These are the last new clauses that I will speak to on behalf of the Opposition. In our fifth sitting, we considered eligibility for leasehold enfranchisement and extension, including the welcome changes that the Bill makes to the non-residential limit on collective enfranchisement claims. However, increasing access to collective enfranchisement by rendering more leaseholders eligible does not necessarily mean that take-up will significantly increase. That is because there are other barriers to exercising the statutory right to freehold acquisition. Some relate to the complexity of the process, but perhaps the most notable is the requirement under section 13 of the 1993 Act that at least half of qualifying tenants in a building must participate in the claim.

While there is no escaping the need to organise collectively to initiate a claim, in some buildings, particularly large blocks of flats, securing the participation of the minimum numbers of tenants required to take part in the service of the initial notice can be next to impossible, given the number of units that are occupied by tenants renting privately from the leaseholder. We therefore believe that there is a strong case for considering whether the minimum participation rate for collective enfranchisement should be reduced.

Precisely what the revised minimum participation rate might be is a matter for debate. We have not sought to be prescriptive in order to allow the Government the freedom to consider what threshold best strikes the right balance between encouraging enfranchisement and ensuring that there is sufficient participation to sustain the proper ongoing management of the building.

New clause 30 would simply require the Secretary of State to consider, within two years of the Act coming into force, whether the current 50% participation threshold should be lowered. New clause 31 would have the same effect in relation to the right to manage, where, in many ways, the argument for lowering the participation threshold is even stronger, owing to the fact that there is really no need for half of all qualifying tenants to remain involved in an RTM company once it has been established.

Again, determining the revised minimum participation rate is a matter for debate, and we have left that question for another day. If I am right in remembering, my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North is proposing, by way of his new clause 33, that that threshold should be a third of qualifying tenants, which strikes us as a reasonable proportion. However, what new clause 31 seeks to secure is the Government’s agreement in principle that the 50% threshold for an RTM acquisition should be reconsidered. These, quite consciously, are probing amendments, but I very much look forward to the Government’s thoughts on the principle of whether that 50% threshold is right, and whether there should be scope in the future to look at it again.