Schedule 4
Commons Bill [Lords]
3:45 pm
Jim Knight (Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Rural Affairs, Landscape and Biodiversity), Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; South Dorset, Labour)
As my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood has just said, the Bill extends the power to seek enforcement action against unlawful works to any person or organisation in future. Amendment No. 36 is about the past. The issue it raises boils down to whether any person or organisation should be able to ask the court to enforce against unlawful works that were undertaken before the Bill began its passage through the other place.
In practice, the question is not that simple. The Limitation Act 1980 rules out enforcement against works undertaken more than 12 years ago, and the effective window for action tends in fact to be much shorter than that, because the courts, which have a discretion rather than a duty to act, tend to look critically at any suggestion that they should enforce against works that are more than a few years old. So, there is likely to be a limited number of cases in which the amendment would make a practical difference to the enforcement position.
Our view is that where works were undertaken within that narrow time window without consent, it would not be right for us to open up the scope for anyone at all to seek enforcement action. In the end, those responsible for such works did what they did, and bore the cost of doing so, on the basis of the limited enforcement regime that then applied. There is a strong presumption against legislation having a retrospective effect. We think that the provision as it stands, without the amendment, strikes a fair balance. We do not think it would be just to allow any person—