LEASEHOLD ENFRANCHISEMENT (WALES) (Hansard, 1 March 1961)

§ Mr. George Thomas (Cardiff, West)
I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make provision for the enfranchisement of residential property in Wales and Monmouthshire held under long leases; and for purposes connected with the matter aforesaid. Today is St. David's day. There can be no fitter day on which I could seek permission of the House to introduce a Bill to make provision for the enfranchisement of residential property in Wales and Monmouthshire held under long-leases and for purposes connected with the matter aforesaid. Ever since I gave notice that I intended, under the Ten Minute Rule, to seek to introduce a Measure on leasehold reform, from all parts of the Principality there has come a mounting wave of support for the proposal. Press, radio, and television in Wales have united in a vigorous campaign expressing deep concern for Welsh people who suffer so grievously from the leasehold system.
I am particularly grateful to the Western Mail and the South Wales Echo for the vigour with which they have supported the demand. In particular, the Western Mail has taken a stand which is very much appreciated in the Principality. The Welsh people treat leasehold reform as a very serious subject. No people in the world love their homes more dearly than we do. For that very reason, there will be keen disappointment at the way in which the hon. Member for Barry (Mr. Gower) and his hon. Friends have persisted in dividing the Welsh forces in this House on this question. The notice of presentation of his Bill, which appeared on the Order Paper for the first time today, tells the Government that Welsh Members are divided on this question. Otherwise, hon. Members opposite would have supported the effort which we have been making for a long time on this question.
Leasehold reform is not a subject for manoeuvres and demonstrations of that sort. I had hoped that we would have support from hon. Members opposite rather than this demonstration of disunity. No part of the United Kingdom suffers as disastrously as South Wales from the way in which the leasehold 1592 system operates under the working of the Landlord and Tenant Act, 1954. It has been gravely aggravated by the Rent Act, 1957, which has inflated property values beyond all reason. During the past year there has been a distressing deterioration in the position of leaseholders in South Wales, as I intend to reveal.
Under the present law the ground landlord is both judge and jury in his own cause. It is he who decides whether he will negotiate at all with the leaseholder concerning either a renewal of the lease or the sale of the freehold rights. It is the ground landlord who decides what terms he will offer, and at no stage in the whole of these discreditable proceedings is there any sign of a freely negotiated contract. The leaseholder is without the protection of the law. The law is biased heavily in favour of the ground landlord. Who but a lunatic would freely sign away the ownership of his own home?
The finance corporations which are represented on the other side of the House—I gave notice to two hon. Members opposite, the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Aitken) and the hon. and learned Member for Northwich (Mr. J. Foster), both of whom are directors of a finance corporation which owns nearly half the City of Cardiff—have largely replaced the old ground landlords. Those finance corporations are enabled, by the 1954 Act, to cheat thrifty leaseholders of their birthright and to blackmail them with the full protection of the law.

Mr. W. T. Aitkin (Bury St. Edmunds)
On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. As the hon. Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. G. Thomas) knows, I have some knowledge of these matters by virtue of a personal interest in the company to which he has referred. I have no objection to his criticisms, if they are genuine, and I believe they are. [HON. MEMBERS:" Is this a point of order? "] I think that I am in very good company in raising this point or order, because yesterday the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition raised very much the same sort of point that I wish to raise now.
The hon. Member, in the course of this procedure, knowing perfectly well 1593 that you, Sir, do not wish hon. Members, in the process of asking leave under the Ten Minutes Rule, to be interrupted, has also used the occasion to make some very slanderous and completely inaccurate remarks. [HON. MEMBERS: "What is the point of order?"] Like the Leader of the Opposition, I seek your protection and your guidance on what we can do, Mr. Speaker.

§ Mr. Speaker
At the cost of interrupting the hon. Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. G. Thomas), for which I hope he will forgive me, I think that this is a serious point of order. I was much impressed by the protest of the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition yesterday, and, although I could not on the spur of the moment think of the right answer, I have pondered about it and I hope that I have now got it right. I think that I ought to ask the House to remember what our proceedings are under this Standing Order, or the whole thing may become rather a nuisance to us all.
The Standing Order allows me, when a Bill is opposed, if I think fit, to permit a brief explanatory statement from the hon. Member who moves and from the hon. Member who opposes the Motion. It would seem to be absurd, in those circumstances, to allow interruptions or interventions into the speech which would swell it up to Second Reading dimensions. On the other hand, it seems to me to be a corollary that if interruptions are not to be allowed then attacks ought not to be allowed, because the victim has no opportunity of answering on the spot.
I am confirmed in the right approach to this, I hope, by a Ruling of my predecessor, Mr. Speaker Fitzroy, which I wish that I had had in hand yesterday when the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition raised his point of order. The actual pretext for my predecessor's intervention was that another hon. Member had protested that the hon. Member seeking leave had spoken for fourteen minutes. Mr. Speaker Fitzroy said: Hon. Members must not forget that in asking leave to introduce Bills under what is known as the Ten Minute Rule they have no more titan the privilege of making a short explanatory statement of the provisions of a 1594 Measure."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 19th May, 1931; Vol. 252, c. 1785.] I hope that the hon. Member for Cardiff, West will be able to follow that pattern, and that others will do so in future.

