826 Speech by the Minister of Agriculture. [Dec, 



tion. If, in spite of this, Parliament should decide to reject the 

 Bill, I can only say that, so far as I am concerned, I shall not 

 introduce another, and I doubt very much whether anyone else 

 will ever be in a position to propose such favourable terms 

 again. 



Difficulties in the "Way of Retrospective Legislation. — Now a 



point about tenants. I hope you will agree that I am not 

 seeking to shirk any difficult points. I know there is one 

 difficult point, and if I do not mention it now I shall be 

 asked about it afterwards, and that is with regard to the 

 position of tenants whose tenancies came to an end at 

 JNIichaelmas, and who wish the provisions of the Bill to be made 

 retrospective. I have very great sympathy with those cases. 

 I have thought a very great deal and very anxiously about them , 

 and I have gone into all the possibilities on one side and the 

 other. I recognise that owing to the fact that when the Bill 

 was originally introduced we said we wished it to come into 

 operation on September 1st, great expectations were aroused. 

 But the discussions have taken longer than we anticipated. 

 Other matters have come in the way, and now the Bill obviously 

 cannot be law by September 1st last. I am not going to give 

 any pledges, I hope it may be passed by January 1st, but 

 certainly not before then. As a result of this delay a large 

 number of tenants, notably in Worcestershire, have been very 

 seriously affected by losing the protection w^hich the Bill would 

 have given them if it had been law by September 1st. But 

 after all the principle of the Bill was that only tenancies 

 which expired after the Bill was passed should reap the benefits 

 of its provisions. We were too optimistic about the date. We 

 could not foresee some of the delays. The House of Commons 

 refused, perhaps very rightly, to be hurried, but the results are 

 none the less unfortunate and hard for those particular tenants. 

 In every situation there are hard cases, but the trouble is I do 

 not see any practical way of dealing with this particular one. 

 Parliament has a particular dislike of retrospective legislation; 

 it has been tried again and again and nearly always been 

 rejected; and I see very little hope of the House of Commons 

 adopting a different view now. In many cases settlements 

 have been effected with regard to these changes of tenancies, 

 and it would be impossible now to re-open settlements which 

 are already closed. Generally speaking, the difficulties are so 

 great that, most regretfully, I have come to the conclusion 

 that there is no chance of this portion of the Bill being made 



