Clause 2.—(RELIEF FOR RESIDENTIAL OCCUPIERS OF DWELLINGS.) (Hansard, 19 February 1964)

§ The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (Mr. F. V. Corfield)
I beg to move, in page 1, line 18, to leave out from "dwelling" to the end of line 2 on page 2.
I think that it might be convenient, Mr. Speaker, if we were to consider with this Amendment the other seven Government Amendments, all connected with the sane point.

§ Mr. Speaker
Yes, if the. House so pleases.

§ Mr. Corfield
This group of Amendments is designed to give effect to a proposal made in Standing Committee by the hon Member for Fulham (Mr. M. Stewart) which the Government accepted in principle. Under the Bill as presented, Clause 2 would apply only to dwellings which were rated on 31st March, 1963. This is the effect of the words which the first Amendment would delete. This restriction was deliberate because the Bill was designed to deal with the sharp increases in rates following the 1963 valuation. If a dwelling was not ra[...]ed immediately before the new valuation lists came into force, either because it did not then exist or because it was vacant on that date, there could hardly be said to have been an increase in rates following revaluation.
This approach was welcomed by some hon. Members of the Committee on the 1319 ground that it would be wrong to give relief to a family which had moved into a dwelling after 31st March, 1963, knowing full well what the level of rates would be. But, as the hon. Member for Fulham pointed out in a very persuasive speech, there could be circumstances in which a local authority might think it appropriate to give relief nevertheless, for instance, when an old person was being moved into an old person's unit of accommodation.
This series of Amendments is designed to deal with that and similar cases. The later Amendments deal mainly with the necessary provisions for putting a notional pre-revaluation valuation upon the property in order that the calculation may be carried out. The second Amendment deals with the valuation. I promised my hon. Friend the Member for the City of Chester (Mr. Temple) in Committee that I would consider the question of a divisor in order to give the valuation officers a quick rule of thumb in dealing with the valuation and to ease the pressure on the valuation staff. I appreciate that the valuation officers have a heavy burden, but I think that my hon. Friend will agree that it would be an immensely difficult task to find a series of divisors which would be satisfactory. Conditions vary very much, even in the same area, depending on the type of house, and so on, and in different parts of the country.
We think that it will be fairly rare that a case of this sort will arise. The valuation officer will be called upon to put this notional valuation on a property if, but only if, the rating authority requests. Therefore, we do not anticipate that the extra load will be very heavy and I think that the formulation of a series of divisors might prove a heavier burden than the valuations of the properties and certainly would not be as satisfactory.

§ Mr. M. Stewart
As the Parliamentary Secretary has said, the number of people and houses affected by the Amendments is not likely to be large. On the other hand, if these Amendments had not been made there might have been a few but flagrant anomalous cases and it would have been too late to prevent them.
The Parliamentary Secretary gave me the credit for the Amendment. There 1320 fore, before the lightning strikes me. I had better place the glory where it is due—partly on my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Mr. Reynolds), who, with his customary shrewdness in these matters, spotted this gap in the Bill within about five minutes of reading it, and partly on the treasurer of the Bullingdon Rural District Council, who wrote me a most helpful letter suggesting a way in which the matter might be rectified. That exact method of dealing with it did not commend itself to the Government. Any method suggested by anybody else never does commend itself to any Government, but I am happy that—in what I am prepared to believe is, for drafting reasons, the most satisfactory way—the basic principle is to be included in the Bill.