Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill

Mark Tami Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 27th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Lee Rowley]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. I know that it is covered in an amendment put down by the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), and I will come to it later in the debate.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

On the point made by the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), Bellway is certainly a company that has done this. Indeed, many people did not even realise that they had a leasehold house and only found out quite a while afterwards when all the costs started to come down the road. I welcome what the Government have done, but we must try to find a good solution for everybody who now finds themselves in this position, because in the years to come those houses could become very difficult to sell.

[Lee Rowley]

The right hon. Gentleman makes an important point about the need to ensure that this regime works. We recognise that there are challenges, which is why we are bringing forward a number of measures.

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To ensure that consumers have access to the material information they need and that they have the confidence to make a decision when purchasing a new house, new clause 50 requires those proposing to sell a new lease of a house to make this clear when marketing the property. To ensure that vendors comply with the new marketing requirements, this measure will rely on new clause 59 to implement a new penalty regime. This includes a fine for failing to provide the required marketing information at the right time. We know that not all home buyers will read the detail of all the marketing information and that not all leases will be advertised, so new clause 51 introduces warning notices so that all vendors will have to alert purchasers in writing that they are entering into the lease of the house, or an agreement for the lease of the house, and informing them on what grounds that lease is permitted.

[Mark Tami]

I thank the Minister for giving way again. One problem is that many of these companies encouraged buyers to use their lawyers, who did not point out some of the pitfalls of leasehold properties.

[Lee Rowley]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, which is why I hope that measures such as new clause 51 go some way towards making it crystal clear that there is no way to get around this, and towards providing clarity to those who seek to buy a new property.

New clause 52 will require a statement on the front of all new leases declaring that it is a permitted lease and is not a long residential lease of a house. Should a developer make a dishonest declaration to His Majesty’s Land Registry, the homeowner may be able to exercise the redress right contained in new clause 54, which will allow them to acquire the freehold from the developer free of charge.

Under new clause 53, if a lease does not include the prescribed statements, His Majesty’s Land Registry will have the power to restrict the resale of the property until the right information and declarations have been provided.

Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill

Mark Tami Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 11th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

An embarrassment of riches! I will give way to all colleagues currently standing, and then I will try to make progress.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

I represent an area with a lot of leasehold houses. It is just a cynical money-making scam. Some people own a house but are required to pay an admin charge to change the flooring or have a pet, so it does not feel as if they own it. I can understand the flooring thing if they are in flats, but not if they are in houses. It is just a con.

[Michael Gove]

I couldn’t agree more.

Leasehold Reform

Mark Tami Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House notes the commitment by the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities in January 2023 to abolish the feudal leasehold system which he has acknowledged is an unfair form of property ownership; calls on him to keep his promise to the millions of people living in leasehold properties by ending the sale of new private leasehold houses, introducing a workable system to replace private leasehold flats with commonhold and enacting the Law Commission’s recommendations on enfranchisement, commonhold and the right to manage in full; and further calls on the Secretary of State to make an oral statement to this House by 23 June 2023 on his plans to reform leasehold.

It is always nice to see the Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley) in his place, but there was a time when the Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) could not resist a housing debate. His appearances in this Chamber are fast becoming rarer than the sight of a Tory councillor in the north of England. I worry that he may be in danger of becoming extinct.

Nothing, as the Minister knows and we know, matters more than a home. Security in your own home, the right to make it your own and the right to live somewhere fit for human habitation are non-negotiable. Housing may be a market, but it is not just a market—it is a fundamental human right. But for so many people in our country, what they thought would be the reward of years of hard work and the realisation of their dreams of home ownership are shattered by the reality of what it means to be a leaseholder.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

As my hon. Friend will know, in the north-west of England and north Wales, leasehold houses were sold for many years. People who were told at the time that they would be able to buy the freehold for perhaps a few thousand pounds, are now being asked for £20,000 or £30,000, which they cannot afford. They are finding that selling their house is becoming very difficult. Linked with that are often very high management fees. This is really affecting them and their lives. People tell me that they do not feel that they actually own their house anymore.

