I feel almost overcome with the suggestion that I should be in some way deputising for one of the Law Officers in this complex matter. There is nothing new in putting on to county courts jurisdiction in relation to leases. We have is in a number of sections in the old Landlord and Tenant Act, and I suggest that there were far more complex jurisdictions under the old Rent Acts.

What is proposed is that the county court should have the power—and I want to make this clear, because my hon. Friend the Member for Bedfordshire, South (Mr. Cole), probably by a slip of the tongue, put it differently—to authorise a local authority to grant leases to tenants before handing over to the former proprietor or his successor in title. It is not a question of the local authority taking the lease, but of the local authority creating a lease that will operate in favour of a tenant against the person to whom the property is handed back.

If, on appeal, the court thinks that the control order should be revoked and is of opinion that it is an order that should never have been made, the court clearly would not regard it as right to use this particular power for that type of order, but one can readily imagine a number of cases in which the order when made by the local authority was clearly justified and right but, where, owing to the ameliorating action taken by the proprietor in the meantime, the court might well say, "This has had its effect. Provided that you, the owner, are prepared to be ser Bible with your tenants and agree to reasonable security of tenure, we think that there is no good reason to confirm this order."

From there, the court can go a step further and say, "We don't think that there is any reason to confirm the order now, but in view of the past history it would be reasonable to authorise the local authority to give leases of this sort." I cannot believe that that is outside the ordinary competence of the county court, and I was a little nonplussed by my hon. Friend when he said that this was a judicial interpretation—I hope that I do not misquote him—as between the local authority and the dispossessed owner, and that that was not the function of the court. What else is the function of the court other than judicial interpretation, I do not know, and I should have thought it an admirable body to determine such an issue. I therefore hope that the House will accept the Amendment.