New clause 17 - Assessment of compensation: valuation date
Planning and Compulsory Purchase (Re-committed) Bill
6:15 pm
Sir Sydney Chapman (Chipping Barnet, Conservative)
I dare to enter the debate on the new clause for just one reason, on which the Minister can perhaps help me. The new clause is clearly technical, immensely specialist and incredibly important. There cannot be a much more important issue than the assessment of compensation value in certain spheres of government.
As I said earlier, the original Bill was a fast-track Bill, but it then went into the railways sidings for a few months. It has now come out with new carriages and important appendages that we must consider. Frankly, I am not competent to deal with the problem and could not begin to have the expertise to do so. I hope that I am not slandering any colleague on the Committee, but I doubt whether anybody else here could either. However, I would be at least partly reassured if I could be told that on this new clause and one or two to come, which I cannot mention, the Government have consulted relevant organisations or institutions, interested parties or parties that are likely to be affected.
I could support the new clause in good faith only if I could be assured that the Government have consulted. A worry is that it was suddenly produced for public inspection just a few weeks ago, if not a few days ago. It is in the interests of democracy that these specialist organisations write to Members on both sides of the Committee to say that they have an interest in this matter and that they would like us to advocate it, and that they have had an opportunity to consider the proposals, so that we could then be asked to pass legislation in which we may fairly and reasonably have confidence.