[Lisa Nandy]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. He has been a tireless campaigner for his constituents affected by this issue, but I fear we will hear so much more of that from all parties in the House today. We have heard it for years that people’s homes have become a prison. The shocking lack of information—or in the case he cites, misinformation—just compounds the injustice that is felt by many. So many leaseholders face the daily reality of appalling charges and uncertainty. This issue affects millions of people up and down the country. There are nearly 5 million leasehold homes in England: the majority of flats in the private sector and 8% of all houses in England.

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[Mark Tami]

My hon. Friend is being generous with her time. I have met many people, particularly first-time buyers, who purchased a leasehold property and were offered a discount by the developer selling the house for using its lawyer for the transaction. Surprise, surprise—the fact that it was leasehold and the pitfalls were never pointed out to them. That seems to be a common practice.

[Lisa Nandy]

That story illustrates so well that that form of tenure—that feudal, archaic system—has become home for sharp practice all over the place. We have heard that from hon. Members over and over on both sides of the House, and it is about time we stopped it. We can take important steps forward on ground rent and extending leases that will make life easier for many, but after all that has been promised, leaseholders have the right to expect their Government to go further. Will the Minister give us a cast iron guarantee that the Bill they have promised will bring to an end the sale of new private leasehold houses at the point the Bill comes into force, ensure those provisions are applied retrospectively to December 2017, a promise that has been made repeatedly by this Government, and bring in a workable system to replace private leasehold flats with commonhold?

Back in May 2021, the Government launched the Commonhold Council, an advisory panel of leasehold groups and industry experts to inform the Government on the future of this type of home ownership. Can the Minister update the House on when the Commonhold Council last met and what its recommendations are for bringing in a commonhold system? As he will know, commonhold has been in force since 2004 but has failed to take off for two main reasons: first, conversion from leasehold to commonhold requires unanimity from everyone with an interest in the block, which has proved difficult to achieve, and, secondly, developers have not been persuaded to build new commonhold developments.

Members on both sides of the House are acutely aware of how complex an issue this is to get right, but complexity is not an excuse for inaction. Credit must be given to the three Law Commission reports that represent a detailed, thoughtful road map, which Labour has committed to implement in full. It is only by implementing those proposals in full that the commonhold system will sufficiently improve, so that leaseholders can easily convert to commonhold, gain greater control over their properties and have a greater say in how the costs of running their commonholds are met.

The proposals would go further still to support those on low incomes and those who have found themselves trapped in leasehold by improving mortgage lenders’ confidence in commonhold to increase the choice of financing available for homebuyers. They would allow shared ownership leases to be included within commonhold and enable commonhold to be used for larger, mixed-use developments that accommodate not only residential properties, but shops, restaurants and leisure facilities.

We have debated these issues in this Chamber so many times since the appalling tragedy at Grenfell, when a group of people were rendered invisible to decision makers only a few miles away, with the most appalling and tragic consequences. Clearly, the burdens that homeowners have long laboured under, because of the disfunction of the property agent market and the inherent flaws of the leasehold system, have become more acute over recent years as a result of the building safety crisis and surging inflation.

That combination has already pushed many hard-pressed leaseholders to the brink of financial ruin. How can we accept that these rip-off companies, on behalf of owners we often do not even know—we do not have the right to find out who they are—are allowed to tell people whether they can even change the doorbell on their own home, as my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) said, or make minor changes that would make all the difference to their lives? Who can doubt that a person’s home is, in most cases, the biggest investment they will make? So it is simply unacceptable for so many homes to be built on an exploitative and unjust business model.

Levelling up, which is included in the name of the Department, was supposed to answer a clamour for more control and agency, and give people who have a stake in the outcome and skin in the game a greater ability to make decisions about their own lives. As I have said in this place before, that is the legacy that we should seek to build, and we should do so in tribute to the tireless campaigners and in honour of those who lost their lives in Grenfell. We must build a fairer, more just system that is fit for the 21st century.

