Leasehold Reform

Debate between Lee Rowley and Anthony Mangnall

Tuesday 23rd May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Lee Rowley]

My right hon. Friend highlights the importance of reform in this area and the cross-party nature of the support for it. I would not read anything into my comments other than that we are committing to reform, we have said we will bring it forward and we will bring it forward. It will happen in the remainder of this Parliament.

Part of that reform will involve reforming unreasonable and excessive service charges. Many landlords and managing agents already demonstrate good practice and provide significant and relevant information to leaseholders, but too many are failing to meet that standard and failing to provide sufficient information or sufficient clarity. We recognise that existing statutory requirements do not go far enough to enable leaseholders to identify and challenge unfair costs. We will therefore act to improve this through better communication around these charges, and a clearer route to challenge or seek redress if things go wrong. That will ensure that leaseholders better understand what they are paying for and can more effectively challenge their landlord if fees are unreasonable, and make it harder for landlords to hide unreasonable or unfair charges.

[Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)]

I hope that my hon. Friend will forgive me for asking this question in this debate, but I wonder whether he might include in the legislation reforms relating to park homes. Many of the issues that he has mentioned are also faced by park homes across the country, including unfair prices and utility prices at very high levels, all of which are totally unacceptable. It is like the wild west for those people.

[Lee Rowley]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. I have hundreds of park homes in my constituency, and I know how important it has been for residents to see progress on those issues over the past decade. I was pleased, as I know my hon. Friend will have been, to see the changes brought forward in the Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) to reform pitch fees from RPI to CPI. That has been welcomed across the park homes sector and I know that the Government will continue to look at what reforms are possible for the sector.

Returning to the specific questions that have been put forward, we are committed to ensuring that when leaseholders challenge their landlord, they are not subject to unjustified legal costs and that they can claim their own legal costs from their landlord. Currently, if permitted by the lease, leaseholders may be liable to pay the legal costs of their landlord regardless of the outcome of the dispute, even if they win their case. The circumstances in which a leaseholder can claim their own legal costs from the landlord are limited. This can lead to leaseholders facing bills that are higher than the charges being challenged in the first place, which can deter leaseholders from taking their concerns to a tribunal. We will act on this and ensure that leaseholders are genuinely free to seek justice and to benefit when their case is proved.

Crucially, we also want to see more leaseholders benefiting from freehold ownership, as set out in the levelling up White Paper, and we recognise that reinvigorating commonhold has a significant part to play in this as a genuine alternative to leaseholds for flats. Some of the failings of the existing leasehold system have been all too evident in the past when seeking to ensure that those responsible for constructing dangerous buildings should be the first to pay for putting them right.

The Building Safety Act 2022, in addition to the existing enforcement powers available through the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 and the Housing Act 2004, empowers leaseholders and regulators to compel building owners and landlords to fix—and to pay to fix—their unsafe buildings through remediation orders and remediation contribution orders. The effect of the Building Safety Act is intended to be that building owners and landlords who build defective buildings, or who are associated with those responsible, pay for the remedying of all historical safety defects, both cladding and non-cladding. Landlords who are not associated with developers but can afford to pay are also unable to pass such costs on to qualifying leaseholders.

Similarly, on insurance costs, the Financial Conduct Authority’s latest report into broker insurance revealed that, on average, the premiums paid by leaseholders living in buildings with combustible cladding had tripled. That is unacceptable. Commissions on insurance policies also drive up prices, and in 70% of cases commissions are shared with property managing agents and freeholders by insurance brokers. This is an unfair burden that leaseholders should be relieved of, which is why we have committed to replacing commission pass-throughs from insurance brokers to managing agents, landlords or freeholders with more transparent fees and fair insurance handling costs. We have been clear that this unreasonable practice must end as a matter of urgency, and I regularly meet the relevant trade associations to make progress on this matter.

