Covid-19: Housing Market

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Wednesday 13th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

We now go over to the Father of the House, Sir Peter Bottomley.

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

The Secretary of State is right to talk about people living their lives. Most of the people going to new homes will be going to leasehold ones.

When will he, and we, act to ban the sale of leasehold and pre-sold houses? When can he announce actions for justice for leaseholders and lease renters who are stuck with excessive ground rents?

Can he advise residential landlords and smart developers that the financial games are over, and that the leasehold knowledge campaign and the all-party group on leasehold and commonhold reform are going to make sure that there is justice for leaseholders?

[Robert Jenrick]

I am grateful to the Father of the House for that question. I pay tribute, once again, to his campaigning over many years against rip-off practices in the leasehold sector. We are committed to bringing an end to those practices, to legislating to bring ground rents down to a peppercorn, and to ensuring that no new homes are built as leasehold properties except in the most exceptional of circumstances. We will shortly be bringing forward draft legislation for scrutiny. I am pleased that, in general, such practices have reduced enormously as a result of the Government’s firm stance and that of campaigners, including many Members across the House. I want to see that continue.

Holocaust Memorial Day

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

I am grateful, Mr Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to speak in this deeply emotional debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols) on her speech—on a personal level, but also in understanding the Jewish people and what they actually went through.

Antisemitism is not new. It has been prevalent in society for centuries, and it is still prevalent with us today. But what makes the holocaust different is that it shows us the ultimate destination of antisemitism, with a systematic attempt to wipe out the Jewish race and anyone of Jewish religion—not just people who were openly Jewish, but anyone with Jewish genealogy somewhere in their DNA. The way in which people’s backgrounds were traced to see whether any relative or any person of their blood was Jewish was systematic, deliberate and intentional.

I was at school with many Jewish children, and no one ever spoke about the holocaust. It was ignored—perhaps to be airbrushed from history forever because it was such a tragedy. The relatives—the fathers and mothers—of many of my friends had actually come from eastern Europe or Germany as refugees, but they never spoke about the holocaust. Whenever one went for dinner on Friday nights, it was never mentioned—I often wondered why. When we were at school, we never got the opportunity to learn about the horrors of the holocaust and what people went through.

I remember my first visit to Yad Vashem. It was not the Yad Vashem that we see now—I have been there many times since—but the first formation of it. This was back in 1992, I think, on my first visit to Jerusalem. It was a much more intimate museum at that time. It commemorated things that had gone on. It had the first recordings of survivors—people who had sadly passed away, but recorded their testimony—and early photographs and other details of what had gone on in Germany and in eastern Europe, in particular, during the holocaust. That made Yad Vashem more intimate, in many ways, than it is now. When I heard the names of the children being recited, it brought home to me how people could systematically murder children—wipe them off the face of the planet—and what a terrible experience it was. I do not mind admitting that I cried. I cried for humanity, and I cried for the people who had lost their lives and their relatives.

When I was elected to this place, the first all-party parliamentary group that I joined was the one on combating antisemitism, because it is right that we in this House stand up against it. I also do not mind admitting that when Holocaust Memorial Day was first mooted—it was when I was the leader of my party’s group on the London Borough of Brent Council—I was concerned that we were going to get into virtue-signalling. I am glad to say that I was wrong. It is right that we educate people, that we commemorate the liberation of Auschwitz and that we bring to bear greater understanding of the horrors that went on.

I, too, have visited Auschwitz-Birkenau. My hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) alluded to the concern that students see Auschwitz for one day, and it would be better if they could stay for longer. The problem with that is funding and the fact that lengthening the amount of time spent away might reduce the numbers who could go on such visits. The problem that I see with the programme of Auschwitz-Birkenau visits is that students learn about what went on there and think that that was it. We need to remember that there was a network of death camps—forced labour camps—across eastern Europe and Germany, where Jews and others were forced into slave labour and then systematically exterminated.

I have often wondered how a civilised nation such as Germany could get into a position in which it would commit such inhumane acts. How could that possibly happen? When we talk about 6 million Jews being killed, it is a number, and it is hard to personalise that down to individual circumstances. It is difficult to visualise the horror of this attempt to wipe out the Jewish race. We have to remember that this did not just take place in one or two years. This was a deliberate attempt by the Nazis to eliminate the Jewish race.

The roots of this are at the end of the great war, when Germany was subjected to severe reparations. That led to incredible poverty in Germany, which then gave rise to the Nazis, who could say, “It’s the Jews’ fault that you haven’t got any money. Let’s take it out on the Jews. If we take Jews out of their position, we can spread the wealth.” That was a deliberate policy, and it should never be allowed to be repeated. There needs to be a greater understanding and appreciation that, from the early 1930s onwards, this systematic approach led to the Shoah. We all have to remember that.

We must also remember that antisemitism was rife in this country at that time. We should not think that it was only going on elsewhere. The thought process and the demeaning of Jewish people was going on in this country, and that is one reason why few people were allowed to escape from Germany to here. Had they been allowed to do so, many people who unfortunately lost their lives in camps would have survived.

I pay tribute to Karen Pollock and her brilliant team at the Holocaust Educational Trust, who do such wonderful work to educate people—young and old—about the horrors of the holocaust. Not everyone can go to Auschwitz-Birkenau and witness evidence of the terrible crimes that were committed. We talk about the shoes, the spectacles and the clothing at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The memory that I have above all else is walking across the park with the lakes, where there is an eerie stillness. No birds tweet, and there is no sign of wildlife. There is nothing there because those ponds were where the Nazis put the ashes after emptying them from the gas chambers and incinerators. The wildlife know what happened, and so should we.

One aspect of the Holocaust Educational Trust’s work that has become more important is the outreach programme. Last year, more than 600 schools partnered with the trust to enhance educational provision. That is important, because it allows holocaust survivors to give their first-hand testimony and lead workshops so that more and more young people can understand what happened and learn the lessons from it. It is important that we remember the survivors.

I echo the need for a holocaust education centre to be set up alongside this building. People visit this place as the cradle of democracy, and it is right that we have a holocaust education centre alongside our Parliamentary Education Centre so that people visiting London can see a proper record of what happened without having to travel to Jerusalem or other parts of the world. I co-chaired the all-party parliamentary group on holocaust memorial in the last Parliament. I pay tribute to my co-chair, Ian Austin, who called out antisemitism and did so much to ensure that people understood the evils of antisemitism and the need for an education centre.

The testimony of survivors is most important. I want to place on record the details of those who sadly lost their lives last year and this year. Eve Glicksman and Henri Obstfeld both died last year, and Hermann Hirschberger MBE passed away on 1 January. One of the most famous holocaust survivors was Gena Turgel, who lived in Stanmore in my constituency. In many ways, she was a pioneer of holocaust education, as she was going into schools and colleges way before many of the current structures were set up. She was born in Krakow in Poland and had eight brothers and sisters. She was only 16 when her home city was bombed on 1 September 1939.

