HC Deb 26 October 1966 vol 734 cc1167-76
Mr. Walter Clegg (North Fylde)

I beg to move Amendment No. 4, in page 5, line 4, at the beginning to insert: (1) The power to acquire land shall not be exercisable by the Commission unless—

  1. (a) the Commission is satisfied that the land to be acquired is the right land for the implementation of national, regional or local development plans and will not be available at the right time for such implementation; or
  2. (b) the Commission is directed by regulations made by the appropriate Minister or Minister by virtue of subsection (3) of section 1 of this Act to exercise that power in a specified instance.
Since I consider that this is a paving or linking Amendment to Amendment No. 5, in page 5, leave out line 9 and insert: 'in respect of which there is planning permission for the carrying out of a material development implementing (in the opinion of the Commission) current national, regional or local development plans'. I would like to take the two together, with the permission of the House.

Mr. Deputy Speaker

Is that to the convenience of the House?

Mr. Willey indicated assent.

Mr. Clegg

The avowed object of this Amendment is to limit the wide powers which are given to the Commission under Clause 6. We do this in two ways, but the underlying motives behind the Amendment are to bring the Clause into line with the White Paper and the Government's intentions at that time. The objectives of the Government's land policy, as set out on page 4 of the White Paper, are twofold. We are only concerned with the first, which is: to secure that the right land is available at the right time for the implementation of national, regional and local plans. These words are echoed in this Amendment. We have gone somewhat further than that and given the Minister power, by Regulation to be approved by the House, power to extend the powers of the Commission to acquire land. The second Amendment is on similar terms. It seeks to limit the power of the Commission by limiting it to land where planning permission has been obtained, subject to the words that I have mentioned.

When we debated somewhat similar attempts by this side to limit the powers of the Commission, I was told on frequent occasions by the Minister, and particularly by the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Mr. Manuel), who, I regret, is not now present, that I was doing that only because I was suspicious. My suspicions are still there. If the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire were present, I would say that they were not merely the suspicions of a lawyer but were also the suspicions of someone who owns a little land and the suspicions of a politician.

When the arguments were put against our limiting the powers of the Commission, it was quite frequently said that the Commission would be a responsible body. The implication was that a responsible public body would always see that justice was done. I took leave then, and I still do, to reject that argument, because I am by no means convinced that the Commission would always do the right thing. It will be a very powerful body; it is to have extremely wide powers. I believe that once it gets the bit between its teeth, it could make decisions which could be repugnant to many private citizens. Therefore, we believe that its power should be limited, in this case to the objectives which the Government have set themselves.

I am not by any means the only person who feels suspicious of public bodies, even public bodies which are democratically elected, which, of course, the Land Commission is not. It is an appointed body. Before I came in to the debate today, I looked at the "tape" and under the heading of "Get-rich-quick rewards" I saw this report from the Rating and Valuation Association conference at Eastbourne: Mr. G. A. Neill, a chartered surveyor, today described as an unhappy feature the tendency on the part of some local authorities to take too short a view of development and to regard themselves as a sort of glorified board of directors instead of the duly elected representatives that they are, and to regard the electorate as shareholders to get-rich-quick rewards. This attitude, he thought, was fundamentally wrong as it ignores long-term considerations and takes into account only short-term material benefits. If that is being said about a democratically elected body as a glorified board of directors, it could be said with even more power about the Land Commission, which, in effect, is a board of directors governing a company which has £45 million, and possibly £75 million, to invest in the purchase of land.

We feel, therefore, that these Amendments are reasonable. They do not seek to prevent the Government from attaining the objectives which they set themselves in the White Paper. All we seek to do is to limit the Commission from going beyond its powers.

Sir D. Walker-Smith

I rise briefly to support the Amendment moved in such persuasive terms by my hon. Friend the Member for North Fylde (Mr. Clegg). Although time goes on, the House will appreciate that this is a vitally important Clause in the Bill, giving these very wide and unprecedented powers of compulsory acquisition to this new creature of statute, the Land Commission.

