Lords Sitting of 28 November 1966

Preamble
The House met at half past two of the clock, The CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Bristol

SOUTH BANK GALLERY
2.36 p.m.
LORD STRABOLGI: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what progress has been made with the plan to build an Art Exhibition Centre on the South Bank and when completion may be expected.]
BARONESS PHILLIPS: My Lords, the South Bank Gallery is being built by the Greater London Council, who are meeting the capital cost. I am informed by the Council that the Gallery is expected to be completed by the early part of 1968.
LORD STRABOLGI: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that reply.

METEOROLOGICAL SERVICES AND INDUSTRY
VISCOUNT ADDISON: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps are being taken to publicise the economic advantages to be derived from a wider use by industry of the services of the Meteorological Office.]
THE MINISTER OF DEFENCE FOR THE ROYAL AIR FORCE (LORD SHACKLETON): My Lords, recent studies by the Meteorological Office suggest that the ratio of benefit to cost to industry by the use of meterological services is very substantial. For example in the case of
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civil aviation it is of the order of 10 to 1; in the case of agriculture it could be as high as 200 to 1. Our national economy can derive substantial benefits from cooperation with the work of the Meterological Office. Progress made so far is encouraging. I can assure the noble Lord that this has served only to enthuse the Meteorological Office, which is now seeking to increase its efforts—which are already not insubstantial—by extending and strengthening its public service organisation, by issuing new explanatory literature, and by making contact with industries both through their own headquarters and research associations and through the other Government departments concerned and the "little Neddies". In this connection I would like to say how helpful has been the recent Report by the Estimates Committee on the meteorological services.
VISCOUNTADDISON: My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Shackleton for his reply. I should like to put one supplementary question to him. Has any market research been done by the Meteorological Office authorities into the demand by industry for their services?
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, some market research has been done, and certain experiments are on foot which will serve the purpose of market research, but this is one of the subjects to which it is important that further consideration should be given.
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: My Lords, may I, as one who has been connected for some years with civil aviation, ask the Minister whether he is aware of the unfailing courtesy and the great efforts towards efficiency on the part of the Meteorological Office which are so much appreciated by all those connected with civil aviation?
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I very much appreciate the noble Lord's remarks, which I know will be greatly welcomed by all those very devoted people who work in weather forecasting at the Meteorological Office.

FIRE DAMAGE AND THE FIRE SERVICE
2.40 p.m.
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the first Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether the very extensive damage caused by fire is receiving urgent attention; whether modern methods of fire-fighting are being employed to the fullest possible extent; and whether, in terms of personnel and appliances, the fire brigades of the country are as well equipped as they need to be.]
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE, HOME OFFICE (LORD STONHAM): My Lords, the loss of life and of property by fire is a matter of continuing concern to Her Majesty's Government. There has been a substantial extension of fire prevention legislation in recent years, and fire prevention is an increasingly important and onerous part of the work of fire brigades. Methods of fire-fighting are kept under constant review by the Government, in consultation with the fire authorities. There are shortages of manpower in some brigades, but I have no knowledge of any general deficiencies in the provision of fire appliances. In view of the need to enable the Fire Service to tackle its new and growing problems more successfully, and to ensure the increasing efficiency of the service for the future, my right honourable friends the Home Secretary and the Secretary of State for Scotland have recently announced their decision to appoint a Departmental Committee to inquire into the Fire Service in Great Britain.
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that encouraging reply. Will the Committee which is now to investigate the Fire Service pay special regard to some of the new methods of fire-fighting which have been devised, particularly the use of inert gases in place of water for fire extinguishing? Will they also consider the need for more radio sets on the fire ground, and perhaps for more light breathing apparatus? And bearing in mind traffic congestion, will they consider
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the dispersal of fire stations so that fire engines do not have to travel so far to the seat of the fire?
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, the terms of reference of the Departmental Committee fall under four heads and are very wide, the first relating to the principles which have governed the organisation of the Fire Service in Britain. But among the terms of reference are measures for maintaining its efficiency; the arrangements for recruiting and training its members, and ensuring that the best use is made of the manpower available. Therefore, I should have thought that all the matters mentioned by my noble friend will be covered in the Committee's terms of reference.
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, once again I thank my noble friend, and am quite content to await the deliberations of the Committee. But, in the meantime, would he mind if I sent him a copy of a paper which I presented to the Chief Fire Officers' Conference three years ago? He may care to pass that on to the Committee.
LORD STONHAM: My Lords, I should be delighted to receive anything that my noble friend may send me in this regard. But I would mention that the use of inert gas generators and such things as high expansion foam and their increasing use, which he mentioned in his first supplementary, will not wait on the Departmental Committee; they are being developed now.

EXCHEQUER GRANTS TO LOCAL AUTHORITIES
2.43 p.m.
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the second Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether, in the calculation of Exchequer grants to local authorities, particular attention will be paid to the specially heavy burdens that have to be borne by counties with rapidly expanding populations.]
THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF HOUSING AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT (LORD KENNET): My Lords, practically all

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Exchequer grants to county councils are calculated either as a percentage of expenditure or by reference to population, so that increases in expenditure and population are accompanied by increases in grants.
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that reply. But is he aware that many county councils, particularly those in the neighbourhood of London, are apprehensive lest there should be a time lag between the services which they have to provide and the rate revenue which they will draw from the new population and new industry?
LORD KENNET: My Lords, my right honourable friend is aware of the disquiet of the county councils in question on this point. But in so far as this disquiet would tend towards a change in the new, proposed system, he does not believe that it is founded on factors sufficiently strong to indicate that change.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: My Lords, is this not a strong argument in favour of the Government's accepting the suggestion which we on this side made on the Committee stage of the Local Government Bill? That suggestion was that there should be effective transitional arrangements to protect local authorities, which otherwise may lose heavily from the provisions of that Bill during the next year or two?
LORD KENNET: My Lords, if only the noble Lord during his tenure of office had shown that it was possible to have a transitional arrangement, without having a second transitional arrangement to get out of the problems raised by the first, we should, I think, have been willing to do so this time.

PROGRAMME OF BUSINESS
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, at a suitable moment after 3.30 p.m. my noble friend the Leader of the House will be making an interim Statement on Rhodesia. In view of the compliments to the Meteorological Office by the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Inchrye, may I hazard my own forecast for this evening? I understand that the Committee stage of the Armed Forces Bill may take one hour and a half. In these circumstances,
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I am going to suggest to my noble friends who will be in charge of the Land Commission Bill that they should adjourn the consideration of that Bill at about quarter to six. The House should then go on to consider the Armed Forces Bill and, if my forecast is right, that should mean that after we have completed consideration of that Bill we could adjourn for dinner until approximately half-past eight. We could then proceed with our further consideration of the Land Commission Bill until about 10 p.m.

LAND COMMISSION BILL
2.46 p.m.
Order of the Day for the House to be put into Committee read.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Kennet.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The EARL OF LISTOWEL in the Chair.]
Clause 1 [The Land Commission]:
On Question, Whether Clause 1 shall stand part of the Bill?
LORD SILKIN: I should like to say a few words on Clause 1 because, obviously, that is the first clause which refers to the first appointed day. There is nothing in the Bill which gives us any clue as to when the first appointed day will be, but rumour has it—and I am not sure that it has not been stated publicly in another place—that it may be on March 1 next. My noble friend Lord Shepherd made some forecast about this afternoon. I am not going to make any definite forecast about the future of this Bill, but it looks to me as though it is most unlikely that it will receive the Royal Assent before we rise for the Christmas Recess. There are a large number of Amendments, and I imagine that some will be carried or accepted.
At any rate, it seems almost certain, in view of the length of the Committee stage here, that this Bill will be modified to some extent before the Committee stage is ended. There will then have to be some time between the Committee stage and the Report stage, if only in order to give the Government an opportunity of considering the undertakings which they

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will undoubtedly give, and which most Governments give in the course of a Committee stage; and after that, of course, we shall have the Third Reading when we in this House can also put down Amendments. The Bill will then have to go back to another place. I need not elaborate further, but it seems most unlikely that this Bill will receive the Royal Assent before a day towards the end of January.
I understand it has been stated that the first appointed day will be March 1. In other words, there will be not more than five weeks between the date when the Bill receives the Royal Assent and the first appointed day. In those five weeks the Land Commission will have to get settled, and to begin to understand the Bill, but they cannot understand it, or even study it seriously, until it is in its final form. I have occasionally been asked to advise on this Bill, but I have refused to give any definitive advice because undoubtedly it will be changed in the course of its passage. In the same way, the Land Commission cannot seriously begin to study this Bill until it has received the Royal Assent. The Government have to get an organisation going. I imagine that the Ministry have started along those lines and that they may well be getting ready to put the Bill into operation, but they will not have a great deal of time.
Then there are the practitioners, who also have to understand the Bill; and the general public. They are not given very much time to make themselves familiar with the contents of the Bill. Yet the date of the first appointed day is most important, because so many things happen on or after the first appointed day, as anyone who studies this Bill will see. First, that is the date from which the Land Commission are authorised to acquire land. On or after March 1, if that is the appointed day, they are authorised to acquire land; and that is the day from which the levy becomes payable. I submit that it is very hard on the general public and on practitioners that they should have so little time between the passage of the Bill and the first appointed day in order to familiarise themselves with what is in front of them.
Would any material damage be done by deferring the first appointed day? I would suggest not. Those people who fear
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what may come after the first appointed day have already taken such steps as they think right, and those are not the people I am concerned about. I am not concerned about the big property companies, who have already taken the best advice they can and are ready even for March 1. I am thinking of all sorts of other people: small property owners, people who are going to build single houses, builders and people of that description not in a very big way of business. All these have to prepare themselves for the first appointed day. I submit once more that March 1 is too early a date for the first appointed day if the general public, the Land Commission and the practitioners—lawyers, surveyors, valuers and so on—are to be able to familiarise themselves with the contents of this Bill.
May I also say that it would be a great mistake to start this scheme off in a hurry? There will be delays, there will be mistakes and there will be misunderstandings; and a few extra months of preparation will be all for the better as regards the efficiency of the carrying out of this measure. I would suggest that January 1, 1968, would be a more appropriate date as the first appointed day; or, at any rate, October 1, 1967, if the Government think that January, 1968, is too long a deferment. I hope that my noble friend will not say that everything is set for March 1 and that it is too late to alter it now. This is a really serious submission on my part. I do not want to talk about my own experience—I do not think that is a good thing to do—but I have had a little experience of the implementation of a measure of this kind, and I would say that that measure would have been all the better in its operation if I had not been in too great a hurry to bring it into force. I hope that the Government will see their way clear to giving this suggestion serious consideration.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: The noble Lord, Lord Silkin, though he was modest about himself, speaks with great experience of complicated legislation such as this, and I should like to reinforce his plea. I believe that the Land Commission are going to have an almost impossible task, and some of our Amendments are designed to make it manageable. We have put down no wrecking Amendments;

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we have put down only Amendments designed Ito prevent the whole machine from seizing up.
I would most strongly urge that March 1 is not a good day to start. I am quite certain, as the noble Lord has said, that the Government will add to their difficulties if they insist on making March 1 the first appointed day. There have already been complaints from professional organisations that the Government propose to start the levy on a date in the calendar different from that on which the new income tax year starts. There are provisions in the Bill which are designed to avoid the duplication of payment of capital gains tax, on the one hand, and the betterment levy, on the other. At least, that is what I think they are designed to do. If I were in charge of this measure, and if I wanted the Land Commission to work smoothly from the start, I should be inclined to name April 6, 1968, as the first appointed day. If any day before that is appointed, I do not believe very serious complications can be avoided.
Moreover, I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, is right in saying that if difficulties are created they will not be difficulties for the very big firms which know how to manage their affairs and have been able to look ahead a long way, but difficulties for small builders and other small people who have had considerable trouble in catching up with the Amendments that were made by the Government in Committee in another place at the beginning of August, and then, only a few weeks ago, on the Report stage in another place. As yet the provisions of this Bill are not fully understood, and that is partly due to the fact that the Government made a number of Amendments, to which I am not taking objection here, at a relatively late stage in another place. The Government may, perhaps out of a sense of pride, stick to March 1, 1967, the date they originally quoted, as the date for the first appointed day, and as it does not appear in the Bill we cannot put down an Amendment to it. But I would prophesy, without any fear of my prophecy being falsified by events, that if in fact the Land Commission have to start work and take over these powers on March 1, 1967, they will find their difficulties immeasurably increased, and will get off to a bad start which both they and the Government will always regret.
2.57 p.m.
LORD KENNET: As the Committee knows, the choice of the date for the first appointed day has been announced by my right honourable friend as March 1, 1967. The day itself has to be designated by Order, and, of course, no such Order has yet been made because it has to be made under the Bill, and the Bill is not yet law. It is therefore legally open to my right honourable friend to choose a day other than March 1, and one can think of circumstances in which he would no doubt be led to do so. But let me say, on behalf of the Government, that I very much hope that those circumstances will not arise.
The arguments that have been put forward in favour of choosing a later day are, I think, three. First of all, there is the possible length of the Committee and the Report stages in this House, the length of time taken by the House of Commons in considering such Amendments as we may pass, and the obtaining of the Royal Assent. I am informed that we shall still be able to stick to March 1, even if the Royal Assent comes as late as January, but I very strongly hope that we shall get as far as the Royal Assent before Christmas. If we are reasonably expeditious in our Committee stage here—and I hope we shall he—I think we shall be able to adhere to this.
The second and third points which have been raised in favour of postponing the first appointed day are closely related. They are, first of all, that the Land Commission and their staff will not have time to study the Bill as amended and as passed before it goes into operation; secondly, that the landowners, especially the smaller ones who do not have access to big firms, will not have time to study it. I think that this point can be exaggerated. We should not exaggerate the extent to which Amendments made in the House of Lords commonly change the shape of measures which have come to us from the House of Commons. These measures do not commonly change very much and I should say that both the staff of the Land Commission, who are at present being gathered, and the landowners, whether large or small, would not be wasting their time if they began to study this Bill now. I understand that they are doing so, quite rightly, and have been doing so for some time. It is

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a fact that the staff of the Land Commission are already being gathered; there are training schemes and familiarisation schemes for this staff. Everything is being prepared for an operational date of March 1, and I think it is clear that, whatever would be the advantages in other fields, there would be some administrative confusion and avoidable delay if we were to postpone the date from March 1.
However, having said all that, it is obvious to everybody that we may slip on the timetable however hard we try not to—and the Government at least are trying hard not to. I think it is also clear that views coming from such experienced sources as both noble Lords who have spoken—and especially, if I may say so, from my noble friend who gave an awful warning to the Committee about his own great legislation of many years ago—should be, and will be, taken into consideration by my right honourable friend in considering the timetable from here on. Of course, the Committee could not expect me to say anything about it at this stage or, probably, at the Report or Third Reading in this House, since there is no date in the Bill and the matter is to be done by Order.
THE EARL OF MANSFIELD: I wonder if Her Majesty's Government fully realise that there are not enough trained officials in the country for work in connection with land valuation at the present time. When the Land Commission get into operation that situation will become much worse. If the Government would accept the suggestions put forward to-day they would avoid the risk of the whole of this measure being bogged down from the commencement.
LORD KENNET: We had some exchanges about this on the Committee stage of the Local Government Bill, when my noble friend Lord Sorensen was able to give assurances, which appeared to give satisfaction to noble Lords, about the programme for increasing the number of valuers in the country.
LORD SALTOUN: You cannot increase the number of valuers just like that. It is a very highly trained profession. You can get plenty of people who can pass the first professional examination and who can value a building site anywhere and value building land
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anywhere by simply referring to books of tables; but that is not valuation. I speak with some experience; I have been through the mill myself. It is a very experienced job and you cannot give experience by just turning a handle.
LORD ST. HELENS: Surely we went all through this when we were discussing the Rent Act about six to nine months ago and the Government agreed that it was impossible to find an adequate number of valuation officers. That was for a completely different Bill. How they are going to cope with this Bill when they cannot cope with the Rent Act, goodness knows!
LORD KENNET: I think that the numbers in any profession can be increased by increasing the number of young persons under training for that profession. I know of no other way of increasing the numbers in any profession. I repeatedly see the numbers in a profession increased and decreased by deliberate acts of Government policy. This has been so for many decades. This is what I meant when I said the Government were making provision for an increase in the number of valuers. I should more correctly have said "an increase in the output of young valuers". Naturally, valuation is a profession in which experience counts more than perhaps in others; but the way to get experience is to get a number of young people available to have the experience. It is a slow business, but it is being done.
THE EARL OF MANSFIELD: Does the noble Lord not realise that it is not possible to make a skilled valuer simply by making a young man pass his valuation examinations. No such man is competent to do valuations on his own unless he has studied for a period of not less than five years under a competent senior official.
LORD SALTOUN: And to that must be added the time it takes to get a valuer's degree from the Surveyors' Institution over the way. That is a considerable time.
Clause 1 agreed to.
Clauses 2 and 3 agreed to.
Clause 4 [General financial provisions]:
On Question, whether Clause 4 shall stand part of the Bill?
3.6 p.m.
LORD WOLVERTON: Clause 4(2) says:
"Subject to the next following subsection, all sums received by the Commission by virtue of this Act, except such sums as are specified in section 2(1) of this Act, shall be paid into the Exchequer."
In this House I do not think we were told at all what the estimate was of the annual amount of the betterment levy; but the OFFICIAL REPORT of another place states:
"Mr. Boyd-Carpenter asked the Minister of Land and Natural Resources what is his estimate of the annual yield of the levy of certain dealings in land foreshadowed in Command Paper 2771."
Mr. Willey replied:
"I estimate that when the scheme is fully operating, the gross yield will be about £80 million per year, on the basis of a 40 per cent. levy."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, Vol. 718, col. 591; 1/11/65.]
We are told in this Bill that the Treasury will advance to the Land Commission in the first instance £45 million for their business of acquiring crown land. That sum can be extended to £75 million by an Affirmative Resolution of the House of Commons. But this large sum, estimated at £80 million, is, so far as I can see, going straight into the coffers of the Exchequer. The noble Lord, Lord Silkin, on November 14, 1966, during the Second Reading debate in this House said:
"I will not indulge in criticism of the Bill or comment on any particular clauses of it. I am sorry that the noble Lord who is to reply is not here, but there is one matter I should have liked to mention and to have a reply to. Why are not the whole of the proceeds of the levy going to be entrusted to the Land Commission? I see that they are going to be able to deduct the levy in cases where they acquire land and in certain other cases, and they will be able to retain that money, but as regards the general levy, when development is about to take place, they are required to pay the proceeds into the funds of the Exchequer and there is no obligation on the Exchequer to treat that as being different from any other monies they acquire."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Vol. 277 (No. 67), col. 1113: 14/11/66.]
The noble Lord was given no answer at all by the noble Lord, Lord Kennet. He was congratulated on his speech by the noble Lord (col. 1165), but he did not get a reply as to why this money was going into the coffers of the Treasury.
The noble Lord, Lord Silkin, drew an analogy between this and the Road Fund
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which was first set up as a tax on motorists and was supposed to go—and did go for some time—towards improving roads; but unfortunately Winston Churchill, when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, did not set a very good example, because he could not balance his Budget. At that time I was only a young man, but I remember that he raided the Road Fund and balanced his Budget that way. Subsequent Chancellors of the Exchequer thought it a good idea, until the Road Fund was nearly exhausted, and the House of Commons decided that the Ministry of Transport should have an Annual Vote. I think it extraordinary that this Bill should appear before us providing that the whole of the £80 million a year is to go to the Exchequer.
No doubt the Treasury will be delighted with that, but we were told that this Bill would help people to buy land more cheaply and help the redevelopment of central areas where land is very expensive; local authorities would be helped to develop that land. My experience, gained during the nine years I was a member of a county council, is that many schemes to redevelop central areas are prepared. My noble friend Lord Gage said on Second Reading that, in his county, of sixteen schemes which were prepared only two were carried out, at a cost of £3 million. Many of the schemes would not be viable without help from the central fund. Local authorities are not keen to go on with these schemes because they entail an increase in the rates. So many such schemes are just blueprints and are not carried forward even if the building resources are available. But just to take the whole of the £80 million and put it into the Exchequer, and to allow the Land Commission to deduct only the levy from the land which they buy, does not seem to me to be in accordance with the object of this Bill. I should like an answer from the Minister if he is able to provide one.
3.12 p.m.
LORD SILKIN: I am grateful to the noble Lord. Lord Wolverton, for taking up the cudgels on my behalf. It is true that I made this point on Second Reading. It is equally true that I did not receive any kind of acknowledgment or

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reply. But that is common fate for many of us on these occasions. We spend hours preparing speeches, and make our points, and if they are awkward points for the Government in question, whichever Government it may be, they are just ignored. I was not going to return to the attack and I am grateful to the noble Lord—I might call him my "noble friend"—for returning to it.
Surely some explanation is called for as to why one portion of this levy is to go into the funds of the Land Commission and the remainder into the Exchequer. It is clear which part goes to one and which to the other, but the logic of it is difficult to understand. If this is a levy on increases in the value of land due to the activities of the community, surely the character of the levy is the same whether it is deducted from the purchase price of land or whether it is a direct levy. The ground for the imposition of the levy is the same, and it would seem that the right thing is for this levy imposed by the Land Commission to be under the control of the Commission and dealt with by them, under the directions, of course, from the Government; and possibly in due course for them to hand over to the Exchequer, as the Bill provides, the excess funds. At any rate, is not the right course to ensure that the proceeds of the levy, however derived, should go in the first instance to the Land Commission, to be dealt with by them? I should be grateful if in due course the noble Lord could give some explanation why there is this differentiation.
THE EARL OF SWINTON: I agree tremendously with what the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, said in his earlier speeches, and I regret to have to differ from him profoundly in this matter as a matter of principle, and to differ indeed both from him and from his "noble friend". It reminded me of an occasion at the League of Nations when I remember Monsieur Barthou referring to Sir John Simon as "Mon cher collégue et presqu'ami."
Surely it is a fundamental principle of taxation, good or bad, that it ought to be paid into the central Exchequer? I think that the brothers Geddes attempted to say that the motor taxation, or petrol tax, was to be revenue committed to the Road Fund. That attempt
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failed completely. It is fundamentally wrong, and surely the real principle of all taxation is that it ought to be paid into a central Exchequer, and then the people in the Cabinet can quarrel about what share they get and what they do with it. In the day of another Labour Government Mr. Snowden, as he was then, sometimes found, as he said, that discussions were considerably shortened when he was able to say, "It may interest my colleagues to know that there is no money for this. "It did, I am told, shorten the discussions greatly in the Labour Cabinet. I think that that was before my noble friend's time. As a matter of principle surely it would be utterly wrong to do anything of this sort.
LORD SILKIN: I do not know whether the noble Earl appreciated that the proceeds of this fund are to be divided into two parts: one part is to go to the Land Commission, and the other part to the Exchequer.
THE EARL OF SWINTON: I think it should all go to the Exchequer.
LORD SILKIN: My question was as much directed to why there should be this distinction as to why the whole of it should not go to the Land Commission.
THE EARL OF SWINTON: I think the whole should go to the Exchequer.
LORD SILKIN: That is not stated in the Bill.
THE EARL OF SWINTON: It would make it a better Bill.
LORD SILKIN: The Bill provides that a substantial part—that part which is deducted from the purchase price of land by way of levy—should remain with the Land Commission. That is what I fail to understand. If the noble Earl's principle is right, the Government are not acting on it.
THE EARL OF SWINTON: I accept that, and I hope the noble Lord will move an Amendment to say that it ought all to go to the central Exchequer. The fact that the Government are not, for once, being wholly vicious, but only partly vicious, is no reason why they should be made wholly vicious.
VISCOUNT GAGE: I, too, hope that the Government will stick to their guns, but for reasons with which they may not

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be entirely in sympathy. It all depends on one's view of this Commission. if one is apprehensive about it, as I am, I think that the less money the Commission are allowed to have, the better. I think that in this case our protection will be the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
LORD MITCHISON: If I may take up the tone of the last speech, I hope that noble Lords opposite will go on discussing taxation and considering money matters to the full, because they will then encourage my Party to carry out their Election pledge to review your Lordships' powers. It shocks me to hear a non-elected Chamber discussing what is purely a taxation question. I want to say no more about the merits of it than that, substantially, I agree with the noble Earl Lord Swinton, and I do not share the view of my noble friend Lord Silkin, that there is a division of the levy.
The amount of the refunds under Part III of the Bill, which is all the Commission are entitled to hold back, is money which seems to be in a different category from the quasi-commercial (and the term "commercial" was used in another place) receipts and payments out from the fund, that is to say, from the Commission. The reason given in another place—and it seems to me the right one—is that if the general account is treated in this way, it presents a better view of what. the Commission are doing.
As for the Road Fund and similar devices, I do not believe that they have ever worked. Your Lordships will perhaps remember that at one period there was a Land Fund. I can afford to be a little critical about it, because it was initiated by a noble Lord whom I supported, but I think it was a mistake all the same. It died finally only because Mr. Enoch Powell used it to pay for a matter which would otherwise have required a Money Resolution. He said that the expenditure ought to be met out of the Land Fund. We were a very good Opposition. We at once put down ten things which ought to be done and paid for out of the Land Fund. I remember only one of them. It was to introduce more planetaria in London. I think that there is only one.
LORD CONESFORD: I am a little astonished by the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, who referred to
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this levy as taxation. I think there is a great deal to be said for that view, but the exact opposite was said by Ministers in another place. What they urged was that the Inland Revenue should have nothing whatever to do with this matter because it was not taxation. While I am delighted that the noble Lord has read sonic of the statements of Ministers in another place, I am surprised at his heresy in refusing to follow them in the view that they levy has nothing to do with taxation.
LORD MITCHISON: This, as usual, is hair-splitting. It is perfectly clear what is meant and intended. These are money matters. If the levy had been in a separate Bill, it would not have been subject to detailed review in your Lordships' House. We can deal with that when we come to it, but at the moment I am perfectly clear about this. Something for the relief of a liability may or may not be called taxation, but we are speaking of a levy which does just that. It is clear what is intended. This is money, this is supply, this is finance, this is taxation, this is whatever word the noble Lord, Lord Conesford, who indeed is a master at distinctions between words, would prefer to choose for himself. He knows perfectly well what I mean and I know perfectly well what he means.
THE MINISTER WITHOUT PORTFOLIO (LORD CHAMPION): If we are going into a discussion about the powers of this House I feel that we shall never get this Bill, and certainly not in time for March 1 if I participate in the exchanges that have taken place between my noble friend Lord Mitchison and the noble Lord, Lord Conesford. I must say that I never thought it would be likely that I should call in aid the noble Earl, Lord Swinton, against my noble friend Lord Silkin, but I have to do so to-day, because I think the noble Earl is absolutely right on this point and my noble friend Lord Silkin is wrong. My noble friend Lord Kennet apologises to my noble friend for the fact that he did not reply to him in his winding-up speech but, as my noble friend knows, we are occasionally charged with speaking much too long on Second Reading, and what is left out is a matter of judgment. Occasionally our judgment is wrong, as clearly

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it was in the case of my noble friend Lord Silkin.
The levy, as my noble friend Lord Silkin said, falls into two parts. One part will be raised by the Commission on private transactions on land. That will be the betterment levy, which will be collected by the Commission and paid to the Exchequer for the use of the Exchequer for its own purposes. But I hasten to add that the Exchequer has taken into consideration the expected yield of £80 million in deciding on the additional grants to be paid under the Local Government Bill, so that already to a large extent the amount of money that will be collected by this process of levy on private transactions will be going to the very things to which my noble friend has suggested it ought to be going. If it is found that the yield is greater than we estimate at this time, the Government, as my right honourable friend said in another place, will bear in mind the receipts from the levy when considering the general financial relationship between central and local government. In any case, it is bad financial management to earmark sums in special funds. This is very much the case here.
As for the amount of betterment that the Commission will gain as a result of its trading in land, it will be able to use some of this for the purpose of assisting local authorities and private house building by means of a cheaper rate of land sale. I think that has already been made clear. We shall then see that the Commission, having, as we hope and expect, a considerable profit on these transactions, largely as a result of its share of the levy, will be able to use it for this purpose. But I must add that if anything is left over and the Ministers feel that a portion of this money should go to the Exchequer, they have power to direct the Commission to pay it to the Exchequer. I notice the noble Lord, Lord Wolverton, smiling, but of course it would be possible for this House to watch what the Ministers do and criticise them. I think that the Government are right here, and I hope that we can now get the clause without further ado.
Clause 4 agreed to.
Clause 5 agreed to.
Clause 6:
General powers of acquisition
6.—(l) Subject to the following provisions of this Part of this Act, on and after the first appointed day the Commission shall have power to acquire by agreement, or, on being authorised to do so in accordance with the following provisions of this Part of this Act, shall have power to acquire compulsorily, any land which in their opinion is land suitable for material development.
(3) The Commission shall not have power by virtue of subsection (1) of this section to acquire any land compulsorily unless, on the date on which the compulsory purchase order authorising the acquisition is made, one or more of the following conditions is fulfilled in relation to that land, that is to say—
(e) the land is, or forms part of, an area which has been declared to be a clearance area by a resolution under section 42 of the Housing Act 1957, or under section 25 of the Housing (Scotland) Act 1950, which is for the time being in force.
(4) Without prejudice to the last preceding subsection, the Commission shall not have power by virtue of subsection (1) of this section. in pursuance of a compulsory purchase order made before such day as the Ministers may by order appoint for the purposes of this subsection (in this Act referred to as "the second appointed day"), to acquire any land compulsorily except for one of the following purposes, that is to say—
(a) securing the carrying out at an early date of material development which, in the opinion of the Commission, ought to be so carried out;
(5) Where the last preceding subsection applies to a compulsory acquisition, and the purpose of the acquisition is that which is specified in paragraph (c) of that subsection, the power of the Commission mentioned in that subsection shall not be exercisable except—

(a) with the approval of the Minister concerned, if the purpose is to make the land available for development or use by, or for the purposes of, a Minister, or

(b) in any other case, with the approval of the person or body of persons who could be authorised to acquire the land compulsorily as mentioned in that paragraph, or, in default of such approval, with the approval of the Minister who could authorise that person or body so to acquire the land.