Here is the part of Gena Turgel’s story that I think is most pertinent. Her family had relatives in Chicago, and they planned to leave for the United States, but they made their decision too late, as the Nazis had already invaded and closed all the entry and exit points, so her family had to move to just outside Krakow. In autumn 1941 she was moved to the ghetto in Krakow, and then moved after some of her family were shot by the SS in the ghetto. She was then forced into a labour camp, and in 1945 to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where she was sent with her mother on the death march from Auschwitz, leaving behind her sister, who they never saw again. They then arrived in a further labour camp, were forced on to trucks, and travelled under terrible conditions to Bergen-Belsen, where they arrived in February 1945. On 15 April 1945, the British Army liberated Bergen-Belsen and among the liberators was Norman Turgel, who became Gena’s husband just six months later. Gena passed away in 2018, but her record is in a book called “I Light a Candle”, so her legacy will live on.

Hermann Hirschberger was born in 1926 in Germany. He lived with his mother, father and older brother. He attended a local non-Jewish school; in fact, there were only two Jewish students in his class and school. In 1936, Nazi laws ruled that Jewish children could no longer attend non-Jewish schools—that was part of the programme to eliminate and delegitimise Jewish people.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

Those who have not ought to look at Adolf Eichmann’s story. He was appointed in 1932, and in 1933 he started dealing with what was thought of as “the Jewish problem”. The idea was to persecute, isolate, emigrate and then literally exterminate the Jews—it went all that time back.

[Bob Blackman]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. It was clear that this was going on for a long time before the second world war broke out.

Hermann and his brother had to walk to and from school, because German culture at that time prevented Jewish people from travelling on trams. Jewish people were not allowed to mix with other people on trams—this was the dehumanisation of Jewish people. Of course, on their way to and from school, Hermann and his brother were often verbally and physically attacked by students from the non-Jewish school. The people they called friends suddenly turned on them because they were Jewish.

Then, at 9 pm on 9 November 1938, across Germany the synagogues were burnt, and businesses and homes and shops were smashed. Windows were smashed and homes and buildings were burnt to the ground. This is known as Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass.

Hermann and his brother had not seen these crimes at first hand, but when they went to school the following morning, many of their teachers had been arrested and they were sent home. Hermann’s mother went to the bank where his father worked to warn him. However, two members of the Gestapo forced their way in and arrested his father at work. His father was then held for two days before being allowed home.

After Kristallnacht, Hermann’s parents realised, as did many others in Germany, that they could no longer stay there safely. They tried to arrange for the family to leave but could not obtain visas for the whole family. However, they managed to arrange for Hermann and his brother to be sent to England on the Kindertransport, meaning that they were making a huge sacrifice—they knew they would probably never see their sons ever again.

--- Later in debate ---

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

I congratulate the new Members, whose speeches were really impressive, and I especially thank two Labour Members who spoke incredibly effectively, the hon. Members for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton) and for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols). All of us will be grateful for the contribution that has been made by each Member, but those in particular were very special.

A year ago, I was at the new cemetery at Bushey for the interment of the remains of six people whose body parts or bones had been found in the Imperial War Museum—they were given as part of a gift. I represented my constituency and my own family. I am not Jewish, but my grandfather’s grandmother was. A year ago, I thought that 45 of his extended family had died at Auschwitz; we now believe that the figure is 62. More than 40 died at Sobibor. There were eight other camps around Europe where others of the 122 that we know of so far perished. Two of them perished at Bergen-Belsen, which is where Anne Frank died.

My father’s cousin George Woodwark was one of the 100 medical students who went out to Belsen in May 1945. Once they arrived at the camp, after liberation, the number of deaths dropped from 500 a day to 100. Within weeks, people were able to say that not a single person had died in one of the huts. That kind of attention to detail is going to be needed for those about whom my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) has spoken. By the way, I agree with that we should always try to remember to say that it was German camps in Poland, not Polish camps. I understand that sensitivity.

At the Imperial War Museum, where 900,000 people a year go to the holocaust galleries—the same number as go to Yad Vashem—they have the records of many of those medical students, as well as of the photographers and journalists who went in in April 1945. The details are there. Someone said that black-and-white photographs cannot convey the smell. In March 1945, some 20,000 people died at Belsen. They were not directly killed; they just died. There were 40,000 people left at liberation, of whom 18,000 died. The conditions in which those people were held are just completely unbelievable.

The camp commander, Josef Kramer, started looking after concentration camps in 1934. It was not in 1939 and not in 1941, when the extermination order came, but in 1934.

I referred earlier to Adolf Eichmann, who got the job of looking after the Jews in 1932 or 1933. The Israelis found him in South America—they nearly got Mengele at the same time. To those who want to study this subject, I recommend looking at Eichmann’s story and what he had done.

There are 37 surnames in my extended family who had deaths. When people start to try to deny the holocaust—whether the holocaust of the Jews, similar genocides that have been spoken about, including Srebrenica, Rwanda or Cambodia during our lifetime, or the other hells that people have been put through, including being sent out to camps by the Soviet Union—we have to keep our eyes open and go on being active. We have to try to do all we can, with others, to prevent this kind of thing from happening.

About 15 years ago, Governments’ duty to protect was being established by the United Nations. Since then, we have gone backwards. There are too many leaders or rulers of countries who have lost the understanding that having a reasonably flexible liberal democracy—and, for that matter, a liberal economy—helps to improve people’s conditions and allows leaders to retire or to be defeated without having to hang on to office. Leaders fear being assassinated and fear having the wealth that they have stolen from their country stolen back from them. They ought to learn—this applies to our friends the Chinese, our friends the Russians, some in eastern Europe and people in South America—that if they are going to be a leader of a country, it is better to be in a democracy so that they can retire and take their pension in their own country, rather than trying to hang on for dear life, because they may lose their life and they will certainly lose their wealth, if they lose their power.

As I said to the Minister earlier, this debate should be about the holocaust and the horrors. It should actually be about how this country did not deal with the question of which year would have been the right one to face up to Mr Hitler in a military sense. Would it have been 1932 or 1933, or any of the years up to 1939? Or, if not 1939, would it have been 1940, 1941 or 1942?

Hitler thought that he could do a deal with the British and isolate us from continental Europe. He was quite surprised when Mr Chamberlain would not go along with that.

We have to say that there is never a right time to go to war. Perhaps we got it wrong over Iraq. In my view, we certainly got it wrong over Syria—we just have to count the millions in Syria who have either died or been sent into exile to see that. There was a miscalculation: Labour thought that the Tories—the coalition—had enough votes to get it through, and we thought that Labour would support us. The House of Commons made a surprising decision—I think that it was the wrong one—and people have suffered because of it. We should accept that we were at fault.

We can go back more than 800 years, to the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre, or to other times. The way in which Jewish people have been treated over the years—not just by Government, but in society—has been wrong. We should accept that and apologise for it.

The main point of this debate is about holocaust memorial and how we can make sure that we and others can learn more. I have referred to the Government’s proposals for a holocaust memorial and learning centre in Victoria Tower Gardens, which is subject to a call-in, rather surprisingly, before Westminster Council has made a decision.

On another occasion, hopefully in Government time, we should have a debate about how we have got to where we are at the moment. We have an unsatisfactory design for an unsatisfactory proposal that completely fails to meet the specifications of the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation that were set out in writing in September 2015. I hope that we find some way of mediating this situation because many of the Jews whom I know think that it is wrong and that they are not being listened to by the foundation or the Government.

I hope that the Government will say—not necessarily in today’s debate, but on another occasion—that they are open to discussions in which they will explain how they put out a document in September 2015 specifying that the centre had to be somewhere in central London between Regent’s Park, Spitalfields and the Imperial War Museum, but they are now saying that the only place that it can be is in an inadequate park close to the House of Lords. However, that is for a different day.

For today, I want to thank the Minister for the way that he introduced the debate and congratulate those who have contributed. By next year, I hope that we will find that progress has been made on getting rid of antisemitism, on keeping a sense of proportion over Israel, and on remembering some of our collective responsibility for allowing the Hitler holocaust to get so far in such a drastic, dramatic, hateful and evil way.

Holocaust Memorial Day

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Luke Hall]

First, I thank my hon. Friend for his work as vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group against antisemitism. I agree that people should take action. We are proud to support the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which unites experts and 34 member states behind the need for holocaust education, remembrance and research. In 2016, the IHRA created a working definition of antisemitism, which is now internationally accepted. The alliance seeks to ensure that no one can shirk responsibility for their words by playing with semantics, but it will succeed only if organisations sign up to the definition and support it. The IHRA definition is already used in guidance for the police and Crown Prosecution Service, to help them to identify hate crime. I urge public organisations in the UK to sign up to the IHRA definition.

I will finish by saying a few words about the holocaust memorial and learning centre we plan to build in Victoria Tower gardens next to Parliament. We are fortunate that the foundation delivering the memorial is headed up by the right hon. Eric Pickles and the right hon. Ed Balls. By placing the memorial and learning centre next to Parliament, we ensure that it will serve as a permanent reminder that political decisions have far-reaching consequences.

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

The main purpose of today’s debate is to highlight the importance of people remembering, not forgetting, and of making sure that future generations know what the survivors knew and what the outside world knew and did not stop. May I suggest that today is not the day to go into too much detail of proposals that do not fulfil the specification of September 2015 for a national memorial? We might do better on another day.

[James Brokenshire (Old Bexley and Sidcup) (Con)]

rose—

Building Safety

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Monday 20th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am aiming to run this statement until about 20 past 4.

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

There will be a welcome for the announcement about the role of Dame Judith Hackitt.

Many points will be made in the next half hour or so, but I want to concentrate on two. First, the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership and the all-party parliamentary group on leasehold and commonhold reform were the first to point out the difficulties of private leaseholders in these tower blocks. When the Secretary of State and his Department work closely with the LKP and with the all-party group, we will not have all the answers, but I commend to him the fact that we can certainly point to many of the questions and some of the problems as well.

Additionally, may I commend what Nick Ross, the independent commentator and expert on risk, has said—that people do not die in buildings where there is a fire if there are sprinklers? We ought to pay more attention to that. Even if they are not required everywhere, we ought to consider whether they would be useful and valuable.

Finally, at the all-party group meeting, leaseholders talked about the sixfold or greater increase in their insurance premiums. The Government should get together with the Association of British Insurers and say, “Are people being scalped or is there scope for a scheme like Flood Re, which made premiums affordable to ordinary people trying to go on living in their homes?”

[Robert Jenrick]

I thank the Father of the House, who has been heavily involved in this issue and has a long-standing interest in leasehold reform. We are working with the insurance industry and the mortgage industry to try to unblock the issues that are flowing there. We have had some success with that. There is now a deal between the major lenders and the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors to find a simpler way to assess the condition of high-rise buildings and ensure that lenders can make a proper assessment of the value of people’s homes. We will continue to engage with that very closely.

I am happy to work with my hon. Friend and any others who represent or are interested in leasehold reform. He knows my personal interest in that and commitment to bring forward legislation later in the year. I have been contacted by many leaseholders who feel trapped in their homes and are very concerned about their ability to meet the costs that flow through. It is obviously right that building owners should meet the cost of remediation work, but we need to work with leaseholders to ensure that meeting those costs is not a barrier to getting the work done and keeping them safe. I have made that commitment today.

Oral Answers to Questions

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Monday 13th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

The hon. Lady is incorrect. The Queen’s Speech made it clear that we will be bringing forward legislation. We intend to publish a draft Bill shortly, which will take the first steps that I have just described. We are also awaiting the next report of the Law Commission. We have just received one on enfranchisement. It is a very important issue, and I certainly want to take forward its recommendations to ensure a simpler and fairer system. The next report of the Law Commission will be on commonhold. Again, we will be paying close attention to that. At our encouragement, the Competition and Markets Authority is now looking into the mis-selling of leaseholds, which is another important issue. Be under no illusion: we will be taking forward leasehold reform, and soon.

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

I thank the Secretary of State and his predecessors for the work they have done in commissioning work from the Law Commission that will provide a guide to the way forward. May I put it to the Secretary of State that, as his representatives at the all-party group meeting last week will confirm, there is a whole range of strong issues—the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq) mentioned them—and that the Government, the Select Committee and the whole House need to make sure there is action, not just good intentions?

[Robert Jenrick]

I thank the Father of the House for the work he has done over many years on this issue. I campaigned on this before I became a Minister. I have seen a number of abuses with respect to leasehold properties, and we want to take action. Now is the time for action. We have the first report from the Law Commission. There will be a further one. There will then be the report from the CMA. Together with the evidence, we will take this into careful consideration and move forward to reform leasehold and put it on a more sustainable footing for the future.

Leasehold and Commonhold Reform

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd October 2019 Westminster Hall

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

I beg to move,

That this House has considered progress on leasehold and commonhold reform.

This debate is an opportunity for the Government to explain what progress has been made on this issue, describe what is in their mind at the moment, and give us some hope that there will be even more improvements in future.

Before I start in detail, I want to thank colleagues who have worked really hard on the issue. I welcome the fact that the Labour party has developed proposals of its own, and I know that the Liberal Democrats have done the same. In particular, I thank and praise the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick), who I think has done more on this issue than any other Member of Parliament. I also thank the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders), who has joined in and helped to make the scandal of leasehold homes in the north-west so relevant.

