Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill

Debate between Clive Betts and Peter Bottomley

2nd reading
Monday 11th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Betts]

I do remember that far back. Many will not remember the Labour Government’s ’67 reforms, but they were quite important on those grounds—absolutely.

Other good aspects of the Bill include its reducing the price of enfranchisement and trying to make it simpler. Now, I am not sure that it makes it simpler; it is still a bit complicated. In the end, it partly depends on the capitalisation rates that the Government introduce, which will determine the price. But a lot of my constituents who are leaseholders live in houses, and they often face enormous barriers to carry through the enfranchisement process. I have referred to Coppen Estates in my constituency, which is notorious for simply not replying to letters. I once got it to reply to a recorded letter at the third time of asking. Normally, it ignores everything. That is just its way of trying to hang on to its ground rents and its income from leases. How will we deal with those sorts of individuals and companies, and the fact that they transfer ownership around from one company to another?

Why is there no right of first refusal for leaseholders in the Bill? I was pleased that, some years ago, Sheffield Council agreed that when it sold freeholds, the right of first refusal would go to the leaseholder. That would be a simple reform, and I hope the Secretary of State will consider it. The improvement of the enfranchisement process to make it simpler and reduce the cost is right, but I would like further improvements to ensure that it will work.

I welcome the standardisation of service charges. One big complaint to the Committee was that leaseholders often simply do not know what they are paying and why. They cannot work out which services are supposed to be provided and which are not. That is an important step forward.

On commission fees, we heard about the £150 to change a doorbell and the £3,000 to put up a conservatory—complete rip-offs. There is no justification for them in houses in particular, and very little justification in flats. I am pleased that freeholders will now have to provide a schedule of rates that will be charged. We called for a cap on rates, which might have taken reform a little further, but at least there now has to be clarity and transparency. I also welcome the clause that means leaseholders will not end up paying for the legal and other costs of freeholders where there is any conflict or dispute.

A number of other measures have been omitted from the Bill, but they could be included very easily. The Secretary of State mentioned forfeiture. If leasehold is a feudal tenure, then forfeiture is prehistoric—it really is. If a leaseholder in a very small way fails to comply with an element of their lease, they could have the property taken off them. That is just unacceptable and unjustifiable. The Secretary of State was right in what he said. Forfeiture is not necessarily something that gets used, but the threat of its being used puts the onus on leaseholders to “behave” or do what the freeholder wants them to do. The removal of that with a simple clause would be really welcome.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

I should have included the hon. Gentleman and the Select Committee in my thanks, and I do so belatedly. On forfeiture, we could ban it completely, although there may be times when it is necessary to have an order to sell a property to pay debts. The limit should be raised from £350 to a significant figure such as £5,000, and any remaining equity should go back to the person who owned the lease and not be pocketed by the freeholder.

[Mr Betts]

The Father of the House makes a very reasonable point. My point is simply that forfeiture is currently a blanket possibility that can apply to any breach of a lease, however minor, and non-payment of a very small amount could cost the leaseholder the total of the value of their property. That is what we have to stop.

Why do freeholders not have to join a redress scheme? The Committee called for them to be included in the redress schemes. The Secretary of State is bringing in a number of redress schemes and ombudsmen extensions, so why can freeholders not be included?

One of the big issues raised with us, where again there is a lack of transparency, is that many leaseholders have to pay into a reserve fund—a sinking fund—for their property. Can we not have some protection for those funds formally written into law? Currently, many leaseholders have no idea what the money is being spent on. There is no obligation on the freeholder to explain it and certainly no protection that funds have to be used for the purpose for which they are paid.

On mis-selling, one of the big complaints we heard when we met leaseholders—this related to houses in particular; Persimmon Homes has been mentioned, but there were other developers too—was the fact that they were being sold a leasehold as though it was the same as a freehold. The solicitors were compliant in that, because they had been recommended by the developer. Often, a bonus was thrown in: “We’ll give you new carpets in the living room if you use that solicitor.” The Competition and Markets Authority investigated at our request and said there was mis-selling, but so far nothing has been done about it. The Government have done absolutely nothing to rectify that injustice. Can we not see something on that again? I do not think that there is any great conflict across the House, or between anyone who has been involved in this matter. It is wrong—absolutely wrong. Solicitors should not be induced in this way to provide conveyancing to a purchaser, when the developer is recommending that solicitor. It simply is not right and it needs addressing.