Everybody, everywhere in the United Kingdom, regardless of the type of tenure that they happen to hold, has the right to a decent, secure, safe home—full stop. We could end these arcane rules and give power back to people over their own homes, lives and communities. Politics is about choices and Labour is clear—we choose to bring this injustice to an end. Change is coming and the Government now have to decide: will they enable that change, or seek to block it? Whose side are they on?

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[Lee Rowley]

The hon. Lady makes a strong point and I will come to that in a moment. We have shared concerns about specifics, which we have all experienced as constituency MPs—Coppen Estates in North East Derbyshire, I am looking at you—and about the general principle and the broader point, which I will come to in a moment.

We have already taken action. The hon. Member for Sheffield South East has highlighted that we have ended ground rents for most new residential leases. The Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Act 2022 came into force last June and prevents landlords under new residential long leases from requiring a leaseholder to pay a financial ground rent. That will ensure that people buying most new leases will not face problems associated with ground rents. However, we remain concerned about the cost of ground rents and, in 2019, we asked the Competition and Markets Authority to investigate abuses in the leasehold sector. Since then, the CMA has secured commitments benefiting over 20,000 leaseholders, including commitments to remove a doubling of ground rent terms and to revert charges to original rates.

We know that there is more to do to tackle unfair practices, however. We know that many leaseholders find the process for extending their lease or buying their freehold prohibitively expensive or complex or lacking transparency. Equally, we understand that many right-to-manage applications fail on technicalities that may be attributed to an over-detailed procedure, and we are committed to improving this by making the process simpler, quicker, more flexible and more effective. That is why, as the hon. Member for Wigan said, we asked the Law Commission to look at the issue, and we are carefully considering the reports that it has since produced on enfranchisement, valuation and the right to manage.

[Mark Tami]

As I mentioned earlier, when many of these leasehold houses were sold, the purchasers were promised that they could purchase the freehold, only to find that that was not an option, the freehold was sold on immediately and freeholds were packaged up; they are financial products. I have spoken to people who get a letter every couple of months informing them that the freehold has been sold on to somebody else. This is their life, this is their property, but they feel that they do not own it because it is being bought and sold on a regular basis.

[Lee Rowley]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a strong point about the importance of reform. This is one of the reasons that we have committed to reform and I hope that we will be able to provide that in the months ahead in the remainder of this Parliament.

We are committed to tackling problems such as these at the root, so we will abolish issues such as marriage value and we will cap ground rents in enfranchisement calculations so that leaseholders who currently pay onerous ground rents do not also have to pay an onerous premium. To make this process simpler and more transparent, we will introduce an online calculator to help leaseholders to understand what they will pay to extend their lease or to buy it out. These changes should, and will, generate substantial savings for some leaseholders, particularly those with fewer than 80 years left on their lease, and also ensure that landlords are sufficiently compensated in line with their interest. These changes are therefore fair for all concerned.

Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill [Lords]

Mark Tami Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 29th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Eddie Hughes]

I largely agree with the hon. Lady, not least because the ten-minute rule Bill to which I referred, which I brought to the House when I was a Back Bencher, completely endorsed her points. It is unfortunate that some people include such egregious terms in ground rents.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

Does the Minister agree that this issue is about not only ground rents, but the admin fees that are often associated with any minor changes that the owner of the property wants to make? A lot of these properties are also linked with extra charges for management fees for the land and other things. The levels of charges placed on leaseholders are becoming totally unacceptable.

[Eddie Hughes]

I do not want to jump forward several pages in my speech, but the right hon. Gentleman is predicting—or at least pointing to—the fact that we have identified this problem and have ensured that when we reduce ground rents to a peppercorn, people will not be able to cheat by introducing associated management fees and other charges. If he is looking for further changes, the second part of our seminal legislation, when it comes in due course, will no doubt satisfy his needs.

