LAW OF PROPERTY (CONSOLIDATION) BILL. [H.L.] (Hansard, 11 February 1925)

§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR (VISCOUNT CAVE)

My Lords, I have to move the Second Readings of this and six other Bills, but I think I can deal with them all in one speech. These Bills are really the last step in the completion of the great change—I think in other days I should have said the revolution—in the conveyancing practice of this country which was effected by the Act passed in the year 1922 at the instance of my noble and learned friend Lord Birkenhead. A promise was made when that Act was under discussion that the law would be consolidated. As soon as the Act was passed, investigations were made, and the existing law and the effect of that Act were carefully considered both by the Committee over which Mr. Justice Romer presided and by myself. It was found that before a consolidating Statute could be passed a certain number of amendments were absolutely necessary. Those amendments were embodied in a Bill which, after some delay caused by the General Election, was ultimately passed into law at the beginning of the present Session of Parliament.

Now these seven Bills are purely consolidating Bills. They are intended to represent the law as it stands to-day, and, if Parliament follows its usual practice, no amendment of the law can be or ought to be introduced into them. Whether they have exactly the character winch I intended to give to them will be considered and determined by the Committee of the two Houses over which my noble and learned friend Lord Muir Mackenzie has recently presided. If they find anything new in the Bills they will probably strike it out or suggest that it should be struck out. I want to add in view of a communication that I have received, that these Bills do not deal with the question of copyhold at all. That 207 part of the subject is left to be governed by what will remain of the Act of 1922 and, therefore, I am afraid that this particular topic could not possibly be discussed on these Bills. I may tell the House one effect of these Bills, and that is to repeal, or partially repeal, no fewer than ninety-nine existing Statutes. I have a list of Statutes that goes far back into our history. One Bill proposes to repeal two Acts that are so old that even their date is unknown. There are two Acts of Edward I, three of Edward III, four of Henry VIII, three of Edward VI, three of Queen Elizabeth, and so on through the list of our Sovereigns, including forty-eight Statutes of Queen Victoria. With some of these Statutes, on which old-fashioned lawyers like myself have been brought up, we shall part with some regret, but I have no doubt compensation will be found in the circumstance that if these Bills become law our law will be more easily understood, not only by lawyers but by laymen.

I will add one word as to the need for dispatch. The delay which occurred in bringing the Act of 1922 into operation was, I am quite sure, unavoidable, but I believe it would be the wish of Parliament that no further avoidable delay should occur. Further it is necessary to pass these Bills at an early date, because after they are passed some time will be required, first, for the issue of Rules under certain sections of these Acts, and, secondly, to enable members of the legal profession to become acquainted, by study of the Statutes and by means of text books, with their provisions. That, of course, must take some time, and as the proposal is that the measures should come into operation on January 1 next, it is desirable that these Bills should pass within the next few months, so that not less than six months may still be available for the study of the Acts after they have become law. That is all that I need say about the Bills to-day. I can only express the hope that the trouble and time which have been bestowed on this work by so many skilled lawyers will bear fruit, and will result in lasting benefit to the country at large. I beg to move.

§ VISCOUNT HALDANE

My Lords, it would pass the wit of man to say whether, in the form which these Bills have finally assumed, they cover everything, or are free in all respects from error, but I think your Lordships will be quite well within Bishop Butler's principle that probability is the guide of life in giving them a Second Reading, and referring them to the Consolidation Bill Committee presided over by my noble friend Lord Muir Mackenzie. Six of these Bills my noble and learned friend on the Woolsack has inherited from the late Government. I myself introduced six of them last August. The seventh is entirely his, I think, with the added co-operation of Lord Buckmaster in its preparation. At all events, they are Bills which simply take the legislation that is before the House in the shape of Lord Birkenhead's Law of Property Act, and unite it with various amendments of the old Statutes in order to get a mass of material which you can consolidate. Upon the six Bills which were introduced last August I spent a great deal of time, and I think that I am right in saying that I inherited the substance of them from my noble and learned friend, who had worked on them while on the previous occasion he occupied the Woolsack.

I may say that I have not his affection for the old Statutes. They are beautiful to look at and contemplate, but I remember when I was a conveyancing counsel in Lincoln's Inn on one occasion discovering that, notwithstanding the care which had been taken by two most eminent counsel, there was a flaw in the title to land which a member of your Lordships' House had bought believing, on the highest advice, that it had become vested in himself. He had paid his money and taken his deed. I was privileged to discover that the land was vested in three infants and a lunatic instead of in the purchaser. That is the beauty of these obscure old Statutes, and I congratulate my noble and learned friend on the Woolsack on having put them into what promises to be, after supervision, a much safer form. I think we may, without the slightest trepidation, consent to the Second Reading of this Bill, and send it and the other Bills to the Consolidation Committee in the hope that they will emerge from the scrutiny of that Committee undamaged.