My final point is one that we raised on the private rented reforms that the Government will hopefully pursue —and hopefully this year coming, rather than waiting any longer with regard to section 21. We have called repeatedly for a housing court. I know the Secretary of State will explain again why he does not want to do that, but I think we ought to keep asking. There are so many issues in the housing field that need a specialism, and need quick decisions and quick resolution. A housing court would be one way of doing that and of trying to improve the process.

Building Safety Bill

Debate between Clive Betts and Peter Bottomley

Consideration of Lords amendments
Wednesday 20th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Minister for the way he introduced the amendments, and I thank the Labour spokesman, the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook), who spoke in a non-party way about the matter. I pay tribute to those on both sides of the House who have been working on the Bill, often without proper recognition. Among them I include the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), the Chair of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee. Its first report on the leasehold disaster was critical to getting Government and some people outside to pay attention.

If anyone from a major media organisation is listening, I urge them to make sure that they have a housing editor who can pay attention to this issue and provide continuity. During the four or five years since Grenfell, several people have taken up the issue of the fire itself, but no one has provided the necessary continuity when it comes to television and radio programmes. Institutional memory is required if we are to understand how we got to where we are, and where we need to get to. For residential leaseholders, fair, detailed, expert housing coverage matters as much as coverage of health, economics, defence and other things. I commend to media organisations the idea of having a housing editor and a team who can help us to do our work better, because without media reflection of our efforts, we will not go as far or as fast as we ought to.

Bluntly, the thinking in the Treasury has been the cause of much of the delay. The tragic deaths at Grenfell, where over 70 people died unnecessarily, were a spur to action. For too long, however, people said, “Look at the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea; this is all its fault.” Most of the blocks affected are not in Chelsea or in Conservative-controlled areas, so we all have a responsibility to accept that we got things wrong.

What was needed to get this right? It was best put by Ted Baillieu in Victoria, Australia, who said that it was necessary to find the problems, fix the problems and fund the problems, and then get after the people who are responsible. If we had done that, for the last four years many more innocent residential leaseholders would have been able to live in homes that they knew to be safe and saleable, and we would be many steps further forward.

I hope that my hon. and right hon. Friends in the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities want to make sure that no block is left unremediated—in plain English, to make sure that every block is made safe—and then go after the money, but the Treasury is blocking that.

I put this question to my hon. Friend the Minister. Who will take claims against those other than the developers—the architects, the surveyors, the component manufacturers, the people who set the building standards and the people who did building control, whether in the public or private sector—who were involved? I am not saying that they are all responsible, but some are. In any other field, lawyers would be coming forward with a class action to put them all in the dock and claim from them the costs that would otherwise fall on innocent residential leaseholders.

For those who are new to this, I repeat that the only people who are totally innocent—the only people who do not own a single brick in the building—are the residential leaseholders, and yet they are being left with some of the costs. If it comes to Divisions, I will vote in a non-party way to try to keep the intentions of the House of Lords going on most of the issues.

I do welcome and accept what the Minister said about extending to three years the responsibilities of the Building Safety Regulator. That makes sense, given the timescale, but what is controversial is leaving residential leaseholders with some of the costs. I draw the House’s attention to the fire at Gibson Court in Woking in 2011. Six years later, those responsible were fined more than £300,000 because their fire protection work had been clearly inadequate. In that case, part of reason for the spread of the fire was the fact that lofts went right across the buildings.

I also draw the House’s attention to the point that the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich made about the fire in 2019 at Worcester Park, where 23 other blocks had to be made safe because one block went up in smoke in 11 minutes. If a fire can spread so far in that many minutes, the idea that it could be contained within one flat is not realistic; those who are vulnerable would have no chance of getting out safely.

I hope that this Bill has the power, under secondary legislation, to extend provisions on remediation costs to buildings below 11 metres, especially for the vulnerable, although I would prefer it to go as far as the House of Lords wanted, so that leaseholders do not have to pay.

Remember that a few years back, Government appeared to be thinking that costs of £15 billion could fall on these residential leaseholders, who did not have the money. I am not talking about people who live in big, expensive, multi-million-pound apartments looking out over the Thames. I ought, by the way, to declare an interest, as I have a small flat in Worthing, which does not even look out over the sea. Six of us bought the freehold and we have had no problems with this, or even with managing agents or insurance companies. I will be buying a leasehold on another property in London in time, and I hope it will not be affected either. I put that on the record, just in case someone says that I am talking from self-interest.

