Lords Sitting of 31 January 1974

Preamble
The House met at half past two of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Rochester.

EMERGENCY SPEED LIMIT: PROSECUTIONS
LORD ORR-EWING: 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 what is their estimate of the percentage of vehicles now exceeding 50 m.p.h. on trunk roads and how many drivers have been warned or prosecuted by the police.
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, I regret that no representative speed measurements are available for trunk roads. In the period December 8 to December 31, 4,674 drivers in England and Wales were reported by the police for exceeding 50 m.p.h. on all types of road. The corresponding figures for Scotland are not available.
LORD ORR-EWING: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that, whereas the vast majority of drivers are still conscientiously trying to keep to the limit, there are an increasing number who are now ignoring it? May I suggest that this tendency will possibly grow, unless strict monitoring is undertaken by the police, and swingeing fines, or even the withdrawal of licences, in the event of transgression, are imposed?
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, fines and penalties are not a matter for Her Majesty's Government, of course. I am sure that as long as the general public see and understand the necessity for fuel saving, they will do their best. The police are certainly reporting a large number of drivers, as these figures indicate.
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, is it not wrong for us to talk about
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swingeing fines and withdrawing licences when each one of these cases ought to be decided by the magistrates on the particular merits of the individual case?
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON; My Lords, what Back-Bench Peers discuss and talk about is no concern of mine. The magistrates will indeed take the point that the noble Lord has made.
LORD DERWENT: My Lords, is it due to my noble friend's influence that Scotland has got away with it?
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: No, my Lords. There is a particular reason why the Scottish Office have been unable to supply the figures.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, what does the noble Lord mean by saying that what Back-Bench Peers say is no concern of his? I hope they are of concern to him.
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, I can assure the noble Lord. Lord Shackleton, that I was referring only to remarks about penalties and fines in courts.
THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE: My Lords, would the noble Lord accept that while the argument for incentive to save petrol applies to individual owner drivers, it may be less impressive on the drivers, let us say, of commercial lorries, who do not necessarily worry very much about their bosses' petrol?
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, it is not the bosses' petrol: it is the petrol which the country is importing; and it is the country which is asking for the saving.
LORD ROBERTHALL: My Lords, is it not invariably the case that a law that is seen not to be enforced gradually loses the respect of the public, and is it not a fact that respect for the 50 m.p.h. limit is much less now than when it was a voluntary matter?
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, the law is being enforced. The figures I indicated over a period of three weeks from December 8 to December 31, 4,674 are very heavy figures—much higher than would normally be the case for people speeding at over 70 m.p.h.
LORD ROYLE: My Lords, does not all this prove that Lady Macleod was right the other day in what she had to say on this subject, and would it not be very much better to go back now to the old speed limit?
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, I think it would be the Government's intention to go back to the old speed limit as soon as we see that there are ample supplies of fuel and the country is not likely to be in danger.
LORD ORR-EWING: My Lords, would my noble friend publish in the OFFICIAL REPORT the extent of the fines and other penalties which are exacted by other European countries who in some ways are less short of oil and energy than we are?
LORD MOWBRAY AND STOURTON: My Lords, I do not know whether we can be responsible for collecting information about fines in other countries. In due course we shall be able to report on the fines imposed in this country.

ECONOMIC SITUATION AND FUEL SUPPLIES
2.40 p.m.
LORD ORR-EWING: 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 they will now make a Statement arising from the proposal made in the House of Lords debate on the 18th and 19th of December by Lord Diamond and many other noble Lords concerning the initiation of All-Party talks on the present crisis.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD HAILSHAM OF SAINT MARYLEBONE): My Lords, I endeavoured to give a sympathetic reply to this suggestion at the conclusion of the debate in which it was made. But I do not think that anything has occurred since which calls for a further statement to the House.
LORD ORR-EWING: My Lords, is the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor aware that there were very large numbers of people in this House who, following the initiative of Lord
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Diamond in the debate on December 18 and 19, took the view that it was highly desirable to build bridges of understanding between the political Parties and people of no Party? Is it not also true that we in this House, unlike another place where politics are more rife, are perhaps better placed to build these bridges of understanding and think of possible solutions for the country in the crisis through which it is going?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, it was because I realised that what had been put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, had a wide measure of support in this House that I endeavoured to give it a sympathetic reception. But I did point out that what he was suggesting was a solution which would command the support of, I think he said, all the Front Benches, and also that it would not be possible to confine any discussions to Members of this House; one must take account of what goes on at the other end of the corridor.
LORD SHINWELL: My Lords, may I ask the noble and learned Lord whether he can recall that in the course of the debate which took place before the Christmas Recess, following the observations of my noble friend Lord Diamond, I ventured to suggest that, entirely apart from the miners' controversial settlement, having regard to the balance of payments problem and a number of other problems associated with the so-called crisis, it might be desirable that Mr. Heath should invite the Leaders of both Opposition Parties, members representing the C.B.I. and the T.U.C., and perhaps other people with expertise, to come together to seek to diagnose the problem and find an approach to a solution, although I did not expect a complete solution? I have not withdrawn a single word of what I ventured to suggest at that time. Apart from the miners' controversy, the coal controversy, I think it could still be useful, from the standpoint of the future of our country, its economic, social and industrial future, if something of this kind could be considered.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I remember the noble Lord's remarks. I listened to them with both interest and appreciation. I still say, however, that a suggestion of this kind inevitably involves the participation of right honourable gentlemen from all three

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sides of another place. Therefore, it is a little difficult to discuss it from the point of view of the Government with complete candour from the place from which I am speaking now.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, would not the noble and learned Lord agree that while we, of course, accept that the noble Lord, Lord Orr-Ewing, is particularly well qualified to draw attention to non-partisan views, it is none the less rather unusual to pick a single proposal out of a debate when so many proposals are made and wonder why the Government have not taken action on it? Most of my experience is that Governments, on the whole, do not attempt to take action on most suggestions that are made.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, my own experience has been almost the direct reverse; that is, that Governments of all complexions are particularly sensitive to suggestions and criticisms coming from any quarter of either House of Parliament.
BARONESS GAITSKELL: My Lords, are we then going to stand idly by while we watch the Prime Minister exercising brinkmanship in industrial negotiations, and having strong Government without wisdom?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I think that that is an entirely different question.
THE EARL OF ONSLOW: My Lords, since the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, put forward his proposition, the situation seems to have got worse. I know that I am putting this in the form of a statement; I will put it in the form of a question. Would the noble and learned Lord consider this again, to see whether he can put forward, or encourage, some constructive thought along these lines? The McGaheys, the erstwhile Viscount Stansgates, and others on the Right, the leader writers of the Daily Telegraph, have been making hard remarks which are getting us nowhere, and this is where we have to try to avoid confrontation at all possible costs.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I do not think that anything I have said this afternoon could be described as in the nature of "confrontative"
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—if there is such a word. I think at the end of the day one has to accept that I was asked whether I had a further statement to make about what the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, had suggested, and I said that I did not think that anything had happened since—whether things had got better or worse—that called for a further Government statement on that point.
LORD ORR-EWING: My Lords, I apologise for picking out a certain person's remarks, if it is not in accord with the usual procedure. One has to raise a Question in accordance with the Rules of this House, and I felt that that was the only way I could decently do it. Perhaps I can build a bridge of co-operation. I should be delighted to have the assistance of the Front Bench opposite in framing another Question on these lines, which does not refer to an individual Peer. My whole anxiety is to build bridges of understanding, and not only between the Front Benches but between many people of goodwill who are putting our country and its urgent and desperate problems first and foremost in their minds.
LORD HYLTON: My Lords, I should like to ask whether it would commend itself to the House if my noble friend Lord Orr-Ewing and the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, were to initiate the conversations, by perhaps drawing in Members of another place and other persons?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, in reply to my noble kinsman, I would say that of course individual Members of the House are always well suited to initiate matters of this kind. So far as I am concerned, in the course of the debate I made it clear that my door is always open, and so is that of the noble Lord the Leader of the House. I do not think that I ought to go beyond that this afternoon.
LORD GORE-BOOTH: My Lords, as the first person who has no connection with another place to ask a question, may I ask the noble and learned Lord whether, as a result of these proceedings, he would at least assure us that he will draw the attention of his colleagues in another place to the fact that the ideas launched by the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, persist in your Lordships' House, and will continue to do so?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I will make quite sure that my right honourable friends are aware of what has transpired.
LORD DIAMOND: My Lords, I wonder whether, in spite of the lack of taste on my part in intervening at all, I may ask the noble and learned Lord to convey to his right honourable friend our appreciation for his having brought my right honourable Leader, the ex-prime Minister, fully into the picture with regard to the recent proposals?
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I am sure that my right honourable friend will be grateful to the noble Lord for having made that remark.

MAPLIN PROJECT: ROAD AND RAIL LINK COSTS
2.49 p.m.
LORD BESWICK: 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 they will give the figure, at 1974 prices, for development up to 1990 of the Maplin airport, seaport and access routes; and what amounts of this total sum are attributable to the new road corridor and the high-speed train link respectively.
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE, DEPARTMENT OF THE ENVIRONMENT (BARONESS YOUNG): My Lords, the estimates for all aspects of the Maplin project are being reviewed in preparation for my right honourable friend's report to Parliament under Section 2(9) of the Maplin Development Act.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for that Answer. May I ask her whether it is possible to update into 1974 terms the figures given in 1973, which were based on 1972 values?
BARONESS YOUNG: My Lords, the new estimates will be based on revised forecasts of air traffic demand in 1990, and on a 1982 opening date for the airport. Therefore they will not be comparable with the figures for expenditure up to 1990 which were given during the passage of the Maplin Development Act.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, are we to gather from the fact that Her Majesty's Government are revising the whole of these estimates that, despite our present economic situation, and despite the fact that the weight of evidence is against it, they intend pressing on with this scheme, regardless of the economic consequences?
BARONESS YOUNG: My Lords, as the Maplin Development Act indicates, we shall be bringing a full report to Parliament.

MAPLIN PROJECT: LANDR EQUIREMENTS FOR LINK ROUTE
LORD BESWICK: 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 what is the estimated acreage of land required for the most economical road corridor from the North Circular Road to the proposed Maplin airport, and for the high-speed rail links proposed.
BARONESS YOUNG: My Lords, the route recommended by the consultants for a joint road/rail corridor between the M.16 and Maplin would require up to 1,400 acres of land. Within the M.16 road traffic would use the network already proposed for Greater London. A study of possible routes for the rail links between the M.16 and King's Cross has yet to be completed.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, in view of the fact that another thousand acres will apparently be required for the roadworks, as well as the fact that alongside the whole length of this roadway there will be a nuisance at least equal to that created by the new airport, is this scheme not discredited on amenity grounds as well as on economic grounds?
BARONESS YOUNG: My Lords, as regards the acreage of land involved, the first stage of the reclamation project would produce approximately 11,500 extra acres of land.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, is the noble Baroness saying that a thousand acres of urban land will be required in order to get to this new land; and is that not an offset to the amenity advantage which she has put forward in our

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debates? May I further ask the noble Baroness whether she will be good enough to say now when the new estimates for which I have asked will be available?
BARONESS YOUNG: My Lords, I cannot accept that the 1,400 acres would all be urban land. Obviously, the route would go through some parts of the country as well as through some towns. As regards the breakdown, the land required for the road is 930 acres and for the rail link is 470 acres. I cannot yet give a date for the publication of the choice of access road, but it will be as soon as possible.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I asked the noble Baroness whether she can tell me when the new estimates for which I asked in my original Question will be made public.
BARONESS YOUNG: My Lords, they will be made public as soon as possible. The only estimates that we can give at the moment are on the costs as indicated in the consultation document on the routes, and they range from £95 million to £120 million at 1973 prices.
LORD WYNNE-JONES: My Lords, does the reply of the noble Baroness mean that there is to be one corridor including both the road and the rail links? I think she referred to one corridor. Does that mean that the road and the rail are necessarily to be linked together?
BARONESS YOUNG: My Lords, it is the intention that the road and the rail links will be in one corridor, and it is thought that it will be approximately 100 metres wide.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, am I to conclude from the reply of the noble Baroness to my noble friend's question about when these figures will be published, that the answer is that she does not know? I think she said, "as soon as possible", which might be any time up to 1980. If these figures are so long delayed, does she think it possible that by then the economic situation and its implications in relation to Maplin will be fully understood by the Government?
BARONESS YOUNG: My Lords, a decision has not yet been taken on what
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will be the accepted road and rail route to Maplin, so it is not yet possible to say what will be its cost. The figures will be considered in the light of the review of the Maplin project, and we must await the outcome of the report to Parliament.
THE EARL OF ONSLOW: My Lords, as the Minister has been dealing with 1973 prices, can she give us a slightly more up-to-date version of what the prices will be in the long run? Also, can she say what cost-inflation the Government think will enter into these figures?
BARONESS YOUNG: My Lords, in the review which we have undertaken to bring before Parliament, increased prices and the effect of higher oil prices on the air industry will be considered.
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, will the noble Baroness make quite clear to her noble friend that thoughout last year the figures which he used to convince the House that the scheme was practicable were 1972 figures, and not 1973 figures?
BARONESS YOUNG: My Lords, that is perfectly true, but that was because the Bill first went before another place in October, 1972. Those figures were kept for the convenience of everybody, so that the same figures were being discussed while the Bill was before both Houses of Parliament.

BUSINESS
EARL ST. ALDWYN: My Lords, with the leave of the House, my noble friend Lord Polwarth will be making a Statement on oil rig construction sites at a suitable moment after 3.30 p.m.

JURIES BILL [H.L.]
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I beg leave to introduce a Bill to consolidate certain enactments relating to juries, jurors and jury service with corrections and improvements made under the Consolidation of Enactments (Procedure) Act 1949. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 1a.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Bill read 1a, and to be printed.

LAND TENURE REFORM (SCOTLAND) BILL
2.57 p.m.
THE MINISTER OF STATE, SCOTTISH OFFICE (LORD POLWARTH): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. The Bill represents the first part of the Government's programme on the reform of land tenure in Scotland, as foreshadowed in the Green Paper which we published in July, 1972. The Bill is largely concerned with the Scottish system known as feudal tenure—a term which may surprise some of your Lordships from South of the Border where I understand that the feudal system ceased to exist a very long time ago. In Scotland, however, it is the form of tenure under which most land is still held; we have lived with it for nearly 1,000 years, even if with the passage of time it has undergone some modifications.
The original concept of a grant of land from a superior to a particular vassal in return for personal service of some kind has long since passed away. The grant of land has become perpetual and heritable, and the return to the superior now takes the form not of services but of monetary payments. The feudal system as it now exists has two basic features: first, the obligation on the proprietor of the land (still technically known as "the vassal")—and I declare my interest at this point in that I am a vassal—to pay in perpetuity an annual feuduty to the superior, which I am not, and to that extent it resembles in some ways the English ground rent; and, secondly, the obligation on the proprietor to observe any land conditions laid down in the feudal charter.
The first of these features—the obligation to pay an annual feuduty—has in recent years become increasingly resented and it is difficult to justify it in modern circumstances. However, the position in regard to the other feature—the right of the superior to impose land conditions which, in the Scottish expression, "run with the land"—is by no means so clear-cut.
Many land conditions are beneficial, for amenity or other reasons, not only to the superior but perhaps primarily to the proprietors themselves. If I may give an
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example which will no doubt be familiar to many of your Lordships, the extent to which the Georgian New Town of Edinburgh has been preserved as such a magnificent part of our heritage is due largely to the fact that the relevant feu charters contain far-seeing provisions of an amenity kind which not only greatly ante-date our Statutory planning code but which also serve to regulate the use and appearance of the property in much greater detail than would be possible using the broader brush of the planning Statutes.
I might quote, perhaps, from the feu charter of our own house in the New Town of Edinburgh, which is dated 1825,
"The houses to be erected in the said lots of ground or said Regent Terrace shall be built according to the said feuing plan and in strict conformity to the elevation prepared by the said William Henry Playfair, architect in Edinburgh …"
It goes on:
"…the whole of the fronts of the buildings as well as the ornamental parts shall be built with stone from Craigleith Quarry or any other quarry which is not inferior to it in quality".
So, my Lords, in this way conformity of design and appearance was very simply achieved and maintained.
So much by way of general background. After publication of the Green Paper, to which I have referred, the Government undertook very extensive consultations on it, and I am glad to say that our proposals have met with a very wide measure of approval. In particular, there was very general agreement that, in the words of paragraph 17 of the Green Paper,
"the major reform of land tenure to which the Government are committed must involve the abolition of feudal tenure. It is important, however, that this should be carried out in a way which is fair to superiors and vassals alike … and that the good points of the present arrangements should be preserved so far as possible."
My Lords, the Government's programme of land tenure reform involves some very complex and far-reaching problems; and we want to give further consideration to some of these so as to make quite sure that we arrive at the best solutions in the interests of Scotland as a whole. We have decided, therefore, to proceed in stages. The present Bill deals at once with the most urgent aspects of that reform, relating mainly to

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feuduties; and it is our intention to introduce as soon as possible further legislation to make provision for the important questions of the creation and enforcement of future land conditions and of the enforcement of those existing land conditions which are at present enforceable only by a feudal superior. I would stress to your Lordships, however, that, as my right honourable and learned friend the Lord Advocate made very clear in another place, the Government are resolved to complete this important task as soon as practicable. I would emphasise, also, that this Bill, besides paving the way to further reform, is of considerable importance in its own right and will bring about a number of fundamental and very significant changes in the law of land tenure in Scotland.
My Lords, the Bill contains three main provisions, It prohibits the creation of new feuduties other than nominal ones of one penny a year if asked; it allows the proprietor of land to have his feuduty reduced to that same nominal amount on payment to his superior of a fair redemption price; and it prohibits the future creation of long residential leases. With your Lordships' permission, I will not go through the Bill in any great detail but merely touch on its main provisions. Clause 1—and Clauses 2 and 3 follow on to it—provides that any new feuduty must be one penny only, if asked. The retention of this nominal feuduty is necessary in the meantime in order to preserve the feudal relationship until the system as a whole can be abolished. A measure of the importance of this clause is that in the past year some 11,000 new feuduties have been created, most of them substantial and some of them as high as £30 or £40 a year. If a deed in future purports to impose a feuduty greater than one penny, the feuduty will automatically be cut down to one penny, but the deed will remain valid in other respects. Thus, the purchaser will not find himself obliged to re-negotiate the sale of the property merely because of the attempt to impose a feuduty by the seller.
It is in Clause 4 that we come to the second of the Bill's main provisions. That clause gives to every person who at present pays a feuduty greater than one penny the right, if he so chooses, to "redeem" that feuduty; that is, to have
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it reduced to the purely nominal one penny a year, if asked. This is to be achieved by the payment to the superior of a sum of money so calculated as to produce an income equivalent to the feuduty if appropriately invested at current interest rates. This is a formula which should be fair to both the superior and the proprietor of the land. The clause also prescribes, along with Schedule 1, necessary forms to be used in the procedure for redeeming feuduty. I should say that it is the Government's intention to produce an explaantory leaflet, which will be made widely available, explaining the procedure in simple and straightforward terms.
Turning now to Part II of the Bill, this is concerned with a change in land law, which is in some ways even more radical than those effected by Part I; that is to say, the prohibition of long residential leasehold. Perhaps I may give your Lordships a brief account of the reasons for seeking this. In our Green Paper we pointed out that long leasehold was in many ways similar to feuing. So far as this Bill is concerned, the outstanding point of resemblance is that the rent under a long lease could readily be used as a substitute for feuduty. So a landowner who is deprived by Part I of the Bill of the power to impose a feuduty, other than a nominal one, on land may instead be tempted to grant a long lease—say, for 60 or 100 years—for which he could charge an initial sum and a continuing annual rent; and the result would be little different from the point of view of the householder from buying a house and paying feuduty on it thereafter. But, my Lords, quite apart from this possible use of a long leasehold as a device for avoiding the provisions of Part I, we believe that long residential leaseholds can bring with them social effects which are inherently undesirable. There is no doubt that many tenants in long residential leases imagine that they are the owners of their houses, and they make repairs and perhaps improvements to a house which they do not realise will one day revert to the landlord, usually without compensation. Obviously, this is liable to cause hardship and resentment. This confusion between long leaseholds and ownership is I think particularly likely to occur in Scotland, where most householders are used to paying a feuduty, and

