| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
1.25 pm
Dr. Ian Twinn (Edmonton): I am grateful for the chance to speak in the debate and support my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Mrs. Lait) who has introduced this Bill to put right a wrong about which many hon. Members have spoken. The problems that leaseholders face are difficult, and often make their lives hell. It is right that the House should, as a matter of urgency, put that right. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Mr. Fishburn) on his patience and determination in bringing up this matter in a sort of Brandon Rhys Williams memorial Bill. We owe it to our former colleague to ensure that Brandon's ideas are brought into law in full. That the matter is set out so simply in the Bill is a credit to all concerned.
It does not matter whether this is part of a great radical reforming agenda or rampant conservatism. I would take being accused of being a Conservative by the Opposition and of being a radical by a Conservative Member both as compliments. I can happily live with both. It does not
matter whether this is part of leasehold reform or establishes a new agenda or form of land tenure. I regard it as reforming the leasehold land tenure system.
Hon. Members have come to the debate because they recognise that leasehold is not working in the way that it should. That has been going on for a long time. As hon. Members have said, the Government first recognised the problem officially in the late 1980s. Draft Bills of one sort of another have been appearing for nearly 10 years. Even lawyers should be able to reach agreement among themselves in that time. However, nothing astounds me about lawyers and they may want to argue about whether it is 10, nine or eight years. That could make it take longer for them to sort it out.
It has been said, rightly, that the Government are making valiant efforts to put right some of the wrongs. We know how leaseholders have been treated. It is sad in a way, because leaseholding can work perfectly well where there is good will on both sides. There would no need to detain the House if all landlords behaved reasonably, but it is clear that they do not. We need reform to make sure that people who are being abused by freeholders are protected.
I am impressed by the Bill. I started my London political career in Dulwich. Lewis Silkin had brought forward the Leasehold Reform Act 1967. I was the chairman of Dulwich constituency Conservative party--after it was brought in, but not that much after. My party gave up that seat because it put forward a candidate--who later represented another seat in the House--who supported the leasehold system. That was a lesson in my political life, and it should be a lesson to my colleagues in the Government that there is a need to take action. There are political consequences when we do not put right a wrong, and this is a wrong that must be put right.
In my constituency, I have seen the way in which the relationship between freeholders and leaseholders has broken down. Like other hon. Members, I have had case after case of abuse by people who have bought up freeholds so that they can squeeze the last drop of money out of innocent home owners who never expected that to happen to them.
One such example is Chapel court in Bush Hill Park in my constituency. Linkproud Ltd, Empress Management and the solicitors Paul Chevalier and Linda Malthouse deserve to have their names mentioned as much as possible, especially under the cover of parliamentary privilege in connection with their disgraceful activities. They have threatened and abused leaseholders and extorted money in the most disgraceful way. It should make us ashamed that our law allows people to behave in that way. They have used bullying tactics and threatened the full force of the law to try to seize properties when small parts of bills have not been paid, and have tried to load up mortgages behind home owners.
The Evening Standard in London has given publicity to that bunch of swindlers--that is the only thing that lawyers and solicitors protected by the Law Society can be called when they behave in this way. I am surprised that the Law Society, with its new management, has not decided to look carefully at the operations of swindlers who pretend to be respectable solicitors. I hope that the Law Society will try to redeem its reputation by looking into cases such as Chapel court.
I shall not detain the House, because other colleagues wish to speak today. It does not seem sensible to detain the Government in getting their act together any longer.
We have heard that other countries are perfectly capable of operating a system that is fair to home owners who want to own a flat. Australia, the United States and countries on the continent of Europe do so, as does Scotland. If Scotland can do it, surely England and Wales can get its act together and put matters right. I hope that we can. As an Englishman with a little Welsh blood, I do not like to see the Scots getting away with it. The Scots can be insufferable when they have got things right. The Scots can be insufferable anyway, as anyone can, but when they have got it right they are even worse, because we know that we should be doing the same as them.
I hope that, when the hon. Member for Greenwich(Mr. Raynsford) speaks on behalf of the Labour party today, he will give a commitment that Labour will support the measure and give full backing to the Government either by supporting the Bill today or by coming back as soon as possible with their own suggestions. The Government should do so before a general election. Opposition Members' reasons for wanting to reform the law are just as honourable as ours and they believe just as sincerely as we do that the law must be changed. There is cross-party feeling in the House that something must be done. We do not want to have to come back in the new Session to ask why commonhold is not included in the Queen's Speech. It must be included.
