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Mr. Wigley: My point was that the access might not go through the curtilage of a house, but might be close to it. Surely the fact that a house that has enjoyed quiet in the past suddenly becomes part of a "honeypot" area will have an effect on its value. The question of compensation must then arise.
Mr. Meacher: There is provision for diversion of rights of way, and that applies particularly to "honeypot" areas. If there are problems such as erosion of land or damage to tracks or paths, the Bill provides for closure, restrictions or diversions. I assure the right hon. Gentleman, who did not have the opportunity to sit on the Committee, that the Bill takes adequate account of such problems.
It is always useful to have officials nearby. I am informed--in answer to the point raised by the right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham--that clauses 19 and 33 are relevant.
Mr. Garnier: Will the Minister give way?
Mr. Meacher: No. I am going to make my case. I am sure that the hon. and learned Gentleman can return to his point later.
The statutory countryside bodies, the national park authorities and other local authorities will all have a part to play in helping to ensure that the new right is implemented and managed in ways that are sensitive to the needs of those who own or manage the land. Through positive management and promotion, including public
funding of the means of access and the appointment of wardens where necessary, any potential adverse impacts can be effectively minimised.Although I would expect Conservative Members to focus on the perceived costs of the new right and understand why they have done so, I hope that they also recognise the potential benefits--not only the generation of extra income, but reduced costs for some owners. For example, landowners who have tolerated public access on a de facto basis--a number have done so--will benefit from reduced occupiers' liability. Where the land is popular with walkers, the provision of wardens would be expected to help to reduce costs.
The hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier), the right hon. Member for Caernarfon and the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) raised the question of the risk of a decline in land values. Indeed, the hon. and learned Member for Harborough drew attention to the retention of powers for access orders under the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949, which provides for compensation. We are continuing with those access orders.
The point is that the 1949 Act provides for compensation in relation to specific sites or areas where landowners have refused to enter into access agreements. Access orders are therefore highly discriminatory and, as such, compensation is provided; but the Bill will apply to extensive areas of certain types of open country. Hence it does not discriminate between different owners. We therefore do not expect land values to be affected significantly.
What we propose is not without precedent. The Law of Property Act 1925 contained no provision for compensation when it introduced a right of access to the so-called urban commons, many of which are anything but urban. So far as I am aware, the absence of provision for compensation attracted little comment in the 1920s despite the creation of a much wider right of access, including for horse riders. The Act did not contain the same restrictions or provision for closures as this Bill. More recently, under the previous Government we had the example of the Dartmoor Commons Act 1985, which does not seem to have given rise to arguments about compensation.
I entirely accept that there is a balance to be struck between the public interest and private rights. We accept that there may be a minimal interference with the private property rights of some landowners, but that very limited interference has to be weighed in the balance with the right of millions of people to enjoy--without doing any harm or damage--extensive areas of open countryside. We believe that a fair balance has been struck, in accordance with our obligations under the European convention on human rights, without any requirement for compensation.
The Government's position is clear. We have gone to considerable lengths to avoid placing burdens on land managers and owners; some people may think that we have done a little too much to accommodate their concerns. I accept that the result is a right that is limited and constrained, but I believe that those who will benefit from the new right will accept those limitations. The
balance is difficult to strike, but I believe that we have got it right. For all those reasons, I ask that the new clause be withdrawn.
Mr. Garnier: I shall respond briefly to the points that have been raised. I thank my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg), my hon. Friends the Members for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) and for Vale of York (Miss McIntosh), and the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) for their constructive contributions. As always, I found it interesting to listen to the Minister, but his response was not terribly helpful. Indeed, trying to engage him in an argument was rather like trying to nail jelly to the ceiling.
11.30 pm
The Minister complained that my contribution to the debate was lengthy, legalistic and esoteric, but if he is not prepared to listen to legal arguments about the construction of laws in Parliament, I really do not know where we are. I appreciate that there are some members of his party who, having won the 1997 election by a massive majority, thought that it was an appalling constitutional device that we should debate laws at all. None the less, that is what we in the Opposition are here for, and I shall keep the Government up late at night if it is in the interests of the public to have their laws sensibly considered. [Interruption.] The babes want to go to bed, but they will have to wait a little longer.
The difference between general compensation and other compensation is not fully appreciated by the Minister. He relied on clause 33 for his arguments, but if he read it a little more carefully rather than depending on notes flying across the Bench from his parliamentary private secretary, he would see that clause 33(1) makes it clear that the agreements are discretionary, in that the access authority may pay compensation.
