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(ii) The advantage would be that the initial period could not be challenged nor would it require legislation, and by the time the option came to be exercised, no doubt the political problem of what was to occur post 1997 would have been solved. Accordingly, the option itself would prove valuable at the date of its exercise and hence potentially now.
Accordingly, it would be better than no option at all.
(iii) This option would provide little advantage until the option was exercised, and by then the political problem might
have been resolved.
(a) Periodic Tenancy with Restricted Right of Determination by the Crown (see Section IV of Opinion)
(i) This possibility, so far as I am aware, has not been considered previously. The reason that indeterminate leases are invalid or operate as the grant of a freehold is that the whole landlord/tenant relationship requires there to be a reversion of the land ultimately to the landlord; without this, what appears to be a tenancy is construed by the courts to be the grant of a freehold in the case of a perpetua: lease, or to be void for uncertainty. Similarly, if the power of determining a lease is illusory the same principle applies In Clay & Sons v. B.R.B. 1971 Ch 725 an extremely strong Court of Appeal held that a periodic tenancy agreement stipulating that the landlord might determine it on notice but with a proviso that he (the B.R.B.) could only do so for specific purposes was held valid and was not caught by the rules governing leases. The proviso was that the premises were required for the landlord's own use. The court said:
"It may well be that if in a periodic tenancy an attempt was made to prevent the lessor ever determining
the tenancy, that would be so inconsistent with the stated bargain that either a greater estate must
be found to have been constituted or that the attempt
must be rejected.as, repugnant. But short of that
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