (Mr. Corfield) did.

Mr. Corfield

I am right.

Mr. Sparks

I am not so sure that the hon. Member is right, because the new basis which the Bill intends to establish is completely to supersede the 1947 basis, because of its general unfairness. It is important to remember that in 1947, when this basis of compensation was laid down, there were no such things as development plans. It was the Act of 1947 which created them and which thereafter designated areas of land for certain specific uses. When compensation on the 1947 basis was established and claims had to be made by the owners for loss of development value, that value was not based upon any plan because no such plans existed.

The hon. Member for North Angus referred to a specific case and said that it was assumed that a development value of about £1,450 attached to the piece of land because it was not far from an industrial development. But there could not have been a development plan in existence.

Sir C. Thornton-Kemsley

That was a specific case where it was agreed. The Amendment applies only to established development values under Part VI —or, in other words, agreed values.

Mr. Sparks

But it was agreed and accepted for a totally different purpose. It was agreed in order to determine a claim to which the owner of the land was entitled on the global compensation figures. It had no relationship to planning as we know it now. Since 1947 we have had development plans, and presumably the piece of land about which the hon. Member is talking is planned not for industrial but for residential purposes. The local authority proceeding to acquire it would therefore have to pay compensation based not upon what it was thought would be its development in 1947 but what is now included in a development plan for residential purposes.

When we assess the question of market value and compensation we must have regard to the passing of time. The basis that we are now supplanting was established twelve years ago, and it may be that in some cases the unexpended balance in 1947 would be lower than the market value established under the Bill. Which of the two figures are local authorities to be called upon to pay? They will be called upon to pay the higher figure, as established by the Bill, based on market value, and not the lower figure which would have been established on the basis of the 1947 claim. To be fair, if we are to say, "In cases where the 1947 claim was a higher figure than the compensation established under the Bill in 1959 the local authority should pay the higher figure," we ought also to say that where the reverse is the case local authorities should pay the lower of the two figures. But that would not meet the intentions of hon. Members opposite.

I hope that the Minister will resist the Amendment. I do not see how he can do anything else. It may be the intention of the Government to establish a fair market price, based upon the market value for the acquisition of land, but the Government cannot do that and at the same time tie down the market value to a lot of propositions and considerations which produce no market value. The less we endanger the matter with prohibitions, inhibitions, restrictions and additions of all kinds the more likely we are to arrive at a fair and equitable figure of compensation for the acquisition of land.

The hon. Member is trying to jerrymander this situation and w rite into market value something more than ought reasonably to be written into it. He is trying to tie down valuers, and to provide that they shall not be free to assess what is a reasonable figure but must take into consideration the question whether, in 1947, the claim on the fund would have produced more for the owner than would be produced for him under the Bill, and that if it would have produced more they must include it in their calculations and call it the market price.

Sir C. Thornton-Kemsley

I hope that the hon. Member will recognise that at present there is no question but that valuers have regard to Part VI claims in making their valuations. The only question is whether they are to be required to do so under the Bill. I say that they should be in order to remove any doubt.

Mr. Sparks

If they are all doing it there is no need for this provision and the hon. Member does not need the Amendment. But if the unexpended balance of development value based upon the 1947 assessment is to be included in the assessment of market value, it makes the Bill more outrageous than ever. It is a first-class public scandal. This matter requires a little more investigation than it appears to have had, and we shall be very anxious to hear what the Minister has to say about it. I am sure that there is no public justification for introducing, into this concept of market value values based upon the 1947 standards which were arrived at for a totally different purpose.

I hope that the Committee will reject the proposal because of its unfairness and the inequitable effect it must have upon local authorities who need land for public purposes.

Mr. A. J. Irvine

We shall be interested to hear the reaction of the Minister to this proposal. I admit that in the open market the unexpended balance of development value may be an element in the market value. But it is an element only to the extent that the purchaser is getting something which he can realise. The point is that it may not have any advantage to the purchaser if the purchaser is a local authority. That is the major objection.

If I may put the same point in another way, I would say that where the assump- tions as to planning permissions are such and such, and the purposes for which the land is being required are such and such, the result of the Amendment may be that the acquiring authority will pay a higher figure in the market for this element of market value, on the basis that it is an element in the market value, when it may be of no value to the authority whatsoever. That seems to be the fundamental objection here and the reason why we should listen very carefully to what the Minister has to say.

It is quite possible that one of the difficulties into which we run in these matters, if we choose a concept like open market value, is that there are elements operating in the open market which have no kind of reference to what the acquiring authority may desire to do with the land. I certainly think that it is very undesirable that, in addition to the price of compulsory acquisition, there should be paid any sum of money in respect of an asset which the acquiring authority is wholly incapable of realising.

Mr. Bevins

I appreciate that my hon. Friend the Member for North Angus and Mearns (Sir C. Thornton-Kemsley), is professionally very well versed in the subject we are debating, but I should like to say to him at the start that many of the aspects of the Bill have been referred to the various professional associations, including the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, the Chartered Auctioneers' and Estate Agents' Institute and Land Agents Society, and so forth, and that none of these organisations has made any comment at all on this point. Having said that, I should add that I could well understand that there may be a little doubt, perhaps on both sides of the Committee, about what the Government here intend, and I should like briefly to put a clearer complexion on this topic.

As I understand it, what my hon. Friends are trying to do is to say that, in determining market value in accordance with Rule 2 of the 1919 Act rules—that is to say, in arriving at the price which a willing seller may expect to receive in the open market—the amount of any unexpended balance of development value attached to the relevant land is to be taken into account. The words in the Amendment are to be taken into account. Those words do not go as far as one or two hon. Members may have thought. The position, shortly, is that when land to which an unexpended balance is attached is sold in the open market the purchase price takes into account—I emphasise the words again—the right to receive compensation within the limit of the unexpended balance on the refusal of planning permission.

Rule 2 of the 1919 Act rules, which are, of course, applied by Clause 1 of the Bill, provides for the valuation of land as if it was being sold in the open market by a willing seller. Therefore, where land is being valued under the Bill, the unexpended balance will be taken into account, and there is no need to provide anything to that effect in the Bill. To that extent, the Amendment moved by my hon. Friend is unnecessary, but there are two things which I ought to add to that.

