ADMINISTRATION OF ESTATES (SMALL PAYMENTS) BILL (Hansard, 18 June 1965)

§ Mr. Peter Mahon (Preston, South)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
The main purpose of the Bill is to achieve what is set out in the Explanatory Memorandum, namely, that all the existing limits, none of which exceeds £200 and most of which are £100 or less, should be raised to £500. The existing statutory provisions are outmoded and, because of the passing of time and particularly because of the change in money values, are totally inadequate.
At a time when people are afflicted by bereavement and have lost loved ones, it is essential that at a sad time in their lives they should be made to suffer the twin hardships of grief and financial embarrassment. At present, they suffer in both these respects as a result of the prevailing antiquated provisions.
1060 When, more than 100 years ago, the existing Measures were devised, the cost of a funeral was probably about £10 or even less. Today the cost is in the region of £100. Today amounts totalling more than £100 left by a deceased person must go into his estate and are not disbursed until his will is proved or letters of administration are taken out. This is, or it can be, a protracted business, and in the waiting period great hardship can ensue to widows, relatives or other beneficiaries.
Right hon. and hon. Members will recognise in the Bill a simple but great act of social justice, because in the knowledge of all of us great hardship has often been caused because of the deficiencies of the existing arrangements.
The Bill has several great merits to commend it. Its chief merit is that, time being a great healer, it allows people to overcome grief and, in so doing, not have to endure financial hardship. I feel, in all humility, that the Bill has so much to commend it that it does not need embellishment. It has earned unanimous approval and I am grateful to hon. Members in all parts of the House for their generous help, encouragement and acceptance of it, particularly in Committee.
On deep reflection one cannot fail to recognise that enshrined in the Bill are many splendid attributes. It does not detract from the virtues. It stimulates them. In the long-term, the Bill will add to the munificence of employers and will most certainly encourage thrift among ordniary people. It is oft-times said:

"In things certain let there be Unity.

In things doubtful let there by Liberty

But in all things let there be Charity."

In helping me to espouse my cause and to promote the Bill, hon. Members have been kindly, and charitable, and I appreciate this.
There is no need to be less than certain about the efficacy of the Bill or to be less than unified in our approach to it. It has evoked very great interest indeed and people everywhere are anxious for it to become law. Hon. Members with true discernment have sensed this from the word go and have supported it every inch of the way. I am truly honoured and exceedingly grateful.

§ Sir Knox Cunningham (Antrim, South)
I join in welcoming the Bill and supporting its Third Reading. Technically it is an extremely complicated Measure, for as the House will see from the Schedules more than 20 Statutory Instruments and 50 Acts of Parliament—the earliest of 1829 and the latest of 1965—have been amended. However, its purpose is crystal clear and, as the hon. Member for Preston South (Mr. Peter Mahon) said, it is to raise the amount from £100 to £500 which can be disposed on death without the usual formalities relating to the administration of estates. I need not stress how important and necessary is this change owing to the inflationary processes which have been going on year by year with the consequent devaluation of money. The figure or £500 today is, therefore, modest.
The hon. Member for Preston, South is to be congratulated on having introduced and piloted the Bill through. The thanks of the House are also due to my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Liverpool, Garston (Mr. Bingham), who has gladly given his advice and help.
This is a striking example of the value of a Private Member's Bill. It is unlikely that the Government could have found time for the Measure, yet it is of great social importance. It is entirely non-controversial and has been welcomed on both sides of the House. It is a good Bill and it will be of benefit to hundreds of thousands of people. I congratulate the hon. Member for Preston, South on making good law and I wish the Bill every success in its passage through another place and on to the Statute Book.