Although certain limitations are put upon the power of compulsory acquisition between the first and the second appointed days—and there are those who feel that the second appointed day may never arise; that is something which we shall see in the future—these limitations, however, which are prescribed in subsection (4), come to an end once there is a second appointed day, if second appointed day there be, and the powers of acquisition are then as defined in subsection (3).

Those powers are, I think one must say, dangerously wide and undefined in the relation to what they will enable the Land Commission to do. I am putting it shortly. My own feeling in regard to the powers of acquisition given by this Clause 6 is that, in so far as the powers are directed to a useful and appropriate end, they are almost entirely powers already exercised or exercisable in law by local planning authorities. They are, that is to say, duplicate powers given to a body which will not have any elective status or responsibility, when such powers are already exercisable by authorities which are directly responsible to democratic election. In so far, on the other hand, as they are new powers which are not duplicate powers already existing, they go so wide as virtually to give carte blanche to the Land Commission.

In support of the first of those propositions, the powers given in Clause 6(3,c), the land is designated by the current development plan as subject to compulsory acquisition that is, of course, a clear duplicate of the powers already exercisable by the local planning authority under Section 67 of the Town and Country Planning Act, 1962.

In support of the second proposition, that in so far as the powers are not duplicate powers they are dangerously wide and imprecise, I would refer the House to the immediately preceding paragraph (b) of that subsection (3), which gives power of compulsory acquisition of land allocated for purposes of any such description, as may be prescribed for the purposes of this subsection". There is no limitation, so far as I know, written into this Bill on the power of the Minister to prescribe, or on the range within which he may prescribe; and that means, therefore, this power of compulsory acquisition will be or may be given to the Land Commission in respect of land appearing in the allocation—or zoning, to use the popular idiom—in a development plan. All land, other than land which, again in the jargon of these matters, is called white land, will be susceptible to compulsory acquisition by the Land Commission under Clause 6(3,b).

When one looks at that in the context of the rest of the Bill, when one sees that these compulsory acquisitions may be carried out under the special procedures of Clause 8, that is to say, without the right of a public local inquiry or even the opportunity to be heard when objection can be raised, when one considers the extension of the powers of accelerating vesting under Clauses 9 and 10, the House will appreciate the enormous step—not step forward, I think step backward is the more appropriate constitutional description—taken by this Clause in giving these very extensive powers of compulsory acquisition to a non-elected body armed with these special rights and procedures.

That being so, it is obviously desirable that some constitutional limits and safeguards should be attached to these rights. Those which are enshrined in the Amendment are very modest and moderate. There might be a case for a substantially tighter restriction on the powers than that put forward in my hon. Friend's Amendment, but, as he said, he erred on the side of caution and based his Amendment on the original proposals of the Government in the White Paper. Therefore, one would hope that the Minister would see his way to accept this restriction, not a dramatic or drastic one but a modest one, upon the very extensive powers which the Bill will otherwise confer.

11.0 p.m.

Sir D. Glover

I do not suppose that the Minister will accept the Amendment, but my hon. Friend the Member for North Fylde (Mr. Clegg) has done the House a service by moving it.

If one takes Clauses 8, 9 and 10 into account, it seems that the Land Commission is being given far too wide a power and an unnecessarily wide one. The idea that because a group of people are called together, however carefully selected, by a Minister they are beyond sin is one of the biggest fallacies of modern government. Once people become members of any commission and occupy a position of power—it has been said that power corrupts—they have a vested interest in doing to excess what the legislation allows them to do. This is ordinary human reaction. To say that because it is a public body and is statutorily appointed it will always act with moderation is not proved by historical precedent. Once people are in that position, they will gradually over the years—they may be all right for the first year—collect the barnacles around their corporate existence which are the result of the powers that exist in that corporate existence. If these people are given the wide powers in the Bill, particularly with the limitations in Clauses 8, 9 and 10, inevitably they will quickly begin to use them to the limit allowed by the Bill.

