0:00 When Labour wrote their manifesto before the last election, they promised reform to the leasehold system of property ownership. But many people find themselves trapped in flats and say those promises have been broken. Hello and welcome to Reality Check. Less spin, more stats. I'm Michael Simmons, the Spectator's economics editor. And to discuss all of this and where reform needs to go, I'm delighted to be joined by Harry Scoffen, founder and campaigner from Free Leaseholders. Harry, thank you for joining reality check. Now, I'm going to ask you to imagine I'm thick for a minute. Um, I'm not thick, I'm just Scottish, and we don't have this quite the same feudal property system that you've got down in England. So, what is the the freehold
0:46 system? What's what's gone wrong with it? >> So, what's happened is that for many years, it was kind of the only way of organizing a block of flats in England and Wales. But what happened is that in recent years, sort of early 2000s, there were these sort of offshore property interests that piled in to buying the freeholds underneath lease holders or flat owners feet. And what happened is that they turned it into a sort of cash machine with gouging ground rents, soaring service charges, fees to keep a cat to to rent out the property. And what happened is that the person that is paid you know biggest purchase of their life is basically subjugated by you know to a landlord. Someone else that has just 2.5% capital value in a block of flats has
1:32 got the whip hand over your home. So what obviously happened is that there was the terrible fallout from the Grenful Tower tragedy. 72 people lost their lives and what happened is that everyone started thinking well hang on a second here. who's going to pay to make these blocks of flat safe. But what happened is that the freeh holders were saying we don't really own the buildings, but all the lease holders been saying, but under the law, you do. So then there was a question of who pays for I just stop there. What what does the freeholder own if it's not the building? >> Well, the the freeholder owns legally he owns the land. He's got the superior legal interest to the leaseolder. But what happens is that when they want to screw the leaseolder, when they want to take money out of them, they say they're the building owner. But when it comes to them actually acting like a building owner, paying like a building owner,
2:19 they say, "Oh, all we do is collect the ground rent. All we are is just a little shell company. We shouldn't have the the obligations of being a building owner." And that's what came into the four after Grenful that actually these guys are kind of >> halfway houses. They're not really building owners. And the lease holders have been saying, but for years you've been saying that we've got to pay these excessive service charge demands because you are the building owner and we're the tenants. But now you don't want to pay to make what is your building safe, you know, because this was life-changing cladding, huge building safety bills, people facing bills of tens of thousands of pounds. And then government started looking at more seriously, thinking, hang on a second here, that's not quite right. Why do we need freeholders if they're not actually paying like
3:04 building owners? Surely it's better for the people that already paying for these buildings to control them like they do in Scotland and the rest of the world. >> This episode of Reality Check is sponsored by Artemis. When it comes to investing in financial markets, you've got a choice. You could follow the crowd and buy an index tracker fund which simply falls an index like the Footsie 100. That means you get all the companies in it, the strong performers and the weaker ones too. This is called passive investing. Or you could invest with an active manager like Artemis. Active managers use their skills and experience to actively identify the companies they think are going to perform best and avoid the ones that they think will underperform. Or to use Artemis' fology, actively hunt down
3:50 healthy profits. Artemis the profit hunter. Be a hunter, not a tracker. As with all investment, your capital is at risk. >> But so if I'm if I buy a flat today, I I'll be a lease holder. Um I pay my mortgage and and I pay these fees that you've been describing >> to the the freeholders. Yeah. >> But that's been the case for forever in England. So I Why are people complaining now? What's actually changed? >> Because the character of the freeholders have changed. So before you might have had someone that lived down the same street and it was a bit like the old B tolet landlord equivalent where if the roof needed fixing they would meet you and your fellow lease holders in a coffee shop and talk about who are the contractors that going to bid for the work and actually you would be able to
4:35 provide your own you know contractor and they would say look actually that is a better market price. Let's go with that. That's what would happen. what's happened since sort of early 2000s property boom easy money lots of borrowing huge billionaires you know in yachts in Monaco and and you know BVI and all the rest of it and they saw owning the freeholds or the ground rents became like a wealth extraction strategy right and actually it's that's become a racket so actually there could have been a case for leaseold years ago but the thing is is that politicians been talking about getting rid of it since the 1880s before working men and women had the right to vote in this country. And that's actually the word where the word infranchisement came from. Leasehold infranchisement was a concept being pushed by Lord Randolph Churchill.
