Leasehold Reform

Greg Knight Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

For most people, buying a house is the single largest investment that they make in their lives. Not only does it provide a home for them and their family, but it is also probably the biggest financial commitment that they have to meet each month. Anyone who has bought a new home knows how stressful and bewildering the process can be, particularly for first-time buyers. The mixture of stress and excitement of owning a new home means that many rely on advice from an array of advisors, including estate agents, lawyers, high-pressure salesmen and developers.

Often, when people are buying a house, they do not look at the issue of freehold and leasehold. They think that leasehold is cheaper, so they think that they will put that all off until the day they can afford to buy the lease. Many are not aware of the feudal nature of the property system in this country. Not only is the system outdated and unfair, but it has been made worse in recent years by the pure greed—it is greed, frankly—of certain house builders and property developers. The number of houses sold as leasehold has more than doubled between 1995 and 2015. The Minister mentioned that the figure has recently gone down. I wonder whether that is because of the scandal to which the Father of the House has just referred.

[Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)]

I am most grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. He is making a number of very good points. In the light of what he has just said, does he agree that it is essential that anyone taking on an estate in land, whether it be a leasehold or freehold, receives the best possible legal advice before they sign on the dotted line, so that they know precisely what commitments they are taking on? Are not some of these problems related to the fact that that advice is not particularly good?

[Mr Jones]

I will cover that in more detail later, but it was a point that was raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami). The right hon. Gentleman is right: the one thing that needs outlawing is a developer or an estate agent being able to refer a person to a solicitor who is supposed to be “acting in their best interests”. That should not happen. The legal advice should be completely independent. There is an unhealthy relationship between those people. It is okay saying that we should blame the individual buying the property, but they are often first-time buyers who do not understand the process.

The issue of flats has already been raised. I accept that we deal with flats in a particular way, but there is a perfectly simple system that is not leasehold. What we have seen over the past few years is houses being sold under leasehold arrangements. That is because certain developers have seen it as a way of maximising their profits. They do it in two ways. The first is by passing the charges on to the owners, when traditionally they should have been paid by the developer—I will come on to examples of that in my own constituency in a minute. The second, which was referred to earlier, is the monetarisation of the actual leases, which are not only being sold to individual companies, but, in some case, being put into baskets of leases. It can be bewildering for a person to find out who owns their lease from year to year.

The other scandal, which was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy), is around minor alterations. We are not talking about the wholesale redevelopment of a property, but, perhaps, a porch being moved or even a Sky dish being added, which have to be charged. It is no wonder that investors have got on to this. They know that the way that these leases have been constructed can mean a profitable business for them. They are not buying out of altruism; they are buying because they know that they can make money, and the people who are suffering are those who bought the leases.

I have already mentioned the issue of legal advice. Clearly, it is an issue that needs to be looked at. In many cases, if a person goes to some major housing developers, they will be told, “These are our recommended solicitors.” I am sorry, but that should be outlawed. The solicitor should be there to represent the buyer’s best interests. As the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight) has just said, the solicitor should be there saying, “No, don’t sign that, because it is not in your best interests.”

I know that Members will cite many examples in this debate, but I wish to raise just three in my own constituency. Members will not be surprised to hear that they involve a notorious company, Persimmon Homes, which is terrible at dealing with customers. It has made more than £1 billion of profit every year for the past five years, mainly funded by the Government’s Help to Buy scheme. The Government have done nothing to stop Persimmon’s sharp practices. Between 2012 and 2020, Persimmon built Roseberry Park in my constituency. Traditionally, when an estate is finished, the verges and common areas are passed over to the council, once they have been brought up to adoptable standards. But, lo and behold, on this site, they have not. Those areas are part of the lease, which means that the leaseholders have to take responsibility for the maintenance charges, which then go up and up. If buyers are asked whether they knew about this, they say, no, they did not, which gets back to the point about legal advice made by the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire—should they have signed this when they are taking on open-ended commitments. The site was finished in 2020, but the roads have still not been brought up to adoptable standards. It is anything to save money for Persimmon.