I am speaking in the interest of people who are poorer than I am, who live in homes that are less valuable than mine, and who have been lumbered with all the disadvantages of being a residential leaseholder—and now with this fire safety defect issue as well.

I reinforce what other hon. Members have said about insurance. Premiums are unreasonably high; I hope that the Competition and Markets Authority and the Financial Conduct Authority will quickly produce a report, and that publicity will make insurance companies bring rates down to market rates—that is to say, rates that are justified by the risk, not by what the market can be made to pay in a crisis. I also hope that all commissions, rebates and douceurs—sweeteners—paid by brokers or insurance companies and received by managing agents or landlords are disclosed. That ought to be out in the open.

For too long, too many people have got rich on the back of residential leaseholders. There are many more things that I would like to say, but I suspect that, given the amount of interest in the subject, I ought to stop now. As well as thanking those from both sides of the House who have worked on this, I thank the National Leasehold Campaign. Without it, we would not have had Victoria Derbyshire’s interest, which has been important. I thank the cladding groups, in all their manifestations. At great expense to themselves, and having given up some of their other responsibilities, they have brought these issues to the attention of Parliament.

I also thank officials in the Department, because after a very slow start, a group of people has been brought together to support Ministers in their legitimate aim of making sure that those who are responsible pay, and those who are not responsible do not have to.

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to be able to speak in this debate. I thank the Father of the House, the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), for his kind words about the Select Committee. He certainly encouraged and prodded us to do the first report on leasehold reform. It was, as he said, a first step towards what we hope will eventually be much more significant reform, which I think the Government are committed to.

Since the tragedy of Grenfell, the Select Committee has produced five reports. I am pleased that the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) is in his place, because he has been with us right the way through those reports, all of which were agreed unanimously by the Select Committee. We have repeated over and over again that leaseholders who are not responsible should not have to pay, and neither should social housing tenants; they are no more responsible, and the two should be seen together and treated equally.

I am pleased with what the Minister said today. I hope it was not just a way to get the debate over with, without pushing away too many difficult questions, and that he is still prepared to look at broadening the scope of the Government’s offer to leaseholders and to social housing landlords and tenants. If that was a genuine offer and he is keen to work on it, that is welcome.

We clearly have come quite a long way since the first offer of a £400 million package to deal with ACM cladding. That was going to solve everything, but obviously it was not, even when the Chancellor stood up and offered in his Budget the £1 billion building safety fund and said that was going to give everything the Select Committee had asked for, which it was not and did not. We have moved on since then, so it is welcome that we have now got to a better place, although it is still not quite good enough.

HOUSING, COMMUNITIES AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT COMMITTEE

Debate between Clive Betts and Peter Bottomley

Thursday 17th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

[Mr Betts]

Future of the Planning System in England

Debate between Clive Betts and Peter Bottomley

Thursday 17th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

Thank you Mr Deputy Speaker. I would also like to thank the Backbench Business Committee for the opportunity to make this statement on the Committee’s report on the planning system in England. I thank all members of the Committee for agreeing the report unanimously, and our Committee specialist Edward Hicks for producing a technically challenging and detailed document, with the excellent support of our specialist advisers, Kelvin MacDonald and Christine Whitehead.

The report was launched partly in response to the Government’s publication of proposed reforms of the planning system back in August. We also build on previous reports by the Select Committee on local plans, land value capture and social housing. It is a comprehensive document and it was drawn up with widespread public interest in it; there were 154 pieces of written evidence; 14 witnesses came to give evidence; we had 6,000 responses to a public survey; and 38 members of the public came to join in our deliberations. We are grateful to all those who participated.

I have got time today, Mr Deputy Speaker, to deal with only some of the key recommendations of our report, which are as follows. A plan-led system, which is generally supported in this country, is rightly seen as the heart of the planning process, and local plans are seen very much at that heart. The Committee recognised that the Government want to place increased emphasis on local plans, and are supportive of the proposals to digitise them, to make the process of formulating local plans simpler and to see them updated more regularly.