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the tenant in a long lease tends to think of his rent as a sort of feuduty. Of course, we understand that the confusion arises only because the tenant has not ascertained his true position, but that is cold comfort to a person who finds himself evicted from what he had believed to be his own house.
A further unfortunate effect of long leasehold of houses is that where a tenant does realise that he is only a tenant he naturally grudges any money spent on repairs and maintenance towards the end of the lease, when the property will shortly revert to the landlord. As a result, it can happen that property which would otherwise have been useful for many years falls prematurely into decay. Moreover, there remains the inescapable fact that, as the expiry of the lease draws nearer, so the value of the tenancy decreases. This means that an occupier who, some years previously, had paid almost as much for his lease as he would have had to do to buy the house will find that he cannot sell the remainder of his lease for enough to allow him to go back into the property market.
As your Lordships are well aware, the long residential leasehold is a well-established, indeed normal form of tenure in England. Nevertheless, I believe that in Scotland we are fortunate that long residential leaseholds have never really taken on, though I know that there are some pockets of it scattered across the country; and principally for the reasons which I have just outlined, the Government are determined that it should not take on. It is particularly important that long residential leaseholds should be prohibited now because, as I have said, the prohibition of new feuduty might make it more attractive than formerly to prospective sellers of land. Accordingly, my Lords, Clause 6, in Part II of the Bill, makes the fundamental provision that, after the Bill comes into force, every long lease will be deemed to contain a condition that there is to be no residential use of any part of the leasehold property.
One exception to which I shall draw your Lordships' attention is that a limited residential use will be allowed on land held on a long lease if that residential use satisfies the double test that it is ancillary to the main use and that its absence would be detrimental to the efficient exercise of it. This means that it would be permissible, for example, for a hotel held on a
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long lease to include a manager's flat, or for a resident supervisor to live on a factory site—but only if the house must be genuinely on the leasehold land in order to serve the main industrial, commercial or other use.
Parts III and IV deal with a wide range of miscellaneous and formal matters which I do not think I should worry your Lordships with now, though of course I will do my best to answer any questions on them. Some of the provisions are designed to preclude other devices which might be employed to circumvent the main reforms proposed; others give additional protection to the proprietor in a feu; and others are of a more technical, but nonetheless important kind.
My Lords, to sum up, the Bill will prevent the creation of new feuduties and allow the equitable redemption of existing ones. It will ensure, by a prohibition on long residential leasehold, that the disadvantages of that form of tenure will not become widespread in Scotland. Finally, it will achieve a number of important technical reforms in the law of land tenure, particularly in relation to leases. But, beyond all this, the Bill represents an important stage in a wider programme for the comprehensive reform of the land law of Scotland—a programme to which the Government are fully committed. So I commend the Bill to your Lordships both for its value in itself and as a major instalment in that wider reform. My Lords, I beg to move.
3.12 p.m.
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth, began by saying that one aspect of this subject might be a surprise to some of their Lordships from South of the Border. They were already in process of voting by the feet to make certain that they were not subject to any such surprise, and they have left us very largely to it. That does not surprise me because a great many of us North of the Border do not have a very great knowlege of the intricacies of the feudal system. We know the main part, having to pay the feuduty, and we know some of the consequences of the powers of the superior. The noble Lord declared an interest as a vassal; I must also declare a wider interest as I am a director and shareholder of a company which, at one and the same time, is a superior and a vassal, but none of that

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will in any way affect the way in which I approach this Bill.
My Lords, this is a measure for which many people in Scotland have been calling for a long time, although, as the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth, has said, it goes only part of the way. It does not alter the structure in the way in which most of those who have been calling for reform want it altered. They want it to be changed to a simple system whereby someone sells land, another one buys land, and that is the end of the transaction. But it will not surprise your Lordships to know that this matter has been under consideration for a very long time, starting off in the time of the previous Government. One thing which I think all of us have learned is that it is a very complicated and difficult business to alter the land law of a country, particularly when, as in Scotland, this is one which has been in existence for centuries and which in many ways has changed in practice through the years. Many of the things which are part of the structure are perfectly acceptable, and one thing which any Government have to be careful about in changing a law is that they do not throw out the baby with the bath water. We want to hang on to those things which are beneficial to people generally.
The Bill as it stands, as the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth, has said, contains a variety of things, but the one which is of immediate concern is the abolition, to all intents and purposes, of feuduty in the future. It does not really abolish it because it substitutes the nominal feu-duty of one penny, if collected, but it continues the possibility of superiors imposing conditions on the person who is now to be known as the owner of the land. I would point out that this is perhaps the least satisfactory part of the Bill, and it is going to be deferred to some future date. I understand that in another place the Lord Advocate gave a firm undertaking that this next measure would come along within three years. Of course that is a rather difficult undertaking to give, and it is an even more difficult one to comply with because the Lord Advocate does not know that his Party will have anything to do with the matter in three years' time—or even in three months' time. However, as a statement
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of intention it is something which perhaps can be accepted by both Parties as desirable, having started on this road, to bring to a conclusion as soon as possible.
The Church of Scotland is probably the largest holder of feuduties in Scotland and they have been expressing views to a number of your Lordships on ways in which they would like this Bill amended. I will come back to that very soon. Before doing that I should like to say that in the past the system worked much better than it has in the last 20 years because, by and large, the superior was on the spot and conditions which he imposed for the protection of the general amenity of the area were under his observation, and if they were not being complied with in the interest of all he was able to do something about it speedily. But in the last 20 years—and particularly the last ten years—many of these feuduties have passed into the ownership of large companies, insurance companies and the like. They are not in a position to know whether the conditions are being observed. Then, to a certain extent, feuduties have passed into the ownership of property development companies, who in many cases have been subject to very severe criticism for the way in which they have sought to gain inflated sums through the conditions which they are able to impose, for instance, by change of use inflating the price of the land out of all proportion. In the main, it is these things which have accelerated the demand for reform.
There were also, as is inevitable in any system as widespread as land tenure, some private landlords who brought the system into a certain amount of disrepute because of the way, as individuals, they exercised their rights as superiors, sometimes seeking to exact larger sums of money for reasons which did not appear to anyone but themselves to be ones which ought to be put forward—the sort of thing which has been suggested in the past as a condition of being able to sell something on the land. They say, "You are not allowed to do that. If you want to do that I want to treble, quadruple or maybe increase tenfold the feuduties". That sort of thing happened, although rarely, and every time one individual did this it tended to bring the system into disrepute.

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The Church of Scotland put forward three proposals. The first of these I support entirely, and the noble Lord, Lord Balerno, and I will in fact be tabling an Amendment for consideration at Committee stage, although it is possible that an Amendment which I believe the Government are putting down may serve the same purpose, in which case the Amendment of the noble Lord and myself would not be pressed. This is on the subject of the document which will have to be completed where the feu is redeemed. This is contained in a Schedule to the Bill and the suggestion is made that at the present time this could be a legal document of some complexity which will involve someone in fairly substantial legal fees.
For example, many of the feus on small houses created, shall we say, before 1960 were probably somewhere between £2 and £10 a year; certainly most of them created before 1939 would not exceed £3 or £4. And on the basis of something like the present values eight years' purchase, the sum which might have to be paid to redeem the feuduty, or to reduce it to 1p, would be something of the order of £20. In my experience—and I am quite certain that it does not differ from the experience of anyone else—you get little from a lawyer for £20. It is not clear in the Bill who would have to pay these legal fees. If it is the former vassal, then the £20 would be more than doubled; there would be £20 to the landowner and £20 to the lawyer, or perhaps even more. If it is to be paid by the superior, he will be in the ridiculous position of being due to collect £20 from his former vassal for redeeming a feuduty and none of the money would reach him because the lawyer would take it all in fees in the first instance. As the Church of Scotland holds a large number of these comparatively small feus, obviously it has a strong interest, which could be shared with its vassals, in keeping the expense of such transactions to the minimum. It therefore wishes a simple form of receipt which would not require recourse to a lawyer at all or, if it was considered necessary to go to a lawyer, would call for only the minimum fee. This is desirable and I support it.
The second point, about which I am not so certain—although I think that
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what the Church wants is reasonable—is that the Church of Scotland wants to make redemption of a feuduty, or its reduction to a nominal sum, compulsory on a first sale. At a meeting yesterday when views on the legal position were expressed on behalf of the Government some of us were made aware of the difficulties of such a transaction. I cannot say that I was completely convinced that the difficulties are insuperable. At the meeting I ventured to point out that it must have been something of this kind that the late Sir Winston Churchill had had in mind when he said that for every solution a civil servant could find a problem. That certainly is very much the case in connection with compulsory redemption. The disadvantage of the way in which the Government are going about this (though I accept that in existing circumstances it is probably the only way) is that it will take a very long time for the system to change from one method to the other as there are many transactions every year.
It would probably speed up the matter considerably if on a first sale the vassal were compelled to redeem the feuduty out of the selling price of the house or more correctly, to reduce it to the nominal amount of one penny. Again an Amendment will I think, be put down by the noble Lord, Lord Balerno. I am not joining him in putting it down, but I want to look carefully at it. In the meantime I hope that the Government will give closer consideration to the possibilities of doing something about this and will not be so obsessed with the difficulties. I accept that they are real and not imaginary; but it may be that, given the will, they can be overcome.
The third point which the Church is raising is the question, in connection with certain churches, of abolishing the right of pre-emption. I cannot go along with the Church on this. I have no objection to abolition, but it must apply both ways. When selling something the Church in many cases imposes a right of pre-emption in its favour. If the Church of Scotland wants to abolish pre-emptions both ways, at least it has a justification; but I have never been very enthusiastic about these one-sided bargains. So on this point, even though I am a Church Elder (do I have to declare an interest as an Elder of the Church of Scotland?) I do not go along with the Church.

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My Lords, I must confess that I have not looked too closely at the miscellaneous provisions. Some of them are now completely unenforceable. I do not know when the right to irritate a feu was last exercised, though I could give an indication when it was last threatened. In fact the threat to exercise it generally produces results and it is almost never necessary to carry it out. I doubt whether, in existing circumstances, any court would allow a feu to be irritated. Perhaps I should explain that to irritate a feu means that if a feuduty has not been paid for two years, at the end of the day if the court agrees, the land and anything on it reverts to the superior and the man who has not paid his feuduty loses his interest in it. Needless to say, a threat of that kind generally results in the arrears of feuduty being paid up very quickly, if not by the individual at least by the building society which is nominally the owner of the property.
If I am giving a somewhat limited welcome to the Bill, my Lords, it is because the Bill itself is limited. So far as it goes I think it will be generally acceptable, but I want to finish on a note of warning to those who are liable to pay feuduty at the present time. Many people have got it into their heads that when the campaign to abolish the feudal system came to an end, it would mean that the payments which they were making would come to an end, and that they would not have to pay anything in return. I am sure that there is no intention on the part of this Government, or a successor Government, to expropriate the land in favour of the man who has the house. He is going to have a choice, as the Bill stands at the moment, of continuing to make an annual payment of feuduty or to pay a capital sum which will terminate it. Those who choose to exercise the second choice at the present time will be getting a much better bargain than they could have secured a number of years ago because, with interest rates as they are, they will be able to buy out a feuduty at something like eight years' purchase. Twenty years ago it would have cost 25 years' purchase. I welcome the Bill, and I hope that this Government, or their successors, will be able to comply with the Lord Advocate's undertaking that the process will be completed within three years.
3.28 p.m.
THE EARL OF SELKIRK: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth, for the very clear way in which he explained the main principles of this Bill, though I am bound to say that the matter is not quite so simple to understand as the speech which he made so admirably. I do not in any way disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, that feudal tenure is not always understood in Scotland, even among some members of the legal profession. It is only those in a specialist branch of that profession who are able fully to grasp all the problems that arise. I am in the happy position of not having to declare any interest whatsoever. I agree that the passing of this Bill is a necessary step. But it is regrettable that, inevitably, it is an interim step. Interim law in regard to land tenure is unfortunate, to put it no higher, but we have a system land tenure which requires amendment. I must say, without trying to make too much of its implications, that a Parliament more sensitive to the requirements of Scotland would have done this 150 years ago. Things have been allowed to drag on which never should have been allowed to do so. If there had been people in charge who were closely in touch, they could have made the amendments as the need for them occurred. The Government have laid emphasis on the abolition of the feudal system. I should like that to be made secondary to ensuring that we have a better land tenure system in Scotland. By that I mean primarily three things: first, security of tenure; secondly, assurance in regard to amenity; and, thirdly, a simple and cheap method of land disposition. This is what I hope the Government will keep very clearly in their minds in the formulation of their final policies.
The noble Lord, Lord Hughes, has mentioned the problem of change. It is very easy for all of us—indeed for anybody in this world—to complain of the nature of land tenure, but in the course of time we have learned how to work it and if you go to a country where it has not been worked out to the same extent and where the words "injurious affection" are

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unknown, it is easy to realise the great advantages that we have in this country. Anyone who lives in a tenement in Scotland automatically knows all the details of who cleans which step, and so on, half-way up the tenement: it is a simple matter and well established in custom. There is no difficulty about it. But if you go to some other country where this has not been worked out, all manner of problems can arise from a system such as this.
I was glad that the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth, mentioned the value of the feudal system, and he mentioned the new town of Edinburgh. This system has an imense advantage over the law in England. Whereas in England you can put a negative condition which will run with the land—and I believe that a good example of this is Leicester Square, where the only rule was that you could not build in the middle of the square. That was negative,. But in the feudal system you can have positive rules, as the noble Lord has said. The original architect, I believe, was Gillespie Graham; and his architectural system had to be imposed over the whole area. This is a very real advantage in planning which we are letting go, and I think we ought to recognise that something will be lost thereby. I would not deny that many misuses have occurred; for instance, the whole system of mid-superiorities is quite ridiculous. Many persons now who hold dominiurn directly have quite detached themselves from the land for which they hold a certain degree of responsibility. I am told that at the present time there have been considerable abuses, closely connected with the rising price of land, which are quite unjustified. In these circumstances, I have no hesitation in saying that something of this character is necessary and in that sense I certainly welcome the Bill. But at the same time I believe we must recognise that this is something that will affect every single person holding a house in Scotland. We have a duty to examine the implication of this matter very carefully indeed and to see that so far as possible it is made clear and comprehensible to everyone.
If I may, I should like to ask one or two questions. The basis of compensation, I think, is one of rough justice. There are about 750,000 feus in Scotland, and to give perfect compensation, of
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course, you would have to value the whole of them—which is clearly impossible. I should like to ask: what is the position with regard to mid-superiorities? May I put the question in this form, and if the noble Lord does not know the answer, perhaps we can hear it later: supposing the proprietor redeems his feu to the mid-superior, the mid-superior under the section of the Bill headed "Miscellaneous" is under no obligation to pay his feuduties—at least in respect of any action by the over-superior—for five years. The proprietor redeems and five years go by. By that time the mid-superior is bankrupt. Can the over-superior then come down on the proprietor for the payment of what is due to the over-superior? In other words, has the proprietor the possibility of having to pay redemption twice? We need to be quite certain that the Bill would ensure that such unfairness could not take place.
I wonder, too, whether the noble Lord could tell us a little more about the conditions of feudal holdings? I think the Government are absolutely right to retain these. Many of them are very important. Houses have been bought on the understanding that certain standards of amenity will be maintained. If all the feus are redeemed, the superior will have no interest whatever in seeing that those amenities are maintained. Who is going to do it? The co-feuars in the majority of cases have not the right to appeal to the Lands Tribunal and they cannot bring any action to it. In some cases, I believe that tenant associations are formed. These are not very easy to run and they do not necessarily accept their neighbour's advice. What do the Government envisage as a way in which the conditions (which in many cases are of the utmost importance to the land-owners) are properly maintained? In many cases this is done by the superior. This costs money but it is necessary to do it and if there are no feu duties being paid, he may well take no trouble. This may be only an interim period, but I stress that it is most important that somebody should have authority to do it. I am certain that local government will not. We are now going through a period of considerable reorganisation, and I suspect that most of the planning departments are hopelessly overworked: they have not got their new organisations going and will find it extremely difficult

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to exercise the minimum powers with regard to these matters. They certainly will not go into many of the details with regard to the future.
I hope I am right in saying that the curious holding called "kindly tenants" will not be touched by the Bill. This unusual holding has been brought about by a private Act of Parliament and affects only four towns in the neighbourhood of Lochmaben in Dumfriesshire and, I believe, has never been committed to writing. This has never been a far-reaching matter. So far as I can see, the Bill does not touch them, and I should be rather sorry if it did. I understand that the tenure is supposed to go back to some services rendered to Robert the Bruce, and I hope that those affected by it will continue to enjoy the benefits they have had up to now. Regarding leasehold tenure—
LORD HUGHES: I am sorry to interrupt the noble Earl but I have never before heard of the expression "kindly tenants", and I hope that at sometime later he will explain it to me. I wonder whether there is a corollary to it—was there also a kindly landlord?—because in Scotland it is often thought that there is no such animal.
THE EARL OF SELKIRK: I think we had better have a confrontation afterwards. I am not very happy about the leasehold arrangement. Leasehold has never held the same position in Scotland that it has in England, and of course the reason for that is that there we have feudal tenure. The majority will always want a fair amount of leasehold tenure, because people move about and it is the easiest way of doing it, and 20 years for this purpose is quite reasonable. There are two things which strike me as being not unimportant. First of all, concerning land for residential development, nobody is going to take a piece of land for 20 years and build a house on it. That, quite clearly, is out. Secondly, I am concerned about the people we sec in their later years in life—perhaps a pensioner, a widow, or some elderly member of a family. Is it possible to get a liferent which may exceed 20 years? There seems to be an increasing number of people who reach four score years and ten nowadays. It seems to me to be of
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the utmost importance at that stage of life that they should not be removed from their property on expiry of a 20 year lease. I should like the noble Lord to go into this matter. I believe it is covered, in a sense, by Clause 7(4), but I must confess I could not understand it. No doubt the noble Lord will explain what this means, as it is important. There are many cases of people having retired, and it is important that they should have security of tenure during their lifetime. I should like the noble Lord to have a closer look at that.
If I may sum up, I am worried about the question of amenity in certain cases. I am doubtful whether planning development in this country has reached a stage when it can cover all the details which are envisaged in some of the feudal arrangements which have been made. There may be an interim period when a lot of damage could be done which would undermine the security of some tenants. The third point made referred to the ease and cheapness of disposition. This raises the question of registration of land titles. Can the noble Lord give us a ray of hope that this will be seriously dealt with at an early date? English experience shows that it takes a long time to deal with this and to get it completed. It is not an argument to say that you have to complete the reform of land tenure before doing it; land tenure reform will go on indefinitely. There will always be changes in land tenure to meet the changes in social circumstances. There will have to be adjustments to whatever form of land registration may be necessary. I hope that this can get started at any early stage for it will make an important difference to the cost of housing.
My Lords, I welcome this Bill as an interim step. I do not think it is going to help a great deal in making land available for housing property, and I am sorry about that. I should like to get some assurance from the noble Lord regarding registration, or at least a recognition that this is in the mind of the Government as something which requires attention at a very early date.
3.43 p.m.
THE EARL OF CROMARTIE: My Lords, being the superior of some feus in the North of Scotland, perhaps I should declare an interest: not, I can assure

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noble Lords, a very large one financially speaking. I think that many of us in this House who know something about feus and feuing would agree that so far as country as opposed to city feus are concerned, much of the agitation has been artificially fomented in the popular Press who have made these admittedly antiquated words "vassal" and "superior", dirty words.
If feuduty had been called "ground rent". I doubt whether we should have been subjected to all this blether, and indeed the Bill might have never been necessary. In a great many cases it suits a feuar better to pay a reasonable annual sum than to have to fork out a capital sum, and I consider that the proposed legislation which prevents the creation of any new feuduty payments may work against the would-be feuar in quite a number of cases. I know of cases where young couples who want their own house and are probably living on a council estate, are not able to put down a lump sum. But if they paid a reasonable feu-duty they would have their own home, which we all agree is desirable. I certainly follow the argument of the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, that there are difficulties where companies which we do not care for very much have taken over properties and there has been great abuse in certain areas. But I am talking about the rural country areas in the Highlands.
Regarding feudal tenure, this has worked well in most cases over hundreds of years—nine hundred or more. Its chief unpopularity lies at the door of some planning officers and their like who resent anyone else having a say. This is not altogether their fault as they are too often trained as town planners only, with the added implication that they are the Lord's annointed. I feel therefore that the Government's proposals are more or less reasonable, with the exception that it would be in the interests of new feuars if they still had the option of paying an annual sum instead of a capital payment if they so wished. Also, I think that a fixed figure of ten years purchase for redemption would be an easier method of calculation. I am, my Lords, opposed to any compulsory redemption and I should like to give feuars an option in the unlikely event of new feus being created.
3.46 p.m.
LORD KILBRANDON: My Lords, I should like to say a few words for the purpose of assuring your Lordships that in my apprehension this Bill, so far as it goes, has the support of the legal profession in Scotland. I know that this sounds like faint praise. I do not regard this, rightly or wrongly, as a law reform Bill; this is a social reform Bill. Whether or not the legal profession approves of it is perhaps neither here nor there. But on the other hand it deals with matters which the legal profession had to deal with themselves and I see no difficulties in their way in the proposals in this Bill.
I said "so far as it goes", and of course most noble Lords who have spoken have said that the Bill does not go far enough; and I agree with this. On the other hand, I remember painfully when, nearly nine years ago now, I was appointed Chairman of the Scottish Law Commission, I thought law reform and reforms of legal matters could be dealt with very quickly. I was very rapidly disillusioned and terribly disappointed, but I am sure it was very salutary. I know that things cannot be done quickly, although I am still absolutely convinced that they can be dealt with a great deal more quickly than they are. But this is a particularly sensitive area and it would be quite wrong to approach this rashly or without thinking out all the ramifications which may have to be considered. I for my part cannot say that there has been any dragging of the feet. Regarding the abolition of feuduties, many of us have thought for a very long time that the redemption of feuduties was right. The control of feu conditions is now, to a great extent, vested in the Lands Tribunal. I welcome the clauses in the Bill which provide for the prevention of long residential leases.
I listened with great attention to the words of my brother, the noble Earl, Lord Selkirk, and I go along with him to a great extent. I would not wish to be quite as critical as he was on the Scottish system of land tenure and conveyancing, awkward as it is. There is a great deal wrong with it, but there is also a great deal of good about it. It is as least as good as systems which we see not very far away. Lecturing at Cambridge the other night, at the end of my lecture I was asked a question by an intelligent undergraduate who said,

