Compulsory purchase orders are theft
Recently Labour has proposed to permit local councils the power to compulsory purchase order greenbelt land at a ‘fair price’. This is aimed at expanding the supply of land to meet their ambitious target of building 1.5 million homes. Little economic damage is likely to occur because taking land from its owners does not diminish its supply. Nevertheless, the proposal shows a total disregard for private property. Indeed, the proposal simply amounts to theft.
Compulsory purchase ordering is taking an individual’s property without their consent — that’s the textbook definition of theft. It doesn’t matter whether a private person or the state commits it, theft is always wrong as it violates the individual rights which ensure the proper harmony of men pursuing their own flourishing.
Proponents might argue that it’s not stealing as the government compensates the landowners for their property. Yet, no one believes that someone stealing a laptop becomes any less of a thief when they leave a grateful fiver at the till. State officials are no less culpable for taking land from landowners and paying them a pittance of it.
Labour stalwartly defends this thievery, arguing it is helping to promote the public interest by better enabling them to meet their housing targets. It must be admitted, the finite supply of land means this form of tax on land will not diminish its supply, and landowners receiving a smaller sum for their land may be made up for by people getting cheaper houses instead.
Nevertheless, the public interest still does not warrant theft. A young family may derive greater use from your second car than you do, but that does not grant them the right to take it. So the greater use of taking land and putting it to housing does not warrant taking it from landowners who want to use it for agriculture either. I’m sure homeowners would object to the bottom of their garden being taken from them at a tiny price and built on.
Perhaps you dismiss these moral analogies, protesting, “Does public policy not stand or fall at the altar of the public interest?” Emphatically, it does not. The pursuit of happiness by each individual is an ultimate value: This truth holds for everyone. Our individual rights to private property which partially constitute justice protects this pursuit. To violate individual rights is to use a person as mere means to your own ends. This is unjustified because the pursuit of your own ends is not of any greater value to warrant treating them as such. The proper harmony of mankind is constituted by a natural principle of respect for each other; not promoting the public interest.
But many in Labour will agree that ensuring the public interest does not constitute justice. Instead, they will justify stripping landowners of their right to sell property at its full value by saying that justice demands greater economic equality. A prominent philosopher to inform Fabian socialists on the specific question of land was Henry George. In his Progress and Poverty of 1879, he wrote:
‘If I clear a forest, drain a swamp, or fill a morass, all I can justly claim is the value given by these exertions. They give me no title to the land itself, no claim other than to my equal share with every other member of the community in [its]... value.’
Contrary to George, individuals are entitled to the land itself. If Georgism contends equality of the return from the land must be ensured because we are all equals, consistency insists upon implementing an equality of return from our natural talents too. Where the very strong, very pretty and very intelligent earn more than their brethren from the same efforts, the fruits of their labour must be extracted at a higher rate. But extracting the personal energy of an individual via taking their creations is wrong. Given this is the conclusion of Georgist reasoning, it must be rejected. Hence, the Georgist justification for compulsory purchase orders must be rejected as well.
Perhaps it will be contended landowners are not entitled to the full value of their land because they exist in a situation of injustice insofar as the unjust violence behind the planning system has restricted the supply of building land, boosting its price. Maybe it is wrong to be advantaged from this injustice, and the state is simply righting this wrong by ensuring homebuyers get the lower price a just system would deliver. In the pre-planning permission 1930s, a house’s cost attributable to land was less than 30% of it; now it is around a staggering 70%.
Breaching property rights is not warranted by restoring a just state to the people — here, lower house prices for ordinary people (which would occur without planning permission). Funeral directors benefit from murderers killing people, yet, I doubt any of us would say the family of the murdered could claim the funeral director’s profits as compensation. Landowners who have benefited from injustice should not be subjected to the theft of their land, or, the theft of the full profits from its sale, either. As the maxim dictates: “Two wrongs don’t make a right.”
Labour’s proposal to permit local councils to use compulsory purchase orders against landowners simply amounts to theft: It must be opposed. None of the arguments as to why land is distinct from other property hold water. And an overriding concern to maximise the public interest is misguided at best. In the end, respecting people requires respecting their private property; and that requires not thieving from them, irrespective of who you are, or, whether you call it compulsory purchase ordering or not.
Charles Amos is a trainee accountant and Human Respect Fellow for the Foundation for Harmony and Prosperity. He writes The Musing Individualists Substack in his spare time.
Charles Amos is a trainee accountant and Human Respect Fellow for the Foundation for Harmony and Prosperity. He writes The Musing Individualists Substack in his spare time
