(2) The foregoing Sub-section shall apply to an association providing land for allotments in like manner as it applies to a council, if at the request of the association the authority by which a rate is levied agrees that it shall so apply.

I beg to move, in Subsection (2), after the word "association" ("apply to an association"), to insert the words holding land from a council and providing it for allotments in like manner as it applies to a council and to an association. This is a little bit complicated. In the first part of Clause 17, a council providing land for allotments is allowed to go to the rating authority and say, "Will you please rate us as if we were the occupiers, without regard to the rent which we charge our tenants?" The Committee has just decided that that rent may continue to be, as it now is, a very heavy rental. At any rate, it is some little relief that the council may say to a rating authority, "We would like to be the body rated on the rent that we pay to the owner, rather than on the rent that is paid to us by our tenants." So far so good. Then, in Subsection (2), the Bill goes on to say that an allotment association may also go to the raring authority and ask to be rated themselves, instead of being rated on the value of the land to the tenants as reflected in the rents they pay. When I moved this in Commmittee, my right hon. Friend making, I think, art acute criticism, said "What is there to make certain that the rating authorities will regard the allotment association as a safe tenant to pay the rates, and what security, therefore, is there that the rates will be paid by them?" Therefore, he was not willing to go as far as I wished to go in Committee when I moved that any association might have the same power as the local authority itself has of going to a rating authority, and asking that the rate should be imposed upon them, and not upon their tenants. To meet his objection, I now narrow it, and only propose to give the power to associations which hold land from a council, and are accepted by the council as being fitting tenants so far as the payment of rent is concerned, and, therefore, as persons of solidity and standing. I ask that in those cases, where associations hold land from a council, that fact may be taken as a sufficient indication that if they are regarded as sufficiently stable bodies to pay their rent, they will also be regarded as sufficiently stable bodies to pay their rates, and to give, as my Amendment proposes, these particular associations holding land from a council the right to go to a rating authority and to say. "We wish to be rated as a body holding land, rather than on the value which our individual tenants obtain from the land."

The argument in favour of this, of course, is that, although the tenants pay rents for their holdings, more is actually included as a matter of convenience in those rents than actually the value of the occupation of the land. The rents are calculated to include the annual subscription to the allotment society, and are calculated to leave a little surplus to provide a nucleus, say, for the prizes at the allotment show, and also to produce perhaps a few pounds which may be given to the secretary as a honorarium for his services. It is rather hard that in these cases the rates should be assessed on the total rents paid by the tenants, which are often, as I say, not purely rent for the land. I think I have tried to meet the point of my right hon. Friend in regard to the possibility of his feeling it inadvisable to make this concession to associations because of their possible instability by confining it only to associations which are accepted as good tenants so far as their rents are concerned, and, therefore might be expected also to be good tenants so far as their rates are concerned.

Sir A. BOSCAWEN:

The Clause enables the council that provides allotments to assess the association instead of assessing the individual, and I think we will all agree that that matter is of some importance. It further provides that where an association provides allotments the association should be rated as a whole, if it desires, instead of rating the individual member. I think it is only right that the rating authority should have discretion to say whether they think the association asking for this arrangement is a body that they can trust and rely upon to pay the rates. Now my right hon. Friend wishes to make an exception from that discretion of the rating authority in cases where the association holds land from a council. Where the association is one holding land from the council which is the rating authority, obviously the council can do what it likes. Most rating authorities will prefer to deal with one body rather than a number of individuals. I do not consider the