HC Deb 13 October 1975 vol 897 cc999-1009
Mr. Nicholas Edwards (Pembroke)

I beg to move Amendment No. 43, in page 50, line 11, leave out 'nine' and insert 'ten'.

Mr. Speaker

With this amendment we may discuss the following Amendments:

No. 44, in page 50, line 16, leave out sub-paragraph (2) and insert: '(2) Five offices as members of the Authority shall be held by members chosen by local authorities in Wales'. No. 377, in page 50, leave out lines 16 to 19 and insert: '(2) Three offices as members of the Authority shall be held by members appointed by the Council consisting of representatives of district councils in Wales known as the Council for the Principality and two offices as members of the Authority shall be held by members appointed by the Committee consisting of representatives of county councils in Wales known as the Welsh Counties Committee.' No. 378, in page 50, line 31, at end insert: '(2A) A member appointed pursuant to paragraph 2 (2) above shall cease to be a member if he ceases to be a member of a local authority.'

Mr. Edwards

All these amendments deal with the nature of the membership of the Land Authority for Wales. In England the functions laid down in the Bill are to be carried out by elected local authorities and in Wales by a creature of the Secretary of State. My hon. Friend the Member for Conway (Mr. Roberts) has just reminded the House that, whereas in England the local authorities are to be allowed a certain amount of discretion as to the way in which they carry out these directives, in Wales the Land Authority has to comply with such directions, and that is a fairly rigid term. Not only does the authority have to comply with directives, but it differs fundamentally from the responsible authorities in England because it is not elected. It is selected by the Secretary of State. He picks its members and gives it orders. In Wales the local authorities are apparently not trusted by the Secretary of State. Instead, we are to have this Authority for which no proper explanation has been given.

If we are to have such an Authority—our efforts to get rid of it unfortunately have been defeated—at least we must make some effort to break a shackle here or there. We must try at least to ensure that its membership is of good quality, representative of various interests and ready to stand up for itself.

The Secretary of State claims that by giving him dictatorial powers we in fact ensure parliamentary control because he is ultimately responsible to Parliament. However, despite what the Minister said in response to the previous batch of amendments, I remain unconvinced. The Minister knows full well that by the time general directives have been reported to Parliament and debated, in many cases the damage has been done. I believe that even more so is that true if we are to have to go through the extraordinary procedure of relying on the Press for information which should be given directly to Parliament. If we are concerned about the way in which individual decisions are taken on a day-to-day basis, if we are to have some element of democratic influence over the day-to-day work of the authority, it cannot arise from the person or body to whom the authority is ultimately responsible. It can be achieved only by having as its members independently-minded individuals, some of whom I believe should be conscious of the fact that they have a responsibility to electors.

The first matter that concerns us is the size of the authority. Originally it was to be a minimum of four which certainly would have been inadequate, particularly bearing in mind that there is to be a minimum of four representatives from the local authorities. The Government have accepted our request to increase the minimum to six, and we are grateful to them for that. Now we press for an increase in the maximum number permitted.

I fully understand the arguments advanced by Ministers against large authorities, but no one could say that an authority of 10 is excessive. I should have preferred something a little larger than that. A larger membership would make possible the inclusion of people with real knowledge relevant to the problem. In the Welsh Development Agency Bill there is the provision that the members should have had experience or shown capacity in various relevant areas. We ought to have scope here for the inclusion of members with experience in areas related to land planning or with knowledge of those most affected—for example, the agriculture industry.

It is because we do not want to squeeze out these special interests that we propose an increase in the size of the Authority. But at the same time we wish to ensure that at least half the members come from elected local authorities, and that is the purpose of Amendment No. 44. This is the vital link with local democracy, the local authorities, which, after all, will have to act as agents for the Authority and will probably have to recruit a considerable number of additional staff.

But we go further. In Amendment No. 44 we suggest that the local authorities should have the power to select or nominate their representatives. I suspect that the Minister will reply that he is interested in their potential ability as members of the Land Authority rather than their skills or popularity as local representatives. It is insulting to the local authorities in Wales to say not only that they may not do the job in Wales which the Government believe can be done by local authorities in England, but that they cannot even nominate their own representatives.

