HC Deb 23 March 1959 vol 602 cc1050-66

Where in accordance with the provisions of the Housing Act, 1957, compensation in respect of the dwelling houses in a clearance area falls to be determined on the basis of the site value thereof and the site of any of the said dwelling houses has on account of the dimensions thereof a value which is less than the value which such site would have on the assumption that it formed part of a larger site which would be capable of redevelopment it shall be assumed in determining the amount of the compensation that such site forms a part proportionate to its area of such larger site.—[Mr. Corfield.]

Brought up, and read the First time.

Mr. Corfield

I beg to move. That the Clause be read a Second time.

The Chairman (Sir Charles MacAndrew)

A number of new Clauses and Amendments go with this Clause. They are: the new Clauses in the name of the hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Page)—(Inclusion of adjoining land in assessment for compensation) and (Compensation in respect of unfit houses)—the Amendment in Schedule 2, page 63, line 36, at end insert: (5) In any case where land is compulsorily acquired under the Act of 1957 at site value and the compensation therefor has not been agreed or paid before the coming into operation of this Act, the acquiring authority may, on being satisfied that a case of hardship arises, pay the owner of such land such compensation, not exceeding the current market value of building land in the district, as the authority may think fit and without taking into account any diminution in value which may be attributable to the size or situation of any individual plot of land forming a part of the land to be acquired, and the Government Amendments in page 63, lines 43 to 47, page 64, line 26, page 66, lines 1, 5, 36 to 38, and page 66 to leave out lines 39 and 40.

Mr. Corfield

The object of the new Clause standing in my name is to try to meet the very difficult problem which arises in cases of slum clearance where, as in many cases, the sites of the slum houses are very small. Under the present law, the interpretation which has been put upon this state of affairs by district valuers is that the individual sites can be considered only as such and that no account can be taken of the possibility of their development in conjunction with neighbouring sites.

In consequence, because a particular site has been too small for development on its own, it has received only a nominal value, and we have had many cases in which sums of 10s., 15s., at the most. £1 have been paid for what to some people has been a home. In these days it is impossible to persuade anybody that £1 is a reasonable sum for a house in which, in many cases, the occupant has been living perfectly happily.

I appreciate that the Bill as a whole will have some effect in that the restrictions of the Third Schedule of the 1947 Act no longer apply, so it is possible to visualise a somewhat larger house on the plot if that plot contains any garden or frontage other than the actual ground on which the house was standing. But it will not cover all cases, and I have attempted to give a reasonable price by aggregating the plots in the area and valuing each plot on the basis of the proportion it bears to the value of the whole area.

I am well aware that this departs from the principle of market value, but that need not cause us any great concern, since we have departed from the ordinary rules of compensation in other legislation in favour of the owner-occupier. I should have thought that there was a very strong case for the owner-occupier of a small house receiving something which took account of the value of the site for the purpose for which it was to be used and would be used as part of a much bigger site, rather than regarding it purely as an individual plot.

Under the present arrangement, there is the absurd situation in which, if the land is acquired and used for a car park it may have greater value than if it is used for housing, for the simple reason that it is possible to park three or four cars on the site of a small house, a plot which would not be big enough to take a new house. So we get the absurd situation in which the plot may be worth anything between £20 or £30 a year for car parking, and only £1, as a capital sum, for rehousing.

Among the new Clauses which we are discussing are many other suggestions. I have put forward this one not as the perfect answer but as one answer to a problem which is very urgent if we are to proceed with the much-needed slum clearance and also retain a degree of consent on the part of the governed in respect of the government exercised by local authorities in the matter of slum clearance with which the House has charged them. I have been accused by hon. Members opposite of seeking to put money into the hands of rich landlords and deprive local authorities of their due, but let us remember that local government will never be efficient if it produces hostility on the part of the people whom it is its duty to govern.

Mr. Page

The new Clauses we are now discussing have been given rise to by cases which have struck the country as being grossly unfair to owners in the past. These cases have caused pressure to be put on the Government to bring in legislation to amend the law of compensation for compulsory purchases. My hon. Friend the Member for Gloucestershire, South (Mr. Corfield) has dealt with cases of small sites which it is impossible to redevelop because of byelaw restrictions, and so on, on the size of plot on which one can build a house, so that the plot when cleared is worth, on its own, only a very small amount—a nominal figure of £1—and yet, if an acquiring authority acquires a number of such plots, the resulting area of land is of considerable value.

