§ Lieut.-Colonel HEADLAMasked the Attorney-General whether he is aware that the effect of Part II. of the First Schedule to the Law of Property Act, 1925, is to vest on the 1st January, 1926, in the owners and assignees of mortgage sub-terms in leaseholds the outstanding nominal reversions, and that the result is to impose upon these owners and assignees personal liability for dilapidations from which hitherto they have been exempt; and whether, in view of the anxiety caused amongst small property holders, he will at once introduce a Bill 1835W to amend the Act by extending to such owners and assignees the protection and indemnity given by paragraph 1 of Part II. of such Schedule to the owners of the reversion?
§ The ATTORNEY-GENERALI am informed that it was always intended that the nominal leasehold reversions or head terms expectant on mortgage terms, acquired free from any right of redemption, whether on a sale by a mortgagee or by foreclosure or under the Limitation Acts, should vest in the owners of the mortgage terms. Not being the original lessees, their liability to the lessors is confined to breaches of covenant occurring while owners of the head terms. Independently of such vesting, the owners of the mortgage terms had, in fact, to perform the covenants to prevent a forfeiture of the head terms. The relief obtainable by owners of head terms under the Law of Property Act, 1925, s. 146, is, in every respect, as wide as that obtainable by owners of sub-terms, and is necessarily more direct. The anxiety suggested seems, therefore, to be unfounded. Any such owner can, however, prevent the head term vesting in him by transferring the sub-term to trustees for sale. No amendment is contemplated.