Immigration Bill (Fifteenth sitting)
(9 years, 1 month ago)
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The Committee divided: - Ayes: 8 / Noes: 6 - Question accordingly agreed to.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 8 / Noes: 6 - Question accordingly agreed to.
The Committee having divided: - Ayes: 6 / Noes: 8 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Minister for Immigration (James Brokenshire)
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss Government new schedule 3—Availability of local authority support.
James Brokenshire
I welcome you back to the Chair, Mr Bone, for our final day of deliberations on the Bill.
The new clause and new schedule 3 make changes to the availability of local authority support in England for certain categories of migrants. The new schedule is in part a companion to schedule 6, which reforms arrangements for the provision by the Home Office of support to failed asylum seekers and other illegal migrants, which the Committee has already considered. As I said during our debates, we continue to consult with local authority colleagues, in particular on the detail of the new support arrangements and how they will sit alongside other provisions. We are clear that we want to encourage and enable more migrants without any lawful basis to remain in the United Kingdom to leave in circumstances when they can do so.
In particular, we have been discussing with local government colleagues whether changes to schedule 3 to the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002, which controls access to local authority social care for migrants without immigration status, would be helpful. Our public consultation on asylum support highlighted concerns that the framework provided by schedule 3 to the 2002 Act and associated case law was complex and burdensome for local authorities to administer and involved complicated assessments and continued litigation to establish what support should be provided in what circumstances. The Committee heard similar concerns from local authority colleagues in their oral evidence to us on 22 October.
We have listened carefully to what local authority colleagues in England told us about the scope for simplifying and strengthening some of those provisions. Our response is the amendments made by the new schedule to schedule 3 to the 2002 Act, making two key changes. First, new schedule 3 simplifies the way in which local authorities in England assess and provide accommodation and subsistence for destitute families without immigration status. It enables local authorities to continue to provide under section 17 of the Children Act 1989 for any other needs of a child or their family to safeguard and promote the child’s welfare. Secondly, the new schedule prevents adult migrant care leavers who have exhausted their appeal rights and have established no lawful basis to remain here from accessing local authority support under the 1989 Act. It makes alternative provision for their accommodation, subsistence and other support before they leave the UK.
Immigration is a reserved matter and, as we have debated previously, immigration legislation—through schedule 3 to the 2002 Act—already provides a UK-wide framework for migrants’ access to local authority services. We therefore have it in mind to seek to amend the Bill at a later stage to extend those provisions to the rest of the UK once we have had further dialogue, which is in hand, with the devolved Administrations.
Turning to the main provisions of the new schedule, paragraph 7 of new schedule 3 inserts a new paragraph 7B in schedule 3 to the 2002 Act. It provides a new simplified definition of a person without immigration status who will generally be ineligible for the forms of local authority support listed in paragraph 1(1) of schedule 3 to the Act. It replaces the convoluted immigration status definitions in paragraphs 6 to 7A of schedule 3 to the Act.
Paragraph 8 inserts a new paragraph 10A in schedule 3 to the 2002 Act, under which regulations will be made by the Secretary of State, subject to parliamentary approval, to enable local authorities to provide for the accommodation and subsistence needs of destitute families without immigration status in circumstances in which case law and human rights considerations may well mean that the local authority should provide support.
Such circumstances include where, first, the family has an outstanding specified immigration application or appeal—in a non-asylum case for which Home Office support is not provided. Secondly, the family might have exhausted appeal rights and not failed to co-operate with arrangements to leave the UK. They must also not qualify for the support available from the Home Office under proposed new section 95A of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999, to be inserted by schedule 6 to the Bill, for failed asylum seekers with a genuine obstacle to departure at the point their appeal rights are exhausted. Thirdly, the provision of accommodation and subsistence support must be necessary to safeguard and promote the welfare of a dependent child. That will enable local authorities to take any action they consider necessary to prevent destitution pending the resolution of the family’s immigration status or their departure from the UK.
Paragraph 4 will insert a new schedule 3A to the 2002 Act, which will mean that accommodation and subsistence support will be provided to a destitute family under the regulations made under new paragraph 10A of schedule 3 rather than under section 17 of the Children Act 1989. As we discussed in respect of schedule 6, there is no general obligation on local authorities to accommodate illegal migrants who intentionally make themselves destitute by refusing to leave the UK when it is clear that they can do so. Schedule 3 to the 2002 Act already provides that a range of local authority social care is unavailable to failed asylum seekers and others who remain in the UK unlawfully except when, following what can be a complex and burdensome assessment process, the local authority decides that the provision of such support is necessary to avoid a breach of human rights or on the basis of other exceptions for which schedule 3 provides.
The new schedule will simplify the complex human rights assessment process, much of which is concerned, in line with case law, with immigration matters that are for the Home Office and the courts to determine, which the local authority has to undertake before it can assess and provide for the family’s social care needs. The provisions embody a sense of simplification.
The main social care needs of families without immigration status who seek local authority support are for accommodation and subsistence to prevent destitution. A June 2015 study by the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society at Oxford University on local authority support for such families—I referred the Committee to this in my letter that notified colleagues of the amendments—found that the welfare needs of the children at the point of referral to the local authority were overwhelmingly for accommodation and subsistence.
The new schedule will also ensure that section 17 of the 1989 Act will remain available to the local authority, together with its other powers and duties under that Act to deal with any other needs of the child or their family that the local authority considers must be met to safeguard and promote the child’s welfare while the family’s immigration status is resolved or, where it is established that they have no lawful basis to remain here, before they leave the UK. The local authority’s duty to provide for the child’s schooling and to address any specific educational needs will also be maintained.
The reforms to schedule 3 to the 2002 Act will simplify the basis on which local authorities deal with destitute families without immigration status and maintain essential safeguards. We are satisfied that they are compatible with our obligations under the UN convention on the rights of the child and article 3 in particular, which requires that children’s best interests are a “primary consideration” in all decisions affecting them. We are also satisfied that they are compatible with section 55 of the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009 under which the Secretary of State must have regard to
“the need to safeguard and promote the welfare of children who are in the United Kingdom”
when carrying out immigration functions.
Paragraph 2 of the new schedule amends paragraph 1(1) of schedule 3 to the 2002 Act so that adult migrant care leavers who have exhausted their appeal rights and who have established no lawful basis to remain here are prevented from accessing local authority support for care leavers under the 1989 Act. Nearly all of those adult migrants are former asylum-seeking children whose asylum and any other human rights claims have failed. The provisions in the 1989 Act are geared to support the needs and onward development of young adults leaving local authority care whose long-term future is in the UK. Those provisions are not appropriate to the support needs, pending their departure from the UK, of adult migrants who the courts have agreed have no right to remain here.
Paragraph 8 will insert a new paragraph 10B in schedule 3 to the 2002 Act under which regulations will be made by the Secretary of State, subject to parliamentary approval, to enable local authorities to provide for the support of adult migrant care leavers who have exhausted their appeal rights in respect of their asylum claim but have an outstanding specified immigration application or appeal and are destitute; or who have exhausted their appeal rights and do not qualify for Home Office support under the new section 95A of the 1999 Act because there is no genuine obstacle to their departure from the UK, but to whom the local authority is satisfied that support needs to be provided. That will enable the local authority to ensure that support does not end abruptly and that there can be a managed process of encouraging and enabling their departure from the UK.
Paragraph 4 inserts new paragraphs 3B and 3C in schedule 3 to the 2002 Act, which means that support will be provided to the adult migrant care leaver under the regulations made under new paragraph 10B of schedule 3, or under new section 95A of the 1999 Act, rather than under the Children Act 1989. By virtue of paragraph 11 of schedule 3, the new regulations will enable local authorities to provide such other social care support, beyond accommodation and subsistence, as they consider necessary in individual circumstances.
We are confident that the reforms to schedule 3 to the 2002 Act will simplify how local authorities deal with destitute families without immigration status, will make more appropriate provision for support to adult migrant care leavers who have not established a lawful basis to remain in the UK and will maintain essential safeguards. The provisions in the new schedule will, like those in schedule 6 to the Bill, be subject to the new burdens assessment of the final package of changes to which we have committed.
We will continue to work closely with local authority colleagues to look at other ways in which we can improve the framework within which they work with migrants without immigration status. All are clear that we want to work together to encourage and enable more migrants who have no right to remain here and who face no barrier to their departure to leave the UK. The new provisions will help ensure that we have the right platform in place for that work.
Chloe Smith (Norwich North) (Con)
Obviously, since the Committee last met we have seen the appalling attacks in Paris. It will not have escaped the Minister’s attention that it is considered possible that one of the attackers entered Europe as a putative refugee. Does the Minister agree with me and many of my constituents that the work we are doing with the new clause and the new schedule, and other parts of the Bill, will simplify, strengthen and prioritise the support we can give to those refugees who need it, rather than those who may be seeking to abuse the system? He surely would agree that that is important work in light of those attacks.
James Brokenshire
I note my hon. Friend’s comments. She will obviously have heard the Home Secretary’s statement yesterday, and the Prime Minister will make a further statement to the House today. It is important that we do not speculate on what may or may not have happened in the appalling events that we have all seen in the past few days. We stand in solidarity with the French people at this extraordinarily difficult time. We stand against those who would seek to divide us and destroy our very way of life. We all have a common cause in standing with the French people and all those who are against Daesh and those extremist organisations that seek to threaten our very way of life.
In general terms, my hon. Friend has highlighted the issue of any threat that may exist with those seeking to come to Europe through an asylum-based route. We need to analyse the facts carefully as to what has or has not happened, but it is equally important to underline the stringent checks that we carry out in this country on those who are claiming asylum and how we believe it is essential to strengthen the screening and identification of those arriving on the shores of Europe. That is why we support the work of Frontex, the EU external border agency, in its work on debriefing those who are picked up. We also support such things as the Hotspots initiative in Italy, Greece and other countries, which ensures that those who are arriving are processed speedily and effectively.
No doubt my hon. Friend will have heard the Home Secretary’s comments yesterday on the work that is undertaken to ensure that we are appropriately screening those arriving in this country through our vulnerable persons relocation scheme. All the steps we are taking are part of our focus on the security of this country, but equally they are about ensuring that those coming to this country who are fleeing persecution and in need of support are welcomed by us and given the support that they require. We believe that that approach is entirely consistent with the proposals in the Bill and is reflected in the new clause and new schedule.
Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)
May I first echo the Minister’s comments by joining him and everybody in the House in abhorring the attacks that took place this weekend in Paris, as well as all the other attacks that have taken place elsewhere. They are attacks on our values, and we must stand together in our response. Those responsible seek to divide us; we must not be divided. As was said in the House yesterday, they are attacks on our values, our principles and our approach to issues such as refugees. It is important, if we mean what we say about our values and about standing together, that we do not diminish our stand on refugees, human rights and the sort of democratic accountability that this Committee brings to how we pass laws in this country.
Those are important principles, and it is right that this Bill should go through such a process to ensure that there is no diminution of protection for asylum seekers and refugees or of human rights for anybody who finds themselves in this jurisdiction, whether they be an adult, a child, a refugee or anybody else. As human beings, they have human rights, and it is our business to ensure that those rights are fully upheld. I make those comments in response to the comments just made, but nothing that happened this weekend should lead any of us to think that weakening in any way our resolve to deal properly with refugees and human rights issues should be any part of the answer to the atrocities, which we are all united in abhorring.
I will take the new clause and schedule in the order that the Minister did. Paragraph 7 of new schedule 3 is intended to provide a new, simplified definition of a person without immigration status who will generally be ineligible for local authority support. Can he assure us that only those currently excluded from support will continue to be excluded—in other words, that this is a simplification of the process, and that paragraph 7 does not broaden the category of individuals ineligible for support listed in schedule 3(1) of the 2002 Act?
Paragraph 8 of new schedule 3 will provide for the accommodation and subsistence needs of destitute families without immigration status in certain circumstances. Our concern about the provision involves those who are seeking judicial review or have judicial review proceedings pending. Again, can the Minister set out the position on such individuals? It will be a change from the current position, and it excludes that group of individuals from protection. If that is not the case, an assurance to that effect would be helpful, and would go on the record.
Paragraph 4 inserts a new paragraph 3A into schedule 3 of the 2002 Act and relates to how we deal with destitute families. Again, there are two issues for the Minister. First, without knowing the meaning of a “genuine obstacle” to return, how can the Committee assess the impact of the provision? We are considering it against a definition that is not before the Committee. Secondly—he might have dealt with this, but perhaps he can assure me if he did not—can he confirm that the needs provided for under the section appear to be narrower than those provided for under the Children Act 1989? In other words, they appear to omit disability or education needs. Given what he just said, I might be wrong about that, and a simple assurance might deal with that point.
James Brokenshire
If I may intervene to save time, I explained that the provision applies to housing and what are effectively direct support needs, but that the provisions of section 17 of the Children Act 1989, which relate to other needs such as medical or care needs, will still remain in force.
[Albert Owen in the Chair]
Keir Starmer
I am grateful. I did think that that was what the Minister had said, and I just wanted that assurance.
Turning in a little more detail to the provisions in paragraph 2 dealing with those leaving care, former looked-after children who require leave to enter or remain when they turn 18, but do not have it or are not asylum seekers, will be excluded from receiving accommodation, financial support, a personal adviser, a pathway plan, funds for education or training and any other assistance under various provisions of the Children Act 1989 and from staying put with foster carers or maintaining contact. The Minister says that that is because the needs of those who have no right to be here are different from those of people who have their future in this country. Such individuals are former looked-after children who have just turned 18, and care leavers in such circumstances include those with no immigration status, those who arrived as children and sought asylum and were granted UASC leave, and those who came to the UK at a young age but were never helped to regularise their status.
Such people can only claim access to accommodation and other assistance in limited circumstances. The first is if they are destitute, have been refused asylum and are eligible for support and there is a genuine obstacle to them leaving the UK. The second is if they are destitute and have a pending non-asylum immigration application or appeal. The third is if their rights are exhausted, and regulations will set out the limited circumstances in which they can receive support.
The concern here is that specific provision was made in the Children Act for all children leaving care in recognition of their additional vulnerabilities and the need for additional support in order for them to have the same chances as other young people entering adulthood. The new clause and new schedule fundamentally change that position. There is a real concern that someone who has just turned 18 and who, as a matter of fact and possibly because of vulnerabilities, has simply not regularised their immigration status will be denied support under this provision, which cuts across the thrust of the 1989 Act.
Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)
I want to speak against new clause 17 and new schedule 3. I want to start by asking the Minister whether he has the approval of the Minister for Children and Families, because the provisions seem to challenge much of the core principles for which he has been arguing. The changes have far-reaching impacts on the core definitions and duties of the Children Act, and it is strange that such dramatic changes are being housed within an immigration Bill.
Section 23(4)(c) of the Children Act places a duty on local authorities to give care leavers assistance to the extent that their welfare requires it. While the young person was a looked-after child, the local authority was their corporate parent. That duty recognises the legacy of the parental role and allows the local authority to step in and protect a care leaver in crisis. The Government’s Staying Put initiative explicitly recognises the need for care leavers to have “stable and secure homes” and to
“be given sufficient time to prepare for life after care.”
The Department for Education care leavers’ charter outlines key principles that will
“remain constant through any changes in Legislation, Regulation and Guidance”,
including the provision of advice and practical, financial and emotional support. Such initiatives are entirely undermined by the proposals.
Migrant children in care often face additional difficulties to British children. They are particularly likely to have faced trauma. They may experience language and cultural barriers. They are less likely to have any contact with biological family members. Care leavers often need their personal adviser or advocate to help to identify and even instruct an immigration lawyer. Barnardo’s conducted a child advocacy pilot for the Home Office that by all accounts seemed to be very beneficial. It helped the young person enormously to make informed choices and it helped the state to provide the level of support that was needed, so it seems odd that the new clause will undermine the Government’s pilot.
Not only is it discriminatory to remove support from young people leaving care on the basis of their immigration status, but in order for migrant care leavers to enter adulthood successfully it is vital that they can access a care plan under the 1989 Act. They are very young adults who often have no one else to turn to. The Government’s changes will remove all possible support usually provided to care leavers—including a personal adviser, a pathway plan and funding for education or training—other than, as the Minister confirmed, basic accommodation and financial assistance for certain groups.
It is not clear from the new clause whether it is envisaged that local authorities or the Home Office will be responsible for providing the support set out in proposed new paragraph 10B. Although I oppose the changes as a whole, at the very least local authorities should be responsible for providing support if the Government are not, and that should be stated in the Bill.
Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)
We have spoken at length about the complexities of immigration law. In introducing yet another Immigration Bill, the Government had the opportunity to simplify some areas of the law. In areas such as appeals, the Government have, to their shame, done so by removing the right of appeal from the majority and proposing that the few who retain it might have to exercise it from outwith the country.
Some of the strongest arguments in the whole debate have been about the support we give to migrants and refused asylum seekers, particularly the children involved in such situations. The Government’s proposals on support for 18-year-old care leavers and destitute families with children in new clause 17 and new schedule 3 are nothing short of a dog’s breakfast, and are potentially dangerous. Either by accident or design, we could very well see support removed from the most vulnerable groups.
Under the existing system, Home Office support is provided under two relatively—I stress: relatively—broad provisions, namely sections 4 and 95. We will now have heavily caveated and more complicated support available across four provisions, including new paragraphs 10A and 10B of new schedule 3. The new clause and new schedule will sow confusion at a local authority level, and dangerous gaps in support can and will occur.
The changes relating to section 17 of the Children Act 1989 will prevent local authorities from providing accommodation and support where there are
“reasonable grounds for believing that support will be provided”.
That will prevent local authorities from supporting families on the basis that they might receive support in future, even though they are not currently receiving any support. It could prevent a local authority from providing emergency support if a family are destitute and have been unable to access immediate support from the Home Office. It will also prevent local authorities from providing support to families who in principle would be entitled to support under new paragraph 10A but are not receiving it in practice.
I am sure the Minister is well aware of the case of child EG, a one-year-old who died in 2012, followed two days later by his mother, when they were left in limbo between two different types of support. It is people like that who might be affected by the Government’s proposals. On the topic of vulnerability, there cannot be many more vulnerable people than young adults who have just turned 18 and have spent long periods of their childhood in care. Indeed, as has been alluded to, the Minister for Children and Families described them as “highly vulnerable” when calling for more support as part of a leaving care strategy as recently as July this year. It seems that our commitment to providing more care for this vulnerable group depends on where they were born or have come from.
The Minister for Children and Families is not alone. The Joint Committee on Human Rights also stated that unaccompanied migrant children must be properly supported in the transition to adulthood and receive bespoke and comprehensive plans that focus on educational goals, reintegration and rehabilitation. That includes planning for possible return to their country of origin and the provision of support to young people leaving care whose appeal rights are exhausted. The Joint Committee also stated that it would be difficult to reconcile the removal of support from young people leaving care on the basis of their immigration status, rather than on assessment of need, with the non-discrimination provisions of the UN convention on the rights of the child. Article 2 of the convention requires that states respect and ensure the rights of each child in their jurisdiction without discrimination of any kind.
During the evidence sessions, we heard time and again from expert witnesses that the proposals in the Bill run counter to the provisions and principles in the Children Act 1989 and the Children (Scotland) Act 1995. The hon. Member for North Dorset mused that it might be easier just to amend the 1989 Act, much to the dismay of myself and my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North-east. The Government may not have gone that far, but they are trying to make changes to the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 that will have a similar effect. Be in no doubt: the Scottish National party will be voting against these retrograde proposals.
James Brokenshire
I shall respond to the points that have been flagged in the order in which they were made. The hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras asked a number of questions. I underline that paragraph 7B is principally a matter of clarification. Those failed asylum seekers who claim asylum at port rather than in country are covered by the definition in paragraph 7B; we argue that that provides greater clarity. He made a point about judicial review cases. If someone has been granted permission to seek judicial review in respect of an asylum or article 3 European convention on human rights claim they will now be eligible for section 95 support under schedule 6 to the Bill.
The hon. and learned Gentleman also asked what was meant by a “genuine obstacle to return”. We debated that previously in this Committee and as I previously stated, the principal reasons will be a lack of documentation, including travel documentation, to facilitate return, or medical issues. He commented on the needs of children leaving care—a point further developed by the hon. Member for Rotherham and the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North. It is important to underline that the provisions relate to adults rather than children. That is important in the context of the UN convention on the rights of the child, as it defines a child as under the age of 18. Obviously, we are talking about adults who do not have that right to remain in the UK.
