Points of Order
Wednesday 19th July 2017
(6 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Yesterday’s Order Paper said that the debate on drugs could continue until 7 o’clock. The final speaker sat down four minutes early. The normal practice in this House is then to use that time for other speakers to contribute. It was particularly interesting that the final speaker, the Minister, had denied interventions on the grounds that she did not have enough time to finish. The Standing Orders are not clear on this point. Is it not right that we get some definition of past practice in relation to cases where speakers do not have anything else left to say and other Members can contribute to what would then be a full debate?
Mr Speaker
I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his point of order and for his characteristic courtesy in giving me advance notice somewhat earlier of his intention to raise it. I am loth to quibble with the hon. Gentleman, who is a considerable authority on matters parliamentary, as evidence by the well-thumbed tome on how to be a Back Bencher of which he is the distinguished author. That said, I am inclined slightly to quibble with him on his proposition that it is normal or commonplace, if a ministerial wind-up concludes early, for other Members to be invited to contribute. In my experience, that is not commonplace. I would not say that it never happens, because you can almost always find an example of something if you try hard enough, but certainly when I am in the Chair I tend to work on the assumption that the ministerial wind-up is indeed the conclusion of the debate.
I note what the hon. Gentleman says about the conclusion of this debate taking place earlier than listed on the Order Paper, although I am sure that he will readily accept that the Official Report—that is to say, the verbatim account of what was said; there is no question of misleading anybody—will show that the debate concluded a little early. The Chair does not normally allow a further Back-Bench speech, and—this is not directed at the hon. Gentleman; it is just a wider point—certainly not from a Member who had already made a substantial speech in the debate.
As for interventions, the hon. Gentleman, as the author of “How To Be An MP”—available in all good bookshops, and of which I am myself a noted admirer, as he knows—he will appreciate that a Member is free to take interventions or not. I note what he tells me—that the Minister said, “No, I can’t take interventions because I haven’t time”—but that is not something on which the Chair can rule. Sometimes Ministers can be a tad neurotic in these circumstances, it is true, as can sometimes, perhaps, shadow Ministers, but that is not a matter for the Chair. Whether the Member seeking to intervene likes it or not, the situation is as I have described.
Let me take this opportunity, in a positive spirit, to encourage all new Members—I am not sure the Whips would agree about this—to read the hon. Gentleman’s books on being a good parliamentarian. [Interruption.] “No!” says a Government Whip, chuntering from a sedentary position, in evident horror at what bad habits new members of the flock might pick up. I think that they are fine tomes. The hon. Gentleman has used his position as a Back-Bench Member to stand up for his constituents and to fight for the principles in which he believes. That has sometimes pleased his party and sometimes not, but that is what we are supposed to get here—Members of Parliament who speak to their principles and their consciences. That is a good thing, and, as he knows, I like to encourage it. In fact, when I was a Back Bencher, I had a relationship with my Whips characterised by trust and understanding—I didn’t trust them and they didn’t understand me.
Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Yesterday, the Department of Health accounts were finally laid before the House, after a week of to-ing and fro-ing that prompted no actual changes, as I understand it, to them. The Comptroller and Auditor General has raised some concerns about the accounts. I seek your guidance on two points, Mr Speaker. First, the accounts have again been laid late. Last year, they were laid on the final day on which Parliament sat; this time, they were laid only a couple of days before the final day. Secondly, what can we do to ensure that a Minister turns up to the House to explain the Department of Health accounts and address the financial concerns that many Members of the House, and not least the Public Accounts Committee, have about the Government’s handling of health finances?
Mr Speaker
I am very grateful to the hon. Lady, who has put her concern on the record. It will have been heard by those on the Treasury Bench, and I suspect that the contents of her point of order will wing their way to Health Ministers ere long. The truth of the matter is that there is no resolution of her grievance available from the Chair. The Select Committee on Health may wish to return to this matter if it is dissatisfied, and the Public Accounts Committee, of which the hon. Lady is herself the distinguished Chair, may wish to pursue this matter further. Realistically, I fear that that will have to wait until September, although if the hon. Lady—she is of course a London Member, and a very assiduous attender—is present in her place tomorrow for the summer Adjournment debate and wishes to expatiate further on her concerns, she may well find she is able to catch the eye of the Chair.
If there are no further points of order—I think that there are none—we come now to the presentation of Bills.
Bills presented
Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Chris Bryant, supported by Holly Lynch, Stephen Crabb, Mr Graham Brady, Ms Harriet Harman, Mr Dominic Grieve, Jo Stevens, Diana Johnson, Tulip Siddiq, Lilian Greenwood, Carolyn Harris and Philip Davies, presented a Bill to make provision about offences when perpetrated against emergency workers, and persons assisting such workers; to make certain offences aggravated when perpetrated against such workers in the exercise of their duty; to require persons suspected of certain assaults against such workers which may pose a health risk to provide intimate samples and to make it an offence, without reasonable excuse, to refuse to provide such samples; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 20 October, and to be printed (Bill 7).
Mental Health Units (Use of Force) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Mr Steve Reed, supported by Norman Lamb, Mr Charles Walker, Jim Shannon, Keith Vaz, Sarah Jones, Mr David Lammy, Dr Rosena Allin-Khan, Marsha De Cordova, Caroline Lucas, Clive Lewis and Heidi Allen, presented a Bill to make provision about the oversight and management of the appropriate use of force in relation to people in mental health units and similar institutions; to make provision about the use of body cameras by police officers in the course of duties in relation to people in mental health units; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 3 November, and to be printed (Bill 8).
Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Afzal Khan, supported by Joanna Cherry, Hannah Bardell, Mr Alistair Carmichael, Liz Saville Roberts, Lady Hermon and Caroline Lucas, presented a Bill to amend the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986 to make provision about the number and size of parliamentary constituencies in the United Kingdom; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 1 December, and to be printed (Bill 9).
Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation and Liability for Housing Standards) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Ms Karen Buck, supported by Luciana Berger, Jess Phillips, Matthew Pennycook, Shabana Mahmood, Heidi Allen, Marsha De Cordova, Andy Slaughter, Alex Sobel, Kate Green, Diana Johnson and Clive Efford, presented a Bill to amend the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 to require that residential rented accommodation is provided and maintained in a state of fitness for human habitation; to amend the Building Act 1984 to make provision about the liability for works on residential accommodation that do not comply with Building Regulations; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 19 January 2018, and to be printed (Bill 10).
Mr Speaker
Friday 19 January is a splendid day—it is my birthday.
Civil Partnerships, Marriages and Deaths (Registration Etc.) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Tim Loughton, supported by Mr Graham Brady, Dame Caroline Spelman, Mrs Anne Main, Frank Field, Heidi Allen, Caroline Lucas and Antoinette Sandbach, presented a Bill to provide that opposite sex couples may enter a civil partnership; to make provision about the registration of the names of the mother of each party to a marriage or civil partnership; to make provision about the registration of stillborn deaths; to give coroners the power to investigate stillborn deaths; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 2 February 2018, and to be printed (Bill 11).
Organ Donation (Deemed Consent) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Mr Geoffrey Robinson, supported by Paul Flynn, Sir Vince Cable, Caroline Lucas, Michael Fabricant, Liz Saville Roberts, Dr Philippa Whitford, Kate Green, Sir Oliver Letwin, Jim Shannon, Angela Rayner and Crispin Blunt, presented a Bill to enable persons in England to withhold consent for organ donation and transplantation; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 23 February 2018, and to be printed (Bill 12).
Refugees (Family Reunion) (No. 2) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Angus Brendan MacNeil, supported by Stephen Twigg, Robert Neill, Stuart C. McDonald, Tulip Siddiq, Tim Farron, Jim Shannon, Caroline Lucas, Anna Soubry, Ian Blackford, Stella Creasy and Hywel Williams, presented a Bill to make provision for leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom to be granted to the family members of refugees and of people granted humanitarian protection; to provide for legal aid to be made available for such family reunion cases; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 16 March 2018, and to be printed (Bill 13).
Parental Bereavement (Leave and Pay) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Kevin Hollinrake, supported by Will Quince, Sir Nicholas Soames, Craig Tracey, Carolyn Harris, Antoinette Sandbach, Jeremy Quin, Huw Merriman, Victoria Prentis, Diana Johnson and Rebecca Pow, presented a Bill to make provision about leave and pay for employees whose children have died.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 20 October, and to be printed (Bill 14).
Representation of the People (Young People’s Enfranchisement and Education) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Vicky Foxcroft, on behalf of Jim McMahon, supported by Jeremy Corbyn, Tom Watson, Peter Kyle, Diana Johnson, Lucy Powell, Sir Peter Bottomley, Stephen Gethins, Jo Swinson, Jonathan Edwards and Caroline Lucas, presented a Bill to reduce the voting age to 16 in parliamentary and other elections; to make provision about young people’s education in citizenship and the constitution; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 3 November, and to be printed (Bill 15).
Overseas Electors Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Glyn Davies presented a Bill to make provision extending the basis on which British citizens outside the UK qualify to participate in parliamentary elections; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 23 February 2018, and to be printed (Bill 16).
Parking (Code of Practice) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Sir Greg Knight, supported by Kevin Brennan, Pete Wishart, Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg, Daniel Zeichner and Graham Jones, presented a Bill to make provision for and in connection with a code of practice containing guidance about the operation and management of private parking facilities; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 2 February 2018, and to be printed (Bill 17).
Mr Speaker
I think the nation should be aware that, perhaps because the right hon. Gentleman’s Bill relates to parking, he is sporting a notably colourful tie, which features a very large number of cars. Knowing his penchant, I assume that they are classic cars.
Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)
They are, indeed.
Unpaid Trial Work Periods (Prohibition) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Stewart Malcolm McDonald, supported by Ian Murray, Lady Hermon, Caroline Lucas, Christine Jardine, Patricia Gibson, David Linden, Alison Thewliss, Chris Stephens, Patrick Grady, Carol Monaghan and Martin Whitfield, presented a Bill to prohibit unpaid trial work periods in certain circumstances; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 16 March 2018, and to be printed (Bill 18).
Prisons (Interference with Wireless Telegraphy) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Esther McVey, supported by Andrew Selous, David T. C. Davies, Kirstene Hair, Trudy Harrison, Philip Davies, Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg, Mr Christopher Chope, Paul Farrelly, Mr Kevan Jones, Mr Stephen Hepburn and Sir Edward Davey, presented a Bill to make provision about interference with wireless telegraphy in prisons and similar institutions.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 1 December, and to be printed (Bill 19).
Stalking Protection Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Dr Sarah Wollaston, supported by Mrs Cheryl Gillan, Ms Harriet Harman, Alex Chalk, Antoinette Sandbach, Luciana Berger, Richard Graham, Victoria Prentis, Maria Caulfield, Mims Davies, Jess Phillips and Vicky Ford, presented a Bill to make provision for protecting persons from risks associated with stalking; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 19 January 2018, and to be printed (Bill 20).
Mr Speaker
Friday 19 January—I do hope I am here.
Employment and Workers’ Rights Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Stephanie Peacock, supported by Louise Haigh, Rachel Reeves, Dan Jarvis, Ellie Reeves, Clive Lewis, Lisa Nandy, Jo Stevens, Ian Mearns, Mike Amesbury, Laura Smith and Chris Stephens, presented a Bill to make provision about employment conditions and workers’ rights; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 27 April 2018, and to be printed (Bill 21).
Licensing of Taxis and Private Hire Vehicles (Safeguarding and Road Safety) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Daniel Zeichner presented a Bill to make provision about the exercise of taxi and private hire vehicle licensing functions in relation to persons about whom there are safeguarding or road safety concerns; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 2 February 2018, and to be printed (Bill 22).
Freedom of Information (Extension) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Andy Slaughter, supported by Dan Jarvis, Jo Stevens, David Hanson, Ian C. Lucas, Ruth Cadbury, Christian Matheson, Clive Efford, Stephen Timms, Ms Karen Buck, Louise Haigh and Kate Green, presented a Bill to make providers of social housing, local safeguarding children boards, Electoral Registration Officers, Returning Officers and the Housing Ombudsman public authorities for the purposes of the Freedom of Information Act 2000; to make information held by persons contracting with public authorities subject to the Freedom of Information Act 2000; to extend the powers of the Information Commissioner; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 15 June 2018, and to be printed (Bill 23).
Representation of the People (Young People’s Enfranchisement) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Peter Kyle, supported by Nicky Morgan, Norman Lamb, Sir Peter Bottomley, Rachel Reeves, Ruth Smeeth, Wes Streeting, Anna Turley, Holly Lynch, Conor McGinn, Caroline Lucas and Jim McMahon, presented a Bill to reduce the voting age to 16 in parliamentary and other elections; to make provision for auto-enrolment onto the electoral register for people aged 16 to 24; to make provision about the use of educational establishments as polling stations; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 11 May 2018, and to be printed (Bill 24).
Physician Associates (Regulation) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Anne Marie Morris presented a Bill to make provision for the regulation of physician associates; to make physician associate a protected title; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 26 October 2018, and to be printed (Bill 25).
National Living Wage (Extension to Young People) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Holly Lynch, supported by Chris Bryant, Jo Stevens, Anna Turley, Wes Streeting, Jess Phillips, Tulip Siddiq, Ruth Smeeth, Gareth Snell, Conor McGinn, Naz Shah and Graham Jones, presented a Bill to extend the National Living Wage to people aged 18 to 24.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 6 July 2018, and to be printed (Bill 26).
Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation and Liability for Housing Standards) Bill
Friday 19th January 2018
(6 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018 Read Hansard Text
Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
May I, too, extend my congratulations to you on your birthday, Mr Speaker? It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair.
Everyone deserves to live in a safe, warm and comfortable home, yet despite the undeniable progress made over many decades, millions of people—often the most vulnerable—still do not. Currently and extraordinarily, landlords have no obligation to their tenants to put or to keep the property in a condition fit for habitation. There is an obligation on the landlord to repair the structure of the property and to keep in repair features such as heating, gas, water and electricity, but that applies only when something is broken or damaged; it does not cover issues such as fire safety, inadequate heating or poor ventilation causing condensation and mould growth. There is a whole range of fitness issues that seriously affect the wellbeing and safety of tenants and about which tenants can do nothing.
We must await the results of the inquiry into the horror of Grenfell Tower before reaching any conclusions, but we know that residents were raising fire safety concerns in respect of the cladding long before the fire. This cladding was, as far as we know, in good repair but may have been unfit and hazardous—something certainly was—yet the residents had no legal route available to them to pursue their concerns.
The Bill will modernise the housing fitness standard, and it will extend to cover almost all tenancies—private, housing association and council. It will allow tenants to take action on their own behalf in the same way and on the basis of the same standards as local authorities currently can and give them a remedy that so many of them lack.
Members of Parliament are all too familiar with bad housing. Most of us, at one time or another, have found ourselves responding to constituents living in the most appalling conditions that their landlords, public or private, cannot or will not act to resolve. As an inner London MP whose constituency includes areas that have been notorious for poor housing, dating back to the era of slum landlords such as Rachman and Hoogstraten, this issue has always been very dear to my heart.
When such cases come to me—I will mention them in a moment—my first port of call is often the environmental health department. While my council is of a different political complexion from me and we fight like ferrets in a sack on most issues, I can truthfully say that environmental health rises to the occasion again and again. I must have referred more than 1,000 cases to it over the years, and it has acted with vigour and professionalism, yet we know that that action is not sufficient.
I have seen a couple with small children living in two rooms of what was in effect the attic of a property in north Paddington. They lived and slept in one room; in the other, the tiny kitchen, toilet and shower were just cubicles built into the same space. I have seen a family who have had to close off two bedrooms—their only bedrooms—because of the cold and damp, and who all slept in the living room because they were unable to use the entire property. I have met a young mum who had to bring home her baby, who was born prematurely, to a flat that was so damp that even I, when I visited her, struggled to breathe. Only two weeks ago, I met a pensioner who was taken into hospital with hypothermia twice because of the cold in a flat from which the heat leaks through badly designed windows. Incidentally, she also fell and hurt her hip on steps that had been turned into a virtual river as water poured through a hole in the roof.
A good example of how fitness and disrepair are distinct and different elements of unfitness comes from an estate—a lovely and popular estate—in Bayswater in my constituency. Residents had long-standing complaints about extreme cold, damp and condensation, to the point that environmental health set up a dedicated project with the goal of protecting the health of residents. In 2011, its report found a range of deficiencies in the flats contributing to the health hazard of excess cold:
“Frequently associated with cold conditions within the flats was another hazard, that of ‘Damp & Mould Growth’ caused by condensation moisture forming on cold internal surfaces within the flats, including the window frames and the glazing. In some cases, the mould growth was chronic and severe”.
Despite environmental health’s survey of their flats, residents repeatedly requested that something be done; they had asked for the windows to be replaced as long ago as 2006. Why were those flats unfit, and how does that distinguish itself from disrepair?
As those flats were built in the 1950s, when building construction standards were poorer than today, their insulation standards were—and remain—very poor. The end walls of the flats are made of solid reinforced concrete, as are the floors, roofs, external stairways, lift shafts, walkways, balconies and possibly some of the internal walls. The cavity walling was unfilled and uninsulated. Consequently, there is constant heat loss throughout the structure of the building and instances of cold bridging in the flats on the estate caused by cold, uninsulated elements transforming heat energy and losing it externally. That causes condensation, dampness and mould growth. Those residents have been waiting for 12 years. A major estate programme has been under way for some years and still has to run until 2022, and the residents have no legal redress to deal with their concerns.
In case references to heat loss and cold bridging are a little technical, here is one example—one of many—from a resident who wrote to me from that estate:
“I have been suffering from the cold. We are always sick with flu and cold. I have my heating on 24 hours a day, with another electric heater and I am always ill, so is my son. My heating bill for this month alone was £400. My son and I have asthma. I have asthma, arthritis, fibromyalgia, diabetes, Kienbock’s disease in my hands, and I suffer panic attacks and anxiety. I am suicidal and had to go to St Mary’s hospital and see a psychiatrist, who said I must move to improve my health conditions. Please, please help.”
Teresa Pearce (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for promoting this private Member’s Bill. Morally, we know that we must take up this issue, but is she surprised to know that that is also the case financially? This month, I received a letter from the Department of Health and Social Care, which stated that conditions of poor-quality housing cost the NHS—and this is a conservative estimate—an estimated £1.4 billion a year.
Ms Buck
My hon. Friend is a mind reader because I was coming to that very point. There is plenty of evidence to confirm that bad housing is a drain on the national health service and—as in so many other areas—if we were able to act more effectively to tackle the causes of bad housing, that would also benefit the NHS.
Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Lady on introducing this Bill and I assure her of our support. She mentioned some disturbing cases, examples of which we will all have heard in our constituency casework. Does she accept that private sector landlords play a valuable role in the housing market and that the vast majority of them understand that, in addition to their right to receive rent, they also have obligations towards their tenants?
Ms Buck
I absolutely do. The vast majority of landlords act responsibly towards their tenants, and they have an interest in ensuring that the rogue minority do not get away with irresponsible behaviour.
This week, I was pleased to take part in Parliament’s digital engagement process, and our project on housing standards received the best response so far in that important experiment. That is pleasing, although it further served to confirm the extent of the problem. We were told that 57,000 people viewed the Facebook page on which we presented our questions about attitudes to housing fitness, and some of the case studies that came in as a response were truly horrifying. Those studies came from all over the country and reflected the scale of the problem.
We know anecdotally, and from Members of Parliament, councillors and other caseworkers, just how serious is the problem of substandard and unfit housing. The English housing survey shows that three quarters of a million private rented properties—about one in six of that sector—are unfit and that about a quarter of a million social rented homes contain a category one hazard under the housing, health and safety rating system. That could relate to damp, infestation, excess cold and a number of other risks, and it means that 3 million people, including many children, have their health and safety compromised every day by substandard housing.
Local council-led enforcement is simply insufficient for the task. I have already mentioned my very positive relationship with my local authority, although it still has constraints, particularly in respect of its own housing stock. Taken across the board, however, local authorities are not enforcing more than a tiny proportion of measures to deal with substandard properties. My most recent freedom of information research, which was prepared into a report by Stephen Battersby, indicates that enforcement action is taken at a level equivalent to only 1% of all the properties that are unfit according to the English housing survey. Research carried out by Shelter about a year ago found that enforcement action has fallen by 40% in recent years. Importantly, this is not a criticism of local authorities, but the fact is that the capacity simply is not there. Performance varies hugely between councils. There is a reliance on informal action in some areas, and although that has its place and can help to resolve some problems, it makes it hard to assess the overall effectiveness of what local authorities are doing.
Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)
I welcome this Bill. Everyone should have the right to live in a home that is fit for habitation, and if that is not the case, tenants need the ability to challenge landlords in court. Does my hon. Friend agree that, in tandem with this Bill, we must consider reintroducing early legal advice in housing matters, so that problems can be resolved a lot quicker?
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
All of us, and our constituents, owe a debt of gratitude to my hon. Friend for promoting this Bill and for her perseverance because it is not the first time she has done this. Legal aid is already severely restricted for disrepair. The Government notes to the Bill say that it contains no financial provision—that is probably why they support it—but should we not meet the remedy that the Bill provides with the funds to allow tenants to enforce it?
Ms Buck
We expect that tenants whose conditions meet the criteria equivalent to disrepair would be able to seek legal aid, and I will be making separate representations about legal aid overall. My hon. Friend and I, and many other Labour Members, feel very strongly about this issue.
Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)
Will the hon. Lady pay tribute to Citizens Advice for its role in assisting 144 families with housing repairs in my constituency? Does she agree that many tenants can get legal expenses insurance through their household insurance, and it is always worth checking insurance policies for that?
Ms Buck
I join the hon. Lady unequivocally in paying tribute to Citizens Advice. It supports the Bill and has written a good briefing about it. I do not want to stray too far from the Bill, but there is a real concern about advice services across the piece, and we must continue to discuss and make representations on that.
One concern that underpins my motivation for the Bill is that it is often the poorest and most vulnerable people—those with the highest likelihood of having disabilities and sickness—who are trapped in the worst housing, and in my experience, very few people have adequate insurance. That is a much larger problem that we must seek to resolve. A number of different remedies may be available to some people, but the minority of people who are concentrated in very bad housing often do not have access to the remedies that are available to those who are better off.
Sir Edward Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)
The hon. Lady is being generous in giving way. I strongly support the Bill. She made an important point about enforcement. The House is good at making regulations, but often they are not enforced properly to help the most vulnerable people, and I believe that enforcement agencies and local authorities need more support. She made a point about retaliatory evictions when local authorities take action, and in my experience local authorities that take action often do not also help the tenant to ensure that the landlord does not behave badly. I would welcome the hon. Lady’s comments on that.
Ms Buck
There are a number of issues in respect of supporting tenants that are outwith the scope of the Bill and on which I will continue to make representations, including retaliatory eviction. The reality is that local authorities are increasingly cash-strapped. That is one of the reasons that environmental health departments are not able to enforce. In an ideal world, local authorities would be able to fund advice services and tenancy liaison officers. I have seen some very good practice by tenancy liaison workers, including in Westminster, across the parties—when work is good, I am happy to acknowledge that. I am in absolute agreement with the right hon. Gentleman, however, that it is inadequate and patchy, which is exactly why we need to make sure that individual tenants can exercise a direct remedy in law when the other services we would all like to be in place are not up to the job.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on her Bill. On the role of local authorities, does she welcome, as I do, the Government’s recent decision to reauthorise Newham Council’s selective licensing scheme? She has rightly pointed out that it is a small minority of landlords who are the problem. Does she believe that local authorities more generally should have those selective licensing powers?
Ms Buck
I do, although that issue is also outwith the scope of the Bill. The Bill proposes one important tool for tenants, but there are many others, some of which are being introduced. We will continue to lobby for others in the future. I certainly congratulate Newham Council on its active work in respect of its rogue landlord sector.
Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)
I thank the hon. Lady for making a strong case on an issue about which she is very passionate. Is it not key to the Bill that social tenants currently have no effective means of redress over poor conditions, as local authorities cannot enforce the housing health and safety rating system against themselves? The Bill will give them a tool to compel local authorities to carry out the repairs.
