“When it is responsible, when it can be achieved without increasing borrowing and when it can be delivered without compromising high-quality public services”. —[Official Report,
So what problem does the shadow Minister have with cutting taxes on working people?
]]>That is extraordinarily timely, given the findings released this week by the Competition and Markets Authority. In its final report, it states:
“As a result of the emergence of the private management model, and the market power conferred on some management companies, households are facing financial and emotional detriment, and, if the status quo is maintained, this is likely to worsen over time.”
It proposes that the Governments of the UK and the devolved authorities look at two areas of measures. The first is to
“provide greater protection to households living under private management arrangements.”
That is what this Bill seeks to do. I know that the Minister has some cards up his sleeve—on forfeiture, right to manage and probably a host of other things—and I hope that he will shake some of them loose as the Bill moves up to the upper House.
Secondly, the Competition and Markets Authority makes two recommendations to prevent the proliferation of private management arrangements for new housing estates. The first is to
“implement common adoptable standards for public amenities on new housing estates”,
and the second is to
“implement mandatory adoption of public amenities on new housing estates”.
That sounds good, but it also sounds a long time away. We know that this issue is growing rapidly, so my amendment 18 seeks to stop it in its tracks by saying that homeowners may not have passed on to them charges for any service or provision that is usually the recourse of the local authority.
I cannot for the life of me understand why the Opposition are not supporting this amendment. I know that it is a bit of a club and not very nuanced, but it gets to the heart of the matter. Could the Minister therefore reassure the Opposition, as well as me and other Back Benchers, that he will look at what the Bill can do to make progress on some of the measures mentioned by the Competition and Markets Authority? I know that he wants to do that; I just hope that he can go as far as he can.
I will now turn to the proposed treatment of marriage value. There is a concern, which has been stressed a number of times, that the decisions we are making through this Bill are based on limited information on important economic effects. One example is the ability given to the Secretary of State to decide options for the future of ground rent. That was raised in responses to the recent consultation. Another is how the Government might determine the appropriate rates for the deferment and capitalisation rates, and there are a range of unquantified effects in the Bill’s impact assessment.
In Committee, I tried to learn a bit more about whether marriage value is a real thing. It is a real thing: it was enshrined in legislation in 2002 and, prior to that, in 1993. The Bill does not abolish marriage value; it transfers it. In fact, it is not possible to abolish marriage value; in maths, it is an optional value—it has real value. This is a decision not to abolish something, but to take it from one group of stakeholders and give it to another. It is a £7 billion transfer of wealth from one group to another, and under the provisions of the Bill it would be retrospective on contracts already entered into. That is a perfectly legitimate public policy position if we wish to take it, but I say to the Minister that as currently proposed it is fraught with legal risk and legal jeopardy.
My amendment would provide a safer passage for this Bill on its way to becoming law. It would ensure that any lease below 80 years at the time the Act is passed would continue to have marriage value, but any lease that goes below 80 years after the Act has passed would not. I ask the Minister to consider that as the Bill moves to its next stage.
]]>This is an important Bill. In my time in Parliament, I have been involved in amendments to the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 and, more recently, in my private Member’s Bill on hare coursing. This Bill gets the fact that it is not about the dogs but about owners. It is about the possession of the dogs. It is about trying to improve the behaviour of dog owners.
Mr Deputy Speaker, I hope that you will allow me a point of levity—it is kind of serious. My hon. Friend
My hon. Friend asked me to go to house No. 1 and meet the family. I went to that door in that particular street, and immediately heard barking from inside. I took Violet and moved her behind me. The lady answered the door and said, “Don’t worry, he’s on a lead.” A few seconds later, her husband left with a dog—it was the dog that was on the lead. He left to one side, and my eyes carefully followed the dog, with Violet protected behind me. It was only when the gentleman got into his car that another dog came out and attacked poor Violet. One can imagine my hon. Friend’s feelings, barely three minutes after she had entrusted me with the dog, when I ran down the street with Violet in my hands, blood rushing from her neck.
My point is not only to put on record my apologies to my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn. I am sure my hon. Friend
One of the issues related to the Hare Coursing Bill was that the police did not feel that they had the appropriate measures, in particular the ability to seize and detain dogs. In those instances, the dogs doing hare coursing were being gambled upon, and therefore were valuable to the owner. But in all cases the ability of the police to take away the dog and to charge the kennel has a deterrent effect. I am pleased to see those provisions in this Bill.
I am also pleased, perhaps unusually, to see clause 4, which gives a justice of the peace the power to authorise the police to enter and search a premises. A survey by the National Sheep Association asked how many times animals have been worried or attacked, and I think 70% of respondents reported such an experience, but in only 14% of cases—barely one in 10—did the owner of the dog alert the owner of the livestock to the crime. Either people do not feel that a crime has occurred or they do not think it is important enough, so a lot of the evidence and information will be taken away. Therefore, in these circumstances, it is crucial that the provisions in clause 4 are put into law.
I welcome this Bill, and I again congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal on moving it forward. This is a live issue, and I heard a case at a constituency surgery just last Friday. It did not involve livestock, but it certainly did involve out-of-control dogs worrying local people. My constituents are worried about attacks. In fact, one constituent’s dog had just been ripped to pieces by dogs that were loose. For the sake of my constituents in Moggerhanger, for those who have pressed the issue of dangerous dogs in towns and villages, for those who have suffered from hare coursing on their properties, and now for farmers who want to look after their livestock, I fully commend the Bill to the House.
]]>One of the concerns that we on the Government side of the House have is that, in the past, people who were given life sentences for serious crimes would have been out after six or seven years—life sentences did not mean life sentences. I want to make sure that when judges hand down a life sentence, it really is a life sentence. However, that intent stands directly at odds with the rules on joint enterprise. When someone who has committed a crime is sentenced, I would not want to be in the position of seeing someone who was there but who had not played, in the hon. Lady’s words, a significant part in the perpetration of that crime getting caught up in that. Does she not see that, without some of the changes that she is making with the Bill, the intentions of those of us who want life sentences to mean life would fall into an even greater sense of legal jeopardy?
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