Grand Committee
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Immigration Bill
(8 years, 3 months ago)
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The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Henig) (Lab)
My Lords, if there is a Division in the Chamber, the Committee will adjourn and resume after 10 minutes.
Amendment 239
“Unaccompanied refugee children
(1) The Secretary of State must, as soon as possible, make arrangements to relocate 3,000 unaccompanied refugee children who are in European countries to the United Kingdom.
(2) The relocation of children under subsection (1) shall be in addition to the resettlement of children under the Vulnerable Persons Relocation Scheme.”
Lord Dubs (Lab)
My Lords, there are times when this country is faced with significant humanitarian challenges and this is one now. It comes not only from the refugee crisis throughout Europe but from the perilous position of unaccompanied children.
Before I proceed, perhaps I may thank the many NGOs, including ILPA, the Refugee Council, Save the Children, my right honourable friend Yvette Cooper—who chairs Labour’s refugee taskforce—and many others. I should declare an interest, as I came to this country as an unaccompanied refugee myself.
Ever since I tabled the amendment, I have been delighted and surprised at the enormous number of messages of support that I have received and at the conversations in which I have become involved where people say, “This is really good. When’s it coming up and are you going to win?”. I believe that there is a real mood in the country that we can do more for refugees and I think that it focuses particularly on what we can do for children—other groups are important as well, but the focus is on what we can do for children. I have been overwhelmed by this; I can hardly find words to describe it. The Government should take into account that a significant part of public opinion would be on the side of the Government if they accepted this amendment.
The evidence is that there are 24,000 unaccompanied child refugees in Europe. Of course, the figures cannot be precise, but it has been estimated that our fair share of the total would be 3,000. That is the basis for the amendment. These figures came from Save the Children and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
We are talking about vulnerable children: the winter is coming on; they are cold; they are hungry. Traffickers will play their part, alas, in trying to capture some of them and they may be forced into prostitution. I understand that Europol has estimated that some 1,000—I may have got the figure wrong; it could be more than that—of such children have disappeared. Is it not a terrible thought that in Europe, at this time and in this year, with all the sophistication and humanitarian instincts that we are supposed to have, there are children adrift, vulnerable and in danger and that very little is being done to help them? We cannot stand by and, as I said, there are many signs that the British people want to help and see this as our collective British responsibility.
The Minister said yesterday in reply to a question that there are difficulties in Kent in getting enough foster parents for children who have arrived there by other means. All I can say is that I have been around quite a bit and people come to me and say that, if an appeal is made, they want to be foster parents and know people who want to be foster parents. The Government need to say in a loud voice that they want people to volunteer and will see whether there are enough children for all the people who offer. It may well be that there has been some publicity in Kent but I am not aware of much publicity in London or the north of England to suggest that the Government are looking hard for foster parents. I urge the Government to say publicly, “This is what we need because we owe it to these children and we can accommodate them well”. We do not want children to come here to be put into care or residential institutions. It is right that there should be foster parents and I urge the Government to make a stronger appeal.
Many years ago I had the honour of being a councillor on Westminster City Council and we were looking at the question of foster parents for local children. Eventually the council was persuaded—I have to say by the Labour opposition—that it would be better not to go on building lots of children’s homes but to make a positive appeal for foster parents. The council appealed for foster parents from outside Westminster, because it is difficult to find all that many there, and there was a good response. Indeed, the council’s policy moved away from having residential institutions for children where that could be avoided.
It is clear that this will put a big responsibility on local authorities and I would not shirk that. They would have the job of vetting whether parents are suitable. These days we are far more conscious that children have to be safely looked after and that we cannot take any risks with them—local authorities do that already for children going into foster care. It will be the job of local authorities to vet families coming forward to be foster parents and to monitor them to ensure the safety of children. That is what local authorities do anyway. It is proper that they should do it and you could apply that process to any new children coming in, particularly the ones who are the subject of this amendment. It is a crucial function for local authorities, because we want children to be safe and properly looked after and we want to be able to make that guarantee.
I welcome the Government’s vulnerable persons relocation scheme. I have been talking to people involved in the process in local authorities and, although I think the numbers are too small, it is an important scheme and if sensibly applied will be of great benefit. But I am talking about different children, who would be additional to the 20,000 figure that the Government talk about.
There are two specific reasons behind this amendment. The first is to establish and get support for what is an important principle and we need numbers to make sure that it is going to work on any worthwhile scale. Secondly, we need to understand the Government’s position. The Minister has explained it on occasion, but I am bound to say that it is not all that clear. A government release said:
“In addition, the UK Government will commit to providing further resource to the European Asylum Support Office to help Greece and Italy identify migrants, including children, who could be reunited with direct family members elsewhere in Europe under the Dublin Regulation”.
That is fair enough. It continues:
“Where it is in their best interests, this will include bringing them to the UK”.
Of course the best interests of children must be paramount, but it is not clear to me what policy is being announced by the Government in that statement. Yes, it is important that children should be reunited with their parents if that is possible but, as regards those coming to the UK, I am not sure that that makes for a policy. I would like the Government to use this occasion to spell out what the policy actually means.
My amendment is for particularly vulnerable people and, although the figure of 3,000 is relatively small, it would make an important contribution to tackling this most vulnerable group. The best interests of the child must be paramount. Although this is not the subject of the amendment, it is important for children not to be told, “You can stay until 18 and then off you go somewhere else”. It is clear that if we take responsibility for children and they spend some years being brought up here, being educated here, living with a British family and having British siblings, as it were, it is important that they should have the chance to stay here if that is their wish. For heaven’s sake, we hope that Syria will become a peaceful country, but that seems a long way off and therefore we should accept responsibility for these children.
There are some children in European countries who have family members in this country. We have found four in Calais and they have been brought here. But this amendment is not intended to cover those children, as they already have a right to join their families under existing agreements. I only hope that we make sure that there are no other children with family members here who have just been missed out in the process.
We all know that in 1938-39 there was a crisis in Europe, as many children, mainly Jewish, in Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia, were helped to escape to safety through the Kindertransport. There has been quite a lot of publicity about that recently, particularly on Holocaust Memorial Day. Quite a number of those children who came over in that way, as I did, have been in touch with me to say how much they support this amendment. Some of the messages have been humbling, as they say, “We must do something; we got here and we want to make sure that others in dire straits have the same opportunity”. In 1938-39, most countries refused to help and it was only the United Kingdom that allowed the children entry. We were alone and we set an example that other countries did not follow. This country said that it could be done and, as a result, thousands of children could thank Britain for that humanitarian gesture. When I meet them, they go on thanking Britain. A plaque off Central Lobby was put up some years ago as a thank you from those Kindertransport children to the British people. It is worth having a look at that to see what happened.
I have had a chance, thanks to ILPA, which sent some quotes from Hansard, to look at what happened when these debates took place in 1938-39. I do not want to take too much of the Committee’s time, but I have one or two quotes, because in some ways nothing has changed. In 1938, Mr Noel Baker asked:
“Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that these children in Germany in many cases are in really terrible conditions, without adult protection and without the means of finding food, and is he aware that the machinery of the Home Office for granting visas is so inadequate that the visas cannot be obtained in sufficient quantities to save their lives?”—[Official Report, Commons, 14/12/1938; col. 342.]
As I said, some of these things today are not that different from what they were then, but I know that the Minister is going to change things. There were other questions. Colonel Wedgwood asked in November 1938 whether the Prime Minister was,
“aware that delays of three months and over occur in the issue of visas to Jewish children from Germany after all guarantees have been given; will he state the reasons for the delay; and can the business be expedited, in view of the increasing danger to the children?”—[Official Report, Commons, 23/11/1938; col. 341.]
So there was pressure there—and there are one or two others still. There was a rather nasty quote from a politician whom I shall not name, to which Mr Wedgwood Benn said:
“In the interests of the good name of this country, will the hon. Gentleman do his best to discourage questions such as this?”—[Official Report, Commons, 24/11/1938; col. 341.]
I shall give just a couple more, because it is quite useful to find out what happened some years ago. The Archbishop of Canterbury made a plea, in this case for Czech children, saying that,
“nothing but benefit could accrue from the absorption of a good many of these intelligent children”.—[Official Report, 5/7/1939; col. 1024.]
It is only a few months ago that Sir Nicky Winton died, aged 106. He was the person who brought children from Prague, mainly in 1939. I went to his 106th birthday party two months before he died. For me personally, it was important that I was able to be there and celebrate his birthday. I could see that he was sinking but, my goodness me, he was still sharp. A couple of years before, on his 104th birthday, I said, “Nicky, how are you?” and he said, “I’m fine from the neck upwards”. What a man. He lived in Maidenhead and on his 103rd birthday the Home Secretary came along to his birthday party, so I was in good company. Sir Nicky Winton saved many children from Czechoslovakia, including me, and I would like to feel that other children in Europe now are to be given the same welcome and opportunities that I had. I beg to move.
Lord Roberts of Llandudno (LD)
It gives me the greatest pleasure to support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Dubs. Sometimes a situation will sweep through a country and bring compassion and tears to so many people. This is the case especially after the last weekend, when we saw the continuing destruction of Aleppo, with scores of thousands of people crowding on the border between Syria and Turkey. They will somehow move from there. They will join that trek, like hundreds of thousands before them, to some sort of hope. Many of them will be children.
I know that in Wales we sometimes have very sad cases where a child has been abducted or put in some danger and people say, “We’ve got to do something to save this child”. Whole communities will rally round to save that child, and so we should. Except it is not one child, but scores of thousands of children. But if we will do it for one child, so we should be prepared to embrace the children that are there—we cannot see the one child because of the hordes of other children. It is a matter of individuals, of little toddlers. I have seven grandchildren myself. They are usually fairly well behaved—not always—but you would defend them and speak for them. You would do anything. You would rather be hurt yourself than they be hurt.
We now have a situation with many unaccompanied children. I think of the parable of the good Samaritan. I should not bring my Sunday sermon here, but in that parable we remember that a traveller on the road—I am not preaching—from Jerusalem to Jericho fell among thieves. There he was, left at the side of the road. He had been robbed of everything. Two temple officers came by and said, “We’d better not touch him. We could be contaminated if he is dead”. They kept on talking. I imagine that they would have met in Jericho and one would have turned to the other and said, “You know, it’s a dangerous situation on that road from Jerusalem to Jericho. Let’s set up a committee to safeguard these people who travel along that road”. Now, we want committees; of course we do. What would we do without them? The House of Lords would be abolished tomorrow if we abolished committees. But that person was still at the side of that road until a Samaritan came who cared for him, took him to the inn and made sure that he was on the way to being well again.
We have a tragic situation from Syria to Calais and Dunkirk, but we need people who will not first go to a committee, but say, “Something needs to be done. We have to act now”. I mentioned yesterday in Questions our debt to the thousands of young people in particular who are in the camps and on some of the Greek islands and sacrificing so much to be there. We owe them a tremendous debt. It is the Red Cross, Calais Action, the Refugee Council and Save the Children—they are there. These are the people with their hands to the wheel in those places.
What are we going to do? If we say that the UK will do no more, where will those children go? Possibly they are asking on the Turkish/Syrian border now, “Where do we go?”. They get to Calais or Dunkirk and they say, “Where do we go?”. Are we going to pull up the drawbridge and say, “You can’t come here?”. If we do, we condemn these children not only in the present time. If they live through the present time to a childhood scarred with memories it will not be to the well-being of the rest of us. Action needs to be taken for the tens of thousands of children as if it was for just one child, for just one of my seven grandchildren.
It is a big undertaking, of course it is, but Canada has taken 25,000 refugees in two months. It was great, seeing that happen and hearing that an appeal went out on the radio in Canada when that first plane arrived at Lester Pearson Airport in Toronto: “Please, will no more people come to the airport? We’re under siege with people wanting to welcome these people from Syria”. The heart of the people is with those people who are tramping across borders or suffering in the camps.
In 1939, we said that we would accept our responsibility for people threatened by the blitz on our large cities—Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and London, of course—and in two months there were arrangements for evacuating 3 million people. We could do it. If we could do it for 3 million people in 1939, we can do it for 3,000 children now. I do not think there is any reason for us not to do it. I cannot think of a valid reason to come to this Committee and say, “Oh, yes, it’s this; it’s this; it’s this”. They are tiny children, like our children. I urge the Government to think again. I assure noble Lords that Heathrow, Gatwick or Stansted would be under siege by the warm-hearted people of the UK wanting to embrace and welcome them. I urge the Government from the bottom of my heart to think again on this.
The Earl of Sandwich (CB)
My Lords, I can see the point of the Government’s plan to collect child refugees from the Middle East, but the thousands of children who were seen on our television screens in October and November last year were already in Europe. The impression at the moment is that the Government are refusing to respond to what has become a public demand. I strongly support the noble Lord, Lord Dubs. This is not just an emotional issue; it is a case of practicality. The Government are talking about an admirable resettlement scheme, but, except in the case of family reunion, they are ignoring unaccompanied minors and ignoring this plea.
Baroness Neuberger (LD)
My Lords, I support this excellent amendment. This is the least that we can do. As the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, and my noble friend Lord Roberts said, there is a huge groundswell of support to bring some of these children—as many as we can—into this country. It is enormously important to get those children out of there, particularly out of Calais and Dunkirk.
I have to declare a couple of interests. I am rabbi of West London Synagogue, which runs a drop-in for asylum seekers and asylum-seeking families, and we have a lot of volunteers who have been going to Calais and Dunkirk. What they say about the situation of those children and the degree of risk to them and the appalling circumstances in which they live is truly ghastly.
I am also a trustee of the Walter and Liesel Schwab Charitable Trust, which was set up in memory of my parents. My mother came as a refugee. She was a domestic servant when her younger brother was still at school. His teacher rang her from Germany and said, “You have to get your brother out of here”. So my uncle came as a semi-unaccompanied refugee and was looked after by the most wonderful foster parents, who responded to general appeals for foster parents. They came forward, took him in and looked after him for months until my mother could cope.
It is ironic that we have been holding these Committee stage debates on the Immigration Bill around the time of Holocaust Memorial Day, when we have been saying “never again” and have been remembering the Kindertransport and the refugees who came. When one looks back on those speeches, as the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, did, on the whole you think a lot of the parliamentarians in 1938 and 1939 were truly wonderful people. However, I want to mention Eleanor Rathbone who is something of a heroine of mine. She also helped my grandparents, who also got out just before the beginning of the war. She said that our being so slow in taking action—in a slightly different area—was the equivalent of saying:
“’We are very sorry for all the people who are in danger of being drowned by this flood, and we will do our best to rescue them, but, mind, we must use nothing but teacups to bale out the flood’”.—[Official Report, Commons, 31/1/1939; col. 151.]
The trouble is that we have been so slow and are taking such very small actions. Three thousand is the very least we can do. We should go to Italy or to Greece and see the huge numbers who are there and then ask ourselves whether 3,000 unaccompanied children on top of the 20,000 who the Government have already said they will take is really too many. I hope the Government will accept this amendment.
Lord Judd (Lab)
My Lords, I am very glad to speak in support of my noble friend—and he really is a friend. What he has said has been all the more powerful for us because of his personal story. He speaks with all the authority of having experienced exactly what we are talking about. Having had the benefits of the response and care that he received, he is determined to see that shared with the children of today. That is a very powerful position.
I believe we should do what is proposed in the amendment because it is right. I do not see how anybody could argue that it is not. These children—bewildered and bereft—are totally innocent. The noble Lord, Lord Roberts, said that they are asking themselves, “Where shall we go?”, but some of them are so bewildered and lost that they are not even asking that. The thought in their minds is, “How are we going to survive?”. They are terrified, frightened and bewildered.
If we have any values in this country, surely we should say that it is imperative to respond. I listened to the noble Baroness’s powerful point about how we are slow to respond, but I am afraid that we are not just slow; inadvertently or not, we seem to be generating a certain message. We have to face the fact that that message is interpreted by many as our seeing something unfortunate or threatening about this situation. The message is that we have to somehow defend ourselves and make concessions where that becomes unavoidable —or clear that it would be impossible not to do so.
We have to face the fact that what confronts us now is only a small fraction of what is going to confront us in the future. With climate change and all the conflicts that are arising, we are going to see the movement of people on a huge scale. That makes it abundantly clear to me that we should establish a record of participation as leading members of international organisations and arrangements, rather than being perceived as defensive and frightened all the time and making concessions. That is not the intention.
I am going to be personal—and this may be embarrassing for the Minister concerned—but I am absolutely convinced that we have a thoroughly decent and very humanitarian Minister sitting with us this afternoon. I have no doubt about that at all. I am also convinced that he doing his level best within government to extend the Government’s response as much as he can. I want the message to go from this Committee that he will have 200% support from us in doing that. I am sure that it will be a message from the House as a whole that he will have nothing but overwhelming support in doing everything possible.
We have to accept that the response of people in this country is not just emotional but practical. I was very struck when all parties in the local authority adjacent to where I live in Cumbria said unanimously—and this very much provides tangible evidence of the case that my noble friend was making—“We must do something. We want to do something. Will the Government help us in pulling our weight as a local authority?”. They were not bludgeoned or cajoled into it. They did it spontaneously. I am sure that my noble friend, who has a home up there too, knows what I am taking about. It was very impressive and I thought it was good: in this community, these values are not just something for individuals but something that the community as a whole is determined to put on record, and we must not let them down.
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, much has been said about the part played by modern communications in the current conflict. Part of that is that we cannot claim ignorance of what is happening. The media, NGOs, colleagues and friends—I, too, have friends who have undertaken voluntary work in northern France—make so abundantly clear what is happening that we cannot escape that information.
I want to pick up on a couple of points that are used as arguments in this debate. One is the idea that children should be kept in their own region and culture, among people from similar backgrounds. Leave aside the variety of people who are volunteering to help children, is it better for children to stay in the region or to be alive, with shelter, not being abused or trafficked, and with access to food, education, health services and so on? Do we keep children in the region so they can be reunited with their families?
I am not persuaded that the administration and the records that will be available if they stay in the region will be better than they would be if the children were brought to this country through a government scheme. I am sure the records will be kept very carefully. I have seen somewhere that the UNHCR regards the chances of relocation if children are brought to this country as still being high. On the question of family reunion—children who are refugees in their own right have rights—it is said that this is, in fact, an underhand way of getting the rest of the family into the UK by sending the children on ahead. I simply do not believe that that is likely except, perhaps, in a very small handful of cases. In any event, the children have rights.
In previous debates I have acknowledged the difficulties in finding foster parents. I know what is said about all the volunteers: there is a general shortage of foster parents for British children. Maybe this will break some sort of logjam. I acknowledge the support that will be needed for foster parents and for local authorities. It is very important to recognise all that because people who are dealing with these children will be dealing with very sensitive, difficult, delicate situations and children who, almost inevitably, will have been damaged. We hope that this is an exercise in not damaging them further.
Like other noble Lords, I have been fascinated by the extracts from Hansard from 1938 and 1939. Not only are the arguments those that are being used today but the ancestors of a number of current Members appear in them. The then Earl of Listowel pointed to a precedent on which Her Majesty’s Government had acted before: the work of the International Red Cross in the south of France. Our shared heroine, Eleanor Rathbone, said:
“We are apparently willing to abandon them”—
the refugees—
“to the danger of being handed over to their deadly enemies rather than risk a few thousand pounds in bringing them over. I know that the Under-Secretary has sympathy in this matter, and I appeal to him to do something to speed up the mechanism and to relax these regulations … Cannot we risk a few thousand pounds rather than abandon these people to the terrible fate that may possibly await them? I feel that in this small matter we may appeal with some hope of success for the Government to adopt a more farsighted and generous policy than heretofore”.—[Official Report, Commons, 31/1/1939; col. 151.]
The leader of the Liberal Democrats, Tim Farron, has been very clear about our party’s stance on this and has been a part of the call for the Government to enable this number of children to be brought here. He has done so because, as the noble Lord, Lord Judd, said, it is right. However, this is not a party-political issue. What is most important is that this has caught the public mood of the moment and we should go with it.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, I am pleased to support my noble friend. The Government are to be applauded for the aid they are giving directly to the region and their recent statement regarding resettling some unaccompanied children, mainly from the region. However, as Heidi Allen MP said on the “Week in Westminster” on Sunday, no amount of such aid can help those in Europe now. In a recent Commons debate on child refugees in Europe, Sir Eric Pickles—not someone I normally quote in support of an argument—said that while the Government are quite right to keep children in the region,
“we are where we are. There are children at risk, and I urge the Government to look carefully at that”.—[Official Report, Commons, 25/1/16; col. 41.]
Perhaps, more accurately, we should say these children are where they are. Refusing to help them is not going to result in them returning to their homelands. Instead, they are stuck in appalling conditions. The International Development Committee took up Save the Children’s recommendation that we should take 3,000 unaccompanied children. It made a very strong recommendation in support of that and called for urgent action from the Government on it. The committee warned that children are prey to exploitation by people traffickers—the very thing that the Government say they want to avoid by supposedly not encouraging children to make the perilous journey to Europe.
Ministers rightly say that any action to assist unaccompanied minors must be in the best interests of the children and that this is their primary concern. But how can it be in the best interests of unaccompanied children to be left to fend for themselves in the camps of Calais and Dunkirk without hope and, as we have already heard, at the mercy of hunger, cold, exploitation and people traffickers? Like my noble friend Lord Dubs, I am not totally clear what the Statement of 28 January promised. In particular, can the Minister confirm that, as Save the Children says, it is intended to try to reunite lone child refugees who are already in Europe with families in the UK? If so, that is welcome, but can he say exactly what is intended and how many children he expects will be helped in this way?
Finally, I take this opportunity to ask the Minister about a report in the Independent on Sunday that the Council of the EU is discussing measures that could have the effect of criminalising individuals and charities that help Syrian refugees, including children, when they arrive on the European mainland—in particular, on Greek islands. The noble Lord, Lord Roberts, talked about what we owe those people, who are doing amazing humanitarian work. Can the Minister give an assurance that the Home Secretary will oppose any such measures? The very suggestion that such humanitarian action could be equated with people smuggling is, frankly, quite abhorrent. I hope that the Minister can assure us that the report is unfounded—I do not necessarily believe everything that I read in the newspapers but this is an opportunity to check it out—and, if it is not unfounded, that the Home Secretary will vigorously oppose any such move.
In the mean time, I hope that the Minister—I agree with what has been said; I know that he is a Minister who listens and cares—will be able to give hope to children who need it. I hope, too, that, even if it is not a final response to my noble friend, he will be able to give a response that at least leaves the door ajar.
Lord Hylton (CB)
My Lords, I support the amendment and I have just one question for the Minister. I wonder whether he has noticed a statement by a small and rather obscure English NGO that has a database with the names of 10,000 would-be English foster carers. I apologise for not having the name of the organisation with me but, even if that figure has become inflated or if, when those volunteers are vetted, not all of them are suitable, surely there must be enough to cope with the 3,000 children mentioned in the amendment. Taking up those offers would greatly ease the burden that presently falls on the local authorities in, for example, Kent and Sussex, and it would spread the load much more evenly around the country.
Finally, I urge the Government not to insist on deporting children who reach the age of 18. They may once have entered this country illegally but they have been here for a considerable number of years. They have been to school in England and have made friends in England, and they should not be deported.
Baroness Sheehan (LD)
My Lords, I support the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, and put on record how impressed I have been with all the other speeches so far in support of the amendment. I will focus my remarks on looking in a little more detail at the court case that the noble Lord briefly mentioned.
On 18 January, the Upper Tribunal ruled that three unaccompanied minors and a vulnerable young man with mental health problems from the camp in Calais had a bona fide case to be allowed to join relatives already resident in the UK. This case is important because it follows a legal challenge co-ordinated by Citizens UK, which cited a little-known provision in the Dublin III regulations that allows an asylum seeker to join their relative in Britain if they have already applied for asylum in France. The Upper Tribunal ruled that the Home Office should immediately allow the three children and one adult to join their families.
Although the Government had argued until then that, under Dublin III, applications for asylum must be made and processed in France, the court accepted that the reality is very different and that the French system is, indeed, broken. Applications from asylum seekers with family already resident in the UK are not being processed and passed on to the UK. In effect, the safe and legal route has been denied to asylum seekers who have done all that has been asked of them.
In this ground-breaking ruling, the court accepted that evidence of a written claim to asylum in France was sufficient to prove that the children had initially sought safety there. Therefore, the court subsequently ruled that, instead of waiting for the French Government to ask, the British Government must act. It will now be up to Britain to examine the claims of these specific cases under the Dublin regulations. This changes the nature of the debate: the Government can no longer hide behind what can be described only as a broken system. Or can they? Will the Minister confirm whether the Government are planning to, or have already, appealed this decision? If so, why?
With the release of the dreadful figures from Europol citing 10,000 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children having gone missing, probably into the hands of human traffickers, surely the Government should now capitulate and accept the moral and legal case for accepting the relatively small number of the 3,000 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children into Britain that we, the Liberal Democrats, other politicians of a variety of different parties and numerous NGOs have been asking for. Citizens UK has identified several hundred children in Calais and Dunkirk alone who have a bone fide case for being brought to Britain. I saw some of them when I was in Dunkirk this Sunday, just as Storm Imogen was gathering pace. There is little justification for leaving anyone to suffer those conditions, let alone the young people who have every legal right to come to Britain. Surely the time has come to get on with it. The unaccompanied children we are talking about have relatives already resident in Britain, so there would be no burden on any of the local authorities.
Lord Green of Deddington (CB)
My Lords, I would like to inject a note of caution into the debate, which has been a little one-sided. I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, is right in suggesting that there is widespread support for refugees, and especially children. Nobody is more qualified to say that than he is. The question is how to do it, and that needs a little bit of thought. The proposal is to relocate 3,000 unaccompanied children from Europe, and that is entirely understandable. It is entirely right to offer refuge where that is in the best interests of the children. However, I think I have a slight difficulty over the suggestion that these children should be selected from those already in Europe. The reason for that is this: there is some risk that it would encourage families to send their children in advance in the hope that that would later open the door, as it were, for the rest of the family to claim asylum.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, did not seem to think that there was very much in that, but there is some evidence from Sweden that that has been the case, and we have had some experience with Albania, when a very large number of families got the idea that, if the children went first, they could follow. We need to be careful of that, and conscious that this could become a selling point for people smugglers in the camps around Syria itself.
Let us take orphan children, by all means, but I rather think it might be better to take them from the camps around Syria and to do so on UNHCR advice. We are doing that already with families, and I do not see why we should not extend that—indeed, I believe we should extend it—to orphan children in those camps. The UNHCR could provide an objective account of those children’s circumstances and take a view as to whether there was perhaps a better solution involving the child’s extended family. Remember, extended families in Syria are very close, very strong and very important. I suggest that we would do better to reinforce our work with the UNHCR. By all means increase the numbers, but let us be quite sure that we do it in a way that does not have a downside attached to it.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, am I to understand from what the noble Lord said that his concern is about where the children may be coming from rather than the numbers? It would be encouraging to hear him say that he thinks that 3,000 is not wrong.
Lord Green of Deddington
My concern is that, if we are not careful about this, we might encourage families to send children on ahead. We need to look at that very carefully because those children would be at exactly the same risk as those already in Europe now. It is a very difficult and sensitive area. There are almost instant communications between child refugees and the adults in their families. If you open a door and give the impression that, “Get your kids as far as Rome and the Brits will have them”, then the risk is that we will make a bad situation worse, if that were possible.
Lord Judd
Before the noble Lord sits down, I thought the noble Lord put his view very morally and I do not believe that it can be dismissed out of hand. However, the question I want to put to him is what would he do about the children who are already in Europe? That is the point: they are already there. As my noble friend said, we are where we are. Although there may be intellectual logic and force in his argument, we have a real situation.
Baroness Neuberger
Could I add to that? The noble Lord, Lord Dubs, has put the specific number of 3,000 children in his amendment, and we know that these are very troubled children. The situation is particularly ghastly right now and we know that some of those children are disappearing. That sounds alarm bells for all of us.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
That 3,000 figure is the figure that Save the Children calculated specifically in relation to children who are already in Europe. That does not, of course, make it inviolable, but I am sure it considered the arguments because, clearly, it will know that those are the arguments that the Government have used. The Save the Children number was accepted by the all-party International Development Committee.
Lord Green of Deddington
My Lords, eventually I will be allowed to sit down. There are some very serious points here. There is a large number of destitute children in Europe. The issue is how we suggest our Government respond to that. Suppose we take 3,000 children in the UK as part as what I think has been described as our share. So 30,000 or 40,000 children are taken into care in Europe. Do we seriously think that none of the families who are refugees from Syria, Iraq or Afghanistan will deduce from that that the best way forward, particularly as the borders close and the Turks get more difficult and so on, is to send a child ahead? I think that they might well. I cannot be definitive about this—we need the evidence and we need to think about it very carefully. But there has to be a risk that if you say, “Right, we’ll have the kids”, other family members will follow and we simply make the situation continue and possibly even get worse. Whatever we do, there is a dreadful situation. Let us be really careful that we do not make it any worse.
Lord Ashton of Hyde (Con)
My Lords, we could probably spend four hours going backwards and forwards on this obviously important subject, but it might be useful, given that we have a number of things to get through, to hear the views of the Front Benches.
Lord Rosser (Lab)
I do not intend to speak at any great length. We support the amendment moved by my noble friend Lord Dubs. Indeed, it is quite clear that not all Government MPs are opposed to taking unaccompanied children already in Europe, not least some of those who have been to the entry points in Greece and other parts of Europe and seen the situation for themselves. We also welcome the financial support the Government are providing to those in camps in Syria and neighbouring countries.
I think we are all agreed—everyone who has spoken is—that we should be taking some unaccompanied children; there might be an issue as to where we take them from. It is not clear, as has already been said, what the Government’s intentions are in this respect, certainly in relation to numbers. The Government, obviously, up to now are sticking to their line that they would be from within Syria and neighbouring countries, but I think I am right in saying that we have not been told how many. I suppose one answer to the question posed by the noble Lord, Lord Green, about the extent to which our taking 3,000 unaccompanied children who are already in Europe might act as an incentive for parents to send their children that way might be that it rather depends how many children the Government intend to take from Syria and neighbouring countries. Clearly if they intend to take quite considerable numbers, that might still be seen as the most favourable way of seeking admission, provided the criteria were met, into the United Kingdom. That, no doubt, is something that the Minister will comment on when he replies, perhaps giving an indication of how many unaccompanied children the Government expect to take from Syria and neighbouring countries. I ask again how the Government actually reached their initial figure of taking 20,000 people over five years. I am still not clear how they reached that. It would be interesting if the Minister could comment on that as well as on the number of unaccompanied children the Government expect to be taking under the arrangements they have announced.
The reality is, as has already been said, that we have apparently considerable numbers of unaccompanied children already in Europe. I am certainly not confining my comments to Calais and Dunkirk. Indeed, the amendment refers to children,
“who are in European countries”.
It is not related simply to what may be happening in Calais and Dunkirk. My understanding, unless I have got the figure wrong, is that Europol recently said that more than 10,000 unaccompanied children registered after arriving in Europe over the past 18 months to two years have disappeared. It said that youngsters arriving in Europe alone are particularly vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. That, no doubt, is something on which the Minister will comment. Why are the Government refusing to take some unaccompanied children from within Europe—a specific figure is mentioned in the amendment? Where children have been identified as being unaccompanied, on their own and having come from a country ravaged by civil war, where hundreds of thousands have died and many have been brutally murdered, is it really still the Government’s policy to wash our hands of them as far as relocation to the United Kingdom is concerned because they landed cold, wet, scared and on their own on, for example, a Greek island rather than being in or near Syria? Up to now, that appears basically to be the Government’s stance.
Lord Roberts of Llandudno
The noble Lord, Lord Green, spoke earlier. Is he a grandfather or a father? Has he children? Would he trust his children to leave Syria to walk across Europe to reach the temptations of Italy and Greece and to meet the deprivations on the way? Would he really think that his child could manage unaccompanied? Is it not really a fantasy to think that these kids are not going to suffer in this way? I would not have thought of putting my children or grandchildren on that trek, and I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Green, would not either.
Lord Green of Deddington
I am a father and a grandfather and of course I would do nothing of the kind, but then I am not in the situation of families in Syria. It is almost unimaginable to do that, but the question is whether there is a serious risk that it could happen. There is some evidence that that is exactly what has happened in relation to Sweden and Albania—Albania is different because that is a peaceful country. I raise the question. We need to be careful. If it was done through the UNHCR, we would be saving the same number of children, but we would not run the risk of encouraging further children to get into serious difficulty.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Bates) (Con)
Before I address the remarks relating to this amendment, I welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, to the chair. I understand it is her first Committee outing as a Deputy Chairman. As an alumnus of that role, I know the fear and intimidation of being faced with the Marshalled List in a very difficult Committee. I am sure all members of the Committee will be very sympathetic to her on her first day.
No one can be unmoved by the quality of the contributions to this debate—I declare myself a father and a grandfather. We identify absolutely with the pain and suffering which people are feeling at this time. I agree with the UN Secretary-General that this particular migration crisis is one of the greatest since the formation of the United Nations. He was right in talking about the scale of the problem.
It might help the Committee if I set out the rationale behind the Government’s current approach and set that in context of the fact that we are dealing with a very fast-moving situation. There is quite a lot of pressure which, rightly, comes from people who are trying to nail the Government down and ask, “Where are you with this particular Statement?” It is very fast moving. A significant number of discussions took place on the margins of the Supporting Syria conference a week last Thursday. Some 35 countries were there discussing these issues. On Thursday, James Brokenshire will be hosting a round table with Save the Children, UNHCR and UNICEF to discuss the specific statements on unaccompanied asylum-seeking children made by the Government on 28 January. This issue was raised by Save the Children and underscored by the DfID Select Committee. There is also the ongoing International Syria Support Group meeting in Munich on Thursday which will be attended by the Foreign Secretary and Defence Secretary. I am trying to set this in context: it is very fast moving.
If I was standing here in this capacity last year, I would have been facing questions—I was standing here last year and I did face questions—from noble Lords who asked me repeatedly to tell them how many people had currently arrived. Officials would tell me to avoid putting a number on it, because it was not very impressive. It was fewer than 100, then 120 and 130: complaints came that it was derisory. Then came the Prime Minister’s announcement in September that it would be 20,000 over the period of this Parliament. So far, 50% of those have now arrived. He said it would be 1,000 before Christmas and I then got repeated questions asking whether they would all be here by Christmas. More than 1,000 arrived by Christmas. That process is continuing. Last year we might have talked about £500 million of aid committed to the region, particularly to help Syrian refugees. That figure went up to £1.1 billion and last week it was doubled to £2.3 billion.
It is right that we are moved by the terrible situation which people are facing but, outside this Committee, it would be unfair to present a picture to the many organisations who are doing incredible work in this area that the Government, and particularly the Prime Minister, are unmoved by this. He is deeply moved by it and the Government are trying to work their way through.
As to the approach we are taking, the crisis we identified was that people were undertaking a perilous journey. I understand the arguments made about “we are where we are” or “they are where they are”, but that was the context in which we began this policy. The European Union’s policy at that point was relocation: in other words, people arrive and then you simply move them around different countries. We felt that simply having the same policy was not the right approach. The total number it aspired to move around was 160,000; currently some 340 have actually been moved. I do not want to start from the premise that we have somehow just plucked this approach from the air and that it has been proved to be fundamentally wrong.
We said that we needed to stop them undertaking that journey, because we knew that they would then immediately fall prey to the criminal gangs—we know the figure of 90%. These gangs are making vast fortunes from trafficking individuals. In fact there was one particular gang which was broken up by the National Crime Agency, working with Europol on 2 December, when 23 people were arrested. This one gang was responsible for 100 Syrian migrants a day coming into Greece and was making estimated earnings of €10 million in the process. This is a very lucrative business. Our first principle is to say that everything we need to do is to stop people making that journey. You then say, “How do you stop them making that journey if you are just giving them humanitarian aid?” They need some hope that they can potentially get out of that area through a safe route—and therefore the Syria Vulnerable Persons Relocation Scheme was expanded. We worked with the International Organization for Migration and the UNHCR to identify the most deserving people, based on established international UNHCR criteria—namely, those who had been victims of torture or persecution; women and girls at risk of violence; and those in acute medical need. Those were the priorities. When they were identified, they could be brought out not as unaccompanied asylum-seeking children but in family units. They are put on a plane with papers; they come to Glasgow, London or wherever it is, and they have a house. They have social workers around them; the children have a place in a school prepared for them when they arrive, they are able to work immediately when they arrive, and they get language support.
So while noble Lords say that we are not doing enough, it is perhaps wrong to say that there is no logic underpinning our approach. In fact, all the way through this process, we have worked very closely with the UNHCR, which believes that it is best to keep families together, particularly for children. That is why we have been following that approach. Of course, there are many more things that need to be done. In terms of how the amendment is worded, to come to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, it talks about unaccompanied asylum-seeking children without designating a specific country. That is one of the things that we have discovered is a real issue. Under humanitarian law, to designate the specific country is very difficult, because you are then differentiating between people on the basis of geography rather than need. So the wording of the amendment is correct.
In the year to September 2015, 1,570 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children arrived in the UK, and 61% of those children were 16 or over. Only 7% were 14 and under. I have to say that those figures surprised me when I read them, because when I thought of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children I thought of my grandson, who is five or six. As we have discussed in Questions before, a large number of that particular group come from certain areas such as Eritrea, which is not to say that Eritrea is not a country that people would want to leave because of their conscription and national service in an open-ended way. They also come from Albania and other countries. At the moment, Albania forms 632 while Eritrea forms 460 of the total unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, while Afghanistan forms 179 and Syria 118. I present that as simply an expansion on the designation and the general term of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. In other words, are we actually helping those whom we want to help the most?
Lord Green of Deddington
On that very point, is the Minister aware that something like 40% of these unaccompanied asylum-seeking children are involved in an age dispute? Quite often, those who claim to be 16 are found to be 18. The point is that many of them are older than one might think.
Lord Bates
That is possibly the case. The Prime Minister announced on 28 January that we are going to continue the discussions. He also said that it is absolutely critical for people’s safety that, when a child or anyone sets foot on a Greek island, in Italy or in any of the reception areas, they are properly recorded via biometrics at that point. That is supposed to happen under the Dublin regulations. However, it was not happening and Europol was deeply concerned about the risk of a lot of people going missing and not being able to be tracked. We have given the European Asylum Support Office additional support, which is then directed to—it is an awful name—hotspot centres, which are reception centres. We have established a £10 million fund to help, particularly with unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. The Home Secretary has asked the Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner, Kevin Hyland, to go to each of those centres and, as a former police officer and someone who is leading the modern-day slavery initiative and the implementation of the legislation, to evaluate the situation and see what more can be done in that area, and then to report back to Ministers. We have established similar funding for people to search out the most vulnerable in the camps at Calais and Dunkirk.
A number of noble Lords mentioned the situation of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, particularly in Kent. I totally accept that many people are willing to foster children. The generosity of the British people is as alive and well now as it ever was in 1938, but often they are not sure how to help. Following the exchanges that we had yesterday, I was inspired this morning to get a letter from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Rochester. I have not asked his permission to mention this but I shall take the risk and ask his forgiveness if I have it wrong. I had mentioned that, sadly, despite widespread support among people who are saying, “We are prepared to help and to be foster parents”, only a very small number of local authorities—about six or seven—had come forward to offer support. The right reverend Prelate said that he would be prepared to write to diocesan bishops across the country saying that this might be something that they could raise with their local authorities to see whether they could do a little more to help during this acute crisis. There is much more that can be done, but I wanted to take the opportunity to set out the Government’s approach for noble Lords.
Perhaps I may answer a couple of specific questions that were asked of me. In terms of the Dublin regulations and reuniting families, there is no limit on the number. If someone qualifies under the Dublin regulations and claims asylum, they will be admitted to the UK. Of course, the point of difference between us that the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, mentioned is that the Dublin regulations are—again, this is an awful word—triggered at the point that a person claims asylum. If people in camps in Calais and Dunkirk do not claim asylum there—of course, they do not want to claim asylum there, because they want to get to the UK and claim asylum here—they do not get the protections afforded by the Dublin regulations. That is a problem and we need to work through it, but that is how it arises.
The French have set up 96 welcome centres across France and 2,500 individuals have chosen to go to one of them since October. Some 80% of them then decided to claim asylum or take voluntary return.
I say to the noble Lord and to all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate that I totally get where they are coming from and I empathise very much with the position. There is a huge amount going on, perhaps not seen, and I have tried to lift the veil on a little bit of what is going on at present. Suffice it to say, I have no doubt that we will come back with further announcements on progress, particularly on the issue of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, over the next weeks and months, as we should and as the Prime Minister has stated. I hope that, in that spirit, the noble Lord may feel able to withdraw his amendment.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
I asked the Minister a very specific question about the Independent on Sunday report. If he cannot reply now, will he undertake to write to me? He has been very good at following up our sessions with full letters.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, the Minister talked about the situation within Syria and potential relocation within Syria. Is he able to say a word about what seems to be quite a fast-changing situation, where the places to which the Syrian population might go are being bombed, starved or both almost out of existence? The situation changes fast. It would be useful to have on record whether the Government’s thinking is moving equally fast.