(6) No order shall be made appointing a day for the purposes of subsection (4) of this section unless a draft of the order has been laid before Parliament and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.
3.28 p.m.
LORD BROOKE or CUMNOR LORD BROOKE or CUMNOR moved, in subsection (1), to leave out "first". The noble Lord said: I beg to move Amendment No. 1. This is

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clearly a paving Amendment. It paves the way for Amendments No. 4, 7, 9 and 24. I think it will be for the convenience of your Lordships if we discuss these together. We have come to the clauses of the Bill which deal with the powers of the Land Commission to acquire land, and to acquire it compulsorily. The conception in the Bill is that there are two appointed days. After the first appointed day, the Land Commission may acquire land compulsorily for any of the purposes set out in Clause 6 (4), but after the second appointed day the Land Commission are unlimited in the purposes for which they may acquire land. Clause 6(3) lists the kind of land which it may acquire compulsorily, whether before or after the second appointed day.
But the sinister provisions are in Clause 7(4)—they are dealt with in Amendment No. 9—which enable the Land Commission to acquire compulsorily any land specified in Clause 6(3) without having to indicate at any stage or to anybody the purpose for which they wish to acquire the land. This must be wrong. Compulsory purchase is a procedure which must be properly safeguarded by Parliament. One of the general safeguards hitherto has been that an acquiring authority must state publicly the purposes for which it desires to take somebody's land away and use it for another purpose. If these provisions in the Land Commission Bill go through now, it will not be necessary for the Land Commission to give any indication at all of the purposes for which they want somebody's land.
This is but the first of several Amendments we have put down which are designed to safeguard the liberty of the subject. Both Houses of Parliament have been over hundreds of years intent to do this, and it is only now, when we have a Bill of this kind, that one sees how far a Socialist Government are prepared to go to deprive an individual of his rights.
Under this Bill the owner of undeveloped land, whoever he may be—he may have a lot of land, or he may have only a little land—is in a cleft stick. If he wishes to develop it. he will seek and obtain planning permission, and then the Commission will immediately be authorised by subsection (3) of Clause 6 to make a compulsory purchase order, not waiting for him to do the development, but
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insisting on grabbing it. If, on the other hand, he decides to play for safety and does not apply for planning permission, then, as I read the Bill, the Land Commission themselves will be able to apply for planning permission if they consider that the land is suitable for material development. And the same thing may happen; the Land Commission can acquire the land compulsorily.
The Commission cannot, of course, do so up to the second appointed day unless they wish to acquire it for any of the purposes set out in paragraphs (a), (b), (c) and (d) of subsection (4) of Clause 6; and with the exception of paragraph (c), which is sheer duplication of compulsory purchase powers already possessed by other authorities, the rest seem to me to be reasonable. I have no complaint as to the compulsory acquisition powers before the second appointed day. But it must be wrong that after the second appointed day the Land Commission shall, as indicated in subsection (4) of Clause 7, be free from any obligation to specify the purpose for which the land is to be compulsorily purchased.
I would ask your Lordships to put yourselves in the position of a man who owns a piece of land and suddenly hears that the Land Commission are proposing to acquire it compulsorily. Naturally, he wishes to object; it is his land. He may or may not wish to do something with the land; but it is the land of a British subject. At that point the Land Commission come along and clap a compulsory purchase order on the land. As I say, quite naturally the owner wishes to object, and if he is lucky, and the Land Commission do not invoke the special procedure of Clause 8, he will have the right of a public inquiry or private hearing.
When I was Minister of Housing and Local Government I frequently had to give decisions on appeals that had been heard at a public hearing—and not only on appeals, but on compulsory purchase orders—and I am well aware that one of the safeguards against wrongful compulsory acquisition is that the body which is seeking to acquire the land have under our present law to state, and state specifically, the purposes for which it is required; and the objector, who is normally the owner of the land, whose rights we should defend, is then in a

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position to argue that the land is not suitable for that purpose, or that some other land is more suitable for the purpose, or that he himself is going to develop the land for a better purpose. Any of those arguments may be a valid reason why a responsible Minister will not confirm a compulsory purchase order made by the local authority. But on what grounds is an owner to object if it is not incumbent on the Land Commission to state their reasons for the purchase?
I do not want to be intransigent about this. If the Government are prepared to amend the Bill so as to deprive the Land Commission of this power to acquire land compulsorily without giving any reason whatever, then my purpose in moving these Amendments will be secured. It seems to me that we need to know from the Government what are the additional purposes over and above those set out in subsection (4) of Clause 6 for which the Land Commission may wish to acquire land compulsorily after the second appointed day. If we can get a list of those additional purposes, I would submit to your Lordships that they could be incorporated in Clause 7 so that they are clearly defined.
Subsection (4) of Clause 6 enables the Land Commission, whether before or after the second appointed day, to acquire land for the purpose of,

"(a) securing the carrying out at an early date of material development which. in the opinion of the Commission, ought to be so carried out;

"(b) securing that the land is developed as a whole, or as part of an area which, in the opinion of the Commission, ought to be developed as a whole;

" (c) making the land available for development or use by, or for the purposes of, a person or body of persons who could be authorised to acquire it compulsorily for that development or use;

"(d) disposing of the land in accordance with the provisions of section 18 of this Act."

What are the further purposes for which the Land Commission may desire to acquire somebody's land compulsorily after the second appointed day? Why should not those purposes be written into this Bill so that everybody will know where he stands? I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 5, line 5, leave out ("first").—(Lord Brooke of Cumnor.)
LORD CHAMPION: I beg to move that the House do resume for the purposes of a Statement.
Moved, That the House do now resume.—(Lord Champion.)
On Question, Motion agreed to, and House resumed accordingly.

RHODESIA
3.38 p.m.
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (THE EARL OF LONGFORD): My Lords, with permission, I should like to repeat a Statement on Rhodesia which my right honourable friend the Prime Minister has just made in another place. His words were:
"As the House will know, my right honourable friend the Commonwealth Secretary returned this morning from his visit to Salisbury, where he had extensive talks with the Governor and also saw Mr. Smith.
"The Government will, of course, be considering most carefully his report on his discussions and, at the earliest possible moment, a fuller Statement will be made."
My Lords, that concludes the Prime Minister's Statement.
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, I am obliged to the noble Earl for repeating that Statement. May I ask him whether this means that the Government do not intend to take any action at the United Nations, as has been so widely rumoured in the last few days they intend to do, and that before they take action at the United Nations there will be an opportunity for this House to debate the whole question?
LORD WADE: My Lords, following on that question, and while thanking the noble Earl for the Statement, may I ask whether he can give any indication when there will be a debate, and particularly how much notice can be given to noble Lords of when a debate is likely to take place?
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, I appreciate the force of what the noble Lord, Lord Wade, has said, and also the concluding observations of the noble Lord, Lord Carrington. I am afraid that the Government are to-day

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considering this whole question with exceptional care, and I have nothing to add to what I have told the House this afternoon. The House must not draw any conclusion either optimistic or pessimistic from that. The House must, I am afraid, just accept from me that the Government are weighing up the whole situation most carefully this very day.
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, of course, I accept that, and I do not want to press the noble Earl too hard, but he will remember that undertakings were given, both in this House and in another place, that before the next stage was taken there would be an opportunity for a debate in both Houses of Parliament. I do not see that anything that has happened in the last few days needs to have changed that pledge.
THE EARL OF LONGFORD: My Lords, certainly all undertakings that have been given will be honoured.

LAND COMMISSION BILL
3.40 p.m.
House again in Committee.
THE EARL OF MANSFIELD: The noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, has covered the ground admirably in his summing-up of this group of Amendments. However, I feel that a few words might be not inappropriate from one whose family has had considerable experience of providing land for public purposes. Up to date, when someone, great or small, has been required to provide land for public purposes, he has always known the purposes for which it has been required—it may have been for housing, schools, construction of roads, road widening, the making of sewers or a multiplicity of other reasons. In our own case we have parted with land very reluctantly because it has been first-class agricultural land, which it is a great pity to see disappear under bricks and mortar. But we have never attempted, nor have most other landowners, to resist such acquisition, knowing that the purposes for which the land was required were absolutely necessary.
If this Bill goes through unchanged, what will be the effect? As the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, has said, the rights of the individual will be
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destroyed altogether, and this could be described by no milder word than "totalitarianism". If the people of this country, the owners of property, great or small, realise that this is a matter which will affect not only the large landowner or big builder but equally every single property owner, I think there will be considerably greater agitation in the country than there has been at the present time; because castle and cottage, farm and factory, garage and garden will all be in equal danger.
Hitherto, as I have said, people have not resisted acquisitions by public authorities because they have been satisfied with the purposes for which the acquisitions were made. But now that that is no longer to be case, an enormous amount of will be stirred up. It is surely rather remarkable that a Government returned for the ostensible purpose of bringing about democratic Socialism should actually be swinging completely in the other direction, because measure after measure that has been introduced has been of a totalitarian character, this unnecessary measure more so, and the abuse which these Amendments seek to remedy to an even greater extent.
One can well imagine Hitler, Goering and Goebbels sitting in their permanent home in the nether regions, raising their glasses of liquid flame in a respectful, admiring toast to their political successors in this country, their political heirs, who are seeking to bring about by Parliamentary chicanery the totalitarian conquest of this country which Hitler himself could not do by force of arms. We have no need to look far for neo-Nazis in this country: there they are opposite us on the Government Benches.
LORD MITCHISON: I should be extremely sorry if any adherence to the subject matter of the Amendment had prevented the noble Earl from making that very amusing speech. I got a great deal of pleasure out of it, and I am sure I am not the only noble Lord who did so. But had we not better see what the Amendment does—and with the Amendment I include the subsequent Amendments—because the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, never told us? He said many things about the Bill, but very little about the Amendment, and I suggest that it might be as well to see what we are doing.

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Clause 6 is of course a major clause in the Bill, and an Amendment on the lines proposed to-day was very rightly described in another place as a wrecking Amendment. This, of course, is a wrecking Amendment. I mention this because only about ten minutes ago the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, told us that he was not going to introduce any wrecking Amendments. I thought he might have waited until we got over this one, when it might have sounded a little more plausible.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: May I reply to the noble Lord? I said in the course of my speech that I did not intend to be intransigent. What I was concerned to do was to get introduced into the Bill a description of the purposes for which the Land Commission would be able to acquire land compulsorily after the second appointed day. That seems to me to be a positive action, not a negative one.
LORD MITCHISON: On that matter I prefer the description which was given in another place. I regard this as a wrecking Amendment, and I hope I may he able to convince those of your Lordships who care to follow the clause that it is indeed a wrecking Amendment. The immediate Amendment we are discussing is simply a paving one to remove the first appointed day. Later on there is another to remove the second appointed day. They are all minor matters. As I see it, the substantial Amendment here is Amendment No. 4, which on page 6, line 3, is to leave out from "section" to the word "to", so that the clause would read:
"Without prejudice to the last preceding subsection, the Commission shall not have power by virtue of subsection (1) of this section to acquire any land compulsorily except for one of the following purposes, that is to say—"
so and so. What has been removed? What has been removed is a reference to the second appointed day. The Bill provides for two stages in the proceedings of the Commission. It does this for the purpose of enabling the Commission to cope with the administrative beginnings and, no doubt, difficulties which are certain to occur at the beginning of a difficult and, I entirely agree, complicated measure like this. There can be no reasonable doubt about that.
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What the Bill does is to state in subsection (4) the following purposes as purposes which must be fulfilled in the first period. What the noble Lord wants to do is to extend the limited powers of the first period over the whole operations of the Commission—that is to say, he wants to take the preparatory period and limit the Commission to what, according to the Bill, can be done then. That is the effect, as I see it, of this series of Amendments. If I have it wrong, I hope the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, will be good enough to correct me, because I did not gather from the explanation he gave to the Committee that that was what he intended, but that seems to me to be the effect of the Amendment.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: The noble Lord virtually invites me to speak again. These Amendments certainly remove the concept of the second appointed day. I am moving them because I am anxious to extract from the Government what are the additional purposes which the Land Commission are expected to carry out after the first appointed day, and why they cannot be specified in the Bill.
LORD MITCHISON: I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, has confirmed what I said. He wants to take out what he calls the content of the second appointed day. That is the whole main purpose of the Bill. The period between the first appointed day and the second appointed day is a transitional one during which the powers of the Commission are to be limited to certain purposes, and those are the purposes set out in subsection (4) of the section we are discussing. That states the objects of these Amendments and therefore the noble Lord who made that eloquent speech just before I rose was, of course, perfectly right: this is an attack on the whole object of the Bill, a Bill to which your Lordships gave an unopposed Second Reading the other day. I know your Lordships' practice is not to dispute Bills by way of Second Reading but to prefer to do it by a wrecking Amendment. I call this a wrecking Amendment because it seeks to remove the whole purpose of the Bill, except for the transitional period. I should like to recall to your Lordships one other matter. A good many years ago there was a Bill

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to nationalise iron and steel: your Lordships did not turn it down on Second Reading but you effectively destroyed its chances by a wrecking Amendment.
LORD CARRINGTON: But if it was a wrecking Amendment why did the Labour Government in the House of Commons accept it?
LORD MITCHISON: Because they had no alternative.
LORD CARRINGTON: They had a majority.
LORD MITCHISON: And it is because I do not want that kind of thing to recur that I should like the powers of this House to be reviewed. I have been provoked into saying that by the noble Lord, who always says, "We are perfectly all right; we never misuse our powers". Let us see what you are doing in this Bill. I repeat, and I think I have reason for repeating, that the effect of this Amendment would be to destroy the whole object of the Bill. Now let us just see what the object is so far as this clause is concerned.
LORD NEWTON: Would the noble Lord allow me? He has referred on several occasions to "the main purpose of the Bill": would he tell us what this is?
LORD MITCHISON: If your Lordships have not read the Bill or the White Paper or the Explanatory Memorandum, what is the use of sitting here and discussing this?
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: State the object.
LORD MITCHISON: I can give it, if noble Lords wish. I will read the seventh paragraph of the White Paper and I am reading it only because I have been asked to do so. I hoped that your Lordships, before coming down to discuss the matter, would have looked at the purpose of the Bill for yourselves, because it is here, stated quite clearly.
"In the Government's view it is wrong that planning decisions which are public decisions about land use should so often result in the realising of unearned increments by the owners of the land to which they apply,"
I do not know whether it is wrong, in the view of noble Lords opposite, that desirable development should be frus-
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rated in the hope of higher prices. Would your Lordships endorse that practice?
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: Would the noble Lord explain—
LORD MITCHISON: In a moment.
"The two main objectives of the Government's land policy are, therefore:—
(1) to secure that the right land is available at the right time for the implementation of national, regional and local plans;"
Would your Lordships object?
"(2) to secure that a substantial part of the development value created by the community"—
Ah! perhaps this is what is getting your Lordships—
"returns to the community and that the burden of the cost of land for essential purposes is reduced."
My Lords, those are the objectives; they are in the White Paper.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: Would the noble Lord allow me?
LORD MITCHISON: One minute; just let me finish. I will gladly allow the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, to interrupt me in a moment, but I should just like to ask whether it is the view of noble Lords opposite that those objectives are wrong. Because this is the method which the Government of the day have chosen, and I hope rightly chosen, in order to achieve those objectives, and when I say this is a wrecking Amendment I mean that it is designed to wreck the method which it is intended to use to reach those objectives. There is the question of letting a citizen have firmer rights of hearing, and of doing this or that. Any question of private rights is not, as I see it, a matter for amendment at this stage or for discussion under this Amendment. Some other Amendment is required for that. Now, on the distinct understanding that I have not finished, I give way to the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: I would never have supposed that the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, had finished yet. He has read out the two objectives of this measure. The second one, the betterment levy, is not reached until Clause 27 and at present we are only on Clause 6. As to the first one, what I have been seeking to do throughout this discussion is to elicit from the Government why

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it cannot be secured within the purpose defined in subsection (4) of Clause 6, the purpose which is authorised from the first appointed day onwards, of
"securing the carrying out at an early date of material development which, in the opinion of the Commission, ought to be so carried out".
What is there beyond that? That is what I am asking the Government to tell us.
LORD MITCHISON: This is a confusion between the method and the object, and, looking at the clause the noble Lord is now discussing, all I can say is that what he intends to do is to remove all the teeth from the Bill, except for a very short period. That is to say, there is a short period now during which those teeth are hidden, or restricted, or whatever is the right word for teeth, and he would have the first period continue indefinitely. He would thereby deprive the Government of the day of the powers which are stated in the Bill for the objective I have mentioned. No argument was adduced about this. There was no suggestion that there should be some other limitation, or anything of that sort. It was simply intended that it should be the very limited objects that are set out in subsection (4).
If one is going to look at that, one ought to consider what the Commission are doing. They are acquiring compulsorily any land which, in their opinion, is land suitable for material development. There is a definition later of "material development" and it is one of some importance. What is suggested here? Is it wrong or tyrannical that a public body, the Land Commission, set up for this purpose, should be able to enforce their opinion that certain land is suitable for material development? It is perfectly obvious that in doing it the Commission have to take into account the intentions of the Government of the day in various respects. They have to take into account, in the words of the passage I have just read, "national, regional and local plans".
All that is intended; and then it is said (or it may be said), "If they have to do all that, why cannot somebody else but the Land Commission take the land?". We have not come to that yet, and I would merely make this observation: that it was stated below, and quite rightly so, that there were a number of perfectly obvious cases in which the existing powers would
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not be sufficient for that purpose, and it seems to me quite sufficient to say that the whole procedure must be subject to planning permission. That is exceedingly important—it was not mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor—and, being subject to planning permission, it must also be land suitable for material development in the opinion of a Commission appointed for the purpose. I find nothing tyrannical in that. After all, we have had planning permission in this country for many years. It has tended to get rather tighter instead of rather looser. We may complain about methods of administration and things of that sort, but the principle of the thing is well established. It is not the case nowadays that the man who owns a piece of land is at liberty to use it as he pleases, to sell it when he wishes, to dispose of it any other way as he wishes; he is subject all the time to the control of the use of land which is imposed at present by the planning machinery.
The difficulty about the planning machinery is that up to date it has been essentially a negative piece of machinery. It could prevent people from doing things; it could not ensure that they did something. A man might get leave under the planning machinery to develop a piece of land in a way which might be for the benefit of the whole community as well as himself, and having got it he might choose not to do it and there was no power to make him do it, except so far as the local authorities had limited powers each within their own area and for their own purposes. I simply say to those who support this Amendment that it is perfectly obvious that, when you have a Bill with a main purpose and a transitional period before it, if you seek to remove the main purpose and to apply the powers appropriate for a transitional period during the whole currency of the Bill you are attempting to wreck the Bill.
LORD SALTOUN: I do not want to impugn the perfect holiness of this Bill in any way, but I am a little uneasy and I should like to ask the Government about one thing. It has been suggested that the Land Commission can acquire land without stating the purpose for which they wish to acquire it. The Government will know as well as anybody else engaged in the development of land that in many cases land is ripe and ready

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for development and verbal undertakings have been given that it should be held for a certain purpose—for example, if an important factory wishes to extend, that is the land they are going to get, and that is all arranged. These things are not secret in any way, but there are no deeds covering them. If the Land Commission can come along and say they want to acquire a piece of land and do not want to say what it is for, it puts the owner to some expense and trouble if he wants to carry out this verbal undertaking, and it may be quite unnecessary because they may want it for the same purpose. Why should the Land Commission not say the purpose they have in view? That is the important point. I do not care about the rest of the Amendment.
LORD CONESFORD: I am really astonished at the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison. I need hardly say that as an opponent of this Bill I heartily welcome it. It is very good indeed that it should be stated by an influential Socialist that the main purpose of the Bill is to give compulsory powers of acquisition without any disclosure of the purposes of acquisition, that there should be no limitation of any sort. The noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, went from one Amendment to another, and it is quite in order because we are considering a number of Amendments together. When my noble friend, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, said it would be for the convenience of the Committee to consider these Amendments together I think that was agreed by noble Lords in every quarter of the Committee.
LORD KENNET: I should interrupt at this point to say that, for myself, I would regard the consideration of Amendments to Clause 7 at this point as a mere matter of convenience and consequential upon the consideration whether or not we should knock out the whole concept of the second appointed day. I think noble Lords would be well advised to keep their arguments on Clause 7 until we reach it.
LORD CONESFORD: I do not differ from what the Minister has said, but when it was said it would be convenient for the purpose of argument to take these Amendments together, in order to raise the question of what were to be the powers after the second appointed day, my noble friend Lord Brooke of Cumnor
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did not attack the whole conception of a second appointed day. He asked for the disclosure of what were going to be the purposes of acquisition after that date. The criticism of my noble friend, as I understood it, was that in the Bill as it stands there is no limitation whatsoever on the purposes for which land can be acquired after the second appointed day. The noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, says that is absolutely all right, that is the whole purpose, and they do not propose to state the purpose.
LORD MITCHISON: With great respect I did not. I pointed out two particular matters, and I shall be very grateful if the noble Lord will keep to the point and answer them. The first is that the land has to be land which in the opinion of the Commission is suitable for material development. That is the first limitation. And the second limitation is the whole of the subjection to planning machinery. That is a very important part of the Bill. It is all very well to get up and say that the Bill leaves the Commission free to do anything they like; but, saving the noble Lord's presence, I did not say it, and if I had said it, even if it was I who said it, it would still be complete nonsense.
LORDCONESFORD: I think it was complete nonsense, although the noble Lord said it. The point I was endeavouring to make was the same point as was made by my noble friend Lord Brooke of Cumnor, that the purposes for which land could be acquired after the second appointed day should be stated in the measure. The noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, if he wishes, can say that it is already adequately stated, and that may be the reply of the Minister when it comes. But certainly it is not an improper point for the Opposition, or indeed for any member who supports the Government, to take: that when extensive powers of compulsory acquisition are being given there should be some proper limitation on the exercise of those powers. My noble friend Lord Brooke of Cumnor thinks that the limitations, if contained in the Bill at all, are wholly insufficient. It is no good the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, saying "Ah, but look at the White Paper". Nobody knows better than the noble Lord that

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the White Paper has been wholly superseded by the Bill. We are not now interested in the White Paper; what we are interested in, and debating in Committee, is the Bill. It is no good his giving various legitimate purposes that the Bill may be designed to secure. The point is what is in the Bill.
My noble friend, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, has made out a formidable case for saying that, after the second appointed day, we are left wholly ignorant of what are the purposes for which the land can be compulsorily acquired. The noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, says, "That is absolutely right; that is the whole purpose of the Bill. Why should you be interested in wanting to know why the land is compulsorily acquired?". The citizens of this country are very much interested in seeking to know why the Government should be at liberty compulsorily to acquire their land. I welcome most heartily the disclosure of the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison. Now we know where we are.
LORD MITCHISON: I rise again only to say, for the second time, that I did not use the words attributed tome, or any such words. I said something entirely different. I am afraid that the noble Lord, Lord Conesford, has misunderstood—I would not say that he has misrepresented me.
THE EARL OF MANSFIELD: Would the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, answer the question put to him? Does this Bill in fact, as we believe, remove the right of the individual to know why his land is going to be compulsorily acquired; and, if so, why?
LORD SILKIN: Perhaps I can help at any rate to clarify the situation. This is a paving Amendment. It is intended that there should be an Amendment to Clause 7, in due course, and I think it is impossible to discuss this Amendment without considering the Amendment to Clause 7. Clause 7 (4) provides, among other things, that
"so much of any regulations made under the Acquisition of Land Act as requires a notice relating to a compulsory purchase order to specify the purpose for which the land is authorised to be compulsorily purchased, and …so much of Schedule 1 to that Act as
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requires any notice relating to such an order to specify the purpose for which the land is required. shall not apply."
In other words, it is quite clear (I hope we are on common ground) that after the second appointed day the Land Commission will not be required to state the purpose for which the land is to be acquired.
There may be good reasons for this. It may be essential, if the Commission are to be able to carry out their purpose, that they should not be required to state that purpose. But I think the Committee are entitled to have an explanation of it. That is the purpose and object of a Committee stage. Obviously, this is something that could not have been raised on Second Reading; but I think that the Committee should have a clear explanation—and I am keeping an open mind on it—as to why it is proposed that after the second appointed day it should not be necessary for the Commission to give any reason for the compulsory acquisition of land.
4.12 p.m.
LORD KENNET: Let me first of all compliment, as my noble friend did, Lord Mansfield on the discrepancy between the content and the manner of his first intervention. The width of the discrepancy was itself a pleasure to me, and I am sure to many other noble Lords. Let me turn at once the substance of these Amendments. If I say that I think noble Lords opposite are making rather heavy weather of it, I know that they will profoundly and sincerely disagree. But I think, in practice, they are probably making rather heavy weather of it. It all depends how you look at this matter.
In Clause 6 there are three things which we have been discussing. First of all, there is the list of the conditions relating to the land, without the existence of one of which the Land Commission cannot take it by compulsory purchase order. Secondly, there is the list of the purposes for one or more of which the Land Commission must take the land before the second appointed day. Thirdly, there is the question of whether or not the Land Commission must declare the purpose for which the land is being acquired. Strictly speaking, only the first two of those arise under this clause. I rather regret that, in our enthusiasm, we have run over into Clause 7, because the

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Amendments to Clause 7 do not necessarily go with these Amendments. It would be open to your Lordships to negative the Amendments to Clause 6, yet pass the Amendments to Clause 7. As noble Lords opposite will not be surprised to hear, I think they would be best advised to negative the Amendments on both. But the discussion has ranged rather widely, and let us accept that.
Let me start at the other end. In this question of the declaration of purpose, if the Land Commission were bound always to declare their purpose we have to consider what effect that would have if the Land Commission wished to change the purpose for which they had acquired the land in the first place. If they have declared their purpose, then I suppose one must imagine further complicated procedure in order to allow them to change their mind.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: Hear, hear!
LORD KENNET: Not necessarily "Hear, hear!" I am coming to the point about this in a minute. Things move fast in the development world, in terms of months rather than of years. But it is not invariably so that the Land Commission would get, or that one would expect the Land Commission always to get, every detail right in the plans they wanted to effect or cause to have effected on land which they acquired. One would be hampering the Commission a great deal more than noble Lords opposite think. I know that they—and I respect their sincerity on this—think they are protecting the subject, but I assure them that to introduce a duty for a declaration of purpose in any detail would be hampering the Land Commission quite severely, and might hold up the whole thing.
LORD DERWENT: I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord but would he explain the phrase "in any detail" because it rather affects the argument?
LORD KENNET: Because once you start laying duties on bodies you have to give them some definition of precisely what they have got to do; otherwise they are perpetually in doubt as to whether they have done it, and people will keep suing them. It is a familiar problem in legislation: when imposing a duty, how general can you be. I think we should probably not be right to be too general
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if we did impose such a duty, and for that reason it would be undesirable.
More important than that, I think, was the repeated challenge of Lord Brooke of Cumnor, to say what are the further purposes beyond the four for which the Land Commission might desire to have compulsory purchase powers. I can think of one—I can, in fact, think of many, but I take it that noble Lords opposite are not seriously worried that the Land Commission are going to take over people's property in order to build brothels, gambling hells, or even missile sites. I take it that this is not their worry. We are thinking about what sensible, respectable, publicly declarable purposes the Commission may have.
Let me indicate one. It could be that the Commission would wish to assemble land rather slowly, and that would be not land which, in their opinion, should be brought forward for development at once. It might be land which in the Commission's opinion should be brought forward for development not at once—however that is to be interpreted—not immediately, but over a slightly longer period. I would remind the Committee that if the Land Commission are to do everything at once, convulsively in broad sectors of action, then this will mean a much higher incidence of compulsory purchase orders. It will mean far more compulsion. If, on the other hand, in a given place at a given time the Commission feel that they can go more slowly and secure this bit of land now for use later, when the other land is available, we might see a much lower incidence of compulsory purchase orders. It would allow an element of flexibility which is not allowed under the four conditions which we have in phase one of the Bill.
I will be quite frank, and say that it could be that the Land Commission, and indeed a Government, will think of other things during the operation of phase one. But the Land Commission are going into action tied to four purposes only. One may ask: why are the four purposes there at all? Well, of course, they were put in to give the Commission some guidance about what sort of jobs they ought to tackle first. I know that the Minister has powers to give the Commission instructions about what they ought to do, but sooner than leave all that to instructions to be issued to the Land Commission by the Minister after or on the first

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appointed day, the Government thought fit to lay it all out on the line in Clause 6 in order that Parliament should be able to debate not only the creation of the Commission and their powers, but also what are, in effect, the first set of instructions to the Commission about how they are to work.
That being so, I think the Committee ought to accept the corollary to that namely, that that which has been laid out on the line for discussion before the first appointed day, before the Bill is law—and many months before—is probably not the best formulation of the purposes to which the Commission must be tied from now to eternity. It could be that the Commission will find that they want to do other things. It could be that the Government will find that they want the Commission to do other things. There is no plot about this. There is no possibility of plot. I beg noble Lords to put out of their heads the idea that the Land Commission are proposing to go stealthily around the land, lying and grabbing for the sake of God knows what ideal—I cannot imagine what it would be. But this is not a situation which need cause us to lose a moment's sleep. The Land Commission are going to operate quite publicly. They will do most of their deals by agreement, and the compulsory purchase law of this country—and I respect Lord Brooke of Cumnor's wish to safeguard it—is pretty well tried. Later on, under Clause 8, I shall have some more things to say about this of considerable interest to the Party opposite.
These four provisions are put there for Parliamentary debate and we cannot expect them to last for ever. So when the Government of the day, presumably jointly with the Land Commission, find it is time to vary these provisions, what do they do? They come right back to Parliament. The Order for the second appointed day is subject to Affirmative Resolution. The opportunity to debate the working of the four conditions is not now. It is after a certain period when the Land Commissin have been working under the four conditions. We can then see how the system has been working and, if the Government think that those four conditions are too restrictive, then they will ask Parliament for specific approval for their amendment.
LORD CONESFORD: I am listening with great attention to the interesting speech of the noble Lord, but am I not right in assuming that the Order for the second appointed day just fixes the date? It does not determine what shall be the powers thereafter. The powers thereafter are what are now in the Bill. Therefore, the mere question of a debate on the date surely will not give us any power in this matter at all. May I add that I did not suggest—and I hope I shall never have to—that Ministers at present have wholly improper ideas of how they are going to work this Bill. What we are concerned with is what the Bill makes possible.
VISCOUNT GAGE: I wish the noble Lord could make one point clear. He has been talking as if the Land Commission will act in future entirely on their own behalf. I think they will have the power to act as agents for other bodies, such as statutory undertakers. The noble Lord was very soothing—
LORD KENNET: Is the noble Lord speaking on the point about the second appointed day, on which I was interrupted?
VISCOUNT GAGE: They have no such powers now. Their powers are confined to what is stated in the Bill. I agree that this point might be taken later.
LORD KENNET: I should be grateful to the noble Lord if he could take that point later. I was in the middle of a piece of argument when I was interrupted by the noble Lord, Lord Conesford. I think, with great respect, Lord Conesford is legally quite right, but in practical terms I think he is mistaken. If I come to Parliament and ask Parliament to approve an Order which will give me powers considered many months or a year before, then if Parliament does not like the powers I am asking for it will refuse me the Order. This is why we have done this by Affirmative Resolution.
To conclude, I hope that what I have said may have removed some objections, doubts and cavils in the minds of noble Lords opposite. If not, let me say that I must agree with my noble friend that this Amendment to Clause 6 is a wrecking Amendment. I appreciate the sincere concern from which it arises, but it is a fact that if the Amendment were passed

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as it now stands it would make a nonsense of a lot more of the Bill than I think noble Lords opposite realise, and that quite a major revision of the Bill would have to ensue. In view of the forthright statement by Lord Brooke of Cumnor that he was moving the Amendment only in order to extract from the Government some view of what another purpose might be beyond the four; and in view of the fact that I have offered him another hypothetical purpose I would ask the noble Lord whether he would agree to withdraw the Amendment. If the Opposition are determined to insist on these points, or part of them, I would rather they did so at a later stage when possibly some contact can have taken place on, if I might put it in a Party sense, minimising the wrecking effect of the Amendment which they now propose.
THE EARL OF SWINTON: I should like to intervene for one moment in order to reinforce what my noble friend has said on this matter. The noble Lord, Lord Kennet, has made one of the most sweetly reasonable speeches that I have heard even him make in this House, ideally suited to the temper of the debate and aimed at reducing the anxieties of the House. But it was such an able speech that your Lordships will have realised that it did not answer any of the objections which were raised by my noble friend Lord Brooke of Cumnor. I am not sufficiently well acquainted with all the details in this Bill to say with certainty what would or would not he required in some Order or Resolution which may be brought forward at some future date. What I am quite sure of, as a matter of principle, is this: what matters is what is put into the Bill today. Anything that happens in future will be conditioned by what is laid down in this Bill. Supposing we pass these clauses without amendment and then some Order is produced later on, we shall be told, "You have passed the main principle. This is strictly in accordance with it".
Time and again it has been said on both sides of the House, "If you want to be sure about a thing put it into the Bill." All we get is undertakings from Ministers—"You know what reasonable people we are." The noble Lord is a very reasonable person. If he were just
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going to administer this Bill—and I know that he will progress a great deal further than his present office—but if he had to do so now in his present office as Parliamentary Secretary, he would have to do what he was told. It is the powers that matter. I certainly would not entrust the Commission with these powers. I am sure the noble Lord would be very reasonable about it. I am equally certain that if the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, were running the Commission he would be entirely unreasonable. He told us to-day, with great frankness, that the whole purpose of the Bill is to enable the Commission to go and collar any land they can, anywhere, for any purpose they may have in view.
LORD MITCHISON: No.
THE EARL OF SWINTON: I hope tomorrow the noble Lord will read what he said. Certainly I was listening very closely to his speech—in fact I had a hearing aid to help me—and I could not find any limitation upon the powers that he would exercise. We know quite frankly what his views are in this matter. I think it is all the more reason, now that we are legislating, that we should put the thing down in the Bill. The Minister in charge of the Bill, Lord Kennet, said he thought that my noble friends on the Front Bench were making rather heavy weather about this business. Well, I daresay Ahab said that Naboth was making rather heavy weather about his vineyard. But the powers which Ahab exercised did not do him much good in the latter end.
LORD MITCHISON: I rise for the third time—I am sorry that ear trumpet has been so inefficient—just to make clear what I did and what I did not say. I did not say that there was no limitation whatever on the powers of the Commission to take land. On the contrary, I said—I think three times—that, first of all, it had to be land that they considered suitable for material development, which I think is a real limitation; and, secondly—and this is a very important consideration which all noble Lords opposite never think fit to mention—that there have to be certain conditions about planning permission. Naboth no doubt had a very nice vineyard, but it certainly was not scheduled for industrial development. There is a difference, after all.

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I wonder whether I could ask the noble Lord who is the Chairman what is the right course. Are we going to have an opportunity of discussing Clause 7 separately?
THE DEPUTY CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (LORD STRANG): I think that is for the Committee to settle.
4.31 p.m.
THE EARL OF MANSFIELD: Unfortunately for the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, he is not the character in the Hunting of the Snark who said:
"When I say a thing three times, it is so."
But that is fortunate for everyone else. The highly laboured explanation of the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, has left me more apprehensive than before, as there slipped out of the Fascist legislative bag one more mangy cat—namely, the admission that the Land Commission would probably spend their time collecting odd pieces of land for purposes totally unspecified. I can only compare that to the famous South Sea Bubble Company, which was founded to make great profits but nobody was to know how. I cannot see that any good purpose can be served by concealing the purpose for which land is going to he acquired for public reasons. After all, it is not a question of the value of the land going up and someone making extortionate profits. Everyone knows that the value of the land will be determined by a very upright body, the district valuers, and that no landowner can demand more than they arc prepared to give. All in all, one can only look at this as a secret and decidedly underhanded attempt to bring on the nationalisation of land—at least, of building land—although that is what at the moment Her Majesty's Government seem very strenuously attempting to conceal.
LORD HASTINGS: May I ask the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, one question? He made it very clear that the purpose was the administrative convenience of the Land Commission. He did not say it was vitally necessary for the purposes of the Bill to have these powers: it was administratively convenient. Does he really think that the administrative convenience of his Government, or any Government in the future, should be allowed to override the basic rights of the private citizen to know why his land is
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going to be compulsorily purchased, in order that he may be able to make a relevant objection? Is there any reason why any Government should ever be allowed, for administrative convenience, to override what is a fundamental principle of human rights?
LORD KENNET: I think, if the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, looks at Hansard tomorrow, he will see that the words "administrative convenience" were used in a discussion on the Question. Whether Clause 1 shall stand part of the Bill? I did not use those words in this context. Secondly, the question of objections falls to be discussed under Clause 8, and we have already gone pretty wide. Lastly, may I remind the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, before he uses his automatic majority to amend this clause, that the Amendment is in his name and that he used the words, "I move this Amendment only in order to extract from the Government what might be some other reason beyond the four for which the Land Commission might use compulsory purchase powers", and that I have given him another reason beyond the four.
LORD SALTOUN: I should like to assure the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, that any majority in this House is by no means automatic. I have been listening to everything that has been said and holding my mind absolutely free, and I think most noble Lords have, too.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: In a fairly long Parliamentary experience I have never heard an Amendment, described by the Government as a wrecking Amendment, discussed in such a cheery spirit on both sides as this has been. I think that this is a good omen for our subsequent proceedings. The noble Lord, Lord Kennet, has just given your Lordships a somewhat free paraphrase of words I used when I moved the Amendment, but what I want to do is to examine how far he has taken us. He sought to separate the concept of the second appointed day from the concept which is embodied in subsection (4)of Clause 7: that the Land Commission need give no reason why they wish to acquire certain land compulsorily. I hope I made clear in my opening speech that my main concern here was to protect the individual who is faced with a compulsory purchase order and is handicapped in

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fighting that by the body who are seeking compulsorily to acquire his land refusing to give any reason why they want to acquire it.
When I asked the noble Lord to state the additional purposes which the Land Commission might have over and above those in subsection (4) of Clause 6, he said at first that he could think of one and then he said that he could think of many others. Then he named the one: that being that the Land Commission might wish to assemble land slowly for long-term development. I should have thought that that was within their powers under paragraph (b) of subsection (4) of Clause 6, which says that the Land Commission, from the first appointed day onwards can acquire land compulsorily for
"securing that the land is developed…as part of an area which, in the opinion of the Commission, ought to be developed as a whole".
That seems to me almost precisely the purpose for which the noble Lord said that the Commission would require second-appointed-day powers. I hope the noble Lord can do better than that.
We are genuinely anxious to have defined further the additional purposes. We are not challenging these purposes. We are not challenging the general idea underlying subsection (4) of Clause 6, that the Land Commission should have power to acquire land compulsorily for reasons which go far beyond the purposes for which compulsory purchase can be carried out nowadays. If we were challenging that, this Amendment would be a wrecking Amendment. I accept that. I am not anxious to quarrel unnecessarily or prematurely with the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, as he knows. But I really feel that unless the noble Lord can give us an assurance that when we come to Clause 7 the Bill will be altered, so that the Land Commission will be required to indicate the purposes for which they are seeking to acquire land compulsorily, we must divide on the appropriate Amendment. However, I am quite prepared, if your Lordships think fit, to withdraw my Amendments to Clause 6, which will leave the concept of the second appointed day in the Bill, and then we can go further when we come to Clause 7, or at a later stage in the Bill, as to what these purposes will be and whether the Land Commission will be required to state them.
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I was not greatly impressed by the noble Lord's argument that the Land Commission, having acquired land compulsorily for one purpose might wish to use it for another purpose. Frankly, it seems to me that there is something dishonest in acquiring land compulsorily for one purpose and then switching one's intention. It can be done in certain circumstances, if I remember the law rightly, when a local authority which has acquired land compulsorily can satisfy the Minister that, though the land is no longer required for the original purpose, it is required for another purpose for which it also has compulsory powers—
LORD PARGITER: Would the noble Lord forgive me for one moment? Suppose that, after the land is acquired for the purpose specified in the planning arrangement already provided for by the local authority within the development plan, the planning authority itself alters the development plan by agreement to some other concept which is generally accepted, under the conditions that it is proposed should be applied because the land was acquired for a specific purpose, the Land Commission would not readily be able to use it for another purpose notwithstanding that planning permission had been given for a different, and probably better, purpose.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: This seems to me to be a matter which we might well examine further. What I do not think is fair is for the Government to ask your Lordships, because certain difficulties will arise if the Land Commission change their minds at a later stage, to excuse the Land Commission from giving any indication of their purpose on the occasion when they are originally purchasing the land. That is what I am contending for. As I say, I am ready to withdraw my Amendments to Clause 6, provided that the Government will help us further on subsection (4) of Clause 7 or, alternatively, I hope we shall have an opportunity to divide on it. Having said that, I beg to withdraw Amendment No. 1.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
VISCOUNT GAGE: Since I put down Amendment No. 2 it has been represented to me that the Bill gives more protection to local authorities than that proposed in the Amendment. The point is that if

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the Land Commission took some course of action which was not agreeable to a local authority then the local authority would have power to appeal against that decision to the Minister, who would then judge the case in his judicial capacity, whereas if the Minister were to take the initiative in the first place that protection would go. I think there is force in that argument, and I therefore do not propose to move my Amendment.
4.43 p.m.
LORD ILFORD LORD ILFORD moved, in subsection (3), to add to paragraph (e):
"and the local authority as defined in section 1(1) of the Housing Act 1957 or section 1 of the Housing (Scotland) Act 1950 consent to such acquisition."
The noble Lord said: This Amendment deals with land which has been declared a clearance area. Your Lordships are aware that the authorities who are authorised to make a declaration of this sort are normally the local housing authorities. The land which is the subject of these declarations is, of course, in most cases occupied by unfit houses and sometimes other buildings. The intention of the local authority is to carry out a slum clearance scheme. The Bill seems to me to produce a rather startling result. The Land Commission have no power to acquire this land until the housing authority make a declaration. The declaration made by the authority then clothes the Land Commission with the necessary powers to acquire the land compulsorily, and the local authority which made the declaration and whose intention it was to carry out a slum clearance scheme may be prevented from doing so, and the land may be used for some other purpose.
I should not like to say that this provision is resented by the local authorities, whose views I am sometimes able to express in your Lordships' House, but the local authorities feel disappointed that where a rehousing scheme is contemplated, as is the case in most instances, they may be prevented from carrying it out by the intervention of the Land Commission, which may have quite different views as to the use of the land. The local authorities feel that before the Land Commission exercise their powers of compulsory acquisition the consent of the local authority should be obtained.
It is, after all, usually the intention of a local authority when they make a declaration of this sort to carry out a comprehensive housing scheme. Their intention ought not to be defeated by the fact that the first step which they take in that direction vests the Land Commission with power to acquire the land compulsorily. In those circumstances, I am proposing that that should happen only with the consent of the local authority concerned; and I hope that the noble Lord will be able to give me some encouragement that something of that nature will be done. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 5, line 44, at end insert the said words.—(Lord Ilford.)
VISCOUNT GAGE: Before proceeding with this I should like to know, on a point of order, whether the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, thinks that this particular Amendment coincides with my next Amendment, which is to leave out paragraph (c) of subsection (4), which I mentioned on Second Reading and which he said he would prefer to deal with on Report although he wished me to develop my point now. It is rather the same point as that of my noble friend Lord Ilford, but I am in the noble Lord's hands.
LORD KENNET: I am grateful to the noble Viscount for giving me the opportunity of advising him. Yes; let us take them together, if that is procedurally correct.
VISCOUNT GAGE: As I have said, I raised this point on Second Reading, and the noble Lord said he would prefer to deal with it later. I said I was particularly concerned with these schemes of comprehensive redevelopment, to which my noble friend has referred. They are often very difficult, they can be very controversial, they can be very speculative and they always mean locking up a great deal of money for at least ten years. I think this is borne out by the Government, who have issued a circular, to which I referred, in which they call attention to the number of schemes in the pipeline, several hundred, and say that, if they were all implemented forthwith, it would place far too great a strain on the finances of the country. They foreshadow some sort of rationing scheme. At the same

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time, in the Local Government Bill a 50 per cent. grant was foreshadowed for these schemes.
I welcome this approach, which seems to me a very workmanlike approach, but I would call attention to the fact that never once in this matter of comprehensive redevelopment are the Land Commission mentioned, either in the Local Government Bill or in the circular. However, when we come to the Bill we find that apparently the Land Commission are given powers parallel to those given to the local authorities. I have always found in life that if you give two people the same job to do there is very likely to be some confusion, and, indeed, that if it is an unpopular job it may not get done at all. I feel that this matter, which I was proposing to raise on Clause 3 but which has already been raised by my noble friend Lord Ilford, requires some very careful examination.
It seems to me that one interpretation is that local authorities can apply to the Commission for assistance; and this is borne out by the Second Reading speech of the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, who talked about the Land Commission normally coming into this as a result of an invitation from a local authority. That might equally mean that, in abnormal circumstances, the Land Commission might come in uninvited.
In any event, I think that some local authorities may well interpret this in a way in which the Government, perhaps, do not entirely anticipate. I think some of them may well say that if the Land Commission are going to do all this work, let them get on with it; let them designate the area and get the district valuer's valuation for the purchase price of this area (which will probably take them about two years); let them discover from the Government whether they can have office or industrial content (and they will be very clever if they can find that out); let them find the private enterprise who will share in the work of redevelopment, if they can, and let them finance the operation because they might say that their ratepayers are in a somewhat mutinous state of mind. I think that the nakedness of the Land Commission will be exposed because, with their present resources, I do not think the Commission will be able to do any redevelopment at all.
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I would suggest that in present circumstances, to avoid this confusion, it ought to be made crystal-clear, first, that the responsibility for these schemes rests fairly and squarely, as it does at present, on the shoulders of the local authorities; and, secondly, that if the Government wish us, the local authorities, to work in with the Commission they should at least lay down some procedure by which we could make that application and some of the conditions they wish to apply. I hope very much that the Government will make clear at the outset that if there is any question of superseding a local authority—and this is the point that my noble friend made—if there is any question of putting in the Land Commission to do the job of a local authority, that step should be taken by the Minister using his default powers, which are very extensive and quite well known. I think that if the Commission themselves try to play the part of "Big Brother" to the local authorities that will create a good deal of hostility, and may cause deadlock.
Although I think this is very unlikely to result, because of the temporary lack of resources of the Commission, I think it would be as well if the procedure could start off on the right foot. For that reason I support the sense of my noble friend's Amendment, and I put my own Amendment under the same head.
4.53 p.m.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: My noble friends Lord Ilford and Lord Gage have spoken in general terms on this particular paragraph of the subsection. If I may, I should like to ask the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, a rather detailed and technical point, about which, I am afraid, I have not given him notice. If he cannot reply this evening, it will be entirely my fault. The point is that, as I understand the Bill as it stands, the Land Commission will have power to acquire land compulsorily once a resolution making the area a clearance area has been passed by the local authority. What usually happens in these cases is that the local authority passes a resolution to make a certain area into a clearance area and the property in that area falls into two categories: first, slum property itself; secondly, other property

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in the area which is either housing, but not unfit housing, or, alternatively, property of some character other than housing. In either case the two ancillary types of property are required, not because they are slums but because a properly shaped area for redevelopment is needed.
When it comes to the ordinary slum clearance compulsory purchase inquiry, under the Housing Acts, what happens is that the people whose houses are slums which have been declared to be slums by the local authority have their land coloured pink on the map, and all the other areas required to be compulsorily acquired so that the area can be of a suitable size and shape are coloured grey. Almost always there is a great deal of discussion about whether one or another property—it is usually always a house—should be pink orgrey. The difference is this: if it is pink, the compensation is based on site value only, whereas if it is grey it is based on market value. Therefore the people who own those houses take a good deal of trouble to persuade the confirming authority—the Minister of Housing or in Scotland the Secretary of State—that, instead of being slums, their houses are required in order to make a proper shaped area. That is sometimes a very difficult process, and it certainly arouses a great deal of hard feeling in certain cases among owners of the property concerned.
What is going to happen under this Bill? As I understand it, the resolution will have been passed declaring an area to be a clearance area. I do not know whether at that stage the local authority will have made up its mind which properties, in the terminology I have used, are pink and which are grey. These are the colours that are used on the map. If the Land Commission come in when this sort of decision has been made, and put a compulsory purchase order on the whole of the land, is the decision whether the compensation is going to be site value or market value going to depend on what the original decision of the local authority was as to the classification of the land, or will there be an opportunity for the person who owns one of these houses which is a little marginally one way or the other, to say, at the compulsory purchase in-
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quity promoted by the Land Commission, that his house is not a slum and is required only as ancillary to those that are slums? This will make a great deal of difference, and I think it most important to know how this procedure will operate, because the ordinary Housing Act procedure will not be followed if this Bill is implemented under paragraph (e).
It may be that there is no gap here, and that there is a perfectly sensible explanation. If there is I should be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, if he can either tell me this afternoon, or perhaps communicate with me later and give me some guidance on this matter, which is one that has not previously been raised on the Bill.
LORD KENNET: I will deal with the last point first. When the noble Viscount began expounding this interesting but not unfamiliar problem of "pink" and "grey" houses, I had two courses of action open to me. One was to look through the Bill to see whether I could find an answer; the other was to continue listening to his arguments. I chose the latter course, and I shall have to let him know later who looks after this matter in the case which he has described.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: I am not unfamiliar with the Bill. I do not think there is anything in it which will be of help; but I may be wrong.
LORD ILFORD: May I intervene? The answer, I think, is that it depends on what authority the land is allocated to.
LORD MITCHISON: I will not take up the time of the Committee by providing what I believe is the answer; but it is to be found in Sections 42 and 43 in the Housing Act 1957.
LORD KENNET: The two series of Amendments before us both concern this question of the relationship between the Land Commission and the local authority on development questions. I should like first to speak about Lord Ilford's Amendment. The effect of adopting it would be to subject a purchase by the Commission, where there was no other "planning decision" as set out in Clause 6(3) on the land except that it is part of a clearance area, to the consent of the local authority. I think I would beg the Committee to put out of their mind any thought that the Land Commission

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are going to go roaring around the country either concealing their true intentions and "bagging" land for improper purposes or preventing the local authorities from doing jobs which they do already very well. The whole purpose is to supplement the local authorities' powers, duties and functions: at the very most to complement them, but in no sense ever to be a substitute for them.
There will, I think, be no dispute between local authorities and the Land Commission over who shall purchase this or that development area or clearance area; and when a local authority wanted to purchase such an area, whether it was planning to use compulsory powers or not, I cannot see any reason why the Commission should want to nipin and do so first. There may be circumstances—
LORD ILFORD: Suppose the Commission may desire to adopt quite a different use for the land, which the local authority does not want.
LORD KENNET: Then it would be subject to planning permission, which is in the hands of the local authority. One might imagine a case where there was a discussion between the local authority and the Land Commission—say that the Land Commission has one great development scheme and the local authority has another and in between there is an area ripe for development. It might then be difficult to decide which should make the purchase.
This leads me on to the Amendment of the noble Viscount, Lord Gage. I am glad we are able to take these two Amendments together, because they face in opposite directions to an interesting extent. Answering the point of the noble Viscount, Lord Gage, about the recent Ministry circular on central area redevelopment, I may say that this had nothing to do with the Land Commission one way or the other. It simply reflected the present economic stringency and would have been sent out in any period of economic stringency, whether or not there was a Land Commission in the offing. It was to ask local authorities to exercise all the caution and discretion which they possibly could in putting forward plans for new central area redevelopment, and to tell them something about the criteria being adopted by the
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Minister in deciding which to approve, and when.
I think that the noble Viscount, Lord Gage, was mostly worried about the danger that local authorities might lie back and leave all initiatives to the Land Commission. First of all, the Commission do not detract from the powers of local authorities at all. The powers which local authorities already have to buy land for re-development, and indeed, to carry out the redevelopment, continue absolutely unaffected by the Bill. The Land Commission's powers supplement them. The difference is obviously that the Commission are a national body which, for a variety of reasons, will have powers to buy land for development, and obviously there may be circumstances in which it would he more efficient for the Commission, who have acquisition as their particular, and indeed primary, role, to buy land on behalf of a local authority. Naturally, one would not assume that any body would buy land on behalf of any other body which did not want it. That would be a ridiculous risk to start facing at this stage.
The interests of the other public authority—in this case the local authority—are fully protected by the existing law and by provisions in the Bill. The Land Commission cannot use the power in Clause 6(4)(c) without approval either of that public body—that is the local authority—or of the Minister; as, if I remember rightly, the noble Viscount, Lord Gage, himself pointed out in an earlier intervention. In practice, it is likely that the Commission will use these powers only at the invitation of the other body, in this case the local authority. As a matter of fact, an informal invitation that the Land Commission should act on behalf of a group of local authorities has already been received and will be waiting for the Land Commission on the first appointed day. I think the pattern we can see developing is that the Commission will do certain jobs which, as I said in an earlier discussion on this point, local authorities are too small or inconveniently placed, or have insufficient powers to do for themselves.
It comes down to this. On this question of the relationship between the two things, the national body and the local body which has these powers, it is difficult to devise the right system. The

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Government believe that they have the right system, and they are confirmed in this belief by the fact that the two sets of Amendments we are considering seem to be based on opposite preoccupations. If I understood him aright, I think the noble Lord, Lord Ilford, was worried mainly that the Commission would go barging around, whisking projects from under the noses of local authorities which were all set to undertake them, and would thereby annoy local authorities and not gain anything; whereas on the opposite side, the noble Viscount, Lord Gage, was worried that the local authorities would say, "Here is a great, big, beautiful, powerful Land Commission. Nobody can expect us to do anything ever again", and would lie back, and would say to the Land Commission, "You do it, won't you". One can see both points of view, but they are conflicting, and I hope the Committee will agree that it will be best to leave Clause 6 as it now stands, as indicating an acceptable middle course between these two worries.
VISCOUNT GAGE: It all sounds too good to be true. I do not think that the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, has done much to lessen the—I would hardly call it "fear"—concern of the noble Lord, Lord Ilford, and myself. It might be that a local authority would take an attitude of intertia or hostility if the Commission started to throw their weight about, but what I think we should have, and I put it to the noble Lord as a reasonable thing to ask, is a little more clarity. There is a great deal of confusion. The noble Lord talks as if we can settle it all over a cup of tea. The Government ought to take a more responsible line. They must lay down, by regulation or by circular, if you like, some indication of what we can really expect, what kind of assistance we can expect from the Commission, if we want their assistance. As I said, the sort of assistance we should very much like is financial assistance, and I do not believe for a second that the Commission can give it. But I should like to see something down on paper.
Perhaps during the passage of the Bill the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, will make a further statement which will clarify the position a little. I am talking about rather major considerations. Here we
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have these very large schemes. Take what I suppose is one of the most obvious which, fortunately, does not occur in very many places in England—that of Piccadilly Circus, which has been under consideration for over ten years. We all have our little "Piccadilly Circuses" in our own small ways, and we are all very concerned about how we are to tackle these jobs and afford the money; whether this is the right time to do it and so forth. We have this circular which promises a rationing scheme, and I think that in a way it is too slack to leave the matter in this position: that we sit down with the Land Commission and hope it will all work out for the best. The Government should give us a little more clarification and assistance.
LORD KENNET: On the point about information, of course the Government will provide a ceaseless flow of information about everything, from policy directives and regulations to gentle advice. I am not sure that now is the time for me to try to tell the Land Commission and local authorities how to get on together. We are discussing a concrete Amendment to a concrete clause in a concrete Bill. Perhaps I should tell the Committee that the Government are going to issue not one but more than one—I am not sure whether it will be three or four—explanatory statements about the Bill, each one for a different kind of readership. Whether it would be appropriate to talk about relations with local authorities in these statements I am not sure, without reflection. Probably it would, and I will see to it that, when prepared, these papers fully cover the point made by the noble Lord.
LORD ILFORD: With reference to what the noble Lord. Lord Kennet, has just said, I should have thought that he could give us an assurance that this question of the apparent conflict between the Land Commission and local authorities, where an area has been declared a clearance area, will be the subject of one of the pamphlets of which he spoke. I do not think that it is beyond the wit of the Minister to indicate the sort of circumstances in which the Land Commission may act in reference to local authorities, and vice versa. If something of the sort were done, I think it would go a long way to relieving local authorities of apprehensions they feel at the moment

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But the local authorities have no wish to live otherwise than in harmony with the Commission. In these circumstances, though the noble Lord has not given me very much, I ask leave to withdraw my Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
LORD KENNET LORD KENNET moved to add to the clause:
"( ) In relation to planning permission granted on an outline application (that is to say, an application for planning permission subject to subsequent approval on any matters) the reference in subsection (3)(a) of this section to the development authorised by the planning permission shall be construed as including all development for which planning permission was granted on that application either with or without any requirement as to subsequent approval."
The noble Lord said: At the Report stage in the House of Commons the present Clause 99(3) was inserted because it was evident from comment in the legal Press and elsewhere that there was confusion in the minds of the public about the meaning of the words "authorised by planning permission", which were used in various places in Part III of the Bill. Clause 99(3) made it clear that these words meant that any detailed planning consents necessary under an outline planning permission must have been obtained before any work done was authorised by that planning permission. Clause 99(3) was drafted to apply to the whole of the Bill, because otherwise there would be room for confusion. We have now realised, however, that the Amendment has had more severe repercussions on Clause 6(3)(a) than was expected and has made it clear that the Commission would not be able to buy land where the planning permission was in outline and the necessary detailed planning consents had not been obtained. The present Amendment puts this right by ensuring that, in this paragraph, a planning permission without such detailed consents having been obtained is sufficient. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 6, line 38, at end insert the said subsection.—(Lord Kennet.)
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: We are grateful to the Government for having introduced this Amendment, which clarifies the position, and I understand that when we come to Clause 99, that
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also is to be appropriately amended. I think that we on this side may have something more to say about Clause 99 and its effect on the remainder of the Bill, but I certainly have nothing but welcome for the present Amendment.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
On Question, Whether Clause 6, as amended, shall stand part of the Bill?
5.13 p.m.
LORD WADE: I should like to offer a few observations before we leave Clause 6. It seems clear from the clause and the subsequent clauses in Part II that, apart from the levy, which we shall discuss later, the Bill is primarily concerned with the buying and disposing of land, and so duplicating the compulsory purchase procedure. I regard this as very unfortunate, first, because it has led to this legislative monstrosity, the Land Commission Bill, and secondly, because it is diverting attention from the real needs.
Let us consider some of these in relation to local authority development, which has already been referred to in the debates on some Amendments. I am thinking particularly of the development of town centres. There are imperfections in the development of our town centres. In some cases, development is on too small a scale. In some cases there is too much piecemeal development. In some cases, local authorities have had to rely on private developers. There are some good private development firms, and I am not criticising these but others are not so good. They are bound to think of development in terms of rent that can be obtained, and are often not able to go into a development on a sufficiently large scale.
Again, local authorities have not always the expert advice they need in terms of architecture and planning. The real need is for finance and first-class professional advice. It does not necessarily follow that these will be provided by the setting up of a Land Commission with these powers of acquisition. There is a strong case for a development corporation, which would be concerned with helping and financing development and providing expertise. This idea has been advocated for many years by my Liberal colleagues and it is here perhaps that we part company with the Government.

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We believe that there is a real need for finance, as has been made clear by other noble Lords who are knowledgeable on the subject, and for more expert advice, and I do not think that these powers of acquisition are going to help us very much.
So far as private builders are concerned, there is undoubtedly a shortage of land, particularly in areas like the South-East of England. This is due to population drift and we shall cure that only by altering the movement of population. But there are cases of the holding back of land which might be useful to private builders. I do not think that any of the proposals in this Bill are going to help very much in this matter of the holding back of land. If anything, the levy will deter people from putting land on to the market. I do not think that the powers in this clause are going to help.
Finally, it is clear from the comments already made that the great uncertainty is how the Land Commission will work out in practice. We have had helpful observations from the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, about how he sees the situation at the present moment, but we do not know what is going to happen in future. It may be that the Land Commission will do very little, but it is possible they may attempt to build up a big empire. We need to look at this aspect with great caution and to remember that the Commission will not be meeting the most important needs.
LORD KENNET: I was most interested in what the noble Lord, Lord Wade, said, especially about architectural advice and finance. These things, as I expect he knows, are near to the heart of our Ministry, and have been long before the Labour Ministers ever got there. We think that we are doing not too badly in many ways and we are planning to do better than we do now. These are not matters that can be dealt with by the Land Commission, who are a body for the acquisition and development of land, and not for giving advice or finance to help other people who are doing that. These things are better done by other State organisations and other private organisations.
Clause 6. as amended, agreed to.
Clause 7:
Compulsory purchase orders: normal procedure.
7.
(4) In relation to a compulsory purchase order which is made on or after the second appointed day—

(a) so much of any regulations made under the Acquisition of Land Act as requires a notice relating to a compulsory purchase order to specify the purpose for which the land is authorised to be compulsorily purchased, and

(b) so much of Schedule 1 to that Act as requires any notice relating to such an order to specify the purpose for which the land is required.

shall not apply.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR moved to leave out subsection (4). The noble Lord said: I have already stated my objection to this subsection, when we were discussing the group of Amendments, including this one, at an earlier stage. This is an Amendment to leave out the subsection which frees the Land Commission after the second appointed day from any duty of specifying the purpose for which the land is to be compulsorily purchased. My noble friends and I are vehemently opposed to any provision by which a person may have his home, his house or his land taken away from him by a public body which is under no obligation whatsoever to state the reason why it wishes compulsorily to purchase that house or land. We are vehemently opposed to it, and I am sure that the vast majority of the British public is, too. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 7, line 40. leave out subsection (4).—(Lord Brooke of Cumnor.)
LORD CHAMPION: We discussed this Amendment on the moving of the first Amendment on the Marshalled List to-day. I must say that when I saw the Amendment I thought that it was consequential on earlier Amendments, and that what happened on the first Amendment would necessarily decide what happened to the other Amendments which the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, mentioned at the outset of his speech on Amendment No. 1. The fact is that we are here, I imagine, going to take a decision as to the use of this second appointed day procedure. I rather think this is the case, because otherwise the

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noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, would not have moved this Amendment, which, as I say, appears to me to be consequential.
The noble Lord and his friends do not like the powers which we propose in this Bill to grant to the Land Commission after the second appointed day, and they want us to stick throughout the life of the Land Commission to the powers as they will be in being between the first and second appointed days. I am sure that we are at one in what. I have now said.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: I think I may be able to help the noble Lord, Lord Champion. My Amendment here is a narrow one. I was at an earlier stage asking the Government if they would explain what additional purposes the Land Commission might have in mind for compulsory purchase after the second appointed day; but I am, for the purpose of this Amendment, assuming that there are certain purposes not specified—and we may have to return to that on the Report stage. This Amendment does not in any way destroy the second appointed day; it does not in any way destroy the possibility of there being further purposes for which the Land Commission may be seeking to secure. All that this Amendment does is to require that the Land Commission will state in their notice of compulsory purchase the purpose for which they desire to purchase the land compulsorily.
LORD CHAMPION: This makes it much easier for me. I merely have to reply, it seems to me, on a technical point, and not over the wide dispute previously discussed. Subsection (4) is in the Bill for a technical reason. After the second appointed day the Commission's powers compulsorily to acquire land are unfettered by the need to show that it is being acquired for one of the purposes set out in Clause 6(4). The provisions in the 1946 Act relating to specifying the purposes—which means purposes such as are set out in that subsection—are inappropriate. This subsection is therefore a direct corollary to the Commission's powers in the second stage. To delete it would make it impossible for the Commission to comply with the procedural requirements under the Acquisition of Land Act. There is no implication in this subsection that the Commission will not know to what use the land should
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be put. There will be a planning decision within the sense of Clause 6(3).
The Opposition will, I am sure, recognise that, the Committee having decided on an earlier Amendment that the second appointed day and the powers thereafter available to the Commission should remain part of the Bill, this subsection must remain in the Bill as well. This is the technical reply to the points which the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, put to me on the technical aspect of this, and the fact that he has let me off the hook about the wider implications of the whole of this business of the second day is certainly welcome to me.
VISCOUNT GAGE: Perhaps I could ask the noble Lord one question. I think after the second appointed day the Commission have powers to act not only on their own behalf, but on behalf of other Government Departments or perhaps statutory undertakers. Would I be right in thinking that under these powers the Commission could acquire land without disclosing the purpose for which it is required, and then, in the case of, say, a reservoir, which may not have appeared on the planning map at all, suddenly announce to the landowner that it was intended to submerge his land and his house under about 20 feet of water? The noble Lord, Lord Champion, is a very reasonable man. Would he think that this was a reasonable position to put somebody in?
These technical arguments do get you into some difficulty when you are dealing with human problems. If I am told that this cannot happen, then I will withdraw. But acting as an agent for all kinds of people, and relying simply on the fact that something may or may not have appeared in a development plan—and I know how easily these things can be changed by ministerial intervention—I think it would be very wrong to apply this procedure to a process of acquisition which for many years has been carried out under well-known safeguards.
LORD CHAMPION: I am not absolutely sure if I have the noble Viscount's point, but it seems to me that he is rather questioning the situation of the Commission, having purchased land for one purpose, using it for another. Is that the point the noble Viscount was on? If it was, then clearly we shall be dealing with

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this later, on what I regard as a Crichel Down Amendment.
VISCOUNT GAGE: That is not quite the position. I am dealing with the point where the Land Commission acquire land without stating any reasons, which I understand is the purpose of the Bill as drafted, and then subsequently, under the general guise of a planning consent given by a Minister, perhaps, over the heads of a local authority, putting a citizen into a position from which at present he is safeguarded under various procedures. And I instanced the possibility of a reservoir being put on to a man's land without his previous knowledge and entirely without the protection which he has now.
LORD CHAMPION: First of all, there has been a planning decision, which will show use. Then the noble Viscount is putting to me: What will be the point if there is a change in the mind of the owning authority about the use of that piece of land? I should not like to answer "off the cuff", as it were, quite in the terms which the noble Viscount has stated. I would rather see what he said in Hansard to-morrow, and write to the noble Viscount, so that I can give him an authoritative answer on the point. I must admit that I thought he was on the point of the land being put to another use by an alteration or another decision of the Land Commission, and that we shall be dealing with on a later Amendment.
LORD SILKIN: I must say that I do not feel very happy either at the terms of the Amendment, which I do not think is really what the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, wants, or at the terms of the reply. What I believe this Committee are trying to get at is this. Admittedly there are circumstances in which the Land Commission will desire to acquire land for reasons other than those specified in Clause 6(4) or which they are not in a position to disclose at the time. My own view is that the Government ought to be prepared to reconsider Clause 7(4) instead of merely saying that they are not obliged to give reasons or the purposes for which the land is required. They should elaborate on it, indicate words which will enable them to go beyond what they said at the time of the acquisition, but subject to confirmation by some authority, the Minister, or somebody of
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that sort. The public are entitled to something more than a negative statement that. "We are going to acquire your land, and we are under no obligation to tell you the use to which we are going to put it". I do not think that can really stand up at all.
Nor is it an answer to say that it is subject to Clause 6(4). That is being highly technical, and I do not think it is good enough, either. If you really mean that, plus some additional ground that may arise hereafter, I think it is much wiser to say so in the Bill and to explain what are the circumstances in which you want to depart from those four conditions in Clause 6(4). I hope the Government will be prepared to give an assurance that they will look at Clause 7(4) again with a view to elaborating and enlarging on it, and giving the reasons why it may become necessary to acquire land in addition to the reasons in Clause 6(4). This is rather complicated, but I hope I have made myself clear.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: I think what has become clear in the course of the debate is this. Your Lordships are not satisfied with the Bill as it stands. Your Lordships are prepared to accept from the Government that there may be certain purposes not so far specified in the Bill for which compulsory acquisition powers may be required after the second appointed day. We on this side think that something specific should be put into the Bill about that, and we are not put off by the argument that maybe the Land Commission will change their mind as to the use of the land. We know that local authorities can change their minds, and under certain safeguards it is possible for them to switch land from one purpose to another. There seems to be no inherent reason why an arrangement of that kind should not be inserted in the Bill.
The point which my noble friends and I are not going to swallow is the point that is implicit in subsection (4). The noble Lord, Lord Champion, very courteously told your Lordships that this was a technicality. It may be a technicality so far as the course by which it has got into the Bill is concerned, but the fact that a public authority is to be empowered by Parliament to acquire a person's house or land without giving any reason for

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the compulsory acquisition of that house or land is far more than a technicality. I have no doubt whatever that we cannot allow this to remain in the Bill and that we must divide the Committee upon it.
LORD MITCHISON: Before the Government answer, I should like to know what it is that so upsets noble Lords opposite. What they say is that there is a grave infringement of the liberty of the subject if somebody's land is taken away from him without his being told the purpose for which it is bought and, therefore, in most cases the purposes for which it is to be used. I find this rather difficult to follow. What is the present position? Why is it an infringement of liberty? What is the point about it? The man's land is going to be taken anyhow. He is going to be paid a sum for it which in most cases, at any rate, will not be dependent upon the purpose for which it is used. Is it perhaps an attempt to get him some more money in some cases? I do not think so. If it is not, what help is it to him to know the purpose for which his land is to be used?
I would say this much to noble Lords opposite. It is quite easy to pretend that every Government authority is wholly idiotic or wicked; that every public commission always acts for the worse; that red tape gets the better of everyone who has to administer anything, and statements of that sort. But it must be the experience of, at any rate, the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, that the Ministry concerned in this case and the people who constitute the Land Commission are not only ordinary good citizens, but rather above the average. It is really preposterous to suppose that if somebody wants to know the purpose for which his land is to be used, and he asks, they will deliberately refrain from telling him, unless there is some reason, or that if he sends them a stamped addressed envelope they will put it in the wastepaper basket or misuse the postage stamp. It is such an odd view—I cannot understand it.
We are told that a man is supposed to have a right to know the purpose for which his land is requisitioned. This puzzles me. Why is it an infringement of liberty if there is some reason for refusing the information? And if there is no reason, why is it supposed that the matter will not be public property any-
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how and that, so far as it is not public property, he will be told? I think one must assume that even under a Labour Government the Land Commission are going to be a reasonable body, that the Ministry is going to be conducted on reasonable lines, and that the political prejudice which occasionally appears in odd places would have no particular scope here.
VISCOUNT ECCLES: I intervene very briefly. If the Land Commission are a reasonable body, they will know for what purpose they are buying the land. If they do not know what they are buying the land for—and I am not prepared to believe that any Commission would buy land absolutely without any idea—they ought to tell the person from whom they acquire it—and for this reason, which the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, does not seem to appreciate. I have had this sort of thing happen with sites for schools. Sometimes the owner of the land knows about another piece of land which is more convenient. This has happened over and over again. If the man does not know and is not told for what purpose the land is to be used, he has no chance to make an offer. I do not wish to weary your Lordships, but I could certainly quote one case where the owner suggested a far better site, with which everybody afterwards agreed. Why should the man not have the chance to argue the chance for an alternative site?
There is one other point. I think the Government ought to be careful about this departure from previous practice and not telling us what is the national interest. We are in great difficulty in this country because the national interest is so difficult to explain to everybody. Unless we are to become a country with far more controls, we simply must learn how to explain to the ordinary person what the national interest is, and take great trouble to encourage people to cooperate with the Government to do what is the right thing. If we pass laws which absolve the Government from even discussing the national interest with a private citizen, we are doing something very wrong. I hope the Government will look at this again.
LORD MITCHISON: I should like, if I may, to take up your Lordships' time to the extent of replying to the noble

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Viscount, Lord Eccles, on what he said to me. May I give him two instances? When the Wiggins Teape Mill was put up at Fort William, land had to be bought there and the foreknowledge of what was going to happen put up the price of land steeply, no doubt for the benefit of those who owned it but, as I am sure the noble Viscount would agree, not for the public benefit. That is the kind of case which I think my noble friend the Minister in charge of the Bill had in mind when he spoke about a rather different variety of it, buying land piecemeal; that is to say, buying land bit by bit in order to provide for some subsequent major development.
Land produces a lot of feeling. Indeed, I think we can see signs of that here to-day. It produces an assertion of right which I think in this instance is somewhat exaggerated, and I hope that, notwithstanding the criticisms that have been made from both sides of the Committee, the Government will feel it is right to leave to the Land Commission the question of whether they should or should not disclose their intentions.
Also may I remind the noble Viscount and the Committee that what we are considering at the moment is the omission of Clause 7(4), because of two particular statements? We are not considering what is going to happen on objections or anything of that sort, and I should have thought the point raised about a man who had objections and wanted to pursue them was an entirely different point and did not arise.
THE EARL OF MANSFIELD: Has the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, never heard of district valuers, whose final decision the landowner is bound to accept?
LORD MITCHISON: Of course I have.
LORD CHAMPION: I must just make a few remarks to conclude this discussion before we go, as we look like doing, into the Division Lobby. My noble friend Lord Silkin appealed to me and to the Ministers in charge of this Bill to discuss this clause further with the Minister responsible for it in the other place. The noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, did exactly that, too. Whatever happens, whether or not we have a Division, I can assure the Committee that I shall carry the
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points made by both the noble Lords to my right honourable friend because I recognise their authoritative nature and the source from which they have come.
Just now the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, really challenged me, when I started to reply after he had moved this clause, to confine myself to the technical considerations, and then when he got up he made it quite clear that we were going to divide, not on technical considerations but rather on points which were discussed on Amendment No. 1. I must just make this brief reply on this point. In no circumstances will the Commission be buying land anthem wondering what to do with it—to what use it should be put. The clause makes it quite clear that the Commission will be able compulsorily to purchase land only within a framework of decisions by planning authorities, whether they are the local planning authority or the Ministers concerned with planning.
Is there any safeguard for the owner? This seems to me to be the point of most of the speeches that have come from the Opposition Benches. It is quite clear to everyone that the Commission will not be able to deprive an owner of his property merely to be unpleasant. The Commission must act in a responsible manner for they will be responsible to the Minister, who in turn is responsible to the Government, and of course as my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor said on Second Reading, the Commission will be subject to the Ombudsman, and therefore if they act harshly they may very well have their actions questioned before that Parliamentary Commissioner.
There is one other point that I must make on the owner's safeguards. The owner can object on any ground to his property being taken by the Commission, and in particular he can argue that his land is not suitable for material development, which are the operative words in this connection. This is the main issue. I end by saying that I think the Opposition will be quite unreasonable if it goes into the Lobby on this Amendment. I give the Committee the undertaking here and now that I will do what I said in respect of the points raised by my noble friend Lord Silkin and the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: I am quite ready to have conversations with Government spokesmen about any of the matters that have arisen from this series of Amendments of mine, of which this is one. But the noble Lord, Lord Champion, certainly has not met the specific point raised by my noble friend Lord Eccles as to how a good result can emerge from an authority having to disclose the purpose for which it is seeking to acquire land. What troubles me about this is that the Government seem un-
Resolved in the affirmative, and Amendment agreed to accordingly.
House resumed by the Lord Chancellor.
willing to recognise that it is quite wrong for any public authority to be given power by Parliament to acquire somebody else's property compulsorily without giving any reason for it. That is the reason why I think we must divide on this subsection.
5.50 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said Amendment (No. 9) shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 89; Not-Contents, 38.

CONTENTS

Aberdare, L.

Effingham, E.

Milverton, L.

Aberdeen and Temair, M.

Emmet of Amberley, Bs.

Molson, L.

Ailwyn, L.

Falkland, V.

Monsell, V.

Airedale, L.

Faringdon, L.

Mowbray and Stourton, L.

Amory, V.

Fortescue, E.

Newton, L.

Ampthill, L.

Fraser of North Cape, L.

Nugent of Guildford, L.

Ashbourne, L.

Furness, V.

Oakshott, L.

Auckland, L.

Gage, V.

Ogmore, L.

Birdwood, L.

Goschen, V. [Teller.]

Rathcavan, L.

Blackford, L.

Greenway, L.

Redmayne, L.

Boston, L.

Grenfell, L.

Rowallan, L.

Brooke of Cumnor, L.

Grimston of Westbury, L.

St. Helens, L.

Brooke of Ystradfellte, Bs.

Guest, L.

St. Oswald, L.

Buccleuch and Queensberry, D.

Hacking, L.

Saltoun, L.

Carrington, L.

Harlech, L.

Sandford, L.

Chesham, L.

Hawke, L.

Sandys. L.

Colville of Culross, V.

Henley, I..

Savile, L.

Conesford, L.

Howard of Glossop, L.

Sempill, Ly.

Congleton, L.

Iddesleigh, E.

Somers, L.

Craigmyle, L.

Ilford, L.

Strange of Knokin, Bs.

Crathorne, L.

Inglewood, L.

Strathclyde, L.

Crawshaw, L.

Jessel, L.

Suffield, L.

Cullen of Ashbourne, L.

Kinnoull, E. [Teller.]

Swinton, E.

Daventry, V.

Kirkwood, L.

Teynham, L.

Derwent, L.

Long, V.

Thurlow, L.

Dilhorne, V.

Lothian, M.

Vivian, L.

Drumalbyn, L.

Mancroft, L.

Wade, L.

Dundee, E.

Mansfield, E.

Wedgwood, L.

Dundonald, E.

Mar, E.

Wolverton, L.

Eccles, V.

Mills, V.

NOT-CONTENTS

Addison, V.

Hughes, L.

Popplewell, L.

Blyton, L.

Kennet, L.

Shackleton, L.

Bowles, L.

Latham, L.

Shannon, E.

Burton of Coventry, Bs.

Leatherland, L.

Shepherd, L.

Campbell of Eskan, L.

Lindgren, L.

Sorensen, L. [Teller]

Champion, L.

Lloyd of Hampstead, L.

Stocks, Bs.

Collison, L.

Longford, E. (L. Privy Seal.)

Stow Hill, L.

Crook, L.

Mitchison, L.

Taylor of Mansfield, L.

Gardiner, L. (L. Chancellor)

Moyle, L.

Walston, L.

Granville-West, L.

Pargiter, L.

Wells-Pestell, L.

Hall, V.

Peddie, L.

Williamson, L.

Henderson, L.

Phillips, Bs.

Winterbottom, L.

Hilton of Upton, L. [Teller.]

Plummer, Bs.

ARMED FORCES BILL
6.0 p.m.
Order of the Day for the House to be put into Committee read.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Shackleton.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The LORD AIREDALE in the Chair.]
Clause 1 agreed to.
Clause 2 [Power of Defence Council to make regulations as to engagement of persons in regular forces]:
LORD THURLOW LORD THURLOW moved, in subsection (4), to leave out words after the first "and" down to and including "excepted case,". The noble Lord said: For many centuries Parliament has kept close control of the powers given to the Defence Council and its predecessors, the Service Ministries, relating to the numbers of officers and men in the Services, the conditions of service, terms of enlistment and the exercise of discipline. Every year money has to be voted, and the numbers of men that may be maintained, including civilian employees, agreed. I have myself held the appointment, in what was then the vast Middle East Command, as Staff Officer responsible for manpower and establishments, and not only did I, and the Deputy Command Secretary, inspect every headquarters and local unit, but we had to satisfy ourselves that every rank was worthy of its responsibilities and that no passengers were carried, and also that local civilians, when available, should relieve Servicemen wherever possible.
This strict control under the close supervision of Parliament, reduces wastage to a minimum. Up till now, terms of enlistment and conditions of service of personnel for the Army and the R.A.F. have been laid down by Act of Parliament, and can be altered only by Act of Parliament. Great care is exercised. For example, in 1961 the House of Commons spent eight hours discussing terms of enlistment and conditions of service, and here in your Lordship's House, the effect on recruiting of every Service measure is the subject of interventions by many of
544
your Lordships. The Reserve Forces Bill provided a recent example of that. The Bill we are now discussing replaces this system by empowering the Defence Council to alter conditions of service and terms of enlistment by regulation—an important change so far as the powers of Parliament are concerned. This requires close examination.
In the Select Committee on this Bill in the other place two main reasons were given by the Government for this proposal; first, that it would be easier for the Defence Council; and secondly, that it would be quicker. Obviously, it would be easier for the Defence Council to amend or inaugurate any change without Parliamentary approval. So that argument is not enough. The second argument, that it would be quicker, is a reasonable one. In the past up to five years' delay has been experienced, and in these days, when the Armed Services are in competition with industry for the far larger numbers of skilled and potential technicians they now require, there is no time for delays of this nature. So enlistment regulations might have to be altered quickly to take advantage of prevailing conditions. Therefore, we have no objection to a change being made in the law, provided that the procedure is such that Parliament still has the last word and final authority.
As it stands, Clause 2(4) provides for regulations being made by statutory instruments of two sorts. Where it repeals or amends an Act of Parliament, a draft has to be laid before Parliament, and no action on the regulation can be taken for 40 days. Where it does not, the regulations come into force but are subject to annulment by either House during a period of 40 days. My Amendment seeks to ensure that all statutory instruments made by the Defence Council under this clause are laid in draft. I do not seek the Affirmative Resolution procedure, which requires the affirmative vote, because that would take up Parliamentary time, even if the Resolution was not objected to. But we suggest that all these statutory instruments should be laid in draft form, and should come into force unless Parliament passes a Resolution that they should not be acted upon.
The effect of my Amendment, therefore, will he to prevent a regulation from taking effect until 40 days have elapsed after it is tabled. This is not a long

545
period when compared with the delay which exists to-day, of up to five years, and it gives Parliament time to query, and if necessary annul, the regulations before they begin to be implemented, and not after. For if terms of service and enlistment subject to the procedure which the Government propose were annulled at some period within the 40 days, Servicemen would have been admitted from the day the regulation was laid until it was annulled, and their terms of service would have no legality; and it is by no means inconceivable that, before the 40-day period elapsed, the Ministry might have second thoughts, just as the Government have had second thoughts on Clause 25 of this Bill after it has been through all its stages in another place, including two Second Readings. The Defence Ministry would be unwilling to withdraw an enactment which was already being acted upon. But this would be easily possible if no action had been taken on it until the period for Parliamentary approval had expired. A fresh draft would then be laid before Parliament, and no harm would be done.
Another point which was not made in another place occurs to me. The Ministry of Defence and its policies are to a large extent controlled by the Treasury. All projects, large and small, have some financial consequences, and are therefore subject to Treasury approval, not least among them conditions of service. Frequently, the best plan, from the Ministry's point of view, has to be modified because of expense, and a cheaper and sometimes inadequate scheme adopted. Though we may agree to give more power to the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry will always have to obtain Treasury approval for its proposals and it might not be able to obtain approval for a much-needed regulation. In these cases, Parliament might consider that the needs of the country should override Treasury objection, and that more generous conditions of service should be offered. Therefore, Parliament must have the opportunity to study new regulations and, if necessary, to annul them.
I know that the Government have not asked for power for the Ministry of Defence to make regulations which are not subject in any way to Parliamentary approval. But what they are doing is to propose that there shall be amend-
546
ments of regulations which will take effect from the day they are laid before Parliament and will be acted upon even if Parliament sees fit to annul them later. In these circumstances, I think that my Amendment is a reasonable one. It provides a safeguard without imposing a long delay or taking up Parliamentary time in cases where no objections are made. I would ask the Government to accept it. We believe in flexibility in regulations such as these, but we are concerned that proper control should remain with Parliament. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 3, line 25, leave out from beginning to ("a") in line 31.—(Lord Thurlow.)
LORD OGMORE: I should like to support the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Thurlow. There is no need for me to make a long speech because I agree with everything he has said. It is most important in all these cases that the rights and the knowledge of Parliament shall be retained. I feel that the suggestion he has made is a most practical one, and I cannot for the life of me see why the Government should not accept it.
6.10 p.m.
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE ROYAL NAVY (LORD WINTERBOTTOM): I think there is no difference between the two sides of the Committee about the need for Parliamentary control of the Armed Forces. That is common ground. Again, it is further common ground between us that the Affirmative Resolution procedure for regulations covering terms of enlistment and service is too unwieldy a method of controlling this type of regulation, and too wasteful of Parliamentary time. But, having said that, I think that the noble Lord, Lord Thurlow, when he speaks about 40 days, has forgotten one important fact. We are not, of course, taking 40 days as a calendar month and ten more days. We are speaking of 40 working days of this House and the other place. This means that if, shall we say, a regulation were tabled in July and had to await the complete passage of time, including working time, then that regulation, tabled in July, might not become effective until November—that is to say, if the regulation had to be laid in draft in the first place in every case. With the

547
best will in the world, we cannot exactly harmonise our administrative and legislative requirements with the Parliamentary calendar.
For this reason it was felt that in cases where new regulations were being laid—and, after all, these do not cover matters of prime importance, but relate to matters which often require rapid reaction by the Defence Council to the existing circumstances—we felt that it would be easier and quicker to table the regulation and allow the proposals to come into effect immediately. This applies in relation to new proposals. If, of course, we are amending existing legislation, then the tabling of a regulation in draft—the procedure which the noble Lord suggests should apply to all forms of regulation—is necessary and desirable. We are changing existing law, and Parliament must have time to consider it. For that reason we propose this alternative measure where existing legislation and decisions of previous Administrations are being altered.
I do not believe that giving the Defence Council the power to act quickly, subject always to annulment of these regulations by either House of Parliament, is taking away from Parliament its right to control the Armed Forces. In the course of the Parliamentary year we can debate on the Affirmative Resolution the prolongation of the Army and Air Force Acts; there is also an occasion for debate when the Estimates are presented, and there are at least two occasions in the year when set-piece debates on the three Armed Forces can be arranged. In this particular case, when we are considering regulations which are proposed under this Bill, we are always in a position to criticise the Executive and to amend its proposals. All we are asking is that in certain cases where decisions of the Defence Council do not affect existing legislation we should be enabled to act quickly without taking away from Parliament its power to reverse the decisions of the Defence Council.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: I am sure the Committee is most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Winterbottom, for his explanation, but I wonder whether the matter ought not to be thought about once again—I know that it has been dis-
548
cussed before. The noble Lord will tell me if I am wrong, but I believe that hitherto the situation has been that, until this Bill came forward, Parliament has dealt with a large number of these matters by Act. In other words every line of a Bill was gone through in all stages in both Houses and has been subject to great scrutiny.
There are two points on this matter. First of all, it indicates that Parliament is extremely jealous of the detailed matters related to enlistment affairs. Secondly, hitherto it has taken a great length of time to get any changes made. What I understand is being done here is to introduce some sort of compromise: that, instead of the Government having to go to Parliament for a complete new Bill every time, we are now giving the Defence Council power to make regulations. I believe that the Defence Council and its predecessors had other powers heretofore to make regulations which were not even statutory instruments at all. It may be that these are going to be promoted, as it were, so that whereas previously they were instant regulations, they will now become statutory instruments and therefore will be subject to Parliamentary approval of one sort or the other. There is a sort of two-way trend, on the one hand from an ordinary Act of Parliament, and all the time which that entails, and, on the other, from the instant regulation powers subject to no form of approval by Parliament at all. Here we meet in the middle.
The crux of the matter is that whereas the effect of the two methods of regulation-making powers is not very different, there is one very important difference. In a case like the one quoted by Lord Winterbottom, where regulations are laid in July and cannot necessarily be finally through the Parliamentary process before November, then throughout all that period men have been enlisted and other matters have been carried out under them. I am not sure that my noble friend Lord Thurlow was right when he said that if the regulation were annulled all the things which had been done before that moment under the regulations were thereby also annulled. I do not believe that that is the case. On the contrary, I think that all those people who had been enlisted under the

549
regulations which were subsequently annulled would have been validly enlisted and would be bound by the terms of these regulations, even though they subsequently came to grief.
In those circumstances, Parliament is to be presented with a strong argument against rejecting the regulations altogether, because there is no power to amend them anyway. What is going to be said is: "These powers have been in force since July", and some noble Lord in charge of the Department will come along and say that there have been 5,000 or 6,000 men enlisted in the various forces under these regulations, and that it would make the whole thing complete folly for either House now to throw them out. All that would happen would be that there would be 5,000 or 6,000 men who had been enlisted under regulations which were then annulled: these men would be in a group on their own, and the whole thing would have to be started again, and their successors would probably be enlisted under other regulations. If we are coming to a compromise whereby complete freedom and complete Parliamentary control will meet in the middle, would it not be better, even at the expense, on occasion, of a few months' delay, to use the draft procedure?
It is all very well to look at subsection (4)(b) and say that in the case where all those matters which have previously been dealt with by the Bill itself the immediately succeeding regulations will certainly come before Parliament in draft, and therefore will be able to be discussed before they come into force. That is quite true. But the second-generation regulations will not come under that paragraph at all: they will come under the procedure in paragraph (a). So that what we are going to have is an erosion of Parliamentary control immediately after this Bill becomes law. The matters on which Parliament has previously insisted there shall be detailed consideration will still be subject to the draft procedure, but soon the position will be whittled away and after a little we shall get nothing but these regulations under paragraph (a), which are subject to annulment.
I know that it is late in the life of the Bill to mention this, but I believe that it would be a good thing if noble Lords
550
opposite would consider the matter again, for I feel that it would not be a very great inconvenience to deal with the matter entirely under paragraph (b).
6.19 p.m.
LORD SHACKLETON: Parliament is always sympathetic on this subject and is rightly suspicious of Governments', of all hues, seeking to find a convenient way to conduct business without unnecessary delay. I have heard many debates on this subject, particularly in another place. However, I consider that we are making rather heavy weather of this particular matter. This subsection is confined to a comparatively small range of powers. It certainly is not concerned with rates of pay. It is concerned basically with terms of engagement—the sort of matter which an employer deals with pretty quickly, and on which he certainly would not dream of going to the board of the company.
For historic and valid reasons, Parliament has always exercised a jealous control over matters of this sort, but of course, as the noble Lord is now aware, this power has never existed with regard to the Royal Navy. The Royal Navy has been able to recruit without reference to annual, biennial or quinquennial Acts of Parliament. But the fact that we have had a lengthy and cumbersome procedure in the past is not, to my mind, an argument in favour of inserting a piece of cumbersomeness into the procedure which we finally adopt. If noble Lords had felt as strongly as they have suggested they do, I am surprised they have not sought to adopt the Affirmative procedure. This is classically an example of regulation making power which is best dealt with by Negative procedure, and it seems to be a quite unnecessary complication to insert these 40-day delays.
A couple of years ago, I was very anxious to insert a break-point into the six-year engagement arrangements for the Women's Royal Air Force. I was prevented from doing so because I had to wait for an Act of Parliament. But if that particular moment had been at the end of July, as my noble friend suggested, I should certainly have wanted to move quickly. Recruiting figures and recruiting trends are very volatile, and I think it is reasonable that whatever Government are in power should be allowed the maximum flexibility in what

551
they do, subject always to the ultimate supervision of Parliament. I am not sure that I really find the argument with regard to the Treasury convincing. If Parliament think that the Government have been unduly mean, they can always bash the Government and the Treasury by carrying a Prayer against the Order. No Government are going to expose themselves to that sort of situation. But the ultimate power in this matter rests in Parliament, and I hope that this procedure will now be regarded as an honourable compromise.
The noble Lord made a point which is entirely valid, that of course under subsection (4)(b) it will be necessary to lay a draft before Parliament, and his case is that this particular control will be steadily eroded. I am sure it is right, if we are amending an actual Statute—this is a matter of constitutional propriety—that that amendment should be laid in draft, but it is not necessary when we are dealing with Orders. This is almost a matter of respect for the Statute, as opposed to the statutory instrument. Again, it is necessary that Parliament should see that this is laid in draft, because it is conceivable that a Government might go beyond what they ought to do in relation to the Statute. But once that is settled, then the powers are restricted. It is only within that area that subsequent matters can be dealt with by Order under the Negative procedure.
Having listened to the debate, having read very carefully the arguments, and having at one time been attracted by some of the arguments, I am quite satisfied that we have arrived at the right balance in this matter. In these circumstances, I hope that noble Lords will accept this procedure. We have not been given an example of the type of Order or the type of amendment condition which noble Lords opposite might have thought was one which they would have liked to see in draft, in case they wished to annul it before it came into force—
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: Just on that point, I should have thought, with great respect, that it would be an awful mistake for us to suggest the type of matter which we to-day might think was objectionable in this respect, particularly as the noble Lord says that
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these are matters which fluctuate extremely. Surely it would be a very bad thing if we were to try to indicate what we at this moment might consider not objectionable but open to question. I should have thought that that was not the right thing to do to-day.
LORD SHACKLETON: I would have thought that the noble Viscount had quite destroyed his own case. He has said that it would be impossible to foresee circumstances in which one would like to see a statutory instrument laid in draft.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: I did not say that. I could easily foresee circumstances. All I am saying is that I think it would be a pity to say what they are.
LORD SHACKLETON: I think it is an awful pity that the noble Viscount will not say what they are, because I want to be convinced. The clause sets out very clearly the type of matters which will be covered by these Orders. It is very easy to imagine, even by looking at existing terms and conditions which are available to any noble Lord to ascertain, ones on which it would not be right to waste the time of Parliament, and indeed, to delay this rational and effective operation of Government in relation to recruiting and such matters. It is to my mind quite unsatisfactory that we should, without some sort of valid reason, abandon a procedure which is now proposed and which provides the ultimate Parliamentary control. These matters come under the supervision of Parliament, and if Parliament does not like them it can annul the Order.
There are occasions when it is right for the Opposition to die in the last ditch for the protection of Parliamentary freedom, but I can assure the noble Lord that this is not such a major issue and I hope he will now agree to let the matter go. It seems to me that we have arrived at what is a proper compromise. In this matter we are imposing on the Navy a restriction which has never existed before, and this seems to be the right sort of balance which we have settled on.
LORD THURLOW: I am not entirely convinced with the arguments of the noble Lord, but I see the point about the 40-day period. It seems rather odd that we cannot get some better system

553
in Parliament, and that this regulation, whether it is going to be for a period of 40 days or 140 days, should depend entirely on Recesses and such things. But that is the procedure and there it is. I still think that our compromise solution is a better one than the noble Lord's, but I do not feel violently strongly about it and I have no intention of dying in the last ditch on this. I beg leave to withdraw my Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 2 agreed to.
Clauses 3 to 24 agreed to.
Clause 25:
Jurisdiction of civil courts
25.—(1) The Army Act 1955 shall have effect with the substitution, for section 133, of the following section:—
"133.—(1) Where a person subject to military law—
(b) has been charged with an offence under this Act, the Air Force Act 1955 or the Naval Discipline Act 1957 and has had the charged dismissed or has been found guilty of the charge by his commanding officer or the appropriate superior authority,
a civil court shall be debarred from trying him subsequently for an offence substantially the same as that offence; but except as aforesaid nothing in this Act shall be construed as restricting the jurisdiction of any civil court to try a person subject to this Act for an offence.
6.29 p.m.
Lotto SHACKLETON Lotto SHACKLETON moved, in subsection (1)(b), to leave out the words after "this Act" down to and including "of the charge" and to insert "and has had the charge dealt with summarily". The noble Lord said: Before I deal with the Amendment, let me say that the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, raised a very interesting point on Second Reading with regard to this clause, and it may be that in discussing the Amendment we shall have to go rather wider. Since the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, has put down a Motion to leave out Clause 25, I shall try to confine my remarks as much as possible to the Amendments which I am about to move, and if they are acceptable to the Committee we can then have a more general debate on the Question, Whether the clause shall stand part of the Bill? Obviously, I have to go into
554
the basis of the clause to explain these particular Amendments, but if noble Lords want to go wider, then of course we must.
I should like to explain the principle of this clause. Its purpose is to bring the law applying to the Army and the Royal Air Force into line with the Common Law principle that a person should not be tried twice for the same offence. The law applying to the Navy is already in line with that principle. It is against that background that I should like (to turn to the Amendments. These Amendments have two effects. They are designed to correct a technical defect and also to make what is no more than a drafting change.
The technical defect is that, under Section 77(4) of the Army Act 1955, when a commanding officer has investigated a charge against an officer or soldier which he cannot try, the commanding officer—and I quote
"may dismiss the charge if he is of opinion that it ought not to be further proceeded with";
and, in the Air Force Act, the wording is similar. The words "has had the charge dismissed" in the new section, Section 133(1)(b), which is set out in Clause 25(1), therefore have the effect of preventing a person subject to military law from being tried by a civil court if his commanding officer has dismissed a charge which he has no power to try. Although it seems right (we shall come on to this in a moment) to bar the second trial of persons subject to military and Air Force law—and I do not want to prejudge the issue on this—we ought not to bar trial by a civil court if the accused has, in fact, never been tried at all.
It may be of interest to remember that the civil equivalent of the proceedings mentioned in Sections 76 and 77 of the 1955 Act in cases with which the commanding officer has no power to deal summarily is committal proceedings before a magistrates' court when the members of that court are sitting as examining justices. If they have no power to try the charge before them summarily, it is their function to decide whether or not to commit the accused for trial by a higher court; and, if the accused is discharged, he can always be tried later for the same offence because the committal proceedings do not constitute a trial.
It is perfectly reasonable, as I am sure your Lordships would agree, for a commanding officer to end Service disciplinary proceedings when he cannot try the case, as commanding officers are held responsible for the discipline and efficiency of the units they command; but it is a very different matter for them to prevent a civil court from trying a charge which they themselves cannot try and where a civilian may be involved. The replacement, therefore, of the words "has had the charge dismissed" in Clause 25(1) by the words "has had the charge dealt with summarily" will ensure that the new section, Section 133(1)(b), proposed by Clause 25, bars trial by a civil court only where there has already been a summary trial. There is a definition of what is meant in Section 77 by dealing summarily with a charge in each of the 1955 Acts. That is the main case for this Amendment.
The drafting point, on which I must confess I was myself misled at first, is this. The references to the Air Force Act 1955 and the Naval Discipline Act 1957 in the new Section 133 at the end of subsection (2) of this clause are unnecessary as a matter of drafting. It is only necessary for each of the 1955 Acts to bar the subsequent civil trial of persons charged and tried under this Act; and I am therefore proposing at the same time that the unnecessary words be omitted. No comparable change is needed in the Naval Discipline Act, because the relevant section, Section 129, bars a subsequent trial by a civil court for the same offence only where a person subject to that Act has been acquitted or convicted of an offence after a trial. The essential point is that under Section 129(1) the accused must have been tried. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 20, line 17, leave out from beginning to ("by") in line 19 and insert ("and has had the charge dealt with summarily").—(Lord Shackleton.)
LORD OGMORE: I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, for explaining his Amendments. I hope that it will meet the convenience of the Committee if we do not go wide on these Amendments, because, so long as the clause remains in. I think they are an improvement and it would be a great
556
pity to leave them out. That does not mean to say, of course, that I am necessarily accepting the clause as a whole, but if it is the Committee's final desire that the clause should remain in, then I think it is much better that these two Amendments should be in as well. So far as the explanation of the drafting point is concerned, I quite see the force of the noble Lord's explanation, and I accept it.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD SHACKLETON: I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 21, line 2, leave out from ("law") to the end of line 3.—(Lord Shackleton.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
On Question, Whether Clause 25, as amended, shall stand part of the Bill?
6.37 p.m.
LORD OGMORE: As the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, has intimated, on Second Reading I raised a point of principle—and, I think, very important principle—which is contained in Clause 25 of this Bill. As the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, and, indeed, as the noble Lord, Lord Winterbottom, have said, Parliament has always been very jealous of the power of the Army. It has not been so jealous of the power of the Navy; and both Ministers have already used the analogy of the Navy to try to persuade us that the Air Force and the Army should fall into the same category. Historically, Parliament has not been jealous of the Navy because the Navy did not operate on land: it was only the Army which operated on land.
Now from the time of the Commonwealth (when, as your Lordships will remember, the Independents were led by General Cromwell and his major-generals, as they were called, who were also, naturally, Independents) Parliament, representing the civil population, has maintained a close watch over the power of the Armed Forces. This was intensified by the action of James II, who was held by Parliament at that time, both Whigs and Tories, to be maintaining far too large an Army in this country and thereby to be committing actions which were dangerous to the public welfare. This was one of the reasons why he was induced, or, at any rate, decided to abdicate.
Ever since then this hold by the civil power over the military has taken two

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forms. The first has been the Army Act, which, until recently, was passed annually. Many of us in Parliament remember when we used to pass the Army Act annually. The second has been the civil courts' power, which operates at the present moment and will continue to operate unless Clause 25 is passed, to try any member of the Army or the Air Force in a civilian court if he has committed an offence triable by civil law, irrespective of the fact that such an offence may have been tried by court-martial. Your Lordships will find that in the Army Act 1958 under Section 133, and in the Air Force Act 1955 under Section 133. The converse—by reason of Section 134 of those Acts—does not apply. In other words, at the present moment it is an absolute bar to trial by court-martial if a man has been tried by a civil court and has been either convicted or acquitted. It has been so for 300 years. This safeguard is subject to certain qualifications, the main one being that when the civil court decides that it is going to take cognisance of an offence which has been tried by court-martial it must, under Section 133, take into account any punishment that has been awarded by the court-martial. So far as I am aware this has raised no difficulties at all.
The main point of my putting down this Motion is to find out why it is necessary to alter something which has been in existence for very many years, which has a great historical tradition behind it, which is one of the integral parts of our constitutional law and which, so far as I am aware, during the years I have spent in the Armed Forces has never presented any difficulty at all. All soldiers and all officers know quite well that this is the situation and I have never heard anybody complain. I agree that there are, in fact, two rights here. There is the question of the civil liberties of the public vis-à-vis the military and the question of the rights and civil liberties of the man.
If it is felt by the Government that they want to change this situation, it is surely not beyond the scope of Parliamentary Counsel to draft a clause which would ensure, in any case where the civil courts were likely to try a member of the Armed Forces, that the military should not try it by court-martial. I want it to be clearly understood that I have no wish whatever for any member of the Armed Forces
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to be tried twice. If it is felt that there is a danger of that happening, then the offender should not be tried by court-martial. I feel that this clause embodies a very dangerous provision, and I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, can persuade us that it is not. Neither he nor the noble Lord, Lord Winterbottom, gave any particular views on this point during the Second Reading debate, although Lord Shackleton referred to it in rather general terms. I was informed by the noble Lord, Lord Winterbottom, that this would be dealt with in Committee. I have not heard why this change is necessary. I think it is dangerous.
We have a situation in this country where more and more power is being taken almost daily, at any rate weekly, by the Executive, by the Government, by the Civil Service. There is no question about that; it occurs in Bill after Bill. Only this evening we have heard comment by the Conservative Front Bench on certain provisions of the Land Commission Bill. There are numerous Bills which are coming, and which have come, before the House in which the Executive, the Government, have taken large powers over the rights of the individual and over the civil liberties of the public at large. This country is becoming a Socialist State and noble Lords opposite are presumably believers in it; at any rate they are themselves signatories to the proposition that they are aiming at the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange—in other words, they aim at a Socialist State. They are quite entitled to believe in that if they wish. At one time I believed in it myself. When I no longer believed in it I left the Labour Party. I did not quarrel. I may say that I left on the best of terms, as noble Lords opposite will admit, and I am glad to say I am on the best of terms with them now. I have not made any personal enemies. I hope they have not.
It is purely a question of principle. They believe in a Socialist State with all that that means with regard to the centralisation of power—that is the point—in the Government and the Executive; and no Socialist State can operate without it. You can look all round the world at the Socialist State and you will find it is, integrally and essentially, centralisation of power. In certain cases, those where dictatorial power is in command,