It seems most unfair to an owner who has been deprived of his small plot for a nominal figure of £1 to find that the acquiring authority, by acquiring a number of other similar plots, obtains an area of land which may he worth 10, 20 or 50 times as much as it paid for the total number of small plots.

The new Clause which has been moved and the new Clause—(Inclusion of adjoining land in assessment for compensation)—deal with the subject, and in the Clause—(Compensation in respect of unfit houses)—I have attempted to deal with the problem in a rather different way, because it is a little wider than the question of small sites. When a clearance order is made it is justified by the houses within the clearance area being said to be unfit. They are said to be unfit because they do not comply with certain conditions provided in Section 4 of the Housing Act, 1957, but in many cases they are not unfit in the sense that it is impossible to live in them.

11.0 p.m.

If the conditions of Section 4 of the Housing Act, 1957, were applied to 50 per cent. of houses in this country these houses might well be said to be unfit. The conditions of Section 4 are very stringent.

Mr. Mitchison

Oh, really.

Mr. Page

Yes, certainly. One has only to look at these conditions. Construed in a harsh way, 50 per cent. of houses could be said to be unfit in accordance with Section 4. The result is that there are frequently houses within a clearance order which still have a good life, some only a short life but some a comparatively long life. They may well be happily occupied as homes. If they are subject to a compulsory purchase order there are three ways in which compensation may be calculated.

Firstly, it may be calculated purely and simply on site value under Section 59 (2) of the 1957 Housing Act. That is the general rule, and the owner will get his nominal sum of, say, £1 for a small plot. Secondly, if the house has been well maintained, Section 60 of the Act comes into operation and a well maintained payment may be paid to the owner. That is only a maximum payment of three times the rateable value, which is not very much for a house which is a home, occupied and perhaps with a reasonable life to it. Thirdly, there may be a payment of full compulsory purchase value if there is an owner-occupier who was in possession in 1955 and is still in possession, but who purchased after 1939.

I cannot see why, if it is fair to give that sort of owner his full compulsory purchase value, the same should not be given to other owners. I feel that the site value sections of the 1957 Act are out of date, are resented by the country as a whole, and act harshly on owners and owner-occupiers of property which still has a life to run, The Clause on page 1441—(Compensation in respect of unfit houses)—is intended to abolish the site value compensation provisions and apply to compulsory purchase under a clearance order those provisions which now apply to what I would call the 1955 owner-occupier who purchased after 1939. But even in his case the value of the property would be reduced by any particularly bad conditions, sanitary or otherwise, that come into Part III of the Third Schedule of the 1957 Housing Act. He does not get payment for a really unfit house. He gets payment for the real value of the house.

The position when a compulsory purchase order is placed on a property of the sort of which I have been speaking is that the owner-occupier, or the owner of a property with a tenant in it, has been assessed for rates for that house. He is told that for the purpose of rates it is the rateable value, and he is made to pay rates on it. It is assessed at a certain annual value for the purpose of Income Tax Schedule A, and he has been called on to pay tax on that annual value. But when a compulsory purchase order is placed on it he is told that the property has no value at all. One cannot be surprised that he should feel an injustice has been done to him. For two purposes connected with local government and central government finances he is told that his property has a value, but when it is taken away from him, for the purpose of compensation, he is told that it has no value at all.

My right hon. Friend has endeavoured to remedy this position slightly in his new Clause by placing, as it were, a minimum sort of compensation in the kind of cases I have been describing of once the gross value. But we may be dealing here with properties of a value of £10 or £15, very small sums, and even if a compensation of once the gross value were paid it would mean a very small amount—certainly in the case of an owner occupier who purchased his house during the past few years.

In some areas which shortly will become clearance areas there are people who have purchased small terraced houses perhaps with the front door opening on to the pavement, but well-built houses, which might last for another 80 or 100 years. They may not have a damp course, or there may be some other reason why these properties do not accord with the provisions of Section 4 of the 1957 Act, and so they are unfit. But they provide good homes and would continue to do so for a number of years to come. Many such properties have been purchased in recent years for sums amounting to hundreds of pounds. In such cases amounts of £10 to f15 are to be offered as compensation. I feel that the Bill does not deal with such cases where lack of compensation gave rise to an outcry for an amendment of the law on compensation for compulsory purchase.

