I beg to move, That the Clause be read a Second time.

One of the difficulties of the procedure whereby we go into Committee and have a rather staccato leap through the Bill is that it is difficult for hon. Members who were not members of the Committee to understand what the Bill is about. In particular, it is extremely difficult for them to understand what this new Clause is about if they have not followed the make-up of Part II of the Bill.

Part II of the Bill deals with the problems raised by houses which are in multiple occupation; that is to say, houses which are let in lodgings, or which have members of more than one family living in them. The Bill provides broadly for two kinds of operations. The first one is the provision of certain standards of good management which are to apply to the houses to which this Bill refers. The second applies to doing work in the houses in order to make them fit for multiple occupation, and the Bill prescribes certain regulations that have to be observed and provides certain sanctions against people who do not observe them.

The main criticism that has been made about this part of the Bill is the difficulty of enforcing it efficiently, and that is a matter which will be discussed later and which has already had a good deal of discussion in the Committee. Among the suggestions which were made by my hon. Friend the Member for Pulliam (Mr. M. Stewart) in Committee was a proposal that the local authority should have the power to acquire the houses and take them into ownership, or, with the approval of the Minister, acquire them compulsorily. We had a discussion on the point that we ought to be sure that this was going to be workable, and that we were tackling the problem which everybody agrees exists in these very overcrowded houses.

One sometimes finds scores of people living in the house, and sometimes almost scores of people living in single rooms. In regard to how the local authority was to tackle the problem, we suggested that there ought to be a final instrument, where the local authority was satisfied that it was not going to get proper management or the work properly done by the private owners—either because they had not got the resources or the skill and experience to do it, or because they were vicious people who were inclined to exploit the situation—the authority, whose job it is to try to put these provisions into effect, ought to be able to cut the knot, take over the houses and do the job itself.

The right hon. Gentleman and the Parliamentary Secretary were not unsympathetic to that general approach to the problem, but they pointed out that in the Housing Act, 1957, there were already provisions for dealing with some of the difficulties. They said that those provisions would enable a local authority which wanted to make improvements or undertake repairs in a house to take over ownership of the house. There is thus no devastating principle involved in our argument, but the Parliamentary Secretary was very fair in telling us that that would not apply to securing proper standards of management or limiting the number of persons living in a house. He said that in those matters a local authority could work only by putting pressure on the landlord.

In some of his remarks the hon. Member made fairly clear what his approach to these problems was. He said:

"In answer to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Nottingham, Central (Lieut.-Colonel Cordeaux), the whole of Part II of the Bill is sanctioned by strong new penalties, including imprisonment for second and later offences and catching, by imprisonment, the officers of any offending company. My right bon. Friend feels that local authorities should use these powers and that there is no need to give them, for these specific purposes, compulsory acquisition powers."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee D, 13th June, 1961; c. 1034.]

That makes it fairly clear that the right hon. Gentleman takes the view that enforcement of these standards by threats of imprisonment is the right way to carry out this operation.

I am the last person to be accused of being unduly squeamish about exerting sanctions against bad landlords, and neither I nor any of my hon. Friends would quarrel with that. But we would quarrel with the practicability of carrying on in some cases a sort of protracted warfare in which every stratagem in the game would be known to and taken by the landlords and have to be countered by the local authority, with an enormous amount of time taken in transfers of property ownership from one landlord to another, setting up bogus directors, going into liquidation at the critical moment when some order for costs is about to be enforced, and so on. Those are all the operations to be taken by bad landlords evading their responsibilities.

There are also the cases with which one could be more sympathetic and where the landlord is not vicious but where he has bitten off more than he can chew and has taken over the management of one of these properties. Sometimes he will have inherited it. When he comes to realise all the complications of such an operation and what is involved in enforcement and inspection and so on, he appreciates that that is something with which he is not equipped to deal. He may not have the money to employ an agent to do it, and he may not have the necessary skill or knowledge to do it himself.

Whichever it is, to take first the case of the vicious landlord, an enormous amount of fun can be had by ingenious landlords and by ingenious local authority committees in having this battle and in working out moves to counter each other. It is tremendous fun. I am sure that many hon. Members have taken part in the game on the side of local authorities, but it comes to one with sudden blinding intuition that this is not so much fun for the wretched tenants.

It is all very well to look on this as a war between the landlord and local authority, but the person who suffers is the unhappy tenant who occupies the awful house and, while all this laborious business is going on, suffers from dirt, squalor, neglect and all the things with which the Bill is designed to deal.

With the well-meaning but incompetent landlord, however sorry one may be for him, from the tenant's point of view it can be equally harmful. It therefore seems a sensible approach to the problem to say that just as in the case of unfit property there is power of acquisition; just as in the case of extortionate rents referred to in the right hon. Gentleman's famous circular there is power of acquisition; just as in the case of enforcing repairs there is power of acquisition; surely it is neither good sense nor good logic to carve out of this power this one little island, namely, management, and say that it is something with which the local authority cannot interfere by means of taking over this property, but can interfere only by trying to secure good management by threats, by fines, by prosecutions, by imprisonments, and so on. It may cause a great deal of business in the legal profession; it may be fun for many people, but it is extremely unpleasant for the tenant.

It has this extraordinary anomaly, which I mentioned in Committee upstairs, that the local authority can acquire the property to repair the banisters, and, having done that, it can sit pretty. It does not have to surrender it again. Having repaired the banisters the local authority can keep the ownership, manage the property and carry out the rest of the provisions of the Bill. But, if it does not need to repair the banisters, if all it has to do is to delouse the banisters, or to deal with dirt and filth which has accumulated under the staircase or in the common water closet, or keep up reasonable standards of cleanliness and management, it cannot acquire the property.

I suppose that there is a way out of this. I suppose that it is possible for the public health inspector to look hard and long at the tenant and say, "The law will not allow the council to take over this property, but I am going away now and I will come back on Monday. If, unfortunately, on Monday one of the banister railings is missing, then 'Bob's your uncle', the Council can acquire the property and carry out the operation." This seems to be stupid. It is reducing this vitally important principle to a farce when it is necessary to go to those lengths to carry out the work.

I suggest that the sensible thing to do is to put power into the Bill to tidy up the situation; to provide that the local authority shall have power to acquire the house to secure in respect of it proper standards of management and the limiting of the number of persons in occupation. The right hon. Gentleman or the hon. Gentleman may well say that that goes very far because it deals not only with houses which are already in a bad state of management, but with houses which a local authority thinks may come into a bad state of repair. I admit that and say that I think it is necessary. I can see no reason why, if a local authority knows that the notorious Mr. X is about to acquire some property, it should not nip in first and acquire the property from under his nose in order to safeguard the tenants. I should be happy to see that happen. In an area which was known to be very overcrowded, with a great many neighbourhood tensions, there might be a house that was put up for auction. I do not see any reason why a local authority, in its wisdom, should not be able to acquire the property in that auction, at the market price, in order to be sure that it will be properly maintained and will not get into the hands of spivs, speculators and gangsters, who are such a menace in these cases.

10.30 p.m.

We suggest that the local authority should be able to acquire by agreement, and have the same power of compulsory acquisition as they have in other cases, with the approval of the Minister. There will be adequate protection; the compensation would be the same as applies in the case of compulsory purchase under Part V of the Act, which contains the main power dealing with acquiring houses for housing purposes. This is a critical test of the sincerity of the Government. If they want to prevent much hardship to tenants, both in respect of threats of physical violence and of eviction if they complain, it is essential that the local authority should have power to step in and cut out the private landlord and take over the property, in order to secure that what we all want to see done will be done.

I very much hope that, having already told us that he accepts the principle of the Clause as it extends to repairs, the Minister will agree that that power should be further extended to cover those cases where there is a need to acquire property in order to maintain proper standards of management and to prevent overcrowding.

Out of the anthology of sayings of the hon. Member for Widnes (Mr. MacColl) I can pick all the things I have to say in order to reply to his arguments. He has used all the ones that I shall rely on. He has agreed that, as was said in Committee, local authorities already have power to acquire, either by agreement or compulsion, any property which they want to improve or alter. I do not want to associate myself with the whole of the hon. Member's argument about banisters; they are very important things, and if they are defective they may make a house extremely dangerous. But it is not for me; it is for the courts to decide what entitles a local authority to use these powers—and they are very broad powers—for the purposes of altering, repairing or improving.

Local authorities have power to acquire a house by agreement or compulsion, for any of those purposes. They already have powers, under existing law, to acquire a house where they wish to provide housing accommodation. That would meet the hon. Member's example of the case of the house which is empty and is put up for auction.

I did not say the house was empty.

It would meet the case of the house which had any vacant space. What the law does not allow a local authority to do at the moment is to buy a house in order to prevent or put an end to overcrowding or bad management. The hon. Member has candidly admitted that the new Clause would give a local authority power not only to buy or compulsorily acquire a house that is being badly managed or overcrowded, but a house that might one day be overcrowded or badly managed—which is a very different thing.

The hon. Member went on to explain that, even if there is a house which is complete in all the works a house should have so that the local authority does not have any excuse to go in and alter, enlarge, repair or improve it, the local authority has, under this Bill, extremely strong powers to force that landlord or owner or lessee to behave—that is to say, to put an end to overcrowding or bad management.

The hon. Gentleman then spoke of the "evil landlord", or the lazy or unskilled landlord playing what he called a "long game" with that local authority to the grave detriment, I agree, of the tenants. But we have to assume, in this set of circumstances, that the vicious, or lazy, or absentee or unskilled landlord has been so virtuous and so skilful and so attentive to his duties that the house is complete in every sort of amenity that the local authority can expect. Only in that combination of circumstances would the local authority lack the power to buy or acquire compulsorily.

As I said in Standing Committee, I think that most hon. Members will agree that we are dealing here with the 999th case out of every thousand. In every other case of this sort, the local authority will already have sufficient powers. But for the case which is the exception, whether 1 per cent. of the cases or a higher percentage, the Committee should bear in mind the very strong sanctions and penalties which this Bill imposes for the first time.

It is unfair of the hon. Member to say, "Why not complete the picture and give the local authority these powers?" As I have explained, the new Clause would give powers that are far too wide for this purpose. It would entitle the local authority to buy perfectly well managed and not overcrowded property. It is not limited to the supposition that the authority would go in and take possession of a badly managed or overcrowded house. It goes very wide. It would weaken the powers and penalties in the Bill if it were held in such low regard that the Minister were asked to make them relatively unnecessary all at once, without even trying them out, and giving the local authorities power to acquire compulsorily or by agreement the very houses for which sanctions are designed.

My right hon. Friend is most anxious that these cases shall be properly dealt with by the local authorities. I remind the Committee that the local authorities have power in every case already where there is any deficiency of works. They have power to acquire property in order to provide housing accommodation, and for the very rare case where the house is already fully complete in its amenities but there is current or prospective bad management or overcrowding, they also have fully adequate powers under the Bill, and these should be properly tried. I hope that the Committee will not accept this new Clause.

I had the feeling that we should not reach the end of these proceedings without one of the Ministers saying that it was for the courts to decide. It is not for the courts to decide. It is for the Minister to decide whether he is to endorse a proposal for compulsory acquisition of a house. That is why we on this side of the Committee have grave doubts. We are not just having a dig at the present Minister, because any Minister could be advised that the proposal of the local authority did not fall within the powers it had at its disposal.

I have had some unhappy experiences of interpretation of the law. My first experience came when I had been Member for Paddington, North for only a few weeks and was seeking information about the problem of fag-ends of leases in this sort of house in Paddington. I wrote to the then Minister of Housing and Local Government—the present Prime Minister—and received a reply—it was autographed and I treasure it—assuring me that the provisions of the Housing Repairs and Rents Act, 1954, which was then passing through Parliament, would give local authorities ample powers to acquire and manage these houses. We know now that this was just not the case.