It may also be worth highlighting some context here. For example, in 2014 63% of asylum claims made by unaccompanied children were made by young people who arrived aged 16 or 17; therefore they had spent most of their lives outside the UK. When their claims fail and their appeal rights are exhausted, adult migrants are expected to leave this country. Any accommodation, subsistence or other support they require prior to their departure is, in our judgment, better provided under provisions intended for that purpose, not under the Children Act care leaver provisions intended to support the development of young people whose long-term future is in the UK. That is the distinction we draw.
Keir Starmer
What does the Minister say to the concern that those coming out of care may very well be vulnerable and traumatised, whatever age they went into care? They might not have regularised their status and will need access, for example, to an adviser even to get as far as an immigration lawyer to start the process. I appreciate what he says about age, but these are children who have just turned 18. What does he say to that group?
James Brokenshire
Obviously, if someone comes to this country as an unaccompanied asylum-seeking child, their case will be considered in that context and whether they become appeal rights exhausted up to the point at which they turn 18. It is not simply about how we approach this when someone gets to 18; for example, when they are 17 and a half they are reminded that they do not have status and that they should be regularising their position if they have not already done so. At that stage, obviously, the provisions that would continue to exist for a child, with the potential for a local authority to provide a personal adviser, will have been put in place.
Keir Starmer
That answer is inadequate. The Minister makes a distinction between those who are 18 and under 18. What he is saying is that we tell children that they must undertake whatever proceedings they need to regularise their status, and if they do not do so, when they get to 18, when they may still be very vulnerable and in need, they have missed the opportunity, perhaps because, as children, they did not understand what they were supposed to do. How is this supposed to work in practice for that vulnerable group?
James Brokenshire
As the hon. and learned Gentleman has already highlighted, support is provided to a child within the meaning of the Children Act. The point we are making is that when someone becomes an adult who is appeal rights exhausted, it is appropriate for the state to seek the removal of that adult from the UK in those circumstances. We are making an in-principle point about facilitating the removal of those with no rights to be here. The hon. and learned Gentleman seems to be suggesting that because someone came to this country as an unaccompanied asylum-seeking child, they have an enhanced right to remain in this country. We are saying that that is not correct. We should of course work with the Home Office to see that someone returns in those circumstances and that they are assisted to do so. Fundamentally, the provisions in the Children Act are designed for those who are likely to stay in the UK. Therefore it is our judgment that they should not apply and that is why we are bringing forward these provisions.
To the hon. Member for Rotherham I would add that we have consulted the Department for Education closely in the preparation of these provisions. The schedule therefore reflects a whole of Government view, rather than just a Home Office view.
Sarah Champion
May I have a brief clarification from the Minister? My understanding is that, if the child or young person is in a care home, the Minister is absolutely right—the age of 18 is the cut-off. If a child or young person is in foster care, I thought we had changed it so that the age at which they stop receiving support is now 21. Would that apply to an unaccompanied asylum seeker, or will they be discriminated against?
James Brokenshire
The point is that there is no discrimination. As I have already indicated, we are talking about children and the support provided under the Children Act. When someone turns 18, they are an adult and therefore we judge it is appropriate that the new provisions should apply. I think that the hon. Lady was highlighting the staying put duty in respect of foster parents. We are saying that, at the point at which someone becomes an adult, they should be leaving the UK and not staying put within the UK. Obviously, we have a strong desire to work with local authorities and with the young people themselves to support them in their departure from the UK.
I want to address the point about gaps made by the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North, which was also made in the briefing from the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association that I am sure hon. Members have received. We do not agree with the analysis that is given. Indeed, we think that the provisions in the new schedule will assist, because we can see that support is being provided. We are simplifying the basis on which the principal need of families without immigration status can be met by local authorities. That need is for accommodation and subsistence support to prevent destitution, as is clearly shown by the study I have highlighted and previously referred to. In respect of family groups, we are clear that section 17 of the Children Act will remain the basis on which local authorities will meet any other social care needs beyond destitution—that is, what they consider to be necessary to safeguard or promote the welfare of a child pending resolution of a family’s immigration status or their departure from the UK. I intervened on the hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras on that point.
The individual case that the hon. and learned Gentleman highlighted involved moving to DWP benefits rather than asylum support. As has been flagged previously, there have been delays in respect of some of the provisions. The Immigration Act and schedule 3 provisions we are discussing are about simplifying the process, so that there are not those laborious human rights assessments that replicate a number of other assessments in the system. The intention is to close some of the gaps, rather than extend them. That is why we take a different view from the analysis articulated by the hon. and learned Gentleman and set out in the ILPA briefing notes. We can see a difference of principle in the Committee this morning on the appropriateness of continuing Children Act provisions beyond the age of 18. Our judgment is that at that stage people should be leaving the UK rather than staying, and therefore we are talking about two distinct mechanisms and two distinct means. I hope that the Committee will be minded to incorporate the new clause into the Bill.
Question put, That the Clause be read a Second time.
Keir Starmer
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
The Gangmasters Licensing Authority—GLA—is the foremost labour inspection agency in the UK and it works to protect workers within the sectors it oversees, namely agriculture, forestry, horticulture, shellfish gathering, and food processing and packaging. It was set up in the aftermath of the 2004 Morecambe bay cockling disaster, in which 23 Chinese cockle pickers drowned when trapped by sweeping tides. In the past two years, the authority has prevented the exploitation of probably more than 5,000 workers.
During debates on the Modern Slavery Act 2015, a number of colleagues called for the Gangmasters Licensing Authority’s remit to be extended to cover sectors beyond those it currently regulates to include other sectors known to be high risk, among them construction, hospitality and social care. We then have the provisions in the Bill, which are not an extension of the GLA’s powers but the creation of a different body—the director of labour market enforcement. We welcome and support that, but there are two major implications. First, by increasing the focus on criminal investigations by the GLA, the provisions extend investigations within the existing remit but not the remit itself. The first issue that raises is one of resources, which has already been touched on in previous discussions in the Committee. Without the resources to go with the additional number of criminal investigations there is, in fact, a thinning down of the GLA’s ability to carry out its important work, rather than a reinforcing of it.
At this stage in particular, I draw to the Committee’s attention the fact that the GLA already sustained 20% savings—or cuts—in the previous spending review. There is a new spending review pending, and I ask the Minister: what further cuts are expected to the GLA in that review?
Secondly, on a separate point, the consultation exercise that accompanies the Bill seems to suggest going down the route of voluntary rather than statutory licensing. It would be helpful for the Committee if the Minister clarified whether this is the intended direction of travel for the GLA, particularly since, in our opinion, the statutory licencing approach has worked very well in the past.
James Brokenshire
I am grateful to the hon. and learned Gentleman for proposing the new clause, which seeks to introduce a power to extend the licensing regime contained in the Gangmasters Licensing Act 2004 to new sectors of the economy. It rightly facilitates a debate and I join him in underlining the important work that the GLA has undertaken and how it remains an important agency in seeking to respond to labour market abuses.
The hon. and learned Gentleman will recollect our debates on the director of labour market enforcement and the new strategy that we intend to adopt. He will also remember that I made it clear that it would be for the director of labour market enforcement effectively to make recommendations as to how resources should be applied within the overall spending envelope.
The hon. and learned Gentleman asked about the spending review. Sadly, that is a matter for others, and he will have to wait for the Chancellor’s statement next week. I am not going to tread on the Chancellor’s toes. I think that is the right and proper way. However, I want to touch on the current consultation on the role and remit of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority. Hon. Members have already voiced opinions of the work undertaken by the GLA and I hope they will welcome the consultation and the questions it asks about the GLA’s role in tackling labour market exploitation.
As demonstrated by the amendments to the Modern Slavery Act 2015, which require a review of the role of the GLA, we have taken very seriously the issues raised during debates during the passage of that Act about whether the GLA should have a wider role. Section 55 of the Modern Slavery Act already requires the Government to publish a paper on the role of the GLA and to consult on it. Our current consultation on the GLA and wider labour market exploitation fulfils that requirement.
We are unclear what the new clause seeks to achieve, given that we are in the midst of consulting on the GLA’s remit and role. In fact, our consultation goes further than the new clause proposes. We are seeking views on extending the role of the GLA beyond its current role in licensing gangmasters in certain sectors. The new clause appears to restrict the GLA’s role solely to licensing. We have a broader ambition for the GLA’s contribution to tackling exploitation, which is why we are proposing a new, wider remit for the GLA with new investigatory and enforcement powers to tackle serious cases of labour market exploitation, wherever they occur in the economy. We also want to ensure that the licensing regime can be adapted to fit the latest intelligence and the changing threat of worker exploitation in different sectors. We have set out several proposals in our consultation that we believe would achieve that.
We are looking to the role of the director of labour market enforcement to recommend any changes to the current statutory licensing regime and also to work closely with businesses to identify areas of possible self-regulation. It is the director’s role in considering the use of licensing to tackle labour market exploitation. The consultation proposes that the director should recommend extensions or reductions to the licensing remit. That may identify new sectors beyond those in the remit of the licensing regime where licensing can play a part in tackling worker exploitation.
At paragraph 137 of the consultation document, we suggest:
“a flexible and evidence-based approach to using licensing as a tool to prevent exploitation in the very highest risk sectors. Any changes to the licensed sectors would be agreed by Parliament, after Ministers had considered an evidence based proposal from the Director. This would be based on a risk based intelligence analysis of labour sectors.”
So we are envisaging a regulation-making power that would allow Ministers to change the licensing regime or the sectors covered by licensing through regulations that would be agreed by Parliament, after Ministers had considered the director’s evidence-based proposal. We believe that that would give an appropriate level of scrutiny to the evidence presented for any changes to the licensing regime.
We are consulting on the changes because we recognise the broad support to build on the effectiveness and good work of the GLA by providing the authority with further powers to increase its already strong performance. Once the consultation has closed, we will consider our response, including the funding necessary for the GLA to operate effectively in the context of the spending review, the results of which will be announced shortly. We fully expect that process to conclude during the passage of the Bill.
In the light of the proposals made in the consultation, which would extend the GLA’s enforcement function across the economy and set the framework for evidence-based decisions on licensing, we believe that the new clause is unnecessary, but we look forward to the results of the consultation and a clear, evidence-based analysis, which I hope will strengthen the GLA and our response to illegal working and to those who are abusing the vulnerable. We are adding to the GLA’s functions and to the progress in enhancing our response to bad, inappropriate and at times illegal practices in the labour market. The new enforcement measures contemplated in the Bill will strengthen the GLA.
Keir Starmer
The Minister resists the temptation to anticipate the Chancellor, but I wager that the resources for the GLA will go down, not up. All that will be discussed between now and what will be announced is by how much the resources will go down. I hope I am wrong, but I doubt it.
I fear what the Minister and other Ministers have said about savings and cuts. Of course I accept that efficiencies can always be made, but I have deep concerns that, in the area we are discussing, as well as in others, we will look back on the spending review and recognise that we did long-standing damage to the ability of our various agencies and authorities to carry out their necessary work, in particular with those who are most exploited in our society. However, we can return to the subject after the Chancellor’s announcement and see what the position is.
The Minister asked what the purpose of the new clause was. It was to build in a review. I listened carefully to what he said about the consultation and what might follow, and I welcome that. Given what he said about the exercise to be followed, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
New Clause 6
Additional measures in relation to victims of domestic violence or human trafficking
‘(1) The Immigration Act 2014 is amended in accordance with subsection (2).
(2) In Section 21 after sub-section (4) insert—
“(4A) P is to be treated as having a right to rent in relation to premises (in spite of subsection (2)) if they are in the process of applying for leave to remain under Paragraph 289 of the Immigration Rules as a victim of domestic violence.
(4B) P is to be treated as having a right to rent in relation to premises (in spite of subsection (2)) if they have received a reasonable grounds decision from UK Visas and Immigration that they are a victim of human trafficking.”’—(Keir Starmer.)
This new clause would enable suspected victims of human trafficking or domestic violence, who do not have a final visa giving them leave to remain, the right to enter into a tenancy.
Brought up, and read the First time.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 10—Persons disqualified by immigration status or with limited right to rent—
‘(1) The Immigration Act 2014 is amended in accordance with subsections (2) to (3).
(2) Omit section 21(3) and insert—
“(3) But P is to be treated as having a right to rent in relation to premises (in spite of subsection (2)) if:
(a) the Secretary of State has granted P permission for the purposes of this Chapter to occupy premises under a residential tenancy agreement; or
(b) P has been granted immigration bail; or
(c) P is to be treated as having been granted immigration bail.”’
To ensure that persons seeking asylum who can afford to rent privately, persons with outstanding applications and persons with outstanding appeals or judicial reviews are able to rent.
Keir Starmer
I will do my best to be as persuasive as my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham had she spoken on the proposed provisions. It is convenient to take the two new clauses together.
New clause 6 is in essence an attempt to carve out an exemption to the restrictions on right to rent in relation to two particularly vulnerable groups—suspected victims of domestic violence or human trafficking—and gives them the right to enter into a tenancy. Our concern is the unintended consequence of those two groups not being able to be properly accommodated.
New clause 10 is different. It is intended to provide a right to rent to anyone known to and in touch with the authorities, whom the authorities have chosen not to detain, where they are in a financial position to rent privately. If they are not in a position to rent privately, they would be catered for differently through support, so this is a sub-group within the group that is known to be in touch with the authorities, but not detained. It has been suggested that the Secretary of State will exercise discretionary power in relation to that group. The new clause is intended to put that on a proper statutory basis so that that group is properly protected.
James Brokenshire
The Government completely agree that victims of domestic violence and human trafficking should not be disadvantaged as a result of this legislation or the previous Immigration Act. We accept that individuals in such a vulnerable position should have access to the private rented sector. The aims and objectives in new clause 6 are laudable, but we do not believe they are necessary.
When the 2014 Act was before Parliament, we were concerned that the Secretary of State should have sufficient latitude to be able to exempt specific persons from the disqualification on renting premises if need be. Subsection (3) of section 21 of that Act provides that a person is to be treated as having a right to rent if the Secretary of State has granted that person permission to occupy premises under a residential tenancy agreement. That can be exercised on behalf of vulnerable people. In addition, the Act provides exemptions whereby the provisions do not apply to certain excluded tenancy agreements. Schedule 3 specifically excludes hostels and refuges. Paragraph 6(5) to schedule 3 defines refuges as accommodation used for persons who have been subject to violence, threats and other coercive and abusive behaviour, so persons in refuges will not be disadvantaged.
Where a potential victim of human trafficking has received a positive reasonable grounds decision through the national referral mechanism, the Government fund specialist accommodation and support, as do the devolved Administrations, which is provided until a conclusive grounds decision is reached on their status as a victim and on any discretionary leave resulting from that status.
New clause 10 is also unnecessary. Persons seeking asylum who can afford to rent privately, and persons who have a genuine barrier preventing their departure from the UK, can already obtain permission to rent from the Home Office. That permission to rent mechanism already exists in section 21(3) of the Immigration Act 2014. Landlords of prospective migrant tenants who believe that they may qualify for permission to rent can contact the Home Office to conduct a right to rent check.
There is also no need for a statutory provision for permission to rent for persons granted immigration bail. Such persons are always given permission, and Home Office presenting officers have been instructed to assure immigration judges that, should they choose to release an immigrant on bail, the Home Office will provide permission to rent. That is our very clear policy. The tribunal has found this approach acceptable. It is also the case that there may be other instances where permission to rent is appropriate, such as where an illegal immigrant faces a recognised barrier to returning home.
Keir Starmer
I am grateful to the Minister for his comments. I think we share concerns about the particular groups that are dealt with under the new clauses. The gap between us is between a statutory scheme under the new clause and a discretionary scheme exercised by the Secretary of State. The Minister has, however, set out in some detail what the policy approach is and has given a clear steer as to how measures are being and will be operated. In those circumstances, the gap is in fact smaller than it might otherwise have been and I will not press the new clause. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
New Clause 7
Residential tenancies: repeal of provisions of the Immigration Act 2014
‘(1) The Immigration Act 2014 is amended as follows.
(2) Omit sections 20-37, 74(2)(a) and Schedule 3.—(Keir Starmer.)
Together with amendment 84, this amendment removes the residential tenancies provisions from both the Immigration Act 2014 and the current Bill.
Brought up, and read the First time.
Keir Starmer
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
I can deal with new clause 7 very briefly because, as hon. Members will see, it is associated with, and is I think the flipside of, amendment 84, which we discussed the week before last. It aims to remove the residential tenancies right to move provisions from the Immigration Act, but the Committee has already had a substantive debate on this, including discussion of the west midlands pilot, and we voted on amendment 84. In those circumstances, whatever our respective views on these provisions, I am not sure they will become any more influential or powerful by being repeated at length. I therefore do not propose to press new clause 7.
James Brokenshire
The hon. and learned Gentleman has clearly reaffirmed the Opposition’s position and I do not think, in the interests of time, that there is any merit in my going over some of the detailed debates that we have already had on amendment 84. We have had extensive debate on the right to rent and I know that there is a difference of opinion across the Committee. Equally I know that the hon. and learned Gentleman recognises that a vote has already been taken and that this new clause repeats some of that ground. I welcome his comment that he does not intend to push new clause 7 to a vote.
Keir Starmer
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
New Clause 8
Persons with a right to rent
‘(1) The Immigration Act 2014 is amended as follows.
(2) In section 21(2)(a) after “have it,” insert “subject to subsection (2A)”.
(3) After section 21(2) insert—
“(2A) P retains a right to rent under this section:
(a) for 90 days after P’s leave to enter or remain comes to an end; or
(b) until the end of the one year beginning with the date on which P’s landlord last complied with the prescribed requirements in respect of P, whichever is longer.”
(4) After section 21(4) (b) insert—
“(c) a person who has retained a right to rent under subsection (2A).”—(Keir Starmer.)
To amend the Immigration Act 2014 to provide protection for landlords and landladies from prosecution when their tenant’s leave comes to an end.
Brought up, and read the First time.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 9—Immigration Act 2014: Premises shared with the landlord or a member of his family—
‘(1) The Immigration Act 2014 is amended in accordance with subsection (2).
(2) In Clause 20 (Residential tenancy agreement), omit the “and” at the end of subparagraph (b), and insert—
“(ba) is not an agreement granting a right of occupation of premises shared with the landlord, licensor or a member of his family, and””
To exclude from the definition of a residential tenancy agreement those agreements relating to accommodation shared with a landlord or a member of his family, so that individuals who rent out rooms or take lodgers into their homes, as opposed to renting out a whole flat or house, are not part of the right to rent provisions.
Keir Starmer
I intend to take a similar approach to new clause 8 as I took to new clause 7. It goes, again, to an issue that we have already discussed: the element of protection given to landlords who find themselves in a situation where they are immediately criminalised under the new provisions, about which we expressed considerable concern in the debate that we had the week before last. This provision deals with what we see as the injustice of that situation by providing for a 90-day grace period to protect landlords. It is, in essence, a version of the argument, or the submission, that we made two weeks ago, which was dealt with by a vote on protection for landlords. Again, I doubt that in the intervening two weeks the arguments on either side have either changed or strengthened, so I will not press the new clause.
New clause 9 has one foot in the camp of having already been discussed and one foot in the camp of being new. The last time we touched on similar provisions was in relation to a concern about those in a household who may find themselves advertising for co-tenants. The example discussed in Committee was that of students in a flat who might advertise when one of their number leaves. The Minister gave various assurances and made it clear that in those circumstances they would not come within the definition of an agent and therefore there was no need for concern. I accept that and, from memory, we withdrew the amendment on that basis.
New clause 9 is concerned with a not dissimilar situation, of a landlord renting accommodation that is shared by the landlord or a member of his or her family. It draws a distinction between, on the one hand, professional landlords, and on the other, those who simply let out a room in their house or flat. There is no real evidence on the likely impact of the new provisions on that group, but they will be impactful. New clause 9 drives at that group of individuals.
James Brokenshire
As the Government have explained, the new offences relating to landlords and agents will be targeted at cases where there has been repeated or particularly serious behaviour as regards renting to illegal migrants or failing to evict them. As I made clear and as we have debated previously, it is not intended to target landlords who are unaware that someone is disqualified from renting, nor will such landlords meet the
“knows or has reasonable cause to believe”
threshold required for commission of the offence. It is not intended to take steps to prosecute landlords who are taking reasonable steps to remove someone they know to be disqualified from their property. I recognise that, in part, new clause 8 goes over ground that we have debated at length in Committee, therefore I do not see a need to rerehearse some of the issues debated previously.
New clause 9 touches on some different points and seeks to place lodgers and instances where a person is renting to a family member outside the scope of the right to rent scheme. That was debated at some length at the time of the Immigration Act 2014 and was considered by the House in the context of its application to lodgers. There is already guidance about the position of those renting to close family. For example, undertaking a right to rent check provides a landlord with an excuse as regards the civil penalty. Where someone is confident that their family member is lawfully in the UK, there will be no need for them to undertake the checks to establish that excuse.
