HC Deb 08 May 1967 vol 746 cc1016-27

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Fitch.]

12.30 p.m.

Mr. William Hamilton (Fife, West)

I hope to give in a fairly short span the background to the case I wish to raise in this morning's short debate. We had the new valuations published in Scotland last September and almost immediately there was an outcry in the mining village of Kinglassie, in Fife, about certain anomalies which appeared in those valuation lists, so much so that a public meeting was held. The chief complaint at the public meeting was from 16 tenants of semi-detached council cottages at Laurence Park. The history of those houses is that in 1929 and 1930 72 houses were built; 16 were semi-detached and 56 were flats in blocks of four, and all these houses, I am informed, have the same accommodation and are of the same size.

When the houses were built the difference in rateable value was £2 as between cottages and flats. In 1961 the differential was increased to £3, the cottages being valued slightly higher. In 1966, when a further revaluation took place, the valuation of the flats was reduced by £3 and the valuation of the cottages increased by £2, so that the overall differential became £8. The assessor was seen, either by the tenants or their representatives, but he refused to budge from his original valuations and an appeal was lodged.

I have taken the trouble to write to the secretary of the valuation appeal committee and, despite the short notice I gave him, he has been kind enough to send me a reply which I received this morning. He points out the legal position as to the terms of the statutory notice of appeal and says that one notice was sent to Mr. Peter Ness, who is very prominent in this question, regarding his own house and another was sent to him in respect of a number of houses and garages in King-lassie. He points out that for the garages no appeal had been received from any of the ratepayers concerned, the only communication having been from Mr. Peter Ness.

I mention that because I tried to get both sides of the case if I could. All the tenants appended their signatures to a document authorising the brothers Ness, Mr. Robert Ness and Mr. Peter Ness, to appeal on their behalf. Robert Ness was to appeal on behalf of the 16 cottage tenants and Peter Ness was to appeal on behalf of the 45 other tenants against valuations of their garages because of inconsistencies on the part of the assessor about the size of the work. I know the two Ness brothers as personal friends. They are highly articulate gentlemen, intelligent and extremely knowledgeable about local affairs. Robert is a retired Coal Board clerk and Peter Ness was a permanent full-time district official of the N.U.M., now retired, and was for many years on Fife County Council. They were certainly qualified laymen who were taking this matter to the appeal committee.

They presented themselves on Monday, 27th February this year at Kirkcaldy. According to the letter from the secretary, which I have quoted, they referred to the procedures according to the Valuation Appeal Committee Procedure (Scotland) Regulations, 1965. The letter says: Unfortunately for Mr. Ness, in his own appeal he made one or two statements, on oath, which were demonstrably quite incorrect in fact and the committee could feel no confidence in any representation which he could make regarding other properties. They felt that this was clearly a case where an important question of fact—possibly also of law—was at issue, and they considered that they had no option but to dismiss the appeal. The reasons were that the Ness brothers were not qualified to appeal on behalf of other people. All the appeals were dismissed without being heard. Apparently a letter was sent to Mr. Ness from the secretary of the appeal committee which confirmed the decision stating that the brothers had no legal qualifications and points of law or of fact might arise with which they would be unable to deal, which virtually is what I have quoted from the letter I received this morning from the secretary. The committee therefore had exercised its discretion in refusing to hear the appeals, a discretion given to it quite properly in the Regulations to which I have referred.

I took up the matter with the Secretary of State for Scotland and in a letter to me dated 5th April he referred to the Valuation Appeal Committee Procedure (Scotland) Regulations, 1965. They do indeed provide that if a committee is of opinion that an important question of law or fact is at issue an appellant can be represented only by a chosen advocate or solicitor by leave of the committee. As the secretary explained, the Regulations were made only after wide consultations with working interests. I looked up the debate which took place on 27th April, 1965, and found that it centred on this precise point of Article 4 of the Regulations about representations of appellants. The point was then made that if the appellant could be represented only by counsel or a solicitor many would hesitate to appeal on grounds of cost alone especially if, as in this King-lassie instance, only a few pounds might be involved. Clearly the cost of obtaining the services of an advocate or solicitor might well be prohibitive in cases of this nature.

