Clause 60 - Boundaries
Land Registration Bill [Lords]
12:15 pm
Mr Michael Wills (Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department; North Swindon, Labour)
This is an important subject. As my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Derbyshire has already inferred, it often causes considerable concern. I hope that my remarks will reassure him as well as the hon. Member for Stone.
Powers in clause 60 allow rules to be made governing the determination of a fixed boundary. It might be helpful if I remind the Committee that the boundaries marked on registry plans are general ones, mapped to obvious landmarks. They are not precisely determined and an application to the registrar is necessary for a definitive answer to be given on where the boundaries lie between two properties.
The procedure is used comparatively infrequently and inevitably requires an application to the registrar and the work that that involves. Applications are often opposed and the general feeling may be that there is no need to invoke the procedure unless there is a specific problem to be dealt with. The report behind the Bill states that that may well change, since improved computer-based mapping techniques may enable a rather cheaper firm boundary to be constructed.
Effective provision by rule is already essential and will remain so, but that is not an argument for the amendment. The style of drafting adopted throughout the Bill and the general practice for conferring power to make rules are designed to make it possible for rules to cover certain items, but not to require them to be made for any specific purpose. It is the correct approach to give the Lord Chancellor maximum flexibility to adapt the rules as the registry embarks on major changes to electronic conveyancing. Rules covering that area and other elements of land registration will be approved by the Rule Committee and will, following a Government amendment, be subject to the negative resolution procedure. There will be much scrutiny of what they contain, and gaps can be pointed out during that process.
A technical, if rather cautious, point against the amendment is that stipulating what the rules must contain would raise the argument that the condition had not been met, and raise the question of validity if the pre-condition had not been met. That would be highly undesirable and unnecessary in the context of the clause, given the degree of scrutiny that the rules will receive. I reassure the hon. Member for Stone that the intention is to make rules that deal with all of the headings set out in the clause. However, we should not place an artificial limitation on the registry's ability to adapt its procedures in appropriate ways that we cannot yet envisage. In light of that reassurance, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will withdraw the amendment.
Mr. Barnes rose—