Ms Buck
The hon. Lady is absolutely right. That is one of the purposes of the Bill. Social council tenants do not have the same right as private and housing association tenants, who can go to the local authority, which may or may not enforce. Council tenants cannot do that, and the Bill will extend to them the right to seek remedy.
As we know, the law in this area is generally outdated and restrictive. I started by saying that there is currently no obligation to ensure that the property is fit, as opposed to the obligation to deal with disrepair, and that there are therefore a range of fitness issues about which tenants can do nothing at all. That used not to be the case. The fitness obligation was set in law, but that has ceased to have effect as the law has developed over many decades.
The concept of housing fitness—of homes being fit for human habitation—stems all the way back to the Victorian era and the work leading up to the Housing of the Working Classes Act 1885. Lord Salisbury, the then Conservative Leader of the Opposition, made the case that the shocking condition of housing was injurious to both health and morals and was promptly attacked, even by The Guardian, for propagating state socialism.
The royal commission established prior to the passage of the 1885 Act proposed that there should be a simple power by civil procedure for the recovery of damages against owners or holders of property by those who have suffered injury or loss by their neglect or default in sanitary matters. That is exactly what happened. The remedy was granted to tenants, subject to what was then a relatively generous rent limit, but as time passed and laws changed, overlapped and melded together, the rent limits ceased to be updated and the ability of tenants to seek a remedy when their homes were unfit lapsed.
Eventually, the impact of that led to a 1996 report by the Law Commission, “Landlord and Tenant: Responsibility for State and Condition of Property”. The commission criticised the fact that the right of civil remedy for tenants against their landlords in cases of unfitness had been allowed to “wither on the vine”, as the rent limits had remained unchanged for 40 years. It concluded that removing the rent limits would be the preferred way to give tenants a civil remedy. Two Court of Appeal judgments supported the same conclusion.
More broadly, “Closing the Gaps”, a joint report commissioned by Shelter from the Universities of Bristol and Kent last year, concluded:
“The law relating to health and safety in people’s homes is piecemeal, out-dated, complex, dependent upon tenure, and patchily enforced. It makes obscure distinctions, which have little relationship with everyday experiences of poor conditions.”
Apart from that, I am sure it is fine.
Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)
Many tenants who are in temporary accommodation with private landlords have been placed there by local authorities. Does my hon. Friend agree that many tenants have difficulty dealing with that dilemma?
Ms Buck
My experience of temporary accommodation is that it includes some of the worst conditions that I have ever seen. Tenants who are often increasingly placed away from their own local authority have a lot of difficulty in seeking remedy, which I strongly believe that they should be able to do.
What will the Bill actually do? The old obligations on landlords to ensure that a property is fit and not just in a state of repair have become obsolete. The Bill will therefore have the effect of reviving the fitness requirements and updating them by reference to a definition of hazards, the presence of which will determine whether a property is unfit. That list of 29 categories of hazard is set out in the housing health and safety rating system introduced in the Housing Act 2004. It will have the effect of ensuring that unfitness is covered as well as disrepair, so structural and design faults are included where they risk causing serious harm. That includes cases where poor ventilation causes severe damp or infestation, fire safety, dangerously steep stairs without protection from falls and so on. The tenant could take action against the landlord to make them put right any problems or hazards that make the property unfit and seek compensation when the landlord has not done so. The Bill makes it clear that the landlord would not be liable for any issues arising from the behaviour of the tenant or issues that would bring them into conflict with other legal duties.
Neil O'Brien (Harborough) (Con)
I welcome this important Bill and the hon. Lady’s tenacious work on the issue. When I was a private renter, I was offered houses with wires hanging out of the walls, electric cookers hanging off the walls and even, in one case, dog mess on the carpet. This is a superb Bill. May I welcome her comments on the excellent balance it achieves between new rights for tenants, which my constituents will welcome, and sensible safeguards for landlords?
Ms Buck
How do I answer that? I thank the hon. Gentleman for his and the Government’s support.
May I acknowledge those people who have got us to this stage and who support the Bill? There has been broad support for the proposals, for which I am very grateful. Shelter has campaigned strongly, as has Generation Rent. The Chartered Institute of Environmental Health has lent considerable expertise. The National Housing Federation has given its backing, and excellent briefings have come from Citizens Advice, Mind, the Law Society and, of course, the Library, among others.
Very importantly, the Bill is backed by the Residential Landlords Association, the National Landlords Association and the Association of Residential Letting Agents. Alan Ward, the chair of the Residential Landlords Association, possibly summed up the situation for all three organisations when he recently wrote that
“the Bill seeks to achieve what all good landlords want; better enforcement against the crooks that bring the sector into disrepute.”
Sam Lister from the Chartered Institute of Housing researched the history of attempts to improve housing fitness, dating back to Lord Salisbury, and he should get the research published because it is fascinating. Stephen Battersby, the former president of the Institution of Environmental Health Officers, has diligently prepared reports on enforcement and housing fitness over several years, and has provided invaluable advice. I also thank colleagues who have given up a precious Friday to be here.
I am genuinely thrilled to have Government support for the Bill this time around, and I hope that we can, continuing in the positive spirit of recent weeks, make good progress in passing it into law. I give thanks to the officials who have been exceptionally helpful during the preparation stage.
I want to place on the record my appreciation for Giles Peaker and Justin Bates, the housing lawyers who took the Law Commission recommendations and not only drafted the Bill but supported me through every twist and turn of it over the past two years. They are great lawyers, obviously, but they are also driven by a passion to champion people in housing need, and I owe them a debt of gratitude.
There is a great deal more to be done to turn the tide on insecurity, affordability, homelessness and housing need, and none of us will stop pressing the Minister to make progress on other fronts. But today we have the chance to progress a Bill that will give tenants new powers to hold the worst landlords to account. I hope that we will take that opportunity, and I commend the Bill to the House.
Lucy Allan (Telford) (Con)
I too would like to congratulate the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) on introducing this important Bill and on securing Government support for it, which is an excellent example of cross-party working. Like all Members, I want to see this Bill deliver on its objectives to ensure that everyone can live in a decent home.
I am the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on new towns. Many new towns, including my own constituency of Telford, have a private rental sector with homes that are substandard and have long been neglected. Both the design and the materials of estates that were built at the same time—in a hurry, 50 years ago—have not stood the test of time and they are now past their useful life. Those estates are decaying simultaneously, which makes renewal and renovation challenging.
Housing estates in many new towns were often constructed to the Radburn design, which was innovative and experimental in its day. Cars were separated from housing, and the front was accessible only by a footpath, with back yards facing each other on to vehicle access alleyways. Over time, however, that has “designed in” crime and antisocial behaviour, and confusing layouts have rendered estates inaccessible. Wooden construction materials are rotting, and flat roofs are prone to leaking. There are houses in multiple occupation and empty properties, and now we have the worst of the rogue landlords. Over the years, the dream of a new start in a new town on a new estate has become a nightmare for some.
Although some of those ex-local authority homes are owner-occupied, most are privately rented and owned by multiple landlords who are very hard to trace. As has already been pointed out today, there are many good landlords who take good care of their properties, and there are long-term owner-occupiers who take pride in their areas, but the simple fact remains that some tenants—my constituents—are living in conditions that are totally unacceptable today. Those privately rented properties are a catalyst for a spiral of decline on their estates, and they cause untold misery not just to the tenants but to the owner-occupiers living alongside them.
Tenants are in those substandard properties because they have been unable to secure housing association properties. Our housing association properties in Telford are very well maintained by our innovative and aspirational housing association, the Wrekin Housing Trust, but they are hard to come by. Nor are those tenants able to secure any other rental property of an adequate standard, because they have complex vulnerabilities. They may have a history of evictions and debt, addiction, or mental health problems. They are at the mercy of rogue landlords, because other landlords are not willing to give them a tenancy. The rogue landlords charge the full amount of housing benefit, and provide nothing but a run-down, neglected property in return, just because they can.
Much as I welcome this Bill, I must sound a note of caution. Tenants who are affected by the worst conditions in the private rental sector are unlikely to be able to complain effectively, let alone take enforcement action against their landlords. Local authorities have an important role to play in that regard. It is not good enough for them to say, “This is an arm’s-length commercial relationship between tenant and landlord, and it has nothing to do with us.” These tenants are our most vulnerable residents, and they are being exploited. We have an obligation to help them to enforce the powers that the Bill will give them, as well as ensuring that local authorities use the powers that they already have.
Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making a powerful point. Does she agree that if these excellent new measures are not to be a dead letter, we must ensure that some of our most vulnerable constituents—including some of mine in Cheltenham—have the tools that they need, through the legal process and through early advice and assistance, to prosecute the rights that the Bill will give them?
Lucy Allan
My hon. Friend is right. We must help to empower those vulnerable tenants, because legislation will not be a remedy if people are not helped to exercise it.
Sir Edward Davey
May I ask the hon. Lady a question that I asked the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck)? Does she agree that we need to ensure that local authorities are enforcing these and other rules in order to protect our most vulnerable citizens, and that the Government should monitor and compare authorities to establish which of them are going after the rogue landlords, and should name and shame those that are not?
Lucy Allan
Indeed. Much more can be done to persuade and encourage local authorities to enforce their role. As I have said, they have an important part to play, and they have existing powers to bring about a remedy.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)
Is it not important for the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government and his Department to approve compulsory licensing schemes in a timely manner? A number of Labour councils in London, and my local council in Brighton and Hove, have put in requests for the Secretary of State to approve, which will give them those enforcement powers.
Lucy Allan
I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman, and I will explain why shortly.
Local authorities have been given funds with which to identify and prosecute rogue landlords. They need to step up to the mark and use their powers to prosecute when properties are unsafe or substandard. There is evidence that they do not make enough use of the powers that they already have.
Let me now deal with the point made by the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle). In my area, selective licensing has been proposed as a solution to these problems, but it penalises all landlords on an estate, including good, responsible landlords. It hits them with an extra levy to prove that they are fit and proper people. It fails to distinguish between good landlords and those who make their money letting substandard properties to the most vulnerable people, to whom not one else will let.
I am pleased by the Government’s strong record of action on improving the experience of tenants and by the action already taken on substandard private rentals. Local authorities now have the power to impose civil penalties amounting to up to £30,000, and rent repayment orders have been introduced.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
I understand the point that the hon. Lady is making about local authorities’ powers. However, as is so often the case, the powers may exist, but the first cuts that are made in local authority budgets are those that prevent them from enforcing their existing powers.
Lucy Allan
The hon. Gentleman is right: local authorities’ powers are not being enforced, and there is a reason for that. We need to do much more to ensure that local authorities do enforce them.
Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)
The hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) said that authorities needed more resources with which to enforce legislation. Torbay Council has used the powers that the Government have given it to levy fines of up to £30,000 in order to increase its housing enforcement team using money from those who abuse their tenants.
Lucy Allan
I am delighted to hear that Torbay is using these powers, and I urge my local authority, Telford and Wrekin, to follow its example.
Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for being so generous in giving way. May I gently say to her that Newham Council has a licensing scheme because it provides money with which it can use its enforcement powers? All landlords would benefit from such a scheme, because it would ensure that they all adhered to proper standards, which could only be good for the whole sector.
Lucy Allan
The hon. Lady is right. The objective of selective licensing is to bring in more funds. However, there is a raft of bureaucracy surrounding it, and some landlords will pass the cost on to their tenants.
Lucy Allan
I want to make one more point, but I may give way to the right hon. Gentleman later.
Lucy Allan
No. The hon. Lady has already had her intervention.
More powers will come into effect in April 2018, with the introduction of banning orders and a database of rogue landlords to help local authorities to tackle this problem. Authorities have powers to remove the worst offenders, and I urge them to do so. Much as I welcome the Bill’s empowerment of tenants, I fear that tenants in the most substandard properties, who do not currently complain for many different reasons, will not be able to take legal action. The needs and concerns of tenants are the responsibility of local authorities, and they must not wash their hands of tenants living in these conditions in their properties.
Let me again congratulate the hon. Member for Westminster North on highlighting this important problem, and thank her for drawing attention to the conditions in which many people are living in my constituency, in other new towns and, indeed, throughout the country. She has spoken up for people who cannot speak for themselves, and on that she is to be congratulated.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Speaker
We are immensely grateful to the hon. Lady.
Is the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) ready, or has he been detained by other matters? No; he is ready. Let us hear from the fellow.
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck). I know that she has long been interested in housing policy and legislation, but what has been clear today—and has been clear for many years to those who have known her that long—is her passionate commitment to housing as it relates to individual tenants and their struggle to secure decent housing conditions. She was driven to introduce the Bill by her experience in her own constituency—which she has spelled out this morning—of the awful circumstances in which people have to live, and her wish to do something to help them.
There are three reasons why I have a particular interest in this issue, and want the Bill to be passed. First, most members of the public, if they were asked, “Should landlords be able to let properties that are unfit for tenants to live in?”, would say, “Of course they should not, but the law prevents that, doesn’t it?” Most people would assume that the law already does what this Bill is attempting to do; they would assume that Parliament has already taken steps to ensure that any house that is let is fit for the tenant to live in. The fact that that is not the case is a condemnation of all of us for having allowed that situation to exist for far too long. I think most of the public would therefore say that of course we should put that basic problem right, and everyone in this House this morning should be here to support this very basic measure.
Sir Edward Davey
It is important that the House understands that our predecessors have tried to act on this: this Bill rightly links back to the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, and I served on the Housing Bill Committee of 2003-04 with the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) when we reformed some of these laws and introduced the housing health and safety rating system, which has proved rather complicated. The experience of that attempt to regulate rogue landlords is the reason we have gone back to some of the laws of the past which the hon. Lady is rightly bringing to the attention of the House today. There is a history here, and we need to understand that.
Mr Betts
Yes, there is a history; the history is that we have not got it right, and that is what we are trying to do this morning. I take the point about the housing health and safety rating system. There have been various efforts in that regard, but in the end the position is still that housing that is unfit can be let to tenants, and that is what this Bill is putting right. In some ways it is going back to the 1985 legislation, which unfortunately has been overtaken by inflation as the rental figures in it are now so far out of date that in effect the legislation cannot be used at all. The Bill is turning the clock back to a previous situation and doing so in a very appropriate way.
In terms of the 1985 legislation, the Bill is updating the fitness standards, because it is taking the standards from that legislation but adding to them the fitness standards from the 2004 legislation and making a more comprehensive definition of what fitness should be. It is bringing the two together in a more comprehensive way: it is turning the clock back to 1985 and then modernising and updating the legislation, incorporating the 2004 standards as well, making a more comprehensive definition of fitness to ensure that the homes that are let truly are fit for people to live in.
Giving the powers to the tenant as part of their contract with the landlord means that tenants in local authority housing have the same rights and powers as those in the private sector or a housing association property. It means that any tenant in any rented property has these rights to take enforcement action against their landlord to ensure that their home is brought up to a certain fitness level. The Bill therefore does three things: it ensures that any home has to be fit for the tenant to live in; it updates the fitness standards; and it applies the legislation to local authority housing as well as other forms of rented housing. For those three reasons, the Bill should be supported.
The right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Sir Edward Davey) referred to the housing health and safety rating system. When the Select Committee looked at issues to do with the private rented sector in 2013, we called for a review and an update. The guidance on that system has not been changed since 2006 and is now out of date.
There are also questions as to whether the risk-based system is understood by many people. It is complicated and difficult to understand. Most of the professionals might understand it, but the fact that there is not an absolute definition of what is fit and what is not is a problem. Many landlords do not understand it, and if landlords do not understand it, the chance of tenants understanding it are very small indeed. Another look should be taken at whether there should be some basic standards as opposed to simply a risk-based system.
There is something strange about a system under which a house let to one tenant can be deemed unfit with that tenant in it, but if the tenant changes and a new tenant moves in, the house can then become fit, despite no work having been done to it, because the second tenant might be deemed to be less of a risk than the first tenant—under a risk-based system, the level of fitness changes with the change of tenant. That is difficult for most people to understand and we will have to revisit it.
There are also questions about local authorities’ ability to take enforcement action in a range of areas. The Select Committee is currently conducting an inquiry into the powers and resources that local authorities have to carry out enforcement in the private sector.
Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)
I recently submitted a freedom of information request to local authorities in London to see how many people had pots of capital to do works if landlords did not do so. The stunning answer was just two, so our laws cannot be enforced at the moment.
Mr Betts
This is a problem: we are certainly getting a lot of evidence to that effect, and we are having our second evidence session next Monday.
The Government are bringing in more powers for local authorities to act, and they are welcome. They include, for example, the banning orders that will come into effect in April, which will affect the worst landlords—whose names ought to be up there in lights so everyone can see what they are up to. The Government’s decision to extend the HMO—houses in multiple occupation—definition of properties that need licences to properties with two storeys is right as well. I argued under the Labour Government for that definition, but unfortunately at the time we could not persuade Ministers to include properties of two storeys, so I am pleased this Government are doing that. It will mean more work for local authorities, however, as well as more powers. I hope the Government bring in the requirement that all private rented homes should have their electrical systems checked every five years, too. This consultation has been a long time coming, but I hope that that comes in as well. Again, however, it will mean more work for local authorities.
The Bill essentially gives tenants powers to act, but in reality tenants are going to need support and assistance. They might contact the excellent Shelter telephone helpline, which is based in Sheffield, or Citizens Advice or other advice agencies, or they might go to their MP or local councillors, but very often they will go to their council to seek help and assistance. Although the primary requirement of this Bill is to give powers to tenants, in the end they might well go to the local authority, so with all the other—very good—measures that the Government are introducing, the extra powers for local authorities to take enforcement action and this Bill might put extra demand on local authority officers. The issue of resources is still fundamental to getting this problem sorted out. That will be raised as part of our Select Committee inquiry, and Ministers ought to be listening: without the resources, local authorities will not be able to offer tenants the assistance they need which would make this legislation effective.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
I join others in wishing you, Mr Speaker, a very happy birthday and in thanking you for sitting in the Chair on your birthday when you could be off enjoying yourself in another way. [Interruption.] I am sure you are going to enjoy our debate.
First, I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests; I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association and have a small property portfolio.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) on bringing this much-needed Bill to the House to ensure that all tenants, whether in social or private rented housing, will have the right to make sure that they are living in a decent home. I think it is a fundamental right of everyone in this country to be able to live in a decent home. This measure has been needed for a long time.
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), the distinguished Chair of the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government. I am not sure whether we have got around to changing the name yet—the name of the Ministry has changed. He has a long history of service in local government and in this House in holding the Government to account through our work on the Select Committee. I have had the pleasure of serving on the Committee for the last seven and a half years. During that time, we have looked at all aspects of the private rented sector and the socially rented sector. This measure is welcome and needed.
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Reading West (Alok Sharma), who was the Minister responsible for negotiating with the hon. Member for Westminster North to get the Bill into a form that the Government could support. I hope that Members will unanimously support Second Reading later today. I welcome the Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Mrs Wheeler), to her place. I have one or two questions that I hope she will answer when she speaks later. I want to thank the myriad organisations that have sent us briefing notes, all of which praise and support the Bill, I am delighted to say. That means that it is likely to receive a smooth passage through the House.
There are many different types of landlord in the private and social rented sectors. There are accidental landlords who inherit a property and rent it out. Most of those individuals want to do the right thing, but they are often ignorant of their responsibilities under the law. The Government have a duty to ensure that those landlords are educated about their responsibilities to their tenants. There are also small investors who have chosen to use property as a means of creating a pot of money for their retirement or for other purposes, and there are commercial landlords. Most commercial landlords in the private sector are really good landlords, but some are rogues. This Bill and many others aim to spot those rogue landlords and put them out of business. It is right that we should ramp up our activities to ensure that those individuals do not exploit vulnerable tenants.
Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
I want to draw the hon. Gentleman’s attention to the evidence that the Select Committee heard last Monday from Shelter, which said that, although the focus on rogue landlords was important, it was misleading to focus on them alone because the tenants experiencing poor-quality accommodation in the private rented sector were not limited to the relatively small number whose landlords could be described as rogues. Some landlords are inexperienced, lazy or negligent in carrying out their responsibilities but fall short of being rogues. These practices are nevertheless unacceptable.
Bob Blackman
I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. When we look at the percentages of properties that are non-decent, it becomes clear that these practices are not limited to the small number of rogue landlords. I will say more about that later.
I note that the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) is in his place today. He and I share the challenge of trying to deal with the many individuals who bought a property many years ago and who, when their lifestyle changed, moved out and chose not to sell their property but to rent it out. Unfortunately, some of those individuals are now exploiting vulnerable people, and they need to be called to account.
In north-west London, we also have a huge number of what are termed “beds in sheds”. These are small developments in back gardens and alongside properties where unscrupulous landlords force people to sleep in absolutely unacceptable conditions. The local authorities attempt to enforce the rules but their resources are limited. As a constituency Member, I routinely draw local authorities’ attention to these landlords, but resources are limited. As the hon. Member for Sheffield South East said, local authorities need resources if they are to enforce the existing laws. I am concerned that, without those resources, the good intentions behind the Bill to give tenants rights and to ensure decent homes may not come to fruition.
Nigel Huddleston (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making a really important point about where the onus of responsibility lies. Does he agree that one of the attractive features of the Bill is that it puts a proactive responsibility on landlords to address issues and concerns, as opposed to the historical norm of their reacting with varying degrees of enthusiasm to issues when they are raised by tenants?
Bob Blackman
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. One of the concerns has to be that, when we empower tenants, we have to ensure that they understand their rights and also draw to landlords’ attention their duty to keep their homes safe.
When the Select Committee conducted inquiries into these issues, we looked into the duties relating to electrical safety. The hon. Member for Sheffield South East will remember some of the reviews that took place. He will also remember our astonishment at the duties on homeowners, let alone landlords, to ensure that their places are safe for electrical purposes. Electrical problems are often invisible to tenants and to landlords, which can create hazards and risks for many tenants.
In one ward of my constituency alone, more than 20% of the properties are rented out in the private sector. Most are rented out to people from the European Union, mainly Romania and Poland, many of whom are being exploited. They are being herded into cramped accommodation in houses in multiple occupation that are not licensed. The local authority is taking action to try to combat that, but it is a real problem that individuals who are coming to this country to work hard, earn a living and contribute to this country are being ruthlessly exploited by a small number of landlords. I condemn those landlords for that.
Matt Western
We see the accommodation that the hon. Gentleman describes in back gardens alongside the train lines coming out of London, but does he accept that that exploitation affects not only migrant labour? With student accommodation, there is a high level of churn within that community, with students staying in a property for a year or less. They are hugely exploited, just as migrant workers are.
Bob Blackman
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. He reminds me of when I was at university in Liverpool. We all suffered appalling conditions in the private rented sector at that time. There are now many more students, all of whom need private rented accommodation for a time during their studies, and as he says, many of them are being exploited. However, they will often put up with conditions that others would not tolerate, in order to pay a lower rent. For that reason, they often do not draw problems to the landlord’s attention. That is clearly a problem.
We need to make it clear that this is a problem not only in the private sector. There are local authorities that do not maintain their properties to a decent standard. There are pockets of poor housing in that sector as well. I remember, as a local authority leader, applauding the then Labour Government for providing funds to bring local authority housing stock up to a decent home standard. That was a great thing, but large numbers of properties owned by councils are still not being maintained at a decent standard. We also have housing associations. About 28% of accommodation in the private rented sector is non-decent, but 14.8% of local authority housing is non-decent and 11.8% of housing association properties is non-decent. That shows that the problem is not limited to the private rented sector; it extends into the social rented sector. That is one of the reasons that I strongly support the Bill. It looks at these issues in a comprehensive manner, rather than a narrow one.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there are problems in local authority housing stock when local authorities subcontract out the maintenance of their properties, often for very long periods, with inadequate scrutiny? Tenants who are responsible to the local authority are unable to do anything, and the local authority is often unable to reel in the contract. The Bill could help to provide more leverage for the local authority to step in.