The first is that it is the case that compensation for planning refusal may he liable in certain cases to fall short of the, unexpended balance. That would happen if the depreciation in value caused by any refusal of planning permission is less than the amount of the balance; that is to say, if the development value today or next year happened to be less than the development value in 1947. Quite clearly, there is a possibility of this. I am not saying that it would be so, but that it is possible in certain cases. It would have to be taken into account by the valuer in arriving at the value of the land, but, of course, this would be equally true in respect of my hon. Friend's Amendment, which says that the amount of the unexpended balance is to be taken into account in determining the market value in accordance with Rule 2. 7.15 p.m.

Finally, I should like to add that if there is any suggestion—and I do not know quite clearly whether this was in the mind of my hon. Friend the Member for North Angus—that the whole of the unexpended balance should be paid, irrespective of whether a purchaser in the open market would have done the same, I am bound to say that that is a suggestion which could not seriously be entertained. We could not go on to provide that the whole of the unexpended balance should be paid whether a purchaser in the open market would have done the same or not. That is a point on which we should not be able to say that full 1947 development value should be paid in addition to existing use value.

My hon. Friends will appreciate that that would involve the payment in certain cases of a figure in excess of market value. I do not think, with all respect to my hon. Friends, that there is any serious doubt on this matter. If there were, I am sure that my right hon. Friend would be prepared to examine it again, but, having done so, he feels that, with the support of the professional organisations, we have got the provisions in the Bill right. I therefore very much hope that my hon. Friends will not be disposed to press the matter.

Mr. MacColl

This all goes to show that if we trust a reasonable valuer we get the right answer, as we suggested earlier on.

I do not think that the hon. Gentleman dealt with the point made by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Liverpool, Edge Hill (Mr. A. J. Irvine). If, in fact, the unexpended development claim is taken into account by the acquiring authority which buys it, what is it buying? Is it something which it can realise? That is the point which my hon. and learned Friend wanted to have cleared up.

Mr. Bevins

I beg the pardon of the hon. and learned Member for Liverpool, Edge Hill (Mr. A. J. Irvine) for not answering his question. The simple answer to that question is that the acquiring authority is paying market value for the land, and that consideration must be taken into account by the valuer. Quite shortly, what happens is that in assessing the compensation the valuer, quite clearly, should not exclude—that is to say, he should "take account of," as the Amendment says—the fact that if planning permission for certain classes of development were to be refused the owner of the land to be compulsorily acquired would have had a chance of obtaining compensation within the limit of the unexpended balance. That is one of the elements which goes to make up market value.

Mr. MacColl

I do not think the hon. Gentleman has helped us. If a private sale is taking place, the purchaser of the claim has got a chit of paper and can trot along with that to the office, cash it and get something for it. Indeed, that is why he bought it. He bought a claim which he can realise, but what I think my hon. and learned Friend wants to know is what the acquiring authority has bought.

Mr. A. J. Irvine

I think this very difficult, and I should like some assistance. When a private owner has this unexpended balance he possesses the advantage that if there is a subsequent refusal of permission to develop he gets compensation out of the balance. An acquiring authority cannot obtain compensation in that sense or of that kind, nor does it receive anything parallel to it. What, therefore, is the acquiring authority getting when it pays for this unexpended balance? It may be true that it is the market value, but is this not a striking example of the market value being an unfair value to claim?

Mr. Bevins

As I tried to say earlier, in such a case an acquiring authority is paying market value, and one of the elements in that value is this element. There is no anomaly between the position of a private purchaser and an acquiring authority.

Mr. Sparks

I was glad to hear the hon. Gentleman confirm some of the fears I expressed about the Amendment. He said that where the unexpended balance of the 1947 development charge proved to be more than the market value that was what a private purchaser would pay; therefore, not the higher price but the market value would be paid. That covers the point I was trying to make. I do not agree that the unexpended balance of the 1947 development value should be wholly taken into consideration, because that would be most unfair.

If we are changing the basis of compensation from one form to another, there ought to be a clear break in order to establish a basis which could be regarded as reliable. Continually to hark back to something which occurred in 1947 for a totally different purpose does not make possible the creation of a sound and favourable basis on which to arrive at a reasonable figure of compensation. I take comfort from the fact that the Parliamentary Secretary said that where the unexpended balance proved to be much more than otherwise would be paid in a fair market obviously the lower of the two figures would be the one which would be accepted. That is reasonable so far as it goes.

Sir C. Thornton-Kemsley

Had I wished the Government to legislate in such a way as to give the better of two worlds to the owners of land which in future might be compulsorily acquired; had I wished that such an owner should get either compensation under the present arrangements or under the new arrangements—whichever was the higher —I should have moved a straightforward Amendment to Clause 1 to that effect. But that is not what I want. I do not want anyone to get a higher value than the fair market value. I do not wish, and neither do my hon. Friends, to make any provision as a result of which an element would be added to the fair market value, being the amount or part of the amount, of the Part VI claim which exists at present. I hope I have made that clear. I hope I may make it clearer by drawing attention again to the words in the Amendment to which attention has already been drawn by my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary—"shall be taken into account." I want no more and no less than that.

My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary says that the unexpended balance will be taken into account.

Mr. Sparks

But not if it is more.

Sir C. Thornton-Kemsley

There have been six speeches by hon. Members on this Amendment, and it was not made clear in those speeches that it was intended that the unexpended balance should be taken into account. Those speeches were made by hon. Members who served on the Standing Committee which considered this Bill during 28 sittings, and therefore those hon. Members may be considered as sort of experts in this matter.

Mr. Ross

No.

Sir C. Thornton-Kemsley

But if there is a division of opinion among six hon. Members who have been "soaking" themselves for weeks in the provisions of this Bill, how much more will there be confusion among valuers who have to interpret its provisions?

Mr. Irvine

The Amendment proposed by the hon. Member for North Angus has had the effect of bringing into the open what appears to many of us to be a concealed enormity.

