TOWN AND COUNTRY PLANNING BILL.

HL Deb 05 June 1947 vol 148 cc199-278

4.10 p.m.

Debate resumed (according to Order) on the Motion for Second Reading, moved yesterday by the Lord Chancellor.

LORD HENDERSON

My Lords, in his eloquent speech yesterday the most reverend Primate showed how we had been thoughtless and extravagant in the past in the way in which we had been using our land. We are all agreed that such a deplorable state of affairs could not be allowed to continue. The noble Lord, Lord Llewellin, rightly pointed out that the Party to which he belongs can claim credit for much of the existing planning legislation. Indeed, the present measure before your Lordships owes a great deal, not only to the trilogy of Reports to which tribute has been paid, but also to the practical knowledge and experience gained by the working of these previous planning measures. I think it is beyond doubt that whatever Government had been in power they would have found it necessary to bring in a comparable comprehensive Bill with the same clear primary purpose. That purpose is to secure the proper balance between competing demands for land, so that all the land of our country is used in the best interests of the whole nation.

To this end, the Bill, as the noble Lord, Lord Llewellin, stated yesterday, enables the Minister of Town and Country Planning and the local planning authorities to control the use of all land and to control all development. The Coalition Government White Paper stated in its introduction that Provision for the right use of land in accordance with considered policy is an essential requirement of the Government's programme of post war reconstruction. In Paragraph 15 of the same White Paper the Government declared: The Minister of Town and Country Planning, the Secretary of State for Scotland and the local planning authorities need to be armed with effective powers, not only to control development and re-development, but also to secure that approved development and redevelopment are carried out on the right land at the right time. There is, therefore, general agreement on the major objective of this Bill. Many points of detail were raised in yesterday's debate, and some can more conveniently be answered on Committee stage. The points concerning minerals will be dealt with by my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor when he winds up the debate, and the others I will deal with now, taking them in the order of the Bill.

Firstly, there is the Central Land Board. One criticism—made, I think, by the noble Lord, Lord Llewellin—was that the Board would be, as it were, a second planning authority, operating (he said) from a remote Whitehall office, hundreds of miles away. That is a misconception which I had better clear away at once. The Central Land Board is not a planning authority; it has no planning functions. When he spoke yesterday the noble and learned Viscount, the Lord Chancellor indicated that it would have to consider such things as whether development in some areas should be encouraged or discouraged, or whether certain types of development should be discouraged or encouraged. If the noble Lord will refer to the report of my noble and learned friend's speech he will see that the noble and learned Viscount, the Lord Chancellor, was careful to say that action of this sort would be done at the instance of the planning authorities—that is to say, the local planning authority or the Minister. The Board is not a planning authority; it is rather a handmaiden of planning, an instrument through which to secure that our land policy and our land administration serve the public interest, instead of being dominated—as is unfortunately too often the case at present —largely by personal interests and private profit.

Nor will the Board operate solely from a central office. The general lines of policy will, of course, be laid down by the Board or the Minister, but it would be a great mistake for the administration to be over-centralized. This is essentially a job where local knowledge and local contact count for a lot. I cannot just now give a detailed description of the precise arrangements that will be made, but it may be taken as quite certain that the day-to-day administration will be carried on from local or district offices, and that the Board's officers will have to keep in close touch with local conditions in their area, with the trends of land values, with the particular needs of local builders, local industrialists, local farmers, with the local authorities, and so on. I can assure noble Lords that the Government are fully alive to these problems.

The special requirements of Scotland, to which the noble Earl, Lord Selkirk, drew attention, are, of course, one important aspect of this general problem. Here we have been at pains to include special provisions on the face of the Bill itself. The Bill before us to-day relates only to England and Wales, with the exception of Clause 2, but a corresponding Scottish Bill is already being discussed elsewhere. When that Bill reaches us here your Lordships will see that the Board are required to have a separate office in Scotland, and are subject to the direction of the Secretary of State for Scotland on matters affecting administration in that country. So noble Lords will see that the gentlemen north of the Border are in no danger of domination by the Sassenachs; they will have their proper share of the seats on the Board, and their own office in Edinburgh, I understand. Ministerial policy will be settled for the whole of Great Britain between the three Ministers directly concerned.

VISCOUNT ELIBANK

Forgive me if I interrupt the noble Lord to ask him a question. The noble Lord says that Scotland will have its own office. What does that mean? Will it be merely an administrative office, or what does it signify?

LORD HENDERSON

If the noble Viscount will allow me to proceed I think he will find I shall answer that question. It may not be to his satisfaction, but at any rate it will be an answer. I was saying that ministerial policy will be settled for the whole of Great Britain between the three Ministers directly concerned—the Secretary of State, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the Minister of Town and Country Planning; and the main lines of administrative policy will obviously also have to be settled for Great Britain as a whole. But subject to that, there will be the fullest possible delegation of work and responsibility to Edinburgh.

I now come to the question of designation. A number of points have been raised on the detailed provisions of the planning parts of the Bill which I may perhaps deal with now. Firstly, there has been criticism of the proposals for designating land as subject to compulsory purchase. The noble Lord, Lord Llewellin, went so far as to say that under this provision the county council or county borough could designate the whole of the land in their area and buy it up. That was, I submit, a rather dialectical exaggeration.

LORD LLEWELLIN

I said that I did not think many of them would, but we were giving them the power to do so.

LORD HENDERSON

While the Minister does not desire that any authority should buy land for the sake of buying it, we do say that if it ought to be bought in the public interests: then it will be bought. In a small country such as this we cannot have proper development frustrated and the country held, as it were, to ransom by lack of power to obtain suitable land. But if the noble Lord will examine the Bill again he will see that the powers of designation are strictly related to need. I can think of no county or county borough in which it might be necessary to acquire the whole of the land in the next ten years, and the designation is limited to a ten-year programme. It is true that at each five-yearly review further land can be designated, so that an authority can main-. tain a programme of development that is always kept at least five years ahead. That is only prudent. But the ten years limit on designation is also a protection for land owners. It has been said that designation casts a blight over the land, that no farmer, for example, will keep his land in good heart. There are some cases where this may be so, and I submit that if land is scheduled for early purchase it might be wasteful of our resources to allow expensive buildings to be put up, only to pull them down after a short period. But those would be the exceptions.

One of the things which a proper Development Plan will show is the programme for proposed development. Local authorities will have no desire to hamper agricultural developments and the production of food; nor would the Government allow them to do so. It will always be possible, I hope, except in cases of emergency, to give adequate notice to farmers of any action that might disturb their work. Meantime there is, I suggest, no reason why they should not carry on their farming as efficiently and confidently as they do now. The so-called threat of compulsory purchase is not new; it has existed for a century or more. This Bill, rather than intensifying the threat, helps to limit it, and in any event a farmer whose land is bought will get full compensation for any value due to improvements he has made during the period of designation—compensation no longer based, be it noted, on 1939 values, but based on the full market value for agricultural use without any reduction whatever; and this covers buildings as well as farm land itself. If any cases do arise—and they will be few and far between—where an owner can show that because of designation his land is no longer capable of reasonably beneficial use as a farm, then Clause 18 of the Bill enables him to require the local authority to buy the land forthwith at full agricultural value. I submit that that gives him adequate protection.

The noble Lord also criticized the provision requiring a Board of Trade certificate as well as a planning permission before a factory may be built. In your debates on the Barlow Report, your Lordships recognized that the proper distribution of industry was vital to the national well-being, and the Board of Trade has been charged by Parliament with responsibility for this. The responsibility can be discharged only through a system of control. Surely it is reasonable that before the industrialist goes to the trouble of submitting plans to the local authority he should ascertain from the Board of Trade whether the erection of his factory in the area proposed accords with national policy. If their certificate is forthcoming the local planning authority must then have their say on detailed siting and layout.

This brings me to a further point—the fear expressed by the most reverend Primate and the noble Viscount, Lord Buck-master, that the shortage of trained staff at the Ministry and among the local authorities will endanger the success of the Bill. The shortage is bound to have some effect on progress, but I can assure the most reverend Primate, and the noble Viscount, Lord Buckmaster, that the Minister is doing his utmost both to secure more trained staff and to use to the best advantage those which we have. The Bill does nothing to accentuate the shortage. On the contrary, by reducing from 1,441 to 145 the number of authorities with planning functions, it secures that the staff are used more economically than at present. Moreover, the Minister, as he has said in another place, has had conversations with the universities and professional bodies on the training of technical and administrative personnel, and he hopes that sufficient will be forthcoming in a reasonably short period.

I will not deal here with the various contributions to the debate on the sum of.£300,000,000 which the Bill sets aside to meet cases of hardship. The noble and learned Viscount, the Lord Chancellor, has already dealt with that at length. But one or two points have been made affecting the distribution of the money to which I may perhaps now refer. The case has been mentioned of an owner who inherited his land and paid death duties on development value which the Bill now takes away from him. The owner who has raised a mortgage on the security of a development value has also been mentioned, and reference has been made to other similar cases. I do not propose to say just how these cases will be dealt with. As the noble and learned Viscount, the Lord Chancellor, has already told your Lordships, it would have been possible to make specific provision for these cases in the Bill itself, but, after consideration, it was thought better to leave all such details to be covered by the Treasury scheme. Surely, this is far better, because by the time the scheme has to be made the Treasury will be in a position to examine the whole question in the light of the information obtained from the many claimants. The points raised in the debate must clearly be met, but I suggest an equitable settlement is far more likely if it is framed by reference to facts rather than to conjecture. But I can certainly assure your Lordships that the Government have the examples mentioned in the debate well in mind, and where any special treatment is called for it will be included in the Treasury scheme.

VISCOUNT BUCKMASTER

With great respect to the noble Lord, I feel that to pay estate duty on over £500,000 on one estate is not a detail.

LORD HENDERSON

I do not think I suggested that it was a detail. I suggested that the consideration of the case would be better left to the Treasury scheme rather than to deal with it as an individual case.

THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY

Do I understand the noble Lord to say that the Government will not give any undertaking at the present stage that where they have charged an owner in death duties on development value they will compensate him on that basis? Cannot that be said now?

LORD HENDERSON

What I have said is that such a case will be taken into account by the Treasury in the formulation of its scheme, and the special circumstances in such a case will be given careful consideration.

THE MARQUESS OF READING

Can the noble Lord give any indication when we may expect any outline of this scheme? Is it quite indefinite, or will it be ready in a reasonable time?

LORD HENDERSON

I am not in a position to say when it will be ready. It has to be done within five years. The noble Marquess asked the question, and I have given him an answer. I am not in a position to modify anything that has been said.

THE DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH AND QUEENSBERRY

May I ask the noble Lord if the cases he refers to will be covered by the Treasury scheme?

LORD HENDERSON

As I have said, the special circumstances surrounding that sort of case will be taken into consideration. I turn now, if I may, to the development charge. In yesterday's debate the principle of the development charge was not questioned; indeed, it has the authority of the Coalition Govern-merit White Paper. But the noble Lord, Lord Llewellin, mentioned three classes of development which he thought should be exempt—the extension of a building where, because the building itself is small (for example, a country cottage) the extension exceeds the permitted 10 per cent. of cubic content; the conversion of a house into flats; and the extension of a factory on land held for the purpose. On the first point I would say this. An increase of 10 per cent, in cubic capacity is expressly exempted from the charge. The development charge is thus levied on the increase in value resulting from the permission to extend the building by more than 10 per cent.

Valuation is far from being an exact science. Let us see how the provisions of the Bill will work. An owner of a cottage wishes to modernize and improve it, and his architect tells him that the changes add, let us say, 15 per cent. to 20 per cent. to the cubic content. The case goes to the official valuer, acting as the Board's agent, to recommend whether or not there should be a development charge. To answer the question, the valuer must begin by ignoring the first 10 per cent. of the increase, because that is part of the existing use value. He must then ask himself whether an extension as proposed, of 15 per cent. to 20 per cent., as compared with one of 10 per cent., will make any ascertainable difference in the value of the property after full account is taken of the cost of conversion. Narrow margins of difference of that kind do not lend themselves to precise valuation, and I am advised that in the result any reasonably small extension of the kind which we are considering will certainly escape any charge.

I may say in passing that it is for this reason that it has not been considered necessary to include any de minimis provision in Part VII dealing with development charges. The nature of the valuation process is such that small alterations will escape automatically. The extensions which the noble Lord had in mind, such as the addition of a bedroom or bathroom, will be exempt. Moreover, if we find, when we come to examine this problem in greater detail, that some further provision is necessary, we will consider that. In the meantime I am bringing the noble Lord's representations to the Minister's attention.

The noble Lord also suggested that the monopolistic position of the Land Board would put the would-be developer at a serious disadvantage. That is a suggestion that does not stand up to examination. If the Board, using their monopoly power, were to demand unreasonably high charges, what would happen? Obviously the would-be developer, as he always can, would drop the idea and there would be no development. Can it be seriously suggested that the planning Ministers would allow the Board to frustrate the root objectives of the Bill, or can it, for that matter, be seriously suggested that the Chancellor of the Exchequer would allow it, because if there is no development there is no revenue from development charges? Is he to stand by while the Board kill the goose that lays his golden eggs? I do not think that we need worry about the monopoly.

Next, the conversion of a house into flats. This is, in general, a highly desirable form of development, and it is quite wrong to say, as one noble Lord said yesterday, that the Bill forbids it. The Bill, like present law, merely controls it. The control has long been welcomed by people who are anxious to prevent the decline of their neighbourhood. And there are other reasons for it, since conversion on a large scale increases considerably the density of the population, and leads to increased demands on schools, transport, and other services. I think it is right, therefore, that the Bill should keep this kind of development within planning control. The next question is whether it should be liable to development charge. The charge is based, as your Lordships know, on the difference between the value of the house with permission to convert and the value without that permission. In many cases, in view of the cost of conversion and the great demand for houses for single family occupation, the difference is negligible, and there will be no question of development charge. But this is not always so. There will be cases, as we all know, where the difference in value may well be considerable; and in such cases, I submit, on the principles of the Bill, it is right that a charge be paid. However, as I have said before, the Central Land Board will take care not to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. Conversion into flats is a desirable form of development, and the development charge, where there is one, will never be so high as to frustrate development.

The third type of development which the noble Lord thought should be exempt was the extension of a factory on land held for the purpose. My right honourable friend the Minister agrees that special treatment is merited here. He stated in another place that he was exploring, with the Treasury, the possibility of securing that the payment out of the £300,000,000 in certain of these cases is related to full or nearly full development value, so that, although a development charge will be payable, it will be little—if at all—in excess of the payment. This concession will apply to any land which is held for the extension of a factory (or the erection of an additional factory) on the date of the introduction of the Bill and on which the projected development is begun within five years of that date. I do not propose to detain your Lordships any longer in dealing with matters of detail. There will be opportunity to examine them more fully later on. But I would like, in closing, to say a word or two about agriculture, which is I know a matter in which many of your Lordships have always taken a keen interest.

It has been said that all the benefits of this Bill go to the towns, the built-up areas, and that the great industry of agriculture derives no benefit whatsoever. I submit that that is not so. We have had many debates on agriculture in this House and no doubt we will be hearing more when the new Agriculture Bill reaches us, as it shortly will. That Bill is the place in which to make positive provision for the efficient running of the great industry of agriculture. But that does not mean to imply that this Bill is of no assistance to agriculture. Quite the contrary. By enabling the local authorities and the Minister to refuse permission to develop good agricultural land, agriculture will receive a very clear benefit. No longer will our best food-producing land fall under the hammer to the speculative builder merely because it happens to be near a town. No longer will a would-be farmer have to pay a full "development value" for any new farm he buys. In future, he will be able to buy at" existing use value." The money that would at present have to be spent on paying for a development value he does not want will then be available for buying equipment, improving the land, or otherwise helping to secure a flourishing agricultural industry.

