HC Deb 21 November 1963 vol 684 cc1319-28

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. M. Hamilton.]

10.3 p.m.

Mr. Bryant Godman Irvine (Rye)

The matter which I wish to raise this evening relates to property known as "Earley Mead", Hastings Road, Bexhill. This property was purchased by a constituent of mine in 1946. In 1948, the Bexhill town map was drafted showing the Bexhill old town by-pass passing through the grounds of that property. The road in question is the Folkestone-Honiton trunk road known as A.259, and the information that I have is that it is not scheduled for work until perhaps as far off as 1978. My constituent, as long ago as 1955, had asked for plans to be passed and these were rejected on the ground that this work had not been brought forward far enough.

When I first came to this House in 1955 this was one of the first matters that came to my attention. I find that during the period from then till now I have had ten letters from various Ministers and Ministries. I find that my constituent has been to the Lands Tribunal and got a decision in his favour, which was overruled by the Court of Appeal. My hon. Friend's predecessor was good enough to see my constituent and listen to the points which we put forward to him on 14th February this year.

The matter is, therefore, somewhat lengthy, but is summarised, fortunately, in the Journal of Planning and Property Law, 1962, on page 519, in an article by Mr. Desmond Heap, which says: Mr. Holland bought his house in Bexhill in 1946. Later, a plan was approved to build a new road which was to pass through the house. Mr. Holland endeavoured to sell the house, but without avail. Later, he converted it into two dwellings in an effort to seil, but again he failed; clearly, others had heard of the proposed new road. Finally, he quitted the premises and left Bexhill in 1951. He had not lived there since; nor has he paid rates on the empty house. He inspected the property from time to time, picked fruit in the garden and cut back creepers. But could not sell the property which remained blighted and unoccupied. Nothing could be done about this until the 1959 Act came into force on 16th August, 1959. Then Mr. Holland sought to get help from Part IV of the Act. But though he succeeded before the Lands Tribunal he failed in the Court of Appeal, which would not regard him as the occupier of the house, either in whole or in part, for the requisite statutory period of at least six months prior to the making of his claim. The court would not regard the storing of articles in three sheds in the garden of the house and in the garage as being such an occupation of pan of the hereditament as to require the Ministry to purchase the whole of the hereditament. In short, Mr. Holland was not an owner-occupier, let alone a resident owner-occupier, and so he lost his case and leave to appeal to the House of Lords was refused. But if Mr. Holland cannot go up to the Lords he can, at least, go back to Bexhill. Presumably, this is what he will now do. He will go back to Bexhill and will once again take up residential occupation of his blighted hereditament. Then, having lived there for six months (which is probably less time than that needed to get to the Lords) he will start again with the mixture as before, commencing with the service of a fresh claim on the Ministry—there seems to be nothing to stop him doing this if he wants to do it. My constituent did not go back to Bexhill. He complained that once the Act had been passed in 1959, when he had served his purchase notice on the Minister under the provisions of that Act, the Minister then served a counter notice, objecting to the purchase notice on the ground that Mr. Holland was not an owner-occupier.

My constituent feels that the Minister was wrong in taking that action because of the words set out in paragraph 64 of Circular No. 48/1959 of the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, under the heading: Obligation to purchase interests of owner-occupiers affected by planning proposals. The previous paragraph states: Although the rights given in Part IV will in the Minister's view meet most cases of hardship, there may be isolated cases which fall outside the provisions. It is paragraph 64 which my constituent felt applied particularly to his case. It reads: The Minister hopes that local authorities who are asked to buy in such cases will consider them on their merits and will exercise a reasonable discretion to buy land in advance of requirements, so long as they are satisfied that the property is 'blighted' as a result of a proposal for acquisition by them and that there is genuine hardship. My constituent is, therefore, complaining, first, that there was a counter-notice served on him; secondly, that there was refusal by the Minister to make any compromise settlement prior to the hearing before the Lands Tribunal; and, finally, that after he had won his appeal before the Lands Tribunal there was then a further appeal set down by the Minister. There was a good deal of discussion between that period and 14th February this year. On that day my hon. Friend's predecessor was good enough to see my constituent and he made a determined effort to see whether there was some way in which this unfortunate matter could be brought to a satisfactory conclusion.

There is a letter from my right hon Friend the Minister of Transport dated 2nd July, 1963, in which that interview is summarised in these terms: What was to be clarified was exactly what part of Mr. Holland's property would be required for the trunk road diversion shown on the Bexhill Town Map. On this basis Mr. Holland would then have alternative schemes of development prepared showing what might have been done with the land if he could use it all or if he could use only the part not required for the new highway (and for possible improvements of Hastings Road itself). It was hoped that this exercise would enable the measure of his real loss from the highway plan to be demonstrated and, in the light of this, we would see whether we were justified in making any proposal to him. The basis on which my constituent is approaching this matter and the basis on which the Ministry was approaching it seemed to have certain differences in the way that the results would be calculated, but, clearly, if it could be demonstrated that a particular piece of my constituent's property was required for this road it would be possible to work out two different schemes and it would apparently be more than likely that some figures on which a reasonable settlement could be based could be worked out.

That interview took place on 14th February, and it came to my constituent's attention on 11th April that the Ministry had not even issued any instructions that the necessary survey should be made to indicate precisely the piece of land which would be required for the road so that it could be marked out on my constituent's property.

My constituent now feels that, with the delay which has taken place, there is very grave doubt whether the Ministry is trying genuinely to meet him in this matter, and there might well be something which my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary could explain to him tonight which would make him change his view. As this discussion took place in February, and nothing has so far happened, he does not feel that the Ministry is doing what it could.

I therefore have had a letter from my constituent in which he explains to me what he would like me to put to the Minister tonight, and the words which he uses are as follows: What I am aiming at is an inquiry to ascertain from what source the Minister of Transport obtained the false information in 1959 … The false information to which he refers relates to some correspondence at that time which suggested that he had purchased this property purely as an investment. He strenuously denies that such is the case and says that he purchased it in 1946 before there was any suggestion that this road would take part of the property and that he would then be able to live there quite happily.

As I have said, in this letter he wants to know the source from which the false information was obtained which is at the bottom of all this trouble and for the falsehoods to be exposed with the people who accepted them without a proper check. When this has been achieved the Minister should himself be asked why he did not proceed in accordance with the Ministry of Housing circular and exercise his discretion to end the 'blight'on my property from the date (eleven years after it was blighted) in 1959 when my notice to purchase was served. Finally, why he should not do so now backdating his purchase to December, 1959, with compound interest thereon to date and paying my costs or alternatively resigning for 'welshing', a term I believe he may know. Why should any property owner be asked to finance the Ministry of Transport until, to quote Admiral Hughes Hallett, 'it is our policy not to compensate owners until they are ready to proceed with their plans not within twenty-five years of its being planned for seizure.' Once again, I repeat this scandal should be publicly stamped on and those responsible for flouting Parliament's intention made to suffer". My constituent feels that, after twelve years of being unable to sell or occupy his property, this is a matter which the Minister should be able to deal with at a very early date.

10.15 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport (Mr. T. G. D. Galbraith)

My hon. Friend the Member for Rye (Mr. Godman Irvine) has put his case in a very forthright and persuasive manner. I do not think that anybody could have done it better than he has. Certainly over many years he has been most assiduous in his endeavours to help his constituent and I hope that tonight I may be able to answer his point and to remove any misunderstanding which still exists and to show him and his constituent that my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport has acted very fairly throughout.

As 1 see it, my hon. Friend's constituent, Mr. Holland, has been asking for two things: first, he wants the Ministry of Transport to purchase his house and garden at Earley Mead, Bexhill, and secondly he wants to know why it should be taking so long to determine the extent of his land which is required for the road and so enable various calculations to be made. I will try to deal with these two points separately.

First may I explain why the Minister is not in a position to purchase Mr. Holland's property and then show that, far from there being any delay, matters have been progressed more speedily than they would normally warrant, especially in order to help Mr. Holland.

