HL Deb 29 November 1973 vol 347 cc239-58

3.54 p.m.

House again in Committee on Amendment No. 1.

LORD WADE

I think we are now in calmer waters. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, asked whether any Members of your Lordships' House had any comments to make on the proposal in his Amendment, and I have one brief comment. A good many years ago I had some experience of registering deeds of conveyance at the Yorkshire Land Registry. I must say that in my view it worked very satisfactorily. It was a convenience to have those transfers of land registered by means of the Deeds Registry. This no longer exists because it has gradually been replaced by land registration. I think there are still some who rather regret that the old Deeds Registry no longer exists. It was convenient to be able to inspect that Registry. I do not recall that anyone objected to the right of inspection, and my view is that the proposal of the noble and learned Lord is a sensible one. I hope that in one way or another it will be adopted.

THE EARL OF SELKIRK

I hesitate to intervene in a debate of this sort between a former and an existing Lord Chancellor, and I know no aspect of law which I find more intimidating than that of conveyancing. I know nothing whatever about English conveyancing, and I did not even know that there was not a public registry in England until I listened to the Second Reading debate the other day. We have had one in Scotland for what is claimed to be about 300 years, though I should guess that it was certainly pretty elementary in the early stages. I have never heard any criticism of this particular system. I have never heard anybody say that there were grave disadvantages to it. We rather pride ourselves—rightly or wrongly, I know not —that this is rather a good system to work.

The advantages which it brings are, first of all, assurance of title, which is very important indeed. This enables the priority of burdens of all kinds to be publicly known, and indeed the priority takes date from the time of registration. That is an advantage in itself. There can be no discussion as to who is, or is not, the prior bond. Secondly, it brings clarity to "servitudes", as we call them in Scotland, or "easements", as they are called in England. I do not see why, in principle, this system should not work exactly the same if, and when, we get to the stage of registration in title instead of registration of deeds, as at the present time. I confess that the registration of deeds is a very complicated matter, and not one which anybody can easily understand without professional and learned advice on the subject. But it is there, and everybody knows what the title is. So far as I know, no serious disadvantages have come from that procedure.

3.57 p.m.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

I am glad to have heard the various views which have been expressed. It is a little depressing, from the point of view of the would-be law reformer, when one puts forward what one believes to be a useful and constructive suggestion for the improvement of the law in one direction, that attempts are made to introduce much more controversial and less well considered reforms as a means of "tacking" to that particular Bill. As I attempted to show on Second Reading, the purpose of this Bill is to alter the structure of the Land Registry; it has basically nothing to do with the system of inspection, or otherwise, of the register. With the one qualification in Clause 4 of a slight easement for the detection of crime, it is not intended to affect the Land Registry one way or the other, except by transferring it to a public body rather than making it a part of the Lord Chancellor's Department.

As I explained, the object of that was to facilitate, and perhaps restore, what I regard as the important necessity of extending compulsory land registration at least to the built-up areas of the country and eventually to the whole country, and about that there was no dispute on Second Reading. I must remind the Committee, because it is directly relevant to the Amendment proposed by the noble and learned Lord, that at the moment I am faced with a situation in which rather less than half the land in this country is registered, if one takes the population basis, which is the usually accepted basis, and rather less than 10 per cent. of the land is registered if one takes an area basis, which is not the usually accepted basis.

What the noble and learned Lord is trying to do is to apply to the rather less than half which is registered a different principle with regard to inspection and knowledge of the true owner from that which is applied to the rest. I still find it wholly unacceptable that that should be so. It cannot depend on whether your land happens to be registered or not which of two quite divergent principles you apply to the publicity attached to the ownership. It is either right that everybody should know who is the true owner of the land, and in what circumstances, or it is right that the other principle should apply to some and, to a specified extent, right across the board. I cannot accept that to do it to registered land and not to unregistered land is to do other than to introduce a purely fortuitous test about a principle which ought to be argued out.