Sir C. Thornton-Kemsley

I am all for having enormities brought to light. If there are enormities let us be clear about them and be satisfied that they have been dealt with. I plead with my right hon. Friend to look at this matter again to see whether, for the avoidance of doubt, it would be wise to say that the unexpended balance will be taken into consideration. My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary has said that, and it is on the record. Therefore, for the avoidance of doubt, let us have it in the Bill.

Amendment negatived.

The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Niall Macpherson)

I beg to move, in page 13, line 35, at the end to insert: (8) In the application of this section to Scotland, subsection (4) shall have effect as if there were inserted at the end thereof the following proviso, that is to say,— Provided that nothing in this subsection shall affect the amount which is to be taken as the amount of the compensation for the purposes of section sixty-two of the Scottish Act of 1954 (which relates to the consideration payable for the discharge of land from feu-duty and other incumbrances)". This Amendment seeks to add to the Clause a subsection referring to Scotland for the purpose of consistency with existing legislation and fairness to the parties concerned. Its object is to secure that the calculation of the superior's consideration under Section 62 of the 1954 Act is not to be affected by any set-oft which may be applied under subsections (3) and (4) of the Clause to the owner's interest, that is to the vassal's interest.

The object of Section 62 of the 1954 Act is to relate the consideration to the unburdened value of the land over which the superiority is secured. Incidentally, its effect in many cases was severely to limit the amount payable for buying out the right to receive feu duties in perpetuity. But the main object was to relate it to the value of the land over which the superiority is secured.

As Clause 8 is at present drafted, the compensation attributable to the feuar's interest, which would figure in the calculations required for Section 62, would be the value of the land after it had been adjusted by setting off the increase in value of any adjacent land also owned by the feuar. As I said, the feu duty to be paid is secured on the land. The value of that land is the value before the set-off is applied. We believe it right that the fact that the feuar is to enjoy betterment on some other land should influence the compensation the feuar is to get for the land to be acquired, but it would be most unfair to the superior if it were to influence the consideration he was to receive in respect of the loss of his right to feu duty in perpetuity from the land actually to be acquired. With that explanation I hope the Committee will accept the Amendment.

7.30 p.m.

Mr. Willis

That was one of the most painful explanations I have listened to for some time. The Joint Under-Secretary was at great pains to tell us what the Amendment meant. He ended up by telling us or suggesting to us what the new proposed subsection would achieve, which was that the land superior of the adjacent land would not suffer any loss in value of his feu.—[Interruption.]—that was what he suggested—

Mr. Macpherson

He does not suffer any loss in his feu as a result of the setoff due to land which does not belong to him and over which he has no rights whatsoever, that is, adjacent land, which has nothing to do with him.

Mr. Willis

Even if the land does not belong to him, why should there be a reduction? All that the Under-Secretary did was to suggest that it would be unfair, but I cannot see why it would be unfair. Why would it be unfair? Up to the moment the Under-Secretary has not told us that. All he has told us is the effect. Could he now finish his speech and then we might be able to engage in debate? Would he tell us why it would be unfair?

Mr. McInnes

Before the Joint Under-Secretary finishes his speech, may I ask him a few questions? As my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Willis) said, the hon. Gentleman stated that in calculating the superior interest there would be no set-off, as it were, as the result of land that did not actually belong to the land superior? How does that individual become a superior of land that does not belong to him? Would the Under-Secretary explain to us precisely the justification for the consideration in respect of feu duties and other incumbrances? He endeavoured to enlighten us on feu duties ground annuals and other incumbrances which are peculiar to Scotland; will he explain the justifications for these other incumbrances for compensation to the land superior?

What the hon. Gentleman is asking is that the consideration should be paid in respect of the discharge of the land from feu duty and other incumbrances. At least, that is the effect of Section 62 of the 1954 Scottish Act. That Section relates to the amount of consideration that has to be paid in respect of discharging the land from feu duty, ground annuals and other incumbrances. My hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) is generally quid; off the mark in understanding some of the most incomprehensible jargon of this kind but now, like myself and my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Willis), he is absolutely flabbergasted at the explanation given by the Joint Under-Secretary of State.

We are entitled to have this matter explained to us in a very simple fashion, and not merely explained from the brief presented to the Under-Secretary of State by the Scottish Office. I do not know whether the Solicitor-General for Scotland or the Lord Advocate helped to prepare the brief, but we should have a degree of sympathy for those who are not in the legal profession. I hope that the Under-Secretary of State will take his time and will explain precisely to us why he wants to safeguard the interests of the ground superior in respect of feu duty, ground annual and other incumbrances.

Sir C. Thornton-Kemsley

I do not wish to follow up the points of detail in the Amendment, but since it is the first appearance, if I may put it this way, of my hon. Friend the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland in the 3 Committee since we came back to the Floor of the House after the long Committee stage, I would ask him a question. We have made a number of Amendments in the law as it applies to Scotland. Can my hon. Friend add anything to What was told us by the Secretary of Slate for Scotland about the Government's intention to make Scottish law more intelligible in Scotland?

Mr. Ross

After that speech Mr. Storey, I cannot possibly be out of order in anything I say. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Central (Mr. McInnes) said that I was flabbergasted. The expression is not too strong. I do not want to be insulting in my references to the Under-Secretary of State, but all sorts of questions arise out of what he said.

Either the Under-Secretary of State did not understand what he was saying or he was being very slick and was trying to put one or two things across. According to the case he put, there are two contiguous pieces of land, and the owner of one piece and the owner of the other. By "owner" in Scotland we mean the person who has the right to use the land. Above the owner is what we call the "land superior" whose great purpose in life is merely to collect feu duty, an annual payment. It does not matter who owns the land or what happens to it; the annual payment must go on.

Where anyone is acquiring the land and tries to commute that annual payment into a sum of money which will free the land from the annual payment, Section 62 of the 1954 Act lays down a formula based upon a compensation payment in respect of the land which is being acquired. It is a simple arithmetical calculation of the sum of money to be paid to free the land of the burden of the annual payment. The Under-Secretary put a case in which the land superior of contiguous land had no interest at all in the other piece of land. That is begging an awful lot of questions. There is nothing in the Amendment which says that. The land superior in the one case can be the land superior in the other. The Under-Secretary of State has gone to great trouble in the Bill to ensure that the land superior is dragged in all the time, in order to ensure that his interests are considered.

The one individual might be the land superior in one case but the owner of the contiguous land. Does the Under-Secretary think that the same principles should apply in that case? If we are dealing with a simple arithmetical formula what difference does it make? We get back to this hypothetical case in which the actual calculation does not meet the sum of money payable in compensation. We have not been very convinced by the explanation and we must be told about it again. It is always delightful to hear the hon. Gentleman's voice.

I am certainly not convinced that it is just that this change should be dragged in at this point. Certainly if the land superior is the same person in each case as well as the owner, I do not think there is any justification for it at all. There is the case where the person may have an interest as an owner and as a land superior. I do not think these cases were put by the Under-Secretary. He gave the impression that this was an example of a poor land superior who had no connection with the contiguous piece of land and whose case was to be decided unfairly, in some way which we could not understand, because the pieces of land were owned by the same person. I hope that the Under-Secretary, or the Solicitor-General for Scotland, will address himself to this point, which still concerns us.

Mr. Willis

I rise again because previously I sat down in order to give the Joint Under-Secretary an opportunity to explain the Clause. The new subsection which he has proposed to Clause 8 applies to subsections (3) and (4). Subsection (3) says: The provisions of the next following subsection shall have effect where on the date of service of the notice to treat the person entitled to the relevant interest is also entitled in the same capacity to an interest in other land contiguous or adjacent to the relevant land. The subsections to which we are asked to add this proviso deal with a person who has the same interest in both pieces land. What is the hon. Gentleman trying to protect? The case he quoted was of someone with a superior interest in one piece of land and a different superior in the neighbouring piece of land.

Mr. N. Macpherson indicated dissent.

Mr. Willis

The hon. Gentleman might have thought he said something different, but that was the case he quoted. If that is to what the new proviso is addressed, the question remains, why should the feu superior be treated in any way different from the landowner? I do not think that the Joint Under-Secretary completed his speech because he never addressed himself to that. The hon. Gentleman never gave reasons why that person should be treated differently. He said that someone should not suffer because a piece of land belonging to someone else was benefited. That does not make sense. Now that he is to give a justification for this Amendment, I wonder if he will explain that point.

The second thing I want to say is why, if we accept the speech of the hon. Gentleman that the real purpose of the proviso is to safeguard the superior of an adjacent piece of land from any effects which might result from the superior of the relevant land having benefited, it is not put in the new proviso which we are asked to accept. That is not in the proviso.

If what the hon. Gentleman offered as an explanation in the first place is the correct one, he ought to amend this one. In the first place, he suggested that what he was seeking to protect was the superior of an adjoining piece of land from any ill effects as a result of the superior of the relevant land benefiting. If that is so, and I concede that there might be a case for putting that in to avoid confusion, why does the proviso not say so? The proviso simply says that in relation to subsections (3) and (4) it must be the same person who is affected. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will now endeavour to explain with greater clarity than he did before.

7.45 p.m.

Mr. N. Macpherson

In view of the many long discussions we had upstairs about the superior and in view of the fact that as I look around me I see that the personnel in this Committee at the moment is almost identical with what it was in Committee upstairs, I did not think it really necessary to go over the same points and make the same kind of explanation as I made on the previous occasion.

In reply to the point made by the hon. Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Willis), I should say that the relevant interest does not include the superior. The relevant interests are those of people who have a right to compensation, whereas the superior as such has no right to compensation. He has the right to consideration. I hope I did not mislead the hon. Member by what I said. What I meant to imply when I intervened was simply that it was not necessary that, because two neighbouring pieces of land were in the same ownership, they had the same superior.

The hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) said that no doubt I would raise another hypothetical case. I can explain this matter only by reference to hypothetical cases. Perhaps I might be allowed to give a hypothetical case to illustrate what would happen. Cases where unfairness can arise are those where the amount set off is greater than the burdened value of the land, in other words, where it is greater than the feuar's compensation. That is where the hardship might arise to the superior.

I will give an example. Suppose there was a property worth £500 burdened with a feu duty of £10 and that was acquired, with the result that adjacent land in the feuar's ownership increased in value by £400. Taking the feu duty at £10 and assuming that the capitalised value was £200, we get the result that under the Bill as at present drafted the feuar would receive the burdened value of the land, which would be £300 diminished by the set off of £400. In other words, he would receive nothing at all in that case and his net compensation would be nil, or nominal.

The superior's consideration, on the other hand, under Section 62 would be the difference between the net value above and the unburdened net value. We said that the appreciation of the neighbouring land was £400, so that leaves £100 instead of £200. Under the Amendment, the feuar would receive the same compensation as before because he enjoys the set-off, he enjoys the benefit of the appreciation of the adjacent land. Therefore, it is reasonable that there should be set-off, whereas the superior's consideration would be the difference between the burdened value before set-off, which is £300, and the unburdened value, which is £500. In that case he would get the capitalised value of his feu.

I am asked why he should be treated differently? There is one very essential difference between the position of the superior and the position of the feuar. In the case of the superior the re is no possibility of betterment of the land and of his ever getting more than the feu duty payable in perpetuity. He cannot get more than that in any circumstances and he cannot in any circumstances get mare than the capitalised value of that feu. That is the essential difference from the feuar.

Mr. McInnes

Would the hon. Gentleman explain precisely what might be the capitalised value of the feu in the event of his disposing of it? Surely he could get a terrific rake-off in that way alone?

Mr. Macpherson

Indeed, no. Anyone purchasing the feu will simply continue to receive the rate which he received, of £10, in perpetuity and he will then pay what is the appropriate amount to pay for an annuity of £10 in perpetuity.

The hon. Gentleman the Member for Kilmarnock presumed that I would produce hypothetical examples. Let me give him some actual examples—because he asked for them at an earlier stage of the Bill—as to what is happening. We have collected some information in this respect.