And let it not be forgotten that standing behind all these advantages is the important fact that the farming industry is put in the unique position, that it alone of all industries is completely exempted from any payment of development charge. These are far-reaching advantages and will, I trust, be recognized as such by those of your Lordships who have the cause of agriculture at heart. In commending the Bill for Second Reading at a later stage of our proceedings to-day, I will add only one sentence which I use with grateful acknowledgment: "If this Bill goes into law it will be by far the greatest thing of its nature which has ever been passed in this country, and will give this nation a lead over all other nations in the matter of physical betterment." My grateful acknowledgment is to the most reverend Primate, the Archbishop of York.

4.40 p.m.

VISCOUNT GAGE

My Lords, I want to approach this Bill from the point of view of a local planning authority, and I may perhaps start by claiming a certain degree of sympathy from your Lordships, not only in respect of the vast amount of work which seems to be looming up ahead of us, but also in respect of the not inconsiderable amount of work that has already been done, much of which I am afraid will be wasted. When I remember the stacks of documents and acres of maps that have been submitted to the Ministry from my county alone after full local inquiry, which I suppose have long since been put into the waste paper basket, I cannot help wondering how often this is going to happen again. I do not pretend that the plans that were submitted were good plans, or that they might have been entirely satisfactory under the provisions of the 1932 Act. Nevertheless the fact does remain that if by town planning we are trying to make patterns for future development to follow, it must be a fairly long-term process, and we shall not get on very fast if every few years our charter is going to be radically revised.

It is quite true that some clauses in this Bill will enable us to complete and improve our original plan, and these I welcome because it will mean that not all our work in the past will be wasted. But there are other clauses which it seems to me had objects which have little or nothing to do with town planning as we have hitherto understood it; for example, those clauses which aim at providing the Chancellor of the Exchequer with new sources of revenue in connexion with the extraction of minerals. Whatever the merits or demerits of such clauses may be, they certainly seem to me to introduce into this subject of town planning entirely new elements of controversy, and for that reason to make it less likely than ever that we shall have continuity of policy. But beyond that, this Bill is not only admittedly controversial but admittedly experimental, and in fact I doubt whether the Government themselves really have a very clear idea of how some parts of it are going to work. Altogether it seems to me to be a fairly safe bet that before many years are out this Bill will have to be substantially amended in the light of experience, whatever Government are in power.

If this is true, there seems to be little point in speculating to what the effects of this Bill may be in ten or fifteen years' time; but it would seem very profitable to examine what the Bill is likely to do in the next four or five years, when it is much less likely to be amended but when it will, nevertheless, control all new building, including the building of new factories, and the extraction of all minerals other than coal, at a time when we are told from the most authoritative quarters that expansion of these things is vitally necessary for the country. I am sure that many of your Lordships would agree, as I do after seeing what happened after the last war, that any large expansions ought to be subject to control; and your Lordships may also agree that so far as this Bill aims at stopping undesirable things happening the powers it gives ought to be very effective. So far as sterilization is concerned I think we ought to be able, with these new powers, to establish green belts round cities, to stop ribbon development, and to preserve amenities in many ways. Whether we shall do so is perhaps rather open to question, because when you have great drifts of the population going on it is very difficult to stop towns spreading by town planning alone without causing a great deal of hardship.

I saw somewhere the other day that the population of greater London is still increasing at an average rate of 500,000 a year. I do not know whether that is true, nor have I any figures, but I believe that a similar proportionate increase is taking place over the whole of the South East of England. If some means could be found of stopping these great drifts many of our town planning difficulties would disappear. But that goes a long way beyond town planning in its narrower sense, such as the type of Bill we are discussing today. So far as it is possible to do so by town planning, I agree that the powers for preventing building are there. But nobody would seriously suggest that the vast powers of this Bill should,be used for stopping things happening and for preserving amenities. The question arises, does the Bill make it any easier than before to encourage good development? I believe that it does, but only in so far as municipal building is concerned. Under the present housing Acts local authorities have very large powers to build, but in addition many have within their areas tracts of land which, either through the action of the enemy or indeed of our own Forces, are in a fairly bad way and can be put right only by wholesale acquisition and re-development. I think the extension of the 1944 Act and its increased grants will be very generally welcomed.

But when we come to private enterprise, the picture does not seem to me quite so cheerful. I do not mean, of course, just speculative building, but the enterprise which according to the Government has to supply 8o per cent. of our production and probably a much higher percentage of production for export. Although there are a large number of clauses which seem to add to their difficulties there seems to be nothing in the Bill which makes the task of private enterprise any easier, with one doubtful and controversial exception. It really is extremely difficult to understand what is going to happen by merely reading the Bill. There are, I understand, no fewer than sixty-seven separate sets of regulations which have to be drafted after the Bill is passed; and many of these will be of the greatest importance.

I therefore hope that at some stage some Government spokesman will take some simple example of a man who wants to build a small factory to manufacture some of the numerous things of which we are so much in need. I hope it will be possible to explain to us in some detail what a man has to do before he can hope to start production, because many planning authorities as well as many would-be developers are in considerable doubt as to what is going to happen. It seems to me that the would-be developer has four major hurdles or obstacles to get over before he can start work. These are; Board of Trade consent; planning consent; he has to negotiate his site with the owner; and finally he has to settle and pay his development charge. As to the first, under Clause 13 of this Bill all new industrial enterprises may have to obtain Board of Trade consent. It seems rather a commentary on present Parliamentary procedure that this clause (which puts the Board of Trade in an absolutely dicta- torial position) should have been guillotined both on the Committee stage and on the Report stage, and really it has hardly been discussed at all.

Hitherto, the Distribution of Industry Act has applied to buildings of 10,0000 square feet, which are fairly large buildings, but I have heard it suggested that this Bill is going to embrace buildings down to 1,000 square feet. I do not know whether we can be told anything about that, or whether we shall have to wait for the regulations to be published. Of course, I am aware that in the present shortage of materials all industrial licences have to be obtained from the Board of Trade, but we hope one day that these shortages will disappear. On what principles are the Board of Trade going to use those great powers?

At present we understand that unemployment is the big factor and that all new enterprises are being shepherded into the development areas, or into the new towns when they are built; but there are many light and service industries which are rather essential for every locality. As the noble Lord, Lord Henderson, said, many of us favour a scientific distribution of industry, but I feel that the local planning authorities, and in fact Parliament itself, might have a little more information about the way these great powers are to be exercised. There ought to be more liaison between the Board of Trade and the planning authorities.

When we come to planning control that will probably be the easiest of the difficulties the would-be developer will have to face, because most local authorities will want to have some industries somewhere in their areas. They will, of course, have to consult more Ministers than they have had to hitherto, but otherwise I should think the procedure will be much as it is at present.

When we come to the next stage, however, the negotiations with the owner and the fixing of the development charge, we are breaking entirely new ground; it will be an entirely new and unfamiliar process and it seems particularly necessary that we should understand how it is intended to work. It would appear that every prospective developer of the future will find himself engaged in a kind of triangular bargaining contest, with the owner on the one hand and the representative of the Central Land Board on the other. I have heard it said that this is more suited to an Arab market than a Western democracy, but I do not necessarily subscribe to that idea; but, to put it crudely, both the Central Land Board and the owner will presumably try and get as much as they can out of the developer, and will then divide up the spoils between themselves. And the only safeguard that the developer has is that at some stage, if the owner asks for too much, they may compulsorily acquire his land.

The White Paper which was quoted yesterday by the noble and learned Viscount, the Lord Chancellor, said that the developer will pay no more than at present, but that instead of paying all to the owner he will pay part to the owner and part to the Central Land Board. If I may say so, with great respect, that seems to beg quite a number of rather important questions and really very much over-simplifies the position. Many owners, particularly if they belong to the farming community, will want quite a lot of incentive before they willingly part with their land, and it does not seem possible that the statement in the White Paper can be true unless the Government are to use compulsion very freely indeed.

This is the one feature of the Bill, I think, which the noble and learned Viscount, the Lord Chancellor, quoted likely to be of great assistance to private enterprise, and although it has been debated at considerable length in another place it certainly does not seem to be clear how this compulsory process will work. When the Central Land Board acquire land compulsorily, will they resell to the first applicant that comes along, or will they sell it to the man who is prepared to pay the highest development charge? What will be the relation between the Central Land Board and the local planning authorities? If the Minister sanctions the compulsory acquisition by the Central Land Board of a piece of land for a particular purpose, will that sanction automatically carry with it planning consent over the heads, so to speak,. of the local planning authorities?

Then the local authorities themselves have power of compulsory purchase for re-planning, and they have power to lease that out to private individuals. If I may ask an ungrammatical question: Who does what? Where does the responsibility of the Central Land Board end, and that of the local authority begin; and what rights has the owner? Has he any right even of being heard before a local inquiry? I hope that all these matters will be fully explained in Committee. Whatever the correct explanation may be, it seems to me hardly disputable that the industrial developer will have three separate elements in the planning machine to deal with—the Board of Trade, the local Planning Authority, and the Central Land Board. And there seems to be nothing in the Bill to ensure that these three elements shall co-operate, or even that they will be aware of what the others are doing.

Suppose the developer goes to the local planning authority and asks this simple question: "May I or may I not build a factory on this particular piece of land"? What sort of answer will he receive? Surely it will be something like this: "Well, we approve of this land, and so far as we know no Government Department want it, but of course you will have to get a certificate from the Board of Trade, and we do not really know whether you will get one or not. We do not know what development charge you will have to pay, or what attitude the owner will take up. It is always possible that the Central Land Board may purchase the land compulsorily, but whether, if they do so, they will sell it to you or to somebody else is again beyond our power of telling. We might conceivably buy the land ourselves and lease it to you—that is if we are allowed to do so."

That would be an answer of a sort, and I am afraid it is about the best answer that anybody can give; but it seems to contrast rather oddly with these clarion calls of the Government to "produce more work or bust," and so forth. If it is encouragement, it is certainly rather a tepid form of encouragement. It is not only the work involved in negotiating with so many people but the uncertainty, I believe, that is likely to frustrate enterprise. And I do not think that uncertainty will frustrate only private enterprise; I think there will be a great deal of uncertainty which the local authorities will themselves have to face.

The other day I was taking part in a conference with a neighbouring borough to discuss the establisment of a green belt, and the town clerk of the borough who is, after all, a very experienced official said, in effect: "We must not just think that we can draw green belts anywhere we like, and then expect the Treasury to come along and pay the Bill. The Central Land Board will be quite unable to forego the development charge on this very valuable building land, and we must start the green belt further out." Is that true, or not? Will the Treasury pay the bill without asking any questions? It will certainly be a very new role for the Treasury to take on. We planning authorities have been told by the Ministry that we can plan without worrying about compensation, but shall we find that the worry is coming afterwards, and that when we have done a great deal of work we shall be told that financial considerations compel the Minister to alter it very materially?

I think we are all familiar with the theory that in the bad old days land owners controlled the land and exploited it for their own personal profit. But whatever may have been the defects of the land owners in the past, they had one or two advantages which nobody seems to have to-day. They were, so to speak, identifiable human beings, and they did have the power of decision. They could say "Yes" or "No." The control of the land is now passing to the community, but if anybody were to ask who really represents the community and who can give decisions on behalf of the community, it is not easy to give the answer. In part, decisions can be taken by the local planning authority, and, in part, by the Minister, to whom any really controversial question must be referred. The Bill is peppered with clauses giving the Minister powers to control the local authority, down to quite small details, and to make it quite clear that both he and a whole range of other Ministers can supersede anything that the local planning authorities may decide—sometimes even without informing them of the intention.

In between the Minister and the local authority there appears to be growing up a somewhat shadowy race of "back room boys"—regional planning officers, regional representatives of the Board of Trade, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Labour, land utilization officers, divisional road engineers, district valuers and so forth. These officials, I understand, are being formed into new organizations to be called Regional Physical Planning Committees, with a Controller at their head. I have no complaint about them at all. In fact if all-important decisions have to be reached synthetically, as it were, I believe that this is a good idea. But, of course, they cannot decide anything themselves. They can only recommend to their Ministers. All decisions of any importance will have to be taken in Whitehall. I feel that this excessive concentration of power of decision in Whitehall is a serious defect in the Bill. We have already seen how the great and powerful London County Council cannot now decide where their electricity supply stations can be put. That has to be decided by the Cabinet. There will be hundreds of little "Banksides" occurring all over the country—cases where different national or local interests will be competing for the same land—and it seems to me that unless some way can be found of devolving power of decision in the less important cases, the whole machine will become top-heavy and unworkable.

In dealing with a Bill of this sort, which ranges from such matters as the preservation of trees to the distribution of £300,000,000, it is impossible to touch on more than one or two points. I am an owner of land, but I have tried to approach this Bill entirely from the point of view of a local planning authority, without having regard to whether or not it is fair to owners. From that point of view, I can only repeat that in so far as this Bill aims at stopping things happening it will work well, provided we know on what assumptions we can get down to work. In so far as it aims at promoting municipal enterprise, I believe it will also work well —that is, if we receive the support of the Minister and not too much interference. But in so far as any other form of enterprise is concerned, I must confess to a certain misgiving. It seems to me that this combination of complexity and uncertainty may have a very clogging effect, and if this criticism can be substantiated, it appears—to say the least—rather a bad thing. I hope, therefore, that the Government will give us full explanations on the Committee stage, and that if any of us can suggest Amendments likely to produce a little more certainty and finality in this somewhat hazy picture, the Government will consider them sympathetically. I am sure we all appreciated the invitation extended by the noble and learned Viscount, the Lord Chancellor, in his speech yesterday, and, therefore we feel some confidence that that will happen.

5.6 p.m.

THE EARL OF RADNOR

My Lords, at the end of yesterday's debate I was left rather with the impression that the emphasis in the discussion upon this Bill had leaned more towards its effect upon towns rather than towards its effect upon the country. I was, therefore, pleased to hear the noble Lord, Lord Henderson, speak of its effect upon agriculture. I was not in the least pleased, however, to hear what he said was to be its effect upon agriculture, because I do not think that he was right. However, I will deal with that later. I only refer to it now because my purpose is to talk about the effect of the Bill largely from the agricultural point of view, and principally as President of the Central Land Owners Association, which, as your Lordships know, is an association of agricultural land owners.

The effect of this Bill upon agriculture is very important. Indeed, I think that its effect and its impact upon agriculture are as great as or even greater than upon land in urban areas. In another place the Minister referred to the fact that the average amount of agricultural land taken over for development annually before the war was a matter of approximately 45,000 acres. Think of it: 45,000 acres of agricultural land went for urban development of various sorts—not necessarily for the building of houses—every year before the war. I have absolutely no doubt that that figure will be attained and even passed in the years that are to come. It means, therefore, that when we consider development in this country we are considering taking out of agricultural production every year a matter of 45,000 to 50,000 acres—a very important area of land, especially when you consider that the bulk of it will, probably, be in the vicinity of towns, and, therefore, land in a state of high productivity.

Now to deal with the Bill in general terms—I cannot possibly deal with every detail which concerns the agricultural side or the land-owning side, and much of it will have to be left to a later stage. I will deal first with a very general point. This Bill has underlying it one very great change in planning, a change to which some reference was made yesterday by the noble and learned Viscount who sits on the Woolsack, and to which the noble Lord, Lord Latham, referred much more specifically. The Bill alters our conception of planning from a negative planning to a positive planning. That is, indeed, a very important change, and one upon which too great emphasis cannot be laid. It must be realized that this change is from a negative to a positive planning. I do not say it is wrong, but it must be realized that a very large part of the Bill and many controversial parts of the Bill are necessarily framed in order to bring about that change. Because it is necessary, if you are to have positive planning, that somebody, whether it is a planning authority or the Central Land Board, should have power to bring about that positive development of planning.

In many ways the framing of the Bill achieves that with some success, although I must confess that I think in some respects it goes a great deal too far—no doubt the noble Lords opposite will realize why. One reason is that in its endeavour to ensure that development as planned should be carried out in spite of unwilling owners, it also makes sure that, in certain and rather frequent circumstances, even if you have an owner who is willing and able to develop his land, planning is not to be allowed. It drives the development plan in many cases directly into the hands of public authorities and takes it away from the private owner. I think that is a grave error in the Bill, in that the purpose of any Bill of this nature must be to achieve development; and to try and drive development into one channel at the expense of another and approved channel is an error which I hope we may be able to mitigate somewhat in the next stage of the Bill.

