Gideon Amos

“I thank the hon. Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi) and her Select Committee colleagues for their excellent report and for securing this important debate. Members on both sides of the House have made important points, including my hon. Friends the Members for Woking (Mr Forster) and for Surrey Heath (Dr Pinkerton), who resolutely spoke up for their residents. The Liberal Democrats welcome the introduction of a commonhold framework, the abolition of leasehold for new build flats and the end of forfeiture. Those are clear steps in the right direction, but they do not go nearly far enough. Liberals and Liberal Democrats have been campaigning for an end to unfair residential leasehold since the Liberal Government’s 1909 people’s Budget, and over 100 years on, progress has been woeful. Nearly 5 million households in England are living under this feudal system today. The Housing Secretary himself has called ground rent “money for nothing”, so why pay £250 for nothing for the next 40 years? For any of the 5 million leaseholders living under this system right now, the draft Bill does very little to help them gain enfranchisement, fix service charges or take control of how their buildings are run. The Government have said they are committed to bringing “the feudal leasehold system to an end.” Where are the goals and milestones that mean it will happen? A target date is needed by which all leaseholders have had an affordable opportunity to convert to commonhold and for the right to manage across the sector. As a first step to achieving those targets, the Government should enact all the remaining Law Commission recommendations on enfranchisement, including cutting out the swindle of development value—recommendations that came out six years ago but, for some reason, remain unimplemented. The Government inherited that delay but then promised in the 2024 King’s Speech to enact them. Let me give the House a specific example of what the delay in implementing those recommendations means in practice. One constituent in Taunton and Wellington went through the right-to-manage process as it stands. It took him four years, and he told me it “felt like a full time job.” The delay meant that he kept paying an overpriced service charge, adding up to an extra £5,000. Residents were forced to set up two separate right-to-manage companies, duplicating costs, simply to manage two buildings in one estate. Once they had finally won the right to manage, they found no legal way to recover even the basic costs of the right-to-manage company because the costs were outside what the lease defined as a service charge. There was a similar story when they went to amend their leases. What links all three problems is that the Law Commission recommended they be fixed back in 2020, so why not implement them in the forthcoming Bill? Right to manage should not be a niche arrangement that only a determined minority can navigate their way into. Landlords and freeholders, who hold all the information and resources, should be required to offer right to manage through a ballot of residents, with a presumption in favour unless more than half of residents vote against it. In respect of leaseholders being enfranchised into owning their own home, and setting a target, the Minister should bring back the amendment he tabled in opposition on properly setting deferment and capitalisation rates. The Bill appears not to contain such a provision. Before I end, I want to say a word about “fleecehold” as it affects freeholders. They face exactly the same issues of moving in, then having no control over the fees they are forced to pay. Homeowners should be given the right to manage the estates they are contracted into having responsibility for. I understand that the Government have asked the Law Commission to look into this, which is welcome, but the track record on Law Commission advice being acted on is worrying. On 27 January, the Minister promised my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Claire Young) that those residents would get protection in this Parliament, but that protection is not in the Bill. When will it be legislated for? In the meantime, councils should be given greater powers to adopt estates. Also, we need a property management regulator of the sort Lord Best recommended, which has the power to crack down on and cap the most exploitative service and estate management charges. Six years have passed since the Law Commission made its recommendations and seven since Lord Best reported. Forty-two years will pass before leaseholders are free of the scourge of ground rent. Yet we still have no goal from the Government on how long it will take for the majority of leaseholders to enfranchise or to gain the right to manage, or for freehold estates to be sorted out. In closing, therefore, I ask the Minister for three things. First, enact the remaining Law Commission recommendations, so that leaseholders get the support they need. Secondly, create a regulator as a matter of urgency, and give it teeth to end rip-off charges. Finally, set a clear timetable for enfranchisement and right to manage becoming the norm, so that people win control over their own home. Let us free people from the leasehold trap. The Liberal Democrats would do that without delay.”