Oral Answers to Questions

Gill Furniss Excerpts

Wednesday 10th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the Select Committee for its report, and I thank my hon. Friend for the way in which he has championed housing issues. His Act is already having an effect on homelessness reduction.

We have committed ourselves to legislation to reduce ground rent on future leases to a peppercorn. As for current leaseholders, we have been working with the industry to ensure that existing leases with onerous ground rent terms are changed to a better deal. Leaseholders of flats have a right of first refusal when their freeholders are planning to sell the properties, and we are considering introducing a right of first refusal for house lessees as well. Last year, we made a commitment to consider a range of charges facing leaseholders and freeholders, including permission fees, and to consider in what circumstances they are justified and whether they should be capped or banned. I have asked Lord Best to chair a working group to look into the regulating and professionalising of property agents.

We are considering the Committee’s report carefully, but my hon. Friend is absolutely right: if we believe that a market is not working properly, we should act to deal with that.

[Gill Furniss (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

Q7.   The Prime Minister will be aware of the Channel 4 “Dispatches” investigation aired last week into the extent of the involvement of both BAE and British military personnel in the tragic war in Yemen. In the programme, it was claimed that BAE carries out 95% of the preparations for Typhoon bombing raids, including the one that killed 40 schoolchildren in August 2018. Will the Government act now to review arms export licences to Saudi Arabia and British complicity in these bombings?

[The Prime Minister]

We have one of the toughest regimes in relation to the export of arms across the world. The hon. Lady references the situation in Yemen. We are very clear that that cannot go on. It is four years since the beginning of that devastating conflict, and there needs to be a political settlement. We are working with and backing work that is being done by the UN special envoy, Martin Griffiths. The parties have made significant progress towards an agreement to implement phase 1 of the redeployment of forces from Hodeidah, and we are urging all parties to honour the agreements that were made in Stockholm. Our total bilateral commitment to Yemen since the start of the conflict now stands at £717 million. We are backing the UN peace process. The coalition is there, and as has been acknowledged by the United Nations, it is there at the request of the Government of Yemen. We have been backing the United Nations peace process and will continue to do so, and we will continue to provide humanitarian support to the people of Yemen.