5:22 And his argument was people should be able to own their homes outright. And actually, if they want to become voting members of this democracy, they have to be able to buy out their freeholders compulsorily. And the idea is you buy out your freeholder, you are then a property owner, and then you would get the right to vote. So for us to still be talking about getting rid of this scam system all these years later is obscene. And you know Margaret Thatcher for goodness sake 1990 last day she was prime minister she brought forward a draft common hold bill. So common hold has always been intended as the replacement to leaseold forms of which are around the world. North America they call it condominium. In Europe they call it co-ownership. In Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Dubai even they call
6:09 it strata title. And actually, that's what we need to move to. But there are these very, very powerful business interests that benefit from the system that basically lobby politicians. They've got their tentacles all around Parliament, all around the Treasury, all around number 10, all around journalists as well. And we're really grateful for you covering this story because it doesn't get the sort of coverage it needs to. 10 million people are impacted. And you're talking about the property market. This isn't just people's lives being trashed. It's the property market being trashed. >> Well, it's interesting um you mentioned that because um be before we we went on air today, I was looking at some stats about the the London housing market and this at the start of this year um something like 28% of owners in flats in
6:56 London have ended up having to sell them for a loss. And there's lots of reasons for that. The mortgage market is going crazy at the moment. Do you think the fears about lease holds and fears about what you have to pay in ground rents is putting people off um buying flats and therefore actually damaging the market too? 100%. So it's a London story, but it's a national one as well. We've got the biggest gap in price between houses and flats for 30 years. You look at other jurisdictions. People love flats. Young people that are sort of the firsttime buyers, they want to live where the jobs are. They want to live where they're starting their careers. They want to live where it's exciting. They don't want to live in more remote parts. And that means, you know,
7:41 enjoying flat living. And for the elderly, they're rattling around in this country in familysized homes. They need flats. But right now, they don't want to move into these milking parlors. And basically you say about London, Hampton's has put out some really good data just a few weeks ago saying that last year according to land registry analysis that 60% of all properties in London that were sold were flats but they made up 90% of all losses. That is seriously worrying and I think what's happened is yes you've got less interest from overseas buyers which really turbocharged leaseold in the 2010s. You've not got your help to buy to ensnare people into these debt traps. But really what's happened is that because of the fallout from Grenful, showing the utterly one-sidedness, the
8:28 exploitive nature of lease hold that you pay everything, but you've got no control, >> people don't want to do that. And actually, you're better off saving up taking longer >> and buying a freehold house. So, an English man's home is his castle. And Barclay's Bank has even come out and said firsttime buyers are skipping flats altogether for what they're calling the forever home, which is a freehold house. And I think that's what we're worried about here, that it's not just destroying the lives of people already in the system for people that want to be homeowners. You're basically condemning a key part of the market. And you would really go that far. I mean, look, I I personally rent, but I would my ambition is to be a homeowner. We're in London. I'm never gonna afford or right now I'm not gonna afford a home, but I might be able to afford a flat. But you would say
9:14 the system is so broken that I I I should just stay renting >> 100% because you can't really do due diligence into these companies that own the freeholds or even run the management of these blocks. And the problem is is that you won't know you're going to be exploited until you're already in bed with them. And that's a huge issue because >> I get that people are saying we need to move away from housing being seen as an asset. It's a roof over your head first and foremost, but at the end of the day, if you're paying for something and it basically plummets in value, that is not a good investment. Put your money, this isn't, by the way, uh investment advice, but into stocks and shares. You'll get a better return. Or wait a bit longer for us to move to common hold. join the rebellion because it's not right that basically someone the biggest purch of
10:00 your of your life you basically become a financial captive to someone else who's got diametrically opposed interest. I was speaking to an economist the other day and he said no sane economist would create the system and there's a reason why the rest of the world including Scotland have forms of common hold. They don't let a third party landlord that's got the whip hand over flat owners. the flat owners appoint their own managing agent. People can get involved or they don't need to get involved and then at the end of the day you've got AGMs and you can vote out a managing agent that's that's ripping you off. >> But how does that really work? If we were to move away from this the freehold leaseold system cuz let's say there's four flats in my block, three of the flats want work done. The fourth person doesn't. Doesn't that just cause the