The other case involves Urpeth Grange. It is a small development site of 47 houses on a larger estate. Developers refused to pay the 15 years’ maintenance on an area of land and a play area and have passed it on to a management company, which is then owned by the leaseholders. Part of the planning permission was to have a play area. Well, if it is a play area, it should have been brought up to standard and passed on to the local authority, but, no, that did not happen. Even though everyone can use this play area, it is still the responsibility of the leaseholders. These sharp practices by Persimmon have been used to make more profit, and they are funded by the Government’s Help to Buy scheme.

Adult Social Care

Greg Knight Excerpts

Wednesday 8th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

I agree; indeed, I will mention workforce later.

The Government have, of course, responded to this issue in successive years, and have found extra central Government funds to pay local government, so we have proceeded from year to year, and although the system has been fragile, it has continued to operate. Of course, the background conditions are getting increasingly difficult. Inflation has an impact on social care providers. A cost of living survey done by social care provider MHA found that 94% of its community schemes had heard members or residents express concerns about the rising costs of living, and 49% of respondents said that the increased costs of transport specifically were a significant issue among their members. There is a danger that rising energy costs will significantly reduce the number of available services and have an immediate impact on discharge from the NHS into the community.

The Association of Directors of Adult Social Services has reported that nearly half of all directors of social care services are not sure that unpaid carers will be able to cope financially with the cost of living crisis, which could lead to further increased demand on paid-for social care services.

[Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does he agree that we still grossly undervalue carers?

[Damian Green]

My only caveat is that my right hon. Friend says “we”. In the community, we do not.

[Sir Greg Knight]

As a country.

[Damian Green]

Publicly, as a country, we may well do so. They are a hidden army of people acting well, purely out of generous motives and the desire to help loved ones, which is natural. They do not get enough reward and praise from the general public, even though many of those people are the best members of the general public.

There are other specific measures that the Government could take. I would hope that following April, adult social care providers could be defined as a vulnerable sector as part of the energy bill relief scheme; I think that would be of significant help. The County Councils Network has estimated that with inflation, it could cost councils £3.7 billion extra to keep social care services running. If that figure is anything like accurate, the quality of care will decrease if those providers are not defined as a vulnerable sector.

I will now move on to the central point of the debate, which is funding. The hon. Member for Sheffield South East has very eloquently made the case for what we all know to be true: adult social care is a huge strain. The way in which we currently fund it is something that local councils find unsustainable, and therefore, the system is now kept going through repeated one-off injections of central Government cash. That in itself is not sustainable as a system. Some years ago, I suggested an alternative way of getting the extra money we all need into the system. I will return to that proposal now, because if we step back, the problem is that social care—especially for the elderly, perhaps—is too opaque for those trying to understand it, with no apparent logic as to which conditions receive free NHS treatment and which do not. Moving directly on to the financial point, it is also unfair not to reward a lifetime of prudence. Those who have saved feel that their savings will simply disappear, while those who have not saved receive the same level of care.

There is also the fact—which is not often discussed—that funding social care out of council tax means that local authorities are reluctant to allow too many care homes, or indeed retirement housing, to be built, because they do not want an increasingly elderly population. The ageing population means that something like 50% of some councils’ spending already goes on social care. As the hon. Member for Sheffield South East said, that figure is projected to rise to 60%, and given the demographic trends that I have already mentioned, my fear is that some higher-tier authorities that are funding social care will end up as basically social care providers with a few libraries and a bit of money to spend on potholes, and not much else. A lot of essential council services will be swallowed up by the need for social care, as well as the fact that the problems in social care put extra pressure on the NHS.

We need a radical change to the system in order to meet five objectives. The first is to provide enough money to cope with the increasingly ageing population. The second is fairness across generations, so that today’s working-age taxpayers are not asked to pay for both their own care in the future and the care of the generation above them today. The third is fairness among individuals, ensuring that no one has to sell their own home—has to lose all their assets to pay for care—and ending the dementia lottery that the hon. Member for Sheffield South East mentioned, where one condition is treated on the NHS and another is not. The fourth is increasing the supply of care beds and retirement housing. My fifth point is perhaps slightly ambitious: in an ideal world, we should secure cross-party consensus, with a lot of consultation before we move to a new system, but with the people moving to that system having confidence that Governments of any stripe will keep it going.