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the centralisation of power becomes intensified and everything comes before and is decided by one or two or half-a-dozen people. There are numbers of countries which, within the last ten or fifteen years, have fallen under dictatorship. Unfortunately, this process of dictatorship, this control by the "man on horseback", or a general, is continuing. We have not to go far across the water to see one of those cases. In South America, Africa and Asia, the "man on horseback", the dictator, whether he is a general or not, becomes very prominent indeed. I am not suggesting that any of the noble Lords or noble Ladies opposite wish to become dictators.
A NOBLE LORD: They could not ride a horse.
LORD OGMORE: They may not be able to do so; but in these days the methods of dictatorship have become more mechanised; they do not need horses. The fact is that although they may not want to have these powers and to exercise them, their successors may. That is the point. There are provisions such as these in the Bill, and the provisions will remain for many years to come. I am sorry that the noble and learned Lord who sits on the Woolsack is not here. I should have reminded him that although two or three of his predecessors in office have been canonised as saints, some of his successors may not be of the same character. We may have some doubtful characters in this House or elsewhere in years to come, when present noble Lords and Ladies have passed away and received in Another Place the rewards of their efforts.
In these circumstances I feel it is dangerous to have provisions of this kind in the Bill. It means that if you had a political general operating under a dictatorial government (whether Fascist or Socialist or whatever it may be) he and his officers would no longer be subject to the civil power for anything they had done. If they did something which was of a dictatorial nature they could hold a faked court-martial; that general or those officers could be acquitted, and the civil courts would be powerless to try them. Even in the Commonwealth this did not happen. Even when Cromwell's soldiers were actually fighting against
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the King's soldiers in the Civil War, the magistrates still held control, and on many occasions when Cromwell's soldiers tried to requisition corn or horses they were hauled up before the civil magistrates who happened to be the King's representatives and country gentry, and had great difficulty in getting away. Cromwell found that his own troopers were put in gaol by the civil magistrates for taking horses and corn. So one can see how jealous, all through history, has been the control by the civil courts of the military. I would say that this is an important point that the Committee is being asked to make. It is not a minor one. There is a great historical background. In my view this clause is a dangerous feature which, unless the noble Lords on the Front Bench opposite can explain to the Committee's satisfaction, we should not pass.
6.50 p.m.
LORD SHACKLETON: I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore. He has found an opportunity to make, I will not say a very original historical speech, but none the less one which I think it was just worth hearing. I find it difficult to believe that the noble Lord meant it seriously at all, but it is always terribly difficult to know when the Liberals mean anything seriously or what particular point they are on. I would only say to the noble Lord that we have been listening to a great amount of political talk of a jolly kind, and if the noble Lord seriously thinks that the liberties of this country depend on the maintenance of this particular clause, as opposed to the effective Governmental and Parliamentary control which exists through the annual authorisation to renew or not to renew the powers of the Army, I think he must have been missing quite a lot of the earlier discussion in relation to control over the Armed Forces.
This is a matter which has been considered in the past and there is here a conflict between two principles. The noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, based his attack on the Bill on this particular clause, largely I think on the grounds that future occupants of the Government Front Bench might not be of such a benign kind as the present ones. The noble Lord even suggested, or a noble Lord suggested, that we might, unlike Cromwell's soldiers, be unable to ride. I would remind the noble

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Lord that my noble friend was an officer in the "Blues", and I was once a serjeant in the most inefficient unit in the British Army, the Oxford University Cavalry Squadron, so let me rebut that part of the charge, and point out—
LORD OGMORE: May I point out that I made no such charge. I said that dictators were now mechanised and that the position no longer applied.
LORD SHACKLETON: I acquit the noble Lord of that charge. This is an important point. I find it very difficult to credit that the reason for discrimination against the Army—and the R.A.F. have to follow suit—is distrust going back to Cromwell an days. As a former member of the R.A.F., I think it a little hard that they should have inherited the same treatment. Nor could one possibly suggest that in this country the operation of court-martial procedures and military law is something which is controlled by the Government. The implication of the noble Lord is that one day a Government may come into power which would subvert and distort this form of justice. But, of course, they would be busy distorting other forms of justice, and I suggest, in view of the other principle, that we ought not to worry too much about the argument of the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore.
Perhaps I would have spoken more kindly if the noble Lord had not gone quite so widely; he even found it necessary to explain why he resigned from the Labour Party, about which, I may add, some of us have other views. I would have thanked him for raising an important point of principle, and I should like to deal with this.
It is a principle of Common Law that a person may not be put in jeopardy twice for the same offence, and the question of double jeopardy in relation to the Navy was exhaustively considered by the Select Committee on the Naval Discipline Act in 1957 and the outcome is set out in Section 129 of the Naval Discipline Act 1957, which provides that a civil court shall be debarred from trying a person for the same offence if he has been acquitted or convicted after a trial under that Act. I hope that your Lordships will agree that the reason for this discrimination against the Army and the Royal Air Force is no longer valid and
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that this difference in the treatment between the three Services should be ended and that the law governing them should be brought into line with the principle that no man should be tried twice for the same offence. Only if there were some really overriding reason of public interest would it seem right to me to continue the present situation, and it is clear that there are no such reasons; and I say this with absolute conviction within the view that I take of Parliament and politics in this country.
I would add—and this may be of some comfort to the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore—that the commanding officers in all three Services are instructed that the decision whether a Serviceman accused of an offence against civil law should be tried by a Service authority or a civil court is one for the chief officer of police in England and Wales and for the procurator fiscal in Scotland. Commanding officers are also instructed to report to the police at the earliest possible moment any alleged offence in the category of a civil offence which would be in question.
I should like to repeat the assurance given by my right honourable friend the Attorney General on this clause when it was considered in another place: not only was it justified but it would have no damaging consequences to the civil arm of the law. The Attorney General gave an assurance that the clause does not affect the right of a citizen to bring civil proceedings against a Serviceman in pursuit of compensation for any damage he may have suffered. In these circumstances, and now that my own speech has had a mollifying effect on me and I hope upon your Lordships, in a reverse direction to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, I hope that the Committee will accept that this principle is a sound one and consistent with the civil liberties of this country; and I hope, therefore, that we shall not tamper further with the clause.
LORD OGMORE: I have derived a certain amount of satisfaction from the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton. I am always pleased to hear the noble Lord. Actually I was one of his Sponsors in this House and I look upon him with great affection for that reason and many others. As he said, here are two liberties to be dealt with, the liberty

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of the soldier, airman or sailor, and the civil liberty of the public as a whole. I do not want to repeat what I have said. If it be decided to leave the situation as it is now, and has been for some time, I do not think there would be any infraction of the liberty of the soldier, sailor or airman. A clause could be drafted by the Parliamentary draftsmen to get round that in the way I suggested earlier.
Regarding the civil liberties of the public, one might imagine what might be the course of events in the future. I have absolved noble Lords and the noble Lady opposite from any attempt whatever, or any desire or wish, of that dictatorial kind and I cannot say more than that. I cannot understand why the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, was so cross because I said that noble Lords opposite believed in the Socialist State. Surely they do. That is an integral part of their faith. They believe in Socialism, and Socialism means collectivism and control by the State. All I said was that if some power of the future, whether Socialist, Fascist or anything else, wished to subvert the law, this is the sort of clause by which they could do it.
I am not satisfied when the noble Lord says this could never happen here and everyone would behave like a gentleman. Those are famous last words. Social democrats all over the world have said them. It has been said in Italy, in Czechoslovakia, in Germany and practically everywhere else. Those who said it were perfectly good people; many of us knew them. They were reliable and trustworthy people who believed just as strongly in their good faith as the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, does and with equal cause. The fact is that when the dictators came in this was the sort of clause and power they used. As I say, these are famous last words; we have heard them so many times. There was a perfectly good Government in Spain, but what happened? When Franco came in how many of their precepts were regarded? He used Parliament and the powers provided by Social Democrats. The same thing happened in other parts of the world, and it is happening to-day. I do not want to pursue the matter any further. I have ventilated it, and if the Committee
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are satisfied with the explanation of the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, so be it.
Clause 25, as amended, agreed to.
Remaining clauses and Schedules agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported with Amendments.
[The Sitting was suspended at two minutes past seven o'clock and resumed at eight o'clock.]

LAND COMMISSION BILL
House again in Committee.
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD moved, after subsection (4), to insert:
"( ) Where a compulsory purchase order is made under the provisions of this section and it affects the winning and working of minerals, and in respect of which objections to the said order have been made and not withdrawn, then the appropriate Minister shall not confirm such order unless he is satisfied that all reasonable steps have been taken to secure such winning and working by means of the procedure prescribed under the Mines(Working Facilities and Support) Act 1966."
The noble Lord said: This Amendment relates to the compulsory purchasing power of the Land Commission in regard to minerals. The effect of the Amendment is to require that the existing statutory procedure for the compulsory purchase of minerals be used first before the Land Commission are allowed to use their power of compulsory purchase. My noble friend the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry and the noble Lord, Lord Henley, both referred to the matter of mineral working on Second Reading, and I think it would be fair to say that mineral working is in a different category from the normal development of land. The normal development of land results in a permanent increase in the value of land, but with mineral workings, after the mineral has been extracted, the results usually are that there is a permanent decrease in the value of land—although, I suppose, it would be fair to say, in passing, that with restoration to such a high standard in some cases of mineral working, particularly ironstone, the farmland is usually restored pretty well to it original value.
I should also mention that while the minerals are being extracted royalties paid for the minerals are subject, first of

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all to mineral rights duty, then to income tax, and often to surtax as well; and with ironstone workings there is the restoration levy, which may be as much as half the total royalties. Thus, there is no danger that mineral workings are not making a full contribution to the Exchequer.
The second general point that I would make on mineral working is that it would be very far-fetched to contend that the development value arising out of mineral working was due to some action of the community, similar to normal development, where a new town or a new housing estate is developed. The fact is that the mineral lies in the ground until it is wanted by the relevant industry, it is then dug out, and that is the end of it. I think it is a fair point to make to the Committee that mineral development is in a different category from general development. In fact, I feel, with the noble Lord, Lord Henley, that there is quite a case for saying that mineral development might well have been outside the Bill altogether. However, we are not trying to move it outside the Bill. What we are trying to do is to ensure that the existing powers, which rest in the Mines (Working Facilities and Support) Act 1966, a consolidation Act which consolidates all the legislation from 1923 onwards, should be used first. If I may refresh the Committee's memory, the process under this Act provides that where a mineral developer had been unable to obtain the required mineral rights by agreement on reasonable terms from the landowner, and where in consequence such mineral rights were in danger of not being worked in accordance with a development plan, then the mineral operator had the right to apply to the High Court which can decide what rights should be granted and what compensation should be paid.
My impression is that everyone, including on occasion Ministers, has agreed that this appeal procedure works well, and in my personal opinion it has stood the test of time as holding a fair balance between the rights and interests of the individual citizens concerned and the rights of the community. This Amendment would do no more than ensure that this well-tried machinery should continue to be used before the Land Commission use their powers.
I noticed that on Second Reading the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, in replying to the points raised by my noble friend the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry and the noble Lord, Lord Henley, in connection with mineral workings, told your Lordships that there had been discussions with the C.L.A., representing the owners of land, and with the Confederation of British Industry on behalf of the operators. The noble Lord, Lord Henley, disputed this point, and I have been given subsequent information from the C.L.A. which confirms this. The opinion of the C.L.A., quite definitely, is that it would be better if mineral workings were outside the operations of the Bill. Their Chairman told me that the only facility which had been extended by the Ministry to the C.L.A. was to allow them to make representations to the civil servant responsible. They draw a sharp distinction between making a representation and having discussions.
I think that in fairness to the C.L.A. I should make this point. They feel a little resentment that the impression has been given that there have been discussions and that therefore the C.L.A. were satisfied with the Bill as drafted. As I say, they are not satisfied, and they think these workings should be outside the Bill. I am not asking for that, but the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, told us, I think, that one of the major reasons why Her Majesty's Ministers wished to have this mineral operation within the Bill is that the C.B.I.'s representations on behalf of the mineral operators indicated that they needed further powers than exist in the 1966 Act.
Arising out of this statement by the noble Lord, there are one or two questions to which I believe the Committee would like an answer. Does this mean that, when a firm of mineral operators have failed to make an agreement with a landowner for the working of a mineral, they can go to the Land Commission and ask them to step in and acquire the land by using their compulsory powers? If this is so, would it not put the Land Commission in an invidious position? More particularly, if the Land Commission were using their powers under Clause 8, where there was not even a public inquiry, would this not be an unfortunate action to take? I cannot

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believe that this is the Government's intention.
I am sure that the Government wish to give, first of all, a fair deal to the landowner. Let me say immediately that "the landowner" sounds like a very heavily loaded political phrase. The landowner, after all, is usually a farmer, either the owner of the land or the tenant of it. I am equally sure that the Government wish to see the Land Commission winning a reputation for integrity and gaining the confidence of the whole community. I believe that the best way to do this is to accept this Amendment, which will make sure that the existing procedure, in which everybody except the C.B.I. has confidence, shall operate first, and only if that has broken down should the mineral operator have the right to turn to the Commission and ask them to step in. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 8, line 6, at end insert the said subsection.—(Lord Nugent of Guildford.)
8.16 p.m.
LORD HENLEY: I support this Amendment. It seems to me—and, I think, to the mineral operators—that the powers of the Mines (Working Facilities and Support) Act 1966 are great enough. I say "to the mineral operators", because the impression I get is that they are perfectly satisfied with the powers of the 1966 Mines Act and I am not quite sure why the C.B.I. have suddenly decided that they are not satisfied.
It may well be argued from the Government Benches that in fact the Mines Act 1966 is a consolidating Act, and that it does not do much more than collect together a good deal of existing legislation going back to 1923; and, indeed, even to 1845. I am not sure that is true. It may be only a consolidating Act, but it is supposed to be, and was redrafted and put together in 1966, as a guide to how the mineral-extracting industry should work in 1966. It gives an up-to-date pattern of procedure right through all the old difficulties. I do not think I need enlarge on what those difficulties were. They concerned difficulties in old leases and old agreements: difficulties of mineral operators persuading those whom they regarded as intransigent landowners to disgorge their land, and all sorts of things of that nature.
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The 1966 Act, in fact, provides a blueprint as to how the mineral-extracting industry should work. If that Act was worth producing at all, I cannot see why it is necessary to go beyond it. I do not think there is any suggestion in the White Paper that minerals should be brought outside the Mineral Working Act under the Land Commission, and I cannot help feeling that it has been put in at the last minute to give a double assurance to mineral operators which they do not need and which is, indeed, unfair to mineral owners and to landowners.
As the noble Lord, Lord Nugent of Guildford, has said, landowners do feel that they have not been consulted. The Minister, in another place (during, I think, the Committee stage of this Bill), gave an assurance that, so far as major minerals are concerned, and other minerals where there is a specific designation in the development plan, he would not go beyond the Mines Act 1966 unless it broke down. If that is so, I cannot see why the Government cannot accept the noble Lord's Amendment; or, if they really feel unable to accept the Amendment, it seems to me they ought to set about repealing the Mines (Working Facilities and Support) Act.
I know that one might make a special case for sand and gravel. There are aspects of sand and gravel which are rather different from what are called major minerals. If that is so, I wonder whether the Government would not consider that they could make a special case for sand and gravel and deal with it under an Order in Council. I do not know what reaction I shall get to this suggestion, but it seems to me quite a reasonable one. I would not myself go so far as to say that a special case should be made for sand and gravel—I do not accept that but if the Government accept it, perhaps they would like to deal with sand and gravel separately and treat it in a different way.
The spokesman for the Government may perhaps criticise this Amendment on a technical point—though perhaps I might say at once that I do not think the technical point is an important one. It is that the Amendment says that the Minister shall not confirm the order. But, of course, in this context "confirm" is the wrong word, and it should in fact be "authorise". When there are objections

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the Minister only authorises, so that to that extent this Amendment is technically bad. But this is a very small point and I do not think we need bother very much about it.
The central point really is this. The Mines (Working Facilities and Support) Act 1966 gives everything that could possibly be desired by a mineral operator. I do not see, therefore, why we should go beyond the Mines Act 1966 and attempt in this Bill to put minerals outside the law, as it were, into the hands of the Land Commission. The only argument could be—I do not know whether in fact the Government will use this argument—that we get better planning this way. I do not see that we do. Planning is dealt with in totally different ways so far as minerals are concerned. Again, so far as betterment is concerned, this is a different issue; I do not feel that betterment is relevant to minerals at all, but that is outside the scope of this Amendment anyway.
The only reason for having this going past the Mines Act 1966 is, I feel, that pressure has been brought, I think unnecessarily, by the extracting industry to persuade the Government that it has not got enough powers. I support the noble Lord in suggesting that in fact the Mines Act gives every power that is necessary; otherwise I cannot see why in 1966 it was consolidated in the way it was. Therefore, I support the Amendment.
THE DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH AND QUEENSBERRY: In the Second Reading debate very little was said in reply to the points raised about the ironstone minerals in the Midlands, and I hope it is justifiable to elaborate a little further this evening. I stated an interest then and do so again now, and also add that I have a very long experience of the management of these minerals from many different aspects. The justification for the ironstone, apart from other minerals, being dealt with in this Bill was questioned, and no information was given to us why it was necessary to be covered in the Bill. I understand that it is there only as a matter of convenience to have it with other minerals; but there is a considerable distinction between it and the others, and it could very well be treated separately if it was decided to do so. It may be of convenience from
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the Government's administration angle, but it must be an inconvenience to all those in a locality who have to manage the getting of the minerals and the restoration of the land.
On Second Reading I think it was shown that there was no case for betterment due to public action, and also that this does not fit in with any of the other subjects of the Bill or the reasons for their being in the Bill. It was shown that it is not necessary for minerals to be covered in the Bill, and that it is suitable neither from a management nor from a taxation aspect.
For many years I happened to be Chairman of a joint committee between the operators, that is the iron and steel companies, and the owners of the ironstone, with a view to promoting better arrangements for working and for making the ironstone available, and for the subsequent arrangements. I am fully aware that the operators always have access to the ironstone, and that the ore is always available to the operators in so far as the owners are concerned. If this was questioned I am sure the point raised must have been in connection with some other mineral, and not with ironstone. The only case which could have been raised was perhaps that in Oxford shire where, after a public inquiry, permission to get the iron ore was refused on quite different grounds.
I have had much more to do with the restoration of land mined for ironstone, and I recollect in 1947, at the time of the Town and Country Planning Bill, the noble Lord opposite taking the late Lord Dalton to that area and a thorough examination was made, after which agreement was reached between the Government representatives, the county council and the National Farmers' Union and all others concerned. Most effective arrangements were made for the getting of ironstone and for the restoration of the land afterwards. I hope that nothing will be done under this Bill to upset these arrangements, which I think have been working perfectly satisfactorily.
There are other points which perhaps do not come so much into this Amendment as into the general discussion and which have to do with the severance of land and the advantage of the responsibility for the general administration and the restoration lying

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with the persons on the spot. To a countryman, it seems that legislation of this sort, mainly concerning urban problems of semi-urban land, is made from a long-term urban point of view, and does not always fit in with the problems of the countryside. I think that more attention should be given to this, and I feel that the Government themselves will find that the Bill could be simplified in so far as this ironstone is concerned. It could well be left out altogether. If not, I hope that this Amendment will be accepted.
LORD MITCHISON: I remember Dr. Dalton standing on top of a hill not far from Kettering, and listening to Stewarts & Lloyds' representative saying that it was quite impossible to do what was already being done in Lincolnshire, and was finally done round about that part of the world.
THE DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH AND QUEENSBERRY: And what we have been doing.
LORD MITCHISON: Which was restoration, and it resulted finally in a most satisfactory arrangement about ironstone mining in that part of the world. I agree that it has been satisfactory. This Amendment—about which somebody has been a little slack in including the word "confirm"—was discussed in Committee in another place, not at great length but fairly fully. I do not know what my noble friend is going to say, but in view of what was said then, I hope he may succeed in mollifying the Opposition, a task for which I find myself ill-fitted, and at the same time in sticking to the Bill as it stands.
I do not think anybody denies that the 1966 Act, so far as it goes, works well. That was certainly conceded in express terms in the Commons. It is, of course, an Act which regulates the relations between the landowner and someone who wishes to develop the minerals in the land, but it seems to me there may well be wider considerations than that in regard to developing minerals. The instance I have in mind concerns parts of the Highlands of Scotland, where a successful development of minerals would be none too easy but if pursued would bring about a difference to the economy far greater than one would imagine from the mere volume or amount of the money
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that passed in connection with it. I should have thought that the Government recognised that the 1966 Act works well, and that in dealing with land generally it would be wise not to exempt this particular group of rights from the operation of the Act.
I often notice that at about the time of the Budget those who wish to be exempted from general taxes become quite voluble. Perhaps something of the sort is going on here. Those who seek to be exempted have a rather heavy burden to discharge. It is not sufficient to say, "It is not obvious how these powers are to be used". I think it is right to reserve them, and they quite clearly were reserved. The assurance which I think the noble Lord, Lord Henley, had in mind is set out in column 242 of the Committee Proceedings on this Bill in another place on June 30. It is as follows:
"I give the assurance straight away, as far as the Class 1 category of minerals is concerned"—
I will come to that in a moment—
"or with respect to any others where there is a specific designation in the development plan, that the Commission would not be required, and would not wish, to intervene in the process."
Then, beyond that, the Parliamentary Secretary went on to say—and I think one must bear this in mind—in column 243:
"…we feel that it would be wrong, even if the Amendment were in order, to fetter the Land Commission. I give the assurance that it would not normally purchase for industry or for reasons of general policy, but there are cases where it would be in the public interest to do so."
And he then refused to accept the Amendment. I think it was not divided upon but was withdrawn, the mover saying that they were grateful for having had a useful discussion of detail, and ending up by saying in column 248:
"In view of the Minister's remarks, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment."
It seems to me rather strange that when an assurance is given in another place and an Amendment is withdrawn on the basis of it, your Lordships, knowing of that assurance, should now be asked to pass what the movers of the Amendment in the Commons did not press to a Division there. Be that as it may,

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which is rather a point of procedure, I turn to another point.
The 1966 Act provides for a number of mineral workings which are included in the First Schedule, but this Schedule does not include sand and gravel. Therefore the rights in regard to the working of sand and gravel are rather different and the mineral operator has less of a case there. I think that sand and gravel is a good example of where, in addition to the interest of the owner of the land and the would-be mineral operator, the public interest is also concerned.
If one looks at what is happening all around any of our big cities, one finds extensive gravel working. I think we all know of it around London. Therefore it seems to me expedient that, rather than leave this simply as a matter between the individual landowner and the mineral operator—at any rate, so far as the use of the land is concerned—the Commission should have the power to move. I can conceive cases where the Commission would wish to move not merely in relation to a particular small area, but in relation to a large tract of country. After all, the mineral workings in Northampton shire and thereabouts, to which the noble Duke alluded, are not very old, and they arise from a major change which was made by the iron and steel industry which moved more or less en masse from the fuel to the ore. The fuel in those times was in Wales and the ore was in the Midlands.
Then there has followed on that a further question which seems to me to be one of a public character, and which was raised in the Oxford inquiry which the noble Duke also mentioned; that is, the extent to which operators could and should work ore which is not particularly good ore, knowing that by doing so they will do a good deal of damage to other aspects of the countryside. I express no opinion about what happened in Oxford, and no opinion on the question generally, except to say that it is something which must always depend on the circumstances of the case and, quite clearly, involves questions of public policy.
I should therefore, as an unrepentant Socialist, hope to keep the Land Commission in on this matter, and I believe, as a citizen of a democratic country, that we ought to follow the Commons on it.
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I further believe as an individual, and, I hope, a lover of my country, that in the long run it is best that this particular group of rights should retain a measure of public initiative and public control.
THE EARL OF MANSFIELD: Would the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, inform your Lordships what are these unworked minerals in the Highlands, other than coal in Sutherland and diatomite in Wester Ross, which are already being worked, and slate in various parts of the country which it is no longer economic to work?
LORD MITCHISON: There are a good many of them, and the question is: what is workable? But the white sands are an obvious case, and I can think of others. But here I, an Englishman, am in the presence of the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, and I would not dare to go any further than I have gone.
8.33 p.m.
LORD CHAMPION: This Amendment has been very well argued and there have been a number of speeches. I start by saying that the noble Lord, Lord Henley, is, of course, absolutely right. The Amendment could not in any case be accepted because it is technically incorrect. It begins:
"Where a compulsory purchase order is made under the provisions of this section…".
and goes on to say that "the appropriate Minister shall not confirm such order" except in certain circumstances. The fact is, of course, that when a compulsory purchase order is made it has become effective. Under this clause the Commission will start with a draft order, and if the intervening stages have been successfully passed, the Commission will make an order. My only reason for mentioning this point here is that, of course, we could not include this Amendment in the Bill as it is at present drafted.
But I would accept the invitation of the noble Lord, Lord Henley, by going on to say that our objections to the Amendment go much deeper than merely the drafting point. I am not going to attempt to sit on the drafting point, and ask the Committee to agree with me because of a drafting point. Here we have to consider the principle, and if I do not reasonably satisfy the movers of the Amendment they may well come back on

