Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill [Lords]

Justin Madders Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 29th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Powell]

Absolutely; my right hon. Friend makes a very good point as well. Many people, especially first-time buyers, do not understand the difference between leasehold, freehold and so on, and many of these issues come to light only as problems arise later or when they try to sell the property.

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

On legal advice, it is worth pointing out that not only were some people told that they had to use particular solicitors, in breach of Law Society guidelines, but some were also told that they had to complete within a certain period of time, so even if they had used a different solicitor, it just would not have been practical for them to analyse or understand the documents correctly. That suggests to me that there needs to be a complete overhaul and inquiry into how the scandal was allowed to develop in the first place.

[Lucy Powell]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, and there is a very strong basis for a wider mis-selling scandal inquiry. Many properties are affected: in terms of houses, for which the practice has been particularly egregious, more than 500,000 leasehold houses have been built over the past 10 years. The vast majority of them are in the north-west of England and north Wales, which is why so many colleagues from those areas are here this evening.

The rights to collect the ground rents are bought and sold on the financial markets as steady income streams to investors, while leaseholders get nothing back for—in some cases—thousands of pounds a year. There is hardly a clearer illustration of the damaging pervasive tendency to treat housing as an investment opportunity—as a product to trade on the market—rather than as homes where people live and build their lives around. That should be the basis of housing in this country. We have lost somewhere what housing is: homes, places where we live, where lives are built, where we become successful —or not—and where we bring up a family. Housing is not a commodity to be traded on the financial market. We have seen more starkly than ever over the past two years that housing is also a public health issue, an educational issue, and a work, security and happiness issue, and we should begin to treat it as such.

Although we welcome this Bill, it is a very narrow first step; there are many glaring omissions—measures which could have been included even in such a narrow Bill. First, there is nothing to prevent freeholders from simply transferring their income stream from ground rents to service charges or administration or other charges, as has been highlighted. As shown by the ground rent scandal itself, there is no limit to the ingenuity that some freeholders will draw on to capitalise off the back of leaseholders. Service charges and administration charges are opaque at best, and far too hard to challenge. Will the Minister address that issue later on?

--- Later in debate ---

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

Let me first put it on record that, alongside the hon. Members for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) and for St Albans (Daisy Cooper), l am a co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on leasehold and commonhold reform. The group is assisted by the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership, which has been campaigning for many years for the kind of reform that we are debating today.

We might have expected the Bill to be a cause for celebration, and indeed any legislation that puts another nail in the coffin of leasehold is to be welcomed, but we are left with a feeling that it is a rather modest measure. Given that it took four years for us to reach this point, it seems that we are making glacial progress. Perhaps four years is not much in comparison with 1,000 years of leasehold, but for those who are still trapped in unsellable or seriously devalued homes because of the leases they signed, progress is not being made quickly enough.

I am not generally a fan of market-based solutions—the market is responsible for most of the egregious injustices that we have seen in leasehold—but, to a significant extent, the market has already moved away from imposing ground rents for most houses, not because those who concocted the leasehold scandal have had a prick of conscience but because a spotlight has been shone on the devastating consequences of their sharp practice. In that respect, I pay tribute to the fantastic work of the National Leasehold Campaign, which has done more than just about anyone to bring the unfairness of leasehold to the public’s attention. It is an irony that those campaigners do not stand to benefit from the Bill because, as has been pointed out already, it does nothing to tackle the existing problems. That said, however, their influence has already benefited my constituents and many others.

A new Redrow estate not far from where I live originally had properties being sold on a leasehold basis. After some pretty determined campaigning from the National Leasehold Campaign, Redrow decided to stop the sale of homes in the second phase as leasehold, but unfortunately not before several hundred people had already bought their homes as leasehold. To be fair to Redrow, I should add that it did then offer them the opportunity to purchase the freehold after two years, although it was a little unfortunate, to say the least, when it subsequently lowered the purchase price for the freehold again, creating another unfairness. While I give Redrow credit for stepping back and weaning itself off the leasehold drug, that should not obscure the fact that all this could have been avoided had it not sold the properties as leasehold in the first place. That takes me back to the basic concern that remains with the Bill, which is that it enshrines in law a two-tier system of home ownership when really we should be ending it altogether.

