I want to address whether the Government’s proposals help many of the leaseholders in Garston and Halewood in any meaningful way. Liverpool City Council is currently monitoring 149 high-rise residential blocks across the city because of fire safety issues relating to cladding, and the Liverpool Cladiators, among others, are
campaigning to have the horrendously costly fire risk remediation done to their homes without the blameless leaseholders having to pay. That is one problem.
In addition, many ordinary families in my constituency who bought new build leasehold houses on estates in good faith are being financially exploited by unscrupulous freeholders who see them only as cash cows. All those people—most of them young families—are trying to get on in life in aspiring to own their own homes. That is an admirable thing that we should be encouraging, but instead, they have found themselves in a living nightmare of escalating costs and financial exploitation that they knew nothing about when they signed up to home ownership. Indeed, some of them were actively misled.
In spite of the warm words, the legislation announced by the Government leaves many of these people in the same trap, with no guarantee of relief, and in some cases only very partial relief. The Building Safety Bill does nothing to help those who live in buildings under seven storeys. As my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) set out, it does not pay the costs of non-cladding remediation needed to ensure fire safety. It does nothing to stop freeholders passing on the ruinous costs to their leaseholders or to ameliorate the soaring insurance costs passed on in service charges. In Liverpool, insurance costs increased this year by between 300% and 1,400%—costs that will be passed on. Before this legislation, leaseholders were facing unpayable, ruinous costs in the tens of thousands of pounds each, literally trapped in fire-trap buildings, in homes that are unmortgageable and unsellable, with no way out. After this Bill is enacted, with its regulator, its new homes ombudsman and its new framework to provide national oversight of construction products, they will still be in exactly the same position.
What about the many hundreds of my constituents who have bought new build leasehold houses and find themselves being financially exploited? They are having to pay escalating service charges, ground rent and fees because the freeholds have been sold on as an income-producing financial asset, thus ensuring that agents squeeze every last penny out of them, while providing as little as possible—usually nothing—in return. The Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill does nothing at all to help existing leaseholders, and the Government appear content to allow these people, who bought their homes in good faith, to be left with no redress under its provisions. My constituents in existing leases will have all the same expensive problems after the enactment of this legislation that they had before it and no way of improving things. Even if they purchase the freehold, exploitative covenants are placed in the contract for sale. Wholesale leasehold reform is needed, but this Bill does nothing about that.
Despite two Bills in the Queen’s Speech that promise solutions to these intractable problems faced by leaseholders, leaseholders will not be given the legislative help that they need and that their predicaments demand. They will still face the prospect of having to pay thousands of pounds and put up with very large, exploitative costs into the far future. They will be left with unmortgageable and unsellable homes, massive, unaffordable bills and no real help from this Government. Rhetoric won’t cut it, Minister—you have to help these people properly.
3.43 pm