HL Deb 18 July 1944 vol 132 cc936-50

Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.

LORD WINSTER

My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. In doing so, I think that I should at once make it quite clear that in introducing this Bill I have acted entirely in my individual capacity, and that my Party is not in any way identified with it. The Bill aims at performing what seems to me to be an act of simple justice to that very considerable number of men who, owing to the war, have been obliged to give up their means of livelihood in order to serve either in the Armed Forces or in some form of war industry. Many of these men have been obliged to abandon a thriving business which they have built up after many years of commendable industry and thrift, or, as has frequently happened, a business which has been carried on by their fathers and grandfathers for many decades.

This type of man I consider to be a valuable citizen, who deserves well of his country when the war is over, and on that account I think that not only is this Bill, as I have already said, an act of simple justice, but it is wise and statesmanlike to preserve and maintain the type of man who has been the backbone of our civic and municipal life for over two hundred years. Your Lordships may wish to know the number of persons who would be affected by this Bill. That, unfortunately, cannot be stated with any very great accuracy. So far as can be ascertained no exact record exists of the number of persons who were in trade or business prior to the beginning of the war and who, during the war, have been in the service of the Crown, the Merchant Navy, the Red Cross or a Civil Defence Force, or who have been engaged in another trade or industry in consequence of a direction from a competent authority. The nearest figures I have been able to get are that the number of persons who are estimated to have been in trade or business in September, 1939, approximated to 600,000.

In considering the Bill we have to take into account the various types of traders. A trader or tradesman is one who sells goods by retail. By retail is meant that he sells goods in small quantities, and to do this, to use a common phrase, he "keeps a shop." There are at least five main types of shops. There are the multiple shops which command very large capital but usually limit the merchandise they sell to one or two ranges. Then there are the chain stores, which sell a great variety of goods at a wide range of prices. The department stores are usually linked up financially with similar stores in other centres. There are the co-operative stores which are based on the conception of mutual trading, their members or customers being held to be the proprietors and sharing in the profits. Lastly, there is the unit, which has been well described as the traditional type of shop carried on as an independent business.

Of the first four types, the multiple shops, the chain stores, the department stores and the co-operative stores, it is estimated that at the beginning of the war there were approximately 150,000 shops open and doing business, and some of these types of shops employed a very large number of men and women. No reliable figure again exists, but it may be estimated that these 150,000 shops employed at least 1,500,000 men and women. But this great army of 1,500,000 employees are not what the Bill defines—I shall come to this later—as "war service persons," because they were not carrying on trade or business on their own account. Large numbers of these employees have been called up for national service, and the effect of this calling up, though it has meant a reduction in staff and a consequent restriction in Service to customers, has not meant that any considerable number of business premises or large shops have been closed down on account of their owners being called to the service of the Crown or directed to another trade or industry by a competent authority. That is a point that I wish to emphasize—that, although this very large number of employees has been called to the Colours or some form of war service, the effect of that has not been any very large closing down of businesses.

Therefore this Bill does not affect and is not intended to affect the first four types of business which I have quoted, the multiple shops, the chain stores, the department stores and the co-operative stores. It is concerned solely with the fifth type of shop, the unit shop. Persons who conduct such a type of shop as the unit shop are best described as the smaller independent, or individual, retail traders. Again, no complete figures are available as to the number of unit shops which were open and doing business at the beginning of the war. The freedom of private enterprise enabled any person with a little capital and a faith in himself, to open a shop. Various estimates have been made ranging from 400,000 to 550,000 unit shops. The majority of them are what is known as the one-man business—the shopkeeper who is carrying on business on his own account. It is these one-man businesses that have been so deeply and adversely affected by war conditions. This unit shopkeeper is the type of man who has been called in great numbers to the service of the Crown, in the Armed Forces, the Merchant Navy, the Red Cross or a Civil Defence Force, or who has been directed into another trade or industry by a competent authority.