As the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack very truly said, the Bill is of great importance to every individual in the country. I would go farther and say that unless we are careful, it is the first stage in deliberate direction as to where the individual in this country is to live and to work; because there are provisions in this Bill which ensure that industry can be placed where the Government wish and homes can be built only where the Government desire. It is the first stage; I would not say it goes all the way, but we want to watch that rather important point.

For those reasons I welcome the suggestion of the noble and learned Viscount that it is your Lordships' duty to examine this Bill in the greatest detail and with the greatest care at the next stage. There is another reason, quite apart from the rather controversial one as to whether it was rushed through another place too hurriedly. Important Amendments and announcements made at a very late stage in another place, and their repercussions on other parts of the Bill need very careful examination. I would, however, offer to His Majesty's Government my congratulations—qualified congratulations—on their courage in grasping the nettle of compensation and betterment. As all know who have had anything to do with planning, that has been one of the grave difficulties in the past in making planning a reality. They have grasped that nettle. My qualification is that they have grasped it so firmly that it has bent over and has stung quite a lot of people on the circumference. I would also congratulate the Government on their courage in dealing with the problem of advertisements. Very few people have any serious objections to the curtailment of advertisements in our countryside, least of all those who have advertised because their competitors insist on advertising.

I have one other general criticism, with which I think most of your Lordships will agree. It is almost impossible to criticize this Bill in detail either on Second Reading or on the next stage, because so many important features of the Bill are left to subsequent regulation. The noble and learned Viscount said it affects every individual in this country. That is quite true. The details of the Bill or what will result from the Bill affect every individual in this country, and when those details are left to subsequent regulation, Parliamentary procedure generally does not allow their discussion in detail, and certainly does not allow of amendment of those details. I could have wished that His Majesty's Government had taken more time and given us an even more voluminous Bill in order that we might be able to discuss those details which are of such importance to every individual and without which it is very difficult to judge whether the Bill is a valuable one or not.

I now come to the Bill itself The organization for planning set up in the Bill makes the major change of making the county the planning authority as against the district. I do not think anyone has any reason for objecting to that change. But I make one proviso: that the consultation with the districts which is provided for should be made a reality, because when it comes to planning in detail, local knowledge is of the greatest value. If notice were taken of local knowledge it would save a deal of trouble in the way of objections and so on, and faults might well be avoided. When it comes to the question of organization, I find myself in this difficulty. We have a Ministry of Town and Country Planning and presumably they are responsible for town and country planning. Going through the Bill, however, I find that not only are the Ministry of Town and Country Planning concerned, but the Ministry of Transport and the Board of Trade are also concerned, as the noble Viscount, Lord Gage, mentioned. I shall say nothing further about the Board of Trade, but I see that no provision is made for any liaison between the three Ministries, all of whom have a pretty considerable finger in the pie of planning.

I know the stock answer is that there is always close collaboration between the Ministries, but some of us who have had experience in that direction have found that very often close collaboration results in no action or collaboration at all. I hope possibly at a later stage we may achieve something in the Bill which will ensure that that collaboration and intercommunication between the three Ministries concerned will take place. I have a particular interest in collaboration with the Ministry of Transport because I am perfectly convinced in my own mind that communications form the skeleton upon which all good planning must be built. Until one has settled the communications, and settled them in collaboration with the planning authorities, one cannot begin to plan. In the Bill as drafted at the moment, the planning authorities have to take into consideration the roads which have been planned by the Ministry of Transport, apparently without any consultation with the planning authorities whatsoever.

I come next to the question of the Central Land Board, on which I have very little to say except that it is quite obvious, from the subsequent provisions of the Bill, that a body such as the Central Land Board is quite essential in the scheme as set out in this Bill. I would, however, say this: that it would appear that the Minister intends to exercise an undue control over the details of what the Central Land Board will do. For instance, the Minister is to appoint the secretary to the Central Land Board. There is a legal point here with which perhaps the noble and learned Viscount, or somebody else, might deal. It is a somewhat difficult position when a body such as the Central Land Board—who have certain Rowers and a secretary on whom there will be certain responsibilities—has a secretary over whom they have no control, either of appointment or, presumably, of dismissal. In most organizations which have a common seal, the common seal is in the hands of the secretary. If the Secretary of the Land Board misuses it, who is responsible—the Minister who appointed him, or the body for which he is acting? That is one detail.

If your Lordships look at Clause 2, (5) (b) you will find that the Minister is seeking to take to himself the task of deciding the quorums, the proceedings, the meetings, and the determinations of the Board. When the Minister has decided all that and appointed a secretary, the Board can settle their own business as they like. I am not quite certain what is the legal interpretation of the word "determinations," but it seems to me that it may cover a multitude of things, and it also seems to me the Minister is to control everything that the Central Land Board could be expected to arrange for themselves.

The planning authorities will be charged with the duty of making development plans for their areas, and in the Bill there is a welcome flexibility in their plans, in that there is to be a quinquennial revision of these plans, and that there is also provision for a possible interim revision as and when necessary. That is very well. They are given three years in which to make their plans. I am not going to quarrel with that period, but I would suggest to the Government, in view of the shortage of skilled people to make plans (and it is absolutely essential that these plans be made by men who are trained and experienced) that three years is too short.

The Minister in another place, with most commendable enthusiasm, said quite a lot about what he thought the plans should be. He said: I attach the greatest possible importance to this survey, which will present a reliable and detailed analysis of the community from every aspect, and an estimate of its future growth at d needs. …It will need the co-operative effort of economists, geographers, sociologists, and other professions. … A new type of planner will have to be trained to carry out this broader conception of planning. I understand that it takes two years to train a planner, and I should imagine that he needs another five years before he is sufficiently experienced to carry out that broader conception of planning which the Minister, in an expansionist mood, envisaged. I do not mind his broader conception of planning, but I would suggest to His Majesty's Government that they might think it wise to reconsider the flat three years contained in the Bill. They will overdrive their planning authorities a bit too much if they do not, and, in the result, we may well get half-baked plans which would ruin all the good effects one hopes may come from this Bill.

I pass from that to the rather vexed question of designation, and I will deal with this question simply and solely from the point of view of agricultural land. My noble friend Lord Llewellin has dealt with it to a very considerable and a very able extent, and I do not want to traverse the ground he has already covered. He talked of the blight there will be upon agricultural land. It is quite true. I gave some figures just now—45,000 acres per annum of agricultural land taken in to development annually. Designation for 10 years ahead means 450,000 acres of agricultural land which will be designated, and which will have upon it the blight of which my noble friend spoke. That is nearly half a million acres, and much of it will be near towns and, therefore, in a high state of productivity.

Even at the risk of repeating what other noble Lords have said, I want to impress upon His Majesty's Government what the effect of this will be upon the owner and the occupier of that land. The owner will have no incentive to keep the fixed equipment in order, and the occupier will have no incentive to keep his land in good heart. In the result, agricultural production is bound to fall. There is a further point which needs consideration, and that is that if and when—I say "if" advisedly, because land may be removed from the category of designation at a subsequent revision—land is acquired (it may be nine or ten years after it has been designated) it will now be acquired compulsorily at existing user value. May I say, incidentally, that the change from the 1939 value to the existing user value is, of course, a welcome sign of grace from the other side? But, so far as designated agricultural land is concerned, it will be acquired at existing user value. If it has been under the blight of designation for nine years, its existing user value as agricultural land will almost certainly have gone down very considerably.

There is a further difficulty in which the agricultural land owner may find himself, and that is that his tenant, when he knows he has the insecurity of tenure imposed upon him by designation, will take the first opportunity to find somewhere where he is more secure, and the land owner will find it very difficult to find a tenant for what amounts to a short-term tenancy for his land; he may have to farm it himself, and possibly have orders imposed upon him by the agricultural authorities under the Bill which will come to your Lordships' House before very long. The whole question of designation will need very careful consideration at the next stage, because it has been claimed, both by the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack and also by the noble Lord, Lord Henderson—and, indeed, it was mentioned by the Minister—that it is in the interests of the land owner.

Speaking as an agricultural land owner, I do not know in the least what authority they have for saying that, because the agricultural land owners (I am President of their Association) were never consulted about this, and have never been asked to give an opinion. Our view, quite definitely, is that it is not in the interests of the agricultural land owners; and personally, if suitable words could be found, I should like to see the designation of agricultural land—I think possibly in the form of land for development as opposed to re-development—removed from the Bill altogether. I am led to that view by the fact that designation gives no certainty at all. The noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack himself said that there is nothing in the Bill which destroys the powers for compulsory acquisition that exist in other enactments for various Departments. The quinquennial revision may designate land or remove it from designation. There may be interim revisions between the quinquennial revision, and there is no certainty that land which is designated will be purchased, or that land which is not designated will not be purchased. We have no certainty at all. We have almost as little certainty envisaged under designation as we have at the present time.

The noble Lord, Lord Henderson, pointed out to your lordships that Clause 18 was a safeguard to the agricultural land owner, in that if he could prove that there was no reasonably beneficial use which could be made of the land, he had his remedy. But it does not touch the point at all, if I may say so. While the land is there, and until it is built on, it is quite obvious that it can still be farmed and it can continue to produce the crops which it should produce. It cannot be proved that no reasonably beneficial use can be made of the land. Clause 18 is no remedy whatsoever. As for the question of whether it is adequate notice, as the noble Lord, Lord Henderson, said, there is no reason why they should not carry on; but human nature is human nature, and people, particularly when they are farmers, do not like spending money when they are going to see it go down the drain under bricks and mortar.

I come now to two further rather important points. The first is the controversial question of compensation, and the second is the question of the develop-merit charges. So far as compensation is concerned. I would say, first of all, that I am not going to quarrel with the figure of £300,000,000. I do not know whether £300,000,000 is the right figure or not; I do not know whether it is the right figure any more than the Minister of Town and Country Planning does. It is just a guess. The Minister gave some figures showing how he arrived at the sum of £300,000,000 or rather he gave some figures in another place showing how he arrived at half the figure of £300,000,000—the half which is in the country—and then said: "I imagine that the urban figure will be about the same, and so I arrive at the figure of £300,000,000." It is just a guess, and nothing more than that.

There has been over this question of compensation and betterment a great deal of discussion on those interesting subjects of shift and float. Those two words, "shift" and "float," first saw the light of day in the Uthwatt Report, and they have been seized on by a number of people, who do not know in the least what they mean, as though they were something new which had suddenly come to light. That is nonsense. Shift and float have been known in valuation of development rights for generations. True, they have not been known under that name. A valuer valuing development rights in the ordinary course of dealing in land assesses the development value of the land; he then studies the problem from the point of view of the risks attaching to it and the likelihood that the land will develop, and he then defers the value; and in so doing he takes account of both the shift and float. It is no new thing. I do want noble Lords to realize that, although it may seem to be a new thing, it has in fact been taken into account in all commercial transactions in developable land over a very long period. The only exception that I know is the case of the valuers who value for death duties. They have not been allowed to take into account deferred values, and in consequence have not taken into account shift and float. Now we get the Minister of Town and Country Planning trying to base his valuation of what should be paid to landowners for the loss of their development rights upon a basis which it has been the practice of the Governments of the day in the past studiously to ignore for the benefit of the Treasury.

The Government, as I say, have decided on a figure of £300,000,000, which is a guess. I think it is entirely wrong that in a matter of this importance they should guess. It is a matter that should be the subject of careful consideration, or, possibly, if it is preferred, of arbitration, but not guesswork. It must reflect unfavourably in every way upon the national credit and the good faith of any Government of this country, now and in the future, that they should deal light-heartedly, as it seems, on a matter of this importance. My noble friend the Duke of Buccleuch yesterday quoted a remark by the Lord President of the Council when he claimed that the Government were committed to fair compensation. I very much doubt whether a guess of this nature can be taken as carrying out that pledge of fair compensation.

Incidentally, since that figure was put into the Bill certain inroads have been made into it which could not have been taken into account at the time the figure was decided upon. First of all, I do not think that the Ministry had the first idea as to what imposition there would be upon the £300,000,000 by the acquisition of minerals. Secondly, they have recently made an announcement by regulation that they will make special arrangements with regard to "near ripe" land, the finance for which will come out of the £300,000,000. The question of minerals, of course, is rather a separate question, and I am not going to deal with that at length because it has already been dealt with. All I would say about it is that it seems quite unnecessary to put it info this Bill. It is a subject about which I know very little, but I am inclined to think the Minister of Town and Country Planning knows a great deal less. He tried to decry the figures of compensation which were put before him in another place. Those figures said that the value of the minerals to be taken over would not be less than £50,000,000, nor, probably, more than £100,000,000, and details were given.

I do not mind telling your Lordships that those figures were provided on my instructions. and I do not mind telling your Lordships how they were arrived at. They were arrived at by taking the figures of production as given in Whittaker for the year 1938, and assuming that the royalties were 6d. a ton it then became a simple sum. It left out quite a lot of minerals which are being mined, and even on that basis it gave a figure of capital value of the order of £50,000,000. £50,000,000 is, therefore, a very conservative estimate. We have had no refitting of the figures from the Minister himself, and it may well he that our figures are very far out; it may be £150,000,000 worth. Surely, that is a matter which should be the subject of a separate Bill, because in effect this provision in the Bill as it stands to-day amounts almost to the nationalization of the surface minerals in this country. This matter can be taken out of the planning Bill and still leave the mining of minerals subject to planning control. It could then be dealt with, if the Government so wished, by a separate Bill which would nationalize minerals.

Allied to the question of compensation is that of development charge I do not think there was any owner of property— certainly no owner of property which had a development value—who did not believe that sooner or later there would be a tax, in some form or another, upon any profits he might make as a result of development of his land. The one hope there was in the minds of those who owned property was that the tax would be in a form which would not inhibit development by the private developer. Now I am in a difficulty, as are all of your Lordships, over this, because we do not know what the development charge is going to be. The whole thing is left to regulations to be brought out subsequently.

We do know, from the Bill, however, that the development charge is well calculated to induce existing owners of property to maintain the existing user of their property, and so maintain their existing income, rather than launch out on the unknown seas of a development with an unknown burden which may be imposed upon them by the Central Land Board, and also, as is quite obvious from the Bill, by the copious comings and goings, the forms to be filled in and the time to be taken in arriving at a decision from the Central Land Board or the planning authority as to whether they may or may not develop or re-develop their land. In any case, it is quite clear that they will not make a great deal more out of their land by developing it than they will by maintaining the existing user. His Majesty's Government, through this Bill, so far as I can see, are driving the private developer out of business, and through their policy are forcing public authorities and planning authorities to carry out the development which could well be carried out by the private developer.

Town and country planning, however, is not an end in itself. It is a means to the end, which is proper development; and it is desirable to enlist in aid every possible person who will help to bring about that end of proper development. But through the development charge and the method adopted—I do not say the development charge itself, because we do not know what it will be—His Majesty's Government are doing their best to drive out of business one partner who could do a great deal towards ordinary development. They are removing a great part of his incentive. It would be better if we knew definitely, through the Bill, that it was going to be a 75 per cent. tax or an 8o per cent. tax upon in creased site value, rather than have only the indefiniteness of this Bill as it stands to-day.

I would say, incidentally, that the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack, in his opening speech, seemed to indicate that there would be no increase in the cost of the land to the developer. It was said in such a way as might be interpreted—although I do not think it should be—that land will be available to developers more cheaply than it would be under the existing system. Of course that is not so, or hardly so, because the development charge will take the place of the profit made hitherto by the individual land owner selling his land for development purposes. In the end the developer will have to pay nearly as much for the land, and the man who uses the land in building on it will have to pay just as much as it he had made the deal with a private individual. I was a little afraid that the noble Lord, Lord Henderson, might get into trouble with his own Party in giving away what was really in their minds when he talked about the goose that lays the golden eggs. It was quite clear from what he said that His Majesty's Government, from the payment of £300,000,000 in compensation and the levy of a development charge, are looking to make a handsome profit out of the Bill they are imposing upon the land owner.