Very few new houses are now being sold as leasehold, but around 1.5 million houses will remain leasehold after this Bill becomes law. Is there a risk that choking off income streams from those who see other people’s homes as an investment will cause them to turn their attention to redoubling their efforts to squeeze as much as they can out of the existing properties? A number of Members have already mentioned that, and I will return to it later.

Turning to the details of the Bill, I know that a lot of consideration has been given to how we define a ground rent. That debate is instructive, because how can a payment for which nothing is received in return be considered a proper legal payment? The short answer is that it cannot, and I believe that that is another reason to abolish leasehold altogether. The reality is that ground rent is a legal fiction and a method of maintaining control and securing an income for which the recipient is required to do precisely nothing.

It is therefore disappointing that lease extensions for houses are exempt from the Bill, because there is significant concern that freeholders will put in massive multipliers when offering informal lease extensions, just to make the premium look lower and more attractive. They would then make their money back through allowing the ground rents to continue. Let us not forget that both parties do not have equal bargaining power. This all just adds weight to the argument that what we have here is a minor change that will help people in the future, when what we really need to do is to deal with the injustices of the present, and the best way to do that is of course to abolish leasehold altogether.

As I said earlier, we also need to keep an eye on whether those who have been involved in the systematic deception and mis-selling change their sights to deal with the new environment that the Bill represents. They have not gone away, those offshore accounts, those trust funds and those private equity investors who see people’s homes as an opportunity to cream off the cash long after the people living in them think that they have bought them. In particular, we have to keep a close eye on estate management companies, because that is one area in which charges could easily be inflated to more than cover the loss of a ground rent.

[Matt Rodda]

My hon. Friend is making an important speech and he has hit on a number of central issues, particularly when dealing with his own legal experience of these dysfunctional markets where on the one hand we have developers with enormous financial power and legal resources and on the other we have humble first-time buyers. Does he agree that there needs to be a rebalancing, with far greater protection for first-time buyers and ordinary householders, and with a much greater attempt by the Government to hold these large developers to account?

[Justin Madders]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. There is clearly an imbalance. We have already talked about how some enthusiastic first-time buyers who just want to get into their new homes put their trust in the people who have been assigned to deliver the legal niceties such as putting a value on the property and doing the conveyancing. They put their trust in those people, and sometimes that trust is betrayed through the egregious injustices that we have talked about.

[Mark Tami]

My hon. Friend has mentioned management fees, which I see as the next scandal coming down the road. People who bought their properties and were being charged perhaps £100 or £200 a year will have thought that that was okay, but that might now have gone up to £500 or £600 and there are often additional charges because, for example, fences or certain parts of the ground are not covered. People have told me that they feel they are paying their council tax twice. That is how they see it, and it is totally unfair.

[Justin Madders]

I thank my right hon. Friend and neighbour for his intervention, which leads me beautifully into the next section of my speech, in which I shall talk about exactly that.

I will never accept that it is right for developers to choose not to pay a sum to councils to adopt the communal areas, and that they instead save themselves money by passing on that cost to the homeowners and then make even more money from the homeowners by charging them for things that ought to be coming out of their council tax. Like my right hon. Friend, I worry that this trend will be accelerated because the ground rent gravy train is coming to an end, and that we will hear more and more stories of homeowners having no choice but to pay inflated annual service charges that, given the choice, they would prefer to pay through their council tax.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

The hon. Gentleman is making a good point about what is referred to as “fleecehold.” Does he agree it is entirely within the gift of the local authority to require the development to be made to adoptable standards in terms of roads and drainage, for example? It can then be adopted by the local authority, so people do not have to pay twice for such services.

[Justin Madders]

That is a fair point in theory, but I find it does not happen in practice. I have estates in my constituency that were built a dozen years ago and still have not been adopted because the developers have not put them up to the required standard. The to and fro never ends, because the developers have left town and they have no interest or incentive to bring those areas up to the adoptable standard.

[Christian Matheson]

I am grateful for the advice my hon. Friend has given to me and my constituents on this matter, as he is a neighbouring MP with particular expertise. He will be aware of one estate in my constituency that has been parcelled up and given to different developers, and it has been developed at different times. Not only do we have a problem with the local authority, but he will recall that we have a problem with different developers playing themselves off against each other in order not to bring the estate up to standard, as the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) suggests.

[Justin Madders]

My hon. Friend and constituency neighbour makes the point well. It all points to the lack of capacity in local authorities to tackle these issues. I do not want to make a party political point, but we have had a decade of austerity and we are now seeing the consequences in how local authorities police these things.

