The Minister has said that local authorities ought to be able to look ahead for at least seven years; and perhaps it is desirable that we should explain from this side of the House why we think the period should be four years and not seven. The House will recollect that development plans have to be revised in quinquennial periods. A plan lasts for five years and then a review is held, and it is revised as necessary. We think that in the case of agricultural land the local authorities should be able to look ahead for five years, and say, "If we desire this land within five years we will designate, or if it is desired for a public purpose or for purposes of enforcing a plan we will take it." We say that if they have not taken it as they approach the end of the five-year period, the owner should have the right to extricate himself from the difficulty in which he is placed—and it is a very real difficulty—by this act of designation.

The Minister said in effect—I am not using his exact words—that only in very rare cases would agricultural land be designated. That seems to me to be a most surprising statement, and I hope sincerely that it is correct. I have envisaged all along that local authorities will go pretty quickly about designating agricultural land because, after all, it is the only vacant land open to them to designate for public acquisition. It is unlikely that they will designate land which is already developed, and I should have thought that the most fruitful source of designation by local authorities, either on their own behalf or on behalf of Government Departments or statutory undertakers, would be land which is already uncovered by buildings and used for agricultural purposes.

We ought not to overlook the human aspect of this project. It really is a great difficulty which we are placing on individuals. First of all, there is the difficulty of the owner-occupier. He sees that his land is designated, and so he says, "I must find another farm." He can afford only one farm, and he is in occupation of that; and yet he has this threat hanging over him that within a space of seven years, in the present case, it is likely to be acquired for public purposes. He is unable to take steps to find another property; at any rate he is unable to make an offer for another property, unless he is a very rich man and can afford two farms, until he is certain that his farm will in fact be taken.

All this time—for a period of seven years—this uncertainty is hanging over him. It is not only hanging over the farmer but hanging over all those whose ways of life are dependent on the farmer. It is hanging over his foreman, cattlemen and farm servants who are all dependent on him, and who may have been working for him for years, living upon the farm, wondering, as he is wondering, what their future is to be. If the objection were only on personal grounds we might not feel so strongly, although we feel that it should be strongly pressed, but it is on national grounds, against the gloomy background not only of world food shortage but of the need in these islands to look inwards and to make the most of our natural resources that we feel strongly; for this House is bound, in these days of economic crisis, to look to the farmer and to the importance of not doing anything that can be avoided to injure the national industry of agriculture.

Many of these men whose land will be designated for public acquisition will want to launch out into new ways, improved methods, different methods, perhaps, under the stress of the need that will be placed upon all of them in the coming years to do all that they can to produce as much food as possible from their own soil. They may want to turn a mixed farm into a dairy farm to produce more milk. It will not be worth while for them to start altering the farm buildings, building perhaps a milk parlour, and making all the alterations that are necessary. These points have been brought to the notice of the House before, and I think that the House is fully seized of the importance of the question, but I suggest from these two points of view—from the personal point of view of hardship to individuals and from the national point of view of the sovereign importance of agriculture at the present time—that this Amendment should be supported.