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"Supposing you were going to introduce some part of the law of Scotland into the law of England, which part would you select?" I thought that was a very fast question. After giving it such consideration as I could I said, "If you could persuade English lawyers to understand the difference between a real right and a personal right, they would know how to deal with 'gazumping'." I was glad to hear a reference to the kindly tenants of Lochmaben. They are very much alive; they are not as archaic as people might think. I remember when I was at the Bar being concerned in a case relating to them. I had to argue the question of whether they were rateable in respect of their right to fish for salmon in the river Annan. So there they are, and I hope they may remain.
My Lords, that is really all I have to say. I support this Bill in principle. No doubt there will be Amendments which I might also support, but in the meantime I would certainly support the Second Reading.
3.49 p.m.
LORD STRATHCLYDE: My Lords, we have to-day embarked upon what my right honourable friend the Secretary of State claimed in another place, a claim which has been repeated by my noble friend the Minister to-day, is the first stage of a reform of the whole system of land tenure in Scotland; a claim which, by the way, the Opposition in another place rejected, holding that the first step was taken with the Act of 1907. Which of these claims is the more correct is of little importance to us to-day, for what we are concerned with now is the Bill before this House. There would appear to be at least one fact which is beyond dispute; that is, that the present system has existed for over 900 years and has ramifications in many aspects of Scottish life and activity. As a layman, it seems to me that any legal system which has lasted for so many centuries cannot have been objectionable for any considerable body of our fellow countrymen, and indeed must have contained matters which were considered to be of benefit to the nation as a whole.
I am all the more inclined to that opinion when I discover that our existing system of land tenure has been under critical examination almost constantly
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since the year 1912 when, if my information is correct, that very great Scottish legal figure, the noble Viscount, Lord Dunedin, presided over a committee or a commission set up to examine the matter. Over all the years since 1912, various important bodies have been seeking—as my right honourable friend the Secretary of State says he is seeking today—the best system to replace the one we are reforming. If it has taken all these years to seek out and still fail to find the best system, it is perhaps going to take many more years, whereas my right honourable friend also said in his Second Reading speech in another place that it is clearly of the utmost importance to ensure that, in this highly complex field of law, whatever changes we make are the best changes after full consideration.
The truth of the matter would appear to be that neither my right honourable friend nor the Government have as yet finally formulated their ideas of the changes which will be required and the time that it will take to construct in place of the existing system an effectual and working system of tenure for the future. So far as your Lordships' House is concerned, our hope surely must be that the Government have progressed further than those who have examined the reform of land tenure over the past 60 years, and that in the end the time and work involved will be found to have been well worth while.
While the future is unknown, we know, as my honourable friend has said, that this Bill will prevent new feuduties, other than those of the nominal amount of one penny, being introduced. In that connection, as the Minister also told us, many thousands of new houses in recent years have had feuduties of from £20 to £40 attached to them. When, for a number of years, I lived in Glasgow, I had to pay feuduty in respect of my house. Although at first I found this somewhat strange, I did not resent it when I came to realise that I was paying my annual contribution, which went on for ever, as part of the cost of my house on the land on which it stood; but for the value of feuduty the capital sum required to purchase the house would have been considerably greater. I was also glad to discover that my feudal superior, to whom the feuduty was paid, performed what seemed to me to be a very useful

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service. As the superior he was in a position to control, and did control, any development on the estate, and to safeguard the environment, which was very much in the interests of his vassals.
My Lords, there is one effect of this Bill which would seem to be of current concern to all of us. Clause 1 affects the abolition of feuduties of more than a mere nominal amount. As I said a moment ago, many new feuduties of from £20 to £40 have been created in recent years. If income is not to be received from that source, allowance for it will undoubtedly be made in the capital cost of land, and that would seem to me to be inflation and less than welcome to a Government dedicated to controlling that most serious threat to the living standards of the nation. Perhaps my noble friend would care to comment on that aspect of the Bill when he comes to reply.
In regard to the limitation on the length of leases of property referred to by the noble Earl, Lord Selkirk, I can find neither sufficient reason nor justice for it. A man buys a house but later for some personal reasons decides to let that house for a period of, say, 50 or 100 years—it does not matter how many. He may well be performing a public service by making his house available for some persons whose need is greater than his own. But in any case in what way, I should like to know, is he harming anyone, far less harming the community? According to my right honourable friend the Secretary of State—and I again refer to his Second Reading speech—he justifies this imposition on private property, as indeed has my noble friend to-day, because the owner might charge an initial capital sum and also a rent. It is claimed that that would, though not technically, have much the same effect as a feuduty. I say to that argument that if my right honourable friend's present advisers are not capable—which I do not believe—of drafting a provision to stop that kind of practice if it is found to be so objectionable, then the sooner other advisers are sought the better both for the Secretary of State and for Scotland.
Then my right honourable friend went on to say—and this has also been repeated to-day—that long residential leases have undesirable social consequences, and he gave us some examples.
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My right honourable friend spoke of a grandfather obtaining a long lease of a house. On his death the lease passes to his son, and on the son's death it probably passes to one of the grandchildren. My right honourable friend then says that having made improvements and extensions to the house—which, let me say, the new leaseholders had no right to make without first obtaining permission from the owners, and which if they did make they made for their own convenience—they come to look on the house as their family home. Then when the lease expires they find to their bewilderment that the house belongs to a landlord. How could they imagine that the house was their own when every half year they were receiving notice that a half year's rent was payable, and how could they then be bewildered? I find such a story rather pathetic.
But that is not the end of the story, for we are told that the house to which they have devoted so much attention—I wonder whether that is true of all tenants—is to pass into the possession of the landlord. What I should like to know is this. When it ceased to be the property of the landlord, was it not the duty of the occupiers to devote attention to the house and return it to the owner in the state in which it had been leased to them?
I would ask my noble friend to consider whether this limit on the length of the lease is not really a gross intrusion on the private affairs of the individual citizen. So far as I know, most fathers wish, if they possibly can, to ensure that their widowed daughters or unmarried daughters are assured of a roof over their heads during their lifetime, and provide by means of a will or otherwise that they should have the lifetime use of the family home where they have spent the greater part of their lives. Is that now to be denied to them? For if such a lease is to be limited to 20 years, then these elderly women will have no certain security of tenure in the latter years of their lives, as my noble friend Lord Selkirk has said.
I am told that the purpose of this part of the Bill is to put obstacles in the way of speculators. The speculator these days has become the bogeyman in our economy, and we go to very great lengths,

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taxation-wise and in other ways, to circumvent his activities. But it may be that, in our anxiety to stop the activities of these elusive people, we do not give sufficient thought to the hurts we may unwittingly inflict on straightforward, honourable and decent citizens. It is in that connection, and in relation to the matter I have mentioned that, like my noble friend Lord Selkirk, I most earnestly appeal to my noble friend the Minister to re-examine this part of the Bill, and to endeavour, either by exceptions or modifications to the 20-year rule, to make it tolerable for those ordinary people who I have indicated are most likely to be injuriously affected by it.
My Lords, there are other matters to which one might refer, but I will content myself in advising my noble friend that at the Committee stage Amendments may be tabled to Clause 4, Clause 6(4) and Clause 11 among others. While it is our duty to criticise and indeed to voice our disagreement with certain provisions in the Bill, we can also, I am sure appreciate the immense amount of work and detailed study which has been involved in its preparation.

NORTH SEA OIL: OFFSHORE INSTALLATIONS
4.2 p.m.
LORD POLWARTH: My Lords, with the leave of the House I should like to repeat a Statement which is being made in another place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Scotland about offshore installations for North Sea oil. The Statement is as follows:
"It is a little more than two years since the first announcement was made establishing that oil in commercial quantities had been found in the British Continental Shelf, off the shores of Scotland. Since then oil in considerable quantities has been found in other parts of the Northern basin of the North Sea.
"The events of last October have completely changed the world oil situation. The threat to Britain's oil supplies and the effect on our balance of payments of the sharp increase in the price of oil have added immensely to the importance of the North Sea oilfields. It is a matter of extreme
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national importance that we should procure this oil in quantity as soon as possible.
"Part of the process of extracting oil from the seabed is the building of the massive platforms to be placed in the sea over the wells. Coastal sites for this purpose have been sought in Scotland and nine have received planning clearance, the first over two years ago. None of the sites, however, has the particular deep-water facilities needed for the construction of concrete platforms required for certain of the oilfields where other forms of platform are unsuitable or less effective. As a consequence of the crisis in world oil supplies last October, I have been examining closely, with my right honourable friends, how soon such concrete platforms will be needed in order to obtain the maximum quantity of oil possible. It has become clear that, if at least one such site does not become available this summer, we could lose a significant proportion of the oil which we would otherwise be extracting from the North Sea in 1977 and 1978.
"In the exceptional circumstances of our national need to obtain as much oil from the North Sea as we can, as soon as possible, we have decided to introduce a Bill which would enable the Government to acquire, using an accelerated procedure if necessary, land which is urgently needed for certain projects related to the production of offshore oil and gas. The Government would then lease the land to operators with appropriate safeguards as to its use. The accelerated procedures would apply also to planning permissions required for the projects themselves or essential and urgent supporting activities. It is intended that these powers should be used sparingly and only for a limited range of cases. Advantages would be that a particular area could be developed in an orderly fashion, the best use made of the chosen site, and safeguards provided for the eventual restoration of the land involved.
"This proposed legislation is linked with a number of other measures being considered by my right honourable and noble friend, the Secretary of State for Energy, to strengthen Britain's capability to supply its own energy

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needs. In view of the national importance of these powers, and the possibility of further oil and gas being found off other parts of the British coast, the Government believe that they should be available throughout the whole of Great Britain. The Bill is therefore to be presented by my right honourable and noble friend who, in the exercise of the powers, would closely consult the Ministers responsible for land use planning South of the Border as well as in Scotland.
"It is intended that the first use of ate powers proposed will be to permit an early start to the construction of concrete platforms in the Loch Carron area, in the North West of Scotland, which has been identified as the area most clearly fulfilling the conditions required for building these platforms. At the same time the Government will take steps to prevent the proliferation of similar developments in other areas of the West Coast of Scotland.
"Three British companies have already submitted applications for planning permission to build concrete platforms at Loch Carron and a public inquiry is now being held concerning one site there, at Drumbuie. I accept that the parties at this inquiry may well feel that this announcement of Government intention has substantially changed the basis on which the inquiry has been proceeding and it may be that they would wish to seek an adjournment to give them an opportunity to reassess their position. If so, no doubt they will indicate their wishes to the Reporter.
"If, however, parties wish it, I would see no objection to the public examination of the argument for and against the grant of planning permission on the proposed site at Drumbuie being continued meantime. And certainly I am anxious to ensure that the objectors to the site are afforded full opportunity to put their views.
"I also accept that the objectors may claim that the Government's proposals have rendered nugatory some parts of their expenses so far incurred at the inquiry. I am prepared to take account of this in the light of the outcome of Parliamentary discussion of the Bill.
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"Under the shortened procedure which we will propose, there will be arrangements for interested parties to make representations, but several valuable months of time should be saved in the case of a Loch Carron site.
"This initiative, in the exceptional circumstances described, will ensure some welcome additional employment in the West of Scotland, not only at the coastal site, but also indirectly. Engineering firms in the industrial belt of Scotland will have opportunities of new business in providing equipment for the platforms, including the modules. The expected development of a concrete platform construction site can bring substantial benefits to Scotland."
My Lords, that is the end of the Statement.
4.9 p.m.
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, this is probably the most important Statement that the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth, has ever made in your Lordships' House. I am grateful, and I am sure all of your Lordships are grateful to him for repeating it to us here to-day. It is difficult, in fact I would say it is impossible, to argue with the view expressed that in the present position with oil the Government should be seeking to procure this oil in quantity as soon as possible. There may well be some folk in Scotland who might take exception to that in other circumstances, but I think even they would find it difficult to do so at the present time.
Where I think we must be very careful is in seeing that, in achieving the object of getting the oil out as quickly as possible, the greatest care is taken to avoid anything which would be to the long-term disadvantage of the areas affected. We do not wish to see in the North-East of Scotland, in the Shetlands, in the Orkneys, or in any other place where the exploitation of oil is taking place, a repetition of what we have had to do in the last 20, 30 or 40 years in repairing the damage in "completed" mining areas. One would hope that in regard to oil we shall learn from the mistakes made in the past in regard to coal.
There will be perhaps in another place a certain amount of disagreement with

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the Statement, which implies that the Bill referred to will be introduced in your Lordships' House—I am grateful for the noble Lord's indication otherwise. I was going to say that I did not think it followed that, because the scheme was being dealt with by the Secretary of State for Energy, the Bill need be introduced here. I think that is right; because at the present time, although I agree completely with the desirability of doing this on a United Kingdom basis, the immediate prospects are entirely Scottish, and there are few of us on this side of the House who can speak to the Scottish position. One aspect which I hope will be emphasised (it is referred to in the Statement) is the question of planning permissions. It is most important that proper planning procedures are still followed through, although it is desirable that in this matter quick planning procedures should be found. Many people have been saying for some time that the Drumbuie affair has now been going on far too long, and requests have been made by the local authority concerned and others for some form of comprehensive planning for this sort of thing. This will be welcomed.
There is one thing that is not mentioned in the Statement (I do not know whether it could have been included), but the Statement gives the opportunity of refering to it. Is consideration being given to the possibility of building platforms other than at deep-water sites, or in such a way that the facilities of the industrial belt of Scotland can be brought into use? There is no part of the country which is in greater need of being able to participate in the future prosperity of oil. I hope—in fact I am certain—that the Government will be looking at that aspect of the matter.
Finally, in these procedures for a more rapid acquisition of land by the Government, will the Bill be of such a nature that it would enable land to be acquired for purposes in connection with the exploitation of oil generally, rather than with the construction of oilrigs? As we know, the Shetland County Council presently have a Bill before Parliament to enable the acquisition of land in Shetland, to accomplish in some way in relation to oil development the same kind of object which the Government have in
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relation to oilrigs. Perhaps that might be taken into consideration. And when the Bill refers to accelerated planning procedures, I take it this does not mean that only scant consideration will be given to all the issues which in normal circumstances would be dealt with in a much more leisurely way. The object presumably is not to cut out any consideration but to ensure that it is done in the quickest possible way.
4.13 p.m.
LORD POLWARTH: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for the general welcome he has given to our proposals. Perhaps I may make it quite clear that while the Bill will be presented by my noble friend it will in fact be introduced in the other place. The fact that it is I who am making this Statement in this place, and my right honourable friend in another, is I think a clear indication of the involvement of the Scottish Office in this matter of very great importance. With regard to the noble Lord's question about other methods and the possibility of constructing platforms at other places, the answer is that this matter is being pursued and we are glad to know that an order was received for a pattern platform to be built by McAlpine's at the site on the Clyde where they will use the resources of the central belt. The indications are that, however many platforms can foreseeably be built at such sites, there is an immediate and continuing need for those that can be built only at deep-water sites as well.
With regard to the further point on the kind of installations covered, the Bill will relate to land urgently needed for the production of offshore oil. This is carefully stated because, while it would include platform sites, and I think could indeed include landing points for pipelines and for the storage of oil brought ashore, we should not like it to go much further. It certainly would not extend, for example, to refineries. It concerns purely those facilities needed to win the oil and get it ashore. As to the further point on planning procedure, I can assure your Lordships that there is no intention to remove the right of objectors and others to make representations. But we have found it necessary, in view of the very prolonged time that the existing procedures are taking, and might take in

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future, to find a way of dealing with this matter more quickly, but without removing the right to make representations.
LORD LLOYD OF KILGERRAN: My Lords, may I also thank the noble Lord for repeating the Statement from the other place, and say that we on these Benches are conscious that a need has arisen, in view of the national crisis in the supply of oil, for speedier procedure for the acquisition of land and for obtaining planning permission. But we hope that, even in the circumstances of the present crisis, the local amenities will not be sacrified extensively merely in the pursuit of speed, and that every effort will be made to avoid desecration of beautiful areas in the way my noble friend referred to earlier.
We note that it is intended that these powers should be used sparingly and for only a limited range of cases. Is it possible for the noble Lord to indicate the kind of cases that will be required in the future? We also note that the proposed legislation is linked with a number of measures being considered by the noble Lord the Secretary of State for Energy. Is it possible at this stage to indicate more precisely what may be the number of measures to be linked with this question of building massive platforms? May I also ask a question about the present planning application which is proceeding in Drumbuie? As the Statement indicates, a number of objectors will have their position considerably affected in this matter, and I assume that their expenses will be carefully considered and, in due course, paid.
LORD POLWARTH: My Lords, in answer to the noble Lord, it is particularly with a view to preservation of the amenities, and the restoration of the land afterwards, that we are proposing this procedure of the Government's acquiring the land and then leasing it. We are most conscious of the importance of this aspect. As to the range of cases, I thought I had outlined them fairly clearly to the noble Lord who posed the previous questions. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, would care to read my reply in the OFFICIAL REPORT. As to further measures, these will be announced in the future; they are not yet ready to be announced. My noble friend has not been in office, nor has the new Ministry
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been in existence, for very long. Finally, as to the expense of the inquiry, I think I made it clear in my Statement that my right honourable friend will consider the position about this carefully.
THE EARL, or SELKIRK: My Lords, does the Drumbuie inquiry now become completely superfluous?
LORD POLWARTH: No, my Lords; that is not what we have said. But we have felt it right to point out that those participating may feel that it should not continue, or that it should be suspended; but it is only right to leave them the opportunity to ask for its continuance if they so wish.
4.19 p.m.
LORD HOY: My Lords, one has a feeling, rightly or wrongly, that what the noble Lord is saying is that you can go on with this little plaything but, whatever decision is reached, it is going to be ignored. I can well understand the difficult position in which the noble Lord finds himself. May I ask one further question, because we ought to have clear what is meant by "further developments", not only extraction? When he talks about provision on shore, I think he is talking about all on-shore development, which would of course include tank storage and so on, without going so far as having a refinery there. Next, may I ask what it is proposed to do with the Zetland Bill? Very soon the Committee which has been set up by your Lordships' House will be meeting, and of course this matter is of great urgency as well. May we then accept that if the Zetland Bill proceeds and meets with the approval of your Lordships' House, then this will in no way be interfered with by the Bill which the noble Lord proposes to introduce to the House? Finally, the noble Lord said he was going to introduce a Bill, but that, "first of all we propose to consult the interests concerned." I do not quite know how this is to be done, unless the interests concerned know what is going to be put into the Bill and their opinions asked about the contents. Or will it be done the other way round, by the Government asking those they are consulting what the Government ought to put in the Bill?
LORD POLWARTH: My Lords, as to the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hoy, the reason for maintaining the possibility of the inquiry continuing is

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that already the evidence has been heard mainly on one side, that of the promoters, and it can be very valuable to a decision, even under the procedure of the new Bill, that perhaps the rest of the case should have been heard. On the other hand, those taking part may feel they would rather see the inquiry suspended at present. That is why we should like to leave the position open in regard to this matter. As to the Zetland Bill, there is no intention that this Bill should necessarily cut across the Zetland Bill which seeks wider purposes, and, as the noble Lord knows, is in passage through your Lordships' House. I think those were the main points.
LORD HOY: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord about on-shore development? This ought to be more closely defined so that the House and the country will understand what the Statement really covers. Secondly, I should be grateful if the noble Lord could inform us how he proposes to consult people about what ought to go into the Bill that he proposes to introduce.
LORD POLWARTH: My Lords, as to the installations which I tried to outline previously, the important point is that it is no use winning the oil with the platforms unless we can get it ashore and store it until something else can be done with it. We will put the exact definition in the Bill in due course. As to consultation, I cannot say exactly how this will be done, but I can assure the noble Lord, Lord Hoy, it will be undertaken, and we will welcome any views given to us.
THE DUKE OF ATHOLL: My Lords, can the noble Lord assure us that this is not the start of the slippery slope of the desecration of the North-West of Scotland, especially as I believe that the employment will be only for ten to 15 years? These concrete monsters could be made equally well in Norway, in a far more suitable place. Before asking my second question, I must declare an interest. I am on the Executive Council of the National Trust for Scotland. Can the noble Lord tell us how the inalienable land at Drumbuie of the National Trust for Scotland will be affected by the proposed Bill? Thirdly, the noble Lord said he welcomed additional employment. We want employment in the Clyde, the Western half of the central
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belt. We do not want it particularly at Drumbuie or Loch Carron where there is little unemployment anyway.
LORD POLWARTH: My Lords, I can assure the noble Duke that this is not the start of any slippery slope. He will find when the Bill comes forward that there will be full provision for Parliamentary approval of individual site cases. Z he position about Norway is that there is every indication that the facilities for production in Norway will become strained before long, and therefore we shall need additional facilities. Further, the value of the production in this country is not limited to the works on the site. There is also the very valuable work in producing the modules, that is, the steel structures and all the elaborate equipment which goes on top of the platforms, which we are more likely to secure if built in this country than in Norway.
My Lords, turning to the National Trust, I appreciate very fully their position in this matter. National Trust land is inalienable only in the sense that a Parliamentary procedure has to be used before it can be acquired against the wishes of the Trust. I think it would be better if the question of the position of the National Trust vis-á-vis any other owner were to be discussed fully in Parliament when the Bill is introduced.
THE EARL OF ONSLOW: My Lords, while welcoming the Statement very much indeed, may I ask whether the noble Lord could possibly tell us for how long these concrete platform construction sites will be needed, or what is his estimate? Secondly, at whose cost will be the restoration of the land after they are no longer needed?
LORD POLWARTH: My Lords, dealing with the second question first, it is just for this purpose of restoration that the Government are proceeding in this way. How they will deal with protection is probably a matter for the terms of lease to the individual operator; but this is the advantage of the Government building in terms to meet the cost of restoration. Would the noble Earl be good enough to remind me of his other point?
THE EARL OF ONSLOW: My Lords, I realise this is a vague question, but how

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long does the noble Lord estimate that these concrete platform construction sites will be needed?
LORD POLWORTH: My Lords, that is difficult to forecast at the present time. It must depend on the further discoveries of Oil.
THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE: My Lords, I have one question, prefacing it with a declaration of interest in that I am associated with one of the firms, Peter Lind, who have applied for one of the sites. Does not the noble Lord agree that the total area of coast involved in these proposals is somewhat less than 3 per cent. of the entire Scottish coastline?
LORD POLWARTH: My Lords, I cannot off-hand verify the exact figure quoted by the noble Earl, Lord Lauderdale, but it is a minute proportion of the total. As the noble Earl will know, the problem is that it happens to be in an area of considerable scenic value.
BARONESS WHITE: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that this new procedure, which on the whole we would welcome, will be watched very carefully indeed by those of us who have an interest in the Celtic Sea where we also have a very sensitive coastline, especially in Pembrokeshire and, if it should so happen, in the Scilly Isles and Cornwall? So we wish this procedure well, but will be watching it extremely critically.
LORD POLWARTH: My Lords, may I say I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady White. That is why we are making this a Great Britain Bill, and not just a Scottish Bill.
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, when the noble Lord replied to the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, he seemed to indicate that each individual site would be the subject of Parliamentary consideration. Does this mean the Bill contemplates that when this process is brought in there will be an Order placed before Parliament?—because I cannot think how otherwise each individual site would be considered by Parliament.
LORD POLWARTH: My Lords, this is still a matter for final settlement, but it will be made clear in the Bill, if we can leave it till the Bill is put forward.

