| Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill
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Matthew Green: Their planning system is good. Mr. Clifton-Brown: I shall not be led down that path, Mr. Amess, or I shall certainly be ruled out of order. I am not sure that I agree with the hon. Gentleman in any case. As I was saying, the Irish Government agreed with their farmers to pay a fixed co-operation payment of 5,000 punts per acre on top of their standard compulsory purchase payment. I know that the punt is not worth the same as the pound, but that is still a substantial payment. As a matter of judgment, it would be interesting to know how the Minister thinks that the Bill's proposals compare to the Irish Government's arrangement. Mr. McNulty: They are in the euro. Mr. Clifton-Brown: The Minister corrects me. However, they were not in the euro in early 2001 when that arrangement was negotiated. I cannot remember the exact date when the euro came into operation. I presume that the arrangement that came into effect in 2001 had already been renegotiated. I cannot remember the exact timing. Amendment No. 424 would enable the Secretary of State to vary the total limit and the percentage of the loss payment. I think that clause 76 covers that. The amendments seek to probe the Government's thinking on how they arrived at the loss payments. The Minister did not answer my questions on financial considerations, or on anything to do with compensation in clause 73. Before we finish this part of the Bill, it would be useful for the Committee to have some idea of the public sector expenditure implications that the Bill will introduce, especially in Column Number: 460 respect of loss payments. That will be an important consideration when we decide whether we feel that they are adequate, and therefore that the clause should be allowed to stand part of the Bill.Matthew Green: I shall praise both the Government and Conservative Members, which will shock them. ''Typical Liberal,'' they will say. Well, there we are. I am pleased that the Government are incorporating the idea of loss payments into the Bill. The hon. Member for Cotswold mentioned certain circumstances, but he did not touch on the fact that when land or a building has been acquired, if the landowner wants to acquire similar land elsewhere to continue his business, he will face legal costs in respect of that transaction. Landowners are not currently covered for that, so I welcome the introduction of loss payments. I also welcome amendments tabled by Conservative Members. I accept that some of them are not worded ideally, but they are probing amendments. While I support the simplification of the compulsory purchase elements, I agree with the sentiment that the state needs to cover the likely losses that people may incur when their land is compulsory purchased. I look forward to hearing the Government's justification of the clause. Some figures to which it refers, especially the 2.5 per cent. on agricultural land, seem low. A proposal to increase that deserves scrutiny. To overcome the problem of people feeling so aggrieved about compulsory purchase, a reasonably generous sum would be welcome, and would assist the process, rather than a figure that is regarded as below the bare minimum. There would be less resistance to compulsory purchase, because pre-negotiations would be based on what the person was likely to receive through compulsory purchase and the loss payment. A more generous allowance would encourage an earlier settlement, without having to go through legal proceedings, which I am sure all members of the Committee would regard as a satisfactory conclusion. Mr. Wilshire: My hon. Friend the Member for Cotswold reminded me of the first 10 years that I spent in this place, when I was much involved in the affairs of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. All my friends in the Republic wish that they had never heard of the euro and want go back to the punt. However, I would be ruled out of order if I pursued such an interesting matter. There are one or two general issues concerning the principle of loss payments that need ventilating, but they are more appropriate to be debated when we discuss clause stand part. I shall not mention them now—unless you are minded not to have a stand part debate, Mr. Amess. For the moment, I shall stick to the amendments. Amendments Nos. 436 and 438 both relate to clause 75. I shall need guidance at some stage on whether we can have two stand part debates on clauses 74 and 75, or whether you want to wrap the debates together, Mr. Amess, because the amendments jump between the clauses. The amendments would delete the limit on the maximum amount that will be paid. Before the Minister points it out, I accept that we could have tabled an amendment to clause 74, which also contains Column Number: 461 the principle that the Bill should state that the maximum payment will be X. We are not debating what the amount should be, but questioning why there should be a maximum amount. I need to hear a justification for that before I can support either of the clauses, and through amendments Nos. 