I have only one other point to which I wish to draw attention, and then I have finished rather too long a speech. It is with regard to the Third Schedule which lays down those things which are to be excluded from the levying of a development charge. It expressly excepts from exclusion of development charges agricultural dwellings and horticultural buildings. This also deals with the matter of the one-tenth increase in the size of buildings. But it does also expressly except from exclusion of development charge agricultural dwellings and horticultural buildings. Representations have been made by me, and I am glad to say that I have a letter written on behalf of the Minister stating that he is prepared, so far as horticultural buildings are concerned, to try to find a means to insert in the Bill, or through regulations, something which will ensure that horticultural buildings will in fact be exempted from development charge; and so far as agricultural dwel- lings are concerned he proposes to do so by a method which will exclude from development charge all those agricultural dwellings other than tied cottages. I prefer to see these proposals on paper before I comment in any detail upon them. I would, however, say that I am very grateful to the Minister for at least going a considerable way in meeting the views of those who are interested in both agriculture and horticulture, though I reserve judgment until I see the proposals actually in print upon the Order Paper.

I have dealt with a number of points which I consider major ones. There are many more which could be dealt with, but which must be left over until we reach the next stage. I would say, however, that in many respects I agree with the fundamental principles underlying this Bill, and although the details will be subject to severe criticism at the Committee stage, I do admire the courage with which His Majesty's Government have faced this very difficult problem. I hope that by the time the Bill leaves this House it will be a better Bill and that when it comes into operation it will be a Bill which will help the country materially.

5.53 P.m.

LORD O'HAGAN

My Lords, in rising to address your Lordships' House after the speeches to which I have listened, I find myself at a disadvantage. Nobody has a greater or more intimate knowledge of the subject than the noble Earl, Lord Radnor. I think your Lordships will agree that he has dealt with it on general lines and most ably, and in a way which shows that the Bill at the Committee stage will not be dealt with in a hostile spirit so far as the general principles of planning which are involved are concerned.

I will confine myself to one point only, and that is with regard to minerals, to which some allusion has already been made by the noble Earl, Lord Radnor. I am bound to say that it seems to me that what he said is fully justified—namely, that there is no real reason why the details regarding minerals should be placed in a planning Bill of this kind. I have already informed the noble and learned Viscount, the Lord Chancellor, of the point of this rather complicated question which I have been asked to raise and to which I hope he will see his way to give some answer when he comes to reply for His Majesty's Government. There is, of course, no Party issue involved in this question at all. The point to which I trust the noble Lord will address himself is closely related to Clause 79. Indeed, the Minister in another place expressed his concern in the matter and said he would give it his consideration. In fact, he accepted the case that industrial undertakings owning freehold minerals for the purposes of their undertakings might occupy a special position. The point is not an easy one and I will endeavour to put it as clearly as I can if your Lordships will bear with me.

In the case of leasehold minerals under this Bill it is the royalty owner who pays the cost of the development charge and not the man who extracts the minerals. Now, it is quite clear that the Minister's policy and intention, as anybody who has read the Report of the proceedings of the Standing Committee will know, are—I quote his own words—that "the mineral worker should be no worse off (under the Bill, of course) than he was before." The royalty owner is to lose his development rights. He gets compensation out of the 30,000,000 fund about which so much has already been said. The amount he will get will be unknown until all claims are adjusted, but it is not unreasonable to assume that compensation will not fully cover the amount of the development charge. Whatever may be the variation between the two sums. the leaseholder, the worker of the minerals, will not be involved, but in the case of the industrial freehold owner, if there is a variation he will be at a disadvantage as compared to the mineral leaseholder, and as the result of the Bill he will certainly be considerably worse off financially.

Now freehold mineral owners in many industries of this nature require great capital expenditure on their plants for the treatment of minerals and for processing raw materials for marketing. To secure the amortization of this large expenditure by complete security of tenure of raw materials, very large areas of freehold minerals have been in fact acquired. For example, in the case of the cement industry, a sixty years' period of supply has been aimed at. In many cases of individual works much more than sixty years' supply has, I understand, been secured, and high prices have been paid. Generally, industry has already had to buy at a premium the development interests which, I would remind your Lordships, only the activities of that industry will create. It seems clear that to put the freehold mineral owner in relatively the same position as the leasehold mineral owner or worker, a special preferential treatment as to compensation is called for, to ensure the quantum of compensation to recoup the development charges at whatever level it is finally assessed.

To assess the claims and to adjust the charges will mean a very grievous burden on the industry, and the very purpose of it all could be secured, it is suggested, by excluding directly from Parts V and VI of the Bill lands owned by industrial undertakings engaged in mineral workings. Now the Minister in the Standing Committee in another place said as regards "near ripe" building land, that (a) the builder would be allowed special compensation in respect of land likely to develop in a five years' normal building programme; and (b) that the development charge in such a case would be' adjusted so as not to exceed the compensation. I would suggest to His Majesty's Government that on these lines the cement industry, for instance, would get an entirely inadequate measure of relief, and for this reason: that there can be no comparison between the capital employed by the normal builder and what it costs the cement industry, for instance, to establish the very costly cement works that have to be erected.

In the case of a builder, the most costly outlay may well be in buying land for development, but in an industry such as the cement industry the purchase of mineral-bearing land, however costly it may be, is but a fraction of the outlay in producing adequate works. I am informed that cement works may well cost upwards of £1,000,000. One can readily appreciate that in the future no one will, if this Bill is passed unamended, launch into the vast expense of making a factory of this nature, with the risk of having to pay vast sums to the State. What I have said with regard to this industry I am told applies in varying degrees to ironstone, salt mines and other important industries.

The House will appreciate that while the point is one of detail and, relative to the speeches to which we have been listen- ing, a narrow point, at the same time a mistake made here will have directly and indirectly a serious effect on the general output and re-organization of industry generally. I am sure the Government are anxious to avoid doing anything to prejudice recovery. I hope I have said enough to show that there is a risk under the Bill as it stands of seriously prejudicing the future of important types of industry. I suggest that they should, in the national interest, be put in a special category owing to the exceptional circumstances in which they are conducted. I hope that the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack will be able to give the House some information on this point, and perhaps an assurance which will relieve the industries, and those engaged in the industries, to which I have alluded.

I do not at this moment, in view especially of the last two speeches, propose to go into the many subjects in which I am very keenly interested. I find myself in complete accord, in particular, with the very able speech addressed to your Lordships by the noble Earl, Lord Radnor. I would like to quote, if I may, what the Minister said in the Standing Committee with regard to the matter with which I have been dealing. He said: I agree that there may be a special case for consideration in the case of a person engaged in mineral workings who owns his own land. In that respect, if the case were put, I would be prepared to give consideration in order to put such a person in the same position, relatively, as a person who is working under a lease. I place the case before you very much less forcibly than it would have been had my noble friend, the Earl of Selborne, been here. He has been unavoidably prevented from being in your Lordships' House during this discussion. A person a such as the noble Earl, with great and intimate knowledge of this subject, would have been able to place the case far more ably and acutely before your Lordships. I can only, in conclusion, apologize to the noble and learned Viscount, the Lord Chancellor, that it will be impossible for me to be here when he replies to the debate, but I am sure that he will do his best to give us some hope and confidence that in this matter the Government will meet whatever Amendments it may be deemed necessary to place before the House on the Committee stage in that sympathetic and understanding manner in which he deals with such subjects.

6.5 p.m.

LORD ADDINGTON

My Lords, I am speaking on this Bill this afternoon mainly in respect of the interests of local authorities and I want to give a very warm welcome to many of its provisions. It will be a very great advantage to us to be able to obtain in the future, at present user value, the land we will want, say, for housing, education, playing fields, open spaces, highways, and many other purposes with which we are concerned, as well as to be able to see that the land is used in the best interests of the people as a whole, and that beauty spots and woodlands are fully preserved. Land seems to rise amazingly in value as soon as it is hinted that a local authority is likely to want it, and the figure put on it by the district valuer seems in many cases wonderfully high to those who are on the spot.

Local authorities are mainly concerned with administration, and the non-county boroughs and the urban and rural district councils view with great regret the loss of the planning powers they have had hitherto. Many of them have expert staffs and have made considerable progress in the preparation of their plans. A good many counties, including Buckinghamshire, of whose Council I am a member, have divided the whole of their area under joint planning committees, each with their own planning officers and their own staffs. In Buckinghamshire, for instance, more than half the area of the county is covered with schemes that have been adopted, and have actually been made and deposited with the Minister, and in respect of which local or ministerial inquiries have been held. Those committees consider applications for development in an advisory capacity. These district councils ask, first, that their views shall be given the fullest possible consideration, both before and after a development plan is made, and before it is confirmed by the Minister; and, secondly, that there shall be real delegation to them in every sense of the word of the functions relating to the granting of permission for the development of land within their district. Such delegation the county councils, I understand, are to some extent prepared to grant, though not perhaps until the development plan has been approved by the Minister.

It is, submit, most desirable that these district councils should retain as many as possible of their functions, and so continue to attract the keenest and ablest people in the area, to be, as they are at present, the first school for democratic leadership and also for practical administration. It is clearly impracticable for the council of any county to deal with all these interim development applications, and if, as has been suggested by the Minister, the developer is to get from one authority both the by-law and the planning permission (as well as, at an early date, the knowledge of the development charge, as I think was suggested) that application must surely go to the district council, and both permissions be given by, them, subject, no doubt, to adequate expert advice being available on the amenity and architectural aspects, and to due regard being paid to the wider aspects of national and county planning.

So far as I can understand the Bill, it will depend entirely on such regulations as are made by the Minister as to whether there is to be delegation at all, and I would be grateful if I could be informed of what his intentions are in this respect, and why it was that m the Report stage he omitted from the old Clause 31, which is now Clause 32, the words which exclude from delegation the function of making or amending development plans. There will be two somewhat distinct periods to be provided for in this respect. The first is that between the appointed day and the time when the development plan becomes effective, and the second after that date. The former seems, in some ways, the more difficult. How are the new planning authorities to draw up in time machinery —however much it may creak, as we heard yesterday it might—to deal with applications for development, until regulations have been made? Is there any power given to the new planning authorities to delegate? It would seem to me to be necessary for provisions to be inserted in the Bill itself to provide for continuity of treatment for such applications.

Conditions vary so much between—and even within—counties that I would suggest that it might be a convenient method to require each county to draw up its own arrangements after full consultation with the councils of its county districts, and then to give to those councils the right of having their further representations duly considered by the Minister, before he confirms such arrangements. Speaking, as I am, in the interests of the local authorities, I think that I am bound to say a word or two about London—of which we heard a great deal yesterday. I might remind the House that it is surely not only in the spheres of finance and commerce that the City of London holds a unique position. It has a great position also in civic matters. Its council is, I believe, the premier council; and the Lord Mayor is the leader of all the municipal councils, if not of all local government bodies, in the country. The Guildhall is the natural scene of so many national ceremonies, and some ceremonies of even wider significance, and it is the Lord Mayor who is the natural host on such occasions. So I do trust that means will be found to enable the City of London to retain its position as a planning authority and, at the same time, to provide adequate co-ordination of development plans for the City of London, for the area of the London County Council and also for some of the surrounding areas. I would be grateful if I could be told what are the intentions of the Minister regarding the new plan, just published, for the City of London, to which reference was made yesterday.

Further, I would urge that opportunity should be taken to give local authorities far more control over both camping sites and over temporary dwellings than could be given in the Public Health Act of 1936. That Act was consolidation, and it was not found practicable to insert much new law, however advisable that might have been. These have now become matters of great difficulty and real urgency, and, if the country is to be planned properly, this opportunity should be taken for full control to be given over them. I would also urge that planning control should be given to the local planning authorities over the plans of all Government Departments. More and more activities are coming under their control, and their plans should surely be made to conform to local conditions and local surroundings. It has already been indicated that certain Government Departments are not altogether without blame in that respect. I believe that such conformity could be secured without great difficulty, if at an early stage those plans were submitted to the expert planning officers of the districts concerned.

I was glad to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Henderson, had to say regarding the additions to small existing buildings, referred to in the Third Schedule. Many cottages in villages and small towns are in urgent need of bathrooms, lavatories and sinks, to make them habitable for the agricultural workers whom we need so much, and whom we are so desirous of attracting to the land. Many of the buildings have low ceilings, and these need to be raised. A suggestion I would make is that alterations required by the housing authority at any rate should not be subject to the new charge or to the limitation of area imposed by that Schedule. There are a good many other matters which I shall he raising at a later stage and I am very glad to know that the noble and learned Viscount, the Lord Chancellor, is proposing to make some Amendments to paragraph 10 in, I think, the Tenth Schedule, which deals with agreements under Section 34 of the 1932 Act. A great many of those agreements are of considerable value, and should certainly be incorporated into the new development plans.

If I may, I will now turn for a moment from the interests of local authorities to some of the wider aspects of the Bill. Speaking for myself alone, I am seriously perturbed by the amount that is left to be settled by regulations—a matter to which the noble Earl, Lord Radnor, has already referred—and also by the door that seems to be opened for discrimination between individuals who are in the same class or category. I trust, therefore, that in many cases it will be possible to insert in the Bill more of the principles on which the regulations are to be based, and some words to prevent such discrimination. Also, in view of the very wide powers that are given by this Bill in matters that concern vitally the interests of very many of our people, I feel strongly that there should be some right of appeal to the courts, both from the decisions of the Minister and from some of those of the Central Land Board.

Generally, I welcome—or at any rate I accept—many of the provisions of this Bill. It is clearly right that our land should be used to the greatest advantage of our people, and that regard should be paid to the interests of the neighbours and not solely or mainly to the wishes of the individual who happens to hold a plot of land concerned. People must come before property, and so far as I am concerned—and I believe that I can speak for most if not for all of those concerned with local government in this country—I can assure your Lordships that we will respond wholeheartedly to the appeal which has been made by the noble and learned Viscount, the Lord Chancellor, and will do our utmost, before the Bill leaves this House, to assist in making it easier to administer, simpler to understand and more equitable as between those who come under it.

6.20 p.m.

LORD HYLTON

My Lords, before attempting to make any comments on this most complicated measure, I would ask your Lordships for that indulgence which you so readily give to those addressing you for the first time. The speeches which you have heard this afternoon from the noble Earl, Lord Radnor and the noble Viscount, Lord Gage, have covered a vast tract of country that is included in the provisions of this Bill, and I have only a few brief remarks that I should like to offer to your Lordships. It occurs to me that we might well further examine the vast machinery that is to be established under the Bill. The machinery is to be of a permanent nature and that, of course, is a new principle in town and country planning. Under the old Acts, planning and the preparation of planning schemes was of a temporary nature, and when schemes became final planning as such ceased. Now, under the present Bill, planning is a continuous process. Not only does a development plan have to be revised at a stated time but there has been instituted a living interest in planning, and therefore I think it most important that the machinery under which this planning will be exercised should be very carefully examined by your Lordships.

The noble Viscount, Lord Gage, has mentioned a considerable number of fences which are placed between the individual who wishes to develop land or build a house and the fruition of his wishes. If one takes these processes in the reverse order, starting from the top, from the Minister whose authority is omnipotent in planning, it is to be observed that when the execution of the plans is in question they are seen in a very different light. The Minister has quite recently instituted under him a number of Regional Offices. Below the regional level there are the county councils as the new planning authorities. They have the offices and the officers. Below them, in the larger counties, there are area committees which would be necessary to deal with delegated parts of planning. In addition to these bodies there are joint boards and, where necessary, advisory committees. It is a formidable total of bodies that have to be consulted and whose authority must be obtained before practical results occur.