When I was referring to the misuse of houses for an entirely different purpose, the present Minister gave an answer to a Question that it was not in his power to grant a compulsory purchase order to a local authority on the grounds that the house was being misused—in that case being misused for the purpose of prostitution—and that it would be necessary for the authority to demonstrate that it needed the house to satisfy the housing needs of its own rehousing programme, and therefore the local authority must put up a comprehensive plan.

There have been arguments in Paddington about whether certain people should be rehoused from houses demolished for slum clearance, and the arguments were based on the suggestion that this operation did not form part of a comprehensive plan. We have good grounds to be worried about this. During the Committee stage discussions the Parliamentary Secretary gave all these assurances about existing powers. He quoted the 1957 consolidating Act. The appropriate Sections of that Act relate to the provision of houses, and the provision of accommodation. The object of those powers was to enable the local authorities to provide housing accommodation for those on their waiting lists.

This is an entirely different proposition. I think that the Parliamentary Secretary will know that I had an unfortunate experience in this regard through a housing association where, with the best intentions in the world, and with the best will of the people concerned, the officials of the local authority advised the appropriate committee that it had no power to make an advance to the housing association to acquire certain houses of this character because the result would not be the creation of fresh dwelling accommodation.

The powers given to a housing association are the echo, the exact repeat, of the powers given to the local authorities. So these powers in the 1957 Act which the Minister quotes have already been quoted against the acquisition. Because—surely the Minister must recognise this—he has said that this is the first Measure that we have had dealing with this matter, and that he wishes to go down in history as the Minister who introduced this major housing reform, he cannot say that it has been referred to in previous Acts, because it has not. The objective is not to create more housing accommodation. In fact, the result of most of PartII of this Bill would be, at the very best—the very best that we could hope for—to maintain the present housing accommodation. Therefore, for the removal of any doubt, the Minister ought to be prepared to insert in the Clause that all the powers of the 1957 Act for the acquisition of houses should be available to the local authorities.

The nub of the difference between us remains as always. What is the Minister trying to do by this Bill? Is he trying to get rid of future shysters and speculators and bad landlords because they bring disrepute on the political system which he upholds? Or is he saying to the local authorities that these houses, which have been misused almost from the day that they were built, now because of a change in the social needs of the city need to be rescued, improved and maintained for approximately the same type of tenant who has been occupying them for the last fifty years?

10.45 p.m.

That is the proposition, that these are the sort of dwellings available for lower-paid workers which will be used by them for another generation or so, however good the rebuilding programme is, because of the consistent demand for accommodation. This stock of houses ought not to be eroded either at one end by crooked landlords or at the other end by what amounts to a virtual change of user of another type of flat. If we are to charge local authorities with the stewardship of this type of housing, which must form part of the balance of housing accommodation in these overcrowded areas, we must give them full power and the ultimate sanction that they can go to the Minister to ask for compulsory purchase powers on the ground that the housing accommodation is being eroded in one way or another. If we look at the Bill in that constructive way we find that it is inadequate to say that there are other ways of doing this.

The replies have varied a little—indeed, in the last two sittings of the Standing Committee they varied a little between morning and afternoon. I do not think the Minister has any firm view on this. I think he is half convinced and may still feel that at a later stage he can provide that these powers can be used for this purpose.

The hon. Member for Fulham (Mr. M. Stewart) put forward a new Clause similar to this in Standing Committee and withdrew it after I had made what I hoped was a very spirited speech in its favour. I was therefore very surprised to find a Clause in almost exactly the same words put forward tonight. Nevertheless, here it is again, and I should like to say a few words in support of it.

The reason why I feel that there is a considerable amount of value in this new Clause is one of the reasons why my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary was against it. It is because it allows the acquisition, compulsorily if necessary, by a local authority of houses let in multiple occupation but not in fact at the time mismanaged, or indeed overcrowded, I believe that to be a very useful provision for a local authority. These type of houses are owned, at any rate in Nottingham, very largely by a comparatively small number of people. We know exactly what they are going to do with any new house they manage to acquire, that is to say, any house of a type that can be let off in multiple occupation. They are going to turn it into the same multi-occupation slum as those they have already treated in that way.

These people are simply not fit to be allowed to take over any more houses and exploit the tenants in the way they have already done and to ruin any more houses. A very good comparison to consider is the case of a person found guilty of ill-treating a dog. Probably the dog would be taken away from him and that person not be allowed Ito keep a dog again. The type of landlord aimed at in Part II of the Bill who has been convicted of an offence—that is to say, has had an order served on him—should not be allowed to take over another house. I very much wish that I had tabled a new Clause to the effect that anyone convicted under Clause 13 (1) or under Section 90 of the principal Act should not be allowed to let any further accommodation he had taken over after he had had such an order served on him. I think I was deterred from doing that because I felt that if I put down any more new Clauses during the Committee stage I would not be particularly popular. Nevertheless, if that cannot be done I believe the next best thing is that houses taken over by people of that sort, whose record is known, can be compulsorily acquired by the local autho- rity at the first possible moment, before the house gets into the state which we know it will if the landlord is given half a chance.

This racket has reached such a state in Nottingham that really good-class houses are being taken over for it—houses that we simply cannot afford to become slums. Failing the power to prevent these people actually buying any more houses and letting them, if we were to give local authorities the power of early compulsory purchase in the case of landlords who are known to be of that type—and the local authorities would not seek permission from the Minister to take such power except in the case of landlords of that sort—I believe that would go a long way towards preventing the further formation of these multi-occupation slums. I therefore think that this Clause would be really useful.

I feel that I must reply to the appeal made by the hon. and gallant Member for Nottingham, Central (Lieut.-Colonel Cordeaux). It is quite true that my hon. Friends and I put down in Committee a Clause very similar to this. But the hon. and gallant Gentleman's recollection is a little at fault. I did not withdraw it immediately after his very spirited speech in favour of it. I withdrew it almost immediately after what I presume must have been an exceptionally persuasive speech by the Parliamentary Secretary, and it was a speech that must have persuaded not only my hon. Friends but the hon. and gallant Gentleman himself, because he will remember that he raised no objection to the Clause being withdrawn.

Why were we all deceived on this side of the Committee, and the hon. and gallant Gentleman? The answer can be found if we look at the difference between the Clause debated in Committee and the Clause which is now proposed. The Clause which we discussed in Committee gave the local authority power to acquire the house either for the purposes set out in this new Clause or for the purpose of repairing defects. We were told with great weight and authority by the Parliamentary Secretary in Committee that local authorities already have the power to acquire a house in order to remedy defects. He assured us that they had that power under, first of all, Section 96 (b) of the relevant Act, and then we pointed out that that had not anything to do with it. He then shifted to Section 92 (d), and that was not entirely convincing either for the reasons pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Paddington, North (Mr. Parkin). We were then shunted back to Section 92 (b), and I am not at all happy about that.

We were repeatedly assured that that part of our Clause was totally unnecessary. We therefore, on reflection, decided that the Clause having been battered down for that reason, we would remove that apparent fault in it and get an exact decision on the matter: can or ought a local authority to be able to take over a house in which one cannot point to a specific physical defect but which the authority ought to be able to take over in order to preserve or secure proper standards of management or prevent it from being overcrowded? First, can local authorities do that today? I think it is now admitted that they cannot. The Parliamentary Secretary argued that one could hardly find a house that suffered or might suffer from bad management or overcrowding in which there would not also be physical defects. Has he considered the possibility that there may be no physical defects in it because the tenants have been patiently doing the repairs themselves for a considerable time? That could very well occur, and it might be highly desirable in the public interest that the house should be taken out of the hands of its neglectful landlord and brought into public ownership, so that then the tenants could have a fair deal. It is clear that local authorities have not the power which the new Clause would give them.

According to the Parliamentary Secretary's argument, it is only in one case in a thousand that the Clause would operate. In that case, for goodness' sake, what is the objection to it?

Because the Clause is drawn at the moment to cover houses which are well managed and not overcrowded.

But a local authority could acquire them only in order to secure proper standards of management or to prevent overcrowding. Surely, the Parliamentary Secretary will not argue that if, under the Clause, a local authority attempted to acquire a house in regard to which it could not be said that there was any reasonable prospect of its being overcrowded or ill managed, the courts would uphold that action for a moment or that the Minister would? If an authority tried to acquire a house like that by compulsory purchase, the Minister would turn it down, and, even if the Minister consented, an attempt to use its powers in a way so obviously outside the terms of the Statute could be challenged in the courts.

As the hon. Gentleman rightly said, this could apply only in a very limited number of cases where there are not actual physical defects in the house but where there is good reason to believe that the house is or is just about to be grossly mismanaged or overcrowded. I accept entirely what my hon. Friend the Member for Widnes (Mr. MacColl) said. If it is known that a house is coming into the hands of some person or group of persons chronically addicted to this racket of mismanaging property, the local authority ought to be able to step in and take it over.

The other leg of the Government's argument is that they have armed local authorities with many other powers to deal with these matters and, therefore, it is not necessary to arm them with this power. The Parliamentary Secretary apparently thought that, if a local authority were given this power of acquisition, it would in all cases rush to it without having thought of using any of the other powers the Bill gives. This is now the second or third time today that the Parliamentary Secretary or the Minister has produced an argument resting on the assumption that most local authorities do their work in a lazy or almost half-witted manner. They do not. We know very well that the Bill gives local authorities several powers for dealing with mismanaged houses. A reasonable assumption, from what one knows of local authorities, is that they will set to work to use those powers and that only where they are faced with someone who is particularly ingenious and who can employ the law's delays against them will they want in the end to say, "Very well. We must go back to our final sanction. We shall bring the house into public ownership".

During our discussions in Committee, the hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page) reproached us for not having put down a Clause of this kind, having failed to notice that we had in fact done so. I am sorry to say that the hon. Member did not support us when the debate on the Clause came.

The hon. Member is wrong. I made some very sympathetic noises during the debate on it. In fact, I called my hon. Friend's attention to the fact that I thought he was wrong in thinking that local authorities had this power.

I beg the hon. Gentleman's pardon. It was on another Clause that he disappointed us, if I may say so. We shall hope for both sympathetic noises and sympathetic action on this occasion.

What it comes to is that local authorities have not the specific power that the new Clause would give them. The suggestion that it would provide them with extravagant powers to acquire any bit of property they took a fancy to is ruled out both by the words of the Clause itself and by the fact that it could not operate without the consent of the Minister.

The suggestion that the Clause is unnecessary because there are other ways in which they could deal with the matter

I beg to move, in page 2, line 7, after "association", to insert:

"not being an association to which the next following subsection applies".

It may be convenient also to discuss the Amendments in page 2, line 13, at end insert:

(2) No subsidies shall be payable to a housing association the funds of which are wholly or mainly provided by an employer for the purpose of providing accommodation for his employees.

and in page 7, line 32 [Clause 7], after "association", insert:

"not being an association to which subsection (2) of section one of this Act applies".

The point of the Amendments is simple and short. Clause 1 deals with the Minister's power to make advances to housing associations. There are varying types of housing associations, and one is the industrial association, which is formed by a company or firm in order to provide houses for its employees, normally with some kind of tied houses. I am in no way quarrelling with the worthy purposes of housing associations and what from their point of view is valuable work, but we said in Committee that we did not think that this was a channel into which public money ought to flow. We said that it was a commercial operation which employers did for their own benefit. I am happy to say, at a quarter past eleven, that that was probably the first issue on which the Government and the Opposition were in entire agreement.

The Parliamentary Secretary said:

"My right hon. Friend has assured the Committee that Clause 7 schemes are not intended to benefit industrial housing associations. If industrial housing associations or anything based on them are in hon. Gentlemen's minds, I will repeat that Clause 7 schemes are not intended to benefit industrial housing associations."—[OFFICIAL, REPORT, Standing Committee D, 9th May. 1961; c. 581.]