Lord Bates
It is a fast-changing situation and needs to be balanced with what we are talking about, which is wanting to ensure that we do the greatest good for the greatest number of people in need. We should also bear in mind when we talk about 3,000 children that there are currently 2.1 million children who are refugees from Syria, so 3,000 in addition is a relatively small number. You can help more in the region. I do not want to sound heartless: we talk about 3,000 people in this amendment, but our aid is providing 15 million food rations already, supporting 600,000 families, educating or supporting in education 227,000 children and providing 2 million medical interventions. I am not expecting people to say, “That’s fine, then”. The pressure needs to be maintained. It is a great humanitarian crisis and this place should be putting pressure on the Executive to take further action. I hope from what I have set out that I can go as far as to say that the Government are taking this seriously. We are not unmoved by it and Britain is doing a substantial amount of which we can be proud.
Baroness Sheehan
Can the Minister say a few words on his statement about most asylum seekers being 16 year-olds, at the upper age of the limit? Surely that is not surprising, because a five or a six year-old, unless he had an older sibling to help him, could not make that perilous journey. Also, NGOs on the ground have told me that 17 and 18 year-olds tend to claim to be younger than they are because they do not wish to get caught up in the dysfunctional immigration asylum system in France. I think that that argument works both ways.
Lord Bates
I hear what the noble Baroness says. The age verification of children is a key challenge facing all the agencies. That is why trying to establish documentation is so important. One can understand why, when someone is received into the country, they self-declare as being a child, because they may then get a different level of treatment and protection. That may be one reason why the age profile is what it is. It is difficult to know how to get around that, other than to work with the individual to identify their documents and age and to make sure that they are in the system and can get age-appropriate support.
Lord Dubs
I am enormously grateful to all Members of the Committee who have spoken. With two exceptions, the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Green, they have all been in support of the amendment, and I am grateful for that. Even the noble Lord, Lord Green, and the Minister qualified their opposition by making sympathetic and reasonably supportive comments.
Briefly, I will say one or two things in reply to the debate. First of all, of course we all welcome the government money that is going into the refugee camps in the region and of course we welcome the vulnerable persons relocation scheme—it has a lot of merit. I think some of us think that the numbers are very small in relation to the number of people in the camps in the region, but we all think that it is a good scheme. We also think that the principle of keeping families together is desirable. The difficulty is that, if there were only people in the camps, and not a million or so more in various European countries, the principle would be easier to apply and we could persuade other EU countries to do the same as we are and take in the vulnerable families. The trouble is that that is not the situation as it is.
We are dealing with a very large number of people who have fled the region—and victims of people trafficking certainly—and are now scattered across many EU countries. It is from among those people that we have identified that there are 24,000 or so unaccompanied children, who are in a particularly desperate situation. In the camps, at least there is support from the various agencies and the United Nations to enable them to live in not wonderful conditions but at least to get food, water and some shelter. But for some of those in Europe, heaven knows whether they have any safety at all. That is the point of the amendment.
Three thousand is a very small number. The Minister talked about the Dublin convention and I wonder whether he is seeking refuge behind that when other EU countries are not necessarily adhering to it either. That may be for another day.
We have an urgent problem. I understand that there is a concern that some of this might provide pull factors for the families. However, as far as we know, these children are, at the moment, on their own. Honestly, if a handful of them had been pushed out of the region in order to attract family members, it would not be a large number and I am pretty convinced that the majority of these unaccompanied children have not been pushed out as a way of enabling their families to follow them. These are children who are vulnerable in their own right.
Lord Green of Deddington
I am not suggesting that any significant proportion of those now in Europe have been sent ahead. It is the future that I am concerned about: that taking 20,000 or 30,000 might in future lead to children being sent ahead.
Lord Dubs
That is a situation that we would have to consider if and when it happened. At the moment, we are talking about a group of very vulnerable children. For all the caveats that have been expressed, I think it right that the Government should do something clear and positive by supporting this amendment.
I think that we have covered all the arguments. There was one quote—I forget which Member of the Committee said it—that I wrote down: “The least we can do”. Whoever said it, I welcome the phrase. It summarises the feeling of the Committee. Yes, there may be other children in the future, but let us for the moment deal with the problem as we see it in various European countries. Let us say that this is the least we can do and that we have a moral responsibility to do it. We have had a good debate. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment, but I say with some confidence that Report beckons.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
“( ) The Secretary of State must by regulations made by statutory instrument provide for the application of the provisions and penalties under this section to those responsible for assuring that border controls are enforced on arrivals and departures at general aviation sites, private landing strips and helipads.”
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, we are now on to Part 6 of the Bill on border security. This is the first of a number of amendments on that. I welcome government Amendment 239C, which recognises that border security is not only about maritime security; we have a land border in Northern Ireland. Many years ago when I was at Chatham House and dealing with the beginnings of European co-operation in police, I kept coming across policemen, as well as Conservatives, who said, “But we’re different. We only have a maritime border”. They should go to Dublin and try to explain that. The delicacy of the border between Northern Ireland and southern Ireland is very considerable and would be very sharply affected if we were to leave the European Union. It is very good to see the government amendment.
My initial interest in this area came from looking at the Channel Islands as a very odd, semi-British dependency. I noted that the owners of the Daily Telegraph—a newspaper that bangs on about border security and the defence of British sovereignty—have a company that owns at least one helicopter, which advertises that it flies between Brecqhou and Monaco. Since the Channel Islands’ authorities rarely, if ever, send a policeman to Brecqhou, let alone a border security officer, I assume that this is a means of entirely avoiding border security. I mark that as one of the many oddities of the way the debate on sovereignty and border security in this country takes place.
Thinking more widely on this, we can see that it is clearly a serious loophole. I am one of those people who occasionally looks at the Financial Times weekend supplement, How to Spend It, just to see how people who earn £3 million a year or more get through it. The editor of the Daily Mail, another newspaper that bangs on about sovereignty and border security, is supposed to earn £3 million a year, so now doubt he thinks about spending his money on things such as that. There are advertisements in How to Spend It for yachts with their own helicopters, so you can fly directly from your yacht in the Mediterranean to your helipad on your estate in Surrey—or, for that matter, the helipad close to us in Yorkshire, where you can get straight on to the grass moors, if you like, again without passing through border controls.
As the super-rich extend their ability to fly in light aircraft and helicopters across national boundaries, there is a growing problem that needs attention. When I first came into government I was briefly spokesman for that aspect of the Home Office that dealt with counterterrorism and border control. I spent a very interesting day with the West Yorkshire Police and the combined Yorkshire serious crime squad, learning about how they work. One of the things I remember most strongly from that was that there is no domestic serious crime. All serious crime involves criminal networks; all important criminal networks are cross-border.
The idea that we do not need to be too careful about helipads at luxury hotels, golf courses or estates in Surrey because the people who go there are rich and therefore law-abiding is not necessarily accurate. Some of them may be rich and not entirely law abiding. Some of the richest people in this country are Russian oligarchs. They may, or may not, be law abiding in this country, but the origins of their wealth may not have been entirely according to British legal standards. Others are from Gulf royal families. Most of them are entirely honourable people, but occasional ones claim diplomatic immunity because they represent St Lucia on the International Maritime Organisation or whatever. There are, therefore, occasions when they may not be entirely in accordance with British law. We have no idea who they may bring in and out of Britain in their private aircraft or helicopters. They may even be bringing domestic workers without visas to work for them here under conditions which we regard as illegal and against the Modern Slavery Act.
I raise this question as there is a major loophole in border security and incursion into British sovereignty. I hope the Government will provide a sign that they are aware of the seriousness of this loophole, which is growing as air traffic from private aircraft and helicopters grows, that they are doing something about it and that they will close the loophole. I beg to move.
Lord Teverson (LD)
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 241A in my name. At the end of the debate at Second Reading, the noble Lord, Lord Bates, responded extensively to a wide range of questions and comments. One of them, brought up by me and a number of other noble Lords, was about the fact that we have so little information in this area. In his response, the Minister read off a whole lot of evidence and research that the Government had possession of. I was unsatisfied by that, because most of the information did not help to determine an evidence-based policy towards migration, particularly the illegal migrants who are in the country. I therefore set myself a challenge: if I was making a decision, as a Minister, on the basis of evidence, what would I want to know? If, in my business life, I was looking at market research, what would I try to determine? I then asked myself if it was possible to determine them, because that is clearly the second stage of this. I have put in the amendment the sort of information that I would want to know if I was a Minister or Secretary of State making decisions about how I approached this subject. Illegal migrants in the country are clearly a problem: no one denies that. If they are here illegally they should not be here, and we should be able to take action. I have a list of eight or 10 things that I would want to see. I will be interested in the Minister’s response in terms of actually finding those things out. Are they, indeed, the sort of things they should know?
The second question is: is it possible to know about and explore something that is an illegal activity? There have been studies of the number of illegal migrants in the UK but I understand that the last major one—maybe by the LSE—was in 2009. It estimated that there were somewhere between 400,000 and 800,000 in the UK. There is quite a large margin of error between the minimum and maximum numbers in that estimate. Is it possible to measure illegal activities? I expect that noble Lords are aware that in May 2014 the Office for National Statistics started to include in GDP figures the amount of GDP generated by illegal drugs and prostitution. Prostitution is not strictly illegal, but in terms of how it is carried out it is broadly seen as an illegal activity and therefore had not been brought into GDP before. The total GDP for those two activities was about £12 billion; more or less 50%, or £6 billion, related to illegal drugs, and approximately the same figure related to prostitution. It is therefore possible to estimate those types of figures with a reasonable standard error, if not with certainty.
The techniques that have been used to measure illegal migration are the Delphi method, the capture-recapture method and the residual method, which has been used to make these estimates in the United States. I am not for a minute saying that this is an easy or totally accurate exercise, but for decisions around such important areas as this, which we all want to solve, we should spend a little more resource and time moving away from rhetoric and into understanding what is going on. By doing so, we might have a lot better decisions about migration management, and there might be legislation that we can all agree on, rather than taking rather normative views.
Lord Marlesford (Con)
My Lords, I strongly support the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire. In fact, I am amazed to hear that this loophole exists. We are now under considerable threat from terrorism. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, that people of wealth are not necessarily any less likely to be objects of suspicion than others, but he rather implied that only people of wealth would have access to these means of arriving in Britain. That is simply not true. Let us get away from the idea that terrorism needs a lot of money. Noble Lords will remember that the post mortem on 9/11 worked out that the total cost of doing the whole of 9/11 was lightly less than $250,000. The idea that money is any constraint on people who wish to get into this country by a means that does not involve a check is not valid. I have been arguing for years in your Lordships’ House that there should be proper entry and exit checks. We have been immensely dilatory about them. It is very late in the day because now we are under real threat and it is essential that the Government give a positive answer to this.
The details are very easy to work out. The law states that anybody landing has to land somewhere where there is a place to check them and, if that adds to the cost, so be it. If it is an emergency landing of some sort, they have to signal it, which they would have to do anyway—and all aircraft have radios—and would be required to remain there until the police were alerted and went to meet the aircraft. It is an essential matter to stop this loophole, and I hope the Government will immediately say that they will draft the necessary regulations to support the implementation of the noble Lord’s amendment.
Lord Rosser
We have an amendment in this group that calls for the Secretary of State to undertake a review of border security. Part of that review would be to consider the adequacy of resources currently available at all points of entry to the United Kingdom; it also provides for the review to be laid before both Houses of Parliament within one year of the passing of this Act. I do not want to make many points, since concerns about border security have been expressed already, but I do not think that the Government know how many people are coming in and out of our country and who they are. They do not, for example, have any idea what the net migration figure will be each year. It seems to come as much a surprise to the Government as to anyone else.
We really have got to the stage when we have to get a grip on our borders. After all, it was only recently—it may have been last month—that a terror suspect on bail departed at a major sea port. We have also had an instance of a terror suspect from the continent coming in through the same route. It would appear that some of those whom we regard as extremists perceive the ferry borders to be a weak link—and it looks as though they have some reason and justification for feeling that way, unfortunately. The Home Secretary really must conduct an urgent review of border security at ferry and other terminals and provide urgent reassurance that passports are properly checked on exit and arrival in the UK.
I think that it is the case that more than two years ago the Government were warned by the National Audit Office that there were worrying gaps in the new Border Force. A recent report from the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration suggests that those gaps are still there and that potential terrorists can also enter our country unchecked—for example, as has already been mentioned, via private planes and boats—as well as there being some evidence that they can come in and out of the country through major ports. Even if the Government do not feel inclined to accept my amendment—naturally, I hope that they will—I hope that we will hear in the Minister’s response that some steps are being taken to tighten up on our borders so that we know who is coming and going, not only the numbers but who they are. I hope that it will be an end to reports, whether from the National Audit Office or from the Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, that there are gaps, and quite serious ones, that need plugging.
Lord Green of Deddington
My Lords, I support Amendment 240. The sheer scale of immigration is a major public concern. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, that we need to get a grip, and part of that is a matter of reorganisation, which I think is at hand. Another part is to have a legal framework, and we are doing that today. But none of that is any use at all unless it is enforced. I am increasingly of the view that the lack of resources is becoming a serious constraint; it really does need to be looked at, and the Government should explain how they think they can achieve their objectives on the resources that they have so allocated.
Lastly, I offer qualified support to Amendment 241A. Illegal immigration is a very important subject that is often ducked. We have looked at this, and it is very difficult to get beyond merely ballpark estimates, but it is worth having a shot at and I think that the Government should do it—not annually, because there is just not enough information for that, but it should be done and it would be worth doing.
Lord Ashton of Hyde
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate. I shall be brief if I can, because—if I can make a pitch wearing my Whip’s hat—we have six more groups of amendments to debate.
It may help if I speak first to government Amendment 239C, which I hope will be uncontroversial. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, for his support on this amendment. This makes a minor change to extend the maritime powers in the Bill to Northern Ireland port police by altering the definition of “Northern Ireland constable” in new Section 28Q of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999, as inserted by paragraph 7 of Schedule 11 to the Bill.
The two harbour police forces in Northern Ireland, the Belfast Harbour Police and Larne Harbour Police, were not initially included in the Bill as the categories of officers listed are modelled on the maritime powers in the Modern Slavery Act 2015. However, we have listened to points made by Northern Irish Members in another place and agree that a consistent approach should be taken across the UK with the enforcement of immigration control. Therefore, this amendment aligns the position of port police forces in Northern Ireland with those port police forces elsewhere in the UK which are already included in the Bill. It will be a matter for individual port police forces to consider whether they wish to use the powers or rely on the relevant territorial force—for example, the Police Service of Northern Ireland.
Amendment 239BA would extend our penalties for misdirected passengers to general aviation sites, private landing strips and helipads. It is the Government’s intention to operate the misdirected flights penalties only at sites where there is a designated control zone to which arriving passengers must be directed for border checks by the Border Force. I shall come on to the points that the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, made in a moment. Given the large number of general aviation sites, landing strips and helipads in the UK that do not have a permanent Border Force presence, this amendment is unnecessary and unworkable. It would place a disproportionate burden on those sites. Border Force officers attend such sites only when they need to check specific arrivals.
On what the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, was saying about the potential loophole, I should quickly mention how border authorities handle general aviation flights. The Border Force and police take an intelligence-led approach to general aviation, which strikes a balance between securing our borders and best managing resources. Flights are risk-assessed in advance and, when appropriate, border authorities will physically examine crew, passengers and goods. There are in excess of 3,000 private air fields nationwide, and it would be unfeasible for the Border Force and police routinely to meet all arriving flights. It was noted by the independent inspection report published in January that the Border Force has made a number of significant recent interventions in the general aviation environment. I confirm that all those travelling via general aviation are subject to the same immigration and visa requirements as those using scheduled services. The noble Lord asks whether we are doing something about it. The Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 includes enabling provisions for a stronger legislative framework for advanced notification for general aviation. Regulations will bring greater clarity to what is needed from the sector but also provide for appropriate sanctions to enforce compliance by the small minority that do not provide advanced notification under the current arrangements.
Amendment 240 seeks to include provision for a statutory review of border security in the United Kingdom. The Border Force operates a control regime which is predicated on checking 100% of scheduled arrivals. Our collection of advanced passenger information from carriers enables us to identify known subjects of interest to law enforcement agencies before they travel, allowing us to intervene and direct airlines and ferry companies not to carry certain passengers so that they never even set foot in the UK. The Border Force adopts an intelligence-led approach in combination with its partners to identify and intercept contraband goods which have the potential to cause harm to the public. Our visa regime provides another vital way by which we are able to manage the threats from crime, terrorism, illegal migration, and espionage.
The Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration regularly reviews Home Office immigration functions, including our management of border security. Most significantly, following the independent chief inspector’s critical review of the then UK Border Agency, Border Force was established as a separate law enforcement body. The Home Office also works with a range of other partners, including port operators, carriers and road hauliers. This allows us to review processes and security interventions to make border security work efficiently, and to work together to intercept threats while keeping the flow of law-abiding passengers and freight moving as smoothly as possible. I assure the Committee that the Government keep the UK’s border security arrangements under constant review and these arrangements are subject to rigorous scrutiny by the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration—as I have said—and by the Home Affairs Select Committee. The reports and publications of both of these are laid before Parliament. On this basis, we do not consider there is any need to introduce a further statutory review process.
Lord Rosser
Are the Government satisfied with our border security arrangements at the moment?
Lord Ashton of Hyde
We are always looking to improve them. We agree that security is paramount. If there are areas that the Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration brings to the attention of the Government, they will certainly consider them.
Amendment 241A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, requires the Secretary of State to undertake or commission an annual survey on illegal migrants residing within the United Kingdom. I completely understand his reasoning and agree with it in theory. He asked whether we agree with the list. I think it is a good start but there are problems. We are committed to tackling illegal immigration. The primary aim of this Bill is to introduce measures to make it harder for illegal migrants to live and work in the UK. However, we do not believe that a Home Office survey of illegal immigration in immigration is achievable, nor that it would deliver the information set out in the amendment. Given the clandestine nature of illegal migration we do not see a practical way to sample a representative population of illegal immigrants to meet the aims set out in the amendment.
As the noble Lord said, there have been research exercises in the past to estimate the illegal population, but these, as he said, have been very speculative with very wide margins of error. They have looked only to estimate the overall level of illegal migration and are not surveys of illegal migrants, which is a wholly different exercise. Very few government surveys are mandated in this way. However, I reassure the Committee that the Government are taking action to improve our understanding of the scale of illegal immigration in the UK. From 8 April 2015 the Home Office introduced exit checks to provide more comprehensive information on travel movements across the UK border since that date. These will help us take more effective action against those who remain here illegally. In the longer term the data will also provide valuable information on the immigration routes and visas that are most subject to abuse, enabling the Government to make targeted changes to tackle this.
I am afraid that the noble Lord will be disappointed that I am unable to give the Government’s support for this amendment, but I hope that the thrust of the new legislation provides reassurance that the Government take the issue of illegal immigration seriously and are taking active steps to counter the problem. In light of the points I have made on these matters, I invite the noble Lords not to press their amendments.
Lord Marlesford
On the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, how can the Home Office argue that there are no resources? It is absurd. It may not be mega-bucks to use private planes, but it is quite expensive. To charge a cost for someone to be at the landing place to check the person is absurd, given the present terrorist situation and the fact that all the indicators say that the terror alert is very high. Look at it another way. We do not hesitate to have police cars, probably with two police people in them, checking that people are not going 40 miles an hour in a 30 mile-an-hour limit, which they should not be doing, but the resource is there. They are the real resources. It is inexcusable not to be following up what the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, said. The Minister says in triumph, “We have now introduced exit checks”, but it is a real disgrace that the Government had not done so long ago, certainly at the time of 9/11.
Lord Ashton of Hyde
On that last point, I do not know that one can blame just this Government, but I accept the noble Lord’s point on exit checks. They are a useful procedure to have. I believe that we had them in the past. We reintroduced them. Nobody is saying, and I certainly did not say, that the reason we do not have permanent Border Force personnel at every single general aviation airfield is simply a matter of cost. The Border Force has 7,700 members, I think. If we had someone permanently at every single general aviation airfield, we could use the whole of the Border Force on that. It is a question of value for money. We are not sitting there doing nothing. As I tried to explain, under the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act, we are extending the powers so that advance passenger information can be enforced. It is an intelligence-led procedure. We do not have Border Force people sitting for weeks on end with no passengers arriving from abroad. We try to do it in a more proportionate and value-for-money way.
Lord Marlesford
I shall ask the Minister a very straightforward question. How is it that, when I was pressing for exit checks, I was constantly told, “We do it by intelligence? We do not need to do it regularly”, but it is now being done regularly? Does the Home Office not understand that we are in a much more dangerous position than we were? Will it wake up please?
Lord Ashton of Hyde
The Home Office understands that because it takes advice from the law enforcement agencies. Of course, we also take advice from my noble friend. It is not true to say that the Home Office does not recognise the security situation. In fact, the Home Secretary regards it as her highest priority.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the noble Lord must clearly be too young to remember who abolished exit controls. It was indeed Margaret Thatcher, when Prime Minister, as an economy measure. She thought that they were unnecessary and cut the number of people employed by the border service. That was some time ago.
Lord Green of Deddington
Perhaps I may correct the noble Lord. Exit checks to Europe were abolished by the Conservative Government in 1994 and exit checks to the rest of the world were abolished by the Labour Government in 1998. Both decisions were wrong.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I tabled my amendment simply to make sure that the Government and, in particular, the Home Office took this point on board. I am very happy to talk further. We are looking for a response from the Government on this. Of course we recognise that 3,000 private airports cannot be entirely covered. One has to use intelligence. As the noble Lord replied, I was thinking of the days when as a schoolboy I used to dip sheep on a farm. The policemen always turned up to check that you were dipping the sheep properly. In those days, there were ways in which they made sure that the law was enforced in all sorts of places around the country. Clearly, we need a degree of intelligence.
The use of private planes and private helicopters is clearly growing. This is not a static situation. The Government’s response therefore cannot be entirely static. They have to be much more aware of what is going on and of the potential for abuse and for people who are engaged in illegal activities, possibly even terrorism, to use this route as well as many legitimate people.
The noble Lord did not mention the Channel Islands loophole. I have asked a number of Written Questions on it. I am struck that the liaison between the British Border Force and the authorities in the Channel Islands may not necessarily be as tight and mutual as we would wish. If one looks for areas where our border controls may not be entirely secure, the Irish land border and the Channel Islands maritime border are the most vulnerable. I will be interested to hear what the Government have to say on that in particular.
Above all, we need to be sure that the Government do not give the impression that there is one law for the rich and another for the rest of us. There are a number of other areas where the Government are edging towards a situation where unkind people, or Private Eye, could indeed suggest that there is now one law for the rich and another for the rest of us. I look forward to further discussions off the Floor with the Government. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Lord Bates
(a) a member of the Police Service of Northern Ireland,(b) a member of the Police Service of Northern Ireland Reserve, or(c) a person appointed as a special constable in Northern Ireland by virtue of provision incorporating section 79 of the Harbours, Docks, and Piers Clauses Act 1847;”
Lord Marlesford
“Obligation to provide information on passports
(1) A condition of the issue of a new passport to, or the renewal of a passport of a British citizen who was either born outside the United Kingdom or who was not a British citizen at birth by Her Majesty’s Passport Office is that the citizen supplies details of their citizenship of other countries and of passports held relating to any such status at the time of application.
(2) A person holding a passport issued or renewed in accordance with subsection (1) must supply that Office with information regarding any acquisition or loss of citizenship of another country within one month of such a change.
(3) Information gathered by Her Majesty’s Passport Office for the purposes of subsections (1) and (2) shall be made available—
(a) to the Home Secretary for consideration as part of a decision made under section 40(4A) of the British Nationality Act 1981;(b) to immigration officers for consideration when undertaking their duties.”
Lord Marlesford
My Lords, I do not apologise for raising yet again the simple point that it is necessary and urgent that the Government should arrange to have details of passports that British passport-holders hold other than British passports. I have nothing against people having as many passports as they want. There are lots of reasons why they may, such as sentimental family connections, birth connections or travel connections. There were days when you had to have two passports if you went to China because the Americans did not like a chop from China. There were days when you could not go to certain Arab countries if there was a chop from Israel. The Israelis gave up the chop, so it was made less necessary. All I am saying is that it is essential that the Government should be aware, so that when somebody produces their passport at the airport, puts it on the scanner—that is a big technical advance now being implemented—and the immigration officer sees the readout, he or she should also know what other passports that person has. That is all I am asking. It is very simple.
The Government have resisted and resisted this. I am afraid that it has become a bit of a Home Office game of “Yes Minister”. It is rather like my firearms register, which took 10 years to get accepted. The electronic register of all firearms is now in extremely good working order and very effective, but if I had not persisted for what turned out to be 10 years it would not be there.
I now ask for something pre-emptive. In this awful world we live in, we have to think about what can go wrong. In an earlier debate somebody, I think the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, gave the example of somebody who had skipped out on bail, apparently with ease. I was put on to the point of needing to know about other passports six years ago by people from the security world who said they had great difficulty and gave an example of madrassahs in Pakistan. Plenty of people—and this is no criticism of the situation—have Pakistani and British passports. They would use their British passport to go in and out of the UK and get up to mischief using the other one. When they came back, people would have no idea where else they might have been or what they might have done. It made the whole scrutiny process extremely difficult. The Home Office has got to learn to identify problems and think of the answers.
My right honourable friend the Prime Minister produced a very interesting example in the last day or two which was well worth saying. If we were to leave Europe, the arrangements between France and Britain for policing people coming into Britain from France might be in danger of falling down and being abolished. The camps might then appear in Folkestone or somewhere in southern England. That would not be acceptable, but it is perfectly easy to deal with. In the case of people coming by ferry, the answer is simple. If the French were to say that we could no longer have British immigration officers on their territory—and I cannot believe they would—we would put them on the ships and not allow people to disembark without having been checked. If they were found unsatisfactory they could stay on the ship and go back again. There are already perfectly good arrangements for airlines. The Prime Minister was right to draw attention to this possibility. It would be tiresome if they overturned a very good system which has existed for three or four years. When I was on the EU Home Affairs Sub-Committee, we visited Calais and saw the policing arrangements. We have all seen them when we travel between the continent and Britain. It is a perfectly satisfactory arrangement: the French police are in the station in London and the British in the station in France.
All I am doing in this amendment is saying that it should be required that those who have other passports notify the British passport authority. When I raised this in an earlier debate, the response was that when somebody applies for a passport they do have to notify about other passports they hold. I could read it from Hansard but I will not bother because the noble Lord has read it himself. The difference is that it is not on the record: it is merely looked at, at the time. That is an incredible gap. Maybe the Minister will be able to tell me that if people have applied for a new British passport—or renewed one—and have shown, declared or revealed that they also have a non-British one, that is now on the record and shows on the screen when their passports are scanned on arrival in Britain. I do not think he will be able to tell me that it is, but I would be delighted if he could. It is now necessary to extend the system so that all passports held by British people have on the record details of other passports held. I beg to move.
Lord Swinfen (Con)
My Lords, I support the amendment in the name of Lord Marlesford. I have relatives with dual Australian and British citizenship. Going in and out of Australia, they use their Australian passports; going in and out of Britain, they use their British ones. Even when flying from one to the other, they change their passports over because it is much quicker for them to get through immigration in both countries by using the passport of the country in which they land. However, there is then no record of the journey in the other passport. The passports of both countries should have a note that they have dual citizenship and, possibly, give the passport number of the other country. My noble friend’s suggestion is eminently sensible.
Lord Green of Deddington
Will the Minister ask his officials whether this apparent gap makes nonsense of the net migration figures? It could confuse them.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, when I was in government I asked on a number of occasions how many British citizens hold dual nationality. We all know that we run into a number of problems with dual nationality, particularly when a British citizen of origin of another country is taken into custody in the country of origin. Dual nationality is a very cloudy concept. I should simply like to add that it would be very helpful if the Government would take this back and possibly even provide a Green Paper on the whole issue of dual nationality within Britain. We all have friends in that situation. I have a nephew and niece who hold British and Irish passports and a nephew who holds British and South African passports. My niece, who works for a development charity, sometimes finds it extremely useful not to be a British citizen when she is in a rather difficult country.
There are some major issues here. A substantial minority have British and Pakistani citizenship, and another substantial minority have British and Bangladeshi citizenship. These are delicate issues. They raise large public policy questions and some security questions. It would be useful if the Government would commit to looking at this matter further and reporting back to Parliament.
Lord Ashton of Hyde
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken. Perhaps I should first declare an interest in that one of my daughters has dual nationality. Indeed, she has two passports.
I start by saying that the noble Lord, Lord Green, very kindly asked me to ask my officials rather than answer his question. I certainly will ask my officials. Equally, I will take on board the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, and take them back to the department.
My noble friend Lord Marlesford has form on this question. I am conscious that I am but the latest in a long line of Ministers—“distinguished Ministers” is being whispered to me—including my noble friends Lady Anelay, Lord Taylor of Holbeach and of course Lord Bates, who, within a very short space of time, have answered the question put by my noble friend Lord Marlesford during debates on immigration Bills, counterterrorism Bills and in Questions in the House. As I said, I am just the latest in a long line and so, in hope rather than in expectation, here goes.
My noble friend will be aware from his long-standing interest in this matter that Her Majesty’s Passport Office requires holders of passports issued by another country to provide details of that passport at the time of application. He made the point that he understood that; the question was whether it would be on an electronic, searchable register. The reason for asking for other passports is to minimise the ability of the British passport applicant to obtain a British passport in a name and identity which is not consistent with an overseas passport. The holding of dual or second nationality is not in itself relevant to the issuing of a British passport. Instead, HMPO collects the information on any other passport held in order to help confirm the identity of the applicant. It provides an additional element of identity verification.
Therefore, requiring a British passport holder who holds or held dual nationality to supply information outside the British passport application process would be an unnecessary and additional function for HMPO. Failure to notify any acquisition or loss of citizenship would require an enforcement and penalty structure. This would in our view be disproportionate and likely result in legal challenges as the failure to notify would have no impact on the validity of the British passport. As I said, it is already a mandatory requirement for all applicants to submit any other passports that they hold, British or otherwise, when applying for a new passport. However, I can tell my noble friend that the Home Office continues to explore ways in which information held within the department is shared effectively to help to prevent and detect crime. My noble friend will be pleased to learn that HMPO is looking at enhancing how information at the point of application is collected and shared across Home Office agencies by making better use of technology. This would include information collected on dual national passport holders at the point of application. Information is held by the Home Office on dual nationals who apply for British citizenship and who subsequently apply for a British passport. Such information is necessary to progress the application for citizenship or when making jointly an application for citizenship and a passport. Outside of either process, the need for information on dual nationality would be unnecessary and would not serve any useful purpose.
Finally, I recognise that my noble friend has concerns about the security implications if his suggestions are not accepted, and I agree that the security of the public is of the highest importance. That is why we ask the views of the law enforcement agencies each time this matter is raised. Their response remains consistent—that the establishment of a dual national database is not considered operationally essential. Despite that, I fear that my noble friend will not be convinced by this response, but I hope that he will acknowledge that information on dual nationality is already collected and maintained. We do not see additional security benefit in extending the data collection process. I respectfully request that the amendment be withdrawn.
Lord Swinfen
Does my noble friend consider that, when someone has more than one passport, the other passport should be noted in the British passport so that officials know that there is more than one nationality involved and other passports may also be held?
Lord Ashton of Hyde
As I said, we are trying to make that information available by using electronic means, and we are looking at that at the moment. We have not received advice that that is necessary. Information is always useful to have, but it is not considered an operational necessity at the moment.
Lord Green of Deddington
I think the important word is “essential”—operationally essential. If you ask that question, you will get the answer that you would hope for. But would it be operationally valuable? Were they asked that question and, if so, what was the answer?
Lord Ashton of Hyde
I shall turn the question round. If you ask any law enforcement agency if it would like some information, it will always say yes. The question is whether it is nice to have something or it is an essential tool, and that is the advice that we have received at the moment.
Lord Marlesford
My Lords, I am afraid that my noble friend has reinforced my argument, by indicating that the information is already being collected and it is only a matter of having it on the same record as the passport record. It would obviously be useful to know, once you know that somebody has another passport, when they are entering or leaving the UK on the other passport, which will often be screened. If it showed that that person had a British passport as well, that might well be a clue and be useful. But the fact is that they are collecting information and then not using it; that is my complaint. I shall withdraw the amendment, but I will come back to it on Report, when we can have a proper debate.
Lord Ashton of Hyde
I must correct the noble Lord on one thing. The Passport Office collects information for foreign passport holders when they apply for a British passport. What it does not do is to maintain it consistently through life; for example, it does not keep up-to-date addresses, and things like that. What I was saying was that, for the information that it does collect, on application and renewal only, it will attempt to make available throughout the other law enforcement agencies. But it does not collect information across dual nationalities, as the noble Lord would want, except when someone applies or renews a British passport.
Lord Keen of Elie
The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Keen of Elie) (Con)
My Lords, we are grateful for the consideration of the devolved Administrations and the interest in the other place of Members of Parliament representing Northern Ireland in relation to this part of the Bill. We have listened, and government Amendments 241B to 241E, 242A, 242B, 242D to 242F, 242H, 242K and 245B represent our response. They are many in number but they have a simple purpose: to apply to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland on a uniform basis the duty to ensure that all public sector workers who work in customer-facing roles speak fluent English; save that, in Wales, the duty will be fulfilled by fluency in English or Welsh. It will apply only to public authorities that exercise functions in relation to matters which are not devolved. At present, the Bill provides for the duty to apply to public authorities exercising any functions of a public nature in Wales. The respective Governments have since agreed that it will apply to public authorities only to the extent that they carry out functions in relation to matters which are not within the legislative competence of the Welsh Assembly.
Noble Lords will have noticed that the Bill does not yet provide for the duty to apply to Northern Ireland. In the other place, a commitment was made to reconsider that position in this House. Our amendments now provide for the duty to apply only to public authorities that carry out functions in relation to excepted matters in Northern Ireland.
Noble Lords will have noted that the Bill already provides for the duty to apply in Scotland only to public authorities exercising functions in relation to reserved matters, so there are no further amendments affecting this region. In these circumstances, I beg to move.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 242, and I am grateful to all noble Lords who have added their name to it. The purpose of the amendment is to ensure that Clause 47 does not lead to discrimination against public sector workers in a consumer-facing role whose first language is British Sign Language by explicitly exempting them from the provision.
In his letter of 19 January to the noble Lord, Lord Bates, the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster-General stated:
“The most significant additions to the Code”—
the code of practice, that is—
“will come from organisations strengthening the content with guidance and practical examples—notably in areas of interest to Noble Lords during the Second Reading debate; avoiding discrimination and providing clarity in how the duty applies to those who communicate using British Sigh Language. We strongly support the use of British Sign Language”.
It also said that one of the main findings of the consultation was:
“Further guidance, clarity and practical examples could be added to support authorities’ understanding and practical application of the duty to reduce any discriminatory impact. Business Disability Forum and Signature will provide case studies for inclusion in the Code to clearly demonstrate application of the duty and the responsibilities of public authorities towards members of protected groups and to advance equality”.
This is very welcome and suggests that the Government accept the spirit, if not the letter, of the amendment.
Nevertheless, Sense, which alerted me to this issue, believes very strongly that writing an exemption into the Bill would remove the possibility of misinterpretation by any authority, which might still occur if clarification were in only the code of practice. Failing that, I wanted to ensure that the Minister’s assurance in the letter appears in Hansard, because it is crucial that we ensure that the Bill cannot be said to discriminate indirectly against deaf and deafblind people, for whom British Sign Language is their first language in either its standard form or as adapted for deafblind people. I am told that its grammatical structure is different from English, so it is possible, on the face of it, that someone might argue that someone using it is not speaking fluent English.
I would be grateful if the Minister would be willing to look again at the possibility of writing a clear exemption into the Bill so as to remove all doubt and therefore reassure organisations such as Sense. If that really is not possible for some good reason, I would at least welcome a clear statement on the record—based on but perhaps going beyond what is in the letter of 19 January—of what the code of practice is intended to say regarding how Clause 47 should not discriminate against users of British Sign Language.
Lord Swinfen
My Lords, I have been working in this House since the late 1970s for people with various forms of disability, and I note that British Sign Language is now accepted throughout. I do not understand why the Government are taking it out of the Bill. I know that it is unlikely to be used very often because it is much more difficult for someone who uses British Sign Language to be face-to-face with the public, but there are members of the public who use British Sign Language as their first language. Therefore, it is essential that some of the people with whom they have to relate when going about their business also use British Sign Language. It is important that the amendment is included in the Bill.
Lord Shipley (LD)
My Lords, I am a signatory to the amendment. It is an extremely important issue because the assumption is that the code of practice and the public sector equality duty will be sufficient in this case. Clause 47(8), which I have reread a number of times, makes it very clear that somebody in a customer-facing role should speak fluent English. The Department for Work and Pensions has accepted British Sign Language as a language since 2003. We do not want to permit any confusion to arise, and the way to solve this is simply for the Government to accept the amendment because it makes it absolutely clear that British Sign Language is an acceptable language and that it is not just a question of an employee having spoken English.
I hope that the Minister will understand that there are some 70,000 people in this country for whom British Sign Language is their first language. As the noble Lord, Lord Swinfen, made clear, this is not just about those employed in a customer-facing role; it is about how you respond to customers who want to speak to somebody who can communicate through British Sign Language. I hope that the Minister will not see this as some kind of bureaucratic minor matter, as it is very important in terms of the public sector equality duty. It cannot simply be left to a code of practice when it should be written clearly in the Bill so that there is no doubt about how public sector bodies should respond.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, my noble friend Lord Paddick and I have three amendments in this group: Amendments 242C, 242G and 242J. Before I come to them, I shall say that I support the amendment on British Sign Language. My noble friend Lady Humphreys is in her place. She heard the confirmation about the Welsh language and welcomes it. I say that in the context of wishing this clause were not here at all. I appreciate that there was a line in the Conservative Party’s manifesto for the previous election and that is why I have not sought to take these clauses out altogether.
The impact assessment on these clauses confirmed my anxiety about their potential for encouraging discrimination and harassment. It says:
“The policy objective is to ensure a sufficient standard of fluent English is maintained and can be enforced … This is intended to improve the quality, efficiency and safety of public service provision and support taxpayers confidence they are receiving value for money”.
So far, so good.
“This proposal is expected to support current priorities for the management of immigration into the UK”.
I have littered questions marks, the word “prejudice”, an exclamation mark and the word “tangentially” around that statement.
We would prefer to take these clauses out altogether, but the first of our amendments looks at the provision for expanding the requirements into the private sector. It is a probing amendment, and I hope that the Minister is aware of the questions that I intend to ask. If this is of such concern, why, in a service context where so many public services are provided on behalf of the Government by the private sector, does the Bill not immediately extend to services which are contracted out? Will there be changes to the requirements as they affect contractors? Has consultation taken place with the private sector? Will there be a single code of practice? Since so much is outsourced, it seems odd if work which is outsourced is not covered, but I wonder whether the private sector will be happy with this as a requirement. I am interested in the consultation.
Amendment 242G is on the code of practice, which under Clause 50 may make different provision for different purposes. I have suggested,
“and for different roles or descriptions of roles”.
It may well be that the Minister will confirm that that is within Clause 50(6) because there are clearly different things that people in the public sector do in different roles or may need to do. The impact assessment states that the code,
“will be flexible enough to account for the differing requirements and existing arrangements of different public sector bodies”,
but it would be good to have confirmation that the legislation allows for that.
Amendment 242J would require a review within five years. I ask the Committee to understand this amendment in the context of my initial remarks. Noble Lords will understand from the points that I have listed in the amendment the matters with which I am concerned:
“the extent and types of authority subject to the requirement; … the standard required; … procedures for complaints”—
it has been pointed out to me that it is sad that requirements are being put in place and that it is felt necessary to have a complaints procedure designed from the beginning—
“direct and indirect discrimination which has or may have arisen; and … the resources required to meet this requirement”.
The Race Equality Foundation says,
“the draft code is poorly drafted, poorly structured and … there is nothing to prevent users of public services making complaints on the basis of accent and appearance. These provisions may encourage, and semi-legitimise, racially-motivated harassment under the guise of challenging someone’s ability to speak ‘fluent’ English. There is already evidence on the greater likelihood for black and minority ethnic people to be subject to the disciplinary process in public services”.
It is obviously concerned about these requirements expanding that likelihood.
The Institute of Equality and Diversity Professionals was very moderate in its language:
“No amount of guidance in the draft Code of Practice can save what is an irredeemably unworkable scheme”.
It talks about:
“The opportunities for directly and indirectly discriminatory, and harassment, claims”,
and reminds us that harassment is a form of discrimination under EU equality law. It asks about the constitutional basis. I think I would ask about the evidence base.
The institute also points out that:
“The use of the terms ‘high standard of English’ … and ‘fluency’ indicate a ‘mother tongue’ proficiency, which is not permissible in EU law”.
Another of its comments says,
“these measures will leave public bodies open to extensive litigation, primarily on grounds of race and ethnic origins, but also on grounds of disability, in relation to … discrimination and harassment claims”.
I said—I think at Second Reading—that I regard the ability to communicate as important, indeed essential, in the public sector, as in all other parts of life, but I cannot be the only person in this Committee who has encountered someone whose English is perfect but who cannot make themselves understood.
