Member

I will also speak briefly to the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lord Roborough. I suppose I have a slightly different perspective. It worries me that we are starting to see, for example, in particular, Herefordshire, in this situation. My noble friend referred to a situation where often a property can be initially acquired at quite a low rent, or indeed as a capital purchase, because of the covenants and restrictions that have been put on it. If nobody reports this, or if the council is not that interested in enforcement, we see that people with considerable wealth can get a very good deal by having lied when they acquired that property. They can then apply after 10 years, saying, “Nobody has made a complaint about it; you haven’t kicked me out of my house or done anything like that”. We should not be rewarding unfairness in that regard either. My noble friend made a point about trying to make sure that property stays linked into the sector; it is important to make sure we continue to have a fair society, not one where people lie in order to gain.