The right hon. Gentleman ought also, before he came to the Chamber, to have read section 8 of the Human Rights Act 1998, which provides a statutory right to damages for victims.
Mr. Hogg: The Minister referred us to clause 33, and it was good of him to do so, but he will have noted that it gives no right to compensation in respect of diminution in value; it covers only a range of out-of-pocket expenses. As my hon. and learned Friend says, it is dependent on there being an access agreement; furthermore, the payments are discretionary. Nothing in clause 33 enables a farmer or landowner who has paid out money to require anybody to reimburse him or her.
Mr. Garnier: Under section 8 of the Human Rights Act, the court may award damages to victims of behaviour that contravenes the convention. If the Government want to waste a lot of taxpayers' money on having people such as my right hon. and learned Friend and me, and indeed the Prime Minister's wife, appear in the courts of this land, I look forward to that, but taxpayers would think that their money was better spent elsewhere.
The Minister said that there may be benefits for some landowners under the access provisions, although I was not convinced by any of his examples. I appreciate that the arithmetic is against me this evening and that many overtired Government Members want to pop along to their
beds. For that reason, I shall ask permission to withdraw the new clause, but I warn that the Bill has yet to get to the other place, where it will receive proper and full scrutiny from Members of all parties and from Cross Benchers. If the Government think that, in the upper House, they can get away with the poverty of argument that they have attempted to advance this evening, they have another think--and many votes--coming. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.Motion and clause, by leave, withdrawn.
Further consideration adjourned.--[Mr. Clelland.]
Bill, as amended in the Standing Committee, to be further considered tomorrow.
DELEGATED LEGISLATION
Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 118(6) (Standing Committees on Delegated Legislation),
Local Government Finance
- That the Local Government Finance (England) Special Grant Report (No. 62) on Private Finance Initiative (HC 458), which was laid before this House on 19th May, be approved.--[Mr. Clelland.]
Taxation (Government Codes of Practice)
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.--[Mr. Clelland.]
11.34 pm
Mr. Oliver Letwin (West Dorset): The Economic Secretary and I have both had a long day in the proceedings on the Finance Bill, and you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, will share the delight when I say that I have no intention of prolonging our proceedings unnecessarily.
The reason for the debate is a sequence of events, which I first raised in a debate on the Floor of the House, about clause 102 of the Finance Bill. That clause has a particular effect. By bringing into play schedule 30 of the Bill, it seriously adversely affects companies that either do or might have their headquarters in the United Kingdom--multinational companies with a range of international subsidiaries.
Of course, the subject of my Adjournment debate is not the substance of that measure, but the process that led to the inclusion of the clause and schedule in the Bill. The Government, perhaps unguardedly, issued a splendid document when they first came to power. It is probably one among many. It purports to be a code of conduct for the Government in implementing new tax measures.
With the substance of the code itself, I have no quarrel. It is an admirable code; it says many sensible things. By far the most important thing that it does is to impose on Ministers--it was, of course, Ministers who were responsible for its production so, through it, Ministers imposed upon themselves--the admirable duty to consult when introducing new tax measures.
When we inspect the notes on clauses that accompany clause 102, we find that Ministers announced that they had conformed to the code of conduct and consulted widely on the measures being introduced. The strange thing is that, in a certain sense, that is absolutely true. The Inland Revenue did, indeed, consult widely on the measure in question. Unfortunately, however, the way in which it consulted on the measure was to ask whether it should carry out either of two actions, A or B. For the purposes of the debate, it is not material what A or B are. They have been sufficiently exposed in my remarks and in those of Ministers during Committee proceedings on the Finance Bill.
What Ministers proceeded to do in their Bill was C--an action entirely different from A or B, about which Ministers consulted. Those who were consulted were, broadly, all the large industries and the major representative bodies in Britain--the Confederation of British Industry, the Institute of Directors, the Association of Corporate Treasurers, the Chartered Institute of Taxation and so on. They were consulted about two things, neither of which were the things that Ministers went on to do. Those are, I think, undisputed facts. As a consequence, those bodies were consulted only in name.
If the code of practice means that Ministers must engage in a process called consultation, where the question they ask has no bearing on what they actually intend to do, that code is a set of words or a set of spin--if I can use that word in the context of recent events--but it is without substance. That is one option that the Economic Secretary has in replying to the debate.
The Economic Secretary may wish to say that I and others mistook the purpose of the code--its sole purpose was, in fact, to present the appearance of a set of rules without substance--and that Ministers were, therefore, thoroughly justified in consulting about things that they had no intention of doing. They did not actually do those things, despite the words of the code, because the code is not to be taken as anything more than mere appearance.
