HC Deb 25 January 1967 vol 739 cc1667-73
Mr. Body

I beg to move, as an Amendment to the words so restored to the Bill, in page 48, line 43, to leave out 'years' and to insert 'months'.

This Amendment is intended to be helpful and constructive. The objective is to prevent undue delay and it may well be that the Minister will be persuaded to take the advice of Dryden, in his Tyrannic Love: All delays are dangerous in war. The title has two words which can describe the feelings of the right hon. Gentleman for this Measure.

Delays of up to six years will, as the Parliamentary Secretary emphasised, be dangerous in the war of negotiations that must break out between the Land Commission and whoever is selling his property—dangerous to both sides.

I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will consider again the 10 per cent. he told us about, because no doubt the Land Commission, like the Inland Revenue, will expect the man liable to levy to be a sensible, prudent man who will put to one side a sum of money sufficient to enable him to pay it when called upon to do so.

Unless the right hon. Gentleman accepts the Amendment, it must follow that, at any time, a man may be called upon to pay within six years after the transaction. It is intolerable to expect anyone to be so prudent as to set aside such a sum of money for such a long period. It becomes particularly difficult in times of credit squeeze and, if predictions are correct, in times of still heavier taxation, which we may have soon.

12.30 a.m.

It is also dangerous to the Land Commission. One would hope that good public relations would be used. In that hope I would invite the right hon. Gentleman to consider the kind of criticism that has come down upon the head of the Inland Revenue when it has sought either to extract taxation long after the event, or to prosecute someone for failing to pay taxes long after the event. The judges have been critical when it has delayed for unconscionable periods of time.

I thought that the right hon. Gentleman might oppose this Amendment on the ground that there would be so much congestion in the office of the Land Commission that there would have to be six years to consider all of these notifications. We understand that it will now only be about 10 per cent., but the total number of notifications in any one year will be 2,500,000. If there is to be a six-year queue the right hon. Gentleman could say that the Commission will have 15 million files to consider, and it would be quite impossible to do that.

Now we are told that only about 10 per cent. of the transactions will be affected by the levy. We know that there are to be only 2,000 employed in the Commission to deal with that 10 per cent., and if the Amendment is accepted it is merely a matter of these officials handling four assessments a day. That is not an unreasonable figure. If that cannot be managed by the officials, it is not a very hopeful prospect for the house-owners of the country.

Both the right hon. Gentleman and his Parliamentary Secretary were students of law and they will possibly have remembered the saying of the Chancery Division: delay defeats equity. I hope that it has not been forgotten because in his last speech we heard the word equity "at least a dozen times from the right hon. Gentleman. I would suggest that delay does defeat equity and there will certainly be no equity here if those who sell their land may not have the transaction completed for six years. It is a long time and it is wholly unreasonable

If the Land Commission is efficient, and if there are only to be 10 per cent. of cases, there is no reason why this Amendment should not be accepted. If the misery will be nasty and brutish, at least let it be short as well.

Mr. Skeffington

One of the fascinating features in a debate of this kind is to see how arguments used by hon. Gentlemen opposite are turned completely on their heads by the same hon. Members in moving a subsequent Amendment. Only a short time ago they were saying how essential it was to delay the first appointed day, and now the hon. Gentleman is standing that argument upon its head and saying that this delay is not suitable. The Amendment was moved constructively, but one of the principal reasons why the Government must reject it is that it would be extremely unfair to the levy payer. The Amendment is based on what appears to be a misunderstanding of the whole process of the statement of levy, with which we have dealt.

The procedure will be this. When a chargeable act or event has occurred and it is notified to the Commission, the Commission will, in a number of cases, wish to make further inquiries. If it does not wish to make further inquiries, it can either say that there is levy due or there is not, but in a number of cases it will want to inquire further. During this period, it will endeavour—I say this again on the basis of the advice and discussions we have already had in setting up the Commission—to come to an informal agreement at a very early stage with the levy payer. It will be on that kind of basis that the operation should and will take place.

