Mr William Spens: ...leasehold interest, as it now obtains here, and throughout the whole of the Dominions. It would be a much simpler matter to put into draft leases, as I managed to do times without number in my own conveyancing days, a right of first refusal if the landlord decided to sell. But to give the tenant a right of purchase at any other than the proper market value is almost an impossible...
Mr William Spens: ...to it, but, at any rate, we understand that that is the position, and we suggest that this Amendment is the simple way of making it clear to everybody—to the layman as well as to the abstruse conveyancers in Lincoln's Inn. I therefore ask the learned Attorney-General to accept the proviso to Clause 1 in the simple language in which we have drafted it.
Mr William Spens: ...if resulting trusts are excluded, and the Clause is made to apply only to settlements which expressly provide for the income coming back to the settlor, it may open up a loophole by which clever conveyancers could apply the doctrine of resulting trusts so as to get some accumulations of income back to the settlor. I would ask my right hon. Friend the Chancellor to accept now and for this...
Mr William Spens: ...the hereditaments, of which the original lessor or his successors in title remain in reversion. The Schedule, as drafted, proposes that the leases in each case should be prepared by the Commission. Conveyancing practice has always been that the lessor prepares the draft of his own lease. There is no objection to the preparation by the solicitors for the Commission of the leases of the...
Mr William Spens: ...Amendments. The object is to provide that the arbitrator should be chosen by the President of the Law Society rather than by the President of the Board of Trade. This deals with a very complicated conveyancing practice and, with all respect to the Board of Trade, I would suggest that in a matter of pure conveyancing the President of the Law Society would be more likely to be able to get a...
Mr William Spens: ...coal in the new Commission is in any way ineffective or that anything has been left out. But, of course, one has only to read and study the Schedules, even though one has had years of training as a conveyancer, as I had in my younger days, to realise what a frightfully complicated task there is ahead of the Government in order to get the coal properly vested in the new Commission in due...
Mr William Spens: You can attach to the ownership of coal and the right of working coal any right-of-way which is convenient in connection with the working of the coal. It is entirely a question of conveyancing and as regards the intermediate land if the owner of the coal acquires a right-of-way and attaches it so as to associate it with the coal which he owns and is working, then that will be a wayleave which...
Mr William Spens: Owing to bad conveyancing there may be exceptional cases.
Mr William Spens: ...not have spoken had it not been for the speech of the hon. and learned Gentleman opposite, who tried to cast the usual aspersions on the two branches of the legal profession in connection with conveyancing. I believe that, so far as my branch of the profession is concerned, I am the only Member who had anything to do with conveyancing in his younger days. It is a common charge made by...