argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2021-11-29
Topic: Housing
Lucy Maria Powell (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, and there is a very strong basis for a wider mis-selling scandal inquiry. Many properties are affected: in terms of houses, for which the practice has been particularly egregious, more than 500,000 leasehold houses have been built over the past 10 years. The vast majority of them are in the north-west of England and north Wales, which is why so many colleagues from those areas are here this evening The rights to collect the ground rents are bought and sold on the financial markets as steady income streams to investors, while leaseholders get nothing back for—in some cases—thousands of pounds a year. There is hardly a clearer illustration of the damaging pervasive tendency to treat housing as an investment opportunity—as a product to trade on the market—rather than as homes where people live and build their lives around. That should be the basis of housing in this country. We have lost somewhere what housing is: homes, places where we live, where lives are built, where we become successful —or not—and where we bring up a family. Housing is not a commodity to be traded on the financial market. We have seen more starkly than ever over the past two years that housing is also a public health issue, an educational issue, and a work, security and happiness issue, and we should begin to treat it as such Although we welcome this Bill, it is a very narrow first step; there are many glaring omissions—measures which could have been included even in such a narrow Bill. First, there is nothing to prevent freeholders from simply transferring their income stream from ground rents to service charges or administration or other charges, as has been highlighted. As shown by the ground rent scandal itself, there is no limit to the ingenuity that some freeholders will draw on to capitalise off the back of leaseholders. Service charges and administration charges are opaque at best, and far too hard to challenge. Will the Minister address that issue later on?
Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2021-11-29
Topic: Housing
Mark Richard Tami (Labour, Centre-left): To list just a few examples that I have come across, some leaseholders who—in theory—own a house and the land around it are asked to pay if they want a pet or want to change the flooring in the house or the layout of the garden. People have said to me, "I’m paying a mortgage on a house that I don’t really feel I own."
Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2021-11-29
Topic: Housing
Mark Richard Tami (Labour, Centre-left): I agree fully with that point. As the right hon. Gentleman said, this practice had largely gone away. For years, houses were not built as leasehold properties, but in the north-west and in north Wales, a group of builders decided that this would be an extra way of scamming—I use that word deliberately—even more money out of the people buying the properties.
Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2021-11-29
Topic: Housing
Mathew Richard Allen Rodda (Labour, Centre-left): I appreciate the work that the right hon. Gentleman has done to try to get the right balance and stand up for the interests of homeowners rather than large corporations. Does he have any reflection, further to the point made by the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), on the knock-on effects of allowing additional storeys to be built on existing blocks of flats? In my experience, there is an exploitation issue both for people who live in flats with top-hatted development—I think that is the word—and for the neighbours. In the area that I represent, there have certainly been a number of problems for neighbours to those blocks. Does the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) have any further reflections on that point? If he were still Secretary of State, would he have allowed that development to go ahead?
Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2021-11-29
Topic: Housing
Mathew Richard Allen Rodda (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend is making an important speech and he has hit on a number of central issues, particularly when dealing with his own legal experience of these dysfunctional markets where on the one hand we have developers with enormous financial power and legal resources and on the other we have humble first-time buyers. Does he agree that there needs to be a rebalancing, with far greater protection for first-time buyers and ordinary householders, and with a much greater attempt by the Government to hold these large developers to account?
Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2021-11-29
Topic: Housing
Justin Piers Richard Madders (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. There is clearly an imbalance. We have already talked about how some enthusiastic first-time buyers who just want to get into their new homes put their trust in the people who have been assigned to deliver the legal niceties such as putting a value on the property and doing the conveyancing. They put their trust in those people, and sometimes that trust is betrayed through the egregious injustices that we have talked about.
Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2021-11-29
Topic: Housing
Mark Richard Tami (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend has mentioned management fees, which I see as the next scandal coming down the road. People who bought their properties and were being charged perhaps £100 or £200 a year will have thought that that was okay, but that might now have gone up to £500 or £600 and there are often additional charges because, for example, fences or certain parts of the ground are not covered. People have told me that they feel they are paying their council tax twice. That is how they see it, and it is totally unfair.
Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2021-11-29
Topic: Housing
Justin Piers Richard Madders (Labour, Centre-left): I thank my right hon. Friend and neighbour for his intervention, which leads me beautifully into the next section of my speech, in which I shall talk about exactly that. I will never accept that it is right for developers to choose not to pay a sum to councils to adopt the communal areas, and that they instead save themselves money by passing on that cost to the homeowners and then make even more money from the homeowners by charging them for things that ought to be coming out of their council tax. Like my right hon. Friend, I worry that this trend will be accelerated because the ground rent gravy train is coming to an end, and that we will hear more and more stories of homeowners having no choice but to pay inflated annual service charges that, given the choice, they would prefer to pay through their council tax.
Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2021-11-29
Topic: Housing
Justin Piers Richard Madders (Labour, Centre-left): That is a fair point in theory, but I find it does not happen in practice. I have estates in my constituency that were built a dozen years ago and still have not been adopted because the developers have not put them up to the required standard. The to and fro never ends, because the developers have left town and they have no interest or incentive to bring those areas up to the adoptable standard.
Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2021-11-29
Topic: Housing
Christian John Patrick Matheson (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful for the advice my hon. Friend has given to me and my constituents on this matter, as he is a neighbouring MP with particular expertise. He will be aware of one estate in my constituency that has been parcelled up and given to different developers, and it has been developed at different times. Not only do we have a problem with the local authority, but he will recall that we have a problem with different developers playing themselves off against each other in order not to bring the estate up to standard, as the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) suggests.
Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2021-11-29
Topic: Housing
Mark Richard Tami (Labour, Centre-left): I totally agree with my hon. Friend. Quite often, the moment the developers sell the last property, that is it: they are not interested any more. They are not interested in snagging or doing the roads; they are off to build somewhere else. The problem is that, as my hon. Friend was saying, local authorities do not have the money to chase these people. In my opinion, if they do not finish an estate—what they were allowed to do under the planning permission—they should not be granted permission again to build anything else.
Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2021-11-29
Topic: Housing
Matthew Raymond Western (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend is making some incredibly important points. I have parallels in my constituency, as I am sure do other Members across the House. In one example, we have a managing company, a massive social housing provider and a partnership scheme, as he describes it, and the builder. It is a big organisation, but there is no overall ownership of the issues. Residents get utterly frustrated—I am thinking about Ellie, Matt, Sarah and others. There are 200 of them in this one development and they cannot get answers from anybody because no one is really taking ownership of the problem.
Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2021-11-29
Topic: Housing
Mathew Richard Allen Rodda (Labour, Centre-left): I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, because he shows that there is a wider issue with this type of behaviour. It is deeply worrying. These are ordinary families trying to get on with their daily lives. They want to be able to find a home of their own in a high-cost area and they are being treated in the most appalling way by an organisation that should be much more responsible. As I have said, I, my office and local councillors have been struggling to find a way of solving this problem, but we have not had much success so far and would appreciate the Minister’s help. We hope that, at some point, Housing Solutions will compensate these poor residents for the way that they have been treated and, indeed, buy them out of their properties if possible. It is absolutely appalling to live next to a haulage yard. People are constantly interrupted by noise from HGVs, driving past at all hours of the day and night. The air pollution from diesel particulates and nitrous oxide is deeply worrying. There is no way of protecting children and other vulnerable people in that situation. I am sure the whole House would agree that no one wants that for their constituents. There is also an issue with planning law that needs to be addressed, by which I mean looking at the risks from air pollution and from putting housing in close proximity to an industrial development. I would appreciate the Minister’s help with that Finally, let me reiterate the points made by other colleagues about the wider issue of leasehold, which is a completely out-of-date system and totally unfair to first-time buyers and other householders—whether they be young residents, people in leasehold properties for long periods of time, or, as the right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) said, older residents. This system should come to an end. It is a feudal system. Our country is unique in having such a system. Surely we need to end it once and for all and move on from it.
Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2021-11-29
Topic: Housing
Mathew Richard Allen Rodda (Labour, Centre-left): I appreciate that the right hon. Lady wishes to make a point about the importance of shared ownership and the difficulties of managing the shared parts of a large block of flats. Has she looked into the way that this issue is managed in other countries, given that all western countries other than the UK do not have the leasehold system? Surely there are ways to manage communal areas other than by maintaining leasehold, which involves all the difficulties that we have heard about.
Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2021-11-29
Topic: Housing
Matthew Raymond Western (Labour, Centre-left): I share a lot of the hon. Lady’s concerns about what her constituents are experiencing. Many thousands of new homes are being built, and constituents are frustrated and surprised when they discover that they have just bought a leasehold house. We understand that a third of leasehold properties are typically houses. Does she agree that where houses have been built as leasehold, surely the simplest thing would be to make them all freehold, and to get agreement with all the developers to reduce the cost of transfer?
Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2021-11-29
Topic: Housing
Mathew Richard Allen Rodda (Labour, Centre-left): I absolutely appreciate the difficulties that the hon. Gentleman is outlining, including indeed in relation to my constituency. I should say that my constituency is Reading East; Reading West is the COP26 President’s. In Reading and Woodley, which I represent, there are a number of private roads and other shared facilities where residents come together and share the ownership of assets. Certainly in my experience as the local MP and previously as a councillor, that can be done quite effectively. I do appreciate that there may be issues with very large blocks, and the point I was making to the right hon. Lady from Chipping Campden—[Interruption.] Sorry, I mean the right hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers); there are various interesting places around the country that we come from today. The point I was making is that we really should look at the wide range of jurisdictions overseas and try to work through some models of what is most appropriate in each given set of circumstances However, it is possible to bring residents together. Certainly, that is my experience locally, and in the example of shared private roads, that has been extremely successful. We have a number of areas where they are maintained to a very high standard, the residents all work together effectively and that is absolutely fine. So I do not think we should try unduly to put obstacles in the way of progress on this matter. At the end of the day, the real issue is moving on from this totally unequal system to one where individual householders are treated more equally, and work together in a collaborative and sensible way.
Consultations on Addressing Legacy of Northern Ireland's Past: Victims Groups — House of Commons, 2021-12-08
Topic: Other
Peter John Kyle (Labour, Centre-left): Thank you, Mr Speaker The Command Paper was published back in July, and since that time there have been two pauses, or perhaps more. That implies quite directly that the Secretary of State’s thinking is evolving. Can he tell the House, with as much precision as possible: what is the difference between his thinking as it currently stands and his thinking in the paper that was published in July?
Consultations on Addressing Legacy of Northern Ireland's Past: Victims Groups — House of Commons, 2021-12-08
Topic: Other
Lindsay Harvey Hoyle (Labour, Centre-left): Order. I know that the hon. Gentleman is new to this, but we must hear from some other Front Benchers, and I am not going to make it if we do not have shorter questions and answers.
Exports to Northern Ireland: Businesses in Great Britain — House of Commons, 2021-12-08
Topic: Other
Lindsay Harvey Hoyle (Labour, Centre-left): Before we come to Prime Minister’s questions—[Interruption.] Mr MacNeil, I do not need any help from you. This is an important message to those people who are watching. Before I come to Prime Minister’s questions, I would like to point out that the British Sign Language interpretation of proceedings is available to watch on parliamentlive.tv.
Engagements — House of Commons, 2021-12-08
Topic: Mixed Topics
Keir Starmer (Labour, Centre-left): I heard what the Prime Minister said at the beginning of this session, but frankly it raises more questions than answers. Last week, I asked the Prime Minister: was there "a Christmas party…in Downing Street for dozens of people on 18 December?"—[Official Report, 1 December 2021; Vol. 704, c. 909.] The Prime Minister and the Government spent the week telling the British public that there was no party and that all guidance was followed completely. Millions of people now think the Prime Minister was taking them for fools and that they were lied to; they are right, aren’t they?
Engagements — House of Commons, 2021-12-08
Topic: Civil Rights
Keir Starmer (Labour, Centre-left): This pretence that further information has come to light—give me a break! The Prime Minister is still taking the public for fools On the day of the Downing Street party, Trisha Greenhalgh’s mum phoned her; she was "breathless and feverish"—[Interruption.] You might want to listen. Trisha followed the rules and did not visit her mum. Listening? Four days later, on the day the Prime Minister’s staff laughed about covering up the party, Trisha’s mum was admitted to hospital. Trisha followed the rules and did not visit. Trisha’s mum spent Christmas day in hospital; Trisha followed the rules and did not visit. Two days later, Trisha’s mum died. What Trisha wants to know is: why did the Prime Minister expect her to accept that the rules allowed a Downing Street party but did not allow her to visit her dying mother?
Points of Order — House of Commons, 2021-12-08
Topic: Other
Lindsay Harvey Hoyle (Labour, Centre-left): Order. [Interruption.] I think I make that decision. [Interruption.] No, I know you are not, and it is not to me, obviously This is a very tense moment for the House and I want to try to calm it down. We cannot continue a debate after it has already gone on, but what I would say is that I am not aware of any media attention and it is not for me to rule on something that happens in Downing Street. I also say to the right hon. Member that he has got his point on the record and we can leave it at that.
Points of Order — House of Commons, 2021-12-08
Topic: Other
Lindsay Harvey Hoyle (Labour, Centre-left): I would encourage all Members to take part in the consultation process that has been launched, but that is certainly not a point of order for me. The hon. Gentleman has made a point of clarification for the House.
