I thank the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) and my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) for securing this debate. I shall say straight away that I welcome the Government’s action last night, which will be helpful for the future.
My concern, which relates to that of other right hon. and hon. Members, is about what happens between now and the point at which any legislation is implemented, and what happens for all our constituents who have faced difficulties and challenges in the past. Those challenges have been so difficult for some of my constituents that they do not want the estates and houses that they have been involved in to be publicly identified because they fear a further loss of income on any future sale of their property.
Before I ask the Minister some specific questions, I will touch on a number of key areas of concern—similar to those outlined by other hon. Members—that have been raised with me: first, the lack of information at the time of purchase, which has been mentioned already; secondly, the concerns and information around the onward sale of freeholds to third parties; thirdly, the issue of what happens on split sites, which my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) mentioned in his intervention; and fourthly, the element of devolution.
On the lack of information, I feel like I am in an echo chamber. The points that have been raised with me have also been raised throughout the debate, but are worth repeating. My constituents, of whom many were first-time buyers purchasing with Help to Buy and who were grateful to the Welsh Assembly and the UK Government for helping them, were forced to use solicitors recommended by the building company; did not get an explanation about what freehold or leasehold mean; did not get an explanation about potential future charges; never had it explained that those freeholds could be sold on to a third party, which might impact on their finances at a future date; and were offered different prices by the same company for the same freehold.
For the same house and the same freehold companies offered £1,500, £5,000 and £7,500 at the same time at purchase. People said, “Well, I cannot afford that now because I am on a Help to Buy scheme. I’ll undertake whatever you think is best for me,” and the advice was to have the leasehold, so people have found themselves on that. We need to revisit that for the future and get some clarity from the Minister about what that means now for people who have undertaken that scheme recently.
Onward sale is important. I know that the Minister will deal with that for the future and will consider completely banning the sale of leaseholds as a matter of principle, but I have a situation now where my constituents bought a property and the leasehold from what they thought was a reputable company, but found that the freehold has been sold on to a third party. Shockingly, my constituents did not even know and were not offered the chance to buy it at that time. In one example, one person happened to see the sales director of the company on site and asked to buy the freehold, which was sold to them, but the freeholds of the other 21 properties were sold to a third party. Only later did my constituents find out that that sale had taken place. They were not offered the chance to purchase as a first port of call, even if they had wanted to.