Leasehold Reform (Amendment) Bill

Bob Stewart Excerpts

Friday 24th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Brandon Lewis]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. To reinforce his comments and because it is important to make clear the Bill’s intent in relation to giving people the ability to act sensibly and reasonably through a power of attorney and agents, I want to quote the judge again. Of the 1993 Act, he said:

“It seems to me that the words are clear and that whether there be good reasons, bad reasons or no reasons, the provision is clear. It is clearly deliberate, and the only way in which one could avoid giving the Section its literal effect is by finding that it produces some anomaly so serious that it cannot have been intended.”

He went on that counsel for the landlord

“submits that the reading, which does not permit a signature by an agent, does produce situations that cannot have been intended. The tenant in the present case is not, in fact, incapable, but what if she were?”

My hon. Friend outlined the case of someone who is vulnerable or incapable. The judge continued:

“Or what if the tenant were mentally capable but paralysed so as to be unable, physically, to impose anything by way of a signature on a document?”

All those issues need to be dealt with. The judge also said that

“whatever anomalies this provision may produce, or however much of a trap it may be for tenants and their advisers, I agree with His Honour Judge Cowell that the distinction drawn in the construction…of sub-section (5), between the method of signature of notices under section 13 or section 42 on the one hand, and other notices on the other hand, is so clear and so plainly deliberate that I cannot give section 99(5)(a) the meaning that it would have in isolation, and I must interpret it as”

—this is the important part of the quotation—

“requiring personal signature by the tenant, and not permitting signature on her behalf by anyone else, whether an ordinary agent or an attorney.”

The Bill will rectify that problem.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I have been listening carefully. The Bill seems to be perfect. Everyone is in accord with it and thinks it is sensible. I just do not understand why we seem to be making a mountain out of a molehill, and why we cannot speed this up and just do it.

[Brandon Lewis]

I thank my hon. Friend for what I think is a helpful intervention, as well as for supporting the Bill. He is quite right. I suspect that one query received by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North when the issue first came to his attention was that this is a 1993 Act and we are now in 2014—he introduced the Bill in 2013—so why has it taken so long to find a way of dealing with this problem? That is a reasonable question to ask, but the reality is that we now have the opportunity to correct the situation. It is quite right to deal with it, and I congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Bury North and for Kettering on doing just that.