ABSTRACT
Chapter 6 describes the growing tensions within the coalition government over the rights to landed property. It accounts for the way the Labour Party retreated from a policy of land nationalisation in favour of seeking to recover the ‘unearned increment’ by nationalising the development rights in land, rather than the land itself. The chapter outlines the political response to the recommendations of the Uthwatt and Scott Reports. While Uthwatt led to an acute political crisis within the government, nearly breaking up the coalition less than a year before the 1945 general election, Scott produced a wider level of agreement, although no legislative proposals as such, apart from a decision to continue on a temporary basis with guaranteed prices for agriculture after the war and a general commitment in principle to create national parks. Finally, the chapter describes the way land-use control was regarded thereafter as the vehicle for recouping betterment (the unearned increment) and determining the level of compensation for land compulsorily purchased by the state. This new approach replaced the traditional policy of land reform based on the rating of site values.