Mr. Ross

It is about time.

Mr. Macpherson

Let us take, for example, cases in Glasgow where the superiorities and ground annuals were acquired in advance of the property being made over free to the local authority. There were some 100 cases in that survey where the value was under £50. The average in those cases was six years' purchase and the feus in those 100 cases where the value was between £50 and £100 was an average of four and one-third years' purchase, whereas the normal capitalised value of the feu would be 16 to 20 years' purchase. That illustrates the effect of Section 62 of the 1954 Act on the value of purchases because—I say this again because it is important—it is related to the value of the land.

Mr. Ross

Now that we have not hypothetical cases but actual cases, I hope that the Joint Parliamentary Secretary will be prepared to give us a little of the history of these matters. He said that the actual feu duty was purchased at six years' purchase in one case and four and one-half years in another. Can he tell us whether any feu duty had been paid at all in those cases?

Mr. Macpherson

I cannot tell the hon. Gentleman that. The whole point is that the payment that was made was related to the value of the land. That is the important thing. There are not only cases where the feu has been made over free to the local authority; I have here cases where superiorities and ground annuals were acquired in advance of the acquisition of the property. There were fifteen cases. Here it was seven and one-third years for values under £50 and eight and one-third years for values upwards of that amount. In another case, the superiorities and ground annuals in a comprehensive development area, it was eight and one-quarter years' purchase. Of the ground annuals purchased some were good and some were in respect of poor tenements, shops and workshops but the value was ten years' purchase.

Mr. McInnes

The hon. Gentleman has quoted examples where the purchase has been for eight years, seven and one-half years or seven years and the local authorities on occasion have had to acquire on the basis of 25 or 30 years' purchase.

Mr. Macpherson

That was before the 1954 Act was passed. The hon. Gentleman at an earlier stage in Committee himself quoted examples where the value which he said the superiors themselves put on the property was something like £700 and where the actual amount paid was about £70. That shows how the 1954 Act operates. Since Section 62 of the 1954 Act related the consideration payable to the superior to the value of the land over which the feu duty was secured, it should be to that land only and to the value of that land that the superior's consideration should be related.

That is why, in order to ensure consistency with the 1954 Act, this Amendment has had to be proposed. We are coining to another Amendment in a moment which has very much the same effect. In that connection, it might be desirable, by way of illustration, for me to refer now to Section 62 (7) of the 1954 Act, which states: Subject to the next following subsection references in this section to the compensation payable in respect of the acquisition of the dominium utile in any such land shall be construed as references to such compensation exclusive of any compensation for disturbance or for severance or injurious affection. This is really a similar case. That is a payment which was made outside and not related to the actual value of the land, just as in this case the set-off for the im- provement in the value of adjacent land is not related to the actual value of this land and therefore not consistent with the purposes of the 1954 Act.

Mr. Willis

It is extremely difficult for us as laymen to try to follow this, as the hon. Gentleman will appreciate. This is very technical and very involved. I cannot quite follow it. The hon. Gentleman has been giving us a large number of cases of unfairness to the land superior of feus being bought for three and a half years' purchase, six years, and four and one-third years, but the Amendment does not do anything to alter that. The Amendment says: Provided that nothing in this subsection shall affect the amount which is to be taken as the amount of the compensation for the purposes of section sixty-two of the Scottish Act of 1954 … This does not change it at all, as I read it.

Mr. Macpherson

I was not suggesting for one moment that the fact that these payments were less than the full capitalised value of the feu duty represented unfairness.

Mr. Willis

What was the point of it?

Mr. Macpherson

The point is that the maximum payment that can be made to the superior is limited to the value of the land. It would surely be wrong to reduce the value of the land by set-off in the way I have already explained, because that has nothing to do with the actual value of the land on which the feu duty is secured.

The effect of that, in the sort of cases that I have cited, might be to reduce the capitalised value that would be paid for the extinction of the feu duty to below what it would be if it were related purely to the value of the land. In the view of the Government it should be related purely to the value of the land over which it is secured, and that would be consistent with the purposes of the 1954 Act.

My hon. Friend the Member for North Angus and Mearns (Sir C. ThorntonKemsley) drew attention to the fact that this was another application Clause and asked what was the intention about reenactment. The hon. Member for Kilmarnock put this question to me earlier. I was not able to answer it at that time. There is no doubt—I think we recognised this at an earlier stage— that a Great Britain Measure with applications such as these would, in some ways be inconvenient to Scottish users. We discussed this earlier and, on Second Reading, my right hon. Friend said that consideration would be given to the introduction of a re-enacting Bill in Scottish terms after the present Bill had reached the Statute Book.

8.0 p.m.

I think that it would b for the convenience of the Committee if I were now to say that that consideration has been given, and I can now definitely state that the Government intend to promote a reenacting Bill immediately this Bill receives the Royal Assent. The reenacting Bill will be in Scottish terms and will contain everything in this Bill which applies to Scotland. It is desirable that the re-enacting Bill should be passed as quickly as possible through all its stages so as to avoid any significant interval of time during which Scottish users will have to concern themselves with the Great Britain Act. I am sure that both sides will co-operate for that purpose.

Mr. Mitchison

Can the Minister tell me whether there will be a corresponding re-enactment of the English part without the Scottish allusions?

Mr. Macpherson

Since the substantive part is in English terms and the difficulty arises because of the application subsections in Scottish terms, I hope that it will be possible for English lawyers, as they have often done before, to read their Act disregarding the Scottish application subsections.

Mr. McInnes

Does the Joint Under-Secretary of State, after making this statement, now recognise the validity of the demand made during the Second Reading debate when we asked for the complete exclusion of Scotland from the Bill and for a separate Bill for Scotland? It is rather late in the day to come forward with a compromise now, after he has had all the legal fraternity of Scotland vigorously protesting about the action of the Government in spatchcocking Scottish legislation into an English Bill. Will the hon. Gentleman now have the humility to confess to the Committee that we were right in our demand on Second Reading?