LAND TENURE REFORM (SCOTLAND) BILL
4.27 p.m.
Second Reading debate resumed.
LORD BALERNO: My Lords, to the best of my knowledge I am neither a vassal nor a superior. I hasten to add that neither am I a lawyer, but for the past nine centuries, as we have heard, the feudal system has furnished Scottish lawyers with a lot about which to argue. As bits of the system became out of harmony with the times, so have they been modified and simplified, but when simplified they only furnished opportunity for the introduction of further complexities. In spite of what my noble friend Lord Strathclyde has said about the proposals during the past 60 years to alter the Scottish feudal system, I respectfully submit that these alterations have been going on for at least the past 300 years. Indeed, the Bill which we are now discussing does just that; it actually amends the Feu Duties Act of 1597, which itself was an amending Act.
While there has been a steadily growing desire to do away altogether with feu-duty, the pace has been extremely slow. It is almost as though we cannot bring ourselves to throw away this lovely, tattered garment which has been of such use to us in the past. Admittedly, for 600 years it has worked well and, indeed, as has been said already, it served a most useful purpose during the Industrial Revolution. But I submit its value has been largely overtaken by the planning legislation of the past 30 years. However outmoded it has become, it is not going to give up without a fight. I suppose the Government are right in this Bill only to push the system a few inches towards its grave. Doubtless they have looked back over the long history of attempts to change and modify, and have realised that here of all the ancient laws of Scotland the national motto applies par excellence, "Nemo me impune lacessit", which translated into Scots, is "Wha daur meddle wi' me?"
The noble Lord, Lord Hughes, has referred to the interest that the Church of Scotland has in the matter of feuduties. They hold, I believe, more feuduties than anybody else, save, possibly, the university of which the noble Lord who is

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promoting this Bill is the Chancellor. From feuduties the Church derives an annual income of £125,000. Most of these superiorities were actually bought by the old Church of Scotland for the endowment of the stipends of the churches which were being built towards the end of the last century, and they were bought, believe it or not, at about 25 years purchase. The present Bill proposes roughly 8¼ years purchase. The Church of Scotland does not oppose this figure, if only so as to bring the matter to a conclusion; and that is why I hope your Lordships will give sympathetic consideration to a very reasonable proposal that will, I hope, hasten the demise of the feuduties.
As the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, has mentioned, under the Bill as it stands redemption is purely voluntary—a voluntary act on the part of the proprietor of the land. This means that the Church can expect to have this millstone hanging round its neck for many years to come. The General Trustees of the Church of Scotland would like to see more definite progress, and they have put forward the proposal to which the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, referred, that this could be accomplished by inserting a new clause, that on the occurrence of the sale of the property the feuduty should be compulsorily redeemed. I can see no hardship being involved here, as this would be paid by the seller. Sales of heritable property in Scotland are, almost without exception, conducted by solicitors, and the redemption price would be a perfectly normal item of their transactions.
The noble Lord, Lord Hughes, has spoken about the form of receipt, and I would support every word he said there; I hope that it is correct that the Government may give some favourable consideration to this. To persuade them in this direction, I would like to say that at the present time, as for many years past, the Church of Scotland are redeeming the feuduties just by a simple receipt, which the proprietor can then put with his titles, and if he wants to register them he can register them and pay for the registration.
There is yet another simplification for which the Bill presents a unique opportunity. Local government in Scotland
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is being reorganised. Again this is a matter to which the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, referred. There are a few churches in Scotland called the Burgh Churches, where the burgh has a right of pre-emption in the event of a change of use of the building. The noble Lord, Lord Hughes, gave as a reason for not supporting such a suggestion that the Church itself was imposing rights of preemption when the Church itself was selling property. This is a pity, because I think the answer to this is that when the Church of Scotland is selling a building it is normally a building which, if one was in England, one would call a consecrated building, and therefore it is the sentimental desire to see that the building is retained, or preferably passed to some other branch of the Christian religion.
I will not weary your Lordships with a disquisition on the subject of Parliamentary Churches, which are in a similar position, in that the local proprietors have certain rights of pre-emption. Both of these are anachronisms and the fact that they are recognised as anachronisms can be seen in the Act of 1970 which abolished such right of pre-emption in the case of the land surrounding the church, in the case of the glebeland. If it can be done for the glebeland it can be done for the churches also.
It is indeed a pity that we cannot get rid of this feudal system altogether, much as one hates to break up a lawyer's paradise. I have a very simple suggestion to make. The obligations other than financial imposed with the feuduty relate almost entirely to good planning and protection of amenities. The difficulties of this have been adumbrated by my noble friend Lord Selkirk. But why not pass over the rights in these feuduties to the local planning authorities, who can then, if they think it desirable, enforce the conditions of the feu, and if not they can ignore them; neighbours wishing the enforcement of the conditions would merely have to ask the local authority to enforce them, and the local authority would do so or not at their discretion in consonance with their good planning.
I find it rather peculiar that at this particular time your Lordships are in the process of discussing the Protection of the Environment Bill. We are now legislating for just those things that crop up

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most frequently in the conditions of the fens, which can be summed up in the words, "Do not annoy your neighbour". With all the planning laws and this wonderful new environment Bill, I beseech the Government to consider whether there is really any need to retain this archaic cobweb of complexity which, so far as I can make out, as I have said, benefits nobody but the lawyers—and I say that with great respect in the presence of a great Scottish lawyer, Lord Selkirk, and the noble Lord, Lord Kilbrandon, who is not in his place.
The coincidence of these two Bills makes me wonder whether arrangements will be made to have a Law Officer for Scotland once again in your Lordships' House. Had one been present, I venture to think that this coincidence and its implications would have been spotted. The last Government arranged for the Lord Advocate to be a Member of this House and all we Scots greatly benefited from his counsel. In the near future we are promised further legislation for the simplification of the land laws of Scotland, and therefore it is all the more desirable that there should be a Law Officer in this House. Without any disrespect to my noble friend who has performed so ably for the Government to-day, I would ask the present Government to give serious consideration to this proposal.
4.40 p.m.
THE DUKE OF ATHOLL: My Lords, like many other speakers I must declare an interest in that I own some superiorities which presumably will be affected by this Bill. I believe that I also pay a small amount of feuduty to the Church of Scotland, to which my noble friend Lord Balerno has referred, as part of the £125,000. On the whole, I welcome Part I of this Bill. I am sure that the Government are correct to proceed in this somewhat slow way. It is necessary to preserve the private planning conditions inherent in the feuing system, and if this cannot be done without keeping the nominal feuduty of one penny per annum if asked for, I see no reason for not keeping it.
We must all be pleased that vassals will have the opportunity of redeeming their feus but, as the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, said, many people are extremely worried about the legal costs involved.
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I would support both his plea, and that of my noble friend Lord Balerno for a simplified receipt system. I believe that under Section 8 of the Feudal Casualties (Scotland) Act 1914 provision was made both for a recorded discharge and for a simple receipt which did not need to be attested or holographed as a recorded discharge. I also believe that the simple receipt was almost universally used, and, so far as I know, worked extremely well. I should have thought that the Government could have based the proposed receipt under this Bill on those lines. That is all I want to say about Part I of the Bill.
I cannot praise Part II so much. Its drafting is incomprehensible. The clauses are much too long and complicated, and the final four lines of Clause 7(1) seem very surprising. Perhaps I might read them:
"… the court may decern for the termination of the lease in respect of such part and the removal of the lessee therefrom; and, failing such removal, the court may, on expiry of the 28 days last mentioned, eject him there-from."
The final few words conjure up a lovely picture of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Kilbrandon, dressed in all his robes, followed by counsel, ejecting someone from the house they had leased. I cannot believe that this is really what is meant. Could not the Bill say what is really meant, which is presumably that an order may be obtained to get the person out of the house. In this day and age, what does the phrase, "the court may decern" mean? That phrase must be a relic of the nineteenth century.
The second Part of this Bill is full of unintelligible drafting and I hope that the Government will look at it very carefully and try to make it easier to understand. My noble friend Lord Selkirk emphasised the need, in a Bill of this sort, for clarity of meaning, and I feel that Part II of this Bill, especially Clause 7, does not live up to that. I am also slightly worried about the principles involved in Part II. Why should willing lessors and lessees not enter into agreement for more than twenty years if they so wish? I used to live in London in a house which had a long lease that expired in 1970. Three or four years before it was due to expire I, somewhat naturally, started to enter into negotiations with the ground landlords to renew

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the lease. For reasons of their own they were not willing to renew it for more than nineteen years. I was not interested in renewing it because I did not consider that it was worth while spending the capital needed to bring the house up to modern standards when one had only a nineteen year lease. This, it seems to me, is one snag about limiting leases to twenty years.
Another snag is that I believe it is difficult to obtain a loan for improvements if a lease is as short as twenty years. I should like to know whether the Government have considered this point in deciding on the period of twenty years. I appreciate that some limit to long leases is necessary, but I should have thought that forty or fifty years would have been more appropriate than twenty years, and would have safeguarded against the fear—which I do not honestly feel is very great—that people do not realise that their house is only leasehold. After all, as my noble friend Lord Strathclyde said, they presumably have to pay a rent either once a year or every half year, and I should have thought that that would make them fully aware that they do not own the freehold of the house.
I should like to ask my noble friend two questions about this Part of the Bill. The first relates to the position over sporting leases which happen to have a house attached to them. Am I to understand that we can no longer make sporting leases for more than twenty years because there is a lodge attached to the dwelling-house? Occasionally people wish to take some stalking for well over twenty years because they wish to improve the forest, or something like that, and they would like a guaranteed tenancy for more than twenty years. I should like to clear up that point. If they are affected by the twenty-year lease, that is another reason for making the period forty or fifty years rather than twenty. Secondly, does Clause 10 apply to all leases, or just to leases of dwelling houses? If it applies to all leases snags will arise, so far as mineral leases are concerned, under Clause 10.
There is still much to do in tidying up the feudal system in Scotland. One matter I am disappointed to see has not been
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dealt with in this Bill is compensation for the variation of land conditions. At the moment the position is most unsatisfactory, and gives the superior totally inadequate compensation for a change of use of lands. This was done under the 1970 Act, and I feel that opportunity might have been taken in this Bill to adjust this. After all, the feuar pays for a particular use or uses only, and if he wants to change his use, which is tantamount to acquiring additional proprietary rights, he should pay the current market value of these rights, otherwise he is acquiring something of value at a nominal price which he can immediately dispose of at its current market value. It is a pity that this problem arose when the 1970 Act was passed. We did not realise at the time the effect this would have on compensation for the change of use. I am sure that no Government would have meant it to be so penal to the superior. With these few remarks, I should like to say that I support the Second Reading of this Bill, and especially of Part I.
4.48 p.m.
THE EARL OF ELGIN AND KINCARDINE: My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Duke. About a month or two ago I followed him rather more physically down Fifth Avenue in New York. On that occasion we were flying a gas balloon as a sort of kite. I dare say that the noble Duke has flown a number of kites to-day, and perhaps I may be allowed to do so this afternoon. First, I must thank the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth, for the admirable way in which this difficult and complicated Bill has been put forward.
In the first clause there is something which touches very deeply and dearly my own heart. The noble Lord, Lord Hughes, asked who was a friendly tenant. Well, they were originally the people who came with my forebears from England. They came up and settled at Loch Maben. They were given land by my Bruce forebears and they and their ancestors and successors have been there ever since. There is something particularly human about the provisions of Clause 1, because we are to be allowed to continue to keep this human relationship between the vassal and his superior. This is immensely important in any dealings that have to do with land where a house, or perhaps a new village or new town is built. As

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has been said, we have seen this in the past in the new town of Edinburgh, but it certainly has never ceased to be important. It is immensely important that the human relationship at the start of a development be continued.
Here I must declare an interest, in that I am not only a vassal but also a superior. People come to me regularly to find out whether I have a new plan to allow them to live with carefully prepared conditions. Even though they might get a plan through a planning committee, they want something extra so that the amenity of their houses and the amenity of their neighbours will be enhanced as years go by. I am fortunate in that one or two villages in my part of Scotland of which I am the superior have been considered for the operation of conservation orders. Were it not for the fact that I am the complete superior of those villages, I believe that it would be very difficult to make the conservation really firm. It is in that way that something from the past can be made valuable to the future. There is a feature of our feu tenure which, strangely enough, has not been mentioned this afternoon, and that is the fact that in all these charters there are names. Scotsmen all over the world love to know from whence they came. They love to know of their families. Embedded in this ancient feudal system are the names of all the people who have owned land in Scotland ever since the system began, and if you wish you can trace anybody, provided that you know where and when he lived. It is a fund of immense value and it is splendid that it should be continued.
However, I am not so happy about the arrangements for redemption, because one of the problems that faces a superior is the very small sums which have come down to us and which are now in decimalised form. Three hundred years ago, they probably started off as a couple of fat capons or a lippy of oatmeal, but they have now become lop or something of that kind and I do not think it will be easy to calculate that in terms of 2½ per cent. Consols. There is a duty on the Government, at each time of the year that it is permissible to have redemption, to declare the value of the Consols and to prepare a quite simple chart which the vassal could look at it to see what the amount should be. It would then be easy for him to know his obligations without
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going to either a lawyer or a stockbroker, and in that way both the vassal and the superior would know where they stood. This system has been conducted—perhaps in other ways—in Scotland for many centuries. It is known as "fiars' prices", and they have been struck annually by the sheriffs of counties for many generations.
I should like to ask my noble friend Lord Polwarth a question about the meaning of the word "other" in the description of "feuduty". Among other things, Clause 4(8) states that
"… any other period of perpetual periodic payment in respect of the tenure or occupation of land".
Unfortunately, my forebears took on some 999 year leases and we shall be in a difficult position if they are not included. I shall then not be allowed to have any houses on that land for the remaining period of the leases, which may be something like 830 years. Furthermore, I may not let properties separately. This seems to me most unfortunate and quite wrong and inequitable. I hope that a 999-year lease can be construed as a feudal tenure, or, alternatively, that there can be a little more flexibility in the arrangements for leases, somewhat along the lines which the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, and others have suggested. Perhaps 20 years is far too short a time and around 60 years would be much more beneficial.
Something has been said about irritancy, and the strange state of affairs when a feu has not been paid for two years. Unfortunately, from time to time I have had to be an irritant superior. One of the most difficult problems is where there is a small piece of ground in an old village which is quite unless for almost any purpose and which is held under a separate feu. The feuar may have disappeared, and the feuduty may not have been paid for many years, so the ground is an absolute nuisance to the neighbouring proprietors. If a five-year period is allowed in cases such as that, it will become increasingly difficult to discover who is responsible and bring him to book and make him pay the duty, or attend to the feu properly. Though there can be a great deal of worry about irritancy, and though the means of irritating a feu might be used wrongfully, one must think of the neighbours who may

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be irritated because of the shabby condition of the ground.
Whatever may happen, I hope that the obligations which exist as a result of feu tenure over 900 years will not be forgotten, because the obligation is to Scotland as a whole. The original obligation of a feu was to see that our country was kept properly defended and free from attack, and that obligation is laid upon everyone who takes upon himself the responsibilities of ownership of land in Scotland. If you try to get out of it by one means or another, you are not being honourable or sensible or helpful to our nation.
If anything happens as a result of this discussion and the passing of the Bill, which, in the main, I greatly support, I hope that it will refresh the spirit of those who use the measure that we have been given by our forebears to the very best of their ability, to build up our country honourably, because this great system has stood us so well in the past. There can be no doubt that whatever is done we shall benefit, for there are many people who enjoy the responsibilities of ownership of property under the feu system. They hope that they may hand on those responsibilities so that others are able to live in a well-ordered, happy and profitable society. I, too, hope that this measure will pass, but I also hope that these various problems will be considered by the Government.
4.58 p.m.
LORD STRATHSPEY: My Lords, I must apologise for having given your Lordships such late notice of my maiden speech on this Bill that my name does not appear on the list. The fact is that I had not intended to speak on this Scottish legal subject, but when I saw the Bill only yesterday I felt impelled to speak on it and to give it my support. First, I should explain that I had the privilege of serving the War Department as a land agent for some 34 years, some 14 of which I spent in Scotland responsible for their landholdings, from Wigtonshire in the extreme South-West to the Isle of Unst, in the expreme North-East. For those of your Lordships who are not geographers perhaps I should explain that Unst is the most Northerly island of the Shetland group.
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During this period of service I had, inter alia, to operate, with and without Scottish lawyers, the Scottish land tenure system. I may say without hesitation that I formed a very marked appreciation of the system, and consider it to be (if I may be excused for making a comparison) superior in many ways to the English system, in which I was trained. I have found it so much more definite, clearer and quicker in some ways. Take, for example, the conveyancing of property. I know that this item is not fully covered in this Bill, but perhaps your Lordships will excuse me for mentioning it, as it will serve as an illustration. I am sure many of your Lordships have been aware of the lengthy uncertainties of the English contract stage. In Scotland, this stage is covered by the exchange of formal missives. These can take a few hours only or, at worst, a few days; but when exchanged they are as binding as the English contract, which normally takes weeks or months to conclude. Again, the English contract by no means always indicates all the purchaser's rights, liabilities and burdens on the property. The Scottish missive does; and if it does not, then the seller is liable to the purchaser.
As many of your Lordships have pointed out to-day, the Scottish land tenure system has successfully served for probably a millenium. It is a good system, and is well known and understood by the Scottish people, who are traditionalists. Here, my Lords, I had contemplated using the word "conservative", but I feared that noble Lords on the opposite Benches might have thought I was using the word in its political sense. But because Scots are traditionalists, the average Scotsman, I think, dislikes and fears changes. Nevertheless, few, if any, would fail to agree that in certain ways the present land tenure system needs streamlining and refining to modern requirements—most notably, in my view, on the feuing side. The Bill is, I think, very clever. It is complex because the law is complex in Scotland, but despite this complexity the Bill is of relatively small size. But it makes certain changes as a soft-pedalling, first step towards the modernisation (if I may use that word), of the parts of the land tenure

