Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2021-11-29
Topic: Housing
Lucy Maria Powell (Labour, Centre-left): My right hon. Friend is absolutely right and he gives good examples, some of which I was going to use later. He makes a very good point—some of these charges are outrageous. Will Ministers respond to that and address how we can stop that practice Secondly, the millions of people already trapped in leasehold homes will see no benefit whatsoever from the Bill, so none of the examples that we have heard will end as a result of it. The Government have chosen to limit the scope of the Bill to new homes, which means those already facing these bills will see no benefit at all. Delay has real costs for them; the Minister can pass the buck on to us for what happened 11 years ago, but more than 2 million new homeowners have been trapped in this feudal leasehold system since his Government came to power The Competition and Markets Authority has done some good work taking down the largest and worst-offending of the freeholders, but we cannot wait for it to take on every single company involved in this outrageous practice. Will the Minister work with us and support our proposal, which we will table in Committee, to protect existing leaseholders Thirdly, the Bill does nothing at all to stop new houses being sold as leasehold. Leasehold houses are straightforwardly wrong, for the reasons that we have already heard. At the same time that the Government promised to set ground rents at a peppercorn, which the Bill does, they committed to ending the practice of newly built homes being sold as leasehold Half a million houses have been sold as leasehold since 2010, 60% of them in the north-west. Those homeowners face not just exorbitant ground rents but restrictions on how they can alter their homes. We have already heard some examples: if someone wants to have a pet, or if they want to make changes to the building, they have to ask permission. All too often, people are left feeling that they do not really own the home. When the leaseholder tries to escape this nightmare by buying out the freehold, they often discover all kinds of other restrictions that they were not told about when they bought their home. This needs to change As recently as 2017, the Government promised legislation to prohibit the granting of new residential long leases on houses. When will that come in, and why is it not included in the Bill? It makes no sense to me whatsoever that that has not made it into the Bill. Again, perhaps Ministers will work with us, and with some of my colleagues who are in the Chamber today, in Committee to end new leaseholds on houses altogether There was a lot more that the Government could have done in a simple first-step Bill, but I hope the whole House will recognise that wholesale reform of leasehold is long overdue. The building safety crisis has brought into stark relief how terrible our feudal leasehold laws are. Innocent leaseholders can be passed remediation bills totalling hundreds of thousands of pounds with no right of recourse. It is a David and Goliath situation that is hitting more and more homeowners across the country. Fixing the building safety crisis truly must mean fixing our outdated leasehold laws too As the last few years have shown, this is now an urgent task, so we call on the Government to do these simple things when it comes to wider leasehold reform: enable leaseholders to extend the lease or buy the freehold; make commonhold the norm, and make it much easier for properties to operate that way; abolish marriage value, as they promised they would; strengthen leaseholders’ voices and simplify the right to manage; give real teeth and real recourse to the bodies that are supposed to arbitrate and act on behalf of leaseholders, or create new ones altogether; and prevent freeholders in law from passing on extortionate costs for remediation works, or for putting right problems that they have created that are not the problems of the leaseholders, as well as the things that I have already discussed. Those are just some of the reforms that are urgently needed to ensure that no leaseholder is trapped against their will in this broken, outdated system In conclusion, the Bill is a tentative attempt at reform. While it is welcome, it represents a massive missed opportunity to transform a leaseholder sector that continues to scam working people on an industrial scale. Even in a slimmed-down Bill, the Government have failed to close loopholes, protect those already in leasehold homes or end the sale of new houses as leasehold altogether. Wholesale reform is urgently needed to ensure that nobody continues to be voiceless, trapped in leasehold homes they cannot sell, and facing ever-growing bills and charges.