The starting point for this legislation has to be our shared recognition that for many people, to be a leaseholder is also to be a homeowner, and we are clear that homes that have been bought should be theirs to live in and enjoy, not be treated as cash cows for third-party investors. This Government are on the side of homeowners, which is why in our manifesto we committed to introduce this important legislation.

Hon. Members will be well aware of the problems that many leaseholders have faced in recent years, including, as pointed out by Opposition Members, spiralling ground rents and onerous conditions that have turned the dream of home ownership into a nightmare for some leaseholders. This Bill is the first of our seminal two-part legislation to reform and improve the leasehold system. Further legislation will follow later in this Parliament to continue to address the historic imbalances in the leasehold system.

[Eddie Hughes]

The work of the CMA has been pivotal so far in already changing the behaviour of a number of significant developers. I have spoken to it recently; further work is ongoing and I hope that it will have further successes in the future. My hon. Friend is completely right to raise that point.

Both this Bill and the wider leasehold reform programme have been informed by consultation. I thank those present here today, including the Opposition Front Benchers, who have taken the time to discuss the issue. I look forward to further discussions over the coming weeks and months.

The Bill has a specific focus: the ground rent in future long residential leases. Some existing leaseholders face substantial difficulties, including costly enfranchisement, a lack of transparency and burdensome lease terms. Escalating ground rents in particular can reach unaffordable levels and make some properties difficult to sell. That is not right, which is why we have asked the Competition and Markets Authority to conduct a thorough investigation into potential mis-selling and unfair terms in the leasehold sector.

[Mark Tami]

I have met many people who were told by the company that sold them their property that they would be able to buy the lease, only to find out, when they inquire to buy it, that it has been sold on to some financial institution. Does the Minister accept that point?

[Eddie Hughes]

Once again the right hon. Gentleman points out an egregious and unfortunate practice that hopefully we will be finding ways to address in future.

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[Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill sets ground rents on new leasehold homes to peppercorn levels. We welcome this very small step towards reform, and will not oppose the Bill this evening.

Generating income through high ground rents is an outrageous practice, as has been discussed, but serious leasehold reform is long overdue. Leasehold has been the main way that properties in shared blocks or converted flats have been owned in this country. It stems from arcane feudal laws that date back to an era of landed gentry and aristocracy, and it needs reform urgently. In its more recent manifestations, there has been what can only be described as a scam on an industrial scale, as was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson), against innocent leaseholders—and it increasingly affected new houses, not just flats. It is totally wrong, and it needs ending.

[Mark Tami]

I have been struck by the way that two houses, next door to each other, may be exactly the same, but one can be leasehold and the other freehold. We see that all the time. When a house is advertised, the advert often says, “This is not leasehold”—it points out that fact. Leasehold properties are being devalued by the day.

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[Lucy Powell]

I am glad the right hon. Gentleman raises that point, because I am sure colleagues around the House will be keen to highlight—

[Mark Tami]

Will my hon. Friend give way on that point?

[Lucy Powell]

I will first try to answer it, and then when I do not answer it very well, I will give way to my right hon. Friend to give a better answer. What I do know is that, unfortunately, many people who bought houses in this situation were advised to use the solicitor of the marketing company or company selling the houses—I have many in my constituency. So they were given poor advice, and this is a mis-selling scam as well. Would my right hon. Friend like to give a better answer?

[Mark Tami]

My hon. Friend has in many ways made the point I was going to make. These people were often first-time buyers, keen to get on to the housing market and get their first home. They were told, “Don’t use this solicitor or that solicitor; use these ones, and we will give you a discount to use them”, and—shock, horror—many were not even aware, as my hon. Friend has made clear, of the property being leasehold, let alone of all the other charges associated with that.

[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.

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[Mark Tami]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Lucy Powell]

I will, because my right hon. Friend is an expert on this issue.

[Mark Tami]

To list just a few examples that I have come across, some leaseholders who—in theory—own a house and the land around it are asked to pay if they want a pet or want to change the flooring in the house or the layout of the garden. People have said to me, “I’m paying a mortgage on a house that I don’t really feel I own.”

