Land Registry
Debate between Liz Kendall and David Lammy(8 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Lammy
If the House will forgive me, I will make some progress, because so many Members want to speak.
The recording of land and property ownership is integral to the functioning of our economy and has been carried out with integrity and impartiality by the Land Registry since 1862. Indeed, the Land Registry’s reputation as wholly independent from the influence and pressures of the market is crucial to its work. The current consultation exercise tries to preserve that necessary independence by attempting to create an artificial distinction between “Land Register ownership” and a new company which “delivers Land Registry services”. That is totally meaningless in practice. While the Government claim they will retain “ownership” of the land register, a private company would be free to grant title and make changes to the register as transactions occur. The consultation document talks of putting
“the right protections in place”
to ensure that the Land Registry would continue to deliver an impartial service to customers. However, there is absolutely no detail about what those protections and safeguards might be. In the words of John Manthorpe, former Chief Land Registrar,
“at the heart of this is the nonsense that a private company should have the power to decide the legal land and property title rights for others”.
The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is yet to publish the responses to the latest consultation, but I have taken the time to read through the responses to the January 2014 consultation. I quote Clifford Chance, the law firm, certainly no stranger to the profit motive or enemy of the private sector, which said that privatisation would create:
“An inherent conflict between a private sector company, whose main purpose is to maximise shareholders’ profits, and the need of consumers for a low cost, high quality and risk free service”.
Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that although the Government say that they will retain ownership of the land register, that is completely meaningless while millions of changes are progressively made to it by the private company? Is that not the key issue? In the words of John Manthorpe, the former Chief Land Registrar whom my right hon. Friend has quoted, the proposal does not stand up to “any reasoned scrutiny”.