The Compensation Controversy
By making a reasonable concession over compensation to the owners of requisitioned property needed for town-planning the Government has secured the safe passage of the Town and Country Planning Bill, for the hostile amendment moved by Mr. Hore-Belisha on Wednesday secured only 58 votes, against 324, in the lobby. Since the amendment raised the whole contested question it is unlikely that any further serious trouble will be encountered in either House. It has to be admitted that in all arrangements of this order ideal justice is unattainable, but nothing is threatened comparable with the injustice inevitably involved in a system whereby one man is conscripted for the army and sent abroad to risk his life while his next-door neighbour gets munition-work at high wages at home. Under the Government's new proposals the owner-occupier of requisitioned property may get compensation up to 30 per cent. above the 1939 market prices. Mr. W. S. Morrison, in the best speech he has yet made on the Bill, explained that the additional compensation was in reality in respect, not of increased value of the property, but for disturbance of the occupier, and in view of the fact that to secure new accommodation would inevitably cost him more than his own house did. This is the case for differ- entiating between the owner-occupier and the investor-owner, and on the whole it may be accepted, though there will undoubtedly be cases where a man who has purchased house-property as a genuine and reasonable investment will suffer hardship.
Previous page