I think it well to remember that all these bodies are anonymous. It will be extremely difficult to get a decision from anyone. They will be continually passing the responsibility to the next level. I speak as a Chairman of a county planning committee who has had some experience of the difficulty of getting decisions from regional bodies and from the many Ministries involved and which have to be consulted in almost every planning matter to-day. We shall be definitely slowing down the rate of development. Is that a wise thing to do to-day when the Government urges us to "work or want"? The wealth of the country in the past has been provided and has increased by development and the profits made from development. Is it wise to slow down in this development when we are told that unless we export we shall want? I think we shall be slowing down exports. The noble Viscount, Viscount Gage, referred to the difficulties that will be placed before developers who require new factories in order to produce new articles to fill the markets either of this country or for export. I think it wise at this stage to point out the dangers we are running by setting up such extremely complicated machinery.

The Central Land Board, which will act independently but parallel to the local planning authorities, again is not a machine that is going to work rapidly. So far as I understand it, the local offices of the Central Land Board may well be the existing offices of the district valuers. Those of your Lordships who have had experience in dealing with the offices of the district valuers will appreciate the interminable delays which exist to-day. The district valuers me a small body in number and extremely skilled at their work. They cannot be multiplied a hundredfold in a short space of time. The district valuer with whom I have had personal dealings in the last twelve months has been a very ill man, so ill that he has not been able to deal with the post arriving at his office, and it was not possible, apparently, for a deputy to be appointed during this period; therefore no decisions could be reached for a period of about six months. If all applications for the assessment of development charge have to go to these offices which to-day are so hopelessly under-staffed, it will be a serious matter for any developer who wishes to carry out any form of development. These facts should be faced when we are dealing with a Bill of this tremendous nature.

I would like to make one brief comment on some remarks made yesterday to your Lordships by the noble Lord, Lord Simon of Wythenshawe, who, your Lordships will recollect, took your Lordships so rapidly from Manchester to Moscow and back to Manchester. The noble Lord stated that he thought the public had a greatly increased interest in planning to-day and I am sure the noble Lord was right. But I think it only fair to say that two years ago the public and local authorities in general had a very much greater interest in the question of planning. I had to attend many meetings with local authorities of all sizes, and in those days local authorities and the public in general hoped that planning on positive lines would make the best use of the limited quantity of land in this country, in view of the great demands that are made on it for all purposes. That is what they hoped, and since then they have been sadly disappointed.

I need quote only one example, that is the Ministry of Town and Country Planning Committee on National Parks. Your Lordships will know that that Committee had a roving commission to investigate National Parks throughout the United Kingdom, and on one of their journeys, a journey to the area of Dartmoor, they were hotly pursued by a military delegation. No sooner had they left this beautiful area—of which, I think, they hoped to turn part into a National Park—than the military delegation arrived hot-foot, with the intention of turning it into an artillery range. The public are confused by such proceedings. It seems lamentable that to-day Ministries should still operate, not at variance with one another, but completely in ignorance of each other's intentions. I think that is probably the basis of the difficulty to-day. The land branches of the various Departments are extremely secretive bodies. They are most reluctant that the whole of their own Department should know their intentions, and that any other Department of the Government should have the faintest idea of what they are proposing to do is absolute anathema to them.

If that is the case, it is most important that under this Bill, or somehow linked up with these new development plans, there shall be some power whereby the Ministries, who at the present time are quite independent of the Minister of Town and Country Planning and of consultations with the local authorities responsible for development plans, and who are large users of land, shall be linked up either to the Minister of Town and Country Planning—whom they appear to have the habit of ignoring—or to the authorities responsible for forming the development plans.

We are to spend countless thousands of pounds a year on these development plans. I have estimated that in my own county of Somerset we shall spend at least £20,000 a year on survey and development plans. That is one county, and not a very large one. Unless the Ministries inform the local planning authorities of their intentions, these piles of paper and thousands of maps may just as well be thrown into the waste paper basket. It is not one Ministry, it is a dozen Ministries who are roaming the country, seeking land which they can occupy—all for good purpose, of course, but still seeking land which they can occupy. I hope that at a later stage your Lordships may be given some indication of how the Government propose to link this demand for land by the various Ministries with either the Minister of Town and Country Planning or, perhaps preferably, with the planning authorities themselves.

6.37 p.m.

LORD PIERCY

My Lords, it is my privilege to congratulate the noble Lord who has just sat down on a maiden speech, which one may justly say was concordant, both in manner and in matter, with the traditions of this House, particularly in respect of the fact that he was contributing to the deliberations of this House from a field in which he has had a great personal experience. That is the kind of contribution which is most valued in your Lordships' House. I am in a little difficulty, both in respect of the lateness of the hour and of the fact that controversy has not flamed up very fiercely on the particular matter upon which I meant to speak—the solution of the betterment and compensation problem which is embodied in the Bill. But it may be still worth while making a few observations on that subject.

I would like to begin by saying that in the course of the discussions not enough tribute has been paid—in fact, I think hardly any tribute has been paid—to the impressive simplicity of the principle which has been applied to the solution of the problem. I mean the plan of restriction on change of user, universally applied. When one compares the scheme which flows from that principle with the scheme of the Uthwatt Committee, or with the simpler, but still complicated, schemes which were being discussed in the early part of 1944, one realizes what a great intellectual advance has been made. Applied to this problem of compensation and betterment, it leaves us to solve, on the one hand, the question of making some payment in appropriate cases in respect of this restriction which has been laid on ownership, and, on the other hand, of finding the machinery for collecting, for the benefit of the State, the value of the development rights—a payment which goes to balance, if possible, the amount which the State pays out in the first place as compensation.

I am aware that technically the proposed payments are not compensation. One could say that in this field, on any scheme that might be adopted, compensation would be only a sort of compensation. It can at the best be no more than a proportion or a share of something which works out at less than the value which the owner thought he had. That flows from the well-known feature of a free market in land such as we have in this country, that if you value by the ordinary processes of valuation in use the properties which have, development value, and you add those values together, and then deduct from the total sum the values of the same properties in their existing uses you get a figure for the total development value far in excess of anything which will be actually realized within any reasonable period—such as the period of fifteen years which is commonly taken into account in those calculations.

That, I believe, is an unassailable proposition; and even in laying down that proposition you are making an assumption, which is that there is something definite about the individual valuations. But they are only definite in a kind of way and for certain purposes; and again I think it is a fair maxim of experience that you never know the value of a piece of land for certain until you see the money on the table. I would think in those circumstances—and I would recommend this thought to the House—that it really is an outstanding merit of this Bill that it provides a large total sum for compensation, or, accurately perhaps, for dealing with hardship. And this is the point I desire to make: if it is true that there is a merit in thus providing a large sum for the immediate compensation of owners affected, that fact should be taken into account when one is considering the figure.

Some play has been made of the fact that an estimate of £400,000,000 was given to the Barlow Committee by the Chief Valuer of the Inland Revenue as the possible value of the development rights of undeveloped land in both town and country taken together in the year 1938. The Uthwatt Committee, by inference, I think, shed some doubt upon that figure. But, leaving that point on one side, while I do not suggest that the figure as put forward at the time was a wild guess, I do think one must concede that it was not put forward as a firm figure which a Government might reasonably adopt for paying out. I have no doubt that the Chief Valuer applied the sort of reasoning with which one is familiar to such statistics are were available to him. But I think I can justly say—and I do not believe anyone can controvert this—that statistical inference in such a matter is highly uncertain at the best of times. The subject matter upon which you are basing your calculations is at any time very slippery. But we have now had six years of War, and something like a revolution in our economic circumstances. There are breaks in the continuity of the statistics, and there have been great changes in the underlying economic and political factors. I do not want to enlarge upon those con- siderations, though they go to the root of these calculations. I merely mention them to explain the peculiar difficulties which surround the task of arriving at a figure.

For the argument upon which I propose to rely is not that statistical argument but another. When the noble Lord, Lord Woolton, became Minister of Reconstruction, he turned his attention at once, and very earnestly, to the problem of the control of land use. The first Paper that was circulated to the Reconstruction Committee was a paper on that very subject. How did it propose to deal with the question of compensation?

THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY

I do not desire to interrupt the noble Lord unnecessarily in his argument, but I do not know that it is quite the practice in this House to quote Cabinet Committees at all.

LORD PIERCY

I apologize to your Lordships' House. May I put it in this way. At that time, in 1944, when this subject was receiving considerable attention, including at a certain date the attention of your Lordships' House, the problem of compensation naturally tame forward. The ideas that were chiefly discussed were ideas of valuing the individual rights and paying out a certain percentage of the development values so arrived at. I think one can see the upshot of those discussions if one recalls a public document of the time, the White Paper which contained what I suppose one might justly call the Woolton Plan. It is clear that between the earlier stage which I have tried to indicate, and the stage which had been reached at the time the White Paper was published, certain things had happened. I think it is clear that the Treasury of those days had come to the conclusion that it would not stand for being committed to paying out a wholly indefinite sum, which would be the result of adopting any scheme of the sort I have mentioned. It stands out very clearly too that the Treasury in those days was not attracted by the idea of paying out any sum unless it had some certainty as to the income it might receive to set off against the out-go.

One must bear in mind that there has always been a certain, what might be called, mystique about compensation and betterment. I have never been able to convince myself that, in a scheme of this kind, the receipts could be relied upon to balance the payments. But no doubt the thing was presented to the Treasury on the footing that if they paid out this compensation, then later on, by way of development charges, they would recoup themselves, and there would be a balance. As one might expect from prudent custodians of the national finances, the scheme which the Government eventually put out, attractively presented in that White Paper, was on these lines: that there would be universal restriction on user; that there would be a betterment charge for permission to develop or redevelop; and that the Government, at the end of five years, having had-the experience of how the income came in, would then say what it proposed to do with regard to compensation. The scheme pivoted on the idea of a balance. So it resulted that, while in the meantime during this period of five years, a right to compensation could be established, the level of the compensation was left completely in the air, with the ominous indication that the Treasury were looking for a balance, and a balance probably of income and out-go.

It is not my intention to decry that scheme as a financial scheme. It bore the marks of calm judgment and a careful stewardship of public resources. There was only one thing wrong with it—or at least I thought so at the time—and that is that it was hard to treat property owners in that way, to plunge them into uncertainty for so long a period, and to give them absolutely nothing definite which they could take hold of at the end of the time. It was sound finance; but, if I may use the term in a neutral way, it was not good politics. To achieve the object in view without too much outrage of the sense of natural justice it was necessary, I suggest, to take a risk on the question of balance; to take the chance that possibly your income from betterment charges might not balance your out-go, and to give people whose rights you were affecting in this drastic way an immediate certainty as to their position. I suggest that the great merit of this Bill is that it does precisely that; it accepts a responsibility and it takes a risk.

The Minister of Town and Country Planning has explained in a very candid way the process of dead reckoning by which he arrived at the conclusion that £300,000,000 was a reasonable figure, and I am bound to say, as a practical man, that what he said carried conviction with me. But evidently it is not—and I have argued that it could not be—a scientific figure. It was one which was arrived at by a kind of free hand process and by discussion among Ministers. I, for one, am inclined to think that the Minister of Town and Country Planning, in consultation with his colleagues, did pretty well in producing the offer for his Bill of a total sum so large as £300,000,000. That, I think, is worth considering.

It is an immense merit in the Bill that you have immediate certainty. It had to be to some extent a speculative move on the part of any Government, particularly if they were looking in any way to a balance of income and out-go on this total transaction, and it would be a great mistake to deride too much the figure of £300,000,000. Human nature being what it is, one would expect that whatever the figure mentioned it would have been regarded as inadequate. If the figure had been hoisted to £1,500,000,000—as I think[...] was suggested from the opposite Bench —I do not know that there would not still have been some complaint of inadequacy, because it would still have been open to anybody to make his own guess as to what the figure should be.

That is the main point in this whole scheme of compensation and development charges; at least that is a most important point. As to the division of the global sum, I do not gather from the debate that there is any fundamental objection to the scheme which is proposed, which is that the Treasury should draw up a scheme. Obviously some principles have to be applied, and they have to be thought out carefully. The proposal that the Treasury should draw up a scheme which should afterwards be subject to the affirmative vote of both Houses is not one that I imagine will create any great opposition. But it has been suggested that it is impossible to deal with the claims and valuations so that the Treasury will actually begin paying out five years from now—which, of course, is the promise. There is no doubt a very large amount of work involved. The noble Viscount who pointed that out did so in juxtaposition with a statement that every acre of land in the country will have to be valued within the next three years.

VISCOUNT BUCKMASTER

I said it would have to be surveyed within the next three years, which is not the same thing.

LORD PIERCY

I agree; and I only want to point out that there is no question of the valuation of every acre in the country within three years in connexion with this particular problem of the distribution of the global sum, because fortunately—and I think this point will be conceded—not all the land in the country will attract compensation.

VISCOUNT BUCKMASTER

With great respect, I have no wish to interrupt the noble Lord or to interfere with his speech, but Clause 55 states specifically that all owners whose interest in land is diminished may lodge a claim. It is true they may not receive anything, but I do not see how the clause can prevent them from lodging a claim.

LORD PIERCY

I concede the point that you cannot prevent anybody from lodging a claim, but it does not follow that everybody will lodge a claim. I think it is generally recognized that a large portion of the land in the country will not attract compensation demands, and I expect that owners, having taken advice on the subject, will discover that that is the case. In that event I should be surprised if they lodged claims.

Your Lordships will remember that in the White Paper the land was divided into while land and green land, so as to bring out the point that in the green land, which was the major part of the land of the country, the claims in all probability would be very few indeed. The point I make, even supposing it is going to be very difficult within a period of five years to have these claims completed, lodged, and examined, is that it is very important, and a good feature of the Bill, that the Government should set themselves a dead line, since this will be a time of transition and disturbance. All sorts of matters hang upon the completion of the work as quickly as possible, including matters like assessment of estate duties. People will not stop dying while these processes are going on.

Finally, there remains the question of development charges. There we have a fundamentally practical problem, and the solution to be applied to that is one that might be picked up from the phrase of a noble Lord opposite—solvitur ambulando. You must find out as you go along what are the best procedures and techniques. It has been pointed out that the Central Land Board will be a monopolist. Of course, it will; but central review of the whole process of settling development charges, and central control, are essential to securing fairness and reasonable uniformity of practice. Therefore, I imagine that in principle no objection can properly be laid to the centralization of that work in the Central Land Board. There is the other aspect of its capacity as a monopolist, the question whether or not it will be able to do business with developers and would be developers.

The experience of monopolists does not show that monopoly kills the higgling of the market, even though the monopolist is seeking all the time to maximise his gains. I see no reason at all to suppose that the process of bargaining, by which ordinary commercial values are reached, will be absent from the course of business under a Central Land Board. Therefore I do not feel that there is anything that will prevent proper development charges being arrived at, as between the parties, in a centralized system of controlling them; and, as we know, after the correct development charge has been ascertained, the Bill leaves a large measure of discretion to the Central Land Board to modify the charge, which means modifying it downwards for the particular case.

I have spoken on one aspect of the Bill. I would like to add that although the Bill is long and complicated, and is embedded in some of the most difficult parts of English law, and therefore has a great deal in it which a layman cannot easily appreciate, it does seem to me to be a well-organized and logical Bill. It has the great merit of combining within its four corners all the major parts of this subject. When it leaves your Lordships' House it will, I hope, be a Bill which we shall all be glad to see on the Statute Book.

7.2 p.m.

THE EARL OF ELGIN AND KINCARDINE

My Lords, it has been pointed out that this is a Bill dealing with England and Wales and that there is only one clause dealing with Scotland. But as that clause is a vital clause in regard to Scotland, I hope your Lordships will not think me transgressing in occupying a few minutes of your time. Under Clause 2 of this Bill there is appointed a Central Land Board which will have jurisdiction over the whole of the United Kingdom. The noble Lord, Lord Henderson, who opened the debate this afternoon, referred to a speech of the noble Earl, Lord Selkirk, yesterday and said that he thought that Scotland need have no fear of domination. I think I am quoting him correctly in saying that he said there would be ample delegation to Edinburgh. But nothing is actually said in either of these Bills, except (a) that the Board will have an office in Scotland and (b) that the Board will comply with such terms as may be given to them by the Secretary of State for Scotland. Both of these references appear in the Scottish Bill, which is not yet before your Lordships. If one is to rely entirely upon the stamina of successive Secretaries of State, one might be satisfied that he would maintain Scottish interests against all comers. But it would be much more satisfactory that there should be something more definite said in this Bill with regard to the relationship with Scotland. If we are to be tied up, we should like to know much more intimately how we are to be tied up.