Many of these ideas, together with making local plans a statutory requirement, were proposals that the Committee made itself in 2016, so we are pleased to see that the Government have now recognised their importance. In the report, however, we express significant concern about the proposals to reshape local plans by zoning every single site into a growth, renewal or protected area. We simply do not believe that the process can be done in 30 months, bearing in mind that many local authorities currently do not have a local plan in place, or many have plans that are significantly out of date. There is a shortage of both financial and staff resources in planning departments, and it is crucial that the Government produce a comprehensive resources and skills strategy, which they have promised.

The Committee members were all concerned about how the zoning system would operate in practice. The proposals lacked detail, which made them very difficult to assess.

We asked for greater clarity about what detail will be needed in local plans to give necessary certainty to developers and other stakeholders for the future. We were unpersuaded that the Government’s zoning system approach, as proposed, would produce a quicker, cheaper and more democratic planning system, and we recommend that the Government reconsider the proposals they put forward.

A real concern that was expressed very strongly to the Committee was that the Government’s proposal in the White Paper would lead to a lack of ability of councillors and their local communities to influence decisions on individual planning applications. At present, most public involvement is at the point when a planning application is made. The Government are right to want to see more local involvement at the local plan stage, as local plans should set the scene for future development. However, to change the system so that local plans are the only point at which communities can get involved, and then to tell communities that they have no say afterwards, risks undermining support for the planning system and undermining the democratic process at local council level.

Our report emphasised the importance of ensuring that members of the public can continue to comment meaningfully on individual planning applications. We call for further research into public involvement in the planning system, so that we can have nationwide figures showing what is actually going on at present and how it can be improved. The Committee is concerned at this stage that the Government’s plans are in very general terms and ultimately planning policy and planning law will need to be written in great detail. The content of the detail will determine whether the Government’s proposals are workable in practice. That is why the Committee believes that producing a planning Bill in draft form, and making it subject to pre-legislative scrutiny by the Select Committee would help ensure that whatever proposals come forward are workable and that planning lawyers and consultants will not be the greatest beneficiaries from any changes. We were warned of the real possibility of a flurry of judicial reviews.

One of the forceful points made to the Committee was that the Government’s planning proposals were essentially housebuilding proposals. The White Paper contained no mention of commercial property, for example, as the British Property Federation pointed out, and virtually no mention of employment, leisure or climate change. All these issues are absolutely central to a holistic, integrated and complete planning system that shapes the places where people live and work.

With emphasis on housing, however, in the Government’s White Paper, our report also looked at the housing formula and housing delivery. We call for clarity on how the Government intend to achieve their housing target of 300,000 new homes a year, which the Committee strongly supports and has been achieved in only a handful of years in the 1960s.



We ask for further information about changes to the housing formula, including how the Government’s proposed urban uplift in 20 major towns and cities, which came during the course of our inquiry, will work in practice, why those areas were chosen, and the rationale for the scale of the uplift. We must also ensure that changes to the housing formula do not reduce the level of house building in other parts of the north and midlands, as that would not contribute towards the levelling-up agenda.

Our report argues that the Government should be very cautious about sweeping away section 106 agreements. Those are legally enforceable contracts between developers and local authorities that ensure the delivery of new infrastructure such as schools and roads for new developments and the provision of affordable housing. If the Government want to proceed, they should bring in levies at local rates that reflect local land values. The Government should also guarantee that there will be no reduction in affordable rented housing due to the reform of the levy and the introduction of the First Homes programme.

Our inquiry considered the pace at which developments with planning permission were being completed. We concluded that it is too slow. Local councils complain regularly that the problem is not the lack of planning permissions but slow build-out rates, over which they have no control. We recommend that if, 18 months after the discharge of planning conditions on a site, the local authority is not satisfied with the extent to which work has progressed, it should be able to revoke the planning permission. We also recommend that if, after work starts, progress is not moving ahead satisfactorily, local authorities should be able to take into account a whole variety of factors to levy council tax on each uncompleted unit. We hope that the Government will take that proposal seriously.

Our report also makes recommendations on the countryside, the environment, the use of brownfield land, the green belt, and many other issues. It is a very comprehensive document. We are currently undertaking a separate inquiry into permitted development rights.