I have always accepted—and the noble and learned Lord mentioned this in Second Reading, and touched on it in the course of his remarks a moment ago—that there is a social need for the tenant to be able to ascertain the true nature of his landlord. This would not be achieved by the present Amendment which would be limited to registered land and would not affect some tenants. But I have always accepted that, and I am happy to tell the Committee that I think the Government have accepted this principle too, and that there is a social need for it. I am not in a position to make a statement, but I am consulting my colleagues at present about the feasibility of introducing the principle of the right of the tenant to ascertain the identity of the landlord, at any rate in regard to residential property, right across the board, in our forthcoming Housing and Planning Bill. If, in fact, that proves possible, as I very much hope it will, that will be the proper vehicle by which to do it, and not the Land Registry Bill.

That leaves only the question of the registration of freehold title and the right of inspection. I wish I could persuade the noble and learned Lord, for whom I have the warmest respect and affection, to take seriously his own precepts about law reform. Since I have been Lord Chancellor I must have heard him make a dozen speeches in which he has criticised various law reform bodies—the Law Reform Committee, the Criminal Law Revision Committee and other bodies—for embarking on schemes of law reform without taking the various steps which he told us the Law Commission, which was his own child, took before they embarked upon a proposal. I cannot help noticing that whenever he has a hobby-horse of his own he asks me to by-pass the Law Commission, to override all his doctrines, many of which are sound, and to try to stampede the House into premature action. I do ask him to be consistent about this matter.

The question in England of publicity being attached to freehold title is a controversial one. Two of the bodies to which the noble and learned Lord usually pays a great deal of attention—indeed, he has sometimes criticised me for overriding their opinion, which I very seldom do—are the Bar Council and the Law Society. Both of them, as a matter of fact, have expressed themselves as strongly opposed to this principle. I am not by any means saying—I do not like to be dogmatic about these things—that they are necessarily right, but I only ask the noble and learned Lord to be consistent in this matter. If he is consistent he will see that it is necessary to consult the various interested bodies fairly widely before embarking upon a change of policy of this kind. The matter is actually before the Law Commission at the present time, and they have issued a working paper. It may have been a report, but I think it was a working paper. The work on that item was postponed, I am afraid largely at my own request, because of greater social priorities. I had to ask them to go into the far more pressing matter at that time of "gazumping", as it is so inelegantly called, and other matters of the same kind. I hope they will now resume it.

The noble and learned Lord went on to suggest that there were scandals in relation to speculation. I do not think it will help in the matter of Centre Point very much. The difficulty with Centre Point was never that one did not know who the landlord was, which is the only point to which the noble and learned Lord is directed at the moment; one knew only too well. The question is why it is left empty. I am prepared to debate that at any time of the day or night and I am sure that I should differ very much from the noble and learned Lord's strictures on the matter. It has nothing whatever to do with this Amendment. I should think—although I do not want, as I said, to dogmatise, and there are arguments both ways—that if you open the Register of Titles to all and sundry on the payment of a fee, which is the purpose of this Amendment, far from discouraging speculation you will encourage it. You may be absolutely sure that if the Register is opened in this way, the persons who will pay the fee will not be merely the inquisitive, desirous of finding out the ultimate truth of the matter; they will include estate agents and surveyors, solicitors negotiating estate duty settlements, and other persons who will pass on the information to speculators very quickly indeed.

