My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in this short debate. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Mann, for reminding us that it is often a rather one-sided battle, with leaseholders confronted by freeholders with massive resources. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, for her support for my amendment.
As far as the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, is concerned, I have happy memories of replying when I was on the Front Bench to his Duchy of Cornwall Bill. He spoke at somewhat greater length on that occasion about the need for major reform of the Duchy.
On the specific issue that I raised, I am not expecting any legislative change because my noble friend said, quite rightly, that the Crown is not bound by legislation, but she said on several occasions that the Crown would act by analogy with the terms of the leasehold Acts. I think that gives me what I want, so long as it covers the Crown acting as freeholder as well as the Crown acting as owner of land in escheat. At the moment, that is not the case. At the end of my remarks, I asked whether my noble friend would be good enough to get the necessary assurance from the Crown Estate and the Treasury that they would deal with escheat applications in the same way as applications for where they are the freeholder.
I am grateful to my noble friend for her sympathetic reply. I think I can build on the undertaking that she has given to make some progress. I do not want to wait until the Law Commission has gone round the course all over again, whenever that may be. The leases that I referred to are coming towards the end of their time, and each delay adds to the potential cost for the leaseholders.
I hope we can make progress without waiting for a Law Commission report. It is simply a case of the Crown acting equitably and doing exactly what my noble friend has said: acting by analogy and delivering the laws that have been passed by Parliament. On that basis, I am happy to withdraw the amendment at this stage.