Orders of the Day — Compensation (Acquisition and Planning) Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 21 February 1958.

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Photo of Mr Henry Brooke Mr Henry Brooke , Hampstead 12:00, 21 February 1958

This tries to deal with cases where land is scheduled in a development plan for a use for which there is no market value—say, where there are plans for a new road, an oven space, or a sewage works. [HON. MEMBERS: "Give way."] There is a real problem here, and the authors of the Bill sought to tackle it by providing that Where the development plan provides for the land being used for a purpose for which powers of compulsory acquisition exist or precludes permission for the development of the land altogether, any resulting decrease in the value of the land shall be disregarded. With great respect, I do not think that that would answer. I do not know, and I do not believe that anybody knows, what is meant by a provision of a development plan which precludes development altogether, apart from the case where the land is reserved for a public purpose, such as open space—which is the first alternative here. I do not think that a plan ever does preclude development altogether.

On the first alternative—the allocation of land for a purpose for which compulsory powers exist—I am not sure whether my hon. and gallant Friend realises that this would include almost any land, because powers of compulsory acquisition exist for a very wide range of purposes, and it would include, for instance, land allocated for housing. Yet I am quite sure that that is not really his intention.

What the authors of the Bill are after here is the problem where land is reserved for a public purpose for which there is no market value, for instance, a school or public open space. The trouble is that their proposal leaves a vacuum. Having wiped out the proposal that the land should be used for the public purpose, what have you left? What are you to assume? One has somehow to deal with the question, or else the answer is sheer guesswork and the owner, and the authority will never come to terms; the position would be left worse than before. What the private purchaser does is to find out before he buys any land what use will be allowed, and it may well be that that is the principle which needs to be applied here to settle somehow what would have been allowed. The one thing perfectly clear is that there must be a firm basis.

I have consulted the Valuation Office of the Board of Inland Revenue, which acts for local authorities when buying land, and I am advised by the Valuation Office emphatically that, on what is in the Bill, it would be impossible for its officers to produce results in which either they or anybody else would have confidence. When I say "confidence," I mean confidence that they were implementing the intentions of Parliament.

It is reasonable to suppose that the Lands Tribunal would feel the same. I gather that my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Gloucestershire, South appreciates that a market value basis which assumes compliance with the development plan might, in some cases, result in less compensation than is obtainable under the present system.

For example, let us take land that is allocated now for residential use which an authority wants to buy for housing purposes, but which had a great commercial or industrial value in 1947. Would it then be right that the owner should get less than he would have received under the present system? I think that that question needs more thought than it seems to have received in the drafting of the Bill, or, indeed, in the course of the debate.

Another obscurity in the Bill arises in connection with the compensation to be paid on slum clearance. If we read Clauses 1 and 2, we find that a "fair market value" is to be paid for all land—and that includes buildings—ascertained in accordance with the Bill. We deduce from that that a "fair market value" is to be paid for slum houses as for others. But when we turn to Clause 7, we find special provisions for improving the compensation payable for houses in clearance areas. We have to conclude, that, after all, the basic provision that nothing is payble for an unfit house as such is intended to remain as part of the law.

The one thing that Parliament must ensure is that the courts are not left in any doubt. Certainly, the Bill as drafted leaves this question open to many different interpretations.