Mr. Norman Cole (Bedfordshire, South)

My hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mr. Page) has referred to the technical aspects of this matter and the amounts of money involved. This Government—indeed, I hope any Government—will be engaged in improving the standard of housing in the country and, in the course of that operation, it will be necessary to re-plan certain areas and build houses on cleared areas.

Over the years many thousands of people have been and will be affected. They will lose the homes in which they have lived quite happily and where they might have spent the rest of their lives. Agreed they will be re-housed in more modern accommodation by the local authority, which will be a good thing. But owner-occupiers of these old properties regard them as a capital asset, not worth a fortune, perhaps, but several hundreds of pounds. If they bought the property within the last three or four years they may have paid several hundreds of pounds, and now they find that their house falls short of modern requirements regarding the amount of land involved on which a modern house can be built. Through that dimensional accident some of these older houses, unless they happen to be on a corner with a return frontage and have enough cartilage to accommodate a new house, fall short of modern planning dimensions and get only a token payment. It is not true to say that because a site does not measure up to modern dimensions it is of no value. The strength and size of the total of the sites as a whole is made up of an aggregation of all its parts, whether it is developed by a local authority or a private developer, and, especially in the centre of a town, the actual individual site has a reasonable value.

Leaving aside the question of academics and technical matters about size, dimensions and modern development as opposed to development of a hundred years ago, this proposal involves ordinary common justice to people who are to be disturbed because of the nation's betterment of its housing. It is enough for them to be disturbed and uprooted, in many cases in their later years, after perhaps going into debt or spending their savings to acquire the house, without then finding that their property under a clearance order is worth £1 or possibly less. I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for what It; is doing in the proposed new Schedule, but if he can go further he will earn the gratitude not only of many in the House but also of many outside.

Mr. Brooke

I am sure my hon. Friends have done quite right in bringing to the attention of the Committee once again the position in which a number of owner-occupiers may find themselves: that is, having lived for sometime in a house which is condemned as unfit, they are offered no more than a few shillings under the existing law. That is a matter to which Parliament should give its attention.

In saying that, I must not be taken to go as far as to agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mr. Page), who wishes by one of his new Clauses radically to alter the whole basis of compensation for unfit houses. The site value basis of compensation for unfit houses has been the law of the land for many years, and I am quite sure he will accept it from the Government that any change in that basis ought not to be made, as it were, by a side wind at this time or place in a Town and Country Planning Bill which is dealing with wholly different matters. Let us keep all these things under review, let us examine the effect of legislation from time to time, but I certainly could not go as far as that new Clause of his.

I think that what is mainly in his mind arid the minds of other hon. Friends is to try to discover some means of helping these owner-occupiers who in past years and up to the present have been in same cases receiving paltry sums by way of compensation for the house which has provided a roof over their heads, albeit in some cases an unsatisfactory one. I would point out to my hon. Friends that this Bill, even if we do not add to it any of these new Clauses or make any of these Amendments, will alter the position radically in two ways.

11.15 p.m.

First of all, up to the present time development value has been tied to the 1947 figures, and in a good many of these cases where the compensation is derisory it will be found that what we know as the existing use value compensation, plus the 1947 development value, has meant hardly anything at all, because in 1947 the land was deemed not to have development value. If we cast our minds back to those days, it was only two years after the war, and it was then hard to envisage a time in the near future when it would be possible to pull down houses which, however bad they might have been, were urgently required for housing the people. The slum clearance programme could not at that time have got under way.

So, there are areas which have development values now, thanks to all that has happened since 1947, but which were adjudged twelve years ago to have no development value. Consequently that arm under the compensation law gave them virtually no compensation at all. The other arm was the existing use value, and we have to remember that in the legislation which this Bill amends, the Third Schedule of the 1947 Act imposed a restriction that, where a building was demolished, the site could be valued only on the assumption that the building demolished could be replaced by one of roughly similar size. But some of those slum area houses were very small, and a site in a development area too small to take a house not in conformity with the by-laws of the present day was virtually worthless for the purposes of existing use value.

Now, both of these restrictions are swept away, and, we think, rightly swept away. The current market value of the land will apply. Then all the other Clauses of this Bill will come into operation and, in a good many cases, there will be a real market value in that land. This land which will be sought after might be used for industrial or commercial purposes, or for housing, but the cleared site will be valued in accordance with the possibility of development which this Bill will adjudge to be suitable. Therefore, these difficulties will not recur and, so far as I can judge the matter, which I have gone into as carefully as I can because of the importance which I attach to it, certainly more than half of the cases where up to now only some nominal payment has been made are to be remedied by this Bill. A material payment of compensation will be payable in place of the nominal sum which has been paid hitherto.

