Control of Office and Industrial Development Bill

Part of Ballot for Notices of Motions – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 14 April 1965.

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Photo of Mr Paul Channon Mr Paul Channon , Southend West 12:00, 14 April 1965

Mr. Speaker, I am glad that you have decided that these three Amendments may be discussed together

An Amendment similar to Amendment No. 12 was one of the most important Amendments which the Standing Committee had to discuss, and it is one of the most important issues before the House tonight. If the Government are not prepared to concede this Amendment, and some of the other important ones, I shall find it difficult to refrain from voting against the Third Reading of the Bill. The Minister will remember that a similar Amendment was debated at some length in Committee upstairs, with the unusual result that so unable were the Government to convince their supporters, that they had to rely on the casting vote of the Chairman to defeat it.

When considering the control of office and industrial development, I do not think that anyone can seriously argue that the Board of Trade should have the right to sit on applications for an unlimited time and give no reason for doing so. These three Amendments deal with slightly different points, but they are all related. There are two answers which I suspect the Government will advance if they decide not to accept them. The first, and more important one, is that of principle, and I shall come to that in a moment. The second one is that advanced in Committees about the backlog, and one reason why all the Amendments similar to these were not taken to Divisions was that it was recognised that there might be a backlog of applications when the Bill became law.

The Government originally claimed that there was likely to be a backlog of applications during the early stages after the passing of the Bill. They claimed that too many applications would come in for them to be able to promise to give an answer to applicants within two months of the receipt of applications. I imagine that an application cannot be deemed to have been put in until the Bill has become law. Therefore, although applications are probably coming in now—and perhaps the Minister of State will tell us whether that is so—the President of the Board of Trade will have two months from the date of the Bill receiving the Royal Assent in which to answer the applicants. It is not a question of two months from the date on which the application comes in.

11.30 p.m.

The Minister of State will recall the assurance which he gave on Second Reading when he said: … the Board of Trade cannot grant or reject permits until the Bill becomes law. It has no power to do so, but we are most anxious to minimise inconvenience to applicants and we therefore propose this."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 1st February, 1965; Vol. 705, c. 741.] He went on to outline the procedure which applicants must follow. I share his view about minimising inconvenience to applicants. The Amendments will deal partly with that.

Early in April, in answer to a Written Question from one of his hon. Friends, the President of the Board of Trade announced that an office had been set up and an address given to which applicants would send in their applications. The Board of Trade had already begun to consider them informally. Presumably a start has been made on sifting the applications. This will mean that when the Bill becomes law there will be a considerable saving of time.

When will the Bill become law? Presumably it cannot reach another place until after the Easter Recess. Time will be needed to consider it there and it may not become law until the end of May or early June. If that is so it will be the end of July or the first weeks of August before the Board of Trade will be caught by Amendments Nos. 12 and 13, though I hope that the Board will be prepared to answer very much earlier applications to which many developers have been waiting an answer for a considerable time. If it is not an insuperable burden, and I do not see why it should be, the Board of Trade should be able to give a decision within the suggested two months.

The onus is on the Board. If the Board argues that in the early stages a decision cannot be given within two months, it must tell us how many applications are awaiting an answer. The onus should always be on a Government Department to explain why it should not make arrangements for the convenience of people who are at its mercy. Applications should be dealt with in reasonable time.

If the Government shoot down the Amendment because they do not like the drafting, or even because they prefer to insert three or even four months in the Clause—and I would be reluctant to go much beyond that—I am sure that my hon. Friends would agree to a reasonable compromise. The Government could easily make the necessary Amendment in another place. I confess that Amendment No. 12 has not the written—though I am sure that it has the moral—support of my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page) and therefore has not been drafted sufficiently accurately. But I have no doubts at all about Amendments No. 13 and No. 14, for obvious reasons.

It is impossible for us to decide without information from the Board whether in the early stages after the passing of the Bill there will be such a backlog of applications that it will not be possible to deal with them within two months. This is why we decided not to alter materially an Amendment which we proposed at an earlier stage.

It is totally impossible for us, without adequate information, to decide how to deal with the problem of backlog—if there is to be such a problem. I hope that the Government will deal with it frankly. I hope that they will not deal with the arguments on the principle that there is likely to be a backlog in the early stages.

On general principles the Minister of State has said that he wished to have applications dealt with promptly. Every hon. Member would wish that. Surely he cannot deny that in principle it is not unreasonable to have some form of time limit within which an answer must be given.

