New Clause.—(ALLOWANCE OR DEDUCTION IN CERTAIN CASES.) (Hansard, 26 October 1966)

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

§ Mr. Graham Page
On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. It would obviously be of convenience to the House if with this new Clause we could discuss the two Schedules referred to in it. Again I invite the right hon. Gentleman to agree that this should be done.
1055 If you will bear with me for a few more sentences, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, the point here is quite different from that on the previous Clause. New Clauses 3 and 4 are substantive. Both of them refer to the Schedules—Allowance in respect of Estate Duty and Deductions from levy in respect of Capital Gains Tax and Corporation Tax—so that, if we do not discuss these two Schedules with new Clause 2, treating it purely as a paving Clause, we shall, when we come to new Clauses 3 and 4, be in the dark about what we are debating. The point is different from that raised previously, and surely the right hon. Gentleman will agree to the Schedules being discussed with new Clause 2.

§ Mr. Willey
In this, as in the other case, I am sure that it is best to take the Schedules in the order in which they appear on the Order Paper. The appropriate place to discuss these provisions will be when we get to the Schedules. There will be plenty of opportunity to do it then.

§ Mr. Peyton
We have had enough of this. The right hon. Gentleman showed himself most contemptuous of the convenience of the House last time, while claiming that what he was doing was actually for its convenience. But he never consulted the House and remained proof against arguments from both sides. I hope that he will think again and give us a chance to introduce matters which are strictly relevant. I do not understand how, for the second time, he can object to discussing the Schedules at this stage.

§ Sir D. Walker-Smith
The Minister has been short and brusque in reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page). That is the sort of thing which one may expect, albeit with regret from harassed Ministers in the small hours on technical Bills. But it is only 10 minutes past 5 in the afternoon and the Minister has so far not charged his energy or intellectuality with much explanation to the House. It is most peculiar as well as discourteous that he should not have afforded us any reason or alleged reason for differing from the proposition put by my hon. Friend.
My hon. Friend put the case clearly and gave a valid reason for saying that 1056 the Schedules should be taken with new Clause 2 and that it could not possibly be discussed without them. The right hon. Gentleman has not addressed himself to that reason. He has merely stated that it is better to take the Schedules and Clauses in the order in which they stand on the Order Paper. But that is not a self-evident proposition. It is denied by the constant practice of the House—for example, on every Finance Bill for years.
One wonders where the right hon. Gentleman has been all this time if he thinks that there is any automatic or irrebuttable presumption in favour of following the Order Paper. Will he, therefore, be good enough to give an answer, if he has an answer, to my hon. Friend? If he does not give it, we can only conclude that he has no answer or no sufficient answer.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
The right hon. and learned Member for Hertfordshire, East (Sir D. Walker-Smith) will appreciate that I am bound by the rules of order. I can only depart from the order of Amendments on the Order Paper with the consent of the House.

§ Sir D. Walker-Smith
With respect, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I entirely accept that and understand it. My reference to the practice of the House on previous occasions was, of course, to a practice sanctioned by the Chair with the express approval of the House.

§ Mr. Graham Page
On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The Minister did not address his mind to the main point of my invitation that he should give his agreement to discussing the Schedules with new Clause 2, and perhaps I did not make it fully clear to him. I do not see how we can possibly discuss new Clause 2 or new Clauses 3 and 4 when we have not yet dealt with the Schedules to which they refer. New Clauses 3 and 4 are in no way paving Clauses. They cover nearly two sheets of the Order Paper and are substantive Clauses. They have the words … Schedule (Allowance in respect of estate duty)… and … Schedule (Deductions from levy in respect of Capital Gains Tax and Corporation Tax)… 1057 I presume that these are the Schedules also referred to in new Clause 2, and until we know the contents of the Schedules or have them explained to us, I cannot see how we can deal with substantive new Clauses. If we give the right hon. Gentleman the point and agree that Clause 2 is a paving Clause with which he does not wish to discuss the Schedules, the House will be in an impossible position when we get to new Clauses 3 and 4.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
I am sure that the hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page) has been long enough in the House to appreciate that difficulties and inconveniences of this kind often arise. I am bound by the rules of order and, however inconvenient it might seem to some hon. Members, I cannot depart from the prescribed rules except by the wish and approval of the House.

