HL Deb 05 May 1949 vol 162 cc338-50

3.19 p.m.

An Amendment reported (according to Order).

Clause 1:

Establishment and jurisdiction of Lands Tribunal

(3) There shall be referred to and determined by the Lands Tribunal— (a) any question which is by any Act (including a local or private Act) directed, in whatever terms, to be determined by a person or one or more persons selected from either of the following panels, that is to say,—

  1. (i) the panel of official arbitrators appointed under the Acquisition of Land Act; and
  2. (ii) the panel of referees appointed under Part I of the Finance (1909–10) Act, 1910;
or which is so directed to be determined in the absence of agreement to the contrary;

THE LORD CHANCELLOR moved to add to subsection (3): (e) any question on which, but for this, provision, an appeal or reference to the county court would or might be made by virtue of section forty-nine, sixty-two or eighty-seven of the Local Government Act, 1948. The noble and learned Viscount said: My Lords, in rising to move this Amendment, I venture to hope that it will receive the approval of all your Lordships. The original suggestion owes its origin to the fact that a member of the Opposition in another place suggested that, if we were going to set up this Lands Tribunal, it would be most desirable that they should deal with questions of rating. So far as I know, having consulted the Surveyors' Institute and a large number of people, everybody seems to think that that is a good idea, and accordingly the effect of the Amendment which I now move is that questions of rating dispute will be heard before this Tribunal. This is an important alteration, and your Lordships will remember that, as the law now stands, and dating, I think, as from February next, it was provided that these cases were to be heard by the county courts. I have always thought that one of the weaknesses in our rating system (and I have played some small part in that system) is that you can never compare one area with another merely by finding out what was the rate charged unless you also knew what was the basis of the assessment. It was notorious that there were some areas of the country where the assessments were low and others where the assessments were much higher. That was due, I think, to the fact that a number of courts had too small an area to decide the matter and establish it on a level keel throughout the whole country.

The Local Government Act of 1948 changed the making of the valuation for rating in this way. The first court of appeal was changed from the assessment committee to the local valuation panel, schemes for which are now being made, and the second court from quarter sessions to county court, primarily because of the advantage in having these appeals heard by courts operating over fairly wide areas and thus securing uniformity of decision. During the passage of the Bill it was argued that appeals of this kind should be heard by special tribunals but as there was no suitable system in existence which could take on this work, there was no possibility of meeting the point. The new Lands Tribunal will, I hope, prove to be precisely the sort of body which meets the need. It will be composed in part of surveyors appointed, as I have always appointed them, in consultation with the President of the Surveyors' Institute—and I would like to take this opportunity of thanking successive Presidents of that Institute for the assistance they have always given me in finding the right people—and partly of lawyers experienced in this work. I believe the result of that system will be of great advantage. We shall have these appeals heard by people who are experienced in this class of case.

In regard to questions of amount, it will probably not be necessary to have a lawyer at all and the rating surveyors can probably deal with it; but, as often happens, where you have cases of mixed fact and law, the lawyers and surveyors can deal with the matter together. Having consulted a large number of organisations and people, I have heard no one dissent from the suggestion which was originally made by a member of the Opposition. Therefore, I do not think it is in any sense a Party controversial point, and I suggest to your Lordships that in setting up this Tribunal we should be well advised to entrust it with the obligation to hear these rating appeals, thereby relieving the county courts. There is another reason why I am glad to relieve county courts. The tendency of to-day is to entrust more and more work to the county courts. I believe they have established themselves to the satisfaction of the vast majority of the people of this country, and a considerable number of judges are doing very important work, and doing it in return for very small remuneration. The pressure of business upon them has increased, and therefore I am rather reluctant to cast this further burden upon them. If I can relieve the county courts of this burden by entrusting it to a Tribunal which is in some respects better qualified than a county court, I am very pleased to do so. Accordingly, I beg to move this Amendment.

Amendment moved— Page 2, line 23, at end insert the said paragraph.—(The Lord Chancellor.)

LORD TEVIOT

My Lords, while supporting the Amendment so ably moved by the noble Viscount on the Woolsack, may I ask this question to clarify some points which have been put to me—namely, will the Lands Tribunal have depôts in various parts of the country which will enable the witnesses and those who will require to give evidence on matters arising out of appeals to attend there, or will those persons have to come to some central place?