Points of Order — House of Commons, 2021-12-08
Topic: Other
Lindsay Harvey Hoyle (Labour, Centre-left): First, I am grateful to the hon. Member for giving me notice of his point of order. I can confirm that I have had no request from the Government to make a statement. Of course, I am open to that, as soon as the Government come forward and say that they wish to make a statement. I say to the Government, as I have repeatedly said—and I will continue to repeat it—that it must be made here so that Back Benchers, whether Government or Opposition, can hear it in this Chamber. This Chamber is where statements are made. Otherwise it goes against the ministerial code. I do not want to fall out with the Prime Minister, but this is not a good way of getting Christmas cards sent between us, because I find it very offensive. There is plenty of time for the Government to come forward and say that they wish to make a statement here. What I do not want is statements to be made outside. I want respect for this House. I expect the Government to make sure that they respect their own Back Benchers, because I do even if he does not. So this is a chance for all to make sure that this House hears it first. I hope that, with my voice, they will be able to hear that in Downing Street, because I will make sure that they do hear it. So please let us not take this House for granted, and I stand firmly behind all Members of this House in saying that it must be heard here first.
Points of Order — House of Commons, 2021-12-08
Topic: Other
Florence Eshalomi (Labour, Centre-left): On a point of order, Mr Speaker. On 3 November, I raised the tragic case of my constituent’s mother who sadly died by suicide, and the Prime Minister agreed to meet me. Mr Speaker, how best can I get that meeting? Essentially, the Prime Minister is now refusing to meet me.
Points of Order — House of Commons, 2021-12-08
Topic: Other
Lindsay Harvey Hoyle (Labour, Centre-left): I will write to the Prime Minister to remind him that he promised to have a meeting with you. I will pass on those remarks, and I am sure that those on the Government Front Bench will have heard them. When people make statements that they will meet, they should honour that. All Members of this House count. All Members matter.
Points of Order — House of Commons, 2021-12-08
Topic: Other
Lindsay Harvey Hoyle (Labour, Centre-left): I do not want to continue debate on a point we have already had an answer to. What I would say is that I expect—and I know—that your voice will be heard, and it is certainly on the record.
Points of Order — House of Commons, 2021-12-08
Topic: Other
Lindsay Harvey Hoyle (Labour, Centre-left): Order. No, I am not even going to enter into that. If you look at yesterday’s proceedings, you will find that someone from the other side did the same. It was in passing and not part of the debate.
Points of Order — House of Commons, 2021-12-08
Topic: Other
Lindsay Harvey Hoyle (Labour, Centre-left): I would be very willing to look, if it is at all feasible, to see whether we could use a UQ, if there is a way around the rules, because I would be more than willing to accept one if the Government were not willing to come forward with a statement. I totally agree that a statement would be beneficial. As I say, I am sure Downing Street would not let the Members of this House down.
Points of Order — House of Commons, 2021-12-08
Topic: Other
Catherine Elizabeth West (Labour, Centre-left): On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Your advice has been very valuable today; I wonder whether you could extend it to this. I feel that there were some inconsistencies in the reply to my Question 6 in Prime Minister’s questions. Could you please advise me of next steps in managing the matter?
Points of Order — House of Commons, 2021-12-08
Topic: Other
Lindsay Harvey Hoyle (Labour, Centre-left): We are not going to extend the debate, and you have been here long enough to know that I am not going to be tempted by that If there are no further points of order, we come to the ten-minute rule Bill.
Nationality and Borders Bill — House of Commons, 2021-12-08
Topic: Immigration
Jeremy Bernard Corbyn (Labour, Centre-left): Sharpness is the order of the day; I will be very brief and very sharp This Bill is appalling in so many ways. I will come to that in just a moment. In this set of amendments, we are dealing with people who are suffering the most grotesque exploitation of almost anyone in the world—people who have been trafficked into sexual slavery, and into working illegally in factories and agriculture, and who have no recourse to any support anywhere. They are living in dangerous conditions. They are often isolated and have no one to turn to. While I appreciate that all the amendments are trying to provide better support and better protection for them, these people are the victims of slavery in every form imaginable Although I support the amendment tabled by the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith), I do not quite understand why he limits the right to remain to 12 months, because if, at the end of that 12-month period, the person concerned is then faced with deportation, I would ask: deportation to where and under what circumstances? Would they not then be in danger in the country they have originally come from, or from the very gangs that have been called out, because of their seeking safety in this country?