Our concern is that taking lodgers out of the scheme will mean that a significant number of illegal migrants and those who exploit them are left untouched, in essence creating a gap in the legislation. That would provide an easy means by which rogue landlords could avoid any sanctions, for instance by arguing that the property was their family home or by arranging for one tenant to take in another occupant as a lodger. Sadly, we know that there is exploitation, there are rogue landlords and that that is a risk. We believe that the checks are straightforward and should be no more difficult for someone letting out a spare room than for any other person who might be within the ambit of the Bill, for example through a formal tenancy. Anyone who accepts remuneration for renting property should accept the responsibilities involved in doing so, such as carrying out the basic checks previously debated and discussed in Committee. The concern about the gap that would be created and the risk that it might lead to further exploitation, with people being taken advantage of, means that we judge that this provision is not appropriate.
Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)
The Minister might remember that in a Committee sitting a couple of weeks ago I asked whether people who let out or gave a room via a charity, for no money or a token sum to cover their rising costs, were already exempt. I did not get an answer at the time, and I do not know whether that was because the Minister forgot, or did not want, to answer. Might this be an appropriate time to ask the question again? There are charities that fix destitute people up with others who have a spare room, and with some of the charities the person gets no recompense and with others they get a tiny amount to cover the increased fuel and other costs. Were such people already exempt, or will they be covered by the provisions?
James Brokenshire
I am sorry if I did not respond previously and I can assure the hon. Lady that it would certainly not have been from not wanting to answer. As she knows, a number of points are made during a debate and sometimes one might inadvertently pass over one of them. In respect of the right to rent scheme, and therefore the statutory excuse, which is what we are talking about, if no money changes hands the arrangement is exempt. I do not know if that helps her. There has to be what would be described in legal terms as some sort of payment or consideration for someone to be captured.
Anne McLaughlin
I am pleased to hear that, but some charities give a tiny, token amount for a donated room. It obviously costs more to have somebody living in a spare room, so the amount is not a profit or a commercial arrangement—it is just a token amount to cover the additional costs. Would that circumstance be exempt or would we have to introduce a provision at a later stage to exempt it?
James Brokenshire
It is obviously difficult, nor would it be right, for me to comment on specific arrangements. I have already talked about refuges and the separate exemptions that apply regarding the support provided for victims of trafficking, and in other circumstances within the definitions that were set out. I have spoken about the issue of nothing of monetary value changing hands, but ultimately we are looking at those with no right to be in the country. That is, I suppose, the basis of the question, and therefore some charitable support might be provided in other circumstances. That is why I must be careful in understanding the specifics, but I think that existing exemptions apply, and these were considered in detail when the right to rent scheme was original considered by the House. There are specific exemptions that we judge to be appropriate, and which cover, in particular, issues of vulnerability and abuse. Refuges play an incredible and essential role in providing appropriate support, and they are normally run by charities and other non-governmental organisations. It was right to put in those exemptions and we judge that they remain appropriate.
Keir Starmer
I am grateful for the Minister’s comments, in particular on new clause 8. I think he said that it was not the intention to prosecute landlords who took reasonable steps to take adequate action. As he well knows, in the end that is a matter for those who prosecute, but what he has said will now be on the record. It gives some assurance, certainly to Labour members of the Committee and also to landlords who have raised the issue with us, as well as with other members of the Committee, on a number of occasions. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
New Clause 11
Eligibility for housing and homelessness assistance
“The Secretary of State shall make provision by regulations to ensure that a person granted leave to enter or remain under section 3 of the Immigration Act 1971, whether under rules made under that section or otherwise, who is eligible for public funds shall also be eligible for housing and homelessness services.”—(Keir Starmer.)
Brought up, and read the First time.
Keir Starmer
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
This is my final appearance on an amendment or new clause, and it is fitting that the new clause is a probing one. Concerns have been raised about eligibility for housing and homelessness assistance. As a result of changes to immigration law and practice, some young people in households with children given leave to remain in the UK that allows them to claim all relevant benefits have un- intentionally been made ineligible for local authority housing and homelessness services, leaving them disadvantaged and creating a problem for social services, which must house them in emergencies if housing departments cannot do so.
The intention behind the new clause is to avoid what is hopefully an unintended consequence. If a level of assurance can be given that that will not be a consequence, the new clause has no purpose.
James Brokenshire
Migrants granted leave to enter or remain in the UK are generally expected to be able to maintain and accommodate themselves without recourse to public funds in the form of mainstream welfare benefits or local authority housing support. There is legislation in place to ensure that the majority of migrants cannot access those public funds. The Government are aware that in some cases a person granted immigration leave with no bar to accessing public funds might require local authority housing or homelessness support but would currently be ineligible as they are not settled here.
The Home Office is working with other Departments—the Department for Communities and Local Government in particular—to remedy the situation as swiftly as possible. It does not follow, however, that everyone who has been granted leave should have an immediate and enforceable claim to access local authority support and services, even where there is no bar to them accessing other public funds.
The No Recourse to Public Funds Network has highlighted the issue of the Allocation of Housing and Homelessness (Eligibility) (England) Regulations 2006, which control access to homelessness assistance and still refer to the discretionary leave category. That is quite a technical but important point. I assure the Committee that we are working closely with the Department for Communities and Local Government to examine amendments to the 2006 regulations, which is the relevant point.
There is an issue here, but I hope, with that assurance, the hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras will be minded to withdraw the new clause, while noting that this is something we are aware of and will take steps to remedy.
Keir Starmer
The purpose of a probing amendment is to identify a particular concern and seek assurance on it. The Minister gave that assurance and says all are working on a remedy. In those circumstances, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
New Schedule 1
Private hire vehicles etc
Metropolitan Public Carriage Act 1869 (c. 115)
1 The Metropolitan Public Carriage Act 1869 is amended as follows.
2 In section 8(7) (driver’s licence to be in force for three years unless suspended or revoked) for “A” substitute “Subject to section 8A, a”.
3 After section 8 insert—
“8A Drivers’ licences for persons subject to immigration control
(1) Subsection (2) applies if—
(a) a licence under section 8 is to be granted to a person who has been granted leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom for a limited period (“the leave period”),
(b) the person’s leave has not been extended by virtue of section 3C of the Immigration Act 1971 (continuation of leave pending variation decision), and
(c) apart from subsection (2), the period for which the licence would have been in force would have ended after the end of the leave period.
(2) Transport for London must grant the licence for a period which ends at or before the end of the leave period.
(3) Subsection (4) applies if—
(a) a licence under section 8 is to be granted to a person who has been granted leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom for a limited period, and
(b) the person’s leave has been extended by virtue of section 3C of the Immigration Act 1971 (continuation of leave pending variation decision).
(4) Transport for London must grant the licence for a period that does not exceed six months.
(5) A licence under section 8 ceases to be in force if the person to whom it was granted becomes disqualified by reason of the person’s immigration status from driving a hackney carriage.
(6) If subsection (5) applies to a licence, the person to whom it was granted must, within the period of 7 days beginning with the day after the day on which the person first became disqualified, return to Transport for London—
(a) the licence,
(b) the person’s copy of the licence (if any), and
(c) the person’s driver’s badge.
(7) A person who, without reasonable excuse, contravenes subsection (6) is guilty of an offence and liable on summary conviction—
(a) to a fine not exceeding level 3 on the standard scale, and
(b) in the case of a continuing offence, to a fine not exceeding ten pounds for each day during which an offence continues after conviction.
(8) For the purposes of this section a person is disqualified by reason of the person’s immigration status from driving a hackney carriage if the person is subject to immigration control and —
(a) the person has not been granted leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom, or
(b) the person’s leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom—
(i) is invalid,
(ii) has ceased to have effect (whether by reason of curtailment, revocation, cancellation, passage of time or otherwise), or
(iii) is subject to a condition preventing the individual from driving a hackney carriage.
(9) Where a person is on immigration bail within the meaning of Part 1 of Schedule 5 to the Immigration Act 2016—
(a) the person is to be treated for the purposes of this section as if the person had been granted leave to enter the United Kingdom, but
(b) any condition as to the person’s work in the United Kingdom to which the person’s immigration bail is subject is to be treated for those purposes as a condition of leave.
(10) For the purposes of this section a person is subject to immigration control if under the Immigration Act 1971 the person requires leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom.”
Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976 (c. 57)
4 The Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976 is amended as follows.
5 (1) Section 51 (licensing of drivers of private hire vehicles) is amended as follows.
(2) In subsection (1)—
(a) in paragraph (a) after “satisfied” insert “—(i)”, and
(b) for the “or” at the end of paragraph (a) substitute “and
(ii) that the applicant is not disqualified by reason of the applicant’s immigration status from driving a private hire vehicle; or”.
(3) After subsection (1) insert—
“(1ZA) In determining for the purposes of subsection (1) whether an applicant is disqualified by reason of the applicant’s immigration status from driving a private hire vehicle, a district council must have regard to any guidance issued by the Secretary of State.”
6 In section 53(1) (drivers’ licences for hackney carriages and private hire vehicles)—
(a) in paragraph (a) for “Every” substitute “Subject to section 53A, every”, and
(b) in paragraph (b) after “1889,” insert “but subject to section 53A,”.
7 After section 53 insert—
“53A Drivers’ licences for persons subject to immigration control
(1) Subsection (2) applies if—
(a) a licence within section 53(1)(a) or (b) is to be granted to a person who has been granted leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom for a limited period (“the leave period”);
(b) the person’s leave has not been extended by virtue of section 3C of the Immigration Act 1971 (continuation of leave pending variation decision); and
(c) apart from subsection (2), the period for which the licence would have been in force would have ended after the end of the leave period.
(2) The district council which grants the licence must specify a period in the licence as the period for which it remains in force; and that period must end at or before the end of the leave period.
(3) Subsection (4) applies if—
(a) a licence within section 53(1)(a) or (b) is to be granted to a person who has been granted leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom for a limited period; and
(b) the person’s leave has been extended by virtue of section 3C of the Immigration Act 1971 (continuation of leave pending variation decision).
(4) The district council which grants the licence must specify a period in the licence as the period for which it remains in force; and that period must not exceed six months.
(5) A licence within section 53(1)(a) ceases to be in force if the person to whom it was granted becomes disqualified by reason of the person’s immigration status from driving a private hire vehicle.
(6) A licence within section 53(1)(b) ceases to be in force if the person to whom it was granted becomes disqualified by reason of the person’s immigration status from driving a hackney carriage.
(7) If subsection (5) or (6) applies to a licence, the person to whom it was granted must, within the period of 7 days beginning with the day after the day on which the person first became disqualified, return the licence and the person’s driver’s badge to the district council which granted the licence.
(8) A person who, without reasonable excuse, contravenes subsection (7) is guilty of an offence and liable on summary conviction—
(a) to a fine not exceeding level 3 on the standard scale; and
(b) in the case of a continuing offence, to a fine not exceeding ten pounds for each day during which an offence continues after conviction.”
8 (1) Section 55 (licensing of operators of private hire vehicles) is amended as follows.
(2) In subsection (1)—
(a) after “satisfied” insert “—(a)”, and
(b) at the end of paragraph (a) insert “; and
(b) if the applicant is an individual, that the applicant is not disqualified by reason of the applicant’s immigration status from operating a private hire vehicle.”
(3) After subsection (1) insert—
“(1A) In determining for the purposes of subsection (1) whether an applicant is disqualified by reason of the applicant’s immigration status from operating a private hire vehicle, a district council must have regard to any guidance issued by the Secretary of State.”
(4) In subsection (2) for “Every” substitute “Subject to section 55ZA, every”.
9 After section 55 insert—
“55ZA Operators’ licences for persons subject to immigration control
(1) Subsection (2) applies if—
(a) a licence under section 55 is to be granted to a person who has been granted leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom for a limited period (“the leave period”);
(b) the person’s leave has not been extended by virtue of section 3C of the Immigration Act 1971 (continuation of leave pending variation decision); and
(c) apart from subsection (2), the period for which the licence would have been in force would have ended after the end of the leave period.
(2) The district council which grants the licence must specify a period in the licence as the period for which it remains in force; and that period must end at or before the end of the leave period.
(3) Subsection (4) applies if—
(a) a licence under section 55 is to be granted to a person who has been granted leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom for a limited period; and
(b) the person’s leave has been extended by virtue of section 3C of the Immigration Act 1971 (continuation of leave pending variation decision).
(4) The district council which grants the licence must specify a period in the licence as the period for which it remains in force; and that period must not exceed six months.
(5) A licence under section 55 ceases to be in force if the person to whom it was granted becomes disqualified by reason of the person’s immigration status from operating a private hire vehicle.
(6) If subsection (5) applies to a licence, the person to whom it was granted must, within the period of 7 days beginning with the day after the day on which the person first became disqualified, return it to the district council which granted the licence.
(7) A person who, without reasonable excuse, contravenes subsection (6) is guilty of an offence and liable on summary conviction—
(a) to a fine not exceeding level 3 on the standard scale; and
(b) in the case of a continuing offence, to a fine not exceeding ten pounds for each day during which an offence continues after conviction.”
10 (1) Section 59 (qualification for drivers of hackney carriages) is amended as follows.
(2) In subsection (1)—
(a) in paragraph (a) after “satisfied” insert “—(i)”, and
(b) for the “or” at the end of paragraph (a) substitute “and
(ii) that the applicant is not disqualified by reason of the applicant’s immigration status from driving a hackney carriage; or”.
(3) After subsection (1) insert—
“(1ZA) In determining for the purposes of subsection (1) whether an applicant is disqualified by reason of the applicant’s immigration status from driving a hackney carriage, a district council must have regard to any guidance issued by the Secretary of State.”
11 In section 61(1) (suspension and revocation of drivers’ licences) before the “or” at the end of paragraph (a) insert—
“(aa) that he has since the grant of the licence been convicted of an immigration offence or required to pay an immigration penalty;”.
12 In section 62(1) (suspension and revocation of operators’ licences) before the “or” at the end of paragraph (c) insert—
“(ca) that the operator has since the grant of the licence been convicted of an immigration offence or required to pay an immigration penalty;”.
13 In section 77 (appeals) after subsection (3) insert—
“(4) On an appeal under this Part of this Act or an appeal under section 302 of the Act of 1936 as applied by this section, the court is not entitled to entertain any question as to whether—
(a) a person should be, or should have been, granted leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom; or
(b) a person has, after the date of the decision being appealed against, been granted leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom.”
14 After section 79 insert—
“79A Persons disqualified by reason of immigration status
(1) For the purposes of this Part of this Act a person is disqualified by reason of the person’s immigration status from carrying on a licensable activity if the person is subject to immigration control and —
(a) the person has not been granted leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom; or
(b) the person’s leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom—
(i) is invalid;
(ii) has ceased to have effect (whether by reason of curtailment, revocation, cancellation, passage of time or otherwise); or
(iii) is subject to a condition preventing the individual from carrying on the licensable activity.
(2) Where a person is on immigration bail within the meaning of Part 1 of Schedule 5 to the Immigration Act 2016—
(a) the person is to be treated for the purposes of this Part of this Act as if the person had been granted leave to enter the United Kingdom; but
(b) any condition as to the person’s work in the United Kingdom to which the person’s immigration bail is subject is to be treated for those purposes as a condition of leave.
(3) For the purposes of this section a person is subject to immigration control if under the Immigration Act 1971 the person requires leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom.
(4) For the purposes of this section a person carries on a licensable activity if the person—
(a) drives a private hire vehicle;
(b) operates a private hire vehicle; or
(c) drives a hackney carriage.
79B Immigration offences and immigration penalties
(1) In this Part of this Act “immigration offence” means—
(a) an offence under any of the Immigration Acts;
(b) an offence under section 1 of the Criminal Attempts Act 1981 of attempting to commit an offence within paragraph (a); or
(c) an offence under section 1 of the Criminal Law Act 1977 of conspiracy to commit an offence within paragraph (a).
(2) In this Part of this Act “immigration penalty” means a penalty under—
(a) section 15 of the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006 (“the 2006 Act”); or
(b) section 23 of the Immigration Act 2014 (“the 2014 Act”).
(3) For the purposes of this Part of this Act a person to whom a penalty notice under section 15 of the 2006 Act has been given is not to be treated as having been required to pay an immigration penalty if—
(a) the person is excused payment by virtue of section 15(3) of that Act; or
(b) the penalty is cancelled by virtue of section 16 or 17 of that Act.
(4) For the purposes of this Part of this Act a person to whom a penalty notice under section 15 of the 2006 Act has been given is not to be treated as having been required to pay an immigration penalty until such time as—
(a) the period for giving a notice of objection under section 16 of that Act has expired and the Secretary of State has considered any notice given within that period; and
(b) if a notice of objection was given within that period, the period for appealing under section 17 of that Act has expired and any appeal brought within that period has been finally determined, abandoned or withdrawn.
(5) For the purposes of this Part of this Act a person to whom a penalty notice under section 23 of the 2014 Act has been given is not to be treated as having been required to pay an immigration penalty if—
(a) the person is excused payment by virtue of section 24 of that Act; or
(b) the penalty is cancelled by virtue of section 29 or 30 of that Act.
(6) For the purposes of this Part of this Act a person to whom a penalty notice under section 23 of the 2014 Act has been given is not to be treated as having been required to pay an immigration penalty until such time as—
(a) the period for giving a notice of objection under section 29 of that Act has expired and the Secretary of State has considered any notice given within that period; and
(b) if a notice of objection was given within that period, the period for appealing under section 30 of that Act has expired and any appeal brought within that period has been finally determined, abandoned or withdrawn.”
Private Hire Vehicles (London) Act 1998 (c. 34)
15 The Private Hire Vehicles (London) Act 1998 is amended as follows.
16 In section 1(1) (meaning of “private hire vehicle” etc)—
(a) omit the “and” at the end of paragraph (a), and
(b) at the end of paragraph (b) insert “; and
(c) “operate”, in relation to a private hire vehicle, means to make provision for the invitation or acceptance of, or to accept, private hire bookings in relation to the vehicle.”
17 (1) Section 3 (London operator’s licences) is amended as follows.
(2) In subsection (3) for the “and” at the end of paragraph (a) substitute—
“(aa) if the applicant is an individual, the applicant is not disqualified by reason of the applicant’s immigration status from operating a private hire vehicle; and”
(3) After subsection (3) insert—
“(3A) In determining for the purposes of subsection (3) whether an applicant is disqualified by reason of the applicant’s immigration status from operating a private hire vehicle, the licensing authority must have regard to any guidance issued by the Secretary of State.”
(4) In subsection (5) for “A” substitute “Subject to section 3A, a”.
18 After section 3 insert—
“3A London PHV operator’s licences for persons subject to immigration control
(1) Subsection (2) applies if—
(a) a London PHV operator’s licence is to be granted to a person who has been granted leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom for a limited period (“the leave period”);
(b) the person’s leave has not been extended by virtue of section 3C of the Immigration Act 1971 (continuation of leave pending variation decision); and
(c) apart from subsection (2), the period for which the licence would have been granted would have ended after the end of the leave period.
(2) The licence must be granted for a period which ends at or before the end of the leave period.
(3) Subsection (4) applies if—
(a) a London PHV operator’s licence is to be granted to a person who has been granted leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom for a limited period; and
(b) the person’s leave has been extended by virtue of section 3C of the Immigration Act 1971 (continuation of leave pending variation decision).
(4) The licence must be granted for a period which does not exceed six months.
(5) A London PHV operator’s licence ceases to be in force if the person to whom it was granted becomes disqualified by reason of the person’s immigration status from operating a private hire vehicle.
(6) If subsection (5) applies to a licence, the person to whom it was granted must, within the period of 7 days beginning with the day after the day on which the person first became disqualified, return it the licensing authority.
(7) A person who, without reasonable excuse, contravenes subsection (6) is guilty of an offence and liable on summary conviction—
(a) to a fine not exceeding level 3 on the standard scale; and
(b) in the case of a continuing offence, to a fine not exceeding ten pounds for each day during which an offence continues after conviction.”
19 (1) Section 13 (London PHV driver’s licences) is amended as follows.
(2) In subsection (2) for the “and” at the end of paragraph (a) substitute—
“(aa) the applicant is not disqualified by reason of the applicant’s immigration status from driving a private hire vehicle; and”
(3) After subsection (2) insert—
“(2A) In determining for the purposes of subsection (2) whether an applicant is disqualified by reason of the applicant’s immigration status from driving a private hire vehicle, the licensing authority must have regard to any guidance issued by the Secretary of State.”
(4) In subsection (5) at the beginning of paragraph (c) insert “subject to section 13A,”.
20 After section 13 insert—
“13A London PHV driver’s licences for persons subject to immigration control
(1) Subsection (2) applies if—
(a) a London PHV driver’s licence is to be granted to a person who has been granted leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom for a limited period (“the leave period”);
(b) the person’s leave has not been extended by virtue of section 3C of the Immigration Act 1971 (continuation of leave pending variation decision); and
(c) apart from subsection (2), the period for which the licence would have been granted would have ended after the end of the leave period.
(2) The licence must be granted for a period which ends at or before the end of the leave period.
(3) Subsection (4) applies if—
(a) a London PHV driver’s licence is to be granted to a person who has been granted leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom for a limited period; and
(b) the person’s leave has been extended by virtue of section 3C of the Immigration Act 1971 (continuation of leave pending variation decision).
(4) The licence must be granted for a period which does not exceed six months.
(5) A London PHV driver’s licence ceases to be in force if the person to whom it was granted becomes disqualified by reason of the person’s immigration status from driving a private hire vehicle.
(6) If subsection (5) applies to a licence, the person to whom it was granted must, within the period of 7 days beginning with the day after the day on which the person first became disqualified, return the licence and the person’s driver’s badge to the licensing authority.
(7) A person who, without reasonable excuse, contravenes subsection (6) is guilty of an offence and liable on summary conviction—
(a) to a fine not exceeding level 3 on the standard scale; and
(b) in the case of a continuing offence, to a fine not exceeding ten pounds for each day during which an offence continues after conviction.”
21 (1) Section 16 (power to suspend or revoke licences) is amended as follows.
(2) In subsection (2) before the “or” at the end of paragraph (a) insert—
“(aa) the licence holder has, since the grant of the licence, been convicted of an immigration offence or required to pay an immigration penalty;”.
(3) In subsection (4) at the end of paragraph (a) insert—
“(aa) the licence holder has, since the grant of the licence, been convicted of an immigration offence or required to pay an immigration penalty;”.
22 In section 25 (appeals) after subsection (7) insert—
“(8) On an appeal under this Act to the magistrates’ court or the Crown Court, the court is not entitled to entertain any question as to whether—
(a) a person should be, or should have been, granted leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom; or
(b) a person has, after the date of the decision being appealed against, been granted leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom.”
23 After section 35 insert—
“35A Persons disqualified by reason of immigration status
(1) For the purposes of this Act a person is disqualified by reason of the person’s immigration status from carrying on a licensable activity if the person is subject to immigration control and —
(a) the person has not been granted leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom; or
(b) the person’s leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom—
(i) is invalid;
(ii) has ceased to have effect (whether by reason of curtailment, revocation, cancellation, passage of time or otherwise); or
(iii) is subject to a condition preventing the individual from carrying on the licensable activity.
(2) Where a person is on immigration bail within the meaning of Part 1 of Schedule 5 to the Immigration Act 2016—
(a) the person is to be treated for the purposes of this Part as if the person had been granted leave to enter the United Kingdom; but
(b) any condition as to the person’s work in the United Kingdom to which the person’s immigration bail is subject is to be treated for those purposes as a condition of leave.
(3) For the purposes of this section a person is subject to immigration control if under the Immigration Act 1971 the person requires leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom.
(4) For the purposes of this section a person carries on a licensable activity if the person—
(a) operates a private hire vehicle; or
(b) drives a private hire vehicle.
35B Immigration offences and immigration penalties
(1) In this Act “immigration offence” means—
(a) an offence under any of the Immigration Acts;
(b) an offence under section 1 of the Criminal Attempts Act 1981 of attempting to commit an offence within paragraph (a); or
(c) an offence under section 1 of the Criminal Law Act 1977 of conspiracy to commit an offence within paragraph (a).
(2) In this Act “immigration penalty” means a penalty under—
(a) section 15 of the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006 (“the 2006 Act”), or
(b) section 23 of the Immigration Act 2014 (“the 2014 Act”).
(3) For the purposes of this Act a person to whom a penalty notice under section 15 of the 2006 Act has been given is not to be treated as having been required to pay an immigration penalty if—
(a) the person is excused payment by virtue of section 15(3) of that Act; or
(b) the penalty is cancelled by virtue of section 16 or 17 of that Act.
(4) For the purposes of this Act a person to whom a penalty notice under section 15 of the 2006 Act has been given is not to be treated as having been required to pay an immigration penalty until such time as—
(a) the period for giving a notice of objection under section 16 of that Act has expired and the Secretary of State has considered any notice given within that period; and
(b) if a notice of objection was given within that period, the period for appealing under section 17 of that Act has expired and any appeal brought within that period has been finally determined, abandoned or withdrawn.
(5) For the purposes of this Act a person to whom a penalty notice under section 23 of the 2014 Act has been given is not to be treated as having been required to pay an immigration penalty if—
(a) the person is excused payment by virtue of section 24 of that Act; or
(b) the penalty is cancelled by virtue of section 29 or 30 of that Act.
(6) For the purposes of this Act a person to whom a penalty notice under section 23 of the 2014 Act has been given is not to be treated as having been required to pay an immigration penalty until such time as—
(a) the period for giving a notice of objection under section 29 of that Act has expired and the Secretary of State has considered any notice given within that period; and
(b) if a notice of objection was given within that period, the period for appealing under section 30 of that Act has expired and any appeal brought within that period has been finally determined, abandoned or withdrawn.”
24 In section 36 (interpretation) at the appropriate place insert—
““operate” has the meaning given in section 1(1);”.” —(James Brokenshire.)
This amendment amends the licensing regimes for taxis and private hire vehicles in England and Wales to prevent illegal working in these sectors. It includes the addition of requirements for licence grant to be conditional on leave and for licence length to be limited by a person’s leave duration.
Brought up, read the First and Second time, and added to the Bill.
New Schedule 2
Duty to supply nationality documents to Secretary of State: persons to whom duty applies Persons to whom section 20A applies
1 This is the new Schedule A1 to the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 referred to in section (Supply of information to Secretary of State)—
“Schedule A1
Persons to whom section 20A applies
Law enforcement
1 The chief officer of police for a police area in England and Wales.
2 The chief constable of the Police Service of Scotland.
3 The Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland.
4 The Chief Constable of the British Transport Police Force.
5 A Port Police Force established under an order made under section 14 of the Harbours Act 1964.
6 The Port Police Force established under Part 10 of the Port of London Act 1968.
7 A Port Police Force established under section 79 of the Harbours, Docks and Piers Clauses Act 1847.
8 The National Crime Agency.
Local government
9 A county council or district council in England.
10 A London borough council.
11 The Greater London Authority.
12 The Common Council of the City of London in its capacity as a local authority.
13 The Council of the Isles of Scilly.
14 A county council or a county borough council in Wales.
15 A council constituted under section 2 of the Local Government etc (Scotland) Act 1994.
16 A district council in Northern Ireland.
Regulatory bodies
17 The Gangmasters Licensing Authority.
18 The Security Industry Authority.
Health bodies
19 An NHS trust established under section 25 of the National Health Service Act 2006 or under section 18 of the National Health Service (Wales) Act 2006.
20 An NHS foundation trust within the meaning given by section 30 of the National Health Service Act 2006.
21 A Local Health Board established under section 11 of the National Health Service (Wales) Act 2006.
22 A National Health Service Trust established under section 12A of the National Health Service (Scotland) Act 1978.
23 A Health and Social Care trust established under Article 10 of the Health and Personal Social Services (Northern Ireland) Order 1991 (SI 1991/194 (NI 1)).
Registration officials
24 The Registrar General for England and Wales.
25 A superintendent registrar of births, deaths and marriages.
26 A registrar of births, deaths and marriages.
27 A civil partnership registrar within the meaning of Chapter 1 of Part 2 of the Civil Partnership Act 2004 (see section 29 of that Act).
28 The Registrar General for Scotland.
29 A district registrar within the meaning of section 7 of the Registration of Births, Deaths and Marriages (Scotland) Act 1965.
30 A senior registrar within the meaning of that section.
31 An assistant registrar within the meaning of that section.
32 The Registrar General for Northern Ireland.
33 A person appointed under Article 31(1) or (3) of the Marriage (Northern Ireland) Order 2003 (SI 2003/413 (NI 3)).
34 A person appointed under section 152(1) or (3) of the Civil Partnership Act 2004.
Other bodies: Northern Ireland
35 The Northern Ireland Housing Executive.” —(James Brokenshire.)
This amendment inserts a new Schedule A1 into the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 listing the bodies which are subject to the duty to provide nationality documents to the Secretary of State under the new section 20A for that Act (see NC15).
Brought up, read the First and Second time, and added to the Bill.
New Schedule 3
Availability of local authority support
1 Schedule 3 to the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 (withholding and withdrawal of support) is amended as follows.
2 (1) Paragraph 1 (ineligibility for support) is amended as follows.
(2) In sub-paragraph (1) (excluded support or assistance) after paragraph (g) insert—
(ga) in relation only to a person to whom this paragraph applies by virtue of paragraph 7B—
(i) section 23CZA of that Act (arrangements for certain former relevant children to continue to live with former foster parents), or
(ii) regulations under section 23D of that Act (personal advisers),”.
(3) After sub-paragraph (2) insert—
“(2A) In the case of the provisions referred to in sub-paragraph (1)(ga), sub-paragraph (2) applies only in relation to a person to whom this paragraph applies by virtue of paragraph 7B.”
3 (1) Paragraph 2(1) (exceptions) is amended as follows.
(2) In paragraph (c) for “or 10” substitute “, 10, 10A or 10B”.
(3) After the “or” at the end of paragraph (c) insert—
(ca) under section 95A or 98A of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 (support for failed asylum seekers etc), or”.
4 After paragraph 3 insert—
3A Notwithstanding paragraph 3, paragraph 1(1)(g) prevents a local authority in England from providing support or assistance under section 17 of the Children Act 1989 to a person in respect of a child if —
(a) the support or assistance is of a type that could be provided to the person by virtue of paragraph 10A (see paragraph 10A(7)), and
(b) support is being provided to the person by virtue of paragraph 10A or there are reasonable grounds for believing that support will be provided to the person by virtue of that paragraph.
3B Notwithstanding paragraph 3, paragraph 1(1)(g) prevents a local authority in England from providing support or assistance under section 23C, 23CA, 24A or 24B of the Children Act 1989 to a person if—
(a) support is being provided to the person by virtue of paragraph 10B or section 95A of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999, or
(b) there are reasonable grounds for believing that support will be provided to the person by virtue of that paragraph or section.
3C Notwithstanding paragraph 3, paragraph 1(1)(ga) prevents a local authority in England from providing support or assistance under a provision mentioned in paragraph (ga) to a person if—
(a) support is being provided to the person by virtue of paragraph 10B or section 95A of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999, or
(b) there are reasonable grounds for believing that support will be provided to the person by virtue of that paragraph or section.”
5 In paragraph 6 (third class of ineligible person: failed asylum-seeker), in sub-paragraph (1), in the words before sub-paragraph (a), after “person” insert “in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland”.
6 In paragraph 7 (fourth class of ineligible person: person unlawfully in United Kingdom), in the words before sub-paragraph (a), after “person” insert “in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland”.
7 Before paragraph 8 insert—
“Sixth class of ineligible person: person in England without leave to enter or remain
7B (1) Paragraph 1 applies to a person in England if—
(a) under the Immigration Act 1971, he requires leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom but does not have it, and
(b) he is not an asylum-seeker.
(2) Paragraph 1 also applies to a dependant of a person to whom that paragraph applies by virtue of sub-paragraph (1).”
8 After paragraph 10 insert—
“Accommodation and subsistence etc: England
10A (1) The Secretary of State may make regulations providing for arrangements to be made for support to be provided to a person to whom paragraph 1 applies by virtue of paragraph 7B(1) and—
(a) who is destitute,
(b) who has with him a dependent child,
(c) to whom section 95A of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 does not apply, and
(d) in relation to whom condition A, B, C or D is satisfied.
(2) Condition A is that—
(a) the person has made an application for leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom and has not withdrawn the application,
(b) where regulations under this paragraph require that the application must be of a kind specified in the regulations for this condition to be satisfied, the application is of that kind, and
(c) the application has not been determined.
(3) Condition B is that—
(a) the person has appealed under section 82(1), and
(b) the appeal is pending within the meaning of section 104.
(4) Condition C is that—
(a) the person’s appeal rights are exhausted, and
(b) he has not failed to cooperate with arrangements that would enable him to leave the United Kingdom.
(5) Condition D is that the provision of support is necessary to safeguard and promote the welfare of a dependent child.
(6) Arrangements for a person by virtue of this paragraph may include arrangements for a dependant.
(7) The support that may be provided under arrangements by virtue of this paragraph may take the form of —
(a) accommodation;
(b) subsistence in kind, or cash or vouchers to pay for subsistence.
(8) Subsections (3) to (8) of section 95 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 (meaning of “destitute”) apply for the purposes of this paragraph as they apply for the purposes of that section.
(9) For the purposes of sub-paragraph (2) regulations under this paragraph may provide for circumstances in which—
(a) a person is to be treated as having made an application for leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom (despite not having made one);
(b) a person is to be treated as not having made such an application where the Secretary of State is satisfied that the application made is vexatious or wholly without merit.
(10) For the purposes of sub-paragraph (4) a person’s appeal rights are exhausted at the time when—
(a) he could not bring an appeal under section 82 (ignoring any possibility of an appeal out of time with permission), and
(b) no appeal brought by him is pending within the meaning of section 104.
10B (1) The Secretary of State may make regulations providing for arrangements to be made for support to be provided to a person to whom paragraph 1 applies by virtue of paragraph 7B(1) and—
(a) who is a former relevant child within the meaning of section 23C of the Children Act 1989,
(b) to whom section 95A of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 does not apply, and
(c) in relation to whom condition A, B or C is satisfied.
(2) Condition A is that—
(a) the person is destitute,
(b) the person has made an application for leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom and has not withdrawn the application,
(c) where regulations under this paragraph require that the application must be of a kind specified in the regulations for this condition to be satisfied, the application is of that kind, and
(d) the application has not been determined.
(3) Condition B is that—
(a) the person is destitute,
(b) the person has appealed under section 82(1), and
(c) the appeal is pending within the meaning of section 104.
(4) Condition C is that—
(a) the person’s appeal rights are exhausted, and
(b) a person specified in regulations under this paragraph is satisfied that support needs to be provided to the person.
(5) The support that may be provided under arrangements by virtue of this paragraph may, in particular, take the form of —
(a) accommodation;
(b) subsistence in kind, or cash or vouchers to pay for subsistence.
(6) Subsections (3) to (8) of section 95 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 (meaning of “destitute”) apply for the purposes of this paragraph as they apply for the purposes of that section.
(7) For the purposes of sub-paragraph (3) regulations under this paragraph may provide for circumstances in which—
(a) a person is to be treated as having made an application for leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom (despite not having made one);
(b) a person is to be treated as not having made such an application where the Secretary of State is satisfied that the application made is vexatious or wholly without merit.
(8) For the purposes of sub-paragraph (5) a person’s appeal rights are exhausted at the time when—
(a) he could not bring an appeal under section 82 (ignoring any possibility of an appeal out of time with permission), and
(b) no appeal brought by him is pending within the meaning of section 104.”
9 In paragraph 11 (assistance and accommodation: general), in the words before sub-paragraph (a), for “or 10” substitute “, 10, 10A or 10B”.
10 In paragraph 13 (offences), in sub-paragraphs (1)(b) and (2)(a), for “or 10” substitute “, 10, 10A or 10B”.
11 In paragraph 14 (information), in sub-paragraphs (1) and (2), for “or 7” (as substituted by paragraph 25(8)(b) of Schedule 6) substitute “, 7 or 7B”.” —(James Brokenshire.)
This new Schedule simplifies the basis on which local authorities in England assess and provide accommodation and subsistence for destitute families without immigration status. It prevents adult migrant care leavers who have exhausted their appeal rights accessing Children Act support and provides for their pre-departure support.
Brought up, and read the First time.
Question put, That the schedule be read a Second time.
Sarah Champion
On a point of order, Mr Owen. May I have clarity on when amendment 70 will be considered?
The Lord Commissioner of Her Majesty's Treasury (Charlie Elphicke)
Further to that point of order, Mr Owen. I also seek clarification. I understand, though I stand to be corrected, that amendment 70 is on the table. I am not sure, however, about whether amendments 221 and 77 are on the table as well.
The Chair
When we come to clause 54, amendment 221 can be moved formally at that point. That will be followed by amendment 70. Ms Champion, are you happy with that?
Sarah Champion
Happy? I am delighted.
Clause 52 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 53
Regulations
Amendments made: 37, in clause 53, page 44, line 15, after “State” insert
‘or the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster’.
Part 7 of the Bill currently requires the Secretary of State or the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster to prepare a code of practice in respect of the English language requirement for public sector workers. The code comes into force in accordance with regulations. This amendment and amendments 38 and 39 ensure that clause 53 applies to regulations made by either the Secretary of State or the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster under Part 7.
Amendment 245, in clause 53, page 44, line 23, at end insert
‘() regulations under section (Private hire vehicles etc)(2),’.
This amendment provides for regulations making provision regarding taxis and private hire vehicles in Scotland and Northern Ireland to be subject to the affirmative resolution procedure.
Amendment 38, in clause 53, page 44, line 39, after “State” insert
‘or the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster’.
See the explanatory statement for amendment 37.
Amendment 39, in clause 53, page 44, line 42, after “State” insert
‘or the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster’.—(James Brokenshire.)
See the explanatory statement for amendment 37.
Clause 53, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 54
Commencement
Keir Starmer
To clarify, Mr Owen, I will not move amendments 221 and 77, but I will move amendment 70.
Amendment proposed: 70, in clause 54, page 45, line 11, at end insert
‘(4A) Section 12 shall not come into force before 1 January 2018.’. —(Keir Starmer.)
This amendment would defer the implementation of Clause 12 until January 2018.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
The Committee proceeded to a Division.
The Chair
The ayes were six and the noes were eight, so the ayes have it—I beg your pardon, the noes have it.
James Brokenshire
On a point of order, Mr Owen, before we reach the formal conclusion of the Committee with the final motion for our consideration, I very much thank you and your co-Chair, Mr Bone, for the manner in which you have chaired our deliberations. At times you have provided us with sage advice on procedure and the conduct of our consideration of the Bill, so I thank both of you for the exemplary way in which you fulfilled your duties. You will have been ably assisted by the Clerks in so doing, so on behalf of the Committee I underline our thanks to them and all the officials. That support has ensured that our proceedings have always been in order and that we have conducted our business appropriately, so I extend those thanks.
I also extend thanks to the officers of the Official Report. They have ensured that our words have been faithfully replicated. Those who will consider the Bill as it passes to Report and onwards will know that our deliberations and debates have been appropriately and faithfully recorded. I also thank the Doorkeepers and all those who have kept us safe and secure throughout our consideration of the Bill.
On the Government side, I thank my officials and the Bill team for all the support they have provided to me and the Solicitor General during our debates and discussions. I also thank the parliamentary draftsmen for the expert advice that that team has given in the preparation and drafting of the Bill, as well as on some of the more technical amendments that we have laid. I also thank the Solicitor General for the support that he has given, for all his sage interventions and for leading on particular parts of the Bill.
I also thank the Whip, my hon. Friend the Member for Dover, for always ensuring that we are conducting our proceedings appropriately and for moving to adjourn at the end of the day. I also thank my Parliamentary Private Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley, for his support, and all Members on the Government side.
Keir Starmer
On a point of order, Mr Owen, I join the Minister in thanking so many members of the teams. In particular, I thank you and Mr Bone, for chairing these proceedings. It has been invaluable to me, in particular, going through such a process for the first time, and has ensured that we have got through quite difficult, technical business in an efficient way which has provided the safeguards that this process is intended to provide. We are all very grateful for that.
I extend my gratitude to the Clerks, who have helped not only in the proceedings themselves but in the preparation as well, and have ensured that we have gone through this process in the best possible way, and to all the support staff, in whatever capacity, both in this Room and sitting behind both teams. The support may be different and perhaps more luxurious on the other side, but that support is vital for both sides, to enable issues to be untangled where they can be untangled quickly and to allow probing, testing and challenge. The process has been useful.
