Mr William Cash (Stone, Conservative)

I beg to move amendment No. 52, in page 22, line 7, leave out ''may'' and insert ''shall''.

Congratulations, Mr. Illsley, on that marathon run. I am amazed that you managed to remember the words as well as you did. It is a bit like reciting ''The Rime of the Ancient Mariner''. I hope that the Clerks and others and the Minister will take note of the point that I have tried to make: in the absence of any sense of dissension in a Committee of this kind, having to go through such a marathon to no useful purpose seems an unbelievable waste of time and breath. That is all part of my continuing interest in improving the procedures of the House and its Committees. Wearing my hat as shadow Attorney-General, I am entitled to make that point. I am sure that the Minister will agree, and that my point will be noted down and referred to the appropriate sources, such as the Leader of the House.

The amendment concerns rules for fixing boundaries. Those are well established, but little used. There should be no doubt that that facility will continue. The overwhelming majority of property boundaries shown on Land Registry plans are subject to the general boundaries rule—in other words, they are approximate. That flexibility is valuable. At least one state in the United States abandoned registration of title early in the 20th century because fixing precise boundaries was found to be impractical.

Remembering any of the great films with John Wayne and the others that we can all recall from the '50s and '60s—at least, those of us who were around at the time can—I would think that it was extremely difficult in the United States to establish where boundaries were. It seems that they kept on being pulled down and re-erected, and an awful lot of people got shot in the intervening period. We are rather more peaceable about such matters over here, although I suspect that there are some people not very far from here who have grave reservations about the system.

The procedure for fixing boundaries—that is, guaranteeing what is shown on Land Registry plans—is well established and sometimes very useful. It is therefore important that it remain. The Law Society proposes that there should be a duty to make rules for that purpose rather than it being discretionary. The Land Registry quinquennial report says that fixed boundaries may become more common, especially where adverse possession proceedings succeed in boundary cases.

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