New Clause.—(FURTHER PROVISIONS AS TO COMPENSATION.) (Hansard, 5 July 1966)

§ Mr. Graham Page

I beg to move, That the Clause be read a Second time.

This new Clause raises again the point of payment of compensation and I wonder if I can hope to get the same sort of undertaking from the Liverpool Corporation as the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board was good enough to give on the previous Bill. The question of the payment of compensation was raised n the earlier discussion on this Bill in Committee upstairs and the corporation has given an undertaking concerning payments. The undertaking was given to petitioners against the Bill on their withdrawing their petition. I quote from a hart of the undertaking: Furthermore the Corporation, for its part. will use its best endeavours to settle the purchase price and investigate title in any particular case without undue delay with a view 10 insuring that the purchase moneys may be paid as quickly as possible … However, that relates only to the payment of purchase money after the purchase price has been agreed. It is the position before the purchase price has been agreed with which I am mainly concerned—where the owner of the property or anyone else with an interest in it is not prepared to accept the compensation offered by the acquiring authority. The acquiring authority is not always right in its valuation of a property, otherwise no cases would come before the Lands Tribunal. 'The fact is that many cases do come before the Lands Tribunal and the acquiring authority is held to have offered too low a figure. But it takes time to act a case before the Lands Tribunal, and my proposal in this new Clause is that if the corporation wants to enter into property it should be prepared to pay 358 a large proportion of the value as recommended by the district valuer.

I cannot see that this can really be any hardship to the corporation. It seems to be a very practical and fair provision. If the Minister feels that a local authority ought not to put a provision like this in a Private Bill in case it becomes some sort of precedent, perhaps the Corporation would be prepared to give an undertaking. I am not sure whether the Corporation has power in fact to make a payment of this sort, but I think that it possibly has. After all, not the whole of the money is coming from the Exchequer; a large proportion of it is coming from the ratepayer, and the corporation would have complete control over the money which it raises itself.

I believe that the corporation could give an undertaking in place of inserting this new Clause in the Bill. I have said before, I always prefer a statement in a Bill rather than have an undertaking outside it, but in this case I would hope that something might be put forward whereby we could be assured that the owner who was unable to agree the price put forward by the corporation was not forced, by lack of funds, to agree what he believed to be less compensation than that to which he was entitled.

I thought the statement made on the previous new Clause by the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Mr. Ogden) was rather extraordinary. I now wonder whether he intends to support me on this new Clause and to say that all the rest of his colleagues will keep silent because they want the Bill to get its Second Reading. The hon. Gentleman said "So that the Bill could get through its Second Reading," but he is a long way behind the times. The Bill got through its Second Reading because I withdrew objection to it before the last General Election by agreement with the corporation that on Report I would raise the points I had wished to raise on Second Reading. By my putting these new Clauses on the Order Paper on Report the passage of the Bill has in no way been delayed, but I have exerted the right as a Member of this House to raise in debate matters in a Private Bill.