§ Mr. Graham PageI beg to move Amendment No. 70, in page 62, line 3, at end insert:
(4) In paragraph 1 of Schedule 9, and in paragraph 2 of Schedule 10, to the said Act of 1968 (meaning of development plan for purpose of certain enactments) after the words 'town and country planning', in each place where they occur, there shall be inserted the words 'the Highways Act 1959'.(5) In paragraph 6 of the said Schedule 9 (construction of certain statutory references to the acquisition of land and to land acquired) any reference to an enactment other than the said Acts of 1962 and 1968 shall include a reference to sections 37 and 40(3) of this Act.This Amendment does two things. New subsection (4) remedies an oversight in the Town and Country Planning Act, 1968, and new subsection (5) removes a doubt about the relationship between Schedule 9 of the Act and the new high- 502 way land acquisition powers given by Clauses 37 and 40(3) of the Bill.Subsection (4) meets a very small oversight. Under the new planning procedure of structure plans introduced by the 1968 Act, Amendments were made to the Town and Country Planning Acts and enactments relating to compensation to alter the expression "development plan"—the old expression—into the new expression, "structure plan". It was then overlooked that "development plan" was also mentioned in the Highways Act, 1959. Subsection (4) puts this right and gives us the new definition.
Subsection (5) is a rather more complicated and I shall have to take it a little more slowly, for my own sake, because it has a number of cross references.
Paragraph 6(a) of Schedule 9 to the Town and Country Planning Act, 1968 contains an extension of certain provisions in the Town and Country Planning Act, 1962 to the compulsory acquisition of land under any enactment other than the 1962 and 1968 Acts. The provisions in question enable an acquiring authority which has acquired compulsorily certain categories of land—burial grounds, consecrated land and land subject to statutory restrictions—to use that land for the purpose for which it has acquired it. They also provide for applying to land compulsorily acquired the code in Sections l64 to 168 of the 1962 Act about statutory undertakers' apparatus. Prior to the 1968 Act these provisions applied to land acquired for planning purposes only, but paragraph 6(a) of Schedule 9 to the 1968 Act applied them generally. Doubts have arisen whether the expression
any enactment other than the principal Act and this Actin paragraph 6(a) would include an enactment passed since the coming into operation of the 1968 Act. The Amendment removes this doubt as regards the new highway land acquisition powers given by the Bill.There have been cases, and there could be cases in the future, in which land of this special kind was acquired and it was then found that it could not be used for highway purposes. This is only a tidying-up Amendment, which will put the matter beyond doubt.
§ Amendment agreed to.