When the Minister of State, who is to reply to this debate, replied to that other debate he pointed out that the many bodies consulted beforehand about the regulations included the Scottish Valuations Advisory Council, the Lord President of the Court of Session, the Council on Tribunals, certain local authority associations and the F.B.I, and none had objected, but he went on to say that objections had been received from the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors and the County Councils Association. He went on to quote in aid the opinion of Lord Patrick in the appeal of Alexander Russell and Company Ltd., of Glasgow, against the Assessor for the County of Renfrew. Lord Patrick said that the layman was unfamiliar with the rules of evidence and unqualified to interpret the law.

My hon. Friend the Minister of State seemed to concur with that view and that proceedings in valuation appeal committees must be conducted in such a way as to satisfy the senior court to which the case might eventually go—that if to say, the Land Valuation Appeal Court. Nevertheless, my hon. Friend conceded that the mind of the Secretary of State for Scotland was not closed on the matter, and we are always grateful for that kind of assurance. That seems to be borne out by the Secretary of State's comment in his letter of 5th April that a general review of valuation procedure will be commenced shortly". I hope that that review will begin very soon and that it will not be confined to this fairly narrow but important point but will extend to many other aspects: for example, the way in which appointments are made to these committees, the qualifications of their members, their social and economic background, and so on.

For example—although I refer specifically to the Fife Valuation Appeal Committee, this applies to all these committees—in Fife the Sheriff Principal makes the appointment. The Sheriff Principal resides in Edinburgh. According to the Act, he makes the appointments after consultation with such persons as he may think fit". That seems to give him a very wide discretion in making these appointments. He also appoints the chairman, deputy chairman and secretary.

Although the Act lays down that the secretary shall not be an officer of a local authority", which is perfectly reasonable, the fact is that the secretary of the Fife committee is the former Assessor of Fife County Council. Therefore, I am not saying that it is so, but it might be suspected that he would be more in sympathy with the present Assessor than with any appellant who might appear before the committee. This might be quite without foundation, but, nevertheless, he might be suspected of being rather less impartial than he should.

Again, the chairman might be at variance with the general views of the community with which he is dealing. After I had said that I intended to raise this matter, I received a letter stating that the chairman of the Fife committee, Major Lawson, was a local landed proprietor. If my hon. Friend the Minister of State knows anything about the mining community, he will know that if there is one class of people they do not like, it is landed proprietors. They suspect, rightly or wrongly, that this fellow is naturally biased against them. Knowing the Ness Brothers, one knows that they can whip up bias against them as easily as anything. Therefore, it was not exactly a happy relationship to establish from the start between these gentlemen.

Nothing is laid down in the Statute as to the qualifications of the members of these committees. If it is incumbent on an appellant to be represented, if not by himself, by someone familiar with the rules of evidence and qualified to interpret the law, it should be equally incumbent on some, if not all, of the committee members.

I should like to quote from the Fife Free Press on this matter, which received wide publicity, some of it in the Scottish Daily Mail and some in the local daily Press. The Fife Free Press of 4th March said: … we are in no doubt that the chairman and members of the court were in grave error in dismissing the appeals without a hearing. It went on to say: One may ask what qualifications the members of the court have. Do they have any more qualifications than the two gentlemen"— the Ness Brothers— 'who sought to represent fellow ratepayers? To the best of our knowledge, the answer is 'No'! In fact, the Valuation and Rating (Scotland) Act, 1956, does not lay down that members of the Valuation Appeals Committee require any legal or professional qualifications, nor does it specifically lay down that appealing ratepayers must be represented by a person with legal or professional qualifications. When I asked the Secretary of State what qualifications these people had, he said that he did not know. He said that there was no obligation on the Sheriff to tell him. I think that there should be an obligation. There should be a directive to the Sheriff, if he is to be the person who appoints these people, to give the Secretary of State reasons for his appointment and the qualifications of those whom he appoints.