As a Committee, we look forward to the Government’s response to our report. We also stand ready, as I have said, to undertake prelegislative scrutiny of the planning Bill to ensure that changes to the planning system, which will always, by necessity, be complex, are given the full and detailed scrutiny they need. That is vital to ensuring that our planning system builds on its past accomplishments, of which there are many, addresses its present challenges, and is fit for the future.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

The whole House—those who are here virtually and those who are here physically—will want to thank the members of the Committee and its Chairman for the work they have put into this report and the work they do on other parts of planning and housing.

I am glad that the Chairman said that the Committee is going to do a review of permitted development rights. The notorious statutory instrument 2020/632 is causing chaos all round England.

I want to add to what the Chairman said—he said that he could not cover every point—to reinforce the absence of the words “local councillor” in the planning statement. It seems to me that the Government need to realise that Members of Parliament matter and so do local councillors, especially in the planning process.

I am glad that the Chairman of the Committee raised the point about non-housing development, whether that is commercial development or making provision, where there is large-scale development, for churches, sports areas, children’s facilities and the like, so that a whole community is held in mind.

I would like to end by inviting the Chairman of the Committee to come with the Minister to my two planning authorities, Arun District Council and Worthing Borough Council, to look down from the chalk garden at Highdown, which is well renovated now, look at the vineyard and then look at the north and south Goring gap, and give assurances to my constituents that that green area around the town of Worthing, the largest in West Sussex, will not be built on as a result of anything in these proposals. If it were metropolitan, it would be green belt and protected. It is not. It still should be protected.

We should not have to build on every strategic gap between one town and a village, or between the hamlet of Kingston and the villages of East Preston, Ferring and Goring. Please come.

[Mr Betts]

I thank the Father of the House for his question and his invitation. I am happy to take up the invitation; let us hope that two of us accept it and come along. He is absolutely right: there are many issues not contained in the initial proposals. We hope that the Government will address them in their response to the consultation and the eventual Bill. Again, it is a major omission that local councillors are not mentioned. Local councillors are absolutely key to the local planning system. We must recognise the amount of work they do and ensure that they are not bypassed by any proposals ultimately adopted.

Fire Safety Bill

Debate between Clive Betts and Peter Bottomley

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 22nd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

There is not the time to say what the Government have done for leaseholders. The Fire Safety Bill, in the form the Government want to return it to, if they get the House to reject the Lords amendments, would place an automatic, unchallengeable financial burden on residential leaseholders in building safety remediation costs, even in circumstances where a lease may have excluded such an obligation. I refer the Minister, if he has time, to the article by Martina Lees in The Sunday Times “Home” section about some of the building costs that are not justified.

The bishops’ amendments are intended to protect leaseholders from being solely responsible for the costs. The Bill strengthens the landlords’ and freeholders’ legal rights over leaseholders. The amendments provide for more balanced liability for costs. These Lords amendments should not be overturned. The alternative, which the Government are asking us to agree, wrongly and disproportionately disadvantages innocent leaseholders. Many are unable to pay, and they are frightened.

This is a Home Office Bill, and the Home Secretary gave this as her reason for rejecting previous Lords amendment 4:

“Because the issue of remediation costs is too complex to be dealt with in the manner proposed.”

I say, and I think people on both sides agree—and probably the Minister does so privately—that what is being proposed cannot be supported. It is too simple: it loads costs on leaseholders, who are the only people who cannot be responsible for putting right a building that they do not own and will never own, and of which in legal terms they are only the tenants.

I ask the Minister to ask his colleagues to let him agree to accepting these Lords amendments, and to let the leaseholders free.

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab) [V]]

I support the Lords in the message it has sent back. The Lords is proposing very important changes to the Government’s position. First, not just leaseholders but tenants should not have to pay. For example, in a block where the social housing provider is the freeholder, according to the Government’s proposals, leaseholders would not have to pay, but social housing tenants—if it is not ACM cladding that is being removed—would have to pay through their rents for the removal of cladding. That tenants have to pay and leaseholders do not simply cannot be right.

We are not quite sure what costs leaseholders in blocks under 18 metres will face, because there is still an awful lot of vagueness and lack of clarity about what the Government’s loan scheme will actually mean. When the Minister for Building Safety and Communities came to our Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee recently, he said that leaseholders would not be responsible for paying the loan, but neither would freeholders; the charge would be on the building. A building cannot be legally responsible for a charge on a loan placed on it. Some organisation or some individual has to be responsible. Is it the freeholder? Is it the leaseholder? There is an awful lot of unclarity about that, and about how we limit leaseholders’ charges to £50 a month. There is a great deal of confusion. The Government are still working that through, so as things stand there cannot be an absolute assurance that leaseholders will not have to pay on blocks of under 18 metres.

