Speeches by Curtis.

“Richard, how confident are you that there is sufficient building control capacity to effectively check the new homes that are being built in accordance with building regulations?”

“Jumping back to the first question, are you confident that there is enough building control capacity in Britain if we do end up ramping up to 1.5 million?”

“Running through this conversation, we have heard a lot about extra burdens that you should put on house builders, reasonably or unreasonably, when they are building a new home. The other inquiry we are looking at is the affordability of buying a house. It is also notable that almost nobody in this country can afford to…”

“You told us that there was no nationally accepted quality assurance standard for construction in the UK new build housing sector. How does this affect the quality of new builds, and what do you think we should do about it?”

“Just back to your original point, Stephen, about it falling on the landowner: that may be true. When you are putting in for planning permission, the balance is usually social housing. All these extra restrictions that we put on are going to come out as either homes not being built or a decrease in the number of social …”

“I realise the cost does not fall on you, as Stephen said, which is why it might be difficult, but there must be some kind of average number we can put on the cost of going up to M4(2) or to M4(3).”

“I am sure they are words that will be repeated back to you next time Vistry turns up to a planning committee and says that it has to drop the social housing requirement.”

“I am Chris Curtis, the MP for Milton Keynes North.”

“If this Committee decides that there is a chance the new primary legislation will not come forward in this Parliament, is it reasonable to argue for regulation of managing agents to be included in this legislation to help those on private fleecehold estates?”

“There is some concern among some people we speak to about whether moving forward with the process that I set out, and you maybe agreed with, of waiting for the Law Commission to come back and then moving forward with legislation off the back of that would push us into the next Parliament. I am trying to get at whether …”

“In terms of timings, are you broadly thinking that you will wait for the next round of Law Commission work to come back before making a decision on what further legislation is required and then putting that forward?”

“At the very least, I think we all broadly agree on setting up a regulator for managing agents at some point. If that requires primary legislation and that primary legislation will not come until the Law Commission comes back and there is a chance that this goes into the next Parliament, there is an argument—”

“Sure, but without knowing how much slower that second piece of legislation would be, it is very difficult for us to make a judgment.”

“I am Chris Curtis, the MP for Milton Keynes North.”

“On the trade-off between peppering Best’s recommendations, or doing a full Best piece of legislation, the argument for doing the former would be the length of time, or possibly even getting parliamentary time to do the latter. Do you have a sense of how long we might be waiting to get a full piece of legislation, regar…”

“I am going to come back to some questions on fleecehold, if that is all right—I know you mentioned some of these points in your previous responses. At the time of the King’s Speech, a policy paper said that the draft Bill would “bring the injustice of ‘fleecehold’ private estates and unfair costs to an end.” I think it…”

“But it is unlikely to be in this King’s Speech.”

“The difficulty with that though is we are having to make that decision without information on the trade-off—that is, the timing and the ability to get a future piece of legislation.”

“Are you reasonably confident that more primary legislation will be required to make the changes necessary to fulfil the commitment to bring the injustice of fleecehold private estates and unfair costs to an end?”

“Sure, but a big part of the injustice of what is happening on fleecehold estates is the behaviour of managing agents acting in an unregulated way.”