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Report stage with an Amendment which would be technically correct.
As the noble Lord, Nord Nugent of Guildford, reminded us, there are powers under the Mines Act 1966 by which a mineral undertaker can compulsorily obtain rights to work minerals. The powers are relatively freely available for certain minerals—primarily metalliferous minerals. For other minerals, including those most important for the building industry—such as sand and gravel and limestone—the powers are available only if the land is specifically defined for this purpose in an approved development plan. Perhaps I should mention here that the authority to take rights is given by the High Court. That is under the 1966 Act. Mineral undertakers in the preferred class—namely, the metalliferous—are reasonably satisfied with the present procedure; that is, the procedure under the 1966 Act. The others are not; and the Confederation of British Industry have made strong representations to the Government that mineral undertakers of the non-preferred class should be helped to get rights to work minerals which are essential for the economic wellbeing of the country.
Here, I think I can give the noble Duke the undertaking he was seeking, and I will put it in these words: that in practice it is unlikely that the Land Commission would buy land for the purpose of mineral working in the preferred class. I would say, in passing, that I agree with him that an excellent job is being done by way of restoration after the workings to which he referred, the iron and stone workings. This was not always the case, of course, and we remember those hills and dales which so marred the country for such a long time after iron and stone working had been carried out. Anyone who knows that part of the country will remember them very well.
THE DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH AND QUEENSBERRY: From war-time operations.
LORD CHAMPION: I remember them very well. I used to pass them, going to and from my constituency, between Derbyshire and London. In any case, we now say that an excellent job is being done, but that is rather outside the Amendment which we are now discussing.
It is recognised, as I say, that, under the 1966 Act, the preferred mineral
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undertakers are reasonably satisfied; but for the other class, the non-preferred class, the existing procedure can be very slow and very cumbersome. An actual example drawn to our attention recently showed that nearly three years passed between the grant of a planning permission and the final making of an order under the Mines (Working Facilities and Support) Act, 1923, which was, of course, the Act which governed this matter but which is now included in the 1966 consolidating Act. Here I must mention to the noble Lord, Lord Henley—although I am fairly sure that his Parliamentary experience is such that he already knows it—that in consolidating Acts one does not make major changes in the Acts that are consolidated. If one starts to attempt that, one immediately runs into difficulties. Only the most minor changes and alterations of a purely drafting character are made when one measure or several measures are being consolidated into one.
As a result of representations made, the mineral interests have been assured that the Land Commission will be able to help them, where necessary, to obtain the land which is essential for their undertakings. Perhaps it would have been wiser if we could have done it by means of an amendment to the 1923Act, or perhaps the 1966 Act as it is now, but I do not think that would have been the appropriate way to do it. There is also the fact that, in our view, it is right that the Land Commission should be able to come in on this. The Amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Nugent of Guildford, would have the effect of limiting and delaying the activities of the Commission in this field. The Commission could not act until the other procedure had been exhausted, but the circumstances in which the Commission would primarily be concerned to use their powers would be those very circumstances where the existing procedure is too slow and would not ensure that land is brought forward at the right time for mineral development.
There is no doubt about the views of the mineral industry. A letter from the chairman of the C.B.I. Minerals Committee states:
"The C.B.I. Minerals Committee, represent-completely opposed to this Amendment whiching all sections of the industry, is therefore

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has been put down without any form of consultation. It would not facilitate the free flow of land for mineral development but would more likely tend to inflate land prices, in some cases possibly catastrophically."
We have to remember, in connection with the compulsory purchase powers in this Bill, that we are not proposing to confer rights on private persons or undertakings but on a Commission which will be answerable to a Minister who, in turn, will be answerable to Parliament for his actions.
The noble Lord, Lord Nugent of Guildford, and others have suggested that we ought not to be doing this here in this Bill, which has, as he said, some purpose other than this. I do not think we can pretend—I certainly would not—that we are doing anything here other than making an attempt through this machinery to benefit the economy. We are doing this in the public interest because we believe it is right, and because it will provide a procedure which is quicker than the slow, cumbersome procedure that I have mentioned to enable this country to get the materials it requires for its essential purposes. This means, as I say, that the Commission will have to act, and be seen to act, in the public interest. Of course they can always be watched, and the Minister responsible can be questioned about his actions in connection with these matters. And, as I said on another Amendment, the Ombudsman could be brought in if it were thought that anything was going wrong in this connection.
The noble Lord, Lord Henley, and the noble Lord, Lord Nugent of Guildford, have talked about the C.L.A. being rather hurt that their discussions with the Minister were not so full as the C.L.A. thought they should be. The facts are that at the request of the C.L.A., Sir Michael Culme-Seymour, of their Minerals Committee, and Mr. Holland saw officials of the Ministry of Land and produced arguments for exemption of minerals from the Bill. They were already aware of proposals to give substantial exemptions to mineral undertakings which had earlier been announced by the Minister. They were told that their views would be conveyed to the Minister but that it was most unlikely he would accept them. Detailed reasons for this were given, and the discussion lasted for one and a half hours.
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The mineral undertakers, represented by the Minerals Committee of the C.F.I., also made representations and came for discussions with the officials of the Ministry. Since exemptions were to be given, there was room for more negotiations, and discussions have been more detailed and longer. The draft regulations to be made under Clause 74 are not yet available and, therefore, have not yet been disclosed either to the undertakers or to the owners.
VISCOUNT DAVENTRY: Might I interrupt? The noble Lord mentioned a friend of mine, Sir Michael Culme-Seymour. Has he been given an answer yet?
LORD CHAMPION: I should have thought that no answer was necessary. He saw the officials, and of course he knows what happened as between his deputation and the Ministry's officials. I do not think there is anything else required as between the C.L.A. and the Ministry. Clearly, when the draft regulations are being prepared, unless I am very much mistaken there will be the usual discussions between the Ministry and those affected by the regulations. This is pretty well common form. I am sorry that the C.L.A. is not happy about all this. We want to keep everybody reasonably happy about these things, and I should not like to be charged with not having had reasonable discussions with people who are interested; but I think that reasonable discussion has taken place. It is not always possible that a body, even one as important as the C.L.A., can have access to the Minister, if the Minister feels the matter is one which ought to be discussed between his officials and the deputation which comes along.
The noble Lord, Lord Nugent of Guildford, asked whether the minerals and the rights in connection with them would go to the Land Commission. Powers of compulsory purchase are being given to the Commission, but they cannot be exercised, as we have repeatedly said, unless development has been agreed by the appropriate authority as being suitable. This is something which the Commission will always have to bear in mind and so will everybody else; for the Land Commission can acquire only

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if the authority agrees that the minerals are ripe for development. The noble Lord, Lord Henley, said that minerals were not specifically mentioned in the White Paper. But there were many details which were not mentioned in the White Paper; had it been otherwise, the White Paper would have been the size of the Bill. But minerals were covered by the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, and since there are many references in the White Paper to development in the sense of that word in the 1947 Act it was clearly implied that minerals would be dealt with by the Land Commission. Not merely on technical grounds, but on grounds of public interest; on grounds which have been represented to us by the C.B.I. (we do not always accept their representations, as noble Lords will know, but here we believe they have a sound case) we hope that we shall be able to leave in the Bill the clause as it at present stands in relation to these minerals.
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: I must thank the noble Lord, Lord Champion, for the informative reply he has given to the Committee. While making an apology for the faulty drafting of the Amendment, I would add the customary remark in passing that no Opposition Amendment has ever yet been technically acceptable by any Government. However, the noble Lord, Lord Champion, generously said that he was prepared to pass this over and deal with the Amendment on its merits, which he proceeded to do in a very informative fashion.
The noble Lord, Lord Champion, gave the same assurance as was given during the Committee stage in another place by the Parliamentary Secretary, to which the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, referred. All I would say to that is that if it is the intention of the Government that normally the Land Commission are not going to use their powers in this connection for Class I minerals, why not put it in the Bill? That would be a much safer place for it and would make sure that it would have the effect for ever. Powerful though the noble Lord's assurance is, as is that of the Parliamentary Secretary in another place, it is soon forgotten once the Bill is on the Statute Book, and I feel that we should all be
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much happier if we saw this provision in the Bill.
May I say that I am delighted that the Government and the C.B.I. have got into this cosy partnership over the Bill? As the noble Lord rightly says, this is not always the situation for them, and I am only too happy to encourage it. But they seem to have come out of it much better than C.L.A. The C.L.A. must learn something from the C.B.I. of the tactics of approach, so that they may get the same happy result. Joking apart, I think that all speakers have recognised that there are two distinct classes of minerals here—Class I minerals and the rest. The noble Lord, Lord Champion, himself has said that Class I minerals could be treated as in a different category.
Although I should like to see all minerals dealt with in the same way, as our Amendment suggests, if there are good reasons—and the noble Lord adduced a case of three years' delay in one instance of mineral development, though I think he would be bound to recognise that the development of sand and gravel, in terms of betterment prices, is in a different category from that of metalliferous minerals—why Her Majesty's Ministers feel that they cannot accept all minerals, but in principle have accepted that Class 1 minerals will normally not be affected by the work of the Land Commission in this respect, I would cogently urge them to put it in the Bill. Perhaps we can leave this matter now in this position, and my noble friends and I can consider putting down a further Amendment for the Report stage which would attempt to do just that. I will try my utmost to see that the Amendment is correctly drafted, though I doubt if it will be, but I feel sure that the substance will be there. In those terms, I beg leave to withdraw my Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
8.53 p.m.
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD moved to add to the clause:
"( ) A compulsory purchase order made under the provisions of this section where it is directed to affect the winning and working of minerals shall be operative only as respects the compulsory purchase of the minerals to be extracted from the land, and shall not otherwise divest the title to the land from the original owner except only in the instance where the original owner has given notice

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to the Commission of his willingness to dispose of the whole of his title and interest in the land and the minerals therein."
The noble Lord said: I beg to move Amendment No. 11 in the names of my noble friends and myself. This Amendment is on a far narrower scale. Its effect would be to limit a compulsory purchase by the Land Commission to the minerals to be extracted only, and to leave the freehold itself to remain in the hands of the owner, unless the owner wished to dispose of the freehold with the minerals—in other words, to leave the landowner the option. It is common practice with some mineral workings, particularly ironstone, that when a mineral is worked out by surface workings, the land is then restored to farmland. As my noble friend the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry has already mentioned, modern methods of restoration are now so good that the land can be restored to good condition. The top soil and subsoil are kept separate, the land drains replaced afterwards and the land brought back to good farming conditions, so that when the working is finished and the excavation filled in and consolidated, the fragmentation of farms which would otherwise occur is avoided. Clearly, where this can be done it is very much in the interests of the farming industry and, therefore, of the community as a whole. This is the sole purpose of this Amendment.
Again, it may be desirable to confine its effect to Class 1 minerals only, but certainly within that class it has a most cogent application in avoiding the fragmentation of land which would otherwise occur where the freehold is acquired, as well as the minerals, and then this particular slice of land is taken out of the original farm unit. I think this is a sound, practical Amendment. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 8, line 21, at end insert the said subsection.—(Lord Nugent of Guildford.)
THE DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH AND QUEENSBERRY: In the case of ironstone, I should like strongly to support this Amendment, again speaking with long experience of the curious results of workings at different depths and under different conditions, and the different effects on the surface. It is most desirable that people on the spot should have, and
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should carry out, the responsibility for whatever is the best use of the land, either restoration for farming or planting with trees. I am sure it will be found that, in conjunction with the office at the advisory organisation in Nottingham and the Land Use Department, who often go to see what is happening, better results can be secured under the present arrangements than by making a change.
LORD HENLEY: I, too, support this Amendment. It does not, after all, prevent a landowner from selling both the minerals and the land, if he happens to own both, and wants to sell them. So there is nothing limiting, so far as the Amendment is concerned. The Government might say that it is not limited enough, in that it might be more acceptable to them if it applied only to those cases where the minerals were already separated from the land. I do not know whether the Government, if they are going to reject this Amendment, would consider a similar Amendment dealing with the divorce of minerals and land, or whether, alternatively, if they cannot do that, they will give some sort of undertaking that, where possible, the land would be sold back, either restored or otherwise, to the original owner. Apart from those two possible alternatives, I support the Amendment.
LORD CHAMPION: All three noble Lords who have spoken have made out a reasonable case, and I am sorry that I have to resist it. As I understand it, the effect of this Amendment would be that if the Commission sought to exercise compulsory powers to acquire land containing minerals to enable those minerals to be worked the compulsory purchase order would be limited to the minerals and the remainder of the land above or below the stratum or strata of minerals (and also presumably any land lying between strata of minerals) would be excluded.
In rejecting a previous Amendment on mineral rights I stressed the fact that the Commission would use their powers of compulsory purchase only where the public interest clearly demanded it. To accept the Amendment could well result in the Commission being hamstrung when they needed, in the public interest, to acquire minerals. Very often the minerals could not possibly be worked without some use of, or interference with, the

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surface of the land. To overcome difficulties of this kind elaborate provisions would have to be made conferring working rights and rights of support.
But having said that, I must add that what is really intended by the mover of the Amendment will be achieved, in practice, without the inclusion of the Amendment. If the Comission make a compulsory purchase order for the land including minerals, this can be done only because it has proved impossible to arrive at an agreement which would make practicable the working of minerals without taking the land. If the Minister is satisfied that the minerals ought to be worked, then it would be possible, in the context of the compulsory purchase order, for a settlement to be reached under which the right to work minerals carries with it the necessary freedom from or obligation to rights of support. It is always possible for an owner to object to a compulsory purchase order on the ground that what is necessary in the public interest can be achieved without the acquisition of the whole of his land, and for the Minister to refuse to confirm the order if he is satisfied that the public need can otherwise be satisfied.
To sum up, we think that this Amendment would be so restrictive as to render the taking of the right to work minerals impossible, except where this can be done without in any way affecting the surface of the land. We are also confident that much of what seems to be the real purpose of the Amendment can be achieved by the use of the Minister's powers when he is confirming a compulsory purchase order.
Perhaps I ought to add that, so far as I understand it, it is not the intention of the Land Commission to purchase minerals to work themselves. They will purchase them, and they will be sold to those people who have not been able to purchase in the ordinary way in order that the minerals may be worked. I think it is the case—I will check this—that if it happens that the ownership of the land, apart from the minerals, should remain with the Land Commission, it will not in the normal way be the practice of the Land Commission to hold land just for the sake of holding land. If I were a member of the Land Commission, and if by any chance the
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land part remained in our ownership, I should carry out what I regard as the Crichel Down procedure, and try to ensure that it was added again to the farm from which it had been torn. This, I believe, is good sense, and I think it would operate in that way. Apart from that, I consider this is an Amendment which we ought not to include in the Bill. The points that the noble Lord has made so cogently are important points, and I hope that what I have told him about the administrative arrangements and so on will satisfy him, and that he will be prepared to withdraw his Amendment.
THE DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH AND QUEENSBERRY: May I say one other word? If the Minister's reply indicates an assurance that the compulsory acquisition of the land will be used only in the minimum number of cases where it is absolutely essential, that is a considerable improvement. But at the same time I feel that he has been unsympathetic about our approach to this subject, and that if the Land Commission go much further than indicated to-day, it would be a justification for our anxiety in the earlier debate this afternoon.
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: I thank the noble Lord, Lord Champion, for his answer to our representations on this Amendment, but I agree with my noble friend the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry that it is not a very satisfactory answer. I do not doubt that if the noble Lord, Lord Champion, was a member of the Land Commission my confidence in its workings would be unlimited. But he will not be a member. I want to make sure that this body works satisfactorily, irrespective of the membership. I am not persuaded by the noble Lord that it would not be possible to put in the Bill an obligation on the Land Commission to sell back the land after working the minerals. I accept that the Amendment in the form in which we put it down would be too restrictive where the Land Commission acquired land for the purpose of working minerals, and that is certainly not our intention in moving this Amendment.
LORD CHAMPION: Would the noble Lord help me in one respect? What has he in mind in a case where, as I think

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will happen, the Land Commission will purchase the land for the purpose of working the minerals but will sell it to the mineral operator?
LORD NUGENT OF GUILDFORD: After the minerals have been extracted I want the land to be sold back to the original owner. I should not have thought it beyond the wit of man and Parliamentary draftsmen to put such a provision into the Bill. I accept that what we have now drafted may be too restrictive, but we shall certainly try again on Report stage to come back with an Amendment on the lines I am now indicating, because the noble Lord has intimated that this is what will normally happen. We are comforted by hearing the noble Lord say that. But the Bill is the place to put these things in and then we can be quite sure that it will happen, so that the land does not get fragmented. In those terms, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 7 agreed to.
Clause 8 [Compulsory purchase orders: special procedure]:
9.7 p.m.
LORD WADE,LORD WADE, moved in subsection (4), to leave out "annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either" and to substitute: "approval by a resolution of each". The noble Lord said: I can move this Amendment briefly, and in doing so I am prejudging the question as to whether Clause 8 should be approved. It is an important clause, introducing the special procedure for compulsory purchase orders, but if it is accepted then I submit that the altered wording of subsection (4) would be somewhat important and would perhaps go some way to meet the fears of those who are disturbed about Clause 8. Subsection (4) reads as follows:
"Any statutory instrument containing an order under subsection (1) of this section shall be subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament."
If I understand this correctly, it means that any Member of either House who objects to a proposed Statutory Instrument containing an order under subsection (1) may pray against it, but in my view that is not a satisfactory procedure. It is extremely difficult to take
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note of the many orders and Statutory Instruments that are continually coming forward and will come forward under this Bill when it becomes an Act. I submit that the Affirmative Resolution procedure is preferable, and the object of my Amendment is to alter this subsection in such a way that a Statutory Instrument containing an order under subsection (1) would require an Affirmative Resolution of both Houses before taking effect.
If one turns to the proviso to subsection (5) of this clause one finds these words:
"Provided that no order shall be made under this subsection unless a draft of the order has been laid before Parliament and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament."
Therefore, so far as an order under subsection (5) is concerned the Affirmative Resolution of both Houses is required. I am suggesting that a similar procedure should apply in subsection (4); that is for a Statutory Instrument containing an order under subsection (1). Surely it would be better to have a similar procedure both for subsection (4) and for the proviso to subsection (5). It may be that the noble Lord, in his reply, will be able to give some explanation as to why there should be different procedures in the two cases, but it certainly seems to me that the Affirmative Resolution would be the most satisfactory procedure in both cases. If that is so, I hope that my Amendment will be accepted. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 9, line 2, leave out from (" to") to (" House") in line 3 and insert (" approval by a resolution of each").—(Lord Wade.)
LORD OAKSHOTT: I would add my support to this Amendment, and appeal to Her Majesty's Government to think again about this particular point. Far be it from me to impute any improper motives to anybody, but when I see in a Bill that the Government of the day decide in the public interest (a phrase which, as my noble friend Lord Eccles said earlier in the debate this afternoon, should be more closely defined) that there should be a simplified procedure for doing something, my suspicions are immediately aroused. When, in the same subsection of Clause 8, there is a reference to Schedule 2 of the Bill, and I find that Schedule 2 says the Minister shall not be required to cause a public local inquiry to be held in regard to these orders, it seems to me, supporting what my noble

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friend Lord Wade said, that it would be very much more satisfactory as a protection to those who may be affected by this provision that the Government should be compelled to table an order under the Affirmative Resolution procedure instead of being able to rest on the Prayer, or annulment procedure, which, as my noble friend said can be exerted only so long as everybody is alert and keeps a very close eye on any order which may be laid by the Government of the day. I would therefore urge that the Government should have second thoughts about this matter.
Noble Lords on the other side who served in the other place will know that in the past both sides have argued back and forth as to whether we should have the Affirmative Resolution procedure or the annulment procedure. But in a case like this, where there is no public inquiry into the order being made, I should have thought this was a simple protection which might be given in this Bill, and I hope that the Government will have second thoughts.
LORD MITCHISON: I hope they will not. I think we must remember where we are. There is a very considerable difference between the Affirmative procedure and the Negative procedure in the Commons, because a Prayer to annul an order is limited in time, and an Affirmative Resolution may be prolonged for a good deal more time.
LORD OAKSHOTT: If the noble Lord will allow me to intervene, I think that if he had said in another place a few years ago that there was very little difference between the Affirmative procedure and the Negative procedure he would have raised a horse-laugh.
LORD MITCHISON: I am saying there is considerable difference in the procedures in the other place. The other place considered this proposal but turned it down. They decided against what is now proposed by way of amendment here, when we are asked to take it upon ourselves to decide that, whatever they may have thought about it, from our point of view the Affirmative Resolution is necessary. Under either the Affirmative or Negative procedure, of course, there is no opportunity of amendment: it is "Aye" or "No". We all know that. But when
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we look at the procedure in this House—and I have listened to both forms of order being discussed here—I do not think your Lordships have been unduly limited by the fact that a discussion tool place on the Negative procedure. It is really a question of Government time. I quite agree that it is the business of any self-respecting Opposition to waste as much Government time as possible, and no doubt that is the intention of this Amendment.
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: No.
LORD MITCHISON: I beg your pardon. I retract immediately: I am glad to hear that that is not the purpose. But if it is not, I should be very glad to know what the purpose is.
LORD WADE: I hope the noble Lord will accept from me that I had no intention of causing a waste of time by moving this Amendment. But there is a real difference between the two procedures. I am submitting that this is a case where as reasonable safeguards as possible should be introduced. The proposal that I have put forward would introduce a fairer safeguard for those who are concerned about this matter.
LORD MITCHISON: The noble Lord, Lord Wade, has misunderstood me. I did not for a minute suggest that his Amendment was a waste of time. I thought it was somewhat misconceived, but one can think that without thinking something a waste of time. What I suggest is that if you put it in you would make no real difference to the opportunities for discussion at all, except that the Government of the day would always have to get the thing discussed, which might well be a waste of time.
LORD WADE: Not necessarily discussed, but it would have to be laid on the Table. It could be automatically approved or discussed.
LORD MITCHISON: I never know what happens when you lay something on the Table; I have never actually seen it done. I am sure it has some significance. But the fact remains that I have listened to discussions on orders under both the Negative and the Affirmative Resolution procedures, and your Lordships emit as much wisdom in volume and quality under the Negative

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as under the Affirmative Resolution procedure. When the Commons, where there is a difference, have turned it down, I cannot think what we could do to correct what they have accepted. There there is a real difference, and it does make a difference.
9.17 p.m.
LORD KENNET: I have to agree with my noble friend. There is, of course, no hard and fast constitutional doctrine about this point, but an Affirmative Resolution procedure is usually reserved for Statutory Instruments which partake of the nature of Acts of Parliament themselves, because, permanently or semi-permanently, they fill in the body of their parent Act—for instance, under this Bill the material development regulations—or substantially alter the workings of the parent Act: for instance, under this Bill the order bringing in the second appointed day which we have already discussed. It seems to us that this procedure is riot so appropriate for a series of orders which are temporary and transitory, being limited both as to time and as to place and purpose.
I would also point out that if we make these orders subject to Affirmative Resolution procedure in both Houses, it would be a strong incentive to the Commission to make large orders at long intervals. Bigger orders would be made than otherwise would be the case. It would be known that they were going to be discussed in any case; therefore why not put everything in? It would save Government time. I can think of future Ministers who might ask them to do this in order to save Government time. Whereas, if we leave matters as they stand in the Bill now, there would be no obstacle to the Commission's making a large number of small orders, each one of which could be picked up by alert Members of either House. To adopt the changes suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Wade, would, I think, be almost to press the Land Commission to operate in a wholesale manner, which might not be welcome to either Party.
I want to come back to Lord Wade's question, about why, if we make an order under subsection (1) and one under subsection (5) subject to an Affirmative Resolution, we should make orders under subsection (4) subject only to Negative Resolution. The answer is that subsec-
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tion (1) provides for the general authority to do this. Subsection (5), to which the noble Lord specifically addressed himself, is concerned with the extension of the general power to do this under Clause 8. It automatically lapses after five years unless, by Affirmative Resolution, the other place gives to the Minister the power to continue making these orders. Subsection (4) deals simply with each of these individual orders. It seems to me to be entirely appropriate that the power to make these orders should be subject to Affirmative Resolution, to the larger Parliamentary control, while the power to make each individual little order should be subject only to Negative Resolution, which is the rather lesser Parliamentary control. I hope that, in view of this elucidation, the noble Lord may feel it appropriate to withdraw the Amendment.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: I have listened to the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, and I must say that I should be disposed to support the noble Lord, Lord Wade, in this Amendment if it were not for the fact that I have standing in my name a much more drastic Amendment to remove from the Bill the whole of this iniquitous clause. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Wade, on having elicited from the Government the confession that there are likely to be a large number of these iniquitous orders. We will certainly return to that at a later stage. The only reason I would not advise my noble friends to vote for this Amendment is that it might prejudice our subsequent intention to get the whole of this inexcusable clause removed from the Bill.
LORD KENNET: I fully take the noble Lord's point, but I must point out to him that my "confession" did not include the word "iniquitous". Perhaps I should put this matter in proportion. If we make each order subject to Affirmative Resolution in both Houses, the Land Commission may be tempted to "plonk" down an order on the whole of England south of the Trent, or something like that, whereas if we leave it subject to Negative Resolution they may make orders on a more manageable scale for this or that town or city.
On Question, Amendment negatived.
On Question, Whether Clause 8 shall stand part of the Bill?
9.23 p.m.
LORD NEWTON: I beg to move the unnumbered Amendment in the name of my noble friend, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, to leave out Clause 8. Is that not in order?
LORD CHAMPION: It is not an Amendment; it is italicised, which means that somebody will be called to speak on it. The noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, was called. You have spoken in his stead. The Motion to be put to the House will be "That the clause shall stand part of the Bill".
LORD NEWTON: I am much obliged to the noble Lord, and I apologise for not being quite up to date with my procedure. It may be convenient to the Committee if we discuss at the same time as this clause a further non-Amendment standing in my name later in the Order Paper, to leave out Schedule 2, be cause Schedule 2 is very closely connected with this clause.
The noble Lord, Lord Wade, when moving his Amendment just now, said that if it were accepted by the Government it might do something to relieve the minds of those who are worried by this clause. I certainly am one who is worried by this clause, and I agree with my noble friend Lord Brooke of Cumnor that it is an iniquitous clause. In fact, I think that this clause and Schedule 2 together are among the more iniquitous provisions of this Bill. They are in direct conflict with the hallowed constitutional principle that it is not enough that justice should be done, but that it should manifestly be seen to be done.
It appears to me, and I think to many other noble Lords, that this clause and Schedule 2, if they remain in the Bill, will enable the Land Commission to take away a person's home or business premises or land within 28 days, without that unfortunate person necessarily knowing that that disaster is going to befall him. I may be wrong about this; I may have misread the Bill, and if I have I hope that whichever Minister is going to reply—probably the noble Lord, Lord Kennet—will be good enough to say so. A similar question to this was asked by my noble friend Lord Brooke of Cumnor in his powerful speech on the Second Reading of this Bill, when he did not get any answer to it.
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The reasons for my fears are these. As I understand it, Clause 8 empowers the Minister or Ministers within five years from the first appointed day to make an order authorising the Land Commission to dispense with the normal procedures for compulsory purchase and to acquire property—homes, land, shops and all the rest of it—compulsorily by means of what the clause euphemistically calls "a simplified procedure". One of the ingredients of this simplified procedure exempts the Land Commission from the obligation of making even reasonably sure that the individual concerned receives the notice of the intention to serve a compulsory purchase order upon him. It seems to me that, at the discretion of the Land Commission, it will be sufficient for one of the Commission's officials to hand the notice to some person on the land, or to affix it to some conspicuous object on the land.
Let us envisage this scene. The official drives up in his car, ready to deposit his notice. If he is lucky he may find somebody picking cowslips or primroses, if it is spring, or blackberries if it is autumn, or an old woman exercising her dog, or a courting couple. Apparently the official will be able to hand the notice to any of these people and later on swear on oath in a court of law that he had complied with the provisions of paragraph 2 of Schedule 2 to this Bill. If the official is unlucky, there will be nobody on the land at all. He will, of course, have come armed with a box of Government-issued drawing pins or perhaps even a hammer and nails, if the Treasury will permit it. But there may not be a conspicuous object on the land susceptible to either drawing pins or nails. What does a conscientious official do then? I suppose he turns up his trousers and proceeds on to the land in search of a prominent stone, and affixes the notice thereto with the aid of one of those sticky labels with which the Inland Revenue are so generous. It will not matter in the least if the notice has blown away before he has got back to his car. He will have done his duty according to the law, and within 28 days—or is it 21?—that piece of land or that field or whatever it may be will become the property of the Land Commission.
I turn now to the position under Clause 8 when a person does receive a notice of intention to make a