I would like to see a crackdown on unfair fees and contract terms by having an enforceable list of what are considered to be reasonable charges. We should require transparency on those charges and give leaseholders the right to challenge rip-off fees and poor performance. We should also try to ensure that residents are given greater powers to take over the management of their homes, if that is where we are going.

As my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson) said, I do not want to be standing here in a few years’ time talking about another PPI for the house-building industry because the Government have once again failed to act on the warning signs that are there for us all to see.

This Bill must be promptly followed with the promised wider leasehold reforms, particularly the promised reforms for which we have been crying out that will enable leaseholders to buy their freehold quicker, easier and cheaper. I have had a private Member’s Bill ready to go for three years that would allow us to do just that. It could have already become law if there had been the will to take on the freeholder interests that would lose out as a result.

I have now got the message that my Bill will not find favour with the Government. I am aware the Bill would not have meant an end to leasehold, but it would at least have given the victims of this industrial-scale con an opportunity to take back control of their property at an affordable price. I thought this Government were all about taking back control. Do they not realise that leaseholders do not have control?

What is stopping firmer action being taken against freeholders? I know there are legal opinions floating about on freeholders’ human rights, but what about my constituents’ human rights? Do they not have the right to live in their own home without someone else trying to make it into a cash cow? Do they not have the right to expect that the biggest purchase they ever make will be done fairly and will be properly regulated? Do they not have the right to have a Government who are serious about stopping the industrial-scale foul play we have talked about tonight?

It is disappointing that, although on the one hand the Government accept that unfair practices in the leasehold market can turn people’s home-ownership dreams “into a nightmare,” we are still waiting for action for the many leaseholders who have been trapped in this web that they did not sign up to. We have made it clear that there are a number of reasons why they have found themselves in this position, not all of which are resolved by the Bill.

We know that one in three houses sold in the north-west in the past 10 years is leasehold, and those people will not benefit from the Bill. My constituents and my hon. Friend’s constituents have been disproportionately affected by the leasehold scandal, and they are still waiting for something that will help. If we are to talk about levelling up in this place, we should be looking at something like that as it will deliver true justice, fairness and levelling up.

We need some clear timescales from the Minister for when existing leaseholders can expect to see action on their concerns. What commitments can they expect? I think we all agree that what has happened is unfair and a significant injustice, but when are we going to see action to put things right for existing leaseholders? The right hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid), when he was Communities Secretary, promised an outright ban on leasehold for all houses four years ago. That is four years of people being trapped in homes that they cannot sell because of onerous ground rents, and four years of stress and uncertainty about whether they should try to buy their freeholds now or wait until the law is reformed. I get asked regularly, “What should I do? Should I wait until the law changes?” It is very difficult to give an answer on that because we still have no clarity on when that law will be changed. So let us end four years of jam tomorrow. Let us deliver solutions for leaseholders today. Let us stand up to the vested interests and please, finally, abolish leasehold.

Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill [Lords]

Justin Madders Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading
Monday 24th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Sir Desmond Swayne]

I draw your attention, Madam Deputy Speaker, and the attention of the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

I am deeply embarrassed about the way that the retirement living industry has been treated over the past few years in the progress to this Bill. In recognition of the significantly greater capital costs of building developments that have communal areas, which have traditionally been funded through an income stream of ground rent, the industry was granted an exemption, or an assurance that it would be exempt from the provisions of the Bill, back in June 2019. That exemption was then withdrawn in January 2021. I understand that the decision to withdraw the exemption was made almost a year earlier, in February 2020, and that discussions about revoking the assurance of exemption had actually begun in August 2019. Throughout all that period, the industry continued to be reassured that the exemption was good and would hold, and it was not.

Throughout that period, the industry continued to raise capital on the basis of the model with which they had been told they could continue. The amendment goes one tiny little bit towards trying to remedy the damage that has been done. It accepts that the practice will have to end, but it asks for one tiny concession, namely that, when the provisions of the Bill bite in March 2023, properties that are part-sold can continue to sell the residual remaining flats or properties on the basis of a continued ground rent. Without that, what we will have is some properties within a development being worth significantly more in terms of the purchase price than others, and some properties paying a ground rent and others not. It will be hugely complicated and divisive. Therefore, the amendment merely asks for that to be addressed. At the most, if the provision were to pass, we anticipate that this would account for about 2,000 properties. I ask the Minister to reflect on this, and, even at this late hour, accept the amendment.