Yesterday the noble Earl, Lord Selkirk, referred, in a very cogent speech, to the fundamental differences between the two countries of England and Scotland in regard to land tenure and the law affecting the holding of land and property. He said, very properly, that Scotland has a great advantage in having had, ever since 1617, by the Register of Sasines, a complete register of transactions and of deeds affecting land and property. No person can have a proper title without its being registered in this register of Sasines. No such register exists, I believe, in England. But I would like to take your Lordships to an earlier period than even 1617. I think it would be correct to say that in the reign of Edward I the land tenure in both countries was very similar; but in the year 1314 a very distinguished and forceful member of my house and family took action which assured that Scotland should develop on her own lines. Since that date the development of the two countries in regard to land tenure has been on quite different lines. Scotland still retains, with much less interruption, a feudal system, and quite a different system has developed in England.

May I quote a very distinguished authority on such matters, Viscount Dunedin, who in a lecture which he gave many years ago stated that there is no more identity between the two systems than there is between chalk and cheese. He said: In this province of the law there has been no convergence. The land systems of the two countries are so different that convergence is impossible. Either you would have to give up the one and introduce the other or else make a clean sweep of both and introduce something quite new. Such an impossible task has never been proposed by anyone. Yesterday the noble Duke, the Duke of Buccleuch, and the noble Earl, Lord Selkirk, gave some illustrations of the differences in land tenure. One is the system of felling in Scotland as compared with a long lease in England. Under a feu, as long as the feu duty is paid the owner of the house which is erected on feu terms is in complete possession and nothing interrupts his possession: the feu is an interminable one, unless by the action of the fetter by non-payment of the feu duty. He therefore has a much more complete tenure than exists in England, where at the end of a long lease the erections and buildings on the lease are returned to the superior.

There is also the case which I think was mentioned yesterday, of the differences which exist in the tenure of flatted houses. In Scotland an occupier of a flat may be the complete and absolute possessor of that flat, with the responsibilities of maintaining it, the walls, the roof or the ground, for the benefit not only of himself but of his neighbours above or below him. No such system exists in England, and it is for this reason that I stress this point: Is it right or just to charge one body with the adjudication of two such completely different systems? I cannot see how they can be expected to carry out that duty. If the Act is to work effectively in Scotland, without delays and irritation to those responsible for administering and interpreting it, it is submitted that there should be either a separate Board for Scotland or at least a Committee composed of persons with a knowledge of Scottish conditions, and especially those who know something of the administration of land in Scotland, and that that body should have executive powers for the discharge of those duties in Scotland.

7.10 p.m.

VISCOUNT RIDLEY

My Lords, I think one must recognize that this Bill is a very courageous attempt to solve two very difficult problems, and it is one which faces up for the first time to the need for positive planning. It is, I think, an inevitable step for anybody who has had experience of trying to make the old planning system work through the local authority and in other various ways. Perhaps we have in many details of this Bill a somewhat rigid and restrictive system. I always believe that in matters of national control and guidance better results can be achieved by a clear and definite guidance on broad outline, allowing the minor details to work themselves out. Of course, it is extremely difficult to strike a balance between the two—to preserve the clear control of the general direction and yet to allow the freedom of detail and the avoidance of unnecessary waste of time on argument, on paper and so on, which are in a sense contradictory. I had rather hoped, however, that we would find in this Bill a little more elasticity in the administration of the work. One has to recognize that much planning in a constructive way is undoubtedly necessary, There must be some opportunities for the natural energy and enthusiasm for work of various kinds which very often lies people who are not necessarily in Government Departments or local authorities. One must give scope to people to improve their means of earning their living and so on, and I hope that we shall not find that we have restricted that too much in this Bill. There is rather a tendency nowadays to assume, in regard to such matters as the adoption or alteration of a development plan or, indeed, of a large range of other activities, that all the brains, judgment and common sense are to be found in the Central Administration. One often finds that in modern legislation not enough is properly delegated and decentralized to the small authorities and agencies who have to operate it, and I am rather concerned that that is so in this Bill also.

That brings me to the position of local planning authorities. In the case of the county boroughs, of course, there is no change; in relation to where the responsibility lies they were and still are the planning authorities. In the case of counties there is a very important change. I listened with very great interest to the noble Lords who spoke with knowledge and experience of work on county planning committees, but I do not think either of them touched very much on the question of the present organization, which consists mainly, in most counties at any rate, of the county joint planning committee. At the same time the county districts are in fact the planning authorities. We have found in our county that this joint planning committee system, even with the district council as the actual authority, is doing very well —I mean from the point of view of coming to agreement on decisions and mixing in the much more local point of view with the larger scale view of the county members.

Most important of all, we find that as all the district councils, urban and rural, have members of their own directly appointed as part of the joint planning authority, they are always more willing to be persuaded to agree to something with which they at first did not agree. At first these district councils are rather inclined to have fairly strong views. The matter comes before the joint planning authority, who are bound to consult the local authorities, and you will often find that one or two members of the district council attend the meeting of the joint committee and are quite persuaded, and then the whole matter goes smoothly. I am a little afraid of the change which is going to be made. I can see clearly that it eases the administrative problem, although in fact maters are not going to be so very different, because in my county, and I imagine in others, the work is done in the county office. There they have their own staff. The district councils do not have, to my knowledge, planning officers of their own, because their work can be done for them by the county joint planning authority. In actual fact, therefore, there is not going to he a great deal of difference, except that there will be consultation with the district council.

One noble Lord who spoke a short time ago referred to the question of consultation and delegation. Clause 32 contains no reference to consultation, and under this system one would almost think it was essential that there should be compulsion on the planning committee to confer with the district council. There is, however, in Clause 32, a paragraph which states that the Minister may order county councils to delegate certain parts of the work to district councils. That is all to the good, but I would far rather have seen that the county councils must delegate to the county district councils certain of their functions—not all, perhaps—under this new Bill, and that the Minister would probably be required to define which of those functions they should be. It is rather too elaborate a point to go into at this time, but it would not be difficult to lay down a series of responsibilities to be delegated to the district councils, so that they may feel that they are really part of the business, and that they are contributing their local knowledge.

Oddly enough, I think that is more important in the urban part of the county than in the rural part, because what is really concerned, apart from the broad outline plan, is urban development, which after all is a much more local problem. This matter affects a large concentration of people, and in regard to it local knowledge is much more necessary. To make a new Bill like this work properly you should try and get the co-operation, the enthusiasm and the help of all the people you can get, and I am quite certain that there are many members of county district councils who are as keen and as competent as many of those on county councils. Being a member of both, I do not feel prejudiced in any direction, but I do think that it is for the good of this country to delegate as much as possible as far down as you can go, and to make as much use of as many people as can be done.

Again, in a rather general way, I am a little concerned about the powers of control—or interference, should I say?— which the Minister himself is to have over the planning authorities. There are a number of things he can do without a "By your leave" or "With your leave." He has default powers. If he thinks they ought to make an order under some section he can give instructions accordingly. The Minister can force two neighbouring authorities into a joint planning committee. Most of your Lordships who are familiar with local government work will probably agree that there is nothing which is generally more unpopular in such work than the suggestion of a joint committee. It is a complicated and roundabout means of doing business. Furthermore, the Minister can make arrangements off his own bat for an authority to go ahead and do development work for part of a neighbouring authority's area. That, I think, is rather unwarranted.

The financial arrangements as proposed for local government work in this connexion will, I think, be considered to be generally acceptable. On the other hand, I have grave doubts about the provision whereby a county council may levy a special rate on a part of the county district. It seems to me that if you say that a county is to plan in an area, surely the cost of the planning should be spread over the county. The noble Lord, Lord Hylton, gave an estimate of expenditure of £20,000 a year, or something of that sort. I am not at all surprised at that figure. I have not gone into it myself but probably it is fairly accurate. Suppose that a county had decided that for one year, while they were busy putting into operation a development plan for a certain part of that area, they would levy a special rate on that area, and that it was a scattered and relatively uninhabited area, with a widely spread population. The result would be that in that locality there would be a very high rate. Then suppose that the next year planning was being done for a much more dense urban area. The rate then would go up hardly at all.

I think it has been the general policy in most recent Acts to try to achieve uniformity of rates, so far as possible, and in this connexion I may quote the Water Act, 1944, which went a long way to abolish differential rates between one part of a district council's area and another. I do not see any reason' why by more detailed discussion we cannot achieve a good deal in respect of these provisions, which I look upon as being, practically, the most important of them all. It is easy enough to pass Bills but a great deal more difficult to make them work smoothly in practice—particularly a measure like this, which of necessity introduces considerable changes of procedure of all kinds. That is all the more reason for a very careful examination of how the planning authorities are to get their work done.

Another point, rather of the same kind, is one, which, perhaps, may appear to be a detail which we should consider later, rather than now; but to my mind it covers an important matter of principle. It is in Clause 13, subsection (4), which provides that the Board of Trade have to certify before permission is given for the erection of any factory buildings. I think one noble Lord who spoke was under the impression that that would mean a separate application by the owner parallel with his application for planning permission. I rather understand it to mean that the local planning authority have to secure the certificate; but I am not sure.

I would now refer your Lordships to the Distribution of Industry Act which was passed in 1945, and to which this particular provision apparently relates. It was an Act passed with the intention of improving and developing what used to be known as planning areas, now, as the result of this Bill, to be known as development areas. The question as to whether or not compulsion in the matter of moving a factory or building a new one should be exercised has been a difficult question throughout all the work that has been clone on that problem. In the Distribution of Industry Act, or rather in the Bill before it became an Act, there was a clause, Clause 9, which covered this. It provided that when the Board of Trade declared that this provision should apply to any particular area, it was then necessary to get their approval before building or extending a factory. There was, however, an important difference which is not in this new Bill, and that was that it excepted factory buildings or extensions of less than 3,000 square feet.

There was also some provision with respect to war damage replacement, and other quite minor points; but from many points of view the 3,000 square feet minimum is the most important. There are provisions in the present Bill whereby the Board of Track have to make regulations, and I suppose you could argue that they could insert that up to 3,000 feet the special provision should not be applied. In the Distribution of Industry Bill there was also a provision which I understood to be a provision for some kind of appeal. To my mind a provision of this sort would not be suitable in this planning Bill. As your Lordships will remember, it was taken out of the Distribution of Industry Bill and there is nothing like it in the Act. It was removed at the instigation of areas who thought they might lose factories and industrial employment because firms would not be ready either to rebuild or to build new factories. I understand that that was the reason for that excision—the opposition of some areas to the right of appeal prevailed as against some who were in favour of it. It was not a question of politics or of Government policy, but merely a matter of balancing up how best the thing should be done. The Town and Country Planning Bill has not, so far as I can see, any appeal provision and no statement about the minimum area on which building may take place.

On the question of policy which has been adopted for the development areas, and which is in operation, I think it is generally agreed that as the important thing is not only to get an industry in a place but to keep it there, it is wiser to persuade these people to go to these areas than to force them. I am convinced that is the right way. I have seen this work going on for a good many years, and nobody is more anxious than I to see the development areas develop; but to my mind we must be very careful about upsetting the natural economy of industry too much by putting it under obligations which are not proper to it, and by giving to the Board of Trade the responsibility of making a decision without, I make so bold as to say, real knowledge on which to do it. Of course, I am not arguing that a factory, whether large or small, should be built without any planning provision. What I am putting to your Lordships is that I disagree with the policy whereby the Board of Trade alone have the decision on whether or not the factory shall be built. Because at the present time the Distribution of Industry Act is doing only badly the work of persuading factories to go to these areas. The real operative course is the building licence; and the way that that works at present is very complicated.

A large number of authorities—joint committees and boards and so on—are in operation, and as something like half the new factories, at any rate in the North-East of England, are now being built by or for the Government, at the Government's expense, and then leased, in very few cases are local planning authorities even consulted or informed of the actual site of factories. That I know from experience to be true. Of course, there are a lot of discussions between various Government Departments and local authorities as to the general pro- posals for development and for factory buildings in parts of their areas, but on the question of sites very often there is only the slightest liaison; certainly it is not treated as a matter over which the planning authorities have any control. Again, I think that is a pity. Let the planning authority make the plan, and give that authority control of what it is trying to do.

One must look ahead to the time when building licences are no longer required, if there is ever to be such a time. Even if it is a long time coming, there are bound to be changes in that, and what we are considering now is a permanent system. Is it right that the Board of Trade should have the actual decision in the matter? One knows that there will have to be a good deal of consultation, as there is now, between the different Departments. It will take too long to discuss the progress of these proposals from the start to finish, but there is no obligation on the regional authorities of the Government to consult anybody. The present building licensing power is used mainly as a further inducement to persuade factories and new industries to establish themselves in development areas. That is a good form of inducement, but positive permanent restriction, so that the Board of Trade on their own responsibility can direct any new building to any part of the country, is bad for two reasons. The real policy is inducement; and I believe the Board of Trade are in a very difficult position in deciding between one area and another.

I would like to ask what would happen under the Bill if this provision is left in. The planning authority, I suppose, would consult the Board of Trade. They and their regional organization cannot move in the matter without consulting a panel representing the Ministry of Town and Country Planning, the Ministry of Labour and the Ministry of Works. They will discuss the matter for some time, and it will have to be confirmed by their Headquarters: and that takes quite a time. I see no reason to think it will happen any more quickly under the Bill than it is happening without it. I think it a definite hindrance to have a provision of this kind without a low limit of building up to a certain size whether or not the Board of Trade agree to it.

There is not enough knowledge of local conditions in the regional Government Departments to justify them in placing an absolute bar on industry growing in one place or another. The only facts available to guide them are the best forecasts that can be made of the amount of people living in or near a certain area who are available for work; and that is not a very scientific way of doing it. It needs to be supplemented by a great deal more knowledge as to what is the most likely industry to prosper in a certain place, and as to the advantages inherent in the locality by way of natural resources, raw materials, transport and so on. I regret very much that the regional Government organizations—and I believe the central as well—have not equipped themselves, so far as one knows, with that kind of knowledge, of which there is a good deal to be got. It has always seemed to me that the Government regional departments should engage much more in research of this kind and should avail themselves of the interest and abilities of outside bodies, of whom there are a good many, who could give them a good deal of help in these matters.

I also regret very much that Government Departments are still freed from control by planning authorities. Even if you say that a Minister could not be ordered about by local councils, one could suggest that he could be ordered about by the Minister of Town and Country Planning. It is not that one wishes to make any invidious distinction between one Minister and another, but I think that in any use of land the Minister of Town and Country Planning should have definite authority to say whether any Department should have the land they want. The Minister could easily work it in with the plans and the planning authorities, and see that the Department keep in step. One regrets the mistakes in planning during the war and since the war. It was understandable that in war time a lot of unsightly things would be built in the wrong places. That was inevitable. But one does not see much improvement in the actions of Government Departments since the war.

I can quote a case of a Royal Ordnance factory being built during the war in a place which all the local people clearly felt was totally the wrong place. We told the Government that quite a long time before the war ended. That was in a so-called development area. We were anxious not to have the factory put out of use or pulled down, but we were so concerned that it was going to upset planning that we tried to persuade the Government it was wrong to use it. And events have now justified us. It has proved upsetting to planning and has led to a lot of rearrangement, and has been an expensive undertaking.