It is perfectly possible to have an Authority which is both efficient and nominated by a variety of organisations. Precedents have been quoted today. One precedent of which I have particular knowledge and experience is the Milford Conservancy Board which has a worldwide reputation for efficiency in the extremely responsible job that it does. The representatives of the oil companies, the pilots, the local authorities, and so on, are not picked by the Minister after consultation. The 1958 Act is refreshing in its wording when we consider what we have had to look at recently. The Act states, The chairman and 10 other members of the board shall be appointed as follows; that is to say". It then lists them: one by the Admiralty, one by Trinity House, one by the National Parks Commission, three by the County Council of Pembroke, and so on. It has been altered recently because we have had a new structure of local government, but the principle is there. Why cannot we have a clause like that on this occasion? Why should the Secretary of State or his civil servants be considered the best judges of character or ability?

Amendment No. 377 takes the matter a stage further. It suggests which local government organisations should make the nominations. It is inspired in part by the Association of District Councils. The wording of the amendment is based on the Local Government Administration (Representative Body for Wales) Order 1974 under which the Council for the Principality and the Welsh Counties Committee are specifically recognised as the bodies to be consulted for the purpose of appointing the representative body for Wales which receives reports from the Local Commissioner for Administration.

The district councils are, of course, housing authorities responsible for local plans and development control, many of which have proven records in the development of industrial estates. We give them credit for that. Their functions, therefore, qualify them best as the agents in this instance, and they are more likely to have the staff and experience to carry out the majority of the agency rôles for the Land Authority. There are about three times as many of them as there are county councils. For this reason, a ratio of three to two is proposed.

I understand that the Welsh Office, faced by this argument from the district councils, has talked about the need for flexibility, that splendid word that means anything or nothing, but the association and the Council for the Principality reply, quite reasonably, that they see no need for flexibility and wonder why there should be this reluctance to amend the Bill. If the Council for the Prinicipality and the Welsh Counties Committee, in which all 37 districts and eight counties are represented, are not necessarily to be consulted, which other bodies, they ask, does the Secretary of State regard as representing local authorities in Wales? Those are reasonable questions to which we shall expect answers.

Finally, I turn to Amendment No. 378 which is also inspired by the Association of District Councils, and that is simple and straightforward. The members appointed to represent local government will be councillors, and therefore it seems logical that if they cease to be councillors they should cease also to be members of the Agency.

We said that we object to the concept of a Land Authority for Wales but if we are to have one we believe that it should have greater independence and more democratic content than the Government have chosen to give it, and that is the purpose of our amendments.

Mr. Alec Jones

I have to advise my hon. Friends that we must resist these amendments which have been so persuasively put forward by the hon. Member for Pembroke (Mr. Edwards). The hon. Gentleman always starts by talking about this body being a creature of the Secretary of State for Wales. I remind him that there are several creatures of previous Secretaries of State for Wales roaming round Wales now and they do not all meet with approval from the people of Wales. This creature is not such a bad one. At least half of its members are to be drawn from local authorities.

I do not believe that it is a question of the Government or my right hon. Friend being unwilling to trust the local authorities in Wales. It is a question of having regard to the size of Wales and to the belief that we can adopt a uniform pattern in this land process for the whole of Wales that will be to the benefit of those who live there. I accept that there can be two views on this, but it is nonsense to talk all the time about who can and who cannot be trusted in this matter.

I accept that we could have an argument about whether there should be nine or 10 members. If we gave the hon. Gentleman 10 he would put down an amendment asking for 11. If we had suggested 11 he would have gone on to 12. There is no magic number. What we have tried to ensure is that we have have a body with sufficient people on it to do the job effectively, but not too many people to clutter up the whole process which we believe to be essential for the people of Wales.

When my hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil (Mr. Rowlands), who was then the Under-Secretary of State for Wales, began the discussions on this Bill he met the members of the Welsh local authority associations. That was in March this year, and at that meeting it was indicated that the new Authority was likely to consist of a chairman and eight members and that local authorities would provide about half those members. At that time the idea that half the members would be from local authorities seemed generally to satisfy all local authority associations in Wales. I am not saying that nine, 10, 11 or 12 is the perfect number, but I do not think that the hon. Member for Pembroke can provide any greater justification for the 10 he has suggested than one could for any other number.