The result has been that a very large number of unit shops have been closed down. Again, no accurate figures are available. It is one of the difficultes in introducing this Bill that accurate figures on these subjects are not available. But it is estimated that some thousands of unit shops have been closed down on account of the traders who conducted those shops being called up for service. It is, of course, quite right and proper that all men of military age who are physically fit should serve in the Forces of the Crown in time of war, but that is not the point at issue. The point is that all such men and women who on account of requirements of war have had to abandon their peace-time business, to give up their shops, in order to serve in the Forces of the Crown, have, in my opinion, the right to expect at the end of the war to be reinstated in their trade or in their business premises. That is the general principle upon which the provisions of this Bill are based and that is the principle which the Bill seeks to have established—namely, that these men and women have the right to expect at the end of the war to be reinstated in their trade or in their business premises.

To come to the details of the Bill itself, the preamble states that the Act is one to make provision for the reinstatement in their trade or business premises of certain persons who are, or have been, in the service of the Crown, the Merchant Navy, a Civil Defence Force, or who have been engaged in another trade or industry in consequence of a direction from the Minister of Labour and National Service or a National Service Officer; and for purposes connected with the matters aforesaid. Clause 1 provides that the term in the preamble "certain persons" means "war service persons," that is any person who was carrying on any retail trade or business on his or her own account on premises which he or she held under a contract or tenancy and who quitted the holding and ceased to carry on such trade or business by reason of his or her entry into war service. The Bill as printed says "he or she" and "his or her" but I have found that in the Interpretation Act of 1889 it is laid down that "he" means "she" also. Clause 1 also defines "war service." In this connexion it has been pointed out to me that the Red Cross possibly should be included in the list. The clause also gives definitions of "landlord," "premises," and "occupier." The main object of the Bill is to provide for reinstatement and the Bill will authorize the reinstatement, restoration and replacement of war service persons in the positions they held in trade or business prior to the beginning of the war.

Clause 2 provides the means and method whereby a war service person shall on discharge from war service be reinstated in the premises formerly occupied by him. The war service person on certain conditions shall be entitled to give one month's notice in writing to the landlord of the premises to re-enter and retake possession of the premises; but that entitlement is limited. It does not apply to a war service person who quitted the premises or transferred his holding or the goodwill of his trade or business in favour of another person for valuable consideration or whose discharge from war service was in consequence of misconduct. It applies only to those war service persons of good conduct and repute who, through no action or fault of their own, were compelled to abandon the business premises occupied by them at the time they were called up. That seems to me to be fundamentally fair and just, but it has been pointed out to me that Clause 2 as drafted may possibly be somewhat ambiguous. I should like to make it quite clear that my purpose is that the war service person shall be entitled to re-entry into his former premises, whether these premises are occupied by the representatives of one of the four types of great multiple shops which I have quoted or even if they are occupied by another single-shop proprietor. Whether occupied by a single-shop proprietor or by one of the four large organizations of which I have spoken, the ex-Serviceman should be reinstated. If the Bill were to go further I would myself propose an Amendment to make that perfectly clear.

Clause 3 makes it clear that it is the duty of the occupier of premises formerly occupied by a war service person to give the latter all the information and assistance necessary to enable him to serve a notice on the landlord. This clause is necessary, I feel, in case the occupier—that is the man who took over the premises of the war service person—refused to recognize any moral or legal obligation to give information to the war service person which might lead to the occupier being dispossessed of his tenancy. One can well imagine that in certain cases there would be a reluctance on the part of the occupier to give the necessary information to the war service person as a matter of grace. Therefore this clause makes it the duty of the occupier to give that information.

Clause 4 places certain obligations on the landlord of the business premises. It obliges the landlord to do all things necessary on his part to enable the war service person to re-enter into possession of the premises. It is not much good giving the war service person the right to reenter into the premises unless at the same time an obligation is laid on the landlord to enable him to do so. Clause 5 and 6 lay down the methods and scope of serving notices on the landlord and occupier irrespective of the conditions laid down under the Rent and Mortgage Interest (Restrictions) Acts or under any other enactment that may have been made with respect to the premises in which reinstatement is sought. Without the provisions of Clauses 5 and 6 the right of the war service person to re-enter into his old premises would very often become a dead letter. Clause 7 provides that if there is no occupier, and the premises are vacant and in a reasonably fit state of repair, the war service person shall be entitled to take possession at the termination of one month's notice of his intention to do so.