The Commission is not an elected body; it is a statutory body with all the evils that grow up with such a body. In debates over the years we have had criticisms of the powers of statutory bodies. Their collective wisdom can often be equalled by their collective evil. There is no certainty that because they are appointed by a Minister they will be angels from heaven. There may be a collective mistake in their appointment. They may all be—I am sure that the Minister would not do this—Left-wing ideological Socialists. Equally, they might be of a totally different political complexion. But the idea that because they are statutorily appointed they do not suffer from the ordinary evils from which humans beings suffer is a fallacy that the House should get rid of.

Up to now most of the powers that were necessary for the compulsory purchase of land existed in the hands of local authorities. I doubt whether they need any more powers. If they do not need any more powers, the Commission does not need any more powers than already exist in the hands of the local authorities. But there is one great difference, and it is that the local authorities are elected by a democratic process. If we decide that the Lancashire County Council is handling the affairs of land purchase in a bad way, every three years the electors of Lancashire have the right to make a change. Under this statutory Commission, appointed by the Minister, the electors have no control over it. That sort of statutory body, if anything, ought to have smaller powers than a body like the Lancashire County Council, which is elected by a demorcratic process.

I ask the Minister, even at this late stage, to consider whether, before the Bill reaches the Statute Book, he would not look sympathetically at the Amendment so ably moved by my hon. Friend the Member for North Fylde and supported ably by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hertfordshire, East (Sir D. Walker-Smith), or at some similar wording. There is a great danger in giving greater powers to a statutory body than already exist to an elected body which, when it comes down to it, is fundamentally the lack of wisdom on the part of the Minister who will have the responsibility of appointing that body. If he makes a nonsense of the appointment, think of the power which he has given to that body.

I ask the right hon. Gentleman to think again about this Amendment.

Mr. Willey

I have great difficulty in responding to the hon. Member for Ormskirk (Sir D. Glover), in view of what he has just said. If he looks at the proposed Amendment, he will read: The power to acquire land shall not be exercisable by the Commission unless—

  1. (a) the Commission is satisfied that the land to be acquired is the right land for the implementation of national, regional or local development plans and will not be available at the right time for such implementation; or
    2. 1173
  2. (b) the Commission is directed by regulations made by the appropriate Minister or Minister by virtue of subsection (3) of Section 1 of this Act to exercise that power in a specified instance."
That rather makes nonsense of a discussion which we had a short time ago. It envisages a very bureaucratic way of working for the Commission.

The first few lines of the provisions have regard to acquisitions by the Land Commission, and would say at the start that we envisage the Land Commission exercising the power to acquire because it is so directed by regulations coming from this House in a specified instance.

That is one of the reasons why I could not accept these Amendments. The major reason, however, is this. I have listened carefully to what the right hon. Member for Hertfordshire, East (Sir D. Walker-Smith) said, and I am sure that he would agree with me that, at any rate, we have the presentation right in the Bill. The first subsection is dealing not only with purchase by compulsory powers but also with purchase by agreement. No hon. Member opposite has directed his attention to that at all. We deal with the powers to acquire both by agreement and by compulsory purchase, and then we go on to define the conditions under which the powers of compulsory purchase can be exercised.

It is under subsection (3) that we provide that compulsory purchase will only be within the framework of planning decisions. The right hon. Gentleman made criticisms of these powers going very wide, but he has not put forward any amendments to these provisions.

If we rely instead upon the present Amendment, we face not only the difficulties to which I have called attention. I thought that it was generally accepted that the Land Commission should acquire land well in advance of development. That would be one of the purposes of the Land Commission in getting land well in advance and managing it meanwhile. It could not do that under the present provisions. It would be quite impossible for the Land Commission to buy land in advance and be satisfied before buying it that otherwise it would not be available at the right time. We know the source from which the right hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends got their inspiration to put down this Amendment, but if we accept that source we have to put it in proper Parliamentary form. That is what we have done in the Clause as it stands.