Lord Rosser
I will listen with interest to the Minister’s response to my noble friend Lady Lister’s amendment. As far as I understand it, the Government will accept British Sign Language—or at least they are saying it is provided for in the code—but they do not wish to put that in the Bill. I will wait with interest to see why that is unnecessary or undesirable since I am not quite sure at the moment what the answer is.
I also want to pursue the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. I am sure the Minister will put me right if I have misread this, but the language requirements refer to public sector workers. I take it that means that any private sector organisation with customer-facing roles will not be covered by the Bill. I ask the same question as the noble Baroness. Why is this being geared to the public sector alone? I do not know that I have particular enthusiasm for seeing it apply across the private sector since I have some of the reservations, subject to what the Minister may say, about the extent to which this could lead to some discrimination. No doubt the noble and learned Lord will explain how it is going to work. As I understand it, the definition of speaking fluent English is laid out in the Bill:
“For the purposes of this Part a person speaks fluent English if the person has a command of spoken English which is sufficient to enable the effective performance of the person’s role”.
Who will judge that and decide whether their English is sufficient? Is it open to somebody to complain that that criterion has not been met? If so, what then happens?
Lord Keen of Elie
I am obliged to the noble Lord. Clearly some important issues are raised here. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, noted that there was some reference to this issue in the Conservative Party manifesto. The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, will correct me if I am wrong but it also featured in the Labour Party manifesto, so I would understand him to have a reasonable degree of insight into what is proposed here.
Lord Rosser
I am asking how the Government intend to apply this. It is their legislation.
Lord Keen of Elie
I fully understand the nature of the noble Lord’s inquiry; I was just pointing out that the rationale behind this legislation was recognised not only in the Conservative Party manifesto but in the Labour Party manifesto.
I begin by looking at Amendment 242, moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister. I am glad to have the opportunity to reassure her and other noble Lords that the duty being imposed by this provision does not apply to individuals who communicate using British Sign Language. I believe it may help if I explain that it will not be the responsibility of individual members of staff to meet this duty; it will be the responsibility of public authorities, as the employers. I remind noble Lords that, as employers, public authorities have a duty under the Equality Act 2010 to make reasonable adjustments for their staff. If reasonable, a British Sign Language interpreter would be provided. In addition, any worker or job applicant who communicates using British Sign Language must be considered for recruitment on a par with any other applicant.
To comply with the duty in Part 7, public authorities must ensure that the British Sign Language interpreters whom they employ, rather than the recipients of such a workplace adjustment, speak fluent English. Given that fluent spoken English is the reason the interpreter has been engaged, there should be no difficulty at all in public authorities meeting that duty. In those circumstances, I seek to reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, about the position in regard to British Sign Language.
Lord Swinfen
My Lords, perhaps I may interrupt my noble and learned friend for a moment. What is the position of a member of the public who uses British Sign Language? My noble and learned friend says that provision is made for the authority worker who uses British Sign Language to be able to do their work in their office, but I am talking about a member of the public who goes to the public authority and his language is British Sign Language. There must be someone who can communicate with that person. I am not expecting everyone to have British Sign Language. One can use videoconferencing to deal with it, but there must be provision for members of the general public who use British Sign Language to communicate with appropriate people in the authority.
Lord Keen of Elie
In circumstances where there is provision for British Sign Language to be available, there will also be an English language interpreter available. Where a member of the public wishes to use or employ British Sign Language, they will, in circumstances where it is available, be able to do that, and the person communicating with them in a customer-facing role will, of course, be perfectly entitled to employ British Sign Language. The provisions of the Bill are not prescriptive. They are not saying that the only language that can be employed is English or Welsh. In circumstances where there is the ability to communicate in a customer-facing role by means of a different language, be it British Sign Language or otherwise, then it may perfectly properly be employed. Whether it will be available on each and every occasion when somebody arrives and is faced with a customer-facing role is a different matter altogether. Clearly, at present it is not invariably available.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
I am not a lawyer, so I rise with some trepidation, but the Bill states:
“A public authority must ensure that each person who works for the public authority in a customer-facing role speaks fluent English”.
I am very grateful to the Minister for the very clear statement he has made that this will not apply to British Sign Language. It may be that he is going to explain this, but why can that not be put in the Bill to remove all doubt?
Lord Keen of Elie
Our position is that that is simply not required. Where you have somebody in a customer-facing role who communicates by way of British Sign Language, they will have a British Sign Language interpreter available. It is the interpreter who will be required by the employer to be fluent in English. That is the situation that will apply.
Lord Swinfen
I am awfully sorry but I do not entirely understand what the Minister is saying. I cannot see the difficulty in including British Sign Language speakers who are able to communicate with members of the public whose only language is British Sign Language. The Minister is saying that that is not necessary. It means that if I speak only British Sign Language, I will not be able to speak to anyone in the authority. That is not satisfactory. Either I am not understanding the Minister or he is not explaining himself as well as a lawyer should.
Lord Keen of Elie
It appears that, although we each purport to be speaking fluent English, we may not be communicating with each other as clearly as might be the case. In circumstances where a person employs British Sign Language and there is a customer-facing individual available to communicate with them in British Sign Language, the person communicating in British Sign Language will either have with them a British Sign Language interpreter or will be able to communicate in British Sign Language and speak fluent English.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I think there are two different debates going on. To pick up the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, the explanation given by the Minister about how this would work is, to me, intelligible, but it does not reflect the words in the Bill because it suggests that the person who is working in a customer-facing role is the interpreter, not the person who is doing the substantive job. If the Government’s concern is that the drafting is not invented here, I hope that they can find a way of explaining that there are two roles in the situation which the noble Baroness set out.
Lord Keen of Elie
I wonder whether I may respond briefly to that and then make a further observation. In circumstances where somebody is in a customer-facing role and uses only British Sign Language, they will, as a matter of practice and pursuant to the Equality Act 2010, have available to them a British Sign Language interpreter. So they will be communicating in a customer-facing role, together with a British Sign Language interpreter.
I do not accept the interpretation of the clause that has been advanced by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, but, having regard to the considerations of time, if nothing else, I will take this matter away and reflect upon the observations that have been made.
Lord Shipley
I thank the Minister for that. I think that that would help because I had not understood what the problem was with making this amendment to the Bill. I hope that, if we come back to this matter on Report, we may have some greater clarity on it because it seems to me that that would solve the problem.
Lord Keen of Elie
I am obliged to the noble Lord. He will appreciate that I, too, am concerned about whether it is necessary for such a provision to appear in the Bill. Our view is that the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, is an important one but that it is already accommodated by the terms of the Bill. However, as I said, I will reflect on that.
I turn to the observations made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, in addressing Amendments 242C, 242G and 242J regarding the implementation of the various duties, as well as the observations made by the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, on the question of public sector workers.
Beginning with Amendment 242C and the question of public and private sector workers, I shall seek to allay the concerns of the noble Baroness but will resist the amendment. We have no desire at this time to lay regulations before further consultation. At present, the Government are committed to carrying out an open consultation before calling on the reserve powers to expand the scope of the duty to the private and third sectors. That is why the provision is expressed in its present form.
The government response to the open consultation, which is scheduled to be made available to noble Lords for our Report stage discussion, will provide preliminary views on this matter. At present, the responses are quite balanced. Many welcome the expansion specifically for the safety and comfort of patients in the social care sector, for example. Others are understandably concerned in case any costs of enhanced recruitment practices have to be passed on to public authorities which are contracting. We do not accept that such costs will increase. Public authorities can simply make job descriptions more specific; there is no need to increase costs. So we do not consider it necessary at this stage to contemplate the proposal in Amendment 242C.
Regarding the noble Baroness’s second amendment, Amendment 242G, I seek to provide reassurance that the principal focus of the code of practice underpinning this duty will be to assist public authorities in setting language expectations for different job roles. I hope, therefore, that she will agree that there is no need to provide for this in the Bill, as it will be an element of the code of practice.
I am conscious of the variations that may occur so far as fluency in language is concerned. Indeed, as a Scot, it is a matter of particular concern to me as well. Clearly fluency will be determined by the employer—and, in this context, by the employer alone.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, to be absolutely precise about this, I hear what is intended regarding the code of practice but can the Minister confirm that,
“different provision for different purposes”,
encompasses my point about different roles? That is the wording in the Bill.
Lord Keen of Elie
I can indeed confirm that. That is the purpose of the provisions in the code of practice.
Lord Keen of Elie
I quite understand the spirit of the noble Baroness’s third amendment, Amendment 242J. The Government intend to review the implementation of this policy. We will commit to doing so in the government response to the recent consultation on the draft code of practice.
On further inspection, the details of the report described in the amendment appear to impose a significant reporting burden on public authorities. The Government’s review will certainly look to cover the principles of the recommendation, such as setting proportionate standards for job roles and avoiding cases of discrimination, because these were the main areas of concern voiced by respondents to the recent open consultation. So these points will most certainly be addressed in that context. Regarding the position of Network Rail, if there are public sector workers there, they will be covered by the initial provisions. As they move into the private sector, they will be covered by the further provisions that will be brought forward following consultation. I hope that reassures the noble Lord, Lord Rosser. I do not understand that there are any provisions regarding the National Health Service in the Bill. In these circumstances, I invite noble Lords not to press their amendments.
Lord Bates
“( ) in Northern Ireland, as an agency worker within the meaning of the Agency Workers Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2011 (SR 2011/350) in respect of whom the public authority is the hirer within the meaning of those regulations,”
“( ) in relation to Northern Ireland, has the meaning given by Article 236(3) of the Employment Rights (Northern Ireland) Order 1996 (SI 1996/1919 (NI 16)),”
Lord Bates
“(4A) A person who exercises functions in relation to Wales is a public authority for the purposes of this Part in relation to those functions only if and to the extent that those functions relate to a matter which is outside the legislative competence of the National Assembly for Wales.
(4B) A person who exercises functions in relation to Northern Ireland is a public authority for the purposes of this Part in relation to those functions only if and to the extent that those functions relate to an excepted matter.
(4C) In subsection (4B) “Northern Ireland” and “excepted matter” have the same meanings as in the Northern Ireland Act 1998.”
Lord Bates
( ) in Northern Ireland, as an agency worker within the meaning of the Agency Workers Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2011 (SR 2011/350) in respect of whom the contractor is the hirer within the meaning of those regulations.”
Lord Bates
Lord Bates
““Wales” has the same meaning as in the Government of Wales Act 2006.”
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
“( ) Regulations under this section must provide for exemption from a charge in the case of an application made—
(a) to fill a skills gap directly concerned with the provision of education;(b) by an institution whose primary function is the provision of education or skills training;(c) to fill a skills gap directly concerned with the provision of health services;(d) by an institution whose primary function is the provision of health services.”
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I recognise that it is late. This is an important proposal on which the House of Commons spent precisely five minutes during its wind-up in Committee. I have another important amendment still to come, Amendment 242S on the tier 1 investor charge, to which I attach a great deal of importance. I have received quite a lot of outside support and some outside briefing on both these amendments. I am conscious that time is short, but these are important issues. It is always the case that the last clauses of a Bill get the least attention.
The proposal for an immigration skills charge is a major innovation, not yet fully developed. It was first floated in a speech by the Prime Minister two weeks after the May election, less than nine months ago. He said,
“we will reform our immigration and labour market rules— reducing the demand for skilled workers and cracking down on those who exploit low-skilled workers. That starts with training our own people.
For too long we’ve had a shortage of workers in certain roles. Engineers, nurses, teachers, chefs—we haven’t had enough Brits trained in these areas and companies have had to fill the gaps with people from overseas. With Sajid Javid as the new business secretary we’re going to get far better at training our own people. This involves creating 3 million more apprenticeships—and we will consult on getting the businesses that use foreign labour to help fund them through a new visa levy.
And today I can announce we will consult on another big change. As we improve the training of British workers, we should—over time—be able to lower the number of skilled workers we have to bring in from elsewhere. So as we embark on this massive skills drive, we will ask the Migration Advisory Committee to advise on significantly reducing the level of economic migration from outside the EU”.
Note that the Prime Minister emphasised that the Government would focus on a massive skills drive and consult on another big change that would follow. He noted that some of the skills in greatest shortage are for teachers and nurses—he could have added doctors. However, in spite of an earlier reference in his speech to “a whole government approach” to the immigration issue, he does not note that these are public sector jobs, for whose training the Government lay down targets and conditions, and for which government departments such as health and education bear some responsibility. There is no mention of these departments in the speech—BIS is the only one mentioned.
The Government asked the Migration Advisory Committee to advise on how to take this loosely defined idea forward. The Migration Advisory Committee report was published on 19 January 2016, just three weeks ago, after the Commons had completed its consideration of the Bill. It addresses the issue of the introduction of a skills charge in the context of a review of the entire tier 2 visas category. It recommends raising the minimum salary thresholds, limiting the period in which skills shortages can be declared for any particular sector, and introducing a charge at a level it suggests should be between £500 and £2,000 per year—I emphasise “per year”. The Government intend this to be a perpetual charge, and they have chosen £1,000 for every year that someone from outside the EEA is employed by a British company, university, school or hospital. One university has estimated that this will cost it £800,000 a year; others suggest higher figures, particularly for universities with global reputations in science and engineering. The CBI has warned that it will impose additional charges on top of the new apprenticeship levy on innovative firms.
This new MAC report also notes in paragraph 1.25 that,
“the public sector may require time to transition to the new salary thresholds”,
since it is in the public sector that recruits from outside the EEA are paid less than their UK equivalents, rather than more. The MAC’s “strongest recommendation”,
“is for any changes to be kept under active review”.
It is hardly surprising, therefore, that James Brokenshire, in a speech in London in late January, declared that the Government are “in listening mode” on this proposal, which, as we all know, is code for saying that Whitehall has not yet worked out what it means and still needs advice from the outside.
So why are we being presented with such a blunt proposal today? Why have the Government not consulted further on its implications for the public sector, above all for the health service, universities and schools? The Prime Minister said that he was going to do so, but it has not yet happened. Have the Government yet consulted with the NHS and the education sector on the likely impact of this charge? Have the Treasury and the Department of Health taken into account the impact of this charge on the NHS budget once it is applied, or on BIS and the DfE, given the implications for the education sector? Will the Government allow the public sector time to manage the transition or are they going to impose it, just like that?
Overall, the Government are relying on the market to provide the 3 million additional apprenticeships they are promising, with the penalty of the apprenticeship levies to spur it on. The massive skills drive that the Prime Minister promised is to be left to the market; it neither starts nor finishes with the Government, in spite of what the Prime Minister says.
The Explanatory Notes to the Bill suggest that the Prime Minister’s creation of 3 million additional apprenticeships will depend almost entirely on this charge. It says:
“The primary purpose of this clause is to increase funding available for apprenticeships in the UK and address the current skills gap in the UK workforce”.
How many apprenticeships will the estimated £240 million to be raised from this charge pay for? Will it get anywhere near funding 3 million apprenticeships? Business, not unnaturally, sees the double imposition of the levy and the immigration skills charge as adding to the burdens on the private sector, without a coherent government approach to labour market policy that is linked to education, at all levels, and to training. In the public sector, the Government have lifted the cap on numbers in nurse training while, at the same time, ending nursing bursaries, and so deterring potential nurses from entering the profession. They have done that at the same time as they recognise the need to increase their numbers.
There are particular issues for UK universities and for medicine—and I thank Universities UK for the brief that it gave me. The global reputation and quality of UK universities and medical research depends on the international circulation of academic and medical careers, with British students spending time studying and working abroad, and overseas students and professors coming to work in the UK. I have visited universities in several countries as an academic where the majority of the staff began their careers as local students, moved on to conduct graduate research there, and were then appointed to the faculty, without much, if any, intellectual challenge from exposure to other institutions or countries. None of these universities is anywhere in the global rankings, but our world-class universities depend on scholars coming in and out. The Prime Minister loudly declared that he wanted to attract the “best and the brightest” from outside the UK; imposing this charge is more likely to keep them out.
This charge will obstruct the circulation of scholars into the UK, and impose additional burdens on university budgets. It will have a particularly adverse effect on the STEM subjects, where over 15% of current staff are from outside the EU. But then, a substantial proportion of UK citizens in these disciplines in British universities have studied and taught overseas in their turn. Have the Government thought through how far this principle of penalties and charging might extend? Should British universities receive credits, say of £1,000 a year in perpetuity, for attracting British scholars with American PhDs back to this country? My son has just taken up a post at a UK university, having benefitted from American funding for his entire graduate education and two post-doctoral fellowships. Should that benefit to the UK as he returns generate a financial credit for the British university that has hired him, or does the Home Office assume that the traffic in academic excellence is all one way—foreigners into Britain? If we are so concerned about the nationality of those employed in the higher education and medical sectors, should the Government also impose fines on UK-trained doctors who then opt to leave Britain to practise elsewhere? Would the British Government be happy if a future Republican Administration in the United States were to impose charges on American institutions that sought to recruit from the UK?
I see no evidence that this has yet been thought through. Some free market economists, no doubt from some right-wing think tank, appear to have convinced the Home Office that the price mechanism will sort everything out, without the need for more active government intervention. That is as daft an idea as imposing central London economic rents on core government buildings in Whitehall, to be then taken off existing departmental budgets—but then the Government have just said that they are going to do that as well. What is even more striking is that the Government do not propose to apply the price mechanism to tier 1 investor visas, in spite of recommendations from the Migration Advisory Committee, where super-rich foreigners would no doubt bid happily against each other for the privileges offered. We will come to that in a later amendment.
We therefore offer in this group a number of amendments which protect the public sector, require consultation with those affected by the charge, and require, as the MAC report suggested, the earliest possible review. We particularly emphasise that it would be idiotic to impose the charge on teachers in shortage subjects in the UK, given the Government expect that domestic demand for education and training in shortage sectors will have to rise, and when funding for further education is already being cut savagely. Two weeks ago, I met three secondary head teachers who told me that maths and computer technology teachers are so hard to recruit that they are looking to Australia to find them, without yet realising, of course, that that would bring an extra charge on their budgets of £1,000 per maths teacher for the foreseeable future.
This clause attracted almost no attention in the Commons. In any event, the Government had not provided the information on which to assess the proposal. That makes it even more appropriate to test the opinion of the House on Report, unless the Government can come up with their own substantive amendments and a good deal more explanation of what this means in practice. I beg to move.
Lord Green of Deddington
My Lords, in relation to skills, I draw the Committee’s attention to the report by the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, on training in the private sector. Her report found that there had been a substantial fall in what she described as “serious” training—that is off-site training—since 2008. It is clearly necessary that action should be taken and encouragement should be provided by the Government to tackle that. That said, I do not think I have any comment on this. I listened with interest to the introduction by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace.
Lord Rosser
The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, has made some very interesting points on this issue. I wait with interest to see what the Minister has to say in response. I would be grateful if he would respond on the point that the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, raised about consultation on the implications for the public sector.
He mentioned the health service and universities. It will obviously be no secret that representations have been received from universities and health service organisations about the implications of this proposal. Indeed, I understand that some universities have taken it up directly with government. Will the Minister set out the extent to which the consultation covered public sector organisations and say what responses were received? Clearly, their line is over the additional costs it is likely to cause the service in question. Indeed, universities will say that it is causing additional costs which might lead to them not necessarily being able to recruit the best people, and obviously part of the role of a university is to train people and increase their skills through higher education. It would seem a bit distorted if the purpose of the levy was to enable money to be provided for apprenticeships but, in so doing, it managed to weaken the ability of universities to provide the best people to provide the education which in itself is raising the skills of people who will be needed in the labour market in the future.
Lord Bates
My Lords, Clause 55 provides a power to raise the charge, but details about the rate and scope of the immigration skills charge will be set out in regulations to be laid before the introduction of the charge. At that point there will be an opportunity for an informed debate on the details within the regulations. There are likely to be legal implications of introducing exemptions which will require careful consideration.
The Migration Advisory Committee published its review of tier 2 migration on 19 January, and the Government need time fully to consider the evidence about the likely impact of different rates on different types of organisation. As well as the Migration Advisory Committee’s findings and recommendations, we wish to consider other evidence from stakeholders and any legal implications before recommending the rate at which the immigration skills charge could be set and whether any exemptions should be applied.
The Government believe in consulting those affected by the proposed changes. The independent Migration Advisory Committee carried out detailed stakeholder consultation as part of its review of tier 2 migration. In addition, this Government have welcomed discussions with, and received evidence from, a large number of businesses and representative organisations. The process will continue and will, of course, take into account the representations that have been made today by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, and those received from academic institutions both by me directly and by other colleagues.
As for consulting on the changes, since the announcement in May, we have been consulting employers and business leaders across the private and public sectors to get their views on the immigration skills charge. This will continue. In addition, the Migration Advisory Committee conducted a review of tier 2 with the remit to advise government on restricting tier 2 to genuine skills shortages and highly specialised experts. As part of this review, the MAC considered evidence from employers on the immigration skills charge.
As to the impact on healthcare, which the noble Lords, Lord Rosser and Lord Wallace, asked about, no decision has yet been made. The details of the charge will be set out in regulations, which will be subject to the affirmative procedure. Therefore, there will be an opportunity for a full debate at that point.
The Government have not said that the immigration skills charge will fund the 3 million apprenticeships; rather, they have said that the immigration skills charge will contribute towards skills funding. The level of the charge has not yet been set. The Government are also proposing an apprenticeship levy, not linked to migration, which will go towards apprenticeship funding. The Migration Advisory Committee recommended a figure of £1,000 per year, which is large enough to raise a reasonable amount of revenue and have an impact on employer behaviour.
That is at the core of what this is about. As the Prime Minister said at the outset, it has been far too easy for some businesses to bring in workers from overseas rather than take the long-term decision to train the resident workforce in the UK. We need to do more to change that, and that is the rationale that is driving this. We are proposing that a charge be enabled through this legislation, and we are continuing to consult because we are not unmoved by the noble Lord’s argument that the level at which this is set and those to whom it is applied will have significant implications. Therefore, we need to get that right.
The noble Lord slightly chastised us by saying that we used to have a policy of attracting the brightest and the best. Of course, there is only one thing better than that, and that is to actually grow the brightest and the best here. That is what this policy is designed to do. More details will follow and the House will have an opportunity to scrutinise those when they are presented.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, before my noble friend responds on our amendments, I wonder whether the Minister can advise the Committee how noble Lords should deal with this when further government thinking becomes clear. As he well knows, we can scrutinise to our heart’s content but we cannot actually do anything about what is in regulations.
I thought that the Minister said at the beginning of his response that there had not been a decision and that this was permissive of regulations, but at the end he confirmed that this is what is in the Government’s mind, which is obviously common sense. However, by bringing forward such a significant new policy proposal as this, having given the Commons five minutes to debate it, as my noble friend said, I do not know how we can really deal with this just through regulations.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
That is precisely what I was about to say. At present, the House is extremely nervous about allowing the Government to legislate by regulation for very obvious reasons based on what has recently happened. Having listened to the Minister, the words “pig” and “poke” come very much to mind. We are being asked to accept something on which the Government have not quite made up their mind about how it will work. They have not yet managed to consult, but if we pass this they will produce some regulations when they work out what they want to do. If we are no clearer than that when we get to Report, it will be very difficult to persuade any of the major groups in the House, apart from the Conservatives, to accept something so unclear.
The noble Lord, Lord Green, and I agree strongly on one thing in the migration debate—that better training and education in Britain are absolutely part of what we need to have—but that should not replace the circulation of highly skilled and intelligent people which is a vital part of our research network in medicine, STEM subjects and elsewhere. If we are beginning to block that, which this suggests it will do, we will damage our standing in the global academic and intellectual world. That is what universities are most concerned about at present. We absolutely need some assurances on that. Last week, I was talking to a vice-chancellor in Wales who was not aware of the implications of this proposal. As the Minister will know, the academic lobby in the Lords is not entirely without a degree of influence. I will do my best to make sure that it is aware of it by the time we get to Report.
There are some large issues here about the private and public sectors, including the question of how we persuade the private sector to invest more in training. This is a Government who need a rather more active and concerned labour market policy. Someone said to me last week that further education funding is about to fall off a cliff. If the Government are looking to further education colleges to help to train apprentices, this proposal is not a good thing to do as part of a whole-government approach.
This proposal suggests that some young man aged 23 in either Policy Exchange or the Institute of Economic Affairs, with a first from some university or other, has written it at speed and the Government have swallowed it. There have been previous occasions in other Governments when those sorts of things have happened. This clearly has not been thought through. If the Government can publish some more detail on what they have in mind by Report, we might be able to make some progress. If they do not know by Report what the details of the policy will be, the House will find it very difficult to accept the proposals in the way the Government have put them before it.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Geddes)
I assume that the noble Lord would like to withdraw his amendment?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
Just temporarily. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
“Tier 1 (Investor) visa
(1) The Secretary of State must make rules which shall come into force no later than 1 January 2017—
(a) to close the Tier 1 (Investor) route;(b) to close applications to extend leave under Tier 1 (Investor) to applicants in the United Kingdom before 1 January 2017.(2) Nothing in this section shall affect leave to enter or remain of the holder of a Tier 1 (Investor) visa granted before that date in accordance with that leave.”
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, special arrangements for foreigners from outside the EU, the EEA and Switzerland who were willing to invest—actually, only to loan by investing in government bonds—a minimum of £1 million were introduced by the Conservative Government in 1994. The introduction of a tiered categorisation for visas in 2008 placed them in tier 1.
The Migration Advisory Committee issued an extremely critical report in 2014. The chairman’s foreword is strongly written. It says that,
“the main beneficiaries are the migrants”,
although,
“the law firms, accountants and consultancies that help organise the affairs of such investors”,
argue that their arrival is “self-evidently beneficial” to the UK—that is, these advisers to the very rich act as a lobby to bring more very rich in—“But”, the chairman continued,
“we do not need such investment to fund the deficit”,
and, if we were hoping that they might become entrepreneurs in the UK,
“we already have an entrepreneur route”.
The foreword goes on that,
“it would be injudicious for the UK to enter into a ‘race to the bottom’, matching special offers recently introduced by, for example, Malta, Portugal, and Antigua”—
and, I might add, St Kitts and Nevis.
Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)
My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, for proposing this new clause. I am a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Anti-Corruption. Like the noble Lord, I have had the opportunity to examine the statistics in the report from Transparency International UK which he mentioned. I find them extremely concerning.
It would appear that, under the tier 1 investment visa scheme, we are operating a charter for money laundering. An individual is required to invest only £2 million in government bonds, or the share or loan capital of a business trading in the United Kingdom, and after five years they can have indefinite right to remain. As the noble Lord mentioned, there is a tariff on this. If they are happy to invest £5 million over three years or £10 million over two years they get a faster track to the right to remain. It is a pretty cheap ticket for them to come in. Large amounts of money have been brought in— £3.15 billion since 2006—by this route. I am advised that golden investor visa approvals have risen from 153 in 2009 to 1,173 in 2014. The largest number are Chinese, followed by the Russians. At the same time, the Chinese and Russian authorities are telling the world that they are very alarmed about the export of corruptly gained capital from their countries. The Government inveigh against corruption across the world. They propose themselves as international leaders in campaigning against corruption, yet it would appear that the right of potentially corrupt individuals—and there is good reason to think they are actually corrupt—to come, take up residence and remain in this country can be bought remarkably cheaply.
I have some questions for the Minister. Will he advise the Committee what precautions the Government are taking to ensure that those who benefit from these tier 1 visas are not corrupt? What investigations are undertaken? What requirements are there on people to declare their wealth and the sources of their wealth? What due diligence is pursued to ensure that those answers are honest, accurate and comprehensive? Do the Government maintain a list of those who are suspected by police authorities or intelligence sources internationally to be criminals or money launderers? Do they ensure that people who are on that list do not obtain visas? What proportion of applications for tier 1 visas is turned down? Do the Government intend to undertake any retrospective scrutiny of individuals who have already been granted visas under this scheme?
The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, referred to things that have been said by the chairman of the Migration Advisory Committee, Professor Sir David Metcalf. Those of us who know him know that he is a man of very great experience and wisdom. He told the Home Affairs Select Committee that the tier 1 scheme is,
“absolutely not fit for purpose”.
Indeed, that could be said to be an understatement. It is worse than unfit for purpose if it pollutes our national life. The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, alluded to the effects on the housing market. That alone must be a matter of very great concern. There is a cascade of misery that derives from the ability of wealthy individuals to force up prices of houses and apartments in London, and if they are doing that through the use of ill-gotten money, it is even more intolerable, as I am sure the Committee would agree. If this is a scheme to enable people who may be participants in organised crime or actively investing in it, it runs absolutely counter to what should be the main strategic purpose of the Home Office in any case.
Sir David said that the scheme brings “absolutely no gain” to the United Kingdom. It may be that the Government disagree, in which case the Minister will tell us, but it seems a reasonable proposition. Therefore, I hope that the Minister will tell us that he will accept the new clause that has been tabled, but if he intends to keep tier 1 visas, what is he going to do to ensure that there is not the abuse that Transparency International and many others believe there is in consequence of the availability of this scheme?
Lord Green of Deddington
My Lords, I speak in firm support of this amendment. We have had two very powerful contributions, and I will not repeat what was said. Listening to them and looking at the study, this is bizarre. It is really quite extraordinary. You can see why it is attractive. There is no need for a job offer or a sponsor, and the visa applies not just to the main applicant but to all his immediate family members. There are no language requirements and, since 2011, the residence requirement has been only 180 days. Talk about an offer. What do we get? We get nothing because these sums of a few million, which are evidently nothing to these applicants, are given back to them after a few years. They can put them in gilts and get their money back. It is absolutely bizarre. I suppose it is intended to give the impression that Britain is open to investors, and investors are a good thing, but we really should not give the impression that we are really quite as naive and foolish as that.
The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, has already quoted some very effective remarks from Sir David Metcalf, as has the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, so I shall not repeat them, but coming from someone of his stature, they should certainly be taken into consideration.
It is hardly too cynical to describe this as a scheme for selling British passports to the very wealthy. There is absolutely no justification for that and this scheme needs to be scrubbed, frankly. It may be that it could be replaced by a more effective scheme that actually brought serious investment and jobs to this country. That is for another day but this has got hopelessly out of hand. It is a useless system and should be abolished.
Lord Rosser
Perhaps I will be a little more guarded in what I say on this one. Some very strong and forceful speeches have been made on the basis that it appears that certain individuals who may have a lot of money are being treated rather differently from those who do not. I will leave it in the context that I will wait to see whether the Minister will accept this amendment. I will wait and see what the Government’s justification is for the tier 1 visa and the conditions under which it is given before I come to any conclusions for the Opposition. I have listened with great interest to what has been said. There seem to have been some pretty powerful points made, and I also want to hear what the Minister has to say in reply.
Lord Bates
My speech begins with the line that I have listened carefully to the arguments. I think the arguments have been well made. I will try to set out for the benefit of the Committee the rationale behind this and then answer some of the specific questions. I underline the Government’s commitment to ensuring that the United Kingdom remains an attractive destination for legitimate international investors. The tier 1 investor visa route allows migrants to make a significant financial contribution to the UK, either through the purchase of share or loan capital in UK businesses, or through UK government bonds. The route does not recognise the purchase of property as a qualifying investment.
The proposed amendment would not only result in the immediate loss of millions of pounds of capital inflow, but deliver a powerful global message that foreign investors are no longer welcome in the UK. This is a message the Government have no desire to send. The Government are clear in their commitment to ensuring that the investor route delivers benefits to UK taxpayers and it remains an important component of the UK’s visa offer for high value migrants.
Acting on an independent Migration Advisory Committee review of the tier 1 investor category, the Government introduced a package of reforms in November 2014. These included taking additional powers to refuse applications where the funds have been obtained unlawfully, where the applicant is not in control of the funds and where the granting of the application would not be conducive to the public good. The Government also raised the investment threshold from £1 million to £2 million and removed a provision which allowed investments to be funded through a loan. Since April last year the immigration rules have also required that prospective tier 1 applicants must open a UK bank account before their application for a visa is allowed. This ensures they have undergone financial due diligence checks before they are granted an investor visa.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, for raising his concerns that visas of this nature have no place in a sovereign nation and that this may be the preserve of tax havens. It would be correct to observe that some so-called tax havens operate citizenship-by-investment schemes, whereby wealthy individuals may be able to effectively purchase a second nationality in return for a sizeable donation, often paid directly to the host Government. I make it absolutely clear that the UK’s tier 1 investor visa is not such a scheme. The UK’s investor visa offers no guarantee of an extension, beyond the initial two or three-year term, let alone settlement, or citizenship. At each of these points, applicants must not only demonstrate that they have continued to hold the appropriate qualifying investments, but are also subjected to further robust checks.
Let me deal with some of the points that have been raised and provide a bit of additional information. The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, asked about precautions. I think my answer addressed some of the points he raised about due diligence, which is carried out in the process of securing the bank account. Also, the United Kingdom maintains some of the toughest anti-money laundering laws in the world and is respected as such. The general grounds for refusal in immigration rules enable the Government to refuse investor visas where the applicant’s presence in the UK is not conducive to the public good, which means that we carry out checks on their criminal background. Under a pilot scheme, investor visa applicants are required to provide criminal record checks from their country of residence as a condition of applying for the visa.
As a result of all the changes that we have introduced, and which significantly toughen up the approach—this may speak to the point that the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, raised—in the last quarter for which figures are available we granted only 46 such visas compared to 274 in the corresponding period in the previous year. That is a reduction of 83%. Before the noble Lord, Lord Green, gets to his feet, let me say that some of that may have something to do with the general economic situation in some of the key countries from which people would normally apply for these visas. However, it might also reflect that the toughening of the rules is having the desired effect.
Lord Green of Deddington
Exactly so. The collapse in the numbers is very good news. It illustrates just how bad the scheme has been. Is it not the case that if you invest £10 million, you get indefinite leave to remain after two years?
Lord Green of Deddington
After that, it is only a matter of time before you get your passport. This is, in effect, selling passports, as the Minister has just acknowledged, and, sometimes, in cases where it may not have been entirely advantageous. But they can also take their money out of gilts. Are we really persuading people to invest in a serious and useful manner in Britain by a scheme like this? I rather doubt it.
Lord Bates
The noble Lord, Lord Green, makes some very good points. I was looking behind me for some inspiration that would enable me to provide a brilliant argument as to why that is not the case. In fact, there were just nods, as if to say, “Yes, that is about right”. This is something that we need to keep under very careful review, and we do. When we get advice from the Migration Advisory Committee that there are problems with the scheme, we have, in the past, shown that we will take action.
On some of the points that were raised about property, there is no suggestion from anyone that people would not be able to own property in any part of the world. The housing issues that were raised are not linked to the scheme. Under the coalition Government, we significantly raised the stamp duty to about 12% on larger homes at that level. In a similar vein, the Chancellor announced in the Autumn Statement that there would be a further levy of an additional 3% for people coming in and purchasing a home in the UK as a second home. That was on top of the increase to 12%. Significant things are happening, but it is about how we maintain an offering on the international stage which ensures that we can attract people with exceptional talent, people who want to come and invest here, and people who want to study, visit or work here so that they can contribute to the public good of this country. We need to keep that under review. That is something that the Government continue to do. I am sure that we will want to take note of the comments made in the course of the debate ahead of Report. I am sure we will revisit it then, but until that point I hope that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment, temporarily.
Lord Rosser
I am not quite clear on what the Minister said in the last part of his comments. Is he saying that he intends to reflect on what has been said and write to us prior to Report? What does he envisage will happen between now and Report?
Lord Bates
Forgive me for trying to be reasonable. I was simply saying that this was an interesting argument that I listened to and followed. A number of points were raised from all parts of the Committee, expressing concerns about how this system operates. I want to go back and talk with colleagues about the system and how it operates, and then come back with answers to the points raised or suggestions as to how things could be improved.
Lord Howarth of Newport
If this does come back, will the Minister share with the House how the Government intend to make their position credible and defensible before this international conference, at which the Prime Minister will claim that Britain is leading in the security of its provisions to prevent money laundering?
Lord Bates
Her Majesty’s Government’s position is always credible and defensible. Most people would recognise that this is a sensitive area, but the UK has taken a very strong stand in the international community on tackling money laundering. It does that consistently through raising matters at the G20, which is a prime vehicle for operating on this, and through the OECD, which has its regulations as well. We will continue to do that. I would have thought that everybody would welcome the fact that the Prime Minister is taking this leadership and wanting to see how further things could be done. It is absolutely the role of this House to apply pressure to the Executive to make sure that they are living up to the arguments and principles that they seek that others observe.
Baroness Hamwee
Can I add a tiny bit of extra pressure on the Executive between now and Report and ask whether the Government have information about the effect on housing numbers and housing prices as a result of this policy? That might be quite difficult as a lot of it will be anecdotal, but it is a jolly big anecdote along the south bank of the Thames, with units that are sold off plan and will probably remain empty. There is a great deal of concern about the impact of the role played by those taking advantage of this route on the housing shortage and on housing prices.
Lord Bates
Housing is outside the scope. I know that the effect on the housing market will be an interesting point of research, but we are focusing on the visa that is primarily targeted into government gilts, or loan stock or equity in UK-registered corporations. Those are the bounds of it. I mentioned that we have taken action before. This will probably excite even more attention, but due to EU law on free movement of capital, the Government believe that there would be legal difficulties in treating residents and non-residents differently by, for example, restricting purchases or charging a higher rate of tax.
I have said what I have said. I am quite genuine. A point has been made. I should just temper the Committee’s expectations because I spent the first two pages of my speech defending the scheme, saying that it was important to send out the message and that these investors were coming. I do not accept the generic term of “dodgy” with “investor”. A lot of investment into this country has been of immense value in providing jobs and wealth to the people who are here. However, I will go away and reflect on the points that have been raised about the specific working of the scheme and come back on Report where those arguments can be tested.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I have some sympathy with the noble Lord in having to reply to this debate. I am fascinated by the caution expressed by the Labour Front Bench and I hope that the Labour Party will not find itself in a position of wanting to defend the super-rich against the criticism from the Liberal Democrats—of course, I speak for the Liberal Democrat Front Bench on this. Perhaps the Labour Party will reflect a little further on that between now and Report. I hope that I will not miss Report. I have to admit to everyone here that I am going on holiday for the first two weeks of March. I am going to Antigua, but I shall not ask whether I can buy citizenship while I am there.
Lord Bates
I will put a special plea to the business managers that we schedule Report then.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I hope that the Minister will be able to write to all noble Lords on the Committee between now and then with a number of answers. Have the Government examined the Canadian experience and looked at why the Canadians abolished their category? Have we considered the same? Can the Government explain why they accepted all of the Migration Advisory Committee’s proposals on tier 2 for the immigration skills charge, but did not accept two rather important proposals from the Migration Advisory Committee that there should be a limited number of sealed bids and a substantial donation to a good causes fund as part of the conditions?
I admit that the origins of my interest in this are from when I went as a representative of Her Majesty’s Government to the capital of a former Soviet state and found myself talking with someone who was clearly very much part of the oligarchy running the country. He told me that he had just been appointed ambassador to Britain and this was rather difficult for him because at that moment he held British citizenship as well as citizenship of his state. He was going to have to come back to his own country for some weeks while this was sorted out, but he had recently bought his son the house next door to his in Chelsea and as his son was rather young he did not want to leave him on his own for so long, so he was not quite sure how he was going to manage it. I began to think it was a little odd. I decided in my two days in that country that it was not a particularly democratic one and the distribution of wealth was clearly in the hands of a very small number of people, although one or two of them offered me some extremely generous gifts, which I, of course, had to pass on. It opened my eyes to something not desirable, not in the interests of this country and not contributing to our economy.
I would have been much happier if the figures I had discovered on tier 1 had shown that the exceptional talent category had 2,000 to 3,000 people in it, the entrepreneur category 3,000 to 4,000 people and the investor category 50. That is the sort of thing we should have if we believe the Prime Minister in his commitment to attract the brightest and the best. We have got it the wrong way round at present. I wish the coalition Government had been able to push a little further in that respect, but we will make up for it. We will do our best to push the Minister and see how far we can go. For the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Hamwee
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I hope this will be quick. This is a probing amendment. Clause 56 is about fees, not really about immigration, although some of it might be. The issue I would like to probe is about passports, not immigration. Clause 56 (4) provides that there may be fees which exceed the cost of “exercising the function” in question. I would be grateful if the Minister would explain to the Committee what is proposed and what lies behind this. Is it about a premium service, rather along the lines of the premium visa service? From time to time, over the years, I have heard complaints about that among the business community—probably not voiced directly to the Government. They are having to pay premium fees for what should be the basic standard service. Is there anything that the Minister can say about customer satisfaction on this? It is worth spending a minute or two getting on record the Government’s explanation of payment over and above the cost of providing proof of citizenship. I beg to move.
Lord Bates
My Lords, the passport fee provisions in the Bill require that all Home Office passport-related costs are fully reflected in the fee structure. That means we can recover the costs associated with processing UK passengers at the border through the passport fee. This is reflected in our spending review settlement. They also allow for a surplus on optional, premium and fast-track services, which we intend to use to help protect the quality of, and fee for, the standard passport service and, over time, reduce the standard fee. We do not intend to generate surpluses to fund other unrelated Home Office activity. Premium or fast-track service delivery is currently, and will continue to be, based on insight into and awareness of customer expectations and needs. In future, we intend to set fees for premium services at a level which ensures that they are economically viable to the customer and ensure that Her Majesty’s Passport Office can recover the cost of the services delivered, while protecting and maintaining the standard passport service.