We have also made progress with a number of banks in recent months on ensuring that the market in leasehold properties affected by cladding starts to become more voluminous, by separating the building safety issues from people’s ability to live their lives.

Whether we are talking about safety or the security and freedom that people rightly expect when they buy a home, this Government are on the side of leaseholders. We are protecting and empowering them to challenge unreasonable charges, making it easier and cheaper for them to extend their lease or buy their freehold, and boosting commonhold as a flexible alternative to take the housing market into the 21st century. Millions will benefit from these reforms, not just in the thousands of pounds saved but in knowing that the homes they have worked so hard to secure are truly their own.

Official Development Assistance and the British Council

Debate between Lee Rowley and Anthony Mangnall

Wednesday 30th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Lee Rowley]

If I may, I will make some progress, but I would be delighted to give way to my hon. Friend in a moment.

Probably what makes today’s debate so frustrating for people out there who may be watching and who do not share the consensus that is generally coming across is that in certain speeches—none of which was recent, I might add—it was as if we were arguing about whether to end aid in its entirety. Effectively, we are arguing today about whether we are going to spend an extraordinary amount of money on international aid or an incredible amount of money on international aid. We are allowing a debate to become skewed by a skirmish over an arbitrary percentage that was agreed back in the 1950s by the World Council of Churches on a basis of which I am still not 100% sure.

[Anthony Mangnall]

My hon. Friend is making a tremendous speech, although I happen to disagree with all of it. He is showing his true parliamentary skills, but the point is that we have arbitrary numbers all over the shop when it comes to politics, from the 2% in NATO to the 2.7% R&D commitment. It is a misnomer to suggest that we have them only in foreign aid. They are therefore not something that we should shy from introducing.

[Lee Rowley]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that we have arbitrary targets everywhere; I do not doubt that. One reason that I sought election to this place was to try to get under the skin of those arbitrary targets. Some of the shibboleths that have not been challenged for a number of years have aspects that we should perhaps look at. We might wish to retain them, but we should never be shy of reviewing them again.

I am not saying this to be sharp with hon. Members, but it cannot be that the only approved manifestation of compassion is via a single monetary figure, free from the realities of any vague financial responsibility or even a semblance of fiscal rectitude. That is before we even get into the points that my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes quite rightly brought up about value for money. I sat on the Public Accounts Committee a couple of years ago and some very interesting reports came through on value for money in this area. I accept that it is a very difficult issue to judge, but we may wish to turn to it with as much frequency and as much depth as we talk about this single percentage.

[Anthony Mangnall]

Will my hon. Friend give way on that point?

[Lee Rowley]

If my hon. Friend does not mind, I will try to make a little more progress.

I do not think that righteousness should be outsourced to an international sector that I have been really disappointed in in recent weeks as regards this debate. All the emails coming into my inbox, far from acknowledging the UK’s continuing commitment to those in need across the world, seem to be trying to create a frame that turns the UK’s huge generosity against itself and seeks almost to sting us into immotive or silent acquiescence.

It really must not be that virtue can be found only in criticism of one number owned by one country, when that country will still spend proportionately more this year than Switzerland, Belgium, Finland, Canada, Ireland, Japan, Austria, Iceland, Hungary, New Zealand, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Slovenia, Poland, Slovakia, South Korea, the Czech Republic, Greece, Australia or the United States did in the previous year. I say that not just to make a rhetorical point, but because it is important that we understand the context within which we are debating this important point.

I absolutely acknowledge the strength of feeling in today’s debate from those who take a different view from mine. I hope and am sure that hon. Members who do not take my view will acknowledge that people who, like me, do not necessarily speak as loudly or as frequently on the subject, but who also feel strongly about it, also look to such signals as what people think around the country. I am afraid that in my view this debate is moving a little away from the people who placed us here. It is our job, or the job of some of us, to bring it back into balance. We all want to help lift up our fellow man, and it is not disproportionate that some of us want to do that in a way that increases the likelihood of our being able to continue to do so in the future.