Clause 8 is, I feel, an important clause. It provides that if the premises are not in a reasonably fit state of repair, it shall be the duty of the local authority in whose area the premises are situated to put such premises into repair at the earliest possible moment. Any local authority which has performed this service shall have a first charge on any compensation due in respect of war damage. If no such compensation is due, then the local authority shall recover any amount so expended from the owner or from the owner and landlord of the premises, such recovery to be spread over a period of thirty years. In this way, although the onus is laid on the local authority to put the premises into a state of repair, sanction is also given to the local authority to recover the amount which it so expends

In Clause 9, supposing the premises are occupied by a person upon whom a valid notice to quit cannot be served—that contingency might arise—what then? In such a case it shall be the duty of the local authority to provide for the war service person alternative accommodation reasonably equivalent to that which he left when called up and as far as possible upon equivalent conditions. It may not, of course, always be possible to reinstate the war service person in his original premises, but this clause provides that in such a case he should have alternative accommodation reasonably equivalent to that which he left and, as far as possible, he shall hold it upon equivalent conditions. There is another contingency which may arise. Supposing premises formerly occupied by a war service person have been destroyed or demolished, which is a contingency that will certainly arise in many areas that have been "blitzed" by enemy action. In some towns such as Plymouth and Coventry, Portsmouth and Exeter, whole shopping districts have been completely destroyed. If the local authority in such areas undertakes the rebuilding of a shopping district it shall be the duty of that local authority, under Clause 10, to provide for the erection of trade or business premises of a size and description reasonably equivalent to those formerly occupied by war service business men and to ensure that such war service persons secure possession. I feel that this provision is necessary because, amongst other reasons, such rebuilding schemes—and some that we have seen are very admirable indeed, notably the remarkable scheme prepared in the case of Plymouth—may very properly be upon a somewhat ambitious scale and without such an obligation as I seek to impose those schemes might not make provision for the erection of the type of small shop which is involved in this Bill.

Clause 11 empowers local authorities to do all acts and things necessary to carry out the provisions of the Bill. Clause 12 provides that where a war service person has recovered possession he shall be entitled to retain possession for a period of five years, provided he makes no default in terms and conditions of his tenancy. This seems to me to be a reasonable provision. The man in question will have a very considerable task to undertake in many cases in rebuilding his business and a certainty of tenure for five years therefore seems reasonable. Clauses 13, 14 and 15 deal with the issue of licences, supplies, default on the part of a landlord or occupier of premises and the jurisdiction of the County Court in matters of dispute.

Those, my Lords, are the main provisions of the Bill. As regards the men who are affected whose future this Bill seeks to assure, numbers of such men are serving their country well at this moment, hazarding and losing their lives in defence of their country. In their own time, when they are in rest, the loss of their business must be a source of constant preoccupation with them. In their own time their minds must be turning constantly round thoughts of what are their chances of getting started again. In many cases they must be galled by the knowledge that someone else has stepped in and is reaping the fruits of their enterprise and hard work. These are very heavy private anxieties for the men to bear. In addition to all that, they have to endure and suffer for their country at this time. I think therefore it may be some reassurance to them to know that their situation engages attention and that there are many in both Houses of Parliament who wish to watch over their interests. We have heard very harsh words used by a member of the War Cabinet in another place about employers who have shown unwillingness to restore their jobs to ex-employees who have been called up. I feel that the State may just as fairly be called upon as any employer to restore their means of livelihood to those men whose business the State has had to break up in furtherance of the war effort. I beg to move.

Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Winster.)

