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Mr. Hogg: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. Does he agree that it should also be borne in mind that this will be the last time--other than when we come to discuss Lords amendments, if we do--that the House will have an opportunity to discuss the compensation scheme? He will have noticed that the scheme is subject to the negative resolution procedure rather than to the affirmative resolution procedure.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: My right hon. and learned Friend makes an interesting point, and if time permits, I may get on to the subject of the negative and affirmative resolution procedures.
Let me return to amendment No. 8. I hope that, as my right hon. and learned Friend said, if the Minister does not accept the amendments this evening or give an undertaking that the Government will move similar amendments in the other place, our noble Friends act accordingly.
It is a fundamental principle of a compensation scheme that professional fees should be paid. No one would argue with that. In any statutory compensation scheme, it should be possible to claim reasonable professional fees. In many cases of compulsory purchase, interest is also paid.
As I said in Committee, it seems entirely reasonable that, since the Inland Revenue and Her Majesty's Customs and Excise charge interest on late tax and VAT payments, if the Government delay paying compensation under the Bill, they should also pay interest. Not only is that equitable: it gives the Government an incentive to agree to the compensation and get it paid as soon as possible. If people's livelihoods are being taken away, they deserve to have their compensation paid quickly.
New subsection (2B)(c) in amendment No. 8 provides for 60 per cent. payment in advance. Again, I declare an interest as one of only two chartered surveyors in the House. I have drawn up such claims in the past. When there are two opposing valuers--as I am sure will be the
case here--it is easy to get to the reasonable quantum of a claim quite quickly, although the parties often disagree about the last little bit and may have to go to arbitration.9.30 pm
As the Bill will make statutory provision for compensation once it has been amended properly in the other place, it is wholly reasonable that a large proportion--personally, I think that 60 per cent. is about right--should be paid in advance. That will help with the costs of resettlement and so on. Some of the payments may be taxable, so it will help if some money is paid in advance and some a little later.
New subsection (2B)(d) in amendment No. 8 concerns clearing land and equipment. I have been involved in agriculture all my life and I know how quickly buildings can become out of date. I have no doubt that the specialist buildings and equipment will be completely useless for anything else, so it is wholly reasonable that compensation should be paid to allow the land to be rendered fit for other purposes. If the buildings are not demolished, they may well be subject to rates, even though the business is not being carried on. In that circumstance, I have no doubt that the owner or lessee of the land would want to demolish them as quickly as possible.
If the state is forcing people to give up their business, it is right to include the items listed in paragraph (e) in the heads of claim. I have no doubt that expenses will be incurred in cancellation of contracts. There may be long-term contracts and some may even contain penalty clauses in the event of premature termination.
I suppose that "other reasonable disturbance costs" could include loss of income. The Minister needs to come clean about that. He said:
- Yes, the Bill allows compensation for income. My hon. Friend's Bill specifically ruled that out. During the discussion that we had in that Committee--because, as I said, the Government must pay in the end--
- I accepted that there would be an amendment that did not bar the consideration of income.--[Official Report, Standing Committee E, 6 June 2000; c. 62.]
I would contend that, if the Government do not pay for loss of income, the claims will rapidly end up before the European Court of Human Rights as a fundamental violation of property rights. Perhaps the Minister, in declaring that the Bill complies with the European convention on human rights, will tell us how that can be so if he is not providing a statutory basis for compensating loss of income. I look forward with great interest to his response.
Mr. Morley: The amendments are very important. The hon. Member for North-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Moss) moved them in a reasonable way and made a number of fair points, which we discussed in Committee in some detail and I tried to address in some detail. I also tried to be as helpful as possible, bearing in mind that, as the hon. Gentleman rightly said, the Bill is an enabling measure. The Bill provides powers to make the compensation scheme. It is not appropriate to include enormous detail of the scheme in the Bill. The draft compensation scheme
will go out to consultation and involve independent assessment of its various aspects, to which I shall come in a moment.
