My Lords, at this late stage of the evening, I will be brief in speaking to Amendment 65 in the name of my noble friend Lady Taylor of Stevenage. The amendment would require the Government to publish their response to their consultation on a cap on ground rents and set out its implementation within a month of the Bill passing. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock. She described ground rent as something for nothing and something that you would not get away with in Yorkshire. Let me assure her that the noble Lord opposite can confirm that you would not get away with it in Lancashire either.
In the past five or six days we have seen a lot of press in relation to the new £250 yearly ground rent cap for 20 years. However, we still have not had confirmation here at this stage of the Bill from the Government. I want to press the Minister on the comments of the Secretary of State, who said in November that the
“consultation was launched to help protect those leaseholders who can be faced with ground rent clauses in their leases, which result in spiralling payments with no benefit in return”.
How are those press announcements happening, when we have not had a consultation analysis and we have not had feedback on the findings of the consultation? We find out in the media what the Government are thinking, and that is not right; we challenge that operation and procedure as a way of working, whereby we find in the media numerous reports about the Government’s intentions.
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After my Second Reading speech, I was approached by a young man called Mike, from Manchester, who told me that his first year of ground rent went up from £250 to £350. At that rate, his 115-year lease would mean that, by the end of it, he would pay over £100,000. More importantly, he said that three buyers had pulled out from buying his house as a result of that system. I share that with the Committee, and I am sure that noble Lords have shared many other examples and have many others in their inboxes.
To finish, the 2019 Conservative Party manifesto said:
“We will continue with our reforms to leasehold including implementing our ban on the sale of new leasehold homes, restricting ground rents to a peppercorn”—
as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock—
“and providing necessary mechanisms of redress for tenants”.
Even though the news that is floating about in the media is welcome, it seems that the Government have gone backwards. I would like to press the Minister on the transition period and how that will play out in future. I look forward to her response.