The services and fees will be set out in regulations. As set out in the existing Clause 56(1), fees are set to meet the cost of such functions associated with the issuing of a passport or other travel documents. They will require approval from Her Majesty’s Treasury and Parliament. Therefore, the regulations do not provide for fees to be set at a level deliberately aimed to achieve an excess or surplus on the overall service. The regulations would provide for the fee for specific premium elements of the service to be charged above cost, but any income derived from that would be required to be used to maintain or reduce the cost of other services provided within the overall passport function.
Although I recognise that this is a probing amendment, the proposal would not work, first, because the use of fast-track services is a matter of individual customer choice and therefore subject to fluctuating demand. Unplanned surpluses, or even deficits, may therefore materialise in-year. Secondly, and more importantly, the level of fees for individual services should be determined by the overall cost of delivering the whole passport function, not the other way around. Our ambition is for the standard passport fee to remain at the current level initially and to fall over time as the cost of passport functions is reduced. This will be achieved through transforming delivery through digital and online services, complemented by the customer’s ability to choose the access services with an appropriate level of fees to reflect the higher level and speed of service provided. I hope that, with that explanation, the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, having listened to that explanation, it seems that the amendment pretty accurately reflects what the Minister has been saying, but I will not spend time on that now. Since we are talking about passports, does the Minister have in his brief the target time for the issue of a passport on application at the moment—which I presume is the standard service—against which a premium service will be designed?
Lord Bates
It is five days for domestic and 14 days for overseas. There are, of course, some elements of variance, but those are the standard times.
Baroness Hamwee
That is helpful, because to issue a passport in less than five days strikes me as going some, though perhaps it may not be so difficult if it is a renewal. I shall be interested to see what the premium service purports to offer. I might be about to hear.
Baroness Hamwee
I might hand it over to the noble Lord, Lord Green, to interrogate. What checks are undertaken for that? I beg leave to withdraw.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, at this stage I shall be extremely brief although I am very happy to talk further, out of Committee. The purpose of the amendment is to probe. A Government who are deeply and publicly committed to the promotion of marriage appear to be imposing charges on it. Before I run off to the Daily Mail to tell it that the Conservatives are making marriage more difficult, perhaps we could explore the implication of some of these additional charges and discuss what the Government really intend with them. We are in favour of settled relationships, both civil partnerships and marriage. The Government have said many times before that they want to promote them. That is the purpose of this probing amendment. I beg to move.
Lord Bates
Currently, both the local registration service and the Registrar General provide a range of services in connection with the registration of births, marriages, civil partnerships and deaths for which, in some instances, there is currently no power to charge a fee. The existing fee-raising powers are restrictive and out-dated and do not cover the full range of services provided. For example, the Registrar General is involved with the verification of around 5,000 divorce documents each year which have been obtained overseas and also provides blank certificate stock to over 30,000 buildings for use in certificate issue. These are just two examples of services provided by the Registrar General for which there is currently no provision to charge a fee to the end-user and where the expense must be recovered from central funds.
Schedule 12 will modernise the process of setting fees for registration services and enable fees to be set for those services which have previously been provided without charge. The provisions also move existing fee-charging powers into regulations, providing more flexibility and making it easier to amend them in the future. This will allow the local registration service and the Registrar General to recover more of the costs of providing registration services. It will reduce the reliance on central funding and ensure that, where possible, any costs are borne by the users of the services on a cost-recovery basis in line with Treasury guidelines.
I hope that helps the noble Lord and he will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
That is extremely helpful. I am happy to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Bates
“( ) regulations under section (Functions in relation to labour market) which amend or repeal primary legislation,( ) regulations under section (Power to request LME undertaking), (Measures in LME undertakings) or (Measures in LME orders),”
Lord Bates
Lord Bates
House of Lords
Retirement of a Member: Lord Dixon
The Lord Speaker (Baroness D'Souza)
My Lords, I should like to notify the House of the retirement, with effect from today, of the noble Lord, Lord Dixon, pursuant to Section 1 of the House of Lords Reform Act 2014. On behalf of the House, I should like to thank the noble Lord for his much-valued service to the House.
Oil and Gas: UK Continental Shelf
(8 years, 3 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Bruce of Bennachie
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they intend to take to assist the viability of oil and gas exploration and development on the United Kingdom continental shelf in the light of the reduced price of oil.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change and Wales Office (Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth) (Con)
My Lords, during his visit to Aberdeen on 28 January, my right honourable friend the Prime Minister set out an action plan to help build a bridge to the future for the industry. This includes a £20 million package of new investment in exploration, innovation and skills, and a new oil and gas ambassador.
Lord Bruce of Bennachie (LD)
My Lords, the oil and gas industry is probably facing its worst ever crisis since it was established more than 60 years ago. Will the Government now scrap the supplementary charge and will they clarify the liabilities on decommissioning which might help that to proceed? This industry has provided tens of billions of pounds worth of investment and hundreds of thousands of jobs for many decades. Will the Government ensure that their action plan will enable it to do so for many decades into the future?
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
My Lords, it is true that representations have been made on the fiscal front and the Chancellor will be considering those. We must recognise that it is not all doom and gloom. Bob Dudley, the chief executive of BP, said last month that the North Sea remained viable economically and would be for decades to come.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)
My Lords, is it not quite obvious by now that Scotland and the oil industry have benefited enormously from having the strength of the United Kingdom around them? Had the Scottish people voted for independence, they would not have been able to benefit from the wider resources of the United Kingdom and the Prime Minister’s welcome involvement in supporting the oil industry in the north-east of Scotland.
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
My Lords, my noble friend is absolutely right about the strength of the United Kingdom and the resilience that it has afforded to the oil industry over a period of time. Long may that resilience continue.
Lord McFall of Alcluith (Lab)
My Lords, Scotland has its very own carbon crisis. The Minister mentioned a supplementary tax. That was imposed in the 2011 Budget and increased from 20% to 32% on the basis that oil prices had doubled. They have now crashed from $114 a barrel—happy days for the SNP—to less than $30 a barrel. There must be a compelling case for scrapping that supplementary tax in its entirety and engaging once again with Sir Ian Wood and others to ensure that, in a bleak global environment, there is at least some viable future for the North Sea oil industry.
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
My Lords, the noble Lord is right that the fall in oil prices is an international problem. He will be aware that there was fiscal reform in the 2015 Budget, with a £1.3 billion injection of extra help over five years through tax cuts. As I have said, the Chancellor will look at representations that have been made to him.
Lord St John of Bletso (CB)
My Lords, are the Government considering a direct subsidy of development capex for exploration and production companies on the UK continental shelf, such as is given to similar companies in Norway?
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
My Lords, the package that the Prime Minister announced on 28 January includes £20 million of new investment in seismic exploration. This will be of assistance, together with the City Deal package for Aberdeen which includes a new innovation energy centre. I hope that the noble Lord will welcome it.
Lord Hayward (Con)
Will my noble friend please bear in mind that although this is a major problem for the north-east of Scotland and the Grampian area in particular, the oil and gas industry and exploration on the continental shelf have generated much wealth for the whole of this country, and therefore tackling the particular issues of the continental shelf will benefit large parts of the nation’s economy?
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
My Lords, my noble friend is absolutely right about the benefits to the whole of the United Kingdom from oil and gas exploration. He will be aware that two massive new fields to the west of Shetland were opened today by Total in Laggan and Tormore, which is very good news.
Lord Grantchester (Lab)
My Lords, when Sir Ian Wood published his recommendations two years ago, oil was indeed trading at a much higher price than it is today, with the price now dipping to below $30 a barrel. Will the Minister inform the House what effect the Government think this has had on the strength of the recommendation of the Wood review report?
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
My Lords, the noble Lord will be aware that the Government have given high priority to ensuring that the recommendations of the Wood report are taken through into law. That is now happening through the Energy Bill, as the noble Lord is aware, so I think that indicates our clear commitment. He is absolutely right; this is a global problem but we are doing what we can domestically to ensure that the UK industry has all the support necessary.
Lord Lawson of Blaby (Con)
My Lords, as I well recall from my time as Energy Secretary, the North Sea oil and gas has had a glorious past. However, is it not clear that its future can be only a shadow of what it has been, and that the future of our indigenous oil and gas industry must lie in the exploitation of our shale resources, which are quite substantial? Will my noble friend undertake to go ahead with that as fast as he possibly can?
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
My Lords, I am very much aware that my noble friend has a very distinguished record as a former Energy Secretary. However, I do not think it is true to say that the oil industry is entering a period where its significance is diminished. It is perhaps not what it was, but it is still of enormous importance. The two oil fields to which I referred will be able, when at maximum production, to supply energy to 2 million homes. However, he is absolutely right about the importance of shale and the Government are determined to go ahead with exploration for it.
Lord Hughes of Woodside (Lab)
My Lords, will the Minister comment on the reports in today’s press that the Chancellor is expected to raise taxes on the oil industry at a time when consumers are not really seeing a reduction in price at the petrol pumps? Will he disabuse us of that idea?
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
My Lords, matters for the Budget are, of course, matters for the Chancellor. The noble Lord will know that I cannot comment on that.
Lord Spicer (Con)
Further to the question of my noble friend Lord Lawson, what is the projected life of the Total gas fields in Shetland?
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
My Lords, the noble Lord is right to raise the importance of the Laggan and Tormore fields. They will be there for a substantial period. I am not sure about the precise period but, as I say, it is a massive find. The greatest part of the energy fields yet unexplored remain to the west of the Shetland Islands and are of massive importance to the country.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton (Lab)
My Lords, I declare an interest as a Lancashire resident. Will the Minister care to take away and reflect on the fact that there is great concern and anger at government suggestions that local people should be taken out of the decision-making process for future fracking? Will he care to comment on the fact that all the fracking decisions this Government have taken tend towards the north? Does he envisage any fracking taking place for oil or gas in the south of England, where Conservative support is concentrated?
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
My Lords, the noble Baroness will be aware that decisions on fracking are taken by planning authorities; they are not a matter for the Government. She will be aware that there are potential fracking areas throughout the country. That, of course, will be something that planning authorities will take forward.
Housing Estates
(8 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Janke
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will provide further information on their proposals for renewal or replacement of failed housing estates, following the announcement by the Prime Minister of £140 million funding; and whether any additional funding will be made available.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)
My Lords, estate regeneration provides a big opportunity to turn around run-down, low-density public sector estates to produce many more new homes and to tackle blight. The funding announced is only part of the package we are working on. An advisory panel, co-chaired by my noble friend Lord Heseltine and my honourable friend Brandon Lewis, will explore how we can help the projects to go forward. The panel will meet for the first time today.
Baroness Janke (LD)
I thank the Minister for her response. I am sure she is aware that, in many parts of the country, the number of households in severe housing need is rapidly rising. Indeed, it is 3,000 in my own city, with the numbers of people sleeping rough having gone up by 41%. Will the noble Baroness tell me when precise, funded proposals will be published, and can she assure us that decent, affordable homes will be provided for those families in the most severe need?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
The noble Baroness underlines the reason why we are doing this estate regeneration. The Government have an ambition to introduce more than 1 million new homes into this country by 2021. The funding that was announced was purely seed funding to attract other forms of funding both in the public and the private sector. In terms of the mix of tenure, that will certainly be in the panel’s minds as it makes its considerations going forward.
Lord Deben (Con)
My Lords, does my noble friend agree that one of the ways to make homes affordable is to ensure that they are energy efficient, so that people do not have to pay too much for their heating? Will she assure the House that these homes will not be built so energy inefficiently that they have to be dealt with again within 20 years? Can she assure the House that energy efficiency will be high on her list of priorities?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, I will not be sitting on the panel, but I shall certainly bring that point to my noble friend Lord Heseltine. Of course, my noble friend is absolutely right that, the more energy efficient a house is, the cheaper it is to live in and the cheaper the bills are for the tenants or the owners of it. I will certainly bring that point to my noble friend’s attention.
The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Stowell of Beeston) (Con)
My Lords, the House is calling for a Cross-Bencher so we must go to the Cross Bench first.
Lord Low of Dalston
My Lords, does the Minister accept that, when making large-scale policy changes on social housing or in implementing estate regeneration programmes, tenants desperately need access to information, advice and advocacy about their rights and options, on the implications for them and their families? Will she ensure that strategies for supporting housing and social welfare advice, commonly provided by such organisations as Shelter, citizens advice bureaux and law centres, are factored into the funding and effective structures for delivery?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
The noble Lord makes a very important point on the need for those tenants not to feel that this has been imposed on them or that things have been done to them, but that they are very much part of the process that is taking place. I know that that is foremost in the mind of my noble friend Lord Heseltine. It will be a collaborative process with tenants to do the best for them.
Lord Harris of Haringey
The Minister’s right honourable friend the Prime Minister, when he announced this initiative, talked about bulldozing 100 sink estates. Can the noble Baroness tell us how many families will be living in those sink estates and how far the £140 million will go towards providing them with adequate accommodation? Perhaps she can tell us whether she agrees with the Prime Minister’s terminology in describing those homes as being in sink estates.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, “sink estate” is terminology that conjures up a picture of an estate that has become run-down, in which people feel less safe to live or, indeed, where the standard of accommodation is not what it should be. The £140 million of funding is seed funding for other types of funding to come in both from the public and the private sector. While that regeneration is being done, I do not expect that the tenants will be living in those houses.
The Lord Bishop of Rochester
My Lords, I speak as one who lived on one of these estates for some 10 years in the 1980s and 1990s at a time when significant public money was invested in that estate. My memory, looking back with the benefit of hindsight, is that we probably gave relatively too much attention to physical investment and not enough to investment in other kinds of infrastructure. Will the Minister assure me that, while attention is given to the physical fabric, whether that is new or renewed, equal attention—maybe even over and above the £140 million, or another £140 million—will be given to such matters as educational, social and economic infrastructure?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
The right reverend Prelate makes a really good point about regeneration being about not just the physical structures that are in place but some of the social structures that are in place to support communities, and other amenities, as he said, such as schools, hospitals and GP surgeries, that so often are not thought about when we think about regeneration.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)
My Lords, I declare an interest as a councillor in Lewisham. The Government issued an Estate Regeneration Programme prospectus in 2014 that promised a £150 million fund from 2015-16 onwards, with all the funds being drawn down by March 2019. The PM recently announced a £140 million fund for estate regeneration. Will the Minister confirm that these are not the same funds being announced twice?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
The noble Lord is absolutely right. These are not the same funds being announced twice. The fund that he is referring to was for regeneration projects that had run into difficulty and needed substantial support from government.
Walking and Cycling
(8 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Barker
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to invest in promotion of walking and cycling.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport and Home Office (Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon) (Con)
My Lords, the Government have made clear their intention to make this country a cycling nation and are committed to producing a cycling and walking investment strategy setting out our objectives, activities and funding available for cycling and walking in England in the long term. The strategy will be published in the summer and will include details of how the £300 million committed in the recent spending review will be invested to support both cycling and walking.
Baroness Barker (LD)
My Lords, from April 2016 the Government have reduced the revenue funding for local authority cycling and walking safety training from £78 million a year to £20 million a year. That will inevitably lead to a reduction in the number of trainers available for schoolchildren and adults. Given that the Department of Health is having to put together a strategy to combat the epidemic of obesity in adolescents, does the Minister not believe that this is a false economy?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
Over the past five years the spending on cycling per person in England has actually gone from £2 per person to £6 per person. If we look at the priority cities, £10 is being spent on each individual. The noble Baroness talked about safety. The Government are investing a further £50 million in the excellent Bikeability scheme, which ensures that our next generation of cyclists are avid cyclists but also learn the importance of safety in cycling.
Baroness Heyhoe Flint (Con)
My Lords, in the recently published new strategy for sport, the Minister for Sport said that the DCMS is not the only department that should be concerned about supporting the health of the nation; 10 other government departments were mentioned in that strategy but, interestingly, not the Department for Transport. I wonder if my noble friend the Minister could—not get on his bike but get involved and speak to all those various departments to see if there can be joined-up government to help such an important facet of our nation’s health.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My noble friend makes a very important point and I shall certainly follow that up. But I assure her that health is one of the key priorities for the DfT.
Lord Clark of Windermere (Lab)
My Lords, does the Minister appreciate that the Forestry Commission provides not only many trees for this country and much timber but thousands upon thousands of miles of forests for the citizens of this country to walk and cycle in, and that there has been a repositioning of the forests much more into the urban areas? For example, when I was chairman, we planted more than 4 million trees in south Lancashire alone. Will the Minister give us an assurance that the Forestry Commission will be considered for some money out of the £300 million pot that is expected in the summer?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
I cannot give a specific commitment on how that £300 million will be allocated; that has yet to be decided. If, however, the Forestry Commission would like to make to make a representation I would be delighted to meet with it to discuss its plans further.
Lord Butler of Brockwell (CB)
My Lords, now that a good deal of Victoria Embankment has been given up for a cycling track, can anything be done to oblige cyclists to use that rather than take up the diminished space on the roads?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
Most cyclists also recognise the importance of safety, and the purpose of cycle lanes is exactly that: to provide a safe and secure cycling environment. I am sure that any cyclist will take up the new facilities with great enthusiasm.
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, the Minister referred to safety training for children, but they also need safe walking and cycling routes to schools, because that is a key way of encouraging them not just to walk or to cycle but to scoot to school. Do the Government intend to introduce safe routes for walking and cycling to all schools, rather than having them just as a desirable optional extra?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
We already see very good examples of our local authorities and schools adopting excellent schemes. As a father of three children, I can assure noble Lords that local schools are very diligent in supporting both walking and cycling; that practice is widespread across the country.
Viscount Hailsham (Con)
May I make a minority point? Counties such as Lincolnshire have many disused railways, which provide a real opportunity for creating tracks to be shared by walkers, cyclists and riders on horseback. There is, however, a problem with the tarmac that is being put down: it is splendid for bicycles, okay for walkers but very, very bad for riders on horseback. Will the Minister, therefore, encourage the use of a material other than tarmac for these shared tracks?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
As a resident of Wimbledon, I see many examples of shared facilities, and they are a good thing. I assure the House that I am very familiar with the shared use of tracks for bicycles, walking and, indeed, horses. However, my noble friend makes an important point and I will take it back for consideration.
Lord Rosser (Lab)
The Government have said that they will reduce the number of pedestrian and cyclist fatalities each year. What is the Government’s minimum target figure for the reduction of pedestrian and cyclist fatalities each year, and how much are they planning to spend each year on cycling safety as opposed to general road safety?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
Any responsible government will have the aim of ultimately reducing the deaths of cyclists to zero. Any cyclist’s death is one too many. The number of deaths currently stands at 113; the number of serious injuries, however, is far higher. The noble Lord makes an important point about the education of cyclists, and therefore—as I have already said—the Government support schemes such as Bikeability very strongly.
Lord Dobbs (Con)
Does the Minister remember that a year ago I was in training for Walk4Jack, in support of my desperately injured neighbour Jack, who had tragically broken his neck in a rugby accident? I hope that he remembers it, because he gave me a nice cheque for it. Indeed, almost 200 Members of this House supported Walk4Jack. Is it an appropriate moment for me to inform the House that, partly because of the support available here, Jack is now putting the threads of his life back together: still tragically injured but going back to work? Does the Minister agree that this is a wonderful example of the benefits of walking—which include my loss of a stone and a half—and also of the depths of generosity of this House, for which I am grateful from the bottom of my heart?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My Lords, when my noble friend started speaking I thought that he might be reminding me—I was racking my brains as to whether I had paid the cheque. I am glad for the accuracy of Hansard, which proves that to be the case. I join him—as I am sure all Members will—in welcoming the rapid recovery of his friend. Sometimes this House comes under great scrutiny, and at times criticism, but it is an excellent example of the best of British, and I too want to put on record the immense generosity of this House in supporting such schemes.
Daesh: Genocide
Lord Alton of Liverpool
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how they intend to respond to the resolutions of the European Parliament and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe condemning the actions of Daesh/ISIS in the Middle East as genocide.
The Earl of Courtown (Con)
My Lords, the European Parliament and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe are right to condemn Daesh abuses in the Middle East and its treatment of minorities. It is a long-standing government policy that any judgments on whether genocide has occurred are a matter for the international judicial system, rather than Governments or other non-judicial bodies. However, let me reassure noble Lords of the Government’s commitment to defeating Daesh and preventing further abuses.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, what is the point of Britain being a signatory to the 1948 genocide convention if, when compelling evidence emerges of mass graves, systematic executions, abduction, rape, enslavement and the forced conversion of minorities such as Yazidis and Christians—evidence sufficient to convince the European Parliament and the Council of Europe—the United Kingdom declines to name this horrific cruelty for the genocide that it is? Do we intend to ignore these resolutions, or will we take them to the Security Council and seek a referral to the International Criminal Court or a regional tribunal, so that those responsible for these heinous crimes will one day be brought to justice?
The Earl of Courtown
The noble Lord, Lord Alton, describes these crimes quite rightly as heinous. He also suggested that we take this matter to the UN Security Council, but it would be for the Security Council as a whole to agree. The UN Security Council has already taken a number of steps against Daesh, for example the binding resolutions against it which seek to reduce its ability to finance its activities and cut the flow of foreign fighters. However, whether or not this is ever designated as genocide does not stop this country’s determination to deliver aid to those people in that situation.
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
My Lords, some of us are really puzzled as to the slowness of the labelling as genocide of Daesh activities, whether by a stronger push from London or in the United Nations. Does my noble friend accept that we are dealing here with a movement of undiluted evil? As the noble Lord, Lord Alton, has reminded us, there have been beheadings, crucifixions, burnings alive, raping and the killing off of the entire Yazidi community. Its sister franchise in west Africa is even reported to be burning children alive. If this does not take us to the definition of genocide in its present form, and I realise that we have to be careful with the words, then surely there must be something wrong with the convention and the international bureaucracy that decrees these things. Can more urgency be put into a matter where it is plain fact that we are dealing with one of the most evil movements of the world, which should be destroyed?
The Earl of Courtown
My Lords, once again my noble friend describes the dreadful activities taking place. Perhaps I could add a reference to a letter that was written to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, by the Prime Minister. I offer my apologies for how late it was in getting him a reply. My right honourable friend the Prime Minister repeated that it is a long-standing government policy that any judgment as to whether or not genocide has occurred is a matter to be judged by the international judicial system. We will nevertheless, of course, continue to fight to bring an end to Daesh’s campaign of terror.
Lord Gordon of Strathblane (Lab)
My Lords, I share the general confusion as to the Government’s position on this. Do they think that genocide is an inappropriate word to ascribe to the activities of Daesh in the Middle East, or do they think that, although significant and accurate, it is better to keep quiet about it in the interests of some greater good, which I must confess for the moment eludes me?
The Earl of Courtown
On the contrary, my Lords, we are not keeping quiet about this issue at all. Only last week, we had 33 Heads of State and 60 different organisations across the road in the QEII Centre, where we had the Syria conference. At that conference, more than $11 billion was committed to spending in Syria. This is not sitting back and doing nothing.
Lord Singh of Wimbledon (CB)
My Lords, when a few months ago I asked for government support for an international inquiry into supposed genocide against the Sikh community in India, I was told, in a very short reply, that it was solely a matter for the Indian Government. That was not a very Christian sentiment. Would the Minister agree with the sentiments of the Sikh guru who gave his life defending the right of followers of another religion to worship in the manner of their choice? Human rights abuses against anyone are the responsibility of us all, and the Government should take every measure to bring those guilty of them to justice.
The Earl of Courtown
My Lords, the noble Lord refers to a Question that my noble friend Lady Anelay answered. We will of course take careful note of what the noble Lord said, including how important it is that people have the freedom to worship in their own faith.
Transport for London Bill [HL]
The Chairman of Committees
That the Commons message of 17 November 2015 be now considered; and that the promoters of the Transport for London Bill [HL], which was originally introduced in this House in Session 2010-12 on 24 January 2011, should have leave to proceed with the Bill in the current Session according to the provisions of Private Business Standing Order 150B (Revival of bills).
Welfare Reform and Work Bill
(8 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Freud
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud) (Con)
My Lords, I will first speak to Amendments 1 and 2, which seek to pave the way for the introduction of an exemption from the benefit cap for all households where a member receives carer’s allowance or guardian’s allowance. We will bring forward regulations to give effect to these exemptions later this year. The exemption will mean that households where someone receives carer’s allowance or guardian’s allowance will be exempt from the cap. For carer’s allowance, this means that the claimant’s household will be exempt from the effect of the cap regardless of whether the cared-for person is part of that household or not.
Providing an exemption from the cap where a member of the household receives carer’s allowance fits within the wider government strategy to do more to support and invest in carers. Both carers and carers’ organisations have welcomed this change, with Carers UK, one of many organisations that work tirelessly to support the needs of carers, describing it as “fantastic news”.
Following the eloquent arguments on guardian’s allowance put forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, on 25 January, I said during the debate on Report on 27 January that this was an issue I wanted to explore further. Having considered the issue carefully, I can now confirm that we intend to exempt all households in receipt of guardian’s allowance from the benefit cap.
Guardian’s allowance is paid to someone who is bringing up a child whose parents have died, or in cases where one parent has died and the other parent cannot look after the child, for example where the other parent is untraceable, unknown or serving a long prison term. As noble Lords will appreciate, this is a very difficult time both for the guardian and for their family, who are not only dealing with their own grief over the loss of a family member or friend, but also helping a bereaved and possibly distressed child come to terms with their loss while settling them into a new family home.
By tabling this amendment we are leading the way for the introduction of an exemption, and we will bring forward regulations to give effect to that later this year. An exemption from the cap emphasises that the Government both recognise the difficult circumstances these families face and strongly value the role of guardians in enabling vulnerable and bereaved children to continue living with their relatives or close family friends.
Amendment 3, as I explained on Report on 25 January, was tabled in response to a recommendation by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee that regulations made under the powers introduced by Clauses 8 and 9 should be submitted to the Social Security Advisory Committee for consideration. We have decided to accept the committee’s recommendation in part.
During the debate on 25 January, the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, asked for a clarification of what regulations might be available to be sent to SSAC, as well as an explanation of why the Government do not think that the level of the cap should be referred to SSAC. I will explain that now. But before I do, I should like to put on record the fact that the Government greatly value the role that SSAC undertakes in providing impartial advice on social security and related matters. This is why consultation with SSAC may extend to cover regulations relating to the key features of the benefit cap policy. For example, we would discuss with SSAC any proposed changes to the grace period or exemption criteria, the introduction of new disregards, or changes to which level of the cap applies to the different household types.
Regulations relating solely to changes in the level of the cap are not included in this amendment. Changes in the level of the cap require a broad assessment of the most significant long-term developments and trends that might affect our economy and are important to households up and down the country. Factors such as inflation, benefit rates, the strength of the labour market, and any other matters that may be crucial and relevant at that time, need to be considered. This is why we have maintained throughout that it is important to allow the Secretary of State the ability to consider the context of the cap in a broad and balanced way. Maintaining this approach means that the Government can respond quickly in the light of any significant economic events that occur unexpectedly but will have long-term consequences for the national economy, and can take steps to adjust the cap level accordingly.
Equally importantly, let us not forget that any changes to the level of the cap are subject to the affirmative procedure, as agreed on Report on 25 January, when government amendments to that effect were accepted. So noble Lords will have the opportunity to ask the Government to explain any changes in the level of the cap before voting to accept those changes. I believe this approach substantially addresses the committee’s recommendation, but also enables the Secretary of State to respond to economic circumstances by considering a broad range of factors when considering the cap level.
Amendment 4 is a consequence of Amendment 3. Its purpose is to make clear that the new clause inserted by Amendment 3, which brings regulations under the benefit cap provisions within the remit of SSAC, extends to England and Wales, and Scotland.
As we draw to the end of debate on the benefit cap clauses, may I take this opportunity not just to thank noble Lords for their contributions on this subject, but to focus on the fact that they have helped to ensure that the work incentive principles of the cap are fairly balanced with that of protecting the most vulnerable. We will bring forward new exemptions for those in receipt of carer’s allowance and guardian’s allowance, and, as I have said, we have increased the level of parliamentary scrutiny by extending the affirmative provisions for any change to the cap level in the future.
Subject to the will of Parliament, the department will now press on with implementing these changes, and will continue to work closely with local authority partners. In spring, after Royal Assent, we will notify households that may be capped at the lower level and advise them of the support available to move into employment, as well as budgeting and housing support that they can access. This will give households several months to take up any support they might need and prepare for the new cap coming in from the autumn. I beg to move.
Baroness Pitkeathley (Lab)
My Lords, when the Minister made this welcome concession about carers on Amendments 1 and 2 on Report—it is indeed fantastic news—I promised no more vituperation, and there will be none. I just have a couple of points on which I would like clarification.
To exempt carers in receipt of carer’s allowance from the benefits cap, the Government will need to amend not only the Bill but the housing benefit and universal credit regulations. Can the Minister confirm that that is what the Government intend to do? I also want to refer to carers who have an underlying entitlement to carer’s allowance. The Minister has announced that all carers in receipt of carer’s allowance will be exempted from the benefits cap. Although that covers the majority of carers, a small number of working-age carers have an underlying entitlement to carer’s allowance but do not receive the payments because they are already in receipt of another income-replacement benefit. That means that carers who have an underlying entitlement to carer’s allowance but are in receipt of benefits—such as jobseeker’s allowance, employment support allowance, maternity allowance and so on—may still be affected by the cap. I should like the Minister’s assurance that he intends this to apply to all carers. If he is unable to give me that assurance now, perhaps he could write to me.
I end by thanking the Minister again for this extremely welcome concession and recognition of all that carers do for the nation, and offer the support of the carers’ organisations in getting the information out there. Anything that can be done to help the Government convey that news will be done.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham (Lab)
My Lords, I, too, thank the Minister. I am truly grateful that he has responded in such a compassionate and sympathetic way to the situation of people who are at the hardest edge of kinship care, when bereaved family members are seeking to look after bereaved children. What the Government, and the Minister in particular, have done is remove an additional pressure that we would have been putting on them of financial strain. As I understand it, he has confirmed that not only will such families be exempt from the benefit cap, the entire income, not just the guardian’s allowance, will not come under the benefits cap—in other words, as a group, they will be excluded. That is so important for those families to give the children they are caring for—as well as their own children, perhaps—the stability and security they need if, out of the wreckage of their lives and the damage that has been done to them, they can hope to build a secure future. I am very grateful to the Minister and thank him enormously.
Baroness Manzoor (LD)
I add my thanks from these Benches. It is great and really welcome. To have these two allowances removed from the benefits cap is essential. We have had long debates and this was pointed out very clearly and forcefully by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis. We on these Benches are really grateful.
Of course, I remain concerned about other areas, such as the additional children of women who are fleeing domestic violence. I implore the Minister to look again at that issue, and perhaps we could come back to it, so that those women, or indeed partners, could be exempted from the two-child tax credit limit.
The Lord Bishop of Portsmouth
My Lords, without wanting to detain the House, I add on behalf of this Bench our thanks to the Minister and offer our support and gratitude for the amendments he has brought forward today. The concerns that have been expressed around the House on many occasions for those who are most vulnerable in society have been passionate and heartfelt. It is good and reassuring when they are heard, and we offer our thanks as well.
Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope (LD)
My Lords, I add my note of congratulation to the noble Baronesses, Lady Pitkeathley, Lady Hollis and Lady Drake, on the splendid work that they have done not just on this Bill but long before and since. They deserve the credit for these hard-fought and well-won amendments, as does the Minister. This has not been an easy Bill at all. Indeed, I do not want to spoil the tone but I join the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, in saying that this is the worst Bill that I have ever come across in 35 years of working in social security. This group of amendments is extremely welcome, but taking £12 billion out of the social security system for the rest of this Parliament is going to continue to be a hard-fought business at all levels, particularly in this House.
I congratulate the Social Security Advisory Committee, whose work is exemplary; it supports a lot of the work that many of us in this House do. I also congratulate the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, which was absolutely correct in its 13th report when it strove to draw to the Government’s attention the fact that the SSAC needed to have a role in these clauses. I agree with that, and now we have a compromise. I do not understand why the Government decided not to allow the whole of the DPRRC’s recommendation; it would not amount to much, and keeping the level out of the hands of the SSAC just encourages Treasury Ministers to say daft things after Budget purdah without any consultation or anticipation by anyone—there have been examples of that in the recent past.
It also detracts from the established annual procedure for updating the social security levels that Parliament has always had in the uprating statement. I note, for example, that there is no sign of the uprating statement coming to your Lordships’ House this year; it is being done by the other place. I look forward to the powers that be allowing at least a Moses Room debate because it is the one occasion when you can look at the national insurance accounts, the Government Actuary’s recommendations and the totality of social security and tax credit expenditure. If this House cannot find time to discuss that annually, that is a matter of very great regret.
My final point is about the SSAC and the policy around the benefit cap. It is one of the most regressive policies that I have ever come across in any social security system, but I understand that I am in a minority of maybe one in the country on that question now. Maybe the Minister will confirm this because I think that the answer to this question is yes: once, as I hope it will be, austerity is dealt with and as a nation we get into a more favourable set of economic circumstances, I believe that the SSAC could use its discretion to undertake a report into the whole policy. I do not think it is excluded by anything in these amendments from looking at the impact and eventual outcome, after the introduction of universal credit. I understand that that may be a few years down the line, but am I right that nothing in the amendments precludes the committee, on cause shown, if it really believes that it needs to make recommendations to the Minister?
I pay tribute to everyone who has been involved in this Bill; it has been one of the hardest fought and most difficult, and people have worked hard on it. We have got results today, and I welcome that as much as anyone. Still, I think that the Bill will cause damage in future, although I know that as long as the noble Lord, Lord Freud, is in his position he will be monitoring that carefully. If he believes in the fullness of his consideration that some of this stuff needs to be amended in future, we rely on him to come to the House and tell us so. I would be one of the first to support him if he did.
Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)
My Lords, I join those who have congratulated the Minister on recognising the special needs of this particularly deserving group. I also congratulate those who have brought these matters to his attention. I feel that this demonstrates very clearly that, when a good argument is put forward, it will be listened to.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)
My Lords, I am sorry that I cannot join totally in the congratulations, although obviously the noble Baronesses, Lady Pitkeathley and Lady Hollis, have achieved great things. However, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and I were very keen that those adopters of difficult children who join their families should also be excluded from the cap. In his reply, the Minister accepted that, where sibling groups were adopted, that would be an exclusion, but where there was one child, his words were, I think, that they would be not unlike any other family.
I suggest to the Minister that any adopted child is not like any other family. Children in care who are going to be adopted are not sweetness and light on the whole. They have had very difficult childhoods and are going to need extraordinary care. I express my disappointment. We have written to him to say that we are disappointed that adopted children have not been included in the list. Having said that, I am extremely grateful for those who are.
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
My Lords, I, too, thank the Government for the concessions that they have made, and I share the view expressed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, that, on this occasion, when a good argument was mounted, it was listened to. However, I say to the Minister that, if he liked those, I have plenty more where they came from, so I look forward to future useful conversations. I also promise him no vituperation at all. Perhaps he will permit me a mild sulk when I come to the third of his amendments, but I promise to be gentle about it.
I welcome wholeheartedly the decision to exempt all those in receipt in carer’s allowance and also to go a step further and not just to exempt guardian’s allowance, as had been hinted at at a previous stage, but in fact to exempt all households containing someone claiming guardian’s allowance. That is a generous response to the pressure from this House. In particular, I pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Pitkeathley for all the work she has done on carers, of whom she is such a tireless champion, and to my noble friend Lady Drake for emphasising the position of carers of different kinds.
I have certainly raised the question of guardian’s allowance to precisely no effect whatever, but when my noble friend Lady Hollis gave a speech and made a report, the Minister ran the white flag up the flagpole at once, and said, “I now know how to deal in future with matters on which I have good arguments.” I commend him for having listened carefully to that one.
The question on which I am still a little unhappy is related to government Amendment 3, raised by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood. As the Minister said, I pushed on this on Report, and I would have brought another amendment back, had I been permitted, but I am afraid the Companion does not allow me to do it. I am glad the Minister has explained why the Government took the view to accept only in part the recommendation made by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. However, I think it is worth while reminding ourselves that the committee could not have been much stronger. It actually said that it considered it inappropriate,
“for this Bill to confer the highly significant regulation-making powers in Clauses 7 and 8 without the application of the SSAC scrutiny requirement”.
When the Government decided not to accept that in full, that is quite a strong statement. It is worth remembering why. Although the benefit cap is a matter for Parliament, all regulations are a matter for Parliament. All that happens is that they go there via an expert Social Security Advisory Committee which will then give advice to us and to Ministers about the way in which the Government should proceed. The Executive are entirely at liberty to ignore that advice and to press ahead, but they really ought to listen.
The reason that the level of the cap is important is that it is not just a matter for the economy. For example, it would be perfectly possible for a Minister to bring forward regulations saying the cap should be set at £500 a year. I am not suggesting they would, but they could. In doing so, that would render completely pointless the entire array of social security legislation, specifying the entitlement people have to a range of benefits by simply saying, “You may be entitled to all of those—however, anything over £500 we just will not give you”. I am not suggesting the Government would do it, but that is an extraordinarily important power, and therefore a very good reason that the SSAC should have been invited to use its powers in scrutinising it before the Government were able to go ahead and do it. However, all I can do at this point, as I say, is sulk mildly, register my disappointment and urge the Government to go away and think again, because I would not want to break the mood of general congratulation, in which I share.
I take the opportunity to ask the Minister a couple of practical questions. He mentioned that the Government will be bringing regulations back later in the year to legislate for those parts of the concessions that are not covered by the amendments today. He has explained he would do that in relation to the amendments on the benefit cap. Will the Minister also tell the House when and how the Government will legislate to deal with their concessions in relation to the two-child policy for kinship carers and adoptive carers? I understand that the regulations will be subject to the negative procedure. Is that correct? If so, will he commit to publishing draft regulations before anything is laid in Parliament? A lot of debate has gone on and in the light of that debate and, indeed, in the light of the comment that he made on Report to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth in relation to domestic violence, it would be helpful to the House if he were willing to offer that.
Lord Freud
I thank noble Lords very much for the lack of vituperation all round, which is deeply appreciated, and for their thoughtful speeches, although I think that this debate has been thoughtful all the way through the different stages. I have appreciated very much what noble Lords have said.
Let me try to answer some of the specific questions. The noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, had forensic queries about the underlying entitlement. As she understands, that is quite complicated. We will go through these issues carefully and bring forward the regulations that allow us to frame the required exemptions, but I make it absolutely clear that our intention is that the exemptions should cover all the carer’s allowance underlying entitlement group, caring for at least 35 hours a week, and equivalent groups in universal credit. I hope that I have satisfied her on that. I confirm also that we will amend housing benefit and universal credit regulations in line, so I think that I have answered affirmatively—indeed, I always answer the noble Baroness affirmatively, as the House has now noticed.
Let me pick up the specific questions put by the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, on the two-child policy, when she skilfully asked me to make huge commitments. On the regulations and sight of them, I hope she will take this in the spirit in which I am presenting it. This will be a rather transparent process. The regulations are not straightforward. They are very sensitive in some areas and we will be working with stakeholders to get them right. I am not talking about an overly formalised consultation process, but I am talking about a transparent process—much more open than you will see with some of the other regulations. I hope that that satisfies her. I will allow her the indulgence of accusing me of not honouring the spirit of what I have said if she thinks I have not.
On the sibling group question—the sequential question—clearly, our intention is that sibling groups are kept together. As we draft the exemption we need to work with stakeholders and colleagues to get this exactly right because it is quite complicated. We will take the point made by the noble Baroness absolutely on board.
I think I ought to write to the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood on the SSAC’s powers, which are rather wide. As the noble Lord knows better than anyone else, there is the power to have independent reviews, but I shall put in writing the exact status of what it can and cannot look at, so that others are able to see it. I can tell the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, that our approach has been that it is not fair to treat parents adopting a child more advantageously than other parents, but we recognise the value of having sibling groups together. That is where we have concentrated our exemption.
I hear the point about domestic violence from the noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor. We have a series of measures to support victims who flee violent households, and I will write to her, laying out what those are. I am in absolutely no doubt that, as we get closer to defining the regulations, this is an issue to which various Members of this House will want to come back. I have probably said all that I can at this time on that. I beg to move.
Lord Freud
Lord Freud
“Benefit cap: Social Security Advisory Committee
(1) In section 170 of the Social Security Administration Act 1992 (Social Security Advisory Committee), in subsection (5)—
(a) in the definition of “the relevant enactments”, after paragraph (al) insert—“(ala) sections 96 to 97 of that Act;”;(b) in the definition of “the relevant Northern Ireland enactments”, after paragraph (al) insert—“(ala) any provisions in Northern Ireland which correspond to sections 96 to 97 of that Act;”.(2) In Schedule 7 to the Social Security Administration Act 1992 (regulations not requiring prior submission), in Part 1 (Social Security Advisory Committee), after paragraph 3 insert—
“Benefit cap3A Regulations under section 96A of the Welfare Reform Act 2012.””
