Speeches by Curtis.

“A question was asked earlier about the will of the people. What percentage of the public do you think oppose the changes that we are making to leasehold reform?”

“When you are here. It is unfortunate—”

“It is again notable that, as the Chair started by saying, we have found it difficult to get freeholders to come and sit before us. Why do you think we find that so difficult? To come back to the previous question, do you think it is because these people, rather than dealing with the legislative process from democratica…”

“Yes.”

“Which other claimants are pursuing further litigation concerning LAFRA?”

“Is the Wallace Partnership Group seeking permission to appeal the ruling from October?”

“Okay. So let us imagine that the legislation does go through in its current state and a judicial review is brought by your members; I appreciate you are not in a place to say they will do that. As a lawyer, do you think their case will be substantially different from the case that freeholders brought against LAFRA?”

“We have heard that. Let us assume that you are not successful in winning that argument; I am sure many of your members would be frustrated by that. What do you think their next step will be? Do you think it will be going to a judicial review?”

“Let us simplify the argument. If the Bill passes in its current form, do you think there would then be a judicial review?”

“It was quite a good manifesto, and it would be nice if some of your members had read it—this was definitely in there. If this Bill were to pass in its current form, do you expect your members would seek to bring a judicial review regarding any of its provisions?”

“That is not this Bill; it was the 2024 Act.”

“Catherine, you talked about the need for a regulator that is independent and has teeth. Do you think it needs to be a newly set-up regulator, or can it be done by an existing organisation?”

“I am Chris Curtis, the Labour Member of Parliament for Milton Keynes North.”

“And do you think this Labour Government should fix that?”

“Lord Gove, you implied that one of the restrictions is limited budget or support capacity within the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel. My understanding is that one of the reasons for that is the cuts that were made during the previous Conservative Government. As somebody who was doing complicated bits of legislation…”

“But given the various constraints—the legal constraints, the legislative process constraints—are you not worried that we are going to run out of time?”

“I have some questions on implementation. Thank you both for attending today. This has been an incredibly useful conversation, but we have enough political podcasts already, so please don’t the two of you go and start one. [Laughter.] Angela, will the Government be able to implement LAFRA and meaningful reform based on …”

“On the time period, Lord Gove, forgetting the merits or otherwise of 20 years over 40 years, do you think there is a legal factor as to whether we should consider that time period, or do you not think the time period is relevant to the legal debate?”

“Economic policies introduced by the previous Government piled more and more pressure on my generation, adding to intergenerational unfairness, and nowhere is that more clear than with plan 2 student loans; to declare my interest, I still owe more than £40,000. The policy proposed by the Conservative party will not do a…”

“I do not think I will get the time to say this at the end, so I want to put on the record that the Government should set up a national commission to look at our voting system. Whatever our views on it, we no longer live in a two-party electoral system, and if our electoral system does not acknowledge that fact, we will…”