Accepting that, we have proposed that the law should be what the Parliamentary Secretary and the Minister have said it ought to be.

The present loose drafting is unfair to people who turn up Acts of Parliament to find out what are the powers given for the expenditure of public money by an enabling Act, which is what this is, when, in the course of a debate in Committee the Minister lets loose the remark that it is not intended that the Minister should use his powers in this direction. That has no legal authority and puts subsequent Ministers in an awkward position.

11.15 p.m.

How does the Minister get out of an undertaking of that sort? He cannot amend the law, and there is no question of making a Statutory Order; it is, in fact, a purely administrative action, and a subsequent Minister who may think that he has these powers would be in a difficult position because of something which a predecessor might have said when the Bill was going through Parliament. Furthermore, it is unfair to the industrial organisations to find that there is power to get grants, and then, when they go to the Minister, to be told that he does not intend to use the powers. After all, we are supposed to be the guardians of public expenditure, and this is a very reasonable request. We do not want the Minister to have unnecessary powers, and we simply ask that the Bill shall conform with the undertaking which was given by the right hon. Gentleman and supported by his hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary All of these Amendments are directed to keeping out of the ambit of the grants, the industrial housing associations which have tied houses

I hope that the Minister will accede to the very moderate request which has been made, especially since we on this side of the House, and, I think, a number of hon. Members on the other side, have emphasised on numerous occasions the great importance of seeing to it that tied houses should not continue in consequence of the associations being set up and that they are not desirable things at all. When it comes to a matter of ascertaining if accommodation is available, it is a hard thing for a person who has a tied house to move to other accommodation. In view of that, it is important that if such houses are erected from which people can be ejected because they are no longer in a particular employment, public money should not be used to subsidise that kind of dwelling.

In view of the undertaking given, it should be specifically stated that this type of association should definitely not be entitled to the grant.

I do not want, in replying to this group of Amendments, to give a false importance to industrial housing associations and the possibility that they might get a subsidy. At the same time, I must explain in all honesty that there could be circumstances under which they might be entitled to it. [Interruption.] Oh, yes; I am trying to explain.

The hon. Gentleman said "subsidies". I think that we are dealing with loans.

As I understand it, we are dealing with the subsidy under Clause 2. If the hon. Member is under the impression that we are talking about loans, perhaps he will withdraw this.

I must admit that I became a little confused between the Committee and the House; we are not now in Committee. I think that we are now back in square one.

There is no question of an industrial housing association being entitled to a loan under Clause 7. My right hon. Friend has already spoken about that point during the Committee stage upstairs. Subsidies fall into two different categories and, as I have just said, as I understand it, it is that with which we are concerned here. They are those for housing associations under authorised arrangements, and the subsidy under special arrangements.

A subsidy under authorised arrangements is by hypothesis a subsidy for a housing scheme which is approved by the local authority as well as by my right hon. Friend. If it occurred that a local authority wanted to make an agreement with an industrial housing association and put up a scheme to my right hon. Friend which it had approved, it would then be open to my right hon. Friend to approve that scheme, in which case the local authority would draw the subsidy and would pass it on, as it always does under authorised arrangements, to the industrial housing association.

I will give the most likely example of that situation. If hon. Members look at Clause 3 (2, a), they will be reminded of the subsidy which is available for the urgent needs of industry—that is both public and private enterprise industry. It could well be that the subsidy that could be drawn under Clause 3 (2, a) might be evoked by a firm's industrial housing association, in which case authorised arrangements with the local authority might be the most suitable arrangement, and a subsidy under Clause 1 (1, d) could be accepted as suitable.

That is one example where an industrial housing association might be entitled —and I think the House would recognise that it might be entitled—to draw a subsidy.

To be scrupulously and pedantically honest, it is proper to remind the House that my right hon. Friend is taking power under this part of the Bill, in the extremely rare case of a local authority going right against public opinion and refusing to co-operate with a beneficial scheme of a housing association, to make a special arrangement. But, as was explained in Committee upstairs, this was a most unlikely and rare contingency. I cannot think of an example now, but there might be a situation in which my right hon. Friend might use the special arrangement procedure, and it might be that that particular housing project was to meet the urgent demands of industry, and it might be that the industry concerned—the National Coal Board with its housing association, or private industry with its private housing association—was operating through an industrial housing association. I think that I am being pedantic about this. It is a conceivably possible situation, but a very unlikely one.

There are therefore those reasons for not removing the discretion in the Bill. I do not want to exaggerate this, but it is a possibility that under certain circumstances such as I have explained an industrial housing association might conceivably be entitled to a subsidy. I hope that with that explanation these Amendments will not be pressed.

This is a matter of principle. Under the guise of a housing association an organisation may be constituted purely for carrying on the business of a commercial firm. A firm which builds or buys these houses to let does so primarily—and as far as it is concerned entirely—with the object of attracting a labour force and keeping it. It is a purely commercial transaction carried out by the firm, and as a matter of principle it is wrong that this should be done with public money. That is so whether the local authority agrees or not. There are all kinds of local authorities. Some may, for various reasons, desire to co-operate with commercial firms.

Even if it is for the benefit of an industry, the same considerations apply.

Here is something which is done primarily for profit. It may be done under the guise of a benevolent association, but it is essentially a commercial transaction, and it is wrong in principle that these people should be allowed to have a loan or a subsidy in any circumstances.

I beg to move, in page 2, line 11, at end to insert:

Provided that, on any occasion on which the Minister withholds his approval he shall state, in writing, to the local authority, development corporation, or housing association as the case may be, his reasons for so doing.

There was a punctiliously polite Greek who, at the funeral of his small daughter, felt obliged to apologise to the assembly for bringing it so ridiculously small a corpse for its attention. I feel rather the same about this Amendment. This is not only the most modest Amendment we have proposed, but almost one of the most modest one could conceive to a Bill.

The Government are aware of our motive. It is quite a reasonable one. In the White Paper that preceded this Bill it was made clear that, although there was to be some redistribution of subsidies, it was not expected that the total of the nation's expenditure on housing subsidies would be increased by the Bill. Yet, despite that limitation, we were told much about the help to be given to certain local authorities. The problem was, therefore, how were certain local authorities to be helped if the total expenditure had to remain the same? The answer could only be by a restriction on other authorities.

One of the instruments which the White Paper indicated that the Government would use to that end was a rather more stringent use of the Minister's power of disapproval of a housing project of a local authority than we have experienced hitherto. Of course, if the Minister disapproves a project, no subsidy is payable. This power has been in earlier Housing Acts, but in the White Paper, as I say, we were given to understand that it might be used more stringently in the future. We felt that if that were to be done—it is a rather serious depar-

The very affecting story from the Greek implied to my mind that the hon. Member for Fulham (Mr. M. Stewart) was not giving his Amendment a very long expectation of life. He moved it most persuasively, and at one time I even thought he was going out of his way to be polite to me, until he inserted those damning words, "whoever the Minister is", implying that his politeness was not directed to me exclusively but was part of the general exchange of the courtesies of Parliament as a whole.

This is an Amendment which comes nearer the mark than the one moved in Committee, but it still misses the target because, as I sought to explain in Committee, the normal stage at which approval would be withheld would not be at the stage of deciding whether subsidy would be payable or not, but at the stage of deciding whether loan sanction would be granted or not. At that stage, which is the critical stage, this Amendment would not bite at all. It would bite only in the rare case where the Minister had agreed to give loan sanction to the erection of a house but subsequently intimated to the local authority that he would not approve it for the purposes of subsidy.

There are certain types of case where that would happen. It would happen when a housing association was building with the help of a loan under Clause 7 for some purpose other than housing old people, but there would be no need there for the Minister to give his reasons in writing because the housing association would know from all that had been said about the scheme that it would not be able to obtain subsidy for that purpose. I suppose there are very rare cases where a local authority might have succeeded in obtaining a loan sanction to build houses for some people avowedly not in need of financial assistance and there would not be need for subsidy, but there again there would not be any reason why the Minister should be put under statutory obligation to put his reasons in writing.

On that account I must advise the House that it would not be an advantage to the Bill if these words were written into it.

I beg to move, in page 8, line 2, to leave out from "advances" to the second "shall" and to insert—

(a) shall carry interest at the rate fixed by the Treasury under section one of the Public Works Loans Act, 1897, in respect of loans to local authorities made on the same date and for the same period, and

(b).

This Amendment arises out of a discussion we had in Committee upstairs and goes somewhat further than the proposal I made in Committee. I hope that for that reason it will not receive any less support from the right hon. Gentleman. The object is that where the money is advanced to housing associations the rate of interest shall be that which applies to loans from the Public Works Loan Board and shall not be less. In some expectation that this Amendment will not be trampled on with the usual ruthlessness the Minister has shown, I put it before the House.

My right hon. Friend thinks this Amendment clarifies his intention and is, in fact, an improvement on the Bill as originally drafted. He hopes that the House will accept the Amendment.

I beg to move, in page 11, line 45, to leave out from "in" to "that" in line 4 on page 12 and to insert:

"an unsatisfactory state in consequence of failure to maintain proper standards of management and, accordingly, that it is necessary".

I think it would be convenient also to discuss the two following Amendments.

Yes, Mr. Speaker. With the two associated Amendments, this Amendment would make an improvement and, I think, a valuable change in the wording of Clause 12. We had a useful debate on this in Committee. In the light of that debate, I expressed my dissatisfaction with the wording of the Clause as it stood and promised that I would move an Amendment on Report to seek to improve it.

11.45 p.m.

In the Bill as originally drafted the main emphasis of this subsection (1) was on the question whether, because of some failure of management, the house in its existing state was unsuitable for the number of households or individuals in it. What follows from that is that to prove a need for a management order it would always be necessary far the local authority to establish some relationship between the squalid living conditions in the house and the number of families or households occupying it.

In these Amendments, if the House will accept them, we shall be adopting a rather different approach. These Amendments, as the House will observe, drop any mention of the suitability of the house for occupation by the number of households or individuals in it. A test of that kind, in fact, could not always be entirely relevant, and horribly squalid living conditions may well exist in a house in multiple occupation even though the house is not numerically overcrowded.

I hope that hon. Members, looking at the alterations which these three Amendments will make if they are adopted, will appreciate that the Government have sought to meet the criticism that was presented in Committee and are seeking now to provide that the test will be the simple one whether the house is in such a bad state because of a failure of management that the regulations made under Clause 13 should be applied to it. The condition of the house remains the determining factor but the number of families or individuals is now no longer relevant.

I think that the right hon. Gentleman is certainly improving the Bill by this proposal. It is only fair to say that the original criticism, although the voice was mine, came in fact from the Association of Public Health Inspectors who had felt some uncertainty about the existing wording of the Bill, and it was only right that tribute should be paid to them for their help in this matter.

I said in Committee that I was not wedded to the form of words which I suggested, nor did I claim authorship of the Amendment. I now thank the right hon. Gentleman for having made this proposal, which I am sure will clarify the position.

I beg to move, in page 13, line 1, to leave out "twenty-eight" and to insert "thirty-five".

Would it be convenient, Mr. Speaker, to take with this Amendment the Amendment in Clause 18, page 21, line 2, which is in identical terms?

If the House so pleases. I had not appreciated the significance. I thought they were the same principle but different points.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

These two Amendments deal with the case where an applicant seeks the revocation of a management order in the case of Clause 12, or a direction about the number of occupants in a house in the case of Clause 18. In both these Clauses the local authority is given 28 days to deal with the application for revocation, and if no decision has been made at the end of the 28 days by the local authority the applicant has the right of appeal to the magistrates' court in the first case and to the county court in the case of Clause 18.