VISCOUNT SAMUEL

My Lords, the Bill introduced by the noble Lord proposes to give protection and assistance to a very large class of our fellow citizens who may have suffered great hardship not through any fault of their own but solely owing to the exigencies of war conditions. As the noble Lord has said, Parliament has accepted the principle that employees, whenever it is not impossible, must be reinstated in their employment when the war is over, if they have lost it through being called up for war service. This class of independent traders comprises people who, very often, have no larger incomes than the skilled artisans and often no greater security of livelihood, and who may be faced by even greater difficulties at the end of the war in starting life again. But to provide a feasible means for preserving their interests is not easy and I should not like to be committed to all the details of this Bill, but it makes a workmanlike endeavour to meet a case which is a strong one and I hope that your Lordships will give the Bill a Second Reading.

LORD STRABOLGI

My Lords, my noble friend was good enough to ask me to say a word in support of the Bill, and I do so not only on that account but because I think it right that every Peer from these Benches should show some interest in this matter if for no other reason than this, that during the long, difficult industrial disputes we have had in many parts of this country it has been the small shopkeepers who have extended credits to the families of the men sometimes locked out, sometimes forced into a strike, and thereby prevented a great deal of suffering to these men's families. I think the Labour movement as a whole owes a debt to the small shopkeeper and anything that can be done should be done, as my noble friend attempts to do in this Bill, to see that shopkeepers who gave up their small businesses to join the Forces should have every chance of reinstatement. Napoleon used to jeer at us by saying that we were a nation of shopkeepers. Well, we have been rapidly becoming a nation of servants of chain stores, which is quite a different thing, and the process of squeezing out the small man has been accelerated inevitably by war conditions. In theory the big unit, the big chain store, should give better service, but your Lordships know, or at least your wives know, that in practice that is not the case, that the decent little shopkeeper is usually the man who gives you by far the best service, for the very simple reason that he depends on good will for his livelihood and the prosperity of his business depends on having a good name for honesty and service and help and courtesy. If he does not have such a name he gets a bad reputation and in that way his business suffers. The remaining small shopkeepers in this period of war have been a tremendous boon, I can assure your Lordships, to housewives all over the country.

I have not consulted my noble friend about procedure. He indicated that he did not wish to go further than the Second Reading, and Lord Samuel hoped the Second Reading would be passed. With great diffidence I would like to make this suggestion to your Lordships if I may, and to the Government. This is a very complicated subject; it bristles with difficulties; we all know that. Give it a Second Reading and then, I suggest, we should remit it to a Select Committee of your Lordships' House so that the whole subject can be well examined. No doubt Lord Templemore will say that this is part of the larger schemes of reconstruction and planning with which the Government are so busily engaged. Well, the labours of a Select Committee of your Lordships' House would, I am sure, assist the Ministries concerned in this branch of reinstatement and reconstruction.

THE EARL OF CORK AND ORRERY

My Lords, I desire to say a few words in support of this Bill, which seems to me to be a simple act of justice to a most deserving section of the population and a very valuable class. We often hear of the value of private enterprise and initiative when it is connected with large business. I suggest that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. The man who has the pluck to put all his savings into a small business is a very valuable unit of society. These men play a great and valuable part as a steadying influence in the country because they are people who stand to lose by riots, disorder, strikes and the like, and will not encourage any upheaval that will deprive them of their business. Many of them are ex-Servicemen and they are often the first to be called up because they have a small retaining fee and are kept on the reserve. They go willingly and the Government should do something to reinstate them.

LORD TEMPLEMORE

My Lords, I should like first on behalf of my noble friend the Leader of the House and of the Government to thank my noble friend Lord Winster for his courtesy in postponing his Motion for the Second Reading of this Bill, not only once but I think on several occasions, in deference to the wishes of the Government in order to further our legislative programme. The course which he thought fit to take has greatly facilitated the business of the House at a time when we were pressed and we ire most grateful to him. For that reason I regret all the more that I cannot give the good reception to this Bill which I should have liked to give. Although His Majesty's Government are sympathetic, as I think everyone must be, with the object behind the Bill and realize the purpose of the noble Lord in bringing it forward, there are certain objections which I will try to state briefly.

