My Lords, I confess to relative ignorance on the subject of the Land Registry, so I have been trying to understand better. Naturally, I wish to support my Government, and particularly want to support my noble friend the Minister, who has to reply to this. I have a number of concerns, some of which the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, set out very fully when making his points. Like him, I, too, have had representations from the Local Land Charges Institute and from the Law Society, which have made a number of points to which I am sure the Minister will reply.
Certain things increase my concern. First, of course, this takes functions away from local authorities and centralises them. There are two things that instinctively trigger me as a localist, and I find them difficult. I therefore need to understand better than I currently do, not just what the problem is that we are trying to fix, but what the scale of the problem is, as the Government see it, that makes it necessary to take these functions away from local authorities and centralise them. Throughout history, the experience of centralising does not necessarily automatically lead to greater efficiency, nor does it seem immediately to be in keeping with the Government’s commitment to localism.
On a similar and related point, I have seen several times the awful phrase “postcode lottery” used with reference to the current situation. I hate that phrase; if we put it rather differently, so-called postcode lotteries mean we recognise that different factors apply in different areas and that local people—local authorities, in this instance—are able to determine their priorities, their way of doing things and, for that matter, what charges they wish to set for local services. If that is called a postcode lottery then I am all in favour of it but I would prefer to call it real localism.
My next point was raised by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie. He referred to the results of the consultation, which came out significantly against the Government’s proposals. That has been dismissed as self-interest. In a sense, that is true; it is pretty obvious that the Local Land Charges Institute has an interest. You can call it
a self-interest if you like, but I have to say that the responses to most consultations come from organisations or people with what could be called a self-interest. It just so happens that that self-interest means that they usually know very much more about the subject than most of us do. The fact that they have a self-interest—or, as I would put it, a greater knowledge—certainly does not mean that they are by definition wrong or that their views should be dismissed. Certainly, the context should be recognised.
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We have referred to both the Local Land Charges Institute and the Law Society. I have also had representations from Liberal Democrat colleagues in local government. I know that my right honourable friend Don Foster has had a letter from the leader of his council, who happens to be a Liberal Democrat, expressing great concern about this proposal. I met the Liberal Democrat leader of Wychavon District Council at a conference the other day. At my request, she subsequently e-mailed me with her authority’s concerns. Wychavon District Council is Conservative-controlled and, she says, is strongly opposed to the proposal. She put to me the two concerns that it has:
“Firstly, the Land Registry would only take over part of the service (the Local Land Charge 1—“LLC1”) & not the further enquiries part (‘CON29’). Local Authorities would still need to service this part, but without the resources to do so. Secondly, the Land Registry have said that they would only hold information for 15 years, and information can be relevant for far longer than this”.
Another point was the confusion caused by the other consultation about future operating measures, to which the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, also referred. I am sure that the Minister will put very clearly on the record that, whatever the rights and wrongs of that, it will not be proceeded with within the lifetime of this Parliament, but of course she cannot bind whatever any future Parliament or Government may do.
I end where I began. I want to be able to support my Government and my Minister on this, but the more I hear about this change—albeit from people with what has been called a self-interest—the more I begin to wonder why we are doing it and why we are so sure that the end result will be so much better for users, for local people and for the efficiency of local government.