My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Nottingham, Central (Lt.-Colonel Cordeaux) represented in Committee that 28 days was a bit short because some local authorities meet only once a month. Although my right hon. Friend is anxious that applicants should not have to wait unduly long for a decision on the important matter of a revocation order, he thinks that 28 days is a trifle short. The Amendment is proposed to increase the time which a local authority will have before coming to a decision from 28 days to 35 days. I hope that both Amendments will be accepted.

I beg to move, in page 13, line 21, to leave out

"and, in particular, that he ensures"

and to insert:

"Without prejudice to the generality of the foregoing provisions of this section, regulations under this section may, in particular, require the person managing the house to ensure"

I think it is convenient to discuss at the same time the Amendment in page 13, line 29.

Yes, Mr. Speaker.

In Committee we became involved in a little semantic confusion about the exact effect of the words "in particular" in line 21. Several hon. Members feared that these would limit the application of the regulations to be made under Clause 13. My right hon. Friend undertook to look into the matter.

As the House realises, my right hon. Friend now proposed to enlarge these words, as in the Amendment, to make it abundantly plain that the examples (a) to (e) and the additional example at the end of the subsection relating to the satisfactory disposal of refuse and litter are instances only and do not in any way limit or restrict the generality of the Clause. The Amendment should clarify the position entirely.

My right hon. Friend is advised that the words he proposes to insert are a great deal more effective to achieve their purpose than a proposal which I know the hon. Member for Fulham (Mr. M. Stewart) had in mind, but which does not now appear on the Notice Paper. I hope the House will accept this clarifying Amendment.

We agree that these are useful Amendments and are grateful to the Government for introducing them.

I beg to move, in page 14, line 19, to leave out "knowingly" and to insert "wilfully".

I think it is convenient also to discuss the hon. Member's Amendment in page 14, line 29.

I am much obliged, Mr. Speaker.

Subsection (4) creates the offence of contravening or failing to comply with the regulations which can be made under Clauses 12 and 13. In order to decide what the offence may be, one refers back to the beginning of Clause 13 and finds that the purpose of the regulations is to impose proper standards of management on the person who manages a house. That person may very well be anxious to do all the things which the regulations require of him, but, as subsection (4) now stands, he might be committing an offence even if the difficulties in carrying out the regulations were insurmountable. It would be no defence to him that he was unable to carry out the regulations however much he wished to do so.

Looking further on in Clause 13, we see that the person managing the house who is to be bound to carry out those duties under the regulations may be the owner or lessee of the house if he collects the rents. That may cover a wide range of persons in connection with the house who have to carry out the duties under the regulations. Again, they may be anxious to do so, but may be unable in certain circumstances to do so. Further in the Clause, in subsection (3), are the regulation making powers. That is the subsection under which the regulations can be made, and under paragraph (c) the regulations

"may impose duties on persons who have an estate or interest in, or who live in, a house".

We do not know till those regulations are made what sort of duties are to be imposed, or how easy or difficult it will be for persons on whom those duties are imposed to carry them out, but if those persons on whom duties are imposed knowingly contravene or fail to comply with the regulations, they will be committing an offence.

My first Amendment is to substitute the word "wilfully" for the word "knowingly" to indicate that a person commits an offence only if he deliberately fails to carry out the regulations but does not commit an offence if he is unable to carry out the regulations although knowing what the regulations are and knowing that the regulations are not being carried out. There will undoubtedly be cases in which the lessor is unable at once to get possession of the premises; there will be cases, even, in which the manager of a house may be unable to carry out at once the duties under the regulations, such as, for example, to quote Clause 13 (1, a), keeping in repair

"all means of water supply and drainage in the house".

He may be anxious to do so, but one can imagine all sorts of difficulties which may arise in his carrying out those duties; and yet, under subsection (4), if he knows that the regulations are being contravened, however impossible it is for him to put them right, he is committing an offence under the Clause.

Surely, we should not create an offence of that sort. The offence should be created only if the person wilfully is not complying with the regulations. My right hon. Friend in Committee, in justifying the word "knowingly" in the subsection, said:

"It will make it that much harder for a local authority to win a case if it has to prove that a man has wilfully contravened the regulations."

Surely, that is not the principle on which an offence should be created—that it will be harder to prove the offence if one word is used instead of the other. My right hon. Friend went on:

"I should have thought that where it was clear to everyone that contravention was unavoidable because something had happened to prevent a man from doing what he was required to do by the regulations, it would be a very foolish local authority which brought proceedings against him."—[OFFICIAAL REPORT, Standing Committee D, 6th June, 1961; c. 846.]

But surely, again, we ought not to create an offence in that way, that although, as is admitted in that quotation from my right hon. Friend's speech, contravention was unavoidable, we rely on the local authority not being foolish enough to take proceedings. Or, as appears later from what my right hon. Friend said a person under those circumstances might be convicted but

"…there would be very little chance of a court imposing a penalty on him."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee D, 6th June, 1961; c. 846.]

Again, surely, we ought not to allow a conviction of that sort. The word "wilfully" would solve all these problems and would catch the real offender without putting the person who is unable to carry out his duties in jeopardy and liable to be convicted.

12 m.

The hon. Member for Widnes (Mr. MacColl) used the phrase "the virtuous lessor" in Committee. He is the man who might be unable to get possession of the premises to carry out the work required under the regulations however much he might desire to do the right thing. That situation could arise, as is recognised a little later in the Bill by Clause 20 in which such a person is given the right to apply to the county court for power to enter. My second Amendment would provide that if the virtuous lessor is taking steps under that Clause, although he may be in breach of the regulations, it should be a defence to any charge under subsection (4) of this Clause that he is contravening the regulations. At least he is taking such steps as he is able to see that he does not continue in breach of them.

I should not have thought that there could be the slightest objection to protecting the genuine person who is trying to carry out the regulations but is unable to do so without applying to the court for assistance. If he is diligently pursuing that course and trying to get the court's directions to allow him to carry out the regulations, he should not be subject to threat of prosecution and be put in jeopardy under subsection (4).

I am afraid that there is a certain difference of opinion between my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page) and myself on this. It emerged in Committee, and I fear that it still persists, because the Government do not see the necessity for the Amendments. In Committee, I indicated my preference for retaining the word "knowingly". I need hardly go over the arguments again because my hon. Friend has admirably recounted them.

My hon. Friend wishes the word "wilfully" to be inserted instead of "knowingly", because he conceives a situation where the regulations might impose duties on a person who is not in a position to carry them out. These are regulations dealing with good management. They are not regulations dealing with the carrying out of major work on the premises, and I find it extraordinarily hard to see how the regulations would be likely to impose duties upon somebody who could not, if he wished, carry them out.

I still think that local authorities, which after all have a lot to do, are not likely to seek to add to their troubles and tasks by prosecuting a person who is virtually certain to win his case in the court because he will be able to show that he could not do what the local authority is prosecuting him for not doing. Even if a local authority took such action, I cannot conceive that the court would impose any penalty on him.

My hon. Friend has added the further proposal to write into the Bill a particular defence—if a person can show that he is

"diligently prosecuting an application under subsection (1) of section twenty of this Act".

Clause 20 refers to the execution of work, whereas the regulations deal with good management. I do not lay too great stress on that, but it would be odd to insert a provision about what might be a good defence when various other circumstances might arise which could equally afford the person concerned a good defence. I do not see how, if one did that, one could stop short of specifying other forms of defence which a person might successfully plead.

My hon. Friend did rather pooh-pooh my argument in Committee against inserting the word "wilfully", but on both sides we have always recognised that the powers under Part II of the Bill are directed not against the ordinary person who is doing his best to look after his property, but against the sort of man who is determined to exploit the property and who knows, or will find out, any and every loophole to enable him to continue to do so.

Successful prosecution of a man like that would be made more difficult if the local authority had to prove that in every instance his failure to comply with the regulations was wilful. It is far harder to prove wilfulness than to prove knowing failure to comply. I am concerned lest some people, whom we all want to see brought to book by this part of the Bill, are able to slip through the net on account of such a change.

I greatly respect my hon. Friend's desire to protect the innocent lessor, or everybody else who is innocent in this matter, but the Bill as it stands gives sufficient protection and we should be erring in a dangerous direction if we inserted the first of the Amendments. The second is unnecessary and inadvisable because it specifies one form of defence leaving in the air the question of why the Bill would not in those circumstances go on to specify other forms. It is on those grounds that I must ask my hon. Friend not to press his Amendments.

I beg to move, in page 14, line 31, to leave out from "shall" to second "of" in line 32 and to insert:

"require an affirmative resolution of both Houses."

This Amendment concerns the code of management for houses in multiple occupation, which code the Minister will have power under the Clause to bring into existence by making regulations. The Bill, as it stands, requires that these regulations shall be subject to what we know in this House as the negative procedure. The purpose of this Amendment is to make them subject to the alternative method of consideration, namely, the affirmative procedure.

We are now discussing a matter which we were not able to touch upon at all during the Committee stage. There was an Amendment put down, but the hon. Member concerned did not move it. Now I see that both he and we on this side have, on further consideration, thought it right to press the matter. We are not asking for the affirmative Resolution as against the negative merely in order to make it more difficult for the Minister to bring the code of management into existence. We think it desirable that it should be brought into existence; but, as the House will know, under the negative procedure the Statutory Instrument is made and can then be prayed against at any time in the following 40 Parliamentary days. If, however, it is so prayed against, we have only an hour and a half for debate, and that at a time when attendance is often somewhat limited and when it is not possible to go into any great detail on the matter.

We felt that that is inadequate for a document of this kind. After all, this will be something new in housing law. We do not criticise the Minister for his pride in that fact, but he does take a good deal of pride in how new this is, and the extent to which he is embarking upon a new venture. When this code of management, created by Ministerial regulations, comes before the House, we say that there should be an opportunity to discuss it at reasonable length. That result we should get if it was made subject to the affirmative procedure.

I ask the Minister to look sympathetically at our proposal. In another Session the Government will not, one supposes, have got its business into the muddle it has got into during this Session. It will, consequently, be able surely to find time for one affirmative, rather than negative, Resolution. I say that because this will not be one of those things which we have to discuss even every year. This is a modest request, and, if accepted, it will make it much easier for the House to take an intelligent interest in this new code of management when it comes before us.

At this hour of the morning I will refrain from seeking to straighten out the mind of the hon. Gentleman about the alleged but non-existent muddle in which Government business is supposed to be. I will confine myself to this Amendment, which I have carefully considered. If this was a case of such a character that hon. Members on both sides might not have had proper opportunity to debate it, then I would have been disposed to have accepted the Amendment. I cannot think that it is a case of that character.

I have already told the Standing Committee that these regulations will be shown in draft to the local authority associations. The purpose of that will be to make quite sure that the Minister will have been able to inform himself of the technical points which representatives of the local authorities may have wished to raise. Indeed, I went further than that, because I recognised from our proceedings in Committee that hon. Members on both sides were interested, and I made it clear that I did not want to consult the local authority associations in any way which might give them an advantage over hon. Members of this House, and gave the assurance that if our Parliamentary traditions allowed I should be glad to show the regulations in draft form.

12.15 a.m.

I understand that there is no Parliamentary bar to my doing that, and therefore I repeat that assurance. It means that there is no fear of the regulations when they are laid taking hon. Members as it were unawares. It might happen in certain circumstances that only towards the end of the forty days would hon. Members become alive to the fact that there were questions which they wished to put to the Government about regulations, but there will be nothing of that sort in this case. Everybody who has shown an interest in the matter will have a full opportunity to see the regulations at an early stage, and there should be no risk of their passing unnoticed until perhaps the thirty-ninth or fortieth day of the permitted period for a Prayer.