10:45 same problem? >> Well, no. It's a simple majority vote. Whereas in leasehold, you don't have a vote. So it's a form of taxation without representation lease hold because someone is levying taxes on you that you've got no way of voting them out and actually the beauty of common hold is that actually those that want to be interested in the upkeep of their homes they can be and those that don't they don't need to vote but the fact is it's done on a simple majority vote and also you're not involved in every single decision about the block. you elect among yourselves the directors that run the common hold association and then they're accountable to the to the rest of you at these AGMs and then yet for the big decisions like a service charge budget that will go out to a vote but the fact is our campaign we don't
11:30 believe English people or Welsh people are somehow inferior to other people around the world they all have got with a program it's time we do >> well let's get into what your organization campaigns for you obviously want this move to to common hold and one of the issues as well is about getting rid of ground rents. The literal the rent for the the ground these buildings are on but um Standard Life and many other pension firms have warned that this will risk the pension industry and Standard Life have said it will damage growth. Is that is that not something that we need to be concerned about? I mean we can't just destroy the value of these investments. Surely there is a huge misinformation campaign being run about this sort of pension funds lobby line. The last conservative government looked at this issue. They did a huge
12:17 public consultation on ground rents because the 2019 Conservative manifesto promised to restrict them to a peppercorn which means making them zero financial value almost immediately. And in the end that didn't happen partly because there was an early election called but also because of these hugely powerful vested interests. But they looked at it and actually they found that less than 1% of UK pension holdings are invested in residential property. So that's not just residential leaseold ground rents. That will also be build to rent. That will be B tolet. That will be social housing. So this is get out your microscope territory. But beyond that there are some insurance companies. I'm not going to name them here but they are masquerading as pension funds. And the thing is is that they've had years to divest from this. You know they talk
13:03 about ESG. This is not ESG. This is toxic because you're not providing a benefit or a service. Even the competition and markets authority under the last government looked at this and they said monetary ground rents are neither legally nor commercially necessary. Now, we want to talk about growth all the time. This isn't growth. This is pure rent extraction because you're not providing a service. There's no value ad to the end user. You're just basically taking money from people in a coercive legal structure under the threat of seizing their homes. And that's the this is the worst thing. If lease holders don't pay that gram rent or don't pay that excessive service charge demand, they could lose their home but all the equity inside it. So it's not just you don't pay your £500 grand rent and you know this the property sold and the freeholder gets
13:49 back that £500 grand rent. They get the £500,000 flat. Now that is evil. And and these people they should know better. They should know that they should be putting money into productive investments. And you think about these huge companies looking to invest in the UK. Are they really worried about a sort of feudal era extortion racket? No, they're not. And it's that's what we've been up against. Even in the media, >> they put out this rubbish about pension funds. But pension funds are not exposed to this asset class. And even if they were, get out the tiny violins. These are hugely globally diversified funds. They have not bet the house on ground rent. Whilst taking your point, surely if their investments in ground rank were really that insignificant, why are they
14:35 lobbying the Treasury, you know, so much to to stop these reforms happening? Because it's easy money. And the fact is is that what we don't have sympathy with is when you are an investor, you take a risk. Should the role of the state be to protect people that have made a gamble on a toxic product? Did people in the 2000s do boom, you're going to know much more about this than me, get a bailout? No, they didn't. Did people buy into PPI? Did they get a bailout? No, they didn't. The fact is is that consumer harm is being propagated on a massive scale. This is going to make the subpostmaster scandal look innocent. This is huge. 10 million people, people cannot sell their homes. We're talking about people with suicidal ideiation. We're talking about, this is opinion, not even us. They did a poll last year.
