HC Deb 27 October 1966 vol 734 cc1404-6
Mr. Graham Page

I beg to move Amendment No. 224, in page 75, line 20, to leave out '21st' and to insert '29th'.

This Clause deals with the avoidance of certain contractual provisions. If I may summarise it, it says that if parties have entered into a contract subsequent to a certain date whereby one who is not properly liable for levy is made liable for it, the whole contract is voided. Take the simple example of the sale of property, an ordinary agreement for sale and purchase. In that agreement, the parties having learned about this levy through White Papers and discussions——

Mr. Costain

Through the Bill.

Mr. Page

Not this Bill. The previous Bill was published only on 21st December, so they could not have known about this from any legislation, or even any prospective legislation.

They draw up a contract between themselves imposing on the purchaser, instead of on the vendor, the liability to pay the levy. I assure the Minister —and I see other practising solicitors in the House—that I know of contracts, one drawn up in my office in preparation for this Bill, which imposed on the purchaser the liability to pay the levy. Fortunately, that contract was not signed before the vital date. It certainly was not signed afterwards because some weeks later we knew the effect of this Clause. But a date is fixed as the deadline after which any such contract will be wholly void. It is that deadline which I question.

The date is the date on which, not this Bill, but a previous Bill before a previous Parliament was printed—at least that is what is said on the outside of the Bill. I have here a copy of the previous Bill which has printed on the outside "21st December, 1965". The Bill which we are discussing came after a General Election and after a new Parliament and is dated 4th May, 1966. It might have been very reasonable for me to ask for the amendment of the Clause to put in the date of printing of the Bill which we are discussing and not the date of printing of a Bill some months before in a previous Parliament.

But I have been very modest. I have asked for only a very small extension, for this reason. The old Bill may have been printed on 21st December, but I am reliably informed that it was not available to the public in any of Her Majesty's Stationery Offices until 24th December. That was a Friday. It was also Christmas Eve. Therefore, if people did not manage to get into Her Majesty's Stationery Office during the afternoon of Friday, Christmas Eve, the 24th, they did not know all over Christmas weekend what was in the Bill. The public could not have known on 21st December because the Bill was not available for them in the place in which they would look for it. They might have asked a Member of Parliament to get it from the Vote Office. But which member of the public would seek to get Bills on the cheap in that way? If anybody is capable, not only of buying Bills on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, but of reading them——

Mr. Rippon

And this one at that.

Mr. Page

And this one, too—then good luck to him.

One must assume, in common sense, that members of the public did not know about this Bill before Christmas. They certainly would not read it over Christmas weekend. Christmas Day was on a Saturday. Then there came Sunday, which was not Boxing Day, because, as the Minister knows, if Sunday follows Christmas Day we have Boxing Day on the Monday. It was therefore impossible to get a copy of the Bill from the Stationery Office on the Monday. So I have given a space of just over a week from the date on which it was supposed to be available to the public to the date when somebody might reasonably have got hold of a copy of the Bill and read it.

I may have put this matter facetiously, but it is of some seriousness, because if anybody signed a contract during that period not only is the offending Clause, making someone pay the levy who is not liable for it, cut out of the contract; the whole contract becomes void. I think that I read the Clause correctly.

This is an assumption by the Minister, and it is too often an assumption by the House itself, that the public knows what is going on here immediately it happens. That is not the fact. The public cannot possibly read all the Bills we produce immediately they are printed and available in the Vote Office. We do not do so ourselves, and we cannot expect the public to do so. The public may be acting to its prejudice, as any person would have been acting to his prejudice, in signing such a contract without knowing what was contained in the Bill.

I ask the Minister on this occasion to look at the matter from a practical point of view and not simply to stick to precedent and what is printed in the Bill. All that the right hon. Gentleman has done in the new Bill is to copy a Clause and the date from the old Bill. I have given a practical date on which someone might reasonably have known what was included in the new Bill and have ordered his business to comply with it.

Mr. Willey

I do not entirely accept the chronological account given by the hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page), but I would be entirely insensitive if I did not respond to such a powerful plea. I must say at once that we accept the Amendment.

Amendment agreed to.