LORDS AMENDMENT (Hansard, 31 May 1949)

LORD PAKENHAM
My Lords, I beg to move that the House do not insist upon this Amendment. I have not had previous experience of dealing with this particular procedure and I hope the House will assist me if I go astray. I would recall to the House that Clause 1 of the Bill enables Tribunals to determine the reasonable rents for premises with rateable values within the limits of the Rent Restrictions Acts and let for the first time since 1939. Apart from Clause 1, the rents of the premises in question would be determined by the first lettings. They could not in any case be raised except to the limited extent permitted by the Rent Restrictions Acts. But, apart from Clause 1, in many cases they would be too high, owing to the great shortage of houses since 1939 which in many cases, as we all know, produced 1280 very high first lettings. The Bill seeks to mitigate that evil and Clause 1 does so in this particular connection.
If your Lordships will forgive me for reminding you of one aspect of our last discussion, as the House is aware, the difficulty is that this is not a general attempt to do justice between landlords and tenants. I must repeat that, although I said it last time and the Lord Chancellor also said it many times. That will require far more comprehensive legislation, after a review of something like 8,000,000 cases. This Bill is concerned simply with certain grave injustices suffered by tenants. That is the purpose of the Bill, and that is particularly the purpose of this clause. The Amendment picks out one particular class of landlord, and says that he should be allowed to charge a reasonable rent to relieve hardship in one particular case, and I think that is not disputed. That is the Amendment to which the House agreed last time, in spite of the views of the Government. We have fully set out on other occasions the reasons why we feel it would be impossible to make one exception of that kind. In saying that, I desire to repeat an expression of our sympathy for those who perhaps did valiant war service, but I cannot allow our sympathy to take effect in any special measure of financial assistance.
I also want to repeat one point which the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor made with some emphasis on the last occasion, because I think the first time we discussed it I did not make it plain enough; and there still seems to be some misunderstanding in another place. It was not the inclusion of the so-called "Communist" Amendment that prevents these particular landlords from raising rents. These particular landlords would in any event be precluded from raising the rents beyond the figure fixed by the first letting. They would be precluded from doing that by the general operation of the Rent Restrictions Acts. May I repeat yet again that the landlords in question are not put in any worse position by anything in the present Bill, and we do not think it is fair to put them in a better position than other landlords until the comprehensive legislation comes along? I would add only that I feel these discussions will not have proved in vain because, when the comprehensive 1281 legislation does come along, there will be no possible excuse for not giving the fullest consideration to the points so forcibly raised from the other side of the House.

§ LORD LLEWELLIN
My Lords, I very much regret that the Government—and it is the Government in another place because they moved their supporters to reject it—have not accepted this Amendment. I am sorry that second thoughts did not prevail and that we did not get this small but just Amendment to the whole purview of the Rent Acts. I notice that a point was made by the Minister in another place that the Amendment which your Lordships passed here was not concise enough and that it would have been a difficult matter to work. I disagree with that view. I know the noble Lord has not made that point to-day. It is quite simple to ascertain whether the owner was a member of His Majesty's Forces, and it is merely a question of fact as to whether or not the owner was required by reason of the exigencies of the war to move from his house. If our words were not effective and the Minister had the will to produce better, he has the way, because the whole knowledge of the Parliamentary draftsmen is at his disposal. We were not attempting in this regard to deal with large landlords. We were attempting to deal with the case of houses in large cities and in other parts of the country from which evacuation took place. They were first let at times when there was a superfluity of houses and not a scarcity; and the Rent Acts, in their whole essence, are designed really to deal with scarcity conditions. It seemed to us only justice that the rent obtained at the first letting in places from which evacuation had taken place should not for ever be the standard rent, and that it should be permissible for the tribunal to ascertain whether that first rent was a reasonable rent and be able to put it up or down; if it were too low the tribunal ought to be able to amend it, just as they should if it were too high.
What is going to be the effect not only on the owners—I prefer to speak of "owners" rather than "landlords," because "landlords" may suggest people who have extensive properties—but also 1282 on the tenants? Our Amendment could be applied only to an owner who had himself been in occupation of one of these houses. In other words, we were dealing with the small man. That man is still the owner and still has a remedy open: he can claim possession of the house for himself on the grounds of greater hardship. But if he does that, the tenant will be worse off than if he were asked to pay a reasonable rent, as might happen under our Amendment. Many of these small owners cannot afford to take unreasonably low rents for property in which they may have placed the whole or a great part of their savings. So, once again, you Lordships' House, by sending forward this Amendment to another place, has been standing up, not for the large landlord but for the right of the small man, the man whom I venture to suggest is great in the framework of our society; he is, as a rule, a man who has a real stake in the country but prefers to be independent of a landlord and so has bought his own house to live in himself. I regret to think that the Government, in rejecting this Amendment, has been living up to Mr. Shinwell's remark, made, I think, somewhere in Kent about a couple of years ago, that for this kind of people he did not care a "tinker's cuss."
It is all very well for the noble Lord opposite, in the bland and delightful manner in which he spoke to-day, to say that these people had his sympathy; but His Majesty's Government could have done these people a better turn than to reject this Amendment, which was designed to help them. I see it was suggested in another place that many ex-Service men might be tenants of these houses, but I cannot think that many people who served in the recent war could possibly have become tenants between the relevant dates in the Amendment, which were September 1, 1939, and August 14, 1945. The majority of the people—let us be quite clear about this—who would have been helped had the other place accepted our Amendment would have been ex-Service men. Here again we find that the Government are turning down a concrete action to help ex-Service men and to help those who have to suffer financial losses because they were called away to serve their country in the Armed Forces.
1283 We do not wish it to be said, however, that we in this House have been responsible for holding up this piece of legislation while at the same time we are in agreement with other parts of the Bill—some of which have our full support. I think that those for whom I speak can, however, claim, and justly claim, that they have done their best to obtain justice in this matter for the ex-Service men to whom I referred, and I suggest that, having done that, we should leave the matter where it is and hope that within a year we shall have a Government in this country who not only express sympathy towards these men but show it in a practical manner by their acts.

LORD PAKENHAM
My Lords, I am sure we all agree with the closing words of the noble Lord opposite, but whether exactly in the sense that he intended I am not prepared to say. We all hope to see a Government in power within a year which will do their best for the ex-Service man, but I fear there will be considerable disagreement as to what is the right Party colour for that Government. I am sure we are all equally anxious to do justice to the ex-Service man. I do not desire to secure any advantage over the noble Lord, but I cannot allow him to secure any advantage over me. I appreciate the good case he has put—argued, if I may say so, with great skill, but I would just take him up on one word which he employed, which was to the effect that this legislation would tie the rents in question down "for ever." I do not think that that was really in the noble Lords' mind, but the expression "for ever" did come into his speech. He and I are both aware that when this comprehensive legislation comes along there will be a good opportunity for reviewing these rents along with other rents, with a view to putting them up or down as the case may be. I do not think there is any difference between us in the matter of interpretation, but the noble Lord's words may be misconstrued outside this House. With those remarks I wish to thank the noble Lord for his friendly treatment of a difficult subject.

§ LORD LLEWELLIN
My Lords, if I may speak again by leave of the House, I meant that we had this opportunity of dealing with the matter now. Nothing in legislation lasts for ever and in that 1284 respect I am quite in agreement with the noble Lord.