Lord Freud
Lord Freud
(a) the amount that would be found under sub-paragraph (4)(a) if sub-paragraph (4)(a)(iii) were disregarded, and(b) the amount that would be found under sub-paragraph (4)(b) if the period in question were the whole of the relevant year in which the tenancy begins,”
Lord Freud
My Lords, the amendment to paragraph 3(5) of Schedule 2 is to address ambiguity in the drafting and clarify that, in a case where the tenancy begins after the beginning of the first relevant year but not at the beginning of the second or third relevant year, the rent should be calculated in the following relevant year. The amendment also removes a redundant cross-reference to paragraph 3(2), which is a drafting error we had regrettably not spotted previously.
I would like to inform the House that a number of social housing providers have alerted us to an unintended consequence of the government amendment brought forward on Report, which sought to enable continuation of existing policy that affordable rents are inclusive of service charge when determined on the percentage of market rent principle, but exclusive of service charge when determined on the social rent model. We have looked at this and agree there is an issue in the drafting that we need to address. The Government will therefore be seeking to do so during Commons consideration of Lords amendments. I thank the providers who raised that issue with us, and apologise to the House that this has come up at such a late stage, and that we are dealing with it in this way.
The Bill returns to the other place without the proposed changes to the ESA WRAG, and the limited capability for work element in universal credit. It also now places a requirement on the Government to publish and report on income measures of child poverty. In sending these amendments back, the Cross-Benchers, in particular, have sent a clear message and I will say only this: there will now be a process between the two Houses, as is conventional. We have discussed many other matters during the passage of the Bill. Many of them are important and we will continue to reflect on them and seek to obtain the best outcomes we can. I beg to move.
Lord McKenzie of Luton (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his explanation of Amendment 5. It makes the drafting of this area somewhat less impenetrable. I was going to say that it would be churlish, given the occasion, to point out that this is the third or fourth attempt to get this drafting right but clearly there will need to be a fourth or fifth, from what the Minister has said, and we welcome the point to which he has alerted us.
I take this opportunity to welcome the Minister’s action in deferring the impact of the rent reduction policy for a period and holding back on the local housing allowance. We will have to see where that leads. Of course, this point was pursued rigorously by the noble Lords, Lord Best and Lord Kerslake. My understanding is that this has not necessarily allayed the concerns of providers sufficiently and there is the risk of holding back on some key projects in relation to supported accommodation, which would be a great pity. So I think there is a task for the Government there.
With regard to the amendments that go back with the Bill to the other place, all we can do is urge the Minister to send it on its way with his wholehearted support.
Baroness Manzoor
My Lords, we broadly support Amendment 5. It is a positive change. I take this opportunity to thank the Minister for the very constructive way in which he has allowed us to meet him, because there have been great challenges in the Bill. It has been a very difficult Bill and he has been a master at defending a very difficult piece of legislation. I sensed at times that he himself felt, “My gosh, what are we doing here?”. I may be putting words in his mouth but that is the sense I got.
Obviously, there are significant financial cuts to some of the most vulnerable in our society. As the Minister is aware, I have been very concerned about the issues relating to the work allowance and the cuts that will affect working people. We have looked at the Bill through the prism of work. I am also very concerned about the cuts to employment allowances for people with disabilities and progressive illnesses. I state again that I really cannot understand how cutting £30 a week from the employment allowances for people in the ESA group is going to make them better and fitter and enable them to go back to work. I say to the Minister: this is going back to the House of Commons but please could the Government look at this? It is so important as a sign of a compassionate, caring society that we look after the most vulnerable. But I thank the Minister, and the Bill team, for the time he has given to the Bill and the very constructive dialogue he has held with us.
Lord Low of Dalston (CB)
My Lords, the Minister made reference to the Bill going back to the other place without the provisions relating to the removal of the ESA WRAG premium and the comparable allowance under universal credit, and to the fact that he would be working to achieve the best outcome in relation to these provisions. I wonder if he would be prepared to meet my noble friends Lady Meacher and Lady Grey-Thompson and me so that we could work together on achieving the best outcome in relation to these provisions. My office is in touch with his office to see if we can set up a meeting with him and Priti Patel, who I believe has also been involved in these issues. I very much appreciate the support of the noble Baroness who spoke before me, and her plea for the Minister to give earnest consideration to this issue, with a view to achieving a better outcome than was in the Bill originally.
Lord Freud
I hear what the noble Lord, Lord Low, has asked for—a meeting on this matter. Of course I would be pleased to meet him, and other colleagues, to discuss this as it wends its way back to the Commons, and perhaps back to us, depending on what happens.
May I take this opportunity to place on formal record my thanks to noble Lords throughout the House? They have discharged their duties to look at the Bill really conscientiously, and have worked hard on some difficult and sensitive issues. They have brought out some unintended consequences, and they have described them and expressed their case in calm, clear language, which means that we can take the points and aim to address them. Indeed, both today and on Report we have tackled some of them.
The Bill has been insulted by one or two noble Lords. I have to reflect back that it has raised some profound issues around what the benefit and welfare system does and how it works. Pinpointing where it affects the most vulnerable and how we can ameliorate that and sort it out has been really valuable.
I thank the Bill team, a handful of whom are in the Box now. They have been formidable in supporting me all the way through the progress of the Bill. I know that they have also been assiduous in briefing noble Lords, because we set up the system, which I have used with previous Bills, whereby there is a briefing ahead of Committee stage, so that when we debate these issues we do not waste time but are able to deal with the issues. The Bill team have done a really good job, and I believe noble Lords think so, too. I am sure I express the view of the whole House in thanking them for all their support.
Baroness Sherlock
May I, on behalf of the Opposition, thank the Minister for giving us access to his officials? I thank the Bill team and some very impressive policy people who have been briefing Peers from all over the House. We appreciate his generosity in giving us access to them, and their expertise and willingness to explain to us patiently—sometimes, if necessary, more than once —precisely how the Bill works. We are grateful for that. They have also been helpful in working with the wonderful Muna Abbas, from our Whips team, who has done a brilliant job in supporting us from this side.
We have not been persuaded by the Minister that this is anything other than a bad Bill—but now, as a result of what this House has done, it is less bad than it was. I pay tribute to Peers throughout the House, who have shown the House of Lords doing what it does best—being a revising Chamber which, even when it does not like legislation, focuses its attention on improving it and sending it back to the other place much better than it was. Long may we do so.
Housing and Planning Bill
Lord Greaves
Lord Greaves (LD)
My Lords, it is an exciting privilege to set off this Committee. I do not know how many sittings we will have, but I am sure that by the end of it we will have completely forgotten today. I start by apologising for not tabling the amendments in time to go on to the Marshalled List. I was a bit spooked by the change in today’s business, so I apologise for that.
As it is the start of a new stage of the Bill, I should declare some interests: my membership of Pendle Borough Council, of which I am deputy leader; I am a vice-president of the LGA; and I am vice-chairman of the APPG on Local Democracy—I shall miss its reception today because of the Bill, and I would rather be there, but never mind. There will be other interests, but those relate to the amendments I have tabled at the moment. In moving my amendment, I shall speak to the others in the group.
We move straight to Part 2, and I say right from the beginning that, first, this is one of the better parts of the Bill and, secondly, it is one of the better written and presented parts, with a great amount of detail on the face of the Bill and in the schedules. If the whole Bill were like that, a lot of us would be a lot happier, but we can be happy for the time being. This part is headed:
“Rogue landlords and property agents”.
When I read it, I asked myself whether the word “rogue” is a proper word to appear in legislation. What does it mean? Is it not just slang and colloquial? Why is it here? We will come back to that.
Chapter 2—Clauses 13 to 26—is all about “Banning orders”. As I said, the clauses in this chapter are admirably clear. They require the Secretary of State to set out in regulations exactly what the banning orders may be put in place for but, nevertheless, by and large, it is a model of good legislation. Clause 13 bans a person from,
“letting housing in England … engaging in English letting agency work … engaging in English property management work, or … doing two or more of those things”.
That is absolutely clear. That is what a person is banned for if they get a banning order. The interesting thing is that, after the first clause of Part 2, the term “rogue” or “rogue landlord” does not appear at all.
What sort of offences are we talking about? It will require regulations, but it is clear that it could be maintaining their property poorly, posing a risk of harm to tenants or other people, dangerously overcrowding their properties, exposing people to unhealthy conditions, housing illegal immigrants, intimidating or harassing tenants who raise a complaint. These things are all absolutely clear, and clearly set out, but they are specific problems that lead to people being banned; it is not clear that they lead to a person deserving the epithet “rogue” or being given that epithet for however long.
In Chapter 3, we have the “Database of rogue landlords and property agents”. However, apart from a statement to that effect at the beginning of the chapter, the words “rogue landlord” do not appear again. Clause 27(1) says what the database is. It must include people with banning orders and it may include people convicted of a banning order offence while being a residential landlord or property agent. It includes some people who have to be on the list and some people who can go on the list, but it is all about banning orders and banning order offences.
This part of the Bill is complicated. I tried to get my mind round it perfectly, but I could not. Then I saw that it will rely on guidance from the Secretary of State so that local authorities can understand it in the way that I cannot. Okay, but it is very clear that what we are going to have is a register of banned landlords and others who have committed banning order offences. What will it be called? Will it be called the register of rogue landlords, because the word “rogue” does not appear in all this? I have the distinct impression that the phrase “rogue landlord” has been added to this legislation—after it was written by civil servants—by some spin merchant somewhere in the Government who thought it would be a good idea to get some good publicity to get it through. I do not think this is the way that legislation should be written. That phrase is in the heading, but it does not appear anywhere else.
Clauses 40 to 50, which are still under the part which is supposed to be about rogue landlords, are all about rent repayments. The phrase “rogue landlord” does not appear anywhere. It is not clear to me whether any landlords who get involved in the whole system of rent repayment are rogue landlords or not. The heading of this part of the Bill contains the words “rogue landlords”, but are they rogue landlords or are they just people on the list who are rogue landlords?
Chapter 5 is “Interpretation of Part 2”. Clause 52 quite rightly sets out in some detail the “Meaning of ‘letting agent’ and related expressions”. Clause 53 sets out the “Meaning of ‘property manager’ and related expressions”. Clause 54 is a typical clause at the end of a part of a Bill. It sets out the meaning of 16 different words and expressions, starting alphabetically with “banning order” and ending with “tenancy”. However, it does not define “rogue landlord”.
Another point about which I am not at all clear is whether, once a person comes off the banned list, they are still a rogue. The problem is that it is one of those words—once a rogue, always a rogue. What does it mean? I looked up the Oxford Dictionaries on the internet and it is full of colloquial meanings. For example, it mentions that:
“a distinct criminal culture of rogues, vagabonds, gypsies, beggars, cony-catchers, cutpurses, and prostitutes emerged and flourished”,
in the 16th century. I suppose that we would not accept Gypsies in that definition, but we are not going to have legislation denouncing people as coney-catchers or cutpurses. The synonyms in the dictionary include:
“scoundrel, villain, reprobate, rascal, good-for-nothing, wretch; … rotter, bounder, hound, blighter, vagabond”.
Later on, there was something about which I was not too happy—it says:
“Northern English informal tyke, scally”.
As a Yorkshireman born and bred, I was not too happy about “tyke” being there. Perhaps we will have legislation denouncing lists of “tykes” who have to be dealt with in some way. Another definition is:
“A person or thing that behaves in an aberrant or unpredictable way”,
I do not think “rogue” is a suitable word.
I have put “specified” in the amendment because I could not think of anything better. I was going to put “banned”, but it is clear that other people may also be put on the list who have not actually been banned but who nevertheless have been convicted of banning offences. It is not entirely straightforward, but I believe that the word “rogue” and the phrase “rogue landlord” are not appropriate to go into the law of England. The Government ought to think of another phrase which is less suitable for tabloid newspaper articles and more suitable for the law of the land. I beg to move.
Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)
My Lords, this is a perfect description of the kinds of people we are dealing with. It will emphasise in the public mind exactly what is going on in the area of housing rental, and I hope that the Government will not give way on this amendment.
Lord Deben (Con)
My Lords, I am so pleased to be on the same side as the noble Lord who has just spoken. It seems a frightfully good word, it says exactly what we mean and it would be very nice if more of our legislation used language which we understood. “Rogue landlord” is a very good phrase to use because it is very important to underline how disgraceful some people are in their treatment of other people in this crucial part of their lives. My only objection is that the word is not used more frequently within the Bill, because there are several references within it where a reminder that this is a rogue-like activity is very necessary.
My only other objection is that “rogue” has a certain rather light touch—it is not as nasty as a number of other words that were used. Perhaps if we had to change it, we could go through the list that the noble Lord has put forward and choose something that is thoroughly more unpleasant than the word “rogue”. However, I cannot imagine why anybody should start this very serious debate off with a discussion about the word “rogue”. This is one of the best things in the Bill. I may have to draw my noble friend’s attention to a number of other things later on as requiring significant amendment, and many things are left out of the Bill that I would like to see put in, but the one thing I certainly would not like to see left out is the word “rogue”.
Lord Beecham (Lab)
My Lords, I understand why the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, would not wish to be considered to be a member of the “Liberal Demotic Party” but we have more important things to discuss in the 14 groups that are before us. I trust that the noble Baroness will deal with the matter briefly, and then we can get into the substance of the Bill.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)
My Lords, before I begin, I will correct a comment I made at Second Reading. At col. 1266 in Hansard I attributed a comment to my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham but he did not make that comment. Obviously, I cannot correct it in Hansard because I said it, so I use this opportunity to correct the attribution.
I will deal with the amendment briefly. When I saw the word “specified”, I thought of “specified housing” as opposed to a person. The public understand the concept of a rogue landlord, just as they would understand the concept of a rogue trader. BBC 1 in the morning is full of stories of rogues of various descriptions, so it is understood in the public mind. However, just to be clear, the majority of landlords and letting agents provide a good service, and we should commend them for doing that. This part of the Bill, which is widely supported, is about tackling the small minority of rogues who deliberately flout the rules. We should call them out for what they are, as they are rogues. It is important that we send a clear message through the Bill that such practices will not go unchecked. I therefore ask the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Northbourne (CB)
My Lords, I speak as a humble landlord. How will I know whether I am a rogue?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
The noble Lord will know very well if he is a rogue landlord, because I will now read out the definition. It is a landlord or property agent who knowingly flouts the law by renting out unsafe and substandard accommodation. To be on the database, they will have to be convicted of certain serious offences—and, for that, they may come before your Lordships’ House.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, that is not the correct definition, with respect to the Minister, unless being banned by a First-tier Tribunal is a conviction. Perhaps it is—it is certainly a status—but it is clear that people banned by the First-tier Tribunal will be on the banned list. One assumes that they are therefore rogue landlords under the definition in the Bill, so they would not have to be convicted in a higher court of law. Yes, the Minister is nodding her head.
I will be brief. I am no friend of bad landlords—far from it. In the part of Colne that I represent, parts of those streets have been wrecked by bad landlords, and I agree that it is a clear phrase in the public mind. However, we are not talking about the public mind but about phrases that will have to be interpreted at some stage by the courts of the country. We are talking about words written into the law of the land. The use of such colloquial expressions, which are perfectly okay on breakfast-time television as the people who are denounced there deserve everything they get, will get us into trouble if we put them into the law.
If the Government are really determined to put this rather unusual and extraordinary expression into the law of the land, it ought to appear in the list of definitions at the end of Part 2 so that we have a clear definition of it, because when the Minister was asked just now she did not quite give an accurate one. At the very least, I ask that it appears in the list of definitions because words mean what they say. This is not Humpty-Dumpty land. Words actually have a meaning and, when it comes to the law, words have more of a meaning than they do in chat in the pub or on breakfast-time television. Having said that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment
Lord Beecham
(a) unlawful eviction of a tenant; or(b) failure to comply with an improvement notice in relation to property conditions.(4) The Secretary of State may by regulations made by statutory instrument amend the list of offences in subsection (3).(5) A statutory instrument containing regulations under subsection (4) may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.”
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendment 8ZA. Both amendments stem from the 20th report of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, published just last Friday—hence the fact that they are manuscript amendments. Both the clauses affected, Clauses 13 and 22, have attracted considerable criticism from the committee. They relate to the introduction of banning order offences, about which the committee expresses serious concerns.
A ban would arise following conviction for a banning order offence and would prevent the relevant person from letting or engaging in letting agency or management work, as a result of an order made on the application of a local authority. It would also ban the relevant person from holding an HMO licence and allow him to be placed on a database. However, the Bill does not define the offence that would allow the Secretary of State to describe its nature, the offender’s characteristics, the place where it was committed, the court passing sentence and the sentence itself by regulations subject to the negative procedure—with no restriction whatever on the character of the offence, which need not be related to housing issues at all.
In a memorandum, however, a wide range of offences is cited as possibly relevant. The committee sensibly pointed out that these offences could be listed in the Bill with a power to amend, if necessary, by secondary legislation. The committee averred:
“We consider it inappropriate that the determination of the offences that are to constitute ‘banning order offences’ should be left entirely to the discretion of the Secretary of State and with only a modest level of Parliamentary scrutiny”.
The committee recommended removing Clause 13(3) and replacing it with a provision listing offences constituting banning order offences, with a delegated power to amend by the affirmative procedure.
The amendment tabled today defines—very narrowly, it must be said—the grounds for a banning offence, and requires parliamentary approval for the relevant regulations. The grounds may be considered too narrow. I hope that the Minister will look at the issue and come back on Report with a more developed position in which parliamentary approval for any new offence is required.
Amendment 8ZA to Clause 22 relates to the provision for financial penalties for a breach of a banning order which may be imposed by the local housing authority. Subsection (9) requires the housing authority to have regard to any guidance given by the Secretary of State in respect of the exercise of its function under the clause. The amendment simply requires that such guidance should take effect only under the affirmative procedure. The amendment to Clause 22 relates to the provision in the clause in respect of the financial penalties for a breach of the banning order which may be imposed by the local housing authority.
The Delegated Powers Committee noted that Clause 22 allows a housing authority to impose a penalty of up to £30,000 for the breach of a banning order and points out that this is an alternative to a criminal prosecution. Unlike in the latter procedure, it will not be necessary for the authority to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt, such that, to quote the committee,
“this clause empowers an authority to act as if it were prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner”.
The provision in subsection (9) requiring the authority to have regard to the guidance means that such guidance will be expected to be followed unless there are cogent reasons for not doing so. The committee concluded that, given the nature of the power conferred on local housing authorities—which would deny the accused access to adjudication by a court as to whether a criminal offence had been committed—the guidance is of great significance, and accordingly that it should be laid in draft and not come into force with the affirmative procedure.
These observations essentially foreshadow the amendment to be moved later by the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes. I think that we are at one on this: indeed, there was, I think, wide agreement around the House at Second Reading that there are far too many areas that are to be covered by regulation with no evidence that any of this will be presented to us as the Bill goes through. It may be ready for other parts of the Bill but there is nothing today on these matters. Unless we have an assurance from the Minister that we will be able to see regulations before Report, the House should take a strong view in support of the amendment which I now move.
Lord Foster of Bath (LD)
My Lords, I rise in support of the amendments that have just been introduced. At Second Reading I welcomed some parts of the Bill but expressed concerns about some others: about the lack of detail, the large number of amendments laid at the very last minute in another place—again, without an opportunity for proper scrutiny—and the 30-odd additional powers given to the Secretary of State. Like many other noble Lords, I very much welcome the Minister’s commitment and promise to do all that she can to ensure that we get details of the various regulations, at least in draft form, as early as possible.
I think that many noble Lords, however, will share my concern that, despite the Minister’s promise, it seems increasingly likely that many of those draft regulations—even if we get them before we finish consideration of the Bill—will not come in time for the relevant amendments in Committee, and it may well be that some of those draft regulations will come after we have finished all stages of our deliberations in the House.
Lord Deben
My Lords, it is quite understandable why the Government have been—if I may put it like this —so loose in the wording, because they do not want to get themselves into a position where they cannot act when an offence of some notoriety takes place. I understand that. However, the big issue here for me is a very fundamental one about the freedom of people in this country. One needs to know that beforehand when one is doing something that will lead to one being punished. My concern here is that there is no certainty and that it might alter depending on who is the Minister responsible. In recent days, we have had an example of how different ways of looking at justice can proceed from Ministers of the same political party—if I may put it as delicately as that.
In those circumstances, it might be of advantage to have a list and to be a little tighter here, while still giving enough elbow room for the circumstances in which a rogue landlord might find some way to behave which we have not yet thought of. As a Member of Parliament for a very long time, my experience of rogue landlords was that they are infinite in their ability to discover mechanisms by which to penalise, harass and indeed destroy the lives of their tenants.
I am sympathetic to this amendment, and think it should contain some of the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Foster, but I hope also that we would be sympathetic to the Minister on this, because it is important that we should be able to move with the crime. We should not be so caught by the phraseology that we cannot deal with something which we have not thought of yet. With that proviso, I wonder whether my noble friend will look again at the way this is done, so that we can protect that essential freedom whereby I know in advance what will happen if I do something which I should not do, rather than not knowing in advance what will happen if I do something which I might find out someone else has decided I should not have done. I just do not think that is a very good basis for English law.
Lord Campbell-Savours
My Lords, I want to intervene briefly again, because this raises an issue of principle which came up during our consideration of tax credits. If you read the report of the Joint Committee on Conventions—the Cunningham report—you will find, under one of the sections, the conditions in which the House feels it is entitled to vote on fatal amendments. I am increasingly of the view, as I think are a number of other Members on this side of the House, that the Government are now abusing legislation by introducing skeleton Bills and bringing in, on the back of them, statutory instruments which they feel the House cannot consider in detail because we cannot amend them. This is a classic case of where, had the House had been given more information in the Bill, we would at least have had the opportunity to debate the detail, within the circumscribed area referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Deben, that would allow for flexibility. We could have considered in some detail what the crimes—if I might use that word, although it is a very broad one—might be.
I feel very strongly about fatal amendments. When it came to the consideration of tax credits, I was one of the very few Labour Peers who refused to vote, on the basis that I did regard what we were doing as fatal. That is how strongly I felt. However, increasingly in conversations with others, they will point to these recommendations on skeleton Bills and the use of SIs. One is being driven into a position whereby one has to vote on fatals—something which I never wanted to do when I was brought to this House some 15 years ago. As the Bill progresses, the noble Baroness should have it in mind that we need more detail, particularly in areas where Members might feel they wish to amend primary legislation.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
Amendments C1 and 8ZA relate to the same issue, so I shall address them together. Amendment C1 would remove Clause 13(3) from the Bill and replace it with a provision listing the offences that constitute banning order offences, namely,
“unlawful eviction of a tenant; or … failure to comply with an improvement notice in relation to property conditions”,
and would require that regulations to amend the list be subject to affirmative resolutions.
Amendment 8ZA would amend Clause 22, and would require financial penalty guidance to be laid in draft before Parliament, and not brought into force without an affirmative procedure resolution of each House.
We propose to define banning order offences in secondary legislation, as this will give us the flexibility to amend the list of banning order offences in the light of experience, as my noble friend Lord Deben said. As he has also requested in terms of certainty, we are sympathetic to that and we will consider it further.
Clause 13(4) explains what matters may be taken into consideration when setting out in regulations what are banning order offences. Banning order offences are likely to include a serious offence, where an offender has been convicted in the Crown Court of an offence involving fraud, drugs, sexual assault or violence that is committed in, or in relation to, a property that is owned or managed by the offender, or which involves, or was perpetrated against, persons occupying such a property. A banning order offence also includes any serious offence involving violence against the tenant by the landlord or property agent, and serious breaches of housing legislation.
We are planning to publish the secondary regulations in draft and will consult on these in the autumn before they are laid before the House. These will all be existing offences that already have serious consequences for those who are convicted. We are introducing civil penalties as an alternative to prosecution, and these will be available for certain serious breaches of housing legislation. The guidance for local authorities will be procedural and will provide advice on when it may be appropriate to issue a civil penalty rather than prosecute, together with advice on what might be the appropriate level of penalties.
The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, asked about the right of appeal for civil penalties. The landlord will have a right to appeal against a civil penalty to a First-tier Tribunal and can either cancel or decrease the penalty. Several noble Lords have brought up the DPRRC and its recommendations on the delegated powers in the Bill, including those highlighted in these amendments. I can confirm to noble Lords that we will consider the committee’s recommendations and respond in Committee if possible, but certainly before Report. I hope that, with those comments, the noble Lord will feel content to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Shipley (LD)
Before the Minister sits down, can I confirm my understanding of what she has said about secondary legislation? There was a request earlier that a draft of the secondary legislation should be made available to this House before Report. Yet I understood the Minister to say that there would be a draft of the secondary legislation in the autumn, which is clearly not before the Report stage. This is an extremely important matter, so can the Minister confirm exactly what the Government plan to do?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I thank the noble Lord for seeking that clarification. I said that we were planning to publish the regulations and consult on them in the autumn. If I can get any detail on them before then, I shall do so.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I am grateful for the Minister’s reply so far as it goes but there remain significant problems, particularly the contrast between a local authority being able effectively to impose a penalty of up to £30,000 for breach of a banning order on the basis of the balance of probabilities as opposed to a criminal prosecution, where of course the case would have to be proved beyond reasonable doubt. I am not at all sympathetic to rogue landlords, however they are described, but it is a curious position to have two processes, one of which requires a higher standard of proof than the other. That cannot really be satisfactory. In some respects, it may well be better to bring such a person to the courts on a criminal charge rather than the local authority taking action and securing financial compensation, yet that is a choice that will be left to the local authority. I am normally very much in favour of local authority discretion, but in this area we have to be careful not to infringe the responsibility of the judicial system. I invite the Minister to undertake at least to consider this aspect as well as those that she has already agreed to take back.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I am happy to consider it, but the guidance for the local authorities will make it clear in what circumstances it would be appropriate to use a civil penalty rather than to prosecute. If it would be helpful, though, I will set out more detail around the two routes available.
Lord Beecham
That would be extremely helpful, but it would be particularly important to be clear what standard of proof is required under the procedures involved. Would it be the same standard of proof or a different one? I am not asking the Minister to answer that at the moment, but I would hope for an assurance that that would be dealt with in the information that she has kindly offered to supply. I assume that her nod was a nod of consent. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“( ) This section shall not come into force until at least one year after the publication of a draft of regulations to be made under subsection (3).”
Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)
My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, for covering so much of the explanation of what the wording of my amendment means. It looks a bit obscure to me, but I understand that it is the appropriate tool for bringing up the issue of the regulations. I consider that we cannot satisfactorily deal with the Bill in its present form without proper consideration of the proposed regulations. I am impressed by the comments already made by the noble Lords, Lord Shipley and Lord Foster of Bath, who have done a lot of explaining that I would otherwise have to do.
At Second Reading, of the 50 speakers, more than 20 drew attention to the need for us to have the detail, in the form of draft regulations, available for us to consider during this stage of the Bill. The noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, said:
“Vast swathes of policy are left to secondary legislation”,
and concluded:
“The Bill deserves, and I am sure will get, the most intense challenge and scrutiny in this House”.—[Official Report, 26/1/16; cols. 1188-90.]
The noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, ended his speech with the words:
“First, we urgently need to see the detail of what is proposed in the secondary legislation. Secondly, we need Ministers to be genuinely open to change”.—[Official Report, 26/1/16; col. 1195.]
I believe that Ministers are genuinely open to change but that there is some degree of obstruction within the department. When we have had our three meetings with the Minister on this issue, they have said that they feel they cannot get anything through in time and that all this could be looked at after the Bill receives Royal Assent. Of course, that is hopeless: if we look at things after Royal Assent, all we can do is have a statutory instrument come forward, to which we say yes or no. We are not then in a position to improve the legislation.
The noble Baroness, Lady Royall, said that,
“the regulation rot sets in at line 14 and continues throughout”.
Then she said:
“The details will be determined by regulation”.—[Official Report, 26/1/16; col. 1197.]
There it is again. The noble Lord, Lord Palmer, speaking about,
“the lack of published regulations relating to the Bill”,
said:
“I suspect that that is because they have not even been written yet”.—[Official Report, 26/1/16; col. 1239.]
That was a fairly appropriate remark, particularly in view of what had been said at our pre-meetings.
The noble Baroness, Lady Grender, wanted regulations now. Again, she is one of many of us who have said that. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, said that he was expecting,
“vast reams of secondary legislation. Many of the clauses have not been properly considered and received cursory—if any—scrutiny in the Commons”.
I think that is true. The Bill has been pushed on to us after the barest consideration in the Commons, which makes it doubly important that we carefully consider every aspect of it in this House. The noble Lord went on to say:
“This Bill gives 34 additional powers to the Secretary of State”.—[Official Report, 26/1/16; col. 1254.]
That is highly significant.
The noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, made a point, which the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, also made, about the report of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. I know its title well, because I served on that committee for almost 10 years —certainly for more than two terms—and I have never read a more scathing report than this one. I would not even have realised that it had been published, because it came out so close to time, had I not, at Questions earlier today, found myself sitting next to the chairman of that committee, who asked me whether I had seen the report. I left Question Time early to run out and get it, to see what it said. It affirms what we are saying: we need all this. We need the information so that we can deal with what is before us. As I said, once the Bill receives Royal Assent, it is too late for us to make any significant change. It is a very interesting and enormously powerful Bill, and it must be considered very carefully. Local authorities, too, have the right to know the detail of what is being considered, so that they can send their comments to Members of this House, and we can decide what we should be doing. I beg to move.
The Earl of Lytton (CB)
I support the noble Baroness and, in doing so, I declare my interests, first as a professional property manager, and—possibly even more significantly—as a private sector landlord. I believe I have a very contented set of tenants, without any of the roguishness that we have heard about.
Leaving aside the absence of a clear due process in the Bill and the safeguards that should go with that, in what I can describe only as this “subcontract” process to local government, putting to one side the non-judicial disposal of a case that might result in the label “rogue”, with lasting stains on character, and parking for one moment the hiatus in terms of the standard of proof referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, there remains an overriding need for Parliament to retain scrutiny of the process, the safeguards and the standards. At the moment we seem to be short of a commitment on that.
I am also concerned that the whole process is a bit reactive, populist and, if I may say so, potentially discriminatory against a class of person called a landlord or their letting or managing agent. At Second Reading, I advocated—at least, I hope it was interpreted that way—perhaps going beyond that to try to support and nurture best practice, in equal measure carrot and stick. It seems to me that landlords can very easily be pilloried by their feckless tenants in the same way that tenants can clearly be very easily prejudiced by malevolent landlords.
There are probably at least as many undesirable tenants, in numerical total, as there are undesirable landlords. I do not say that in any way to cast aspersions on the tenants. I believe that the vast majority of them, in the same way as landlords, honour their commitments, try to do the best thing and genuinely create something that is growing in popularity. It is an expanding sector. The last thing we need to do is to set about damaging it so that people feel that they are under the cosh and go away. At Second Reading, I referred to the fact that our European neighbours seem to have sorted this out without this continual anti-landlord or anti-tenant adversarial approach in their dealings.
Therefore, we need to look at the whole situation and—if I may put it this way—somehow invert the process. Perhaps having the regulations before us is one step on the way so that we can look at that in detail and examine what the actual process is. At the moment, it would be possible for almost anything to be passed down to local government. As a vice-president of the Local Government Association, I would be slightly fearful, as a local government chief officer, of what might get passed down to me, thank you very much, as a hand-me-down to police this sector.
I support the noble Baroness. The key to this is very much to get these regulations out, and I support the general thrust of her amendment.
Lord Shipley
In a sense, everything has been said about this issue, but we must put on the record, for the avoidance of any doubt, that this amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, is extremely important. As we have heard, had it not been for the manuscript amendments, this would have been the first that we discussed. It brings to the fore the issue of principle about the role of your Lordships’ House.
I agree that the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee’s report is one of the most critical—possibly the most critical—that I have read. For that reason, it matters profoundly how the Government react to it. This House must be able to do its job properly. With so much being left to secondary legislation and so much that will not be with us by Report, the Government will have to do a very urgent job.
It has been asserted that perhaps the secondary legislation has not been drafted. It really ought to have been. If it has not been, we should be told. If it has been, and it is in a form that we could see, even if it is a draft of a draft, that would be extremely helpful. I think the Minister understands the strength of feeling in your Lordships’ House about this issue. I sincerely hope that she can respond positively to the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I warmly endorse everything that the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, has said, and I, too, pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, who of course has long had an interest in these matters and has repeatedly raised them in your Lordships’ House.
It is important that the Government listen to the experience of Members from a variety of backgrounds, who know a good deal about the implications of legislation of this kind. There is a temptation to legislate in haste with a risk that you—or, more particularly, other people—repent at leisure. There is that concern about the way this matter has proceeded thus far. I fear that it is not uncommon for the committee to comment adversely on the way that matters are brought before your Lordships’ House. Lack of consultation and the reservation to government of powers to prescribe by secondary legislation, which may not come for a long time or sometimes come into force before any scrutiny has been given, is particularly invidious when we are looking at areas such as this, which impinge on the lives of many citizens.
Viscount Eccles (Con)
My Lords, I was a colleague of my noble friend Lady Gardner of Parkes on the Delegated Powers Committee for a while. My experience on that committee was that it thought very carefully before making a recommendation. In general, it has been the House’s experience that the committee’s recommendations, particularly the more severe ones, are to a large extent accepted. I hope that my noble friend on the Front Bench will be able to persuade her colleagues that the recommendations we have been discussing—Clauses 13 and 22 come to mind—need to be taken very seriously and responded to in a positive manner, not pushed off into any form of long grass.
Lord Foster of Bath
My Lords, I repeat my congratulations to the noble Baroness on being the first in your Lordships’ House to lay an amendment on this very important issue. I echo all the words of my noble friend Lord Shipley, although he left one issue rather hanging in the air: the current state of play with the drafting not only of regulations in respect of Clause 13, which we are discussing, but of all others. Perhaps in her reply the Minister will be kind enough to inform the House what her understanding is of the state of play with the drafting of legislation which affects the Bill.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, I understand loud and clear the premise of the amendment of my noble friend Lady Gardner of Parkes, which proposes that the scheme for making the banning orders would not come into force until a year after the draft regulations setting out the nature and characteristics of banning order offences have been published. I understand the point about the laying of regulations and responding fully to the comments of the DPRR committee, which noble Lords have made loud and clear. However, I make it clear that people who have been convicted of offences that are in the nature of a banning order offence before the legislation comes into force cannot be subject to banning orders. That is quite important in the context of the discussion we are having. The legislation will therefore not apply retrospectively.
As I have said before, we have not included the specific offences in the Bill because we want the flexibility to add further. However, I can confirm that we will consult fully with interested partners on the matters that will constitute banning order offences before the regulations are laid in this House. I have set out the timetable for the consultation and for responding to the DPRRC. I hope to do that during Committee stage, but in any event we will definitely do it by Report.
I cannot remember which noble Lord—it may have been the noble Lord, Lord Foster—asked if we could have sight of what regulations there might be, when we might expect them and why we might not have them in a timely manner. I am more than keen to get what information I can to noble Lords to prevent some of the obvious concern that arises out of the Bill coming forward time and again, which it will—I cannot blame the House for doing that. The noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, is not in his place, but I point out that we are attempting to do that as fully as we can throughout the course of the Bill.
I hope that reassures my noble friend and other noble Lords that we do not intend to implement the banning order provisions in the Bill without fully considering the views of the interested parties on the nature and characteristics of such offences. We began that process last summer when we published our discussion paper on tackling rogue landlords, which noble Lords may or may not have seen, and we will develop them in further detail through further consultation later in the year. I therefore ask my noble friend to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
My Lords, I thank all those who have contributed very helpfully to the amendment and debated it. When the Minister says that she is more than keen to do things and make progress, I believe that. However, I feel there is a lack of willingness in the department. I do not say that just because she now happens to be the Minister. I had dealings with the Minister before her and with various Ministers before that. In all housing issues, I have found that there has been a reluctance to see any proper reform or progress. That is a great pity. We should probably have had a consolidation Act of all the property laws that have been passed. I have been involved in them myself since the early 1980s. All noble Lords know my registered interest, so I do not need to repeat it. Each time we pass another Act everyone working anywhere in the property world has to keep referring back to the previous Act and the Acts before that. I am told that consolidation Bills are not brought forward now because, in the past, the Law Commission used to finance them and bring them to Parliament. It will no longer do so unless Parliament agrees to finance the work that it does. This also needs a little bit of thought.
Something else that needs thought is the First-tier Tribunal. I opposed the removal of the leasehold valuation tribunal which could have dealt with the same sort of issue at a much lower cost. It is now extremely expensive. It used to be only £500. No matter what your case, more than £500 could not be awarded against you for most leasehold offences. Now, to bring your case at all, it is a minimum of £500 to walk in the door. It has changed into a much heavier legal procedure which I do not think works so well for simple cases. It has always been there and acknowledged to be necessary for the more important or serious cases. Certainly rogue landlords will come into that category. I did not speak earlier but, of course, the word “rogue” means something different to me as an Australian.
To return to the original point, I respect what the Minister has said. I hope she can persuade her department to bring these matters forward. I thank all those noble Lords who have participated and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Grender
“( ) A banning order must specify how many tenants are thought to be affected by the banning order and what arrangements will be put in place to mitigate against those tenants becoming homeless.( ) A banning order must specify that a local authority has given due consideration to issuing a management order to ensure existing tenancies are continued, wherever possible.”
Baroness Grender (LD)
My Lords, these Benches welcome moves in this Bill to deal with rogue landlords, but this amendment deals with what I believe to be a possible unintended consequence which I think the Government and the Committee should consider.
When a landlord is banned what happens to any existing tenants of that landlord? This Bill lacks clarity in this situation. In Clause 16(4)(a) the implication is that existing tenancies will normally need to be brought to an immediate end with the following wording:
“A banning order may… contain exceptions—
to deal with cases where there are existing tenancies and the landlord does not have the power to bring them to an immediate end”.
On the face of the Bill, this seems to suggest that the preferred route in these circumstances would be an immediate end to all other tenancies. The danger here is clear. An immediate end to a tenancy of someone already in the precarious situation of renting from a rogue landlord means for many the threat—or maybe the reality—of homelessness or rooflessness. My amendment tries to provide a safety net for any tenants who will be in danger of becoming homeless as a result of a ban.
We also need to assume, in a worst case scenario, that the banned landlord has two options. First, he could transfer property to another party. In spite of the list of exceptions in Clause 26, let us assume, for the sake of argument, that the address book of this rogue landlord is not littered with responsible social landlord friends and acquaintances to whom he wishes immediately to transfer his property. The second option is immediate eviction and a quick sale of the property.
This brings me to the tenant. If they are living in appalling conditions, with a bad landlord, but know and understand that their complaint will result in eviction, will their fear of this outcome reduce their likelihood of making use of this welcome change in the law? Will local authorities in turn worry that to ban a landlord will result in more people being accepted as unintentionally homeless on their books? Is there a danger that these tenants will be classified by local authorities as intentionally homeless because of mandatory possession under Section 8 of the Housing Act 1988? The risk of that increases with buy-to-let mortgages when landlords get Section 8s in situations of mortgage arrears and repossessions.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)
My Lords, I support my noble friend’s comments and agree with everything that she has said. I shall speak specifically to Amendment 7, which is in this group and is a probing amendment.
Banning orders are a very important element of the Bill. They are not undertaken lightly and involve a great deal of research and work on the part of the local authorities. It takes many months of gathering information from tenants and consulting with related agencies operating in the sector, such as Citizens Advice, food banks, social services and local housing associations, to build up a picture around a person who they are investigating with a view to considering a banning order. Local authorities’ budgets are extremely stretched, as we know, and while it is to everyone’s advantage that they undertake this work in order to achieve a successful outcome when they apply for a planning order, it seems not unreasonable that they should receive the fine as recompense for the work undertaken. This will be especially important when it is highly likely that the local authority will be expected to house those previous tenants of the landlord subject to the banning order, as my noble friend has indicated.
There is an undertaking that local government will not be expected to take on new burdens that are not listed in the new burdens doctrine, with the expectation that the Chancellor will have had regard to this requirement when making the local government settlement. I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm that this is the case. Might she also be able to find a way forward to recompense local authorities in some way for this additional work, which is desperately needed by private sector tenants?
The Earl of Lytton
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, has raised a very important matter, and it is appropriate that it should be grouped with government Amendments 3 and 4. As the noble Lord, Lord Deben, mentioned earlier, there is no limit to the amount of roguishness that can come about. As to the question of identifying who is the perpetrator, who the owner and who the person in control—is it a company and or an individual?—these are murky waters, particularly with patterns of complex ownership, possibly involving ownerships of non-domestic individuals or companies, and so it goes on. It begs the question, in terms of Amendments 3 and 4, as to what the person faced with the sanctions envisaged here will do under the government amendments in particular. What is the nuclear option? What are the choices before the case is even heard, let alone when it is actually heard? What happens when a conviction occurs and is subject to an appeal?
This leaves potentially malevolent folk, if that is what they are—we assume that the ones who are rogues are malevolent folk and are appropriately labelled as such—still with the considerable ability to make mischief and make life a misery. Whether that is spitefulness, simply being manipulative, or whatever, I see great problems. That is one of the reasons why I am concerned for local government being handed this issue on a plate. There may be very uncertain outcomes that are extremely costly to unpick. Bearing in mind what I said a few minutes ago, I am not in favour of short-changing due process. There must be due process. I do not think we can tackle roguishness that borders on, or may actually be, criminality, other than by proper due process. We cannot have the rule of law being circumvented to catch these people; we have to play this by the rule book. That is the only way in which not to discourage the willing horses while at the same time squeezing out the malevolent types.