The model I take, because we can see it more or less working, is the pension system. The basic state pension has been increased significantly in recent years, taking many pensioners out of poverty, but at the same time, most people save additionally through their working years to provide comfort and security in old age. Auto-enrolment in pensions has been a great cross-party success story, encouraging millions more people to save towards their own security in old age; for an individual who starts saving in their early 20s, the benefits will not come for decades, but they will be huge when they arrive.

Similarly, just as the basic state pension has been improved in recent years, I think we should offer a universal care entitlement, offering a better level of care—both homecare and residential care. For those who need residential care, that would cover the core residential costs. The needs would be assessed locally, but the money would come from central Government, which would take away the pressure on local councils. The state element of that funding should come centrally, rather than locally. Will that involve extra money? Of course it will, but given the annual injections of extra money that the Government put into the system, they have already implicitly admitted that it needs much extra money, so I think this is a necessary increase in public spending. I accept all the pressures and controversies that it will cause, but it seems unavoidable to me.

On top of that, we need to find an acceptable way to allow those with the capacity to improve their own provision to do so. I suggest we should create what I call the care supplement: a new form of insurance designed specifically to fund more expensive care costs in old age, just like the private pension system that tops up the state pensions of millions of people. It would allow people to buy insurance at the level they can afford in order to provide peace of mind. I do not think that the care supplement should be compulsory, as indeed auto-enrolment for pensions is not compulsory, so we would not get into the slightly sterile debate about death taxes and dementia taxes, phrases that both of the main parties have thrown at each other over the years.

People could save for that insurance over many years through their working life, or they could make a one-off payment—possibly using something like equity release from a part of their house value—at a suitable time in their life. I will pause on that point, because too much of the social care debate has devolved into questions about home ownership and whether a person has to sell their home. Under a mass insurance system, nobody would have to lose all of their assets or sell their home; a sliver of the money that is now in free equity in housing owned by the over-65s would cope with this challenge. There is £1.7 trillion in free equity in housing owned by the over-65s, and if a very small percentage of that money were applied to insurance for social care, it would mean that people had peace of mind in old age.

I have been told by successive Ministers that that system would be too complicated, and that we cannot set up an insurance system. All I say in response is this: of course, setting up a new system is complicated and difficult, but we know that the current system is not working. If we carry on doing the same thing, the system will continue to be frail and rickety for years—possibly generations—to come, which is not acceptable. We have to do something radically different. If somebody can come up with a better way of getting some of that wealth to pay for social care, fine, but we have to try something radical.

Funding is one key issue, but since the debate is about adult social care, I will identify four areas in which we need new thinking if we are going to fix social care. The first is the workforce, which has already been mentioned. It needs to be bigger—bigger by more than 100,000—and to achieve that, it needs to be better paid and have a higher status. I would like nurses working in the care system to be on the same Agenda for Change pay scales as those in the NHS, otherwise they will keep moving from the care system to the NHS.

The second area is the voice of care within the new integrated care boards. That change represents a chance to improve the integration of the health and care systems without creating another massive bureaucracy, but I slightly fear that the ICB system is settling down with the voice of care providers not being loud enough at the table. Local authorities are clearly a key player in the system, but so are other providers, and their voice needs to be heard.

My third point is about the use of technology, not only for sharing information between different parts of the system, but for giving those in receipt of care more control over their daily life. We are not exploiting the range of available technology anything like enough to do that and, if we get it right, the prize is that more people will be able to stay in their own home for longer. That is better for them, most importantly, but it is also better for the taxpayer, so it ought to be a high priority. It is particularly important for people living with dementia.

The fourth area is an extension of that notion of people staying in their own homes for longer through the provision of housing. As it happens, in one of the Minister’s previous incarnations, I spoke to him about this issue. We are failing to build anything like enough supported housing for older people, particularly in retirement villages. Taken together, the last two measures I mentioned—technology and the provision of suitable housing—would mean that many people were able to stay in their own home for longer. As I say, that is a double win: it is better for the taxpayer, but most importantly, it is better for people as well. Most people want to live in their own home for as long as they can.