I have to consider this proposal also in relation to the Land Registry. The position of the Land Registry, as to which the noble and learned Lord made inquiries, is this. Not only have we been held up from extending the system of compulsory registration ever since 1968, in the unhappy circumstances which I outlined to the House on Second Reading, but also the modest increases in staff I have been able to achieve have been largely taken up with the great number of increases in transactions. If you now impose upon an overworked and understaffed Registry the additional work of giving copies of a title on payment of a fee to anyone who happens to ask for it, the process of extension and expansion, which is the whole purpose of this measure, will, at any rate to some extent —I cannot say to what extent because one cannot estimate the demand—be frustrated. I can only contemplate it with a certain amount of dismay. I am not seeking in any way to be dogmatic about the matter, but it is really outside the purpose of this Bill to introduce a change in the law with regard to inspection, except to the very modest extent which Clause 4 indicates. It will not alter the principles as applicable to the greater part of land in this country—about 92 per cent., if you judge it by area, and over half if you judge it by population density—but it will limit it to registered land. It will, therefore, mean that there is a complete divergence of principle between the two types of land.

If you ask whether this will not perhaps increase the political opposition to land registration, which is never very explicit but is nevertheless real for not being articulate, I can only say that I suspect it will. It is seeking to prejudge a question which is currently before the Law Commission and which is opposed by both branches of the legal profession and is therefore, to say the least, controversial. It is imposing an additional burden on a Registry which I want to expand. I do not want to be unkind about this—I am not saying that in the end, when we have got things as we should like to get them with land registration, we should not, after due discussion with the interested bodies, come down on the noble and learned Lord's side—but I do think I am justified in asking him to apply his own principles of law reform to his own Amendment. If he does so, I hope he will not press it to a Division.

LORD CHORLEY

I find the argument of the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor most unconvincing. It seems he has two main points. One is that until all registrations can be made public none should be made public. You might as well say that if some brilliant doctor discovered a cure for a deadly disease, but for the time being the cure could not help everybody who suffered from the disease, until enough of the cure was produced it should not be applied. That seems absurd. The other argument is the familiar one, that it is administratively inconvenient to do it. Ever since I had the honour to be a Member of this House I have heard this argument trotted out in connection with reforms which, after a short time, are admitted to be absolutely essential and are then brought into effect. I hope your Lordships will not be put off in this way any longer.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

The noble Lord has completely misrepresented my argument. My argument was not that it was desirable to do it but that you could only do it to some and therefore you must not do it at all; it was that, whether it was desirable or not, it was wholly controversial and that to do it to one type of land, so as to give preference or to put an added disadvantage on one type of land rather than another, was wholly unjust. Nor did I say it was administratively inconvenient. I said law reform, if it is to be effective, must go forward on certain principles, principles which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, has frequently outlined to the House with far greater brilliance than I can achieve. We must proceed according to our own principles if we are to achieve an orderly advance. I only asked him to stick to his own principles.

LORD GARDINER

I do not know whether the noble and learned Lord feels able to reply to my question as to what his present estimate is of the length of time it will take to complete the eight-year plan.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

I did not have prior notice of this question, but I think from the time one was able to resume the full operation of the plan it would take between four and five years to extend compulsory registration to the built-up areas of this country. When I say "this country" I mean England and Wales. I am confining my estimate to the built-up areas and not to some of the outlying areas.

LORD GARDINER

I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord for the consideration he has given to this Amend- ment and I should naturally like to think about what he has said. As to the point about speculation, what makes Centre Point an unusual case is that everybody knows who the owner of it is. In many recent property speculations the case has been otherwise because the owners have often been hidden under an absolute myriad of subsidiary companies; nobody really knows who owns what. While appreciating what he said about tenants, I should have thought the need of local authorities was much greater. It seems to me an astonishing thing to-day, with the reorganisation of local government and with local government responsible for proper planning in their areas, that they cannot find out who owns what. There is a public register available with information in it and they are not allowed to see it. It is not only the local authorities who are affected; bodies like the Friends of the Lake District, who would like to discuss things reasonably with the relevant owners, cannot do so because they cannot find out who they are.

