Property Agents: Regulation

Lord Kamall Excerpts

Thursday 18th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Swinburne (Con)]

I know that the Minister, my noble friend Lady Scott, has engaged with noble Lords on the leaseholder and freeholder Bill and will continue to do so as it progresses through this House next week. I understand that the noble Lord, Lord Best, has reached out to her to consider how to improve the Bill further. I have no doubt that further conversations will happen as we consider the Bill in detail in Committee.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

My noble friend the Minister will be aware that there have been some industry initiatives—though they are not perfect—over the years such as Safeagent and the kitemark scheme. In considering the possibility of more regulation in this space, could my noble friend and her department ensure that they do not squeeze out those private initiatives and work in conjunction with them?

[Baroness Swinburne (Con)]

I can confirm to my noble friend that we are working hand in glove with industry and trade bodies that want good-quality services provided by their members. It is in their interests, in our interests and in consumers’ interests that we do so.

Hate Crimes

Lord Kamall Excerpts

Wednesday 21st February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, one of the most recent announcements from the Government in this area is indeed additional funding through the Department for Education to schools to increase education around this area. That is something the DfE is taking forward.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

My Lords, when the Government look at their hate crime strategy, how much of it do they think they can achieve in a top-down way from central government, and how much can they achieve in working with local community organisations, so that it is a bottom-up approach to tackling hate crimes?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My noble friend is absolutely right that working at a local level is key to giving people more confidence in reporting, but it is also really important in thinking about solutions to these issues. One of the things that my department has been doing, in particular since 7 October, is regular engagement with local authorities to understand what is going on in their area, examples of best practice we can help share, and any particular issues that they are aware of that we can provide more support on.

Leasehold Reform

Lord Kamall Excerpts

Thursday 11th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

My Lords, I am sure that many noble Lords are grateful to my noble friend the Minister for saying that the Government are still committed to commonhold. She keeps saying how complicated the whole issue is. To ease the understanding of noble Lords and others, will she commit to listing some of the complications in a letter to me and other noble Lords, so that we too can understand how complicated it is and why commonhold provisions have not been brought forward at this stage?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I shall certainly do that—I thought that my noble friend Lady Penn had agreed to that letter, but I shall look into it and sort out a letter. But I think that my offer of meeting noble Lords, as we move into the Bill, is the correct way forward.

Residential Leasehold for Flats

Lord Kamall Excerpts

Thursday 30th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

Yes, the Autumn Statement set out the way forward we are going to take on that issue. We need proper financing to support our ambitions for more homebuilding. Some of that comes through government support, but the private sector is a key partner here and we need to do everything that we can to unlock investment.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

My noble friend mentioned there were complications in extending freehold to leaseholders in flats. She does not have to answer everything right now, but I wonder whether she could write to me, and deposit a copy in the Library, about some of those complications, so noble Lords can better understand those barriers to extending freehold?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

I would be very happy to write to my noble friend but, as I said, in looking at the distinction between houses and flats, the majority of houses have always been provided as freehold, and there are few justifications for building leasehold houses. We have seen, in recent years, this practice being exploited by developers to levy unfair charges on home owners. Flats, on the other hand, have shared fabric and infrastructure and therefore require some form of arrangement to facilitate management. Traditionally, this has been facilitated by a lease, but, as we discussed, commonhold is an alternative way to do this.

Homelessness: Vagrancy Act 1824

Lord Kamall Excerpts

Monday 10th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

The noble Baroness is absolutely right that we need more homes in this country—more affordable homes and more homes for social rent. That is why we are putting £11.5 billion into the affordable homes programme and, importantly, working with local authorities to ensure that they look at every possible way of using the £500 million we are giving them to keep people in their homes in the first place, rather than becoming homeless.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

My noble friend said that this is incredibly complicated and that replacement legislation for the Vagrancy Act must be considered. Can she share with us what laws have to be replaced, as many noble Lords feel that it should be very simple to abolish it now?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I am not prepared to say what legislation might go. Part of this is not about what legislation goes but how much support we can give those individuals in trying to get them off the streets and into homes.

Housing: Modular Construction

Lord Kamall Excerpts

Thursday 8th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I am not aware that we have looked at this for asylum seekers particularly, but if there is a requirement for high-quality housing to be delivered quickly then we will of course work across government, as I said we are doing, to ensure that all departments look at MMC as a method of delivering quickly and safely.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

What conversations have there been across government departments on the environmental impact of introducing modular housing, particularly the use of shipping containers for modular homes, which are seen to be a more environmentally friendly way of avoiding waste and providing homes for the future?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

One of the main things with modular homes is that they are more environmentally friendly: they are energy efficient and use more environmentally friendly products. We need to keep pushing this to get this sector to be a far more major part of our whole building industry.

Windrush Generation: 75th Anniversary

Lord Kamall Excerpts

Wednesday 24th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

We are paying out continually under the compensation scheme, and the Home Office continues to make improvements to how easily people can access that scheme. We have paid out £59.55 million across 1,599 claims to the end of March 2023, a further £11.11 million has been offered and is awaiting acceptance, and a final decision has been made on 62% of the claims—so we are working on this. We are working with claimants on how we can make it easier and will continue to do so.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I thank my noble friend the Minister for sharing the plans to celebrate the Windrush generation, but can we make sure that we celebrate the full diversity of that generation—not just the Afro-Caribbeans but the Indo-Caribbeans and Chinese-Caribbeans who came to the UK and worked in public services? I declare a personal interest in that my father came in 1952 on two boats: one from Guyana to Trinidad, and then one from Trinidad to the UK.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My noble friend is absolutely right that we should celebrate the whole generation and that group of communities. Looking at what is happening in London and Birmingham, I am sure that all those communities will be represented and celebrated.

Residential Leasehold

Lord Kamall Excerpts

Wednesday 17th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

My noble friend just said that property law is fiendishly complicated and that is why this has taken some time. Will she enlighten us as to some of the complicated issues that have to be tackled before this law can be brought forward?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

The Government are working with the Law Commission; we have asked it to recommend reforms to commonhold legislation, and it published its report in July 2020. We are considering those recommendations and will respond to them in due course, but it is a fiendishly complex system.

Leasehold Reform

Lord Kamall Excerpts

Thursday 23rd March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

The planning system will have to be looked into, but I can say that, interestingly, through the recent rent Act, new builds are now no longer or are very rarely leasehold—they are now freehold—so the developers themselves are looking at this. It is more complex in flats and with multiple occupancy, but in terms of houses very few leasehold properties are available.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

My noble friend the Minister will be aware that in many cases the freeholder is a local authority. Can she advise us on what conversations her department has had with local authorities across the country, or representative bodies of local authorities, to make sure that they make it easier for leaseholders to acquire their properties?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I will write to the noble Lord with all the details of those conversations. They are being had, but I will give him more information when I write.

Levelling Up Fund

Lord Kamall Excerpts

Tuesday 24th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, I am sure that once they put in an expression of interest for the bids—because it is in two rounds—they would have been told the rules for that second round of bidding.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

Can my noble friend the Minister tell us what thinking there has been in her department about local government finance in the long term? Has there been any investigation of, for example, encouraging local authorities in the longer term to raise more of their own revenue locally, rather than constantly relying on central government? We have seen centralisation over successive Governments over the years.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, with some of the devolution deals that have been done, and will be done in future, that is one of the issues we are talking to local government about and encouraging it to do.