My Lords, the comments that have been made are very interesting and I am grateful to all those who have given their support. However, we tend to overlook the fact that there are now something like 6 million leaseholders, so we are not talking about a little subject. It is a pretty big one that is important to a great many people. It cannot just be brushed aside as something that it would be nice to do.
I would love to see a completely new consolidation Act for all property issues; I raised this at a meeting where I was asked to give a speech. I said that people
should write to their MPs and press for one. A man who said he was a member of the Law Commission made it clear that the commission does nothing for nothing now, so the only way you could get it to prepare a consolidation Act, which it often used to do in the past, is by pre-paying for it. Some Government must decide that it is time to put all property legislation, which keeps a lot of solicitors happily and expensively employed referring to Act after Act with each one changing the previous one, into one Act. It is all piecemeal and there is no cohesion. Those 6 million leaseholders and the multiplicity of legislation are big problems for us.
The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, said that this might well be a growing problem, and I think he is right. Foreign ownership and the fact that so many people are having to move out of London because service charges are too high are the reasons for these issues. What the Minister had to say was very good, but he has not really given an indication that he will say anything before Third Reading, which is coming up pretty soon. What I would like to hear from him is that he will look at another approach, either through regulations or in some other way, to deal with this. That, at least, would put his good intentions on the record. As I say, it is important that these issues are not just pushed aside, which has been the case too many times when I have raised them. This basically applies to the situation as set out in Amendment 101.
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With Amendment 102 on the sinking funds, I refer to the situation to help people who will, under this Bill, become owners of properties that will require some sort of control, particularly if they are in blocks of flats rather than houses. If they are houses you can deal with it or let it collapse internally if you want to, but in a block of flats your flat will affect everyone else in the whole block. If things were seriously let go and water was pouring everywhere, everyone would be affected.
The sinking fund for new properties to be sold under the Bill should be a feature of all the leases from day one. It should not be a case of looking at it 30 years later and saying, “We should’ve done something”. The woman I mentioned on a total income of £10,000 thought that she would not be able to put aside even £1 a week towards it. However, if you had this fund right from the start and there was some particular little amount built in, it would build up over years. That woman had been in her property for 30 years. Over 30 years something would have built up to help her meet the bills.
As I said, there are so many reasons for people not to vote—perhaps self-interest or a total lack of interest. There are lots of reasons, but we need to deal with that percentage of people who do not vote at all. I would like more confirmation from my noble friend that he intends to look at that. He says that leaseholders have the right to challenge. That is all very well, but on the right to challenge under the leasehold valuation tribunal, I fought hard to retain that you could be charged a maximum of £500; it is now £500 to walk in the door. It was always acknowledged that the first property chamber was big money and not to be taken lightly.
There needs to be a greater understanding of all these things. There needs to be more comment from the Minister. I do not know whether he will answer these points separately, but I would like more assurance that the Government seriously intend looking at this with a view to really helping the 6 million leaseholders.