Leasehold and Commonhold Reform

Debate between Peter Bottomley and Norman Lamb

Thursday 21st December 2017 Westminster Hall

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

My hon. Friend makes a point that shows the truth of what I said at the beginning: the Government’s announcement today has gone further than people expected, but it does not cover everything. There needs to be a forum in which the Government can actually listen to the voices of those who represent the unfortunate ones who are caught in a trap and find ways of solving that.

By the way, that if someone is to talk about me and uses “you”, may I ask them please use it in the plural sense? The hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) and others have given help over the years as well. We have to make this a “we” thing that is cross party and effective.

[Norman Lamb (North Norfolk) (LD)]

May I congratulate everyone who has been involved in this campaign so far? I am acutely aware that every time the hon. Gentleman gives way, he has to get up and down from his chair with his dodgy leg, so I apologise for that. I want to draw attention to another group: long leaseholders of the National Trust. I have a number of constituents who are in that situation. Even though the period of the lease goes well into the future—2043, in one case—they almost certainly cannot sell their homes because they have no idea what the modern ground rent will be at that date. They are trapped completely. It is really important for the National Trust to behave responsibly.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

That is a point that the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) might raise if she speaks. My right hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Sir Hugo Swire) sadly cannot be here because he has a Secretary of State visiting his constituency, but he asked that the question of National Trust leaseholders be raised. I also want to pass on the strong encouragement from my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach), who has a constituency engagement and cannot be here but wishes to be associated with all that we are saying.

How is it that past Ministers failed to get a grip or an understanding? One reason—I make this direct accusation —is that the present and past chairmen of LEASE, the Leasehold Advisory Service, were not up to the job. They were supposed to be the ones providing impartial advice to leaseholders and others. In practice—perhaps, they can argue, because they not properly or fully funded—they had to raise money commercially. Their idea of raising money commercially was to run a conference where lawyers, accountants, surveyors and freeholders came together to swap ideas on how to put one over on the leaseholders. Only when the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership charity started pushing did some of the leaseholders get invited to a little bunfight afterwards. The trustees of LKP were not invited to the conferences, but some of them decided to go anyway. That is a crazy way of dealing with things. When I raised that with Deep Sagar and similar issues with Roger Southam— the present LEASE chairman, who I doubt will be chairman for very long—they did not respond in a way that I regard as proper.

My biggest condemnation is this. Who knew most about the problems of leaseholders? The advisory service that leaseholders would ring up. Who should pass on to Ministers that there are problems? The Leasehold Advisory Service, LEASE. Did it? No. Because it is pre-Christmas, I will not use the sort of language I would be tempted to use if I were in a coffee shop. We then had the problem that staffing on this side of the housing department in the Department for Communities and Local Government was not strong enough. I am glad that there are now more people there who have more of a commitment to more engagement.

The Minister needs to have a quiet word. When embargoed notices of what was going to come out at midnight were sent out, every single journalist was obviously going to ring up Martin Boyd, Sebastian O’Kelly and one or two MPs who were involved, who had not had a copy of the embargoed press notice. It would be far more sensible to look on the major charity in this field as partners, not as people who need to be approached third hand for comments. As it happens, their comments were good and supportive, and I am glad they did that. However, I think the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse will agree that LKP should be regarded as trusted friends.

LKP is the secretariat for the all-party group. On behalf of all of us, I would like to pay tribute to it for all that it does, together with Katherine O’Riordan, who does so much work in preparing our meetings and roundtables, which has helped to raise the general level of understanding. While talking of praise, I thank the lawyers who have given advice to both us and Government on how to make changes that will work.

I had a whole series of other issues in my prepared notes. If the debate dies out towards the end, perhaps I will speak again after the Minister, but if my colleagues on both sides of the Chamber fill up most of the time, I do not mind. We can deal with the issues that I have not raised in detail either by correspondence or if, as I asked at business questions today, the Government hold a debate in their own time on their proposals. That will get a widespread welcome, and we can then work out the timetable, the modalities of making the change and how we can get the Law Commission recommendations to come forward as fast as possible.

We can then re-gather here in 10 years’ time and say that, since Christmas 2017, substantial progress has been made for new leaseholders, who will not be exposed to all these horrors, and on the ways forward for existing owners of leases, who will be messed up unless we make a change on extending leases and the costs of getting permission to do all sorts of simple things. Sir David, I think that this debate will be remembered not just for your chairmanship, but also because it has brought us all together to make change for the better.