15:22 43% of lease holders say that the system has stopped them from starting a family. That rises to 56% in the capital. This is a huge issue. And the thing is is that these guys that are all about buccaneering capitalism, Adam Smith, we're talking, aren't we, about the 250th anniversary of his book. >> He hated ground rents because it's unearned income. It's it's not providing any service. So these guys, they've actually got a reputational risk. And the only reason why it's been protected all this time is that the people that are the ground rank grifters have controlled the media, have controlled parliament, they've controlled number 10 in the Treasury. And your own editor, Lord Michael Gove, we've got to give him credit on this one. Without him, Labour wouldn't even be looking at leasehold
16:08 reform. And he was up against actually a resistant Conservative government, first under Boris Johnson, then under Rishi Sunnak. And actually, that's what we're talking about when we're looking at people like Donald Trump. Whatever our personal views about that guy, you know, are. He's saying homes are for people, not corporations. That's what we're pushing at free lease holders. You know, we talk about take back control. That's what we're still believe in. Actually, let the little guy own their own home. Well, let's get into the the politics of this because when Labor stood in the last election and um were obviously elected on a landslide, one of their popular promises among the young, the sort of um new professional classes was that they were going to sort all of this out. Why were we even having this
16:53 conversation? >> Because they've been captured, you know, by these same interests. And the fact is is that I think, you know, I've heard a lot of your coverage about the jury trials. There's synergies there. While the legal establishment are not in favor of our campaign, they're certainly in favor of stopping the abolition of jury trials, but it's the same point that the government thinks they know best. Actually, elites are more important than the will of the people. And the fact is these freeholders are going around, they're going around Westminster now. They've got lobbyists, and I'm doing this for free, by the way, seven days a week. I get burned out repeatedly because we're trying to deal with a huge misinformation campaign. You know, they've got groups, I'm not going to name them, but they've got groups that are pumping out briefings to
17:38 politicians, pushing one message. We're trying to push the other message in policy. But the problem is they've penetrated every level of government. And the fact is is that they've got the money to make their case. We don't. And the problem is is that >> why is Labour not doing this? They've got the second biggest parliamentary majority in their 126 year history. We've got K Star Stmer named after Kier Hardy who you know founded Labour to take on these Rentier interests and yet we've got Kier Starmer sucking up to them. That's wrong. But what I think is more interesting is why aren't we hearing from the opposition parties? With potentially the exception of Zack Palansky on X, we're not hearing from the leader of the Conservative Party yet. We're not hearing from the leader of the Liberal Democrats, you know, and
18:25 the Liberal Democrats are now really down in the polls. They've got all those seats from the last elections because they did silly stunts, but when it comes to actually cutting through, yes, we can all bash Donald Trump. What is your domestic policy offering? They've not got it. But what's interesting is that whatever our views about Zack Palansky and the Greens, he's understanding that there are these downwardly mobile graduates in the cities who are getting screwed. People that previously could have been voting to thinking capitalism is not working for me. I'm a financial slave for the offshore property mafia and actually he's going in there but why aren't we hearing from the conservatives? We've not ruled them out. Maybe they'll come out. Kemy's on a bit of a roll at the moment going for wedge issues like you know tuition fees. Maybe
19:12 this is another one where it will, you know, get the conservatives a hearing with under 45s particularly in the cities. But you know what we're saying to the conservatives is you're running out of time here. Come on, go for it. Because you talk about getting rid of stamp duty. Yes, that's important. But younger people, they are now looking at the legal structure and thinking, "Ooh, I could save a few,000 on stamp duty. I'm going to be paying so much more than that on insurance kickbacks on service charge commissions to freeholders and managing agents and actually the value of the home is going to depreciate and I'm going to be trapped in a flat and when I have children you know if I can even afford children I'm never going to be able to basically upsize to a freehold house with the garden outside of London. >> That's it's very interesting. Um I do