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

This will be a very peripatetic court. It will travel about so as to meet the convenience of the various people concerned.

LORD TEVIOT

I thank the noble and learned Viscount for his reply.

VISCOUNT SIMON

My Lords, I venture to intervene just to say that I think that the proposal which the Lord Chancellor now makes is one which we will generally accept. The new Tribunal is certainly very well qualified to decide rating matters, constituted, as it will be, both of lawyers and of persons experienced in the valuation of land. I am glad that my noble friend behind me has already ascertained that these rating appeals will be dealt with locally and will not involve people coming unnecessarily to some central place. There are perhaps one or two other matters on which some people might like to be assured. I think the intention is that in the case of a rating appeal to a county court, solicitors can appear, as well as barristers. I think it is quite right that they should. It will be useful to have that assurance, because some people have been anxious to know. I certainly think solicitors or barristers ought equally to be available to present an important case, although, as the Lord Chancellor has said, there will be simple cases in which there will be no need for trained legal assistance.

There is one other matter I wish to raise in regard to this Bill. As your Lordships may have observed, in Clause 3, subsection (6), provision is naturally made authorising rules for regulating proceedings before this new body, and one of the express provisions made is that these rules should include rules "as to the evidence which may be required or admitted in any such proceedings." I think my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor will agree that in transferring rating appeals to this new body, which is very well qualified to deal with them, it is not his intention that the existing practice as regards evidence should be altered. Some rating appeals are of great importance to the parties concerned. For instance, a regulation which said that there was to be only one expert on each side, or something like that, would be quite out of place when possibly a most important rating issue is being considered on which both the finances of the local authority and the commercial procedure of some great enterprise may depend.

Therefore, I shall be glad to know whether the Lord Chancellor can, conveniently, say what he contemplates in regard to that matter. I ask because, of course, what I have suggested would be possible in the terms of the Bill, if very restrictive provisions of that sort are made. I do not want to see an unnecessary multiplication of experts. I think the Lord Chancellor's experience will be much the same as mine—namely, that in some large rating cases it is important that there should be full expert contribution and, it may be, of different points of view from different expert authorities. With those queries, which I hope it is not inconvenient to put, I would like to say that for my part, and I believe I speak on behalf of most people who have considered the matter, I think this is a very useful transfer of jurisdiction, and I am sure the Lord Chancellor adopts it with more pleasure because it was proposed in another place by a member of the Opposition and at the time it was not accepted by the Government.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

My Lords, may I just reply to the points raised by the noble and learned Viscount? I certainly contemplate that solicitors should have a right to appear. I have not considered, as yet, what the precise rules I should formulate should be, but I shall certainly pay great regard to what has been said. The sort of thing I had in mind was rather to dispense with the necessity of proving mere documents which everybody knew existed. I quite agree that there are cases in which one should not limit the number of experts. At the present moment I do not wish to say anything more on the matter, except that the point which the noble and learned Viscount has stressed will certainly be present in my mind.

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

LORD CLYDESMUIR moved to add to subsection (3): Provided that no question which at the date of the commencement of this Act falls to be determined by the Scottish Land Court shall be referred to the Lands Tribunal. The noble Lord said: My Lords, this Amendment refers to Scotland only. On the occasion of the Second Reading of this Bill, I gave notice that it was my intention to move an Amendment to make quite clear the position of the Scottish Land Court.

As your Lordships are doubtless aware, in the North of Scotland, in the crofting counties, the Land Court adjudicates over a wide field—for example, it adjudicates over questions of compensation for the requisitioning of land for aerodromes and so on. Moreover, questions arise between land owners and crofters which it is particularly appropriate should continue to be dealt with by this Court. The Court has a high reputation and a wide knowledge of conditions in the crofting counties which, as I am sure your Lordships appreciate, differ from other parts of the country. Indeed, the law dealing with these counties differs in some ways, and so it would be unfortunate if anything in the Bill drew away from the work of the Scottish Land Court. It seems to me that the effect of Clause 1 (3) (c) of the Bill might be to preclude the Land Court from adjudicating on questions now arising between land owners and crofters. I therefore move this Amendment, which is in the form of a proviso to Clause 1, in order that we may receive an authoritative statement from the Government about their intentions in regard to the Scottish Land Court, and to ascertain whether it is clear that the work of that Court will not be interfered with. I beg to move.

