§ PROVISION FOR SUSPENSION OF EVICTION ORDERS
§ Mr. MurtonI beg to move Amendment No. 10, in page 3, line 29, leave out 'twelve' and insert 'three'.
§ Mr. SpeakerI suggest that, for the convenience of the House, we take with it Amendment No. 11, to leave out 'twelve' and insert 'six'.
§ Mr. MurtonThe intention of the Amendment is to reduce the 12-month period of suspension of eviction orders as proposed in the Clause to a period of 3 months only. In our view, 12 months is too long. If the court has made a decision that an eviction order should be enforced, it should be possible for the persons concerned to be able to find alternative accommodation within three months and, therefore, a longer period would not appear to be necessary.
§ Sir Knox CunninghamI wish merely to give my support to the Amendment. Twelve months is much too long, and I think that three months is a better period. I warmly welcome the Amendment.
§ Mr. LubbockThe Amendment would result in the courts being even more busy than they are. We had complaints in Committee about the additional work which would be created for the courts in dealing with possession orders under the Bill. On reflection, perhaps the hon. Member for Poole (Mr. Murton) would agree that from, that point of view, a shorter period would be undesirable. In any event, would the House think that, where a man is occupying a caravan as his home, he should be forced to come back to the court every three months or six months to seek an extension of the stay of execution? That would create almost as much insecurity of feeling on the part 1166 of a caravan resident as that which he suffers already.
It would be better to stick to 12 months. I hate to say it yet again, but it is the period set out in the Protection from Eviction Act, 1964, Section 2(1) of which provides:
… the court may suspend the execution of the order for such period, not exceeding twelve months from the date of the order, as the court thinks reasonable.That has worked satisfactorily, and I hope that the House will agree to it in this case.
§ Mr. MaddanThe Act to which the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock) refers does not work wholly satisfactorily. In fact, the reverse is the case from the point of view of some very good landlords who find their properties deteriorating and the comfort and amenities of neighbours severely affected for a protracted period. It is quite unnecessary to import the twelve-month provision from that Act into the Bill.
A caravan is not a permanent dwelling. The whole situation is different, the time scale is different, and what may be reasonable for a house is not reasonable in the case of a caravan site. One has only to think of the comparative lack of privacy of a caravan dweller vis-à-vis his neighbours to understand the extremely harmful effect on a whole site of someone being allowed to stay in what may seem to be perpetuity to his neighbours by a suspension of up to twelve months. It will not be in the interests of either caravan site owners or caravan dwellers that suspensions should be anything like as long as twelve months.
§ Mr. SpeakerOrder. I would remind the House that we have a mass of Amendments to get through if we want the Bill.
§ Mr. John WellsI hope that the House will take heed of what has been said by the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock). Although I disagree frequently with him, I think that what he said on this point was very wise. I beg hon. Members to support the hon. Gentleman.
§ Amendment negatived.
§ Sir C. BlackI beg to move Amendment No. 12, in page 3, line 36, to leave out subsection (3).
1167 Perhaps this Amendment will indicate clearly the difference in philosophy, as it has been described, between the sponsors of the Bill and some of us who, on some aspects of it, are its critics. The Clause creates machinery whereby the occupier of a caravan may be able to reside in it practically in perpetuity. In an earlier Amendment we accepted a maximum period of 12 months as reasonable in the circumstances, although some of my hon. Friends and I would have preferred a shorter period. It seems to me wholly wrong to set up machinery, as in this subsection, which can create a tenancy virtually in perpetuity in respect of a caravan as distinct from a permanent house or flat.
An important point which we must not overlook is that if the subsection remains in the Bill, and if it is understood by caravan owners that once an occupier is in occupation he may be in occupation virtually in perpetuity, the number of people willing to let caravans will fall dramatically. At the moment a caravan owner can let the caravan for a period and know that he can recover possession at the end of that period. If he is saddled with a tenant virtually in perpetuity, with all the trouble of contesting court proceedings every 12 months to decide whether the tenant can stay, does anybody seriously imagine that people who let caravans now will be willing to let them in future? If we leave the subsection in the Bill, we shall enormously reduce the number of caravans available for letting.
§ Mr. DoughtyI thoroughly support the Amendment. Although the Bill talks about the occupation of caravans, we are dealing with caravan sites. The caravan is the property of the owner. There is a complete distinction between the Bill and the Rent Acts. Once a person is told, on legal advice, that he can go to court within a period of 12 months and ask for time to find alternative accommodation, there will be little encouragement for caravan owners to let their caravans.
I do not ask for the whole Clause to be taken out, and there is no Amendment down to that effect. The subsection provides that the period of suspension shall not be extended
for more than 12 months at a time".1168 That means ad infinitum. That is the thoroughly objectionable part of the Clause.
§ Mr. LubbockThe Parliamentary Secretary gave an assurance on Second Reading that it was the Government's intention to introduce permanent legislation as soon as Parliamentary time was available.
§ Mr. SkeffingtonI should not want the House to be misled. This was an undertaking given by the Leader of the House. There is no question but that legislation is prepared and that as time affords in the coming Session it will be introduced.
§ Mr. LubbockTherefore, we have to make provision meanwhile for the period of the suspension to be extended until the legislation which the Government have promised comes into force, just as it was foreshadowed that the Rent Act, 1965, would supersede the Protection from Eviction Act, 1964, and that once the Rent Act was on the Statute Book the other Act would be unnecessary. Since, in an uncertain world, we cannot be absolutely certain just when Parliamentary time will be found for such legislation, we have to anticipate the need for extensions that could be applied by the courts at their discretion.
3.15 p.m.