Demands for training land often interfere and contradict the attempts of people to plan properly. I would have liked to discuss one or two further points had there been time. Many of your Lordships have spoken of that, but I would briefly mention one or two points to which a slightly different aspect might be given. One cannot deny that this Bill is mainly an urban matter, and it must be so because the problems of planning in the country are relatively easy. Further, the town dweller gets, not all the benefits under this Bill, but probably rather more than the countryman. I would remind you that the countryman, in exchange for the rates and taxes which he pays, has the pleasure of paying them at the same rate as the townsman, though he does not get the same quality of service that the townsman can get. This is due to the fact of distance and the lack of concentration of people. Such things as water supply, sewerage, electric light and so on, are not, generally speaking, quite so good for the countryman, so that in town and country planning one has to be particularly careful that the countryman, and the industry by which he lives, do not run any serious risks.

I believe there are some risks to the industry, such as the question of designation (which has been thoroughly discussed already) and the very difficult question of the rebuilding, alteration and extension of cottages. It seems to me that there may be a great deal of improvement in this. The noble Earl, Lord Radnor, quoted an undertaking to us, but we ought to be particularly careful to see that whatever is done makes it possible to improve small rural houses without having to pay a really substantial development charge. In the country it is nearly always a question of modernizing or improving a cottage, and 10 per cent. is not really logical because we may have a small but sound building which has to be enlarged by 50 per cent. But when it is enlarged it is of no greater value, and if a development charge has to be paid on that it clearly becomes a tax on building. The value of the site is not improved because, nine times out of ten, the cottage rent is not raised. However I will not waste any more time on that except to say, on this question of building and extending, that I hope that whatever is done will include not only the farm workers but other rural workers such as wood men and drainers, and so on. There has always been some confusion about this, but they need this quite as much as the farm worker himself.

I would also suggest that when the time comes we should consider whether the exemption give to farm buildings should not be extended. The noble Earl, Lord Radnor, suggested that something should be done about horticultural buildings, and I would remind your Lordships that there are forestry works and buildings: we must have saw mills and drying sheds and so on. There is also the question of the buildings necessary for the maintenance and repair of country cottages. These are small matters, but they ought to be considered in the same category. The noble Lord, Lord Henderson, said it was a good thing that the land would not be likely to be sold to speculators so that good land was damaged. I agree with him, but I think the farmer would mind just as much if his best land were taken by the Government and treated in the same way. We have seen that happen, but I hope it will not happen under this Bill; there are places where it is extremely difficult to avoid this, and there are places where mistakes are sometimes made.

There is a point upon which I would be grateful for some information. It was stated (I think by the noble Lord, Lord Henderson) that in Clause 18 there was room for a claim for damages arising out of designation. But I find that Clause 18 deals with the refusal of permission to develop. There may be provisions in the Bill where, under certain conditions, compensation can be paid, and I would be grateful if we could have an explanation of that, because it materially affects the question of designation. Further to that question of designation, I see no reference in this clause, nor, indeed, anywhere else in the Bill, to the question of woodlands. If woodlands have been dedicated, and they become designated, do they become de-dedicated, or what? One must have a proper working plan for woodlands, and one must look forward. If one knows one has only ten years, one's energy will be concentrated on that part of the woodlands which is going to remain as such. If it is known that woodlands are going to be destroyed by being turned to some urban use, one will not bother quite so much, That is a pity; and it may be found they are afterwards taken out of designation; the woodlands may have suffered and gone back because they have not been kept as up-to-date as they might have been. I hope we may have some explanation of that.

That brings me to one more point, in Clause 26—Orders for the preservation of trees and woodlands. This interests me because I have spent much time as a member of a joint planning committee trying to operate the earlier Act. We had a case under that Act which has already taken two years to deal with, and it is not really settled yet. I think this Bill may be an improvement, but there is a difficulty in that there is no mention of what must be in the Order in respect to the conditions. It is far too vague and indefinite. Whatever type of woodlands it is—whether it is a large area, a small wood, a group of trees, or a combination of tree planting—which one wants to preserve, the general principle, to my mind, is that the Order should contain instructions to maintain the woodlands according to a working plan (or a system of operations if it is too small for that) which has been advised by a forestry expert or consultant or by the Forestry Commission. That must be done locally; it cannot be done in any general way on a far away plan. For that reason, I would say that the Ministry should not he the authority for laying that down, but that the local planning authorities should be ordered to consult either some of the staff of the Forestry Commission or a local forestry consultant. If an expert were consulted in that way it would be known what ought to be done, and what conditions should be put in the Order. If we do not do this, I fear that in time a lot of mistakes may be made. In some places we may have a series of miserable old trees dying away, for it is commonly thought that if a tree is left standing it stands for ever— which is by no means the fact. If it is properly arranged and replanted, then I think it will be a great contribution towards maintaining the beauty of the countryside, and I am extremely anxious to see that that is done. I hope we shall have an oppor- tunity to discuss the details of this point at a later stage.

7.50 p.m.

THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY

My Lords, I hope at what is genuinely a very late hour not to detain your Lordships too long. We have had two days of full debate, and most of the points have already been well covered by noble Lords far better qualified to speak on this subject than I am myself. Moreover, the main purpose of any noble Lord who has the privilege of occupying the position which I occupy at the present time, of speaking at the end of a Second Reading debate, is to give advice to his supporters. On the present occasion that is not very difficult advice to give, for, whatever we may feel about certain provisions of this Bill, I do not think it is one of those measures—some of which we have had lately—of which we on this side of the House fundamentally dislike the general principle. Broadly speaking, as I think the noble and learned Viscount, the Lord Chancellor, said yesterday, all Parties alike nowadays support the principle of town and country planning. We recognize that we live in an island which is thickly populated and closely integrated; and we recognize, too, that in the interests of the community some measure of planning is necessary if the amenities of the country, and even the security of the country, are to be preserved.

That, of course, is the essential justification for a very long series of Acts which have been passed in recent years, with general support, I think, of all sections of opinion. We have seen great dangers arising from the point of view of national defence in the great growth of towns like London and Birmingham. We have seen ribbon development stretch out its tentacles over the countryside; we have seen the deplorable result of unrestricted development and re-development in our great cities, and I am certain that there is a general consensus of opinion that something must be done. If that involves limitations on the liberties and action previously enjoyed by certain sections of the population, I think we are all ready to accept that fact. That is not only the view of Socialists, or bureaucrats, but of a great proportion of the landlord class, who are not always, perhaps, quite so black as they are painted. The Party to which I belong is certainly not hostile to planning and, as the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack was good enough to say yesterday, we did play a considerable part in the formulation of a Bill in 1944, which may not have been a perfect Bill but which could not, at any rate, be regarded as reactionary.

In view of what I have said, it will be obvious to your Lordships that I am not going to advise a Division against the Second Reading of this Bill; indeed, I think all noble Lords on this side of the House warmly welcome the purpose of this measure. But we do reserve the right to amend and improve it, and that is a function which your Lordships' House is well qualified to perform. We do not regard this Bill as by any means perfect. As your Lordships will have heard already, we think it is over-elaborate, we think it tends to be over-centralized and to give too autocratic powers to the Minister, and we think that, in certain respects, it does not do justice as between the various sections of the community. To all these aspects of the Bill we shall be obliged to give full and careful consideration at a later stage.

I said that I thought the Bill was over-elaborate. What I mean is this. I read it with as much care as I could, and it seems to me to involve a multiplicity of permits and licences which may well fatally hamper development. I gather that the Minister himself is apprehensive of this possibility, because I saw that in the Third Reading of the Bill in another place he said that there was a great problem before the developer in getting decisions as to by-law application, ribbon development application, planning application, and development charge; and he said he hoped that means would be found for accelerating this process. No one who in recent months has had experience of the difficulty of getting permits from public authorities, central and local, will do other than fully share the Minister's preoccupations. I think there are very few of us, as the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, said in his admirable maiden speech, who have not had the experience of waiting months to get consideration of a perfectly simple, straightforward application to a local authority for the maintenance and improvement of properly. Those are the kind of difficulties which are already hampering those who are genuinely desiring to assist in the housing of the people, as the vast majority of us do. I must say that many of us who have had some practical experience do view with great apprehension any extension of these difficulties as a result of this present Bill. Perfection in planning is an admirable thing, but provision of homes for the people is yet more urgent. I do hope that the Government in their enthusiasm for planning will not allow the first to fatally hamper the second. Any reassurance which the noble and learned Viscount, the Lord Chancellor—who I understand is going to reply—can give us on this point we shall warmly welcome. There is a real danger, I think, that the further machinery which is imposed by this Bill will inflict a crippling blow upon private enterprise which I know, from what the noble and learned Viscount has said, it is designed to help. I do beg the Government not, in their enthusiasm, to allow the Bill to do that.

I now come very briefly to my second criticism, which is that the Bill is over-centralized. I do not complain that the main power to initiate plans has been put in the hands of the county and county borough councils. I think, as many other noble Lords have said, that that is an admirable proposal. They are bodies well fitted to perform that function; and the power given to the Minister to set up, in suitable cases, joint planning bodies is also extremely well conceived. But above these bodies are the Minister and his creature—I notice the noble Lord, Lord Henderson, called it more politely his handmaid—the Central Land Board, which is not an independent body, for it is brought into being to carry out the instructions of the Minister. To these two authorities, the Minister and the Central Land Board, are given immense compulsory powers. As I understand it, they can take compulsorily any land they want; they, or the joint planning bodies under them, can sterilize any land they may conceivably want up to a period of ten years; they can refuse the developer the right to develop; they can pay him any or no compensation, as they feel inclined; they can override any previous agreement with regard to open spaces, and so on. I am not saying that these powers are not defensible, but they go an extremely long way.

There are many noble Lords on this side of the House who feel that there should be some provision that owners should be able to appeal in suitable cases to an independent body. The Minister and the Central Land Board have dictatorial powers in many respects, and there ought to be some independent check, wherever that is possible. I do not say for a moment that the present Minister would not act with the strictest propriety. From what I have seen of what he has said, he has shown himself to be a wise and moderate man. But he is not the only possible occupant of that important post. Only the other day a speech of one of his colleagues made it clear that he regarded himself as representing only one section of the community—organized labour. Your Lordships are well aware of the quotation of "not caring a tinker's cuss." If a Minister of that kind were to become Minister of Town and Country Planning, what protection would the main part of the population have—the great middle class and others, who to-day own so large a proportion of the houses and land? He would, in my view, be like the Judge depicted by Lewis Carroll in the Mouse's tale in Alice in Wonderland: I'll be judge, I'll be jury, Said cunning old Fury, I'll try the whole cause, And condemn you to death. That would be the attitude of a Minister of that type, and there are many of us—probably on all sides of the House—who feel that there should be some limitation to the autocratic powers of the Minister wherever there is danger of arbitrary and unfair decisions. It is our bounden duty to try and strike a just balance between the interests of all the various sections of our population, and I feel that it should be one of our main duties in considering this Bill to do that.

I had intended to say something about designation, but the subject has already been fully discussed and I only say that I share to the full the pre-occupation expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Llewellin. I was glad to hear from the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Henderson, that the Government are also aware of possible dangers that might arise from designation. This is a matter which we can discuss at a later stage of the Bill. There is another point which I think the House may wish to consider with considerable care—it has been mentioned to-day—and that is the position of Government Departments under the Bill. Under this measure private citizens are subject to restrictions and controls of very great severity, but apparently Government Departments are to be largely, if not entirely, above the law. Why? Is it suggested that Government Departments are entirely free from human failings and act with superhuman wisdom? That is certainly not the lesson of recent experience. What about the Ministry of Fuel and Power and the Bankside Station? What about the Post Office and White Horse Hill? And what about the Service Departments and the training areas, to which I think the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, referred this afternoon?

I would have thought that it was clearly established that Government Departments are to-day the most dangerous and most vandalistic section of the community. What happens—as I think the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, asked—when Government Departments disagree, as they only too frequently do? What machinery is there under this Bill for resolving these differences? Has each point, big and small, to be referred to the Cabinet? That would put a burden upon Ministers which would be almost impossible for them. What is the point of controlling the population in this drastic way, if over and above there is to be a régime of absolute anarchy? I should be glad to know why. I do not press the noble and learned Viscount, the Lord Chancellor, for a reply to-night, but I should like to know at some stage what steps the Government propose to take to deal with this aspect, because I feel it is an important one. If you are to have roving Government Departments, as a sort of robber barons, cruising about the country, the whole conception of planning will be gravely prejudiced.

In conclusion, I would like to say a word or two on the whole question of compensation and betterment. I think the noble and learned Viscount, the Lord Chancellor, quite rightly said that this was the only really controversial part of this Bill. We have always been told that compensation and betterment provisions are an essential part of a Bill; we have been told, too, that the main cause of failure of previous schemes has been the high cost of land which has crippled development. There may be, of course—and I think there undoubtedly are—cases where this was true, and it is evident that means must be taken to prevent that. But I suggest to your Lordships that the suggestion that the high price of land everywhere is the whole root of the trouble is not susceptible to proof; nor will it stand up to any careful examination. If I might give a simple example, in the part of England which I know—it is, strictly speaking, a developed area, where London has spread out and is absorbing the countryside—the value of building land before the war was just about £200 an acre. It may have gone up to £250 an acre, but broadly speaking, for the ordinary small house, that is what it was.

As your Lordships will see, on a basis of eight houses to an acre that is £25 per house. Now even if it were double that, it is an infinitely small proportion of the total cost of the house when it is built. The overwhelming proportion, as everybody knows—and I wish the noble Lord, Lord Quibell, were here because he would be able to bear me out —is accounted for by labour, materials, drainage and roads. To attempt to put the whole responsibility upon the high cost of land is really to deceive the population of this country. In any case—and this is the point I want to make with regard to this Bill—will the situation of a developer be any better under this Bill than it was before? I think it is extremely doubtful. I thought there was a rather unguarded passage in the speech of the noble and learned Viscount, the Lord Chancellor, yesterday, when talking about the development charge, in which he said: In the ordinary case, the perfectly straightforward case, of land being sold for development, the development charge is merely part of the purchase price of the land which the developer at present pays to the land owner. In future he will pay to the Central Land Board, and in consequence should pay the land owner less. If I understand that passage aright, the position of a developer will be very much what it was before. He will, in fact, pay the same sum, or approximately the same sum. He will pay a smaller proportion of that to the landlord and the rest to the Central Land Board; but actually to buy the land it will cost him very much the same as it did before, and the only real beneficiary under this scheme will be the Treasury. They are the only people who really gain. This development charge is to be imposed for all kinds of extraordinary reasons which have nothing whatever to do with planning. We have heard some of them mentioned to-day. If a man increases the size of his house by 10 per cent.—I think the noble Lord, Lord Henderson, said "over 10 per cent.," but the difference is a comparatively small one—he will have to pay this charge. If he divides his house into flats for the purpose of increasing accommodation for people he has to pay this charge. If he increases the size of the factory in an existing industrial area, where there is no change of user, then he has to pay this charge. If he develops the minerals on his land, and so increases the wealth of his country, he pays a development charge.

I know that the noble Lord, Lord Henderson, said that this provision would be applied liberally and intelligently, but why is there this charge at all? It is nothing whatever to do with planning, and it should have no place in this Bill. None of the actions by the ordinary citizen which I have quoted are contrary to the strictest principles of planning; they are all beneficial to the community. Why then penalize him by putting on him this charge? If I may speak quite frankly, as I listened to the extremely persuasive speech of the noble and learned Viscount, the Lord Chancellor, and to the subsequent speeches yesterday, I was driven to the conclusion that the only explanation was that this particular portion of the Bill was not the work of the Minister of Town and Country Planning, but that it emanated from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and that it was an extremely ingenious method of collecting revenue. That was the main, if not the only purpose, of this particular charge.

