My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their contributions in this group. I thank my noble friends Lord Young and Lord Bailey of Paddington, and the noble Lord, Lord Truscott, for their amendments regarding forfeiture and service charge enforcement.

The upkeep and safety of buildings is paramount. Landlords, be they private companies or resident management companies, need an effective mechanism to recover unpaid debts, lest their costs fall to other leaseholders or to the detriment of the building’s upkeep. It is important to consider resident management companies in particular, which often have very limited access to other funds to cover any shortfall in the service charge fund. Having a robust and efficient way to enforce unpaid charges is therefore critical to ensure the efficiency and solvency of these resident-led companies. Equally, there are other breaches—unauthorised alterations, anti-social behaviour and use of a property for immoral purposes—that can be difficult and even impossible to remediate. In such cases, forfeiture may be the only effective way of putting a stop to the breaching behaviour. While well-intended, we do not believe that the abolition of forfeiture without a suitable replacement would ultimately serve the best interests of leaseholders, and in particular resident management companies.

My noble friend asked about progress in drafting. I hope he appreciates—it is with respect that I say this—that I do not think I am able to comment on what may happen or where that is, simply because I do not know who will be lucky enough to serve in the Government and answer that question after the election.

I turn to the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Truscott. Unfortunately, we believe that this amendment does not achieve its stated aim of protecting leaseholders, crucially against forfeiture over non-payment of service charges. The Government recognise that those home owners who pay rentcharges face the threat of forfeiture. Part 7 of the Bill already removes the risk of forfeiture for unpaid arrears of income-supporting rentcharges, since the remedy is so disproportionate to the sums owed. The Bill also contains a robust package of protections for home owners who pay estate rentcharges.

I now move to the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock. Noble Lords will be aware that the Government do not believe that it is appropriate that many leaseholders face unregulated ground rents for no clear service in return. The Government have already legislated to put an end to ground rents for most new residential properties in England and Wales through the Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Act 2022. We have also encouraged work led by the Competition and Markets Authority to investigate abuses of the system, such as the mis-sold doubling ground rent leases, securing commitments from freeholders to remove these costly terms, benefitting more than 20,000 leaseholders. Given where we are in the parliamentary timetable, I hope noble Lords will understand that we cannot accept an amendment on complex new policy at this stage.

I turn to Amendments 51 and 52 in the name of my noble friend Lord Bailey. I fully agree that it is important to have effective enforcement measures in place. Amendment 51 seeks to retain criminal sanctions for failure to provide information to leaseholders in a timely manner. The existing measures, including the statutory offence under the existing Section 25 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, have historically proven to be ineffective. Local housing authorities, as the enforcement body, were reluctant to bring prosecutions against landlords, and the cost and complexity of doing so were a significant barrier to leaseholders bringing a private prosecution. That is why we are replacing it with a more effective and proportionate proposal, set out in Clause 57.

Amendment 52 would require landlords to account to all leaseholders where costs were found to be unreasonable and would impose a two-month limit on repayments to leaseholders. It would introduce a power to enable the appropriate tribunal to award interest on any determination in favour of the leaseholder, where a leaseholder has made an application. While I agree that there must be a robust regime in place to challenge service charges, we do not think that this is the right approach.

Landlords may wish to compensate leaseholders by offering a credit against future service charges rather than returning money, and a leaseholder may prefer this. In addition, the Court of Appeal held in 2022 that a tribunal decision of the type to which my noble friend refers is a determination of whether the service charge is payable and not of whether it is due. Therefore, although the amendment is well-intentioned, it would not be possible to implement in the form drafted.

As I have said, I would have liked to go further, and indeed that was the intention, but we are in wash-up. With that, I hope my noble friend will withdraw his amendment.