I must, however, warn the House that if we leave the Bill as it stands there would be types of case where the compensation payment would remain nominal. These are the cases which my hon. Friends seek to assist. There are two proposed new Clauses designed, I think, to try to give an additional payment to owners in such cases, through the medium of something not unlike the global assessment which, the House will remember, I criticised on an earlier Amendment. Without going into all the detail of whether it could be right to value a series of small sites as one site, as if they were all put together, and then make an apportionment of the value between the different sites, I would simply say to my hon. Friends that, even if one adds a percentage to the original sum, should the original sum be small the percentage itself will be small. Even if one could add, let us say, 50 per cent. by one of the expedients Which they suggest, it would not be great consolation to someone who was to receive 10s. for his site under the existing law if he found that, with the benefit of the 50 per cent. increase, he would have 15s. Moreover, if one applied such a percentage increase as is implied by the new Clauses, as I read them, to the larger sites which have industrial or commercial value, they would gain the 50 per cent. increase, which might be a very considerable sum. I do not think that that is what my hon. Friends are seeking to do: they are seeking to help the owner of the small site.

The two cases to which the Committee should address itself are these. First, there is the case of the unfit house which is built on land which appears to have no market value in that no private purchaser is in the market for it. One can visualise that sort of land—jammed between two converging railway lines, not suitable for industry or commerce, with no private house builder seeking after it. The land really does appear to have no market value—yet, no doubt, it has been the site of the home of owner-occupiers who have lived there for many years. They have grown accustomed to the disadvantages of the site through long familiarity and through the feeling which we all have for our own homes. That is one type of case, and one cannot cure that by merging several small sites into one.

The other type of case, which is even more difficult to help, is the case where, although the site itself may attract some value in the open market, nevertheless there is some kind of annual charge on the land which, as it were, eats up the compensation so that the owner-occupier finds that he is left with only nominal compensation, such material compensa- tion as there may have been going to benefit the owner of the ground charge, not the occupier. That type of case, according to the analysis I have made, accounts for a surprisingly large proportion of the whole of this group of nominal payments.

In those circumstances, the Government have very carefully considered whether some remedy could be found. It must necessarily be an ad hoc remedy. One cannot arrive at a solution by any jockeying with the system of valuation, nor can one overcome the difficulty where the compensation is devoured by an annual charge except by securing for the owner-occupier some payment of money which will not be so devoured, but which will be safeguarded. That is what the Government have sought to do in the Amendments which stand in my name. There are corresponding Amendments for Scotland in the name of my hon. Friend the Joint Under-Secretary of State.

We do not put these to the Committee as having some logical basis which could be defended against all comers. Our case is rather that the present system is unconscionable, and where there is a situation which is unconscionable it is the duty of Parliament to try to find a remedy, even if it be an ad hoc remedy.

I will conclude by seeking to explain the significance of these Amendments that stand in our names. Their purpose is this. They seek to provide a kind of floor for the amount of compensation for every owner-occupier of an unfit house acquired by a local authority. There must, of course, be qualifying conditions. One does not want to extend this to everybody. The last thing one would wish to do is to recreate a market in slum houses. I think that all hon. Members on both sides of the Committee would regard that as deplorable.

The qualifying conditions which are set out in the Government's proposal are, first, that the owner must have been living in the house at the date of the making of the compulsory purchase order. Secondly, he must keep his interest at the date of the service of notice to treat, or, if he should die before the notice is served, then up to the date of his death. Thirdly, he must be entitled to the service of a notice to treat that is, his interest must be for more than a year. That, in passing, is in line with the special owner-occupier compensation introduced by the 1956 Act.

Subsection (2) of the main Amendment provides that this compensation floor, as I have called it, should be the gross annual value of the house for rating purposes. If the owner-occupier occupies only part of the house then he will get the apportioned share of the value.

Subsection (3) lays down that in calculating whether an owner-occupier is entitled to this floor of compensation, account shall be taken of any compensation which he would otherwise receive for his interest, including any well-maintained payment, but not any payment for disturbance as distinct from payment for acquisition of the revelant interest.