I have had some difficult briefs in my time. In terms of the likelihood of ever winning a single vote, this goes down as one of the most difficult. I thought for one brief moment that we might just have sealed one vote a moment ago, but that was not to be. That is a reflection on the process, but I thank the Minister and the Solicitor General for the way they have dealt with our questions, the information they have provided and the assurances they have given on issues that are of real concern, not only in the Committee but to many people outside who will be affected by the Bill. They have willingly written or put on the record their position where they have agreed to meet our concerns, and we are grateful for that.
Perhaps we should add our thanks to the witnesses who came and gave their time and their evidence to the Committee, both orally and in writing.
Anne McLaughlin
On a point of order, Mr Owen, I am beginning to feel a bit sorry for Mr Bone, because this is twice you have had this. Perhaps you have engineered it this way. I add my thanks, on behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North and myself, to everyone involved. This is obviously our first time on a Public Bill Committee. I was a Member of the Scottish Parliament for two years, but I never served on a Bill Committee. I was on the Audit Committee and the Petitions Committee, so this is completely new to me. As well as the Clerks, colleagues in the Labour party have been so helpful and generous. Our own researchers have been really good.
I will always remember my first experience on a Bill Committee as being a little like ceilidh dancing in that you work out exactly what you are doing just as the music stops. I am desperate for my next Bill Committee, because it has all now clicked into place.
It is not often that I have anything positive to say about Members on the Government Benches. [Hon. Members: “Oh!] They bring it on themselves. While the entire Bill is wrong and everything they said is wrong, the way in which it was said was respectful and the responses were comprehensive. While I completely disagree with everything that is being done, I thank Government Members, particularly the two Ministers. It was helpful and useful to have them here, and everything was done respectfully. However, I was worried when the Minister for Immigration said that it had been a measured debate, because I feel like I have not done my job properly.
Finally, I thank all the stakeholders and witnesses, who were incredible. I have read some of the really interesting evidence again, and they advised us and suggested amendments and taught me so much. I am looking forward to my next Bill Committee because of my experience here. I just want to thank everyone again and to thank my mum. I will sit down now.
The Chair
I am grateful. The last three contributions are known as bogus points of order, but they have been accepted and will be recorded because they were so eloquent. I want to echo what has been said and to say that we deal with serious matters in such Committees, but we have done so in a way that is a credit to Parliament. I am grateful to both Front-Bench and Back-Bench Members for their contributions. I also want to single out the Clerks for their excellent preparatory work before our meetings.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill, as amended, accordingly to be reported.
Housing and Planning Bill (Third sitting)
(9 years, 1 month ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
The Chair
I welcome you all to the third oral evidence session of the Housing and Planning Bill Committee. I am particularly glad to welcome our four witnesses today, from the Chartered Institute of Housing, the Planning Officers Society, the Royal Town Planning Institute and the Town and Country Planning Association. Perhaps you would be kind enough to introduce yourselves for the sake of the record.
Trudi Elliott: I am Trudi Elliott, the chief executive of the Royal Town Planning Institute.
Dr Hugh Ellis: I am Dr Hugh Ellis, head of policy at the Town and Country Planning Association.
Mike Kiely: I am Mike Kiely, chair of the Planning Officers Society.
Terrie Alafat: I am Terrie Alafat, chief executive of the Chartered Institute of Housing.
The Chair
Thank you all for coming. We have until 10.15 am—45 minutes, or thereabouts—to hear your evidence.
Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)
Q 224224 We know we need to build more homes, and I think that there is a broad consensus that we need to build homes across all tenures to meet the demand. Can you give us your view as to whether the Bill as a whole will increase the supply of housing across all tenures? Specifically on starter homes, what do you think the consequences for affordable housing will be? Do you think there is a risk that starter homes will crowd out other forms of affordable housing?
The Chair
Answer as you will, but all four of you do not have to answer every question.
Trudi Elliott: We commend the Government, and indeed all parties, for their commitment to solving the housing crisis, which is one of our big national challenges. We have not done a detailed analysis of the implications of each of the clauses. We have seen the impact assessment, and certainly the aspiration is that the Bill as a whole will improve supply. Having said that, from our members’ perspective, a lot of the challenges of housing delivery are outside the issues in the Bill, including access to finance and a skills shortage right through the supply chain. We are in a position now where, as a result of previous changes, planning permissions per year are up to 242,000, whereas completions or starts have got up to only between 131,000 and 133,000. So it is the other stuff in the system that will help us to deliver homes that we have to focus on.
I also have to say that there is a massive challenge in local government regarding resourcing in planning. We have recently instructed Arup to undertake a review of all the authorities in the north-west, which is a microcosm of the country. There has been a 37% cut in resource going into planning, particularly development management. Although the officers have managed to keep the statutory targets on target—the granting of permission—there is an impact on both pre-application work and post-planning permission work. Arup summed up the situation to us as being that the system is being kept going on the good will and integrity of planning officers, and that is not sustainable in the future. We have to work collaboratively with local government, Government and the profession to look at how we can address this resource challenge. One of our concerns about the Bill is that we need to ensure that it does not inadvertently increase the burden on local authorities either through complexity or additional demands that are not resourced.
In terms of starter homes, 100 years of planning has demonstrated to us that what successful places need is a range of tenure and homes. We absolutely understand and commend the Government’s concern about home ownership. It is a massive aspiration in this country, and the number of people owning their home has gone down. But from the way the starter home provisions in the Bill look as if they are going to be constructed, they have the potential to squeeze out other forms of affordable housing. If the regulations are too rigid, they could reduce the flexibility of local authorities and reduce finance. So in the implementation of starter home provision, we urge the sort of flexibility that enables local authorities and developers to generate mixed communities and ensure that as many schemes as possible are viable and have, both in the long term and short term, a mix of housing tenure.
Matthew Pennycook
It would be nice to hear from the other witnesses as well, if we have time.
Dr Hugh Ellis: Very quickly, our biggest concern about starter homes is simply the fact that they are not affordable. In many areas, particularly rural areas, the affordability gap between 80% market prices and lowest quartile median income is very stark. We are creating a new powerful legal duty in planning—the first one on housing—that is very much focused on a particular tenure that is not affordable to many people on medium and low incomes. That is a significant issue.
The second issue is more general. Briefly, the Bill is a missed opportunity. This is a nation that pioneered place making for new and renewed communities, at scale, very effectively in the post-war era and has gone on doing that. However, the Bill does not get at the heart of housing delivery. It does not challenge the dominant housing model, which has largely failed, particularly in England. Nor does it deal with things like the objectives for place making or high quality standards, particularly compulsory purchase issues, nor does it create a framework, for example, for garden cities, which this nation pioneered and of which it should be justly proud.
So there is a great sense of a missed opportunity in the Bill. The tools are at our hands, and the evidence, advice and resources are well developed to put forward a programme that could put us into the delivery of the post-war totals—300,000 to 350,000 homes a year. But that can only be done by recognising that planning is a powerful solution to housing and place making, and is not the problem.
Mike Kiely: I agree with what colleagues have said. We have a significant housing crisis, and we need to use all the tools at our disposal. I think a number of elements are missing from the Bill. There are sites out there that are not coming forward, and local authorities need the ability to unlock those sites. The compulsory purchase provisions in the Bill are welcome, but they do not go far enough to enable us to CPO sites that are capable of being developed for housing, but where the landowner is sitting on those sites and speculating on their increasing value.
The other area that is missing, if you look at other more successful cities in Europe and America, is the private rented sector. For some reason that does not fly in this country. The money is out there willing to invest in the private rented sector, but we need to try to unlock it.
My final point is that it is important to assist the bringing forward of affordable housing through varying subsidy means, but subsidising starter homes by 20% for just five years and then allowing that person effectively to get a 25% windfall is very short-sighted. That money will go into the housing system and will inflate housing prices further because it is additional capital that will be at the disposal of people to buy homes, and that will drive up prices. The homes are not affordable to start with, and then they make housing in general less affordable because of the increase in capital going into the system.
Terrie Alafat: We also find that the focus on building new homes is positive, and we support all the measures that try to ensure that the planning system enables more house building. We also support the ambition to improve access to home ownership, but it is fair to say that we are a bit concerned that starter homes may crowd out both more affordable rented accommodation and shared ownership. We think starter homes are positive—it is another product for the housing market. We know that we need a variety of products for people on different incomes and with different aspirations, but we also find that that particular product will only be able to help a certain group in the population.
Savills did some research that showed that a normal couple on a median income would struggle to afford a starter home in 48% of local authority areas, and only about 10% could afford a home in London. So we think this should be an addition to the housing supply, not instead of.
Finally, it is important to look at the affordable rented sector. We support measures to increase the private rented sector, but we have done some analysis to look, within current policies, at the loss of the social rented sector between now and 2020. We looked at existing stock, at existing policies around the shift to affordable rent, at right-to-buy projections—these are all projections—and we could see a loss of about 400,000 units at social rent.
So we would say we are quite supportive. We are looking forward to seeing the detail on section 106 and how that will operate in practice. We suggest there should be as much flexibility as possible at a local level to be able to look at local housing needs, to make certain that they get the right mix of provision on the sites they develop for housing.
Matthew Pennycook
Q 225 We know that effective place making requires decent infrastructure. Do you have concerns, if starter homes are exempt from the community infrastructure levy, that the necessary infrastructure to build sustainable communities will not be there?
Mike Kiely: Almost certainly. It seems an odd public policy to take money away from necessary infrastructure and subsidise a five-year reduction, and then that individual gets the benefit of that public subsidy. When you set your CIL, there is always a huge gap between the moneys that you can bring in through section 106 and CIL and the necessary infrastructure bill. It is always a challenge to provide the infrastructure, and we need to try and get as much money as we can into the public purse to deliver that supportive infrastructure. This will clearly reduce that, and will mean we are less able to provide the schools, highway improvements or whatever that facilitate the functioning of communities. It will be harder for us to do that.
Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
Q 226 Ms Alafat, you mentioned in your submission the need for local planning and development teams to have more resources. Do you not feel that the changes contained in the Bill on the planning system—to require a local plan by 2017, to make time timely decisions, and on planning in principle—will effectively ensure that local authorities properly provide the resources for their planning departments and prioritise that to ensure economic development?
Terrie Alafat: As Trudi has already mentioned, the reality is that local authority planning departments have been under significant pressure already. It is worth thinking about the implementation of this, given how important planning is, to try to make certain that we have the right resources at local level, but also the right skills. I think that is an important implementation issue. In terms of the Housing and Planning Bill, there are other very good measures being taken—for example, in the private rented sector—that require local authorities to do more on enforcement, but we need to look at the resourcing of that as well.
Kevin Hollinrake
Q 227 You would accept, then, that local authorities will need to look in more detail at this and prioritise resources in planning departments as a result of the changes.
Terrie Alafat: I think that if we are trying to engage local authorities to support house building, we need to give them the tools to do that, but we also need to look at the resourcing issues.
Kevin Hollinrake
Q 228 That is a matter for them to prioritise, isn’t it? Some local authorities have reduced resources within their planning departments back to 50%.
Terrie Alafat: Yes, they have.
Kevin Hollinrake
That cannot be right. The developers we speak to every single day speak of their frustration with planning systems, because those departments are not properly resourced.
Terrie Alafat: Obviously, these are local decisions. Local authorities have to look at their prioritisation across their statutory duties. I am not in a position to decide that for local authorities, but it is fair to say that if housing growth is a priority for the country, we need to look at how to do that with the involvement of local authorities, which have an important role to play. It is interesting that on some of the other proposals in the Bill—pay to stay and the selling off of high-value stock—the funding is going to be taken back by central Government. It is worth asking in the round whether we are giving local authorities the tools and resources to deliver this.
Kevin Hollinrake
Q 229 Dr Ellis, you referred to the changes in the planning processes as radical. Would you expand on that?
Dr Hugh Ellis: The most radical change in the Bill, I guess, is the end of English discretionary planning. The powers in the Bill on permission in principle are extraordinary. They apply to all land and all forms of development contained in the appropriate documents, which is all development plans. There has been a very strong narrative that this will only apply to housing, and only to a small number of houses, but the permission in principle idea, which is as close to zonal planning as we have got in this country, gives the Government the power at any time to introduce it to all forms of development. For example, fracking could easily be a part of it in a minerals plan.
What really puzzles me is, if you want to use this power in a restricted, focused way, why create such an extraordinary level of change in the plan? To give you an idea, the English discretionary planning system was developed in response to zonal planning. It was meant to be more flexible, particularly for the private sector, and more democratic. The zonal planning systems in the US have been extremely problematic. They have been in the Supreme Court 25 times since 1920 because of their explicit use for racist purposes. If you are going to introduce zonal planning, you really have to be careful about how you do it. A White Paper or a Green Paper would have been great.
Discretionary planning and zonal planning are two different cultures and two different systems, and the Bill does not work out how they will mesh together. If you try to drive those two cultures and systems together without an awful lot of forethought, you have a major problem. The balance between permission in principle in the plan and the technical detail later on is important, and the Bill makes it clear that you have to approve the technical detail in accordance. We have created a very, very powerful new mechanism.
The TCPA, looking at 120 years-worth of European and international planning, sees it as a fundamental change. There is nothing wrong with fundamental change, so long as it is carefully worked through so that the issues of local democracy, sustainable development and high-quality outcomes are secured, but we cannot see that any of those critical issues have been fully considered or worked out in this Bill process.
Kevin Hollinrake
Q 230 But local plans and neighbourhood plans have been through a democratic process.
Dr Hugh Ellis: They have been through a democratic process, but at the moment there are two bites of that democracy: there is the democratic process that says that there is a plan allocation, and then there is a second process that says that a planning application comes in on the detail, and you have a right over that as well. That is the two-stage process we have at the moment. If you want to change that, that is fine, but it is a significant democratic change.
The most important issue is a fundamental planning principle that has not been discussed, which is that the detail and the general principle are intimately related. Anyone who does planning will tell you that you cannot make a decision in principle about a site until you know the detail of its flood risk appraisal and the degree of affordable housing you want on the site. To try to split principle and detail as if they are not connected in reality is extremely dangerous. Understanding the principle of a site means you have to understand the detail of its implications.
Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
Q 231 You have already touched on some of the issues I was going to ask about. I want to come back to the issue of place making. As representatives of the planning profession—I was once a planner myself—you know that planners try to secure the best possible place making outcomes across all types of planning decision making. Can you comment in broad terms, but perhaps with some detailed examples, on the implications of the Bill for the ability of planning to deliver high-quality places? What consequences might we see in future as a result of the Bill?
Trudi Elliott: I suppose one of the challenges with the Bill is the amount of detail that is going to be covered by the regulations. For example, we think that if permission in principle is going to work with a local authority’s place-making and plan-making function, an amendment to clause 102 would probably be the way to go. If you limited the qualifying documents to the development plan and the register, and if you limited that to the brownfield register, you have a fighting chance of making this mini-system within a system work within the overall place-making agenda.
As Hugh has outlined, not all brownfield is the same. Part of the reason why brownfield land has not been developed is the constraints of the site. The Government have been looking at the criteria to address that. We think accessibility needs to be added to the proposed criteria—it is a massive issue for place making.
If we do not link homes to jobs, we really are in a difficult situation. The other challenge we have on place making is linking up homes, jobs and the infrastructure required and when that infrastructure goes in. There are places in the Bill where that challenge is acknowledged. One thing we may need to look at is mechanisms outside the scope of the Bill on getting more resourcing into infrastructure, because the more infrastructure we can have, the more sites we can unlock. We are doing work with a number of organisations from Adam Smith to Shelter on land value capture and how we can generate more resource in the system for the necessary infrastructure that creates great places.
Dr Hugh Ellis: One brief example in the Bill on place making is changes to urban development corporations. The development corporation model is extremely powerful. There are procedural changes to the way in which we designate urban development corporations, but nothing to secure high-quality outcomes on the corporations themselves—no obligations on place making or quality. Starter homes are another clear example.
The interesting thing is that England is falling very badly behind, both on individual building standards and building techniques in terms of innovation and on the wider project of place making. Internationally, many other cities and countries are doing much better. The reason is that they set democratically very high standards for their industry to achieve. Plainly, with the loss of things like zero carbon and other standards, we have set that process in reverse. There is an opportunity in the Bill, a significant one, to make clear that the achievement of housing growth is both about numbers, particularly for those people most in need, and also about inclusive places and strong place-making standards. That is the English tradition—that is how we built garden cities and how we achieve Letchworth. We achieve Letchworth through very strong planning.
Mike Kiely: I want to touch on two things. One is the nationally significant infrastructure projects. The Government are introducing the ability for an element of housing to be provided—we accept that and it is sensible—where it is functionally related to the infrastructure project. The caretaker’s house is the example, although you cannot have one of those now and it is a nonsense. Another example would be Sizewell B, where the workers’ accommodation will be converted to housing later. That is fine, but there is this “next to or close to” test, which suggests that housing—up to 500 units is suggested—completely unrelated to the nationally significant infrastructure project can be given consent just because it is nearby. I heard that they were talking, or thinking, about fairly significant distances, not close proximity. We are not saying no to including housing in NSIPs, but if we are going to include it, let us have a proper debate about it. The measure seems to be a bit of a fudge and that part of the proposal should be reconsidered.
Permission in principle is a potentially good idea that is in danger of going off the rails. It would be wrong if we see it as a move to a sort of zoning principle, for all the reasons that Hugh has given. It is a fundamentally different way of going about things. It has its origins in complaints largely from small house builders that the outline application process has become burdensome. It has become burdensome because of myriad changes to the planning system over many years, many of which come from Europe. That makes the process more complicated. An outline application is complicated because it produces a planning permission that has conditions attached to it. That is the only point in time at which the authority gets to put conditions on that consent, and therefore it has to look into the matters behind those conditions. That is what drives the complexity. The idea of separating the permission from the conditions was the origin of the proposal, but the measures in the Bill on converting allocations and allocations that go down to five units is a massive additional burden on local authorities.
The people who drafted the Bill have misread the national planning policy framework. On when a strategic housing land availability assessment needs to be produced, it talks of looking at sites larger than 0.25 hectares that are capable of taking at least five units. The threshold is a quarter of a hectare, not five units. In London, that will more than double the amount of work that local planning authorities will have to do on their SHLAAs. I urge you to read carefully your own definition in the NPPF, and use that in the Bill rather than what is in there at the moment. Frankly, every site in London is capable of taking five units, and producing the register would be an impossible burden. If the threshold is at 0.25 hectares, that is manageable. We are doing that work already and we can easily convert it.
The Chair
Can I try to hasten us along a little bit? We have taken 25 minutes so far, and we still need to take questions. That is a slow rate of progress. We might try to make questions and answers quicker.
Helen Hayes
Q 232 I have one more quick question. Could you comment on the implications of the Bill for the involvement of local communities in the planning process?
The Chair
Not everyone need answer.
Trudi Elliott: We think that that is a problem with the permission in principle, unless you make the amendment we suggest. Some of the documents referred to currently as potentially in scope do not have the same consultation mechanism. Therefore, either the Bill has to introduce a consultation mechanism, or it needs to limit the qualifying documents to those that have proper public consultation. That is the route we would recommend.
Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
Q 233 The regulations in the previous Parliament allowing developers to challenge section 106 agreements freed up capacity and new build on dormant sites. Do you not agree that there is a case to be made that starter homes will do the same for marginal, brownfield sites under these proposals?
Trudi Elliott: I think any new model must be helpful in terms of giving greater flexibility and potential. It has the potential. I suppose that what we need to avoid is the unintended consequence when something that is potential to somebody could adversely affect either the flexibility of a local authority or the viability of other sites for other developers. I would urge greater flexibility in the implementation of the starter homes and less prescription about percentages, for example. What we know is that the more prescription there is around some of these things, the less flexibility there is for sensible deals to be done between local authorities, developers and communities to get things delivered.
Mr Jackson
Q 234 It is therefore fair to say that, unless a site that is developed is 100% starter homes, the idea that no infrastructure will be developed is not the case. Another example from recent history is the affordable rent regime, which released extra funding to go back into community facilities infrastructure, along with other tenures. Surely that is the point. There will still be mixed-tenure facilities or developments, but an element of them will consist of starter homes.
Trudi Elliott: Yes, and what we are saying is that we should not prescribe what that element should be. We are saying: give more flexibility to local authorities and developers about what will make a scheme stack up financially and deliver that sort of mixed community. What you do not want is a prescribed percentage of starter homes that can then squeeze out other forms of housing, particularly affordable housing.
Mr Jackson
You said “can” rather than “will”.
Trudi Elliott: Exactly: it can squeeze it out. That is why I am saying that you need flexibility in relation to individual sites and schemes.