It is not for me to dogmatise about these things, Mr. Speaker, but I have always understood that if in your judgment a Prayer has not been adequately discussed by half-past eleven you can permit the discussion to be resumed on another evening.

In all those ways it seems to me that there should be adequate opportunities for hon. Members not only to inform themselves of what is in the regulations, but to raise with the Government any points they wish to raise. I give the assurance that I shall be anxious to take a great deal of trouble about the framing of these regulations. We had valuable debates on this in Committee upstairs, and I indicated that I wanted to learn the views of hon. Members on both sides.

I recognise the importance of these regulations, and in resisting the Amendment I am not attempting for one moment to cause their importance to dwindle. I am resisting it simply and solely because in my judgment this is a matter which can be amply discussed by hon. Members on a Prayer, that is, under the negative Resolution procedure, and it does not seem to me that this is a case where an affirmative Resolution of both Houses should necessarily be required.

I have listened carefully to the Minister. I also had the advantage of hearing him in the Committee upstairs. As I see it, the Minister is preoccupied about this vital set of regulations in relation to himself and to hon. Members. It is right and proper that both he and the House should have an opportunity to look at and review them.

The Minister said that he would consult local authorities before the regulations were placed before the House. So far so good.

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will allow me to make good an omission. I meant to say that I would consult not only the local authority associations but professional organisations and other bodies of that kind who would naturally be interested in the draft regulations.

That intervention is in order. I remember the discussions on this point. What the Minister said just now adds to the point I am making, that both he and the House are anxious that the proper machinery should be used for creating this social improvement. These regulations will be of prime importance to the folks who have to live in these houses of multiple occupation. If, by the procedure of the House, in which I am not an expert, those regulations go through without much publicity getting into the homes of the average person, we shall have partly failed in our object of educating not only those who have the ownership and control of these houses but the folks who live in them, and who are entitled to understand what means are available to them of ensuring that their homes are up to the proper standard.

I ask the Minister not to be so modest about this. He should reconsider the matter, and if he finds what appears to be an ulcer in our housing system he should deal with it by way of the affirmative procedure, thereby ensuring that more is known about the regulations. We want to get off on the right foot. I have asked him to use his influence as a Minister to apprise local authorities of the things that this Measure foreshadows. Here is another opportunity for him to cultivate public opinion in the councils of Westminster, in order that these provisions may be brought in not only willingly but knowingly on the part of the public as a whole.

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.

I beg to move, in page 18, line 18, at the end to insert:

(2) Notwithstanding the foregoing subsection, if before the expiration of the time mentioned in that subsection the person on whom the notice was served notifies the local authority in writing that he does not intend to do the work in question, the local authority may, if they think fit, themselves do the work forthwith.

This Amendment arises from a very helpful suggestion from the hon. Member for Paddington, North (Mr. Parkin), who said that it was a shame that a local authority might have to wait to use its default powers to carry out works under Clause 17 until the end of the period which it had allowed the owner or the occupant of the house to do so, if the owner or occupant never intended to carry out the work. My right hon. Friend undertook to look into that suggestion and this Amendment is the result.

The House will observe that this Amendment would advance the date at which the local authority might use its default powers in a case in which the person on whom the works notice was served notified the local authority in writing that he did not intend to do the work; and the local authority thought fit to do the work at once instead of waiting until the end of the period. It is important to note that the local authority is given the discretion. It is empowered to do this and it will have to decide whether it is a suitable case.

My right hon. Friend has in mind the absolutely clear case as being the most suitable, a case in which the freehold of the house is in the hand of the person on whom the notice is served and where there are no complications or other interests involved. In such a clear case there would be considerable advantage in the local authority being able to advance the date if the person on whom the notice had been served definitely indicated that he did not intend to do the work. With those qualifications, my right hon. Friend thinks that this would be a useful addition to the powers of the local authorities, and he hopes that the Amendment will be accepted.

It is a pity that my hon. Friend the Member for Paddington, North (Mr. Parkin), who has contributed so notably to the improvement of this Bill, is not able to be with us at this particular moment. We are very glad that the Government have seen fit to adopt the suggestions he has made. That shows how much better we get on when the Government accept advice from this side of the House in general and from my hon. Friend in particular. We are liable to get on better when the Government display confidence in public enterprise and the capacity of local authorities to get on with the job. It is that kind of Amendment we have been pressing, and we are very glad that on this occasion we have the Government with us.

I beg to move, in page 21, line 8, at the end to insert:

(9) The local authority may from time to time serve on the occupier of a house or part of a house in respect of which a direction under this section is in force a notice requiring him to furnish them within seven days with a statement in writing giving all or any of the following particulars, that is to say—

(a) the number of individuals who are, on a date specified in the notice, living in the house or part of the house, as the case may be;

(b) the number of families or households to which those individuals belong;

(c) the names of those individuals and of the heads of each of those families or households; and

(d) the rooms used by those individuals and families or households;

and if the occupier makes default in complying with the requirements or furnishes a statement which to his knowledge is false in any material particular, he shall be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding twenty pounds.

We had some discussion in Standing Committee on Clause 18 about the difficulties which might arise in enforcing a direction which places a limit on the number of individuals who could live in a house. I think it was the hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Reynolds) who put forward a suggestion that the local authority should be empowered to require that a list of the people living in a house should be provided. The Government have considered that suggestion, as we have considered everything else that was said in Committee, and it seems to us that this would be a useful addition to local authorities' powers. There are some drafting Amendments that will necessarily follow, and perhaps we can discuss at the same time the whole remaining group of Amendments to page 21, which are all consequential on the Amendment I am moving.

This Amendment would enable a local authority to require an occupier—if a direction under Clause 18 has been made in respect of that house, but not otherwise—to furnish a statement in writing giving particulars of the numbers of individuals and households and the rooms they occupy. I think it will be clear to the House that this information should help the local authority in checking whether a Clause 18 direction is being complied with. I think that in Committee there was a fairly widespread acceptance of the belief that otherwise difficulty might arise. Under the proposed Amendment an occupier who knowingly makes a false statement will be liable to a fine not exceeding £20.

While stressing that the obligation to furnish a list will apply only to the occupiers of houses on which a Clause 18 direction has already been made and does not apply to other houses in multiple occupation, I hope that the way in which the Government have thought this out and presented the Amendment will commend itself to hon. Members on both sides of the House.

There is one point which the House should consider. It is a point which runs through the whole of Clause 18. The onus is placed on the occupier to supply the local authority with information about the numbers of persons living in a house, or part of a house. There is a £20 fine involved for failure to supply that information. I am not clear how the right hon. Gentleman would expect this information to be supplied if he were to place the responsibility for supplying it on the occupier. In Part II of the Bill responsibility is placed upon the person managing or having control of the house. When we come to Clause 18 and to this Amendment the responsibility for furnishing the information as to numbers is placed upon the occupier. If by "occupier" is meant the person occupying part of the house and not the owner, I am doubtful if the occupier would be competent to supply the information.

I should have thought that the number of people occupying one of these houses would be a matter for the owner or the person in charge of the house, and that such a person should be made responsible not only for furnishing a return as to numbers but also for complying with any direction that the local authority might give under Clause 18 not to increase the numbers and not to replace any person who vacated the house.

The Minister may have an adequate reason for placing responsibility on the occupier, but I cannot see how he can expect the occupier to be responsible for supplying this information. I should have thought that the manager, who has been so frequently mentioned, would be the responsible person.

I warmly welcome this Amendment. It may well turn out to be the thin end of registration, and I certainly hope it will. The power given to the local authority here is very valuable and is a strengthening of its authority in the matter, and I certainly welcome it.

I should, however, like to comment on the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South-West (Mr. A. Evans). This has had a rather curious drafting history, because in the original Bill Clause 18 did not refer to the occupier at all. It provided for the local authority to issue a notice dealing with the maximum number of persons who may occupy the house. Therefore, apparently, "persons who may occupy the house" is not the same as the occupier of the house.

In Committee the Government, in order to introduce what was known as the run-down Amendment, removed subsection (1) from the Clause and replaced it with what is now subsection (1), introducing for the first time the "occupier". In order to get out of the obvious ambiguity—at least, I take it that this is the reason for it—of referring to the "occupier" in one line and "persons occupying" in the next line, it became

"…the highest number of individuals who shouldֵlive".

My impression is that the reason why "occupier" is used here instead of "owner" is that it refers to the person who in some sense is occupying parts of the house—a series of rooms or something of that sort—and knows the family trees of the persons who are living as his lodgers or his family. I suppose that is the reason why responsibility is placed on the "occupier" instead of the "person managing". But it still leaves me very confused about who the occupier is and how he is defined. As far as I know, in the Housing Act, 1957, "owner" is defined but "occupier" is not. Does it mean the rateable occupier? If it does, it will be a very narrow definition indeed, because in a great many of these houses the person who knows the family tree is not the rateable occupier. If, as my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South-West so wisely says, we are placing a penalty on somebody, we should know on whom we are placing it.

12.45 a.m.

In its present form, the Bill refers to the occupier of the house and places a responsibility on him for permitting numbers of people to live in the house and so on. In the Amendment, we bring in the expression

"occupier of a house or part of a house".

Why is there a distinction drawn between placing duties on the occupier of a house, on the one hand, and on the occupier of a house or part of a house, on the other? What is the difference? Are there no duties under subsection (2) on the occupier of part of the house?

Why are there now to be two penalty provisions in the Clause? We have a penalty in subsection (10). We are now introducing a new penalty attached only to subsection (9). It will be confusing to have the two. As far as I can see, they are more or less the same in regard to first offences, although the Amend- ment has no higher penalties for second offences. That seems to make life rather difficult.

It may be the late hour of the night, but I have the impression that the Government have gone out of their way to make this matter as confusing as they could. There are ambiguities and confusions in it. However, as I have said, I warmly welcome the Amendment, in spite of the comments I have made about it.

I am grateful for the welcome the House has given to the Amendment, although several searching questions have been asked. Whether I can answer them all I do not know. I shall try. If there are any doubts left, I shall see that the matters are carefully looked at when the Bill reaches another place.

It did not seem to the Government that knowingly to make a false statement in response to a request for this information was the type of case where the penalty ought to be stepped up for a second or subsequent offence. There is no particular likelihood of the person being a kind of cumulative offender here who thought he would gain something by committing the offence repeatedly. There is a very stiff penalty for a second offence in relation to this Part of the Bill, and it seemed to the Government that, despite the complication it would cause, there should simply be the one offence with a fine not exceeding £20 for an occupier who knowingly makes a false statement.

With respect, I think some of the questions about the use of the word "occupier" related rather to the Clause as a whole than to this Amendment. As it stands now, the Clause refers to the occupier, and it clearly would have been inapposite for the new subsection (9) which I seek to introduce to refer to anybody but the occupier. It is the occupier who has the duties under this Clause.

However, the main reason why the word "occupier" is used here and not "manager" is that the house which is in question under Clause 18 may not be a house which is subject to a management order. It would, therefore, be inappropriate to place responsibility on the manager. There will, however, always be an occupier; there will be no doubt or impossibility about fixing the responsibility upon somebody. The owner may be an absentee; his whereabouts may be unknown; but the occupier is bound to be there if the house is in occupation.

Then the hon. Member for Widnes (Mr. MacColl) asked me about this phrase

"occupier of a house or part of a house"

and inquired why that did not appear elsewhere in the Clause, in particular in subsection (2). If he looks at the wording of subsection (3) he will see it stated that

"References in the foregoing subsections to a house include references to part of a house"

and, of course, this is coming in subsection (9), so we must be quite sure we cover the part of a house in subsection (9). This is a house which may be in the occupation of a number of families or may be let in lodgings. There may be different occupiers of different parts of the house, as is recognised in subsection (3), and it is in order that sub- section (9) shall be fully integrated with the rest of the Clause as it will read that this perhaps somewhat complex wording is used in the Amendment.