This Kinglassie case had a good deal of adverse publicity and a lot of adverse comment about the valuation appeal procedure in general. The Daily Mail of 2nd March referred to it as, "a miscarriage of justice" and the Fife Free Press pointed out that only a few weeks after the Ness brothers had been refused a hearing, a former member of the Fife County Assessor's Department, now in private practice, who knew the ropes about valuation, had been allowed to represent a Kirkcaldy shopkeeper but only after private discussion and comings and goings and the chairman making it clear that this was not to be taken as a precedent.

The Fife Free Press again carried an editorial, from which I wish to quote. It said: It seems to us that the Fife Valuation Committee's conduct ought to be thoroughly investigated, for grave injustice is being done to the ratepayers. We repeat, the Secretary of State for Scotland should take immediate action to prevent any further instances of miscarriage of justice. In my view, this case has all the trappings of a little bit of petty dictatorship at local level. The way in which it was conducted—I take full account of the letter which I have received from the secretary—seems to me to have been the negation of democracy and justice. No other words can describe dismissal of an appeal without its being heard. That such an intolerable situation could arise unmistakably points to the need for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to ensure that it never happens again.

12.47 p.m.

The Minister of State, Scottish Office (Dr. J. Dickson Mabon)

I am much obliged, as, indeed, are many of my hon. Friends from north of the Border, to my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton) for raising this matter in an Adjournment debate of this character, because I am sure that many people, quite apart from those in Fife and Kinglassie and those who have a sense of grievance as a consequence of this case, will recognise that it is import- ant to make some comments about the present effect and the experience that we are having of these valuation appeal committees. I hope that my hon. Friend will bear with me for a short time if I try to outline the position of the Secretary of State, because there seems to be a misunderstanding not by my hon. Friend but on the part of many people outside this House about the position of the Secretary of State in this regard.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has overall responsibility for valuation legislation in Scotland but he has no authority to interfere with any decision made by a valuation appeal committee or to intervene in the way in which those committees conduct their hearings. Valuation appeal committees are appointed under Section 5 of the Valuation and Rating (Scotland) Act, 1956, to hear and determine appeals and complaints under the Valuation Acts. Each valuation authority has an appeal committee of from 15 to 30 members drawn from persons residing, engaged in business or working in the area and appointed by the Sheriff Principal after such consultations as he may think fit. Each member holds office for three years and is eligible for reappointment. Membership of a valuation authority is not a disqualification. The Sheriff appoints a chairman and a deputy-chairman from among the members of the committee.

This change from the previous practice to the present practice, established in statute by the 1956 Act, was a consequence of the recommendations of the Sorn Committee, which were debated by Parliament at the appropriate time after that Committee reported when a Bill was presented to the House. It would involve a change in statute to alter any of these matters and, although the Secretary of State will naturally bear the experience in mind, my hon. Friend must first appreciate the difficulties which there are, quite apart from the preferences there may be, in seeking to alter matters which are now in statute.

Where we are concerned at the moment and where we can do something affecting the financial year beginning in 1968 is in relation to regulations which flow from statute which were debated on 27th April, 1965, when the Secretary of State laid regulations before the House for discussion. My hon. Friend will recollect that, of the nine regulations then prescribed, eight were written with a definite anxiety to protect the position of the appellant going before the valuation appeal committee. Regulation No. 4, which is the controversial one, arose from the comments by Lord Patrick in relation to what happened in the higher courts when an appeal against a decision of a valuation appeal committee was heard by their Lordships. As I said on 27th April, 1965, Regulation No. 4 was designed also to protect the appellant in cases which went higher than the valuation appeal committee, to the Lands Valuation Appeal Court.

The background on Regulation No. 4, which is particularly at issue in this case, is that previously there was no restriction as to the person whom an appellant could choose to represent him. In the majority of cases, obviously this was convenient to everyone concerned, as one ratepayer might appear for all his neighbours or a surveyor or valuer might be briefed to present an appellant's case. This has been called a lawyer's regulation, but among objectors to the regulation were surveyors, and it might be reported that the surveyors wanted the position restored so that they could offer their professional services. However, my hon. Friend's case is not an argument for surveyors or lawyers but for those other than appellants to appear on behalf of neighbours.

