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Finance Bill

The whole purpose of setting up an RTE company as a legal entity would be to bring these groups of tenants together into one legal entity and to have certainty that they could then exercise basic rights under the legislation, which would include SDLT relief. Lots of groups of tenants would not necessarily be RTE companies. Removing RTEs would presumably open this out to all sorts of tenants. While that might have some relevance to SDLT, it could undermine some of their other rights and certainties. Another option would have been to introduce changes to remove an RTE company and replace it with a common definition of a company in the original legislation—the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act—and the 2003 Act. In that way, tenants could qualify for SDLT relief while having the legal protections and certainty afforded by being a company. The essence of the issue—I am glad in a way that the hon. Member for South-West Hertfordshire has raised it—is that these legal and practical difficulties cannot be allowed to go on for ever. After five years, the Government must tackle them head on and decide what they are going to do so that we have some certainty this time that these reasonable and justifiable reliefs can be given to all the groups of tenants who have got themselves together in RTEs and are now waiting to get the thing done. I would be grateful if the Minister explained how the Government are going to tackle that and resolve what has been an outstanding issue for far too long.