Mr. Macpherson

My right hon. Friend recognised that there would be inconveniences. He recognised that during the Second Reading debate, and he gave an undertaking that the Government would consider re-enacting the Bill in Scottish terms. I am now telling the Committee that the Government intend to do so. The re-enacting Bill, of course, will effect no further amendment of the law. Both Houses will be asked to have it referred for examination to the Joint Committee on Consolidation Bills.

I must make it clear, since the hon. Member for Glasgow, Central (Mr. McInnes) has raised this point, that I do not wish to leave the impression that any precedent of general application is being established either by the introduction of the present Bill in Great Britain form or by the decision to re-enact subsequently in Scottish terms. The appropriate form of legislation in any particular case must always be a question of judgment based on the circumstances of the particular Measure under consideration.

Mr. Ross

On a point of order, Mr. Royle. I had hoped that the Joint Under-Secretary of State would make a short statement, and I hoped that that statement would not be at all controversial. I appreciate that what he has done is to have his hon. Friend the Member for North Angus and Mearns (Sir C. Thornton-Kemsley) ask a "stooge" question and then, just as a matter of accident, he finds he has two or three pages of a prepared reply just handy on this important point. I should like to know whether we humble backbenchers will be able to take up points which we think worthy of question in respect of this statement and to ask questions in relation to what has been said, which is important but which, I am sorry to say, has nothing whatever to do with the Amendment we are discussing.

The Temporary Chairman (Mr. Royle)

The House is in Committee. Provided what the Joint Under-Secretary has been saying is in order, hon. Members will have their opportunity to speak again.

Mr. Macpherson

I am much obliged to you for that Ruling, Mr. Royle.

Mr. Willis

Further to that point of order. Surely, the question is whether or not all this is in order, and whether such a statement should not be made at some more convenient and suitable time. It has nothing to do with the Amendment.

Mr. Ross

Further to that point of order. We are here dealing with an Amendment relating to feu duty. What we have had is a statement about the Government's intention to re-enact the Bill in Scottish terms. I suggest that it would be far better and tidier from the point of view of everyone if the announcement were made as a statement and we had the usual courtesy of being able to ask supplementary questions to find out exactly what was involved.

The Temporary Chairman

I have only just taken occupancy of the Chair, but, so far as I can judge, so far the Joint Under-Secretary has said nothing out of order, and the hon. Member will have his opportunity, just as he would if a statement were made.

Mr. Macpherson

I am obliged to you for your Ruling, Mr. Royle. I should like to point out to the Committee that it was the hon. Member for Glasgow, Central who, at this stage, asked whether I would admit that we had been wrong in proceeding in this way. I was explaining why we had sone so, and I was giving the reasons. It was on a very similar point that the hon. Gentleman, in Committee upstairs, raised this identical question—simply on the Scottish application subsections.

Mr. McInnes

In all fairness, at least to the hon. Gentleman and myself, I should like to make it clear that it was he who elected to take the opportunity, in discussing the Amendment now before the Committee, to explain to the Committee the decision of the Secretary of State. In other words, the Secretary of State has now agreed to succumb to the overtures we made on Second Reading.

Mr. Willis

Further to that point of order. I should like to put this point for your consideration, Mr. Royle. We are discussing an Amendment dealing with what is to be set off against compensation paid in respect of land taken. In the course of our discussion, the question whether we are to have a separate Bill for Scotland, when it is to be introduced, and how it is to be introduced, has been raised. I submit to you that, if we are to discuss that, we shall not make very much progress with the Bill, quite apart from whether it would be out of order. I submit to you that it is out of order. We shall not be discussing the Bill for some time to come.

Mr. Macpherson

I am entirely in the hands of the Committee on this. I thought that it would be for the convenience of the Committee if it knew about it at this stage.

Mr. Ross

The hon. Gentleman might have told us.

Mr. Macpherson

I have told the Committee. I think that I have made the matter sufficiently clear. If the hon. Member for Kilmarnock prefers that it should be the subject of a statement at some other time, I am perfectly prepared to see how that can be done.

The Temporary Chairman

I think that it would be for the convenience of the Committee if the Joint Under-Secretary were allowed to go on with the speech he is making, in order to give the Chair a real opportunity to know whether he is in order or not. Nothing that the hon. Gentleman has said since I came to occupy the Chair has seemed to me to be out of order, and I think that we should make better progress if he were allowed to resume.

Mr. Macpherson

I was challenged about why we had reached this particular decision, and I was about to say that, in reaching a decision on whether there should be a separate Scottish Bill or whether we should take part in Great Britain legislation, there are four or five factors which have to be taken into account. The first is the need for legislation affecting Scotland to be in keeping with the Scottish legal system. The second is the need for Scottish Members to take part in debate on matters which are common to the whole of Great Britain, and that has been done during the passage of this Bill. The third is the convenience both of those who must debate the Bill and those who use the resulting Act. The fourth is the effective use of Parliamentary time and the special position of the Scottish Grand Committee and the Scottish Standing Committee.

In deciding whether it is desirable to re-enact a Great Britain Act in Scottish form, there is another important question which it is necessary to ask, namely, is the existing law on the subject contained in Great Britain Statutes or in separate Statutes for Scotland and England? Even where there are already separate Statutes there may be little or no need for reenacting an amending Great Britain Bill in Scottish form, especially if the provisions relating to Scotland and to England in that Bill are set out separately and in substantive form. With relatively short Measures, it is generally fairly easy to set these out in that way, but to have attempted to do so in the present instance would have meant a very much longer Bill and a great deal of needless repetition. As I say, we hope to get the reenacting Bill on the Statute Book at the earliest possible stage after the present Bill obtains the Royal Assent.

Mr. McInnes

The Joint. Under-Secretary of State has been given the opportunity of making a statement on the Secretary of State's intention to re-enact a purely Scottish Bill relating to town and country planning. I submit to you, Mr. Royle, that it was entirely irrelevant for him to do so. He has made a very important statement which vitally affects the Scottish legal system and the approach of the Scottish Office to it without any intimation having been given to Her Majesty's Opposition of the intention to make such a vital statement.