The question of how many representatives should be drawn from local authorities is of considerable importance. Nevertheless, we have to take into account the facts as they are, and we know that if we are talking about having a Land Authority for Wales working in harmonious relationship with both county and district authorities it is bound to cause resentment among some local authority representatives if they feel that others are being better treated than themselves. I think that our arrangement for having the same number from counties and districts is the right way of dealing with this problem. I accept and note the part that district councils have played in housing, and so on, but county councils have played an equally important part in other spheres of life in Wales. So I believe that by having the same number from county councils and district councils, we have dealt effectively with that point.

10.15 p.m.

However, when it comes to the method of selection, it is a vital question whether the choice should be for the Secretary of State or for the local authorities. I would give three reasons that it is better that the provision in the Bill for the choice to be made by the Secretary of State should prevail. First it will help to create unity within the Authority. If the amendments were accepted, some members of the Authority would be selected, nominated or chosen by the local authorities and some by my right hon. Friends and in the working of the organisation there would be a tendency towards division between local authority representatives and the rest. There is bound to be such a risk in any case, but with the hon. Gentleman's recommendations, the possibility of a rift would be even greater.

Second, there are implications for the status and position of any Secretary of State as an appointing authority. The amendment would require him to become a mere cypher rubber-stamping the appointment of people nominated by others. This is not desirable, particularly when the Secretary of State is answer-able to Parliament for the way in which the Land Authority carries out its functions. If the appointment of half the members is taken out of his hands, his personal authority is weakened and by implication Parliament will lose because the field over which the Secretary of State is answerable to Parliament will be restricted.

The third reason is the most telling. The amendment would constrain the Secretary of State's freedom to appoint other members of the Authority. The Secretary of State is anxious to achieve various balances—geographical and between ages and sexes and the needs of different interests. To do so, he must retain the power to nominate these people so as to give him the right flexibility.

I am sure that the hon. Member for Pembroke (Mr. Edwards) was right about Milford Haven in the past, but he knows that that is not the present position, that three local authorities have to be consulted about filling two vacancies, so one is bound to be disappointed. It is the normal practice to obtain more nominations than there are places to fill to give a degree of selection.

We do not object to Amendment No. 378 as such, but we intend that the point should be covered by the letters of appointment issued in accordance with paragraph 4 of Schedule 2—that a member of the Authority shall hold and vacate office in accordance with the terms of his appointment. The assurance that a local authority member would be required to stand down if he ceased to be a member of the local authority was given by my hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil in Committee on 12th June. We do not believe it necessary to write that into the Bill and we think that the provisions which we have outlined for the number and composition of the Land Authority will give us the body best suited to the needs of our people.

Amendment negatived.

Mr. Alec Jones

I beg to move Amendment No. 45, in page 51, line 6, leave out 'chairman or'.

Mr. Speaker

I understand that it will be convenient to discuss at the same time Government Amendment No. 46 and Amendment No. 47, in Page 51, line 7, at end insert 'provided always that any one person may not hold the offices of chairman and secretary concurrently for a period exceeding three months and then only as a temporary expedient during a casual vacancy occuring in one or other of such offices'.

Mr. Jones

I shall be recommending the acceptance of Amendments Nos. 45 and 46 and the rejection of Amendment No. 47.

The Government amendment has been introduced to meet a point made by a number of Opposition Members during consideration of the Bill in Committee. Although the Opposition did not object to the principle in Amendment No. 297, which was moved by the hon. Member for Conway (Mr. Roberts), of flexibility and economy which is at present embodied in paragraph 4, the argument was made that there was a potential danger in allowing an individual to hold, even for a short period until other arrangements could be made, the two key appointments of chairman and secretary.

