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 Patrick Jenkin Mr Patrick Jenkin , Wanstead and Woodford 12:00, 14 April 1965

But I am perfectly certain that by the nature of the I.D.C. procedure almost inevitably one has fairly detailed conversations with the officials of the Board of Trade, and I support what the Minister of State has said about their helpfulness and the services they perform in assisting applicants to make the best of their case. But, by the time those conversations have finished, the applicant will have a pretty clear idea of the reasons why his application has been turned down.

I can understand that in the nature of it, the I.D.C. procedure is not appropriate for "full reasons". Apart from anything else, it is terribly important in the industrial field when there are several applicants—several firms possibly trying to compete for the same market opportunity—that through no leak in the administrative machine should the fact that others have applied get out to each of them. But I wonder if these considerations apply to offices? Inevitably there is competition between office developers, but in a very large number of these cases there would be no possible damage done if the fact that their applications had been put in became known.

In this connection one has only to think of the planning register, which is open to inspection. Different authorities have different rules, but in the authority which I had the honour to be connected with the planning register was open for inspection as soon as a planning application had been before the planning committee and even before it went to the full council.

This office development procedure is very much more akin to planning, although I agree that the factors on which a decision will be made are quite different. Nevertheless it is much more akin to planning than to the I.D.C. procedure, and I should have thought that the particular argument which the Minister of State addressed to the House to justify the reasons for not giving full reasons for the decision is not as valid as he represented it to be. I should be grateful if the Minister would reconsider this, with a view, if he cannot accept the Amendment, at least to the possibility of introducing an Amendment in another place. The desirability—indeed, the necessity—of reconciling those who will be affected by this legislation to its operation is an important factor.

I have the honour to represent a constituency in Greater London and am conscious of the problems of congestion, and so on. We who deal with constituents' problems are much more ready to accept the overriding national case for regional legislation of this sort. It is, perhaps, easy for us, if an application is turned down, to say that we know the reason for it broadly overall. We know that it is desired not to expand employment in congested areas, we know that the Government are trying to encourage the development of under-developed areas, but many of the people who might apply for office development certificates do not have the advantage of this overall view of the economy and many of them are, perhaps quite understandably, concentrating on their own immediate problem and the hopes and aspirations which they may have in this direction. It would be helpful, and it would go a long way to reconciling them to the operation of this whole procedure, if they could be assured of receiving from the Board of Trade, in the event of their applications being rejected, full reasons why they had been turned down.

For this reason, I am happy to support the Amendment, which has been so ably moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West, and I hope that the Minister of State will be prepared to give second thoughts to it.