Selling off the Land Registry into private hands will mean the public will start to lose money from the sale in 25 years’ time.

A campaign group opposed to the sale of public assets, We Own It, said that the sale of the Land Registry at a likely £1.2bn valuation would be a short-term gain.

It said the Land Registry is a British institution to be proud of, is profitable and innovative, and is working well in public ownership.

Modernisation and productivity gains have meant that the Land Registry has passed on savings to the end user, with £117m of saved fees resulting from reductions two years ago.

The Land Registry has been a strong contributor to the public purse by paying regular dividends into the Treasury coffers.

In 2014/15 it paid a normal dividend of £19.1m in addition to a special dividend of £100m.

A previous attempt to privatise the Land Registry was abandoned in 2014 when then business secretary Vince Cable stepped in to veto the sale.

However, last week’s Queen’s Speech made it clear that the sale is back on, and will be part of a new Neighbourhood Planning and Infrastructure Bill.

We Own It this morning warned that a new owner might have to meet profitability expectations by placing all data behind a paywall.

It is also uncertain how accountable a company running the Land Registry would be in future – for example, whether it would have to answer Freedom of Information requests.

The Land Registry is one of several institutions which the Government is either planning to sell or part-privatise, or is considering a sale.

We Own It warned that if the Land Registry, National Air Traffic Services, Ordnance Survey and Channel 4 stay in public ownership, they can be expected to contribute £7.7bn in profits over the next 50 years.

It claims that if all these organisations were sold, the money raised would be no more than £3bn, a figure that would “barely dent the deficit figure”, while depriving the public of future profits.

Cat Hobbs, director of We Own It, said: “George Osborne can’t have his cake and eat it. If he goes ahead with the Great British sell off, we’ll have lost our public assets forever – and all the millions of profit they bring in every year.

“The Land Registry is a profitable, successful, innovative organisation doing a great job – why privatise it? We need to think about the wealth of the next generation, not just a quick fix on the deficit.”

We Own It also pointed out that some privatisation simply fails – for example, National Express abandoned the East Coast Mainline train service because of dropping profits. A government-owned company, Directly Operated Railways, stepped in and returned a profit, but despite this, the train service was re-privatised.

A petition to prevent the sell-off has already drawn some 225,000 signatures at https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/stop-privatisation-of-the-land-registry