Bob Blackman
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. Clearly, local authorities that choose to outsource their responsibilities should not abdicate their responsibility to their tenants. One problem is that when tenants come to complain about that sort of issue, local authorities can wash their hands of it and say, “That is nothing to do with us. You have to go to the service company.” Tenants then find it difficult to identify who is actually responsible, and there are many examples in my constituency of where individual tenants have complained but have not been able to get the service that they should get from their landlord, be it a housing association or the local authority.
Matt Western
I thank the hon. Gentleman for being so generous in giving way again. In my local authority, I understand that the budget for maintenance and repairs to local authority-owned properties in this financial year ran out before Christmas, so the authority is unable to make those repairs.
Bob Blackman
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. We all recognise the clear pressures on local authority budgets, but the key issue is that it is the local authority’s responsibility to find the money to honour its obligations. I cannot talk about an individual council’s budget, but the reality is that councils have legal obligations to provide tenants with decent quality homes, and they should not ration the service they provide.
Almost a year ago today, I was standing up and speaking on my Homelessness Reduction Bill—now the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017—on Report. I remind the hon. Member for Westminster North that the only amendment accepted by the Government when the Bill was in Committee was her amendment, which means that local authorities, when placing vulnerable people in accommodation, have to inspect the premises and ensure that they are fit for human habitation and safe. That was a dramatic change to the law, but it is a narrow requirement relating only to when vulnerable people are placed in accommodation by local authorities. I am therefore delighted that this Bill will force all landlords to bring their homes up to a decent standard in an acceptable fashion.
However, I just want to raise one or two concerns, because I think the Bill can be improved still further. Tenants need to understand their rights and those rights need to be enforced. I want protection for people who complain about their landlords, so that we do not see retaliatory evictions, as mentioned by the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Sir Edward Davey). We do not want people who take action suddenly to find themselves homeless because the landlord has said, “You can take me to court if you want, but if you do, I am going to evict you as a result.” That would be reprehensible and we have to find a way of combating it.
The Bill gives tenants the right to challenge bad landlords, but the primary responsibility for inspecting and ensuring that properties are safe should reside with local authorities. I am concerned that local authorities are now unable to carry out that function due to a lack of funding. The Bill’s explanatory notes state that a money resolution is not needed, but local authorities should be provided with more funds to enable them to enforce the rules that should apply. I ask the Minister to look at that, because the Department needs to consider the matter in the round to ensure that local authorities are given the necessary resources to ensure that people can live in decent accommodation.
Rebecca Pow
I commend my hon. Friend for introducing the 2017 Act, under which money has been made available to local authorities to carry out some of their new duties. Therefore, does my hon. Friend agree that there needs to be some support for local authorities in order to make this Bill work?
Bob Blackman
When I got my Act through, the Government were generous and produced some £83 million to support the first two years of the legislation, £17 million of which came as a result of the amendment of the hon. Member for Westminster North to ensure that homes are inspected and made fit for habitation before anyone is moved in. That was much narrower than the broader requirement in this Bill, so there is the need for a substantial injection of cash into local authorities.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the 2017 Act is still not being enforced in many cases? At Christmas, a mother from my constituency was moved into temporary accommodation where the toilet was overflowing, and that situation stayed the same until I intervened; the local authority only took action after that intervention. That shows that the 2017 Act is too weak and that without resourcing for local authorities, without increasing the cap on housing investment and without proper enforcement, these are nice words, but they are unenforceable.
Bob Blackman
The hon. Gentleman and I would agree that we clearly need to ramp up activity and funding and give local authorities the powers and resources that they need to carry out their duties under both this and other pieces of legislation.
I ask the Minister to consider the sentencing guidelines for rogue landlords. A maximum fine of £30,000 may be possible, but it is rare for the courts to issue such fines. Not only should fines be reinvested into the inspection and enforcement process, but we need clear sentencing guidelines so that magistrates courts can maximise fines, particularly in the worst-case scenarios.
Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. May I just confirm something? We only have 23 minutes until the statement, and is it correct that this very important debate must conclude then?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
There will be a statement at 11 o’clock, but the debate will not conclude then.
Bob Blackman
For the hon. Gentleman’s information, I am coming to the end of my speech. I am very supportive of the Bill, and the debate will be interrupted while we have the statement, but it will continue to its conclusion thereafter, so he does not have to worry about that.
I have another concern about the legislation’s implementation period. The explanatory notes state that the provisions will come into force three months after the Bill becomes an Act, but will the Minister consider whether there is any need for secondary legislation—for any regulations—when the Bill becomes law? The Government are introducing myriad secondary legislation next month in relation to my Homelessness Reduction Act, and we do not want to reach a situation where much-needed secondary legislation is not ready in time for this legislation’s commencement, which could lead to problems later on.
In summary, I strongly support this Bill and trust that it will receive the House’s unanimous support. If the hon. Member for Westminster North wants me to serve on the Bill Committee, I will be delighted to do so to help her get the Bill through Parliament.
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow my near north-west London neighbour in one direction, the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), and to support a Bill introduced by a north-west London neighbour in another direction, my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck).
When we consider legislation, there is usually a sophisticated lobbying operation through Change.org and 38 Degrees spamming us with lots of emails, but on this Bill I have been contacted by a far wider range of people. In fact, every Friday at my surgery—I will hold my surgery after I finish here today—people come before me to ask, knowingly or unknowingly, for this legislation.
In September 2017 my office went over the 20,000 mark of individual cases processed since 2015, and a large number of those cases are housing issues. People come and show me on their phone pictures of damp problems that are too big to be dealt with by buying a spray, and “Bang! And the dirt is gone.” It is a bigger problem when the ceiling is caving in. There are people living in properties with rodent infestations, and their children cannot sleep at night because of the gnawing.
There are a multitude of cases, and I am getting a strange sense of déjà vu because in 2015 one of the first debates I spoke in was on my hon. Friend’s Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Bill. That Bill was talked out by Conservative Members, which is why some Opposition Members were getting jittery when the hon. Member for Harrow East was being a bit loquacious. We are relieved to hear that he was not trying to talk out the Bill. It is not a good look for a modern Conservative party to oppose homes fit for human habitation, and I am glad it has seen the error of its ways and will be supporting the Bill today.
I will be brief because I do not want to play the same game and talk out the Bill. The gaps that have led to this Bill, such as the difficulty of enforcement, have already been mentioned, but I draw attention to fire safety, which is not addressed in existing legislation. My hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North and I have the A40 between our constituencies, and at the side of the A40 is Grenfell Tower, which I went past yesterday. Anyone living in Ealing who goes to central London by road passes Grenfell Tower, which is a burned carcase on the skyline of one of our nation’s richest boroughs.
Our nation used to be the world’s fifth largest economy—post-Brexit, I think it is now the sixth largest, which is another story that I will not go into now—and the fact is that people were burned alive in their homes because people pooh-poohed the idea of regulation and batted away the idea of health and safety as meddlesome and troubling. What happened is the logical extension of that, and it is something that shames our nation.
My hon. Friend mentioned the powerful groups that are backing her Bill, including the Law Society, the National Housing Federation, the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health, and Shelter. Fifty-one years ago, Shelter’s film “Cathy Come Home” shocked the nation, and Grenfell has shocked the nation a second time.
As an Opposition Member, I am into holding the Government to account, and this Bill holds landlords to account where standards are not met. As the chair of the new all-party parliamentary group on single-parent families—Members do not have to be a single parent to be in our group, so a quick plug—I am duty-bound to point out that the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s figures show that single parents are more likely to live in substandard accommodation and poverty than any other type of family, a rate of 20% compared with a national average of 7%. The English housing survey shows that people in poverty are far more likely to live in hazardous homes than those who are not in poverty, which is why this Bill is needed.
I am pleased to see the Government’s change of heart. Last time such a proposal came before the House, the hon. Member for Nuneaton (Mr Jones), who is now a Conservative party vice-chair and is no longer a Minister in the Department, scandalously said that the proposals of my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North, and in fact all the Labour party’s proposals on things such as landlord licensing—I am pleased my council, the London Borough of Ealing, has a register of landlords—will
“result in unnecessary regulation and cost to landlords, which will deter further investment and push up rents for tenants.”—[Official Report, 12 January 2016; Vol. 604, c. 785.]
The new Prime Minister talked on the steps of Downing Street about burning injustices, and I am glad the Government will put their money where their mouth is and back this Bill, which I hope will be a staging post for a Government after the next general election that is for the many, not the few.
Luke Hall (Thornbury and Yate) (Con)
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate and to follow some fantastic and informative contributions from both sides of the House. I too will be brief, because I know a number of Members wish to contribute. I start by welcoming the Minister to her place and by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) on all his work on his Homelessness Reduction Act 2017. I congratulate the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) on her cross-party work over a number of years to ensure the Bill can be supported. I rise with the intention of supporting the Bill today.
The Bill will grant tenants the right to take action in the courts against landlords who fail to ensure that their property is fit for human habitation, and a number of colleagues in the House today will identify with and recognise some of the stories and examples that have already been raised, especially by the hon. Lady. We have all seen the damp and the lack of proper drainage and water in some properties, and I thank her on behalf of a number of constituents in Thornbury and Yate for raising this matter.
I also pay tribute to the citizens advice bureau in south Gloucestershire and South Gloucestershire Council for all their work and for the thoughts they provided ahead of this debate. It is clear that the current system needs updating. If a tenant is living in an unfit property, the housing health and safety rating system allows local authorities to assess whether the property contains serious risks to the individuals living there, and where it does, the local authority requires the landlord to reduce or, ideally, remove the risk.
The upshot is that an offence is committed only when a landlord fails to comply with the enforcement notice, and the upshot of that is that tenants have to rely on the local authority to take action on hazardous properties, and are unable to do so themselves. I welcome that the Bill is righting that wrong across all sectors by putting an obligation on landlords to keep their property in good condition.
As has been pointed out, there are already statutory obligations on most landlords to keep in repair the structure and exterior of their properties, and a number of other factors. However, provisions requiring landlords to ensure their properties are fit for habitation have realistically ceased to have any effect—that has been explained much better than I could by the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts).
Where a landlord fails to maintain a property so it is fit for habitation—the Bill’s definition of which will include freedom from damp, proper ventilation, proper water supply and drainage, and a number of other factors that everyone here would take for granted in our own lives—the Bill empowers tenants to take action themselves in the courts, giving tenants the ability to hold landlords to account where there has been a failing and allowing tenants to apply for an injunction.
Antoinette Sandbach
Does my hon. Friend agree that the fact tenants will be able to receive damages is a huge improvement, particularly because living in substandard accommodation, such as accommodation with mould or damp, can be incredibly depressing and can have an effect on people’s mental health? The punitive element of damages will make a real difference to enforcement, and hopefully lawyers will enforce tenants’ rights through no win, no fee cases.
Luke Hall
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. This Bill not only gives the power to hold landlords to account by making them carry out the works; it also gives the power to instruct compensation, which is a real strength.
The Bill achieves all that while still being proportionate. It is not overly burdensome on landlords because of the simple principle that it should not increase costs or create cumbersome work for the vast majority of landlords who are already providing a good service and safe, good-quality accommodation to their tenants. The Bill will push landlords to act proactively, and I hope it will create a ripple effect to create more of a safety and people-first culture in the industry.
The Bill also seeks to protect landlords from potentially spurious claims by ensuring that landlords are not liable if the property is not being used for the purpose for which it has been let. Landlords will not be responsible for repairing items that the tenant may remove from the property—essentially the tenant’s own property. Just this morning, I was contacted by a landlord in my constituency, who welcomes this Bill because it is not seen as a threat; it is actually supporting the industry by enhancing the reputation of the vast majority of landlords.
I will conclude, as I know a number of Members wish to speak. This Bill empowers tenants, protects landlords and will drive up standards across both sectors. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Westminster North for bringing it forward and look forward to supporting it today.
Sandy Martin (Ipswich) (Lab)
I wish to pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) for introducing this Bill and to my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) for the debate we had in Westminster Hall yesterday afternoon on supported housing. Although that was clearly not on exactly the same issue, many of the tenants we are talking about in this Bill are very vulnerable people and clearly there is a benefit to society in enabling the maximum number of people possible to lead independent lives. Some of the people who are not currently able to gain redress for inadequate housing run the risk of ending up either in supported housing or in hospital.
Just last weekend, I called on a couple who invited me into their flat to show me the mould that had grown all around their bathroom, under the window in their sitting room and even in the bedroom. This couple live in a council flat in Ipswich, so I was able to pass on their details to the local councillors in the strong expectation that something will be done to rectify the situation. Of course, the council does not always get things right. I believe Ipswich Borough housing is an exemplar of good practice, but even good landlords get things wrong sometimes. That is why it is so important that this Bill will apply to local authority housing properties, in the same way it does to private rented accommodation. Indeed, in some ways, it impacts more on those public sector tenants who need its help than it does on private sector tenants, because whereas a private sector tenant might hold out some hope that they could persuade the local council to act legally on their behalf, a council is not going to take out a legal case against itself.
One would hope that accountable local authorities would take their responsibilities to their tenants seriously enough to rectify any unfitness without the need for legal recourse, but unfortunately that is not always the case; in such cases, council tenants have no recourse to the law at all. This Bill will enable council tenants to take legal action against their landlord if no action is taken to put right any unfitness, just as it will for private sector tenants. I know that Conservative Members would not be willing to accept a Bill that unfairly favoured public sector housing over private sector housing, and rightly so, and this Bill does not do that. I could wish that, in the interests of fairness and a level playing field, Conservative Members might consider other measures for the private sector, and changes to the law and regulations for the local authority sector, but I think that is for another day.
Of course, although this Bill does afford a very important and necessary protection to council and housing association tenants, the majority of the problem exists in the private sector. In the east of England, 20% of private sector rented stock is in a state that poses a serious risk to its tenants’ health, as compared with just 8% of the council and housing association stock. In my 20 years as a local councillor I was constantly being contacted by distraught residents who showed me mouldy walls, dodgy banisters, awkward and cramped entrance halls, and rickety windows. I would raise these issues with council officers but in almost every case I was told there was no action the council could take with the private sector landlord on these matters. This Bill will empower the tenants themselves to demand safe and healthy homes from their landlords.
I do not believe that there will be any rash of prosecutions as a result of this Bill. I believe it will focus the minds of those landlords, both private and public, who do not currently pay quite enough attention to the welfare of their tenants and encourage them to provide the level of service that 75% of landlords are already providing. All good landlords should welcome this Bill. Why should the 75% who provide fit and proper housing be undercut by rogue operators or see their sector tarred with the brush of inadequate maintenance or shoddy flat conversions? I am delighted that this Bill is receiving support from across the House, and I look forward to it becoming law.
James Heappey (Wells) (Con)
I join colleagues from across the House in congratulating the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) on introducing the Bill and on her opening speech, which set out well why the Bill is so important. It addresses an important issue for not only some of my constituents, but constituents from across the country. I join colleagues from both sides of the House in recognising that the vast majority of private landlords are not rogue landlords and act responsibly, providing their tenants with excellent accommodation and service. However, the reality is that a small minority exploit some of the most vulnerable in our society and this Bill is hugely important in addressing that. I am therefore pleased the Government have decided to support the Bill today, and I add my support to that.
The Government have already made good progress. Since 2010, we have introduced powers for local authorities and, with those, provided £12 million to help authorities to identify and prosecute some of the worst offenders. I understand that 70,000 properties have been inspected, and that 5,000 landlords have had further action taken or even had a prosecution brought thereafter. The Government have also brought in measures to protect tenants against retaliatory evictions, and last year further measures were introduced to clamp down on rogue landlords, which could lead to penalties of up to £30,000. That is very welcome indeed. But clearly those measures alone, as the Government recognise, are not enough, and there is more—
Sir Edward Davey
The hon. Gentleman missed out one regulation from his list—the one on minimum energy efficiency standards in the private rented sector, which I brought to this House and which it passed, and which can be a huge attack on fuel poverty. Will he join me to ensure the Government go ahead and implement those from April this year, so that we can tackle fuel poverty and the worst examples of uninsulated homes in the private rented sector?
James Heappey
The right hon. Gentleman knows that he and I are fellow travellers in our enthusiasm for home energy efficiency, and indeed that was exactly what I was moving on to in my speech. I fear, however that he may need to stay for a little while during the statement in order to hear both parts of my thoughts on home energy efficiency, as I suspect an interruption may be imminent.
The Government have introduced some excellent measures thus far. There is much more to do, as they have recognised, and of course this Bill is therefore hugely important in addressing what remains to be done. As the right hon. Gentleman said, one key part in ensuring that homes are fit for habitation is how well insulated they are and how energy-efficient they are. Too many people live in fuel poverty, not necessarily because they have not got the money to heat their property, but because their property is so poorly insulated and the appliance within it so inefficient that the costs of heating that property are disproportionate to what they should be if all of those measures were adequately in place. We have to start to move on from an argument that all that matters in housing is providing it at the most affordable cost to rent and buy—equally important, surely, is what it costs to live in the property each month thereafter. In talking today about homes that are fit for human habitation, we should be very much focused on making sure that the houses people are living in are not only affordable to rent, but affordable to live in each month. That requires much higher expectations of landlords on the home energy efficiency measures and the insulation in their properties.
One Opposition Member, either in the second speech from that side of the House or in an intervention on the opening speech, gave a startling statistic about the cost each year to the NHS of people living in poorly insulated homes. I think the figure was £1.4 billion, which seems to me to be a good reason why we should make better-insulated and more energy-efficient homes a higher priority, so that people can not only live in comfort but afford to live in their home.
I see that you are on the edge of your seat, Mr Speaker, so I shall draw my remarks to a close and let other business proceed.
Mr Speaker
That is extraordinarily considerate, and characteristically so of the hon. Gentleman, in time for the statement by the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice.
Proceedings interrupted (Standing Order No. 11(4)).
Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation and Liability for Housing Standards) Bill
Wednesday 20th June 2018
(5 years, 10 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 20 June 2018 - (20 Jun 2018)
The Chair
Welcome to the Public Bill Committee on the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation and Liability for Housing Standards) Bill. Before we begin, I have a few preliminary announcements. Please switch electronic devices to silent. Teas and coffees are not allowed during sittings.
Clause 1
Fitness for human habitation
Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)
I beg to move amendment 1, in clause 1, page 1, line 2, at end insert—
“( ) In section 8 (implied terms as to fitness for human habitation)—
(a) in the heading, after ‘habitation’ insert ‘: Wales’;
(b) in subsection (1), after ‘house’, in the first place it occurs, insert ‘in Wales’.”
This amendment would ensure that the existing section 8 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 (which imposes an implied covenant as to fitness for human habitation but only in relation to leases falling within certain rent limits) will continue to apply so far as relating to Wales. The substituted section 8 introduced by the Bill, which imposes the new implied covenant in relation to England, will be re-numbered as section 9A (see Amendment 2).
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 2, in clause 1, page 1, line 3, leave out from beginning to “Fitness” in line 4 and insert—
“( ) After section 9 (application of section 8 to certain houses occupied by agricultural workers) insert—
‘9A ’”.
This amendment is consequential on Amendment 1.
Amendment 8, in clause 1, page 3, line 45, leave out
“and Liability for Housing Standards”.
This amendment is consequential on Amendment 15.
Amendment 9, in clause 1, page 4, line 2, at end insert—
“9C Application of section 9A to certain dwellings occupied by agricultural workers
(1) This section applies where under a contract of employment of a worker employed in agriculture—
(a) the provision of a dwelling for the worker’s occupation forms part of the worker’s remuneration, and
(b) the provisions of section 9A (implied term as to fitness for human habitation) are inapplicable by reason only of the dwelling not being let to the worker.
(2) There is implied as part of the contract of employment (in spite of any stipulation to the contrary) a term having the same effect as the covenant that would be implied by section 9A if the dwelling were let by a lease to which that section applies.
(3) The provisions of section 9A apply accordingly—
(a) with the substitution of ‘employer’ and ‘employee’ for ‘lessor’ and ‘lessee’, and
(b) with such other modifications as may be necessary.
(4) This section does not affect—
(a) any obligation of a person other than the employer to repair a dwelling to which the covenant implied by section 9A applies by virtue of this section, or
(b) any remedy for enforcing such an obligation.”
This amendment, which replicates section 9 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 in relation to the new implied covenant, is consequential on Amendments 1 and 2.
Amendment 10, in clause 1, page 4, line 3, leave out subsection (3).
This amendment is consequential on Amendments 1 and 2.
Amendment 11, in clause 1, page 4, line 11, leave out sub-paragraph (i) and insert—
“(i) after ‘house’, in both places where it occurs, insert ‘or dwelling’;”.
This amendment is consequential on Amendments 1 and 2.
Amendment 12, in clause 1, page 4, line 15, before “any” insert
“in relation to a dwelling in England,”.
This amendment is consequential on Amendments 1 and 2.
Amendment 13, in clause 1, page 4, line 27, after “habitation” insert “of dwellings in England”.
This amendment is consequential on Amendments 1 and 2.
Amendment 14, in clause 1, page 4, line 27, at end insert—
“( ) In section 302 of the Housing Act 1985 (management and repair of houses acquired under section 300 or retained under section 301), in paragraph (c)—
(a) for ‘section 8’ substitute ‘sections 8 and 9A’, and
(b) for ‘does’ substitute ‘do’.”
This amendment is consequential on Amendments 1 and 2
Amendment 15, in clause 2, page 4, line 32, leave out
“and Liability for Housing Standards”.
This amendment would change the short title of the Bill so as to leave out the reference to liability for housing standards (see the explanatory statement for Amendment 16).
Amendment 16, in title, line 3, leave out from “habitation;” to “and” in line 5.
This amendment would remove the second of the objects mentioned in the long title in relation to amendments of the Building Act 1984 making provision about liability for works not complying with the Building Regulations. There are no such amendments in the Bill so this part of the long title is unnecessary. As a consequence it is proposed that the short title of the Bill changes so as to leave out the reference to liability for housing standards (see Amendment 15).
Ms Buck
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Mr Wilson. I am very grateful to the Minister and to everyone who spoke on Second Reading and who has agreed to serve on this Committee.
The first group of amendments are broadly technical. With your permission, Mr Wilson, I will spend a minute or two setting them in the context of the Bill. I hope that that means we will not have to spend time later on clause stand part.
Clause 1 is, in effect, the Bill. It would amend the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 to ensure that homes are required to be in a condition that is fit for human habitation at the beginning of the tenancy and throughout the tenancy. Landlords are not currently required to ensure that the properties they rent out are free of potentially harmful hazards. There are statutory obligations on most landlords to keep in repair the structure and exterior of their properties and to repair installations for the supply of water, heating, sanitation and so forth. However, provisions requiring landlords to ensure that their properties are fit for human habitation have ceased to have effect over the past half century as a result of the annual rent limits, which have not been updated.
This short Bill would amend the 1985 Act to require that residential rented accommodation is provided and maintained in a state of fitness for human habitation. There is to be an implied covenant in a lease that a landlord must ensure that their property is fit at the beginning of the tenancy and for its duration. Where a landlord fails to do so, the tenant would have the right to take action in the courts for breach of contract on the grounds that the property is unfit for human habitation.
Currently, tenants must rely on local authority environmental health departments to enforce against bad landlords on their behalf. As I found in my research with Dr Stephen Battersby, and as Generation Rent confirmed this weekend in its research, enforcement is wholly inadequate to the task almost everywhere, and non-existent in some places. If the tenancy is with the local authority, the position is even more restricted, since environmental health departments cannot enforce against themselves.
Despite a long-term improvement in housing conditions over recent years, around 1 million properties remain in such a state that they represent a serious hazard to health. That affects about 3 million people who are overwhelmingly the most vulnerable and deserve our protection.
The Bill would do three things: it would ensure that any home has to be fit for the tenant to live in; it would update the fitness standards; and it would apply the legislation to local authority housing as well as to other forms of rented housing. It would do so by replacing section 8 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 in its entirety for England. The proposed new sections in the Bill set out the implied covenant regarding fitness, the various exemptions and the leases to which the implied covenant applies.
