Land Registry sell-off would leave property market 'open to abuse', say MPs

Privatising the Land Registry would undermine a pledge by David Cameron to tackle money laundering and leave the property market "open to abuse", scores of MPs have warned.

In a letter to the Business Secretary Sajid Javid, written by Labour MP David Lammy and signed by 65 colleagues from across the opposition benches, the parliamentarians cite the Prime Minister's pledge that "there is no place for dirty money in Britain", reports The Guardian.

Lammy wrote: "Selling off the Land Registry to the highest bidder may help the chancellor's sums add up next year but the public interest, transparency, impartiality and accountability should not be sacrificed for profit in the short term."

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The MPs say that privatising the Land Registry, which manages the official record of commercial and residential land ownership in England and Wales, would make the London property market in particular "more opaque and open to abuse".

Under proposals that were the subject of a consultation that closed last week, the government would keep the land registries themselves in public ownership, but the management of registrations and access to the data would be sub-contracted to a private third party, which would be able to join others in exploiting the data commercially.

There have been widespread complaints over the plans, which would raise around £1bn for the Treasury, with the Competition and Markets Authority saying they raised conflicts of interest concerns and could be detrimental to consumers.

It has said that a company that is sub-contracted to run the service should be forced to split commercial and monopoly data activities.

More than 288,000 sign petition against Land Registry plans

26 May

A petition calling on the government to drop its proposal to privatise the Land Registry has gathered more than 288,000 signatures.

Campaigners and representatives of the Public and Commercial Services Union will hand the petition to Business Secretary Sajid Javid today, as a public consultation on the proposed sell-off officially closes.

Joy Bassett, one of the protest's organisers, told The Guardian: "The level of support shows that once the public know and understand what is going on, they will respond."

Opposition to the sell-off has grown, with everybody from solicitors to media groups raising concerns over the government's proposals to sell off the organisation, which is the official record of who owns land and property in England and Wales.

Critics point to the "use of the records for investigative journalism" and are worried that "access to data could be harder if the records are in private hands".

Earlier this week, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) warned that a private company could seek to block or prohibitively price access to the public-housing registers in order to retain a commercial advantage.

If a sale were to go ahead, it said, any profit-focused activities should be split off into a separate entity. Greater regulatory oversight than is currently planned would also be required.

Under the government's plans, while the registers would remain in public ownership, the organisation's registration and access services would be sub-contracted to a private company, which could then exploit the data to provide commercial services.

The Land Registry already sells access to the data to private companies, such as the property websites Zoopla and Rightmove, which helped it generate a positive dividend of £19m last year. The CMA is worried that a new owner could exploit its monopoly position to reduce choice and drive up prices for consumers.

Adding to the controversy, The Times reports that "all of the potential bidders have business links to tax havens or secretive jurisdictions including the Cayman Islands, Jersey and the US state of Delaware". The paper adds that some "also have significant property interests, which could raise concerns about possible conflicts of interest".

While there is nothing illegal about these connections, the revelation raises "questions about David Cameron's commitment at this month's anti-corruption summit to greater openness about foreign ownership in the British property market".

Land Registry sell-up opposition mounts as regulator wades in

24 May

The government is facing growing resistance to its plans to sell off the Land Registry, with the latest warning of the dangers of privatisation coming from the competition regulator.

Days before this Thursday's deadline for plans to sub-contract the main function of the service by 2017, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has submitted a report that warns of the harm the sell-off plan could cause to consumers as well as the conflicts of interest such a sale could potentially generate.

The submission urges the government "to consider safeguards to ensure that the Land Registry, as a commercial company, would not dominate the market", notes The Times. It stops "short of voicing outright opposition to the privatisation".

John Fitzpatrick, the senior director of the CMA, said: "Our particular concern is that attaching higher prices to Land Registry data would harm consumers while restricting innovation and choice in the flourishing app and website markets that rely on this as an input."

Created in 1862, the Land Registry collates all land and property data in England and Wales and manages one of the largest property databases in Europe. This information is used to compile official statistics and by commercial entities, such as property websites Rightmove and Zoopla.

By charging homeowners and others to register and access data as well as for its use by third parties, the Land Registry has "generated a dividend of £19m in the 2015 financial year and a special dividend of £100m to bolster its cash reserves". It employs 4,500 staff.

The government reckons it can raise as much as £1.2bn towards a target of £5bn in asset sales by selling the service. Civil Service World notes the database would still be owned by taxpayers but that updating, managing and providing access to it would be handled by a third party.

A new privatised Land Registry would also be able to commercially exploit the information in the same way as others already do.

To avoid any conflicts of interest, the CMA says the new company might have to be split into two divisions, with one charged with handling "monopoly data" and the other dedicated to commercial activities.

More stringent oversight than is currently planned would be needed to ensure that the new company offers "fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory access to all monopoly data" and that it does not prohibitively raise prices for third parties, it adds.

The intervention will act as a catalyst on the already vocal opposition to the move. On Thursday, the Public and Commercial Services Union plans to mark the ending of the consultation by handing a petition against privatisation signed by more than 220,000 people to Business Secretary Sajid Javid.