To begin with, there is no ground for thinking, as far as His Majesty's Government are informed, that so elaborate a piece of legislation is necessary. The number of ex-traders on the Board of Trade Register of Withdrawing Retail Traders is not more than 15,000 and a considerable proportion are not "war service persons" as defined in the Bill because the Register includes persons who have closed businesses for any reason since September 3, 1939. For retail food businesses the corresponding number is thought to be of the same order. The number of premises closed is, therefore, not a significant proportion of the total number of shops in the country, which probably exceeds a million. There is no reason to suppose that the premises situation will be such that ex-traders will not be able to find premises. It is, of course, the fact that in the absence of some legislative provision there will be a certain number of ex-traders who will be unable to return to their former premises, or premises of the same size and character in the same neighbourhood. This is admittedly unsatisfactory, but the real question is whether the Government would be justified, having regard to the figures quoted above, in attempting to remedy the situation at the cost of such a drastic interference with individual rights and the existing channels of distribution as any legislation directed to this end would be bound to involve.

I would like to draw the attention of my noble friend and your Lordships to the statement made by my right honourable friend the President of the Board of Trade, Who, speaking on behalf of the Minister of Food and himself on December 14, stated that so long as the retail trade licensing system is continued it would be operated during the transition period so as to facilitate the return to their former businesses of persons on the Board of Trade Register of Withdrawing Retail Traders, and that a comparable arrangement would apply as regards food retailers. The licensing system would certainly not be operated during the transition period to penalize an ex-trader who could not return to his former premises. It may very well be, of course, that in particular areas, owing to damage caused by enemy action, the total number of shop premises will be inadequate and no doubt Plymouth, to which my noble friend Lord Winster referred, is as good an example as any. But legislation of this kind is not, in the opinion of the Government, the best way of dealing with the problem, which can be far better tackled under the legislation proposed by the Ministry of Town and Country Planning for the rebuilding of bombed areas. Clause 15 (6) and Clause 16 of the Bill now before another place will go very far indeed to meet the noble Lord's difficulties so far as bombed areas are concerned, and so far as other areas are concerned, there is, as I suggested earlier in my speech, no very large problem.

I would also add that a number of licences—I think amounting to about 15,000—have already been granted to applicants on the ground that their proposed business is necessary to meet the essential needs of the public or on the ground that the applicant has been discharged as disabled from His Majesty's Forces. Some of these persons, we have every reason to believe, have already started in business in premises formerly occupied by what the noble Lord's Bill calls "war service persons." I think your Lordships will agree that it would not be possible to contemplate turning out these people.

I should like to call attention to Clause 3 of the Bill, which imposes on the existing occupier the duty of doing something the result of which would be to his own disadvantage. His Majesty's Government cannot think that that would be likely to be very effective. They think also that Clause 6 would be quite unworkable in its present form. It provides that the existing occupier shall quit the premises after receipt of a valid one month's notice, notwithstanding the Rent Restrictions Acts or any requisition or any other order or direction in respect of the premises. The Rent Restrictions Acts do not apply to business premises as such; they apply to dwelling-houses, though a dwelling-house is not excluded from the operation of the Acts by reason only that part of the premises is used as a shop or office or for business, trade or professional purposes. Representations to the effect that the recovery of possession of a dwelling-house owned by a person who has been on war service, and who requires it for his own occupation, should be facilitated have been made to the Inter-Departmental Committee on Rent Control which is at present sitting under the chairmanship of my noble friend Viscount Ridley, and these are being considered by the Committee.