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

I rise to speak in support of new clause 1, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury).

To respond to the previous speaker, the right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne), on the issue of ground rents, it is clear that service charges are for communal areas. Indeed, McCarthy Stone’s website says very clearly—

[Sir Desmond Swayne]

rose—

[Justin Madders]

Go on then.

[Sir Desmond Swayne]

It is unlawful to charge ground rent for the maintenance of a communal area. They are clean different things.

[Justin Madders]

Indeed: ground rents are payments for which nothing is received in return, which is why they should be abolished. For the record, I am a co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on leasehold and commonhold reform and have campaigned for the abolition of ground rents for a number of years, having seen the impact on individuals of their use and abuse.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale for tabling the new clause and for being a consistently strong advocate for leaseholders during his time as an Opposition spokesperson. He apologised at the start of his speech; I would ask him to resign based on that apology had he not already been moved to another position. [Laughter.] He has done a sterling job in this brief, and the new clause is typical of the way he has used every opportunity available to him to push forward the cause for leaseholders.

As we know, new clause 1 would not abolish ground rents altogether but, if it is agreed to, will set a timescale by which concrete proposals on their abolition must be put forward. That is important because for too long my constituents and thousands of others have suffered because of the leasehold scandal.

I know that the overturning of a system that has been in place for 1,000 years is not necessarily straightforward, and arguments will always be made as to why things cannot happen, but, as has been said so many times—I have already said it once in this debate myself, but it is worth saying it again and again because it is such a powerful point that can never be made enough—ground rent is a payment made for which absolutely nothing is received in return. Why, then, can we not get on and reduce that payment to effectively nothing so that the legal position reflects the reality of the situation? That would send out an important signal—not just a departmental press release but a signal that will make a tangible difference to people’s lives: that the days of leasehold are numbered and that this place does not accept that ground rent is a legitimate payment.

We see ground rent for what it is: a feudal device used to suck money away from people who get no benefit and no advantage from the payment but risk losing their home if they do not make it. Such arrangements have no place in the 21st century or, indeed, any century.

Some say that we should not ban ground rents on existing leases because that would introduce an element of retrospective impact on long-standing investments, including pension funds, but that is not an argument I have any sympathy with. The toxicity of leasehold has now been known for at least five years, which is plenty long enough for any investor to have taken a closer look at what they were involved in, looked for alternative sources of income and realised that nobody with an ounce of humanity should be using people’s homes as an investment vehicle—and especially not ones that included leases that were so onerous they made the homes unsellable.

Yes, there is a concern that we should not readily change the law so that it works retrospectively and changes the legal nature of a contract after it has already been entered into, but let us not forget that this place voted to introduce the loan charge, which retrospectively changed the law, arguably to the considerable detriment of many who say they were misled about what they signed up to at the time. There are parallels, because let us not forget that the victims of leasehold did not sign up to leases in the full knowledge of what they entailed. The developers, lenders and lawyers all have some degree of culpability, but the innocent victims—the leaseholders—do not.

The Competition and Markets Authority has been clear on several occasions that leaseholders have been wronged, and I welcome its decisions, but of course those decisions do not cover everyone, which is why we in this place need to step in. We often talk in the House about the plight of the Women Against State Pension Inequality—did the WASPI women not sign up for something very different from what they ended up with?

I know there are legal opinions about freeholders’ human rights, but what about my constituents’ human rights? In fact, I would love the owner of a set of freeholds to get on the witness stand and try to convince a judge that they are the wronged party in all this. I would love to ask them whether they think people should have the right to live in their own homes without them being used as an income stream for someone else.

The irony of what we are debating is that many of those who have done the most to bring the leasehold scandal to the public’s attention—I think in particular of the National Leasehold Campaign—stand to benefit the least from this Bill because there is nothing in it to help existing leaseholders. That is why new clause 1 is so important. Four years ago, when he was Communities Secretary, the right hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid) promised an outright ban on leasehold houses, and we all hoped that by now a law would be in place for everyone so that these wrongs could be righted. Those people deserve an end to this. They deserve hope that something will finally be done to make their lives a little better. If the Government cannot support the new clause, then, at the very least, I would like to hear from the Dispatch Box a commitment in the form of a final date by which the scourge of leasehold will finally be consigned to the history books. The wronged leaseholders deserve that, and it is about time it happened.

[Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders). I share his concerns and those of the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury), because a significant number of new homes built in the north-west of England, particularly in my constituency and in theirs too, have been on leasehold contracts. Although I recognise the aim of the new clause, I am not completely sure that it will resolve all the issues for my constituents, and I want to talk through some of the issues that they have told me about over the past couple of months.

I welcome many of the proposals set out in the Bill and recognise the important role that they will have in protecting leaseholders moving forward. I am, though, concerned that, as the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston said, they will offer little comfort for the thousands of homeowners who have become trapped in historical leases, which I am afraid many were even unaware they were purchasing when they signed for their new home. That includes an number of constituents in Warrington South who have spent the past 12 years trying to resolve a situation that they were inadvertently drawn into when they were mis-sold their properties on the Steinbeck Grange estate in Chapelford village by David Wilson Homes.

My constituents believed they were purchasing their properties freehold, and many were not disabused of this position until several months after they moved in, when they received an invoice. One might rightly ask why their lawyers did not make them aware when they were signing the contract. It has become clear that most of them used a legal firm recommended by the developer—by the house builder’s sales team—and those lawyers failed to point out the tenure under which the properties were being sold, and failed to make Steinbeck residents aware of the important clause in their contract documents. By using their first names in dealings with clients, they made sure they could not be traced by dissatisfied customers once they became aware of the situation. The law firm went into administration within days of the estate being completed.

I note with interest that the Law Society’s response to the Bill states that it is not the solicitor’s place to dissuade a client from entering into a particular transaction; their role is to ensure that the transaction is legally sound and efficiently completed. I agree with that, but I believe that every lawyer has a responsibility to their clients, and in this case the client was not the developer but the homeowner, or prospective homeowner. They should have made clear all the elements of the contract and their clients should have been advised accordingly. I am aware of one Warrington solicitor who, when looking at the contract that was brought to him, advised the purchaser not to proceed because of the leasehold situation, and has come forward to give me all those details.

As hon. Members have mentioned, the Competition and Markets Authority is currently investigating several issues surrounding the potential mis-selling of leasehold properties. I thank the CMA for its endeavours in addressing this poor practice. It has been to Warrington and engaged with my constituents, and I am incredibly grateful for the work that it is doing there. These investigations have looked at four developers—Persimmon, Countrywide, Taylor Wimpey and Barratt Homes, which is the parent company of David Wilson Homes. To date, the CMA has reached agreements with the first three. I therefore encourage the management of Barratts to recognise the harm that has been caused by its past sales polices and agree a way forward with the CMA as soon as possible to put things right.

Many hon. and right hon. Members have raised these issues in this House, but progress is also down to the tenacity of the men and women trapped in unfair leasehold contracts across the country who have continued to fight for their rights. I particularly praise my constituent Mr Mike Carroll, who has refused to take no for an answer and is continuing to work tirelessly with me and his neighbours to achieve the right and just outcome for them.

Ministers also need to look again at how consumer bodies around the country, particularly trading standards, should be working in the interests of homeowners, to help them resolve some of these issues. In the case of homeowners in Warrington, trading standards appear not to have been interested and have done little to involve themselves in any investigations. That is not the case in other parts of the country, where resolutions have been reached. I note in particular that Cardiff trading standards got involved and looked very closely at some of these practices.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Eddie Hughes)]

This is a bit like the Rolling Stones tour in that I said goodbye to the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) and he has come back for an encore, for another concert. However, like the Rolling Stones, it is good to see him back again. I thank all right hon. and hon. Members for their contribution to this debate and for the constructive way in which they have engaged with the Bill throughout its passage. I particularly thank the Opposition Front Bench team for their helpful contributions.

I will address each amendment, starting with amendment 1 in the name of the hon. Gentleman. The difficulties faced by existing leaseholders have rightly been raised by Members across the House, both in Committee and in correspondence. I understand Members’ points about the fact that the Bill relates only to new leases. I point out, however, as I did in Committee, that the Bill is just the first of two-part legislation to reform the leasehold system and that further legislation will follow in this Parliament, so I encourage others, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning), to engage with me in discussions on the second part of the legislation as it begins to form.