I am a little impressed with the fact that there is not a single member of your Lordships' Committee, apart from the noble and learned Lord, who has said a word against this Amendment. As for it being outside the scope of the Bill, this clause provides for the first time that instead of there being a closed record it is to be open to the inspection of the Director of Public Prosecutions. I am surprised at the noble and learned Lord putting that forward. I would have thought that he would have said that we cannot have a state of affairs in which some people's properties, those registered in the Land Registry, can be inspected with a view to prosecution being brought against them, whereas other people are protected and cannot be prosecuted. It seems exactly the same argument. The very thing this clause is dealing with is to answer the question: ought this register to be open to inspection and, if so, by whom? However, as I have said, I should like to consider further all the matters to which the noble and learned Lord has referred. It may be that I shall wish to return to this point on the Report stage of the Bill.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 4 agreed to.

Clauses 5 to 9 agreed to.

Clause 10 [The initial debt]:

4.15 p.m.

LORD GARDINER moved Amendment No. 2:

Page 10, line 13, at end insert— ("() The initial debt

  1. (a) shall not include any amount in respect of the value of the Land Registry building in London, and
  2. (b) shall be arrived at after crediting the registering authority with the amount by which the income of the existing Land Registry has, on the vesting date, exceeded its expenditure.")

The noble and learned Lord said: This Amendment is purely exploratory and relates to what is called the initial debt in this clause. I understand that if the State has paid for a Land Registry say, at Bristol or somewhere else, it may be right that the new body should be debited with the cost. This Amendment is put down in order to raise two questions: first, will this apply to the Government Land Registry? At Second Reading, on November 20, at column 923, the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor said, … as a matter of history the Land Registry itself—which must be worth a good many millions; I do not know how many; I am not good at that kind of thing—was originally paid for out of the various fees charged in the past, … I am not sure whether that could have been right, but it was done. It cannot possibly be right that the users should have to pay for it twice over, if that is the position under this clause.

The second point is whether, against the initial debt, the Government should give credit to the new Land Registry for the existing surplus which has been paid into the Consolidated Fund. On Second Reading I raised both these points at column 918. I said: As I believe I am right in thinking that the London Land Registry was built entirely out of the fees of the people who used it and that the Government of the time never had to pay for it at all, if there are registries elsewhere which belonged to the Government and have been transferred to the Land Registry it might be proper to allow for that fact. Then I went on to the other matter: But may I ask what is to happen to the £11 million (I think that is the figure now) that the Chancellor of the Exchequer owes to the Lord Chancellor at the moment? I am quite clear in my recollection that it was £4 million when I was in office; then, as we see, in the last two years they made a profit of over £8 million, so the figure is something like £12 million. Are the Treasury going to give credit for that sum? I will not say anything further until I know what the answer is, because although I raised both matters on Second Reading (and this is not a complaint but a statement of fact) I did not receive an answer on either point. I beg to move.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, for raising these points. I am not sure to what extent I can give him satisfaction, nor how much I agree with his statement that the Chancellor of the Exchequer owes me £11 million, or £12 million. It seems to me to be wealth beyond the dreams of avarice which I do not believe I possess.

It is important to understand at the outset that the Government's general policy on fees and charges for public services—and that includes fees for land transfers—is that they should reflect the economic cost of providing the services, including the price of using the assets employed in the business. Whatever else may be said about other types of public service, some of which are clearly social services, this must be right if you think about the cost of transferring land, which is simply a buyer and a seller entering into a commercial transaction and obtaining, in the case of registered land, a service from the public because the title has been retained on the public registry and the service of transfer is conducted by public servants.

Among the costs of the assets engaged on the business are the capital assets involved in the premises employed. It cannot in principle make the smallest difference how the particular premises came into the possession of the Crown. They may in some cases have been part of the ancient demesne of the Crown; they may have been bought a few years ago in Bristol or wherever they may be; or they may have been paid for historically out of the fees in the past. But it is right that those who buy and sell land should pay for the service they receive: and I think that any accountant would tell them that payment for that service must include a charge for the premises involved. I think that all businesses proceed on this basis.