Subsection (4, b) provides that the special owner-occupier compensation provided in what was originally the 1956 Act and is now payable under Part II of the Second Schedule of the Housing Act. 1957, shall be brought into account.

Mr. Mitchison

Will the right hon. Gentleman explain one small point? If the owner-occupier gets compensation on the basis of a well-maintained house, will it not always be more than the floor introduced by this Amendment?

Mr. Brooke

Yes. It would in the normal case. I was simply seeking to explain that the owner-occupier would not get both. If from one or other of the provisions he was receiving more than that, he would not get this in addition. This is frankly a long-stop provision. I was seeking to explain finally that this floor is related in the Government's proposals solely to the owner-occupier's own interest. He will become entitled to it irrespective of the fact that there is a ground landlord who may be receiving the bulk of any compensation payable in respect of the site.

I hope that the Committee will feel that this is both a reasonable and an ingenious method of seeking to remedy what is undoubtedly an unconscionable situation in the law as it stands. The main provisions of the Bill, as I have explained, will rectify the position of the majority of cases. If we went any further than that, there would remain these other classes of cases, smaller may be, but deserving of sympathy nevertheless—the cases where the land has no market value, and the cases where compensation is eaten up by the existence of an annual ground charge. I submit to the Committee that it is desirable that we should seek to make some provision for those cases, and I trust that this plan will be acceptable to both sides of the Committee as an earnest attempt to rectify this situation which, I submit, Parliament ought not to allow to continue.

11.30 p.m.

Mr. Mitchison

This is, of course, a serious matter for those concerned, but perhaps I may be allowed to say that I listened to some of the speeches in support of the various new Clauses with some amusement. These, apparently, are the cases which gave rise to an outcry to amend the law of compensation, and these are the cases which have attracted attention. That may or may not be so, but if it is the fact we are now coming down to what they are to get out of it. I wonder whether they are in fact the cases which have attracted attention and caused the outcry.

The right hon. Gentleman's new Clause, to which I shall come in a moment, is the only one on the Paper which is limited to owner-occupiers. Hon. Gentlemen opposite know quite well what they are proposing in their new Clauses and Amendments. All of them would have secured additional compensation, other than the right hon. Gentleman's new Clause, for that somewhat unsympathetic figure the slum landlord, just as they would have secured it for the owner-occupier.

Mr. Corfield

I am sure the hon. and learned Gentleman will appreciate that the big man will get the high sum in any case because he owns contiguous sites which are developable, so that my new Clause, anyhow, is very much in favour of the small man. I am surprised to find the hon. and learned Gentleman making the point he is, because my proposal is precisely the same idea as that he was pushing earlier.

Mr. Mitchison

I do not think the hon. Gentleman need be so surprised. He put down, as did other people, Amendments which were intended to apply to the slum landlord just as they apply to owner-occupiers. They could perfectly well have limited them to the owner-occupiers if they had chosen. They knew perfectly well that their Amendments were not limited to them.

Let us consider the owner-occupier for a minute. The right hon. Gentleman explained that the owner-occupier would get much more under the Bill anyhow, and that, he said, in conjunction with changes relating to development value. I think it is just as well even at this late hour to remind the Committee what the Parliamentary Secretary said in Committee on this matter. This is what he said: When one turns to the ordinary case of the owner-occupier who is subject to compulsory purchase procedures, then we find that, as a general rule, the owner-occupier does in fact receive the market value from the acquiring authority. I said as a question: Now? The answer was: Yes, now, because in the vast majority of cases affecting the houses of owner occupiers, existing use value and market value are identical figures, because as a general rule there is no development value. In fact, the cases of injustice under the existing law are those where there is a real disparity between existing use value and market value. Those are certainly not in the generality of cases, but are rare cases of owners of land, as such, and particularly on the fringes of our great cities." —[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee D. 2nd December, 1958 c. 57.] He agreed that farmers were the people most probably affected.

That is the position, and therefore by and large the owner-occupier, quite apart from this Bill, is in the vast majority of cases getting full market value already. I see the hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Page) shaking his head, but the hon. Member for Crosby made a mistake in his facts to which I shall come in a moment. Meanwhile I think he might take it that the Ministry of Housing and Local Government probably knows the position almost as accurately as he does.

That is what the Ministry's spokesman said on this matter. We are not dealing, therefore, with the majority of owner-occupiers. As far as the Amendments in the names of back-benchers opposite are concerned, we are dealing with slum owners and owner-occupiers on exactly the same footing.