The noble and learned Viscount, the Lord Chancellor, in his speech, assumed that the developer would pay less than he does at present for approved objects, and the same view, I think, was taken by the noble Lord, Lord Henderson. The noble and learned Viscount, the Lord Chancellor, quoted the case of a man who might be asked to sell a piece of land for two objects: a housing estate, and, at a higher price, for a greyhound racing track. The Lord Chancellor pointed out that the owner might give way to the temptation to sell to the greyhound racing, company. But under this Bill local plan- ning authorities have ample powers to prevent this. If they have scheduled land for certain purposes, it can be sold for no other. They can designate the land in any case, or they can purchase compulsorily; they have complete control of the situation. I do not see any reason why the developer should get his land more cheaply under the proposed system. On the contrary, as the noble Lord, Lord Llewellin, said, while at present if he is dissatisfied with the price he can go elsewhere, in future he will be up against a nation wide monopoly; and it is only too likely that the amount of this development charge will be governed not by considerations of good development but by the Chancellor of the Exchequer's need for money—which will, presumably, increase month by month and year by year.

The noble Lord, Lord Henderson admitted in his speech this afternoon that it would be the Chancellor of the Exchequer's view that would prevail in this matter. I am sure the noble Lord did say that.

LORD HENDERSON

But on two different legs.

THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY

It seemed to me an extremely strong leg! It is perfectly true that the Chancellor of the Exchequer will not raise the charge so high as completely to stop development, for then he will not get the revenue; but he will raise it as high as he can. We all know how hard up the Chancellor of the Exchequer is nowadays; Government expenditure is continually rising, and he cannot get any more by direct taxation of the higher income groups because, as a Minister said lately, they have been sucked dry; and it is clear that the Government are extremely reluctant to impose direct taxation on the lower income groups, where 90 per cent. of the national income now goes. They are therefore driven back to indirect taxation. This part of the Bill is a notable contribution to this new Labour policy, and it is a most ingenious example of it. It looks unexceptionable. The development charge gives the impression of being a charge in aid of development; in fact it is a charge in restraint of development. It is a tax pure and simple. I feel that the Chancellor of the Exchequer is to be congratulated on a most astute stroke of business, but it has nothing whatever to do with planning and it will not assist development; it will tend rather to hinder it.

The noble and learned Viscount, the Lord Chancellor, may retort to me that some such proposal formed part of the National Government plan. But there was one essential difference. Under the National Government plan the owners were to be compensated. The noble Lord, Lord Piercy, said it would be difficult to compensate people for development value in land. He said there was no accurate value on which compensation could be calculated. But in fact for many years the Inland Revenue have succeeded in assessing the value on land and taxed the owner on that basis; therefore we can only conclude that while it may be difficult it is not impossible. If it is possible to compensate people I am sure it is desirable, for if they have fair compensation there can be no ground for any suggestion of injustice, though personally they might be still sceptical of the advantage of the development charge to the developer himself. It was for that reason, I think, that the National Government accepted the principle of compensation, and the noble Lord, Lord Piercy, rightly said that the rate of compensation should be reserved.

But since then the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Treasury have become more rapacious, and more desperate for money, and so they have now taken the further step of repudiating the obligation to compensate. They have tried to gild the pill of confiscation by offering £300,000,000 to relieve cases of especial hardship. I do not think the noble and learned Viscount, the Lord Chancellor, attempted yesterday to deny that this £300,000,000 is a mere fraction of the value of the assets which have been taken over. Probably the mineral rights alone would account for a very large proportion of that total sum. When the whole £300,000,000 has been paid out the whole vast revenues to be derived from the development charge will ultimately find their way into the Exchequer as part of the ordinary pool of taxation.

It has been suggested to me that the purpose of this £300,000,000 is similar to that of a primer which is put into an engine to get it going. I cannot help feeling—and there are many others on this side of your Lordships' House who feel—that this part of the Bill represents a pretty shady transaction. The noble Lord, Lord Piercy, in his very interesting speech, said the merit of the Government scheme was that it relieved uncertainty on the part of the owners, as they will now know immediately, as they would not have known under the National Government scheme, what will be the total sum payable in compensation; but the individual owner will have no more certainty than he would have had under the other scheme as to what he is going to get. And he will have to wait five years to know the exact sum. All he will be certain of is that he will have lost the absolute right to compensation. I cannot feel that such a man will register the same satisfaction as was exhibited by the noble Lord, Lord Piercy, with this aspect of the Bill.

I have stressed this question of compensation at great length because I believe it involves a vital principle which affects the whole population—small owners far more than big owners. I would have liked to go into the whole question of the Uthwatt Report, an which the Government policy is said to be based, but it is too late to do that. But I would like to quote just two or three words from the Uthwatt Report which have not been quoted hitherto. They come from paragraph 36: In framing our proposals, however, we have assumed that Parliament will take the view that compensation should be paid at any rate in respect of comprehensive limitations upon the rights of private ownership… That was a perfectly clear statement and one which is just and wise. Moreover the denial of so fundamental a right as this could be extended indefinitely once it has begun, over the whole field of public policy. I cannot help feeling that in these provisions of the Bill the Government have set their feet on a very dangerous and slippery slope. The Cabinet have, within recent weeks, through the mouth of the Lord President of the Council, been at considerable pains to woo the good graces of the middle classes; but I think they are likely to strike these unhappy people a pretty savage blow in the compensation provisions of this Bill, and I think there are many of us, not only those who sit upon these Benches, who will deeply regret that provisions of this kind have been pitchforked into a Bill with which they have in fact had nothing to do.

I have spoken at greater length than I had intended and hoped, and possibly at greater length than I should, but the subject is both big and complex; it affects every man, woman and child in this country. There seems to be some illusion amongst the Party opposite—I do not say in this House but in another place—that land in this country is still in the possession of a few Dukes and Earls. I take those words from a speech in another place, and I was glad to see that Marquesses were excepted from the list of wicked men. The illusion seems to be that a few Dukes and Earls can be treated with less consideration than other sections of the community. In any case I should have thought that rather a queer conception of democracy, and that it approximates rather more to the Russian than to the British understanding of the word. But what is far more important than that is that it has no relation to the real position.

Land in this country is no longer held in very few hands; we are already to a great extent—and I am glad of it—a property-owning democracy. I understand that the number of householders who either own or are in process of owning houses is now well over 3,000,000, out of a population of under 50,000,000, and that figure takes no account of those who own landed property in other forms. Many of those people are poor people, people who have invested the whole of their savings in this way, and it is for those people in particular, above all, that Parliament should be trustees. That is, I think, the reason why the action of a Government, whatever the reason for it, in hustling this particular Bill so rapidly through another place, with no adequate consideration, under the guillotine, came as so severe a shock to very large numbers of people, many of whom are not at all Conservative in politics. All these people—as is clear from the Press, and the Press of all Parties—are looking to your Lordships' House now to do the job which another placed failed to perform, and I hope very much that we shall not fail them.

I would assure the Government that there is no question of obstruction on our part. We shall do our work speedily and efficiently as usual, but the work must be done if the Bill is to be made what I understand and I am sure the Government desire—an effective measure for the replanning of our country on firm, just, and enduring foundations. That is not a Party aim, and in the achievement of that aim we on this side of the House shall be proud to play our part.

8.24 p.m.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR (VISCOUNT JOWITT)

My Lords, your Lordships will, I know, acquit me of any discourtesy if I do not attempt to reply to many of the points which have been made in the course of this interesting and instructive discussion during two days of debate. I do not do so, first of all, because with regard to some of the points I say quite frankly I should like further time for consideration; and I do not do so because the hour is late; and I do not do so because, if I attempted now to give a short and rather ill-considered answer it would, in itself, be an act of discourtesy to those of your Lordships' House who have spoken, and who have spoken with such obvious knowledge and after such thought that has been given to the matter by your Lordships.

There are, however, one or two broad general principles which I would like to discuss, and I take as my theme the speech which we have just listened to. I had the privilege of working with the noble Marquess the Leader of the Opposition on a Committee dealing with this particular topic in the days of the last Government. I am firmly convinced that one of the reasons (in fact, the main reason) why planning has hitherto failed is because of the consequences of restriction. It is quite true that if you buy a plot of land and build a house on it, however much you pay for the land, in 99 cases out of 100 the price is a comparatively small proportion—almost negligible, compared with the price you pay for the house. That is a fact, and I do not base the claim here on the ground that the developer is going to get his land any more cheaply.

I was really concerned in the passage which was quoted to show that the developer would not have to pay more. But what I do say is this: it is not the land on which you build, it is not the fact that the developer has to pay more or less for the land, it is the fact that, if you are going to restrict land from being built upon, you incur such potential liabilities in the way of compensation that you simply dare not restrict it. Consider land in the neighbourhood of a town. There you get the spread of the population going out. It is quite obvious to all of us that that town ought not to grow any further, and that that unseemly sprawl ought to be stopped. How can it be stopped? It must be stopped by Green Belts. If you have to have a Green Belt, you have to compensate everybody for restricting the value of their land, and you simply cannot undertake it. I have talked to a great many persons on both sides of the House who are interested in town planning, and I believe it is universally agreed that it is the extremely heavy financial consequence of restriction which makes planning as inadequate as it is to-day. What then are we to do?

We follow the advice of the Coalition Government by buying out these development rights. We follow their advice in not paying out the sum of money until the scheme has been prepared. Their scheme was to take five years; we hope ours will certainly be no longer. But we have differed from them in two respects. First of all, instead of saying that the laud owner was to have to pay only 80 per cent., so that he shall have some inducement in developing we have this idea of the Central Land Board, which gives very much greater elasticity; instead of a rigid 80 per cent. in each case you get more elasticity, which I think is good. Secondly, instead of deferring our study for two years, leaving it quite at large, and leaving everybody imagining what lovely things they are going to get we have tried to quantify the amount as we thought right.

Believe me, there really was no vote-catching about this, and indeed I would say there was no vote-catching in this Bill at all. I do not think the ordinary elector will enthuse about it one way or the other, or understand it. But I am perfectly satisfied of this: whatever sum had been put in this Bill it would have been said on the one side that it was much too much and on the other side that it was much too little. We have tried to fix a sum which is a fair estimate of the global figure to be paid, on the basis that all these development rights are, as it were, on the market on the same day. I hope, and I believe, when we come to consider the details of it, that your Lordships will see that it is a fair estimate of what the figure should be. That is the justification for our scheme. If it causes hardship in particular cases, I say that I am sincerely sorry. But I do say that to get rid of this bugbear once and for all, to enable planning now to take place, to enable open spaces to be dedicated and green belts to spring up, will be such a tremendously important thing that I am thankful we can say that, without conscious unfairness, we have got rid of this great difficulty.

For the rest, this debate has taught me several things—and here I come to ground upon which I agree very largely with the noble Marquess. I think we have to be careful to avoid too much detail and too much red tape. I entirely agree with him that homes should come before planning. If you are going to have so much consideration and cogitation about not building a home in the wrong place, there is a danger that you will never build one in the right place. I am only saying what the Minister himself has said. He is most anxious to devise some plan which is not going to mean a lot of filling up of extra forms, and to get this thing going on thoroughly business-like lines. I agree that that means that he must not over-centralize. I am sure that he must do exactly the reverse, and entrust to the organizations in the provinces the power and the duty to take decisions.

It is the fact that the Minister under this Bill will have very considerable powers. I, myself, think that that is inevitable. I believe that it springs from the idea that we are going to have positive planning. And I think that is right too. I feel that the Barlow Report showed how necessary that was. Ever since Cobbett referred to London as the "Great Wen," London has been growing, and I believe that Queen Elizabeth deplored the fact that London was too big in her day. We have not been able to stop this growth. Industry after industry has come to London, and London has become larger and larger. Some other towns, also, are getting larger and larger, and our countryside is being denuded of people. You must have positive powers to stop that. You must be able to direct industry in this sense. You can never, of course, say to a man: "You must put up a factory there." He would be very likely to say: "I am not going to risk my capital putting up a factory in that place." The only way you can do this, is by persuasion and by discouraging him from, or, if you like, forbidding him going elsewhere. That is all you can do.

I am satisfied that the Minister must have these very considerable powers. I do not think that that is a justiciable matter which admits of any appeal to the Courts. I think that appeal should be to the High Court of Parliament and Parliamentary criticism. I am convinced that if you have our present system you must have a Minister who can govern and give orders; any question as to whether we are to have great new industries here or there is not a suitable subject of an appeal to a court of law. Equally, if that is right, a particular question of location of factories must be settled (this, I think, is a point which was raised by the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley) by the Board of Trade after consultation with the organizations who are able to speak about it.

So much for those points. There are just one or two other matters to which I wish to refer. The question of the staff has been mentioned. The noble Viscount, Lord Gage, in particular, in his most interesting speech, indicated the danger of the whole machinery breaking down because there would not be staff to work it. I am very conscious of that difficulty and that danger. At the present time there are some 280 joint planning committees, and we shall now have 60 county councils which will become planning authorities. We shall have very largely to rely on the staffs of the 280 planning authorities to serve the 60 county councils. I quite agree that one of the great difficulties with which we are going to be confronted is this difficulty of staff. It will, therefore, be very difficult, I have no doubt, within the space of three years to get these plans prepared. But, for my part, I would rather have imperfect plans within three years, showing that people are really getting down to the job, than more perfect or more complete plans over a longer period.

With regard to the Central Land Board, we shall, of course, rely in the main on the district valuers. There are some 90 offices at the present time. I believe it is intended to increase the number of offices to 120, and we must give these people, who are very highly skilled and experienced individuals, very wide personal discretion. It would be perfectly hopeless if they were going to have to refer everything to some central office to get directions. That would clog the machinery and create intolerable delay. A broad general question of principle would be referred to the centre in order that principles might be laid down. Afterwards when the principles had been laid down the officers would have to be responsible for applying those principles to particular cases. I believe that the elasticity which our scheme gives, by not fixing in advance a definite charge which is to be made for development, is desirable. I believe that it is desirable for the reasons which I have given already, and I think it is better to do that. Of course, the Central Land Board will be the creature of the Minister—by that I mean it will have to obey the general instructions of the Minister. On the other hand, if the Minister is wise, although he will be able to give the Board instructions, clearly he will leave a great deal of the day-to-day working to that Board. The more he leaves to it the better.

With regard to Scotland and the Board, let me say that I am supposed to be an expert on the law of Scotland as well as the law of England—at least I have to sit on Scottish appeals—and I entirely agree that the land tenure system on the other side of the Border is completely different. Therefore, in this matter, we had better arrange a divorce between England and Scotland, on the ground of incompatibility of land tenure. On the other hand, obviously, there will be some matters—location of industry is clearly one—where Ministerial decisions will have to be taken which must apply to both England and Scotland.

With regard to minerals, I do not propose to say anything at the present time. I have heard the arguments which have been put forward, and I propose to take the opportunity of discussing them with the Minister, and then I shall be able to give, in due course, a more considered reply than I could give at the present time. I must, however, say this. I think that one of the blots on our countryside has not infrequently been the working of minerals—the working of them unnecessarily in some particular place. I have come across a case only recently where I regard the working of minerals as antisocial, and if I were to be asked whether I should pay any compensation to a man if I restricted him from the anti-social use of his land I should most certainly say "No." So, I imagine, would all your Lordships. But the whole question is one of difficulty, and I will take the opportunity of looking into it.

This is a very difficult and complicated measure. We have seen, in our debate to-day and yesterday, that there are members of your Lordships' House who can speak with great authority on almost every aspect of it. I myself have enjoyed listening to the speeches both to-day and yesterday, and I have learnt a great deal from them. Though I look forward with some trepidation to the Committee stage yet I shall do my very best when it comes to satisfy your Lordships.

With regard to the point of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, about the old district planning authorities, I am very anxious, and the Minister is very anxious, that these should have real scope still left to them. We will do everything we can to see that they are consulted and to see that their views and local knowledge are made use of. It is difficult to lay down a definite hard and fast rule in all cases, because circumstances vary so much. In some cases they have relinquished all their powers to the county council, but in many other cases they have shown themselves useful in this matter. The noble Lord will find both the Minister and myself sympathetic to his point of view, and I will do all I can to see that all the services they can render are used. For the rest, I thank your Lordships for the way in which the Bill has been received. I will reciprocate as best I can when it comes to Committee stage.

On Question, Bill read 2^a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.