Blustering Baroness Fails to Save Government’s Blushes

When persistently asked why the Government had not yet implemented legal protection for leaseholders and when they planned to do so, Baroness Hanham uttered a selection of tepid responses including: 

“We do not believe that it is necessary...”

“...this was not our legislation: it was the legislation of the previous Government and it was the previous Government's responsibility to implement it.”

“We...do not think that it is appropriate to do so.”

Fortunately, Lord Lloyd of Berwick was on hand to ridicule these unconvincing answers by saying:

“An important new principle has just been announced. There are many reasons for not bringing things into force, which Parliament has passed, but surely one is not that the other side passed the legislation. Parliament passed the legislation and the Minister is saying that she does not like it.”

One glimmer of hope for leaseholders around the country came when Baroness Hanham admitted that in spite of her other comments, “we are keeping a watching brief on the concerns of people within the leasehold reform area.”  This is perhaps the first public indication that the Government may be persuaded to reconsider its current intractable attitude to leasehold legislation, and a sign that recent political pressure from the Lord’s, MP’s and the London Assembly is having an effect.  

Baroness Gardner, who initiated this Parliamentary exchange, has spoken in support of leaseholders several times in the last few months and will be giving the keynote address at the FPRA AGM and Leasehold Exhibition on 8th November 2012, in Central London.

To read the full debate in Hansard, click here. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201213/ldhansrd/text/120723-0001.htm#1207233000474 

To reserve your free place at the FPRA’s AGM, please email events@newsontheblock.com.