[Lucy Powell]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right and he gives good examples, some of which I was going to use later. He makes a very good point—some of these charges are outrageous. Will Ministers respond to that and address how we can stop that practice?

Secondly, the millions of people already trapped in leasehold homes will see no benefit whatsoever from the Bill, so none of the examples that we have heard will end as a result of it. The Government have chosen to limit the scope of the Bill to new homes, which means those already facing these bills will see no benefit at all. Delay has real costs for them; the Minister can pass the buck on to us for what happened 11 years ago, but more than 2 million new homeowners have been trapped in this feudal leasehold system since his Government came to power.

The Competition and Markets Authority has done some good work taking down the largest and worst-offending of the freeholders, but we cannot wait for it to take on every single company involved in this outrageous practice. Will the Minister work with us and support our proposal, which we will table in Committee, to protect existing leaseholders?

Thirdly, the Bill does nothing at all to stop new houses being sold as leasehold. Leasehold houses are straightforwardly wrong, for the reasons that we have already heard. At the same time that the Government promised to set ground rents at a peppercorn, which the Bill does, they committed to ending the practice of newly built homes being sold as leasehold.

Half a million houses have been sold as leasehold since 2010, 60% of them in the north-west. Those homeowners face not just exorbitant ground rents but restrictions on how they can alter their homes. We have already heard some examples: if someone wants to have a pet, or if they want to make changes to the building, they have to ask permission. All too often, people are left feeling that they do not really own the home. When the leaseholder tries to escape this nightmare by buying out the freehold, they often discover all kinds of other restrictions that they were not told about when they bought their home. This needs to change.

As recently as 2017, the Government promised legislation to prohibit the granting of new residential long leases on houses. When will that come in, and why is it not included in the Bill? It makes no sense to me whatsoever that that has not made it into the Bill. Again, perhaps Ministers will work with us, and with some of my colleagues who are in the Chamber today, in Committee to end new leaseholds on houses altogether.

There was a lot more that the Government could have done in a simple first-step Bill, but I hope the whole House will recognise that wholesale reform of leasehold is long overdue. The building safety crisis has brought into stark relief how terrible our feudal leasehold laws are. Innocent leaseholders can be passed remediation bills totalling hundreds of thousands of pounds with no right of recourse. It is a David and Goliath situation that is hitting more and more homeowners across the country. Fixing the building safety crisis truly must mean fixing our outdated leasehold laws too.

As the last few years have shown, this is now an urgent task, so we call on the Government to do these simple things when it comes to wider leasehold reform: enable leaseholders to extend the lease or buy the freehold; make commonhold the norm, and make it much easier for properties to operate that way; abolish marriage value, as they promised they would; strengthen leaseholders’ voices and simplify the right to manage; give real teeth and real recourse to the bodies that are supposed to arbitrate and act on behalf of leaseholders, or create new ones altogether; and prevent freeholders in law from passing on extortionate costs for remediation works, or for putting right problems that they have created that are not the problems of the leaseholders, as well as the things that I have already discussed. Those are just some of the reforms that are urgently needed to ensure that no leaseholder is trapped against their will in this broken, outdated system.

In conclusion, the Bill is a tentative attempt at reform. While it is welcome, it represents a massive missed opportunity to transform a leaseholder sector that continues to scam working people on an industrial scale. Even in a slimmed-down Bill, the Government have failed to close loopholes, protect those already in leasehold homes or end the sale of new houses as leasehold altogether. Wholesale reform is urgently needed to ensure that nobody continues to be voiceless, trapped in leasehold homes they cannot sell, and facing ever-growing bills and charges.

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[Robert Jenrick]

I will make progress, if my right hon. Friend does not mind.

