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Clause 14—(Power To Require Doing Of Work To Make Good Neglect Of Proper Standards Of Management)

Volume 643: debated on Tuesday 27 June 1961

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I beg to move, in page 15, line 14, at the end to insert:

"or the magistrates' court may order"

I think it would be convenient to the House to take with this Amendment the Amendment in Clause 16, page 17, line 11, after "allow", insert:

"or the county court may order"

Yes, Mr. Speaker. The purpose of the Amendment is to allow a person who is appealing to a magistrates' court against a notice served upon him under this part of the Bill to ask the court to extend his time for appeal. As the subsection stands, the only authority who can extend the time for appeal is the local authority itself. A person served with a notice to do something under the Clause and thinking he has a right to appeal against that notice—and he is given that right under this subsection—must do so within twenty-one days.

The only relief from that is if the local authority extends that twenty-one days. The local authority is a party to the appeal, and as far as I know it is entirely unprecedented for the court itself to be refused the right to extend the time for appeal if good cause is shown by an appellant. The same principle is adopted in Clause 16, under which there is an appeal to the county court. Again, I propose that the court itself should be given power to extend that time if good cause is shown why the appellant is out of time in bringing his appeal.

In Committee, my right hon. Friend explained his reason for giving twenty-one days and no longer. He said that there must be a fixed time for appeal; but there may be cases in which the person served with the notice and the local authority wish to discuss and negotiate, and under those circumstances the local authority should extend the time. That is just the sort of case where the appellant should be permitted to go to court and say, "I have been in negotiation with the local authority over the work to be done on these premises to put them right; I regret that I did not know that a period of 21 days was fixed by the Act and that only the local authority can extent them." He may have had a verbal assurance from an official that it would be all right to go on negotiating because the local authority would extend the time. But he should be allowed to go to the court and, if he has a good excuse, the court, and not the other party to the action, should have the power to extend the time.

My hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page) has explained my right hon. Friend's reason for drafting the Bill as it is. There must be some fixed time within which an appeal can be submitted, otherwise there will be more scope for evasion by a landlord minded that way. But my right hon. Friend wants to make sure that, if the local authority and the individual landlord or owner are in the middle of negotiations, it should be possible to extend the period during which an appeal can be made.

My hon. Friend will, I am sure, accept the fact that the appellant must be ex- pected to know his rights. If he feels that the negotiations will come to nothing, or suspects that the local authority will not extend the period of appeal if the negotiations do come to nothing, then he can protect his position by putting in an appeal during the 21-day period. My hon. Friend suggests that this is an unprecedented situation, but my right hon. Friend is only following the precedents of many previous Acts, and I would quote, in particular, Section 36 of the Housing Act, 1957, under which a landlord is required to do the work to render a house fit for habitation and is given a period for lodging an appeal of twenty-one days. That section has no provision for the court to extend the period.

This is precedented and fair. The power to extend the period of appeal is only given so that the local authority may use it when negotiations are going on, and the appellant can always protect himself by putting in his appeal before the end of twenty-one days if any situation such as my hon. Friend describes is arising. I hope that my hon. Friend will not press the Amendment.

I cannot understand why the Parliamentary Secretary cannot see his way to accept 'the Amendment. There is nothing in it to which exception can be taken. It would mean in practice that the local authority would still have the same rights as the appellant. It could still determine whether to grant an extension of time in which an appeal could be made, but additionally there would be an independent arbiter.

If the local authority decides that it does not want to extend the time, then surely the appellant—and one can only work on the principle inherent in British law that a man is innocent until proved guilty—should have the right to ask an independent arbiter to decide whether, in the circumstances, he is entitled to the time for which he asks. Who could better fill such a rôle in these cases than the magistrates' court on the one hand and the county court on the other?

12.30 a.m.

It may well be that it is precedented, but it seems to me so simple and so indicative of the need to be absolutely fair at all times. The arguments advanced by the Joint Parliamentary Secretary do not seem to me to be valid. Is there any real reason why it should not be accepted? Could not the point be met? I do not see the grounds on which the Joint Parliamentary Secretary is rejecting the Amendment.

Amendment negatived.