Mr. Nirj Joseph Deva (Brentford and Isleworth):
I am grateful to catch your eye, Madam Deputy Speaker. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Mrs. Lait) for bringing this important measure to the House. I was impressed by the detail, care and attention that she has put into the arrangement of the clauses of the Leasehold (Reform) Bill. She must have spent much time on the minutiae of the Bill, for which we should all commend her.
I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Mr. Fishburn), who was my Member of Parliament at one time, on having brought such a measure before the House on eight separate occasions. I only regret that he will not carry on, like Fox, to the 21st occasion, until he gets his Bill through. I commend him for his efforts and for his care and attention in trying to look after his constituents and other people who have been affected.
The hon. Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr. Khabra) made a thoughtful speech, but tried--without great success--to turn this into a party political issue, which fortunately it is not. If he is so concerned about protecting tenants from large landowners, why did the Labour party oppose our home ownership policies when we tried to sell council houses to tenants? After all, we are the party of home ownership--the party that believes in people owning their own properties--and our record in the past 16 years or so has proved that. We have put about
3 million people in possession of their properties at the expense of some large owners--council landlords who have not looked after their tenants as well as they should.
I want my hon. Friend the Minister to take great note of the Bill. I hope that he will either support it today or bring forward similar legislation in the next Queen's Speech--certainly before the next general election, as my hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton (Dr. Twinn) said. It is an important issue, both for the Conservative party and the people of Brentford and Isleworth, and it is, therefore, important for the Minister to assure us that it will be a matter of major legislation and concern for the Government before that election.
I have worked on behalf of leaseholders in my constituency, particularly those in Brentford dock, where tenants have had enormous problems because their freehold has been sold underneath them, so to speak, several times; they have reached the point where they do not know who owns it. They have also had problems with, among other things, service charges, management costs, repairs and lifts. That leads me to believe that commonhold is the way forward.
Commonhold is a freehold development in which two or more people can come together and form an association to achieve home ownership, which is an important consideration. I shall take this opportunity to explain in some detail how the system will work. A commonhold is a freehold development of two or more units which share services and facilities and so require a system for communal management and for the ownership of the common parts.
The promoter of a commonhold--the person who establishes it--might be the developer of a new development. Many new developments are being built, new properties are being taken up, construction is taking place and the economy is reviving. Today, interest rates came down, which means that more properties will be purchased. People will want to go into the market and buy--the market is reviving. Not only the Conservative party but the Labour party should encourage that trend, and we should talk up the economy. I am rather disappointed by Labour Members, because they are always talking down the country. We want to revive confidence in the economy and the property market, and it is absolutely futile for the Labour party to talk it down, creating a sense of gloom where there is no gloom.
A block of flats is the most obvious example of a commonhold, in which the flats would be owned on a long leasehold basis. There would be nothing in commonhold legislation to prevent commonhold from being established for non-residential purposes. Equally, the system might be adopted for commercial or mixed-use developments, and the units would not have to be horizontally divided like flats. Therefore, the system could also be used for housing, industrial estates and even shopping precincts, with flats or offices above. It could also be applied to agricultural buildings and surrounding farmlands.
The owner of a commonhold flat or other unit--the unit owner--would, unless and until the commonhold was brought to an end, own the freehold in his unit. That ownership would automatically carry with it the right to essential passage--such as for access to gas, water and electricity--and the right to perform any communal service, such as for cleaning, maintenance, use of the
common parts and insurance of the structure. If a building had other communal facilities--such as parking, gardens or recreational facilities--the right to use them would go with the unit.
The commonhold association, for which the Bill provides, would be a corporate body established under the commonhold legislation and run exclusively by the unit's owners, who would then own and manage any common parts as well as the services and facilities. The commonhold association would have the benefit of a charge against each unit in respect of any arrears of service charge, to give it comparable protection to that which applies to service charges under current leases.
On the winding up of commonhold, the freehold in the individual units would automatically be transferred to the commonhold association, and the owner's right to his unit would be converted into a share of the association's net assets. The commonhold share would be calculated according to the proportions laid down for each unit when the commonhold was established. That arrangement would ensure that the value of the commonhold property, as a whole, could be realised by a single person, such as the liquidator of the association, thereby avoiding the problem that would arise if all unit owners continued to own their units.
I should like briefly to speak about the commonhold association. The commonhold system would include a self-contained scheme for the establishment, conduct and--in conjunction with the winding up of the commonhold itself--dissolution of the commonhold to run the commonhold. The corporate body would not be established under the Companies Acts, although similar procedures would apply where appropriate.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |