§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR (VISCOUNT HALDANE):My Lords, I ask leave to introduce seven Bills. They are Bills with which I have no intention of proceeding at the present time, but I am desirous of having them printed so that we may have the benefit of any criticisms which may be made between now and the time when the House reassembles in the autumn. These Bills relate to the law of property, and perhaps your Lordships would permit me, although it is unusual, to occupy two or three minutes at the outside in making a statement of what they consist. Your Lordships remember that my noble and learned friend Lord Birkenhead passed a great Act called the Law of Property Act, and that Act, as was almost inevitable with so great an Act, was not the work of any single Lord Chancellor. I myself, in 1913 and 1914, had introduced what was substantially the same Bill, but it was much improved before my noble and learned friend took it up.
At his request I presided over a Joint Committee of the two Houses for the purpose of putting the Act into shape. In the end my noble and learned friend, with something that seemed to me to amount to genius, did what I should have doubted my own capacity to succeed in doing—he passed the Bill through Parliament, and so the Act passed on to the Statute Book. When my noble and learned friend Lord Cave succeeded to the office of Lord Chancellor, he took a view, in which I concurred and in which Lord Birkenhead concurred, that we should not really put the law of real property into shape, unless we passed further Acts amending the other statutory provisions belonging to our history and which deal with the law of real property. All the Bills necessary have now been prepared.
There is an Amending Bill, which deals with Statutes going back to the 125 thirteenth century. They are all brought into shape, and if that Bill, which is one of those that I propose now to introduce, and which I have inherited really in a large measure from Lord Cave, passes, then all that will be required will be to pass six Consolidation Bills, for which no time will be required, because they do not change what will then be the law at all. I should tell your Lordships what the Bills I propose to introduce are. As I have said I do not propose to proceed further with them at present. They are seven in number and they carry out the policy concurred in by Lord Cave as well as by Lord Birkenhead himself, and embody work done also by others.
The first is a Bill to amend the Law of Property Act and the enactments thereby affected. I passed through this House the other day a Bill suspending for a year the operation of Lord Birkenhead's Act in order to enable these amendments to be made. Then there are six other Bills. There is one to consolidate all the enactments relating to conveyancing and the law of real property in England and Wales; one to consolidate the enactments relating to settled land; one to consolidate the enactments relating to trustees; there is one to consolidate the enactments relating to registration; one to consolidate the Land Transfer Acts; and, the last, one to consolidate the law relating to administration. If the Amending Act passes, and if these Consolidating Bills are also passed, then your Lordships will have obtained what successive Chancellors have suggested as the ideal at which they ought to aim—namely, that the whole law relating to property should be consolidated into six convenient volumes, which I trust your Lordships will all have in your libraries, if not bound in morrocco at any rate bound in buckram. They will be a fertile source from which to inquire into the state of the law as regards property and will enormously facilitate the work of those engaged in this practice.
Moved, That the Bill be now read la .— (The Lord Chancellor.)
§ On Question, Bill read la, and to be printed.