Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Viscount Younger of Leckie and Lord Young of Cookham
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
My Lords, I hope that I can honour that approach. However, before I begin, I will take this opportunity personally to welcome back to her place my noble friend Lady Hanham. She is a much-valued colleague and has been much missed.
I thank my noble friend Lord Young for tabling these amendments, which have clearly generated support across the House in this very short debate. I appreciate that we discussed them in Committee, but it is helpful to be able to consider them once again today. They follow helpful interventions in both Houses, and I take this opportunity to thank both my noble friend and Sir Peter Bottomley in the other place for raising awareness of such issues.
As my noble friend eloquently set out, giving leaseholders the right to obtain contact information for other leaseholders in a shared block from their landlord, subject to their consent, will help those leaseholders fulfil their statutory right to have their tenants’ association recognised. Addressing the irregularity concerning the inability of courts and tribunals to restrict recovery of a landlord’s legal costs from leaseholders as administrative charges where they consider it appropriate will help to address a perceived unfairness in the current system, which I think we can all agree is the right thing to do. In conclusion, I am very happy to accept my noble friend’s amendments and I hope that they will be accepted by the House.
Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Viscount Younger of Leckie and Lord Young of Cookham
Viscount Younger of Leckie
I would not put it in quite that way. There are no plans to make changes, but the noble Lord will know that we are talking about properties that are considered to have a long historical association with the Crown. I will investigate further and if I can furnish the noble Lord with more information, I will certainly do so in the form of a letter.
Lord Young of Cookham
My Lords, I am grateful to everybody who took part in this debate. In response to the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, let me say that, indeed, I do not remember the background to a Written Parliamentary Question that I answered in 1992. My general impression was that the Duchy agreed voluntarily to abide by what was in the legislation. That was the background, which I think was broadly confirmed in the exchange, although there might be some minor amendments more recently. I am grateful to my noble friend for his benign response to my two amendments: the teams of Young and Younger seem to be on the same wavelength here. Against the background of the assurances that he has given, I am more than happy to beg leave to withdraw Amendment 84BA.