Amendment No. 13 goes a little further. It provides that if the Board of Trade does not give its reasons within a certain time it will be deemed to have been decided that an office development permit should be granted. There are precedents for action along these lines, although slightly different—for a good reason—in town planning procedure. The Minister will recall that under that procedure if no reply is received from the local authority within two months the application is deemed to have been refused. A very different point arises in the present circumstances, because in the case of office development permits there is no effective appeal. In planning procedure there is an appeal to the Minister, and very different issues of principle arise.

The Minister argued in Committee that to pass this Amendment might be against the interests of the applicant. I am delighted that so many hon. Members have come into the Chamber to give me vocal and moral support. [HON. MEMBERS: "Carry on."] I shall indeed carry on. I am grateful to them for that advice. I venture to recapitulate to those hon. Members who have arrived late the purpose of my Amendments. It is that people who have genuine applications to put in for office development permits should not be unduly penalised by the failure of the Board of Trade to give an adequate answer within an adequate time.

I have suggested in Amendment No. 13 that if the Minister of State argues that in certain circumstances it is against the interests of the applicant that a decision should be given within a certain time—because the Board of Trade might then be tempted to refuse the application—if the applicant so agrees the time within which the Board of Trade should reply may be extended. If we are really to have a situation in which the Board of Trade wishes to have more time to consider an application, in a case which might give rise to considerable difficulty, the time can be extended. No applicant would refuse the Board of Trade extra time to consider the matter, because it would be in his interest to have the matter fully considered, otherwise the Board of Trade might refuse the application. That point has been met in the Amendment.

Amendment No. 14 provides that the Board of Trade shall give an applicant full reasons for its decision in granting or refusing a permit. I should have thought it was obvious in a case like this, where the Board of Trade is judge and jury in its own case and where there is no appeal from its decision, that if it wants to avoid a sense of unfairness being felt it should give its full reasons for refusing any application under the Bill.

There may be cases in which people wish to proceed under the terms of the Offices, Shops and Railway Premises Act but where the Government refuse permission for people to comply with the provisions of that Act. If the Minister of State or the President of the Board of Trade had to give reasons why there had been a refusal of permission, this would be a very effective sanction against the Board of Trade's applying this restriction unreasonably. I have no reason to think that the Board of Trade will act unreasonably. From experience with the industrial development certificates, I think that it will probably administer it fairly. But justice must be seen to be done as well as actually be done, and I hope that the House will accept the Amendment.

I have consulted the Franks Committee on Administrative Tribunals and Inquiries. Hon. Members will be aware of the main recommendations. It is unfortunate that no hon. Member present was a member of that Committee. We should have appreciated the assistance of the hon. and learned Member for Cardigan (Mr. Bowen), who was a member of it. In fact, we have not been graced by the presence of any member of the Liberal Party throughout our proceedings. Paragraph 98 of the Report, referring to administrative tribunals—I agree that there is a distinction between an administrative tribunal decision and the Minister's decision—says: We are convinced that if tribunal proceedings are to be fair to the citizen reasons should be given to the fullest practicable extent. A decision is apt to be better if the reasons for it have to be set out in writing because the reasons are then more likely to have been properly thought out. That applies just as much to a decision of the Minister as to a decision of an administrative tribunal. Paragraph 99 says: As soon as possible after the hearing the tribunal should send to the parties a written notice of decision". The Report goes on to make a number of other recommendations. I think that I can legitimately pray in aid the Franks Report for part of my argument.

The Minister of State will say that the Franks Report did not recommend that the Minister should within a specified time have to give an answer or the application should be deemed to have been decided in favour of the applicant. I confess that the Franks Committee did not recommend that. But Amendment No. 13 is an alternative to the other Amendments and my hon. Friends would be extremely pleased if we could have some assurance on Amendments No. 12 and No. 14 even if the President of the Board of Trade does not feel able to go as far as some of us would like in regard to Amendment No. 13. This is an important matter, and I am sorry that it has come on so late at night, but it is nevertheless a matter which the whole House should consider seriously. It affects the rights of individuals. They are up against a powerful Government Department. If there is any doubt about which way the balance lies, it should be given to the citizen and not to the convenience of a Government Department.

An unfortunate thing about this debate is that there are so few hon. Members opposite who were present during the Standing Committee debates. The hon. Member for Shoreditch and Finsbury (Mr. R. W. Brown) was there, but I do not see any others. I think that the hon. Member would agree with me—at any rate, it is a proposition which is not unreasonable—that the Ministers, when arguing against such Amendments in Committee, were more concerned with administrative convenience in the Board of Trade than with the matter of principle.