I see, as the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, sees, some serious structural difficulties in dealing with this in practice. We have in this Committee the skills set to unpick this and to consider the complications and ramifications.
Baroness Redfern (Con)
My Lords, I support the Bill and welcome the following very clear measures to tackle the issue of rogue landlords that will strengthen the private rented sector.
Private tenants need additional reassurance that rogue landlords will be driven out of business, and banning orders for these criminal landlords and property agents is needed to prevent them operating and repeating serious housing offences. As a council leader, I believe that having the ability to apply for banning orders, together with fines, against rogue landlords and property agents is essential. This will prevent serious or repeat offenders, who are known to cause misery and harm to renters and place them at serious risk, from letting property. In such cases, there should be no room for these operators within the sector. I am pleased that the Government are determined to crack down on these landlords so that they either improve the service they provide or leave.
I also welcome the introduction of a much-needed database of rogue landlords and property agents. This will allow greater co-operation of local authorities around the country to keep track on banning orders and monitor ongoing trends. Having this national co-operation will, as I said, prevent serious or repeat offenders who are known to be causing misery and harm to renters and placing them at serious risk, from letting property, and there should be no room for these operators within the sector.
I ask the Minister to assure noble Lords that further government intervention against rogue landlords will happen and that she will collaborate with council leaders, like myself, in bringing a rogue landlord database to fruition as soon as possible.
Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)
My Lords, I support Amendments 2 and 7, and draw the Committee’s attention to my entry in the register of interests as a director of the Property Redress Scheme, one of the government recognised organisations.
Amendment 2, in the name of my noble friend Lady Grender, draws attention to the fact that this House and the other place do not consider legislation in a holistic fashion. We seem to consider one amendment to one piece of legislation without looking at the unintended consequences of that legislation, as identified by Amendment 2. Yes, we should address rogue landlords, however one describes them, but that will have an effect on the tenants of the relevant properties. The tenant who makes a complaint will have some protection in terms of getting rehoused, but the property may contain a number of tenants, including those who have not made a complaint against the landlord who is banned. If the property is no longer available for letting, those tenants will become homeless. My noble friend drew attention to the transfer of the relevant property to other people who are not specified in the Bill. What then happens to the tenants? We do not know that because we are not adopting a holistic approach to the legislation. The noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, said that we do not have consolidation Bills. We have unintentional effects because of that.
Amendment 7 was spoken to by my noble friend Lady Bakewell. The problem is that we pass legislation without considering sanctions. The sanctions are to be imposed by local authorities, which are having their grants reduced and are looking for ways not to spend money rather than to spend it. Amendment 7 proposes that local authorities which are proactive in implementing the legislation should retain the relevant financial penalty. When the Minister replies, will she say whether the Government have had discussions with trading standards departments, environmental health departments and housing departments on how they will implement this part of the legislation to ban rogue landlords? I know of only one London borough—Camden—that has a really active trading standards officer dealing with housing, but the rest do not have the finance to cover this area. Therefore, I hope that some research has been carried out with local authorities in England to determine whether these restrictions will bite where they need to.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
My Lords, I support Amendment 7. I appreciate what has just been said, but certainly my view is that one of the big problems with all these housing issues of overcrowding and everything else is that the local authorities cannot afford to implement the enforcement and inspection measures that are constantly necessary. Indeed, at a later stage in the Bill I intend to bring forward an amendment to enable them to charge more for planning applications for these enormously expensive huge underground developments which many people find very inconvenient. The person who applies for planning permission for a simple little underground development just to give their family more space pays the same amount as the person applying to build a multimillion pound development. That is very unfair. The proposed measure would enable local authorities to have a little more money to enforce their many obligations. This amendment is valuable in that respect.
Lord Campbell-Savours
I will speak to the amendments moved and spoken to by the noble Baronesses, Lady Grender and Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville. We all know the reality. The reality is that local authorities will be picking up this responsibility because people will be advised by the homeless charities or whatever to go to the local authority, and the local authority will have to pay. The question is: who should ultimately pay?
It may be that the Government should take upon themselves the right to take a charge on the landlord’s property. I know it would be very controversial—I am sure the lawyers would have a field day—but it would mean that the local authorities would get their money back. I therefore put that as a suggestion, which the Minister might wish to pursue when we get to Report.
Government Amendment 4, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford, deals with further offences by the person who committed a first offence. What about people who transfer their interest, so that the further offence is committed by the person to whom the interest has been transferred? Clause 26 deals with the “Prohibition of certain disposals”. Subsection (1) states:
“A person who is subject to a banning order that includes a ban on letting may not make an unauthorised transfer of an estate in land to a prohibited person”.
Subsection (4) describes a “prohibited person” as,
“a person associated with the landlord”,
or , under subsection (4)(f),
“a body corporate in which the landlord has a shareholding or other financial interest”.
Subsection (5) states that an,
“‘associated person’ is to be read in accordance with section 178 of the Housing Act 1996”.
In that section of the 1996 Act, I am told that an “associated person” is someone who is in a marriage to, or is a cohabitee of, or lives with, or is a relative of the landlord, or someone whom the landlord is about to marry, or who is a child of the landlord. Does this include relationships that have developed and are registered overseas? Many landlords will be operating from overseas, so we will have great difficulty identifying who the owner of a particular property is.
This brings me to the second point, which is about,
“a body corporate in which the landlord has a shareholding or has a financial interest”.
What about companies registered outside the United Kingdom? The landlord might be in some tax haven or in some other part of the world, which is perfectly respectable but where we do not have much access to information. I think these bodies need to be more clearly defined in the law, and I wondered whether the noble Baroness might wish to comment on that as a proposition.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, the amendments put forward give rise to a very simple, brutal question—I speak as somebody who is wrestling with trying to produce a council budget at the moment, in very difficult circumstances—and that is: how much is this going to cost local authorities? I have looked at the impact assessment, and basically it talks about the cost to the private housing sector—to the providers of private-landlord accommodation. Unless I have completely missed it, I cannot find any assessment of the cost to the local authorities, who will have the responsibility of doing all this. My first question is: have the Government made an assessment of this and, if so, will they tell us what it is?
The second thing I have been trying to apply my mind to is, in my own authority, how we will deal with this. The point about local authorities, of course, is that they are very different: there are large unitary counties, there are large metropolitan and other unitary urban authorities, and there are small districts. It is the housing authorities as a whole which will have to deal with this, including the small districts. The way the small districts may be able to cope is perhaps very different to that of a large authority that employs a lot more specialist staff, such as solicitors and property management people. I have, therefore, been trying to get my mind round how local authorities will actually make the decisions about applying to the tribunal for a banning order—who will make those decisions, how it will be done, how much it will cost, how much work will go into it—and dealing with appeals, because it is quite clear that there will be a lot of appeals, assuming that a lot of people go through the banning process.
Then there is the second decision. Apart from the people who have gone through the tribunal and automatically go on the database, there is a decision about whether to put the other people who have been convicted of banning offences on the database. How much time and resource will that decision take? Again, there is the question of appeals, which are never cheap for local authorities, and then there is the cost of maintaining the database itself: whether or not that is onerous depends on how many people there are on the database. My second question is really linked to how much the Government think this is going to cost local authorities—any answer to that must be based on an idea of how many cases there are going to be over the period of a year, or whatever it might be. Do the Government have any answer at all to those questions?
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)
My Lords, at the start of the first day of Committee, and my first contribution at that stage, I should have declared that I am an elected councillor of the London Borough of Lewisham.
I join other noble Lords in concern about the lack of regulations available for noble Lords to see. Why does the Minister think that it is acceptable to bring forward a Bill in such a sorry state? Does she accept that it is wholly inadequate to suggest that the Government will consult fully and lay regulations months after the Bill has become law?
On Second Reading, and subsequently, I and other noble Lords from these Benches have welcomed the banning order proposals in the Bill. They will provide, we hope, an effective additional tool for local housing authorities to use against rogue landlords and persons engaging in letting agency or property management work who think that they can rip off tenants and treat them badly with impunity. With an ever-increasing number of people forced into the private rented sector, it is important that there are proper safeguards. Peter Rachman became synonymous with the rogue landlords of the 1960s. We want to ensure that we do not have any modern-day Rachmans, or, if we do, that they are dealt with effectively.
I also see the proposals in this part of the Bill as a first step to dealing with the issues in the private rented sector that make life difficult for tenants living at the poorer end of the market. The ward that I represent on Lewisham Council is typical of those that the Bill is aimed at: we have very little local authority housing other than a successful housing co-op, and until recently an overwhelming number of people there were owner-occupiers. However, there has been an explosion in the private rented sector in the last 10 years, for a variety of reasons. Most landlords are very good, with anything from one to a few properties. They often get into the market as a landlord because they have fallen into negative equity, have looked to move on but have been unable to cover their capital outlay. Many of those coming to my surgeries are now private sector tenants, invariably young people, both singles and couples, who cannot get any social housing because they are not in a priority group, cannot go on the housing list, cannot afford to buy and are left to seek refuge in the private rented sector.
When I was a member of Southwark Council in the 1980s, we had properties deemed hard to let—that nobody wanted to live in—and the council was able to let those to single people and couples who would not otherwise qualify for social housing. That category no longer exists. The amendment proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, in this group, has identified what is a significant omission from the Bill. The amendment has the full support of noble Lords on these Benches. After we have taken action against the rogue landlords, what happens to their tenants? These will be the very people who have suffered at the hands of the rogue landlord in the first place. It is right that the amendment should be in the Bill and not left to regulations, advice notes or any other procedure that does not involve it being clear in the Bill itself. If the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford, does not accept the amendments today, I hope that she will at least reflect on this proposal and meet with colleagues from your Lordships’ House to discuss this matter before we get to Report.
We also support Amendment 7, in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, and the noble Lord, Lord Palmer of Childs Hill. Following an enforcement action resulting in a financial penalty, it must be right that the money should be retained by the local authority and not be lost to the Consolidated Fund or some other place where money from these penalties goes and never returns.
The remaining amendments in this group are government amendments. Amendments 3 and 8 appear to correct drafting errors and make matters clearer. Amendment 4, to which my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours referred, seeks to deal with the situation where a person convicted of an offence continues with the breach after conviction. I have an issue with this amendment. Does it go far enough when dealing with people who, at this stage, have no respect for the law, or where the tenants are again in a difficult situation? We may need to look at that further.
My noble friend Lord Beecham will ask more questions of the Minister when she moves her amendments. At that point, we may need to look at the issue further and bring an amendment back on Report.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, I shall answer the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, first because I ran out of time in a debate the other day and I could not answer him fully. He will get first place on the housing list today.
The noble Lord referred to the regulations which other noble Lords have mentioned at length. I can only reiterate my desire to bring forward as much information as I can. In any event, as I outlined in relation to the previous amendment, none of the orders could be implemented until the regulations were in force. So the orders would not be retrospective; they would only be made after the regulations had gone through. However, I take his point and I will do my best to bring forward as much information as possible.
The noble Lord made a point about social housing being so much harder to obtain than previously for people who would seem to be on modest incomes. That is behind the Government’s priority of building homes for all types of tenure in this Parliament, but focusing particularly on the younger generation that he talks about who are increasingly left out of the housing market. He also asked whether I would meet with him and colleagues before Report and I will be happy to do so.
Amendments 3 and 4 amend Clause 20 so that a person who has been convicted of breaching a banning order and continues to breach the order after that conviction shall commit a further offence and be liable to a fine not exceeding one-tenth of level 2 on the standard scales for each day or part of a day on which the breach occurs. This would equate to up to £50 a day until the breach ceases The amendment also introduces a defence of reasonable excuse in relation to the further offence which will capture any cases where a person was genuinely not able to cease breaching a banning order following conviction because, for example, they were in hospital and therefore unable to manage their affairs to bring tenancies to an end. Rogues who continue to let out their properties despite being convicted for that offence will therefore not only incur punishment for the initial breach of the order but will continue to be punished for each additional day that they remain in breach of the order. This sends out a strong message that a breach of banning order will not be tolerated.
Amendments 5, 6 and 8 amend Clause 22 so that a person who has had a civil penalty imposed upon them for breaching a banning order as an alternative to prosecution, and continues to breach the order despite the first civil penalty, can have an additional civil penalty of up to £30,000 imposed for each period of six months or part of a six-month period in which the breach of the banning order continues. Rogues who continue to let out their properties despite having incurred a civil penalty for the breach will, therefore, be subject to additional civil penalties for continuation of the breach. This sends out the strong message that a breach of a banning order will not be tolerated and will ensure that the business model of rogue landlords is disrupted.
Lord Greaves
I have an amendment later on that refers to empty dwelling management orders, which do not work very well at the moment. If a local authority is managing a property because the owner of that property has a banning order, is it assumed that the only money the local authority can spend on the property, which may be severely substandard—that may be why the banning order is there, or may be related to it—is the money taken in rents, even if it is not sufficient to bring it up to standard? If so, do we accept that a local authority is managing a substandard property for a period of time and if not, where will the local authority get the money to put into that property?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I think that comes back to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, about charges on properties. The local authority cannot in any circumstances of managing that property be out of pocket, but nor would the tenants be expected to live in substandard conditions. Therefore, any money that needed to be spent on the property could be recouped by a charge on the property. I think that answers the questions of both the noble Lords, Lord Campbell-Savours and Lord Greaves.
Lord Beecham
A further question has just occurred to me. We are assuming that we are talking only about a landlord and a tenant but of course, there may well be a mortgagee. What happens in the event that the council takes over the property? Is the council then responsible for paying the mortgage payments out of the money it receives and, if not, is the tenant not at risk of the mortgagee obtaining possession of the property?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, as far as I know, the mortgagee is responsible for paying the mortgage. If the rents do not cover the costs of any works that need to be done on the house, again, it comes back to the charge on the property in order to keep those tenants in the property for the agreed period of the tenancy. That is the way I think it would work, but I will confirm that in writing because I do not want to mislead noble Lords.
Lord Campbell-Savours
The issue there would be whether the council had a first or second charge.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
Yes, it would. May I clarify that in writing?
Lord Foster of Bath
I wonder if the Minister can help me because I am now slightly confused. If the local authority is expected to use funds upfront to make repairs and bring a property up to suitable standards, and the only way it can recoup them is through a charge—whether a first or a second charge—is it not the case that that money can be realised to the council only when the property is sold, which may be a considerable time after the local authority has incurred the costs?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
That might be the case. The point is that the local authority could recoup the costs. I think the premise of all the questions is the local authority not being out of pocket because of its obligations to the tenants. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, is shaking his head so I will let him intervene.
Lord Greaves
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way when I was not asking her to. This is a new convention which perhaps we should adopt. I think the point that my noble friend Lord Foster of Bath was making is that it might be a very long time before the property is sold by the owner. It could be 50 years, by which time who knows whether local authorities will still exist? There appears to be no means by which the local authority is guaranteed to get its money back within the period of the banning order.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, I hope I made the point clearly that ultimately, the local authority will get its money back. That might mean that at the end of a tenancy the local authority could force the sale of a property in order to get its money back, but the point is that the local authority can get its money back. I guess if it incurred any interest charges over the period, it can claim those back as well. But such is the level of the civil penalty that local authorities should be in a fairly good position, using penalties and other things to service any housing costs they might have and to not be left out of pocket.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I am trying to be helpful to the Minister. It would be extremely helpful if she could write to us all with some examples and figures showing how this might work in practice, both in terms of the procedure and some numbers, so that we can understand it—which we are not going to this afternoon, clearly.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, I think I understood what I was saying, but I am sorry if noble Lords did not. I shall be very happy to write and explain. I always use the example of a house that costs £100, so it will probably be something around that.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
While all this is going on, I am conscious that there is one very vulnerable tenant and one rogue landlord, who is getting angrier. What protection is there for the poor tenant left there while all this is going on? The landlord is not getting his rent or having his mortgage paid and the council is in there taking things over. I am wondering about the human issue.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, I do not have any particular concerns about the rogue landlord; I am concerned about the vulnerable tenant. That is why the local authority, or the managing agent of the local authority, is the protection for the tenant who, if they have been subject to the practice of a rogue landlord, might find it a light relief not to be treated in such a contemptuous way.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
That is absolutely right. I have no worries for the rogue landlord but the noble Lord, Lord Deben, spoke earlier about these characters and some of their despicable practices. I am worried about how they treat their tenants.
Lord Palmer of Childs Hill
In terms of the charges on the property, I seek some clarification. We are told that the local authority may have taken over management of the property and be taking a charge on it, and will be able to underwrite its costs in one way or another, which seems very sensible. The problem is if there is an existing charge on the property because the owner has a mortgage on it. To seek recompense and take action, the local authority will have to take cognisance of the fact that there is already a charge on that property. A local authority may be very reluctant to incur the cost when it knows it is in a queue and may get nothing whatever at the end of the line.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, I would assume that in those circumstances the local authority would take a second charge out on the house. That is the assumption I would make in such circumstances.
Under subsection (7) the Secretary of State may make regulations specifying how financial penalties recovered under this clause are to be dealt with. Broadly speaking, we envisage that such sums could be used in connection with the authority’s private sector housing functions, but we will discuss the details of how the income is to be applied with relevant parties before making the regulations. We will consult on guidance, setting out the appropriate penalties to levy, and take into account a wide range of circumstances. Such guidance will also cover landlords’ right to appeal. Furthermore, we will issue local authorities with guidance on the utilisation of any money they receive through financial penalties.
I do not know whether I answered the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, and the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, about the new burdens. I have probably made my point, but any policy that could result in a local authority incurring costs is subject to a new burdens assessment. We have considered this test when developing this policy. It is not a burden as it is not a requirement to place someone under a banning order.
In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, on how local authorities will implement this policy, local authorities have warmly welcomed it because it will help them to crack down on the rogues and retain the income from civil penalties and rent repayment orders. It is important that noble Lords are satisfied that local authorities are very happy with this.
The noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, mentioned the transfer of interest to a prohibited person when that interest is an overseas interest. It does not matter whether it is an overseas interest or whether it is in this country, the policy still applies, as I understand it.
The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, asked how local authorities would make their decision and how many cases we would have a year. Local authorities are likely to seek banning orders where the offence is particularly serious or where they have a repeat offender. We estimate that there will be about 600 banning orders per year. I hope my comments have reassured noble Lords, but I see that the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, is about to stand up.
Lord Beecham
I am sorry to add to the noble Baroness’s problems. However, I am slightly puzzled by the relationship between government Amendments 3 and 4, which apply to Clause 20, and government Amendments 5 and 6, which apply to Clause 22. Government Amendment 4 to Clause 20 specifies:
“Where a person is convicted … of breaching a banning order and the breach continues after conviction, the person commits a further offence and is liable … to a fine not exceeding one-tenth of level 2 on the standard scale for each day or part of a day”.
However, government Amendment 6 to Clause 22 states that,
“subsection (3A) allows another penalty to be imposed … If a breach continues for more than 6 months, a financial penalty may be imposed for each additional 6 month period for the whole or part of which the breach continues”.
Is that on the same basis or a different basis? I apprehend that the Minister may not be able to give me an answer off the cuff, but will she have a look at that—or get somebody to have a look at it—to see whether there is a relationship between those two positions, or whether they deal with different issues? At the moment, I am confused—which is not unusual. It may be perfectly simple but it does not look terribly simple from these two amendments.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, as I understand it, the second penalty is an enhancement of the first, so they are related. However, I think the first is a lesser penalty because it involves a first breach and the second is greater because it perpetuates the breach.
Lord Beecham
With respect, that does not tell us or the offender the basis on which the second penalty would be calculated.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, Clause 20 concerns a criminal offence whereas Clause 22 concerns a civil penalty, which is an alternative, if that makes any sense.
Lord Beecham
I am sorry to persist but that does not tell us the basis on which the relevant penalty would be calculated. It is clear as regards the criminal offence, if that is the distinction, but it is not clear whether the same way of calculating the penalty is used. I do not expect the noble Baroness to answer that today but if she could answer it in writing subsequently, that would be fine.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I thank the noble Lord, not for letting me off the hook but for deferring the hook. I will write to him about that. I request that the noble Baroness withdraws the amendment at this stage.
Baroness Grender
I thank all noble Lords for their contributions to this discussion and the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, for his support for continuing to examine this area. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Palmer of Childs Hill, who raised property transfer and the noble Lords, Lord Campbell-Savours and Lord Greaves, for commenting on where the resource goes, about which we have already had much discussion. The Minister said that we would find some answers and reassurance for tenants in Schedule 3. We will continue to scrutinise this issue to make sure that there is absolutely no threat of a tenant being made homeless as a result of the activities of a dreadful rogue landlord. That is the main aim of this amendment and we will continue to review that as the Bill progresses. However, at this point, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“(3A) Where a person is convicted under subsection (1) of breaching a banning order and the breach continues after conviction, the person commits a further offence and is liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding one-tenth of level 2 on the standard scale for each day or part of a day on which the breach continues.(3B) In proceedings for an offence under subsection (3A) it is a defence to show that the person had a reasonable excuse for the continued breach.”
“(3A) If a breach continues for more than 6 months, a financial penalty may be imposed for each additional 6 month period for the whole or part of which the breach continues.”
“( ) An appeal under this section must be heard within 28 days.”
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville
My Lords, when I spoke previously I should have drawn your Lordships’ attention to my entry in the Register of Interests as a district councillor of South Somerset District Council and as a vice-president of the Local Government Association.
I will speak, in the first instance, to Amendment 9. I will then speak to Amendments 10, 12, 13 and 14. On Amendment 9, it is only fair and proper that those who have the prospect of a banning order being imposed on them should have the right of appeal. My colleagues and I are happy with the process laid down for dealing with appeals, with one exception. Both the landlord and his tenants, plus the local housing authority, will be in some uncertainty during the appeal process. Uncertainty leads to stress, and this will be extremely unwelcome for tenants, who are already fraught because of the situation in which they find themselves. The state of their accommodation may be less than we would wish, and they may have been threatened. They will want their ordeal to be finalised as quickly as possible. Likewise, the landlord will be waiting for the sword of Damocles to fall, and this could be unjustified, as we heard from the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, earlier. It is only fair and equitable that this uncertainty be as short-lived as possible for all concerned. That is why I have tabled this amendment, requiring the appeal to be heard within 28 days so that the decision is reached quickly and efficiently for the benefit of all concerned. I hope the Minister can agree to it.
Turning to Amendment 10, the register of rogue landlords is one of the most important steps forward in this Bill. Those of us who have been, or are still, councillors will know at first hand what misery can be caused by a tenant who has what is now classed as a rogue landlord. All housing department officers know who they are as the tenants of these landlords are frequently in their offices or on the phone complaining about the treatment meted out to them. The frequency of evictions by these landlords, or the sudden ending of tenancies, alerts officers to where they are and the properties that they own and run.
It is essential that a register of rogue landlords be set up which can be accessed by those agencies supporting their tenants. These agencies will be well-known, trusted deliverers of advice and support, including the local authority, the CAB, the DWP, jobcentres and possibly food banks. It is vital that tenants are also able to access this register if they are not to go from one poor landlord to another. It will always be the case that those who are the most desperate to find a roof over their head for themselves, their partner and perhaps even their children will be most at risk of being exploited. They need this information to assist them to make the right choices.
It is not as though the names of those who are likely to arrive on the register will not already be in the public domain. Local newspapers are full of court reports. Someone on the register is also likely to be engaged in other activities and will have come to the notice of police and local authorities. If they have previously held a licence for a HMO, that will have been reported in the local newspapers. I can understand that there are some sensitivities here, but we must protect tenants by allowing them access so that they can make value judgments. This is a freedom of information issue and I hope the Minister will be able to concede this amendment.
I turn now to Amendments 12, 13 and 14. As already said, it is important that all those who are operating in the private housing market are able to provide for and assist their tenants to have a secure and untroubled home. It is to no one’s advantage for people to be continually seeking alternative accommodation; to be moving within an area where they are currently living or having to move to a different area is stressful. This is especially true if there are children involved. Disrupting a child’s education as they are forced to move schools is very harmful and will set back their educational progress.
It is essential that tenants are able to access the register of rogue landlords so that, having moved from one such landlord, they do not fall foul of another operating in a similar type of accommodation. Let us not forget that the people and families looking for the accommodation which is likely to be provided by those on the register will have little choice because of their straitened circumstances. However, like everyone else, they deserve to be protected from exploitation.
As I have already indicated, the information on rogue landlords is likely to already be in the public domain through court proceedings and other avenues. I urge the Minister to consider these amendments and respond positively to them. I beg to move.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I support the amendments moved by the noble Baroness. I have one query about Amendment 12, which removes a requirement for information disclosed from the database to be anonymous. It would be helpful if it were made clear that any information concerning a tenant would continue to be anonymous. It is not clear whether there would be any information about a tenant revealed or recorded but, to be on the safe side, such a tenant should not have his or her details revealed. That ought to remain guarded by anonymity.
This group of amendments addresses a large range of issues designed to facilitate dealing with the problems occasioned by rogue landlords. Amendment 15 specifically bars any landlord on a database of rogue landlords from obtaining a house in multiple occupation licence. It would be good to have that in the Bill.
The background to this group and much of what we are discussing today in the Bill was set out recently in disturbing statistics produced by Citizens Advice in its response to the welcome funding by the Department for Communities and Local Government to tackle the problem on the ground.
I am bound to report that a grant of £80,000 has been received to be applied in the ward that I represent on Newcastle City Council, in an area just half a mile away from the new properties that the noble Baroness visited recently. We got a selective licensing scheme for that area—eventually; it was not easy to obtain. About a third of the landlords in the area were clearly not conforming to the requirements. I am glad that we have received this funding to enable us, as a council, to pursue matters.
Lord Tope (LD)
My Lords, my noble friend Lady Bakewell spoke to these amendments fully and explained them very well, and we all wait with interest to hear the Minister’s response. We should recognise how important the issues that they raise are. My name does not happen to appear on Amendment 9—I am not quite sure why—but I certainly support it. We do need some sort of indication—I think 28 days is entirely right and appropriate—of how soon an appeal on matters that are so important and sensitive for both the tenant and the landlord will be heard. We are only too aware of other types of appeal that wait not just for months but for years. For an appeal to be heard within 28 days seems to me entirely reasonable.
The other amendments deal with another important point: exactly who will have access to the information in the database? Surely it must be right for the tenants to have a right of access to that information. Whether it is appropriate to put that in the Bill or in the draft regulations we wait to hear—but we have heard enough about the regulations already while debating this Bill, and we think that it should be on the face of the Bill. I hope that when the Minister replies she will, at the very least, agree with the point being made here. We can then argue about where the provision is to be placed. We look forward to the Minister’s reply; I hope it will be a positive one, recognising the importance of these issues.
Lord Campbell-Savours
My Lords, I firmly support Amendment 9, moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville. It is a very sound amendment.
Clause 29 refers to a power to include a person convicted—that is, convicted in a court of law—of a banning order offence. Then it says in a subsection:
“A local housing authority in England may make an entry in the database in respect of a person who has, at least twice”—
not once, twice—
“within a period of 12 months, received a financial penalty in respect of a banning order offence committed at a time when the person was a residential landlord”.
We are talking here about a habitual offender. In Clause 32 the Government set out what can be on the database. Let us go through the list, because that list should be available to the general public for the reasons set out by the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, when she referred to freedom of information. First, there is the period for which the entry is to be maintained: why should that not be available to the tenant or tenants? Details of properties owned, let or managed by the person: why should they not be in the public domain when the matter has been dealt with in the courts? Details of a banning order offence of which the person has been convicted in a court of law: why should that information not be made available to the tenant? Details of any banning orders made against the person, whether or not still in force: why should tenants not know the background of their prospective landlords? Also on the list are “details of financial penalties” received by the person.
Finally, I return to the first item in the list: the person’s address or other contact details. One would have thought that a tenant should at least have the right to know who their prospective landlord is, where they live, and their contact details. I put it to the Minister that the Government are a little oversensitive about this. They should reconsider this area and think about what is in the public interest. Who is going to lose as a result of this? The local authority does not lose; the tenant does not lose; only the landlord who has been convicted of a criminal offence loses. I ask the Minister to reconsider the position.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 16 in my name in relation to Clause 38. Amendment 16 would mean that for the purposes of paragraph 17 of Schedule 23 to the Finance Act 2011, the database will be treated as being maintained by the Secretary of State, although Clause 27 sets out that local authorities have responsibility for maintaining its content. This will ensure that HMRC is able to access the database, using its powers under the Finance Act 2011, so that it can use the data in discharge of its tax functions when dealing with rogue landlords and property agents.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, for speaking to Amendment 9. While appeals, and not just appeals about entries on the database, should be dealt with without undue delay, it is not appropriate to set out in primary legislation strict time limits for doing so, because it may not be practical or reasonable to do so. The tribunal has a wide range of powers to ensure that cases are dealt with fairly and justly. It can award costs against vexatious litigants whose only purpose in appealing is, for example, to delay their entry on the database or to cause further expense to the local housing authority. It can also prioritise cases that it considers urgent and refuse adjournments when there is no good reason for the request. In general, however, when the appeal is not vexatious in nature, how quickly it can be disposed of will ultimately depend on its complexity and other factors, such as the representations that the parties intend to make. Indeed, other factors can lead to delay, such as the illness of a party or a representative. It would be manifestly unfair if representations could not be accepted outside 28 days when there is genuine and good reason for doing so because the law has said that the appeal must be heard within that timeframe, regardless of circumstances.
I turn to Amendment 10. Landlords and property agents included on the database will have either been convicted of a banning order offence or received two or more civil penalties, as an alternative to prosecution, for serious breaches of housing legislation. I appreciate the feelings of noble Lords on this issue. It is not intended that all those included on the database should be banned from operating their business, but banning orders would be sought for the very worst or repeat offenders. Banning order offences will be defined in secondary legislation but are likely to include a serious offence. This is where an offender has been convicted in the Crown Court of an offence involving fraud, drugs, sexual assault or violence that is committed in, or in relation to, a property that is owned or managed by the offender or which involves, or was perpetrated against, persons occupying such a property. It would also include any serious offence involving violence against the tenant by the landlord or property agent, and serious breaches of housing legislation.
Amendment 11 would allow tenants and prospective tenants to petition their local housing authority to gain access to the database of rogue landlords and property agents. Doing so would effectively blacklist those landlords and agents on the database and put them out of business. This is not the intention of our legislation. The database aims to enable local authorities to keep track of rogue landlords and agents and target their enforcement action more effectively. Where a local authority believes a landlord or agent should be prevented from renting out or managing property, it should seek a banning order.
Noble Lords, and particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, asked whether the public or tenants will have access to the database. The database will hold details of landlords and property agents who have been convicted of certain offences. Just because a landlord or property agent is on a database does not mean that they are banned from letting out a property—that would require a banning order. Making the database publicly available could raise data protection issues. However, the Secretary of State can give information held on the database in an anonymised form for research, statistical or monitoring purposes. The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, asked about tenants’ details. These will never be disclosed. The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, also asked about the effect of putting a landlord or property agent on the database. A database will enable a local authority to keep track of the landlords or property agents who have been convicted of a relevant offence and who may seek to move to a new area to avoid detection and attract new tenants. It will also enable them to obtain details about other rental properties owned by the landlord. In some cases, a local authority may decide to monitor a landlord or property agent on the database before deciding whether to apply for a banning order.
Information on the database will be made more widely available in an anonymised form. In addition, where tenants raise concerns about their landlords failing to take action over property conditions, local authorities can carry out an inspection, using the housing health and safety rating system introduced in the Housing Act 2004, and take appropriate enforcement action.
Where a local authority believes that a landlord or property agent should be banned from being involved in renting out or managing property, it should apply to the First-tier Tribunal for a banning order. Banning orders are intended to be used for those landlords and property agents who are particularly serious or prolific offenders, and who represent a real risk to the health and safety of prospective tenants. Local authorities have been provided with strong enforcement tools to ensure that, once a banning order has been made, it is not breached by the offender.
Amendments 12, 13 and 14 would require the Secretary of State to make information on the database of rogue landlords and property agents accessible to everyone and provide that the purposes to which the data may be put include the protection of tenants. As I have said, making the database publicly accessible would effectively drive anyone on the list out of business—which is not the purpose of the database.
Finally, Amendment 15 would require local authorities to automatically bar landlords on the database of rogue landlords from holding an HMO licence. As I have said previously, the purpose of the database is not to ban landlords and property agents from operating. The idea is to enable local authorities to monitor rogue landlord activity and effectively target enforcement action. The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, mentioned retaliatory eviction. We legislated through the Deregulation Act 2015 to stop the practice of retaliatory eviction, a move that has been much welcomed by Shelter.
I hope I have explained enough to enable the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment—
Lord Campbell-Savours
On government Amendment 16, I do not quite understand why HMRC would want to gather these data. Perhaps the Minister could explain.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, it is for tax purposes—to enable the rogue landlords to fulfil their tax obligations.
Lord Campbell-Savours
I am not opposed to that but are we saying that persons who are subject to the legislation in terms of banning orders come under a separate reporting arrangement to the Revenue as against the generality of landlords?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I am sorry, could the noble Lord please repeat what he just said?
Lord Campbell-Savours
Are we saying that there is a separate category for those landlords who would fall under the legislation in terms of banning orders as against the generality of landlords, who, as the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, said, are pretty good people?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, it is the rogue landlords who are on the database. HMRC will have access to that database.
Lord Beecham
Does it not already have access to the Land Registry and can therefore find out more quickly and more cheaply who the owner of a property is?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, anyone can have access to the Land Registry but not everyone can have access to the database of rogue landlords.
Lord Beecham
But the rogue landlord must be the owner of the property; otherwise he would not be the landlord, presumably.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville
My Lords, I thank noble Lords who have taken part in this short debate. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, for mentioning the anonymising of tenants’ names on the list. It is very important that their names should not be released.
I cannot pretend that I am anything other than disappointed with the Minister’s response. It is very important that the appeals are heard in a timely manner and I think 28 days is a reasonable time in which to hear an appeal. In other parts of the Bill we shall come to issues of abandonment, where there are very definite timescales that people must abide by. So I find it somewhat strange that we cannot have a timescale for hearing the appeals. This may be something we wish to return to on Report.
With regard to the list of landlords being anonymised and not released to tenants, I cannot see the point of holding a list if it is be anonymised. That seems somewhat perverse. Tenants should have access to the list and should be able to see whether their landlord is on the database. I accept that rogue landlords will be on the database when they may not have a banning order. I understand that difference but, nevertheless, these are not the kinds of landlords we wish to promote. The Minister has indicated that she does not wish to drive rogue landlords out of business, but what of the good landlords? There are hundreds and thousands of responsible landlords operating their properties for the benefit of their tenants and just one or two rogue landlords are in danger of giving other landlords a very bad name. We should be able to name and shame these rogue landlords.
However, I understand the Minister’s view. It is possible that we may return to this but I will withdraw my amendment.
Lord Beecham
May I revert to my Amendment 15 about the HMO licence? I do not understand the logic of the Minister’s position. If a landlord is described as a rogue landlord and is on the database accordingly, why should that not operate as a bar to obtaining a licence for a house of multiple occupation?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
Could the noble Lord repeat what he has just said?
Lord Beecham
Amendment 15 would prevent a landlord on the database of rogue landlords obtaining an HMO licence, which seems perfectly logical. The Minister appeared to reject the idea; I cannot think why. If she cannot for the moment remember why she did, perhaps she could communicate her thoughts later.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I rejected the amendment because the purpose of the database is not to ban landlords and property agents from operating but to enable local authorities to monitor rogue landlord activity. It is crucial to give local authorities the freedom to make judgments regarding the licensing in their area, just as they do in other forms of licensing, so it does not necessarily follow that a rogue landlord should be banned from holding an HMO licence. Although a local authority may make the judgment that they should be banned from having such a licence because of their activity, it does not necessarily follow.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Andrews) (Lab)
My Lords, is it your Lordships’ pleasure that the amendment be withdrawn?
Lord Campbell-Savours
My Lords, on that matter, I had almost forgotten what I was going to ask, but it was this: if we can ban a doctor or a dentist for bad practice, why can we not ban a landlord?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
The landlord who is on a database of rogue landlords has not necessarily been banned but may have had a civil penalty. So it is up to the local authority, when coming to a judgment about an HMO licence and in the light of the information that it has, whether that landlord will be banned from holding one. It may decide on balance that he or she will be, because they are such a rogue, or they may have had one civil penalty and it might therefore grant him or her a licence.
“(5) For the purposes of paragraph 17 of Schedule 23 to the Finance Act 2011 (which relates to HMRC data-gathering powers), the database is to be treated as being maintained by the Secretary of State.”
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
“Extension of the Housing Ombudsman to cover the private rented sector
(1) The Secretary of State shall by regulations introduce a scheme to extend the Housing Ombudsman Scheme, as set out in section 51 of and Schedule 2 to the Housing Act 1996, to cover disputes between tenants and private landlords relating to properties within the area covered by the Greater London Authority. (2) The scheme under subsection (1) shall—(a) come into effect within 6 months of the passing of this Act; and(b) last at least one year and no longer than two years.(3) The Secretary of State shall, within three months of the closing date of the scheme, lay before each House of Parliament a report on the scheme under subsection (1), alongside any statement he thinks appropriate about the extension of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme to the private rented sector.(4) The Secretary of State may by regulations extend the powers of the Housing Ombudsman Scheme as set out in section 51 of and Schedule 2 to the Housing Act 1996, to cover disputes between tenants and private landlords throughout England.”
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, Amendment 17, which is in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Beecham, seeks to extend the services of the Housing Ombudsman to the entire private rented sector. Following a successful pilot scheme in London, the Government decided to proceed in that manner. Ombudsman services are available for a variety of matters. They have proved highly effective and seek to resolve complaints having investigated the issues at hand independently and in a less confrontational way than proceedings in court can be.
At present, the Housing Ombudsman provides ombudsman services to housing organisations that are registered with it. The service is free, independent and impartial. It has two classes of membership: a mandatory membership, which includes all bodies registered with the Homes and Communities Agency; and a voluntary membership, which includes landlords and letting agents in the private rented sector who want to provide a good service to their tenants and who also have, and wish to retain, their good reputation.
My amendment seeks to extend the service on a trial basis to cover all disputes between landlords and tenants in the private sector in the Greater London area. It provides that the trial would last for between six and 12 months and that subsequently, within three months of the ending of the trial period, a report must be laid before Parliament with any statement the Secretary of State thinks appropriate about the extension of the scheme. That could be anything from welcoming the trial and extending the scheme to concluding that it was not a success and ending it there. The Secretary of State has complete flexibility in this regard. If it is deemed to have been a success, we have also included in subsection (4) of the proposed new clause the power to extend the scheme to cover the whole private rented sector in England. This is a sensible and proportionate measure and amendment, which I hope will receive a positive response. I beg to move.
Lord Foster of Bath
My Lords, we are being asked in this amendment whether we think there is a need for further protection for tenants in the private rented sector. I suspect that I can guess the Minister’s response, although I hope I will be proved wrong. The Minister will point out that there is already a large amount of legislation to protect us from—I hesitate to use the phrase—“rogue landlords” and that further strengthening of that is to come, and that there is protection as regards retaliatory eviction against people who run “beds in sheds”. The Government’s own website lists a large number of tenants’ rights, which include the rights to,
“live in a property that’s safe and in a good state of repair”,
to have your deposit protected, to,
“challenge excessively high charges, know who your landlord is, live in the property undisturbed, see an Energy Performance Certificate … be protected from unfair eviction and unfair rent”,
and to have a written agreement if the tenancy term is fixed for more than three years. The Minister will no doubt point out, rightly, that some councils already have an accreditation scheme; she will point to the excellent Private Rented Sector Code of Practice that was developed on behalf of the Government by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors back in 2014. She may talk about the trade bodies that many residential landlords associations have, and as a fallback she will also of course refer, rightly, to the county court mediation service.
On first sight, given that long list, it may appear that there is no need for further protection for tenants in the private rented sector. However, noble Lords will be aware that in a number of the areas I have referred to there are ongoing problems. For example, after the list of rights that appear on the Government’s website, a section then tells you what to do if you feel that you are not able to exercise those rights. It suggests that you should first complain to the landlord; failing that, you should complain to one of the recently set up “designated persons”—that is, an MP, a councillor or one of the various tenant panels; and finally, if all that fails, you should go to your local council. Notwithstanding the responsibilities in some areas—but not all—that local councils have, as most noble Lords will be aware, many councils simply do not have the resources and expertise sufficiently to deal with the wide-ranging types of complaints that will and do come forward. The county court mediation process has of course been successfully used on a number of occasions, but there is a problem, due to various legal arguments as to whether private sector landlords are defined as “suppliers”. Can the Minister tell us whether, if landlords are not defined as suppliers, that particular problem means they will fall outside the remit of that mediation service?