Finally, there are issues other than cladding. It is not just that cladding will have to be taken off; very often, the cost of doing other fire safety work on blocks of flats is greater. Again, we were told that if the other work is associated with the removal of cladding, it will be covered by the Government’s financial help. If insulation is a composite part of a building’s structure along with the cladding, presumably it can be removed, as it is associated with the cladding. However, if the insulation is completely separate and distinct from the cladding, the Government funding might pay for the cladding removal but not the insulation removal. Very often, leaseholders simply cannot afford to pay for that, but the Government will not allow any of their funding to go ahead unless the leaseholders can find the additional costs.

None of those positions is acceptable. I support a position where neither leaseholders nor tenants are asked to pay to make their buildings fire-safe.

Leasehold Reform

Debate between Clive Betts and Peter Bottomley

Thursday 21st March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Betts]

We feel it is necessary not simply that we have a number of individual recommendations, but that the Government now call on, invite and fund the Law Commission to conduct a more comprehensive review of leasehold legislation as a whole. We have made many other recommendations that I do not have time to go into today, but we look forward to the Government response to our report. Given the weight of evidence we have had from so many individual people—our constituents—up and down the country, we urge Ministers to take our recommendations seriously.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

May I say that I own a leasehold flat? In a few years’ time, I may own another one, but I have not had any problems.

The Chair of the Select Committee, and his colleagues and advisers, deserve enormous thanks and congratulations. In just three months, they had the innovation of the roundtable—I recommend the conclusion of that roundtable to the BBC, and others, who do not yet seem to have covered the detail of the report.

The hon. Gentleman picked up on issues raised by the National Leasehold Campaign, as well as the knowledge of Bob Bessell, a trustee of the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership, who has developed more than 1,500 retirement properties with no ground rents. He knows, as do we, that ground rents pay for nothing that is of benefit to those in their homes.

The report’s suggestion of lease-rental is good. Leaseholders should not think that they actually own anything, because they do not. They are effectively tenants, and as we saw with the Grenfell-style cladding, they were supposedly left carrying the cost of replacing that cladding, which is not good enough.

On behalf of the all-party group on leasehold and commonhold reform, I welcome the campaign to ensure that costs are made equal and that freeholders are not able to put the costs of unsuccessful legal actions on to leaseholders, who then have to pay even though they won a dispute.

It is important that all recommendations in the report are debated in full, and if we have more such reports, the work of those who have campaigned on this issue, particularly the hon. Members for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) and for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick)—he is currently in a meeting about leaseholders, but otherwise he would have spoken today—will be carried through to the benefit of leaseholders.

[Mr Betts]

The point about the costs of legal action not being recoverable from leaseholders is made in our report, and I welcome the idea of a longer debate on that issue—perhaps once the Government have published their response, so that we can take that into account. We ought to pursue the idea of lease-rental more clearly, because people do not wholly own their properties in the way they think they do.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Betts]

We made it clear right at the beginning of our report that there should be a clear explanation from the seller of what extra charges there might be for the future maintenance of areas of open space that have not been taken over by the council. If they are to be managed by a private company, its service charge should be open and transparent, but all that information should also be provided right at the beginning. My hon. Friend is absolutely right that this is a scandal. I referred to 700 pieces of written evidence, but every day we are continuing to get leaseholders writing to us, having seen our evidence sessions on the television or read about them on the website, saying, “Me too; we have been badly treated and we want something done about it.”

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. May I first say that the House greatly welcomes the way the Chair has run this Select Committee statement, because all the Members who could be here today have managed to get in?

There are many other Members representing the 10 million people living in the 5 million homes affected by leasehold, so perhaps the Government would consider making an oral statement next Monday or Tuesday so that others can contribute.

The Government might wish to talk about how they will continue to fund the Law Commission’s work and the extension recommended by the Committee.

None of this would have happened without the work of Sebastian O’Kelly and Martin Boyd of the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership, so I think that we ought to pay our debt to those outside this House as well as congratulating ourselves inside it.