§ Mr. Leslie Hale (Oldham, West)
I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Preston, South (Mr. Peter Mahon) on having done something—perhaps I should not use the word "done"; it might be improper to anticipate the Lords spiritual, temporal and for life—of great importance. This small but important ship seems to be embarking in fair legislative seas with reasonable hope of reaching port within a measurable period of time.
My hon. Friend the Member for Preston, South, has achieved this in the first session of his first Parliament, something 1062 which I have failed to do in 20 years. Whenever I embark on the legislative seas the storms break virtually before I leave port, and many useful ships bearing my name have disappeared without my having any claim on the insurance—apart from a little flotsam and jetsam having left nothing to indicate what once seemed to be a fair voyage. My hon. Friend has achieved a considerable feat and he has managed it so well that there has been no criticism or opposition. This is indeed a Measure of real importance.
I intervene at this stage just to record how grateful we are that something has now been done that should have been done long ago. We are now paying an almost involuntary tribute to the lawyers of 750 years ago. We are not always over-generous and understanding of the legal profession and though I have never been much of a lawyer, I have never had reason to apologise for belonging to that profession, which produced Lincoln, Pym, Lenin, Danton and many other great figures of reform. Lawyers have always disliked the wretched business of charging a guinea or two to perform duties unnecessary but for Parliament, but one must pay the rent. Like members of other professions, lawyers have expenses to meet; rents for offices, the wages of clerks and so on. I recall that on one occasion earlier in my career, my rent was multiplied by five, although I am not saying that it was an excessive rent in the circumstances.
The Bill has considerable legislative importance, as can be seen by anyone who looks at the way it has been carefully drawn. It has an admirable structure. When one thinks in retrospect on this issue, one realises how this rather largely unnecessary process from start to finish has occupied our legislatures to the extent of involving the provisions of 50 or 60 Statutes. This is virtually a codifying Measure. For example, we amend the Taff Vale Railways Act, 1895, and though the Taff Vale was once a constitutional monument—I forget whether it was a monument or a pitfall—we do not know if the railway existed. We are also dealing with the Great Eastern, which I thought was the name of a ship. We have altered Statutes dating back many years.
What used to happen in my time was that an unhappy relative who had just 1063 gone through all the personal tragedy of an intimate loss then had to go to great expense, frequently the payment of funeral and medical expenses, for which in most cases no ready cash was available. It was not so much even a question of paying any duty. Often the whole estate amounted to less than £100. It was all a little obtuseness by big business always slow to revise its rules. The rule had been laid down and the bank manager had to obey it.
Earlier in my life I spent many hours drawing up documents asking for some wretched young man—perhaps the only son and where there was no widow—to be allowed a repayment without a giant. It was usually refused and he had to go to the trouble of filling out the necessary forms, Form A4 or B2 and so on.
Indeed, I remember they had to complete another document even more ridiculous which insisted—and we did not draft these things, we objected to them—that two persons of independent status should go bond for the due administration of the estate in a sum equal to double the value of the estate. That provision lasted for so many years that an intelligent insurance company found out that one safe way of making money was to issue a form of insurance instead of a bond and collect a modest premium in respect of a policy on which there was no possible risk of a claim arising in years. The people concerned did not understand what it was all about anyway and in many cases they were not prepared to take the financial risk. It was all a wretched, silly process. Successive Chancellors of the Exchequer have removed Estate Duty on these tiny estates and this is one more reason for doing what the Bill now does.
It would be an interesting exercise for a qualified lawyer to trace the history of this curious subject from the first bureaucratic idea through the complex forms and documents of various kinds and the final computation of estate, always inaccurate because one dealt separately with realty and there was the deduction of duties and so on, and the newspapers finally published a figure as "net personalty", which are words that have never had any meaning relative to the facts which the papers were 1064 endeavouring to explain. All this has gone on for years.
The last time that my hon. Friend the Member for Preston, South and I were together we were flying "English" in the stratosphere and afraid that we might be called upon to make an unhappy forced landing, but my hon. Friend pilots his planes with great care and discretion and very much in the interests of his constituents. He is to be congratulated upon it. The Bill is admirable in its drafting, construction and good sense and it was so ably and convincingly presented to the House that my hon. Friend has encountered not even the most remote form of criticism.

§ The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Niall MacDermot)
I should like to join those hon. Members who have expressed their gratitude and given their congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Preston, South (Mr. Peter Mahon) both for bringing forward the Bill and on the way he has handled it through its various stages.
As the hon. and learned Member for Antrim, South (Sir Knox Cunningham) has indicated, this Measure is one of a kind which I think any Government of any complexion would be glad to see introduced. But it is also of a kind, such is the pressure on Parliamentary time, which it would be difficult for a Government to find time to introduce. Certainly as things stand we are dependent upon the good judgment of those hon. Members who have good fortune in the Ballot to pick out particular Bills which we may think are worthy of support. If I may speak on behalf of the Treasury, we were delighted when my hon. Friend chose this as a subject for a Private Member's Bill. It may be that after the House has had time to consider the Report of the Select Committee on Procedure ways may be found whereby we shall be less dependent on Private Members' Bills than we are at the moment for bringing forward a great deal of useful non-controversial law reform Measures.
This is what this Measure is. It redefines a great deal of social legislation, much of it going back over 100 years, and much of which is largely spent in its force due to the fall in the value of money. One has only to look at the 1065 Schedules to the Bill to find how far back this legislation goes. The earliest Act affected is the Friendly Societies Act, 1829. II: was realised as early as that date what hardship it can be for people of small means when one of their near and dear relatives dies and leaves a small sum which may help to tide over the most difficult period of all when people are readjusting themselves to the loss of the breadwinner in the family.
There can be real hardship if delays are imposed upon them in obtaining these necessary sums, and a great deal of administrative work has to be done before this is achieved. Therefore, as far back as 1829, it was found right to exempt these small sums from these formalities. The limit which is now raised was fixed over 100 years ago. Once it was fixed it tended to be followed, and it was followed in legislation in this century. As has been said, there was an instance where £200 was fixed but that was the highest and in nearly all the legislation affected by the Bill the limit is £100. The limit which my hon. Friend has thought right to recommend to the House, and which certainly has our support as being the right kind of figure to fix today, is £500 and, as hon. Members will have seen, there is provision whereby if necessary in future times that can be raised again by Treasury order, with, of course, the necessity for an affirmative Resolution by Parliament.
Full Parliamentary control will therefore be retained, but if the only purpose then is simply to raise the amount to adjust to altered circumstances we shall not need all the formality of a full Act of Parliament. A Bill was obviously needed on this occasion because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Hale) has been stressing, this is almost a Measure of consolidation in itself. It tidies up the law in many ways. It is technically complicated although the object which it sets out to achieve, and which we all agree it has achieved, is simple. As my hon. Friend the Member for Preston, South said, this is an act of justice. I hope that it receives the support of hon. Members on both sides of the House and may be swiftly passed into law.