19:58 want to come back to this point of personal responsibility though because >> we have this sort of trend in society. You see it with campaigns like the Waspy Women. Yeah. Where um the the complaint is, you know, we weren't warned about this. We didn't know this was going to happen. I mean, you've set out a pretty convincing case why for me, someone that's not on the property ladder yet, why I shouldn't buy a leaseold flat. But surely people knew all these risks when they when they made these purchases. No, they didn't because this is a misselling scandal. And with a misselling scandal, the people that are making a killing off the scandal want to basically minimize information. And actually, we've not got a free market in in the housing market at the moment. Those that have got all the power and the money, they're the ones in snaring buyers. So, I won't name particular developers on this podcast,
20:44 but what I will say is we saw even with the help to buy scheme. developers were saying to buyers on this help to buy scheme, you cannot buy the shiny flat unless you go with my choice of lawyer. Conflict of interest. And the point is young buyers, they trust the system. And that's why we've got this political collapse that's happening in this country. They look to our politicians to actually take on vested interests to actually deal with systemic failings. But they're not because the people that are ripping off the little guy are funding them. They're funding think tanks. They're funding charities. They're funding all party groups that are pushing out this toxic narrative. And then governments are not actually doing what they promised in the manifesto. And for young people, we're
21:30 never, as you've said, going to ever buy a house. Unless you're investment banker in Canary Wolf, you're not going to be able to do it. Or you wait for your parents to pop their clogs and you get a nice inheritance. That is not the good society that we should be living in. But the problem is it's not right for these lawyers, these developers, these surveyors to turn around and go, "Well, you didn't need to sign the contract." No, these are surfom's contracts. There's a reason why Adam Smith hated ground rents. There's a reason why Lord Randolph Churchill hated leasehold. He said, "We're going to move to socialism in this country." He said that. He said, "If people cannot own their own home, what is there to believe in the capitalist system?" You've even got Margaret Thatcher with Lord Mai. I know you've got the Scottish background. You know, Lord Chancellor, he got it. That
22:18 actually if you want to give people home ownership, you don't then turn them into glorified rental tenants. And actually, you know what? With this renters's rights act, stay renting. You're going to have more security renting than as a lease holder. Because with being a renter, if you have a bad landlord, you can leave him behind with your capital intact. With leaseold, you know what? You sink your life savings into a property, but that landlord is far more powerful than anything you'll ever see in in in by by rent. Yeah. Because they can bring up the service charge so high the home is unmortgaged, not you know, unsalable. And that's another point people go, "Ooh, didn't you know that you're not really owning the home with leaseold, that there's a landlord, there's a freeholder, you know, that's the way it's been." Well, what happened is around the time of Grenell, a little
23:04 bit before, basically developers were ratcheting up these ground rents. They were making them double every 5, 10, 15, 20 years. And the lenders, sorry to to blame them here, but they have to be blamed. They were allowing mortgages to go out on these leaseold flats with hugely punitive ground rents. They're asleep. So if the lenders were fine with it, you can't then turn around and say, "Oh, but guys, you should have done your due diligence. You trust the system. you trust lenders who have got highly paid professionals to look at these sort of products to think actually no the system will protect me if there's something clearly wrong going on and that's what happened they lent against this rubbish and then all of a sudden they woke up from their sleep and now it's too late so when there's market failure you look to government to correct those
23:50 distortions but yet we're not getting a government that's doing that and what's interesting is that Labor traditionally we talked about Margaret Thatcher earlier they have a really good narrative spin on this. Harold Wilson actually there were very regressive forces in the conservative party in the 1960s because you know the conservatives traditionally have grown out of the land gentry they didn't want to get rid of the leasehold scam but Harold Wilson you know in in the late60s it was in the manifesto and they delivered it in the 1967 act the idea that people in leaseold houses could compulsorily buy out their freeholders that obviously created a debate about hang on a second are we leaving those that have bought flats behind and it it took 1980s Margaret Thatcher to bring forward