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
My Lords, this is an interesting proposal and if it is introduced, leaseholders too should be included. There are 6 million leaseholders, who in the past could have gone to a leasehold valuation tribunal for a very reasonable cost, but who now have to go to the First-tier Tribunal, which is much more expensive. There are many things that could be resolved by applying the ombudsman scheme. I would like to hear more about how this would work, and also—perhaps at a later stage in the Bill—to look at the possibility of including leasehold properties.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham (Lab)
My Lords, I support the amendment, because I think there is a real issue here. Speaking as a former local authority leader—many people in this House are either former or current local authority leaders—I had three ombudsman judgments against me, of which two were correct and one, in my view, was not. That was over about 25 years, and most were associated with planning issues.
Throughout all my ombudsman experience, both in this sector and in the health service, the issues were between the ombudsman service and a publicly accountable body, such as a local authority or a health authority, in which there were members concerned to maintain the reputation of that authority, and to respond, if not precisely to the ombudsman’s proposals—the ombudsman had no enforcement powers—at least in a positive way. The ombudsman had no powers to make us do anything, but people would respond positively by trying to address the problem and see whether it was largely procedural or whether policy needed to be changed in some substantial way. That was because the ombudsman was overseeing a public organisation that had a reputation, with trustees, councillors and so on, who were accountable for their decisions in public, in the press.
If the Minister cannot support an amendment like Amendment 17, I hope that she will tell us how she would apply that same degree of scrutiny and enforcement to rulings against rogue landlords. There is a real issue here. Local authorities will respond, even if they cannot go all the way, but a private individual, knowing that the ombudsman has no statutory powers of enforcing a decision, may decide to go in a different direction and weather hostile criticism. Can the Minister help us by telling us in what ways the Government would ensure that the naming and shaming effect of ombudsman practice could apply in the private sector?
Lord Best (CB)
My Lords, I declare my interest as the chair of the council of the Property Ombudsman, and so I am on familiar ground. As chairman of an ombudsman scheme, I am very much in favour of the principle of having ombudsman services. They save having to go to court, spending a lot of money and being at loggerheads for longer. If one can resolve matters through the mediation services that, in effect, an ombudsman provides, it can be beneficial to everyone. I am also familiar with the Housing Ombudsman scheme because it is the body to which people take their complaints if they are tenants of housing associations and local authorities. I have had responsibility for housing associations and, like the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, I have had judgments against my organisation for, hopefully, rather trivial matters. The Housing Ombudsman has a very good reputation and is doing a very good job. It is sorting out many complaints and provides a good model for ombudsman-ery.
However, in the circumstances of both the Property Ombudsman, who looks after complaints from estate agents, letting and managing agents and corporate bodies, and the current Housing Ombudsman scheme, which looks after the mostly responsible local authorities and housing associations, one is in completely different territory to the 1.8 million individual private landlords. I see severe practical difficulties in applying the principles of ombudsman-ery—which require you to deal with a corporate entity, a body whose reputation needs protecting and who has a great deal to lose from the process—to the 1.8 million individual landlords, which, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Foster, is perhaps the current figure, 72% of whom have just one property.
It is extremely expensive if one gets bogged down in an individual dispute. Cases which involve the Property Ombudsman in dealing with disputes between agents and tenants who complain to us can sometimes go on for a very long time. However, the agents will try to get matters sorted: they will have their own complaints procedures and will work things through. They will show a willingness to go with this and, at the end of it, when we make an award—if we do make an award—against the agent, then the agent will pay up. We have sanctions if they do not.
When dealing with individual landlords, who sometimes do not have an office or an address and do not reply, these disputes can run and run and be extremely expensive to administer. This, I am afraid, is a criticism of having a system which has 1.8 million landlords looking after the properties. The practical difficulties of simply applying the ombudsman system to all private landlords are enormous. I suggest that if one were to have a pilot scheme to test out whether one can apply ombudsman principles to this sector, it would be a good idea to go with the corporate entities first. These landlords are private companies and have status. There is therefore an opportunity for legal processes to be brought into play if they do not pay up on awards and so on.
Forget the great mass of individuals for the moment because they could be expensive. I am afraid 96p per landlord will not do it because if tenants and landlords get into a dispute it can be ongoing. Even when one is half-way through trying to fix a dispute the landlord/tenant relationship can break down again on a new issue and the case could run and run. It is a big undertaking. So, to start with, I would stick with the corporate entities.
The Housing Ombudsman scheme is able to take on board corporate players. Some of the good landlords we have are already in membership of the Housing Ombudsman scheme on a voluntary basis. If one was seeking to extend the principles of ombudsman services, the first step would be to make this compulsory, as it is for housing associations and local authorities. Corporate bodies which are landlords should have somewhere to go. As with when we complain about our electricity, telephones or anything else, there should be a service. I suggest a pilot should start there, but it should be a little less ambitious than the scheme suggested in the amendment which, in many ways, is going in the right direction.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, for moving Amendment 17, which seeks to place into the Bill a power to widen the Housing Ombudsman’s role to cover private sector housing and disputes between tenants and private landlords. As the noble Lord said, private sector landlords can already join the Housing Ombudsman scheme on a voluntary basis. Indeed, many landlords who wish to assure their tenants of the quality of their services have already done so.
The Government’s interest is in protecting tenants and provisions elsewhere in the Bill already address this; for example, tenants whose landlords have failed to carry out repairs can complain to their local authority, and through the Bill the Government are strengthening the powers of local authorities to deal with landlords who do not comply with the law.
We do not wish to introduce unnecessary regulation on landlords or institute a national register, which would be the ultimate effect of this amendment since, to make it work, all landlords would be required to sign up to the scheme. Despite the excellent work of the Housing Ombudsman in resolving complaints, we think that for private landlords membership of the scheme should remain voluntary, although we encourage landlords to sign up.
Where private landlords have signed up voluntarily, they are signalling to their tenants that they are committed to a high level of service and can be expected to comply with any determination. Were they to be required to sign up, we might not see the same level of engagement with the process or level of compliance, as the noble Lord, Lord Best, intimated, and determinations would not be enforceable. We would risk increasing the number of complaints and the associated costs, while the tenants of reluctant landlords might not see the benefit.
The measures in the Bill are focused on tackling rogue landlords, but we must remember that the majority of landlords in the private sector provide good-quality and well-managed accommodation. We know that 84% of private renters are satisfied with their accommodation and stay in their homes for an average of three and a half years. The Government want to support and encourage good landlords so that they become more professional and continue to provide good-quality rented accommodation. Part of that approach involves ensuring that the regulatory framework is appropriate and proportionate, keeping red tape to a minimum and having a level playing field so that good landlords are not undercut by less reputable ones.
To support that objective, the Government have introduced a number of measures, as the noble Lord, Lord Foster, said, to drive up standards across the board, including: publishing How to Rent and other guides for tenants; developing a model tenancy agreement for use by landlords and tenants; requiring letting agents to display their fees in a prominent place so that prospective tenants will always know from the outset how much they will be charged; and promoting voluntary accreditation schemes and the industry-wide code of practice.
In answer to the question about making the code of practice statutory, we have no plans to do so because it is currently working well and we do not want to add further burdens. In relation to the Housing Ombudsman, we have no plans at this stage to merge it into a single ombudsman service because the Housing Ombudsman performs a specific role and needs to retain its independence.
I hope that on the basis of this explanation the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in this short debate. I take the point that the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, made about the funding mechanism. We certainly need to devise a system that collects the fee with another charge or over a longer period, although, as the noble Lord, Lord Best, said, there are already private landlords who have signed up to the scheme and pay their contribution to be part of this valuable service.
That is also why our amendment put forward a pilot scheme in only one part of the country—London. At the end of the scheme, that would be evaluated by the Secretary of State and a report would be laid before Parliament; at that point the scheme might have been a great success and could be extended further or might not have worked—or somewhere in between. We gave all options to the Secretary of State to move forward.
We should not forget that, in many of the areas that I outlined in which people have protections, virtually no legal aid is available now for these things. The protections are there, but they do not have the legal aid to ensure those protections. With that, though, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Beecham
“Accreditation and licensing for private landlords
Local authorities shall be required to operate an accreditation and licensing scheme for private landlords.”
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I may not be visible, but I rise to move Amendment 18 and speak to Amendment 27 in this group. Amendment 18 is about local authorities operating an accreditation and licensing scheme for private landlords and it would require local authorities to do it. A number already make this part of their work. In Leeds it has been particularly successful, with 332 landlords accredited, providing nearly 15,000 bed spaces. In a parallel scheme with the universities, some 20,000 bed spaces are covered by an accreditation scheme—so near enough 35,000 people are covered by such schemes. There is expense involved in running them and, in the present financial climate, it would be difficult for local authorities to progress the proposal in this amendment, unless there were government backing in the form of some funding. As I have already indicated, some funding is currently available. My own authority has benefited from it and, no doubt, others have too. Perhaps the Minister can clarify the position but I suspect that this has so far been something of an experiment to see how effective such investment might be. If these schemes are proving successful, I hope the Government will look at extending the programme elsewhere.
Amendment 27 is of a different kind. It would create a register of all private landlords and privately rented properties, to be maintained by local authorities. It simply registers where properties are so that local authorities know which properties are rented out and who the owners are. They can then use that information to inform landlords of their duties under housing legislation and under the recent, rather difficult requirements of immigration legislation, which, I suspect, is a considerable burden on landlords. It is also good property management practice.
The noble Baroness and I have not exactly crossed swords, but we have occasionally discussed the progress of the duty on owners to provide carbon monoxide alarms in their properties. I speak with some feeling about this, since my own carbon monoxide alarm has fallen down three times in the last couple of weeks and I cannot persuade it to stay in position. Better organised people no doubt can—and they certainly should when they are letting out properties. The programme that the Government launched in the summer was done without very much publicity or very much time. I understand that the Government intend to review matters only several months into the current year. If the Government —or, more specifically, local authorities—knew which were rented properties, they could direct the publicity to known landlords, rather than in general terms through the media. They could do this potentially in other contexts. It would be a very useful tool in assisting the good management of properties by responsible landlords. Otherwise, they may simply not come across the publicity around carbon monoxide or smoke alarms, for example. There is the potential here for the Government to create a situation in which councils and landlords can work together in the interests of tenants and, ultimately, landlords. It is not much use to a landlord having a property that has been exposed to fire or other damage, let alone the dreadful consequences of carbon monoxide poisoning.
I hope that the noble Baroness will look sympathetically at both these suggestions. They are designed to make sure that standards are maintained and to assist good owners to carry on responsibly the business in which they are engaged and thereby to protect their tenants. Ultimately, of course, it also protects their own property interests. It is in everybody’s interest that progress along the lines of these two amendments should be made. I beg to move.
Lord Flight (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register, and will speak to Amendment 21, whose objectives I trust will command broad support. These are, in essence, to provide practical and low-cost measures to enforce existing laws to protect tenants from criminal landlords. If measures along the lines of this proposed new clause are adopted, I also believe they would avoid the need for new regulations.
The private rented sector has already become larger than the social rented sector, and PricewaterhouseCoopers estimate that, by 2025, 25% of UK households will be private rented homes. Such large increases argue strongly for greater scrutiny of how the sector operates. One of the main reasons for a lack of effective enforcement of existing laws is that there is no clear and systemic way of identifying the landlord of a property and how they can be contacted. This needs to be readily available, if both the enforcement of existing regulations and the taxation of landlords are to be effective.
There are also a number of other government policies which will work only if there is a way of knowing how to contact landlords. For example, the Government’s right- to-rent scheme—making landlords legally responsible for checking the immigration status of their tenants—needs the name and contact details of the landlord to be readily available for the Home Office to tell a landlord if a tenant is in the country illegally.
Within the Housing and Planning Bill, how can government expect their proposed rogue landlord database to work if there is no systemic way of identifying such landlords? How can HMRC seek to claim tax for which a landlord may be liable if there is no ready way of finding him?
The case for a clear and systematic way of identifying landlords is, I suggest, compelling. A national register of landlords has been suggested as a solution to this issue. The problem is that it would be only the good landlords who readily identified themselves. What landlord, flouting his legal obligations, would voluntarily come forward to make himself known?
In 2014, a report on the regulation of private rented housing was produced by Michael Ball, professor of urban and property economics at Reading University. He noted that such registration schemes fall back on the threat of penalties for those who fail to register to try to ensure that higher numbers do so, but that such threats are unlikely to impress the worst landlords because of the more draconian penalties they would be likely to face if their poor practices were found out. They are thus unlikely to co-operate.
Ministers have claimed that the Bill already includes measures that will allow local authorities to access information held by tenancy deposit schemes to assist with the enforcement of regulation. This is certainly a welcome move to better use the data which are already available. However, councils will be expected to pay to access such information, which may deter many authorities. Also, the measure would not help local authorities find landlords who do not abide by their legal obligations as they relate to tenancy deposit schemes. Recent research has found almost 300,000 landlords still not complying with deposit protection rules.
The solution is, in essence, to ask the tenant. That is what this amendment is about. Something similar was promoted by Dame Angela Watkinson MP, in the other place. The amendment would make it compulsory for local authorities to ask tenants to provide on their council tax registration forms details of the property’s landlord or managing agent. Thus collected, the information should then assist local authorities to enforce all regulations pertaining to the private rented sector as well as support other government policies, such as the right to rent and the rogue landlords database, which require knowing where landlords can be contacted. Local authorities would also have an up-to-date picture of the size of the private rented market in their area, enabling better evidence-based policy. It could also be used as an invaluable tool to communicate with landlords.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. I understood that Amendments 24 and 25 were in the 11th group, but perhaps I missed some earlier realignment of amendments.
Lord Flight
The noble Baroness is entirely correct. That is why I asked the indulgence of the Committee quickly to address them now. That is for two reasons: first, they relate to Amendment 21 and, secondly, as I have given notice, I may not be able to be here when they are called later, for some particular personal reasons.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
No, I fear we must stick with the group of amendments that we have.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
I am sorry to be a misery on this, but it is rather difficult because, when we get to that point in the debate, we will not be able to debate the amendments. They are quite some distance away; they would have needed to be grouped.
Lord Flight
I am bound by that judgment, but I did ask the Whips’ Office and was given permission so to do.
Lord Campbell-Savours
My Lords, I am not sure that the Whips’ Office has jurisdiction in these matters. The amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Flight, deals with a local authority’s arrangements for gathering council tax payments and business rates. However, there is another very important form of taxation when discussing these matters, which is taxes raised by the Inland Revenue—that is my explicit interest in Amendment 16, as spoken to by the noble Baroness. We now have a booming rental market in the United Kingdom, with programmes on television promoting buy to rent and organisations issuing leaflets and sending them to people’s homes explaining the benefits of buy-to-rent arrangements. A lot of people should be paying taxes on rental income.
Take a flat in London with two bedrooms, costing £500 a week or £25,000 a year. There will be many examples in London of people gathering in very substantial rents, even on just one property, who through some means or another are simply not declaring it to the Inland Revenue. Any system, including the system promoted by the noble Lord, Lord Flight, would be helpful in itself, but the system proposed by my noble friend, of a mandatory register of all private landlords, would certainly be very helpful in enabling the HMRC— which I keep referring to as the Inland Revenue, being a bit old-fashioned about these matters—to identify those people who should be paying tax on their rental income. The Inland Revenue are missing a trick here, because I suspect that there are probably billions in unpaid taxes on rentals which are not declared to the Revenue.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I have Amendment 33A in this group. I do not want to say too much but give general support to the two amendments spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, which tackle the question of the register from opposite ends but which are mutually complementary, as far as I can see—there are two different purposes but both would be desirable. There are two points in this amendment.
First, it is our view that wherever possible, local authorities should have discretion over what they do, and therefore this question of whether a local register of private landlords should be set up and collected should be a matter for the local authority concerned. For all the reasons put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, and indeed to a degree by the noble Lord, Lord Flight—as well as those in the very interesting contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, which bring in a different dimension altogether—I suspect that most authorities would want to do it, because of the value there would be. However, the real reason we would like to see it is for local housing purposes, to enable a local authority to maintain proper scrutiny over the private rented sector in its area and to more easily take action when action is required. My amendment is a statement against “one size fits all”-ism to some extent, but if the Government were minded to set up the kind of register that the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, is proposing, and it were compulsory for all local authorities, I do not think we would squeal too much.
Secondly, it seems to us that a register ought to pay for itself. An ordinary register would not be terribly expensive to run, and it ought to pay for itself rather than requiring further contributions from local authorities. Those are the two reasons for my amendment.
I listened carefully to the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Flight. I am not sure that the council tax register as such would be a particularly efficient way to do this, since as I understand it, people only really register for council tax in the sort of sense he is talking about when they are new residents in a property. Over a period of time, they might well provide the information he wants, but in the short run I do not think they would, because people simply pay the bills they get each year rather than filling a form in to register again afresh each year. No doubt these are details which could be discussed.
Lord Flight
I think I need to respond to that. Yes, it is correct that this would essentially be when a new residence starts, but there could be a simple form that went out with regular council tax demands.
Lord Greaves
Indeed, but it would not be compulsory to send it back—or perhaps it would if the legislation said that it was. Equally, it might be more efficient to do it with the electoral register. I do not know, but I am sure it could be done. However, there is a growing consensus on this, and sooner or later Parliament will have to legislate on the Government’s behalf. Registers of private landlords are going to be required for a number of varied purposes, which have been discussed around the Committee today.
Earl Cathcart (Con)
My Lords, I should declare that I am a landlord. I support Amendment 21, tabled by my noble friend Lord Flight. This is a bit of a hobbyhorse of mine, and I raised this exact solution in a Question last summer, when I said:
“One of the problems is not knowing who the landlords are. Some suggest that there ought to be a national register of landlords, but the good ones might register while the bad ones will not bother and thus remain below the radar. Surely a better way is if all new tenants, who are required by law to complete a council tax registration form, put on that form the name, address and contact details of their landlords; then, councils would build up over time a complete picture of all the landlords in their area”.—[Official Report, 23/6/15; cols. 1467-68.]
I raised the point again at a later date, but that, too, fell on stony ground. My noble friend the Minister then kindly arranged a meeting with Brandon Lewis, the Housing Minister, and all three of us agreed that it was a jolly good idea—until an official put a spoke in the wheel by suggesting that such a measure would put a burden on local authorities. Quite what that burden would be I do not know. It must be in local authorities’ interests to know who all the landlords in their area are—the good and the bad. I understand that, as my noble friend said, some local authorities already require this information on their council tax registration forms. So surely this is best practice, not a burden.
There are numerous occasions when the Government need to contact landlords, but cannot do so because they do not know who they all are. We heard from the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, that the Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Alarm (England) Regulations allowed only two weeks for landlords to comply, but the Government could not write to the landlords, so how on earth could they comply on time? We also heard from my noble friend Lord Flight about the provisions in the Immigration Bill legally requiring landlords to monitor whether their tenants are legally allowed to rent in this country. I wholeheartedly support my noble friend’s amendment. I shall not go over all his arguments, but I hope that the Minister will agree to look at this again.
Lord O’Shaughnessy (Con)
My Lords, I register my concern about Amendments 18, 27 and 33A because of the unintended impact of the regulation that I believe they would introduce.
It is worth reflecting once again on the reasons behind the Bill: we have too little housing in this country, it is too expensive and is not of a high enough quality. To address this crisis we need to generate radically greater investment in housing. I think everyone in the Committee agrees with that. That investment must come from government and the private sector. Several noble Lords have already commented on the growing role of the private rental sector. For better or worse, we now have 4.4 million households in private rented accommodation—the second highest tenancy after ownership. Earlier, the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, talked about an explosion of private rental housing. I welcome this in its own terms because we will simply not get the housing we need without the billions—indeed, trillions—of pounds of investable money that is sitting in pension funds and other investment funds.
It is also worth remembering that we have a public debt of 80% of GDP and a budget deficit, so private sector funding is essential to meeting our housing need. Whenever you talk to private pension fund and investment fund managers about investing in housing, you find that it is the complexity of the product that puts them off. We must be very wary about increasing that complexity.
What are the conditions needed to encourage this investment? Clearly, any investment needs to look for an economic return. I think we all agree that that is available in the housing sector. We need a quick and simplified planning system—we are not dealing with that part of the Bill today but will do so—and a low regulatory burden for the non-rogue landlords. It is on this last item that these amendments are problematic. I totally understand their intention but believe that they will provide another barrier to entry for potentially good landlords.
My noble friends Lord Flight and Lord Cathcart talked about the fact that licensing schemes will tend to attract good landlords and not capture the bad ones. For that reason, a mandatory licensing and accreditation scheme—let alone the charging of fees, as suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves—would potentially discourage investors and raise the costs of housing while also increasing the burden on local authorities. Surely this is not the way forward to generate the housing that we need.
What we need, of course, are greater powers to crack down on rogue landlords—exactly what we discussed earlier today—a proportionate response to the problem rather than a blanket response. As we discussed—and will continue to discuss—these are well provided for in the Bill, with great agreement across the House. So the discussion of voluntary arrangements—
Lord Greaves
I do not understand how a simple act of telling the council that you are the owner of a property is a huge regulatory burden. But putting that on one side, how is a council supposed to crack down on a rogue landlord if it does not know who owns the property?
Lord O’Shaughnessy
That is a perfectly good question. I was going to end by talking about the voluntary arrangements that have been discussed in both this area of registration and with the Housing Ombudsman. However, the amendment of my noble friend Lord Flight points to a simpler, lower-impact and more elegant way of gaining the information that we are after. Every time there is a change of tenancy or of ownership is precisely the point at which a new registration would have to be made. I do not believe you would need to send out forms every year; you would just need them when the occupancy or the ownership changed. That would provide a rolling database of the information that local authorities need.
The Earl of Lytton
My Lords, this series of amendments has raised some very interesting points. At Second Reading, I suggested a means whereby prospective tenants might get access to information on landlords who were signed up to a reputable body with established standards that it imposed on its members, and with current and valid membership of a dispute resolution and redress scheme. I am told that there is no such facility. My thought was to bring out the best and to lead from the front with the positives rather than try to deal with the negatives and, in so doing, squeeze out those rogues we have heard about. It was suggested to me by a residential managing agent of my acquaintance that it would be a bit like Checkatrade or TripAdvisor, particularly if it had user or customer—that is, tenant—feedback built into the system. However, I cannot see that that sort of thing can work by compulsion.
I am not an advocate of a compulsory scheme, as proposed by noble Lords in some of the amendments. It would have large costs; it would be readily circumvented, especially by the rogues; and it would suffer from a measure of disregard through ignorance among the 1.5 million one-unit property landlords. I tend, therefore, towards the solution of the noble Lord, Lord Flight, but, again, with some caveats. I would particularly like to know what proposed new paragraph 27A(2)(a) means in terms of the word “category”, and, with apologies to him, where Airbnb fits into the framework. The Government have already moved to facilitate this trend, which may be here today and gone tomorrow. How, therefore, do you keep track of that as a “category” in terms of art? A holiday let today may be an assured shorthold tenancy tomorrow, or vice versa. I see great practical problems in this regard.
There is, however, another problem about candid declaration, if one is going down this road. How frequently, given this quite rapid churn in the system, do you have to trawl for the information to ensure that it is bang up to date? What happens when something that has planning consent for, for example, holiday lets turns out to be on an 18-month assured shorthold tenancy, potentially in breach of planning control? For that matter, what happens when it operates in the other direction? There could be issues to do with planning or potential breach of private contract, and I wonder who gets to see and use the information garnered by this process. There is quite a quite dangerous mix of stuff here, with all sorts of people coming in with different motives. The truth is that, over many years, housing has become commoditised. It has gone beyond being the roof over your head and the security for your family; it is now an investment vehicle, a pension pot and a place to park a significant sum safely where you can manage it and see what is happening, as opposed to subcontracting it to somebody who manages portfolios on the stock exchange, where you may have less control. That brings all sorts of different motivations and methods of managing, owning and occupying property.
I said earlier that I would hesitate, if I were a local government official—which I am not—to delve into this issue. It has very significant resource implications. I still tend, therefore, to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Flight, but it has a number of holes and would provide far from perfect coverage. That said, we are beginning to drill down and head in the right direction, which is somehow to find a method whereby people will voluntarily sign up because they see it as being in their interests to do so—because they want to be seen as the good guys and the providers of quality, and not to be associated with the rogues about whom we have heard so much today.
I hope the Government will feel that there is merit in that. Perhaps with one or two tweaks—a combination of some of the things discussed in this group of amendments—we could end up with something of long-term benefit that would defuse some of the adversarial nature of what we have been talking about, which is corrosive to the sector and to relationships between landlords and tenants and ultimately may end up leading us around the houses—excuse the pun—several times without achieving what we need: the long-term betterment of the landlord-tenant relationship in the private rented housing stock.
Lord Foster of Bath
My Lords, we seem to be discussing two slightly separate issues in this group of amendments. The first is whether or not we need to have a register of all private sector rented landlords, and I certainly believe that we need to have that. As my noble friend Lord Greaves made very clear, if we do not know who owns a particular property or who is its landlord, it is very difficult to take enforcement action against them. It is also very difficult, as the noble Lord, Lord Flight, has pointed out, for a number of bits of government legislation to be effectively enforced without having such a register—for example, the requirement for landlords to vet the immigration status of their tenants.
Amendment 27 from the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, proposes a mandatory register and suggests that the way of filling the data in it is by requiring all landlords to sign up to it. As the noble Lord, Lord Flight, has pointed out, there are some difficulties with that: those landlords who are not particularly good, those who are on the border of being rogue landlords, are not likely to bother to provide the information. The noble Lord provides an alternative means of filling the data sets: using the form that is initially sent in for registering for council tax, although, as my noble friend Lord Greaves has pointed out, that is done by very many tenants only once in a blue moon.
So there are problems with how we fill the data set, but what is most important is that we hear from the Minister whether it is the Government’s view that we should be having a national database. Whether it is run at individual local authority level or nationally I am not that concerned about at this stage, but it is important to know what the Government’s thinking is about having a database of all private sector landlords. Then perhaps we could get together from all sides of the House to work out the details of how we could fill the data set and ensure that people registered appropriately.
The second issue is local authorities operating an accreditation or licensing scheme. There is a straightforward difference between Amendment 18 from the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, and my noble friend’s Amendment 33A. My noble friend suggests that this should be voluntary and local authorities can decide whether or not to do it, while the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, is suggesting that all local authorities must do it. I make it clear that I side entirely with my noble friend. It is right and proper that local authorities do this, but it is also important that we recognise that some local authorities have already found ways of doing it; across many parts of London there is already such a scheme, and other councils—for example, by using an Article 4 direction—have been able to do that.
Still, it is important that we treat these two issues as separate: first, with regard to the list of all private sector rented landlords so that we can ensure that legislation that we pass in your Lordships’ House will be enforced; and, secondly, that we allow discretion to local authorities to decide how best they wish to operate in the best interests of the people they seek to represent in local authority areas.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
My Lords, I remind noble Lords that this issue came up earlier under the Deregulation Bill. I was very opposed to the fact that they threw out all rights to register people who were living in these places. It came up, in particular, in relation to Airbnb. I divided the House and we lost the issue. Westminster Council had been prepared to register people even at 24 hours’ notice so that it could know who was occupying, not only as a landlord but who was living in the place. This was rejected. I found it extraordinary that, at a time when New York and Paris were bringing in this regulation, we were deregulating it. It went through on the Deregulation Bill and it should be drawn to the attention of noble Lords again. It seems to be in total conflict with what the House carried at that time, against what I was hoping, which was more like what the noble Lord, Lord Foster, has just suggested.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, if I may, I will take note of what my noble friend Lord Flight has said and deal with it in the relevant group so that I have both heard him and responded at the relevant time and we do not move amendments out of kilter.
Amendments 18 and 33A are very similar, so I will address them together. These amendments would involve local authorities operating an accreditation and licensing scheme for private sector landlords in their area. The current licensing arrangements were introduced to give local authorities the ability to deal with problems that might arise in connection with rented property and provide for three types of licensing: mandatory licensing of larger houses in multiple occupation; additional licensing of smaller houses in multiple occupation; and selective licensing of all types of private rented housing, should the local authority see fit to do that.
A major drawback of licensing is that it impacts on all landlords and it places additional burdens on reputable landlords who are already fully compliant with their obligations. As my noble friend Lord O’Shaughnessy says, this creates unnecessary costs for reputable landlords which tend to be passed on to tenants. The majority of landlords—the non-rogue landlords, to quote my noble friend—provide a good service and the Government do not want to impose unnecessary additional costs on them or on tenants who may see their rents rise as landlord costs rise.
Accreditation is of interest only to good landlords who rent out decent accommodation, so it does not help to identify and tackle criminal landlords nor lead to improvements in the sector. Local authorities are in the best position to decide whether or not there is a need for an accreditation system in their area. Indeed, voluntary accreditation systems have been introduced by many local authorities and are also promoted by the main landlord associations. The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, asked whether these could be extended if they were successful. They most definitely could, but it would be a local decision-making process. I hope, with that explanation, the noble Lord will agree to withdraw the amendment.
I would like to thank my noble friend Lord Flight for tabling Amendment 21. I see that my noble friend Lord Cathcart is in his place; he has spoken to this. The amendment would require local authorities to request tenure information from residents, owners and managing agents whenever the local authority requests council tax information. As my noble friend Lord Cathcart and I have already discussed, it happens in some councils, as noble Lords have pointed out, particularly in London. It is already being practised by some councils, but not all. I am very supportive of ensuring that local authorities have the tools necessary to tackle rogue landlords in the private rented sector in their areas. Parts 2 and 3 of this Bill demonstrate our commitment to this.
Local authorities already have powers in existing legislation to request tenure information on council tax forms—as I have said, some do—through the Local Government Finance Act 1992 and the Housing Act 2004. They can also access the tenancy deposit protection schemes. I am very sympathetic to the purpose of this amendment but, before jumping head first into legislation to require it, which could potentially increase financial burdens, the Housing Minister and I intend to investigate the matter further and have taken steps to establish a working group to explore this important issue. It will be chaired by none other than Dame Angela Watkinson herself. The working group will assess the extent to which local authorities are currently using their existing powers, examine how they could currently use this information to tackle rogue landlords and, crucially, consider how and whether requiring the collection of tenure data will assist in tackling rogue landlords. It is due to meet in March and will report back to Ministers within three to six months.
The noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, came back on the point about the ability of the Inland Revenue —or HMRC—to access rogue landlord data.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
Yes, it can access all data, but in particular it can access rogue landlord data. This is part of my point: there is evidence of some practices in London where rogue landlords are housing 20 or so tenants in two-bedroom properties. That evidence could be married up with the various agencies not only to find those rogue landlords but to fine them as well, and recover the tax that is due to HMRC. I thought that might be a useful circling up.
Lord Campbell-Savours
I am not referring to rogue landlords but to all landlords.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
Absolutely—I would just make the point about the rogue ones, but the noble Lord is absolutely right.
Amendment 27 would require all private landlords to sign up to a national register, which would be operated and maintained by a local authority. The information on the register could be used by local authorities to inform landlords about regulatory matters, of their duties under the Housing Act and the Immigration Act 2014, and other useful information. The Government do not support a national register, for reasons which some noble Lords have pointed out. In addition to the costly undertaking of supporting a national register—
Lord Campbell-Savours
I am sorry to press the Minister again, but has any estimate been made of what the cost would be? Can we have some idea, or is there just an assumption that it will be too costly?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, I am not sure whether an assessment has been made, but while I do not know what the cost will be, there will be a cost. There will obviously be an obligation to provide a register, and therefore an associated resource and cost. I cannot say what the quantum of that cost would be at this point.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
I wonder whether the Minister can also help me. She was helpfully describing a working party which is being set up and chaired by Dame Angela Watkinson, to report in three to six months’ time. Given the findings and recommendations with which it will no doubt come forward, can the Minister assure us that there are powers within this proposed legislation—the Act may have gone through by then—to implement them in a way which reflects the opinion of this House? Does she have those powers? How would she therefore progress any findings which might or might not follow the path of the noble Lord, Lord Flight, or the path of my noble friend Lord Beecham on this?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
It may be helpful if I tell the noble Baroness that what I discussed with my noble friend Lord Cathcart and the Housing Minister was that there are local authorities doing just this. I imagine that the working group will be exploring the art of the possible—to extend if it needed—and what the implications would be for local authorities, but some are already doing it under existing legislation. I do not think that the Bill per se would do it, but it is about how we would marry up existing legislation with what is already being done by local authorities.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
But that would suggest that the chair of the working party and that party did not produce recommendations any different from those currently practised. That of course is not probable. If it is to be effective, one will need some powers in this legislation, by affirmative regulations or something, to come back to that should it be appropriate. I doubt that the Minister would want primary legislation for that, but if she does not have statutory instrument powers, she will not be able to do it.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, the working group will meet in March and I would not want to pre-empt what it will come up with or recommend. I am saying that there is existing legislation to do what my noble friend Lord Flight suggests, but it is a question of local authorities’ willingness to take it up, which is varied. I cannot pre-empt what the working group will say.
My noble friend also made the point that only the good landlords will come forward, and I agree with that. I also agree that local authorities should focus their enforcement on the small number of rogues who knowingly flout their obligations, and that what is why we are establishing the database.
The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, asked how the council can crack down on a landlord if the tenant does not know them. The tenant can raise concerns with the council, which can use the powers in the Housing Act 2004 and seek action from the landlord or the property manager. The tenant may not know the landlord, but they should know the managing agent.
My noble friend Lord Flight asked how local authorities know where the rogue landlords are. Obviously the database will be built up, but authorities will be able to combine the tenancy deposit data with existing data sets, such as council tax and housing benefit data, to identify properties that are not on the tenancy deposit protection list and hence those potentially belonging to rogue landlords.
The noble Lord, Lord Foster, asked about immigration, particularly illegal immigration, and how those tenants would be identified. The Immigration Act 2014 introduces a requirement now to check the immigration status of the tenants. Where a landlord has concerns about a tenant’s immigration status, he should contact the Home Office. Local authorities can also raise any concerns regarding illegal immigrants with the Home Office.
With those points, I hope that the noble Lord will feel content to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I will not keep Members of your Lordships’ House from their dinner or from the dinner break business, whichever they prefer or are committed to.
I have a couple of very short points. The first is that the Minister did not quite reply to my noble friend Lady Hollis’s question, but perhaps she will send her a reminder. Alternatively, of course, the Minister could look at Hansard.
The noble Baroness, Lady Gardner, has raised Airbnb matters more than once in the House. If she looks down the list she will see that I have Amendment 32, which will touch on that matter, so, hopefully, we can revert to it.
Lastly, I shall say a brief word about Amendment 18. Part of the problem is that at the moment we have a selective licensing scheme that operates slowly, and there are hurdles to surmount before you can implement such a scheme. I mentioned the scheme that is now working in my own ward in Newcastle and which has received this additional funding—I repeat my gratitude in the hope that perhaps we will get some more—so it is not a straightforward matter to produce any form of licence scheme on a selective basis.
Having said that, I think it is clear that there is not much support for making this universal and comprehensive, but I invite the Minister to commit to looking at how the current scheme might be improved so that it could be speedier and done much more at the discretion of local authorities. At the moment you have to have a certain number and a certain percentage; it is full of hurdles that get in the way of dealing with what is quite an important problem for many people. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Foreign and Commonwealth Office: Funding
Lord Luce (CB)
My Lords, I welcome the opportunity to clarify how the Government are matching the funding of our diplomacy in relation to our foreign policy priorities. I am grateful to all noble Lords who are participating, with all their experience, and to the Minister for responding.
I support the Government’s commitment in the Queen’s Speech to continue to play a leading role in global affairs, and I welcome the autumn spending review decision to preserve the FCO budget in real terms. However, I suggest that there is still a serious mismatch between our foreign policy priorities and available diplomatic resources. The result is that we cannot properly fulfil our ambitions.
We need to look at this issue in a broader context to see why this is the case. Between 1997 and 2010 there were considerable reductions in the service. These included the closure of more than 30 UK overseas posts across Africa, Latin America and Asia. The coalition Government then embarked on tough new economic policies. During their five years in office, this led to a 16% core spending cut in real terms and a consequent reduction in UK-based staff from just under 5,000 to just under 4,500, although this was buttressed by a larger locally engaged staff.
I should acknowledge that in 2011, the then Foreign Secretary, now Lord Hague, did everything he could to retain our embassies. As a result, the total number of overall posts overseas has increased from 258 to 268, and the numbers are maintained in 168 countries and nine multilateral bodies. However, the danger now is that our very high-quality UK-based staff are too few, trying to do too many things. They are too thinly spread.
I was struck by the Foreign Secretary’s own admission of this when he said to the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, just before the Autumn Statement:
“The ability to maintain the network at its current level and to sustain that in the future, and the ability to have a sufficient density of policy-making capacity here in London so that we can lead the foreign-policy-making process across Government and beyond are the key to the Foreign Office’s raison d’etre”.
He went on to say that,
“we are pretty close to the irreducible minimum of UK-based staff on the network”.
By comparison, we spend less per capita on diplomacy than the United States, Germany, France, Australia and Canada.
Another way of looking at this is in the context of HMG’s spending on international policy. Of every £1,000 the Government spend, £2 goes to the Foreign Office, £50 goes to defence and £10 goes to DfID for development aid. I note that the MoD and DfID shares are now formally linked to international targets; the FCO’s is not, and so is vulnerable to squeeze.
It is increasingly clear that the capability of the FCO to undertake its vital work has been declining. There have been noticeable weaknesses in managing the outcome of crises in Iraq and Afghanistan and in the operational handling of the Russia/Ukraine region, Syria and Libya. Also, for example, only 23% of the jobs in eastern Europe and Central Asia and only 27% in the Middle East and north Africa have the required number of local language speakers. In this context, I welcome the new Language Centre and the Diplomatic Academy. Further problems arise from underinvestment in modern equipment and ageing IT systems.
It seems to me that we now face a choice: either we continue to play a global role, punching above our weight, as the noble Lord, Lord Hurd, once suggested, or we recognise that we are no longer willing to afford what it takes, sharpen our priorities and reduce or eliminate some of our roles. I, like the Government, am in favour of the first choice. There are many reasons for this.
In my student days at Cambridge, I had the privilege of meeting Dean Acheson, who had famously proclaimed that Britain had lost an empire but not yet found a role. I believe that this is no longer true. We have seen a successful transformation of an empire into a Commonwealth of 53 equal nations whose potential we have yet to fulfil. We are anxious to play a full role globally, but no longer as an imperial superpower.
It is worth reminding ourselves of our position in the world. We are the fifth-largest economy. We are a nuclear weapon state within the non-proliferation treaty. We are members of more multilateral international bodies than any other nation, ranging from the UN—with our permanent membership of the Security Council—to the EU, NATO, IMF and so on. We can add to all this our “accumulated estate of soft power”, so well summarised by the 2014 Lords Select Committee on Soft Power, ably chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Howell. It showed that we have the strongest cultural assets in the world. We are a leading digitally connected society. We are ethnically diverse and therefore outward looking. The BBC World Service and the British Council are outstanding in communicating our values to the world.
At the same time, Britain’s security and prosperity are under threat and likely to remain so. If anything, the world is more troubled than it was in 2010. Moreover, it is changing fast. We have seen the rapid rise of China, an aggressive Russia, disintegration in the Middle East spurred on by Daesh, a weakening of the EU and of transatlantic cohesion, an international humanitarian system at breaking point, with 60 million displaced people and mass migration towards Europe, and a sketchy global economy and financial system, in addition to the fact that the end of the Cold War has seen the return of local conflicts, many failed states and the increase of terrorism. In the face of all this, it must be in our British interests to continue using our diplomatic assets around the world, and within alliances and international organisations, to work actively for peace, stability and the promotion of free trade. But we can only do that if our diplomacy is adequately funded and supported.
In my five years as a Minister in the FCO, I grew to admire the immense skills and intellectual judgment of many independent-minded diplomats. But I recognise that the role of the diplomat is changing with the digital age. The range of tasks facing a diplomat today demand a multiskilled approach. Our embassies provide a platform for 26 government departments, promote trade, deliver consular services and contribute to global issues such as tackling climate change and cybersecurity. This must mean attracting and retaining sufficient highly qualified people, who these days have many other career choices open to them. If we spread them too thinly around the world and give them inadequate training, we will both overstrain them and fail to provide the quality needed for an effective foreign policy.
I suggest we need more of these highly qualified people as well as better resources to support them. I am not convinced that the settlement the FCO has now reached with the Treasury for the next five years provides for this. The cost would be peanuts compared to the DfID budget of over £13 billion. I want to see us using all our strengths as a country—strengths that we tend to understate and underplay—to try to contribute to a better and more stable world.
We need to take every opportunity within the Commonwealth to use our soft power to our mutual benefit. We need to be active in Europe, whatever form it takes. We need to remain a robust partner in NATO through strengthened Armed Forces and as a nuclear power. We need to be actively working with our friends in the Gulf countries to reduce tension and to end conflict. We need to work hard to understand the importance of new relationships in Asia while keeping close to our neighbours in Europe and our old friends in the States. In all this, effective diplomacy will be at a premium. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to this debate and, in particular, to the urgent need for the Government to provide adequate diplomatic support to enable us to continue to play an effective global role.