§ Mr. Gerald Nabarro (Kidderminster)
On a point of order. Mr. Speaker, you have just said that you were impressed with the point of order raised yesterday by the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition. By that choice of words I suggest, with the greatest respect, that you have now suggested to the House that you were in sympathy with the point of order raised by the right hon. Gentleman. May I out to you the contrary point of view, that I did not attack the right hon. Gentleman yesterday. I quote my exact words—

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. Everybody knows what the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro) said, because it is recorded in the OFFICIAL REPORT. I am not making any reproach to anybody except myself for not having the answer correct yesterday. It is sufficient to carry this point to say that the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition was asserting that he was being attacked and asking how an hon. Member who found himself in that position was to have a chance of answering. That is all that I am ruling.

§ Mr. Nabarro
Further to that point of order—and I apologise to the hon. Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. G, Thomas) for interrupting his speech—. does your Ruling this afternoon mean, Sir, that an hon. Member opposing, as I was yesterday, a Motion to bring in a Bill under the Ten Minute Rule may not attack any Member on the other side of the House or any one of his colleagues? I suggest, Mr. Speaker, that such a Ruling would be quite insupportable in practice if the Member concerned is to oppose what is being said by the hon. Member opposite.

§ Mr. Speaker
I do not think that one can lay down a precise rule—a sort of lawyer's rule—about this. I should have thought it could be sensibly left to the good sense of the House. The speech of the Member moving should follow the indication of my predecessor, and that of the hon. Member opposing should be in line with it.

§ Mr. Sydney Silverman (Nelson and Colne)
On a point of order. Since my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. G. Thomas) was not out of order in his speech, and no one has so far alleged that he was, might it not be better that he should be allowed to finish his speech and that we should deal with the points of order at the end of it?

§ Mr. Speaker
I respectfully agree. I do not want to encourage them.

§ Sir Spencer Summers (Aylesbury)
On a point of order. Arising out of the comments which you were good enough to make on this point, Mr. Speaker, you quoted from an earlier Speaker's Ruling and referred to what is called the Ten Minute Bill Rule. Are we to understand that the length of an opening speech is at your discretion, despite the Ten Minute Rule?

§ Mr. Speaker
The words of the Standing Order which I read are that there should be permitted a brief explanatory statement.

§ Mr. Ronald Bell (Buckinghamshire. South)
On a point of order. You were kind enough to read the words of the Standing Order, Sir. is it not the case that under the Standing Order a brief explanatory statement in support of the Motion, and against it, is allowed only at your discretion if the Motion be opposed, and that those words govern the rest of the Standing Order? I ask that because a practice seems to have arisen whereby hon. Members moving unopposed Motions for leave to bring in a Bill are also making ten-minute speeches although no opposition follows

§ Mr. Speaker
What the hon. Member says is quite true. I think that all hon Members at present in the House know that we have adopted the practice of permitting a brief explanatory statement to the hon. Member seeking leave. I hope that we shall not interrupt him further.

§ Mr. G. Thomas
I am sorry that all this uproar has arisen from my setting out the terms of my proposed Measure I hope that it is in order for me to illustrate to the House why I wish to see leasehold enfranchisement in a Private Member's Bill.
In Dogfield Street, Cathays, Cardiff, there is a house with a ground rent of 1596 £3 a year, with thirty-six years still to run. When the leaseholder applied to renew the lease he was told that the increased ground rent for the remaining thirty-six years would come to £523, plus a premium of £100, making a total of £623 for a lease of forty-four years. I could give the House many examples of the way in which the citizens of South Wales are being held to ransom by ground landlords. It is not my fault that I am unable to develop the argument here. They come from Pembrokeshire, Cardiganshire, Glamorgan-shire, Carmarthenshire and Monmouthshire. We have had an avalanche of letters from desperate people seeking protection.
My proposed Bill will, first, entitle all leaseholders to obtain the freehold of their home at a fair and reasonable price. I believe that people are entitled to own their own homes and that under the present system they are being prevented from so doing. Secondly, I suggest that there should be ground rent tribunals —equivalent to the rent tribunals that we knew in other days—to decide a fair rent or price for a freehold or the renewal of a lease, as the case may be. It is a monstrous injustice that the present law is weighted so heavily in favour of those who speculate in other people's homes. My proposed Measure would make it impossible for people to enter into speculation to make a profit out of the misfortunes of others.
I will give the House another example, that of a house in Bassaleg Road, Newport, Monmouthshire. The ground landlord was a Mr. Myers, of Victoria Road, Penarth. The ground rent is £3 10s. a year, plus 10s. for a very small piece of additional ground. There are about twenty-six years to run on the lease. The ground landlord says that he will not renew the lease, but that he will sell the freehold for £4,000. There is nothing at present to stop ground landlords asking what they like because they are the judge and jury—

§ Mr. Hugh Rees (Swansea, West)
On a point of order. Is it right to refer to a deceased person in this House? Mr. Myers died a week ago.

§ Mr. Speaker
I think that I heard Oliver Cromwell's name referred to yesterday.

§ Mr. Thomas
I am deeply grateful to you, Mr. Speaker. I am trying to obey your Ruling. I realise why the hon. Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Rees) wanted to silence me on this question.
I believe that the House could pass no single Bill which would bring a degree of freedom for Welsh people more than could be given by a Measure of this sort. I believe that the terms of the Bill, which are supporter by enlightened opinion throughout the Principality, are reasonable. I hope that the House will agree with me and give me leave to introduce it.