We pressed the Government very strongly on Second Reading that Scotland should be excluded from this Bill, but they turned down our request. They did not turn it down on any logical ground. They simply pointed out that this was a United Kingdom Measure and that there would be no separate Bill for Scotland, although town and country planning legislation in the past provided for separate Scottish Bills. I wish to express my surprise that the hon. Gentleman should take the opportunity, in the midst of discussing an Amendment to the Town and Country Planning Bill, of making a vital and important statement of this kind. I think my hon. Friends will agree that it is most unfortunate that this opportunity should have been taken to make such a statement.

8.15 p.m.

Mr. Willis

The unfortunate thing about the statement of the Joint Under-Secretary of State is that not only has he chosen a very unfortunate time to make it but, in making it, he has adduced a number of arguments in support of a course followed by the Government. I do not know to what extent we shall be allowed to say anything about those arguments, but I hope that I will be allowed to say a word or two on them.

The hon. Gentleman said that when tie came to consider whether we should have a United Kingdom or Scottish Bill we should take four things into account: first, whether the legal language of the Bill was such as would adapt itself to a separate Bill or a United Kingdom Bill; secondly, to give Scottish Members the opportunity of taking part in the discussion; thirdly, to consider the convenience of the users; and, lastly, the use of Parliamentary time.

First, the hon. Gentleman Knows that he has had to introduce a great many Amendments to the Bill in order to bring it into line with Scottish law and practice. We have previously had separate legislation. Our whole system of land tenure is completely different, and in those circumstances, where the basic consideration of a Bill is quite different in the two countries, we should have a separate Bill.

On the point about Scottish Members being given the opportunity to discuss this Bill and United Kingdom legislation, three Opposition Scottish Members have discussed the Bill and I think that we should have had two or three Government Members who have been reduced to the hon. Member for North Angus and Mearns (Sir C. Thornton-Kemsley). To limit discussion on the Bill to four Scottish Members out of about 70 is not giving Scottish Members the opportunity to discuss their own legislation.

The Joint Under-Secretary of State said that we had to consider the convenience of users. He knows quite well that every user of this legislation in Scotland has been most violently opposed to the method of introducing it. I have never seen so much protest in Scotland a: Scottish legislation being incorporated in an English Bill as there has been on this Bill, and the Joint Under-Secretary of State knows that. The Government have received representations from the Scottish Bar on this subject, and he knows quite well that nobody in Scotland wanted Scottish legislation incorporated in the Bill.

On the point about the best use of Parliamentary time, surely the Government have learned by now that if they had introduced separate Bills for England and Scotland the English Bill would have been disposed of in 15 sittings, not 24. The Scottish Bill could have gone through the Scottish Committee in the normal way, and far more Scottish Members would have had the opportunity of taking part. More time has been wasted on this Bill because of the incorporation of Scottish legislation into it than on any other Bill I can remember. I have sat on a great number of Standing Committees, and I know of no other Bill on which so much time has been wasted, when English Members have had to listen to my hon. Friends the Members for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) and Glasgow, Central (Mr. McInnes) and myself on what the Bill meant when applied to Scotland.

Mr. Lindgren

We enjoyed it.

Mr. Willis

My hon. Friend may have enjoyed it, but I would hesitate to say that that was the most effective use which could be made of Parliamentary time. None of the reasons given by the Under-Secretary is sufficient to warrant the time which has been wasted on this Bill. It is scandalous, and we vigorously protested at the time. I hope that no Government will do this again on Scottish legislation.

I now come to the point that we are to have another Bill. What the legal profession in Scotland really wants is a consolidation measure for the whole of town and country planning legislation, not a separate Bill. While I have no doubt that the legal profession will be satisfied to some extent with getting a separate Bill, surely the urgent thing now is some measure of consolidation. One has only to read Clauses in this Bill. My hon. Friend and I tabled one or two Amendments to draw attention to the number of references which one has to make from the Bill to the Schedules, from the Schedules to the 1957 Act, from the 1958 Act to the 1954 Act, back to the 1919 Act and in some cases back to 1854. This is not legislating for the people of Scotland. This is creating confusion and causing the people of Scotland a great deal of inconvenience and also expense.

The Solicitor-General for Scotland ought to have been protesting about this. I do not know whether it is because his profession does so well out of all this mass of verbiage that he chooses to be silent. It is quite unreasonable to inflict this upon Scotland, and what we really need is a consolidation Bill so that we may know where we are.

Now I will turn to the Amendment itself, to ask a question.

Mr. Sparks

Before my hon. Friend returns to the Amendment, I should like to ask you, Mr. Royle, just exactly what we are discussing at the moment. Are we in order in discussing the proposed consolidating Bill for Scotland? Are we discussing the reasons why the Government have incorporated Scottish legislation in this Bill? If we are, will the English Members be allowed to protest as the Scottish Members have done? Because we have violent objections to our time being taken up with these matters when we ought to be devoting it to English measures. We have not sufficient time to discuss the English problems, so if you can give us your Ruling and tell us what exactly we are supposed to be doing at the moment I am sure that would help us all.

The Temporary Chairman

I share the anxiety of the hon. Member for Acton (Mr. Sparks) about this. Listening to the last few sentences of the Joint Under-Secretary of State I thought he went rather wide, but I stated the view that it was necessary and that he might be allowed to go a little wide for the purpose of making the position perfectly clear. Having allowed the Joint Under-Secretary of State to go on to that extent I am now giving the hon. Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Willis) some latitude in what he is saying. I hope that the Committee will accept it in that sense and that in due course we shall get back to England and Wales.

Mr. Willis

I am grateful to you. Mr. Royle, for your remarks.

I would point out to my hon. Friend the Member for Acton (Mr. Sparks) that what he said was precisely the point I was making, that the time of both English and Scottish Members is wasted by this procedure.

I wanted to ask one question about the Amendment. I take it that by what the hon. Gentleman said about the Amendment he is really concerned with the value of the relevant land and not the adjacent land? I am grateful to him for his assent on that point, because he caused a certain amount of confusion about the adjacent land.