Mr. Page

The hon. and learned Gentleman keeps speaking of slum landlords. He is well acquainted with paragraphs 2 and 3 of the Third Schedule to the Housing Act, 1957, which would prevent the landlord of a slum property obtaining compensation.

Mr. Mitchison

All I can say to the hon. Member is what I have said before to him, and I will not repeat it. All the Amendments happen to be confined to owner-occupiers. The Government have thought it necessary to do that for good and sufficient reason. We were told that the owner-occupiers' are hard cases, but the vast majority, to quote the Parliamentary Secretary, will not be affected by the Bill. Therefore, and I hope that it is not an un-Parliamentary expression, there is a certain element of humbug in some of the arguments put forward. I hope that hon. Members opposite will not take that unkindly.

Mr. Corfield

We certainly shall not after the humbug we have heard from the hon. and learned Member today.

Mr. Mitchison

If the hon. Member accuses me of humbug he is only saying what I have said to him. Therefore, I hope we shall take it on both sides of the Committee.

These are unfit houses. I was astounded at the hon. Member for Crosby saying that 50 per cent. of houses in the country were unfit to live in under the standard of fitness in the Housing Act. I never heard a more staggering statement from somebody whom I thought to have some knowledge of the matter. He has forgotten what is the standard. He said that the houses would be unfit if they had no damp course. That is not so. One has to consider other things beside dampness. The house has to be so far defective that it is unsuitable for habitation in that condition.

I agree that the definition in the Act was phrased by the Ministry of Circumlocution. I have always said so, but at the end of the day there must be a real unfitness of the place to live in, and it is nonsense to suggest that half the houses in the country are as bad as that. It would be a criticism of private landlordism which in my most exalted moments I have never been able to reach. I would not go as far as the hon. Member for Crosby in that respect.

The hon. Member for Bedfordshire, South (Mr. Cole) told us that the Government have been encouraging the campaign to improve housing. The hon. Member had better put his head together with his hon. Friend the Member for Crosby as to the result, if 50 per cent, of the houses are unfit to live in.

Mr. Cole

Without necessarily agreeing or disagreeing with the statistics of my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mr. Page), may I ask whether, even if those figures were correct, there has not been an improvement proceeding? Therefore, was not my remark quite logical?

Mr. Mitchison

The Government have done little about it, but I should be out of order if I went into that now and pointed out that the Government's slum clearance programme has merely done, or not quite done, what the local authorities said that they would be able to do before the Government started a slum clearance campaign.

Turning to the Amendment, which we must take more seriously, I agree that this is a case where something has to be done ad hoc. It is a narrowly-limited something, but there are cases, as has been stated, where a man feels the real hardship of receiving compensation on the basis, small though the figures may be, that is not the basis on which he has to pay local and central taxation.

I feel, therefore, that the Government's proposal here is properly limited to owner-occupiers and to putting a floor to what will be a minority of cases, because only a small minority of owner-occupiers will be affected. Quite a number of them will receive the "well-maintained" allowance and therefore this will not touch them, because it will be always a higher floor. At the end of the day, it will affect quite a small number of cases.

However, they will be the genuine hardship cases. Therefore, I and my English hon. Friends welcome the Government Amendment. We recognise it to be illogical and ad hoc, intended to deal only with a small number of cases, to make a very small contribution and not to have very much relation to whatever the motives may have been which led to the Bill. However, we are glad to see it introduced even at so late a stage.

Mr. Corfield

In the Committee stage earlier the Parliamentary Secretary said he believed that it would be possible in valuing the sites to envisage a marriage of sites. Has he considered the effect of paragraph 1 of the table in Clause 8? Does he still think that the marriage of sites can be contemplated? If not, will he consider the matter when the Bill goes to another place to ensure that that can take place in the valuation of these very small sites?

Mr. Brooke

I will consider further what my hon. Friend has said, but as I understand it everything will depend on whether a private purchaser would have the chance of marrying the sites. If he would not, then to treat the sites as capable of being married would give each of them something more than market value in the open market. That is the test which should be applied.

Mr. Corfield

Surely paragraph 1 of the table is a definite prohibition against the marriage of sites. That is what is worrying me.

Mr. Mitchison

I trust that the right hon. Gentleman will remember that midnight marriages are not only unlawful but open to very serious objections on grounds of public morality.

Question put and negatived.