24:36 schemes to allow lease holders of flats to buy out their freeholds. Fortunately, she was, you know, removed before she could bring in the common hold scheme that she wanted >> and John Major and the Conservatives reverted to tight back to the land gentry. Common hold never got delivered even though there was a second draft bill in 96. It was in the conservative manifesto in '92. But Labour were the ones that were left to bring in common hold in 2002. But you know what happened? Lobbying again. So I've got this document here. It's been deleted. It's called an antifudism 1995. If this had been delivered when Labour were last in power, I wouldn't be here speaking with you. Yeah. >> Because what they had promised was that all new flats would be common hold. What happened is an early election was called in 2001. >> The Conservatives didn't want to support
25:22 the legislation. It fell in the wash up. We're here. you know, maybe you need to get him on the podcast next. Michael Batilla, we've never been able to verify that, supposedly opposed it as a shadow chancellor, but they brought forward the legislation in the second term under Tony Blair, but basically developers threatened the government and said, "If you mandate common hold on new flats, our members will never build a single house. Forget a flat, a house." And that's what happened. So, we've got common hold in the statute books 2002 act. We've got, I think, 20 common hold schemes in the country. So there'll be more books written about common hold than have been created. So that's what we're you know this is what's happening. Hugely powerful vested interests and Tories blind spot are landed interests property interests but Labour's blind spot which I think is fascinating is
26:08 ruled by lawyers. It's these guys at the KC's these are the guys at Lincoln's in fields that are you know in the society of you know labor I think what was it Labour society of lawyers. These are the guys that are making money off the system that are then advising the housing minister saying it's complicated but it's not complicated. All the work, most of it's been done by the law commission 6 years ago. And they promised that in the Labour manifesto. So it wasn't just a headline commitment of we're going to finally end the feudal system. They said we're going to be bringing forward the remaining law commission recommendations on something called infranchisement. to buying out your freehold, but also another scheme that's worth having called right to manage, which allows you to get control of your service charge without buying the freehold. And yet that was repeated again in the King's speech in July 2024. It's not in the bill. The bill that came
26:54 out on the 27th of January, why is it not in the bill? It's because of all these lobbying interests, but also I know a lot of the coverage, the spectator is very interested about the European Convention on Human Rights. There is an ECHR angle to get worked up about. The free holders are threatening the government not just on the growth case and the bogus line about pension funds. They're also saying K star Lord Herma you wrote the book on ECR if you want to get rid of leaseold you can't do it. It's against international law and obviously these sort of legalistic >> how can it be against international law? Explain that to So basically we've got this convention you know European convention of human rights inside it it's called A1 P1 so article 1 protocol
27:40 one and basically that's the argument about right to property and that came in to stop huge atrocities from happening you know the star sea the secret police from actually stealing individuals land their homes what it was never conceived was to be a rent seekers charter and what's happened is that these big freeholders some of whom are offshore they don't pay tax in this country they're now saying Oh, we've got a right to property. That is not what it was intended to do. And the thing is they're using that and it's fascinating. Last summer there was a judicial review. So the legislation that Michael Gove or Lord Gove had managed to get through in the washout. They said it was against the human rights under this article one protocol one. So they went all the way to the high court and they said there were a
28:25 series of policies. I don't want to bore you with the details but basically they went for some of the biggest barristers won't name names one of whom used to be the boss of Sakir starama there was another one that worked with him on a mc liel when McDonald's was suing activists and that went all the way to the European court of human rights in Strasburg and in the end the freeholders lost because what happened is the high court agreed with the government that even while we're in this sort of international law system with you know membership of the ECR parliament is ultimately sovereign And if it sees an injustice like leasehold, as long as it doesn't do a Robert McGabby stealing the freeholds and not giving the freeholders any compensation, then parliament can do as it wishes to deal with this injustice. And what's fascinating is