Mr. Hogg: If the Minister is right about that--obviously he is, in a sense--would it not be right to use the affirmative resolution procedure? Then the Minister would have to lay a draft scheme for the approval of the House and the House would at least have an opportunity to express a view on it. At present, the probability is that the House will never have such an opportunity.
Mr. Morley: A draft scheme will be produced, circulated and opened to consultation. The right hon. and learned Gentleman will appreciate from his time in government that I follow the professional advice of departmental advisers on the use of affirmative and negative resolution procedures.
I shall deal with the amendments one by one. The right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham and the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) were right in their interpretation of amendment No. 5. It would extend a requirement to make a compensation scheme to the National Assembly for Wales. That would be superfluous because there are no fur farms in Wales.
I sympathised in Committee with the points made by the hon. Member for North-East Cambridgeshire about the requirement for MAFF to make a compensation scheme in England. That was one issue debated by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Garston (Maria Eagle) during the passage of her private Member's Bill, on which there was much consultation with the National Farmers Union--when, of course, we listened to points made by fur farmers.
I draw hon. Members' attention to clause 5(1), which states:
- The appropriate authority may (and, in the case of the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, shall) by order make a scheme for the making of payments.
Amendment No. 6 and the first parts of amendment No. 7 and new schedule 1 address aspects that can perfectly be part of consultation on the scheme. I caution the hon. Member for North-East Cambridgeshire against requiring great detail in the Bill. I know that it is not his intention, but a quest for such detail can be restrictive and make it more difficult to respond to consultation and include aspects that people feel are appropriate. We believe that the current provision is adequate.
As the hon. Member for North-East Cambridgeshire said, there is an appeals procedure via arbitration or the Lands Tribunal--two opportunities. Setting up an advisory body is a complicated and bureaucratic approach to the issue. We have already said that, in drawing up the draft compensation scheme, independent assessors will visit fur farmers to consider what should be part of a compensation scheme and, of course, of the valuation.
Although those assessors will report to MAFF, they are individual assessors--chartered accountants, for example. They are governed by their professional bodies, as those hon. Members who are chartered accountants know well. There is an element of independence within the
assessment that we are proposing, so such an external body, with all the bureaucracy and possible delay that it would entail, is unnecessary.Amendment No. 8 contains a list of compensation provisions, put forward in the light of the consultation exercise. I made it clear in Committee that many of those are perfectly reasonable and valid. In Committee, the Government accepted much of what was put forward, and the Bill provides the power for such a detailed scheme. However, we are back to the problem that to include too much detail in the Bill would be restrictive in a way that I know the hon. Member for North-East Cambridgeshire would not wish.
Mr. Hunter: I have read and re-read the Parliamentary Secretary's comments in Committee on the issue of compensation, but I cannot see a categorical assurance that loss of income will be reflected in the scheme. Can the Minister clarify that point?
Mr. Morley: The original Bill promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Garston deliberately precluded compensation for loss of income. In the light of representations that we have received, this Bill provides for compensation for loss of income, and that will rightly feature in the consultation process. The independent assessors will, among other things, assess income when they visit farmers when the Bill receives Royal Assent.
I was tempted by amendment No. 10 in the spirit of moving the Bill forward. I recognise that there are legitimate concerns about compensation, and I can give the clear undertaking that Ministers will not unreasonably withhold agreement to go to arbitration. I am happy to put that assurance on the record.
Amendment No. 11 relates to the time scale for compensation. I repeat that I understand that many fur farmers want a compensation scheme up and running as soon as possible. When I last met them they said that they were anxious to have some clarity about where they stood. If there was to be a Bill, they wanted it to make progress and have it implemented as quickly as possible so that they could make their decisions and be compensated accordingly. That is what we have tried to do. We must have the consultation period. It is a convention that, in general, no Act of Parliament should be brought into operation earlier than two months after Royal Assent.
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