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code covered by the Bill without—and I emphasise this—materially changing the system or code.
Yesterday, the Lord Advocate referred to definite restrictions in feu charges and dispositions as applicable to site planning and use of land. These are matters which I feel are best left to the planning authorities in general. May I give your Lordships an illustration of what I mean? The noble Lord, Lord Hughes, in fact touched upon this item in his speech. When we came to dispone some particular land site it was found in the titles that the use of the site was restricted to, let us say, a gunsite or an ordnance depot. Clearly there was no civilian requirement for such uses; and the then current planning use was for, say, residential at high density. One had then to make the best bargain one could with the superior to obtain a relaxation of this prohibitive restriction in order to enable the purchaser of the land, very often a local authority, to develop it. I hope that future enactments (as we have heard to-day there are likely to be) will go further than this Bill presently does and will eliminate to a large degree from titles such major restrictions on use as the one I have described, leaving these planning matters to the planning authorities. After all, if a superior sells his land he sells it, or should do, at the best market value obtainable at the time, and in my view there his interest should end. He marches out of the land and hands it lock, stock and barrel, so to speak, to the new proprietor.
To return to this Bill, I feel that Part I is particularly desirable in that proprietors or vassals, as they are known, will be able to free their properties from feu-duties, except for one penny per annum, and other charges as mentioned in this Bill, if they so desire, and it will prevent the imposition of new feuduties in future titles. I feel that, as other noble Lords have pointed out to-day, such charges are now out of date, and that feuing value is not at all a realistic value to be placed on a property. The realistic value should be contained in the purchase price the vassal has to pay for the dominium utile. I thank your Lordships for listening so patiently to me.
5.8 p.m.
LORD POLWARTH: My Lords, I think your Lordships will agree that this has
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been a very useful and constructive debate, and I am sure that the first thing your Lordships would like me to do is to express our warm congratulations to the noble Lord who has just sat down, Lord Strathspey, on such a very helpful, informed and constructive contribution to our debate. He is known to some of us for his devoted service in the capacity of Land Agent in Scottish Command during that important post-war period. Even if he has waited, according to my work of reference, 25 years to give us the benefit of his wisdom, I am sure we all hope that it will not be another 25 years before he does so again.
I think your Lordships have in general welcomed this measure. It has been interesting to see the sort of love-hate relationship that so many of us have for this feudal system: this "tattered garment" of the noble Lord, Lord Balerno, and this "human relationship" of the noble Earl, Lord Elgin. But I think there has been a general acceptance that the time has come for the abolition of the system in its present form, subject to the finding of a really effective method of maintaining these all-important conditions with regard to the land—and that, my Lords, is firmly our intention, as I said at the beginning. It is indeed this search for the most effective method that has made it impossible for us to come forward with more at this present stage; but that search will continue. As I have said, it is a subject of great complexity; and I was glad that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Kilbrandon, with all his legal wisdom, made that point clear to us.
My Lords, I shall try to answer the principal points raised by noble Lords, but in view of the time and the subsequent business I hope your Lordships will forgive me if in some cases I deal with these points by correspondence, or leave them until we come to them in Committee. I am not myself learned in Scots law, and some of the points are very intricate. I was interested in the suggestion of my noble friend Lord Balerno regarding the presence in this House of a Scottish Law Officer. That is not for me to comment on, but I am quite sure that other holders of my present office would have been very glad, as indeed would I, to have at my right hand, so to speak, somebody learned in the law of Scotland. I can assure my noble friend that I will

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pass on his suggestion to the proper quarter.
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, gave, I think, a general welcome to the Bill. The first of his main points concerned the form of discharge on redemption of a feuduty. This was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Balerno, and the noble Duke, the Duke of Atholl. We have looked at this point very hard and we realise there is justice here. Accordingly, we intend to move an Amendment at Committee stage to make it possible for a simple form of receipt to be used —and indeed that it should be used in every case—though with the option for a formal document if either party should want one. It is therefore proposed that we should move an Amendment to that effect. A simple form of receipt should not require legal expertise with the consequent expense.
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, I take it that if either party elects to have the more formal document, the cost will be borne by the party seeking the more formal document.
LORD POLWARTH: Yes, my Lords, that is indeed the case; the one who asks for it will have to pay for it. The noble Lord then referred, as did a number of other noble Lords, to the question raised by the Church of Scotland in particular of making redemption obligatory on the first sale after this legislation comes in. The noble Lord quoted Winston Churchill in this respect regarding lawyers and problems. I can only say that I am not qualified to explain the difficulties of bringing this in at this stage. One can see the merits of such a procedure and we are still most interested in it, but I am assured that to attempt to introduce that provision at this stages in the Bill, involving extremely complicated drafting, is not possible. I can do no more than give that assurance having pressed our legal friends upon it. I think it would be more proper and logical that this should be tackled in the context of the next stage of legislation. I can assure your Lordships that we intend to bring it in though I do not know whether it will be within the three years. I hope, therefore, that pressure will not be used to try to get this provision into this Bill as it will entail considerable complication.
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There is then the point which the noble Lord mentioned about burgh and Parliamentary Churches—a somewhat obscure subject. If I took him aright he expressed a contrary view on this to the view of at least one other noble Lord (I think the noble Lord, Lord Balerno) regarding this right of pre-emption of these properties. I can only say that this question of rights of pre-emption is only one aspect of the problem of land conditions generally, and again we do not feel it right to deal with this particular one, relating to these rather peculiar churches, in isolation. Clearly, any proposals would affect the interests of local authorities, too. I believe that so far there has not been any consultation with them, so I think that the whole question of these rights should not be tackled at this time. We shall see what should be done in the future.
The noble Earl, Lord Selkirk, whose experience in Scots law we all greatly value, said that he thinks the system should have been done away with 150 years ago.
THE EARL OF SELKIRK: I said that I thought a number of reforms should have been made over the years.
LORD POLWARTH: I should have been sorry if it had been done away with 150 years ago, because that would have antedated the creation of my feu charter by one year and we should not have had the conditions which have done so much to preserve the property. However, I am sure he is right and I think the great thing about this is that there must be a continuing process of change in relation to the law of land tenure. The noble Earl spoke of the need for simpler methods of transfer of land. This is something of which we are very conscious and have in mind; but again we do not think this is appropriate for this Bill.
The noble Earl raised one or two specific points. He asked whether, if a proprietor has redeemed his feuduty, can an over-superior call on him to redeem the over-feuduty too? The answer, my Lords, is, no. The receipt which the proprietor will receive for the initial redemption money will be binding on all parties having an interest in the land, so he cannot be pursued for that. The noble Lord also asked who will enforce conditions in future when the

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superiors no longer exist. This is a matter for further consideration. That is the main reason why we are clearing up the reform in two stages, as I said earlier. The Green Paper did canvass the possibility that powers of enforcement might be given to neighbouring proprietors. This is only one thought, and it has some support. As to his "kindly tenancies", I think the kindliness was more on the part of the landlord than the tenant. The answer is that they are not affected.
The noble Earl, Lord Cromartie, suggested that the abolition of feuduty would increase the price of new houses. From all our inquiries this is doubtful to-day though it may have been true in the past. The evidence that we have suggests that the vendor of a new house now, usually the developer, charges the full going rate for the house and the land, and the feuduty is just a little extra stuck on top. That is certainly the impression we have to-day, so I am doubtful about it increasing the initial price of houses.
The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, I think fully appreciated that we must have time to get the best answers to all these questions. He raised in particular the question of long leasehold, the possibility of life tenancies, which exercised a number of others among your Lordships, particularly for people such as old retainers and for members of a family. I know that my right honourable and learned friend the Lord Advocate is writing to him on this subject and will give him rather more detail than I can. There are some problems in relation to this and there are considerable difficulties in drafting an exception for these particular classes that would not create loopholes and nullify the general intention of the Bill. The 20-year period is a fairly long one for which to grant a lease, and there is nothing to prevent the voluntary renewal after that time. I would suggest that the noble Lord might await the letter to which I have referred, and then if he wishes he can put down an Amendment.
My Lords, I know that some doubts were expressed about the abolition of the right to create long leaseholds. I will not go over that point again because I covered it at the beginning. There is
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no doubt that while the practice is common and understood and accepted in England, it is not common or widely understood in Scotland. We have been fortunate to have avoided the feu system, and I believe we are right, in the general interests of all concerned, to avoid its proliferation.
The noble Lord, Lord Balerno, spoke of the millstone round the neck of the Church of Scotland in having a continuance of these small feuduties and not being able to get them redeemed on the first sale. My Lords, this is not in perpetuity. This is one of the matters being looked at for the next stage of reform, and we shall bear very much in mind what has been said. One other point that was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Balerno, was: why not pass over the right to enforce land conditions to the local authority? When we talked to the local authorities about this they made it very clear that they did not want this responsibility. It would be very difficult for planning authorities to regulate matters in such detail as they are by the present system.
The noble Duke, the Duke of Atholl, raised a number of specific points. In particular, he referred to the incomprehensibility of one clause of the Bill. I would only say again that the legal jargon is something which I am not qualified to speak on and I am sure it would be necessary to make it relate to other measures concerning land. The noble Duke asked about sporting leases and whether it would be all right to create longer leases, including the lodge, for 20 years. I am informed that it would qualify as ancillary residential use and therefore it would be possible. I am also informed that Clause 10 does not apply to mineral leases; in fact, it does not apply to leases at all.
The noble Earl, Lord Elgin and Kincardine, felt that the formula for redemption was unduly complicated. I do not think that is so. The price of 2½ per cent. Consols is easily ascertained. It gives a perpetual yield and I should have thought was a fair basis, adapting itself to the conditions at any moment. The full details will be published in the leaflet that I have said we will issue explaining how the Bill will operate, and I do not think the noble Earl should fear on that account. I am bound to say that

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while I find it difficult enough to see him as an "irritant superior" as he described himself, after the very non-irritant speech that he made, showing a great interest in and understanding of the system, I think I must say that if all superiors had shown such a responsible attitude to their responsibilities perhaps we should not have found ourselves so much in need of a reform to-day. If there are other points which the noble Earl made I would beg his leave to deal with them by correspondence.
That said, I am extremely grateful to your Lordships for your general welcome to the Bill and for some constructive suggestions, and I hope that your Lordships will now give the Bill a Second Reading.
LORD HUGHES: My Lords, before the noble Lord concludes, and on the basis that silence is sometimes meant to convey consent, I would wish to say that I am afraid that I must agree with the noble Earl, Lord Cromartie, in relation to the effect that this may have on the price of houses. Many builders anticipating this sort of thing—I myself have done it—have been granting feus with a nominal feuduty and receiving the value of the land in the price at which the house was sold. In his first speech the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth, referred to the creation over recent years of feus of £30 or £35 on top of the grassum which was being taken for the land. Those builders who have been doing that will not suddenly become philanthropists. When they start to sell, in addition to the grassum they are getting at present, they will take eight years of purchase added to the price; and if they have been selling a house with a feuduty of £30 they will stick £240 or £250 on the next selling price of the house. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Polwarth, is being misled by his advisers if he thinks that those builders—and there are some in Scotland—who have been seeking to get the best of both worlds will suddenly find themselves wearing a halo, because they will not.
LORD POLWARTH: My Lords, I think that we must respect the views of the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, with his experience in this matter. There is room for two views on this matter. We will
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watch it closely, but of course the real remedy is to keep down the price of houses by increasing the supply.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

UNIT PRICING BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and to be printed.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT BILL
5.25 p.m.
BARONESS YOUNG: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. The Bill before us, on local government finance, follows upon and is an adjunct to the Local Government Act 1972. It is in four main parts. The first two parts are concerned with Government grants to local authorities, and rent rebates, and are a further instalment in the Government's programme of rectifying iniquities and anomalies in the distribution of Government aid and in the rates which citizens bear in paying for local government services. The third part of the Bill makes provision for the establishment of local authority ombudsmen and lastly the Bill strengthens local government as a whole by removing unnecessary controls by central Government over the local government.
Before describing the main provisions of the Bill let me emphasise its urgency. The core of the Bill relates to the provisions in Part I about grants. Until the Bill has been enacted the Order and the Regulations, which must be made under Part I to enable the Government to pay out grants, cannot be made. Both the Order, which is an Affirmative Order, and also the Regulations, must be made before April 1. If they are not made the whole system of local government finance will be thrown into disarray, the valuable reforms which all are agreed upon will be lost and many domestic ratepayers will suffer hardship. I think this is generally appreciated, and I am grateful to those on all sides who have co-operated in making the passage of the Bill as speedy as possible.
I have said that the core of the Bill is the provisions in Part I about grants.

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In this technical field of Government grant it may be helpful to the House if I discuss each of the three elements of the grant, and indicate in what way they are changed under this Bill, and the reasons for the changes. These provisions provide the framework within which the rate support grant settlement of 1974–75 and future years will be settled. What is at issue now is not the actual figures in the settlement just agreed, but rather the need to make sure that the framework within which the negotiations and settlement take place is right that the right factors are taken into account and that there is sufficient flexibility in the system to enable us to meet the changing needs of future years.
I shall start with the domestic element because, although it is the smallest element of the grant it does illustrate most clearly how necessary are the provisions of the Bill to prevent hardship and inequity for individuals. The domestic element of the grant, noble Lords may know, is given to local authorities to enable them to relieve domestic ratepayers of a certain proportion of their rates. It is, in effect, a form of domestic de-rating which applies to all domestic properties. Formerly, this domestic element had to be fixed at a flat rate over the whole country.
However, in 1974–75 we face a position where, because of local government reorganisation, and the reorganisation of the water and sewerage and health services, even if we were not also making changes in the distribution of grants, there would be substantial changes in the burdens which ratepayers would face if we took no steps to alleviate them. Some, particularly those in the big cities, will gain; others will lose. The Government think it only fair that those domestic ratepayers who face substantial increases, through such reasons which are entirely outside the control of their authorities, should be shielded from them for this year. If we used only the flat rate domestic relief we would have to put the flat rate so high that it would take a wholly disproportionate amount of the total grant, and benefit many who did not need it. In fact, what we have put into the 1974–75 settlement, is a variable domestic relief as well as the fixed domestic relief; that is, a domestic relief which is tailored to the rise in rates in each
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authority. It is important that the power to make a variable domestic relief is contained in the Bill.
Secondly, there is the needs element. This is the largest element in the grant. It is intended to help authorities in accordance with the variations in demand for their services and in the cost of meeting those demands. The 1966 Act set out various factors by which it should be calculated—population, road mileage, school pupils, et cetera, but gave very little room for the Secretary of State to add new factors or change old ones. However, in the passage of time it has become clear that the factors in the 1966 Act did not adequately reflect those variations, and in particular one of the most pressing problems of our time—the social problems of declining inner city areas. Both the Government and the local authorities were agreed that more of the needs element total needed to go to the large cities where those problems were most acute. It has been done in the needs element formula proposed for 1974–75. This adds a new factor—the personal social services factor—to those which determine the distribution formula. This new Bill gives us this power; it enables the Secretary of State to use what factors he thinks right in the circumstances. This power in the Bill will enable us to vary or add factors in order to improve continuously the equity and impact of the needs element.
Thirdly, there is the resources element. This is designed to help those authorities who have inadequate resources, that is low rateable values, even when they are already helped by the needs element, because they have low rateable values. Formerly, under the 1966 Act, the resources element was prescribed to bring the rateable resources of those authorities who fell below the national average up to that average but no further. We have found that this provision is too rigid. It has even been characterised by critics as a "poverty trap". In order to help the authorities properly we need to bring their resources up to the level of the richer authorities—that is well above the average level of authorities. We have, in the settlement, taken a level which leaves only 11 per cent. of rating authorities above the qualifying line. This Bill allows us to prescribe the level up to

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which resources shall be brought in the light of circumstances.
These three examples show how the grant provisions in the Bill will be able to ensure that rate support grant settlements are vastly fairer and more generous to those in real need than they have been in the past. I have purposely not gone through the clauses seriatim or explained the many detailed technicalities which lay behind them, but I should like to mention three major points which arise on Part II. There are three clauses which I believe will be of particular interest to your Lordships. Clause 6 provides for the introduction from April, 1975, of a new system of transport supplementary grants. In effect it provides for a number of the existing specific transport grants to be replaced by a new or a unified system of Central Government support for local transport expenditure. The main grants being replaced are those for principal roads and public transport infrastructure.
One of our main objectives in seeking to change the present grant structure is to promote comprehensive transport planning, and county councils will be asked to submit annually to the Department transport policies and programmes setting out their objectives and proposals and the estimated cost of carrying them out for a period of years. These policies and programmes will be used as the basis for decisions on the allocation of transport supplementary grant each year.
Clause 7 introduces a new supplementary block grant to be paid to those county councils which have to incur additional expenditure on National Parks. This provision fulfils the undertakings which we gave during the passage through Parliament of the Local Government Act 1972 that the greater part of the expenditure on National Parks would in future be borne by the Exchequer. The new supplementary grant will be based on returns of estimated expenditure, submitted by the National Park authorities, to be incurred on all aspects of the administration and management of the Parks. In the recent White Paper on the Rate Support Grant 1974–75, we announced that the total grant next year would be £1·4 million, which represents a fourfold increase over the present level of grants for National Parks. Clause 9 extends the
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present power of the Countryside Commission to give financial assistance to countryside projects. In future, they will be able to assist both private individuals and public bodies, including local authorities, in doing anything which furthers the purposes of the countryside legislation.
Part II of the Bill makes domestic improvements to the rating system. It starts from the assumption, as indeed does the whole Bill, that rates are the basis of local government taxation. We have all searched for alternative sources of finance (none harder than my right honourable friend Mr. Page) but all turned out to have insuperable difficulties: either they were difficult to collect or did not carry local responsibility or would not help the poorer authorities. So we have turned our attention to improving the rating system and to removing its major defect—its regressiveness: the fact that it bears more harshly on the poor than the rich.
This, we think, we have succeeded in doing by the rate rebate scheme proposed in Clauses 11 to 14. This is a generous scheme, tied to the scheme of rent rebates and allowances which will replace the present, and in some respects inadequate, rebate scheme. We estimate that about 3 million people will benefit under this sliding scale next year compared with about 800,000 at present. The number of domestic ratepayers benefiting will also increase substantially—from 900,000 under the current scheme to an estimated 3 million next year. The loss of rate income arising from the new scheme will be of the order of £95 million a year, but a new 90 per cent. grant will be paid to local authorities, and this next year will come to about £85 million.
After rate rebates, the most important provision in Part II of the Bill is that relating to the penal surcharge on empty commercial property. It is primarily aimed at discouraging, by means of penal levels of dates, the deliberate keeping vacant, for long periods, of office blocks. Your Lordships will have the opportunity to consider the detail of this rather long clause, which introduces two new sections into the General Rate Act 1967, at a later stage of the Bill, but despite its length, it is basically simple in concept. Where a commercial property is capable of being put to good use, and the owner has not tried his best to let it, he becomes

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liable to the surcharge. The longer he does not try, the bigger the surcharge becomes. It starts at 100 per cent. of the full rate on the property for the first year of non-use, becomes twice the full rate for the second year, three times for the third year and so on, indefinitely.
Clause 15 deals with empty property rating. In the past, though local authorities have been able to levy rates on empty properties, criticisms have been made: first, that if an authority adopts the powers it must continue to exercise them for a minimum period of 7 years unless the Secretary of State approves a shorter period; secondly, that there can be no discrimination between types of property—it must be all empty property or none; and thirdly, that there is no flexibility in the percentage of the full rate to be charged—it must be 50 per cent. The clause is designed to meet these criticisms. It removes entirely the minimum period during which the empty property rate must be levied. It enables the rate to be applied only to specified classes of property; and it enables different percentages up to 100 per cent. to be levied in respect of different classes of property. Moreover, for good measure, it enables a different pattern of percentages to be applied in different parts of the rating area.
I should now like to turn to Part III, which, together with Schedules 4 and 5, forms a distinct section within the Bill, referring to the establishment of an ombudsman or complaints system for local government. Local government, and the standards of conduct and administration in local government, are subjects much in the news these days. Certain court proceedings have attracted wide publicity. The Prime Minister has recently set up a committee under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Redcliffe-Maud—who I am glad to see is speaking in our debate this afternoon—to consider the rules of conduct which should guide members and officers of local authorities.
The underlying principle (which I am glad to say appears to be widely accepted) is that local government ought to have some formal machinery for regulating its affairs, comparable to that which Departments of State have in the shape of the Parliamentary Commissioner. There are many points in common between the Parliamentary Commissioner system and that
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which is proposed in Part III of this Bill. The most important is that both are concerned with that elusive but recognisable concept, "mal-administration". But the formal structure of the new organisation is rather different. Instead of a body headed by a single commissioner, the Bill provides for a collegiate structure. The separate Commissions for England and Wales are to consist of local commissioners each having a primary jurisdiction for a particular part of the country, although with ample provision for varying areas and for making flexible working arrangements. Appointment of the commissioners is to be by the Crown after consultation with bodies representing local government, and the intention is that those appointed as commissioners will be persons deserving the confidence of local government as a whole. The representative bodies are designed to exercise an effective measure of control over the new system. Local councillors also have an important part to play in the operation of the scheme. Just as the Parliamentary Commissioner system is designed to help Members of Parliament to do their jobs more effectively, so this scheme is intended to give similar help to local councillors. Thus complaints will normally reach the local commissioner through a councillor. And the councillor who refers a complaint to the commissioner will of course receive the report which results from the investigation.
Another important feature of the system is the form of sanction which will attach to reports of local commissioners. When Government Departments are investigated by the Parliamentary Commissioner, pressure to rectify maladministration and to prevent its recurrence is brought to bear by Parliament itself acting through one of its Select Committees. In the case of the local commissioners there will be more direct reliance on the effects of local publicity and the influence of public opinion. Reports on particular cases by local commissioners will be made available for public inspection and will no doubt be fully reported in the Press.
But despite these and some other differences between the Parliamentary Commissioner's organisation and that proposed to be set up by Part III of the Bill, we should be ill-advised to make a