I also pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Sir Edward Davey), who was deeply involved in the early stages of the campaign by the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership. That charity’s campaign, both for the ordinary leaseholders of flats and houses and in the retirement field, has done so much to make it possible for the work of MPs to be well directed and well supported. With Louise O’Riordan, it acts as the secretariat for the all-party parliamentary group on leasehold and commonhold reform, and I think we can all say that we have made progress together.

I say to those in the Government field and in the Government’s Leasehold Advisory Service, or LEASE, that we often agree that problems exist. We agree more often now than we did five years ago, when a succession of temporary Housing Ministers could not see that there is a problem, which partly was because the Department did not have many officials working on the issue of leaseholds and commonholds. The attempt by Parliament and the Government to bring in commonhold failed because the responsibility for it was split with the Ministry of Justice, which had no resources whatsoever. As a result, nothing happened. When we put forward the case for uniting commonhold with leasehold, I understand that the predecessor Department to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said that it would take responsibility if it received the resources, but there were no resources.

[Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

I and other Labour Members are grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his generous comments, and I congratulate him on securing the debate. He does not have any support from other Government Members at the moment, whereas Labour Members are mob-handed in Westminster Hall today. However, I can assure him that we are here as his fan club and support structure, because it is the prominent role that he has played—leading the all-party parliamentary group, as co-chair—that has ensured that we have been able to press the Government on the issue. To the Government’s credit, they have made a number of commitments on leasehold during the past five years, and we are very keen to hear the Minister’s response to this debate.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

That is the sort of remark I can survive, and I am grateful for it.

I will say, as I try to in each of the debates on the issue, that I am a leaseholder of a small flat in my constituency, and with the other five leaseholders we bought the freehold. We had a good freeholder, good managing agents and we have had no problem whatsoever, and we know how the system can work. In effect, we are commonhold now, but we were originally freehold. Ground rents were low and we did not have the problem of ground rents doubling every 10 years.

We also did not have the kind of crooks, such as Martin Paine, who came in and gave informal leases, which really made a mess of people’s lives. We did not suffer from the Tchenguiz interests, which were responsible—both in the retirement field and in other fields—for some of the worst excesses. Frankly, the public authorities, such as the fraud people, the economic crimes people, the police and the Competition and Markets Authority people failed, and the Tchenguiz-controlled business got away scot free, when the people in that business should have been sent to jail and fined millions of pounds. The millions of pounds would have made up for the losses of the ordinary leaseholders who were failed by them.

I also pay tribute to Martin Boyd and Sebastian O’Kelly, chief executive and trustee of the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership, who have done so much, and they have now joined members of the National Leasehold Campaign and Bob Bessell, the former director of social services in Warwickshire, who in his retirement built 1,600 retirement homes without a single ground rent.

I thank my right hon. Friend the Minister for coming down on a fast train from Manchester, where she has given distinguished service over the past two days. I ask her to review whether it is sensible, necessary or right to allow ground rents in retirement properties. I look on the Churchill Group as the son of McCarthy and Stone, which was, with Peveril, at the foundation of some of the problems that hit previous generations. To any Treasury civil servant who reads the report of this debate, I would say that if we get leasehold and commonhold right, the value of homes will go up, not down, and the income to the Treasury will go up.

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

My area has quite a few new leasehold housing estates, some of which have now been there for a number of years. The residents are being hit with a double whammy. They have all the costs associated with leasehold and they also have service management fees, which are absolutely enormous and growing. More and more people are reporting to me that they cannot sell their properties because they get partway through the process and the buyer looks at the cost and says, “No way.”

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

We are not able to cover everything in a half-hour debate, but that is one of the issues to which I think the House of Commons needs to return. We ought to have a full-day debate, preferably in Government time and on the Floor of the House, so that many other Members can speak and be a voice for their constituents.

As an example for those who do not read Private Eye on the day it comes out, there is a story about Rothesay Life, which apparently has £1.5 billion of loans. It can revalue the interest over 30 years and take it almost as instant profit. That is the kind of thing that leads people to say, “I am going to be greedy and get away with things as long as I can.”

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

I echo the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick). We are very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for all the work that he has put into the campaign, which is growing stronger by the day. Some of the voluntary schemes that developers have entered into with leaseholders have a sting in the tail, with additional clauses carrying on afterwards. Does he agree that that example shows that it is important to get something on a statutory footing as soon as possible?

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

The whole House will agree with the hon. Gentleman. Incidentally, we got the Competition and Markets Authority to hold an investigation into leasehold and—this is one of my tributes to the Government—I want to say how grateful we all are for the matters that have been sent across to the Law Commission, with the aim of getting practical and fair proposals that can be enacted.

One such important issue is lease extensions. There are more than 1 million leases, mainly of flats, that are coming to the 80-year limit where they cannot be mortgaged and where the marriage value starts coming in. At the moment, it is very difficult to find a cheap, easy and fair way of getting an extension on a lease. As and when we come to the elimination of new ground rents, we should find a way of putting a sunset clause on old ground rents, and give an incentive to freeholders to come forward with ways of getting some capital value now, rather than none later on. They have had the dawn of their money, and there needs to be some kind of sharing of the dusk that stops the money rolling in. We need to find a way of saying to them, “Let’s agree a simple chart; if you take 10 years of existing ground rent, don’t start saying you will take a doubling, and a doubling again after that.”

I interrupt myself to say that there is one announcement from the last couple of days that is potentially very dangerous to leaseholders, which is the proposal that people can put two more storeys on top of a block without planning permission. If the block is owned by an outside freeholder, that will ruin the chance of enfranchisement. If it is going to happen, all the value should go to the leaseholders, not the freeholder. In fact, it might provide an incentive for the leaseholders to buy the freehold and then agree among themselves how to deal with building on, and having a bigger community. As I said, I own a lease and part of a freehold of a block in Worthing. I am also contracted to buy a leasehold flat that is being built at the moment, which might be built in three years’ time. If anyone thinks that I have an interest in this issue, I do—if I get any benefit from it, I will give it to a good cause.

To go back to LEASE, MPs have had difficulty with its two previous chairs. The first, Deep Sagar, showed no understanding at all that LEASE should not be helping rapacious freeholders or clever managing agents to screw money out of leaseholders. He moved on, but I must say incidentally to the civil service appointments people that they should count how many public appointments he has had—I think he has had more than the number of years I have had in the House of Commons, which is 45. The second chair was Roger Southam, whom I took on trust when he was appointed. Others said that he was not trustworthy. It turned out that I was wrong and they were right.

I hope that when a permanent chair is chosen for LEASE—it now has an interim chair—the stakeholders will be consulted on the process and, if possible, given a chance to comment on who might be on the shortlist. If they do not want to trust me, perhaps they could ask the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse or someone else to bring an impartial view. LEASE has been led for many years by Anthony Essien. I have no complaint about him; I have treated him with respect on every occasion, and vice versa.