There are two groups of amendments to clause 1, the first being largely technical. Amendments 1 and 2 and 9 to 13 address the position of Wales. The Bill extends to tenancies in England only. Housing is a devolved matter and section 8 is a matter for the Welsh Government in Wales. Until any changes are made, sections 8 to 10 of the 1985 Act will continue to apply in Wales in their existing form. The amendments provide for that, while introducing the provisions of the Bill for England.
Amendments 8, 14 and 15 correct the short and long titles of the Bill to remove the wording that originally related to a contemplated clause addressing liability for failure to comply with building regulations. That clause was not brought forward on Second Reading, so the short and long titles should be amended to reflect that.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Mrs Heather Wheeler)
It is a pleasure, Mr Wilson, to serve under your chairmanship.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Westminster North on successfully taking the Bill through Second Reading and, more generally, on raising awareness about the importance of improving standards in the rented housing market. I look forward to working with her as the Bill proceeds through its many stages.
We are in favour of these technical amendments and I have nothing more to add.
Amendment 1 agreed to.
Amendment made: 2, in clause 1, page 1, line 3, leave out from beginning to “Fitness” in line 4 and insert—
“( ) After section 9 (application of section 8 to certain houses occupied by agricultural workers) insert—
‘9A ’”.—(Ms Buck.)
This amendment is consequential on Amendment 1.
Ms Buck
I beg to move amendment 3, in clause 1, page 2, line 7, after “landlord” insert “or other third party”.
This amendment would ensure that a landlord will not be liable under the implied covenant as to fitness for human habitation in circumstances where the required remedial works require the consent of a third party if reasonable efforts to obtain the consent are made but the consent cannot be obtained.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 4, in clause 1, page 2, line 28, at end insert—
“( ) Where a lease to which this section applies of a dwelling in England forms part only of a building, the implied covenant has effect as if the reference to the dwelling in subsection (1) included a reference to any common parts of the building in which the lessor has an estate or interest.”
This amendment would extend the implied covenant as to fitness for human habitation in cases where the dwelling forms a part of a building to any of the building’s common parts in which the landlord has an estate or interest.
Amendment 5, in clause 1, page 2, line 38, at end insert—
“‘common parts’ has the meaning given by section 60(1) of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1987;”.
This amendment is consequential on Amendment 4.
Amendment 6, in clause 1, page 3, line 7, after “(4)” insert “, (4A)”.
This amendment is consequential on Amendment 7.
Amendment 7, in clause 1, page 3, line 20, at end insert—
“(4A) Section 9A applies to a periodic or secure tenancy that comes into existence after the commencement date on expiry of a term of a lease granted before that date.”
This amendment would ensure that the implied covenant as to fitness for human habitation will apply to a periodic or secure tenancy that comes into existence after the date on which the Bill comes into force in a case where the tenancy arises out of a fixed term tenancy granted before that date.
Ms Buck
Since Second Reading, I am very pleased to say that, with the co-operation of the Minister and the help of officials, we have been able to bring forward a planned amendment to extend the provisions of the Bill to common parts, which I will briefly explain.
Where a dwelling is part of a larger building—a room, for example, in a home in multiple occupation, a flat in a purpose-built block or a house that has been converted into flats—amendment 4 would extend the implied covenant of fitness, so that the whole dwelling would be fit for habitation, including any part of the building in which the landlord has an estate or an interest. That would include, for example, the outside walls and roof of a block of flats, and the internal common parts where the landlord owns the block.
If the common parts are in such a state that they present a risk to the health or wellbeing of the occupiers of the dwelling, the landlord will be required to take remedial action, subject to any exceptions available under, for example, the main amendments that we have made to clause 1. Amendment 4 is necessary to give effect to the purpose of the Bill, because without it the implied covenant would be restricted to the extent only of the demised property—that is, the flats—and would not catch, for example, fire safety hazards in the common parts.
Amendment 3 would ensure that where a landlord requires the consent of a third party—such as a neighbour, a superior landlord, a mortgage company or a public authority, such as one responsible for giving listed building consent—to carry out the works required to remedy unfitness, the landlord would not be liable if they had made reasonable efforts to obtain that consent but it had not been given.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
This is an excellent Bill, which I think we all support strongly. One issue that has raised concerns is the definition of “fitness” and who decides whether a building is fit or not. Is it the individual who has the lease or is it the landlord? Who makes that decision? Is there agreement on that matter with the Government and the Minister?
Ms Buck
That matter has indeed been agreed with the Government and is included in the Bill. The Bill amends the fitness standards of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 and updates them to incorporate part of the Housing Act 2004, which is basically the housing health and safety rating system. It will therefore be a more comprehensive and updated list.
In some cases, the tenant would still require an assessment to be carried out by the local authority before taking legal action under the Bill. In that sense, this legislation is complementary to the work that local authorities already carry out. In some cases, the tenant will make private arrangements for that, and in some cases the unfitness will be so evident that the tenant will be able to take action themselves by gathering photographic and other evidence that will clearly imply that the property is unfit.
In incorporating the updated fitness standards, we have made sure that we have future-proofed them, because I am conscious that there is a debate about the housing health and safety rating system and the risk-based approach. I am sure that there will be an opportunity to look at that again and consider how it can best be revised. We want to ensure that the Bill can incorporate any changes of that nature in the future.
Heidi Allen (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)
The hon. Lady is very kindly clearing up a few items. I am just thinking back to when I owned a flat that was originally in a leasehold property—four flats in a big Victorian house. We collectively bought out the freehold together. Is she content that the wording is tight enough to cover situations where there are multiple parts of freehold owner within one building?
Ms Buck
The Bill relates to tenants, not leaseholders. It means that if a tenant is renting a property where there is more than one landlord, the provisions that I have just outlined will apply. The tenant will have recourse through their own landlord, but if the landlord is unable, after making reasonable efforts, to secure permission to make the changes required owing to other obligations, that constitutes an exemption under the legislation.
The wording of amendment 4 follows from the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, which imposes an equivalent liability on the landlord for section 11 repair obligations. The fitness requirements are therefore very much consistent with the repair obligations that are already well established.
The definition of common parts is taken from the Landlord and Tenant Act 1987 and refers to
“any building or part of a building”
including
“the structure and exterior of that building or part and any common facilities within it”.
The same definition is used in respect of section 11 of the 1985 Act. In effect, the amendments secure consistency between the main statutory repairing rights.
Amendments 6 and 7 clarify that the implied covenant applies to any periodic or secure tenancy arising after the commencement date at the end of the fixed-term tenancy granted before the commencement date. That would include a secure tenancy after, for example, an introductory tenancy, an assured tenancy after a fixed-term starter tenancy, or a statutory periodic tenancy arising at the end of a fixed-term assured shorthold tenancy.
Amendment 4 is the most substantial amendment relating to common parts. We were unable to table it on Second Reading, but I am extremely grateful for the work that has been done by officials working with Justin Bates and Giles Peaker, who were the two lawyers who helped to draft the original legislation. Working on the Bill over the last few months to ensure that it, as a whole, is fit for our purpose and to table these amendments has been an incredibly productive experience for us all. I hope that all hon. Members will support the amendments and clause 1.
Mrs Wheeler
I, too, congratulate everyone on the Bill team and all the lawyers who have been working on this matter. This is a sensible amendment that the Government accept and are very happy to support.
John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship on a Bill Committee for the first time, Mr Wilson. In the spirit in which my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North introduced the first group of amendments, perhaps I may deal with amendment 4 but also speak a little more widely. That may help you decide, Mr Wilson, whether we should have a clause stand part debate and how wide it should be.
I underline the Opposition’s continued strong support for the Bill. It sets out exactly the legal changes that Opposition Front Benchers tried to introduce two years ago into the Housing and Planning Bill. We were resisted at that time, which is why in January I warmly welcomed the Minister and the Conservative party’s change of approach. I also welcome the willingness of the Government to set up a second Committee to deal with the bottleneck that we had regarding private Members’ Bills that have reached this stage.
I pay tribute to the work that the Minister and her officials have done. They have not taken this private Member’s Bill and filleted it, as sometimes happens. On the contrary, on amendment 4 they have proved willing, as they suggested on Second Reading, to extend the basic provisions on the responsibility of landlords to make and keep fit for human habitation—not just to make repairs—to common parts as well. I strongly welcome that.
I, too, pay tribute to the advisers that my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North has had in Giles Peaker and Justin Bates. They are among the finest housing lawyers in the country. The Committee and the House are very fortunate to have their unremunerated commitment and expertise behind the Bill.
Above all, I cannot let this opportunity go by without paying tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North. This really is the Buck Bill. This is not a hand-out Bill from Government, or a Bill prepared by an outside organisation and thrust into the hands of a Member who has come out high in the private Member’s Bill ballot. My hon. Friend has worked for a long time to develop the content of, and the case for, the legislation. She has also worked for some time to build the coalition of support behind the measures, which includes the Residential Landlords Association and the National Landlords Association.
The Bill is a really important step forward. My hon. Friend has mentioned the scale of the desperately bad, indefensible housing that too many people, as tenants, have to put up with across the country. You will be familiar with that, Mr Wilson, from many cases in your own part of the north-east. The provisions in the Bill are long overdue.
Finally, I say gently to the Minister that I am so glad that the Government have shifted their view and accepted, in this small way, the need to regulate more strongly a market that the Prime Minister herself described as “broken”. I hope it will be a first step towards some of the other changes that are clearly necessary, such as longer tenancies, controls on rents and greater licensing of private landlords. Will the Minister give us an indication of when mandatory electrical safety checks will see the light of day, given that they are already part of legislation? They would be a great complement to the provisions that my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North is leading on for us today.
Mrs Wheeler
I have nothing further to add, other than to say that we support the amendment.
Amendment 3 agreed to.
Amendments made: 4, in clause 1, page 2, line 28, at end insert—
“( ) Where a lease to which this section applies of a dwelling in England forms part only of a building, the implied covenant has effect as if the reference to the dwelling in subsection (1) included a reference to any common parts of the building in which the lessor has an estate or interest.”
This amendment would extend the implied covenant as to fitness for human habitation in cases where the dwelling forms a part of a building to any of the building’s common parts in which the landlord has an estate or interest.
Amendment 5, in clause 1, page 2, line 38, at end insert—
“‘common parts’ has the meaning given by section 60(1) of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1987;”.
This amendment is consequential on Amendment 4.
Amendment 6, in clause 1, page 3, line 7, after “(4)” insert “, (4A)”.
This amendment is consequential on Amendment 7.
Amendment 7, in clause 1, page 3, line 20, at end insert—
“(4A) Section 9A applies to a periodic or secure tenancy that comes into existence after the commencement date on expiry of a term of a lease granted before that date.”
This amendment would ensure that the implied covenant as to fitness for human habitation will apply to a periodic or secure tenancy that comes into existence after the date on which the Bill comes into force in a case where the tenancy arises out of a fixed term tenancy granted before that date.
Amendment 8, in clause 1, page 3, line 45, leave out
“and Liability for Housing Standards”.
This amendment is consequential on Amendment 15.
Amendment 9, in clause 1, page 4, line 2, at end insert—
“9C Application of section 9A to certain dwellings occupied by agricultural workers
(1) This section applies where under a contract of employment of a worker employed in agriculture—
(a) the provision of a dwelling for the worker’s occupation forms part of the worker’s remuneration, and
(b) the provisions of section 9A (implied term as to fitness for human habitation) are inapplicable by reason only of the dwelling not being let to the worker.
(2) There is implied as part of the contract of employment (in spite of any stipulation to the contrary) a term having the same effect as the covenant that would be implied by section 9A if the dwelling were let by a lease to which that section applies.
(3) The provisions of section 9A apply accordingly—
(a) with the substitution of ‘employer’ and ‘employee’ for ‘lessor’ and ‘lessee’, and
(b) with such other modifications as may be necessary.
(4) This section does not affect—
(a) any obligation of a person other than the employer to repair a dwelling to which the covenant implied by section 9A applies by virtue of this section, or
(b) any remedy for enforcing such an obligation.”
This amendment, which replicates section 9 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 in relation to the new implied covenant, is consequential on Amendments 1 and 2.
Amendment 10, in clause 1, page 4, line 3, leave out subsection (3).
This amendment is consequential on Amendments 1 and 2.
Amendment 11, in clause 1, page 4, line 11, leave out sub-paragraph (i) and insert—
“(i) after ‘house’, in both places where it occurs, insert ‘or dwelling’;”.
This amendment is consequential on Amendments 1 and 2.
Amendment 12, in clause 1, page 4, line 15, before “any” insert
“in relation to a dwelling in England,”.
This amendment is consequential on Amendments 1 and 2.
Amendment 13, in clause 1, page 4, line 27, after “habitation” insert “of dwellings in England”.
This amendment is consequential on Amendments 1 and 2.
Amendment 14, in clause 1, page 4, line 27, at end insert—
“( ) In section 302 of the Housing Act 1985 (management and repair of houses acquired under section 300 or retained under section 301), in paragraph (c)—
(a) for ‘section 8’ substitute ‘sections 8 and 9A’, and
(b) for ‘does’ substitute ‘do’.”—(Ms Buck.)
This amendment is consequential on Amendments 1 and 2.
Question proposed, That the clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill.
Ms Buck
We have had a brief discussion of the amendments in the context of clause 1, so I do not wish to detain the Committee long. Clause 1 is the substance of this short Bill. We had a good debate on Second Reading in which virtually everyone on the Committee today participated.
I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne for his kind words. The Bill has caught the moment in terms of housing standards. Although there has been an improvement in the quality of the housing stock over decades, millions of people still remain in unfit housing, including many children. They are often the families and individuals who have the least choice in their housing. They are people with disabilities and long-term health problems, and people on very low incomes. Although a local authority has an important role to play in enforcing behaviour, it is essential that those people have a direct means of redress against the worst landlords.
As my right hon. Friend said, this is just one of many different measures that we would like to see brought forward; the Government have brought some forward and there are other measures we would like to see that would strengthen the role of tenants. We are conducting our business at the same time as the Grenfell inquiry into the worst residential fire in modern British history is going on, and we are reminded of the critical importance of listening to tenants’ concerns. The Bill is one of the ways in which we can reflect those concerns.
Mrs Wheeler
I am happy to support the clause.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 1, as amended, accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 2
Extent, commencement and short title
Amendment made: 15, in clause 2, page 4, line 32, leave out
“and Liability for Housing Standards”.—(Ms Buck.)
This amendment would change the short title of the Bill so as to leave out the reference to liability for housing standards (see the explanatory statement for Amendment 16).
Question proposed, That the clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill.
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Wilson. I rise to add my congratulations and thanks to my hon. Friend, who has not only championed the Bill but, as the MP for Westminster North, has championed the rights of private tenants over a long period.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Mr Wilson. I warmly congratulate the hon. Member for Westminster North, and I echo what others have said about her hard work, much of it behind the scenes.
I simply want to add how extraordinary it is that landlords have no legal obligations to their tenants to put or keep the property in a condition fit for habitation. Like every member of the Committee, I have, over my eight years as the Member for Brighton, Pavilion, seen literally hundreds, if not thousands, of cases of people living in the most awful conditions. In my experience, it is the most disadvantaged people who live in the worst and most dangerous rented housing. I want to put on record my pleasure at the progress of the Bill. I look forward to seeing it reach the statute book very soon.
Finally, I echo the words of the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne on the next challenge, which I agree is about controls on rent. I hope that one day we will get to that as well.
Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North for her dogged determination in introducing the Bill.
Some 43% of people in Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport, live in the private rented sector. We are one of the areas in the south-west with the highest concentration of people in the private rented sector, and there are still far too many examples of really poor standards. In particular, people have been really scared about complaining. I wonder whether my hon. Friend, or perhaps the Minister, could briefly explain what education and empowerment can accompany the Bill, once it passes into law—assuming, as I hope, that it will—to help people who are living in substandard accommodation but do not complain about it for fear of being evicted.
John Healey
We are debating clause 2 stand part. Clause 2(2), which I am glad to see survived the joint work with the Department, states:
“This Act comes into force at the end of the period of three months beginning with the day on which it is passed.”
The Minister and her team will be not only working on the content of the Bill, but planning and anticipating its implementation. When does she expect Royal Assent, and therefore the Act to come into force?
Bob Blackman
I echo the appreciation and thanks expressed to the hon. Member for Westminster North for introducing the Bill. She tabled an amendment to my private Member’s Bill that helped vulnerable people being offered accommodation by local authorities, to ensure that their homes were fit for habitation. That was a complementary move, and I strongly support today’s Bill.
I have a few questions for the Minister, which I will ask now rather than intervening when she rises to speak. My first question complements what the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport said. One concern is that tenants who complain of the poor standard of the accommodation in which they live may be subject to retaliatory evictions. Clearly the Government must take action on that, or the teeth of the Bill will be irrelevant. Will the Minister ensure that the Government consider how to prevent retaliatory evictions? Will she also look at the issue of the guidance that the Department gives local authorities on enforcement? That is another key aspect of the Bill.
Thirdly, will the Minister look at the concerns that have been raised by a number of tenants’ groups and representatives of organisations that are looking at the degree of tolerance of homes that are unfit? I raised with the hon. Member for Westminster North the concern of who defines fitness. It is clear when a place is terribly bad, but electrical dangers can be unseen and the tenant may not have the knowledge to be aware of them. How is that to be determined? It is part and parcel of what we want to do to ensure that tenants are safe and clear.
While I am on my feet, I draw hon. Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
I do not want to detain the Committee for long, but I add my congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North. We have been in the House together for 21 years and she has never failed to battle on behalf of tenants, including and people vulnerable to being exploited by ruthless landlords. I want to put on record my respect for her dogged determination over so many years. In doing so, I echo the comments of other hon. Members on enforcement and the need to ensure that what is in the Bill is followed through.
Retaliatory evictions by ruthless landlords have been mentioned. That happened to a constituent of mine, which resulted in her being deemed by the local authority to have made herself intentionally homeless. That was a double whammy for that person. The local authority does not have the resources to investigate in depth to get to the bottom of why someone has been evicted.
If the words on the Bill’s pages are to have any meaning for some of the most vulnerable of our constituents, following through and making the resources available to enforce them is essential. I conclude by again congratulating my hon. Friend.
Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)
For all those people who are cynical about MPs, the Bill stands out as a shining light. My hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North regards very seriously her role of doing casework and understanding the problems of her constituents in a built-up urban area where the demands for housing outstrip supply, and where landlords can behave as they choose.
We are all beginning to understand that our local authorities are either unable or unwilling to take action to resolve many of those problems. That is either because they do not have the finances to do so or because they are concerned that, if more private tenants are evicted by landlords, they have to take on the responsibility for rehousing them and are unable to do so.
This is a great Bill born out of a great place by a great campaigning MP, but our constituents and vulnerable tenants will be able to take action only if they have support. Once again, we will fall back on the great work of our local law centres and legal advice agencies, which are also experiencing great demand and difficulty. I would be grateful if the Government took on board what needs to be done to allow the words on the page to become reality and enable some of our most vulnerable constituents to take action against their landlords.
Mrs Wheeler
It seems appropriate to wrap up my comments here. It is great news that everybody on the Committee completely agrees with the Bill. In broader terms, everyone deserves a safe and decent place to live, regardless of tenure. The vast majority of landlords work hard to ensure that their tenants live in decent and properly maintained properties. The majority of tenants are satisfied with their home, but for a minority of tenants the picture is very different.
According to the English housing survey, the social rented sector contains about 250,000 properties out of 4 million-plus with at least one serious hazard. The situation is worse in the private rented sector, where approximately 800,000 properties contains at least one serious hazard. It is unacceptable that anyone should have to live in a property with serious hazards, and we are determined to ensure that all landlords either meet their obligations or are forced to leave the sector. Local authorities have strong and effective powers to require landlords to carry out improvement works, and we expect them to be used.
We recently introduced a range of additional powers through the Housing and Planning Act 2016. Those powers include the abilities to impose a civil penalty of up to £30,000 and to ban the most serious and prolific offenders, potentially for life. We know that many local authorities are already making good use of the powers. Torbay Council, for example, has used revenue from civil penalties to fund an extra enforcement officer for its housing team. There is more to do, however. That is why the Government strongly support the Bill, which will help drive up standards in rented homes and ensure tenants get a fair deal.
The Bill will not introduce new obligations on landlords. They can already be required by their local authority to rectify any serious hazards in their property. The Bill empowers tenants to hold their landlord to account in the courts, rather than having to rely on the local authority to take enforcement action on their behalf.
Andy Slaughter
Obviously, that is what the Bill is about. Does the Minister agree that the Government also have a role to play, either by ensuring that tenants have the resources to be able to enforce their rights, as several hon. Members have said, or by looking at how local authorities and others use the private rented sector? We have seen accommodation procured that is not fit for purpose, even with the Grenfell replacement accommodation. There has been outsourcing. In the time that I have been involved with this issue, we have gone from people in bad private rented accommodation waiting to go into council flats to people who would have expected to go into council flats effectively being put into the private rented sector in substandard accommodation. I hope the Government will also look at that as part of this exercise.
Mrs Wheeler
Indeed. Interestingly, when a tenant might take a landlord to court because of a hazard, we know that 75% of those hazards are visible, such as uneven floor surfaces, excess cold or damp and so on. Where a tenant has concerns, they should ask the local authority to inspect and determine what level of hazard it is. Bodies such as Citizens Advice and Shelter can also give advice on such matters.
Siobhain McDonagh
Is the Minister aware of how many London boroughs have capital funds to do works in default where such problems in the private rented sector are very high?
Mrs Wheeler
That is exactly why we have got the fines of up to £30,000 that can be levied. As I have explained, Torbay Council has been on the front foot. It has now employed another person because of the fines it has levied and received. I think that answers the hon. Lady’s question. Councils need to step up.
It was clear on Second Reading that there is wide cross-party support for the Bill and general agreement that we need to act now to require landlords to proactively ensure that their properties are free from hazards at the outset. Not to do so would be unfair on good landlords who are in the majority and who do keep their properties properly maintained. It would also mean that those tenants living in a property with serious hazards would be unable to hold their landlord to account.
It is important that tenants clearly understand their rights and know what to do if something goes wrong. Subject to the Bill successfully receiving Royal Assent—we hope it will be in spring 2019, to answer the question of the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne—we will produce a short guidance document for tenants that will explain their rights under the legislation and how to represent themselves in court, should that prove necessary. The guidance will complement the “how to” series of guides produced by my Department, which have recently been revised and expanded. The revised versions will be published shortly. Tenants are already protected from retaliatory evictions where the local authority has confirmed that there is a legitimate complaint regarding a hazard.
The Bill sits very well with the range of initiatives that the Government have taken to improve conditions in the private rented sector. We have introduced fines of up to £30,000 for a range of housing offences. We also introduced legislation allowing tenants and local authorities to reclaim up to 12 months’ rent for offences such as failing to comply with an improvement notice or a prohibition order. We have also introduced banning orders, potentially for life, preventing the worst landlords from renting out property. We are not resting on our laurels, however; we know there is still much more to do to drive up standards. That is why we are legislating to ban letting agent fees for tenants, thereby reducing costs and improving affordability.
Ms Buck
I am not going to even acknowledge that.
I am grateful to the Minister for her positive comments, and I thank all Members who have made a contribution this morning. I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Hammersmith, for Eltham and for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport, and the hon. Members for Harrow East and for Brighton, Pavilion.
I agree with everything that Opposition Members have said regarding the need for further support. I am concerned, even with the provisions in the Bill, that local authority finances are such that enforcement capacity is stretched. I have seen that myself through the work I have done on environmental health staffing. I do not think that the Bill in any way replaces the need for well-funded local authorities, or for the work that they do on enforcement and supporting tenants. It is a genuine problem. I also agree that there is a need for further investment in legal aid regarding housing, and for early advice. I am grateful to the Minister, who on Second Reading confirmed that legal aid would be available in cases of serious hazard under the Bill, as it is in cases of serious disrepair. However, that is clearly not enough; we know that more needs to be done.
In his short contribution, the hon. Member for Harrow East made a further reference to the issue of fitness. When I responded to him earlier, it was in the context of the definition of fitness, but ultimately—and this is the whole point of the Bill—it will be for the courts to decide on the issue of fitness, on the basis of the evidence that is brought forward. That is the purpose of the Bill, and although there is far more to be done and no one piece of legislation provides an answer to all problems, I believe that it will give tenants an important new power and right. As I have said on many occasions, the measure of success is not how often the new legal power is used, but whether landlords respond to its introduction and recognise that they cannot get away with appalling standards.
Opposition Members have referred to the vulnerability of tenants, particularly homeless tenants in temporary accommodation—one of the passions of my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden, who has done so much work on that issue, and of my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith. In addition to giving tenants the rights and powers that the Bill provides and, indeed, the other measures that the Minister and the Government are bringing forward, we must recognise that ultimately, if tenants have no choice but to accept their current accommodation because they face restrictions—particularly restrictions on their capacity to afford to find somewhere else to live—they are more vulnerable, regardless of what the retaliatory eviction powers are and how they can draw upon those. Many people will put up with appalling conditions because they simply do not think that they are going to find another property that is suitable for them—for example, if they are working or if their children are in school. That wider context is way outside of the scope of the Bill, but it is a reality.
We have ranged slightly widely on clause 2, Mr Wilson—I am grateful for your tolerance—but we are drawing to a close. I very much thank the Bill team, and I thank Giles Peaker and Justin Bates, without whom none of this would have been possible. I commend clause 2 to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 2, as amended, accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Title
Amendment made: 16, in title, line 3, leave out from “habitation;” to “and” in line 5.—(Ms Buck.)
This amendment would remove the second of the objects mentioned in the long title in relation to amendments of the Building Act 1984 making provision about liability for works not complying with the Building Regulations. There are no such amendments in the Bill so this part of the long title is unnecessary. As a consequence it is proposed that the short title of the Bill changes so as to leave out the reference to liability for housing standards (see Amendment 15).
Bill, as amended, to be reported.
Homes (Fitness for Habitation) Bill
Friday 26th October 2018
(5 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 20 June 2018 - (20 Jun 2018)
Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
I am very grateful for the cross-party support for this Bill. I will not seek to detain the House, as we have other business, but I will take a few minutes to explain why the Bill is important and should continue its passage through the House.
Living in a cold, damp or unsafe home is hell. It damages people’s physical and mental wellbeing, erodes the income of the poorest households and impacts on children’s education. The most vulnerable tenants are those most at risk of being trapped in substandard accommodation, and they are often the least able to withstand the damage such conditions do, or to fight their corner unaided.
The emails that flow in from constituents—and, indeed, many others, including the hundreds of people who took part in the parliamentary digital involvement exercise before the Second Reading debate—about bad housing conditions make truly heart-rending reading. I am sure that everyone in this House will have received similar representations.
In one of the recent cases that have come to me, a constituent wrote:
“My flat has metal casement windows around 50 years old that were installed when they converted the houses into flats…My kitchen window leaks when it rains. I have video evidence catching water in a bowl as it pours in…The weather is changing into autumn now and I’m worried for my health…it’s difficult to afford to heat my home. I am on benefits so have limited funds. The windows let in a lot of draught so I get very cold in winter. I recently had a level access shower fitted after having spinal fusion surgery last year but in the winter the condensation from the shower forms ice inside the window and it’s freezing in there, everything is damp.”
Another wrote:
“I am tenant of a privately rented accommodation with my partner and two kids…It’s been a struggle to get us out of it as it is not conducive to live in especially for my son who has chronic lung disease, autism, asthma…He was also previously in a coma at St. Mary’s hospital due to a virus caused by excessive cold. The mould and damp in the house turns our clothing, toothbrushes and cups black. I cannot begin to explain how many hospital visits we have had with the ambulance coming sometimes twice a day as my son’s breathing deteriorated. His GP also wrote them explaining his medical condition and this was also ignored.”
Another wrote:
“Hope all is well. I have been complaining about my freezing cold smelly damp mouldy flat for numerous years. The condensation brings in the cold air from outside that makes my flat extremely freezing cold.
I was told to leave my heating on low…I cannot afford to leave the heating on constantly low…in the winter months and when it is really cold I go without food to put the heating on and to try and stay warm. So that has not solved the problem…The cold aches my bones and muscles. The damp and mould affects my asthma. As a type 1 diabetic and asthmatic I am constantly ill living in this flat…I got pneumonia and blood poisoning…I guess the way they are progressing it will be done the day I am being removed from this flat in a coffin.”
Those are the kinds of cases that come to all of us.
Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for her speech and, indeed, for the entire Bill, which I genuinely believe will make a massive difference. Will she join me in congratulating Newham Council, which has been a pioneer in taking on bad landlords and making sure that our citizens have homes that are fit for habitation?
Ms Buck
I am grateful for that intervention and I will happily congratulate Newham Council, because although it has a problem with its housing stock, it has led the charge on local enforcement. I am happy to give it credit for doing that.
Many landlords take their responsibilities seriously, but still 1 million households across the private and social sectors are forced to endure conditions that harm them or pose a serious risk of harm. According to the latest English housing survey, 15% of private tenanted properties have category 1 hazards classed as a serious risk to the occupier’s health—that is 750,000 households —at least a third of which contain children. A further 250,000 socially tenanted properties have a category 1 hazard under the housing health and safety ratings system, which works out at about 6%.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. Does she agree that it is completely unacceptable that in my constituency families of four are living in a box bedroom with only a single mattress on the floor?
Ms Buck
I totally agree; overcrowding is a scandalous problem in our social housing, and it is often equated with some of the very poor standards people experience, with damp and condensation linked to overcrowding. These are tragic cases and we urgently need not only an expansion of social rented housing to enable people to escape these kinds of conditions, but the provisions in this Bill and other measures that the Government have introduced.
Landlords currently have no obligation to their tenants to put or keep a property in a condition fit for habitation. A requirement does exist to ensure the structure and facilities such as the heating, gas and water are in repair, but this does not cover issues such as fire safety, heating that is functioning but inadequate, or poor ventilation that can lead to the condensation and mould growth seen in the kind of cases I have outlined. A range of fitness issues seriously affect the wellbeing and safety of tenants and about which tenants can do nothing at all.
For private and housing association tenants, it is possible for the local authority to enforce fitness standards under the housing health and safety rating system, under the Housing Act 2004, but there is a huge degree of variability across councils in terms of inspection, the issuing of notices and enforcement rates. About 50% of councils have served none or only one Housing Act notice in the past year. One London council, Newham, which has an active enforcement policy, accounted for 50% of all notices served nationally and 70% of those served in London. A freedom of information inquiry by the Residential Landlords Association found an average of just 1.5 prosecutions per council, and my own freedom of information research found that enforcement action of any kind accounted for only 1% of the estimated number of category 1 hazards. That means there is a complete postcode lottery on the prospect of councils taking steps, with the real prospect being that the council will not do so.
For council tenants, the decent homes standard requires homes to be free from category 1 hazards, and considerable progress was made in improving the quality of housing stock, thanks to the decent homes initiative, but the 2004 Act and housing health and safety rating standards have little impact, as local councils cannot enforce against themselves. So council tenants have no way to enforce, or seek to have enforced, fitness standards, including fire safety, if their landlord does not do anything. The Bill enables all tenants, whether private or social, to take action on the same issues and standards as local authorities can.
Chuka Umunna (Streatham) (Lab)
May I shower a huge amount of congratulations on my hon. Friend, because this Bill will make an immediate difference in my constituency? For all the case examples she has described, we see exactly the same thing in my constituency. I am pleased the Government appear to be supporting the Bill. If this Bill passes, we need to make sure that tenants all know that they have this power she is proposing to give them and this ability to enforce their rights. Does she agree that it is important that if the Government are going to support this Bill, they make sure that everybody knows they will be empowered to do something beyond what the local authority can now do for them?
Ms Buck
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention and for his congratulations. I totally agree that in addition to the legislation we pass in this House it is crucial that we use all the tools of government communications to get a message out that people have rights, that they need to be able to exercise them, and that they need to know how and where they can go in order to do so. I am sure that the Minister will support that point.
This Bill will enable all tenants, whether private or social, to take action on the same issues and standards as local authorities, following recommendations made by the Law Commission and the Court of Appeal dating back some two decades. This is therefore very much a legislative updating whose time has come. The effect of the Bill will be that the tenant will be able to take action against the landlord to make them put right any problems or hazards that make their dwelling unfit, and the tenant could seek compensation when the landlord has not done so.
Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on introducing this important Bill. Many of us will have received representations from private landlords who are screaming about the impact of this Bill on their ability to make profit. Let us be absolutely clear: if someone cannot make profit by providing a clean and safe place for people to live, they should exit the game completely.
Ms Buck
I totally agree with my hon. Friend on that. It is also fair to say that the majority of good landlords are happy to endorse that view, because their reputation is dragged down by the behaviour of the rogue minority.
The Bill is not intended as a replacement for the work of local authorities but is complementary to it, enabling tenants to take action where the council has not done so or cannot do so. For all new tenancies after the Bill comes into force, it would make it a right to have a home that did not create a risk to the health and safety of its occupants. As the excellent House of Commons Library briefing on the Bill says:
“The Grenfell Tower fire has focused attention on housing standards in the social rented stock and also in privately owned blocks of flats.”
So I am also pleased to say that the Bill was amended in Committee, with the support of the Government, to extend the fitness obligation to the building within which the dwelling forms part. So the tenant of a flat, a room or part of a shared house will be able to enforce against defects, including fire risks, that threaten their health or wellbeing in their home, even if the defect is in another part of the building.
It has been marvellous to have secured Government backing for this Bill, even to the point of strengthening it. We have had support from across the spectrum. It has come from bodies ranging from the National Landlords Association and the Residential Landlords Association, to the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health—CIEH—the Association of Residential Letting Agents, Shelter, Generation Rent, the Law Society, Mind, the National Housing Federation, the Local Government Association, Citizens Advice and others.
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
I am delighted to say that the Government have now got behind the Bill, as that is very welcome. Does my hon. Friend agree that it would also be useful if they gave more security to private tenants, because that is necessary to ensure that they are not evicted as a result of reporting faults, and if they restored early legal advice for housing matters, because without that it is going to be difficult to enforce this?
Ms Buck
I totally agree with my hon. Friend on that. This Bill is one tool and there are many others we need to adopt to ensure that tenants have a full range of rights and, indeed, are protected against retaliatory eviction. That is outwith the scope of this Bill, but there is much more we will seek to do and will no doubt be pressing the Government to do, on matters ranging from security of tenure protection to the provision of legal aid and advice services
I have always believed that politics is a collective effort. For most of us, most of the time, what we do in here is part of a team effort. Although that can sometimes drift into tribalism, there is no shame in the fact that politics is not primarily about what we do as individuals. Private Members’ Bills are one of the few ways in which we, as individual Back-Bench MPs, can make a difference, but in truth this, too, has been a team effort. I am grateful to the Minister and to the officials, who have been brilliant; it has been a joy working with them on this Bill. I also thank all the MPs, from both sides of the House, who spoke on Second Reading, who served in Committee and who are here today to see us through Third Reading.
Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)
May I, too, congratulate the hon. Lady on introducing this important Bill? It has been a pleasure to serve on the Bill Committee. Does she agree that this is a shining example of the huge amounts that can be achieved when Back Benchers work with the Government?
Ms Buck
I do agree with that. In the end, what we want to do here is to make changes, and it is hard for individuals to do that without having that kind of support, including from the Government.
Information, help and lobbying came from all the organisations I have mentioned, and very much from Sam Lister at the Chartered Institute of Housing and Stephen Battersby, the former president of the CIEH. But none of this would have happened without the inspiration and commitment of Justin Bates and Giles Peaker, the housing lawyers who brought forward the concept of this Bill and have given their time and their considerable brains to it for the past three years. I can only offer my inadequate thanks to them for that effort, but I will say that if anyone can claim credit for securing this important step forward in the protection of tenants, it is them. With that, I conclude my remarks and commend this Bill to the House.
Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) and a privilege to be here to support the Bill. I speak as an accidental landlord myself: when my second wife and I got together 10 years ago, she was shrewd enough to want to hang on to the property that she had, just in case it did not work out, and 10 years later we are still renting out that property. I believe that we are excellent landlords, and that is because it makes financial sense and moral sense: if we maintain our property to a high standard, we will retain our tenant. There are, though, parts of the country where that is not the case—where demand outstrips supply. Some 1.2 million houses have been identified as non-decent. That is clearly appalling and I am delighted that the Bill will address it.
In October 2015, legislation was introduced putting an obligation on landlords to provide a smoke detector on each storey of a property and to provide a carbon monoxide detector if the property has solid-fuel-burning appliances, such as a wood-burning stove. I introduced a private Member’s Bill that would have made it an obligation for landlords to provide a carbon monoxide detector in all properties, socially and privately rented, in which any fuel is burned and carbon monoxide produced. That is an absolute necessity to ensure that all homes are fit for human habitation and do not present a danger to the occupants.
Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making some interesting points based on his experience in the social rented sector. Does he agree that no landlord should have any problems with the Bill and that we should be clear that it will create an additional power to help tenants, not replace the powers that councils have?
Eddie Hughes
When we consider how many properties are rented out, for both social and private purposes, it is important that they are all as safe as possible.
Unfortunately, when I became a Parliamentary Private Secretary in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, I had to step down from my position as chair of the board of Walsall Housing Group, a housing association with 20,000 properties in Walsall. I had been leaning very heavily on the association to get it to provide carbon monoxide detectors in its properties, and I believe it now does that for all its new build properties. I shall continue to try to influence the association to do that in its existing social rented properties.
I completely support and endorse all elements of the Bill and look forward to its becoming law.
Mr Speaker
The board is now sadly deprived of the hon. Gentleman’s expertise and commitment, but at least we have been able to enjoy his eloquence today.
Faisal Rashid (Warrington South) (Lab)
I am pleased to be here to support this vital Bill. I commend the hard work of my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck), to whom we all owe a debt of gratitude for her tireless work on this issue, without which we would not be considering the Bill today.
The Bill will make huge leaps in the strengthening of tenants’ rights by ensuring that they have the power to hold their landlords to account if appropriate standards are not being met. That is especially important in the age of generation rent, when the proportion of individuals and families living in the private-rental sector has doubled in the past decade and figures for individuals and families occupying properties in the social-rented sector continue to number in the millions.
Since I became an MP last year, I have been dismayed by the number of constituents who have contacted me with housing issues. Some of my constituents have been left without central heating for up to six months, and others have faced serious fly and rat infestations. By any reasonable account, these situations have made my constituents’ homes inhabitable, yet often they have been powerless to act. I am pleased that these issues are finally getting the attention they deserve, but it is utterly dreadful that it has taken a tragedy as serious as the Grenfell Tower fire to throw into sharp focus the issue of unsafe rented accommodation in this country. Grenfell serves as a harrowing reminder of the difficulties that tenants face in getting their voices heard, and it is right that we act to ensure that a tragedy like that never happens again.
It is simply wrong that in 2018 some 2.5 million to 3 million people are renting homes in which there is a
“serious and immediate risk to a person’s health and safety”,
as defined by the housing health and safety rating system. I am hopeful that with cross-party support the Bill will give a long overdue voice to those individuals and families.
For many years now, the Government have placed the duty of ensuring that a rented property is fit for habitation on local councils, while simultaneously slashing their budgets by unprecedented amounts and thereby preventing them from taking any meaningful action to fulfil their responsibilities in this policy area—and many others. This is simply not good enough on an issue as pivotal as the habitation of homes. I am hopeful that if the Bill is given its Third Reading today, tenants will be empowered, burdens will be lifted from over-stretched local authorities and the small number of rogue landlords who refuse to resolve issues that make their homes unfit for habitation will be forced to clean up their act.
Neil O'Brien (Harborough) (Con)
I wish to make a brief contribution, mainly to congratulate the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) on an excellent piece of incredibly important legislation, which I am glad to support.
Those of us have been following the #ventyourrent campaign initiated by Generation Rent on Twitter have seen incredible squalor in some parts of the private rented sector. Even this week, we have seen on the front page of The Guardian two days in a row incredible examples of problems with repeat offending slum landlords. There is clearly a big problem and I know that Ministers are thinking about it. The Bill, which I hope will be given its Third Reading today, is an important contribution to the empowering of tenants to help to clean up some of these problems. It will clearly not be the end of the story, and we need to think about enforcement and how we can enable it to pay for itself by fining and taking the property of repeat offending slum landlords, but it is a pleasure to support this important legislation today.
Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)
I rise to speak in favour of the Bill and to urge the Government to go further. I wish to point out just how serious the issue of poor-quality private rented accommodation is in my constituency and to show why urgent action is so sorely needed.
Just last week, I met a constituent who was desperate for help. She is a single mother who lives in damp terraced accommodation, with mould growing on the walls. She was desperate. Her son and daughter both have problems with their breathing. One of them has asthma and was seeing the doctor about it. She had asked the landlord for help, but he was unwilling or unable to make changes to the property and solve the damp problem. She is applying for a council house, but because of the severe shortage in places such as Reading and Woodley, she is unable to progress quickly up the list of those seeking homes. The woman’s plight explains the seriousness of the issue and why urgent action is needed.
In Reading, nearly a third of houses are in the private rented sector. There are many good landlords, but there are also many who do not provide a good service. Problems with damp, difficulties with landlords and high fees all make for deep-seated problems that affect thousands of local people. At the same time, as was mentioned earlier, councils have few powers to tackle rogue landlords and there are simply not enough good- quality private rented properties or council houses available in many parts of the country. I urge Ministers to take steps to address this serious problem by considering Labour amendments to the Bill and other related measures on the issues that affect the wider housing sector.
Several amendments to the Bill were proposed, and I am grateful to the Government for taking some of them on board. I hope that they will look again at one in particular. Earlier this year, I spoke about the potential loophole that allows landlords to charge for items such as lost keys. That could provide less scrupulous landlords with a loophole through which they could bypass the Bill’s intent. I urge the Government to look into the matter again.
Other changes that are needed include a much larger programme of council house building and wider measures to improve the planning and development sector.
I urge the Government to support Reading Borough Council’s bid for about 140 new council houses and ask them to go much further in considering the funds that are available for council house building. In my area, we could easily find families to fit into another 1,400 council properties, let alone the 140 that have been bid for.
Kevin Foster
I welcome the spirit of the hon. Gentleman’s speech. Does he agree that his local council may well benefit from the removal of the cap on borrowing to fund housing and therefore might be able to fund more of the council houses he is talking about?
Matt Rodda
I do welcome that. My council colleagues tell me that they are waiting for further details from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, and I look forward to Ministers being more amenable to local authorities on this matter.
To sum up, as time is pressing, poor-quality rented housing is a serious issue for many residents and urgent action is needed to address both the problem of rogue landlords and the problems in the wider housing market.
Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate and to give my support to what is a welcome and timely Bill. It is welcome that I am able to speak on this matter. While I was in the Department for Communities and Local Government, I would have been unable to do so, but now that I have the joy of being in the Cabinet Office I can, although I have to be careful not to go into some of the issues around Grenfell, given the ongoing inquiry for which the Cabinet Office is responsible.
It is welcome that the Bill has cross-party support today. In summing up, I know that the Minister will want to reflect on how the Government will take it forward and how they will publicise these rights, as was touched on earlier. A key point to make is that the Bill is about additional powers; it is not about replacing the role of local authorities. That clear message will have to be given through local authorities. I accept that the vast majority of them will act on that basis.
A tenant who makes a housing standards complaint should not just be told that there is now an opportunity to pursue it via a civil route; the Bill is about providing an opportunity to pursue complaints via a civil route in addition to the housing standards enforcement work of local authorities. It would be helpful if, in summing up, the Minister reflected on what promotion and engagement work might be done with local authorities to ensure that that is clear in their approach.
A landlord in my constituency came to see me after my speech on Second Reading, when I said that the Bill was absolutely needed because of the actions of a small number of people. They were concerned about the Bill. I said quite bluntly that if they were concerned about a standard that meant they had to maintain their property as fit for human habitation, they really were in the wrong place entirely. Being fit for human habitation is about the lowest standard one can imagine for a property. It covers basics, such as making sure that the heating is on, that there is not undue damp, that it is safe and that the windows are fixed. It really is not the highest of standards. It is therefore right that there is another way for tenants to enforce it.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes) said, most reasonable landlords will not fear the Bill at all; they have no reason to fear it. If people are maintaining a reasonable property, the Bill is utterly irrelevant to them. It will never have any impact on them; it will not change how they run their business; and it will not cost them any money. The only people who need worry are those who constantly ignore reasonable requests for repairs, those who have just about avoided prosecution on a couple of occasions because their actions did not quite come up to the criminal standard that is used for local authority offences and those who skimp at every opportunity. Those are the landlords who need to worry.
Landlords who are part of a quality assured system and who work closely with groups such as the Devon Landlords’ Association have absolutely nothing to worry about and will see absolutely no change to their business. As I said on Second Reading, the vast majority of landlords provide reasonable properties at a reasonable rent. Those who do not are the ones who will have to think about the implications of the Bill.
As the Bill covers civil matters, when they go to court they will be dealt with on the balance of probabilities, rather than against the criminal standard. Being able to enforce something as a civil matter gives a court slightly more leeway. When things are done to the criminal standard—beyond reasonable doubt—different evidential standards apply.
Eddie Hughes
With reference to recourse to the law, does my hon. Friend recognise that tenants who have complained about repairs are 50% more likely to be evicted?
Kevin Foster
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. He will realise that I have to face the House and am not deliberately turning my back on him as I reply. He is absolutely right that if someone makes a legitimate complaint to their local authority or pursues a case under the Bill, there must be clear actions to be taken if so-called revenge evictions take place.
I am conscious that that danger may vary between areas. In some parts of the country, a large amount of housing may be available at reasonable prices, although I accept that affordability is an issue across the country. However, in other places, particularly the area represented by the promoter of the Bill, the cost and availability of housing are huge issues. The threat of having to move out is much more significant in such places than somewhere where people could just move down the road. There is a need to tackle revenge evictions, because if revenge evictions are the result of the Bill, it will not be a success.
Again, the vast majority of landlords respond to complaints fairly and reasonably and will work with their tenant in their mutual interests. If the landlord has a long-standing tenant, they do not have to pay agency fees to relet their property. Likewise, the tenant is able to make more of a life for themselves and does not have the disruption to their family life and their children’s schooling that comes with regular moves.
My hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North, as always, brings his vision and knowledge to this debate, and rightly highlights that we must not only ensure that the powers are used, but that revenge evictions do not take place.
Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)
What would my hon. Friend say to those who say—I disagree with them—that any legislation that impacts on landlords will have an unwarranted impact on the availability of housing, because people will be more unwilling to rent out their properties in areas where there is already a pressing demand for housing?
Kevin Foster
What I would say to them is, as an Opposition Member said earlier, “If you are renting out a property that is unfit for human habitation, you really should not be in the business of being a landlord. If that is the standard of what you are renting out then, bluntly, we do not want you to carry on.”
Will there be an impact on availability? Possibly, but—and it is a very big but—if someone cannot afford to do a property up to the standard where it is fit for habitation, they have an obvious option, which is to sell the property to someone who can. Another option is to discuss with the local authority whether planning permission needs to be granted to allow for a proper redevelopment.
I recently went to see a superb development in Paignton. It used to be poor-quality, guild house-style accommodation. In theory it was sheltered accommodation, but it was more like guild house-style accommodation, with shared bathrooms and facilities that were not particularly good. It was on the site of a former brewery. It was really not that great and the local housing association took the view that it did not meet the standard. It has been done up properly and there are now 22 new homes. The new apartments are modern properties that meet modern standards of disability access; the facilities reflect this era, rather than the 1950s; and young families have moved back in.
Let us be clear about what happens when we take action on housing standards. I know my hon. Friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie) will agree with this point; indeed, he probably made his intervention so that I would put it on the record. There is always the theory that when we introduce legislation and take action on housing standards, we might reduce the supply and make it more difficult or more expensive—because if we contract the housing supply, the price clearly goes up—for the tenant to find housing. However, in my experience when enforcement action is taken by local authorities, which will still happen, in many cases it results in the same amount of housing, or even slightly more of it, but this time of the right standard.