Has it ever occurred to the right hon. Gentleman that it might be possible to put the present subsection (3) lower down in the Bill? I do not think that that would be a very difficult operation.

It had occurred to me, but it does not arise on this Amendment, and I have little doubt that if I were to suggest it to the draftsman he would find cogent if not compelling reasons why that should not be done.

I hope that my right hon. Friend will look at the wording of this Clause again before it gets through another place, particularly these words "occupier of part of a house". The occupier of part of a house may be served by the local authority with a notice or direction under this Clause to give all these particulars, and if he does not, then he is liable to a penalty of £20. The occupier of part of the house may be merely a lodger or he may happen to be the person whose name some- body at the local authority's offices happens to know and so he is served with a direction. Then he is dragged to the court. When he gets to the court he says, "I am only the lodger there. I am not the person responsible." The court must say, "That is no concern of ours. Parliament in its wisdom has laid down that the occupier of part of the house can be directed by the local authority to give these particulars. If he does not give them he is liable to a fine of £20."

It is no good my right hon. Friend saying that the local authority would not be so foolish as to do this. We must not create offences in this way so that a court must give stupid convictions of this sort. The court cannot do anything else when faced with circumstances like this, when responsibility is imposed on an occupier of the premises, if he defaults. Even though he may be a lodger there, or a person staying there only for one night and occupying a room for a night, the court has to convict him.

I wonder if the right hon. Gentleman would explain to me, in the light of his previous explanation, how this squares up with the wording of the Clause. Subsection (2) says:

"A direction under the foregoing subsection shall have effect so as to make it the duty of the occupier for the time being of the house not to permit any individual to take up residence in the house"

and so on. This question of the occupier as it relates both to the Clause and the Amendment places an enormous responsibility possibly upon a sub-tenant.

Has it not occurred to my hon. Friend that it would not be within the power of the occupier to prevent people coming into the house? Only the landlord or the manager has the power.

Certainly. That is precisely the point that I am making. The occupier would not have the power not to permit. The Minister might correct me, because there is no point in making a mistake at this stage if these things have already come out in discussion.

The hon. Member is now asking me questions not about the Amendment but about the rest of the Clause which has already been approved in Standing Committee. I will look at all these matters, because obviously it is desirable that the Clause shall be a unity and as clear as can be. The Government have sought to insert in the Clause a new subsection which by common consent will be of value, and those people much wiser than myself in the drafting of Bills have advised me that this subsection in the Amendment is rightly drafted to achieve the purpose.

My answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page), at any rate off the cuff and I may be wrong, is that in subsection (9, a) of the Amendment there is a reference, and that is the first information that the occupier can be asked to give, to the number of individuals living in the house or in part of the house, as the case may be. The occupier of the whole house may be asked to give a list of the people living in the whole house and the occupier of part of the house may be asked to give a list of the people living in that part of the house. I think that it is the answer but I will willingly look into it because we are extremely anxious to get the drafting right. I am encouraged by the fact that the general purpose of the Amendment seems to be acceptable.

I beg to move, in page 22, line 6, to leave out "dispense with the consent" and to insert:

"give the necessary consent in place of that other person"

Subsection (1) gives a person who is served with a notice to do something under this part of the Bill and finds he needs the consent of some other person to carry out that work the right to apply to the county court if that other person refuses consent. As the subsection stands, what the county court may do is to dispense with that consent, but it may be that the person desiring to carry out the work needs to enter and to go on to the premises. Dispensing with consent is insufficient in such cases. The county court could give consent itself and deem consent to have been given. Therefore, for the words "dispense with the consent" we want to substitute the words

"give the necessary consent in place of that other person".

That would solve that problem.

My right hon. Friend suggests that the words proposed by my hon. Friend improve the drafting of the Bill and remove any shadow of doubt. He hopes that the House will accept the Amendment.

I beg to move, in page 22, line 33, after "capacity", to insert:

"or any responsible shareholder of the body corporate"

It may also be convenient with this to take the Amendments in page 22, line 35, at end add:

In the case of a body corporate which is a company under the control of not more than five persons within the meaning of section two hundred and fifty of the Income Tax Act, 1952, each of those persons shall for the purposes of this section be deemed to be an officer of the body corporate.

In page 23, line 3, at end insert:

"or, as the case may be, was not a responsible shareholder"

and In page 23, line 15, at end insert:

(7) For the purpose of this section "responsible shareholder" means a person who by virtue of his beneficial ownership of shares of a body corporate, whether or not his name appears on the register of shareholders, exercises or is entitled to exercise directly or indirectly, control of the body corporate.

That would be very helpful.

Clause 20 (4) has some valuable proposals and says:

Where an offence punishable under the foregoing provisions of this Part of this Act which has been committed by a body corporate is proved to have been committed with the consent or connivance of, or to be attributable to any neglect on the part of, any director, manager, secretary or other similar officer of the body corporate, or any person purporting to act in any such capacity, he as well as the body corporate shall be deemed to be guilty of that offence…

In Committee, I moved an Amendment to add sharehokiens to that list because of the special problem created by a number of fly-by-night companies which take over property and often transfer it rapidly from one company to another, or suddenly go into liquidation and so on. It is very useful that the directors and managers of such a company should be held personally responsible and I do not quarrel with that, but one is faced with the problem of the shareholder who dominates the company, but who has the wisdom to slide out of responsibility as an officer of the company and put in a woman or man of straw to take responsibility.

In Committee I made the point that my wording would probably not meet the problem of the case where shares were in the names of nominees and, with his usual skill, the Parliamentary Secretary agreed with me and used that argument for riding off the whole issue. However, he said that he would have another look at it and I am sorry that he has not done anything about it.

We had another look at it and we have put forward two alternative ways in which this matter might be tackled. We offer them to the Government in the most helpful spirit. Apparently, they have not our skill in these matters and have not been able to do their own homework, so we shall be delighted to lend them ours. I am afraid that my explanation of our two methods involves a pleasant meander through the Income Tax Act, 1952, which, at one o'clock in the morning, will not be universally popular with hon. Members.

The first proposal which we put forward is simply to define a responsible shareholder in the body corporate. We take that as a term of art and give the definition as being a person who was

…the beneficial ownership of shares of a body corporate, whether or not his name appears on the register of shareholders, exercises or is entitled to exercise directly or indirectly, control of the body corporate."

That limits the responsibility to a shareholder who is in control of the company. It does not mean even a substantial shareholder who is not in control.

The other method is to go to the Income Tax Act, 1952, where it deals with what might be called the small family company, formed in order to avoid Surtax. At some stage in the proceedings I must point out that there is a small misprint in our Amendment as it appears on the paper in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Fulham (Mr. M. Stewart). Three letters have been missed out, so that there is reference to Section 250 instead of Section 256 of that Act.

That Section is most interesting in the context about which we are speaking, because it deals with the problem of a company under the control of not more than five persons, and that is likely to be the sort of company we are talking about. We are not talking of the reputable public company which has a large number of shareholders. We are concerned with a company which may well be bogus in design, and so the limit of five persons in control comes near the mark. This decides the whole problem of who is in control. This Section of the 1952 Act states,

"…five or fewer persons together exercise, or are able to exercise, or are entitled to acquire, control, whether direct or indirect, over the company's affairs, and in particular…the greater part of the share capital or voting power of the company…"

Fascinating stuff, Mr. Speaker, and it is about a matter which is very relevant to what we are now considering. It goes on to define a relative as a

"husband, wife, ancestor, lineal descendant, brother or sister…"

and states that

"a person shall be deemed to be a nominee of another person if, whether directly or indirectly, he possesses on behalf of that other person, or may be required to exercise on the direction of or on behalf of that other person, any right or power which, by virtue of any of the provisions of this section, is material in determining whether a company is or is not to be deemed to be under the control of not more than five persons."

This, again, is fascinating, and it might well be very relevant to what we are discussing.

The alternative proposal is, instead of simply defining the controlling shareholder where there is a company under the, control of five persons, or fewer, within the meaning of the Income Tax Act, each of these people should be deemed to be an officer. If by neglect an offence is committed, any of them shall be held responsible. If they are not responsible, then they would not be liable, any more than an officer of the company would be.

We have put forward two alternative proposals which we say would be extremely valuable. I know that the Parliamentary Secretary has said that if one was brutal enough to the "front men" one might get a kind of seller's market in the "front men" and shareholders in the background would not be able to do anything about it. That is a brutal way of going about this. We have dealt with this in an earlier Amendment about acquisition and the brutal attitude of the Government towards landlords and being prepared to imprison them. I think that it would be a cumbersome way to do it, to go on chasing these companies round the place and imprisoning their representatives.

It sounds clever, but it would be an extremely laborious business and would, as I said on an earlier Amendment, often cause great hardship to the tenants while this performance was going on. I therefore think that one or the other of these methods would be a useful way of getting at the people who are in effective control of the house.

Hon. Gentlemen opposite have been assiduous and ingenious in trying to crack this nut. My right hon. Friend sympathises with their objective of trying to catch a manipulating and controlling shareholder who hides behind a screen of officers who will be the people to take the rap under this Bill. I have to tell the House that there are grave difficulties in either of the approaches suggested by hon. Gentlemen, but I have to add some words of comfort, because to some extent their efforts are unnecessary.

First, to dispose of the Amendment in page 22, line 35. It is true that the Commissioners of Inland Revenue can do a certain amount to penetrate the screen of nominees behind which a controlling shareholder may hide. The Commissioners of Inland Revenue have a considerable staff for this purpose, and it is doubtful whether local authorities could operate in this way.

As the hon. Gentleman recognised, there is the difficulty that the beneficial shareholder, the person at whom these Amendments are directed, can hide behind successive screens of nominees and so make it all the more difficult to catch up with him. I confess that the attempt to make a shareholder, even if he is quite overt and does not screen himself in this way, responsible for neglect in any way, is bound to fail. The House will remember that this is an attempt to extend the consent, connivance or neglect of any officer to the controlling shareholder.

A shareholder has no duty to operate the company, and therefore he cannot be said to be guilty of neglect in any sense since there is no duty which he can neglect. On the other hand, if a local authority can show that a controlling shareholder has consented or connived to any action which by this legislation is a criminal offence, then by that fact alone, without any writing in of Amendments, the local authority can presumably catch him as an accessory or for aiding and abetting.

That is very nearly the only legal comfort I have for the hon. Gentleman. When I say the only legal comfort, the other comfort I have for him is what he mentioned, namely, that when this Bill bites on the officers who operate companies of this sort there will be a rapid dwindling of the number of people who will be willing to serve as such officers in future. Consequently, the manipulating controlling shareholder will have more and more to take the rap himself, and my right hon. Friend hopes that by that means the purpose of hon. Gentlemen will be achieved.

I must warn the House that this series of Amendments as at present drawn will not achieve their purpose, and for those reasons I hope that hon. Gentlemen will not press them.

I beg to move, in page 23, line 3, at the end to insert:

(6) Section one hundred and fifty-nine of the principal Act (which confers powers of entry for the purposes mentioned in that section) shall apply to entry for the purpose of ascertaining whether there has been a contravention of any regulation or direction made or given under the foregoing provisions of this Part of this Act, but so much of that section as requires notice to be given of the intended entry shall not apply to entry for the purpose mentioned in this subsection.

This Amendment gives effect to a promise I made in Committee to introduce an Amendment which would make it certain that local authorities had adequate powers of entry for the purpose of ascertaining whether there had been any contravention of requirements or regulations made under Clause 13 and applied to houses by orders under Clause 12, or any contravention of a direction made under Clause 18. The Amendment provides a power of immediate entry for those purposes. It seems to the Government that there should be a power of immediate entry in this case, because it is desirable that an officer of a local authority can go in without delay to make sure whether the regulations or directions are being complied with, and the possibility of making sure of that might be weakened or invalidated if there were an obligation to give twenty-four hours' notice.

