LORDS AMENDMENT (Hansard, 7 August 1980)

§ Lord BELLWIN

My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth not insist on their Amendment No. 7, to which the Commons have disagreed for the reason numbered 8.

This amendment would come into play when a landlord had failed in its duty under the Bill towards a tenant who wished to exercise the right to buy, to such an extent that the Secretary of State had decided to serve a notice under Clause 22 invoking his powers to intervene in the sale. The events we are concerned with are therefore in the realm of hypothesis, and I sincerely hope and trust that responsible and proper conduct on the part of landlords will ensure that they remain there. The amendment would require the Secretary of State's notice to include a statement of the reasons for his intervention.

My Lords, what, in fact, would the effect of this requirement be? It would not inform landlords of anything that they did not already know. The reasons for the intervention would lie in the policies which they themselves had been following. They would have received prior notice of the Secretary of State's 1633 intention, and before that the relevant details of the individual case would normally have been canvassed between the local authority and my right honourable friend's department in the course of his preliminary inquiries.

It was rightly suggested at Committee stage that a statement of reasons would not be so necessary if (as will for all practical purposes be the case) there had been consultation beforehand. In fact, the only likely purpose that a statement of reasons would serve for a landlord seeking to deny the right to buy would be to provide a further procedural peg on which it could hang a challenge to the Secretary of State's action, either in further discussion with my right honourable friend's department, who would be acting on his behalf, or in the courts.

My right honourable friend will be anything but eager to use his powers under this clause. There is no question of his doing so arbitrarily, or in any case where there are no strong grounds for believing that the landlord has failed in its duty towards a person validly seeking to exercise his statutory right to buy. If his powers should ever have to be used, we owe it to the tenants concerned to ensure that they have a prompt and effective remedy on which to rely. This amendment would add nothing to the effect of the Bill as it would work in practice, and it would prejudice the interests of the tenant, who would already have suffered delay and frustration enough, without the further difficulties of challenge to, or litigation over the exercise of the Secretary of State's intervention powers.

I ask your Lordships to accept that reserve powers of this kind—unwelcome though their presence in the Bill may be in some quarters—must be capable of prompt and effective use, if they are to serve the purpose for which they are designed. That purpose is simply to ensure that tenants cannot be denied the rights which Parliament has given them in this Bill. That principle has been upheld once again by the disagreement of the Commons with this amendment. In the circumstances, I wonder whether I could urge your Lordships to accept the judgment of the other place in this matter.

§ Baroness BIRK

My Lords, I do not intend to insist on this amendment, but I cannot let the opportunity go by without again registering my feeling about this whole clause and the fact that the Government have been so obstinate about quite a simple amendment. All it does is ask the Secretary of State to state his reasons. I shall not rehearse all that I have said before and the Minister has said in reply, but it still seems to me to be important if the local authorities want to challenge what the Secretary of State said in the courts, then, by having his reasons given in writing, they have something to go on. I feel that this is a case of extreme obstinacy. It really is not a matter of principle, but at this point there is obviously not going to be any way of pursuing it further.