I thought that my hon. Friend was fair when he said in this illustration that the committee was in serious dispute with Mr. Ness when he himself, presenting his own case, made an error of fact. The trouble about the position of the Lands Valuation Appeal Court is that it cannot correct wrong findings of fact arrived at by the valuation appeal committee. The Lands Valuation Appeal Court's considerations are confined to questions of law or value, and it cannot correct wrong findings of fact. My hon. Friend may be surprised to appreciate that Regulation No. 4 was designed to enable the local committee to have the particular circumstances presented to it in the most appropriate form and in this way to serve the best interests of the appellant. The Council on Tribunals advised the Secretary of State accordingly, as did the Lord President and the Lord Advocate, and many other organisations urged the Secretary of State to make Regulation No. 4.

In the Kinglassie case, the appeal committee, judging that a matter of fact if not of law was in dispute, invoked Regulation No. 4. That meant that the Ness brothers could not represent these ratepayers. The only persons who could represent the ratepayers were each appellant acting for himself or counsel or solicitors appearing before it in order that proper procedure should be observed and no wrong findings of fact arrived at which could not be reversed by a higher court if it went that far.

The Kinglassie people were able, if they wanted, to call for a fresh hearing under Regulation No. 7. They could have gone to the Committee, asked it to recall the decision and set a date for a fresh hearing, in which case the appellants themselves could have laid their cases before the appeal committee. There is a proviso referring to special circumstances, and I suggest to my hon. Friend that he advises his constituents to look at this reference where the proviso is sine die. I should have thought that they would be entitled to a hearing before the appeal committee under the present circumstances—

Mr. William Hamilton

There is no time limit?

Dr. Mabon

There is no time limit in the special circumstances which the appeal committee may allow.

What cannot be changed is that the appeal, if heard, would have to be allowed under the present regulation, which is either conducted by the appellants or a lawyer retained by them.

I take the point that it would seem strange that one would have to engage a lawyer and perhaps a solicitor in a case involving only a few pounds and a small number of appeals. What the Secretary of State has to weigh against the present Regulation No. 4, however, is past experience. Some cases have been lost because of the failure of the appellant to have procedures followed so that there are no wrong findings of fact arrived at by the valuation appeal committee, because then their Lordships are disbarred from helping the appellant at the stage of the higher court. In other words, it is a question of balancing the value of Regulation No. 4 in the light of Kinglassie and other cases which may emerge as against previous cases under the former system.

I would counsel my hon. Friend to advise his constituents to look at the matter again. I want to assure him that we shall review the present regulations when the present appeal period finishes, which is 15th August. We have already some information. Through Lord Avonside, the Chairman of the Scottish Valuation Advisory Council, some studies are being conducted on revaluation, and the Council intends as a result to examine several procedural matters. The Annual Report of the Council will be published shortly, and I am sure that my hon. Friend will read the Report to see the lines along which the Council is proceeding.

It would be proper for Ministers to look at this matter when we have all the information at hand in the autumn or early winter, and it is possible for us to bring in regulations amending the present ones so that the next financial year following will be covered. However, we must wait and see, and balance one advantage against the other.

I am only sorry that the Kinglassie case arose as it did. In the long term, it may be useful as a means of ensuring that we do not have repetitions of unfortunate cases like this, that people understand their rights and are able to fulfil them or, alternatively, that, as the legislating officer, the Secretary of State can be of help. In the meantime, I will note all that my hon. Friend has said, together with other comments which he may make in correspondence later when he has seen the Council's Report. I assure him that we take these matters seriously and want to do what is right and proper not only for the valuation system but also every ratepayer within the system.

The debate having been concluded, Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER suspended the Sitting till half-past Two o'clock, pursuant to Order.

Sitting resumed at 2.30 p.m.