As a matter of historical fact, the building known as the Land Registry Building originally cost about £243,000. It was bought, I believe, between 1900 and 1927 and it was paid for historically out of fees provided by the then buyers and sellers of land. I cannot see in principle why the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, thinks that the present buyers and sellers of land ought to gain because of what the previous buyers and sellers of land in the earlier part of my lifetime, up to 1927, provided. It became part of the property of the Crown and was paid for in that way at that time. I do not see that anyone should get an advantage out of that except the present owners, who are the Government, which is the Consolidated Fund. Owing to the distribution of work which has since taken place into various district registries, and owing to the various other steps that have been taken, the building which is called the Land Registry is in fact occupied only as to about one quarter by the headquarters of the Land Registry itself. The rest is for other public purposes and departments—including, I think, the Public Record Office. So it is only for that part of it which they occupy currently that the Land Registry will be charged under this Bill; and they will be charged what the Government consider an economic rent; that is, about £150,000 a year. The Government are retaining the rest of the building for their own use.

The noble and learned Lord also raised what is a cognate but separate question: what happened to the surpluses of the past. The answer is that they have gone into the Consolidated Fund like all other surpluses on Government activities. The fact that the Land Registry has been making a profit—which it is not intended to do; it is intended to balance its activities taking one year with another—and the fact that for various reasons, including the inflated price of land and including the great rise in the number of individual transactions, it has been making a profit, has enabled me to reduce the fees. I think I reduced them by 20 per cent. this summer. But the profit, when it was made, was paid into the Consolidated Fund; and anybody who believes he is going to get it out now is, I think, optimistic—greatly more optimistic than the sad-faced lawyer who holds for the time being the ancient Office that I hold. But in fact the profit has gone into the Consolidated Fund, and that has enabled me, as I have said, to reduce the charges. In future, of of course, the Land Registry will be within the limits of the directions I am supposed to give under this Bill; it will be the master of its own house, designed not to make a profit but to balance its accounts. It will charged with rent for both the out-stations and the headquarters station and it will so arrange its affairs as to charge as little as possible to the public for the services it renders, consistently with financial prudence. That is how the matter stands.

The noble and learned Lord put his case very reasonably. I am not saying that I have not a good deal of sympathy with it. But the answer is that the Land Registry is going to be charged with what it occupies now, whether by headquarters or district stations; and that the past surpluses have gone into the Consolidated Fund—if that is the question that the noble and learned Lord wanted answered. It does not constitute a debt from the Chancellor of the Exchequer to me. I should be happy if it did.

LORD GARDINER

This was a purely exploratory Amendment, and I am glad to know the position. But it seems to me an extraordinarily unsatisfactory one. Under this Bill, the future financial basis is to be exactly what it has been in the past; namely: It shall be the duty of the registering authority so to conduct its affairs as to secure that, taking one year with another, its revenue is not less than sufficient to meet its outgoings properly chargeable to revenue account. —not to capital account. Something happened in the past which was not quite right. In the earlier part of this century the Land Registry, finding that it had a surplus through over-charging the users, proceeded to spend it on the Land Registry. So the Land Registry, as it has been admitted, was paid for by the users. All I am suggesting is that there should be no debits among the initial balance in respect of the costs of the Land Registry; because if that happens it means that the users will pay for the same building twice over. I still do not see how that can he right.

Secondly, so far as the surpluses are concerned, the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, or at least the Chief Land Registrar, has apologised very much for what happened in the last two years—and very properly so: because being under this injunction to break even taking one year with another, when the fees were last put up a most unhappy miscalculation was made as a result of which the profit made in 1971–72 was about £2½ millon and in 1972–73 over £6 million. It cannot be right in this new set-up that that profit, resulting as it does from excessive fees charged to the users of the Land Registry—fees which ought never to have been charged at all—should be pocketed by the Government.