My original idea for a universal care entitlement accompanied by a care supplement would take the burden of social care funding away from local authorities, which is good, and, more importantly, offer certainty and security for the increasing numbers who will need social care in old age. No one would have to sell their house and see their inheritance disappear, everyone would have the chance of receiving better care and fewer people would be left unnecessarily in hospital beds as they wait for social care to be available. I am conscious that none of this is easy and that it will take political courage and possibly political consensus to achieve, but it is absolutely necessary if we are to provide peace of mind and security to frail, elderly people who richly deserve it. I commend these ideas to the Minister.

Oral Answers to Questions

Greg Knight Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

They are coming: we are going to introduce those reforms in the next Queen’s Speech.

[Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)]

Is the Secretary of State aware that in 2019 I took through Parliament the Parking (Code of Practice) Act with all-party support? This measure mandates the Government to introduce a code to make parking fairer for motorists. In view of the overwhelming support for this measure on both sides of the House, why are the Government now dragging their feet on the matter?

Terrorist Offenders (Restriction of Early Release) Bill

Greg Knight Excerpts

Committee stage & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons & 3rd reading & Committee: 1st sitting
Wednesday 12th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sir William Cash]

I have already canvassed some parts of what I am about to say, but there is more to say, for a very sound reason. Parliament is full of opinions and Ministers are full of opinions. Two Ministers are sitting on the Front Bench at the moment, no doubt debating the issue before the Committee, but their opinions are not the law, and nor are those of leading counsel, whether senior Treasury counsel or those involved in academic discussion. I say that really seriously. I have been practising the law since 1967 and I know a little about how the law is interpreted. We saw the Gina Miller case the other day. How many times were we told that there was absolutely no question but that the Government were right in their interpretation? I served as the shadow Attorney General and saw the whole of the Iraq and Peter Goldsmith exercise. We were told over and over again in the House this, that and the other about interpretation—“This is what will happen. This is the way it will go.” That is no way to make decisions on matters of this kind of critical importance.

There are occasions on which the question of interpretation may merely be about a modification of policy; this is actually about saving human life. I repeat that: saving human life. Where it is possible for the House to ensure that human life cannot be unreasonably and wilfully disposed of by people who are intent on murdering for no reason at all, we need to take seriously the question of whether or not we can exclude the courts —because this is Parliament, not the judiciary—from making wrong decisions when matters come before them.

I heard with interest the Chairman of the Justice Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), and the various cases he mentioned, and I have just heard the Minister refer to the Uttley case. There is also the Hogben case, which was of course in 1985, before the Human Rights Act 1998. Reference was also made to the del Río Prada case. As a matter of fact, the legislation does not depend on an interpretation of those individual cases by way of precedent, and that is not what we should be worried about; we should be thinking about the purpose and scope of the Bill and its objective, which is to do everything that we can to ensure that human life and public safety come first. I do not want this to become an argument about the interpretation of law, which is why I tabled amendment 3 to clause 1.

[Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)]

On the subject of opinions, does my hon. Friend intend to test the opinion of the Committee, or merely the opinion of the Minister?

[Sir William Cash]

That is an extremely good question on which I have already given an indication. Being a realist, I know perfectly well that this is not a Bill to which an amendment is going to be passed—certainly not today—but I did say that the House of Lords, which is where the Bill is going, is full of lawyers, some of whom I will disagree with and have disagreed with for as many years as I have been in the House, but there are others who will take a different view.

I am interested to hear the views of the House of Lords on the question of my proposal to amend clause 1. The wording of clause 1 currently refers to an offence “within subsection (2)” and a sentence imposed

“whether before or after this section comes into force”,

at which point I propose to insert the words

“and notwithstanding the Human Rights Act 1998”.

The effect of that would be to put a complete bar on the use of the Human Rights Act, by interpretation of the courts, in any attempt, whether it is regarded as misguided or is a matter of culture—there is currently a load of culture in the courts relating to human rights questions that have built up over the whole of my lifetime in the law.

I am deeply concerned that we could allow legislation to go through that could be interpreted in a way that would result in human life being lost and public safety being infringed. That is my concern. [Interruption.] I see the Minister looking at me either apprehensively or with anticipation; I am not sure which it is and I do not really care. What I am saying is that I want certainty. I know that if the words “notwithstanding the Human Rights Act” are brought into the Bill, the effect will be to exclude completely, for reasons that I am about to give, any attempt by the courts to modify the effect that the Bill otherwise would have.