The Bill was born out of two issues. One is a recent phenomenon, which the Front Benchers and other hon. Members have mentioned: the abuse of leasehold in recent years. A system that was never perfect and that many of us would wish to see reformed was subject to wholesale abuse and rip-off practices by developers and freeholders, who used ground rents as an income stream and escalated them, leaving leaseholders in a perilous position. Leasehold was used for properties for no good reason, purely to benefit from ground rents. We have heard about such examples, and particularly the use of ground rents for houses. It is difficult to see that any house needs to be built as a leasehold property. In different times, I have bought into the argument that there might be exceptional reasons why one would need to build such a home, but it is very difficult to think what those would be. The system is not used in other countries around the world, including in the United States, where there are gated communities, communities for the elderly—all manner of different homes. They are not being built as leasehold properties, so I do not see why they should be in this country.

[Mark Tami]

I agree fully with that point. As the right hon. Gentleman said, this practice had largely gone away. For years, houses were not built as leasehold properties, but in the north-west and in north Wales, a group of builders decided that this would be an extra way of scamming—I use that word deliberately—even more money out of the people buying the properties.

[Robert Jenrick]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right; I do not disagree in any way. The north-west was particularly targeted, for reasons that I do not understand, with tens of thousands of homes built in this manner. It really was disgraceful. It gave leasehold a very bad name and necessitated these changes and others that will be introduced in future. The Bill ends these practices for new properties; that is key. It will ensure that the business model behind ground rents—the creation of such properties as leasehold to benefit commercially—will come to an end. We are already seeing its gradual reduction, and the Bill will lead to its elimination.

I want to address the point that was raised about why the proposals should be extended to retirement properties. As Secretary of State, I came under fierce resistance and lobbying from the retirement property sector. Its lobbyists approached Members of Parliament and my Department and threatened judicial review of our proceedings. I considered it to be an unfair practice, targeted at the most elderly and vulnerable in our society, that in addition to paying their service charge they should pay a ground rent that might escalate at a significant pace. Why not have a fairer and more transparent system where an elderly person knows exactly what they are getting when they pay the purchase price on their property and then when they pay the service charge on an annual basis, instead of receiving two bills every year? I think that is a simple matter of fairness and transparency, and it was the right decision to bring that to an end. We did, however, give a longer period for businesses to transition and to change their business model, which is why that part of the industry will not feel the force of the Bill until 2023.

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[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.

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[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak in tonight’s debate. I wish not only to address a number of issues that colleagues have raised, but to add in further details that I hope are particular to my constituency but fear may be common around the country.

First, I wish to support the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell). Obviously, I welcome this Bill, which will help, but the broader point about the deep inequities of leasehold still stands true and we should be moving much faster on this important matter, trying to remove leasehold from the system of ownership in this country. Is it not incredible that the UK still has this medieval system of ownership, which, as has been mentioned, so discriminates against first-time buyers, people on lower incomes, older people and many other groups, which in many ways deserve more support and encouragement to get on to the property ladder? They deserve not to have their lives blighted by what is, sadly, sometimes the behaviour of irresponsible developers. I am not saying that all developers are irresponsible, but Members have clearly highlighted some awful and appalling examples of behaviour.

First, Loddon Park is a pleasant development on the edge of Woodley, a suburb of Reading. It is a relatively new and really quite beautiful development, with many attractive homes. The homes are freehold properties but some of the shared areas in the large development are subject to charges. In many ways, the sort of problems described so eloquently by my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) are also occurring for those at Loddon Park—several hundred people living in an attractive new development on the edge of an urban area in the south-east of England. The residents potentially face unlimited extra costs for the maintenance of some attractive grounds—including meadow areas, large ponds and other areas where children can play—because no cap was written into the charging policy and they did not realise that when they bought their properties.

As explained earlier by my hon. Friends the Members for Ellesmere Port and Neston and for City of Chester (Christian Matheson), as well as other colleagues, some of the first-time buyers we are talking about are unfortunately not always aware of some of the difficulties into which they might get themselves. There is an unequal situation in which on the one hand there are powerful and articulate developers with an excellent team of lawyers and on the other hand there are first-time buyers. That is deeply unfair. In this case, young families face potentially unlimited additional costs to pay for the upkeep of the rather attractive communal areas around their houses. That is very sad and deeply unfair. I respect the fact that the local authority had difficulties in trying to provide the properties, but I wish it had been more careful. There is also an element of involvement from Wokingham Borough Council, which is the local authority involved. Will the Minister look into that issue? I will write to him to explain the situation and ask for his help and support.