I doubt that that is the defence that the Economic Secretary will wish to use, but I admit that it would be a rational defence. We would all then know where we were. We could solemnly stand up, tear up the codes and explain to the public at large that, although there is a code, it is not a code--it does not mean anything because the propositions in it are without substance. There is another possibility, which is that the code has a meaning and substance, and that it does mean something when it says that Ministers have to consult.
As an earnest seeker after truth, I wrote to the Cabinet Secretary to ask a series of questions, particularly whether there were administrative sanctions that would give the code substance, and what the role of the accounting officer--in this case, the permanent secretary to the Treasury--would be if there had been a contravention by the Government of the Government's code. I did not add to that question--perhaps it was an oversight--"on the assumption that the code has substance and meaning". I rather took it that, as between the Cabinet Secretary and me, there would be agreement that if the code had been issued by the Government, there was a presumption that it had substance and meaning.
In the way of these things, very often it is impossible to find anything so parodic as real life, and this was one such a case. There is, as we know, the splendid programme "Yes, Minister", and there is, as we all know, the wonderful character Sir Humphrey. Many people believe that Sir Humphrey is an exaggeration of what really happens, and that "Yes, Minister" is a parody of what really occurs. However, in his response to me, the Cabinet Secretary showed that the parody lies in reality and that Sir Humphrey is merely a pale imitation of reality.
The Cabinet Secretary did not take very long to reply; he was admirably prompt. Nor was he verbose in his reply; his reply was admirably concise. Nor was he obscure in his reply; his reply was admirably clear. Nor, however, did he in the least reply in substance to my inquiry. What he told me was that the Government had decided that the Government had fulfilled their code of practice, and that, therefore, I should put my mind at rest.
This is a splendid state of affairs. Sir Humphrey does not tell us that he thinks that the Government have obeyed the code of practice--far from it. I suspect that the Cabinet Secretary--who I take it is one of the most distinguished people in the country--was very carefully advised. Almost certainly, if the code had any substance, the Government had broken it. Therefore, far be it from him to say that he thought that the Government had obeyed it.
Nor did the Cabinet Secretary tell me what an accounting officer would do, or whether there were any administrative sanctions. I take it that he did not answer those questions because, as I suspected, there are no administrative sanctions and there is no role for the accounting officer. I am sure that the Cabinet Secretary
knows those things very well, and that he was, therefore, very careful not to tell me anything except the strict and literal truth--which I am sure is the strict and literal truth--that the Government consider that the Government obeyed the code of practice.I should like at some time to have an opportunity in the House to debate a new variant of the highway code--the Letwin variant of the highway code. The difference between the highway code as it is and the Letwin variant is that, under the Letwin code, it will be not be policemen or magistrates, but Letwin who decides whether Letwin has obeyed the highway code. I offer you the prospect, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that there will be very few occasions indeed on which Letwin judges that Letwin did not obey the highway code.
If all we have in this code of taxation is Ministers judging whether Ministers have obeyed the code--and if there are no administrative sanctions, no role for the accounting officer and no method of monitoring; hence, if the code itself has substance, the substance can be contradicted in practice with impunity--we have not a code, but a farce.
The reason that I raise this issue--apart from the fact that, in this particular instance, it is of signal practical importance--is that the measures in question, on which we were not consulted within any ordinary meaning of the term, will have the effect of destroying a very large part of the British economy. However, I raise it not only for that reason of substance, but because it calls into question all the other codes that have been produced by the Government.
It is my intention, following the Minister's response to this debate, to inaugurate a series of investigations, and to seek to persuade Select Committees to inaugurate a series of investigations, into the way in which the Government have treated their own codes of practice more generally. I think that that is a fruitful line of inquiry. We have already begun to discover that the hallmark of this Government, who have done some good things, is that their explanation of their own prowess vastly exceeds their delivery.
Before the election, the present Government made enormous play of the need to revolutionise the conduct of Government--to clean up their act. When they came to power, they tried to fulfil that promise--or to appear to do so--by issuing a huge new set of rules that would govern their conduct and ensure that they acted in a proper spirit. Now, some years later, we discover either that this particular set of rules, and presumably others, are a mere facade, or that they have meaning, but are wholly unenforceable and hence a farce in practice and in relation to a matter of the gravest importance. That is the charge and I look forward to seeing how the Economic Secretary, albeit at a late hour and after arduous work earlier in the day, responds to it.
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