I have other concerns about the Bill that I have already made clear. I do not think that offenders should be considered for release after half or two thirds of their sentence. I have a lot of sympathy for what my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) proposes in amendment 1; he says it should be nine tenths. I do not know whether he will address that point later.

The bottom line is that we should not allow this situation if we can avoid it—and we can avoid it, because we are the Houses of Parliament, and as a result of Brexit, we have just regained an awful lot of our sovereignty. This is more a matter of the European convention on human rights than of the charter of fundamental rights—or, for that matter, of Brexit—but the amendment is an indication of the House’s determination to use our sovereignty to make law that will guarantee that we do not face people losing their life, or public safety being undermined.

If we do not include in the Bill the words that I propose in my amendment 3, I believe—as I said before with respect to the Lee Rigby case—that it is not a matter of if such a thing happens again; it is a matter of when. I concede that this is emergency legislation; that is why I support it, but it requires a full, thorough review, perhaps by the Justice Committee, to ensure that we deal with the issue properly and fully.

I applaud the Government for bringing in this Bill on an emergency basis, but I criticise the fact that the Bill does not go far enough. The Minister is, if I might say so, not a lawyer; he can only have received his information from others who are. He is taking a bit of a punt in saying that the words

“and notwithstanding the Human Rights Act 1998”

are not needed. He does not know that. I say that with not only respect, but knowledge and certainty. It is very difficult even for lawyers to be sure what the impact would be of allowing the Bill through without excluding the Human Rights Act 1998 from it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir John Hayes]

We do, in fact, have an independent reviewer of terrorism legislation. In that context, I was privileged to work with Lord Carlile—a former Liberal Democrat Member of this House, by the way. So that role exists, but I do not want to underestimate the significance or value of the Committees of this House in doing their job. The ISC in particular is a well-respected Committee of the House, which has a very strong track record of looking at these matters empirically and advising accordingly. My argument is not that we should not have that kind of scrutiny; ideally, it would have been a precursor to this legislation, but we should indeed consider allowing it through the mechanisms that I have described. I invite the Minister to embrace the spirit in which I have advanced my argument.

The third and final amendment that we have heard ably articulated during our considerations this afternoon is the one in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne). Again, I am extremely sympathetic to the purpose of the amendment. Indeed, I might even go further, and say that “nine-tenths” is too modest. However, while my right hon. Friend’s amendment is welcome and adds pressure, if I might put it that way—he said “prodding” rather than “probing”, and I have added a third “p”, “pressure”, because I know that alliteration is dear to his heart—given that the Government have made crystal clear that in forthcoming legislation they will look at three matters, minimum sentences, maximum sentences and mandatory sentences, much of what he desires should form part of that further Government policy and practice. I hope that we can increase minimum sentences, that we can increase maximum sentences, and that we can tie to that—as the Government have said they will, as I note from comments made in the statement by the Secretary of State following the recent terrorist outrage—

[Sir Greg Knight]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Sir John Hayes]

I will just finish my sentence, and then I will give way happily to my right hon. and distinguished Friend.

The Government have said, and the Secretary of State was clear about it in the statement a few days ago, that tied to those three provisions will be the end of early release for certain kinds of prisoner. I now happily give way to my right hon. Friend before I move to my exciting peroration.

[Sir Greg Knight]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. Does he not think that whatever scheme is ultimately settled upon, there needs to remain some incentive for someone who is in prison to behave him or herself?

[Sir John Hayes]

I note that my right hon. Friend was preoccupied with urgent meetings when I spoke earlier, but if he reads the Hansard report of my earlier contribution, he will see that I am on exactly the same page as him, not for the first time. He is absolutely right that parole has historically always been considered on the basis of an assessment of both risk and worthiness. “Good behaviour” is the term that was once routinely used in respect of parole. When people have proved, through how they behave in prison, that they no longer pose a risk to the public and that they deserve to be released early, they should be. The problem with the current arrangement is the automatic nature of early release, and I resist that per se, not just in respect of terrorist prisoners but more widely. The public would be outraged if they knew just how many people have been released early, including terrorists. Enough is enough; now the time to put an end to that. This is the beginning of it, and I happily support this legislation.