HC Deb 15 June 1965 vol 714 cc401-3
Mr. Patrick Jenkin (Wandstead and Woodford)

I beg to move Amendment No. 500, in page 69, line 7, to leave out "(leases or premiums, etc.)" and to add: (treatment of premiums as rent, etc.)". I do not wish to depress the Treasury Bench, but with this Amendment we are half way to the thousand, though by the pages of the Bill we are less than one-third of the way through. I do not wish right hon. Gentlemen opposite to go home in an unhappy frame of mind, but it is interesting to note that of over 750 Amendments nearly 300 have been tabled by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. This is a most ramshackle Bill. It will end up like the Irishman's waistcoat—seven new backs and nine new fronts—or like the Chinaman's axe—six new handles and five new heads.

It is about time that we recognised the enormous haste with which the Bill has been flung together. It set the Parliamentary draftsmen an impossible task and one can only marvel at the skill with which they have wrestled with the problems with which they were faced. However, inevitably the Bill is riddled with mistakes which we have had to put right. One might suggest that the Chancellor should end by tabling a new Clause ending with "E. and O.E." The Bill is like counsel who started a statement of claim by saying that on the day stated the plaintiff—

The Temporary Chairman (Sir Herbert Butcher)

Order. The hon. Gentleman would be well advised to come to his Amendment.

Mr. Jenkin

The Clause clearly bears evidence of having been drafted in extreme haste. It has a palpable mistake, for the words which I propose to delete are meaningless. Yet all the draftsmen had to do was to take the side note from the relevant Section of the Finance Act, 1963, as I have done, and adapt it so as to refer to all three Sections of that Act. I submit that I have brought light where only darkness existed before.

Perhaps the explanation of how the draftsmen came to make this extraordinary mistake is that Sections 22, 23 and 24 of the 1963 Act deal with a number of complex matters relating to land—leases for premiums, or at lower than market values, sales subject to right of re-conveyance and other complicated matters. One can appreciate that this required great expertise.

I wonder whether possibly the Chancellor turned for advice to what I understand is a fairly recently formed organisation which advertised in the Sunday Telegraph on 2nd May. I quote the advertisement: 95 per cent. mortgages still available up to £6,000, 90 per cent. up to £15,000, under our exclusive executive house purchase plan. Write giving details of age, salary, purchase price and loan required to The Harold Wilson Organisation, Cromwell House, Waverley Street, Nottingham. I would submit that this is a matter which requires the closest investigation, and I refer it to my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, South (Mr. William Clark). I am happy to put right what obviously has gone wrong as the result of the advice tendered by the other Harold Wilson organisation and for which that organisation must be held entirely responsible.

Sir Eric Fletcher

A great deal of what the hon. Member said seemed to me totally irrelevant to the Amendment he has proposed, but I must take exception to his introductory remarks in which he complained about the draftsmanship of the Bill. I think that by most connoisseurs of Parliamentary draftsmanship the Bill would be regarded as a masterpiece of elegance and lucidity—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] It may be difficult for some hon. Members opposite to understand it, but it only requires an elementary amount of attention to its Clauses for anyone to realise that it is couched in the simplest and clearest possible language.

These strictures which hon. Members opposite continually are making about the draftsmanship—I am not talking about the principles of the Bill, but about the draftsmanship—are completely unfounded. Every independent, objective lawyer to whom I have talked about it, every accountant—everybody who has really taken the trouble to read the Bill through carefully—has been impressed with the masterly way in which this complicated subject has been condensed into lucid and intelligible English.

Having said that, I do not want to take away from the hon. Gentleman any credit he may claim to himself for having detected a very minor technical flaw in one line which merely is a description of a Section in an Act. I think, perhaps, that the Amendment he proposes is an improvement on the words in the Clause as drawn, and for that reason I am prepared to advise the Committee to accept it.

Mr. Heath

In view of the Minister's open declaration that he has come not to bury my hon. Friend, but to praise him, we accept it.

Amendment agreed to.

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