Amendment moved— Page 2, line 23, at end insert the said proviso.—(Lord Clydesmuir.)

LORD MORRISON

My Lords, I hope to be able to give the noble Lord a satisfactory answer although, for what I think he will agree are good and substantial reasons, I am unable to accept his Amendment. The first of these reasons is that the noble Lord's Amendment is out of place. The Scottish Land Court has no jurisdiction in any of the questions specified in Clause 1 (3) as being referable to the Lands Tribunal. There is no power in Clause 1 to assign any of the functions of the Scottish Land Court to the Lands Tribunal. The next point, I wish to make, is that the noble Lord's Amendment might be more appropriate in Clause 4. If the noble Lord will look at Clause 4 (1) he will see that it empowers His Majesty by Order in Council to add to the jurisdiction of the Lands Tribunal, subject to conditions specified, questions referable to a statutory tribunal. The question, therefore, has resolved itself now into what is a statutory tribunal. If the noble Lord would now look at Clause 4 (7) he will see that it is laid down that: … the expression 'statutory tribunal' means any Government department, authority or person entrusted with the judicial determination as arbitrator or otherwise of questions arising under an Act of Parliament, except that the expression does not include— (a) Any of the ordinary courts of law or a tribunal consisting of one or more judges of any of those courts … That brings us to the second question which I postulated—namely, whether there is any real doubt as to whether the Scottish Land Court is an ordinary court of law. That, I think the noble Lord will agree, is the point, and I will try to resolve the noble Lord's doubts. The Scottish Land Court is appointed under Section 3 of the Small Landholders (Scotland) Act, 1911, and is expressly designated in the Statute as the Scottish Land Court. It consists of a legal chairman and practical agriculturists experienced in the fixing of rents and the valuation of equipment and stocks. Section 25 (2) of the 1911 Act provides that no other court—and I emphasise the word "court"—shall review the orders or determinations of the Land Court. The view that it is an ordinary court seems to be confirmed by the opinion of the Lord President in Mathieson v. the Board of Agriculture, 1917. In that case, although three of the seven judges dissented, it was not questioned by any of the judges that the Scottish Land Court was a court of law in every way. Further evidence from the same Act, Section 3 (2), is that the Chairman of the Scottish Land Court has the same rank and tenure (and this is a quotation from the Act): as if he had been appointed a judge of the Court of Session. The Scottish Land Court, also, is mentioned in the First Schedule to the Legal Aid and Solicitors (Scotland) Bill among the courts in which legal aid may be given. I hope that I have convinced the noble Lord that the Scottish Land Court is an ordinary court of law, and that his Amendment is therefore unnecessary.

LORD CLYDESMUIR

My Lords, accept the noble Lord's view that the Amendment would be more appropriate in Clause 4. In view of the assurance which he has given, and of the quotations which he has read to the effect that the Scottish Land Court can be regarded as an ordinary court of law, in every sense of the word, I do not think my Amendment is necessary. I have no doubt that your Lordships will be vigilant to watch that in the future that court will be regarded as an ordinary court of law and that its useful functions will not be entrenched upon. I beg leave to withdraw my Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

3.37 p.m.

VISCOUNT SIMON moved, after Clause 1, to insert the following new clause:

Power to determine Appeal against Development Charge

" . Any person aggrieved by the determination of a development charge by the Central Land Board under section seventy of the Town and Country Planning Act, 1947, may within twenty-eight days of the receipt by him of the notification of the development charge, appeal against such determination to the Lands Tribunal and the Lands Tribunal shall have jurisdiction to hear any such appeal and shall make such determination as it may think fit and section three of this Act shall apply to an appeal under this section."

