| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
5.45 pm
The Minister appears serene, but I hope that, when he winds up this little debate, he will be able to give us a much clearer idea of when we can begin to consider compensation for non-income assets. Will we start with a clean sheet, and will he say that his experts will be able to consider the way in which the businesses operate and the assets that they deploy, without any constraint or guidelines from him or his officials?
My hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Mr. Atkinson) was helpful when he described his constituent's fur farm which had been concreted over. I have been led to believe that other fur farms occupy a considerable acreage of a variety of land. I do not know how many strawberries the hon. Member for Garston had in mind when she came up with her idea, but it strikes me that there could be a wide variation in the nature of the non-income assets involved. I hope that that means that there will be a flexible approach towards the compensation that might be available for them.
The point that I am making in my introductory remarks is that more questions remain than have been answered already. The Bill is in its final stages and people's livelihoods have been threatened. Their lordships have tried to be helpful in sending the amendments to us, but I am not sure that they take us much further forward. Unless the Minister is a lot more persuasive than he has been hitherto, I will not be persuaded that we are heading in the right direction.
So much for the preliminaries: let us get down to business. The issue of timing has come up in the debate already, and I have considered it. On the face of it, one would have thought that the matter would and should have been resolved already, and not just by clause 5, which is the subject of the amendments. I looked for guidance in clause 7 (3), which states:
- Section 5 shall come into force at the end of the period of two months beginning with the day on which this Act is passed.
-
It is a matter of detail, but I presume that the term "the Act is passed" means Royal Assent rather than the Act being finally approved by both Houses of Parliament. I do not want to make much of an issue of that, because I suspect that the time difference between the two will not be great. It seems clear that the Act will come into force two months after it is passed.
The passage of time can have an important influence on the valuation of the assets. For example, on income or non-income assets, the passage of time may lead to considerable variation in the values of the product itself--the unfortunate animals--or the land and buildings. Those values may vary considerably upwards or downwards in a few months and they certainly would in two or three years. That could considerably affect the amount of compensation provided.
We need to know much more from the Minister on the important subject of the period between the Act being passed and the date of January 2003 or beyond. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham asked, will the compensation scheme continue to exist beyond that date? Although the businesses may be arbitrarily ended by statute on a certain date, it is perfectly possible that there will be a lengthy period beyond that before the formalities are complete and the compensation is required or payable. We need to know more about that.
Mr. Hogg: My right hon. Friend might press the Minister on another matter. A business that closes down after the Bill is enacted may do so not because its activity is prohibited but because the owner is seeking to get the best value at that time. We do not want the Minister then to say that no compensation is payable because the closure is the result not of the prohibition but of the fur farmer's choice to dispose of his land at the best possible price.
Mr. Forth: My right hon. and learned Friend helpfully expands a point that I was trying to make. There is considerable doubt about the scope or flexibility in the application of clause 5 and the amendments tabled to it, and whether a voluntary liquidation or going out of business will be treated in the same way as an enforced going out of business. There is a difference. For example, if the value of pelts or, for a reason that we cannot foresee, the value of land or buildings, varied considerably, could farmers determine the timing of their compensation claims or would it be arbitrarily imposed on them by the Minister, his experts and officials? We do not know the answer to that, but we must have it before we decide whether to approve the amendments.
The amendments hint at that. Lords amendment No. 2 says that the scheme
- need not provide for the making of payments in respect of all income losses or all non-income losses or (as the case may be) in respect of all businesses--
Mr. Bercow: I am of a suspicious turn of mind, as my right hon. Friend is aware. We are told that clause 5 will come into force two months after the Bill becomes an Act. We are also told that clause 5(5) will facilitate an appeal or reference to the Lands Tribunal for determination when someone has been notified of the amount that he is to be paid but is dissatisfied with it. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the provision in Lords amendment No. 2 for circumstances in which no compensation arrangements are to be made could be used as a lever against someone who was intending to negotiate over a relatively long period--as near as possible to the rest of the Act coming into force in 2003--to browbeat him to an early settlement on the basis that he might otherwise get nothing at all?
Mr. Forth: My hon. Friend is right. Once one gets into that territory, such considerations--regrettably--become all too possible. My hon. Friend's question leads me to ask whether the Lands Tribunal will deal only with disputes that are about amounts or whether they could be about whether compensation should be payable.
Mrs. Llin Golding (Newcastle-under-Lyme): What if the owner of a fur farm dies and has no one in place to manage it? The loss would be tremendous. If he dies within the three years, what happens to compensation for his family? Is it reduced because the farm is non-existent?
Mr. Forth: I am grateful to the hon. Lady for making that important point. It is a subset of the argument that I made a moment ago concerning the possible variation in value, which would decrease rather rapidly in the tragic circumstances that the hon. Lady described. Is the Minister satisfied that proper arrangements will be made if such events unfold? Does he agree that the value--income or non-income--could be dramatically affected by them? I hope that he will respond to our concerns about that.
On the Lands Tribunal, hon. Members who have been following the Bill's tortuous passage through Parliament will recall that we wanted a body other than the Lands Tribunal to play a part in the scheme, because we were unhappy about that organisation's ability and expertise to deal with such matters properly. The compensation arrangements as set out in clause 5 and the amendments have given us a different angle to consider and have given rise to another doubt in our minds.
If the Minister, feeling more hard-hearted than normal, were to invoke the provisions of Lords amendment No. 2 and say that he was not prepared to provide compensation, could that be regarded as a dispute under clause 5(5) and
be referred to the Lands Tribunal? In other words, will the Lands Tribunal be a court of appeal against the Minister--urged on by his officials, experts or others--saying that no payment will be made? We need to know, because that will be an important aspect of the way in which the scheme operates and relevant to the reassurances that we want to give to people whose livelihoods are about to be taken away from them.
Mr. Hogg: My right hon. Friend gets to the root of the scheme. The problem is that the compensation and the categories of people who are entitled to it flow from the scheme as published. Does my right hon. Friend accept that the real problem is that the House will never have the opportunity to discuss--and, therefore, to shape--the scheme on which the answers to the question posed by my right hon. Friend will ultimately depend?
Mr. Forth: I am prepared--just once more--to be slightly more generous to the Minister than my right hon. and learned Friend. The Minister could give us an undertaking even now--
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |