Clause 90.—(DISCLOSURE OF INFORMATION BY INLAND REVENUE.) (Hansard, 27 October 1966)

§ Sir D. Walker-Smith

I beg to move Amendment No. 242, in page 83, line 2, to leave out 'whether before or'.

I move the Amendment in a spirit of inquiry and not of hostile intent and to elucidate some clarification on why it is necessary to put this in such wide terms in this subsection of Clause 90. Under Clause 90(1), the Inland Revenue is permitted, in spite of obligations of secrecy, to make disclosure to the Commission for the purpose of facilitating the performance of any of its functions of the contents of any document to which the Clause applies.

Subsection (2) deals with the question of to what documents it applies in these terms: This section applies to any document which, having (whether before or after the passing of this Act) been produced to the Commissioners of Inland Revenue in pursuance of Section 28 of the Finance Act, 1931 or furnished to them in pursuance of Schedule 2 to that Act, is for the time being in their possession or under their control. Section 28 of the Finance Act, 1931 applies, in substance, to documents in relation to the transfer on sale of the fee simple of land, to the grant of any lease of land for term of seven years or more and to any transfer on sale of any such lease.

Those documents have presumably, under Section 28, been made available to the Inland Revenue in compliance with that statutory provision since 1931. It is, of course, quite proper in principle that, if the Commission, for the purposes of its statutory duties, needs such documents, they should be made available by the Inland Revenue. That seems proper and appropriate. What, at the moment, I am not clear about is in what way the Land Commission can be concerned with documents of this sort going back as far as 1931.

The Land Commission will, presumably, be concerned, where it is concerned with such documents, with them in the context of calculating base value. I do not see what other purpose it could have. In the calculation of base value, the relevant Schedule for this purpose is, presumably, Schedule 5. That, as the House is aware, is the Schedule which deals with Base Value Derived From Previous Disposition. 1414 It defines a relevant disposition for this purpose and relevant previous disposition in these terms: 3. For the purposes of this Part of this Schedule a previous disposition of the charge able interest shall (subject to paragraphs 4 and 5 of this Schedule) be taken to have been a relevant disposition of that interest if it was a disposition for valuable consideration under which the chargeable owner or a predecessor in title of his became entitled to the chargeable interest, and either—

(a) it was a disposition falling within the antecedent period, or
(b) it was made on or after the first appointed day and constituted a chargeable act or event…"

Obviously, we are not concerned here with (b), which refers to after the appointed day, because we are thinking in terms of 1931 or thereabouts.

Presumably, therefore, we have to consider what is the antecedent period referred to in paragraph 3(a) of Schedule 5. To find out what that is we go to paragraph 2(2), which states: In this Part of this Schedule "disposition falling within the antecedent period" means a disposition which either—

(a) was made within the period beginning on 1st July 1948 and ending with 22nd September 1965, or
(b) was made after the end of that period…"

Again, we are not concerned with (b) because that is after the end of that period. So we now seem to have brought ourselves within the relatively narrow ambit of 1st July, 1948 and 22nd September, 1965.

Unless the right hon. Gentleman has some other provision in this long and complex Measure to refer to, that seems to leave an unexplained gap of 17 years from 1931 to 1948. The year 1948 would seem to be a reasonable terminus a quo for this matter, because the Minister and the House will be aware that 1st July, 1948 was the appointed day under the Town and Country Planning Act, 1947. One can see that it may be necessary to go back that far to 1931. A lot of interesting things happened in 1931, including the General Election which showed the sound political judgment of this people in a very commendable and striking way. Apart from any nostalgic satisfaction that may bring to the right hon. Gentleman, can he please explain the significance of 1931, and bridge the gap between then and 1948?