Mr. Ross

No Government have piled more insults upon the people of Scotland than the present Government. I can remember very well the declaration which was made nine years ago—I have a copy of it here by chance—when the Unionist Party in Scotland, said that one of the things it would do would be to introduce for Scotland special separate legislation whenever circumstances required. If there is anything for which we need special legislation for Scotland it is for the law relating to the land, for that goes right back into the beginnings of the Scottish legal system, and the hon. Gentleman knows it and knows it very well. If there ever was a subject for Which we should have separate Scottish legislation that subject was legislation for the land itself, and, equally, of course, for compensation for acquisition.

Not many years ago another Secretary of State for Scotland, and a Unionist Secretary of State, said: The position in Scotland is somewhat different both as regards the scale of the problem and the basis of compensation under the existing law."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 13th December, 1955; Vol. 547, c. 1010.] His attitude was that Scotland would have its own legislation. That was the right hon. Member for Moray and Nairn (Mr. J. Stuart). The present incumbent of the office is content to be trailed along at the patchwork heels of England and to land us in this humiliating position.

We have the Joint Under-Secretary of State giving a very important statement. It is all very well for him to say that he sees here now the same kind of people he saw in Standing Committee, but the matter goes beyond his merely making a statement, for he sought to offer five justifications for the original decision of the Government to treat Scotland in this way in the Bill. I was quite content that he should make a statement, and I was forbearing in allowing him to make the statement, for I thought it important that we should get the matter clear, but when he went on to justify the original decision of the Government I thought it just a bit too much. I am prepared to stomach just so much from the Joint Under- Secretary of State, but not quite as much as that. He put it in this nice, quiet way, and I can understand his doing it. He did it at a time when most Scottish Members, the Members who are interested in these questions, are dining, so that there would be few to have the opportunity of putting questions to him on the statement and on the trimmings he added to it by way of justification.

This is a very important thing indeed for Scotland. We have been pressing the Government to get us out of this difficulty, and we said that the best way would be to have a Scottish Measure, to extract the Scottish parts from this mêlée and reprint them in a form suitable to Scottish law and intelligible to Scottish lawyers. The profession which the Solicitor-General for Scotland graces has been the most outspoken against what the Government did, and it has insisted that this at least could be done, but the way the announcement has been made is not at all flattering to the Joint Under-Secretary of State.

Does he remember what he had to say on this very question of legislating for the whole of the United Kingdom at once? He said that the problem arises from the wide differences of character, outlook, and development between different localities in the Kingdoms. The problem, of course, becomes a good deal more acute when a separate national sentiment is involved. These are not my words, but his. He went on: It becomes still more acute where a separate language is involved, in a country which largely speaks a separate language. It becomes most acute of all—to my mind, though possibly others in the House may disagree on this—where there is a separate law involved, as in Scotland."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 16th November, 1949; Vol. 469, c. 2089.] The hon. Gentleman is prepared to trail along with the Government, insulting Scotland even in the way he makes an announcement on their behalf. We have every reason to be angry with what has been done.

8.30 p.m.

A statement was made in which we were told that certain procedure would be adopted. It would not be dealt with by a Committee of the House but by a joint consolidating committee composed of Members of both Lords and Commons. Then the matter would come back to the House of Commons, with, I suppose, the hope that there would be no power of amendment or addition. Even on a somewhat cursory reading of the present Bill, it seems inevitable that if we are to have that amount of trouble we ought to have some consolidation as well.

I should like to ask the Joint Under-Secretary some questions, but I have a conscience about the rules of order even if the Joint Under-Secretary has not. In any event, he probably has not the knowledge within the folds of his file to answer the questions which I would put. I register as strongly as I can my horror at the way this matter has been handled, and the way it has been slipped across. It is disgraceful that we should have a Joint Under-Secretary who is prepared to accept this kind of thing and to tell an hon. Friend, "You ask me a question about so and so, not related to the Amendment. We have the whole thing ready and we shall slip it through in Committee when there are very few present"

It is very bad taste and very bad judgment on the part of the Joint Under-Secretary not to have confined himself to a simple statement that the Government intended to do a certain thing, instead of trying to justify the original error which set the whole of Scotland by its heels. I have plenty more of the speech which the hon. Gentleman delivered on 16th November, 1949. It is always handy to carry plenty of evidence about the hon. Gentleman.

As for the Amendment, it is strange how the Government can manage to get this strange interlude into the Bill. I was far from satisfied when the hon. Gentleman gave examples and spoke about 4⅓year purchases, 7⅓year and 8⅓year purchases, and so on. This may well go to prove that the feu duty was too high in the first place. We should like to know whether this practice was so abandoned that no one was paying any feu duty at all. I have not been convinced that any benefit accrued to the land superior. If there was an isolated case where the land superior had purely and simply an interest in the right of feu duty being acquired, I could see what the hon. Gentleman is getting at, but he has not satisfied me in the case where the superior is getting additional consideration and compensation in respect of contigtous land—in other words, duplicate benefit.

I do not see why we should go to the help of that old man of the sea in a matter in respect of which his ancestors for hundreds of years did nothing at all. The hon. Gentleman need not expect me to shed any bitter tears over the land superior. I agree with Tom Johnston that the sooner he is wiped out of existence the better. I hope that the Joint Under-Secretary will give us a far better justification of the Amendment than we have had so far, and I hope that he does not give us any more statements in the process.

Mr. Willis

The Joint Under-Secretary said in reply to me that the relevant interest did not refer to the land superior. But subsection (3) deals precisely with the owner of the relevant interest, and subsection (4) states: Where the last preceding subsection applies"— in other words, the subsection that deals solely with the owner of a relevant interest— the increase in the value of the interest in adjacent land shall be taken into account, and the amount thereof shall be deducted from the amount of the compensation which apart from this subsection would be payable in respect of the compulsory acquisition. If we are dealing solely with the owner of the relevant interest, why should this subsection, which deals with the land superior, be inserted?

Mr. N. Macpherson

The answer is contained in Section 62 of the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act, 1954, where the aggregate amount of the consideration payable is related to the amount of compensation payable in respect of the acquisition of a feuar's interest, the dominium utile. That is why it is inserted.

Amendment agreed to

Clause, as amended ordered to stand part of the Bill.