The hon. Gentleman quite rightly drew our attention to that point. My predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil (Mr. Rowlands), undertook to consider the points raised without commitment and to return to them on Report with a suitable amendment. We have accepted the point made by the hon. Gentleman that there is sufficient substance in the points which were then argued in Committee to justify a modification of the provisions of the paragraph to ensure that one person should not at the same time be both chairman and secretary. The amendment will achieve this while maintaining full flexibility. A person may be an official other than a secretary and a member, including chairman or deputy chairman, and the secretary can hold any member's position other than chairman's, while the chairman may hold the post of any official other than the secretary. The chairman should not at the same time be deputy chairman.

We tried to take fully into account the point made by the hon. Gentleman. We agreed that the key appointments of chairman and secretary should not be held by the same person. We would concede that the other point is of some importance, namely, that there is bound to be some degree of flexibility in this.

The Opposition amendment is not now consistent with the argument that they put forward in Committee when they saw the danger of any one person being both secretary and chairman even for a short time. The Opposition originally argued that the Government should go all the way on this matter but I would hope that they would be prepared to withdraw the amendment.

Mr. Wyn Roberts

The amendment of the Secretary of State meets the points that we were making in Committee about the danger inherent in the Bill as it stands that the authority might become almost a one-man band. Some hon. Members may believe that the best committee is a committee of two with one member away sick. However, it would not be advisable to carry that principle too far when setting up statutory bodies.

We will not move our amendment in view of the fact that the points are covered by the Government's amendments.

Amendment agreed to.

Amendment made:

No. 46, in page 51, line 6, at end insert 'and a person holding the office of chairman of the Authority may hold any other office except that of secretary or deputy chairman'.—[Mr. Alec Jones.]

Mr. Wyn Roberts

I beg to move Amendment No. 48, in page 52, line 33, at end insert 'provided always that nothing in this paragraph shall be taken to make valid any transaction which would otherwise be void or voidable'.

The aim of this amendment is to ensure that in the event of actionable conduct on the part of any member of the authority, such as involvement in fraud, an action could be brought and the relevant transactions of the authority made void in consequence of a conviction.

This amendment was suggested off the cuff by my right hon. Friend the Mem- ber for Crosby (Mr. Page) when we were discussing the point in Committee. Some hon. Members expressed doubts concerning the effect of the seemingly sweeping exoneration given in the relevant paragraph to the proceedings of the authority.

It was explained to us that the paragraph was meant to protect the innocent third party in any transaction involving the authority, but certain questions arose to which satisfactory answers were not then available. The Minister promised to consider the amendment before us and we eagerly await the Government's considered reply.

Mr. Alec Jones

I assure the hon. Member for Conway (Mr. Roberts) that the fears he has expressed and similar fears which were mentioned in Committee are completely unfounded. We discussed this in Committee and it was accepted by some Opposition Members that the paragraph as it stood did not deal with issues of fraud and corruption.

To quote the right hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Page) its intention was to ensure that a third party who deals with the Authority does not need to investigate whether every member is free from taint, is well appointed or has an interest in the affairs".—[Official Report, Standing Committee G, 17th June 1975; c. 1058.] The right hon. Gentleman went on to suggest that although he did not see the need for the words which are now proposed we as a Government might consider putting them in to satisfy his hon. Friends. My hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil (Mr. Rowlands) undertook to consider the proposal.

We have considered the proposal and have taken advice in the matter. I wrote to the right hon. Member for Crosby and the hon. Member for Hove (Mr. Sainsbury) on 16th July explaining to them that the paragraph would not limit the powers of the courts under Section 173 of the Law of Property Act 1925 and that our legal advice was that an amendment on the lines suggested was not necessary. I said in that letter: We have now considered this point and I am advised that nothing in the new paragraph would limit the powers of the courts under section 173 of the Law of Property Act 1925 which in subsection (1) provides that '…every voluntary disposition of land made with intent to defraud a subsequent purchaser is voidable at the instance of that purchaser'". I might have been prepared to add the words to ease the minds of Opposition Members, but I had to take the advice that, in general, in drafting, unnecessary words should not be added just for the avoidance of doubt when no doubt exists. Such drafting would have the unfortunate effect if creating doubt elsewhere where similar words have not been added.

I understand the fears expressed by the hon. Gentleman. I hope that what I have said will assure him that there is no reason for such an amendment and that his fears are not valid.

Mr. Roberts

In view of the Minister's assurance, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

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