The noble and learned Viscount said: My Lords, this Amendment has been put down by some of my noble friends and myself in order to raise at this stage of the Bill what I hope many of your Lordships will feel is an important question, and I have reason to think that the suggestion it contains is favoured by a good many members of your Lordships' House. To make the matter quite clear to those who have not had occasion specially to study it, perhaps I may just say that the Town and Country Planning Act, 1947, puts certain duties upon the Central Land Board, one of which is mentioned in Section 60 and another in Section 70. So far as Section 60 is concerned, as your Lordships may recall, what is to be determined there is what is called development value—admittedly a rather complex question which requires an understanding and experience of the valuation of land. That question bears upon the claims which many people may have on that global sum of £300,000,000 which is dangled before a certain number of anxious persons and which in the course of time they will scramble for.

By this Bill, that jurisdiction of the Central Land Board is—very properly I think—transferred to the new Lands Tribunal, and on the Second Reading the Lord Chancellor explained to us clearly how that Tribunal would be constituted. It is not to be purely a legal Tribunal. It will have a President who is a lawyer, and possibly some other members who will also be lawyers, whilst other members will be persons who are specially skilled and experienced in valuation. The actual wording used is: persons who have ha d experience in the valuation of land appointed after consultation with the president of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. So far so good; but as I have said, the Town and Country Planning Act also contains, in Section 70, another case in which the Central Land Board is given jurisdiction, not to settle development value but to settle an equally complicated matter—that of the development charge, which, if I follow the Act correctly, is to be arrived at by contrasting what is supposed to be the value of land after permission has been given for development with the smaller value of land before it has been given that permission. I do not think it can be disputed that that question, if it is to be properly answered, also requires a fairly accurate application of the art and skill of valuation. I am certain that those who undertake this now do so with the best intentions, and there is no sort of criticism to be made of their good faith.

The question is: In the case of a dispute about the original decision, should not that question also be decided by this new Tribunal, which is specially qualified for such purpose s, because as things are, there can be no doubt that since the Act was passed there has been a great deal of feeling and some discontent about the way in which development charges have been fixed. How are they in fact fixed? The Statute says they are to be fixed by the Central Land Board. In practice, they are ascertained—or, at any rate, in the first place they are sought to be fixed—by a district valuer, who acts, I suppose, as an agent of the Central Land Board. When a figure has been arrived at, it is approved and certified by the Central Land Board. And that is the amount, that has to be paid. When you ask how it comes about that you are requested to pay that sum, in many cases no answer is given at all. In practice, as it has developed since the Act passed, the man who asks how it comes about that the calculation is made, is simply told that that is the figure he has to pay. Among the owners of both large properties and much smaller properties a great deal of feeling has undoubtedly been aroused. People consider that this method is arbitrary and unfair, and that one person does not know if he is being treated on the same lines as another.

In this connection, I must remind the House that the situation is quite different from that visualised when the Town and Country Planning Act was passed in 1947. At that time the Standing Committee in another place had before it an Amendment which would have enacted that, before the development charge was fixed, there ought to be the provision of the details, facts and calculations which would enable the person who was to be called on to pay to know how the figure was ascertained. If he does not know that, he has not even an opportunity of correcting a mistake, let alone of knowing whether he is being treated on equal terms with other people in other parts of the country who are being dealt with by other valuers. I would remind the House that at that time the Minister, while rejecting the Amendment, assured the House that really the Amendment was asking only (as he put it) that the Central Land Board should behave in a decent manner and should not act arbitrarily, that they would be prepared to listen to representations made by people in respect of development rights.

The Minister went on to say that the Government could not put in an Act of Parliament the provision that people should behave decently, and added that it was his intention, as it was his job, to see that the Central Land Board did act in the right spirit. There can be no doubt as to what was meant by the Government when that was said, because the Minister went on to draw a comparison with the way in which things were done when a claim was considered under the War Damage Act, and he pointed out that that was the spirit in which this proposal would be worked. He claimed, and rightly claimed, that the War Damage Commission were always ready to listen to representations made, and to disclose what could fairly be disclosed, in order to satisfy any person before them that he was being fairly treated. That is not what happens now, and I am sure that other noble Lords can testify to this at first hand. I have had a lot of evidence of this, though I have had none in my own experience. I am not concerned with paying development values, as I do not own any land where that question arises.