If a landlord feels that one of their properties is not up to standard—again, I refer to the landlord with a property in Paignton—they should start engaging with the local authority. Most councils will be reasonable and sensible if a landlord is trying to do the right thing. That could mean looking at how the property is used, perhaps converting the property or getting planning permission to allow the proper redevelopment of the site, as happened in Paignton. I am happy to take another intervention but I think that my hon. Friend can be reassured that, although there is always an argument about how much we do in terms of pushing measures so far that we reduce supply, this Bill will not do that. In fact, it could reduce the supply of completely unsuitable accommodation and increase the supply of the type of rental properties that we want to see.
Let me turn to the matter of implying terms into a lease—a sensible and proportionate measure. For those wondering what that means, this is about how the legislation creates the civil enforcement. Any tenancy will now contain this provision in the lease. As has been said, this is not about bringing back a piece of Victorian legislation, where the maximum rental price is now woefully out of date—probably as historical as the piece of legislation itself. Rather, this is about having a modern piece of legislation that does not come with the idea that every so often we need to decide the maximum rent to which it would apply. That makes this a more secure piece of tenancy legislation.
Following amendment in Committee, it would be interesting to understand how the Bill will affect those who rent out a property in a block where the leaseholders are the freeholders. A concerning issue came out following the fire safety work in Torbay after the Grenfell Tower fire. To be clear, there is not a large local authority owner of tower blocks in Torbay, as some hon. Members might have in their constituencies. We have a lot of apartment blocks and blocks of flats, particularly for those entering retirement, where the leaseholder is the freeholder—that is, the leaseholder owns a share in the freehold—and some of these flats may be rented out. In these cases, the freeholder, who is supposed to be dealing with certain issues and maintaining certain safety standards, has absolutely no incentive to enforce against its own shareholders. In fact, the shareholders are not very keen at all for the freeholder to take enforcement action.
There was an example in my constituency whereby a block had been built in the late 1960s—not a dissimilar era from that of Grenfell Tower. There were two apartments on a floor, which had two fire doors, then the corridor and then the door to the stairwell. About 20 years ago, the owner of one flat bought the other flat on the floor and turned it into one property along the whole floor, so instead of having two doors and the fire door to the stairwell, there was now just a fire door to the stairwell. This had not been picked up, partly because the freeholder had no great incentive to take action against the leaseholder, because the leaseholder was the freeholder. In the Minister’s contribution, she might wish to reflect on whether a tenant of a leaseholder would be able to enforce against the freeholder in such a situation.
Matt Rodda
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there is a related issue—cuts to fire services—to which he is almost referring in his very thoughtful contribution? I have had representations from Royal Berkshire fire and rescue service about the dire need for more fire safety officers, who take a long time to train. Many properties in multiple occupation actually have multiple fire safety issues, including small adjustments made by landlords and tenants, as the hon. Gentleman has described, and because of the nature of the buildings, which are often old and in some cases dilapidated. I have heard some very concerning stories about this in my county. Will he refer to that aspect?
Kevin Foster
My uncle, Station Officer John Griffin, was for many years a fire safety officer in Plymouth fire service and then Devon fire service, which Plymouth service became. I do not want to get into the grounds that will be covered by the inquiry, as that is not right, but there is an argument about whether the change made just over a decade ago by a previous Government—removing the fire service from being proactively involved in fire safety inspections and very much reducing the role of fire safety officers from the fire service—was the right move.
I put on my hat as a former member of the Local Government Association’s national fire services management committee and as a former member of the west midlands fire and rescue authority, and I do think we should look at rebuilding a more proactive role for the fire service in fire safety. To be fair, I will not criticise everything the previous Government did with the fire service. Some of the measures regarding home fire safety checks and moves to more proactive areas made sense. However, we may well reflect that the changes to the fire regulations and moving the fire safety inspections away from the fire service were perhaps not right. Perhaps we will move forward and review that, although there will need to be a balance in outcomes.
Mr Speaker
I very gently say to the hon. Gentleman, to whose contribution in mellifluous tones I am listening with close attention, that he has now spoken for a little longer than the Member in charge of the Bill. I know that he is not the sort of Member who would respond to any exhortation from any quarter to speak at length for any reason, because he just would not do that, but there is a lot of business to get through and I therefore express cautious optimism that he is now approaching his peroration.
Kevin Foster
As always, Mr Speaker, you can incisively see what is happening with my speeches; you have worked out that I was moving towards the end of my remarks. I know that some colleagues will be very disappointed that I am not going to try to break my record for a speech.
Kevin Foster
My hon. Friend is enjoying this because it is such a rare chance to hear me in the Chamber.
This Bill is very worthwhile, and it is appropriate and proportionate. It has been strengthened in a welcome way in Committee with regard to the provisions on communal areas. I am pleased to support its Third Reading, and look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to the points raised during the debate.
Emma Dent Coad (Kensington) (Lab)
Eighteen years ago in my Notting Hill Housing flat, after prolonged complaints had been ignored, my ceiling collapsed, narrowly missing my young daughter’s head. The five-year battle with my social landlord and the help that I received from my local councillors at the time propelled me into active politics, so I am devastated that social landlords have stepped even further away from their responsibilities over the years. I know from my casework that a collapsed ceiling narrowly missed a young child’s head just recently.
Some residents who attend my surgery have brought photos of the massive cracks across their ceilings—they fear a ceiling collapse—as well as of large gaps in stucco facades, which they fear could fall into the street. However, they have been told by their social landlord that they will not be helped unless they stop talking to me, so little or nothing has changed. That is shameful. I do not need to tell anyone in this House that disrepair followed—if people are lucky—by botched refurbishment can put people in mortal danger. Grenfell Tower residents who complained about their botched refurb were sent cease and desist letters, and had no legal recourse.
Since I became an MP last June, my office has dealt with nearly 1,500 cases of all kinds. Around half are housing cases, most involving disrepair. The majority of cases relate to social housing. Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation was among the worst performers, as it has been during my nearly 13 years on the council, but has now improved slightly, leaving Notting Hill Housing—Notting Hill Genesis, as it is now—as our worst performer.
One of my constituents lives in a flat suffering from subsidence, which their landlord has been ignoring. From time to time, due to that subsidence, her front door becomes stuck and she is trapped in her flat for hours. Shame on Notting Hill Genesis. I have told her to call the fire brigade the next time that happens. Another group of constituents who were fleeing domestic abuse with young children were found a place in a hostel where they felt safe, until the ceiling collapsed. They moved downstairs to be safe, but then two more ceilings collapsed. That happened just last year—Notting Hill Genesis again.
Another case involved an elderly and confused woman. Her heating and hot water broke down about a year ago and was not fixed for three months. Her doctor told her that she was close to hypothermia and she then told her neighbour, who luckily reported it to us. Her landlord ignored our pleas, so I put the details on Twitter and there was a response within hours—shame on London and Quadrant. Another constituent’s damp was so bad that he had severe respiratory problems. When I visited, the poor gentleman had to move his nebuliser out of the way to show me the toxic black mould—that was KCTMO.
In yet another case, a constituent who fled from Grenfell with his young child was placed in temporary accommodation in a council flat that was so damp that the toddler’s clothes were literally rotting. Another constituent had a manhole cover in their downstairs kitchen and sitting room that regularly overflowed with raw sewage, by up to a foot. That was Peabody housing. In the last case I shall report on, there were concerns about fire safety that had been reported to a landlord, but were completely ignored. The landlord was told that if they did not fix the problem that they were being emailed about, there could be another Grenfell. A month later, a massive explosion ripped through the flat. There was a huge fire and a constituent died instantly—that was Catalyst housing.
It is such a difficult and long-winded process to get an environmental health officer to visit a home and manage damp that I have my own damp meter. If we have another very cold wet winter, I will be using it extensively and reporting on social media if landlords do not respond, which they often do not, even to an MP. We ask every family that comes to us with problems of damp whether anyone in the family has asthma. So far, every single family reporting damp has at least one such family member. Poor housing is damaging health and sometimes killing my constituents, and until now they have had no legal redress. My office is working on a casework report that will include photos, anonymised examples and timelines of responses from landlords. We will expose the truth. The state of social housing in my constituency is, in many cases, Dickensian.
Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)
Many of the social landlords mentioned in my hon. Friend’s speech are also active in my constituency, where I have some similar examples to hers. Does she share my concern that many of them started as charities and, by behaving in the way that they are and not delivering quality housing, they are breaching their charitable objectives?
Emma Dent Coad
I agree. Many of them have become developers with social purpose, as they are called, and have lost their charitable status—and they have left it well behind. Many are focusing on building new and often poorly constructed developments, while letting their old stock decline, and they are then selling into the private market. This is deliberate. Tenants are ignored, derided and, on occasion, bullied, with their pleas ignored. They need this legal recourse, so I am delighted to support the Bill proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck), a dedicated and hard-working heroine, and I ask the House to pass it.
Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck), whose hard work and dedication to improving the lives of tenants has got this Bill to where it is today. We need no more stark reminder of the dangers of housing hazards and unfit properties than the Grenfell Tower disaster, as my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (Faisal Rashid) mentioned when he spoke up so determinedly for his constituents about the difficult situation in which many of them are forced to live. No tenant should be allowed to live in housing with such fire safety hazards, and no tenant should ever be ignored when they make a complaint about the severe risks that they see in their property. This disaster cannot be allowed to happen again.
The Bill can be the foundation of ensuring that we never see tenants housed in such unfit accommodation ever again. It gives tenants direct rights to compel social and private landlords—my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Emma Dent Coad) just highlighted the importance of including social landlords in the measure, and her comments also brought to the fore the importance and imperative nature of the Bill, which comes not a moment too soon—to carry out repairs if their accommodation is not fit for habitation and presents a serious and immediate risk to their health and safety. My hon. Friend the Member for Reading East (Matt Rodda) rightly highlighted that, given the number of private rented sector properties in his constituency. He also talked about the growing issues that will come as the sector looks only to expand.
The Bill is undoubtedly a positive step for tenant safety, but the Government must do more to empower tenants to challenge unfair conditions if the Bill is to reach its full potential. The Government must ensure that tenants do not fear retaliatory action when they complain about unfair conditions, as the hon. Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes) rightly pointed out in his intervention. Unfortunately, a study by Citizens Advice showed that the current measures against retaliatory evictions are simply not working, with local authorities not reporting a downturn in evictions as a result of the Deregulation Act 2015. Protection against retaliatory eviction is vital to the Bill’s success, so will the Government listen to groups such as Citizens Advice and Shelter, and introduce a Bill on the back of their consultation to make three-year tenancies the norm and to give tenants the security they need, which was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter)?
We saw news this week about the fact that despite the introduction of the Government’s rogue landlords register, some landlords who have been deemed in law to be unfit to let properties continue to be rewarded with rental income, including from the public purse as a result of housing benefit. The landlord register is not being properly used as it might be, and it is also not public. Is this not an opportunity to give that mechanism real meaning, to use it properly and to give consumers their full rights by enabling them to see where rogue landlords are in operation? Such measures would have made the Bill even stronger, but we are very pleased to see it finally reach Third Reading. We hope that it will put an end to the scourge of unfit housing once and for all.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Mrs Heather Wheeler)
Thank you—[Interruption.] Get on with it, absolutely—God almighty! I just think that this is an important Bill and it needs all the time and love that it can have.
Before I start my speech, I draw Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial interests. I thank the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) for everything she has said and congratulate her for tenaciously taking this Bill through Committee and bringing it to the House today. Her Bill is an important part of our work to raise awareness of this vital issue of standards in rented properties. I want to talk about rented houses and flats, both social and private, and the sort of unacceptable conditions that some tenants have to put up with. Many Members have already mentioned the minority of landlords who do not think that they need to comply with the law, and how their tenants suffer as a result. I would also like to describe some of the new requirements we have brought in to help improve the lives of tenants and make sure rogue landlords are either driven out of the sector or forced to sort out their properties and their attitude. The hon. Lady’s Bill is an extremely valuable part of this work.
We had, I felt, a very productive, interesting and worthwhile debate in Committee. I am going to set out the other work we are doing to help tenants, which includes some new requirements but also makes sure we sharpen the tools we already have. In England, privately rented houses and flats provide housing for 4.7 million households—20% of all households. The social rented sector provides a further 17%, another 3.9 million house- holds. The majority of these are safe, secure, warm and dry.
People are tenants for all sorts of reasons—maybe the flexibility is convenient for them, maybe it makes more financial sense or perhaps it means they can live in the area they want to. Some 84% of tenants in the private rented sector and 81% of social housing tenants have said they are satisfied with their accommodation. These tenants have already seen an improvement in the quality of the houses and flats they live in. In 2008, serious category 1 health and safety hazards would have been found in around 30% of properties in the private rented sector and 15% in the social sector. By 2016, those figures had fallen to 15% of private rented and 6% of social properties.
However, it is still not acceptable that there is a hard-core, stubborn minority of landlords who rent out places that are not fit for their tenants to live in. Not all tenants have the luxury of choosing where to live, and some of the most vulnerable people in society live in these unfit properties. It is precisely this minority of houses and flats which still have serious hazards that the Bill will help to tackle.
We have been working hard to improve housing conditions and tackle rogue landlords. For example, since 2015 landlords must install a smoke detector on every floor of their properties, and they must have carbon monoxide detectors where the heating comes from solid fuels. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes) on all the work he has done on that issue.
We also used the Housing and Planning Act 2016 to give local authorities tough new powers to tackle rogue landlords and poor property conditions in their areas. If landlords do not comply with legal notices served on them because their properties are not safe to live in, local authorities can now impose civil penalties of up to £30,000. Bristol City Council, for example, has imposed 12 civil penalties, with the lowest at £628 and the highest at £25,800. Local authorities do not even have to take rogue landlords to court to give them that short, very sharp shock, and they can use the revenue to further fund their enforcement activities. That is hugely important for council finances.
As well as that, if tenants have had to live with a serious health and safety hazard in their house or flat and the local authority has served a legal notice on their landlord, they may be able to reclaim up to 12 months’ rent. If the rent was paid through benefits, the local authority can get that back, too. Really serious offenders can have their name added to the new database of rogue landlords and property agents and could be banned from being a landlord, possibly for life.
In addition to those powers, we have extended the licensing of houses in multiple occupation. These properties are occupied by tenants who are not related but who share facilities such as bathrooms and kitchens. They are often good value and form a useful part of the housing market for many tenants. However, they are higher risk. Landlords of larger HMOs—those on three or more floors with five or more tenants—require a licence issued by the local authority for each property. On 1 October this year, we extended that to include HMOs with one or two storeys and five or more tenants. We have also introduced requirements for minimum room sizes, to help prevent some of the overcrowded conditions that local authorities have reported to us.
I am pleased to say that this is the third private Member’s Bill introduced by a Labour Member that this Government have supported, following the Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018, which was promoted by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and received Royal Assent in September, and the Mental Health Units (Use of Force) Bill, which was promoted by the hon. Member for Croydon North (Mr Reed) and is now in the other place.
The Bill before us builds on the work that has been done and adds a new dimension to the fight against rogue landlords. It will empower tenants by allowing them to seek redress from their landlords if their rented house or flat is in an unacceptably dangerous condition. Landlords will have to keep their properties free from hazards from the outset and for the entirety of the tenancy. Tenants will be able to seek redress without having to rely on their local authority, if they prefer to, and local authorities will still have the same strong enforcement powers to serve legal notices where they find serious health and safety hazards.
No further obligations will be put on landlords who rent out safe, secure, warm and dry properties. If a landlord is quick to carry out repairs when they are reported, manages their property well and takes their responsibilities seriously, the effect the Bill will have on them will be to level the playing field. Rogue landlords will have to improve their properties or leave the business. Landlords who do not maintain safe properties prevent an effective and competitive rental market where all landlords operate on an equal footing.
It is those two aspects of the Bill—giving more power to tenants but putting no new obligations on good landlords—that allow it to sit so well with the range of initiatives we have already introduced. The Bill will give power to tenants, which will complement the existing powers and further enforcement options we have provided to local authorities. Good landlords have nothing to worry about because there are no new obligations or costs for them under the Bill.
It was reassuring to hear such support and general agreement from Members across the House on Second Reading. That is a testament to how seriously all parties take this issue. In Committee in June, I once again heard cross-party support for the Bill and agreement that we need to act now. Members drew attention to issues in the private and social rented sectors that concerned them, and no one argued against the Bill.
Amendments were made in Committee that have further tightened the provisions of the Bill and made it more effective. For example, the common areas of rented properties will now be included. That is important because properties with common areas such as shared stairwells can be at a higher risk from hazards such as fire, as we have heard. Tenants need to be confident that they can hold their landlord to account when it comes to health and safety hazards in those common areas. That amendment will further help tenants in properties such as houses in multiple occupation.
The Bill will extend tenants’ rights and, for the first time, allows them to seek redress if their landlord rents them a property that is not fit for human habitation. It is vital that tenants understand their rights and know how to use them, as Members have said. Subject to the Bill receiving Royal Assent, we will produce guidance for tenants that will explain their rights and how to represent themselves in court should that prove necessary. We will also signpost where and how they can get any support they might need. That guidance will complement the “How to” series of guides produced by my Department, which have recently been revised and expanded. The guides include checklists for new and existing tenants, landlords and letting agents. Whatever the circumstance, we want to ensure that tenants are armed with information, so that they know their rights and responsibilities and can challenge poor behaviour.
There is still more to do. Our support for the hon. Lady’s Bill is an important part of our programme of work to drive up standards in rented houses and flats, and that support does not sit in isolation. We recognise the important role that landlords play in providing homes to millions of people around the country. We want to bring fairness to the market and promote good practice. It is key to the Bill that landlords ensure their properties are fit for human habitation.
Whether a house or flat is fit is determined by the presence of serious hazards. Those hazards are set out in the housing health and safety rating system—or the HHSRS, as it is nattily known. The HHSRS focuses on the hazards that are most likely to be present in housing. Tackling those hazards makes homes healthier and safer to live in. As part of our ongoing work to improve standards, we will commission a review to ensure that the HHSRS continues to work well, and that will take place next year.
Tenants are, of course, at the heart of the Bill. The intention behind it is to empower tenants, which is our intention as a Government. We have introduced legislation banning letting agents from making unfair and hidden charges, making it easier for tenants to find a property at a price they are willing to pay and saving renters an estimated £240 million in the first year alone. In addition, we have announced plans to make client money protection mandatory for letting agents and will introduce requirements on training and accreditation to ensure that tenants are protected. We will further empower tenants by requiring all landlords to belong to a mandatory redress scheme. The work the Government have already done to improve conditions for tenants, as well as the work we are now doing and the hon. Lady’s Bill, will mean a real improvement for tenants and a serious driving up of standards in both the social and rented sectors.
I want to thank the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), the hon. Members for York Central (Rachael Maskell), for Streatham (Chuka Umunna), for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon), for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter), for Warrington South (Faisal Rashid), for Reading East (Matt Rodda), for Kensington (Emma Dent Coad), for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) and for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn), and my hon. Friends the Members for Colchester (Will Quince), for Walsall North, for Torbay (Kevin Foster), for Harborough (Neil O’Brien) and for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie) for all their contributions today and in Committee. I am grateful for all the hard work on the Bill across the House.
To conclude—
Mrs Wheeler
I could go on, if my hon. Friend would like me to.
It is clear that there is support for the Bill across the House. The Bill will empower tenants and help to further improve standards in rented houses and flats. It has been a pleasure working with the hon. Member for Westminster North, and I am sure her Bill will get the continued support it deserves as it progresses.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.
Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Bill
Monday 29th October 2018
(5 years, 5 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018 Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 20 June 2018 - (20 Jun 2018)
Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Bill
Friday 23rd November 2018
(5 years, 4 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 20 June 2018 - (20 Jun 2018)
Lord Best (CB)
My Lords I begin by declaring my interests as in the register and, in particular, as a part-owner, with my wife, of rented property. I am also currently chair of a working group for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, which advises the Minister for Housing and Homelessness on regulation of estate agents and letting and managing agents.
It is a great honour to be piloting this important Private Member’s Bill through Your Lordships’ House. Its promoter in the other place has been the heroic Karen Buck, MP for Westminster North. She has been the most dedicated and committed campaigner, not just for this Bill, but for her many constituents with serious housing problems. Her desire to see the provisions of the Bill on the statute book comes from valiantly seeking to resolve hundreds, possibly thousands, of awful real-life cases of housing misery. I salute her for all her work and for successfully taking the Bill through the other place. I also pay tribute to Giles Peaker and Justin Bates, two lawyers with extensive and highly relevant experience, who have worked tirelessly to draft and perfect the Bill. I commend the Government for having the good sense to give the Bill their full support.
The Bill comes to us with backing from all quarters including, prominently, those bodies representing both landlords—the National Landlords Association and the Residential Landlords Association—and tenants, such as Shelter, Generation Rent and others. As Alan Ward, chair of the Residential Landlords Association, has written:
“The Bill seeks to achieve what we all want: better enforcement of existing laws and regulations against ... the criminals who bring the sector into disrepute”.
It seeks to improve housing conditions for those living in circumstances that can well be described as unfit for human habitation. The public at large may think that slums are a thing of the past and that, if any still exist, there are plenty of laws and regulations to force recalcitrant landlords to bring them up to minimum standards. Sadly, neither of these assumptions is correct. There are around 1 million households forced to live in so-called non-decent properties. The English Housing Survey of last year recorded 750,000 properties which present a,
“serious and immediate risk to a person’s health and safety”,
with 225,000 in the social housing sector. Yet the law is woefully inadequate in compelling the owners of these properties to bring them up to standard.
Karen Buck has quoted many examples from her own constituency. One tenant living with her partner and two children writes that her son has been,
“in a coma at St. Mary’s hospital due to a virus caused by excessive cold. The mould and damp in the house”,
says this tenant,
“turns our clothing, toothbrushes and cups black. I cannot begin to explain how many hospital visits we have had”.
Another tenant complains about her,
“freezing cold, smelly, damp, mouldy flat”.
and says,
“the cold aches my bones and muscles. The damp and mould affects my asthma. As a type 1 diabetic and asthmatic I am constantly ill living in this flat”.
She concludes:
“I guess the way they are progressing, it will be done the day I am being removed from this flat in a coffin”.—[Official Report, Commons, 26/10/18; col. 536.]
These cases demonstrate not only the hardship caused by bad housing conditions but the cost of this to the NHS and wider society.
The Bill addresses the need for a serious overhaul of current legislation in England. Separate measures apply in Scotland and Northern Ireland and, for the most part, in Wales too. It addresses the current legislative inadequacies in three key ways. First, it makes it clear that it is not lawful to let substandard property. Currently, there is indeed a requirement in law, in the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, which consolidated much earlier legislation, for privately rented homes to be “fit for human habitation” at the beginning of a tenancy and to be maintained at this level. But this requirement has ceased to have effect because it covers properties only with rents below a limit set many decades ago—a rent limit of £52 per annum, or £80 per annum in London. The Bill would remove this wildly outdated constraint, obliging landlords to ensure that all properties are fit for human habitation, with no exceptions, based on a rent limit.
With the offence of letting an unfit property restored once more, tenants would have the chance to take an offending landlord to court. This constitutes a significant change in the landlord/tenant relationship. Currently, tenants cannot take direct legal action themselves and are entirely reliant on their local authority to serve environmental health enforcement notices on the landlord and to enforce these. With local authorities short of funds, few have found it possible to take such action on any scale: in 2016-17, half of all councils served no such notices, or only one. The position changes radically with this Bill affording tenants the right to take action themselves and, on their own behalf, enforce their right to a safe and healthy home.
Secondly, the Bill addresses the problem of defining what “fit for human habitation” means. It does not add any new regulations or requirements on landlords but simply draws together all the existing obligations in this regard: the nine criteria used in the 1985 Act and the key health and safety features covering the core hazards used in the current housing, health and safety rating system—HHSRS—brought in by the Housing Act 2004. The Bill, therefore, consolidates and clarifies what constitutes an unfit property.
