Clause 6Defences
Homes Bill
3:45 pm
Mr David Curry (Skipton and Ripon, Conservative)
I support my hon. Friend. I shall begin by telling an absolutely true story, which relates to my cottage in a village called Fearby, near Masham, near Ripon, in North Yorkshire. My next-door neighbour is a charming lady who keeps rather a lot of cats. My daughter and her boyfriend stayed in my cottage over Christmas and the new year. My next-door neighbour said that she had heard a rumour that I was not going to stand again for Parliament. My daughter immediately refuted that and, being very loyal, said to the neighbour that she surely would not want to lose such an outstandingly good constituency Member of Parliament. My neighbour replied to my daughter that that was not what was on her mind: she simply did not think that anyone else who moved in would take such a tolerant view of her cats.
I tell that story to ask whether that would it would be a defence to say that I was not prepared to sell my property because I did not think that the purchaser would be sufficiently tolerant of the cats in the neighbourhood. Curiously, as I went home last night, just a mile from the House, in Kennington, a large dog fox was raiding the dustbins, supremely indifferent to the vote that had just taken place here. Could one say that any purchaser would have to be an animal lover? These are the Del Boy clauses—the ``any excuse'' clauses. Would one want to sell one's house to a Member of Parliament? The neighbours might be very upset at the prospect of the neighbourhood being brought down quite so low.
My hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne made a serious point about a person being black. Related legislation exists, but how can one demonstrate that the person being black was the reason for reluctance to sell? Could one not think that the purchaser had insufficient means, or was not genuinely interested in buying a property of a general description? Such a defence is easy to advance, but difficult to unravel or, indeed, to sustain under interrogation. I do not understand how the defences are going to stand up in practice.
May one take exception to people's accents or to their clothes? I do not mean to insult Members of Parliament and I am sorry to use them again as an example, but some of them do not look as though they have just stepped out of a bandbox—I except, of course, members of the Committee, who are sartorial models, but have in mind some old Labour Members, and perhaps even one or two Conservatives. If they turned up to view a property, one might suspect that they did not have the means to purchase it. Will the Minister tell us, not the intention behind the proposal, but how he thinks that the defence, whether justifiable or not, can sensibly be analysed in practice?