Before I mention another egregious example from the Reading East constituency, I offer my support to colleagues who have mentioned the issue of snagging and the problems with developers that prevent the adoption of roads. I know of cases in both Reading borough and Wokingham borough in which different developers have started to build a new estate and completed all the properties, which have been sold, but the roads, street lighting and other services have not been properly completed. Although the issue has gone on for years, there has been an ongoing tussle—similar to what the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) mentioned—between council officers and developers. It has been deeply problematic for local authorities, which often have low levels of resource in their planning departments so are not well equipped to argue the case.

[Mark Tami]

I totally agree with my hon. Friend. Quite often, the moment the developers sell the last property, that is it: they are not interested any more. They are not interested in snagging or doing the roads; they are off to build somewhere else. The problem is that, as my hon. Friend was saying, local authorities do not have the money to chase these people. In my opinion, if they do not finish an estate—what they were allowed to do under the planning permission—they should not be granted permission again to build anything else.

[Matt Rodda]

My right hon. Friend makes an excellent point. There should be much stricter rules on this issue, because such sharp practice by developers helps no one. It does not help the building industry as whole, homeowners, local authorities or, indeed, other businesses that have to operate. In one estate near me, drivers can feel the difference as they drive on to the unadopted piece of road because their vehicle goes over a huge bump. That is not good for anyone, including many of the small businesses that have to deliver to that estate. It is surely in everybody’s interests, including those of the wider building industry, to get on with it and come up with a clear, simple and fair solution to the problem so that we can all move on and not spend vast amounts of unnecessary energy chasing after developers to sort out problems such as lamp posts that do not work or roads that have not been finished off.

I wish to address a specific issue that relates to a social housing enterprise in my constituency that operates across large parts of Berkshire. I have been deeply disappointed by Housing Solutions and ask for the Minister’s help. This organisation appears to have badly let down a number of residents in Woodley, the Reading suburb I mentioned earlier. It applied for planning permission to build properties next to a transport depot, where there are a lot of heavy goods vehicle movements, and on an industrial estate. The properties have been sold in a part-ownership scheme to local residents who were desperate to get on the housing ladder and were finding it quite difficult because they are on modest incomes. The local authority gave planning permission and carried out all the relevant checks—again, this is Wokingham Borough Council not Reading Borough Council. There was nothing in planning law to stop these flats from being built next to a haulage yard. The local authority looked into it and it was not able to reject the plans on that basis—on the basis that the flats were close to a noisy and polluting business. However, it did try to insist on conditions on the development. Sadly, though, it appears from lengthy inquiries from my office and also from one of the local councillors—Councillor Shirley Boyt—that these conditions have not been met. Residents, including a constituent of mine, Elise Maslen, who lives in the development, were not told of the additional changes that would need to be made to these properties—in particular, the need to adapt to air quality problems, such as mechanical ventilation and other forms of enhancements to the properties. They were also not told about the noise and pollution from the depot when they purchased the properties. That has resulted in around 20 families being trapped in flats that they do not want to be in, suffering from noise and air pollution.

The local authority has tried to find a way of bringing these properties up to spec. It has insisted on Housing Solutions doing that, but there has been a great deal of delay. This has gone on for five or six years. Sadly, some of the residents have moved away and are now having to pay for the cost of living in these properties while also living at a new address. They are deeply concerned about the health of their children and of themselves. This seems to be an egregious abuse of the situation. While it is not directly related to leaseholders, it has many of the same features, with powerful organisations, sadly, abusing their position of power and ordinary householders struggling and being provided with incorrect information. I wish to write to the Minister to ask for his help on this matter because it is of huge concern to me, to the local community and to the residents concerned. They have been treated appallingly by the housing association.

