I ask the Minister to clarify a couple of points. It is extremely unusual for me ever to find anything in his comments to disagree with or depart from. If I heard him correctly, however, I think he stated that he thought it was unlikely that landlords would ever seek to circumvent the intent of the Bill. Possibly I took that out of context, but I suggest strongly that, on the contrary, it is extremely likely that landlords will intend or try to circumvent the intent of the Bill, because that is what we have seen from freeholders over decades. That is why we are in the position that we are in.

We are obviously starting from the position that we want this to be fair—each side needs to see justice—but, as I think most of us have remarked, there is a massive imbalance of power. The Minister spoke powerfully about how it is not Conservative to promote a market with such imbalances of power and, in such situations, it is incumbent on us as Conservatives, who believe in free markets, to free those leaseholders—those tenants, who have bought those properties in good faith—from under the yoke of the freeholders, who hold all the power and, in particular, the threat of blocking those court actions and tribunal claims.

The difficulties that those leaseholders face are such that they often give up years of their lives to them. These people are just doing normal jobs, already working hard to pay their mortgage on the flat that they thought they had bought and owned, but instead they might have to spend hours, days or years of their life trying to familiarise themselves with incredibly dry, complex bits of legislation that we are grappling with in this Committee with great difficulty, even though we all have a reasonable degree of familiarity with it. Imagine being a flat owner who finds themselves wondering what on earth they are going to do to challenge their freeholder in a court of law. They face the stress and difficulty of mounting a claim, wondering who is going to help them, and fearing that they will be lumbered with all the costs at the end.

I have two specific questions for the Minister. First, is he confident that we have addressed to the best of our ability, with all the information and work that we have done, the statement that—I believe this; I am very cynical—landlords will seek to circumvent what we are doing? They are probably already doing so. Does the Minister feel confident that he, his excellent officials and the whole Department have scrutinised the matter to the best of our ability to prevent that?

Secondly, in the Minister’s view, are we addressing the egregious situations that we heard about in some of the evidence sessions in Committee? Groups of leaseholders have taken freeholders to court because of all sorts of spurious and seemingly tiny and insignificant things, and they have found that the freeholders have had the costs awarded to them and they are then seeking to recoup those costs through the service charges of the leaseholders. To me, that seems an absolute violation of justice. We believe in a fair market, but this cannot be one when leaseholders are operating in a dark room—they cannot see the prices, or the other buyers and sellers. It is not a free market in any shape or form. We are inching towards some degree of freedom, but I would welcome some reassurance from the Minister.