Sarah Russell MP: speeches

Speeches

• 2 Jul 2026 · Commonhold and Leasehold Reform: Managing Agents · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi) for securing this debate, and for all the work that she has done on this issue. I see that Lord Best is in the Gallery; he, among many others, has been campaigning on these issues for years. I rise to draw attention to the experiences of some leaseholders in my constituency. I have previously spoken at length in the Chamber about unadopted estates. I am not going to dwell on that subject today, because it is not discussed in the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee’s report, but I want to draw it to the Minister’s attention, as it is a major issue in my constituency. To turn to the specific problems we have, the draft legislation, as it stands, is fantastic. The proposal to cap ground rents will be absolutely life changing for people in my constituency who have contacted me and talked about how ground rents are going up to double what they were and about the difficulties they are consistently having with the fact that there appears to be no real ability to hold a managing agent to account. The specifics I want to talk about are from a case I have been working on with the homeowners—well, the leaseholders—for some time, in which FirstPort, yet again, is the managing agent. Having finally managed to dislodge FirstPort as the managing agent, the residents have been told by the new managing agent that of the £40,000 reserve they believed was available to them, there is none—nothing. FirstPort has not explained where that money has gone or what it has been spent on, and this has been the outstanding position for well over six months. A sum of £40,000 is a lot of money to just vanish, and we would think that an organisation would be able to point to what it had been spent on pretty readily, if it was keeping accounts in any normal fashion. That is one of a succession of difficulties that these leaseholders have had with FirstPort, and this has been going on for years and years. I understand that the Government have concerns that the draft legislation is already exceptionally long, and as a lawyer, I have a huge amount of sympathy for that, but I completely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green and the members of her Select Committee that we must do something, in line with Lord Best’s previous recommendations, about the regulation of managing agents. We have been talking about this topic in this House for as long as I have been an MP, and clearly significantly longer than that. If these organisations were capable of self-regulation and if educating people who worked in them was sufficient to solve this problem, it would have been solved a long time ago. No one wants regulation for the sake of it, but the only way there will be accountability for vast amounts of individuals’ money that appears to simply vanish into the ether is if we put regulation in place. I thank the Minister.

• 20 Apr 2026 · Security Vetting · Hansard source

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  It is accepted by many on the Government Benches that the Prime Minister did not know the outcome of the vetting, but the Cabinet Secretary came forward on Tuesday, having spent a month researching whether or not she could provide the advice that she did, so she had clearly thought very carefully about the information that she brought forward. The Prime Minister then launched an investigation, rather than coming straight to the House with the information that she had provided. Was that because the information was insufficient to present to the House? If so, when was the Prime Minister planning to come to the House?

• 27 Jan 2026 · Commonhold and Leasehold Reform · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for his statement, which demonstrates how Labour stands up for people against vested interests—my constituents will thank him for it. On the ongoing problems with unadopted estates, which I have been raising with him since before my election, I would be extremely grateful if he agreed to visit my constituency to see the difficulties that homeowners face.

• 11 Nov 2025 · Prisoner Releases in Error · Hansard source

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  We must of course solve the immediate problem of accidental releases, which are a huge issue. However, for longer-term planning, we have a very high vacancy rate in our prisons. I understand what the Secretary of State has said about the work on bringing that down, but will he look at the Justice Committee’s recommendation to produce a 10-year plan for the prison system workforce in the same way as we do for the NHS?