COMMONS AMENDMENT (Hansard, 26 July 1977)

§ The LORD CHANCELLOR
My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth agree with the Commons in their Amendment No. 3. The Amendment inserts a new clause, "Rectification of the register", after Clause 23. It is important that the entry of a person on the Land Register as the registered proprietor of a piece of land should, so far as possible, be conclusive as to his title. Nevertheless, it would be too rigid a rule to provide that the register was wholly incapable of amendment if an error or omission subsequently came to light. Such a rule was adopted in the earliest days of land registration, but it soon had to be abandoned. It has been accepted for many years now that rectification of the Land Register should be possible in certain circumstances to correct errors or omissions. The relevant provisions are contained in Section 82 of the Land Registration Act 1925 which sets out the grounds on which rectification may be ordered.
The power of the registrar or the court to order rectification is, however, limited where the registered proprietor is in possession of the land, since it is an accepted principle that the proprietor in possession should not be dispossessed unless there is good reason to do so. Section 82(3) of the Land Registration Act 1925 deals with the position of the proprietor in possession, but it has become clear from decisions of the courts that the subsection does not give the proprietor in possession the full benefit of the presumption against rectification which the Act was clearly intended to provide. This has been pointed out by learned commentators as a serious defect in Section 82, and the Law Commission put forward some provisional proposals for remedying the defect in a 1972 working paper.
The Law Commission's proposals were, in brief, that rectification should not be 872 ordered against the proprietor in possession unless either he was in some way to blame for the error or omission in question, or for some other reason—on a kind of balance of hardship test—the justice of the case required it. I am assured by the Law Commission that these proposals received widespread approval in consultation and will be confirmed when they submit their final report. The Law Commission have also confirmed that this is a self-contained point which can be implemented in advance of their comprehensive report on improvements to the land registration system. Accordingly, this would appear to be a useful amendment to the Land Registration Act which will be of practical benefit in the working of the system. My Lords, I beg to move.

Viscount COLVILLE of CULROSS
My Lords, I welcome also the insertion of this new clause, the only one, I believe, which has been put into the Bill in another place. This is not a subject upon which have an enormous amount of experience. I am, however, aware that there have been some very complicated sets of facts which the courts have had to pronounce on in the last decade regarding the subject of rectification of errors, and it has evidently emerged that there is something wrong with the way in which the original Act was drafted. I am sure that the noble and learned Lord is right to take this opportunity to correct the balance of the way in which the courts are allowed to proceed and to insert it in the Bill at the earliest opportunity. Therefore, I am very happy indeed to see this Amendment.

§ The LORD CHANCELLOR
My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Viscount for his assistance on this matter—as, indeed, on the other provisions of this useful Bill.