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compulsory purchase order. He can object to the Minister but, as my noble friend Lord Oakshott said a few minutes ago, he will not have the right to a public inquiry or even to a private hearing by somebody appointed by the Minister concerned for the purpose. Yet, as my noble friend Lord Brooke of Cumnor reminded us the other day on Second Reading, it has throughout our history, except in very rare circumstances been accepted that no person's home or property should be taken away from him without that person having the right to a public inquiry or a private hearing.
I was very interested in the observations of the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor on this matter when he moved the Second Reading of this Bill. This is what the noble and learned Lord said—and I am now quoting from column 1080 of Hansard of November 14:
"…the Minister, under this procedure"—
that is to say, the procedure under Clause 8 and Schedule 2—
"is obliged to consider the objection and there is no question of any land being taken from anyone compulsorily without his having full opportunity to object."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Vol. 277 (No. 67); 14/11/66.]
Please note that word "full", because in the next sentence the Lord Chancellor went on to define what he meant by "full opportunity". He said:
"He can state his objections at length in writing."
How jolly decent of Her Majesty's Government! Not only are they gracious enough to say that the aggrieved person can make his objection in writing: they are even prepared for him to make his objections in writing at length!
But, rather more seriously than that, I am sorry that the Lord Chancellor is not here in the Chamber this evening, because if he had been I would have asked him whether he would accept that definition, his own definition, of" full opportunity" if it were put to him by counsel when he was sitting as a judge. I also wonder what view the noble and learned Lord would express if I were to introduce a Bill into this House to provide that in future, because of the increase in crime and the pressure on the courts, a person convicted of an offence would only be able to appeal
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against sentence in writing. I expect the noble and learned Lord, or whoever spoke for the Government, would tell me—and very properly tell me—that it is necessary in this country that justice should manifestly be seen to be done. But should not justice also be made manifest before a person is dispossessed of his home or his property, and a compulsory purchase order made? He has not even committed an offence—except, of course, the offence, as it is in the eyes of some, of just being an owner.
The Government's excuse for providing in this Bill for the so-called simplified procedure of compulsory purchase is, in the words of the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, that there is a possibility that there may be "organised withholding of land" when the Land Commission start to operate. But why should there be "organised withholding of land" provided that the Land Commission behave in the responsible and reasonable manner in which Ministers have this afternoon been so concerned to assure this Committee they will behave? I am not aware that in the past there has ever been an "organised withholding of land". There may have been a withholding of land from time to time, but not organised and the fact that the Government obviously envisage that there may be in future only increases one's fears as to what the real purpose of this Land Commission is going to be.
Again, if there were organised resistance on a large scale I should have thought that, prima facie, justice would require that there should be a public inquiry at which all the objections could be fully aired, and could be seen to be aired, before any compulsory purchase orders were made. Everybody knows perfectly well that there have to be powers of compulsory purchase, as there have been for a great many years, and it may well be that in the future compulsory purchase orders will have to be exercised more often than they have in the past. But it is a hateful necessity—at least, I think it is—and therefore the procedure must not only be fair but must be seen to be fair.
And do not let us ever forget that it can matter, as much as anything can matter in life, to a man and woman and their children to live in their home in the community in which they have put

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their roots. The noble Lord, Lord Kennet, the Parliamentary Secretary, in the course of his peroration in winding-up the debate on Second Reading used these words:
"…for at least a century the British Left has regarded State power as something to be wielded to rectify abuse, to protect the weak against the strong. Is it too colourful a claim to say that the Land Commission, which I hope that the House will approve this afternoon, is to protect the weak against the strong?"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Vol. 277 (No. 67) col. 1168; 14/11/66.]
Yes; I think it is too colourful a claim. Clause 8 will not rectify abuse; it will create abuse. It will not protect the weak against the strong; on the contrary, it will protect the strong against the weak—and that is why I wish to leave this clause out of the Bill.
9.32 p.m.
LORD KENNET: The debate on this proposal that the clause be deleted may be long. This clause has attracted a great deal of attention both in the House of Commons and in the Press. Many misunderstandings have been disclosed; many misstatements have been made; and in one or two newspapers there seems to have been an organised campaign—not, indeed, to withhold land, but to misrepresent the situation. What are the differences between the special procedure under Clause 8 and under Schedule 2 to this Bill and the normal procedure for compulsory purchase? They are two. They concern the service of notices and the holding of inquiries. They are the two differences to which the noble Lord, Lord Newton, has just addressed himself.
Under the normal procedure the making of a draft compulsory purchase order must be advertised; notices must be served on the owner and all interested in the land; but if, after careful inquiry, the owners of some interests cannot be found, notice can be served by delivering it to an occupier of the property or, if there is no occupier, by posting it on the land. That is all there already. Under the special procedure, the only difference is that this latter method can be used without first incurring the often unreasonable delay of trying to trace the identity and addresses of absentee owners, of all the absentees who may have an interest in the land in question. This
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delay is one which, if they are trying to evade you—and this is the point—can become intolerable. It is not a difference of principle; it is a difference of degree. Let me read to the Committee the relevant part of Schedule 2, It says:
"Any such notice shall be taken to be duly served if—
"(a)"—
and (a) is obviously the first preference which will face the Land Commission—
"it is addressed to the owner, lessee or occupier by name, and delivered to him or left at, or sent by registered post or the recorded delivery service to, his usual or last known place of abode"—
and this is obviously the first thing to do and the first thing they are required to do under the familiar compulsory purchase procedure which we have at present—
"or
"(b) where he is the owner, lessee or occupier of land which appears to the Commission to be separately occupied, the notice is addressed to' the owner and the occupier' of the land (describing it) and is either delivered to some person on the land or, if there is no person on the land to whom it can be delivered, is affixed to some conspicuous object on the land."—
and this is the objection of the noble Lord, Lord Newton—
"or
"(c) where the land appears to the Commission to be unoccupied, it is addressed to 'the owners and any occupiers' of the land (describing it) and is affixed to some conspicuous object on the land."
I would draw the attention of the Committee to the order of events. First try (a), and if that does not work, try (b); and if there is nobody at all, try (c). This is what the local authorities do now.
LORD NEWTON: This is very interesting. What the noble Lord is saying, as I understand it, is that the Commission will first try (a) and then (b). But (c) says, "where the land appears to the Commission to be unoccupied" it is then sufficient to affix the notice to some conspicuous object. It does not say "where the land is unoccupied", which is a purported statement of fact which presumably could be challenged in a court of law. It merely says "where the land appears to the Commission", and presumably if a particular official decides to assume that the land is unoccupied, he

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need not bother about (a) or (b), and if one were to take him to court, all he would have to substantiate was that it appeared to him that the land was unoccupied, whether in fact it was or not.
LORD KENNET: He would look pretty silly if he turned up in court and said that a large inhabited slum looked to him unoccupied and he stuck the notice on the first door he came to. The Land Commission are going to be human beings. They are going to be operating within the law. They know that if they set a foot wrong, they are going to be pulled up pretty smartly by Parliament, by the Press—which we do not propose to abolish this evening—and by the courts, for we do not propose to abolish the planning laws. I say to noble Lords opposite that if evidence is given on behalf of the Commission that in their opinion a stretch of land is unoccupied, when it appears to be occupied to everybody else, they are not going to be able to operate like that for very long. The ordinary facts of life are still going to operate, even after the Land Commission is set up. The provision in the Bill is made to avoid the Land Commission's being bogged down for months and even years, as local authorities sometimes are at present, by the deliberate evasion of service of notice by landlords. If there is a house on the land, the notice is not going to be blown away. If there is anybody in the house, he is not going to refuse to accept it—unless, indeed, he is trying to evade accepting it. As for the noble Lord's picture of officials from Newcastle stopping—shall I say?—a milkmaid out picking cowslips and saying," "Dear madam, will you excuse me while I affix this notice to the back of your skirt", this is not what is meant to be. We are all living in the same country—
LORD NEWTON: He has not got to stick it to the milkmaid's back. All he has to do is to hand it to her and he has served notice.
LORD KENNET: This is a delicious scene. But possibly the noble Lord will accept that here we are talking of a difference of degree and not of principle. Local authorities are authorised to have recourse to precisely this procedure if they cannot find people. The only thing is that
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they are required to demonstrate that they have gone to great lengths to find people, to an extent from which this Bill proposes to exempt the Land Commission, and the Government believe for a good reason.
LORD HASTINGS: But suppose somebody is legitimately away on business or on holiday for a month. He is given only 28 days. What is going to happen then?
LORD KENNET: The noble Lord has asked me an entirely hypothetical question. Several courses will be open to him. I can tell noble Lords opposite my personal "snap" reaction. What I should myself do would be to object on the grounds that I was away for the period of notice and so was unaware of what was happening. This brings me to what I think is the weightier of the objections which have been raised to this clause—that is, about the holding of an inquiry. Under the normal procedure, the Minister, before authorising compulsory purchase, must see that any objector who does not withdraw his objection and whose objection is not confined to the scale of his compensationis heard by a person appointed for the purpose—normally the inspector at a public inquiry. The obligation is there, no matter how frivolous the grounds of objection. The Minister has no discretion in the matter. Even when the real ground of objection is compensation, the objection generally purports to be on other ground, in order to ensure that there is an inquiry. This trick is not seldom used—and it is a trick, since the basis of compensation is market value, and market value can be settled by the Land Tribunal.
The only change made by this special procedure is to give the Minister discretion whether or not to hold an inquiry. It gives him this discretion when he wants it, subject to the Negative Resolution of Parliament, as we have just been discussing. if he asks for the power to use this discretion for a certain time and a certain purpose in a certain district, and Parliament thinks he should not, it can stop him; and five years from the passing of this Bill, he loses this power of discretion altogther unless Parliament, by Affirmative Resolution, positively decides to continue it.

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Let me remind the Committee of what I said on Second Reading. Who are these recalcitrant landowners whose right to an inquiry is in question? Who are they likely to be? They are those who have first been unwilling to develop in the public interest land which they own. Second, they are those who have refused to sell their land by agreement to the Land Commission in order that it may develop the land in the public interest. Third, the situation in which all this happens is one which has given the Minister reason to believe that land cannot be compulsorily acquired under the ordinary procedure quickly enough to save the housing programme and that there is, in effect, a plot to hold up development in a given part of the world which is clearly against the public interest; and fourth, this situation is one which not only the Minister judges in this way but also Parliament itself, when it has elected to allow to the Minister the power of discretion we are now discussing.
A moment ago I spoke of misrepresentation. The biggest misrepresentation of the Government's intention has been that the Clause 8 procedure may deny landowners or householders any possibility of making their case known to the Minister. This is not so. Paragraph 4 of Schedule 1 of the Acquisition of Land Act 1946 applies to all compulsory purchase orders whatsoever. This paragraph provides that before confirming a compulsory purchase order the Minister must consider the objection and the report of the person who held the inquiry. The clause we are now discussing relieves the Minister of the obligation to hold an inquiry in the extreme circumstances which I have already described, but leaves wholly untouched his obligation under the 1946 Act to consider the objection. Now what does considering the objection mean? We are not in the dark about this; we have judge-made law. This was set out very clearly in the case of Stafford v. The Minister of Health reported in 1946. Under the Housing (Temporary Provisions) Act 1944 the situation was similar to the special procedure we are now considering. The Minister had to consider objections but he had discretion whether or not to hold an inquiry.
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So I would ask noble Lords to bear in mind that what I am about to describe corresponds precisely to what the situation of the law will be if we pass this Clause 8 unamended. In this case the landowner, having been informed by the local authority of their intention to submit a compulsory purchase order to the Minister for the acquisition of his land, sent a notice and grounds of objection to the Minister. The Minister, in the exercise of his discretion, decided not to hold an inquiry and confirmed the compulsory purchase order.
It was held by the court to whom the landowner appealed that the confirmation of the order was invalid and should be quashed because the mere notice of grounds of objection did not constitute a presentation of the landowner's case. Mr. Justice Charles rejected the contention of the local authority that the notice of objection with its grounds was in fact a statement of the objector's case. Those objections were merely blank statements or contentions. It was going too far to say that once grounds of appeal had been put forward no argument or elaboration was needed and that the grounds constituted a complete case with all its evidential statement.
It is true that this was not the only ground on which the case was decided, but it was one ground among others and, as such, is binding and will still bind Ministers when the Land Commission Bill becomes law. I hope I have made clear what will happen under the expedited procedure proposed in Clause 8 of the Bill, and how it is related to antecedent legislation and to judge-made law.
I turn now to the circumstances in which the Minister might think it proper, subject always to the approval of Parliament, to introduce a special procedure. My right honourable friend has himself many times stated what these might be. First, we must face the political fact of life that in this country landowners have in general always opposed every attempt to collect betterment. The levy under this Bill will be primarily taken from the proceeds of the sale of land. So the most direct way to frustrate the collection of betterment will be not to sell land. Landowners might withhold their land, or even club together to withhold it in an organised way, in the

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hope that the land levy would be repealed or abandoned, and indeed with the intention of discrediting the whole Land Commission. If this were to happen the building of private enterprise houses would be seriously prejudiced, and in order to overcome an organised opposition the Land Commission might have to make a large number of these compulsory purchase orders. If public inquiries had to be held for all of them the consequent delays could entirely frustrate the housing programme, and all for the sake of what hypothetically would be a politically motivated and socially profoundly misguided opposition on the part of a few large landowners.
The Government hope that this will not happen, but they would be failing in their duty to the public if they did not take adequate powers to deal with it if it does. It is not an imaginary risk. The noble Lord, Lord Newton, said that organised opposition to the sale of land had never been seen in this country. He was wrong. Organised opposition by landowners has occurred in the past. When Austen Chamberlain, not a Socialist, not even emotionally allied to the Labour Party, as Chancellor of the Exchequer was moving the Finance Bill that repealed the Lloyd George scheme incorporated in the Finance Act, 1910, he referred to one of the reasons for failure of that scheme, described in evidence given by the Deputy Chairman of the Board of Inland Revenue to the Select Committee on Land Values. This reason was "prolonged and organised opposition". This is Austen Chamberlain confessing failure.
VISCOUNT DAVENTRY: What year was it? It was a long time ago.
LORD BOWLES: It was 1922.
LORD KENNET: It was repealing the scheme of 1910. Quite simply, this Government do not intend to fail as Lloyd George failed. The Government have made very clear the circumstances in which orders applying the special procedure would be made—a virtual revolt by landowners; and only that. We think that landowners now are much less self-centred than they were over 40 and 50 years ago, at the time I am talking about. Surely they will not withhold their land from development and deprive the people
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of the houses they need. Surely they will not set the pursuit of the highest possible profit from their land above the building of houses for owner-occupiers.
Whether we are right in our belief that landowners are more enlightened now than they used to be can to a certain extent—and I believe it is an interesting and valid extent—be tested by the actions of noble Lords tonight. They are a good gauge of landowner feeling. I can think of better gauges, but not many. If noble Lords opposite and their friends have no intention of withholding their land which is ripe for development, and if, despite the levy, they will sell it freely to builders for private enterprise housing, then the circumstances which would justify the special procedure will never arise and it will never be invoked. If, on the other hand, they oppose this procedure it is probably because they expect it to be used against themselves and their friends outside.
Noble Lords opposite may, of course, say that they are not opposing Clause 8 in order to protect their own interests as landowners.
VISCOUNT DAVENTRY: Is there nobody on that side of the House who has a bit of land at all?
LORD KENNET: I have a bit, and I am quite happy about the levy. The noble Lord, Lord Newton, has already said that his object is to protect the interests of the owner-occupiers; and to prevent the occupier of the small house from being dispossessed without a hearing. This would be a mistaken argument. A Minister is not prevented from holding an inquiry; he is only freed from the absolute obligation to hold one in every single case. If, in the circumstances in which the procedure of Schedule 2 was in use, a compulsory purchase order was made which included a dwelling-house, and there were representations from the occupier of that dwelling-house, any Minister would obviously recognise that these were circumstances in which he ought to give the occupier an opportunity to be heard at an inquiry.
I would assure the House this evening, on behalf of the Government, that so long as this Government lasts any Minister will always accord a public inquiry into objections to a special procedure compulsory purchase order from the

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occupier of a house. But that would be only my assurance, and I hold the view, which I expect is shared by noble Lords opposite, that government by assurance is not to be preferred to government by Statute law. I have therefore to tell the House that, in view of the opinions which have been expressed in the House of Commons, in this House, and in the country, the Government are now prepared to put this point beyond any doubt. Provided, of course, that Clause 8 and Schedule 2 are still in the Bill at Report stage and are therefore capable of being amended by this House, I will move an Amendment to the Bill, which will have the effect that, if the occupier objects, a dwelling-house cannot be taken compulsorily under this procedure, without a hearing or an inquiry—and here is a draft of it.
If, in the light of this assurance, the Opposition still press for the rejection of Clause 8, there can then be no doubt, and will be no doubt in the country, that they are voting for vested interests. If, on the other hand, they will agree to let Clause 8 stand, so that I can later introduce the Amendment I have just undertaken to introduce, they will show that their opposition to this clause was really based on what it was alleged to be based—on solicitude for the householder.
9.58 p.m.
LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR: If the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, wishes to get a Government Bill through, I would not recommend him to make many speeches of that character. There is much to be said when in charge of a Bill—and I have been in charge of many—for being conciliatory and not taking the initiative in accusing one's opponents of future malpractices.
This debate, which was so admirably initiated by my noble friend Lord Newton, concerns something which vitally affects everybody in the land. The noble Lord, Lord Kennet, rested much of his argument on the fear—or the threat—that a certain number of large landowners would enter into a determined conspiracy to wreck this Bill. I do not believe that for one moment. Even if that were true, which I do not accept, there could be no justification for taking the powers in subsection (3) of this clause to ask Parliament to make an order
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which would apply to acquisitions generally—that is to say, to all acquisitions throughout the country during this period of five years, whether there was any difficulty about them or not.
I had been intending to say—because I am never intransigent—that what was really wrong with this clause was the sweeping wording of subsection (3). I think nearly all of us, both here and outside among the general public, would accept that there is something to be said for a very special procedure in a limited case where a real crisis arises. But that is not what Clause 8 provides. Clause 8 provides the Minister with most sweeping powers, subject only to control by a Prayer from either House of Parliament. The noble Lord has suggested, and indeed has put on the Table, a draft Amendment which runs to some thirty lines, and I am not going to attempt to take it in here. Indeed, it would be quite wrong for me to do so because it is not available to noble Lords generally, and I am quite certain that a number of noble Lords are deeply interested in this clause for the protection of the general public.
I think it is unwise to let this clause remain in the Bill with Schedule 2, but at the same time there are signs of repentance on the Government Benches; there are signs of an indication that they themselves recognise that the clause which they have presented to Parliament is too wide and too sweeping and should be limited. When one recognises signs of repentance in a sinner one does not want to punish him prematurely, and I think we should try to see how far we can get this repentance to go. It may be that if this clause remains for the time being in the Bill, not only will the Amendment which the Government promised to Schedule 2 be on the paper for Report stage but other Amendments in the names of some of my noble friends and other noble Lords not belonging to the Party which I have the honour to serve, because the interest in this is widespread, owing to the threat which the clause presents to all kinds of people.
It is late this evening. I hope I am not cutting anybody else out from taking part in the debate, but the advice I would give to my noble friends is not to press this to a Division this evening but to examine with great care the situation that

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will arise if a Government Amendment is tabled on Report, and to add further Amendments which may be designed to make this clause, in a truncated form, acceptable, so that this special procedure is available only to cases where a real crisis is liable to arise and the clause is no longer drafted in this sweeping form which is, quite frankly, a threat to everybody in the country.
LORD MITCHISON: I do not propose to keep the House for more than two minutes, but so far nobody has mentioned two things which require to be mentioned. The first is that for five years, from 1946 to 1951, very similar powers to those given by this clause were given to the Government of the day and were exercised, and there were virtually no complaints. This was said in the other place, it was in no way contradicted, and I suggest to your hard-headed Lordships that in this instance an ounce of practice is worth a pound of theory and rhetoric, and we have the practice here.
Secondly, I wish to say something (and I want to make it perfectly clear that there is nothing whatever personal about this) about the way society in this country has developed, and the way in which the rights of landlords and others have grown and been varied. I find it remarkable that the Tory Party to-day rests its case so much on not allowing the Government to turn an individual out of his house. We heard the noble Lord, Lord Newton, almost weeping about it. Until 1950 every landlord in this country had the right to turn out a tenant; and heaven knows how many did so!
10.5 p.m.
LORD CONESFORD: The noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, as usual thinks he is the only noble Lord in this House who has an ounce of experience about anything. Actually he is perhaps the only noble Lord who can never learn from experience, which is a slightly different thing. I have, as a matter of fact, some experience in a matter that is not wholly alien to this Bill; namely, town and country planning. In fact I was the Minister who got the original Ministry of that name established; it was the subject that brought me into politics, and I have been interested in it ever since.
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What strikes me as amazing is this hostility to a public inquiry, as though it was always an unmitigated nuisance from which no good could come. It so happens that my experience in recent public inquiries has generally been from the point of view of amenities in which I am passionately interested. I think that my interest would probably have been on the same side as that of the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, and I very much wish that he were still here—I do not see him at the moment. But the line he took was that an inquiry by the Minister—that is to say, the Minister allowing the objector to come and give his objection to him—was just as good, or nearly as good, as having a public inquiry. But it has this very great distinction, which I think every democrat in the House—and I hope there are some opposite—will appreciate: if there is a public inquiry, the public know something about it, and therefore the worth of the objection raised by the individual who objects to the compulsory acquisition is made public, and the Minister, in dealing with it, is dealing not only with the individual making that objection but with a public that followed the inquiry.
What makes me particularly anxious about this desire to get rid of public inquiries in this type of case is observing what has happened since this Government took office. Though there is a public inquiry, and though the official taking the public inquiry makes a report and recommendation, the Minister is not, of course, at all bound to follow that recommendation. He may do precisely the opposite. I do not complain of that power; he has a right to do it if he wishes. But at least the public know the way that the inspector has reported. If this special procedure—accelerated procedure or whatever it is called; simplified procedure—is adopted and there is no public inquiry, the public will never become informed of the menace. I can only say I very much regret that the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, thought fit to attack the motives of this side at a time when he thought the debate was coming to an end, though we can prevent that.
LORD MITCHISON: Has the noble Lord never attacked our motives?
LORD CONESFORD: I cannot remember offhand. I fully concede the possibility, and I shall certainly have far less hesitation in future. But I do not think I have ever, in what was thought to be the concluding speech of a debate, assumed that there could be no honest reason for disagreeing with the view I was putting forward. I do not think I have ever done that: I hope I have not. That was the implication of Lord Kennet's speech to us: that there was no decent reason for which we could oppose this clause. I can only say that I oppose it, and I do not believe my motives are entirely indecent.
LORD KENNET: There is a decent reason for which noble Lords opposite can oppose this clause, and it would be that it did not lay upon Ministers the obligation to hold a public inquiry in the case of every single householder. That obligation I have just undertaken to introduce. I do not know if there is any other decent reason for which noble Lords opposite can oppose the clause as I propose to amend it.
THE EARL OF MANSFIELD: I am not surprised that the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, mentioned the noble Earl, the late Lord, Lloyd-George, because certainly the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, is an admirable spiritual descendant of his, so far as Lime house vituperation is concerned; and I wish to repudiate, on behalf of rural landlords, the slur which, quite unnecessarily, the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, sought to put upon us. As for the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, in the latest, we hope, and almost the least relevant of his many irrelevant remarks, he talked of landlords having the power to throw out tenants, and asked if they do so. May I remind the noble Lord that to-day the people who can throw out tenants are the Forestry Commission, the mines, the county councils and the town councils—and do they do it!
10.12 p.m.
LORD NEWTON: I do not want to prolong this debate, but as I started it I think I ought to wind it up.
LORD SHACKLETON: Very quickly.
LORD NEWTON: I do not think the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, was here
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earlier. If he had been, he might have thought me fully justified in prolonging the debate. I am not going to do so. The noble Lord, Lord Kennet, has promised to put down an Amendment which I think means that I shall have got nearly all I asked for in what I think was really a most moderate and reasonable speech, although the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, went so far as to think that I wept at one moment. I hope no other noble Lord did. I think that as the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, had determined at the end of his speech to make this quite substantial concession, it was not really necessary to build up to it in the way he did. But he has had a long day, and we are grateful to him for the help he has given us.
The noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, said that he did not know what was meant by laying something on the Table. Well, he saw it happen this afternoon, when the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, chucked his Amendment across at us. I should like only to say this: that when a Minister in this House makes a promise to do something one knows that he means to do it and it is not necessary to prove it by throwing something at us.
On Question, Clause 8 agreed to.
House resumed.