Clause 10 (Hansard, 13 June 1968)

§ The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. John Mackie)
I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment.
I would suggest, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that we also discuss Lords Amendments Nos. 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 11, 13, 34 and 35.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Eric Fletcher)
If the House agrees, so be it.

§ Mr. Mackie
The Amendments to Clauses 10, 11 and 17 pave the way for introduction of new Schedules introduced to meet a point raised by the hon. Member for Edinburgh, West (Mr. Stodart) during earlier debates. We are grateful to him for raising the matter. The new Schedules are a rather more elaborate affair than the Amendment he proposed himself at one stage, but I hope that he will agree that they do what is needed, and deal fairly with both landlords and tenants.
The purpose of the new Schedules is purely to provide for the transitional problem which may arise where a landlord has served a notice to quit shortly after the Bill was introduced into Parliament, when he could not reasonably be expected to have known its detailed provisions as to the form of notice that would entitle him to claim exemption from liability for the payment. The effect of the relevant provisions of the Bill before amendment was that the new sum for which Clause 9 provides would be payable where notice to quit was served at any time after the introduction of the Bill, and did not take effect before the Bill had become law. The landlord would not be liable for the payment, however, if the notice stated that it was 542 given on one or more of the accepted agricultural grounds or hardship listed in Clauses 10 and 11.
As the hon. Member for Edinburgh, West pointed out, a landlord who served notice to quit soon after the introduction of the Bill might well have failed to appreciate the effect of these Clauses, and might have served what is known as a plain notice to quit—that is, a notice which does not specify the grounds on which it is given—for a straightforward agricultural purpose without realising that the notice was not in a form that would allow him to escape liability for the payment. The Schedules give him a second chance.
This is a purely transitional problem, and the Schedules apply only to notices to quit served between the introduction of the Bill and the date when it becomes law.
Schedule A relates to England and Wales. Paragraph 1 allows the landlord to import into such a notice to quit a statement of the grounds on which it was given. Paragraphs 2, 3 and 4 give the tenant an equivalent right of reference to the Agricultural Land Tribunal if he doubts whether these grounds do in fact justify the landlord in claiming exemption from payment under Clause 10. His rights under these paragraphs are relevant only to the question of whether or not the landlord is liable for the new payment: they do not give the tenant any rights to contest the effectiveness of the notice to quit in other respects.
It is a matter requiring some legal expertise to set out the rights and counter-rights of the two parties in a way which will cover the various circumstances in which they are likely to find themselves. The wording of the Schedule is somewhat intricate; but its effect is as I have described.
The purpose of the Scottish Schedule B is the same, except for provisions contained in paragraphs 2 and 3 to deal with types of case which can arise only in Scotland.

§ Mr. Anthony Stodart (Edinburgh, West)
When I suggested that there was a gap in what was intended, which I believe, in the light of what the hon. Gentleman has said, was a good one, I did not anticipate that quite so much writing would be required. I am grateful to the hon. Gentlemen for what he has said. 543 Initially I thought of the problem in a Scottish context in view of the number of removals that there tend to be in Scotland at the Martinmas term, and it was on the Scottish Qause in the Committee that I raised the point that an injustice might be done, and the Under-Secretary of State admitted at the time that it was an interesting point and one worth looking into. At a subsequent stage I mentioned that the problem might arise in England as well. I suppose therefore that it is inevitable that one feels a certain amount of satisfaction that one has been responsible for bringing to the notice of the Government something that has not previously been thought of. The Government have responded well to this and I am most grateful to them.