Leasehold Reform — House of Commons, 2019-07-11
Topic: Housing
Peter James Bottomley (Conservative, Centre-right): 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.