Mr Jackson
Q 235 Dr Ellis, first, I have to say that I think it is pretty risible to compare the proposals in this legislation with Supreme Court challenges to US zoning policy based on racism. That is a ridiculous comment to make, frankly. Can I specifically ask you to concede that one reason why this is quite a strong piece of legislation in terms of direct intervention from the Secretary of State is the failure over a long period of local planning authorities to produce development plans in a timely and expeditious manner? You did not mention that at all in your evidence.
Dr Hugh Ellis: You didn’t ask me.
Mr Jackson
You didn’t volunteer it either.
Dr Hugh Ellis: It is certainly not risible. The Minister, in evidence to the Select Committee on 7 September, was asked about the American and US zonal planning system and said it was an interesting example. My point is that the emphasis is entirely on the Government. If you want to make radical changes to the English planning system, that is of course your democratic right, but you have to be clear and transparent and you also have to have done the work to understand the implications.
The point about zonal planning is that it has major implications across the world. There are successful models in the Netherlands and there are deeply unsuccessful models in the United States. The literature is there and the Department should know that stuff. There is very powerful literature about the impact. I would strongly advise the Committee to look at the equalities impact assessment for the Bill and to ask officials how much work they did in comparing other zonal planning systems across the world in relation to those implications. It is important because we are trying to deliver mixed communities that benefit people in the round. That is the key objective of planning. That means that whatever system we introduce, we have to be absolutely clear about what those implications are for social justice.
In relation to your question about the degree to which plans have been delivered across England, yes, the performance has been pretty poor. That is absolutely true. The question is how we can speed that up. When you get down to the root cause of what those problems are, they are very often, for example, issues around the lack of strategic planning such as how we deal most effectively with strategic housing growth in the south-east. That means that England must have effective strategic planning. The one thing that we have done in the last six years is abolish that framework. That was a profound mistake.
Mr Jackson
No, it didn’t work. Regional spatial strategies did not work.
Dr Hugh Ellis: They worked well—
Mr Jackson
They didn’t work.
Dr Hugh Ellis: They worked by understanding that there were multiple housing pressures and by dealing with those pressures strategically, making sure that housing growth was linked to where infrastructure was provided and where environmental constraints, for example, provided opportunities. That framework was very important. As we move forward, we need to think about how we can best deal strategically with housing growth. Otherwise, what happens is that communities get extremely pressured in ways that they cannot deal with. They need that strategic support to make truly sustainable places.
Mr Jackson
Q 236 What I would say, to put it on the record, is that regional spatial strategies delivered the lowest number of homes since 1923 in the last year that they were fully operational before the coalition Government.
I want to move on to the evidence from the Chartered Institute of Housing. Can I ask about this figure of 48%? It is a rather confusing figure. I am always slightly surprised when I see in evidence the phrase “areas north of the midlands”. That doesn’t really specify where that is. What is it 48% of? Is it 48% of population? Have you published the data?
Terrie Alafat: Can I just explain? The data that I referred to are from work that Savills has done. Something came out just this week as well. Savills has been doing an analysis of housing markets across the country—it is not CIH research; it is Savills research. Obviously, I could send the Committee the link to the research. It looks at couples—not individuals—on a median income, so therefore you could have two working people or one working person, and at the 20% discount on house prices in country as a whole. Forty-eight per cent. of local authority areas would struggle. That is not saying “just north of the midlands” or whatever. Savills has produced maps that show that. It is its market analysis. Of course, in London, as we know, house prices are higher. As with a lot of this research, that just gives an indication. One would have to look in detail at any specific area to see how it plays out, but it at least raises the question of starter homes being the answer to home ownership. The only point we are trying to make is that we do not want it to be the only focus in terms of meeting people’s needs. It will mean that some individuals will get access to the housing market through starter homes, and that is a good thing. Indeed, if that means that it frees up more sites and brings more land in for housing, that is all very good because it adds to supply.
The point is that we should recognise that it will not be the only answer. If you start looking at some of the shared ownership products, for example, which have been here for quite a long time—we are hoping there will be more because I think the sector is interested in expanding them—in some parts of the country, they will often be available for high-value property for people on lower income but who still want to get into home ownership. There are always, at any time in any developed nation, a proportion of the population—I have seen different estimates—who cannot afford home ownership at that point. Then you start looking at rented sector and alternatives. That is the only point we are trying to make.
Mr Jackson
Q 237 You are inviting the Committee to conclude that the 20% discount on the market price is affordable on only 52% of transactions and purchases in the country—you are using local authority areas—and that on 48% it is completely unaffordable. I would challenge you on that, because I do not think that is true.
Terrie Alafat: Again, this is looking across the country at couples on median income. It is being used simply to raise the issue of recognising that it is not going to be the answer across the country in all areas to home ownership. That is the point we are making.
Mr Jackson
Q 238 You are not raising the issue. You oppose the policy, effectively, because of the evidence that you pray in aid from Savills.
Terrie Alafat: No, we do not oppose the policy. I have made it clear that we do not oppose the policy.
The Chair
We should probably move on. I should perhaps remind you that the witnesses are here better to inform the Committee, rather than necessarily agree with us. That is an important thing to remember. I call the shadow Minister, Roberta Blackman-Woods.
Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)
Q 239 There seems to be a supposition underpinning some of the clauses in part 6 that the reason we are not building enough homes in this country is that planning departments are too slow. Do you agree with that supposition? What do you think could be done to improve the planning system, without bypassing local communities in that decision-making process, as the Bill suggests?
Trudi Elliott: As I said, we commissioned Arup to look at this issue in the north-west. They looked at all types of authority in the north-west. They concluded that, where there were statutory targets, local authorities’ performance, despite the cuts, had actually improved. We are getting planning permissions through the system quicker and the absolute number of planning permissions has gone up—we are now at 242,000.
What they identified is the crisis in resourcing in planning departments. I acknowledge the comments of one of the Committee Members that this is a matter for local authorities to determine, but the reality is that the crisis in resourcing is impacting on speed in two areas. It is impacting on pre-application discussions, particularly where there is no agreement with an individual developer. They are also impacting on post-grant planning permission matters—the negotiation of section 106 conditions and so on—because there are simply not enough people, and not just in the planning department, because there are associated challenges in legal departments and the need for legal input into some of those issues.
The swiftest way to speed up the system would be for us collectively to ensure that there were sufficient resources in local government planning departments to work the system. What we have got at the moment is a system that requires a level of resourcing in local authorities that they have not got.
They are also having difficulty retaining and recruiting staff. That is something we are trying to address in terms of the overall supply of qualified planners. It is now one of the top five professions for getting a graduate job, so we are doing our bit at that end, but local authorities are having difficulty recruiting and retaining. That is partly because it is less attractive there. It is not just about salaries; it is about whether you pay your professional subscriptions, continuing professional development and all of that. The quickest way to improve the system is to get more resource into local planning authorities. Every one of my members, 50% of whom are in the private sector and are trying to get developments done, will tell you that that is the quickest way to speed up the system.
The Chair
Can I encourage everyone to be as brief as you can? We have 10 minutes left and quite a lot of questions still to go. Can we have brief questions and answers, please?
Mike Kiely: On the resourcing of planning departments, we have been here before. When we came out of the previous recession, we were not in the realms of severe cuts to local government. The planning sector was able to gear up with help from the Government, which had a bursary system to meet that challenge. It is a cyclical industry, and we regularly go through cycles and do not learn the lessons.
There are things that the Government can do to increase resources in planning. The development sector and the British Property Federation are lobbying you to increase fees or give us the ability to increase fees for development management work, and that needs to happen urgently. It varies a lot, but on average the fees cover only between two thirds and three quarters of our costs.
Outside London, some of the local planning authorities are quite small, and I question whether they are viable as local planning departments and whether they are able to do the development planning work. That area also needs to be looked at. Authorities combine, but only at the officer level. There is a limit to their efficiencies if they still have to manage 120 or 180 members because they are not combined at the political level. There are things that can be done to improve the effectiveness and resourcing of planning departments.
Dr Blackman-Woods
Q 240 I have a brief follow-up question. The Government’s preferred development model seems to be urban development corporations. We are being asked to pass legislation that will enable them to come through the Houses on a negative instrument. Do you think that is a good model, and should we be doing more to make UDCs locally controlled?
Dr Hugh Ellis: The development corporation model can be successful, but it is interesting that UDCs, compared with new town development corporations, have much less opportunity for public involvement, particularly on the designation process. New town development corporations were designated only after a local public inquiry, which seems to us to be very important. The UDC model is designed for smaller scale regeneration.
The point we will go on making is that development corporations were the great legacy we gave to the world to deliver new places. They were the positive part of planning in the post-war settlement, and they were really effective. They are a great vehicle, if they are delivered in the right way and to the right standards, for boosting housing supply, but they need other things. You need a national spatial vision for England, and you need to be able to join demographics and housing infrastructure. One of the most extraordinary things about this nation is our complete inability to join major transport infrastructure with demographic change. There is no overview of England in that sense, which leads to much more unsustainable outcomes for people, the environment and, ironically, the economy.
It is a great shame that the most effective tools—this is about the tools in the toolbox—for delivering high-quality new places, particularly in relation to harnessing land tax effectively, were the new town development corporations, which were locally led. Buckinghamshire asked for the designation for Milton Keynes in the 1960s. It was not imposed on them—that was news to me and is fascinating. It was worried about piecemeal, badly serviced development all over the county, so it undertook a study and asked the Government at the time for the designation.
That is the choice that England faces. It either faces 340 small authorities attempting to do this in a fragmented way, or it seeks the support of proper, strategic approaches. It is not an imposition, but a recognition that the geography of England is really—
Seema Kennedy (South Ribble) (Con)
Q 241 Dr Ellis, can I quickly go back to your written evidence? Is all your analysis through the prism of the 1947 Act, the nationalisation of development rights and all those things? Is that the gold standard by which you work?
Dr Hugh Ellis: At the time, it was certainly the best way of settling the key arguments about how to control land in the public interest. We represented them in our evidence only because we are struggling to see what the underlying principles in the Bill are based on for this reform package. We are looking for a standard to which you can go back and say, “That’s the kind of planning system we want.” I do not understand from the Bill what our planning system will look like in 2020, how it will fit together strategically and locally, and what people’s rights will be.
Given that we have not had consolidated planning legislation since 1990, which is a long time ago, our planning legislation is extraordinarily complicated. The TCPA is advocating, yes, by all means, let us have change, but let us base it on clear transparent principles: local democracy, the idea of comprehensive planning and high place-making standards. That 1947 settlement was interesting because it was cross-party, particularly driven by solving the land tax problem. That seems interesting to us.
Seema Kennedy
Q 242 Would you accept, though, that the world has moved on? The nationalisation of planning has not really worked now. Up until 2010 the number of houses it was delivering, in the light of the 1990 Act, was too low and there needed to be radical change.
Dr Hugh Ellis: I do, but that was 1990. The 1947 Act and the New Towns Act 1946 delivered at the peak almost 400,000 units a year. That was delivered through effective planning. All that we are suggesting, given the age of our organisation, is that there are some important lessons that we need to learn from the past. I think the last 20 years of planning reform have all sorts of problems, so you are quite right. We are arguing for a comprehensive reassessment, if that is what we want, of planning. We are arguing against walking blindfolded into a new planning framework where these issues have not properly been discussed.
Teresa Pearce (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)
Q 243 Ms Alafat, reading through your evidence, you do not seem confident that one-for-one replacement of right to buy is likely to happen. What are your views on the fact that replacement, if it does happen, does not need to be in the same area? What effect do you think that would have?
Terrie Alafat: To clarify the position on one-for-one replacement, we did some interim analysis a couple of months ago. That was, of course, based on what we knew in the policy as it was evolving. In particular, the definition of high value and how that will work in practice has an effect in the receipts that would be delivered.
Our early analysis showed that if you looked at a higher-end estimate, the receipts would probably be just enough on the estimates for the right to buy. We were more concerned about the replacement of the local authority housing stock as well. More work needs to be done. We are keen that Government work on the definition and consulting. That is quite positive because that is really important.
The reality is that when you look at the numbers—the receipts that will be generated across the country and where, given the high value, with that definitional issue—there is no doubt that there will be higher receipts in areas such as London and parts of the south-east. The receipts generated in some other parts of the country will probably not be enough to replace in the local area. There will be a whole issue about how the funding is apportioned to deliver the one-for-one replacements. That is still very much up for discussion and there is obviously a lot of work going on around the implementation of the policy.
Teresa Pearce
Q 244 What do you think the consequences will be for the provision of affordable housing?
Terrie Alafat: Again, there is a whole issue about whether the one-for-one is affordable rent or shared ownership, and that is again under discussion. What I pick up from the housing sector is that quite a number of the housing associations are still very interested in providing social rent and affordable rent. We have to see what the mix will be. We will have to see how this actually works in practice. What does it mean to be high-value? What is the level of receipts? What does it mean for one-for-one across housing associations and local authorities? There is a lot more detail that needs to be worked on.
Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)
Q 245 Dr Ellis, you mentioned that it was a failed model, and I think many of us would agree with that. Do you think there is anything in current law or in the Bill that would prevent a local authority from taking a more strategic role—you mentioned Letchworth—in relation to land assembly and land capture?
Dr Hugh Ellis: There is not anything that prevents it. The key issue is more about whether it has been enabled. The biggest problem with compulsory purchase and land assembly, which clearly relates to compulsory purchase powers as a last resort, is the compensation code. The compensation code changed radically in 1961.
The Chair
Order. Thank you very much, Dr Ellis. Sorry to interrupt you in mid-flow, but under the rules of the House we have to stop at precisely 10.15 am, when Big Ben chimes. I apologise for that. I thank all four of our witnesses for an extremely interesting and lively session, which I am sure has better informed the Committee. Thank you very much to the witnesses for coming, and for their evidence.
Dr Blackman-Woods
On a point of order, Mr Gray. The witnesses are here to give us evidence. It is really important that we are allowed to hear that evidence from the witnesses, and that their evidence is not crowded out by members of the Committee shouting. I do not think that is a sensible way for us to continue.
The Chair
I am most grateful to the hon. Lady for that point of order. Certainly, if any member of the Committee were shouting, I would be the first to call them to order. I tend to agree with the hon. Lady, because quite frankly, once or twice during that evidence session I felt that we were tending to disagree with our witnesses. It does not matter if we disagree with them; we should not say so. I acknowledge the hon. Lady’s point of order, and certainly, if there were to be any such disturbance I would be the first to come down very heavily indeed on it.
Examination of Witnesses
Shaun Spiers, Duncan Wilson and Duncan McCallum gave evidence.
The Chair
I welcome the next panel. We have half an hour to speak to the Campaign to Protect Rural England and to Historic England. Sadly, one of the CPRE witnesses was unable to make it, I think because of ill health. We wish him a speedy recovery. I am sure that Mr Spiers will do a doubly good job. First, I ask the witnesses to introduce themselves for the record.
Shaun Spiers: I am Shaun Speirs, the chief executive of the Campaign to Protect Rural England. I am a generalist, and the person who is missing is the planner.
Duncan Wilson: I am Duncan Wilson, the chief executive of Historic England.
Duncan McCallum: I am Duncan McCallum, policy director at Historic England.
Dr Blackman-Woods
Q 249 The CPRE has expressed concern that the starter home developments contained in the Bill will crowd out other forms of affordable housing. Clearly, the Minister has said that he thinks local authorities will be able to negotiate for other types of development as well. Will the members of the panel say whether or not they are convinced by that?
Shaun Spiers: No, we are not convinced. We think that it will crowd out other forms of development. The local authority will have a duty to provide starter homes. Local authorities find it hard enough to negotiate section 106 agreements, very often from a position of weakness in which they have to meet extremely high—really, implausibly high—housing numbers. If they have to negotiate starter homes as part of their agreement with developers, it is highly unlikely in many cases that they will also be able to negotiate any truly social or affordable housing.
Duncan Wilson: I am not sure that that question is particularly for us, but more generally, anything that increases pressure on local authority resources is going to make life more difficult for us in arguing the case for the historic environment.
Dr Blackman-Woods
Q 250 The CPRE has also expressed concern about the affordability of starter homes. Do you want to say anything more about that? Do you think the discount should be in perpetuity? Also, do you think that it will deliver more homes for rural areas?
Shaun Spiers: Our concern is particularly about rural affordable housing. The deal between the National Housing Federation and the Government to sell off rural affordable homes, which are affordable in perpetuity, will make it extremely hard to replace those rural homes, because it costs more to build a social house in a village. There is less land available, and there are relatively few specialist advisers. So if you sell the social housing in villages—in four fifths of villages there is no opt-out at all, and in one fifth of villages there is an opt-out but not a full exemption, so some of the larger providers who have only a few rural homes will have an incentive to sell them—it will be extremely difficult to replace those homes. Replacing them with starter homes that can be sold on the open market within five years, and which in any case will cost an average of eight and half times median rural wages—that is median rural wages, not lowest quartile wages—is no substitute.
The question for the Government and the Committee is, are we content to see villages become the preserve only of people who can afford to buy a home, or do we hold by the idea we have all had of villages for centuries, that they are genuinely mixed communities?
Kevin Hollinrake
Q 251 Mr Spiers, on that point, you have obviously read the voluntary agreement between the Secretary of State and the National Housing Federation. It details the fact that housing associations would have discretion not to sell, for example where a property was in a rural area and could not be replaced. Does that ease your concern?
Shaun Spiers: It does not ease it at all, I’m afraid, for two reasons. One is that it is a discretion. Some specialist rural providers, such as Hastoe Housing, which gave evidence to the Committee last week—the chief executive of Hastoe and I are meeting the Minister tomorrow to discuss this point—have said that they will not sell. Other, larger providers, who have a few really high-value properties that are harder for them to maintain, because most of their stock is in urban areas—they might have those properties because of transfers or takeovers over the years—will be quite likely to sell them.
The other thing is that in the agreement between the National Housing Federation and the Government, the definition of “rural” is extremely narrow. It excludes about four fifths of what we would regard as rural areas, and it is almost impossible to get a rural area designated as rural by the Secretary of State under the current agreement. So the Rural Coalition, a group which includes the Campaign to Protect Rural England and the Country Land and Business Association, has proposed a much more comprehensive and much clearer definition of “rural” to the Government, but unfortunately the Government have not so far adopted it.
Kevin Hollinrake
Q 252 I accept that you are keen to get a definition, but as to your point about housing associations, Mr Orr said last week in evidence that housing associations
“do not want to move away from the business of providing housing for people who are in the greatest housing need”. ––[Official Report, Housing and Planning Public Bill Committee, 10 November 2015; c. 37, Q89.]
Why would you feel that they are likely to sell off houses when local communities need them?
Shaun Spiers: I think the whole point is that rural areas are different. Even if you think that all housing associations are still thoroughly motivated by social need—there is a question mark over the ethos of some of the larger housing associations, but even if you accepted that they still had a social mission—it would be quite legitimate for a housing association to say, “We will sell this affordable home in a Cotswold village, where it has got high value, and build two homes in a lower-value area, and that fulfils our social mission”; and so it may. The CPRE is about rural England and about keeping a social mix in villages, and once that house has been sold it will be very difficult to replace it.
Kevin Hollinrake
Q 253 Talking about some of the provisions in the Bill, such as the brownfield register, I know the CPRE has been very keen on providing housing on brownfield sites. How do you think that will play out in future housing development?
Shaun Spiers: We were very pleased to see the brownfield register. There is a statement in the impact assessment that says that we have wildly exaggerated the availability of brownfield sites. We did research with the University of the West of England to show that there was enough suitable brownfield land, most of it already in planning, to provide 975,000 homes, and that that stock is constantly replenished. We do not understand why the impact assessment queries that, because we have never seen any analysis from the Government to query it. That aside, the fact of the brownfield register is a positive thing. It will make smaller sites available for small builders, which is a big need—possibly for self-builders. I think that when the brownfield register is completed it will entirely verify our 1 million figure.
Duncan Wilson: If I might comment on the brownfield register from the Historic England perspective, I should start by saying that we are also in favour of brownfield development, but the national planning policy framework contains a number of checks and balances which we are concerned may be lost, perhaps inadvertently, in whatever process emerges from the brownfield register proposals. That is more about the law of unintended consequences than anything deliberate, but it is not entirely clear in the Bill how it will operate. That may be left to statutory instrument or ministerial statement, but we would like to see it explicit at the outset so that we could be confident that the role we have under the present system to make the case for the historic environment is not entirely bypassed by the brownfield register.
The factors that we normally highlight either need to come into play at the inscription of the site on the register or in the technical detail stage. By calling that stage the technical detail stage, there is an implication that nothing very major can be raised. So we do have some concerns. Let’s take the example of a brownfield site in a conservation area. Our concerns relate to the sensitivity of a development in terms of massing materials or the archaeological implications of developing a brownfield site, which could be missed. They might not be known when permission in principle is granted, but might subsequently become clear. The present system allows some due diligence to take place before final permission is granted. We are concerned that the new system may not allow for that stage.
