Land Registry

Will Quince Excerpts

Thursday 30th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)]

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) on securing this important debate. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris). I am not sure that I can quite match her passion, but I will certainly set out where I stand.

I was elected last year on a mandate to balance the books. There is no question but that the Land Registry offers an opportunity to raise money for the Government—the amount is purported to be around £1.5 billion. I am not ideologically against privatisation. When the Government can raise capital by selling assets, without detriment to public services, it can make sense to do that in certain circumstances. I appreciate, however, that that is a point on which Opposition Members may not agree with me.

I was a practising property solicitor until the last election, so I spent my days buying and selling houses for people. As part of that role, I spent several hours a day and many hours on the telephone liaising with the Land Registry. I used to find the Land Registry very helpful, and I very much valued its expertise. However, on occasion, and sometimes more often, it was quite slow, particularly regarding non-urgent matters such as first registrations. To be fair, the Land Registry has done a great deal in recent years to innovate. It has largely moved away from paper and some of the online tools, especially the mapping tool, are really useful. Having said that, some of the tools it uses are very much outdated and in need of an upgrade.

On that basis, there is no question but that there is a strong case for privatisation, because that could lead to a cash injection that could be transformational and drive innovation. Having said that, I am not in favour of, and nor can I support, the privatisation of the Land Registry. To be clear, the Land Registry is not RBS or Royal Mail. To compare it with those organisations fundamentally misses what the Land Registry is and what the consequences would be if it were in private hands.

As hon. Members have said, the Land Registry continues to be an essential part of land and property ownership in England and Wales. The main statutory function of the Land Registry is to keep a register of title to freehold and leasehold land. That represents 24 million titles covering 87% of the land mass of England and Wales. On behalf of the Crown, the Land Registry guarantees title to registered estates and interests in land. For a very small fee—as little as £3—it also makes data available to the public and solicitors via searches.

My objections are simple. In proposing the move, the Government have misunderstood what the Land Registry is fundamentally about. It is more than just a data provider or an authority for recording title. It registers title, guarantees rights to land and provides guarantees pre and post completion searches. The reliability of the register is vital to the property market, and any loss of confidence in the register would significantly affect the property and mortgage markets and, therefore, the economy as a whole. While the Land Registry can, at times, feel clunky and hugely frustrating for property professionals, at its heart it is based on the principles of integrity and impartiality, and I fear it is that that we put at risk if we accept the proposals to privatise.

We are a nation of homeowners and a level of trust has been built into our system through the security that has been provided by the Land Registry since 1862. We have an established property market, which is why England and Wales is a highly trusted market in which to invest. I fear that privatising the Land Registry would put that trust at risk, particularly for foreign investors. Let us not forget that the Land Registry guarantees the titles to billions of pounds of residential and commercial property.

The Land Registry acts as a repository for huge amounts of important data as a monopoly, and rightly so. However, let us remember that it has no hidden agenda or motive other than to provide a public service and to ensure that the property market continues to function well. I share the concern of many that privatising the Land Registry would undermine impartiality, increase fees for customers and pose a considerable risk to the integrity of the organisation.

Let me be clear that I would not criticise any private company for acting in the way I have described; in fact, we should expect it. However, a profit motive would completely change the nature of the organisation and we should expect costs to be driven down, with prices for data and fees rising. With the monopoly that exists, I struggle to see how the move could not be seen as anti-competitive. Given the monopoly, it could be argued that if the Land Registry were in private hands, it could reduce innovation and the transformation agenda, as there would be no market forces forcing it to do otherwise.

Fees at the moment are reasonable and offer customers good value for money, but let us be clear that property transactions are expensive when we include legal fees, stamp duty, search fees and moving costs. The current scope of the Land Registry’s work is limited by its direct link to the property market, meaning that there are limited options for a private company to increase workload and therefore revenue and profit. I appreciate that there is potential for the Land Registry to start providing other searches. However, that would require primary legislation and would lead to opposition from local authorities and private companies that already provide such services. The most likely outcome, notwithstanding the commitment the Government have made to retain an element of control over fees, is that fees will rise.

I have not heard any stakeholders in the property industry calling for this change, let alone warmly welcoming it; in fact, they all criticise it. Solicitors, surveyors, estate agents and mortgage lenders are opposed to the plans. The Competition and Markets Authority has said that the proposals would give the new owner a monopoly on commercially valuable data with no incentive to improve access to it. The concerns raised are not unreasonable, nor do I consider those raising them to have a hidden agenda or motive; their worries are genuine and we should not ignore them. There is no need to do this. As the right hon. Member for Tottenham said, the Land Registry has returned money to the Treasury in 19 out of the past 20 years, while continuing to reduce the fees that it charges the public.

Selling the Land Registry—the sole record of land ownership information—is a privatisation too far. We would, rightly, not consider privatising HMRC or the General Register Office. Some things are just too important to take out of the hands of Government. We would not consider privatising the births and deaths registers, and we should not treat land ownership differently. The Land Registry works. It makes money. If all the concerns I have raised cannot be addressed, please just leave it alone.