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strict separation between the two systems. We are sure that some transactions at least—we do not know how many—will concern both central and local government—or, indeed, either of these branches of Government and the National Health Service—and the Bill contains provision in Clause 33 for dealing with these "composite cases" as they have sometimes been called. In addition, there is a degree of cross-membership, because the Parliamentary Commissioner himself is to become a member ex officio of both the English and Welsh Commissions, not for the purpose of handling local complaints but to give the Commissions the benefit of his experience.
As with the Parliamentary Commissioner, a number of subjects are excluded from the jurisdiction of local commissioners. The principle here is that it would be impracticable and undesirable to make local commissioners into a general Court of Appeal or have them deal with some matters which are best dealt with by some other means or in some other form.
I am glad to be able to tell your Lordships that local government itself, through its representative associations, has greatly assisted the Government in the development of these proposals. The associations have been taken into consultation and are represented on a Working Party with officials of my Department and of the Welsh Office, which is considering the detailed organisation and implementation of the new system—subject of course to Parliament's approval of the legislation.
This Bill contains important provisions for the future of local government finance. We believe that by making the Government grant structure more flexible we shall be better able to help local authorities with their needs, present and future. The rent rebate scheme will help domestic ratepayers and the establishment of the local ombudsman will be welcomed by both the public and by local government. The last Part of the Bill fulfils a pledge by the Government to remove a number of financial restrictions from local government. My Lords, I ask you to give this Bill a Second Reading.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Baroness Young.)
5.44 p.m.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, the House will appreciate the survey which the noble Baroness has given us on this Bill. The noble Baroness has covered a very wide field and with some speed, which is perhaps indicative of the manner in which we are expected to deal with the Bill in this House. It was in 1971 that the Government published their proposals for the reorganisation of local government, and those proposals were followed in July of the same year by a Green Paper entitled Future Shape of Local Government Finance. That Green Paper encouraged us to anticipate that the reorganisation of local government itself would be accompanied by equally extensive reforms in the field of local government finance. The Queen's Speech in October. 1972, led us to anticipate legislation during the last Session dealing with this matter of local government finance; indeed, we were reminded of that in the consultation paper which was issued in June of last year.
We did not get legislation in the 1972–73 Session, and we are not now getting any dramatic reforms in the field of local government finance in the shape of this Bill. The very word "finance" is not used in the Title of the Bill. What we are getting is a Bill which makes modest adjustments but which misses a unique opportunity to put local government finances on a sound and lasting footing, one which might have given them greater independence, which the alternative sources of revenue would bring. Furthermore, this Bill comes to us at almost the last minute of the last hour. The noble Baroness told us that the Government want the Bill to go through the House quickly; and she has reminded us that the local authorities want it on the Statute Book urgently as well. Local government has been placed in a position of some considerable embarrassment by reason of the very bad timing of this legislation, which was promised last Session and is now brought to us at the very last moment before it is needed to come into operation.
A spokesman of local government put it to me a day or two ago, "I do not know what will happen if it is not in operation by April 1". If we had been caught up in a General Election we should have found out what would have happened. For the sake of local Government—and it has enough problems on

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its hands at the moment with reorganisation taking place—it is a good job that we did not have a General Election. That is the only good reason I can think of for not having a General Election. As it is, we have the Bill before us and the ink is scarcely dry since it left the other place. It left the other place a better measure than when it first appeared there, and I noticed with considerable pleasure the conciliatory attitude of Ministers there as it progressed through and after the Committee stage.
We on this side will do all we can to expedite the passage of the Bill in this House; but we have an obvious duty to give it critical examination at the Committee stage. If we can improve it further so much the better. But for the Government to ask us to begin the Committee stage on February 7, a week away, on a very large Bill such as this one, to give us a week to consider the Amendments that we shall need to lay before the Committee, is no help. It may look good on paper, as though the matter has been tackled urgently, but it is going to impose heavy pressure on anyone who really wants to examine critically the provisions within the Bill.
Having indicated that the Bill does not reform local government finance in any dramatic way, I must say that I do not know how the noble Baroness is going to hear what I am saying if the noble Lord, Lord Mowbray and Stourton, keeps on talking to her. The Government must indeed be in a rush if they are handling their business in this kind of way. One anticipates when we take the Second Reading that the Minister will be free to listen to what is being said.
As I was saying, since the Bill does not reform local government finance in any dramatic way, it is proper that I should say that within the limits of present Government intentions quite a number of its provisions are indeed to be welcomed. I give an especial welcome to Clause 19 with the relief it provides for disabled persons. I welcome also the increase from 75 per cent. to 90 per cent. in the grant for rate rebates, and the provision for local schemes, although I would point out that the estimate of 3 million beneficiaries underlines the inadequacy of the incomes of those at the lowest levels of our incomes scale. It justifies the criticism of the rating system as being unfair in its application. The regressive
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nature of the rating system has long been accepted. The rate rebate scheme was first introduced in 1966 as a temporary measure to ease its application. The present proposals indicate a more permanent arrangement. I wonder how many of the 3 million beneficiaries that the noble Baroness has spoken of will take up the benefits of the rebate scheme. I certainly hope that they will all do so. However, at the back of my mind I have some doubt as to whether all those who ought to benefit from it will, in point of fact, claim.
There will be general agreement that the powers provided in 1966 for the rating of empty properties, about which the noble Baroness has spoken to us, have not been adequate. Indeed, Centre Point continues to epitomise our failure in that regard. It epitomises also our failure to get our priorities right. We have a situation where we are aware of escalating capital values of empty office blocks, while the homeless search in vain for a secure resting place. So in this field we on this side certainly welcome the greater powers provided in the Bill, whereby local authorities may exercise some greater pressure and derive some greater return of income. But I wonder whether still we are not using a nutcracker were we ought to be using a sledgehammer to deal with this problem.
We welcome too the increase in the average relief to the domestic ratepayer. The figure of 10p is, as I understand it, to be the average. The minimum will be 7 and in other cases it will exceed 10. We may need to look at the application more closely in Committee. We may also look at the entitlement of metropolitan districts to the resources element grant.
I think that this Bill is to be criticised for its failure to provide local government with new sources of income. The local authority associations and the G.L.C.—and the noble Baroness acknowledges the help they have given—have made it clear that they would welcome some developments in this area. Indeed, in March, 1972, they put forward a number of proposals for finding new sources of revenue. Those proposals may have been faulty; they may not have been bold, but they did put forward some practical proposals. May I mention the hotel tourist tax which the G.L.C. suggested should be, or could be, proposed to the

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rate of 50p per bed night. I gather that that proposal was calculated to yield over £13 million a year in the Greater London area. As I say, I only mention that to indicate that local government has ideas in this area. It is perhaps a matter we shall be able to return to at a later stage.
My Lords, I should like to see local government given the opportunity to develop socially desirable services that would in themselves be an advantage to the community and a source of income as well. I am one of those who believe in municipal enterprise; I think it ought to be encouraged. I should like to see local authorities given opportunities to compete in certain commercial fields which could be financially productive. I believe this would have a remarkably stimulating effect on those who serve at this level of government, and might attract many who feel that the present duties and powers of a local authority are too dull and too limited.
Furthermore, I believe that local government would give a good account of itself if it were allowed to indulge in this kind of enterprise, for local government discharges functions of vital importance in a very responsible way. Local government is not an exciting subject for many people. It is a great pity that more Members of your Lordships' House do not appreciate on occasions like this that we are here discussing a service that is noteworthy for the manner in which it discharges the functions allocated to it. Local government is at the very grass roots of democracy in this country which many of us have been proud to serve at different levels. I fought my first election in 1927, when I was just 21, and I feel that it has been a great privilege to serve at district and county level, and to work in other fields of local government activity, almost for more years than I care to remember. Like many of your Lordships, I think that those Members in the House tonight, and certainly those who have indicated their intention to speak, will be appreciative of the quality of service that is given by those who work in local government professionally and those who serve it in a political sense.
I should like to see something like a Royal Commission appointed to look
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at this whole question of local government finance. The noble Lord, Lord Redcliffe-Maud, is in the Chamber and I am glad to see that he is to speak. May I say to him that the further we get away from the publication of his Report, the more I am quite sure he was on the right lines on one thing—unitary authorities. I should like to see something like the Redcliffe-Maud Committee going into this question of local government finance with a view to finding new acceptable methods of financing local government. I appreciate that the rating system we have in this country provides a very easy way of collecting taxation. If I may say so, it is a little too easy, if that is the main reason for maintaining this regressive system of local taxation. As things are, local government is too dependent on central Government and a Royal Commission or a Committee could well find the answer to what has been up to the moment an intractable problem.
The cuts which the Government have recently imposed on local authority expenditure are pretty devastating. If I may just say a word or two about education, in our case those cuts have dashed the education committee's hope of replacing 12 of the 120 sub-standard, pre-1903 primary school buildings we have. They have deprived us of the possibility of providing some essential extra places at a very substantial number of them; that is to say for the 1973–74 and 1974–75 building starts programme. Indeed, the overall cuts imposed on local authorities leave them with very little discretion in many fields. If wages and salaries are to be untouched, and if the establishments (established posts with the numbers as they exist at the present time) are to be maintained, then I do not know how the percentage reduction that the Government seek will be achieved.
Last week the Government published the promised White Paper on the rate support grants. Again that was a very tardy publication. Local government has been waiting to know what it was going to get for some months, and it has come at a very late stage. For most authorities I would venture to say that it has come at a point after which most of them would have had their figures finalised for

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consideration by their financial committees. One of our major local authorities has written to me saying:
"The present attitude of the Government in making relatively minor changes in the Rate Support Grant Structure, shows no appreciation of the demands for efficient local government services in the conurbations. The present tinkering with the present grant structure supplies so little additional financial assistance that it will not even keep pace with current needs, let alone the rising level of expenditure, and ratepayers will thus be called upon to carry very large additional burdens."
Not my words, my Lords, but the words of one of the largest local authorities in the country, if not the largest.
May I briefly refer to paragraph 21 of the Consultation Paper where it is stated that the Government intend to look further into the possibility of expressly permitting capital values to be adduced in support of rental values. This surely is a matter that the Royal Commission I have mentioned could look at. As it is, the present rating system is based on notional rent levels that cannot be accurately measured in a situation of housing scarcity over such a very long period. I should think there is clearly a need for a thorough examination of the whole system.
I do not want to say very much this evening on the question of the rate support grant, and I will merely add this. As I appreciate the position, in its application it will be carried out by regulation; that is to say, the actual allocation of the rate support grant funds is a matter for annual orders, albeit in consultation with local authority associations. If I understand Clause 10 correctly, this leaves a very great area of uncertainty as to the future. We generally welcome the improved supplementary grant provided in Clauses 6 to 9 dealing with transport, national parks, and the provision whereby the Countryside Commission may aid public authorities and others in achieving the purposes of the Countryside Act 1968 or the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1969. My Lords, we shall give close attention to Parts III and IV of this Bill on which the noble Baroness has spoken. As I see it, the position of the ombudsman in local government is not on all fours with the Parliamentary Commissioners. It is probably that we shall ask the Committee to consider certain matters
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on the issues involved, and I think it will probably be with regard to finance.
Having said that, I hope reasonably briefly in the circumstances, I would end by saying that we support the Second Reading, and promise to do the best we can by way of co-operation during the subsequent stages of the Bill. I think that the timetable, starting the Committee stage next week, adds to our difficulties, and we may find ourselves asking the Committee to consider a number of Amendments which, if we had more time to study the Bill, we might not have tabled. I do not know. It is very difficult at this stage to say how we can deal with the matter satisfactorily. I do promise that so far as we can give cooperation in all the circumstances, that we will do, as well as our colleagues in the other place. We shall try to be constructive and helpful; and we hope that the Government will be as conciliatory in this House as they were in the other place. So far as the noble Baroness, Lady Young, is concerned, I know that she always tries to be conciliatory, and I hope she will be able to persuade her colleagues in the Department that she might be allowed to be so during the passage of this Bill.
6.6 p.m.
VISCOUNT AMORY: My Lords, the noble Lord. Lord Garnsworthy, has told us that he first joined a local authority in 1927—
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, I fought my first election in 1927: it took me a little time before I got there.
VISCOUNT AMORY: My Lords, I will not press the noble Lord any more. I fought an uncontested election in 1931, I think, a few years later. For eight years before that I was precluded from standing for my immediate local authority because during that period I was its auditor—at a salary of 10 guineas, which I feel the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, will agree, had there been a Phase 3 at that time, would probably have been within its limits. Some of the small criticisms I have to make I share with the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy. That slight note of asperity which the noble Lord contrived to introduce into one of his invariably courteous speeches, wholly appropriate from those Benches, quite obviously I must avoid at all costs, speaking from these Benches.

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My Lords, this Bill, although based on the earlier Consultation Paper, has of necessity had a rather rushed passage through Parliament. This is due, as the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, has said, to the time-scale of local government reform, with its starting date of April 1 next. I myself think that in the circumstances this degree of rush has been inevitable. Though I notice that the Opposition in another place complained that this Bill ought to have been introduced two years ago, in the light of the whole programme of local government reform that was not feasible. I do not believe it could have been introduced until the general pattern of the main Act had been settled by Parliament. The noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, said that my noble friend had introduced this Bill with speed. While that is so, I am sure that he will agree with me that she has introduced it also—which fits in with his closing remark—with her usual courtesy and charm. Within the limited time available, I believe that reasonable consultations have been held with the representatives of the local bodies concerned.
I should like to start by making it clear that the association with which I am connected personally, the County Councils Association, are strongly in support of the principle of block grants. A big disappointment is of course, as the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, said, that no additional sources of local government revenue have been discovered and agreed. The most attractive potential one, I should think, is the local income tax. This idea bristles with difficulties; there is no question about that. Probably in any case it would have been impossible to introduce such a novel idea at this particular juncture of affairs, when the new local government system has still to get into its stride and everyone concerned is overwhelmed with work and faced by many new problems, and also when a number of tax changes at the centre are in hand. The possibility of some kind of local income tax, however, I believe justifies further study. The present rating system, it is unnecessary to say, has obvious defects and limitations as a main, or even as a substantial, source of revenue. Local income tax, if such a system could be devised,
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might afford just the flexibility that is required.
Another possible source of local revenue that I believe was examined was some kind of transport fuel duty. But I personally doubt whether that will prove a likely starter, owing to the drawback of differing local rates of duty in neighbouring areas. In the absence of a new source of local revenue, and with the limitations of the rating system, we are forced back on grants from the central Government as the main source of local government revenue. The ratio of central Government grants to other income has been rising over the years; and as so much local government expenditure is initiated and made mandatory on local authorities by central Government and Parliament, this trend is likely to continue. This is to be regretted because it conflicts with the ideas of greater independence, authority and responsibility for local, as against central, authorities. It means that, within broad limits, local authority policies are dominated and controlled by financial restrictions imposed centrally.
It is disappointing to note how often in this Bill, as in the Local Government Reform Act itself, powers of intervention or approval are given to the Secretary of State. Perhaps this is inevitable, but it is sad to those who hoped that the new local government system might give local democracy a really new degree of autonomy and independence. One other point I should like to make in passing is that new responsibilities, and, arising there from, additional expenditures, are being continuously thrust on local authorities by Parliament. Parliament invariably underestimates the future costs which are going to arise. Thereafter, local authorities are often criticised for what has happened, when the real reason has been the commitments that have been laid on them by Parliament. It cannot be too often repeated that the best time to control expenditure is at the moment when the additional functions and commitments are being considered by Parliament. If that opportunity is neglected, then any future economies will be far harder to secure without damaging the efficiency of the services concerned.
There are three statistics (I am not going to give your Lordships more than

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that) which I find it useful to keep in my mind as a background to what we are discussing. I will summarise them briefly. The first one—I am referring here to the year 1971–72—is that local authorities in England and Wales spent on revenue account about £7,000 million, and on capital account another £2,000 million. I have not checked these figures but I believe they are right. That represents about 31 per cent. of the combined expenditure of central and local government. I mention that point only because these are formidable and very significant figures. The second statistic, again dealing with local authorities in England and Wales, is that as a proportion of the gross national product the figure of local government expenditure in 1949 was 9·2 per cent., and now is 15 per cent. The third statistic is that the proportion of the estimated expenditure of local authorities met by grants in this year, 1973–74—this is an estimated figure—is 60 per cent. Those three statistics give me a background picture of the problems we are dealing with.
To turn to the actual provisions of the Bill, I want only to refer very briefly to three or four points. Many people I think are not happy that the basis of the needs grant should be related to past expenditure, which may have been influenced by considerations other than need, such as limitation of resources available. Perhaps that is inevitable for the coming year, 1974–75, but it is to be hoped that some better formula may be worked out for future years. The next point I should like to say a word about is supplementary transport grants, which in principle are to be welcomed. The proposals seem to give the Secretary of State almost unfettered power of control over the grants in individual cases. That is a power which will need to be looked at in Committee. Also, there is a danger—one can read it between the lines here—that there may be a recurrence of too much detailed control from the centre, which would be a great pity.
On rates rebate grants much can be said, but while the increased rate is very welcome, the logic of the grants being limited to 90 per cent. is not apparent. Rates are the only independent source of local government revenue available to local authorities. Rent rebates are an instrument of national policy and not a
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local government responsibility, and therefore, I should have thought, should have been financed wholly out of central funds. I know that it may sound a little ungracious—my noble friend may tell me that I ought to be very satisfied with what has been done—but it is the logic involved that I do not quite understand. As regards the rates system, I feel it is disappointing that the opportunity has not been taken to improve the system in detail. I will mention only one example. I should have thought that again it would have been logical to treat Crown property exactly as other property. This is perhaps a point we can consider on Committee.
Then there is the ombudsman. The definition of "maladministration" will require careful consideration. The objects would be defeated if it meant that any local authority decision could be challenged. I think that that is clear and will be agreed. There is some safeguard against that in Clause 34.
As regards the representative bodies, their functions still seem a little vague and a little bare, perhaps; but again we can probe that. The removal in Clause 35, in particular, of a number of controls over local association functions is wholly to be welcomed. Nevertheless, in this Bill, as in the main Local Government Reform Act I mentioned, the number of circumstances in which intervention by the Secretary of State is envisaged is still rather alarming. One can only hope that these powers will be employed to the absolute minimum. After all, it is only when local government has room for a really substantial measure of independent judgment and action that it will be activated by a spirit of real, alert local democracy. Control in detail from Whitehall, however beneficently conducted, is fatal to that vitality.
Finally, I come to 1974–75, next year. With the recent economy measures announced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer it will be a difficult year for the new local authorities though the necessity for these economy measures will be challenged by few. The efforts the Government have made through the rate support grant proposals to temper the burdens for local authorities in their first year under the new system is recognised and appreciated. It is still extremely difficult for those concerned to forecast

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the precise impact of the new rate support grant on the individual councils, and, as the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, has said, this creates serious problems for treasurers and finance committees as the days go by. It has been computed, I believe, that on the basis of what is known so far, local authorities in the aggregate will have in their rate support grant (and if this is not so my noble friend will tell me) a growth factor for next year in real terms of about 2·5 per cent. In the case of county councils, I think the rate is probably rather less—perhaps of the order of 1·7 per cent. But I am sure that, whatever problems arise in the interpretation of essential services (and that is the most difficult thing in the world), local authorities, recognising the urgent need to moderate the rate of national inflation, will seek to get through next year as best they can.
My Lords, I do not believe that this Bill is the final word in the reform of local government finances. If I thought it were, I should not be wildly enthusiastic about it. But I do not believe it will be, and I do not believe my noble friend will tell us that she believes it will either, or perhaps even wants it to be. But, recognising the difficulties and all the problems that overwhelm administrators in getting the new local government system going, we ought to give a general welcome to the main provisions of this Bill, as an instalment, and send it on its way as quickly as we can.
6.24 p.m.
LORD REDCLIFFE-MAUD: My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to follow the noble Viscount, Lord Amory. He has really said, particularly in his closing remarks, very much what it is in my mind to say. If I may first apologise to the noble Baroness for not having been in my place when she started her speech my excuse is that the Prime Minister had asked me and some colleagues to investigate and make recommendations about local government rules of conduct. Therefore, in a sense I had been about the business which is before your Lordships' House this afternoon before I was able to be in my place. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, for his kind remarks. I am, as I have often bored the House by saying, absolutely
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unrepentant about the advice given to the Government by the Royal Commission on Local Government in England. I shall never forget my pleasure that it did commend itself to the Government of the day. However, I am also convinced that we are right to give this Bill a Second Reading with all reasonable speed.
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, referred to the Royal Commission on Local Government in England, and suggested there might be yet another body that might look at local government finance. Provided that it has no personal connection with its predecessor, that would be an extremely good idea. The Royal Commission by its membership was quite the wrong body to give fundamental consideration to local government finance, which, in fact, needs such consideration. I very much endorse what the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, said, that this Bill does not begin to do what in fact Parliament will have to do, and the sooner it does it the better. I remember Mr. Crossman when in the Administration speaking about the rate in terms which reminded me of what Mr. Lloyd George had said in the first decade of this century, that fundamentally the rate is indefensible. On the other hand, it is ridiculous to suppose that at this stage local government could possibly get on without it. And although the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, in my opinion was right in saying that we must not let this Government, or any other Government, off the task of seriously improving the financial basis of the partnership between local authorities and central Government (which already spends these huge sums to which the noble Viscount so rightly referred), nevertheless, I think we should be grateful for certain benefits that this Bill produces. Even in the field of finance it represents considerable advance, in my opinion.
I think that the rate itself, which I dare say we all agree must stay, is going to be improved in the sense of its regressiveness being reduced by the improvement in the rebate system, in the rate on unoccupied premises and also by the new system of rate support grant. But that is makeshift, and will be most unfortunate if the advantages which local government gets from this