Holocaust Memorial Day 2021

Mark Tami Excerpts

Thursday 28th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

It is nearly 76 years since the end of the second world war in Europe, but the lessons that the world needs to learn from the events that culminated in the holocaust remain as relevant today as they were then. The holocaust did not begin and end with Auschwitz and the other extermination camps; its roots lay in the falsehoods and hatred that festered for centuries before and continue to exist today.

In the 1920s and 1930s, that hate and antisemitism was whipped up at rallies, and pamphlets were published that transformed Germany from an advanced liberal democracy into a vicious dictatorship. Today, that poison and those lies have not gone away. We rarely see the mass rallies and events, but the battle has moved online, where hate speech and holocaust denial can be found at a disturbing level. There are those who hide behind the idea that somehow this should be allowed, under some perverse idea that it is free speech.

The other night, I re-watched the excellent David Baddiel documentary in which he made contact with holocaust deniers. I was particularly struck by his concerns about what he termed to be “soft” holocaust denial—the idea that, yes, something may have gone on, but that it has been exaggerated and somehow blame lies on all sides. This is extremely dangerous. We see today populist Governments in Poland and Hungary seeking to rewrite history, to airbrush out the involvement of their countrymen and women in terrible crimes.

I believe that the holocaust is not just a terrible one-off event that happened in our history, carried out by a madman and his thugs. The truth is very different. Before the establishment of mechanised extermination in death camps, Einsatzgruppen squads followed the German advance into eastern Europe and Russia, shooting over 2 million men, women and children. These groups were led not by so-called thugs but by a university lecturer, a theologian, a doctor. These should be warnings to us about how this can take over.

History teaches us the events of the past, but it is also a warning for our future. The holocaust is a fact. There are no alternative facts, and we should never allow that to be said.

Mobile Homes Act 1983 (Amendment) Bill

Mark Tami Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 23rd October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

It is a pleasure to introduce this Bill. It is a two-clause Bill, but the second clause covers only the Bill’s extent, commencement and short title, so it essentially has only two provisions. It arises directly from my long-standing interest in the welfare of park home residents. I have been privileged to be the chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on park homes for more years than I can recall.

Mobile and park homes provide residential accommodation for about 85,000 households on some 2,000 sites in England. Most of those residents are of pensionable age. They normally own their own home, and they pay rent to the site owner for the land on which the home is stationed. Let me put it on the record that they are not bungalows. Some rogue firms out there are marketing new park homes as bungalows. I have written to the Advertising Standards Authority on the subject but have yet to receive a satisfactory response.

The Bill will make two changes to the Mobile Homes Act 1983 that will help all residents. The changes were set out by the Government in their response to their own call for evidence in their 2017 review of park homes legislation. On page 6 of the response, which was published on 2018, it says at paragraph 12:

“Some site owners pass on their repair, maintenance and other ad hoc costs to residents by requiring them to pay variable service charges in addition to the pitch fee.”

The Government response goes on to say, in a subsequent paragraph, that the

“Government wants to ensure that residents only pay for services that they are required to pay for through the pitch fee and will introduce legislation in due course to amend and clarify the definition of a pitch fee and prevent the use of variable service charges in written agreements, when parliamentary time allows.”

Well, parliamentary time does allow; it needs the will of Government. I hope we will hear from the Minister that the Government do have the will to implement what they said they wanted to do.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman referred to the charges that are made; does he agree that quite often those charges are made but the work is not actually carried out? Many owners are just interested in cramming as many mobile homes on to sites as possible.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

The tenor of the hon. Gentleman’s intervention is that there are a heck of a lot of rogues out there and they are up to no good, and he is absolutely right. There are, however, quite a lot of good park home owners, and it is important that we try to support them and to prevent the rogues from taking over the whole industry. That is why it is so important that the Government take seriously the changes—albeit quite modest—in the Bill to try to improve the lot of residents on park homes sites.