29:10 that we were worried that it was seven freeholders. Two of them joined forces. So in the media it just sounded like six, but it was seven freeholders ganging up on the government. And the problem is the government is got so many other priorities. There's obviously a resourcing issue as well, but it's not right that the will of the people is left to just one party. So, we tried to be an intervenor and actually it was a bit of a surprise. Lord Michael Gove offered to be our witness if we went through to the next round. And what was fascinating about that is that the judge, and not to criticize the judge, we believe in rule of law, was like, "No, the government can make the case. Trust the government." And what was fascinating is the government was incredible. In the summer they had this rockstar KC and basically he came out
29:58 and he was saying look you are the domestic court. This may go all the way to Strasburg. Let us win this because what we need is for the court in Strasburg to basically own the UK government being defeated on this issue. But they were making the case this is what successive cohorts of voters have voted for. You know going back to like 1960s and saying look parliament has made its will known with this legislation. It's done years of consultations. It's done years of law commission work. It's listened to all sorts of stakeholders. It listened to industry. Let them do this legislation. But what was fascinating is that the free holders have all of their incredible barristers like the creme de
30:45 la creme and the judge asked about a proposal that was very pushed for by Lord Gove but also his colleague at the time Lee Roelly who also helped open up this issue under the last government which was a very resistant government to this agenda and he said what about reducing grounds to a peppercorn and the barister for one of the freeholder uh applicants the Wallace Partnership Group said cuz he said is it retrospective because this is what it hung on actually you know some of these laws are they retrospective in the 2024 act because if it is and you've not done conversation to the freeh holders or even if you have there could be an issue there and the barrista you have to tell the truth to a judge like that as a court of appeal judge that's come it down to the high court for this and she
31:32 said no it's not retrospective and he said can you explain that she said it's not retrospective in the sense that we're the the policy that was consulted on by the Rishies government wasn't going to be retrospective in the sense that it wasn't clawing back money that lease holders already paid to landlords. What it was going to do is restrict the income stream going forward. And he said, "Oh, well, in that case, that doesn't even meet your ECR harmful retrospectivity case." What's fascinating is that never made the final decision. And I get that it was not a policy that had been delivered in the legislation. But what's happening is that you hear the media, you hear these journalists, you hear politicians saying, "Oo, we've got to be careful about grammar. We've got to be, you know, careful about retrospective contracts." We don't. If Parliament wants to do something, it thinks that
32:18 there's an injustice there. It doesn't even matter that we're in the ECR. We can do it. But this is all about power politics, you know, and I think that's what's interesting. Lord Gove got it. There are a few other voices within the Conservatives. Lee Roelly that got it, >> but Labour don't seem to get it. And I think that's where we need to bring it back to Angela Raina. >> Sure. Well, let's let's let's leave it on that point. And but just before we we finish up, >> you've obviously been passionately campaigning about this for a while and it's something that's, you know, you're clearly worked up about, >> but are you positive at all that that this is going to be resolved or is progress going to be made or are you going to be having to campaign for this in 5 10 years time? I'm hopeful that because this is collapsing the property market, it's not sustainable. And I
33:04 think now with the whole situation in the Middle East, everyone's cost of living is going to go through the roof again. And then everyone's going to look like they did with the Ukraine invasion and think, "Ooh, the people being protected here are these freeloading freeholders. This system of leaseold is illegitimate. It's unsustainable. We've got to get rid of it." And I think the politics of the Labour party right now is fascinating because Angela Raina, she's been very quiet since leaving, you know, the post of deputy prime minister and housing secretary. But the issue she came out and fought against Starron was leasehold gramar. She wrote an article in the Guardian in January saying is Labor for the people or the vested interests. And it was interesting. She gave evidence to the Commons housing select committee in March. I did as well. Lord Gove did. And you could feel
33:51 a little bit for her because she couldn't depart too much from the government line. But people keep saying to me, "Ooh, if she becomes an ex- prime minister, will she get this done, Harry?" It could be a terrible bet. I think she will. She'll go much further than the halfbaked draft common hold and leaseold reform bill that we've got. And if she doesn't, it's going to be one for the Greens, Reform UK, or Revive Conservative Party to finish. Well, on that note, Harry, thank you very much for joining Reality Check. >> Thank you.
