Localism Bill

Earl of Lytton Excerpts

Thursday 7th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

I start by reiterating that I hope it is clear that we on these Benches very much want to see the Government achieve their aspirations in these provisions. However, Amendment 144A in particular illustrates the danger we are getting into of making this very complicated and bureaucratic. For example, there is a proposition that transfers between companies in the same group should not be a relevant disposal. Let us reflect on how you would cast that provision. There are plenty of differing definitions of groups of companies around. If we think one step beyond that, what happens if you sell the shares of a company that owns the asset, but not the asset itself? If that company were not only to have the asset but another asset, for example, the group of pubs mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, where does that leave you? We ought to be focusing on something that is deliverable, even if at the edges it is a bit rough and not technically watertight. It offends me as an accountant to suggest that, but this group of amendments and the issues that were raised in respect of the previous amendment illustrate the complexity that we are in danger of building into this provision which could undermine it completely.

[The Earl of Lytton]

What the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, has just said highlights the fact that we are trying to talk about exclusions from something that would cover a potentially vast range of circumstances. I support the thrust of what he said. We need to reverse that so that we catch the transactions that need to be caught because in the global family and order of property transactions that could potentially be caught, the class of transaction that we are trying to catch is very small. The problem is the lack of definition, and therefore the clause has to be all-encompassing, and it sweeps up all these other things that other noble Lords have referred to. I think of situations where there might be transfers of assets one way or another between parish and rural community councils or between community groups of whatever form and structure. What about transfers of assets between various tiers of authorities? Are all these to be caught up? It seems to me that we are almost at the point of needing a category of owner that gets caught by the Bill, but I am not going to suggest that because I think there might be a simpler way of dealing with it, as the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, suggested. However, there is a relatively narrow class of circumstances, and it all boils down to the fact that we have these open-ended definitions. I plead with the Minister to find some way of rendering this down so that we can get to the nub of the issue and not have a one-line provision and then 1,000 lines of exclusions and caveats and things to try to exclude all the bits that have got caught up and should not be in there in the first place.