With regard to purchasing the house, the position is controlled by the Town and Country Planning Act, 1959, which laid down four conditions entitling a person to serve a notice on an authority requiring it to purchase the property. All four conditions have to be met and one of them, which is spelt out very carefully in Sections 39 and 43, was that the person serving notice had to be the owner-occupier, and for this purpose "owner-occupier" was defined in Section 43(2) as a person who occupied a property during the whole of the six months before serving his notice or who occupied it for six months up to a date ending not more than six months before serving notice, the property having since remained unoccupied. As my hon. Friend knows, Mr. Holland submitted a claim stating that he was the owner-occupier within that meaning.

As is usual in these cases, the Ministry made the normal inquiries through the district valuer and we were informed that the property had been unoccupied by Mr. Holland for two or three years. That was the information we got, but we now know that it was an underestimate and that Mr. Holland and his family left the property on 16th August, 1951. This is important, because the Act was not retrospective; it dealt with conditions as they were in 1959 or at any later date and at no date after the passing of the Act did Mr. Holland appear to the Ministry of Transport, at least, to be an owner-occupier.

It was, therefore, the clear duty of the Department on the receipt of Mr. Holland's claim to issue a counter-claim. Although Mr. Holland complains of this, I do not see that the Department could have done anything else. Mr. Holland, however, maintained that he had remained the occupier, at least in the legal sense, up to the date of his notice. That argument was tested through the Lands Tribunal, as my hon. Friend pointed out, and the Court of Appeal and the verdict in June, 1962, was that Mr. Holland had not been the occupier This seems to me to be a complete vindication of the Department's decision to serve the counter-notice.

After reference to the Lands Tribunal had been set in train, it was suggested that the Minister might have made a compromise, but no compromise was ever proposed to him by Mr. Holland or on his behalf. The buying of the whole property was, and still is, what Mr. Holland is claiming. The suggestion, therefore, to buy the whole property scarcely seems to be a compromise and certainly is not something that the Minister could reasonably have entertained while the case was sub judice. Nevertheless, Mr. Holland seems to think that the Minister should have accepted the ruling of the Lands Tribunal that he was the owner-occupier. I should, therefore, explain why the Minister did not feel that he could do this. The decision was unacceptable because it appeared to create a definition of occupation—a few odds and ends and gardening tools in three sheds—which was not only contrary to the definition of occupation for rating purposes, but what would have opened the door to all sorts of artificial forms of occupation which would have extended the scope of the Act beyond what we in the Ministry believed to be Parliament's intention. Such a precedent was, naturally, well advertised in the professional publications, one of which my hon. Friend has read. We thought, therefore, that it should be tested in the courts. This explains why the Minister appealed and his justification for doing so is that his appeal was unanimously upheld in the Court of Appeal.

I turn now to the important part played by my hon. Friend in all this matter. He first wrote to my predecessor, the present Civil Lord of the Admiralty, on 1st February, 1960, asking whether a way out of the difficulty could be found, as otherwise Mr. Holland would have to move back into the house for six months to establish occupancy. In the light of these representations, the Department considered the possibility of a discretionary purchase, the Minister having been given permissive powers under Section 48 of the 1959 Act to purchase land in advance of actual requirements for road construction. At that stage, I fully admit, there was an incorrect inference from the information provided by the district valuer, although it was not a mistake of any great importance.

By 1959, as my hon. Friend will recollect, the house had been divided vertically and one-half had been made into two fiats. The district valuer's report said that shortly after the purchase of the house by Mr. Holland, it had been divided vertically. This was quite true—this is what had happened—but the period of family occupation from 1946-1951 was unknown to us at that stage. This led to the inference that the house had been bought for investment purposes. Naturally, this wrong inference annoyed Mr. Holland and I apologise to him for this mistake.

The important thing, however, is that the inference was corrected within a few days and the full facts were known when a discretionary purchase was declined in April, 1960 The reason that it was declined was that neither the house nor the larger part of the garden was likely to be required for the road. It was, therefore, decided that there was an insufficient case to justify an advance purchase of the whole property from public funds.