I do not think I need go any further in stating the objections—I am afraid there are many—of His Majesty's Government to the Bill. In the opinion of the Government the Bill is really quite unworkable in its present form and in any case is not a measure designed to secure, in the most effective way, the object which I know very well every member of your Lordships' House has at heart. For that reason I regret to say that I am authorized to state that His Majesty's Government cannot give any facilities for this Bill and I therefore hope my noble friend will not press his Motion for the Second Reading. I hope that he will be satisfied now that he has had an opportunity—an opportunity of which he took full advantage—of ventilating this question and of drawing attention to the claims of small business men for special treatment when they return to set up business again. It is indeed an object which we all recognize as being of paramount importance, and the noble Lord, Lord Winster, and your Lordships may rest assured that my right honourable friend the President of the Board of Trade, and his colleagues in the Government, are just as sensible of, and as fully alive to, the position of these men as he is.

LORD WINSTER

My Lords, I must thank the noble Lord for his reply and also for what he was kind enough to say about myself. I need hardly say that I have always been and shall always be ready to do what I can to assist the Government in such matters as those to which he has referred. I should also like to express my thanks to the noble Lords who were kind enough to support my remarks. May I say, in regard to what Lord Templemore has said, that I would like to make it very clear that in seeking to do justice to the small men nothing is further from my thoughts than to wish to do injustice to any other body of men? I must confess that I was somewhat surprised to find that my noble friend Lord Templemore should have been able to whittle away this problem to such very small proportions as he did, and should have been able to say that there is no ground, no necessity, for any such elaborate piece of machinery as I have proposed. In view of the facts and figures available to me that does indeed cause me surprise. Contrary to what he says, I feel that either now or at some other date there will be very ample grounds for some such measure as this. The figures given by the noble Lord also came as a surprise to me. I accept them of course but I feel that thought and consideration will be called for in reading what the noble Lord has said.

Furthermore, I was very much surprised indeed to hear Lord Temple-more say that the Government have no reason to think that the ex-Serviceman of the type of which I have been speaking will be unable to find the premises which he will require to enable him to restart in business again. Lord Templemore further said that the Government were not prepared to countenance such drastic interference with private rights as he considers that my Bill proposes. My case is that very serious injustice may be done to ex-Servicemen, and I would ask whether it is really contended that the Government are not prepared to interfere with private rights in order to enable justice to be done to these men who are serving la the Armed Forces. I think it will cause very great dismay and surprise amongst all those men when they learn that that is the Government view on that point. It may be quite true, as the noble Lord said, that the Minister of Town and Country Planning will deal with some aspects of this problem. The noble Lord said that the Minister can deal with the problem. I cannot follow that at all, because the functions of the Minister of Town and Country Planning do not provide for be building of the type of shop of which I have spoken. In rebuilding there is no duty on the Minister at present to provide that type of shop in the rebuilding plans which these ex-Servicemen will require, nor has the Minister any right to give that priority to the ex-Servicemen which I am seeking to obtain for them. Therefore, I do not think that the problem can be dismissed in that way by saying that the Minister has powers to deal with it. I feel that it is obvious that he has not.

In speaking of Clause 3 Lord Templemore said that it might operate to the disadvantage of the occupier. Surely without Clause 3 there would be a state of affairs which would operate far more to the disadvantage of the man who has been called up by the State, who has had his livelihood destroyed and sees no means al re-establishing himself in his business. It may be quite true that it would operate to the disadvantage of the occupier but surely this is a question of which is the more deserving case.

LORD TEMPLEMORE

My Lords, if I might interrupt for a moment, may I say that what I meant was that you would not be likely to get information from him?

LORD WINSTER

That is exactly the purpose of Clause 3. It is framed to ensure that the ex-Serviceman may not be done out of what I regard as his due rights by the action of the occupier. I certainly think that in that case the ex-Serviceman should be considered before the occupier. I am grateful to the noble Lord for his expression of good will and the sympathy which he has shown concerning the fortunes of these ex-Servicemen. With the reply which he has given I must confess that I am in many respects disappointed. I was especially disappointed, as I said, at the attempt to whittle away the problem to such very small proportions. I believe that it is a very serious, very important and very pressing problem and one which closely concerns the future lives of these ex-Servicemen. However, in view of what the noble Lord has said, and of the Government feeling unable to give time for the Bill, I will now withdraw it.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

Bill, by leave, withdrawn.