My Lords, I thank the Minister for her response. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, for supporting these amendments and the noble Lords, Lord Truscott, Lord Kennedy and Lord Bailey, for their comments.
In relation to the Minister’s comments about the time it takes to do this, I repeat that the Conservative Party has had this in its manifesto since 2017, so there has been quite a lot of time to think this through and have a look at this. It is a bit disappointing that we are in Committee in the House of Lords with some of these key issues still unresolved.
I ask your Lordships to reflect on, first, the example I gave in the earlier debate, of the elderly couple who told me they have a dispute with their landlord and are being threatened with forfeiture. They potentially have a £15,000 bill for the costs. If they pay that charge it is taken as agreement, but failure to pay it means that the landlord can invoke forfeiture, so where do they go? That is an awful position to put people in.
My second example is a young lady who I was out with the other day doing our political work. She lives in a leasehold flat; she put a political poster up in her window and then, almost immediately, received a letter from the landlord threatening her with forfeiture because that breached the terms of her lease. That seems an onerous way of dealing with a relatively small issue.
I listened carefully to the noble Lord, Lord Truscott, and he is right that there needs to be some form of resolution to this that means it does not need to go to the High Court—but it should certainly not be forfeiture, which is totally disproportionate. There may be a need to consider remedies other than the big sledgehammer of the High Court. Threatening to repossess people’s homes is certainly not an answer to technical breaches of lease.
Regarding rent charges, they will still be in place until 2037. We have to look at this and see whether we can find some way of getting rid of them before then.
As the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, said, if we have to bring this amendment back again, we will, but I would rather the Government did so. That said, I withdraw the amendment.