Business of the House

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Thursday 30th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I call the Father of the House.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

I welcome the news that the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill, which will bring in modern housing terms, will have its Second Reading in a week or so. Through my right hon. Friend, may I say to the Government that even if we have to add things to the Bill as it goes along, that is better than having to wait another year for this overdue opportunity to reform effectively the scandalous abuses within leasehold, which are loaded so much against 6 million home occupiers—the tenants of leasehold homes?

I draw my right hon. Friend’s attention to the named day question I tabled for the Foreign Office about the acid attack on Shahzad Akbar on Sunday in England. If Ministers think it is appropriate to make an oral statement, will she please encourage them to do so? It is just as shocking to have a Commonwealth country suspected of an acid attack on one of its nationals—a human rights lawyer—in this country as it was to have the Russian attack in Salisbury and the alleged Indian attack in Canada.

May I ask my right hon. Friend to draw to the Home Secretary’s attention the letter he will have received today from the human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, asking whether the police force in the relevant area was right to assess the risk to this man as low when in fact it was high, and whether is it true that the local police had switched off the automatic number plate recognition system for some reason, when that might have helped to detect the culprits of this terrible acid attack?

[Penny Mordaunt]

I thank my hon. Friend for his warm welcome for the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill. I will certainly ensure that the Home Secretary is aware of his concerns with regard to that police force. He will know that the next Foreign Office questions are on 12 December, but I will certainly ensure that both the Foreign Secretary and his lead Minister in the Commons are aware of his concerns about that terrible attack.