In the normal course of events, even if the Commission has to make some inquiry—I repeat what I said earlier on another Amendment—we are confident that it will generally be able to come to its decision and notify the levy payer informally, or even formally, within a matter of months.

The Amendment, on the other hand, would force the Commission in this case to give notice of assessment within six months although it might be impossible for the Commission to do so if in that period it had not received the information which it must have in order to make the assessment. This would be nonsense. No one can suggest that the Commission should be statutorily bound to give a notice of assessment when the facts into which it is asked to inquire have not been given to it.

We are convinced—I give the assurance on the basis of the inquiries we have made—that in the overwhelming majority of eases the Commission will be able to give its decision within a matter of months, but there will be cases—some were mentioned in the Standing Committee—when there may be overlapping charges, when the levy payer may be awaiting transactions in connection with his interest which require investigation, when he cannot within the time give the information which the Commission wants. In fairness to the levy payer, there should be additional time in such cases. That is why the uttermost limit of six years, or three years, has been adopted. These periods have been taken from the existing Income Tax provisions; they have worked over many years very satisfactorily, on the whole.

A maximum period has been allowed in these cases, though, as I say, in the overwhelming majority of cases the assessment would be much before that. It would be much against the interests of the levy payer to say that he should be precluded from awaiting the results of certain negotiations in connection with other interests in the chargeable act or event before he could make his additional return to the Commission, and to say that this cannot be done because the Commission must serve its notice of assessment in six months.

As that would be a great disservice to the levy payer, and as the assessment would be given in the overwhelming majority of cases within a matter of months, I hope that the Amendment will not be pressed.

Mr. Graham Page

I had hoped that the Parliamentary Secretary would make some offer of relief to the levy payer from the position in which he will be put of not knowing whether he will be liable. It would have been quite possible to offer a procedure, by way of regulations, for a clearance certificate so that there was not this business of the levy payer not knowing and not being able to force the Commission to tell him for six years whether he is liable to levy or not.

I say "levy payer", but let us not call him that. Let us call him what he is, the ordinary citizen who sells his house, who carries out any of the other transactions which are chargeable such as letting his house or carrying out some development.

We have tried on previous Amendments to think along the same lines as the Minister in considering so many years for the Commission, but we ought to have a completely different conception of it now. When I submit deeds for adjudication for stamp duty on a voluntary conveyance, it does not take the stamp duty authorities six years or even six months to tell me what the stamp ought to be.

Mr. L. M. Lever (Manchester, Ardwick)

It takes a long time.

Mr. Page

It does not; it does not take six months.

Mr. Lever

It takes a long time, too long.

The Speaker

Order. One sedentary interruption is enough.

Mr. Page

When I submit an Inland Revenue affidavit to the Estate Duty authorities for the assessment of Estate Duty it does not take six years or six months for the answer. When I submit an application for registration of land at the Land Registry it does take them rather a long time, but it does not take them six years or even six months. I have quoted cases all of which deal with valuation. Somebody has got to value the property before they can tell me how much my client owes under these transactions.

Why cannot we have the same service from the Land Commission as we have from the stamp duty authorities, the Estate Duty authorities and H.M. Land Registry? There is no reason why the Land Commission should set itself above all these concerns and keep citizens waiting all this time.

A simple form of clearance certificate can be obtained from the Estate Duty Office and the same sort of procedure could be applied to the Land Commission. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will think about this seriously and see if he can bring something into the Regulations, if not into the Bill now, to relieve the citizen of this sword of Damocles hanging over his head.

Mr. Skeffington

In the normal case what the hon. Gentleman has called a clearance certificate will be the notice of assessment. If there is any other way in which we can help the levy payer my right hon. Friend will see what can be done, but normally the notice of assessment will be the certificate and that will be the end of the matter.

Mr. Page

I do not think the hon. Gentleman has understood the point clearly. The point is that the victim should be entitled to demand a statement as to whether he is liable within a certain period, not just wait for the notification.

Amendment to the words so restored to the Bill negatived.