Mr. Graham Page

I am sorry that the right hon. Gentleman has misread the Amendment and has not grasped its purpose. The Commission is set up for some purpose. I gather that it is not set up for the purpose of seizing people's land indiscriminately. It is set up, as is said in the White Paper, to secure that the right land is available at the right time for the implementation of national, regional and local plans. That is set out clearly in Cmnd. 2771, on which this Bill was based.

If that is the purpose of the Commission, it should first have regard to that purpose, and that is what we have set out in paragraph (a) of Amendment No. 4, that the Commission should pay attention to the purposes for which the Government have put it into existence. As I understand it, there is nothing improper now about putting White Papers and phrases from White Papers into Acts. Apparently it is proper, after the Prices and Incomes Act, to write the whole of a White Paper into a Statute. We have been modest here and have merely taken a few words out of the White Paper to show the purpose of the Commission.

If the Commission wishes to go outside that purpose, paragraph (b) comes into operation, that is to say, the Commission must come to the Minister and say, "We want to acquire some land, not because it is the right land to be made available at the right time for the implementation of national, regional and local plans, but for some other purpose". If the Commission wants to do that, it should come to the Minister, and he should bring the matter before Parliament by means of regulations to allow the Commission to go outside the scope of the purpose for which it was set up.

As has been said in this debate, when we have given compulsory powers in the past, we have given them to elected bodies. In certain cases we have given them to statutory bodies as well, but in every case, as far as I know, we have expressed the purpose for which the compulsory powers were to be used. We have never given any statutory body, or an elected body, a blank cheque to purchase property compulsorily without a purpose. This is what we want to put into the Clause, which, as it stands, gives the Commission wide powers.

As I read the Clause, the Commission will have very few limitations. It is true that there are these subsections about first appointed day, and second appointed day, and so on, but on reading the paragraphs under the lettering I should have thought that the draftsman had covered every possibility, and that the Commission could bring itself within any of those subparagraphs without any difficulty at all, whatever land it wished to acquire. Thus the limits are negligible, and really the rest of the Clause does not mean anything.

If the Commission is acquiring land, it is surely acquiring it for the purpose of development, whether it is immediate development, or whether it is acquiring it in advance of the time at which it desires to develop. If that is the case, before the Commission acquires land it should see that there is planning permission for the development which it wishes to carry out. That is the purpose of Amendment No. 5. The Commission should not go fishing around for plots of land, and then some time in the future decide that it will develop this or that on the land. Before it acquires land it should see that there is planning permission, and that that planning permission allows the development for which the land is to be purchased. There is no difficulty about this for the Commission, and it is a protection to the victim of the compulsory purchase—the previous owner of the land.

11.15 p.m.

The Commission, without owning the land, can make its application for planning permission without being obliged to do that. If the Clause remains as drafted the Commission can acquire land and then decide later for what purpose it will develop it. This is not the purpose for which it was set up. It is not the purpose set out in the White Paper or the purpose which was understood in the debates on the White Paper, or even in the debate on the Second Reading. The Commission was to bring forward the right land at the right time for the implementation of national, regional or local plans. That is the point to which it should pay attention. It cannot pay attention to that unless it knows what permission it has for the development of land. Therefore, before it acquires any land it should see that there is planning permission in respect of that land. This will at least be some protection to the owners of land, and it will be some protection to Parliament to know what the Commission is doing and what activities it is undertaking.

I do not know why the Minister wants to give the Commission these unlimited powers. Is it so that by specific directions under Clause 1 it can be used as the vehicle of Ministerial directions? I would not accuse the present Minister of that, but we do not know what other Minister might take his place in due course. Under the Bill no purpose is set down for which the Commission can acquire land. Under Clause 1 a Minister can order it to acquire land for any purpose he chooses by a specific direction. There is no protection to the public. There never has been a Bill like this before—not even in wartime—which allows the Government to take property from the subject in the way that this Bill does.

Amendment negatived.

Amendment proposed: In page 5, leave out line 9 and insert: 'in respect of which there is planning permission for the carrying out of a material development implementing (in the opinion of the Commission) current national, regional or local development plans'.—[Mr. Clegg.]

Amendment negatived.