It is true that the HHSRS has itself been criticised as too complex and open to varied local interpretation. However, the Government have undertaken to review and revise it next year and the Bill’s definition of fitness will take on board, without further legislative action, any changes made to the HHSRS.
Thirdly, for the first time, the Bill gives the same rights to tenants of local authorities to insist on the fitness of their property as tenants of private landlords. At present the local authority, as the enforcement body, cannot take action against itself, which leaves council tenants powerless in this respect. The Bill enables these tenants to compel their local authority to carry out the works needed for the property to meet proper standards.
Moreover, thanks to an amendment to the Bill in the other place, its provisions cover health and safety hazards in shared areas and communal spaces in blocks of flats. As we all know from the ghastly tragedy of Grenfell Tower, there are apartment blocks where tenants are exposed to serious dangers. The residents of Grenfell Tower raised their concerns about the safety of the building on many occasions, but their voices were not heard and they had no means of forcing their landlord to take action. This Bill gives council tenants, like private sector tenants, the power to take their case straight to the courts.
The vast majority of landlords and tenants will be unaffected by the measures in the Bill but it will redress the obvious imbalance in a market where acute shortages currently favour the provider at the expense of the consumer. The Bill empowers all tenants by replacing a now defunct legal obligation on the landlord with a real, enforceable obligation. It defines what the legal obligation covers for homes to be fit for human habitation and extends that obligation to council landlords as well as private ones. In every respect, this is a valuable and commendable legislative measure.
Will the Bill mean an end to the problems faced by tenants in the private rented sector? No—it is limited in scope and there remains much to do. Now that Westminster and Whitehall have begun to catch up with the phenomenal change in the scale of private renting and the effects of this on millions of households in this country, there is a new willingness to bring forward a range of legislative changes.
The Government have started with action against rogue landlords: fining and banning the criminals; laws against retaliatory evictions; the enforcement of electrical safety measures; an extension of licensing for houses in multiple occupation; the ban on tenant fees, which we are currently debating in your Lordships’ House; the regulation of property agents; an exploration of longer tenancies and the possibility of new housing courts; the creation of an ombudsman for complaints against landlords; and more.
Sadly, these changes do not include restoring full legal aid to enable tenants fighting cases about unfit property to claim damages. Nor have the Government yet agreed to reverse the reductions, in real terms, to housing benefit. The current caps and cuts mean that many tenants face real poverty because they have to cover a rental shortfall from their meagre income from other benefits. But these are matters for other government departments and another time.
Meanwhile, this Private Member’s Bill—a great example of cross-party co-operation in the cause of social justice—takes pride of place amid the other new measures to upgrade the private rented sector. It is a particularly valuable piece of the whole because it gets to the heart of the matter. It addresses the key issue of whether the product on offer— the house or flat for rent—is fit for purpose and, if not, it empowers the tenant to get that sorted.
I close by underlining the deep appreciation of all of us with an interest in housing matters for the dedication, compassion and commitment of this Bill’s parent, Karen Buck. I hope noble Lords will give it a very fair wind. I beg to move.
Lord Horam (Con)
My Lords, we are all grateful to my noble friend Lord Best for piloting this limited but important Bill through the House of Lords. As he said, we are also particularly grateful for what he rightly described as the heroic efforts of Karen Buck, the Labour MP for Westminster North, for conceiving of this Bill and taking it through the other place highly successfully. I had 31 years in the other place and in all that time never managed to get a Private Member’s Bill through, so I know how successful she has been in doing that.
The Bill, as my noble friend said, also has the support of Shelter, the Landlords Association and, most importantly, the Government. I am glad to see the Minister in his place listening attentively, as he always does. Indeed, the degree of cross-party support on this might have been a feature of other arguments we are having on a wider scale at the moment, but sadly Brexit does not seem to be producing that degree of understanding.
It is truly appalling that we have 1 million families—2.5 million to 3 million people—living in private or social rented accommodation with category 1 hazards. As my noble friend Lord Best said, category 1 properties pose a serious and immediate risk to a person’s health and safety. Although part of this problem is in the social sector, as was tragically revealed by the Grenfell incident, most of it is in the private sector. Three-quarters of the people living in this category are in the private rented sector.
We simply have really inadequate old properties badly renovated to low standards, often by absent landlords seeking to maximise their income by splitting an old house into as many small spaces as possible and then not maintaining it properly. This is the real issue here. In many ways, housing benefits contribute to this problem and make it more difficult to make the necessary renovations. My memories go back to the Rachman period in the 1950s, and of course Karen Buck represents in Parliament the North Westminster area—and previously represented Kensington North—where that was evident. It still exists in our big city areas.
It is also a problem in seaside resorts. Many of us got in the post today the excellent agenda 2030 brochure put forward by the pride of place team from Blackpool. I know Blackpool well; I was born in Preston, not far away. Blackpool has eight of the 20 most deprived neighbourhoods in the country and much of that is property of this kind. What were once bed and breakfast hotels have now been converted into appallingly low-standard accommodation of the kind we are concerned about.
The Bill will extend the definition of what is fit for purpose—that is, fit for human habitation—and will also extend people’s right to take a bad landlord to court, but the truth is this is just a Bill and a very restricted Bill. We need far more if we are going to deal with this problem satisfactorily.
As was pointed out in the letter that many of us will have got from the leader of Blackpool’s pride of place project:
“Many of the tenants living in the private rented sector … are vulnerable, lead chaotic lives and would lack the confidence to commence legal action against their landlord. For the proposed legislation to be used effectively by tenants, extra resources would need to be made available to local authorities or voluntary sector advice agencies, like the Citizens’ Advice Bureau or Shelter to support the most vulnerable tenants in taking their landlords to Court”.
I know that well from my own constituency experience, both in Gateshead and in Orpington. People in this category do not think of going to a solicitor. They lack the confidence to do that, they have no contacts and their first thought is to go the CAB, their local council or a Member of Parliament. We need resources for those voluntary agencies to help them effectively. As the noble Lord, Lord Best, touched on in the latter part of his remarks, this is part of a wider issue with housing, not just related to substandard private rented property, which we have to tackle.
I made the point in my speech in the Budget debate that this is part of the poverty issue that so disfigures our country at the moment. It exists, and we have the resources to do something about it. It will mean raising taxation, but we should not forget that we are a comparatively lightly taxed country. We only take about 35% of our national income in taxation. In Germany it is 39%, in the Netherlands it is 41% and in France it is 47%. That is the difference between this country and other neighbouring European countries, and the extent to which we can tackle these problems because we have the resources to do so. It could be done if we had the willingness to raise taxation. In this case, for example, we could probably put a couple of extra layers on the council tax for higher, more expensive property to raise the money to give councils the funds to deal with this problem.
I wholeheartedly support the Bill and hope it goes through unamended. I also wish my noble friend on the Front Bench well, because I know his heart is in the right place, in his and his colleagues in the department’s discussions with the Chancellor, because I believe that the Chancellor has to provide the funds to deal with this aspect of poverty as well as other aspects. I hope they will be forthcoming in the next Budget. They were a little in the last Budget, but we need a far bolder and more radical approach in the next Budget.
Baroness Grender (LD)
My Lords, good Bills on housing are like buses: you wait ages and then three come along at roughly the same time. This Bill, the Tenant Fees Bill and the Homelessness Reduction Act have all provided an opportunity for me to stick my hand out and happily climb on board.
I recall one of the first meetings I had when I came to this place in 2013, sponsored by my noble friend Lord Tope. It was a meeting with Shelter and Electrical Safety First about this very issue. Both organisations have campaigned for this change for many years. The horror stories they put before us were compelling. The solution they presented was almost simple—reviving a clause from the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 requiring all rented homes to be “fit for human habitation”, a clause long defunct because the rent levels were no longer relevant, as we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Best.
I say “simple” but, as we all know in this place, nothing is ever simple. I therefore congratulate Karen Buck MP on her excellent Bill, the Government on giving it time and technical support, and the noble Lord, Lord Best, on carefully guiding it through this place with—we hope—no amendments.
Karen Buck MP is a fellow vice-chair of the APPG for the Private Rented Sector and has regularly updated her colleagues on that group, for which I thank her. She tried to get this Bill first in 2015, and then we all tried to amend the housing Act in 2016 to include these proposals. The superb addition to include social tenants is a real credit to her hard work and determination to ensure that all renters do not have to live in homes that are a real hazard to their health and well-being. Any of us who has been an activist in some of the more challenging areas in the UK with high levels of social rent are only too well aware that it is not just the private sector that has horror stories about poor conditions. I note, however, that the English Housing Survey shows social rented housing as the lowest percentage across all tenures of non-decent homes. It is yet another strong argument for more social housing—which we have debated many times and will continue to do. Another welcome addition is the extension to communal areas.
As the noble Lord, Lord Best, pointed out, the backing of the Residential Landlords Association and the National Landlords Association is excellent news. The good news for the landlords they represent is that all landlords who are good landlords need do nothing at all when this Bill comes into effect. But those 1.3 million social and private rented properties that are deemed a hazard under the housing health and safety rating system will be expected now to have to raise their standards.
The Bill rightly places greater powers with those who rent, without having to rely on their local authority. It treats people who rent like the consumers of a service that they are. I guess my regret is that this has come late when the impact has been significant for up to 3 million people, including children, who have had to live with damp, infestation, live wires in dangerous places and more, with little or no hope of changing that. The health impact is well known and estimated to cost the NHS £1.4 billion every year. I am sure that other noble Lords will share in the collective sharp intake of breath when they recognise that, according to Shelter, if these rights had been in place, particularly in communal areas—so that tenants could go to court regarding missing fire doors, emergency lighting, sprinklers and other safety devices—the anecdotal evidence is that more tenants’ lives tragically lost in Grenfell Tower might have been saved. Of course, we are still waiting for the inquiry to conclude.
So, what future buses, or Bills, are we still waiting at the stop for? The now chronic shortfall in housing benefit, which does not cover rents in 95% of the country, must be addressed. I echo the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Horam, on that.
In order for this particular Bill to be effective, greater effort must be made to underpin the original intentions of Sarah Teather MP’s Private Member’s Bill in 2014 to stop retaliatory evictions through Section 21. While an amendment to the Deregulation Act 2015 was the best way of trying to achieve that, more needs to be done in this area so that tenants can complain about poor conditions. Evidence to the HCLG Select Committee inquiry suggests that retaliatory evictions in the private rented sector are still a problem. A Citizens Advice survey in 2017 found that nearly three in five renters entitled to compensation did not force the issue because of fear of eviction—and half said they feared a rent rise if they did.
Security of tenure will help to underpin the good work of this Bill. Scotland’s introduction of indefinite security of tenure is now one year old, and I would like to hear the Minister’s view of how that significant change is going. Does he believe it has had an impact and would he consider something similar here? Shelter has recommended three-year tenancies as an effective way of underpinning the Bill we are debating today. Can the Minister update us on the Government consultation on three-year tenancies, which finished in August 2018?
Sufficient resource for legal aid is essential, and I am sure my noble friend Lord Shipley will develop this point. I will wait to hear the Minister’s response on that. Likewise, I am sure that my noble friend Lord Tope will ask about the extraordinary foot-dragging on the introduction of a timetable for mandatory electrical checks.
I was particularly struck by the phenomenon of older renters, raised in a briefing by Independent Age. The changing nature of tenure in the UK means that we are now seeing larger numbers of older people renting privately. The need for accessibility standards and adaptations is something that this Government would do well to anticipate in policy before it becomes a significant problem. More than half of older renters live alone and almost three-quarters have a disability or an illness. Given the predictions for the private rented sector and population, this problem will become more acute. Will the Minister tell us whether there are any plans to look in particular at this phenomenon?
I thank the Minister for his letter of last night and the update on a public database of rogue landlords, which we will discuss when parliamentary time allows. It will be no surprise for him to hear that, on these Benches, we are a little frustrated given that we gave him ample time and opportunity to do that, both in my Private Member’s Bill on tenants’ rights in 2016 and during the passage of the Housing and Planning Act 2016. When parliamentary time allows, and as I said in my Oral Question of 13 November, I will return to a possible model for this open register—that of the food hygiene ratings. It operates in a commercial sector and empowers consumers. If we can measure where we eat, we can measure where we live, and have an open register for that.
That said, we on these Benches are delighted to welcome this Bill and the time the Government have allowed now. We look forward to seeing it progress to Royal Assent with as much speed as possible, so that, finally, tenants can say no, with strong legal back-up, to the appalling conditions they have been condemned to for so many years.
The Lord Bishop of Rochester
My Lords, I too am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Best, for his advocacy of this Bill in your Lordships’ House and for his customary detailed and lucid comments in introducing the debate. I also salute the indefatigable work of the Member for Westminster North, who has already been referred to, and look forward to what we all hope will be a positive response to this debate from the Minister.
Like many others, I am very supportive of any efforts to improve and assure the quality of accommodation in the rental sector, whether that be individual, corporate or social landlords. I did, however, have a slight moment of hesitation about speaking on this, as I became conscious that the Church of England, in its various national and local corporate guises, is a not inconsiderable landlord.
Clergy housing is often let short term during parish vacancies; these are the properties of the parishes and dioceses, and are let to provide income. Rather akin to the agricultural workers referred to in the Bill, there are some 7,000 or more clergy who receive housing as part of their remuneration, and are thus in a quasi-tenant relationship with Church corporate bodies. They are, I think and hope, not in need of the provisions in this Bill because, in perhaps an extremely rare instance of the Church being ahead of the game, the Repair of Benefice Buildings Measure 1972 laid on diocesan authorities a duty not unlike that in this Bill, and was reaffirmed by the Ecclesiastical Offices (Terms of Service) Measure 2009. That said, I fear that there may be instances where Church authorities and Church-related bodies could do better. I welcome the fact that this Bill will, as I understand it, apply to those corporate bodies when they let residential properties to tenants other than the clergy. If those bodies are not already ensuring that their let properties are of the best possible standard, this Bill will help to make sure that they do.
More generally, I welcome the provisions of this Bill that make clear the implied covenant within a tenancy and those which seek to clarify and extend the definition of “fitness for human habitation”. Reference has also been made to the right of tenants to take action, not being dependent on local authorities to do so. That is an important provision, though I will refer to a slight proviso around that.
Clearly, as has already been indicated, not least by the noble Baroness, this will bring no added burden for those landlords who already make this a priority and operate in the best possible way. Indeed, the safeguards built into the Bill relating to those matters which are not a landlord’s responsibility also help to clarify this and, I hope, reassure landlords.
An anecdote of good practice by a landlord came to me unexpectedly on my journey here this morning. My train was, for reasons I do not yet understand, curtailed at Denmark Hill and never reached Victoria, so I shared a taxi with a gentlemen who, when he discovered I was to speak in this debate, told me how he sought rental accommodation for his son, who was having a year out from university on a work placement and needed to find accommodation. He told me of taking over the tenancy of a flat, and it being very clear that the landlord and his entire family had spent most of the night before cleaning and redecorating the property to hand it over in an absolutely immaculate condition. We know that many landlords operate in that particular way; our concern is those who do not.
Noble Lords will be aware that we have to legislate for those who do not act in the best way for the common good and for the good of human kind. Many of us will be aware of instances where standards of rental accommodation fall below what is right and proper in a society such as ours. Sadly, that may particularly apply to housing which accommodates those among the most vulnerable in our society—those whose desperation, or lack of alternatives, mean that they take whatever they can, even if it is unfit. As Bishop to Her Majesty’s Prisons, I have a particular concern about those who have been released at the end of a custodial sentence. The provision of housing for them is a particular challenge in our society. They are among those who often end up in housing which is frankly appalling, but it is all that is available.
Even in the student sector, one still hears tales about overcrowding and below-standard accommodation. The noble Lord, Lord Best, referred to properties with mould, which affects people’s health and well-being. Without naming names, as a former board member of housing associations over some 30 years, I have in the past visited housing association properties which have been infested by mould. That is not how it should have been. For myself and my fellow board members, I hope we took that seriously and did something about it.
The empowerment of tenants to take action, with a clear right to do so if this Bill passes, is an important area already referred to. We are in an economic situation where we find real financial pressures on institutions such as community law centres, and where, thank goodness, many lawyers still offer pro bono services. If tenants—particularly vulnerable tenants—are to be able to make use of the provisions here, then we need to look at that whole area. I know this lies outside the scope of this Bill, and the noble Lord, Lord Horam, has already referred to it—I was intrigued by his comments about taxation and welcome them—but this is an area that needs to be looked at if people are to be able to exercise the rights given to them under this Bill.
The place where we live is one of the key contributors to human well-being or, in some instances sadly, the lack of it. For all to have the realistic prospect of a decent home is surely not beyond us in this society. The Bill, albeit limited in scope as others have mentioned, will make a valuable contribution to that in a particular sector of housing provision, and I welcome it.
Lord Tope (LD)
My Lords, I join everyone in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Best, for introducing this Bill in this House. I join him and everyone else in the tributes paid to Karen Buck MP for her indefatigable work and for promoting this Bill in the other place.
I must declare some interests. First, I am one of the many vice-presidents of the Local Government Association. I am co-president of London Councils, the body that represents all 32 London boroughs and the City of London, and I am a patron of Electrical Safety First, a charity whose name is self-explanatory. All those bodies and I welcome this Bill, support it entirely and wish its speedy enactment in due course.
Let me start with electrical safety, which my noble friend Lady Grender has already trailed for me. I am going to ask the Minister when the Government intend to introduce the five-yearly mandatory electrical safety checks. After years of campaigning for this, they finally announced in July this year that they would do so. In his letter yesterday, the Minister used the time honoured phrase that they would do so, “when parliamentary time permits”. I have been here long enough to know that the Minister will say he is not responsible for the allocation of parliamentary time, so I will not ask him when parliamentary time will allow. May I ask him when his ministry hopes and expects that legislation to be introduced? Is it shortly? Is it in due course? Maybe it is as soon as possible. Can he give some indication that it really is a priority, at least in his department, if not yet, sadly, for his Government?
May I also ask the Minister to clarify, when this Bill is enacted, whether landlords will actually be prevented from renting a property where there are no records of electrical safety checks? As I understand it—and the Minister will know better than I do—it is the intention of the Welsh Government not to allow landlords who cannot prove evidence of an electrical safety check to be able to rent out a property. Is that also going to be the case in England?
On perhaps a more positive note, Electrical Safety First commissioned York University to undertake a research project on the state of electrical checks in the social rented sector. The research found that the social rented sector has a lower proportion of properties that require electrical repairs than any other housing tenures, and properties in the social rented sector are far more likely to have modern electrical safety devices present. This is the case especially with properties owned by housing associations, which have the highest proportion of homes built after 1990. The researchers found, too, that councils and housing associations are doing a much better job in maintaining fitness-for-human habitation standards in terms of electrical safety, probably due to the decent homes standard. They found that the majority of social housing providers voluntarily conduct checks at five-year intervals already and support mandatory checks. However, if the Government intend to legislate for electrical safety checks in the private rented sector, will the Minister confirm that it will also include the social rented sector?
I turn to London and London Councils, where I have some interest and responsibility. In London, the capital city, private renting is the fastest growing housing tenure. It is estimated that, by 2026, 1.4 million dwellings in the capital city will be private rented. That sector is dominated by small-scale landlords. Sadly, we all know that there are far too many documented concerns about poor management standards.
I listened with interest to the noble Lord, Lord Horam, who I think used to represent Orpington. He gave examples of some inner-city places, and I think Blackpool and other seaside resorts, all of which are sadly well known for such cases. I wanted to give an example that was given to me in my own borough, the London Borough of Sutton, by the chair of our housing, economy and business committee—I always have to think about that title. It is a borough where the council has had majority Liberal Democrat control for nearly 33 years, so I take no pride from giving this story. It is a property very close to where I live, but perhaps more relevant, it is less than half a mile from the green-belt border with Surrey—the leafy part of London, apparently. My former colleague said to me that she had come across a family of two adults and three children in a privately rented flat with two bedrooms and a reception room, in a 1960s-built, tall block of flats. From the outside, which I pass every day, it looks perfectly good and decent, but as well as being overcrowded, the state of disrepair in this place is, as my friend who has seen it described, appalling. Electrical fittings do not work and bespoke heating that has been set up as the underfloor heating is too expensive for the family to use. There are wires trailing everywhere. The oven supplied by the landlord works poorly; the smoke alarms do not work at all. There is mould and insect infestation. The family have lived there for 12 years and repeatedly asked for repairs. Although the landlord sends someone round to have a look, nothing happens.
This example, and sadly there are all too many, from the leafy part of outer London, is now drawn to the attention of the chair of the housing committee, and of course action is now being taken. But none of us looking at the outside would have been aware of that. It is not the image that is presented of much of outer London, and yet it exists—I am sad to say—nearly as much in outer London as it does perhaps in Blackpool or in Paddington.
London Councils says that it believes boroughs need to be empowered and given adequate resources to help improve protection of private tenants. It makes the point that London boroughs have suffered a 63% reduction in government funding between 2010 and 2020. It also says that councils should have local licensing powers and be allowed to recoup costs of enforcement against rogue landlords.
Finally, the penultimate paragraph of the Minister’s letter to us yesterday said that the short guidance document for tenants will be published as soon as the Bill has completed its passage, to explain their rights and how to represent themselves in court if necessary. I strongly welcome that. Part of the York University research I mentioned found that consumers are being left behind in their awareness simply of their rights and opportunities, never mind the difficulty they will always experience—and some particularly so—in exercising those rights, if necessary, through the courts. Will the Minister confirm that this guide will include specific reference to electrical safety? If it does not, he can rest assured that he will be hearing more about it from me, and I am sure from other noble Lords in this House. That said, I wish this Bill a swift passage through your Lordships’ House, and a rapid enactment as well.
Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)
My Lords, I too congratulate my noble friend Lord Best on bringing this Bill to the House and Karen Buck on all the work that she has done in another place. I referred in the previous debate to some of the singular peculiarities of your Lordships’ House. Perhaps I should have said the peculiar advantages, for we have had two Second Readings each presented by a true expert in the field that each Bill covers. I know that my noble friend has given a great part of his life to quality and safety of housing, and the issues covered in the Bill. He is highly regarded, particularly throughout the architecture profession and by housebuilders.
I declare an interest: I happen to be chairman of the not-for-profit company Design for Homes, which organises the housing design awards each year. One of the purposes of those awards is to reward not only the beautiful, but large-scale housing that provides safe spaces in good-quality environmental conditions for families, particularly in mixed communities, where people seem to flourish best.
I can say from my experience as a lawyer and sitting as a part-time judge as a recorder in county courts, and, indeed, in the criminal courts, that I have seen the dangers presented by bad housing. One can truly observe that crime, child abuse, respiratory disease and mental illness are all caused—I mean caused—by poor-quality housing and poor housing maintenance. Anybody who is in a caring profession, such as the right reverend Prelate, if he will forgive me for describing his calling as a caring profession, sees that on an everyday basis. I have been involved in some safeguarding inquiries relating to abused children. The effect of poor housing has been all too obvious.
May I be allowed one anecdote? My noble friend Lord Best referred to local authorities. He is absolutely right. Local authorities are sometimes just as much to blame as private landlords. On one occasion I was sitting as a recorder in a central London county court. A woman who had a disabled son of some 20 years had been living without any heating or hot water for two years in her council flat, which was owned by a south London council that I will not name. In the end, a solicitor came to court pro bono to try to get something done. The local authority’s housing director’s answer was that he or she was unavailable that day because they had meetings and could the case be adjourned. My reaction was, “Yes of course, I’ll adjourn the case until 2 o’clock and if he or she doesn’t turn up then there will be a warrant for their arrest”. Of course they turned up, but why should that mother and that disabled young man have had to have gone through months of difficulty and come to an intimidating county court, with wigs, gowns and the rest of it, to get their hot water and heating repaired—the ordinary requirements of life, particularly for that disabled young man? It just should not happen.
I echo something the right reverend Prelate said in this context. It is disgraceful that people who face low-quality housing conditions below fitness for human habitation cannot obtain legal aid to ensure that they get their rights. If they are given legal aid and the landlord has not provided the necessary facilities, the landlord has to pay the costs. I would have thought that this is an area in which legal aid should be glaringly and obviously available.
