Schedule 3.—(REGISTRATION OF RENTS). (Hansard, 1 November 1965)

§ Mr. MacColl
I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment.

§ Mr. Speaker
I understand that we are taking with this Amendment Lords Amendments Nos. 38 to 45.

§ Mr. MacColl
This matter looks extremely complicated, but it is not as bad as it looks. It deals with a point which has been discussed earlier, that of getting references to the rent assessment committee if they are out of time. The point has been raised that if the rent officer's decisions begin to look irregular someone might want to make a reference to the rent assessment committee after the statutory period had passed.
The rent officer has power to refer matters to the rent assessment committee and he can allow objections out of time. That still leaves one with the problem that if the rent officer unwisely is being "sticky" and says that he does not want to refer matters to the rent assessment committee, there should be some means of enabling an application to be made to the committee, rather like leave to appeal to a higher court.
This question was discussed in Amendments put down in Committee and these Amendments are the result of our cogitations. The effect is that, first, the rent officer has the power to make the reference, but if he fails to do so then he must pass on the request to the rent assessment committee. The main reason why this sounds difficult is that there is no appeal to the rent assessment committee as an appellate body; it is a reference by the rent officer to the rent assessment committee. That is why it has to be done in this complicated way. The intention is to ensure that both landlords and tenants who are out of time are able to go to the rent assessment committee and get permission for their case to be looked at again.

§ Mr. Allason
We have had a rather different explanation of the reason for these Amendments than that given by the Government spokesman in another place, when he said that the intention of the Amendments was to meet the criticism of the Opposition as regards timing. On this occasion, we have had an entirely different explanation, and perhaps a somewhat more satisfactory one, because I regarded the explanation as regards timing as extremely odd. All that we are doing here as regards timing is changing the referee and not giving any extension of time.
If it is a matter of meeting the criticism of the Opposition, I wonder whether the 832 Government would be prepared to leave it to the Opposition and take their decision about whether this is a valuable series of Amendments. They seem to me to have considerably different effects to those described by the Joint Parliamentary Secretary. He has spoken about the occasion when an appeal out of time is necessary because the rent assessment committees are now giving considerably different decisions to the earlier decisions that were given immediately after the process had been introduced.
Surely, a rent officer would not himself reject these appeals. He would be a most conscientious person and it is unlikely that he would reject them. It is much more likely that the type of case which a rent officer rejects is one which has no merit and in which the rent has been long decided and then, many months later, the landlord or tenant says, "I am rather fed up with that decision. I think that I ought to have a bash at changing it", entirely forgetting that it should last for three years. Twelve months afterwards, perhaps somebody comes forward and says that he would like to appeal out of time, and the rent officer might say, "Do not be ridiculous. You are not entitled to be so far out of time as this."
Under the Amendment, the rent officer may no longer exercise his judgment. He is now forced to go to the rent assessment committee and place all the facts before it. Therefore, on every occasion when, under the original terms of the Bill, the rent officer would have refused that permission, he must now submit a full report to the rent assessment committee. That committee will have to go carefully into a case of which it knows absolutely nothing, get itself fully informed on it and judge whether the rent officer has been reasonable. In such circumstances, the result is only to pile more work on the rent assessment committees. We are already worried that they will be overloaded.
Therefore, if the test is whether to trust a rent officer or to pile more work upon the rent assessment committees because the rent officer cannot be trusted, perhaps the Government should consider the appointment of the rent officer and whether he is a good person. I believe that rent officers will be good people and can be trusted and that it will be 833 unnecessary, therefore, to provide this extra appeal to the rent assessment committees. I speak entirely for myself in saying that I do not think that rent officers are likely to be unreasonable and that, therefore, these Amendments are unnecessary.

§ Mr. MacColl
By leave of the House I would just say that what the hon. Gentleman has just said may well be true, but it is the price of seeing that justice is appearing to be done. There might be a rent officer who stands on his dignity and does not like a reference made and tries to discourage it. We feel that the rent assessment committee should have a comprehensive survey of the position, to get a balance between the rents. Therefore, it should not be handicapped. It is perfectly true that if there were a lack of confidence in the rent officer it might lead to frivolous applications, but we cannot do the two things—have freedom of access to the rent assessment committee and at the same time not run the risk of frivolous applications. On balance, we think this is worth doing.