LORDS AMENDMENTS (Hansard, 26 October 1967)

§ LORD KENNET
My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth not insist on Amendments Nos. 3 to 5 to which the Commons have disagreed.

§ LORD BROOKE OF CUMNOR
My Lords, I hope it will not be thought discourteous to another place if I say that I think very little of the Reason given for the Commons disagreement to this Amendment. It is stated to be: Because the term of 21 years has for nearly 50 years been taken in comparable legislation as the test for distinguishing between long and short leases, and is more suitable than a longer term for purposes of the Bill. But that overlooks the fact that this Bill is unique. We have never before had a Bill designed to deprive the freeholder of leasehold property of his interest in the bricks and mortar. I should have thought that in those circumstances the Government would have concentrated on seeking to find a definition which would discriminate between the genuine building lease, where I think it is their desire to protect the leaseholder, and the lease which does not involve any obligation on the original lessee to build a house on the ground because in fact the house is already there.
I cannot conceive of any circumstances in which anybody would agree to enter into a lease for less than fifty 1800 years and to build a house on the land in question; it would be so obviously an uneconomic proposition. We all know that the average building leases are for seventy-five or ninety-nine, or sometimes 999 years. It was on these grounds that your Lordships agreed to substitute fifty years for twenty-one years as the discriminating figure between a short lease and a long lease for the purposes of the Bill; and I have no doubt whatever that your Lordships were right to do so. There is really no substance at all in the argument that in previous legislation, dealing with quite other matters, the discriminating figure has been taken to be twenty-one and not fifty. Quite obviously this Bill is not designed to apply to the case where the lease is entered into without an obligation to build on the land. The whole concept of the Bill is directed towards the building lease, and it was for that reason that I moved the Amendment to substitute fifty for twenty-one. I can only regret that the Government have added to the confusion of their thinking in advising the Commons not to accept our Amendments, and in giving this quite irrelevant Reason for their disagreement.

§ LORD KENNET
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, said that the Bill is unique in that it affects who shall pay whom for the bricks and mortar, and that we have never had a Bill before which does this. The same could be said of any Bill ever passed by any Parliament. Every Bill is unique, and of every Bill it could be said that we have never before had a Bill which does such and such, because if we had had such a Bill before, it would not have been necessary to pass another. The Bill is part of landlord and tenant legislation which for many years has had the period in question, and not the one proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Cumnor. Moreover, the figure of 21 years appears in the White Paper which was before the electorate in the last Election, as the noble Lord can confirm if he will turn to paragraph 5.