LEASE has been changing: it is now unequivocally on the side of leaseholders, thanks to the intervention of Gavin Barwell, who was the first Housing Minister to get a grip on what was needed—he provided leadership in the Department, and I am glad that the Department has responded. LEASE’s website now has more than 100 categories under which people can interact and get some advice. The problem is that LEASE could not give all the advice on practical things.

For example, on the Grenfell Tower cladding issue, when the Government rightly said that no social tenant should have to carry the cost of re-cladding, the private tenants were left stuck, either in public or private blocks. The advice that the campaigning charity Leasehold Knowledge Partnership gave was right, while the advice that LEASE gave—to go to court—was wrong, because the tribunals had to reach the unfair conclusion that the leaseholder was stuck with the cost.

I pay great tribute to the then Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire), who got the Government to agree—perhaps against the advice of some civil servants—to carry the cost. He solved a problem that would otherwise have hit many small people.

There are other issues that I could cover at some length. I pay tribute to the National Leasehold Campaign, and to Katie Kendrick and Jo Darbyshire; to Victoria Derbyshire’s programme on BBC 2, which gave the issue prominence at a time when it mattered; to Patrick Collinson of The Guardian; to whoever advises Strobes at Private Eye on leasehold issues; and to others.

I declare this in public: if any of these big property interests threaten defamation proceedings against any of the leasehold campaigners, I will say on the Floor of the House of Commons exactly what can be said about them, in spades—I won’t hold back. Up to now I have been pretty restrained, but I want people to know this: do not bully those who campaign for justice. We are all on the side of the small voice. By all means have discussion, and by all means have disagreement, but do not think that you can get away with lawyers’ letters of the kind that get prominence every now and again in Strobes’s legal pages.

[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman for all the work that he has put in over many years; many of us have come in on the back of it. Does he welcome the decision in the Persimmon case in north Wales last month and recognise that other leaseholders are in a similar position of not having had enough information when they bought out their lease? I have a situation with Barratt Homes in my constituency, where leaseholders are now looking to get the county council to take on a similar case under trading standards. Would it not be far more efficient for the Government to send out a clear message to property companies in this case that they really need to do the right thing by leaseholders who have been dishonestly sold to? That would save them from all those actions and relieve the pressure on county councils and leaseholders.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

The whole House will agree. Perhaps it would help if the Ministry considered having a roundtable to go through some of these issues—it would not have to be secret, but it could be informally private. We were fortunate, in part, with Pete Redfern of Taylor Wimpey, when we discovered that the then chair of LEASE had written totally defective documents that put it as though Roger Southam could control blocks that should never have been anywhere near his control. That got resolved. Taylor Wimpey said it would set aside £130 million to put right some of the things it now recognises it should not have done—it has not done enough, but at least it recognises the issue and has made a start.

I think the trading standards case in Wales is a way forward. Responsible shareholders in each of the building firms should be saying, “With social responsibility in corporate governance, what are you going to do about it?” That applies to Barratt as to the other firms. As for Persimmon, I hope that it will say that this is not just a judgment relevant to Wales, where in fact it kept away from judgment by making a voluntary payment, but applies to England as well.

Put simply, we need to abolish new leaseholds in any but the most extreme circumstances; we need to find a way to convert to commonhold; and we need to make commonhold so well known that when people try to register, it is recognised by Help to Buy and by the Land Registry—it is now recognised by both, but it was not previously. Advice should be taken from the all-party group and our secretariat, the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership. When there is friction, let us try to resolve it in a normal way. I end with this offer: I hope that the chief executive of LEASE will accept an invitation to bring all his staff to a drinks party here in the House of Commons, where the all-party group and those who give day-to-day advice to leaseholders can come together and get past any problems that may be apparent at the moment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms McVey]

I shall come to that later, but the hon. Gentleman will know as well as I do, I hope, that that is looked at and where it can be proved that something wrong and unlawful has been done, it will be taken up and checked.

Obviously still more needs to be done. Our recent publications show the other plans we have for leasehold reform. They include our responses to the technical consultation on implementing reforms to the leasehold market, and to the Select Committee, most of whose recommendations we were able to accept in full or in part. We have also committed to regulating managing agents, and to improving the transparency and fairness of service charges. Too often, people feel ripped off by fees and charges, sometimes not even being told what they are paying for. We have committed to introducing a single mandatory and legally enforceable code of practice to set standards across the sector. We will also require agents to be qualified to practice.

Last October, we established an independent working group, chaired by Lord Best, to look at how standards can be raised across the property sector, and to consider how fees such as service charges should be presented to consumers. The working group published its final reports to the Government in July. We are considering its recommendations and will announce the next steps in due course.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

The whole House is grateful to my right hon. Friend. There may not be time to get through all the things that the Government are doing and looking forward to doing, so would she consider making a written statement to lay things out and make them available to all, not just those who are here for the debate?

One thing that may not be dealt with straightaway is looking at the regulations on recognised tenants’ associations—in effect, recognising leaseholders, which I know is a tricky issue. The Government wrote to me saying that they would consult the property tribunal about how this was working. I do not ask for an instant response, but that is one of the issues that should go forward.

The Minister’s response to the Select Committee report is very good. The report was one of the best I have seen in all my time in the House, and the Government are responding to it well.

[Ms McVey]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. We should and will lay the matter down as a written statement. Everyone, across the House, appreciates that there is bad practice. Where bad practice happens, in whatever form, it should be taken to task.

It is unacceptable that some freehold homeowners are unable to challenge excessive fees for the maintenance of their estates. We are going to legislate so that residential freeholders will be given the right to challenge the reasonableness of such fees. They will also be able to apply to the tribunal to appoint a new manager. That will help to increase the transparency, accountability and reasonableness of the fees.

Many leaseholders have raised concerns because they believe they were mis-sold their properties—the leasehold tenure was not properly explained to them, and the onerous terms were not made clear. Some were told that they could buy the freehold for a certain price after a couple of years, only to find out that it had been sold on to an investor in that time and that either the price had gone up considerably or they could not buy it. I welcome the Competition and Markets Authority’s current investigation of the issue.

I appreciate that I am running out of time, but I will indeed meet with my colleagues. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West for bringing this important matter to Westminster Hall. It is something that all colleagues want to get right. Abuses will not be accepted by any of us.

Question put and agreed to.

Park Home Residents: Legal Protection

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Tuesday 1st October 2019 Westminster Hall

[Sir Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

I am advised that it is in order to give injury time for time missed.

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

I beg to move,

That this House has considered legal protection for residents of park homes.

Thank you for starting the debate, Sir Christopher. I hope I will soon be able to resume my place and that you—you were originally going to move the motion—will be able to pick up and give the speech the House is looking forward to.

May I first pay tribute to you, Sir Christopher, for leading the all-party group on park homes? This is one of those areas where, for far too long, there was too little publicity and too little Government action.