When I say "ought never to have been charged at all" I do not overlook the difficulties of the Registrar, who naturally does not assume that within two years of the election of a Conservative Government the building of houses will practically have stopped and that these enormous profits out of land will have been made. But he himself agrees that it was unwarrantably large and he says, quite rightly: We must use our best endeavours to avoid a comparable disparity between revenue and expenditure for the future. There is no reason why the Government should make a windfall from that when the whole intention of the present Act, as of this Bill, is that, looking at the expenditure and revenue, there should be a balance each year. However, as I have said, I put down this Amendment to explore the situation, and I shall not press it to a Division tonight.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 10 agreed to.

Clauses 11 to 20 agreed to.

Schedule 1 [The new public authority]:

4.30 p.m.

LORD GARDINER moved Amendment No. 3:

Page 18, line 21, at end insert— ("() The staff shall be employed on terms and conditions not less favourable than those they enjoyed on the vesting date and the staff shall continue to be employed on terms and conditions not less favourable than those from time to time enjoyed by the Civil Service, including such terms and conditions as are applicable to civil servants desiring to transfer to other posts in the Civil Service.")

The noble and learned Lord said: This is an Amendment for which I hope the whole of the Committee will feel some personal responsibility. I hope the whole Committee has the same admiration for our Civil Service as I have, but here are civil servants who, having chosen that way of life, with every prospect of security of tenure find themselves in a very difficult position when they are suddenly dismissed and are, they hope, to be employed by some new autonomy. On what ought to happen I should have thought we are all agreed and nobody could have given more satisfactory assurances than those given by the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor. On Second Reading he said: … all staff at present serving with the Land Registry will be transferred to the new organisation on the appointed day. They will cease to be civil servants, but we are prepared to guarantee that the terms of employment offered will be the terms on which the staff were serving on the day before the transfer. Moreover, t is the Government's intention that after the change Civil Service terms and conditions should continue to apply to the staff of the new organisation so that there will be freedom of transfer between the Land Registry land Government Departments. The staff of the Land Registry will continue to belong to the Civil Service superannuation scheme. All new conditions of service and pay agreed for the civil service will apply automatically to the staff."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 29/11/73; col. 911.] That is very satisfactory, and the sole difference between us is this. We all know that so long as the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor is in Office, and I do not doubt so long as this Government are in Office, this undertaking will be honoured. But, of course, the staff will have no guarantee at all in the future because no Government can bind their successors. The question is whether, if we are to do what I would feel to be our duty to the staff, we ought not to ensure that whatever terms the Government may be prepared to accept, these guarantees given to the staff should be incorporated in the Bill.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

I was very grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Gardiner, for the kind things he said about the concordat which we have arrived at with the staff, which I am glad to say he finds satisfactory, and which I hope and believe is satisfactory and will commend itself to the whole Committee. I was also very grateful to him for saying, as I should expect him to do with his usual courtesy, that neither I nor any of my colleagues so long as we remain in Office would willingly depart, or will depart, from that undertaking; and, of course we will not. But I was slightly surprised by what the noble and learned Lord went on to say. It is true, of course, in a legal sense that one does not bind one's successors. But I think that in a matter of this kind it is almost a convention of the Constitution that successor Governments are in honour bound to honour an undertaking of this kind, and I should assume it to be so. Of course, politics is a very uncertain thing, but looking at the Benches opposite, or at the Cross-Benches, or even at the Bishops' Bench, I cannot conceive of any Government composed of any people I know in this country who would he disposed to break an undertaking of this kind, at any rate deliberately.

Therefore one questions the necessity for this Amendment. I also very much question its rightness, because here again I would remind the noble and learned Lord of his own principles. My mind goes back to those long and stormy nights in 1971 when we were debating the Industrial Relations Act. I have managed to make this concordat by negotiation with the unions and I think that is the best way to handle things. What would be the effect of the noble and learned Lord's Amendment? It would make the courts the ultimate arbiter of what is and what is not acceptable if, for any reasons, the conditions of service do change by agreement with the unions. I do not think that they will change in any other way because we have undertaken that they shall be on Civil Service terms. The noble and learned Lord wants to make the courts the arbiter. This is a very rum thing coming from the Opposition Front Bench, in view of all that was said during the discussions on the industrial relations legislation.

