Speeches, etc.

Margaret Thatcher

Speech to Suffolk Conservatives

Document type: Speeches, interviews, etc.
Venue: Ipswich
Source: Thatcher Archive: CCOPR 934/75
Editorial comments: Embargoed until 1200.
Importance ranking: Minor
Word count: 592
Themes: Agriculture, Privatized & state industries, Public spending & borrowing, Housing, Local government

STOP THE COMMUNITY LAND BILL

An Englishman's home was once his castle. Now everyone who owns a piece of land is at risk.

If the Town Hall considers land is suitable for development, they have the power under the new Bill to take it over. So everyone is subject to the arbitrary discretion of the Council with virtually no right of appeal.

In addition, the Council can declare what are called Disposal Notification areas. If you have more than an acre—a big garden or vegetable patch, or somewhere to keep a few hens or a few pigs—then you can't sell your home until the Town Hall have a chance to grasp it first. If you want to move, you must notify the Council—then your house can be purchased—by order of the State.

The Community Land Bill gives far-reaching powers to the Council to grab now and think later.

If your house or garden, or your smallholding, is in the way of their plans—then too bad—you will be on the list of compulsory purchase. [Beginning of section checked against ITN Late News:] The new Bill really makes a nonsense of the freehold and it pierces the heart of a property-owning democracy. And who pays for it all?. Unfortunately it is going to come from money borrowed by the State. [end p1] We Know this morning that the State has had to borrow yet more money and we know who will have to repay that money.

All the thousands of extra bureaucrats needed to run this Socialist vendetta must of course be paid, and the cost of their offices, expenses, travel and endless reports must be underwritten by whom? By the taxpayer, you and I. [End of section checked against ITN Archive: Late News.] Hundreds of millions of pounds of your money will be spent on capital and interest—as usual the people will foot the bill for this piece of Socialist dogma and extravagance. Here is where public expenditure can be well and truly cut.

What an outrageous waste of the taxpayers hard earned money! It won't produce one more house one minute earlier. It is an expensive way of employing more staff at the Town Hall to slow up the housebuilding programme. It is a way of making houses cost more. The Government's motto is— “all power to the form pushers: no freedom for the form fillers” .

Acres and acres of land will go to waste while local Councils decide what to do with it. And, of course, it means another vicious blow for farming because the Town Hall can take valuable agricultural land for development. In the unlikely event of there being any profits, they will not find their way back to farming.

Instead there will be a carve up between the local Councils and the Chancellor of the Denis HealeyExchequer. No doubt contributing a bit towards the huge cost of running this bloated scheme. The Land Bill also hits out at pensioners. This Government has refused to protect Pension Funds from the effects of the Bill. [end p2]

That means that people who rely on a firm's pension will not benefit from profits made from redeveloping the pensions schemes' own land.

Instead the Government will get it.

Just as the Government, under the Bill, would have taken money from the Churches and the Charities until the Conservatives forced them to change their minds.

Above all, the Land Bill is another blow to the freedom of everyone.

It's homes that are at risk.

It's pensions which will suffer.

The Community Land Bill does nothing for the community but strikes at all those who have tried to be thrifty and set something aside for themselves and their families.

It's expensive and it's harmful.

It's a real Socialist measure.

It's part of the wider vendetta being waged against freedom.