§ Mr. Eyre
Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. This is not a matter of inconvenience to the House alone but of considerable inconvenience to the great mass of citizens outside. The Minister is bringing in a revolutionary Bill with revolutionary Clauses undermining seriously the rights of ordinary people in the ownership of land. He is doing it so far without explanation of the system and without proper discussion of the developments of that system.
Parliament cannot be made a nonsense of in this fashion, and the right hon. Gentleman should no longer shelter behind a subterfuge. He should allow the matter to be discussed in proper fashion by allowing consideration of these Schedules with new Clause 2.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
In so far as that intervention is in order, I must point out that it is up to the House itself to change the rules of order if it so wishes to allow the Chairman latitude or discretion in this matter, but until the rules of order are changed, I cannot alter the sequence on the Amendment Paper without the consent of the whole House.

§ Sir J. Foster
Further to that point of order. I ask your Ruling, Mr. Deputy Speaker, on new Clauses 3 and 4. I submit that no one can maintain that they are paving Clauses but are substantive Clauses. I ask whether the Ruling of Mr. Speaker with regard to new Clause 1 does not apply to this case, because his 1058 Ruling was given on the basis that new Clause 1 was a paving Clause. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] Here we have a number of technical expressions which will have to be interpreted by reference to the Schedules.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
I think that the right hon. and learned Gentleman will agree that it might be better to raise that point of order when we come to new Clause 3.

§ Mr. Willey
New Clause 2 is a linking Clause. It provides a link in the Bill with the Schedules on Estate Duty and deductions from levy in respect of Capital Gains Tax and Corporation Tax.
Perhaps this is the right time for me to say that, when this matter was discussed in Standing Committee, I said that I would certainly give the hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page) as much notice as I could of what would be complicated provisions. On 10th October, I redeemed my promise, saying that I would welcome any comments that he had so that, if possible, I could take them into account before Amendments were put down on the Order Paper. In short, right hon. and hon. Members who were on the Standing Committee will be pleased to know that I carried out my undertaking.

§ Mr. Graham Page
The right hon. Gentleman has referred to a letter which he wrote to me on 10th October. He must have known where I would be during that week, for he knows about party conferences. I did not receive the letter until a week later, which was just over a week before the Bill reached its Report stage, and the letter consisted of seven pages closely typed and a Schedule of 27 printed sheets.

§ Mr. Hugh Rossi (Hornsey)
If the House and the country and professional advisers have been confused over the last Clause, and the Schedule which we did not discuss in connection with it, they will be even more confused and in far greater difficulty over the two Schedules which the Minister now sees fit to introduce at this very late stage of the Bill. We must register the strongest possible protest at the way in which these changes have been introduced. It is no good the Minister saying that he gave my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page) 1059 a warning in a letter, dated 10th October, but not received until 17th October. We are to have to consider at some time in the early hours of the morning, no doubt deliberately in the early hours of the morning, two highly technical Schedules. One is a Schedule which cuts right across the law relating to Estate Duty and by which we have placed for our consideration 386 lines of small print. The other relates to matters of Capital Gains Tax and Corporation Tax and is equally technical and consists of some 559 lines of small print.
Whenever my hon. Friend may have received the letter, other hon. Members saw these proposals only a few days ago and when we asked the Leader of the House for longer in which to consider them, our request was rejected. These are technical matters requiring a great deal of professional expertise to understand. I defy their understanding even after a great deal of professional expertise has been applied to them.
This is a most disgraceful way in which the Government have seen fit to treat the House and it is indicative of the whole way in which they have approached the Bill. Nearly 150 Government Amendments are on the Order Paper, 40 of them substantive or additions to existing Clauses. We have six new Clauses and four new Schedules and those four new Schedules alone amount to 1,500 lines and we have had three or four days in which to consider all these matters.
If I were allowed to go into some detail about these Estate Duty and Capital Gains Tax matters, I would graphically underline the ridiculous nature of the law which is now proposed and the discourteous way in which the House has been treated in being asked to consider these matters at such short notice. I have the greatest sympathy with the Minister, who has had put into his lap a Bill which, I feel, he regards most awkwardly and which he brings to the House without any great pleasure. It has evidently been a matter of constant embarrassment to him throughout the Committee stage to explain most of the matters in the Bill. These Schedules should have been referred to professional bodies before coming to the House. We should have the benefit of the views of those professional bodies before us. This treatment is typical of 1060 the very uncertainty of the Government themselves about how to bulldoze a Measure through in furtherance of some sacred party political dogma attached to the nationalisation of the land.
To give just one other example of this situation; we have had two land Commission Bills brought before the House, one printed in the New Year and one after the General Election. Between the old and the new Bill we had six new paragraphs and sub-paragraphs added to Schedule 4 while two of the old paragraphs went out and there was a considerable redrafting of definitions. In Committee there were 13 Government Amendments to that altered Schedule and on Report we have 15 more——

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
Order. It is difficult to see how this argument is relevant to the new Clause.