We remember the phrase about a "lawyers' paradise". We remember the phrases about "break-away unions". I am bound to point out to the noble and learned Lord that suppose there were a concordat between some future Lord Chancellor and the unions concerned in this registry—and there are several unions—which some dissident minority wanted to challenge. It would undermine the whole authority of the union in negotiating if some dissident minority, perhaps some unsatisfied individual, were able to go to the courts and say "Well, the question is that the terms should be not less favourable"—which is the Amendment just proposed—"and in this respect it is less favourable although you may get advantages in the other way". To substitute for a concordat that the terms will be Civil Service terms, which is what I have agreed, terms " not less favourable than those that were previously enjoyed, is to substitute a phrase which could give abundant source of argument of interpretation in the courts both as to fact and to law about something which ought to be fundamentally a matter for agreement in the ordinary way by negotiation between the management and the staff side.

I find myself in the odd position of preaching Christianity to St. Peter and accusing St. Peter of heresy. I know that, coming from this side of the House, what I say must be treated, and no doubt will be treated, with a grain of salt by noble Lords on the other side. But I think that the noble and learned Lord is undermining the authority of the unions, and undermining the validity of negotiations, by trying to substitute the statutory formula which is not the same as I have agreed in my concordat, because I have said that after the change Civil Service terms and conditions should continue to apply so that there will be freedom of transfer. The noble and learned Lord is saying something else: that they will be "not less favourable", and something which can be determined by the courts and not by negotiation and will therefore allow a dissident minority to undermine the negotiators. So I think that on balance I have the best of this argument.

LORD GARDINER

I shall not pursue this point except to add that I have no objection to any dispute being decided by a court if it goes to an ordinary court and not to the Industrial Relations Court. My objection to the Industrial Relations Court was that I thought there would be many more strikes than there would have been without the Act and it would gravely sour industrial relations. I think that I have been absolutely right about that. I also feared some degree of conflict between Parliament and the Judiciary, and I hope that I shall not be able to say that I was obviously right about that, too. I still feel that, in principle, where staff are being guaranteed, the guarantee ought to be carried into the legislation; and particularly so where perhaps a State body is being hived off, in a sense, to private enterprise. But I do not intend to pursue the matter, and I ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Schedule 1 agreed to.

Schedule 2 agreed to.

Schedule 3 [Transfer of property, rights and liabilities to the new public authority and other transitional provisions]:

On Question, Whether Schedule 3 shall be a Schedule to the Bill?

4.40 p.m.

LORD GARDINER

On Schedule 3 to the Bill—and this is my last point—I venture to raise something about which I know nothing at all, because it is a point of which barristers have no experience and solicitors have all the experience. I rather sympathise with solicitors in relation to pending legislation, because of course a Bill dealing with a fundamental question like this affects all conveyancing solicitors; and most firms of solicitors do conveyancing work. What happens is that they read in The Times, the Daily Telegraph or the Guardian that there has been a Second Reading of a Land Registry Bill. They could not have read that until, I think, Wednesday of last week. They then try to get the Bill. When the Stationery Office branch was in Kingsway one could of course go there and be served without delay. Now that branch has been closed down, and there is a wretched thing called a Government bookshop in Holborn which is very small. I have been there several times. I have never had to wait for less than half an hour in a queue before I was served; and when you get to the counter the assistant says that what you require is out of print.