I must point out a most undesirable consequence to site operators were the subsection to be deleted. If a caravan resident is given 12 months' security of tenure and then abuses it and decides to make a thorough nuisance of himself on the site and play merry hell with all the neighbours, the site operator would not be able, without the subsection, to appeal to the courts to reduce the period of suspension. The deletion would be most objectionable to site operators, who would lose their protection against the undesirable person who, by craft or by some other means, has obtained a 12 months' suspension of the order and proceeds to abuse it.
§ Mr. MaddanWe are coming to the very nub of the matter. I first began to be very interested in the problem of caravan dwellers when Lord Brooke, then Mr. Henry Brooke, was at the Ministry of Housing and I represented another constituency. The interesting thing is, and this subsection throws light on it, that 1169 provision of bricks-and-mortar accommodation under private enterprise auspices has been extremely tardy and inadequate to meet demand. It is generally agreed, and one of the Government's recent White Papers underlined it, that one of the reasons for this position is the unsatisfactory state of landlord and tenant law. We are now trying to import into the caravan world exactly those provisions which have dried up the supply of brick-and-mortar accommodation, and for that reason the subsection is extremely undesirable.
It has also come out in our exchanges this afternoon that, in any case, the Government have their own Bill which will come along, we are told, very soon. Would it be a great tragedy—
§ Mr. SkeffingtonI intervene because I thought that it might be implied from the demeanour of some hon. Gentlemen opposite that the Government did not intend to deal as soon as possible with the whole problem, going very much further than a Bill in relation to caravans. Actions in relation to harassment and so on can be dealt with in a parallel way, but other legislation to deal with caravan circumstances is quite different. We are grateful to the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock) for undertaking this holding action, but it is the Government's intention as soon as possible to introduce permanent legislation. I did not say that there was any question of its being done this Session: it will be done as soon as possible in the Session to come.
§ Sir Knox Cunningham rose—
§ Mr. SpeakerOrder. We cannot have an intervention in an intervention.
§ Mr. MaddanI accept entirely what the Parliamentary Secretary says, but the proceedings on the Bill, not only today but in Committee, show that there is a great deal to be considered. I am not at all certain that the hypotheses of the holding Bill may not militate against best solutions later when the Government's Bill comes forward.
§ Sir Knox CunninghamWe have had a promise from the Minister that the Government will bring in legislation this Session—
§ Hon. Members: No.
§ Sir Knox CunninghamAre we to place any more reliance on this promise than on other promises, which have been broken?
§ Mr. SpeakerOrder. We are getting a little wide of the Amendment. We are trying to decide whether subsection (3) should stand.
§ Mr. SkeffingtonI must correct what has just been said. What the hon. Member for Antrim, South (Sir Knox Cunningham) said just now is not what I said. I did not say that it would be this Session—that is the one thing I did not say.
§ Question put, That the Amendment be made: —
§ The Committee divided: Ayes 12, Noes 69.
1171| Division No. 166.] | AYES | [3.20 p.m. |
| Biggs-Davision, John | Doughty, Charles | Maddan, Martin |
| Black, Sir Cyril | Drayson, G. B. | Maginnis, John E. |
| Clark, Henry | Farr, John | |
| Cunningham, Sir Knox | Gurden, Harold | TELLERS FOR THE AYES: |
| Currie, G. B. H. | Jennings, J. C. (Burton) | Mr. Michael Alison and Mr. John Wells. |
| NOES | ||
| Abse, Leo | Fletcher, Raymond (likeston) | Kenyon, Clifford |
| Archer, Peter | Ford, Ben | Kerr Russell (Feltham) |
| Bagier, Gordon A. T. | Fraser,Rt.Hn.Hugh(St'fford & Stone) | Lipton, Marcus |
| Butler, Mrs. Joyce (Wood Green) | Freeson, Reginald | Lloyd, Ian (P'tsm'th, Langstone) |
| Campbell, Gordon | Garrett, W. E. | Lomas, Kenneth |
| Crossman, Rt. Hn. Richard | Ginsburg, David | Luard, Evan |
| Delargy, Hugh | Gray, Dr. Hugh (Yarmouth) | Lubbock, Eric |
| Dickens, James | Gregory, Arnold | Mabon, Dr. J. Dickson |
| Driberg, Tom | Hamilton, William (Fife, W.) | Macdonald, A. H. |
| Dunwoody, Dr. John (F'th & C'b'e) | Hamling, William | Mackenzie,Alasdair(Ross&Crom'ty) |
| Eadie, Alex | Heald, Rt. Hn. Sir Lionel | Mahon, Peter (Preston, S.) |
| Edwards, Robert (Bilston) | Heffer, Eric S. | Mallalieu,J.P.W.(Huddersfield,E.) |
| English, Michael | Jay, Rt. Hn. Douglas | Mellish, Rt. Hn. Robert |
| Ewing, Mrs. Winifred | Jenkins, Hugh (Putney) | Mendelson, J. J. |
| Faulds, Andrew | Johnston, Russell (Inverness) | Mikardo, Ian |
| Molloy, William | Pavitt, Laurence | Taverne, Dick |
| Morris, Alfred (Wythenshawe) | Rees, Merlyn | Vickers, Dame Joan |
| Moyle, Roland | Ridley, Hn. Nicholas | Weitzman, David |
| Ogden, Eric | Robinson, W. O. J. (Walth'stow, E.) | Williams, Alan Lee (Hornchurch) |
| Oram, Albert E. | Roebuck, Roy | Wilson, William (Coventry, S.) |
| Orme, Stanley | Ryan, John | Winnick, David |
| Paget, R. T. | Shaw, Arnold (Ilford, S.) | |
| Pardoe, John | Skeffington, Arthur | TELLERS FOR THE NOES: |
| Parker, John (Dagenham) | Stonehouse, John | Mr. Albert Murray and Mr. James Wellbeloved. |