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Bill lead the Government of the future to think that they can leave rates alone. The more one tinkers with the point in respect of, for example, the domestic rebate, the more illogical one makes it and the less sound the foundation for what local authorities themselves ought to be expected to do. Nevertheless, I think it is an improvement both in respect of rates and of grants.
My Lords, I am particularly glad that the Government have taken advice from a Select Committee of your Lordships' House which reported in July on sport and leisure, in this respect at least, that it has strengthened the powers of the Countryside Commission and enabled (and I very much hope this will be done) the Countryside Commission to take its place along with the Department of the Environment, with the Sports Council and with the local authorities in developing a strategy for recreation. I myself have very strong feelings that at some time this House might with profit debate the Report of the Select Committee on Sport and Leisure. I have no doubt that in due course that will be done. Meanwhile, it is of real importance that the new local authorities should recognise that the use of leisure should be, as we recommended in that Select Committee Report, a general part of the structure and fabric of our social services.
With this disastrous, shortened industrial week, we are perhaps having a foretaste in regard to leisure of what in happier times we should find welcome, that is, an increase in the amount of time in which we are free to do as we like. If we are to have the opportunities of using this free time, there is a real need for both national and regional strategies to be developed. As the Select Committee recommended, local authorities must be the main organ through which those opportunities can be provided in collaboration with private enterprise, and the Countryside Commission, as it now will be able to do, must play its part in finding some money for good local schemes promoted by local authorities as part of the regional strategy, so that leisure use will be to great advantage.
My Lords, if I may mention the Ombudsman, which we see emerging from the Second Reading of this Bill, I think that Parliament will be right to make this novel innovation, borrowed originally
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not from Scandinavia, as I like to think, but from another part of the Commonwealth, New Zealand. My only regret is that the draftsman has done such marvellous work when he describes what the Ombudsman cannot do that he may have deterred our fellow-citizens from making the fullest use, in collaboration with local government bodies, of this new remedy for maladministration. I hope that in Committee we may be able perhaps to make a little more clear to the general public and the citizens how they can regard the Ombudsman as one of their friends, not, of course, going beyond or overlapping the work of the Minister in her appeals, and the local authorities in using their discretion on a policy.
I do not know whether the draftsman in New Zealand was better advised perhaps even than our own when he said that the Ombudsman there should have a chance of looking at any decision that was wrong. That at once raises the question of the infringement of the rights of local government to decide right and wrong in policy terms, and, therefore, perhaps we were wise not to go so fast or so far as the New Zealand Ombudsman. I do believe we shall find there is no necessary conflict between the proper inevitable work of decision by representatives of the local communities in matters of policy and the assistance of an impartial investigator who can be, as it were, the friend out of court of all citizens with a sense of injustice.
VISCOUNT AMORY: My Lords, I wonder whether my noble friend would agree with an idea that was crossing my mind as he spoke, that he himself would make an absolutely ideal Ombudsman, and if he agrees, will he put in for the post when this Bill has gone through?
LORD REDCLIFFE-MAUD: My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Viscount, but the existing tenant of the office of Ombudsman in the Parliamentary sense is such an admirable holder of that office that it will not be necessary for any Member of your Lordships' House to offer his services yet awhile.
The other thing which I very much welcome in this Bill is the partial implementation of a great promise made by Mr. Peter Walker some time ago, that

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the thousand controls which he had detected through which central Government shackles the discretion of local government should be removed. He added, except where they were necessary. In Schedule 6 the Bill does go some way to free local government from some of those nannying instincts which 50 years ago compelled the Mother of Parliaments, in the Protection of Pet Animals Bill and in various other matters to do with performing animals, to prevent local authorities from using their discretion in the fees that they should charge for licences. Ten shillings is to go if this Bill goes through, and this seems to me in itself a good reason for giving it a Second Reading.
6.32 p.m.
LORD LUKE: My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Baroness for explaining this Bill so well and in so short a time. I listened most carefully to what the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, had to say, as I did to the noble Viscount, Lord Amory. I was interested to hear that he thinks this Bill is an instalment. Perhaps that will help us with the time factor Lord Garnsworthy brought up. The noble Lord, Lord Redcliffe-Maud, has allayed some of my fears by his reference to the Committee in this House and to a strengthened Countryside Commission.
Though giving a general welcome to this Bill, I have criticisms, and I hope that I may be forgiven if I deal with one specific element of it. That is the withdrawal of grants for open spaces which is, I suggest, an unfortunate aspect. It means that recreational facilities may once more be given a low priority, a retrograde step. Specific grants are removed from other items of local government expenditure, but grants for amenities are in a different special category. Recreational facilities cost money, but they have no visible return except the enjoyment and health of the people, and I maintain that if no central incentive is given they can easily get left out. Thus we may well see open spaces, children's playgrounds become the "also-rans" among some local authorities. We may well see, once again, the backlog building up, which over the years we have tried to remove. We have recently seen good progress with efforts to provide play
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space for children, but I am not going to weary your Lordships with what has been achieved.
I hope that some of these items may appear in the needs element as outlined by the noble Baroness; but I noticed she said that this would be mostly for the towns, and I wonder what happens to the local areas in the villages. It is going to bear very hardly on parish councils, who have the least resources, and whose land costs are none the less high; and it may mean that land available cannot be reserved. I see that supplementary grants are made for National Parks. That is splendid. Of course, they are regional. Grants and loans are available to the Countryside Commission for its purposes, and once again I am very glad the noble Lord. Lord Redcliffe-Maud, feels that this will fill some of the gaps that I fear may arise. Nevertheless specific grants for public open spaces are excluded. I am surprised, and I think it is a little illogical, that the Lea Valley Regional Park is specifically left out. Many noble Lords will have seen what excellent results have been achieved in that large area. It seems strange to me that National Parks are included, and they are regional, and the Lea Valley Regional Park is excluded. It has been the most imaginative scheme that has been produced for many years, and curtailment will be a great discouragement.
I think it is not inappropriate to quote from the report of the Select Committee of this House on Leisure and Sport; it has not been debated yet, and I am very sorry that it has not. They relate that in October, 1972, there was the launching of the campaign by the Sports Council, Sport for All, which we all welcomed. But the Committee advocate recreation for all, not treating recreation as an optional extra; opportunities for enjoyment of leisure are really part of the general fabric of social services. They say, and quite rightly, that local authorities are by far the largest suppliers of facilities and have a wide range of powers, including the Physical Training and Recreation Act, 1937. Local authorities have shown a growing interest in provision for recreation, though very little use has been made of powers to grant-aid sports clubs. But it must be said that local authorities have only recently thought that they have any

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responsibility, outside their duties for education; they ought to have a statutory duty, and this should be given, to secure what is needed in their area for all people other than those of school age.
Local authorities should be keeping pace with the demand, which is ever-present. The Sports Council has wisely been given funds for facilities to meet wider than local needs, but what is to happen to small local needs? It is the responsibility of the Government to encourage recreation in all its aspects, both large and small schemes, and there should be a proper balance between national policy and central sources and local needs and priorities. Over the years, we have seen a see-sawing, backwards and forwards, between specific grants and block grants. I quite appreciate that Her Majesty's Government wish to give local authorities more autonomy, and I quite appreciate what the noble Lord, Lord Redcliffe-Maud, said about this. But this does inevitably produce a lack of uniformity. Local authorities have different views and give different values to recreation and its needs. I apologise for taking up the time of the House in dealing with this one aspect, but I would ask the noble Baroness to give careful consideration to the likely results of this part of this Bill.
LORD HYLTON: My Lords, before my noble friend, Lord Luke, sits down, would he agree that there is great scope for much more joint use of school playing grounds and playing fields by the community at large?
LORD LUKE: Yes, my Lords, there is very great scope. I hope that we shall hear a lot more about it. I do understand that now the playing fields attached to new schools are for dual use. Of course a large number of schools have playing fields which are empty at school time, and it is a great pity that they have not got dual use.
6.40 p.m.
LORD MONSON: My Lords, first of all I should like to apologise to the first three speakers for having missed their remarks. I was informed that the debate was likely to start at a quarter past six and planned accordingly.
My Lords, I want to speak solely on Clauses 15 and 16. I do so with some
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trepidation, being neither an expert on local government nor a lawyer; but I believe these two clauses raise certain issues of principle. Dealing first with Clause 15, I accept the argument that rating authorities ought to have the power to levy full rates on empty properties, and that the previous limit of 50 per cent. was too low. After all, there is a certain redistributive bias built into the rating system, which is generally accepted by most people in this country as fair. Thus, not only parents of young people contribute towards the costs of education, but also childless couples, as well as shops, offices and factories. In a similar manner, everybody contributes towards the upkeep of parks and libraries, even those who never set foot in either.
Moving on to those services from which all ratepayers benefit, street cleaning and the maintenance of highways helps the owner of the unoccupied property as much as the owner of the occupied one in that his property is thereby made more easily saleable or lettable. Again, given the incidence of vandalism at the present time, it can be argued that the police have their work as much cut out protecting empty properties as occupied ones; and the same applies to the fire services. The only indisputable saving to a local authority when a building is empty is in the field of refuse collection. Because there is a genuine saving here, I am inclined to think that a 95 per cent. maximum would be fairer than a 100 per cent. maximum—but the difference is really too small to make an issue of.
What I find worrying about Clause 15, though, is subsection (4); specifically the very wide discretion given to rating authorities to levy differential rates on different classes of property, and as between different areas. Of course it is perfectly reasonable to discriminate in favour of households, in so far as their property is more likely to be empty because a prospective purchaser cannot obtain a mortgage, than because the owner is asking too high a price. It is the power to discriminate between, say, offices and shops, or even different types of shop, that is worrying. The power to discriminate between different areas within the rating authority's jurisdiction is even more so. The overwhelming majority of local government councillors in this country are dedicated, hard working, and totally honest people, but there

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are black sheep, as in every other profession and occupation. I wonder whether the very wide powers of discretion that subsection (4) permits may not open the door to a certain amount of favouritism on the one hand, or vindictiveness on the other? Apart from this, I have no quarrels with the principles behind this clause.
But, my Lords, turning to Clause 16, I believe we are sailing into very much deeper and more dangerous waters. To reiterate, I think that we all generally agree with the principle of Clause 15; namely, that it is fair to charge up to 100 per cent. rates on empty property, so that the properties in question can make an equitable contribution, along with all other ratepayers, towards the services provided by the local authority. Going a stage further, if the property were to remain empty for more than a few months (as in the case of a large office block) one could justifiably seek slightly more than 100 per cent. This is because the shops, boutiques, hairdressers, snack bars and so on which surrounded the empty block would almost certainly ask for a reduction in their rating assessment, on the grounds that the increase in trade that the new office block was expected to bring had not materialised. If these small traders' appeals were successful, it would be only right and proper for the owner of the office block to pay more, so as to make up the deficiency. But once we start talking about 200, 300 or 400 per cent., we have left the realm of "fair shares" and "equitable contributions" and entered the realm of punishment—whatever anyone may say about it not really being punishment at all, but only a little subtle arm-twisting. Now I may be old-fashioned, but I was under the impression that punishment in this country was something for the courts—and the courts alone—to impose. Apart from rebates and exemptions which are rightly given to the poorer section of the community, it is a misuse of the rating system to use it for punishment or, for that matter, reward.
If it is considered that leaving office blocks empty for more than a specified period of time is harmful to the community as a whole, then let it be made a criminal offence, punishable in the courts, upon conviction, by an appropriate fine. Alternatively, or perhaps additionally, we could legislate to empower planning
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authorities to impose, as a condition for the granting of planning permission, a requirement that the building, or buildings, in question should not only be completed but fully occupied by a certain date. If the developer did not fulfil his side of the bargain, then the planning consents would automatically become null and void. Of course, the results would be even more draconian in effect than the penalties provided in Clause 16—but at least this would have come about through a clear-cut breach of contract.
My worries about Clause 16 are the precedents it may set. Supposing at some future date—I simply pluck an example out of the air—alcoholism became a problem in certain parts of the country. Might not the Government of the day decide to empower local authorities in the areas concerned to levy double or treble rates on pubs and off-licences as a quick and convenient way of dealing with the problem as they saw it? Such an idea may seem fanciful to-day in 1974, but in ten years' time, who knows? I hope that the noble Baroness who is to wind up for the Government will be able to reassure us on some of the issues I have raised.
6.48 p.m.
LORD HYLTON: My Lords, may I say to the noble Lord, Lord Monson, how very much I admire his courage in putting forward a view on rating which may be unpopular, but which is perhaps also constitutionally correct. However, that is not a point with which I should like to deal to-day, because I want to suggest to your Lordships that this Bill gives the House an opportunity to examine the responsibilities both of local and central Government for the rehousing of homeless families. I should make it clear that in using the word "homeless", I am doing so not in the broad sense—for example, of people living in very overcrowded conditions or in slums—but in the narrow sense of people with no roof at all over their head, with nowhere to go, who may truly be said to be "houseless".
It may be helpful if I gave a little background on the current situation in this respect. Each year there is a rising number of persons applying to local authorities for temporary accommodation. Each year local authorities find themselves obliged to put more and more people

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into hotels and bed-and-breakfast accommodation because they have no, or an insufficient amount of, temporary housing of their own. May I give an example from an organisation with which I am connected, Shelter Housing Aid Centre. During 1973, homeless emergencies rose each quarter, and doubled between the first quarter, of the year and the fourth quarter; they rose from 100 to 216. In this connection, an emergency is defined as being a case of eviction with a known certain date which cannot be avoided. That is the background of the present situation, and it is serious.
I shall now try to indicate briefly the legal history of the question. For many years it has been governed by the National Assistance Act 1948, particularly Sections 21, 24, 34 and 35. These impose a duty on local authorities to provide temporary accommodation to persons in certain defined circumstances. Then along came the Local Government Act 1972, Schedule 23 of which took away the absolute duty and replaced it with a power. This caused some concern and apprehension which led to a question being asked in another place, to which the Secretary of State for Health and Social Services gave the following Written Answer. He said:
"I propose to give direction to local authorities to continue after 1st April 1974 their duty under Section 21(1)(b) of the National Assistance Act 1948 to provide temporary accommodation in certain circumstances for homeless people. In addition … the Secretaries of State for the Environment and Wales, and I intend to issue a circular setting out the Government's view that accommodating homeless people should increasingly be seen as a housing responsibility. The policy of the Government is to seek to improve the general provision for the homeless without altering the particular responsibilities placed on local authorities by the National Assistance Act."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, 20/12/73; cols. 373–4.]
That seemed to be a helpful and promising answer, but it did not by any manner or means satisfy many people. In consequence, an Amendment was put down at the Report stage of this Bill in another place, the debate on which was answered by my honourable friend Mr. Rossi. On January 23, 1974, he said in columns 1778–1781 that,
"… it is the Government's will and intention to do whatever they can to help the homeless".
That is a very good intention and I only hope that it will become really effective. He indicated that the direction to be
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issued would continue the duty of local authorities to provide accommodation for those in urgent need. That is also helpful and promising. He went on to say:
"The Government are giving themselves a more effective and sharper weapon to deal with homelessness."
He said that they would also be more flexible. Nevertheless, concern still remains, as expressed in the All-Party Amendment moved in the other place, which was defeated by only a fairly narrow margin late at night. That concern is shared not only by Parliamentarians, but by a very large number of voluntary bodies which have to deal with this problem. To mention just a few, they include Shelter, the Child Poverty Action Group, the Campaign for Homeless and Rootless People, the Catholic Housing Aid Society and several organisations dealing with one-parent families, not to speak of the National Council of Social Service and the Shelter Housing Aid Centre.
There are at least three reasons for this concern. The first is that the functions of housing and social service will be on two different levels of local government in most of Britain outside of London and the metropolitan counties. This, in itself, is liable to create problems. Secondly, there are two central Government Departments involved—the Department of Health and Social Security and the Department of the Environment. The third reason for concern is that the circular which is coming out, which I have seen in draft, will suggest that responsibility for the re-housing of homeless families should be transferred to housing authorities, whereas the direction, which is also shortly to be published, will presumably apply to social service authorities.
In this context, I should like to ask my noble friend the Minister whether she can say why the forthcoming direction is not to be a joint one between the Department of the Environment and the Department of Health and Social Security? Will the direction be subject to Parliamentary approval? If so, will it be by the affirmative or the negative procedure? Also, must the approval of Parliament be sought, as I hope it will be, before the direction is withdrawn or rescinded? Will the direction cover all known types of homelessness; for example, those which arise from family

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friction, harassment and cases where no court order has been obtained? Finally, will the direction and the circular be published before the Committee stage in this House? I hope very much that they will be. If these documents are not available, we shall to some extent be stumbling in the dark and it will not quite be the open Government which we have been promised.
This is a time of desperate housing shortage in London and many other places, when many local authorities have no temporary accommodation of their own, or an insufficient amount; when some splitting-up of families still continues by the taking into care of children of homeless parents; and when local government is being reorganised with, as I said, different powers allotted to the different tiers. In these circumstances, it is necessary to be very clear about who does what. We must at all costs try to avoid confusion. The history of circulars on this subject in the past is not exactly a very happy one, and it is no exaggeration to say that they are put into practice by those local authorities which would do so anyway, and disregarded by the rest. In the past, there have been too many examples of what might crudely be called "passing the buck", sometimes between one local authority and another, and sometimes between local authorities and voluntary bodies. I urge the Government to amend this Bill to make the duties of local authorities absolutely clear, especially the duties of housing authorities. If this is not possible, we may have to ask the House itself to do so.
6.58 p.m.
VISCOUNT SIMON: My Lords, I am sure that we have all listened with attention and sympathy to what the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, has said about the desperate situation of homeless people in this country, and I hope that at the next stage of the Bill it may be possible for him to bring forward some concrete proposal that can be worked into the Bill to ameliorate the position to some extent. I am intervening for only a few moments—and I hope to keep my speech as short as the last four speeches have been—because I thought that there should be some words from these Benches on a Bill which, while a great deal of it may seem
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dull, is a very important Bill indeed, as the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, said.
The noble Baroness, Lady Young, began her introduction by reminding us of the urgency of getting this Bill through, and the noble Viscount, Lord Amory—I thought rather kindly—emphasised that the reason for the urgency is the time scale. But we are entitled to say—and the noble Viscount may agree with me—that the Government made the time scale. If after the Local Government Act was passed they were not to have—and they decided not to have—a full-scale inquiry into local government finance, which clearly would have taken some time, then a Bill such as this could have been brought in straight away or after a very short period of consultation. In fact, it has come so late that both in another place and here we shall be hard put to it to give it the careful study that it undoubtedly deserves, for it is a very complicated subject. Had there been more time, we might have been able to consider in greater detail possible alternatives to the rating system as the principal source of local government finance. While it has been rightly said that rates are simple and easily understood, that is surely only because we have had them with us for a long time. But there is almost universal agreement that they are not a suitable main source of finance for local government.
There is in this matter, my Lords, one dilemma which must be faced, but which I think is not always faced, by those who advocate other sources of income for local government; that is that almost any tax or source of revenue that can be imagined, at any rate by me, will have the disadvantage that it will make rich areas richer and poor areas poorer. It seems to me that, whatever the sources of local finance are, there will have to be Exchequer grants to equalise the position of the poorer authorities with that of the richer authorities. In fact, under almost any tax or system one can think of it is the poor authorities that not only will have less revenue coming in but will also be liable to face greater demands upon their resources. For that reason I find it difficult to believe that we shall be able to get away from a situation which the noble Viscount, Lord Amory, quite rightly said militates against the freedom of local authorities, perhaps, to do what

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they want; for they must rely very largely on Exchequer grants. It was the noble Viscount, Lord Amory, again, I think, who regretted the extensive power still given to Ministers to intervene. But here, surely, the dilemma presents itself in another form. If it is money voted by Parliament which in fact enables the local authorities to carry on, is it not inevitable that the Minister should have some powers, which are contained in Clause 5 of this Bill, to intervene if he feels that these funds provided from the Treasury, from the central revenues, are not being properly employed?
My Lords, I do not propose to comment on Part I of the Bill in regard to the new rate support grants except to ask one question—and, as I have given the noble Baroness no notice, it may be that she will not be able to answer it this afternoon. The noble Lord, Lord Garnsworty, mentioned, I think, an average domestic element in rates of 10p, and that indeed was mentioned in another place by the Minister when introducing the Second Reading of the Bill. But looking at the White Paper which has since been published and which I have tried to understand, though I will not guarantee that I have understood it, it seemed to me that that figure had been replaced by the figure of 7p. I do not know whether the noble Baroness could say what the significance of this is. The noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, was welcoming the 10p. If it has been whittled away by 3p, it does not look quite so worthy of welcome.
Turning to Part II of the Bill, I feel that, as we have to live for the time being with rating, the extension of the rate rebate scheme is certainly to be welcomed. I do not know whether it goes far enough, but it would be very unwise of us to look this gift horse in the mouth. I agree with the noble Viscount, Lord Amory, that there is every logic in having a 100 per cent, grant to cover what is a mandatory rate rebate scheme, although the provision that local authorities can introduce their own rebate scheme up to an amount of (I think it is) 110 per cent. of the basic scheme might leave us with the thought that at least the extra 10 per cent., if any local authority chose to introduce a private scheme, should not be subject to grant. While on the subject of grants, I would also support the view expressed in an-
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other place that sere is logic in a 100 per cent. grant for the mandatory academic grants.
As to unoccupied property, I listened with interest to what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Monson. I do not know that I agree with him; but looking at Clause 16 I wondered why, in this provision for super-rating, it is confined to commercial property. It seems to me far more objectionable that residential property, in which people could live, should be left empty than large blocks of offices, which might with some difficulty be converted into living accommodation but which are not basically suitable for that purpose. One has the feeling that Clause 16 has been introduced with a particular case in mind, one which we have all heard a great deal about, and I have a feeling that legislation which is devised to meet particular cases is not always very satisfactory legislation. I just wonder whether, if these powers are to be given for penal rates on unoccupied property, they should not apply just as much to other types of property as to commercial property.
Turning to Part III, I welcome the appointment of the Commissioners, but I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Redcliffe-Maud, that as the Bill is drafted their field of activity looks very circumscribed. Perhaps the Schedule needs closer attention than I have yet given to it, but when we go into Committee we may wish to look at this to see whether the limits within which complaints can be presented to the Commissioners are not too tightly drawn. There is one point here that I think is worth mentioning. The duties of the Commissioners are similar, of course, to the duties of the Parliamentary Commissioner, but the circumstances are rather different, because in local government (and I think this particularly applies to small local authorities) the councillors are very much more closely concerned with administrative decisions than, for instance, are Members of Parliament—or even, I dare say, Ministers themselves—with administrative decisions taken in the name of central Government. It seems to me that there may well be cases where the councillor concerned—the councillor of the particular ward in which the complainant lives—may feel very embarrassed about having to forward a complaint over a decision to

