The Gazette 1967/71

work was undertaken, it should first be made clear that the individual members of the Working Party had only a limited experience of practical conveyancing, although two members had had some experience of conveyancing in England and elsewhere in the Commonwealth as well as locally. We thus regarded it as supremely im portant that we should have the fullest discussions with persons in day-to-day practice of convey ancing, whether privately or in the capacity of a building society or government legal adviser. Accordingly we had a large number of sessions, some more formal than others, and the comments and criticisms which were made either of our conceptual framework or (more commonly) of the detailed working of a scheme as particularised in our draft legislation were invaluable and often resulted in major revision. One or two of those consulted urged us to scrap the whole of the land law and substitute some simpler alternative method of holding land. Attractive though this might seem at first glance, we soon came to the conclusion that such a draconian solution would be quite impractical and the most we could hope to do would be to rewrite and consolidate the existing statute law while at the same time elimin ating "mystique, archaism, arbitrary hurdles and mumbo-jumbo" (see para. 6 of our Report). Again the opinion was sometimes held that there was no need for reform (though no one was able to sustain this view under cross-examination!). Perhaps the best answer to anyone still inclined to this viewpoint would be to direct his attention to the Fifth Schedule to the draft Property Bill (Northern Ireland). There he will see listed for repeal some 112 statutes, usually in whole. If the average conveyancer is disturbed to learn that there are such statutes in force as the Clandestine Mortgages Act (Ireland) 1697, the Leasing Powers Amendment Act for Religious Purposes in Ireland 1795 or more exotic, the Custom of England that Land of Bastard without their reverts to Lord to be observed in Ireland (22 Hen. 3 (1238)), to name but three of the 112 listed, we hope that he will be more reconciled to finding an intellig ible code contained in a total of the 280 clauses in the draft Property Bill. This bill, incidentally, includes the general law of landlord and tenant (Deasy's Act being amongst the proposed repeals)

and the law of wills. We deal separately with the problem of fee farm and other periodic rents in a separate draft bill, the Periodic Rents Bill. The Main Reforms Proposed The principles to which we had regard as far as either possible or expedient were: — (a) Simplification of Conveyancing, (b) Assimilation of the law of Northern Ireland to that of England (one good reason for this being the desirability of utilisation of the ex cellent precedent books published in England), (c) Assimilation of the law relating to unregistered land to that relating to registered land. (d) Assimilation of land law to that governing other types of property, (e) Catering for the needs of person dealing with land and any special needs in Northern Ire land, (f) Settling doubts as to existing law, (g) Removal of injustices, and (h) Easy accessability of the law (see Para. 6). Before discussing briefly some of the detailed proposals it should be emphasised that we exer cised the maximum possible care to create a com plete "code" whose provisions interlocked satis factorily. A serious study of the proposals could only be made by a careful perusal of the draft bills themselves, and what follows is only a highly selective bird's-eye view. Furthermore, we not unexpectedly encountered great difficulties in drafting some of the provisions dealing with the more obscure corners of land law — e.g. the con version of perpetually renewable freehold leases into terms of years — rarely met in practice, no doubt, but an essential component in a complete code. Not infrequently the Working Party would devote two or three meetings to the drafting and wider implications of a single sub-clause, and would still be loathe to undertake that the whole is free from errors, inconsistencies or omissions. Detailed Proposals (1) Reducation in Number of Legal Estates We followed the Law of Property Act 1925 in the proposal to reduce the number of legal estates to two, viz. an estate in fee simple absolute in possession and a term of years (sic). Thus 208