436 and 438, I invite the Minister to tell us why there should be a maximum payment. What is wrong with paying what the property is worth?I turn now to amendment No. 420, which relates to clause 74, and amendment No. 422, which relates to clause 75. I accept that if the Government want to be pedantic, they could say that we could have tabled yet another amendment to subsection (2)(a) of the proposed new section 33B of the Land Compensation Act 1973 under clause 75, which is another example of a percentage being mentioned. I could be uncharitable—I try not to be—and say that the percentages have been plucked out of the air, but I doubt that. If they had been, my guess is that they would have been the same. Why did the Minister settle on those percentages? One is 2.5 per cent. and the other is 7.5 per cent. I suspect that a great deal of thought has been given to them. It may sound pedantic to ask: why not 2 per cent., rather than 2.5 per cent.? Somebody, somewhere must have done some calculations and arrived at a conclusion. If we are to support the Government and settle for 2.5 per cent. and 7.5 per cent., we must hear the argument in favour of those figures. I might have been the author of the amendments, but I accept that tabling amendments simply to double the percentages is but a means of triggering the debate. I am not accusing the Government of plucking figures out of the air, but I will readily admit that in doubling them I was guilty of that, to test the Government's arguments. I hope that the Minister does not simply say that our figures are wrong, because I want to know why hers are right. On amendment No. 437, my hon. Friend the Member for Cotswold said that he thought that it was not necessary to add at the bottom of the list in new section 33B(2) the words
I do not know whether that would be a sub-subsection. I can never get the jargon right. I have a suspicion that sometimes the value of the land is one figure and the value of the building is a different figure, whereas their value together is quite different. At the moment, the payment would be whichever of the two sums was the higher. From my own experience of buying a home comprising both land and a building, I learned rapidly that the combined value of the land and the building is often in excess of the value of the land or the building, and that they are complementary to one another. If the Government do not want to pay according to the combined value, they should tell us why. My hon. Friend has made the point about generosity, and I shall return to that on clause stand Column Number: 462 part. If the Minister resists the amendment that would add
there has to be a very good reason for doing so, because that would be departing from the generosity principle that my hon. Friend adduced for us. Amendments Nos. 421 and 424 would prescribe different amounts. It is perhaps ironic that my hon. Friend and I are putting forward yet more powers for that jackboot dictator, the Secretary of State, but I am trying to be helpful to the Minister. She has missed some rare occurrences of my trying to help her Government, but I do so occasionally. The amendment would get the Government off the hook of the inflation that they are stoking up for the next year or two, which will make them more mean than they are at the moment. I hope that the Minister will accept help from whichever quarter it comes. Mr. Clifton-Brown: I am sorry to interrupt the flow of my hon. Friend's speech, but I must take him back to his point about land and buildings. It is a good argument and it will become increasingly important over time, particularly in the south of England, where people will pay a significant premium for houses that have a bit of land with them, because they will start to become a scarcer commodity. Mr. Wilshire: As the owner of a house with land, I sincerely hope so—but perhaps that is declaring an interest. The Government, who do not like people having a pleasant home in the countryside, are using their dictatorial powers to demand that concrete be spread all over people's back gardens in order to meet some artificial targets. I accept that that is the Government's policy, and making people suffer that awful future is one more reason for generously compensating them. My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Amendment No. 423 seeks to double the maximum amount payable. I will not go to the stake to defend the figure of £50,000; it is just a figure that has been tabled to trigger the debate. However, not even I can imagine that the Government are so stupid as to pluck the figure of £25,000 out of the air. Somebody somewhere must have had a very good reason for setting £25,000 as the maximum amount. The figure may reflect what the Government—who want to interfere in all our lives—think any individual in society ought to be allowed to have. That may be the philosophy behind it. There must have been a reason for setting a figure of £25,000, and I would be eternally grateful if the Minister would tell us what it was.
10.45 am
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| ©Parliamentary copyright 2003 | Prepared 28 January 2003 |