If I could stray on to the grass verge on the margin of this Bill, I will say something relating to my chairmanship of Design for Homes. We note that, under Sir Roger Scruton, the Government appointed what is called the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission. This Bill does exactly what it says on the tin, but one has to read that commission’s title with great caution. It seems that the Government have fallen into the trap of appointing “taste tsars” who seem to believe that the bypass variegated, as Osbert Lancaster called it, of old represents the best quality housing and that modernist architecture has no place. Some of the best housing we have seen in the housing design awards—I have been involved for several years now—has appeared in modern, contemporary-looking buildings, which have certain obvious advantages. They have large windows so that you can see what you are doing without having to turn the lights on; they have modern efficient heating systems which do not necessarily take up wall space; and so on. I invite the Minister and the Government to link with the purpose of the Bill: the need to be broadminded about architecture and not be lectured to by people who think they have a monopoly of good taste, particularly when they expressly and explicitly reject best modern practice.
There are many examples where one would not necessarily expect it of poor housing which is not kept in good repair by landlords. In rural areas, many small cottages are let by large estates which spend as little as possible on maintaining those properties. There are more cottages without inside lavatories in the rural areas of England and Wales, at least, than in the urban areas of England and Wales. That requires attention.
Many in this House have had children at universities and we have all seen, in some quite distinguished university cities, terrible accommodation in which landlords simply do not carry out the repairs. They are able to let the properties six months before the tenants move in because there is such demand for them, and if you deliver your student children to those properties you find despicable states of repair. On one occasion recently I had to go out to a supermarket to buy 24 lightbulbs so that one could see anything happening in the students’ accommodation. That was in one of our great university cities. This area needs attention.
As to young working singletons, there have been grants of planning permission, particularly in the London boroughs, in which office premises have been turned into small and inadequate flats and flatlets. One can almost predict what they will be like in five or 10 years’ time because they are plainly unsuited to that kind of conversion. I can understand the reasons why local planning authorities give consent in those cases—it brings properties quickly into residential use—but you are asking for trouble if you do that unless you impose, as a local authority, proper conditions so that those buildings are big enough, clean enough and properly serviced for the future, otherwise you are perpetuating the Rachmanism to which the noble Lord, Lord Horam, referred.
With those thoughts in mind, I strongly support the Bill. It is high time that it was enacted and I hope we will see strong government support for it.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)
My Lords, I join the debate on the Bill because I am very interested in the subject and have always strongly supported Karen Buck, who has done a marvellous job.
I do not agree with the view of the noble Lords, Lord Best and Lord Tope, that the good thing about the Bill is that people will be able to take their issues straight to the courts. We should have a return to the leasehold system, under which people did not require special measures to get their legal fees paid. The Leasehold Valuation Tribunal did a huge amount of good. There should be an ombudsman to deal with matters prior to people going to court—they could be dealt with more quickly—and court should be a second choice only if the first one does not work. That issue needs thinking about.
My noble friend Lord Horam mentioned properties being split into units as small as possible. I agree particularly that action is needed on these.
Something that has not been mentioned, and here I must declare my interest on the register, is the abuse of the letting system whereby holiday lets are taking over a lot of property in London. The Mayor of London has commented on the great loss of accommodation. I would like to see powers returned to local authorities to determine whether or not people are entitled, and at least to be able to check how many people are living in these places. As I have said before in your Lordships’ House, there are three one-bedroom flats in the block that I have concerns in, and 10 people are bussed in for one or two weeks’ holiday. Sometimes they come all bandaged up—they are national health tourists—but otherwise they come in and make life hell for any long-term residents living in the block. It is important that we restore powers that were taken away from the London local authorities. We should go back to that system and encourage local authorities to be more involved. Although the statement is made regularly that they have all the powers they need, if you ask them, they will say that they do not have the powers. I think Newham is the only London borough that has continuing powers.
Mention was made of mould in buildings. When I was on the Greater London Council, I was responsible for one-eighth of London’s housing. We introduced systems building, which was a marvellous concrete thing that was meant to be great. As chairman, I went out to visit the properties because people were very unhappy with them. Someone’s lovely wedding dress, laid out on their bed for use, had been damaged and virtually destroyed by green mould. It turned out that the whole problem was a lack of ventilation; these places were heated in the morning and then people went out to work and closed the door behind them, and the lack of ventilation meant that the mould had its perfect growing conditions. Once that was discovered, they were able to deal with the problem and put in small permanent ventilation, and the mould vanished. The problem is that, for every improvement you believe you have made in housing, there is some downside. You have to be aware of that and check that things are going well.
Many speakers, including the noble Lords, Lord Tope and Lord Carlile, mentioned legal aid. Legal aid is not that easy to come by. It is a more serious issue to have to spend the time taking a matter to court than the previous system of someone looking into things. Indeed, I understand that the noble Lord, Lord Best, himself has some sort of ombudsman qualification that he deals with. It is unfortunate that powers have been taken away from local boroughs and I would like to see them reinstated.
Lord Shipley (LD)
My Lords, I remind the House that I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association. This has been a helpful debate. I noted very carefully the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, and no doubt the Minister will respond to them. The problem is that the English Housing Survey, which was two years ago, found that one-fifth of the homes in this country fail to meet the decent homes standard, which I regard as very serious. As we know, category 1 hazards are growing and enforcement activities by local authorities are falling.
There is a very serious problem here, and I am delighted that the Bill has cross-party support and, crucially, very strong support from the Government. We have heard the list of all the organisations that support it externally, and it is a tribute to the mover of the Bill in the House of Commons, Karen Buck MP, and to the noble Lord, Lord Best, in this House that it has attracted such a degree of unanimity. That is a rare event in Parliament and a clear demonstration that this is a problem that needs a solution. We on these Benches, as noble Lords have heard, commend the Bill.
A few years ago I had the privilege of leading Newcastle City Council and one of my aims was to ensure that the decent homes standard was reached in the 30,000 or so homes for which the council had responsibility. It was vital that we achieved that and we did. However, I also recall at the time not understanding why a tenant in the private rented sector could ask the council to take enforcement action against their landlord but a tenant of the council had no right to seek enforcement by one department of the council against another. Crucially, this Bill puts that omission right.
My noble friend Lord Tope reminded us about electrical safety issues, and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to the specific points that he raised. I will just add that we should always remember that the Grenfell fire began through an electrical fault, so the questions asked by my noble friend Lady Grender about the problems raised by Grenfell residents and the points raised by my noble friend Lord Tope about the need for better electrical safety checks are very pertinent. To be specific, can the Minister tell us, first, whether the social rented sector will have the same statutory application that is planned for the private rented sector and, secondly, when the parliamentary time is likely to be secured to pass the legislation that the Government have promised? In particular, I would like to know whether the Government will prevent a landlord renting a property where there is no record of an electrical safety check. This matters greatly.
I do not seek to repeat all that has been said in this debate, which has been compelling, but I want to raise two or three other issues that have not been covered so far. One relates to how tenants can represent themselves in court. The Parliamentary Under-Secretary at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has said that guidance will be produced on how tenants can represent themselves in court—but, given the cuts in legal aid, a great deal of thought needs to be given to how this will work.
Reference has been made to legal aid. It would help enormously if it could be restored for cases involving the disrepair and unfitness of properties, but I also wonder whether the Government might look carefully at expanding systems of advocacy. The councils for voluntary service, certainly in my area, support advocacy systems, and I would like to think that systems might be made available to simplify the process for tenants. They need to be briefed properly on their rights as tenants but they also need to have the confidence to take forward any problems they have. Therefore, the way in which tenants represent themselves will become an increasingly important issue.
There seems to be a problem with security of tenure in that, if a tenant makes a complaint, action must have been required by the local authority. It must have inspected the premises and served a notice on the landlord to protect the tenant’s security of tenure. I hope that the Government will look very carefully at how they can ensure that, if the local authority is not involved in the process, a tenant is protected.
In conclusion, let us re-emphasise that we are dealing with a small minority of landlords. As the Minister in the other place, Heather Wheeler, said, with this Bill the Government plan to disrupt their business model. The Bill provides a critical opportunity to achieve better enforcement and higher standards. It enables tenants to be empowered to take action directly, bypassing the local authority if they wish to, and leaving local authorities better able to concentrate on the worst cases. It is extraordinary that tenants today do not have an automatic right to live in a home fit for human habitation. With this Bill, they will have that right.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, as other noble Lords have done, I refer the House to my relevant registered interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association.
I am very much in support of the Bill and congratulate my honourable friend in the other place the Member for Westminster North, Karen Buck MP, on bringing the Bill forward and on securing government support for it, which is quite an achievement. I am delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Best, is taking this Bill through your Lordships’ House, and I join him and other noble Lords in the fulsome tributes paid to my honourable friend. The noble Lord, Lord, Best, also listed some of the examples that Karen Buck made reference to in the other place, which were truly dreadful. We should not forget that she represents one of the richest parts of our country and our capital. Those were examples of the dreadful conditions some people have to live in today.
I am pleased that the Government have decided to support the legislation; it is very welcome, and I was very much encouraged by reading the letter from the noble Lord, Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth.
The Bill, as we have heard in this debate, will improve standards in the private rented sector by giving tenants the ability to take legal action where the landlord fails to keep the property in a state that is fit for human habitation, and where they fail to ensure that the property is maintained in that state as the law requires them to do so. Presently, the only way a tenant can seek to rectify matters is where an environmental health officer, using powers contained in the Housing Act 2004, takes action against the landlord, as they are prevented taking direct legal action themselves to put the issues right.
So we have the situation where a landlord could rent out a property that is not fit for human habitation but only the local authority can take action against them. In many cases, the local authority will take action, but as we have debated many times in this House, local authorities are under severe financial pressure on a range of matters. According to estimated figures from the Local Government Association, the funding gap next year will be £3.2 billion. Having said that, I agree with the comment made by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, that, unfortunately, some local authorities themselves have been proved to be guilty of providing properties that are unfit for human habitation. Unfortunately, that is a matter of fact.
Generally, this is a very welcome move, but that leads me on to the issue of legal aid, which many other noble Lords have referred to, to enable lower-income households to exercise their rights and have access to justice. The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 cut legal aid for early advice on housing cases and restricted it to only the most serious disrepair cases, which is a matter of much regret. Even with this welcome Bill becoming law, if individuals do not have the means to seek redress in the courts, that is a barrier to improving housing standards for some of the most vulnerable people who need this protection. I am aware that the Government are conducting a review of the LASPO reforms, and I very much support the calls for legal aid to be restored for matters of disrepair and unfitness, including damage-only claims.
There is also the question of security of tenure and the protection from retaliatory eviction where tenants seek to enforce their new rights. I am aware of the protections that are currently in place—the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, made reference to those—but my point is that they require the local authority to protect tenants from eviction, and this situation risks undermining the new powers won for tenants if they have to rely on hard-pressed, cash-strapped councils for that protection.
I was pleased to receive the letter from the noble Lord, Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth, which I made reference to earlier. It expresses the Government’s support for the Bill, which is great. However, one of the most interesting sections of the letter was at the second bullet point on the second page, where it says that the remedies available to the tenant will include an order of the court requiring the landlord to take action to reduce or remove the hazard, and damages to compensate them for having to live in a property which was not fit for human habitation. I fully support and welcome that—it is wonderful.
However, that made me wonder why the Government are resisting compensation payments for tenants who have been ripped off and charged prohibited payments. We can see that in the Tenant Fees Bill. The line we get from the Government is that we can have compensation and fines, but it would be unfair on the rogue landlord to have both. I do not agree with that. I will come back to that bizarre position when we consider the Bill on Report; I am sure that we will come back to this issue then. It owes more to the funding regime envisaged by the Government for that legislation than any other consideration.
The noble Lord, Lord Best, referred to electrical safety checks, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, and the noble Lord, Lord Tope. That leads me to ask, as a number of noble Lords have done, about the Government’s stated intention to bring forward mandatory electrical safety checks in the private rented sector. We heard the Government’s announcement on that in July, but they have been fairly quiet since then. Perhaps the Minister can use today as an opportunity to update the House on the action that the Government intend to take. We need progress on this matter. We are now in November; change has been a long time coming and it still has not got here yet. I hope that the Minister has some good news for us today; if not, I hope that he will write to Members of the House on these matters.
I want to add to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Tope, about whether landlords will be prevented from renting out a property where they do not have any evidence that a mandatory electrical safety check has been carried out. We heard that this is the case in Wales. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Rochester was right to illustrate that most landlords provide a good product. We should be clear about that. Good landlords are providing a good product to people and meeting their legal obligations—we should not forget that—but here, we are talking about rogues and criminals who flout the law.
The noble Lord, Lord Tope, also referred to licensing schemes. I am very much in favour of local licensing schemes; they are positive and improve local housing situations. I have mentioned the Newham scheme many times before. Recently, I went to Newham with the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, who was suitably impressed by the work undertaken by the council and the mayor there. I am sure that he has mentioned that to his government colleagues.
I will bring my remarks to a close. I support the Bill and thank the noble Lord, Lord Best, for bringing it forward. I want to make it clear that I have no intention of tabling any amendments to it whatsoever, which I know may surprise noble Lords. It is important that we do not do that. The Bill is very good and needs our support. I urge noble Lords to do the same as me, no matter how tempting their well-intentioned or well-meaning amendments may be. They would do great harm. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and Wales Office (Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth) (Con)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in the debate. I am not at all surprised that the noble Lord opposite will not table any amendments because I know how responsible he is. I am grateful to him, as I am sure other noble Lords are. This Second Reading has been a debate of great content. Some very interesting and important points have been made, to which I will do my best to respond. In so far as I cannot do so from the Dispatch Box, I undertake to write to noble Lords and place a copy in the Library.
In particular, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Best. I agree very much with the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, about the quality of the sponsorship of the Bills we have seen in the House today. We could not have a better pilot than the noble Lord, Lord Best; I thank him for his hard work on such a great cause. As other noble Lords have done, I also thank the honourable Member for Westminster North for introducing her Bill. I acknowledge her hard work in the other place; she has shown considerable determination in taking it through successfully. I am delighted that the Bill has received such widespread support across this House and in the other place.
The noble Lord, Lord Best, has given us an effective overview of the Bill and why it is needed, and I echo that. It is an important Bill and we heard from many noble Lords in this debate about the fact that 20% of the housing in this country is in need of urgent attention. That underlines the importance of having this Bill. We heard that from the noble Lord, Lord Best, and my noble friend Lord Horam. The noble Baroness, Lady Grender, also echoed that point.
This fairly short Bill builds on work we have been doing to improve housing conditions and tackle rogue landlords. I must say that, although I am as guilty of using it as anyone else, I wish we could get away from the phrase “rogue landlords” because it tends to make them sound a little too cuddly for my liking. “Bastard landlords” or something stronger would probably be more appropriate because they are far from being cuddly. I shall try to deal with the situations raised by noble Lords, particularly by the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, and the noble Lords, Lord Tope and Lord Shipley. All three asked about electrical checks, as did the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy.
Since 2015, we have moved on the requirement to install a smoke detector on every floor in properties and carbon monoxide detectors where the heating system uses solid fuels. We have taken tough action in the private rented sector on civil penalties for recalcitrant landlords who need action to be taken against them, which can go up to £30,000. It is worth noting that those civil penalties can be retained by local authorities, which helps them with housing enforcement. We have seen Salford City Council use those powers recently against one landlord, issuing three civil penalties for the flouting of three separate legal responsibilities and fines coming up to £55,000. As I say, local authorities keep the proceeds of those civil penalties.
Local authorities have the power to issue banning orders for landlords and add to them to the database. As noble Lords will know, we propose that the database should now become public, but I am afraid to say that that will happen when parliamentary time allows. I know that is a standard phrase which is trotted out. This issue does need legislative action, but we are dependent on the business managers finding time for that. As far as the department is concerned, this is certainly a high priority.
Private tenants can now apply to get up to 12 months’ rent back if the landlord has not dealt with health and safety hazards and the local authority has taken enforcement action through rent repayment orders under the Housing and Planning Act 2016. We have extended property licensing so that more homes in multiple occupation now need a licence and we are going out to consultation, or perhaps review, on the issue of selective licensing. We will report on that in the spring. We have also announced that we will carry out a comprehensive review of the housing health and safety rating system. The noble Lord, Lord Best, rightly stated that if that is extended, it will automatically come within the compass of this legislation. We also plan to require all landlords to belong to a mandatory redress scheme, which I think is known and understood, and we are proceeding, as noble Lords have made clear, with the Tenant Fees Bill, which will reach its Report stage in your Lordships’ House the week after next. Subject to this Bill receiving Royal Assent, we will produce guidance for tenants, as has been suggested. I have covered that in a letter which has been sent round. In response to the question put to me by the noble Lord, Lord Tope, I intend that to include points on electrical safety. That was a point well made.
I will try to pick up the points made during the course of the debate, but if I do not address them all I will seek to cover them in a letter to noble Lords. On security of tenure, as is, I think, widely known, the department is considering the position on three-year tenancies and will respond to this issue in the new year, so an announcement will be forthcoming early in the new year on this point.
I was asked some specific questions relating to electrical safety standards. We put a question on the private and social rented sectors having the same requirements in the social housing Green Paper. I think the intention is that they should be dealt with in the same way. I cannot see any reason why they should not be. If I am wrong on that and there is a reason I will cover that in the letter, but it is not apparent to me. We will issue a letter announcing our intentions on this area before Christmas, so I hope noble Lords will bear with us on that.
I thank the right reverend Prelate for the points he made, together with perhaps an anticipatory mea culpa in case there was an issue for the Church, but I am sure it is following good practice in this area. He made a point about legal aid, as did other noble Lords. I am always grateful when noble Lords exaggerate my powers, but as I am sure can be anticipated, this is not an area where I can opine from the Dispatch Box. I will endeavour to cover the point and, as was rightly said, there is a review in this area. I hope noble Lords will understand when I say that I will cover that in the letter, but I cannot give a definitive statement of where we are on that issue.
I move on to points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile. I agree with him on the importance of design. The design of buildings generally, not just for residences, has been a particular interest of mine. I also agree that modernist future design is important. In the National Planning Policy Framework we have, I think for the first time, a requirement to consider good design. It does not specifically mention modern design, but it certainly does not exclude it. Modern methods of construction and self-build will lend themselves particularly to more modern design. I know that the Secretary of State is committed to good design, but that does not exclude modern design. I will make sure that the points made in the debate are brought forward to my right honourable friend the Secretary of State. I agree with the point made by the noble Lords, Lord Carlile and Lord Tope, that sometimes in an area where you might expect good housing—university towns would certainly be part of that—something that looks like good housing from the outside looks very different once behind the door. That is something we need to bear in mind.
We talked generally and correctly about the impact that poor quality and non-decent housing has on individuals but, as was said in the debate, it also has economic effects in terms of pressures on the health service, and I am sure it has an effect on kids’ education if they are off school and so on. It certainly has dreadful social effects as well. The points are well made, hence the importance of doing what we are doing.
I thank my noble friend Lady Gardner of Parkes for bringing forward points about the ombudsman and a housing court, which she touched on, which are still very much on the agenda. As my noble friend mentioned, the noble Lord, Lord Best, is central to the issue of the ombudsman. We are looking at that ombudsman service and the housing court issue and will be responding on that, I think, in the new year as well. I will cover that in the letter.
On holiday lets, which my noble friend mentioned, there is a special power for London in that there is a restriction of 90 days for the Airbnb-type let in London, as in other capital cities and tourist destinations around the world, such as Venice. There is a 90 days’ accommodation limit. My noble friend will know that the UK Short Term Accommodation Association is doing effective work to try to make sure that that is enforced in London. There is a separate issue with landlords enforcing the provision in their leases. I know from speaking with my noble friend yesterday that that can be a particular problem and is a particular problem for her. I have great sympathy with that issue. I will write to her on that point to see if there is anything specific we can do, but I thank her for bringing those points up.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, for his contribution and support. He mentioned again the electrical issues and their importance in the context of Grenfell. We do not know with certainty about the cause of the fire—at least in a legal sense—because we have not had the criminal proceedings or the result of the inquiry, but he is right about the importance of this in general terms, so I appreciate the points he is making.
I will write on the retaliatory eviction point. Certainly, there is protection where there has been an inspection of the premises by the local authority and it has confirmed that there is a legitimate complaint on the part of the tenant, but I will write more widely to cover how that is dealt with elsewhere.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, once again for his support. I am very happy to discuss with him the point on compensation for loss. I can see why he thinks that is inconsistent, but I do not think it is. Our point here on compensation in relation to tenant fees is that it is legitimate for there to be a fine, where appropriate, of the landlord and for a return of the money, and compensation if there has been a loss, for example, if somebody has suffered illness and they can demonstrate that, which is what we are talking about here. Compensation for a loss is a bit different—I think the noble Lord is talking about exemplary damages. The noble Lord, Lord Carlile, will know the precise legal word.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
We will come back to this on the Tenant Fees Bill. I thought compensation was for when you suffer some loss or injury and if you had money taken off you inappropriately for a prohibited payment. Why cannot there be compensation for that? We will come back to this on the Tenant Fees Bill, but I think it is for any sort of loss, potentially. The noble Lord, Lord Carlile, may want to intervene.
Lord Carlile of Berriew
If it helps the Minister, I did not immediately realise he was talking about exemplary damages because they are given in very restricted circumstances. It is pretty unlikely that they ever will be given in an ordinary landlord and tenant case.
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
I totally agree. We will perhaps come back to this but we are not debating it in this Bill.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
I am certainly not talking about exemplary damages, but what if a landlord has been prosecuted and has to pay some compensation? Those are not exemplary damages.
Baroness Grender
What we were looking at when I tabled the amendment in Committee was compensation for expenses but, in addition, some kind of incentive, especially for people who are not on high incomes, to take the case forward. However, I am sure we will explore this further.
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
Without conflating the two, it begins to sound like exemplary damages to me, but we will come back to that.
I am very grateful for the support this Bill has received and the Government are very strongly in support. I thank noble Lords who participated in the debate, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Best, for all the work he has done and no doubt will continue to do in piloting this Bill forward.
Lord Best
My Lords, I give deep thanks to everyone who has participated. Every Member of this House who spoke welcomed this Bill and paid tribute to its author, Karen Buck. I thank noble Lords for both things. I will make myself popular by not referring to all noble Lords and their excellent contributions this afternoon.
It is quite encouraging how many of the issues we have all expressed concern about over quite a period are coalescing. The buses are all coming down the road, with quite a few backing up to join in the queue. I had not realised that there was a selective licensing review—among the several reviews going on at the moment—looking at the things that may be improved for the future. There is an awful lot of good stuff coming down the line: security of tenure, the housing courts, electrical safety and the Housing Ombudsman.
I thank the Minister very much for that. I have been in the House some years and I think he is the most diligent Minister in writing to all of us about issues of concern and keeping us abreast of things. I much appreciate noble Lords drawing attention to the fact that amendments to this Bill will not be welcome. We need to press forward and get it done. We are under pressure of time and a swift passage is what it is all about. Nobody thinks that this Bill solves all the problems of the private rented sector, but this is a really central piece of that big jigsaw. This is about the condition of the home in which people are going to live. It is perhaps the most fundamental of all the reforms that are going on now, welcome as all of them are. For that, I pay very special tribute to Karen Buck and those who have advised her. Karen Buck was twice described this afternoon as indefatigable and I have described her and do again as a heroine in these issues.
I thank noble Lords for their contributions. I ask the House to give the Bill a Second Reading.
Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Bill
Wednesday 12th December 2018
(5 years, 4 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018 Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 20 June 2018 - (20 Jun 2018)
Lord Best (CB)
My Lords, I understand that no amendments have been set down to this Bill, and that no noble Lord has indicated a wish to move a manuscript amendment or to speak in Committee. Unless, therefore, any noble Lord objects, I beg to move that the order of commitment be discharged.
Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Bill
Wednesday 19th December 2018
(5 years, 4 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018 Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 20 June 2018 - (20 Jun 2018)
Royal Assent
Thursday 20th December 2018
(5 years, 3 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 23 October 2018 - (23 Oct 2018)