I pay tribute to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, which looks after park homes, for the way it has picked up the initiative by Nat Slade, an officer in Arun District Council, and his colleagues, who have worked with the Ministry to get the Government to come forward with measures to deal with some of the appalling abuses. If I were a tougher Member of Parliament, I would name some of the rogues and crooks—some have left the park home business, but others continue. My belief is that, with publicity, they will be shamed into stopping the exploitation of some of the most vulnerable people in our communities.

Few people choose to live in a park home as their permanent residence if they have better options, but the fact is that many do not. Too often, people have taken on a home that is, in theory, licensed only for holiday use, but everyone, including the freeholder and owner and the operator, knows that they are there to make permanent use of it. If, by chance, the operator manages to get the licence changed to permanent, the innocent park home owners and residents are then told to pay a fortune to convert what was, in effect, a permanent residence into another permanent residence.

[Mr Philip Hollobone in the Chair]

[Sir Greg Knight]

Is not one of the problems that, unlike purchasers of freehold property or those who take on the long lease of a flat, many park home occupants have not had the benefit of legal advice before signing up?

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

That is certainly true. Too often, the operator or owner has encouraged the park home resident to use a lawyer who works for or is recommended by the park home operator.

I shall now resume my place so that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) can start his debate.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

I am grateful to you, Sir Peter, for moving the motion. I shall call Sir Christopher—it is his debate—but for the avoidance of doubt I should say that I am not late; I am the replacement.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Absolutely. That is important. In that context, the Government have given new responsibility to the Leasehold Advisory Service to advise potential purchasers of park homes. I, and indeed the all-party parliamentary group, had a meeting with Anthony Essien, its chief executive. The trouble is that although it can give advice someone must approach it for advice before it can do so, and many people do not because they are seduced by the sort of information that I have referred to.

[Mr Clive Betts in the Chair]

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

I am sorry that a pre-existing commitment prevents me from staying for the rest of the debate.

It seems to me that the Advertising Standards Authority should get a complaint, and should quickly adjudicate, rule out of order and condemn the advertisements that my hon. Friend refers to. May I point out that Sonia McColl, the champion of park home owners, had her 40 foot, 10-tonnes mobile home stolen? My hon. Friend might join me in appealing to Devon and Cornwall police to find it and to find the people who stole it. Death threats are one thing; having your home stolen is another.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

That last point is really important because Sonia McColl did an enormous amount of good work on behalf of park home residents across the country. She was the victim of a vendetta and a serious crime and I have seen recent correspondence suggesting strong evidence against two potential perpetrators, but the prosecuting authorities are not taking the action they should be taking in that respect. As always, my hon. Friend makes a very good point.

May I refer to another site in my constituency that is now called New Forest Glen but is better known as Tall Trees, in Matchams Lane? No application has been received by Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council for a caravan licence, despite more than 100 of my constituents living and having their permanent homes in Tall Trees park. I have been told by the council that officers from both planning enforcement and environmental health have met the site owners to try to regularise the situation on several occasions, but without success. They are now advising the site owners that they are considering formal action to secure the necessary permissions for both planning and site licensing. Although such promises of action are welcome, they must be considered in the context of many years of inaction during which residents of Tall Trees have been denied the rights and protection that would be available if they lived on a licensed park home site. These rights include the ability to form a recognised residents association and restrictions on the amount by which ground rents can be increased, and on service charges being imposed.

Silver Mists, New Forest Glades and New Forest Glen are owned by one organisation, RoyaleLife. In March this year, I requested through the representative of Mr Bull, the chief executive of Royale Parks, that he address the problem, especially on Tall Trees. I referred to the fact that despite being recognised by Christchurch Council as enjoying residential status for 12 months of the year, many of the residents of Tall Trees were still paying site fees of £4,750 per year as well as council tax. If they had the benefit of formal residential status through a site licence, their fees would be £1,900 rather than £4,750. By not even applying for a site licence, Royale Parks is benefiting by being able to charge much higher fees. Residents also suffer because they must pay VAT on those fees. That situation should have been brought to a head by the council taking enforcement action against Royale Parks for not having a licence, thereby forcing the company to comply with the law. In my letter to Royale, I suggested that a meeting between Royale and the residents—who have been trying to have such a meeting for many months—would be useful, and I hope that such a meeting will now take place on 11 October.

Last Thursday I received the latest word from the council’s corporate director for environment and community in response to the concerns that I have expressed on behalf of residents. It is not wholly reassuring. Although she says that she hopes the requirement for Royale Parks to regularise the situation and obtain the appropriate site licences or face formal action will provide some comfort to the residents, she could take action now to ensure that all those park homes for which residential use is recognised benefit from a residential site licence. I do not understand why the council has been so slow in acting against a site owner who is refusing to apply for a site licence. The site owner, unreasonably, is refusing to obtain a licence for the existing residential park homes, instead choosing to put pressure on residents to support his appeal in respect of other park homes on the Tall Trees development that do not currently have certificates of lawfulness or valid planning consent for residential use. Residents have been told that the site owner will address the issue only if the appeal against the refusal of certificates of lawfulness on other parts of the site are successful. In other words, residents are being held to ransom. Those appeals have been delayed inordinately, not least because the appellants want a full hearing.

I then got involved in writing to the chief executive of the Planning Inspectorate to see whether we could bring this matter forward. We now have an appeal fixed for 10 December, which is good news, but in the meantime, there can be no justification for denying Tall Trees residents, who are lawful occupiers of their caravans, the protection of a site licence.

People in Tall Trees who wish to sell their home are unable to get full price for it because of the constraints to which I referred. One constituent estimates that the value of his home has been depressed by £100,000 as a result of the site owner’s actions and the council’s refusal to take enforcement action.

So far, I have concentrated on cases where no site licence has been issued, but even where licences are issued they are often not enforced, leaving residents exposed to exploitation. One such site, in Ferndown in my constituency, is Lone Pine Park, which is owned by Premier Park Homes Ltd. Two of my constituents there have been harassed because their park home is old and regarded by the new owners as being out of keeping with the new image of Lone Pine Park, which is described in a brochure as offering

“bespoke homes…nestled within Millionaires’ Row in Ferndown …Dorset.”

My efforts to engage with Dorset Council on the concerns expressed by my constituents have largely fallen on deaf ears. I wrote to its chief executive, Mr Prosser, on 5 August, but despite repeated requests for a reply I received a response only very late yesterday evening. In my letter, I referred to: the failure of the owner to deposit new site rules; residents and the emergency services having restricted access to estate roads because of the construction of new homes; rodent infestation; the dumping of rubbish and waste; and the proliferation of potholes, which prevent the local general practitioner car service from accessing the site. The chief executive says in his answer that he understands

“that a new site licence has been issued”,

which provides the site operator with a number of permitted rights. He goes on to say:

“There are some outstanding matters which would require planning permission that are not covered by the terms of the site licence, and for this reason there is an open enforcement case on the site until such matters are regularised.”