Helen Hayes
Q 254 Taken in the round, the Bill introduces some fairly substantial reforms to the planning system. Could you comment on the extent to which, in your respective areas of expertise, you think that rural and heritage matters will continue to receive appropriate attention at the appropriate stages in the planning process and whether you have any concerns?
Duncan Wilson: I refer to my previous answer. Our main concerns relate to uncertainty around the brownfield register. We do not believe the present process, at least on our part, is unduly cumbersome. Our turnaround time on planning applications and listed building consent is 99.8% within 21 days, with an average turnaround of 12 days. From our perspective, I am not sure the proposals are shooting at the right target. We acknowledge that local authorities are very stretched, and we have been doing our best to make up for those deficiencies with additional training and support for planning departments, but realistically it is a much bigger problem than we can address. There at least needs to be some acknowledgment of that, as well as a streamlined process.
Helen Hayes
Q 255 On the concern about permission in principle and technical details, what would be an appropriate balance of heritage-related inputs at each of the two stages of the proposed new process?
Duncan Wilson: The problem with permission in principle is that the present system allows for reserved matters that can be resolved further down the line. We are not sure that the provisions of the brownfield register would effectively do that. In effect, we are comparing it with outline planning permission and detailed planning permission. It seems from the way in which the brownfield register has been talked about that there is not much you can do once you have given permission on the brownfield register for the site to be developed, in terms of conditional clauses relating to archaeological investigation or perhaps some fairly fundamental design points. It is a question of clarifying where that comes into play and whether it can come into play before inscription on the register.
We would not want whole categories of site not to be inscribed on the register because these factors have not been sufficiently examined. The issue is more about how it will work in practice, which can be sorted out. Our starting point is that brownfield development is a good thing, provided that it is reasonably sensitively designed where that is an important factor.
Duncan McCallum: Some sort of light-touch desk-based assessment to cover that and spot the things you cannot see immediately may be a way around that. It would give some reassurance that any development that takes place on that site is going to be satisfactory and, most importantly, that there are not going to be any unexpected discoveries. Obviously you cannot predict everything that might turn up, but it would give some reassurance that you are unlikely to find anything of great value on the site, so the development can go ahead.
The Chair
The CPRE wants to get a word in edgeways. Mr Spiers, please go ahead.
Shaun Spiers: On permission in principle, we noted in our evidence that we are concerned that it might complicate matters rather than make them more straightforward, but that can be worked through. The overriding view is that the brownfield register is positive and will relieve rural areas from inappropriate development—urban sprawl and so on. Obviously we do not want brownfield land of high heritage or environmental value to be developed, but that should not end up on the register.
I have emphasised my point about the right to buy, but one other point on that is that the Government and the National Housing Federation set a great deal of store by covenants. They say that housing on rural exception sites will not be sold off because it is protected by covenants, but we are concerned that those covenants might not be sufficiently strong and could be subject to challenge. If we do not want housing on rural exception sites to be sold off now or in future, but the Government are not prepared to give a full rural exemption, it would be good to have a total rural exemption for housing built on rural exception sites now or in future, because we know that landowners will not sell housing at a discount or gift housing for affordable homes if they are not affordable in perpetuity.
The last point about the effect of the Bill on rural areas is that we think there is scope to introduce a neighbourhood right of appeal, which would encourage neighbourhoods to engage with the local planning process and to come forward with land in their village, parish, or indeed urban neighbourhood for development. They would want, though, to be protected against appeal or the sort of the decision that was made in Northamptonshire at the end of last month, where, on the day when a neighbourhood plan went to referendum, they were made to accept a development that was not in the development plan because the local authority did not have a five-year housing land supply.
It will be very hard to persuade the many neighbourhoods throughout the country that are not engaging with the neighbourhood planning process to do so unless that process is better protected. A small neighbourhood right of appeal, quite narrowly defined, will help to encourage rural parishes throughout the country to engage with the neighbourhood planning process and volunteer more housing than might be in the local plan.
The Chair
Five colleagues want to ask questions in the 12 minutes remaining, so brevity is of the essence.
Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)
Q 256 You just raised the issue of local plans, Mr Spiers. Do you welcome the provision in the Bill that effectively requires local authorities to have a local plan in place by 2017, otherwise one will be developed for them? That could avoid exactly the kind of risk you outlined a moment ago.
Shaun Spiers: Yes, we think local authorities should definitely have a local plan. Currently, local authorities are not completing local plans in part because of how the housing numbers are calculated and the fact that local authorities do not feel empowered to resist housing numbers that will have bad environmental consequences. As well as the stick, the Government should provide a carrot by looking again at how housing numbers and objectively assessed need are calculated.
Chris Philp
Q 257 Will both witnesses confirm what I think is their view, namely that the emphasis in the Bill on brownfield development, combined with the maintenance of the sanctity of the green belt, should protect rural England from overdevelopment?
Shaun Spiers: If it was as simple as that, it would. We welcome both the emphasis on brownfield and the sanctity, as it were, of the green belt, but we are extremely concerned about the fact that local authorities will be required to commit to implausibly high housing numbers—sometimes double the average housing output over the past 15 years—which will mean they will have to release sites, sometimes in the green belt and sometimes in areas of outstanding national beauty, which will then be developed by developers and the brownfield sites will go to waste. You cannot crack this problem unless you also look at how the housing numbers are calculated. The report we published yesterday is a cracking read, and I commend it to everyone.
Teresa Pearce
Q 258 Mr Spiers, you said that you do not have any confidence that the voluntary agreement, with the exemption for rural stock, will happen. Do you think that exemption should be in the Bill?
Shaun Spiers: I think that there should be a full exemption for rural areas, properly defined, in the Bill, yes.
Teresa Pearce
Q 259 In your evidence you said, on the agreement between the National Housing Federation and the Government, that you feel the right to buy failed to follow the guidance in the Treasury’s green book. If they had followed the guidance, what would they have had to do?
Shaun Spiers: We have written to the Secretary of State, and we are meeting the Minister for Housing and Planning tomorrow to discuss this issue. As far as we know, there has been no rural briefing. To follow the guidance, the Government would have to think that rural areas are different. It is harder to build a home; the way homes come forward is different; wages are lower; house prices are higher; and 8% of the stock is affordable stock, compared with 20% in urban areas, so there really is a rural difference.
Mr Bacon
Q 260 Mr Spiers, you mentioned self-build. What scope do you think there is, particularly in rural areas that are provided for in chapter 2 of the Bill, to encourage local communities to do more self-build and custom house building? Does the CPRE see that as a problem, or do you welcome it?
Shaun Spiers: We think there are lots of questions about how it will work out in practice. The wording in the Bill is not sufficiently clear, and it is certainly not sufficiently clear to me. This is one of the areas on which I wish Matt Thomson, our head of planning, was with us. It would be useful if local authorities were required when allocating large sites to devote a proportion of the site to self and custom build housing, which would get the small and medium-sized enterprises going and provide better-quality housing.
Mr Bacon
Q 262 You said that landowners are unwilling to gift land or give it at a discount unless they think it is protected in perpetuity. Do you think there is a role for landowners to work more closely with, or even create, mutual housing co-operatives or to work with community land trusts to create the in-perpetuity protection that you are talking about?
Shaun Spiers: Yes, I do. The in-perpetuity affordability is absolutely key. There is no limit to demand for housing in a rich Cotswold village. The difficulty is providing affordable housing.
Mr Jackson
Q 263 On the specific point about starter homes, as you know, Mr Spiers, for the past year or so the policy has been governed by ministerial fiat in respect of rural exception sites, which you mentioned earlier. Given that many people in villages want to try to retain familial links with their sons and daughters who perhaps do not have the wherewithal that they had to buy starter homes in villages, is it not better that you have some new homes within the framework of starter home policies within the village envelope? Most local planning authorities do not allow homes to be built in the open countryside; they allow them to be built only within the village envelope. It would formalise the situation in a more satisfactory way if there were more starter homes for local people in the village. In that respect, notwithstanding what you said about affordability, surely that is cumulatively a positive development.
Shaun Spiers: It may be, but it depends. You need to take it on a village-by-village basis. Villages should grow organically, and in some villages there may be a need for starter homes or even marker homes. We should not confuse starter homes with affordability. If somebody buys a starter home and rents it the next day, makes it into a holiday home or whatever, you are not meeting the crying need—
Mr Jackson
But that is not going to happen.
Shaun Spiers: It could happen. From the CPRE’s point of view, the crying need in rural villages is for socially rented housing that is affordable in perpetuity. That does not come at the exclusion of other things, but I think a starter home that is at 80% cost for five years and then is sold on the open market is meeting not that need, but a different need. It is helping the village to expand for anyone, but it is not meeting the needs of local people.
Mr Jackson
Q 264 In reality, is not the present situation just one extreme—that is, unsatisfactory infill, rural exclusion and probably small-scale? For those local authorities that do not have development plans and five-year supplies, an urban extension is stuck on the end of a village, where 100 homes might be built. The starter homes policy potentially, with the other permissive policies that are outlined in the Bill, actually achieves a medium and delivers more homes for people who cannot buy at the market rate.
Shaun Spiers: It may do—it has to be on a village-by-village basis. There is a danger of over-complicating things. The best thing for villages that want to expand and take on more housing is to engage with a proper neighbourhood planning process and to have their social stock protected. Some villages will benefit from starter homes and some villages will regard them as imposed on them and not benefiting the village in the long run. But a proper neighbourhood planning process can help the village grow organically and control its social mix.
The Chair
We have a few more minutes left. Does anyone have other views on the Bill that have not been winkled out in the course of our conversation so far?
Duncan Wilson: As I said at the outset, we are supportive of the development of brownfield land. We are not quite sure about whether the mechanism is going to work, although we could be convinced about that, and we understand the general objectives. Our general observation is that the national planning policy framework is working well and we do not want to disrupt that, because it allows the case for the historic environment, from our perspective, to be put and assessed by the local planning authority. We do not necessarily disagree with the objectives of the Bill, but would like to know more about how it is going to work in practice.
Shaun Spiers: The one area that I have not mentioned is that, where the permission in principle works—we are slightly sceptical about it—it should trigger a neighbourhood planning process whereby a neighbourhood can draw down funds to develop a neighbourhood plan, and shape the development that is in the outline plan and ensure its quality, the mix of housing and so on. That would help to get local support for high-quality development, which is one of the things everyone wants. We could use the neighbourhood planning mechanism alongside the permission in principle.
Kevin Hollinrake
Q 265 Mr Spiers, you concede that, if a property is sold through the housing association through the extension of right to buy, the person living there is still part of that social mix?
Shaun Spiers: They are while they carry on living there. They can sell it on, though, and that has been the problem with the sale of council houses in villages. Villages have been transformed by the sale of council houses. The village that I partly grew up in had council houses built in Cotswold stone with Cotswold slate roofs paid for by a local philanthropist. They have almost all now been sold on the open market because they are very desirable houses built to Parker Morris standards. They are not for local people any more. Portable discount, maybe; but if you want to have villages in 20 or 30 years’ time that have a genuine social mix of the sort all of us have always thought was intrinsic to village life, we need to think again about the right to buy as conceived in the Bill.
Kevin Hollinrake
Q 266 Your villages must be different to my villages. I live in a rural area in north Yorkshire that is quite expensive, but a lot of the properties sold into the market through the original right to buy have people on lower incomes still living in them, having either bought them or rented them. I cannot accept that that is not part of the social mix you are trying to ensure. Those properties tend to be less expensive than the other properties in those villages.
Shaun Spiers: Do you think that that will be the case in 20 years’ time?
Kevin Hollinrake
It is certainly the case now; we are 20 years on from the original right to buy, are we not?
Shaun Spiers: I can assure you that it is not the case in many villages across England.
The Chair
We have come to the end of our allotted time. To both Historic England and CPRE, thank you very much for your evidence, which has been extremely useful for the future deliberations of the Committee.
Examination of Witness
Brandon Lewis MP gave evidence
The Chair
Q 267 We come to the high point or the low point—I am not sure which—of our deliberations: the Minister will address us. It is the high point of our deliberations, no matter which party we come from.
I take this opportunity to welcome to the panel the Minister, Mr Brandon Lewis, who I know wants to make a few opening remarks. I remind the Committee that we are here not to disagree or, indeed, to agree with the Minister, but to enlighten ourselves about his views with regard to the Bill.
Brandon Lewis: Thank you, Chair. I am not quite sure I can live up to the introduction of being the high point, but I will be happy if Members decide to support and agree with me. I appreciate the chance to say a few words about what we have heard so far and the purpose of the Bill. I want my comments to match the main themes of what we have been talking about so far, so I will begin by looking at starter homes and housing supply and management.
We have heard a lot about the importance of affordable housing, which I have no doubt we will return to over the next few weeks. I want to clarify, from the outset, that affordable housing is a priority for the Government. That is why we have committed to build more new affordable homes than in any equivalent period in the past two decades. Hon. Members on Second Reading and those who have given evidence and spoken in Committee so far have underlined the need for affordable homes, including for social tenants, which we agree with, but as Ian Fletcher said last Tuesday, we cannot look at the Bill in isolation from wider Government policy on housing. We are already making social housing more affordable by cutting rents for housing association and local authority tenants. That is equivalent, by the way, to £12 off the average weekly social rent. Indeed, we have seen more council homes built in the past four years than in the previous 13 years.
It is now the turn of those who want affordable housing to buy. Starter homes are the next stage in our package of affordable housing support for everyone across tenures. I found it helpful therefore to hear Richard Blakeway confirm that the GLA welcomes the introduction of starter homes and the Government’s focus on promoting home ownership, with a real role for starter homes in London. We heard fears from those such as Councillor Philip Glanville, who said that starter homes would cost £420,000, but as the Committee has heard, the Council of Mortgage Lenders says that first-time buyers purchase properties costing an average of £280,000 to £290,000 in London, as well as across the country. There is also a 20% discount for starter homes. I hope that puts those concerns to rest once and for all.
I will give a couple of examples. In my constituency, you can buy a two to three-bedroom new build home for £145,000 to £160,000. In the constituency of the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton (Mr Jones), you can buy a two-bedroom apartment for £125,000 or even £95,000, and a three-bedroom house for £150,000. When you then put a 20% discount on those homes, let alone linking them to the Help to Buy scheme that the Government have brought in, it really makes home ownership affordable for people again.
Tim Pinder and Mark Patchitt expressed their concerns about the amount of compensation the Government will give to housing associations. I want to assure the Committee and be very clear that we will provide full compensation for the discount and that housing associations will retain the sales receipt, enabling them to invest in the delivery of new homes. They also asked why such a commitment was not in legislation. We heard comments this morning from Shaun Spiers about things he would like to see in the legislation around the voluntary agreement for the right to buy. It is worth remembering the exact words of David Orr, who made it very clear that this is a “voluntary deal” and that the “core principles” will be the basis on which it operates. I will be very clear: we legislate only where we need to.
We have heard a lot from London over the past few sessions. Witnesses from the LGA and London local authorities gave strong evidence about the scale of the housing challenge in London. The LGA said that we need to build at least 230,000 homes in the capital. I was pleased to see a number of witnesses agree that the measures in the Bill will increase housing supply and, indeed, housing supply in London. Amendment 1 and new clause 1 propose a way of going further. I look forward to discussing those at the appropriate time over the next few weeks.
Whether we talk about one home extra being built for every one sold, or two built for every home sold, let us be clear: before the extension of right to buy, a relevant social property might not have gone to someone new for another 20 or 30 years, or even longer. Now, not only will that home help somebody into home ownership, but the sale will deliver at least one extra home within three years. It is a good deal for Londoners and for the rest of the country. We heard concerns about how it will be funded. Richard Blakeway believed the sale of high-value council houses would cover at least the cost of the discount and the cost of re-provision in London. We are doing complex thinking about how to best implement this and we are working and liaising with local authorities. As you have heard, I am still meeting various bodies.
On ensuring social rents better reflect income, we will flesh out various provisions in secondary legislation. Putting the detail in regulations allows the policies to be influenced by the debate in Committee. Further analysis and the views of local people will also be taken into account—those people will implement the policies on the ground—which is something Governments have practised for generations.
We welcome thoughts, as always, but, as we debate the clauses, my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary and I will be clear that we owe it to housing associations, councils and those on the ground to resist any amendments that will limit our ability to adapt the detailed implementation of the policy. We need to do this based on the feedback that we get on various issues over the next few months. When we get to clauses that give the Secretary of State the power to make regulations, the Committee may wish to reflect on the flexibility of those and how adaptable they can be. Many of our witnesses, including this morning’s, have expressed support for the approach in that flexibility.
I want to touch briefly on our reforms to the private rented sector. We have heard from Campbell Robb and Jon Sparkes, for example, how important it is to have a secure home. I know many witnesses want us to go further to crack down on rogue landlords. David Smith, for example, wanted the most serious offenders to always go to court, and I know that many already do, but I am happy to look into how we can go further to get the worst representatives—those rogue landlords—driven out of the sector. The vast majority of landlords support those who rent their homes, and the Bill will help them go further to do so.
We all agree that the planning system needs to be streamlined in order to deliver more homes to rent and more homes to buy. We want developers to know where suitable brownfield land is, and we will make the planning process more predictable by allowing planning permission in principle to be given. We want those who wish to build their own home to know it will be easier to do so, and therefore boost the economic recovery of small builders, too. We are improving neighbourhood planning. Local plans have been around for more than a decade. Despite some of the reasons given in evidence so far, the time for excuses is over. If plans are not in place, I make no apologies for intervening and making sure that we work with communities to get them done, representing people in their communities.
Finally, as I said earlier, the Bill is part of our wider package to help people into home ownership and to deliver a full range of affordable housing across all tenures. I hope we will not have too many Divisions over the next few weeks. On clauses where we divide, I ask Members to consider this: everyone on this Committee wants more homes for people to buy or rent. We all want to make it easier and safer for people to live in their properties or to manage them effectively. Every clause in the Bill helps such things to happen, and every vote against helps to prevent or delay it. I am happy to take any questions the Committee may have and I look forward to debating the Bill with everybody in the next few weeks.
Dr Blackman-Woods
Q 268 We have heard from a number of witnesses—perhaps not the ones mentioned by the Minister—who pointed out that starter homes, although welcome, are not an alternative to genuinely affordable housing. On what evidence base did the Government decide to prioritise the delivery of starter homes above all other types of affordable housing, and what do they mean for our meeting the delivery of affordable housing targets locally?
Brandon Lewis: They are part of the mix. The recession has meant that first-time buyers have been very hard hit. I am proud of the fact that we now have roughly double the number of first-time buyers that we inherited back in 2010. That is good news, but we want to go further and do more to help first-time buyers get the chance to own a home of their own. Help to Buy was a part of that and has played a huge part in the more than 200,000 helped since 2010 by Government-supported schemes.
Help to Buy has meant that people can get a home with a 5% deposit, but does not deal with whether homes are affordable to purchase. We are making it clear that an affordable home is not simply a home to rent; many people—86% of our population—want to own their own home. One of the things that I find most disappointing is people arguing against that. With great respect, Shaun Spiers—whom I like and meet with regularly—spent a long time making a case for why people in villages should not have a chance to own their own home. I absolutely refute that. I want to do everything possible to ensure that people who aspire to that chance to own their own home get the opportunity to do so, whether through the extension of the right to buy or through creating starter homes.
Starter homes will give people the chance to buy a new home of their own at a 20% discount on the market value. New two-bedroom homes, including white goods, are being built in parts of the country for £129,000. A two-bedroom home can be under £150,000 in my constituency and, as I said, in the constituency of the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton (Marcus Jones), under £100,000. With a 20% discount and perhaps a link to Help to Buy, buying a home is affordable again. That is an important thing to be doing.
Furthermore, that is only part of the mix, which is one of the points that I have made in response to questions and before the Communities and Local Government Committee only last week. No one is saying that the Bill in and of itself deals with the entire housing market. The Bill does part of the job and the Government are doing a lot of other things. The housing market includes people with shared ownership, the affordable rental sector and social renting, market-priced housing, and private rented sector housing, as well as the retirement housing that is coming forward—there is a whole range of tenures. Starter homes are only part of the mix.
Dr Blackman-Woods
Q 269 We all accept that starter homes are part of the mix, but what will the Bill do to ensure that the whole mix is delivered? From witness after witness, we have heard that the prioritisation of starter homes will crowd out other sorts of affordable housing, which are needed as well. On what evidence base did the Government come up with the plan to prioritise starter homes over everything else?
