Diolch. Can I just thank Hefin David for introducing these proposals today? They did speak to my recurring nightmare of land law lectures 30 years ago. But I think it is important that you've done this, because even though rentcharges—new rentcharges—were abolished in 1977, there are still some in existence. The remedies—you refer to them in your motion—are hugely draconian, and, of course, the Court of Appeal has quite recently confirmed that these are live remedies, so I think we need legislation now to at least modify them.

Estate rentcharges, which is actually the core of what you're talking about, are a little bit different—perhaps a bit more relevant as well. They don’t carry the disproportionate remedies with them in quite the way that some ordinary rent charges do, but neither were they abolished in 1977. They were specifically retained with small estates in mind, to manage the ongoing maintenance of shared facilities, perhaps like a joint access way, or a shared pumping station—small things like this. And I can think, actually, of one estate in Uplands, which is the ward I live in, built in the 1980s—15 or so properties—they pay about £150 each under a rentcharge to maintain a bit of shared land and an entranceway into Cwmdonkin Park. But larger estates tended to have adopted or adoptable services protected by bonds, so rentcharges weren't used from the 1970s onwards every day because they weren't needed. The unintended consequence of that was that the enforceability of covenant was lost as well, but I'll leave that for another day.

I think now we're seeing that estate rentcharge used more creatively, though. We all know those big estates, where the roads are too narrow, on one of those annoying political canvasses when you can't find somewhere to park. Those roads are pretty much unadoptable and the houses are subject to rentcharges to maintain those and to look after other common areas, and that rent owner, as you say, is usually a large developer or one of the agency companies, and they're collecting that £150—it is 150 quid these days, not a guinea. But as a result of these, they're spending less upfront, avoiding making up estate roads to adoptable standard, avoiding having to give a section 48 bond cover, in the case of them defaulting on adoption, and through the rentcharge, they're creating an investment fund on which they get interest, along with the ability, as you indicated, to increase that rentcharge whenever they like, and charge whatever they like for consents and other covenant enforcement without any accountability. And when you consider how many of this type of estate are likely to be going up under local development plans all over Wales, as councils scramble to meet the housing targets they've been set, this estate rentcharge has become a bit of a developer's dream, I think: completely unregulated, no obligation to consult, no obligation to offer reasonable charges, no right for rent payers for copies of accounts or access to a first-tier tribunal—you've got to go to county court. And I think my little estate in the Uplands is probably fine because, actually, the residents are the management company. But on these big multihundred-house estates, we're going to be in exactly the position you said, and I really hope that one or both Governments manages to deal with this fairly swiftly.