§ Mr. Rossi
I was trying to indicate the discourtesy which the House has suffered at the hands of the Government and the impossibility of trying to arrive at a balanced judgment of the validity and worth of these Schedules when, by their persistent and repeated Amendments and alterations, the Government have clearly shown that they themselves do not know where they are going. In the next few months and years the confusion outside the House after the passing of the Bill will be enormous. Nothing will bring greater discredit on the Government than the Bill, which is the one element which gives me the greatest comfort in the whole matter. We only await the day when we will have the opportunity to repeal these Clauses and Schedules root and branch.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
Order. We cannot discuss the whole Bill on this new Clause.

§ Mr. Peyton
The right hon. Gentleman in, for him, the comparatively long speech with which he introduced the new Clause, described it as a linking Measure.

§ Mr. Manuel
Is this a competition in rudeness?

§ Mr. Peyton
Modesty compels me to admit that if I were to indulge in competition in rudeness with the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Mr. Manuel) I should be beaten by miles.

§ Mr. Manuel
Come outside and I will show you.

§ Mr. Peyton
Further modesty compels me to admit that, sitting down, I can never muster even a tithe of the eloquence which the hon. Gentleman finds it so easy to command.
As I was saying, the right hon. Gentleman introduced the new Clause at greater length, and I thought that at least that was a remarkable concession and that some of the things said to him just now were tempting him in the direction of communicating to the House of Commons. He described it as a linking Clause. As far as I can see, what it links is chaos to discourtesy. No possible explanation was offered by the right hon. Gentleman about what he was asking the House to do.
I echo the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey (Mr. Rossi) and tell the Minister that communications between the two Front Benches are matters of no interest whatever to back bench Members on either side of the House. It is a most inadequate way of discharging the duty which even the Minister feels it incumbent upon himself to perform to the House to say merely that he has written to my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page) and asked for his comments. Whether the letter arrived or not is a matter of no importance to me—nor whether it was delivered. What I am concerned with is that the Minister feels that he can escape his duty of explanation to the House of Commons by reference to the fact that he has written to my hon. Friend and invited his comments on what one must politely describe as a set of intolerable gibberish.
5.30 p.m.
We are in the most impossible position. We know what is coming behind this disguised mangy horse, but we cannot discuss it because of the obstinacy of the right hon. Gentleman. He has said dogmatically what accords with his convenience, and yet he remains utterly unresponsive to what the Opposition, indeed what hon. Members on his own side, have said accords with theirs. Coming from the right hon. Gentleman, this is surprising as well as unfair.
I say surprising because I wish to erase any impression that I may have given before that I have any feeling of personal hostility towards the right hon. Gentleman. Far from it. In fact, I have 1062 a good deal of sympathy with him. The Prime Minister has thought up this impossible job for him and now gives him this filthy Measure to pilot through. No wonder the right hon. Gentleman allows his modesty and sense of shame to run away with him and says that this is a paving, a linking amendment. The right hon. Gentleman has all of my sympathy. We on this side of the House feel nothing but pity for him in the invidious, humiliating and mortifying position in which a very fast and fraudulent Government have placed him.

§ Mr. Graham Page
I accept the invitation of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Central Ayrshire (Mr. Manuel) to say something about the new Clause and about the Schedule. The new Clause deals with two Schedules. Is this what the right hon. Gentleman meant by linking? There is no linking at all between the two Schedules. [Interruption.] I hear a voice behind me say that it is stinking and not linking. I do not know what the right hon. Gentleman means by linking. These are two completely distinct Schedules, one dealing with Estate Duty and the other with Capital Gains and Corporation Tax.
There are matters of deep principle in these Schedules. I challenge the right hon. Gentleman to tell the House whether he has put these Schedules before any of the professional bodies for advice. Have they been concocted by his Department and put on the Notice Paper just like that, or have there been consultations to discover whether those people who are in practice and who have to put the Schedules into effect have considered them? I cannot think that the right hon. Gentleman has taken this step, because they would not have reached the Notice Paper in this state if he had.
I will not refer to both Schedules, because reference to one is quite sufficient. I refer to the principle in the Schedule headed "Allowance in respect of estate duty". By the new Clause we are asked to approve of the entry into the Bill of a Schedule dealing with Estate Duty, which requires the personal representatives of a deceased person to calculate the gross principal value of the chargeable interest—that takes up half a page of print. They are then asked to calculate the modified value, which takes up another page of 1063 print. Over the page, they have to calculate the excess gross value and, as if all of that was not enough, they then have to take two pages of print to calculate the net principal value and the amount of Estate Duty attributable to the net principal value. Eventually they reach the effective rate of duty and appropriate allowance. Paragraph 23(1), states: There shall be calculated what proportion the amount of estate duty attributable to the net principal value of the dutiable interest bears to the gross principal value of that interest. Paragraph 23(2) states: That proportion, expressed as a percentage, is in this Schedule referred to as the effective rate of duty. Paragraph 24 says: The appropriate allowance shall then be the amount which bears to the excess gross value of the dutiable interest the proportion which constitutes the effective rate of duty.