Brandon Lewis: I am sure that we will debate such matters over the first few sittings in the next week or so, but I draw attention to my opening remarks in answering your question. When first-time buyers are the hardest-hit part of the housing sector, it is entirely appropriate for us to do what we can to help them. I am slightly surprised at your comment, which I would reverse: why for so many years has no one been making the case for people who want to own their own home being crowded out of the affordable housing market by other forms of affordable housing? For the first time we are able to introduce a product that will create new homes for people who want the chance to be able to afford to buy their own home, alongside affordable rent as part of the mix. To say that something that does not exist yet is crowding anything else out seems anomalous.
Dr Blackman-Woods
Q 270 However, do you accept that it is quite unusual to come up with a policy where witness after witness says that we all think it is good to support starter homes, but not at the expense of other types of housing, which are very much needed as well?
Brandon Lewis: You have also had people making the point that this is not necessarily at the expense of other things and is part of the mix. For example, Dr Ellis from the TCPA made your point today as well, but, with the greatest of respect, this is also someone who tried to make the case that the regional spatial strategies worked, despite the delivery of the lowest level of housing starts since 1923; argued that the Bill brings back segregation; and at other times argued that Hull is about to disappear as an area. I therefore do not give that a lot of credibility. A lot of other people have made the case for starter homes being a good thing, not least the tens of thousands of people who have registered to buy one. We will do all we can to deliver for them.
The Chair
I now have eight Members who have caught my eye for the 25 minutes left to us. With mutual respect and by keeping things as short as possible, we can get everyone in.
Stephen Hammond (Wimbledon) (Con)
Q 271 Is there any evidence to suggest that starter homes will necessarily crowd out other low-cost ownership, or indeed that every starter home will be built at the maximum? Is there not some evidence, particularly from the Council of Mortgage Lenders and others, that a number of the starter homes might be built well below that cap?
Brandon Lewis: Absolutely. That is a key point to bear in mind, which we managed to flush out of Councillor Glanville eventually. Other witnesses have made that clear, including the Council of Mortgage Lenders. We have put in a cap and made it very clear what the price limit will be. We expect to see that delivered. Also, the 20% discount is at least a 20% discount. I would not be surprised if we see people coming in with bigger discounts, which would also help to move this market.
I have just listed some homes, and people can look on Rightmove themselves—I wrote a blog for it just a couple of weeks ago—and find plenty of new build homes at well below £200,000 and in some areas below £100,000. I expect to see that. When we then link that with the 20% discount on top of the market price, and if somebody can also link it with Help to Buy, then somebody earning £20,000 or £25,000 to £35,000 who has been effectively locked out of the ownership market since the great Labour recession suddenly has a chance to own their own home again. I think that is a really good thing.
You make a really good point about the mix. We will continue to see a mix. People sometimes underestimate—or maybe do not understand the housing market enough to appreciate—the way that large developments in particular work. Housing associations work in partnership with large developers. There are a number of very large developments that private sector developers are building at the moment in partnership with housing associations. They will not want to change that. They both want those joint ventures, both financially and in delivering the mix. Some housing associations are building in phenomenal numbers at the moment, and are looking to go further. We will be working with them to deliver that. In schemes in London or outer London, or indeed other parts of the country, you can see them working together. The finances of that work for both developers and housing associations, and both have made the case publicly and in this Committee about the importance of a mix of tenures on a site. I think we will see that continue.
Stephen Hammond
Q 272 Presumably it is that mix that gives you confidence that some of the infrastructure that is needed will be built.
Mr Spiers, and indeed the GLA, have suggested that 95% of the brownfield sites are already under development or have planning permission attached to them. Is that a number that DCLG recognises?
Brandon Lewis: No. What we have said we will do, and what we were elected on a manifesto to do, is to make sure that 90% of brownfield sites have planning permission by 2020. I do agree with Shaun Spiers and others who have commented that we need to identify these brownfield sites. I have worked with the Campaign to Protect Rural England over the past year or so to make sure that we do everything we can. We all want to see those sites built out first. The brownfield fund is also part of making sure that we deal with some of the viability issues of some of those sites. It is important that we encourage local authorities to do this. Having the register out there in a way that is transparent and in the public domain will help that. Planning permission in principle goes a long way to help that.
You also make a very good point, as Mr Jackson did earlier, about infrastructure. By having mixed sites and larger sites, of course the part of the site that is not delivering starter homes will still be creating both the community infrastructure levy and section 106 agreements, where that is appropriate and relevant for that local authority. That is putting aside local growth fund issues and devolution deals, which are also providing infrastructure. It is right to do so, and we need to make sure that we are providing infrastructure as well as well designed homes for people.
Helen Hayes
Q 273 Yesterday in the Communities and Local Government Committee, we heard evidence from four councils. Two of them were Conservative-led, one Liberal Democrat-led and one Labour-led. All of them gave very compelling evidence that, despite the comments you just made about the ability of the Bill to deliver a mix, it simply isn’t there. They talked about the way in which the 1% rent reduction will undermine the ability of councils and housing associations to deliver new socially rented stock. One of the councils was up against its borrowing limit on its housing revenue account already, and said that once that is taken into account the receipts from homes that are sold under the right to buy will not be there to replace homes that are lost to the rental market.
The evidence from housing associations, which was previously heard by this Committee and also by the Communities and Local Government Committee, is that while many of them say that the Bill will deliver more homes as a whole, most of them say that they as individual housing associations will be delivering fewer of those homes at social rent. I am afraid that I am just not convinced by the statement that starter homes will be part of a mix, and that they will not crowd out much-needed homes for rent. I would be very grateful if you would say a bit more about where the evidence is for those statements, because I have not seen it.
Brandon Lewis: You have conflated a few things there, so I will try to cover all of them if I can. First, the 1% cut is obviously an advantage to tenants in social housing of both local authorities and housing associations, and I am slightly surprised that you seem to be against us reducing the costs for residents.
Local government has done a phenomenal job in the last few years of realising efficiencies, sharing management, sharing chief executives, reducing its costs. I will be quite up-front about this, as I was in the Select Committee: I think local government can go further. I think it has a long way to go in doing similar things on planning. Touching on some of the evidence given this morning, I think that local authorities can go a lot further in terms of having good resilient resource as well as saving efficiencies.
Housing associations have not been subject to that kind of transparency. I think a 1% reduction year on year over the next four years is not an unreasonable thing for the public to expect them to do, which tenants then benefit from as well. Equally, I have spoken to housing associations that have made the point to me that they expect to reduce their rent by 4% to 5% next year, in one case because they are being challenged by the private rented sector. That is no doubt because social housing rent has gone up in the last four or five years by roughly double what the private sector has. We need to be up-front about that.
You say it affects housing supply, but we have housing associations saying quite the opposite. The largest, Sanctuary, is talking about increasing housing supply; L&Q just last week, I think, published the fact that it has had a very successful bond issue to go and build further. It has very ambitious plans to build more, some of which, like others, it does in partnership with private developers. It shows and backs up the point in the closing remarks of David Orr in his evidence. He said that yes, this will drive up housing supply, and yes, housing associations will want to deliver starter homes. That is a good thing.
Touching on the point about HRA, we have to be very cautious about the housing revenue accounts situation. We gave local authorities some headroom last year for those who wanted to bid to go a bit further if they were near the headroom. There is more than £2 billion-worth of headroom in the HRA nationally for local authorities to use to build, and I think that they should be doing that if they want to show they are building more. We also need to bear in mind, however, that any use of HRA affects the public sector borrowing requirement. It affects the country’s books, and we need to do what we can to make sure we are managing our deficit so that we can get on top of the debt we inherited.
Helen Hayes
Q 274 South Cambridgeshire District Council told us yesterday that it was up against its borrowing cap on the HRA, which meant that the receipts from homes sold under the right to buy would not yield sufficient funds to replace those homes. I hope that you will look at the evidence session, because I do not think that the evidence from four councils from all political persuasions, which was very powerful yesterday, should be ignored.
I want to ask about the issue that was raised in the earliest evidence session this morning about the lack of quality standards for the delivery of affordable homes and for urban development corporations. How confident are you that those measures will see genuinely high-quality development going forward?
Brandon Lewis: Actually, if you look at some of the papers put out by the NHBC over the last few months you will see that—don’t get me wrong, as Housing Minister I get people coming to me, and when I visit sites I see issues out there, and I am not pretending for a minute that people buying new homes do not have issues from time to time; we have all done it, and I have done it as well—the reality is that, from a general point of view, we build some of the highest-quality homes in the world at the moment. That is good, but it does not mean we cannot look to go further. I make the point quite regularly that I think we should be looking to ensure quality of build and quality of design—design is important not just in terms of what homes look like but also in terms of master planning.
On starter homes and affordable homes, I put together a design panel earlier this year that is still in place. Starter homes are a very good example of where quality is important to us, which we made very clear by having some of the most renowned architects involved in that— Terry Farrell, Quinlan Terry and others. It has put forward design templates, so that we can say to people that if they buy a starter home, it will be at least as good as homes designed by some of the best architects this country has to offer. If a local developer with the local authority comes up with something that is better or more appropriate for them, then I believe in trusting local people to make local decisions. But starter homes will be at least as good as the best architects that we have can design.
Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)
Q 275 I am pleased to hear that the starter homes are a mix of the affordable housing element. I wondered if the Minister could confirm—we did not hear it in the evidence in either session really—that for those on a low income, being able to afford a mortgage is crucial because mortgage monthly payments are significantly lower than rental monthly payments in the private sector. Could the Minister shed any light on that? Encouraging people to be able to own their own home would help those with low monthly incomes.
Brandon Lewis: Absolutely. I have seen plenty of examples of people who have made that case to us over the past few years—they are in the private rented sector and are paying a certain amount in rent, but when they work out what the equivalent mortgage cost on that home would be, it is roughly half. Usually it is at least 30% less than their rental costs, but more often than not it is 40% to 50% less. The challenge had always been around getting a deposit together to buy that home. That is what the Help to Buy scheme was about, as it allows people to buy their home with a 5% deposit.
I come back to a point I made earlier about starter homes: if you are able to buy a starter home, particularly in the kind of price range I outlined, which you see partly in East Anglia and certainly outside London—the evidence session with Shelter was quite enlightening in pointing out that this debate is about more than just London—and if you can get a 20% discount on market value, that makes it affordable again. It makes it a real possibility for someone—especially people in the private rented sector but potentially in the affordable rented sector and the social housing sector, as well, with right to buy—to look at it as a chance to own their own home. I come back to the fact that we were very clear: we were elected on a mandate to deliver home ownership to an extra 1.3 million people. We are very aware of the fact that 86% of that population want a chance to own their own home and we will do everything we can to support them in reaching that ambition.
Maria Caulfield
Q 276 To return to the point about delivering one-for-one in the right to buy sector, I asked in a previous evidence session about housing associations looking at other models of house building—not just traditional house building but perhaps things like modular house building—but we did not really get an answer from the housing associations. What are your thoughts about alternative ways of building? Also, on pay to stay, we have heard that housing associations are worried about the 1% cut in council housing rent yet they could not say why they are not implementing the pay to stay measures that are already in place for those who earn £60,000 a year or more. That would bring them some income, so why are they not doing that to fund new house building?
Brandon Lewis: There are a few points in there. On build-out rates and different types of building, I absolutely agree. The reality is that, generally, we still build homes in the way we did 20 years ago—sorry, 100 years ago—which means it takes, on average, 20 weeks to build a house, if the weather holds out. Modern technology means you can build a house much quicker. I have seen two two-bedroom semi-detached homes built in a day. Modular homes can be built in a couple of weeks. They are high quality and have very high energy efficiency. I highlight that, because they do not need any more regulation on zero-carbon homes—those kinds of homes deliver that. That really speeds up the rate of delivery.
The National Housing Federation, on behalf of its members, has been talking to us with some very ambitious plans for going further. We are already seeing organisations—Sanctuary, L&Q, Gemini and others—looking to be quite exciting with what they are building. They already build a mix of tenures, with market properties to sell as well as affordable private rented sector and social sector properties as well. They are looking more and more at that kind of modern technology. If we can do that, we will see a dramatic sea change in the way we deliver housing, certainly in terms of the scale and speed at which we can do so. One of the biggest challenges we face—I appreciate that this is slightly outside the remit of the Bill, but it highlights my earlier point about the Bill being part of the solution—is that we still have house builders building out on sites at an average of 50 homes a year. With modern technology we could easily convert that to 200-plus homes a year. That is where we should be looking to go. There is a real opportunity there.
The extension of right to buy through housing associations will help housing associations release capital and get access to capital. That allows them to build homes that would not otherwise exist; hence David Orr’s point, which he made quite clearly, that this will drive up housing supply. Every time a home is sold, that creates an income and a generation of asset that that housing association can use to build more homes. The reinvigorated right to buy scheme was introduced in 2012. There have been three years to build homes, and at the moment we are ahead of schedule in terms of building one for every one sold. In London, it is closer to two. We can expect to see that with the extended scheme. In some parts of the country, that will mean more than one home built for every home sold.
Matthew Pennycook
Q 277 Minister, this is not in the Bill, but you have indicated previously that regulations will allow starter homes to switch to full market value after five years. I am struggling with that logic, and I wonder whether you can help me: at a time when you are asking for Government, across all Departments, to make greater savings, and given that the rationale is to ensure an affordable home ownership offer, what is the logic for giving people that windfall rather than ensuring that starter homes remain in perpetuity as affordable homes?
Brandon Lewis: I am happy to answer. We went through this at the Communities and Local Government Committee, so you might want to have a look at the transcript. There are schemes selling homes at a 20% discount in perpetuity—Pocket Living, a super product in London, is a good example. We are saying something slightly different for two reasons. First, this is not about building any number of starter homes—they stay in perpetuity and therefore you can slow down building, which is what happened with social housing under the previous Labour Government. We will need to build starter homes and to keep building them. We want to build 200,000 in this Parliament, but not stop there. We need to keep building them for first-time buyers going forward and to see that number grow and grow.
There is a clear logical reason for mortgage lenders, bearing in mind that we want people to be able to buy these homes. Most people buying a home will need to get a mortgage. It is not a discount if a 20% on market value discount is available but market value can never be realised.
Matthew Pennycook
Q 278 What assessment has the Department carried out on the number of people who are currently unable to buy their own home but will be able to do so under the starter home programme? I asked a previous witness about this but did not get a satisfactory answer. In essence, I am trying to get at what estimate you have done of the widening of the home ownership pool that the Bill and the starter home policy in particular will create. What are the numbers over and above those already in a position to buy their first home?
Brandon Lewis: We have already said we want to see 1 million new home owners in this Parliament. The 200,000 starter homes are part of that, but only part of the picture.
Matthew Pennycook
Q 279 Can I push you on what assessment you have made?
Brandon Lewis: I am not going to publish here the advice we are looking at on taking policy forward. We don’t do that. Our policy is to make home ownership available to more people with 200,000 starter homes. The clear evidence is that first-time buyers were the hardest-hit through the recession under the previous Labour Government and we want to do what we can to help them. We have already doubled the numbers and we want to go further.
To finish with your query on five years—the issue applies to right to buy as well. Why should somebody who owns their own home that they have bought through one scheme be treated any differently to anyone else who owns their home? They should have the same rights over their home as other people. I have very little sympathy with the argument that, just because somebody has bought their home through a scheme, they should have different rights of ownership to anybody else. Once somebody owns their home, they should have the same right to do what they like with it in good time as any other home owner.
Chris Philp
Q 280 To develop the question about home ownership versus rental, would you agree with the analysis that Crisis and Shelter alluded to that home ownership is a fundamentally better form of tenure because it is more secure and the person owning their home gets to participate in house price growth? As Maria Caulfield said, it is often cheaper as a form of occupancy than the private rental sector. Is that part of the reason why you are so keen to promote home ownership?
Brandon Lewis: The short answer is yes. It is important to bear in mind one of the differences between the private rented sector here and in other parts of the world, particularly the US and to an extent Germany. One of the biggest challenges for somebody in this country in the private rented sector is that 91% of the stock is owned by small landlords who own nine properties or less. I think the point was made in the evidence session that nearly 90% of the people who move in the rented sector move home through their own choice.
The biggest risk to a tenant in the private sector is if the landlord decides to sell to an owner-occupier and the type of tenancy at the property changes. In other parts of the world, where there is more institutional investment, multi-family housing and things like that, if a landlord decides to sell their property, they sell it to another private landlord. The tenant’s invoice changes from one company to another, but the tenure of the property does not. That is why people here still look to ownership to being a key part of secure tenure. Extending every opportunity for people to get into ownership is a good thing.
Chris Philp
Q 281 Do you agree that extending home ownership is an effective way of fighting poverty?
Brandon Lewis: Certainly. We can go back to when the right to buy scheme was brought in. The Minister who took it through the House was Michael Heseltine, who came to our Department to extol his wisdom—he showed me some of the debate, which I read through. It is interesting that some of the arguments against right to buy back then, in the early 1980s, are almost word for word what we hear from people on the left of politics in the Labour party today. They do not seem to have learned. One thing that people should have learned is that right to buy has been arguably—I would make the case—one of the most powerful forms of social mobility this country has ever seen.
Chris Philp
Q 282 Absolutely. To pick up a point that was alluded to by the planning witnesses earlier, they mentioned that planning departments in councils are under-resourced, which is probably broadly true. Do you have any sympathy for proposals that some developers have made that they would be willing to pay much higher planning fees provided that they got a better service in return? For example, if they did not get the service, the enhanced fee might get refunded? I know it is a complicated area and the council might simply swipe the money. Do you have any views on those proposals?
The Chair
Quickly.
Brandon Lewis: We need to be very cautious about simply allowing local authorities freedom on planning fees. It could be gamed, to an extent. I am sure that no local authority that any of us know would ever do this, but arguably they could put planning fees so high that it would make it difficult for small developers. Equally, there are planning performance agreements in place, particularly in London where we see very substantial agreements being formed between developers and planning authorities. However, I do think there is a real issue of making sure that local authorities are performing well and that they have very resilient planning teams.
I made the point to the Select Committee just last week, as well as on the Floor of the House last week during Question Time, that planning authorities should be sharing services and resources much better on planning. There is a long way to go with that and much to be found, not just in efficiency but in quality of service, quality of job for planners and excitement around the job. We could see a great improvement there, but we also need to focus on delivering small sites and small planning permissions in the same way we have seen improvements on large site speed of delivery over the past few years.
Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)
Q 283 The Government have pledged that property sold via right to buy will be replaced on at least a one-to-one grant basis, a one-to-one grant being provided for that purpose. Existing state aid rules do not allow for the Government to provide such aid to home builders, save for the provision of social housing. If grants are provided, for example, for building housing for commercial sale, it is possible that it would breach state aid law and give housing associations an unfair advantage over commercial house builders. What assurances can the Committee have that such a grant arrangement will be compliant with state aid?
Brandon Lewis: It would have to be compliant or we would not be able to do it.
Peter Dowd
Q 284 You are giving that assurance?
Brandon Lewis: If it was not compliant, we would not be able to do it, so it will be compliant.
Kevin Hollinrake
Q 285 Going back to starter homes and affordable rents, you talked at the Select Committee about local authorities and developers still being able to negotiate arrangements to suit local needs. Will you expand on that to say how that will happen in practice?
Brandon Lewis: At the moment local authorities negotiate with developers and we see different types of development and different viability issues in different parts of the country around what works and what the mix will be. Yes, we want to see starter homes. We think there is a real need to deliver homes that are affordable for people to buy and we want to put a clear focus on that, but local authorities will still negotiate what is right for them locally, what the viability is locally, and they are ultimately the ones who make the planning decision locally.
I think there was a fundamental misunderstanding by the TCPA representative today about how planning permission works in principle. Actually, it is ultimately driven by a democratic, locally focused scheme. They support the RSS, so I suppose I should not have been overly surprised by their evidence. Ultimately, local authorities have the final decision as to whether a planning permission is approved. Even when a plan is there in principle, the detail is for the local authority, and part of that will be the negotiations around what is viable.
At the same time, as I said earlier, I think we will continue to see developers working with housing associations to deliver mixes of housing, not least because that is how the financial modelling works for the developments that they are putting forward.
The Chair
That brings us to the end of our three evidence sessions preparatory to our detailed consideration of the Bill. I hope the Committee will agree that it has been an extremely useful series of panels. I thank the Minister for appearing in front of us and for being frank and straightforward in his responses. We will meet next on Thursday at 11.30 am in Committee Room 12 to start detailed, line-by-line consideration of the Bill. I thank the members of the Committee for their patience and I hope we have managed to get as many members in as possible during the question session.