Despite having had my letter for two months, he goes on to say:

“planning/enforcement officers will visit the site again to check the situation to ensure the site is not being operated in a manner that would breach the permitted rights under the provision of the site licence or the permitted development order”,

and that

“the enforcement file will remain open until the site has been regularised.”

I refer to that letter at some length because it seems to show that the council has a very relaxed attitude to these important issues, which directly affect so many residents.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

Will the Minister join me in paying tribute to the Park Home Owners Justice Campaign, and does he agree that one of the best ways to identify and deal with bad operators is publicity? Can I through him invite people to copy anything that they say to rogue operators to [e-mail], which is one of the great campaigners in this field?

[Luke Hall]

Absolutely. Such debates are an excellent way to shine light on poor practice in the sector. Park homes represent about 180,000 households and can house some of the most vulnerable people in society. Too often, those people are exploited and suffer poor treatment. They deserve our protection and support, so it is right that the Government have given and will continue to give significant attention to the sector. Good progress has been made in recent years. We have heard this morning that there is still a huge amount to do. I trust that I can count on the support of the Members present this morning, as we press ahead with our vital reform of the park home sector.

Building Safety

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Thursday 5th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I will write to the hon. Gentleman with an answer.

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

Will the Secretary of State use the campaigning charity the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership as a way of letting leaseholders in privately owned blocks know what should be happening and of making sure that their interests are taken into account just as much as those in the private sector?

[Robert Jenrick]

I am very happy to take my hon. Friend up on that. He knows that I share his determination to take forward wider reforms in the leasehold sector, and I will be introducing measures in that respect in due course.

Oral Answers to Questions

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Monday 22nd July 2019 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

I recognise the hon. Lady’s call, which is why we have taken a number of steps and will be bringing forward legislation to ban new leases on houses and to reduce future ground rents to zero monetary value. The Select Committee obviously highlighted the issue of existing leases as well, and we therefore now have a pledge in place and a number of people are coming forward to provide that direct response. I keep this issue under continual review as to what further steps are needed to change the situation for the future, as well as providing support for those already in this situation.

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

My right hon. Friend and his team have, over the past year or so, made more progress than was made in the previous 20 years, which is greatly to be welcomed. May I ask that he continue showing the open-mindedness, flexibility and drive that are necessary to undo some of the past misdeeds, whether by declaring clauses to be unfair, and therefore unenforceable, or by finding simple, low-cost ways of righting wrongs that have been around for far too long?

[James Brokenshire]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his comments. We have firmly focused on this issue of leasehold, and I know the close attention he pays to the steps that have been taken. Obviously, the Competition and Markets Authority will be looking at this issue of unfairness. In relation to the Select Committee’s response, there are legal complexities with existing contracts, but I assure him that we will continue to focus on this to provide that effective response.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Rishi Sunak)]

Far from being complacent, the Government are working hard to ensure that local authorities receive the support that they need, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen). We know about the importance of children’s services, and the importance of ensuring that all authorities benefit from best practice from places such as Leeds, Hertfordshire and North Yorkshire. We are funding those authorities so that they can spread that best practice throughout the country, transforming the lives of children everywhere.

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

I do not want to assume that Ministers have seen the letter that was sent to the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) and me today by the director general for housing about the chairman of the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership and LEASE, the Leasehold Advisory Service. It deals with one issue satisfactorily. May I ask Ministers to see whether the alleged social media comments that pose a difficulty can be sent to the chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on leasehold and commonhold reform to establish whether he can overcome the second difficulty?

[James Brokenshire]

I will look into the matter and come back to my hon. Friend.

Leasehold Reform

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Thursday 11th July 2019 Commons Chamber

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

Not only do we think it is a scandal, but the buyers—the finance company—must have known it was a scandal. If the Government, Law Commission or Parliament come forward and say that those houses can be enfranchised on the basis of a formula that means that those buyers do not get their expected bounce of bonus or excessive profits, it will be their fault because they knew.

[Bob Blackman]

I thank my hon. Friend for that. He is absolutely right, and I compliment him on the measures he has taken on behalf of leaseholders over many years.

The issue of legal advice for individuals who are purchasing, particularly for the first time, is crucial. We found when we took evidence that developers give incentives, discounts and all sorts of other encouragement to first-time buyers to use the same solicitors as they are using. Of course, these solicitors are then acting on behalf of both sides and are not acting independently. That must be bad and this must be made clear in legislation.

On our recommendations on ground rents and onerous terms, the Government have said they have taken note but they have taken no action. The key here is that the Government seem to be driving the view that voluntary action is sufficient. After looking through all the evidence and hearing everyone who has come before us, my view is that voluntary action is not acceptable: we have to legislate and force developers to do the right thing, otherwise they will not.

I also think we have to draw a distinction. We need to legislate to protect people going forward and then consider retrospective legislation to right the wrongs that have been done to leaseholders over many, many years. I also believe that we should legislate to intervene on existing ground rents that are onerous—not only should we do this for future cases, but we should intervene to correct the position on existing leases, because we now have a position where first-time buyers have entered into a lease and cannot sell their property. It is outrageous that we have allowed them to get into that position.

The Chair of the Select Committee has mentioned the position on permission fees. It is outrageous that someone can put a conservatory on a property that they have bought and suddenly the developer is saying, “I want thousands of pounds because you put something on the back of your property.” That should be outlawed.

On service charges, sinking funds, estate management, enfranchisement and forfeiture, it is not good enough for the Government just to lean back and say, “We note what you’ve said and we will consider what needs to be done.” We need legal action. I suggest that when the Law Commission and the CMA report, we come forward with a substantial piece of primary legislation to correct this market, as that is what will be needed. Unless we commit to doing that right now, these developers will carry on fleecing their customers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) for giving us another chance to debate this issue. I have spoken before on this issue many times, and I intend to keep doing so until we have some action, because I cannot stress enough just how big a problem it is in my area.

The hon. Member for Hendon (Dr Offord) rightly pointed out the impact on London because of the high proportion of flats sold here, but the figures helpfully provided by the Library show that in 2018, 16 of the top 20 constituencies for leasehold house sales were in the north-west, and staggeringly, 14 of those were in Greater Manchester. I know how bad this is in my constituency, and my constituency is not even on that list—what must that mean for those other places? The argument that there is some sort of price differential between freehold and leasehold, when the market is so concentrated in certain parts of the country, has nothing going for it whatsoever.

In a previous debate on this issue in Westminster Hall, I said:

“I am genuinely shocked by the stories I hear in my constituency and that we have heard in this debate. I am not a man prone to hyperbole, but I would go so far as to say that the only fair description of some of the practices we have heard about in this debate is legalised extortion. There is simply no relationship between the services being rendered and the costs charged for them.”—[Official Report, 21 December 2017; Vol. 633, c. 471WH.]

I stand by every word of that statement.