What happens is that again and again a man, whether he be small or great, who knows that he has to pay something for development value if he is given leave to develop, is told that he has to pay a certain amount. It is a lump sum—sometimes a very considerable sum. If he says, "But how do you arrive at a figure like that? What is the calculation which leads you to that conclusion?" he is told, "That has nothing to do with you. I tell you that that is the amount, and as it is the amount certified by the Central Land Board, pay it you must, or proceedings can be taken against you." Is that a satisfactory state of affairs? It is entirely contrary, I am sure, to the intention of Parliament when that Act was passed. I am not blaming the ideal of planning when I say that if we want planning to succeed, we must carry it out in a way which will ensure its having the good will and consent of the people of this country. That is why I venture to move this Amendment.

I must add that this proposal, or something very like it, was inserted in the Town and Country Planning Bill when it came before this House, and was agreed by a majority. If the Bill went back to another place and that place, in its wisdom and on the Motion of the Government, rejected the proposal of your Lordships' House, that is a fact which we have to weigh, because I imagine that in this, as in most other matters, we desire to give weight and consideration to the views expressed in another place on our own Amendments. That is certainly my wish. But there is this distinction: We in this House carried that Amendment before the Bill was passed, without any experience of how the Act would be worked. I defy anybody to deny that in this respect this Act is regarded by large parts of the population as working arbitrarily and unfairly. Once that is established, the case for making this change now is not a contradiction of what was decided when the Bill was passed, but an attempt to provide for what, in practice, was found to be a very unfortunate gap in our legislation.

I hope that this Amendment will be carefully considered. It is not put down with a desire to interfere with the proper working of this most important scheme, but it cannot be right that what is, in effect, a great tax should be demanded lawfully from members of the public without giving them the slightest chance of understanding, how or why it is arrived at; that they should simply be told: "You will just take it, and you are not allowed to have any information as to how it is arrived at." Is that not a matter of land valuation? Of course it is. I apprehend, whatever else is done to calculate a development charge, that the responsible authority often proceeds by saying: "Thanks to this development, there will be an increased annual value to this property," and they fix that figure according to local conditions or comparisons. They then decide what is the proper number of years' purchase by which to multiply that annual value, and thus arrive at a figure. Those are exactly the considerations which all of us who have had to do with this subject matter know have to be weighed in a valuation tribunal.

I recollect that at an earlier stage my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor said that he did not think it would be a good plan for an appeal to go to a High Court Judge on a mere matter of valuation. To some extent, I sypathise with him in that view, because I do not think a man who happens to be learned in the law is necessarily a good man to value land, any more than he is to value cattle, or anything else. But this Tribunal which the noble and learned Viscount is now setting up under this Bill is not a Tribunal staffed by judges, but a Tribunal which consists, as I have said, of persons who have experience in the valuation of land, appointed after consultation with the President of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. Surely, in case of a challenge, there could not be a more appropriate body to pronounce than a body staffed in that way.

There is one other point that I would like to mention. It might be said—although I think it would be deplorable if it were—that this provision in the existing law, that a man has to "plan" a development charge, is so incomprehensible, and impossible to arrive at by any process of deliberate reason that there is nothing to be done about it but to leave it to an official to say: "That is the amount you pay, and that is the end of it." I cannot believe that at this time we shall be told that that is a good method of fixing the amount of anybody's tax. But, as a matter of fact, the present body, the Central Land Board—who, of course, do their best—have done what they could to develop a system by issuing what I think are called "Practice notes." When you look at these practice notes, which are designed to help the valuers all over the country, what you find is, first of all, that the Chairman of the Central Land Board, a most distinguished gentleman, has written this: A study of these notes will show that 'value' has many meanings and that to adopt one common meaning for all cases must produce absurd results in some. We have been given the discretion to decide which is the fairest to adopt in each case, and have stated some of our present views in these notes. When I turn to page 11 of the notes, I find some two or three pages in which this valuers' guide proceeds to quote a series of legal decisions, from the House of Lords downwards, for the very purpose of guiding these people as to how they ought to arrive at this figure, which they arbitrarily—or at any rate without explanation—pronounce. That fact is enough to show that this is a serious subject which ought to be dealt with by a body suitably staffed. Therefore, without occupying more time—especially as I understand that there is a statement now to be made on another matter—I beg to move Amendment, and I hope that it may receive support in other quarters of the House.

Amendment moved— After Clause 1, insert the said new clause.—(Viscount Simon.)