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which he may well have been a direct party. Because, after all, the councillors do not decide only issues of policy in their committees: they decide very many issues of administration. I think this will have to be borne in mind when framing the rules for handling these complaints.
My Lords, in conclusion I agree with what has been said by several noble Lords, that we hope this is not the last word. I do not believe it can be the last word. It is no doubt undesirable to subject local government to frequent changes, but at the same time I cannot believe that reliance on rates as the principal source of finance of local government should be allowed to continue indefinitely. I would support the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, that a Royal Commission, or perhaps some other suitable body, should be set up to inquire into this. It is a complicated and difficult matter and it may well be four or five years before we have a Report which has been thoroughly considered. Perhaps by then local government in its new shape will be ready to accept another change. My Lords, we on these Benches shall certainly support the Second Reading of this Bill.
7.11 p.m.
LORD DIAMOND: My Lords, it is a great pleasure for me to follow the noble Viscount, and like him, I would say that we from this Party give our support to the Bill. We regret that we are not able to make the greatest possible contribution because of the time factor. There is little for me to add to what my noble friend said in speaking to this Bill, but I should like to deal with two principal points which have emerged in a number of speeches. One is the question of dealing with this Bill with such urgency, and the other is the general importance of local democracy. So many criticisms have been made that I hesitate to rub this point in. I know, of course, that we would not be moving to the Committee stage in a week's time unless this matter had been agreed through the usual channels. I was not here, but I daresay it is just possible, though highly unlikely, that when my Party was in Government there were occasions when we wanted co-operation from the other side in getting legislation through rather quickly.
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My Lords, there is a further point to which I want to refer which has not been mentioned by those who have drawn attention to the difficulties of adequate examination in the time scale that has been given to us. Nobody can doubt, having listened to the debate to-day, that a great contribution can be made by your Lordships to Bills of this kind. The wealth of experience that rests on these Benches is really remarkable, and I suggest very tentatively to your Lordships that it is neither of benefit to Parliament nor, more particularly, to your Lordships' House, that the impression should get abroad that Bills of this importance can be got through this House without adequate examination. We all know that there are times when pressure in Departments makes life very difficult indeed, but I am not one of those who take the view that one need bring one's officials into this matter at all. If officials are too pressed it is because they have been given too much to do or there is inadequate staff. These are faults of Government and of Ministers.
As the noble Viscount, Lord Simon, has said to-day, we are being pressed in this way because the Government have decided that this shall be done at this time, and indeed there would be utter chaos if this Bill were not enacted in time to enable the consequential effects to take place prior to April 1. Already, as my noble friend Lord Garnsworthy has said, great inconvenience is being suffered by local authority treasurers in having to estimate their figures in order to prepare their rate precepts and demands. They have no time to wait for accurate figures. Some of the formulae have been prepared only within the last few days, and there is therefore near chaos existing already in many local authorities. I think we are bound to stress this point and to ask the Government to be more considerate of the needs of Parliament and to take account of the wrong impression that can easily get about if it is felt that a Bill can be pushed through your Lordships' House very quickly without regard for the need for consideration, especially as we know that there are times when adequate consideration cannot be given in another place and they rely on us to give a second view.
I am sorry to appear a little schoolmasterish, but I think that is a point

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worth putting forward, especially as it is not the first time I have found myself at this Box compelled to make the same comment with regard to Bills about which it would be quite impossible for us to know what the Government have in mind with regard to Amendments before putting down our own, and similar problems of that kind. What is of importance in the view of all those who have spoken is this sense of local democracy to which the noble Viscount, Lord Amory, has referred. This is something we have to seek to encourage and revitalise. I think the noble Viscount, Lord Amory, referred to "more independent authority and responsibility", and I look at it also in terms of greater participation. I recollect full well, as all your Lordships who have been Members of another place will, that when one held what is called one's "surgery" in one's constituency, question after question concerned grievances in connection with local government rather than with central Government. These are the things which impinge on the daily lives of citizens, and it is right that they should feel that they can participate and understand, and that those who are elected by them can understand what they are doing, and feel free to use their discretion a good deal more than they are at the moment.
My Lords, there is one obvious way of increasing that sense of responsibility and independent authority, and that is by providing more sources of local finance, either instead of or in addition to the rates. So far as the rate is concerned, I agree with all those who say that this is a matter which should be continuously looked at and improvement sought. As a simple practical person who knows that money has to be got by convenient methods, in suitable ways, my own view is that however much this is looked at it will be with us for the lifetime of everybody here. Perhaps a more constructive approach to it is to say, "Let us improve the rating system as much as we can while it is with us because it is going to be a companion for a long time". Of course our anxiety is about its element of regression—though it is not completely regressive—and seeing whether that cannot be improved. I recognise that the Government have made an attempt to go some way towards that in the present Bill. We should therefore
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continue to examine it by whatever method is appropriate—whether by a Commission, as suggested by my noble friend and, I gather, supported by the noble Lord, Lord Redcliffe-Maud—or in some other way.
I think, too, of other sources of local finance, such as local income tax. This is the only part of the speech of the noble Viscount, Lord Amory, with which I did not entirely agree. I hope I do not embarrass him if I say that I accept the rest of it and rejoice in every word that he said. As to local income tax, he seemed, notwithstanding his vast experience as a great Chancellor of the Exchequer, to be holding out hopes that it would be possible to find some kind of local income tax which would do the trick. If that is his hope, the noble Viscount is more hopeful than I am.
VISCOUNT AMORY: My Lords, on that, I am just about as hopeful as is the noble Lord, Lord Diamond. I said it bristled with difficulties and I leave it like that. I said if one could be found it would add just the kind of flexibility that is wanted. I am not hopeful that this is feasible but I have, I think, just a slight degree of hope; just enough to make it worth while looking at it further in case some by-product might come out of it. I do not think that my hopes are very different in scale from those of the noble Lord, Lord Diamond.
LORD DIAMOND: My Lords, I am much relieved to hear that. Now I agree with every single word that the noble Viscount said, which is a very happy state of affairs. I think it helpful if one has a view of this kind which is not entirely unrelated to the facts and a careful examination of them. It is helpful that one should say this so that people's gaze should not be directed at what is not likely to be achieved quickly, but rather that their gaze should be directed from a more productive angle. That is why I say that I do not really think we shall see any satisfactory alternative or additional substantial local revenue—at all events in the near future—that will achieve the purpose we all want to achieve of giving a greater sense of local democracy; although I share with the noble Viscount the view that everything should be looked at intensively in the hope that there will be a spin-off.

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The reason why I cover this ground first is to come to the second point I wish to make. I do not think this is the only way of vitalising or revitalising local democracy. I am aware that the larger authority is likely to be the more efficient. Nevertheless, I am of the view that the time will come, probably at the same time when we are thinking again about the religion of pursuing growth at all costs, when we shall take the view that there is a good deal to be said for removing some of the restrictions put on the exercise of discretion by local authorities, and be willing, if necessary, to pay the additional cost which may arise from some possible fall in efficiency resulting from that individual action. It may be that there is a price to pay. In my view this is a small price to pay for a happier local community. I do not think, therefore, that we should too lightly concentrate the whole time on achieving efficiency at all costs, including the cost of a devitalised local community and a less happy one.
We have to bear in mind that the political situation is that there are always local authorities at cross purposes with the Government of the day. There are always Tories at cross purposes with a Labour Government and there are always Labour councils at cross purposes with a Tory Government. I am grateful to the noble Viscount, Lord Simon, for contributing to our debate, and so extremely well, if I may say so. But I daresay that the same situation would arise even were there a Liberal Government. I doubt whether the Liberals would claim to win every local authority in the country. So, my Lords, that is the background of the situation and something that we have to bear in mind, and not increase the friction which is there naturally in many cases.
That brings me more particularly to the Bill, because although the Bill does not, and one would not expect it, promote this in any particular way, it goes some way to making life more difficult. As the noble Viscount said, there are inadequate guarantees of consultation, and I think that consultation is a very appropriate alternative to local finance for making a local authority feel more independent and able to rely more on its own sense of responsibility. There are several examples of this. Reference was made to Clause 6, the transport clause. There is no adequate guarantee of consultation
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about that. I think the complaint about that clause is that discretion is left completely in the hands of the Secretary of State, without any question by the local authority or any right of consultation. I know that the noble Baroness will say that Governments always consult fully, but it makes a great deal of difference if the consultation process is guaranteed and included in the Bill. That is a matter we can come to on Committee stage.
Again the Bill leads the way for the regulations which will be the important parts so far as many local authorities are concerned, and I do not see in the Bill anything like adequate guarantees of consultation in arriving at the content of the regulations. There are several examples of this, and I relate it to the major point I was making, that we must do all we can, in the light of the expectation of some of us that alternative local revenue is difficult to find, to give support to a feeling of participation and community at the local level. My Lords, that is all I wanted to add to the excellent speech made by my noble friend, who has already made clear that notwithstanding the difficulties, we want to support the Bill, and to expedite it as much as we reasonably can.
7.27 p.m.
BARONESS YOUNG: My Lords, I should like to begin by thanking all those who have taken part in this debate. I never cease to be impressed by the expertise which Members of your Lordship' House bring to any subject, and particularly I welcome the expertise which has been revealed to-day as I think nearly everyone who has spoken has practical experience of local government and a deep interest in it. I can only add that although I have not had the years of experience, as some noble Lords have had, I did serve for 15 years in local government and I retain a great admiration for what it does and for those who serve in it. I was glad to hear the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, say that he wishes to expedite the passage of this Bill. If I did not speak at great length at the beginning of the debate it was because I think that when one is explaining, or attempting to explain, a complex Bill it is better to pick out and to underline essential points, and leave for the Committee stage the many other matters

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which though important are complex. I hope that on Committee we shall have adequate time to debate the points raised this afternoon at much greater length.
The first matter raised was the time-tabling of the Bill. I can understand that local government is concerned. I recognise, and know from those in local government who have discussed it with me, that this is a very difficult time; at the end of an old period of local government and the beginning of another period. To add any other uncertainty makes things more difficult. I can only say in mitigation that if in considering the timetable of this Bill it must be seen in relation to the Local Government Act 1972. That Act changed not only the boundaries of local authorities but also their functions, and there had to be time for the elections and the consideration of these functions before we could deal with the whole question of finance.
My Lords, I will take the general topics which were raised one by one and try to answer some of the questions. The first point arose over the question of the rate support grant. I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, who asked about metropolitan counties and conurbations, that we believe that they should he better off. If I might quote one example, Greater Manchester will get nearly 8 per cent. more under the new system than it did under the old one, this is derived from the needs element. Most of the complaints from other parts of the country have been that too much has been going to the conurbations, not too little.
The noble Viscount, Lord Simon, referred to the amount of money in the domestic element. He thought there was a contradiction between the 10p. referred to by the Minister during the Second Reading in debate in another place and the 7p. referred to in the White Paper. The noble Viscount was quite right in pointing out the difference: it occurs because we have now decided that 7p. is the right flat rate element in the domestic rate. However, it will be varied and in a great many cases it will be increased from the 7p.—that is the minimum—and it could go beyond 10p.
The noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, raised a question that probably worries all of us, namely, whether enough
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people will be able to take up the benefits of rate rebates. This of course is a concern which occurs over many kinds of social security payments. The Government are to undertake extensive advertisement and publicity—in the Press, on television and by leaflets. I can confirm that the Secretary of State is well aware of all the problems that can occur in this respect, and he will be willing to take up any suggestions that may be offered to him in order to see whether we can improve the take-up rate of these benefits.
A number of noble Lords referred to the question of alternative sources of finance. Anyone who has been concerned in local government, let alone anyone who has paid rates—and I think this would apply to all of us—would like to see some alternative form of rating system, or to maintain the rates and find some other form of finance to top up, as it were, and to give a buoyancy that rates do not offer. As I said earlier, no one has tried harder to find some such alternative than my right honourable friend Mr. Graham Page.
The noble Viscount, Lord Amory, and the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, both referred to the question of a local income tax. I was very glad to hear both noble Lords refer to the difficulties about such a tax, and the very practical difficulties the Government would face at this time in introducing some new form of taxation. The other tax which I know has been considered by the local authority associations was some form of local motor fuel duty; but while this may well have benefited local authorities it would have been at the expense of the national duty. Also there would have been considerable administrative difficulties and the burden would have fallen largely on industry. So, as I say, there are difficulties in almost every form of tax, and I think at the present moment we are left with the situation put by the noble Lord, Lord Diamond—if I may paraphrase what he said—
"We should hope to improve the rating system because it will be with us for a very long time."
Nevertheless, I should like to confirm that it is the view of my right honourable friend the Secretary of State that this Bill is not the last word on this subject. I think we should all continue to look

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at the matter and see if we cannot find something better.
I was very glad to hear the words of the noble Lord, Lord Redcliffe-Maud, who was of course a member of the House of Lords Select Committee on Sport and Leisure, and to have his support for new grants for the countryside. The noble Lord, Lord Luke, mentioned grants for the countryside and asked why the specific grants to the Lee Valley Regional Park had ended. I share with him a great admiration of this park, having visited it recently. The specific grants for this park were made in order to help get it launched, as it were. It is now launched. It will, however, be eligible, under Clause 9, to receive financial assistance from the Countryside Commission; therefore, although it will lose the grant in one way it will regain it in another way.
The noble Lord was also concerned about the withdrawal of specific grants for public open spaces; but here again it has been the policy of the Government to withdraw specific grants wherever possible in order to give freedom to local authorities to decide which projects they themselves may wish to promote. I was grateful for the welcome given by the noble Lord, Lord Garnsworthy, to the improvements in the system of rating for the disabled, in that for the first time the land on which their garages stand will be free from rating. This tidies up an anomaly arising from the revaluation of 1973. There are also some minor improvements to dwellings, which will now attract some relief.
The noble Lord, Lord Monson—I felt, very bravely—attacked Clauses 15 and 16. The noble Lord suggested that the empty office building problem could be overcome by making it a condition of planning permission that a building should be occupied when completed. I think there would be very grave difficulties involved in that. The owner might not be able to let it—and then what could the local authority do about it? The clause in fact has been inserted because the Government have decided that the misuse of resources involved in building such large properties and then keeping them empty has really become an affront to society: all sections of another place, and indeed of society
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generally, have complained about it. An alternative to what is proposed in the Bill would have been to make it an offence to keep the building empty and then fining the offender—which is perhaps the proposal that the noble Lord has in mind. This, too, would have involved difficulties and would rarely have fitted the actual circumstances. I think that the safeguards must be emphasised. It is only when the owner is deliberately withholding his property from being let that the clause will bite.
At this point perhaps I might comment on the suggestion of the noble Viscount, Lord Simon, that in fact the same kind of principle should apply when houses are kept empty. Houses are excluded from this particular clause because the reason most of them are empty is not that the owner is deliberately keeping a house empty—for from it—but because he has been unable to sell it. In nearly every instance I should have thought that the average owner who wishes to sell his house wishes to sell it as quickly as he can.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, I think the noble Baroness will agree that it may very well depend upon the reasonableness of the price the owner is asking. If he is asking an unreasonable price and just holds on until he gets it, there is a great danger of the situation arising which was referred to by the noble Viscount.
VISCOUNT SIMON: My Lords, may I ask the noble Baroness this question? Have there not been cases of blocks of flats where a position has arisen very similar to the one which has recently been so widely publicised? I was thinking of such a case rather than of houses.
BARONESS YOUNG: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Viscount for drawing this distinction, but I would still maintain that it is very much the basic right of an individual which is at stake in the sale of his house; and I still believe it is generally true that he must first sell his house before he can buy another one for himself.
The noble Lord, Lord Hylton, touched on what I think is one of the most serious social problems facing us today; that is, the problem of homelessness, particularly

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in large cities. This is a matter which rightly cuts across Party political lines. It was debated last week in another place during the Report stage on an Amendment made to this Bill.
Although we are debating this Bill on Second Reading, it will, I am sure, be the wish of your Lordships' House if I were to spend a little time replying to the points which have been raised, in particular the specific questions which the noble Lord addressed to me. The purpose of the Amendment moved in another place was, first, to restore a duty on social service authorities to provide temporary accommodation which has been converted into a power by the 1972 Act; secondly, to specify some categories of people for whom the duty should in particular be exercised; and lastly, to transfer that duty from county to district authorities. The present position is that under the National Assistance Act 1948, local authorities are under a duty to provide in certain circumstances temporary accommodation for persons in urgent need. From next April, that duty imposed upon local authorities will be replaced by a power, but that power will be subject to a direction by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Social Services which will be made in the next two or three weeks restoring the existing duty and keeping within the general intention to relieve the local authorities of the unnecessary administrative burdens represented by the present old-fashioned procedures.
I know that the sponsors of the Amendment in another place were concerned lest there should be reduced provision for the homeless by local authorities. We hope that this will not happen and we do not expect it to happen. The Government were very sympathetic to the wish of the sponsors of the Amendment to help in a constructive way those people who are suffering genuine homelessness, but we believe that our forthcoming circular on the matter provides a better alternative to that contained in that Amendment. The circular will in particular stress the responsibilities of local government as a whole, and it will bring out as a major change of practical responsibility between housing and other social service authorities, that housing authorities should increasingly undertake a prime responsibility
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for homeless people and for accommodation.
The noble Lord, Lord Hylton, put to me a number of specific questions. The first was whether the direction will be a joint one. The answer is that it will be made by the Secretary of State for Social Services because it is the responsibility of the social service authorities. The direction will not be subject to Parliamentary approval. The noble Lord asked whether it could be rescinded or withdrawn by Parliament. The answer is that it cannot, except by amending legislation introduced in Parliament. The Secretary of State could withdraw a direction or issue an amending direction. Lastly, he asked whether the direction would cover all known types of homelessness, in particular homelessness arising from family friction. The answer to this question is that the direction will restore the duty on local authorities, as it at present exists, to provide in certain circumstances temporary accommodation for persons in urgent need.
LORD HYLTON: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for her long and detailed explanation. I agree with her that the Amendment moved in another place was defective in form and would not necessarily have been suitable; but does she realise that I am asking the Government to bring in their own, watertight, copper-bottomed Amendment which will make things clear? My noble friend says that the circular and direction will come out in two or three weeks' time. That is certain to be too late for our Committee stage. Can she get the Government printer to work overtime or all night so that we can have these documents in time?
BARONESS YOUNG: My Lords, I cannot promise, or give any undertaking, that the Government will bring in an Amendment on the lines suggested. I will read my noble friend's speech with great care. As for the date of the circular, I cannot make any further comment except that it is expected to be printed within two or three weeks. But I have taken note of my noble friend's remarks on that subject.
I should like now to turn to the matter of the local ombudsman. The noble Viscount, Lord Amory, expressed some anxiety about the definition of maladministration lest it should open too many

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transactions of local authorities to investigation. I think that at the Committee stage noble Lords will want to look carefully at this point. We hope to have the advantage of the case law which the Parliamentary Commissioner has built up on this subject. The wording used is very similar to that used in the Parliamentary Commissioner Act 1967. The noble Viscount, Lord Simon, suggested that the terms might be too tightly drawn. Here again we shall have an opportunity to look at the proposed terms in much more detail when we come to the Committee stage. The noble Viscount said he was afraid that a councillor might be reluctant to put forward a complaint. In that event the complainant could go to another councillor; or, if he thought fit, he has the opportunity of approaching the local commissioner, who could, if he so wished, accept the case.
I should like to conclude by saying something very briefly about Part IV of the Bill, which deals with the abolition of a number of controls. The noble Viscount, Lord Amory, said that local government was still concerned that there were far too many central Government controls over its activities. We believe that in Schedule 6 (which I am sure all noble Lords interested in this matter will study) we remove a great many controls. On the question of transport supplementary grants, we recognise that the taxpayer's interest must be safeguarded. The aim of the new system is to enable the controls to be directed to general principles and not to individual projects. We believe that this Bill will substantially reduce central Government investigation of every single local project.
My Lords, I have tried to comment on the main points of this Bill. I should like to return to the point that I made at the beginning about the timetable and say that I hope the House will feel that there will be plenty of time to debate the many detailed points that have been raised to-day, and others which I know
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will come up, at Committee stage, and to say again how glad I am at the general welcome that has been given to the Bill this afternoon.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.