The problem in my constituency is with ground rents and service charges, and we need serious action on both. For example, residents of a block of flats in the Hattersley area of my constituency were quoted £32,000 just to paint the hallways—not to paint the flats, but just the communal hallways. Frankly, they could be painted with gold, and it should not come to £32,000. Another constituent was charged £180 just to ask what it would cost to buy the freehold—just for the inquiry and the quote that came back. Frequently, worse than that, people simply do not get a response or the information when they make an inquiry about buying the freehold. Often service charge bills are received with no information and no breakdown, sometimes even charging for works that predate a managing agent taking over. Those are just a fraction of the stories I could tell. I could use more than my five-minute allocation simply reading out examples.

Like colleagues who are present, I have made many of these points before. These are always good debates. There is a great deal of expertise, good will and consensus, but frankly, I have seen everyone in this Chamber today in previous debates. This is a group of people who really know the problems, but we need some action, because we are sick of making these points.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the best thing to do in England or England and Wales, with, I hope, the Law Commission’s support, is to pass a simple statutory instrument that provides for a table of information, so that instead of people having to ask and argue with surveyors, they can look at the table and see the number of years, the ground rent and so on?

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I have huge respect for the work that the hon. Gentleman has done on this issue, and I could not agree more.

There are five things that I would like to see happen. First, the sale of leasehold houses should be ended—that is obvious, and I think there is no disagreement about it. Ground rents should be capped at a percentage of the property value or an overall financial sum. The sum of £250 a year has been raised, and I would be more than happy with that. As the hon. Gentleman said, there should be a simple right-to-buy formula that is not bureaucratic, with additional administration or legal costs, but that can be used in every case to let people purchase their freehold. There should definitely be a crackdown on unfair terms and opaque service charges. Ultimately, we need to make it as simple as possible to let residents take over if they are in that flat situation. Some people will not want that, and there are some reputable people in the marketplace providing services in that situation, but the power should be with the residents to make those decisions.

I will conclude, because I know how many Members want to speak. I cannot stress enough how much people want to know when they will have a simple and straightforward way out of this. I want to make a point that was touched on earlier about the impact on investors. It is true to say that there is another side to this. We have heard about the bad deal that our constituents get, and those on the investor side who have bought the leasehold and freehold rights are clearly getting a very good deal out of it. I want to make two points on that. Colleagues will be aware that when I am not speaking from the Back Benches, I speak from the Dispatch Box for the Labour party’s shadow Treasury team as the shadow City Minister.

First, institutional investors—particularly those based in this country—have some of the best research and analytical functions of any businesses going. They assess all kinds of risk, including political risk, and I cannot understand how anyone would invest substantially in this area without knowing the political risk that has been raised frequently about the will of Parliament and our desire to see change in this area. Secondly, there are many precedents of this House legislating to limit unfair contract terms and conditions because the power balance and the relationship between both parties is not right. I simply cannot emphasise enough how much that applies in this case.

This is symptomatic of how our housing market does not work anywhere near how it should. I do not think that our land allocation system works. I do not think that the design of new homes works particularly well. I do not think that the power of developers is right in our system. I do not think that the affordability of homes is anywhere near correct, and I do not think that this leasehold system is fit for purpose at all. We can influence some of those things at a local level, and in my constituency we are trying to do that, but some things require parliamentary legislative action. This is one of them, as I think we all agree, so let us get on and do it.

--- Later in debate ---

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

We owe progress to a number of people. I want to mention Lynn Boyd first, as she is the one who encourages Martin Boyd, who, along with Sebastian O’Kelly, has created the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership. They have also got better retirement solutions to deal with exploitation in the retirement market. Without them, I do not think that those MPs who have been trying to organise would have got even halfway as far as we did.

I also pay tribute to the National Leasehold Campaign, and to Jo, Katie and Cath, who provided that spark and allowed the north-west MPs to understand the strength of the issue. Together they and the north-west MPs have got both practical progress and media interest, which matters. If anyone at the BBC is listening to this debate, could they please nominate one or two housing experts with whom we could interact? Often when things come up in this part of the housing field, we do not know who to talk to. We do in health, finance and politics, but we also need it in housing.

I should also mention Gavin Barwell, who, both as Housing Minister and as chief of staff to the Prime Minister, got the Departments to start moving and told LEASE at its conference that it was to be unequivocally on the side of leaseholders. Martin Boyd has given a direct list of the number of times when LEASE, through its conferences and in its publications, allowed—and, I would say, encouraged—expertise in how to exploit residential leaseholders.

I declare an interest, as I constantly do: if I ever forget, please correct me. I own a lease—actually, I have paid for a lease in my constituency. As it happens, the other five leaseholders and I have bought the freehold. We had a good freeholder and a good managing agent, and we are happy. I have contracted to buy a leasehold flat that is being built and may be completed in three years’ time. If there is a restriction on ground rents, I might benefit from that as well. That is not the reason why I support the Labour party’s policy in this area. In a different debate, I could have a knockabout with Labour on some of their failures on housing, but on lease- hold I think the interaction between the Government, the Opposition and Back-Bench MPs will lead to significant progress, unmatched since George Thomas, Lord Tonypandy —one of your predecessors, Mr Speaker—campaigned on leasehold abuse in his first 20 or 30 years in Parliament.

There is not time in this debate to deal with all the issues, but I hope that the Chair of the Select Committee will accept praise from the whole House for the way that they, with their witnesses and advisers, have produced a report that exceeded expectations and pretty well met the needs of the situation. I encourage everyone to read that report, including the reasons for its recommendations, and say, “Let’s get on with it.”

I want to add to the list of the goodies Bob Bessell of Retirement Security. He has developed well over 1,000 homes for people in retirement with security and without ground rents. I give notice to my hon. Friend the Minister on the Front Bench that perhaps in another parliamentary Session we should return to the issue of ground rents, which the Government seem to have been persuaded are necessary by Churchill and other retirement developers. If Bob Bessell can do it for well over 1,500 homes, so can Churchill, McCarthy & Stone and the others.

I do not know how much money the firms have spent on lobbying, and I know that one of them may indirectly have given what appears to be a rather large donation to LKP—we will come to that on another occasion—but they have spent an absolute fortune trying to trip up the people who are the goodies in this campaign. I am glad to speak after my friend the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) and to say that he is one of the goodies, together with the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) and the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Sir Edward Davey), a candidate for the Liberal Democrat leadership who was a Minister under the coalition Government. They have helped as well.

We have to realise that until we can get LKP to be respected by the present chair of LEASE we will only get half as far as we can, because while that sore is still there the Government cannot expect to get the full benefit that LEASE should give and that LKP is trying to give. I make this suggestion, which is not for the Minister to answer today. Invite—and if she will not do it, instruct—the chair of LEASE to invite the chair of the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership to come to the LEASE office, and meet the LEASE staff. If there are problems, they can then be resolved quietly, and we will know that we can go on co-operating. That seems the simplest way of dealing with that problem.