It has appeared to the Government, on examination, that an additional power of this kind is desirable, but in the view of the Government it should be confined to cases where there is a regulation or a direction in force. That is why the Amendment is drafted as it is.

I beg to move, as an Amendment to the proposed Amendment, after "ascertaining", to insert:

"whether a house is let in lodgings or occupied by more than one family; how many individuals and households are accommodated in it or".

In some ways the Government Amendmentment is more drastic than the new Clause we moved in Committee. As far as I understand it, it removes all requirement to give notice and all need to apply for a warrant. We took our precedent from the Public Health Act for applying for a warrant for entry without notice. As I understand it, the right hon. Gentleman is dispensing with that. In other words, this is a very smart invasion of an Englishman's home. I do not quarrel with that particularly, because if he does not think a warrant is necessary I am a little surprised, but it will make for more efficient enforcement.

But in the other respect the Amendment does not go as far as our proposal did. We are very worried about the problem of discovering which houses should be subject to the provisions of the Measure—which should have an order made in respect of them and in which case there should be a direction, and so on. The Bill may deal with the glaring cases, about which everybody knows; it may operate fairly smoothly in the first few months. But thereafter it will tend to become a dead letter, because it will be comparatively easy to evade it.

The simplest and most obvious case is that where it is known pretty notoriously that a house has ten or twelve people living in a room. No order has been made, and no direction given. It may be a matter of mere rumour or complaint, without direct evidence. A public health inspector or enforcement officer may visit the premises, but the twenty people will not be there on the night when he arrives; they will have disappeared, but they will return the next night. There is nothing in this extension of the provisions of the Bill which enables that kind of case to be dealt with. That seems to us to be playing with the problem. Unless the Government are prepared to take seriously the problem of how one finds the cases which require the attention of this part of the Bill, it will deal only with the obvious cases and relapse into being a dead letter. We move this Amendment to bring out that point. I hoped that the right hon. Gentleman would say that this aspect had been inadvertently overlooked, but apparently it is a case not of oversight but of neglect, and I am sorry that he has made this considerable blunder.

Perhaps the hon. Member for Widnes (Mr. MacColl) and I were slightly at cross-purposes, because he was arguing that the Government Amendment went further than the new Clause which had been moved in Committee by the Opposition, whereas the Government Amendment singles out one particular set of circumstances and says that where it is desirable there should be power of immediate entry. That is the case where there is a direction or regulation in force.

It is not a question of an officer of the local authority wandering round and seeing a house and thinking that he would like to walk straight in. Where the manager or occupier is under certain obligations already, it seems to the Government that without the power of immediate entry it might be very difficult to make certain that these regulations or directions were being complied with. But the Government certainly would not be disposed to go as far as the hon. Member wishes and give a statutory right of immediate entry in any form to any house simply in order to find out whether it is in multiple occupation and how many people are living in it.

The local authorities have the power of Section 159 of the 1957 Act, and in my Department we have never had complaint from local authorities that those powers are inadequate for the purpose of survey and examination to determine whether any of the statutory powers ought to be exercised in respect of a particular house.

That is almost entirely in cases where there is a structural defect. One cannot alter the angle of light or the size of a room in twenty-four hours, but one can alter the number of people sleeping in that room.

But the local authority ought not to need a power of immediate entry to discover whether a house is occupied by more than one family. It is reasonable that it may wish to find out, but there is no reason why it should not give twenty-four hours' notice before entering.

The hon. Member's Amendment also contains the words

'how many individuals and households are accommodated …"

Possibly he may be thinking of the old form of Clause 12 rather than the new form, because we are not proposing in the Bill, as amended, that the actual number of individuals should be the vitally relevant piece of information. What has to be ascertained is whether the house is let in lodgings or occupied by more than one family; and, if it is, whether through some failure of management it is desirable that the regulations should be made applicable to it. As I was saying, these powers of entry under the 1957 Act for the purpose of survey and examination are found adequate by local authorities and there is no reason why they should not be adequate for ascertaining whether a house is let for lodgings or occupied by more than one family. Everything has to start from that. If the house does not comply with those conditions, it does not become subject to the provisions of Part II of the Bill.

I must advise the House that it would be reasonable and not going too far to introduce the immediate power of entry as embodied in the Government Amendment, provided that it is confined to those houses already subjected to regulations or directions. But I could not advise the House to accept the hon. Member's Amendment to the proposed Amendment which, in the view of the Government, would go far too far. It is the Government's view that the existing power of entry under Section 159 of the 1957 Act is quite sufficient for the purpose of ascertaining whether the house actually comes within the conditions laid down in Part II of the Bill.

I beg to move, in page 28, line 30, to leave out "principal".

I think that with this Amendment it would be convenient to discuss the Government Amendments in page 28, lines 31, 32, 33, 37, and page 29, line 20.

I indicated during the Committee stage proceedings that the Government wished to look further at the drafting of Clause 29. I think that it would be the desire of us all that there should be as little dubiety and uncertainty as possible in drawing the line between landlords' responsibilities and tenants' responsibilities. A further examination by the Government revealed that the Bill, as introduced, left various uncertainties. But I must give notice to the House that I am not proposing to ask that we proceed too far tonight. This group of Amendments alters the immediate dividing line which is the essence of Clause 29 and the Government consider that the date at which the Clause should operate should be altered. However, that is a matter which we shall come to tomorrow.

I will give an example of the kind of uncertainty which might arise under the Bill as it stands and which in the view of the Government justifies these Amendments. It is not clear, for example, whether the phrase "sanitary fixtures", to be found in line 22, on page 29, includes baths and wash basins. Undoubtedly it is intended to include water closets, but no one would normally describe a bath as a sanitary fixture, yet it is quite clear that the Bill ought not to leave anyone in doubt about whether a bath is covered by Clause 29 as part of the landlord's responsibility or not.

1.30 a.m.

To give another illustration of these uncertainties, what about boilers and hot water tanks? Are they to be regarded as installations for heating or installations for the supply of water? If they are installations for the supply of water, it is by no means clear whether or not they "make use of" the supply. It seems to the Government essential that we should make certain Amendments in this case to reduce to a minimum the risk of uncertainty and litigation about these matters.

What the Amendments do is, first, to drop the reference to "principal installations". If we speak of "principal installations" in a Bill it suggests that there might be some secondary installations for which the landlord is not necessarily responsible. It might be argued that although a hot water tank is a primary installation the hot water pipes leading from the tank to the central heat. ting radiators are secondary installations. That, of course, would make nonsense because. if the landlord is to maintain the tanks of the central heating apparatus, obviously he ought to be under an obligation to maintain the central heating apparatus as a whole.

Secondly, the effect of the Amendments is to make the landlord specifically responsible for all the major bathroom and washing equipment. Perhaps I should mention that water closets are described as sanitary conveniences—we had some reference to this in Committee—purely and simply to conform with the provisions of Sections 33 to 47 of the Public Health Act, 1936.

Thirdly, under the Amendments the landlord is made specifically responsible for all installations used for heating either rooms or water. The landlord will be responsible for domestic boilers, for geysers and other fixed—I emphasise the word "fixed"—gas or electric water heaters, radiators and built-in electric fires. On the other hand, other gas or electric appliances, for example, cookers and refrigerators, remain excluded from the landlord's responsibility as appliances which make use of the supply of water, gas or electricity.

We have examined the Clause under a microscope. We believe that by these Amendments we have removed dubieties and uncertainties which might otherwise exist, but there is no doubt that they draw the line in a somewhat different place from where it might have appeared to be under the Bill as originally introduced. As I shall explain tomorrow, that is the reason why, in the light of what was said in Committee it seemed to the Government essential to change the date of operation of this Clause.

It seems to me that, viewed as a whole, these Amendments are desirable, but I take the view that they are much more defining Amendments than Amendments substantially altering what most people would have thought the Clause meant in its original form. To that extent I think they are desirable.

The wording of Clause 29 as it stands is, I would agree, open to dispute and discussion, but I am bound to say that when I saw the words "principal installations" I took them to mean very substantially what the Government are now inserting in the place of those words. I stress this point because the Minister has argued that because of these changes in the wording of Clause 29 it would be justifiable to alter the date on which it comes into force. We shall be discussing that tomorrow—

Today.

Perhaps I should say "this afternoon." I will not pursue the point now, but I want to make it clear that we on this side of the House cannot be regarded as accepting that view at all.

As I said at the beginning, it seems to me that what we are really engaged in on these Amendments is to give a greater precision to Clause 29. I doubt very much whether anyone could really say with his hand on his heart when he sees the Clause 29 which we shall now create out of these Amendments, "Well, really, I had no idea it meant anything like that." It means for all practical purposes what most of us expected and wanted it to mean, and what any reasonable person who had been in on this matter from the moment that it was mentioned in the Queen's Speech debate could reasonably have expected it to mean.

That seems all that it is necessary to say on this issue at the moment. I should have thought that the Minister is now getting the definition about right, and it will be useful in the future for other purposes as laying down a broad general guide to what a landlord ought to be regarded as responsible for, and what can be put on the tenant.

I rather rejoice that we are beginning to say "a basin", "a sink", or "a bath" when we mean to say "a basin", "a sink", or "a bath", instead of talking about "fixtures for making use of the supply of water other than sanitary fixtures" when there is some doubt even what "sanitary fixtures" mean. I heartily commend this practice of calling things by the names we use in ordinary speech, and I hope it will be widely copied in other Statutes.

There is only one query that I want to put to my right hon. Friend. It is on the question of space heating and the heating of water. He stressed just now that this referred only to fixed installations. In fact, the word "installations" applies to both the proposed new paragraphs, and I presume that it is from that word "installations" that he implies that any fires for space heating, if they are to be included in this, must be fixed fires. But I am wondering how he gets that interpretation of "installation". Would it not just as well refer to moveable electric and gas fires which one can plug in? They are installations for space heating, and might well be included, even though they are not fixtures.

I shall examine that point, but I very much doubt that a moveable electric fire could be described as an installation.

I beg to move, in page 28, line 37, to leave out from "lessor" to "shall" in line 39.

I think it would be convenient to discuss with this Amendment the Amendment in page 29, line 9, after "and", to insert:

"subsection (1) of this section shall not avoid any covenant by the lessee so far as it imposes on the lessee any of the requirements mentioned in paragraph (a) or paragraph (c) of this subsection.

(3)".

Yes, Mr. Speaker.

These are really drafting Amendments. I shall briefly explain them, but I assure the House that they are not intended to do anything fundamental.

Taking first the words it is proposed to leave out, the difficulty about the present drafting is that covenants of this sort may be expressed in several different ways. The words in Clause 29 (1) are rather inflexible they adopt that single formula and they might be held not to apply to covenants which have the same effect but which are worded differently. The Amendment in page29, line 9 writes the same provision into subsection (2) in a more flexible form.

The House will have observed that, under the Amendments, the tenant can be made liable for the maintenance of anything which he adds to the house and is entitled to take with him when he goes. That is linked with another Amendment which we have not yet reached, and that will be the effect if that further Amendment is agreed to.

Further, the words in line 39, at the end of subsection (1)—

"or to make good damage done by the lessee"—

are dropped because they are really too restricted. They do not cover, for example, damage done by the lessee's family, and they are in any case unnecessary because the point is already covered in the expression

"to use the premises in a tenant-like manner".

These are really nothing but tidying-up Amendments, and I assure the House that they raise no major point.

I beg to move, in page 29, line 5, after "accident" to insert:

"or by dry rot, wet rot, woodworm or other similar decay unknown to the landlord".

