LORDS AMENDMENT (Hansard, 6 July 1989)

The Earl of Caithness
My Lords, I beg to move that the House do not insist on their Amendment No. 7 to which the Commons have disagreed and do agree with the Commons in their three amendments proposed in lieu thereof.

§ The Earl of Radnor
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for describing both the original amendment which your Lordships accepted and also for going into some detail into the amendment which the Commons have put in lieu of it. I am happy to accept the replacement by the Commons. At the same time, I should like to thank my noble friend for seeing me between the last stage of this Bill in this House and now in order to discuss the sort of compromise which we have before us. Having said that, indeed it is a compromise in that still in my heart of hearts I believe that the original amendment was tidy, concise and covered all the matters which were worrying my noble friend.
However, as he has described it, the situation is a great deal better than it was in the original Bill for the various reasons my noble friend described. To begin with there is this restrospective penalty of £5,000 instead of £1,000. That must be considered an advantage, although in a way it is quite outside the original thrust of the amendment which I put forward together with other noble Lords.
Much more important to me is that "reasonable notice" has been defined as three months for a new pipe and 42 days for the relaying of a pipe. I believe that, together with the exceptions of emergency service pipes and Clauses 40 and 70, it must be considered at least an advance because it will mean that people will not be abused in quite the same way as has happened since 1974 when "reasonable notice" could be defined by the courts as whatever they felt was correct. Noble Lords will remember from the debate that this could be as little as one month and two days.
An important point is that, by regulation, money can be paid in advance. That is of considerable importance because the parties must come together for this to happen and all kinds of matters must be discussed. Once more those ugly situations where things happen too quickly and with too little consultation may be overcome. Perhaps my disappointment is that the matter is left to regulations and is not on the face of the Bill.
I think that I have covered the matter. Compromise is sometimes quite a good way of going about things. Although I said earlier that I prefer my own amendment, I am happy to accept this amendment as it stands. I am grateful to my noble friend.

The Earl of Caithness
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for what he has said. I appreciate that he would have liked his amendment to stay intact. Any noble Lord who had succeeded in the way that my noble friend has would not have felt any differently. I hope that the House will agree that we have been able to meet my noble friend a great part of the way, although perhaps not as far as he would have liked. We have made every effort to meet him on the points that he raised and we have 1303 also, as he so generously said, broadened the scope of the amendment. We increased the penalty.