I should, perhaps, say a word on the principles which guide us in deciding whether to make a discretionary purchase. This matter was the subject of a Ministry of Housing and Local Government circular to local authorities in August, 1959. That circular contains a clear proviso that the authority is to be satisfied of genuine hardship before making a purchase. The trouble is that in this case we have never been satisfied that genuine hardship existed. The locking up of a man's capital in an asset which he finds it difficult to dispose of is not comparable with the sort of hardship that we try to relieve, for instance, when a man whose employment is transferred cannot buy a new home unless he sells his old one first. That is what we mean by hardship.

The planning of new roads and the warning given of them in development plans are processes which must go on in the general public interest all the time, but if the Minister and local authorities had to buy every property affected in which capital was locked up there would be no end to the bill and a serious reduction in the amount of money available for urgent actual construction would result if this policy were adopted.

Parliament was clearly aware of that when it approved the 1959 Act, as is shown by its careful limitation of the scope of relief. It struck what it thought was a reasonable balance and the Minister cannot be expected to exercise his discretion beyond what Parliament provided. Far from flouting the wishes of Parliament, we believe that we are carrying out Parliament's wishes.

Of course, my right hon. Friend has exercised his discretion frequently since the Act was passed up to the present time in 129 cases. On the other hand, besides Mr. Holland's there have been a further 32 cases in which we have declined to purchase from applicants who turned out not to be owner-occupiers. I think that this shows that the Minister's discretionary powers have been used with a due sense of responsibility for both the public purse and for personal hardship.

I would now like to turn to the question of delay, which is the most recent cause of Mr. Holland's worry. The position at the beginning of this year was that Mr. Holland had failed to prove himself an owner-occupier—he had failed in the courts to establish that—and my right hon. Friend was not prepared to exercise discretion to purchase, for the reasons I have already given. Nevertheless, my predecessor, the present Civil Lord, following pressure from my hon. Friend, was anxious to see whether there was any way in which he could help Mr. Holland. A meeting was accordingly arranged and the discussion, as my hon. Friend will remember, was without prejudice.

The proposals which were made hinged upon an exact determination of what part of Mr. Holland's property would be required when the by-pass at Bexhill was brought into our trunk road system. It was at this point that it is possible that a misunderstanding crept in. Mr. Holland seems to have assumed that the calculations could take place at once, but in fact the necessary calculations could not be deduced from a line on a development plan. As I am sure my hon. Friend realises, the first step is an order under the Highways Act, and such orders are part of a statutory procedure laid down by Parliament under which all owners, not just one like Mr. Holland, affected by a proposal are given rights of objection. This, naturally, takes a good deal of time.

The Minister is bound to proceed in this way, and I can assure my hon. Friend that he is doing so as quickly as the procedure laid down by Parliament allows. In fact, design work which might not otherwise have been started for a few years has been put in hand already. But I must warn my hon. Friend, and I hope that he will pass my words on to his constituent, that it will be several months yet before draft orders can be published, and so patience—however difficult that may be—is still necessary.

There is nothing sinister about this. It was fully explained in letters which my hon. Friend has had from my predecessor and my right hon. Friend. It is all part of the normal process and Mr. Holland has not been and is not being victimised in any way. Just the reverse; we have done what we can to help him.

To clarify matters, perhaps I should say, in conclusion that the position is the same as it was when Mr. Holland came to the Ministry and saw my predecessor. It is that we are ready to re-examine Mr. Holland's case and all the circumstances which have led up to it when some reasonable estimate of his loss can be made on a proper determination of what part of his property is required for the new road. We do not retire from that position at all, but the time taken to do this—I do not like using the word "delay", because there has been no delay—is inseparable from the normal procedure and cannot be speeded up without prejudicing the rights of other citizens, which is obviously out of the question.

However, I will give this assurance, that while we must continue to reserve our views about the property as a whole, I can say that we will sympathetically consider the advance purchase of whatever part of the grounds of Mr. Holland's house are found to be necessary for the construction of the road. I am sure that my hon. Friend will understand me when I tell him that I cannot go further than that tonight. But I hope that I have shown him that his persistence has produced results and that we have already set in train action which, I trust, in due course will result in a mutually satisfactory solution to this difficult and very long-standing problem.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at half-past Ten o'clock.