I have regarded this as an extremely important matter. Hon. Members may remember that I got a little worked up about it in Committee on an Amendment similar to this. This Amendment seems to me to be one of the greatest importance in the Clause. Perhaps it might not be out of order if I were to say that I hoped to address the House at some length and ask whether my right hon. Friend would wish to interrupt me to give any indication as to his intention of continuing with this Clause tonight. He gave an indication just now that we should be talking about some other parts of the Clause, as I understood it, this afternoon. I had hoped that I should not, perhaps, have to detain the House on an important Amendment like this at this stage. However, since my right hon. Friend does not rise to his feet to interrupt me, I must continue to detain the House at this early hour of the morning.

1.45 a.m.

This Clause imposes an absolute covenant on the landlord to carry out repairs provided that the lease is less than seven years. One can imagine a lease of some six years, and during the last few months of that lease the house collapses for one of the reasons indicated in my Amendment, such as dry rot, which may have been quite unknown to the land- lord. The tenant in those circumstances would have the right to call upon the landlord to rebuild the premises.

We have recognised in this subsection that there are certain occasions on which it would be quite unfair to call upon the landlord to rebuild or reinstate the premises under this statutory, absolute covenant which the Clause imposes on him. In subsection (2,b) it is recognised that the landlord should not be called upon,

"to rebuild or reinstate the premises in the case of destruction or damage by fire, or by tempest, flood, or other inevitable accident"

What is meant by "other inevitable accident" I should not like to endeavour to explain.

What I hope to insert is a sort of case in which the landlord may find that he has to expend large sums of money even at the fag-end of a lease in order to reinstate the premises. In the case of dry rot it is very possible that neither the occupier of the house nor the owner of the house knows anything about it until it is at a very advanced stage. I did explain my own experience in this. The whole of one side of my house had to be removed and rebuilt at very considerable expense. Had that house been let to a tenant and this Bill had been an Act the expense would have been entirely crippling. It might have happened at the end of a lease when perhaps a difficult or perverse tenant could have forced the landlord to expend all that money without any real benefit to the tenant from it.

Paragraph (b) as it stands excuses the landlord from reinstating in the case of destruction or damage by flood. I wonder to what extent that is going to be construed by the courts in two or three years' time in the areas which were flooded last year, when the dry rot starts, as undoubtedly, I am advised, it will in those houses where very careful precautions have not been taken, the precautions of lifting the floorboards, letting a draught go through to dry them out for a week or two on end, and then treating them with a special substance to prevent dry rot. In those flooded areas I am quite certain we are going to have serious dry rot, and I wonder if the courts are going to say, "This is due to flood and the landlords are excused in these cases from rebuilding or reinstating." That is not clear from the Clause. If my Amendment were made it would be perfectly clear.

If we are recognising in these cases of inevitable accident, in cases of fire, in cases of tempest, that the landlord is excused from this covenant, then he certainly ought to be excused from other cases which unknown to him cause such destruction and damage to the house that the expense of reinstating is quite out of proportion to the benefit which would be obtained.

I realise that my wording of the Amendment may not be technically correct. Dry rot, wet rot and woodworm may have some technical definition but those are the three which I know as a layman to cause extreme and unknown danger. They can arise without the owner or occupier or anyone else knowing anything about them, until they are in an advanced stage and require a great deal of expenditure. One should, of course, relieve the tenant of any covenant to reinstate or rebuild in such cases. That must follow. It would be quite improper to accept the principle without realising that we are relieving the tenant of any covenant to reinstate. But that is no reason for imposing on the landlord this very severe liability which if it occurs at the end of a lease might confer no benefit on the tenant.

The hon. Member will be aware of the following words in the Clause:

".ֵand in determining the standard of repair required by the lessor's repairing covenant, regard shall be had to the age, character and prospective life of the dwelling house"

These seem to me to apply where the extent of work required is such as to be unwarrantable in view of the general state of the house.

I would not rely on those words at all to relieve the landlord of reinstating. If those words had any real force, what is the necessity for paragraph (b) which spells out the cases in which the landlord is not called upon to rebuild or reinstate? I read the words to which the hon. Member draws my attention as meaning the age and character of the house. If it is an old house one would not expect it to be brought up to modern standards by repairs. One would retain the character of the house and its prospective life. I do not think that those words would relieve the landlord in the sort of case which I have endeavoured to describe.

These matters were raised, I think, by my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir E. Erring-ton), in Standing Committee and the Government have given further consideration to them. In particular I have thought about what my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page) has said about the house which might collapse shortly before the end of the lease owing to undiscovered dryrot. The trouble about my hon. Friend's proposals, however, is that they are inconsistent with the view which the Government have consistently taken that landlords should be under a duty to look after the property they let for people to live in.

I know that dry rot is both inconvenient and expensive. My hon. Friend the Member for Crosby has had dry rot in his house. I have had dry rot in mine. The owner-occupier has no escape from the obligation to put it right, in some cases, I am afraid, at the cost of having to dig deeply into his pocket. But there really is a difference between flood, fire and storm on the one hand and damage by dry rot or wet rot or structural decay on the other. In the Government's view people who decide to go into the business of letting house property must take very seriously their responsibilities for keeping the property in proper condition, unless they are absolutely prevented from doing so by flood or storm.

I should have thought that there was an obvious obligation on both the landlord who is letting a house and on the owner-occupier of a house. In his own interests, each should keep his eye on the house and, if need be, have a survey made from time to time to see that these latent troubles have not started. Once they start, we all know only too well how rapidly they may spread.

The crux of my hon Friend's argument is that unless his Amendment is adopted, a situation may arise in which the landlord has virtually to rebuild the house because, through one of these causes, it will have fallen down before the lease ends. In such a case the house would almost certainly have been deemed by the local authority to be unfit for habitation. The obvious course which would be followed in a case like that would be that the local authority would proceed to make a demolition order or a closing order under the 1957 legislation, and that would end the matter. If the house has been put in such an impossible state, almost certainly it would be unfit for habitation and could not be made so.

The argument may be advanced that, even so, the risk should not be left with the landlord to bear; but where else is it to lie? It cannot be fair for it to lie with the tenant. If the landlord is not in a position to make good damage caused by dry rot, a fortiori the tenant will not be in a position to do it and will have the smallest possible incentive to do it, because he has no continuing interest in the house. The practical result of making the Amendment would be that neither party would do anything, neither the landlord nor the tenant, and the house would just decay.

I put to my right hon. Friend the situation in which a landlord may be willing to carry out the work, but it might take a considerable time. While he is under this covenant, he will have to pay the tenant to find accommodation elsewhere and he will suffer the damage of what I would call the almost inevitable accident of dry rot. That is where the difficulty arises.

I see that there are difficulties and that from one point of view one could treat dry rot as an inevitable accident, but in fact it is not an inevitable accident and each of us who owns and lives in a house is to blame if he allows dry rot to get a hold on it. Surely one is no less to blame if one is letting the house to someone else.

There is an essential difference between damage by fire and flood and storm, which is excepted from the Clause, and damage by dry rot or decay which a landlord who has taken proper care of his property ought to be able to spot and deal with at an early stage. If, as I say, the house has gone too far before it is discovered, then almost certainly the outcome will be that the local authority will make a demolition or closing order.

I beg to move, in page 29, line 6, to leave out from "anything" to end of line 8 and to insert:

"which the lessee is entitled to remove from the dwelling-house",

This is a small Amendment which I think will improve the meaning of the Clause. The Bill, as it stands, absolves the landlord from the duty to repair or maintain anything not included in the premises when the lease began. The intention here was to exclude anything put in by the tenant during the tenancy, but the Bill goes too far because we really need to cover that case where the landlord himself provides fittings during the tenancy which are of a character which he ought to maintain. It must be remembered that work might be carried out with the help of an improvement grant, and that the landlord is then entitled to charge a higher rent in consequence and he should be under an obligation to maintain these improvements as he is for the rest of the house.

The Amendment excuses the landlord from responsibility only for those items which a tenant has installed, and is entitled to remove when he goes. The point is a relatively straightforward one, and I hope that the House will accept it.

I beg to move, in page 29, line 34, at the end to insert:

"so far as it is used as a private dwelling"

This is an addition to the definition of a dwelling-house and arises from this cause: namely, that the lease under this Section and the dwelling-house under this Section includes one which forms part of a building which also includes business premises. If there is mixed letting, the absolute coverage imposed on the landlord by the Clause applies not only to the dwelling-house part of the building, but to the business premises as well.

That arises from the fact that the definition in subsection (5) is a lease

"…whereby a building or part of a building is lei wholly or mainly as a private dwelling".

The words in my Amendment add:

"so far as it is used as a private dwelling".

In order to come within this Clause, the letting would have to be wholly or mainly as a private dwelling, but that does not exclude a small shop which forms part of a dwelling-house or is in premises where there are living quarters and business premises as well.

It seems unfair that the landlord of business premises should be bound by a statutory covenant of the kind set out in Clause 29. I should have thought that it would be fair to exclude that part of the premises which is being run by the tenant for his own profit.

The intention of Clauses 29 and 30 is surely to protect the tenant of the dwelling-house and, from a national and social point of view, to maintain the dwelling-house of the landlord. I should have thought that we ought to exclude from that any part of the premises which is used merely for the private profit of the tenant.

I am not quite sure whether my hon. Friend realises how narrow is the range of cases at issue here. The only cases in which Clause 29 applies to lettings of mixed premises are first lettings where the residential use is the dominant one. All renewals of leases of mixed premises are outside the scope of this Clause. The reason is that they are all covered by the 1954 Act, and the House will see that in paragraph (i) of Clause 30 (3,b) reference is made to the 1954 Act. For that purpose it does not matter how small a proportion of the dwelling-house is used for business purposes. Even if only one room in a large house is used as a doctor's surgery, the 1954 Act will apply to all renewals of leases.

What we are concerned with here is solely the case of the first letting of mixed premises where the residential use is the main one. What my hon. Friend's Amendment seeks to do is to establish that the obligation on the landlord shall apply only to the dwelling part of the house and not to the rest. I ask him to consider whether this is really a practical solution.

Perhaps I can give the most obvious case, that of a house in which the ground floor, or a room on the ground floor, has been turned into a shop. The house is used mainly for residential purposes, but above the shop there would be rooms—bedrooms and living rooms. So that those bedrooms and living rooms may be properly habitable, not only their walls but the walls of the shop part of the house must be properly maintained.

In a case like that the structure of the premises is indivisible, and an obligation to keep the dwelling part in repair without an obligation to keep the business part in repair would land us in absurdity.

I hope therefore that my hon. Friend will not press the Amendment, especially in the light of what I have said, that all renewals of leases of these mixed premises are not affected by Clause 29.

I beg to move,

That further consideration of the Bill, as amended, be now adjourned.

I should like to express my appreciation to the House for the progress that we have made. It might be asked why we do not finish the Bill tonight. There are only four more Amendments, and they fall into a single group. I hope that it might be possible to dispose of the group and also give the Bill a Third Reading by seven o'clock tonight, other-wise we shall be in the unfortunate position of having our Third Reading debate interrupted by Private Members' business, which is due to take place from seven o'clock to ten o'clock. I realise that at this hour of the morning nobody can say for certain what will happen later in the day, but if we can do that we shall certainly have a more satisfying Third Reading debate.

Meanwhile, I move the Motion to adjourn further consideration now because I do not think it would be right, at this hour in the morning, to take the final group of Amendments, which raise a substantial point.

I share the Minister's hope as to what we may be able to do this evening, although we cannot say how it will work out. In any case, I feel certain that the Motion now moved is a wise one, and it is desirable to break off and start afresh on the rather important issue that awaits us with the few remaining Amendments.