I want to call attention to a legal article under the heading "Current Topics" in the Solicitors' Journal of last Friday. I had to get this Amendment put down by Monday, and naturally I had not time to go into this because it is a solicitors' point; but as they acted like lightning, I thought it was at least courteous to them that the point should be raised. What they said was this: "Land Registry Bill and private documents One thing that seems to be missing from the Land Registry Bill, as originally drafted, is any general provision for the transitional adaptation of private documents. It is not uncommon for deeds and agreements to refer to the Chief Land Registrar (in his present capacity) or Her Majesty's Land Registry. Two common examples are provisions in mortgages forbidding applications for first registration of title while the security is subsisting and provisions in documents dealing with registered land requiring application for registration or noting of their effect. These references vary in their terminology. Clearly, no change in the substantive effect of private arrangements is intended by this bill, which is largely administrative, but it is important to ensure that this does not happen unintentionally by a side wind. Some documents which refer to the Chief Land Registrar may be suitably worded for the new arrangements; others may not be and some form of blanket adaptation is called for. Provision is made in the bill for the adaptation of agreements and documents which become necessary because of the transfer of property to the new registry. Something similar must be added during its passage through Parliament to deal with the more general transitional problems. Having given notice to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor on Monday that I proposed to raise this point, I am happy to afford him an opportunity to say whether this is well-founded or not.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

I was delighted to learn from the earlier part of the speech of the noble and learned Lord that he had leisure time in the Government bookshop to reflect upon the advantages of nationalisation. I am sure he will convey his experience to his colleagues who want to extend those advantages to so many other things. I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord for raising this point. It is, as he rather indicated, a highly esoteric one. The only conclusion I can come to, having thought about it, is that it requires further time for reflection; but I will give the best answer I can at this stage, from which it will appear, I think, that it does require further thought and reflection. I can only undertake that it will receive that, and will either be dealt with here on the Report stage or later, because we must get this point right. I think it is a narrow point, but it is one that has been quite legitimately raised and which must be put right if it needs to be put right.

The question relates to the extent of Schedule 3, paragraph 6 of which forms part of the general transitional provisions in the Bill. The effect of Schedule 3(6) is that in certain circumstances references in existing documents to the Crown, the Chief Land Registrar or the Land Registry itself, or to the officers or staff of the Land Registry or to property occupied for the purpose of the existing Land Registry, shall in future be read as references to the registering authority, its staff or property and so on as appropriate.

The question raised in the article is: how far does this provision extend? The provision is expressed to apply, "so far as may be necessary, in consequence of the enactment of Sections 3 and 17 of this Act and paragraph 1 of this Schedule". It is admitted that it applies therefore to documents which relate to property transferred from the Crown to the registering authority by paragraph 1 of Schedule 3. For example, a lease to which the Crown is a party will in future be read as one to which the registering authority is a party after the Crown's interest is transferred to the registering authority under that paragraph. The same will be true of documents which govern rights and liabilities of the Crown which are transferred by that paragraph, and these will cover quite a variety of contractual arrangements.

But the author of the article maintains that this transitional provision does not apply outside the limited area of documents relating to the transfer of property rights and liabilities to the registering authority; and the author maintains that there are other documents affecting, for instance, private transactions which now refer to the Chief Land Registrar or the Land Registry which ought to be covered by the traditional provisions. There is, admittedly, some doubt whether paragraphs 5 and 6 of the Schedule go so far as to provide for all references to the present organisation in existing documents to be converted into references to the new organisation. But, equally, it is uncertain whether, for practical purposes, such a provision is required.

Further thought is therefore needed to see whether the Bill is defective in this respect. The matter can be fully examined, and I hope will be fully examined before the Report stage, but it could not be fully examined in time for to-day's debate. I would therefore ask the Committee to acknowledge that the noble and learned Lord has raised a point, for which we are obliged, which needs further thought and if necessary, at a later stage, the Government will move an Amendment to improve the Bill in the manner required.

Schedule 3 agreed to.

Schedule 4 agreed to.

House resumed.

Bill reported without amendment.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

My Lords, I do not know whether I should be in order in moving, That the Report be now received. We are not trying to do without a Report stage, but my impression is that I should not do this because I do not want to do the noble and learned Lord out of his fun on Report.