§ Mr. Rippon
What does it mean?

§ Mr. Page
I was hoping that the right hon. Gentleman would explain what it means. It is a formidable task for personal representatives to undertake. They have to consult professional men. They have to collect together the estate and file the Inland Revenue affidavit, with all of its Schedules, in order to find the total value of the estate and the Estate Duty upon it. In ordinary law, executors are given what is called the executor's year to do this.
Then, and here I come to the point of principle, having to do all of that work and those calculations, we come to a sub-paragraph tucked away under procedure. The sub-paragraph says: A notice of claim may be served either before or after the service of a notice of assessment of levy in respect of the levy in question, but shall not have effect if served after such a notice of assessment of levy has resulted in an operative assessment of levy. If one looks back, under procedure, it means that the notice of claim has to be served within two months or it has no effect at all.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman will appreciate that we shall be able to discuss the detail of the Schedule when we come to it.

§ Mr. Page
With great respect, this is scarcely a detail if we are asked to accept 1064 a Schedule under which personal representatives have to do a great deal of calculation but can only get the benefit of this Schedule if they put in a notice of claim within two months.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
That is a detail of the Schedule which we can discuss when we come to it.

§ Mr. Page
I bow to your Ruling, but a detail of this sort seems to be a matter of principle as to whether the Schedule means anything at all. If one can only take advantage of it by putting in a notice of claim within two months, yet all of this work has to be done under the Schedule, then the Schedule is just a stupidity.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
When we come to the Schedule we can consider, if necessary, Amendments for extending the time for putting in notice. That is a detail of the Schedule.

§ Mr. Page
In this new Clause we are asked to approve of the introduction into the Bill of two Schedules. I am endeavouring to deal only with principles which emerge from them. One of the principles is whether the Schedule has any meaning at all when a claim has to be made in that short time. There are other matters of principle, such as the Commissioners of Inland Revenue shall give a certificate which is conclusive and deprives the citizen of making any appeal to the courts if the Commissioners are wrong. These are the sort of things which appear in the Schedule, and I do not think they are matters of detail. They are matters which the right hon. Gentleman has not chosen to mention to the House in asking us to pass a Clause which introduces these Schedules.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
The next new Clause is new Clause No. 3.

§ Mr. Rossi
On a point of order. This Clause contains references to certificates made under Parts III and IV of the Schedule. Before one can exercise one's judgment as to what this means within the new Clause, one should look at the Schedule in order to see what a certificate under those parts of the Schedule is. Until 1065 we do that, we do not know what we are enacting under new Clause 3. On that basis, may I ask for your ruling as to whether the Schedule is now incorporated by reference into this new Clause and, therefore, falls properly to be discussed by us?

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
In discussing the new Clause, Members are obviously entitled to seek clarification of its effect in so far as reference is made to the Schedules mentioned in it. To that extent, reference to the Schedules mentioned in the new Clause would be in order. The details of the Schedules will be open for debate when we come to the Schedules later.

§ Mr. Graham Page
Further to the point of order. New Clause No. 3 refers to details of the Schedule. I think that the point of my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey (Mr. Rossi) was that we should have to refer to the details of the Schedule, and not just to the Schedule in general, in order to understand the Clause. To put a new Clause on the Notice Paper referring to a Schedule which, if your Ruling, Mr. Deputy Speaker, is correct, we are not to discuss in detail, and mentioning details of that Schedule such as certificates, is something of an abuse of the procedure of the House. We are being prevented from discussing properly a Clause which, by use of the subterfuge of referring to a Schedule later on, is quite unintelligible.
I would ask you to rule, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that if we are not allowed to discuss the details of the Schedule we should not discuss the Clause at all.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
I am anxious that the House should understand exactly what is in order and what is not. The debate on the new Clause will be slightly different from the debate which we had on earlier Clauses. In so far as reference to the Schedule is necessary to make the new Clause intelligible, it is obviously in order for any hon. Member to discuss the provisions of the Schedule so as to understand the effect of the new Clause. To that extent, whether they be matters of principle or detail in the Schedule, they are in order for the purpose of understanding the effect of the new Clause and making it intelligible. Debate on the merits and details of the Schedules is 1066 much better postponed until we reach the Schedules.