The Government understand the urgency of the need for changes for leaseholders paying out unacceptable charges day to day. However, I do not think that the arbitrary deadline in new clause 1 is useful in this context, and similar is true of the alternative deadlines suggested by the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts). Although I appreciate that this is not completely relevant, Madam Deputy Speaker, on what he said about new burdens, the point of legislation such as this is to encourage people to behave appropriately so that they treat leaseholders fairly and there are no cases. However, as the Bill is implemented and we see how it develops, I look forward to discussing with him and the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee the impact that that will have on councils.

[Justin Madders]

The new clause is obviously not going to find favour with the Minister tonight, but could he at least give us the date—maybe even just the year—by which leasehold will finally be in the history books?

--- Later in debate ---

[Justin Madders]

It is a pleasure, as always, to follow the Father of the House. As we have already mentioned this evening, we are now four years on from the promises that were made about reforming leasehold, and the Bill, as we have all accepted, is a step in the right direction. However, as we have all acknowledged as well, it is little comfort to those who are still trapped in homes that they cannot sell because of the onerous leases with which they have been left, and we must do something about that. I tried to get the Minister to give us a year when that might happen, but we could not get anything out of him. None the less, I can assure him and the House that we will keep pushing on the issue, because justice demands that it is resolved.

It is also worth commenting on the fact that one in three houses sold in the north-west in the past 10 years is leasehold. There has been much talk about levelling up. Who can doubt that a person’s home is the biggest investment they will make? So it is simply unacceptable for so many homes in my part of the world to have been built off the back of an exploitative and unjust business model. Surely, if levelling up is to mean anything, it should at the very least mean that people’s homes are owned on the same basis wherever they live in the country.

The ending of ground rents for new homes is a positive, but it will create a strange situation. There will be houses within a stone’s throw of one another that have a different form of ownership. That will just add more weight to the sense of injustice that existing leaseholders feel, which is why I am so keen for us to push on and deal with that issue.

As many Members have said, a lot more needs to be done. A whole range of issues have been mentioned tonight. We have, for example, barely touched on park homes. There are so many scandalous things going on there, and we really should be paying them more attention. For homeowners, we see the following: management fees, which are a rip-off; non-transparent service charges; the cost of enfranchisement; insurance scams; obscure penalty clauses; and other costs that appear everywhere we turn in a lease. They are all baked into the business models of those avaricious companies which, let us not forget, are still out there building houses.

I am a little concerned that the companies on which we rely to build the houses that we need are responsible for many of the injustices that we have discussed tonight. We need to keep a close eye on their practices in future. I still think that we need an inquiry into the whole industry. We have previously discussed some of the things that we touched on tonight, and the question of how close lawyers were to developers and whether they were acting in the best interests of their clients needs further examination. We need to look at the lenders and surveyors and what the developers were saying to people, often first-time buyers, who were misled about what they were buying. We need to make sure that the system is examined thoroughly so that there is no repeat of the scandal that we have seen over the past five years.

People who buy a home should have a right not to expect it to become an ongoing income stream for a third party. If we have that as our guiding principle we will not go far wrong, so let us crack on with legislating so that that can become a reality for everyone. As many Members have done, I want to acknowledge the fantastic work of the many campaigners who have been active in bringing this issue to the fore including, as we have heard, the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership, Martin Boyd, Sebastian O’Kelly, the late Louie Burns, the National Leasehold Campaign, Catherine Williams, Katie Kendrick, Jo Darbyshire and many others, with the Father of the House being one of the biggest cheerleaders. There are many people who have contributed to bringing the issue to the attention of the House, but there is much more that we need to do. It feels at times as if progress is painfully slow, but that should not dim our determination finally to consign leasehold to the dustbin.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

We know about some of the abuses, because people who were working in firms that I would respectfully declare to be dodgy provided information anonymously. Will the hon. Gentleman join me in saying to Richard Davidoff, who might take defamation action against people who have blown the whistle on practices that we would condemn, that the courts should not be used to stop people blowing the whistle on practices that are questionable, if not completely wrong?

[Justin Madders]

As always, I find myself in agreement with the Father of the House. Whistleblowers should be able to speak up freely. With my other hat on, it is probably time that we had a review of whistleblowing legislation to make sure that people are adequately protected. We owe a debt to people who are prepared to speak up and put their head above the parapet, possibly at great personal expense. The scams have to be stopped, and people need to be supported.

On that note, we have made a little progress tonight, and I want to keep making progress. I am sure that the majority of the House will want leasehold finally to enter the history books, rather than being something that we deal with on a day-to-day basis.