Business of the House

Andy Carter Excerpts

Thursday 15th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The nation owes a great debt to those who keep us safe, and we have been kept safe by our nuclear deterrent now for many decades; it is a fundamental part of our defence strategy. The 22,000 men involved between 1952 and 1991 are people who deserve the thanks of a grateful nation. I will of course pass on to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence what the hon. Lady has had to say about any proposals or anything that can be done for the people who were involved in these tests.

[Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend will know, because I have raised the matter with him in the House on a number of occasions, that residents living in Steinbeck Grange in Warrington believe they were mis-sold leasehold properties by David Wilson Homes more than 10 years ago. I welcome the work that the Competition and Markets Authority is undertaking to investigate these complaints, but my constituents and others around the country have an understandable need for the Government to take action to legislate to tackle historical problems.

May we have a debate in Government time on what actions the Government can take to support my constituents, particularly by looking at the use of incentivised solicitor arrangements, where discounts are offered for homebuyers to use friendly law firms that then disappear, leaving homebuyers with no opportunity to challenge their lawyers if they did not disclose the facts at the time of purchase?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The last point that my hon. Friend raised sounds almost like fraud. If somebody is proposing a solicitor who is not a real solicitors company and there is no comeback on the firm, that sounds like an extreme level of malpractice.

I can assure my hon. Friend that Her Majesty’s Government are committed to promoting fairness and transparency for homeowners and ensuring that consumers are protected from abuse and poor service. The Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill is currently making its way through the House of Lords and will end ground rents for new qualifying long residential leasehold properties in England and Wales, which is a major change to property law. It is encouraging that the Competition and Markets Authority is taking enforcement action to tackle certain instances of mis-selling, but I encourage my hon. Friend keep campaigning on this and particularly raising that very troubling issue of vanishing solicitors.