Lord Patten (Con)
My Lords, I listened with great respect to that masterly overview from the noble Lord, Lord Luce. He has no greater admirer than me for all that he achieved as a Foreign Office Minister, and indeed later in Gibraltar. I would seek to correct him on only one minor point. He paid us all some advance compliments on being great experts on foreign affairs. Alas, not me. I was never considered by the powers that be to have the subtlety of mind to be appointed to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. I equally admire the work now being done by Philip Hammond, building on that of his predecessors such as my noble friend Lord Hague, in continuing to focus the FCO within resources.
This is a never-ending task: it will never be completed, but has to be done year in, year out. We must recognise that in an age of austerity—or restraint, or whatever the current polite phrase is—it is far from over, and that any great expenditure increases in the next five years are unlikely, after the five-year settlement. We must also recognise, however—this is a positive point—how many other departments are pitching in, and increasingly so, on the foreign affairs front. Some of them were enumerated by the noble Lord. They are not just the obvious ones such as DfID or the MoD: there is also BIS, with its welcome refettling of UKTI activities to create greater focus, as well as helping to proselytise for the university achievements of this country worldwide. The Department for Education is also increasingly concerned with educational exports—and other departments are getting involved too.
All this is becoming much more joined up, albeit perhaps not by design but by chance. Many departments are now much more foreign-facing than they may have been when the noble Lord, Lord Luce, first went to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. That is a very good thing, and should be encouraged across Government. I urge the Minister to carry back the message to Foreign and Commonwealth Ministers that they should tell taxpayers just how many other departments beside the FCO are intimately involved in foreign affairs, albeit sometimes at one remove.
Finally, if I may strike a personal note, I much admire the individual civil servants in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office who are on the front line, dealing with difficult and sometimes, I have to say, morally challenging matters—for instance, if they are in Saudi Arabia, wanting to maintain our important strategic interests there, but in a country that routinely crucifies and cuts off heads week by week. That is a great moral challenge for those young men and young women. It is exactly the same with Turkey—a country that is using military force against its own citizens today, but is also playing a very welcome and important role in the Syrian refugee context. Those are truly examples of the diplomat’s personal dilemma, which people must face on a day to day basis.
I end by saying that the people of Gibraltar would wish that the noble Lord, Lord Luce, was back there, dealing with an increasingly intransigent Spanish Government, who are conducting their affairs in a most un-European way.
Lord Judd (Lab)
Not for the first time, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Luce. I thank him for having introduced this debate today, for having done it so well, and for having set out the challenges so clearly. The first reality of existence, and certainly the first reality for Britain, is that we are all now part of a highly interdependent world. The challenge for politicians in this generation, under Governments of all persuasions, is the contribution, and the value of that contribution, that we can make to meeting this global reality—strengthening global governance and the effective delivery, for people all over the world, of the policies that are necessary.
This is true of migration. We are only beginning to see what is going to face us in the future, with climate change and the rest. It will become a gigantic issue, which will require all nations to co-operate. It is obviously also true of security, and of economic affairs and many other things.
One thing that has come out in the debate is that many significant departments of state have, in effect, their own foreign policy. That makes the Foreign Office’s work in co-ordinating that reality, and in making sure that the policies individual departments are following are well informed and based on sound judgment, more important than ever. That is tremendously demanding.
It is also important to recognise that if we are to make an effective contribution to global governance, we need good intelligence—we need to be able to understand the world in which we are working. That makes the front-line work of the Foreign Office crucial. One of the changes we have to make in any leadership role we may want to play is that we have to understand that we cannot cruise on our past status—we cannot take for granted that the world is going to listen to us because we have been a great power, an imperial power, and the rest. We have to earn our laurels and that means the quality of what we are contributing will be vital. That rams home again the crucial challenges to the Foreign Office and its personnel.
When I was in the Foreign Office, like the noble Lord, I was incredibly impressed by the quality and dedication of the people I was working with. But it is a changing demand and therefore we will have to have in the Foreign Office the people who are right for meeting that demand and playing it in the directions I have indicated.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Luce, for introducing this debate. I hope it will be one more spur to seeing that whatever we do with the future of public expenditure and government priorities in this country, the Foreign Office will remain pre-eminent.
Lord Chidgey (LD)
My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Luce, on securing this debate and the admirable way in which he introduced it.
I want to talk about something related. In last year’s strategic defence and security review, the Government decided to place greater emphasis on soft power as part of their national security strategy. The decision to bring the funding of the BBC World Service back into the remit of the Foreign Office, with a budget of £85 million each year by 2017-18, was therefore widely welcomed.
I know that many noble Lords will recall their past dependence on the often crackly and faint yet measured tones of the BBC World Service shortwave reception. Calmly, it brought reliable news and comment to the remote and sometimes unstable locations to which noble Lords’ employment had taken them. Currently reaching 308 million people worldwide, and with a goal to reach 500 million by 2022, the BBC World Service has established an envious reputation for delivering trusted, impartial news. Plans for investing here, where a global gap has never been wider, will be very welcome, particularly in Africa, where audience figures outstrip all other areas of the world.
During previous rounds of spending cuts, replacing the extensive World Service network of shortwave radio transmitters with cheaper, local, city-based FM stations seemed like a good wheeze. The problem was, and is, that these FM stations are particularly vulnerable to political interference and closure when countries become unstable. Closure of FM stations compromises the delivery of the BBC’s flagship: trusted and impartial news. In Answers to Written Questions, the Government have told me that forced closures of FM stations have occurred in numerous African countries, including Somalia, Sudan and Rwanda—perhaps not surprisingly —but also, I believe, in Nigeria. Nevertheless, while audiences have switched from shortwave to FM, the total audience across all platforms in sub-Saharan Africa has risen from some 53 million to 82 million over the past 10 years.
Here lies the challenge to increasing the BBC World Service’s audience from 308 million to the target of 500 million by 2022: half the world’s population is under 35. The BBC’s future plans need to target aspiring youth overseas. The rise in TV audiences will continue to outstrip radio; digital platforms will continue to expand; and, particularly in Africa, mobile phone technology will challenge other news-delivery media. For the BBC World Service to keep pace and to be ahead of the curve in the future, there has to be some certainty now in funding streams beyond 2018.
Lord Wilson of Tillyorn (CB)
My Lords, the subject of this debate is broad and important, but time is very short indeed, so I shall concentrate on one issue: the importance of regional and country expertise if we are to have an effective foreign policy and, it follows from that, the need for consistent funding to support it.
A good many years ago, when I was a relatively junior member of the Foreign Office, I was summoned to 10 Downing Street to brief the Prime Minister on a visit to south-east Asia. The meeting started with the Prime Minister, the then Mrs Thatcher, roundly condemning the Foreign Office for its written briefing: what was the point of it all? She could get just the same sort of thing from the special supplements in the Financial Times.
Of course, that was all to ginger people up, and there is no harm in that, but it reflected a view that was beginning to be current then and which has continued in the minds of some people that globalisation means that the whole world is coming together, similarities between countries are now much greater, so why, then, have specialist diplomats? Rely instead on the newspapers and the news media. It was not true then; it is not true now. I am no expert on the area, but it seems clear that in recent years, we have desperately needed more and greater expertise on Iraq and Afghanistan and now on Syria and Libya as well.
There have been very welcome signs that the Foreign Office, particularly under the noble Lord, Lord Hague, has again taken to heart the traditional need for regional and language expertise. The setting up of a new Foreign Office language school, to which my noble friend Lord Luce referred, just over two years ago, is a very welcome sign. After all, the value of learning a language is not just the ability to speak it; it is a means of understanding the history and culture of a country—in other words, to understand how people think. This sort of training cannot be short-term; it needs time, effort and consistency.
I hope that the Minister can reassure us all that regional and country expertise, together with language training, is now high on the agenda of the FCO, and that funding will be there to achieve it. It would also be useful to know how many people are now being trained in each year in so-called hard languages: in particular, Arabic, Japanese and Chinese. Perhaps it is not fair to ask for an answer of the cuff, but if the Minister would like to write to me and place the letter in the Library, that would be very useful.
Lord Marland (Con)
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Luce, for his excellent résumé. I also declare interests as chairman of the Commonwealth Enterprise and Investment Council and as the Prime Minister’s former trade envoy. In the limited time available—which is shameful really; three minutes to talk about such an important subject—I will pose two questions to my noble friend and hope that he will respond either here or in writing.
We all agree with the noble Lord, Lord Luce, who put it beautifully, that resources in the Foreign Office are extremely limited and, much more importantly, unevenly spread. My first question is: how many people work on the European desk and how many work on the Commonwealth desk? I will give a rough answer: it is probably 10 to 15 on the Commonwealth desk and 100 on the European desk. The Commonwealth, incidentally, comprises one-third of the world’s population and 53 countries which all speak the same language. It is probably our oldest trading relationship, on which a small group of people in the Foreign Office work tirelessly to try to maintain the lights, under the spectacular leadership of a Minister, Hugo Swire.
My second question is about Africa. We have lost our pre-eminence. China is now overrunning Africa with its investment and its new set of rules, which are not necessarily conducive to our rules of engagement. When I was a Minister, I invited the Foreign Office to produce a report on how it should reallocate resources for Africa and redistribute personnel to reflect the differing and emerging countries. So my second question is: how has that report gone? Has it been enacted? Have steps been taken to make it happen? From the outside, it does not look so. I was with the Cameroon high commissioner yesterday. He was bemoaning the fact that no Cabinet Minister has ever visited Cameroon in its history. I think we could say the same for Angola, Mozambique and for a lot of African countries. This is shameful, given the resources and wealth that are now happening in these countries.
The Foreign Office is an excellent institution, but it is spread too thinly. It needs our support and it needs greater resources. It is up to us to put pressure on the Government—our own party—to ensure that resources are created for it.
Lord Green of Deddington (CB)
My Lords, I should like to speak in support of the points made so eloquently and powerfully by my noble friend Lord Luce in his opening speech. I await with anticipation the contribution of my noble friend Lord Kerr, who ran the service for five years and who should certainly be listened to.
For my part, I should like to offer a view from the coalface at which I strove for some 35 years, including in Saudi Arabia. It is self-evident that the effectiveness of the Diplomatic Service depends on the quality and experience of our staff in the overseas posts. I was, therefore, shocked to discover that, in nearly half of them, there are two or fewer UK-based staff. I take nothing away from the value of local staff—they make a great contribution to many parts of our work—but the key task of interpreting a foreign society to our own society relies on capable and experienced staff, as the noble Lord, Lord Wilson, has just pointed out. Much of that art is learned from your superiors. In two-man posts, you are not going to learn very much; you are not even going to be there together for very long.
To be effective in any post requires a steady building of trust at senior levels in the other Government. This, in turn, requires that our representatives know the language, culture, history and the way that people think in those countries. This is absolutely vital. We have to earn our laurels, as the noble Lord, Lord Judd, pointed out. We have to be good but, sadly, this expertise has been hollowed out. It is almost beyond belief that about a quarter of the jobs in the Middle East that should have Arabic speakers do not have them. The cost of the lack of that expertise is and can be immense. It is surely apparent that the Government’s performance in recent years in Iraq, Libya and Syria has revealed at every stage an inadequate knowledge of the vertical, social realities of these countries.
The same remarks about expertise apply in London also. My noble friend Lord Luce quoted the Foreign Secretary as referring to,
“a sufficient density of policy-making capacity”.
Well, well, well. I think what that means is people who actually know what they are talking about. This is rather important because, if officials are going to stand up to Ministers, it is not good enough that they have simply read the same telegrams. They will not be taken any notice of. They have to speak from a real experience of the region; a real knowledge of the leaders of the countries we are talking about; how they think; what their priorities are, and what the pressures on them are. They need a long experience, the longer the better, especially in stable countries—if there are any left—in such countries that have had a stable Government for some time.
Regrettably, it has now become quite clear that the Diplomatic Service is stretched far too thinly. Its capability to promote and defend our national interest is declining and this is a decline which the Government must bring urgently to a halt.
Lord Hunt of Chesterton (Lab)
My Lords, I welcome this debate on the funding and policy of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Important parts of UK foreign policy also concern working with other countries to create opportunities for UK business and to deal with major challenges that affect both developed and developing countries around the world. These include diseases, global climate change and, as is described in this week’s New Scientist, the transformation or long-term storage of nuclear waste, which may be a 1,000-year problem.
I hope that the Government will be more proactive in participating in the organisations of the EU, the Commonwealth and the UN, as other noble Lords have mentioned. In my experience as a chief executive of the Met Office, and now working with high-tech companies abroad much of the time, I have seen the technical and commercial value of collaboration with the EU networks and UN agencies. Also working with the Commonwealth is very important, particularly on climate change. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office and government departments are not seen by other countries to be as effective in advertising and making use of these collaborative programmes. Our embassies and government offices do not do not regularly fly the EU and UN flag. One embassy I visited celebrated pulling down the EU flag at the end of Britain’s period of the presidency and hoped that it would never have to put it up again.
The UK’s involvement in the EU and the UN is not advertised on the UK Government webpage. It is noticeable, however, that other EU countries that have bigger budgets, as has been commented on, nevertheless advertise their role in the EU very considerably. How would a foreign businessman or a technical institute know about the UK’s participation? Surely the FCO should be expanding its work in this way and demonstrating its participation. I hope the Minister will perhaps respond to that.
I am afraid that the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee, which has been looking into the consequences of the UK leaving the EU, has had evidence from UK and non-UK companies showing that UK business will lose its influence in steering the new technological initiatives that will emerge from Horizon 2020. In that event, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and other departments will have to spend more money to ensure strong participation. It is very important for the Foreign Office budget that we remain in the EU. The days of a UK FCO just physically and metaphorically displaying the union jack should be over.
Lord Craig of Radley (CB)
My Lords, I, too, commend the noble Lord, Lord Luce, for securing this all-too-brief debate. If money is short, why not try melding better together the efforts of charity and other bodies with those of FCO staffs in posts overseas?
I am a fellow of the Commonwealth Partnership for Technology Management—CPTM, for short. It has a remarkable track record: more than 20 years of organising yearly, or near-yearly large-scale meetings attended by heads of government or states from a variety of Commonwealth and other countries in the developing world. The host head will personally be present and take full part in the two or three-day event. All these heads are themselves fellows of CPTM. In addition to the wider gatherings, we have fellows only sessions. I have met and dined with heads on these occasions informally, without any of the normal protocol to arrange meetings or discussions with such individuals. Participants at these gatherings are drawn from business, labour, academia, the media, government and other public sector bodies. All can enjoy the freedom of direct interaction at every level, including with the heads attending. These meetings invariably lead to wide-ranging and fascinating exchanges between those present.
CPTM’s vision is to encourage by interaction a smart approach to activity between all sectors, to achieve win-win outcomes, and to reflect Commonwealth values of tolerance and co-operation rather than an attitude of beggar my neighbour and confrontation. Indeed, the fact that successive heads from those countries participating have been interested in CPTM and followed so closely the involvement with it of their predecessors in office, is a strong indicator that CPTM has lasting value. It has done much to help those developing nations and their leaders to formulate their vision and approach to national growth and prosperity.
I am afraid that UK Governments have shown scant interest in this successful enterprise and the work of CPTM. They miss out. Involvement in these gatherings would give local high commission staff the opportunity to network informally with key regional individuals and to better appreciate the complex of feelings and attitudes about the United Kingdom held by many of those from the developing world. May I encourage the Minister to get briefed about CPTM? I am, of course, willing to facilitate any meeting between the CEO of CPTM and the FCO to assist.
Lord Hylton (CB)
My Lords, I will speak not so much on funding, important as that is, but rather on our foreign policy interests. This country is by far the largest European provider of aid for refugees and displaced people from Iraq and Syria, and it is therefore very much in our interests that these large sums be spent effectively and fairly. I have two questions on our interests as regards Syria.
First, what are the Government doing to ensure that the largest share of food aid does not go to areas controlled by Assad? This will serve only to prolong the war and thus displace more people. Aid must, surely, go fairly to all those in need. Secondly, why has it taken from 2013 until just last month for British officials to visit the free cantons of north Syria? I was briefly in Jazira last May. It was quite easy to get in, yet it took the visit of the United States diplomat Mr Brett McGurk before our people went—with him—to Kobane. The cantons of Rojava may well hold the key to the future of Syria. We should therefore work with them. I look forward to the ministerial reply, since I have given him notice.
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)
My Lords, my noble friend Lord Luce was indeed an excellent Minister and governor and deserves to be congratulated on having made every single one of the points that I had intended to make. Undeterred, I will add a couple.
First, the funding situation is a little worse that my noble friend describes. In my five years, the FCO secured real-terms increases in its vote every year, but in the 15 years since I left, there has been a real-terms cut of 20%. It is actually bigger than 20% if you think of its effect on the front line, because when you strip out the programme spending on UN contributions, international subscriptions and the conferences, exhibitions and stunts which are so popular with Ministers of every political complexion, what you are left with for funding the service is much more steeply reduced.
The paradigm case is language skills, and I entirely agree with the points already made. When I was Permanent Secretary, there were some 400 to 500 people —my noble friend Lord Green among them—who spoke Arabic in the service. There now are 131. When I learned Russian, I was one of about 300 in the service who spoke it; there now are 56. That is very worrying.
As my noble friend Lord Green said, what Whitehall, Ministers and businesses look for from the Diplomatic Service is considered advice from people who know what they are talking about because they have been in the country more than once. They have got about and know who is in and who is out, who is going to be the next President, and who is rising and who is falling. They know who, in each decision tree, is the real decision-maker or influencer. They have been round the bazaars and the restive provinces, and they know what is being said in the mosques. They have made friends and done favours. They have been to the funerals and to the weddings: they have become trusted, so they can go and listen. Most importantly, they have to be good listeners.
I worry that our staff, much more thinly spread than they used to be, are now required to spend far too much of their time preaching rather than listening. It seems to me that the key thing that the Foreign Office adds is local knowledge distilled from a long stay and lots of contacts. I wonder whether this is the reason we were blindsided by the Russians when they attacked Ukraine or why we unwisely derecognised President Assad on the grounds that we assumed he was about to fall. I wonder whether we sometimes have such a tin ear for the resonance in other countries of our EU rhetoric because we do not have enough people explaining the local impact and effect of our actions.
The noble Lord, Lord Luce, is quite right to talk about a mismatch. Our talk about a global role and global responsibilities will be more posturing than performance if it is not backed with adequate resources.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, I strongly agree with the noble Lord, Lord Luce, about the loss of analytical and linguistic capability in the Foreign Office over the past 20 years or more.
I spent a little time as a very junior member of the ministerial team in the Foreign Office saying that we should be spending more time looking at the eastern neighbourhood and being told that it was not a high priority. When the Ukraine crisis broke out, we were desperately short of people who understood Ukraine and Russia, and others who had retired had to be brought back in. That is a good example of how if you do not follow things through—if you do not understand the language or have sufficient understanding of where a country’s elite is coming from to be able to empathise, even if you disagree with its point of view—you get things wrong.
I also strongly agree with the dangers of reducing the number of overseas posts to a point when you have one or two that are home-based. We are asking the locally employed in a number of posts to do things which are, frankly, dangerous for them and, incidentally, do not provide good enough political reporting for us.
I disagree strongly with the noble Lord about whether or not we have a foreign policy. I have read the 1961 report to Harold Macmillan which said that unless we have a coherent European policy, we will not have an overall strategic foreign policy. That is as true now as it was in 1961. I will take that no further but say simply that in terms of where the Foreign Office goes from here, we also need to recognise that the Foreign Office can no longer make foreign policy. It is a great source of expertise and advice but we make foreign policy across Whitehall. In this Government—too much, I think—the Treasury makes foreign policy, No 10 makes foreign policy, the Cabinet Office makes foreign policy, and the Foreign Office has been to some extent pushed out. But if we want to deal with climate change, management of the internet, cybersecurity, global pandemics or migration, we have to have people across Whitehall with skills, understanding of foreign countries and negotiating capabilities, and we are not good at doing that.
Those noble Lords old enough to remember the Berrill report, which said that we needed to have a proper overseas cadre across Whitehall, will remember that that was unfortunately resisted by the Foreign Office. I tried when in government to look at language skills across Whitehall. There was very little evidence that departments even kept proper account of who spoke what languages. That is simply not good enough. We need the cross-posting of people from other departments when they are young and unmarried or without children to go abroad, partly because that is when it is much easier to get them to do that, so that we build those sorts of external understandings and languages in other departments.
My final comment is that the biggest threat to the FCO’s future overseas budget is the Government’s announcement that they are going to impose economic rent on government departments across Whitehall. The FCO would make a wonderful hotel. I am not sure the FCO budget could stand the comparable rent.
Baroness Morgan of Ely (Lab)
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Luce, for putting this issue on to the agenda and for his exposition of his analysis of the situation.
I am sure that for us all the world feels more unpredictable than it has felt in decades. We have terrorism, mass migration, the shift from west to east, and Russia now throwing its weight around again. On top of that, we have the spread of nuclear weapons and the need to tackle cybercrime. We have the challenge of climate change. These are all new challenges, yet what have we seen? A reduction in the Foreign Office budget of 16%. Yes, we should all be happy that we saw only a freeze this year, but that does not make up for the fact that we have seen a 16% cut since 2010. The task of the FCO is substantial, but we spend even less on it than New Zealand does on its foreign affairs ministry. Germany spends almost 50% more than us and, while France has cut its diplomatic effort, its operating budget is still over one-quarter larger than the UK’s. Is it any wonder that we were frozen out of the discussions over the Ukraine crisis and had to watch France and Germany taking the lead?
It is a shame that we have seen such a substantial shift in the responsibility of our embassies, so that today they are so focused on promoting exports. For every minute spent on promoting British exports, less time is spent developing an in-depth understanding of the country. The LSE Diplomacy Commission recently noted that, to make the FCO more effective, part of the solution lies in preventing UK foreign policy from prioritising commercial diplomacy above all else. The licensing of strategic arms exports is a particular case in point: in Egypt, British foreign policy is delivering development and governance assistance on the one hand while supplying arms on the other.
We should not underestimate the damage that leaving the EU would make to Britain’s ability to influence events and policies on the global stage. We could no longer count on the EU to represent us in many countries around the world and we would have to negotiate a whole raft of our own trade agreements. In theory, this would be the responsibility of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, but the fact is that we have no skills whatever to negotiate trade deals in this country; we have not needed to do so for over 40 years. Undoubtedly the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills would have to rely on Foreign Office expertise and there would be great pressure to redirect resources from the FCO to BIS.
Traditionally, the FCO has been the Rolls-Royce of the Civil Service machine. Its strength has a direct bearing on our position and influence in the world. We cannot let the service erode any further.
The Earl of Courtown (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Luce, for his thoughtful and comprehensive contribution to this debate, and welcome this opportunity to address the issue of funding for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and our foreign policy interests. We last debated the subject in November in response to a Question from my noble friend Lady Helic. That was prior to the publication of the strategic defence and security review, the spending review and the new development strategy. At that time I reassured the House of the Government’s commitment to eliminating the deficit. I confirmed that the FCO had played its part through cutting its operating costs while continuing to respond to new challenges and opportunities.
The noble Lord, Lord Luce, highlighted the importance of soft power and praised the chairmanship of a committee of your Lordships’ House by my noble friend Lord Howell, as did the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey. The noble Lord is quite right about the importance of soft power and sought assurance that the Government would continue to invest in our diplomatic resources, as well as in military and development activity, in order to protect and advance of the UK’s interests globally. It therefore gives me great pleasure to confirm the commitments made in another place by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Autumn Statement on the spending review. The Chancellor announced that the Government would protect the FCO in real terms. I am sure that noble Lords will all want to know what that protection means in practice. First and foremost, the overall resource departmental expenditure limits for the FCO will rise in line with inflation in each of the four years covered by the spending review. This will raise funding from £1.1 billion in 2015-16 to £1.24 billion by 2019-20. This settlement will enable the department to maintain our world-class diplomatic service, including our network of diplomatic posts, which host 26 different government departments and agencies around the world. This global presence, and continued foreign policy leadership in Whitehall by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, will serve to protect our national security, promote our prosperity, and project the UK’s values.
In line with this Government’s commitment to spending 0.7% of gross national income on development assistance, the FCO will be allocated additional ODA-eligible resources, more than doubling our spending—from £273 million in 2015-16 to £560 million in 2019-20. This will enable us to pursue our key foreign policy priorities and deliver the ambition set out in the new development strategy.
Within this settlement the Foreign and Commonwealth Office will undertake new work. This includes hosting the presidency of the European Union in 2017, and increased spending to support the UK’s Overseas Territories, in order to meet our long-standing commitment to address their reasonable needs. To that end, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office will co-ordinate a new strategy for the Overseas Territories and chair a new director-level board, to direct cross-government activity. In addition, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office will spend up to £24 million over the next four years to increase the presence of its counter-terrorism and extremism experts overseas. The noble Lords, Lord Kerr, Lord Luce, Lord Wilson of Tillyorn, Lord Green and Lord Wallace of Saltaire, all commented on the language capabilities of our service. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office will allocate new funds to improve Mandarin, Russian and Arabic language skills. It will enhance country and regional expertise across the former Soviet Union and the Gulf, and invest in electronic data collection and analysis to maximise the benefits of open-source information.
Lord Patten
May I come back very briefly on that point about language skills, to ask if that list could be extended to take in more people trained in Farsi, given the growing importance of Iran, which is opening up to the world?
The Earl of Courtown
On that issue, I will have to write to my noble friend. On the same topic, the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Tillyorn, asked about the teaching of hard languages and how many students come out of the excellent FCO language centre, which opened in 2013. It accommodates approximately 1,000 students per year, including those from other government departments.
The noble Lord, Lord Luce, suggested—as did other noble Lords—that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is under-resourced to address the myriad challenges that we face. While protection of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s departmental resources is an important signal of the Government’s commitment to maintaining our global role, I acknowledge that it is not likely to be sufficient in an increasingly challenging international context. I am therefore pleased to confirm that spending on the Government’s international priorities will increase, with a larger Conflict, Stability and Security Fund, a new Prosperity Fund and more funding for the British Council and BBC World Service. I noted what the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, had to say but I will have to write to him on the details. This is intended to increase the impact of the United Kingdom’s soft power assets, as mentioned by other noble Lords.
The Conflict, Stability and Security Fund, through which the Foreign and Commonwealth Office funds much of its conflict prevention work, will grow by 19% in real terms by 2019-20, to a total of £1.5 billion per year. This will strengthen the UK’s ability to support stabilisation in countries including Syria, Ukraine, Somalia and Pakistan. It will increase the United Kingdom’s response to serious transnational threats, including extremism, serious and organised crime and illegal migration.
As I have already mentioned, a new Prosperity Fund, worth £1.3 billion over the next five years, will be used to support global growth, trade and stability. This will reduce poverty in emerging and developing countries, and open up new markets and opportunities to the United Kingdom. Funding for the British Council will also be protected in real terms. In addition, the council will be able to bid for up to £700 million from a cross-government fund to improve links with emerging economies, help tackle extremism globally, and support good governance.
The noble Lord, Lord Hylton, gave me prior notice of a couple of questions that he wished me to answer. I will answer them, but if there is anything more I can add later, I will. Basically, he was asking me what Her Majesty’s Government are doing to prevent the largest share of food aid going to Assad-controlled areas. All UK-funded assistance is distributed on the basis of need to ensure that civilians are not discriminated against on the grounds of race, religion or ethnicity. The Department for International Development continues to work with the United Nations and the international community to ensure that all minorities’ rights are protected and our aid reaches those in greatest need.
We recognise that the Syrian Kurds are in the midst of the continuing civil war, and their fight against Daesh. However, we do not recognise calls by the PYD for an autonomous Kurdish area. We continue to use our contact with Kurdish groups to encourage commitment to pluralism, respect for the other political forces within the Kurdish areas and co-operation with the rest of the Syrian opposition to work towards a political solution to the conflict.
Lastly, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office will be provided with a flat cash settlement of £98 million capital funding per year to invest in its real estate. This will fund new embassy buildings in Abuja and Budapest and provide further investment across the Foreign and Commonwealth Office estate to keep people safe while they are working for the UK abroad.
Lord Marland
At the risk of being a Commonwealth bore, the Minister made the point that the UK will be president of Europe for six months. It will also be chairman of the Commonwealth for two years. The Minister has been at great pains to refer to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, but he has not said at any point what the Government intend to do there; I would like him to write to me.
The Earl of Courtown
My Lords, of course I will. With the time allowed, I was unable to extend my remarks to all issues.
This Government’s investment in our foreign policy capability delivers results on many fronts: whether the key role we played in the Iran nuclear negotiations, or our leadership in tackling the Ebola crisis. Meanwhile, our commitment to protect the Foreign and Commonwealth Office budget and to provide additional funds for cross-government activity internationally will ensure the UK continues to play a pivotal role in tackling the most important global challenges in the years to come.
Housing and Planning Bill
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
“Description of Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMOs)
Article 3 of the Licensing of Houses in Multiple Occupation (Prescribed Descriptions) (England) Order 2006 is amended as follows—(a) omit paragraph (2)(a); and(b) omit paragraph (3).”
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)
My Lords, Part 2 of the Housing Act 2004 repealed Part XI of the Housing Act 1985 and introduced a new definition of a house in multiple occupation and, in April 2006, a new scheme for controlling and licensing such houses that were deemed a high risk. Houses in multiple occupation include bed-sits, shared houses and hostels but not self-contained flats. They share one or more of the basic amenities, such as the toilet and the washing or cooking facilities. Those properties which met certain conditions had to be licensed. These conditions included the building being three storeys or more high and occupied by five or more tenants, in at least two households. The regulations have worked well but more needs to be done. The private rented sector is increasing, as we have all heard, and so are houses in multiple occupation. We need to provide protections to this growing group of tenants, who are particularly at risk.
The purpose of Amendment 19 is to go further and bring more properties into scope. To be part of the mandatory licensing scheme under my amendment, the only two conditions which would need to be met are that the property has to have five or more people living in it and in at least two households. As I have said, houses in multiple occupation pose the greatest risk to the tenants living there. It has been established by research undertaken that people living in bed-sits are six times more likely to die as a result of fire than people living in an ordinary house. A number of factors can be at play here, from a vulnerable person living in the accommodation to the quality of the construction or conversion of the property. The time has come to extend these provisions and I hope that we get a favourable response. I beg to move.
Lord Shipley (LD)
I do not wish to detain the Committee but I simply want to say that this is an extremely interesting proposal, which I hope the Ministers will look at very carefully. We have a lot of experience in recent years of HMOs and the legislation about having three storeys. We need to look carefully at this because the proposal as outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark, seems to be one meriting some further close attention.
Baroness Maddock (LD)
My Lords, if I may briefly intervene, I remember having great discussions about this matter on previous Housing Bills a long time ago. When the Bill with this provision in it originally came forward, we flagged up that there would be problems on it. I urge the Government to look again at this. They can look back at the discussions we had in those days about how to describe an HMO and the issue about the three storeys. Some of us have been in this House and doing housing over a number of years. I do not think that there is anybody else in the Committee right this minute who would have done this when I did, but there will be Members of the House who remember it very well.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)
My Lords, this amendment would insert a new clause into the Bill that seeks to remove the requirement that a house in multiple occupation is required to be licensed only if the building is of three or more storeys. While mandatory licensing applies to such HMOs if they are occupied by five or more persons in two or more households, local authorities have the power to introduce additional licensing schemes to cover smaller HMOs.
It is of course appreciated that not all local authorities have made additional licensing schemes but, as the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, said, it is also well known that some of the worst management standards, living conditions, disrepair and overcrowding in the private rented sector are found in smaller HMOs. This is why the Government issued a technical discussion paper late last year, seeking views on whether mandatory licensing should be extended to smaller HMOs. Officials are currently analysing the results and the Government hope to publish a response to the discussion paper in the spring. I can assure your Lordships that the Government are determined to tackle abuses in the HMO market, as they are in any other part of the private rented sector. Extended mandatory licensing is an option to achieve this, through secondary legislation. We are considering that option but we want to fully consider all responses received before announcing how we will proceed.
I hope that on this assurance, and because I have been able to say that the Government are looking at this and committed to stamping out abuse in HMOs, the noble Lord will agree to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate, including the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Maddock. I knew about the consultation and I am delighted that we will get a response back in the spring. I hope that it is a favourable one, and with that I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
“Implied term of fitness for human habitation in residential lettings
(1) Section 8 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 (implied terms as to fitness for human habitation) is amended as follows.(2) For subsection (3) substitute—“(3) Subject to subsection (7), this section applies to any tenancy or licence under which a dwelling house is let wholly or mainly for human habitation.”(3) After subsection (3) insert—“(3ZA) Subsection (1) does not apply where the condition of the dwelling-house or common parts is due to—(a) a breach by the tenant of the duty to use the dwelling -house in a tenant-like manner, or other express term of the tenancy to the same effect; or(b) damage by fire, flood, tempest or other natural cause or inevitable accident.(3ZB) Subsection (1) shall not require the landlord or licensor of the dwelling house to carry out works—(a) which would contravene any statutory obligation or restriction; or(b) which require the consent of a superior landlord, provided that such consent has been refused and the landlord or licensor has no right of action on the basis that such refusal of consent is unreasonable.(3ZC) Any provision of or relating to a tenancy or licence is void insofar as it purports—(a) to exclude or limit the obligations of the landlord or licensor under this section; or(b) to permit any forfeiture or impose on the tenant or licensee any penalty or disadvantage in the event of his seeking to enforce the obligation under subsection (1).(3ZD) Regulations may make provision for the exclusion of certain classes of letting from subsection (1).(3ZE) In this section “house” has the same meaning as “dwelling house” and includes—(a) a part of a house, and(b) any yard, garden, outhouses and appurtenances belonging to the house or usually enjoyed with it.”(4) Omit subsections (4) to (6). (5) In section 10 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 (fitness for human habitation), after “waste water” insert “any other matter or thing that may amount, singly or cumulatively, to a Category 1 hazard within the meaning of section 2 of the Housing Act 2004.”(6) Regulations may make provision for guidance as to the operation of the matters set out in section 10 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 which are relevant to the assessment of fitness for human habitation.(7) This section shall come into force—(a) in England at the end of the period of three months from the date on which this Act is passed and shall apply to all tenancies licences and agreements for letting made on or after that date; and(b) in Wales on a date to be appointed by the Welsh Ministers.”
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, it was with much surprise that I heard that the Government had not agreed to an amendment in the other place which would have ensured that residential letting must be fit for human habitation. However, I am hopeful that your Lordships will be able to persuade the Government of the error of their ways as we progress through Committee and Report. Even at this early stage, I can say that we feel so strongly about this that we will divide the House at the appropriate time if the Government do not move from their present position.
The move to pass such an amendment in the other place was defeated, as I said earlier. The Communities Minister in the other place, Mr Marcus Jones MP, said that the Government believed that homes should be fit for human habitation but did not want to pass a new law that would explicitly require that. That is just nonsense. Unhealthy and unsafe housing needs to be tackled. The private rented sector is growing rapidly and tenants need protection to ensure that their home is fit to live in. Damp, mould, excessive cold, overcrowding and lack of proper space, fire hazards and other hazards regarding electrical and other safety can all have major consequences for people, even death.
Local authorities clearly have a role in protecting tenants in the private rented sector when landlords fail to maintain or provide properties that are safe and healthy to live in. However, local authorities are under considerable financial constraints, and this is never going to be enough. My amendment therefore seeks to provide tenants with the means to take action themselves, and would place a specific duty on landlords to ensure that the property they let is fit for human habitation and will remain so during the course of the tenancy. For me, that is a perfectly reasonable duty to place on landlords.
Amendment 22, in the names of my noble friends Lady Hayter of Kentish Town, the noble Lord, Lord Tope, and in my name, would introduce mandatory electrical safety checks into the private rented sector. Again, Members in the other place were unable to persuade the Government on this issue, but we hope again to have more success in your Lordships’ House. In fact, your Lordships’ House may be surprised that such checks, unlike those for gas safety, are not already mandatory, given the danger of electrocution as well as fires caused by faulty electrical installations. Indeed, according to the charity Electrical Safety First, which works to prevent electrical accidents, around 70 deaths per year involve electricity, compared to 18 from gas. That is over one a week. Yet, regrettably, the opportunity afforded by the Bill has not so far been used to protect tenants from electrical hazards.
Safety standards in the private sector depend on the age of the property, its location and, importantly, the competence—or willingness—of the landlord to undertake checks and repairs on electrical installations. We welcomed the measures introduced by the Government last year on carbon monoxide and smoke detectors. However, it is hard to explain why no consideration has been given to electrical safety which, sadly, is the cause of more deaths and injuries. Gas, carbon monoxide and smoke detectors all help make rented properties safe, but as my noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath said in this House on 7 September 2015, electricity must be included if we are to provide private tenants with proper protection.
The Government’s rather unsatisfactory response then was that there is a legal duty on landlords to keep tenants’ electrical installations safe. This simply will not do—it is not enough. Not only does it mean that electrics in a rented property go unchecked for many years but it only guarantees prosecutions of landlords after the event, whereas we want to prevent electrocution or fires in the first place. Regrettably, while landlords in England must ensure that electrical installations are kept in safe working order, there is no legal requirement on them to check the installations regularly. Furthermore, there is no requirement to demonstrate to tenants that the electrics are safe. This is not acceptable, and is contrary to the Government’s autumn Statement on safety in the private rented sector and to their supposed desire to see a “bigger, better and safer” sector.
Furthermore, it is against what the public want. Of those responding to the DCLG’s own consultation, 84% believed that mandatory electrical checks in the private rented sector were needed. However, there has not been any action from the Government so far. The Local Government Association supports mandatory checks to reduce the risk of electrical fires. Electrical Safety First’s call for mandatory checks is also supported by the Chief Fire Officers Association, Shelter, Crisis, the London Fire Brigade, and British Gas, to say nothing of tenants.
A third of private-sector tenants stay in their home for less than a year, with eight out of 10 being in their current home for less than five years, so not only do an increasing proportion of our citizens live in the private rented sector, but it is a sector with a high turnover and an average tenancy of only about three years. Therefore, checks by landlords for electrical safety are essential. We know that privately rented homes are at a higher risk of fire. There has been no reduction in private rented sector fires since 2010 of those investigated by the London Fire Brigade. Indeed, of these 748 had an electrical source of ignition in the past five years, while only 97 fires had a gas source of ignition.
Why are the Government not taking this more seriously if they want a safer private rented sector? It seems that there is no strategy or response. I concur with Electrical Safety First that tenants would be better protected with mandatory five-yearly checks of electrical installations and supplied appliances. We know that annual gas checks work. Now is the time to implement mandatory electrical checks to discover faults before they cause accidents or fires. Our amendment would improve standards and not be burdensome to landlords.
Electrical Safety First estimates this would cost landlords about £3 per month over a five-year period. Of course, the amendment is about saving lives and damage to tenants’ property, but it also would protect the landlords’ assets. Checks could spot problems before they pose a serious risk through electrocution or fires.
We are pleased that the department has been undertaking research into the merits of introducing these checks, but it is now time for action. I hope the Minister will undertake to bring forward proposals while we have the Bill in front of us.
The final amendment in this group is Amendment 30, which seeks to ensure that people living in properties under a guardianship contract have some rights and protections. It is fair to say that these guardianship schemes are increasing in popularity. The guardian pays a licence fee to occupy a part of a building, secure it and prevent damage. Most of the buildings are not housing, and the guardian is not a tenant, which means he has few legal rights. My amendment seeks to redress the balance, which I think is only fair and reasonable. I beg to move.
Baroness Grender (LD)
My Lords, we are also supporting Amendment 20, and I would like to speak in support of Amendment 22 and electrical checks on behalf of my noble friend Lord Tope.
At Second Reading, the Minister said, in response to this very point:
“Local authorities already have strong and effective powers to deal with poor-quality unsafe accommodation, and we expect them to use them”.—[Official Report, 26/1/16; col. 1270.]
In the Committee stage in the Commons, the Minister of State, Brandon Lewis, said:
“Local authorities already have strong and effective powers to deal with poor-quality unsafe accommodation, and we expect them to use those powers”.—[Official Report, Commons, 10/12/15; col. 707.]
I would like to stress to the Minister and to the Government that this is slightly the wrong end of the stick of the point that this amendment is trying to make. The amendment is trying to beef up existing legislation to ensure that tenants have greater rights. It is less about local authority involvement and much more about liberating the consumer—the tenant—to take action and get repairs delivered. It is not even about the issue of compensation afterwards. It is about where they live right now and having the legal weight behind them to take action and get the repair in the place where they are a tenant. I cannot stress that enough. Therefore, I simply suggest that, if the Minister comes back and says that local authorities have enough power, that does not answer the question I am trying to raise.
This is not new legislation. It is not extra red tape. It is simply about enabling tenants, as I made clear at Second Reading. It revives an outdated law. It is about rights for consumers—something I suggest that this Government should be eager to embrace. Overstretched local authorities could encourage tenants to challenge conditions themselves and free their resources to focus on the very worst conditions. It would therefore act as a deterrent to landlords letting out properties in poor conditions.
The key point is that the clause does not impose new requirements on landlords; it is not a further regulatory burden. The standards set out are effectively the same as those in the Housing Act 2004 via the housing health and safety rating system, the HHSRS. There were 51,916 complaints about housing conditions to the relevant councils in 2013-14 but only 14,000 inspections of PRS properties. In other words, yes, the local authorities have the power, but they do not have the resources, so when complaints are made to them, very few inspections are made as a result, and there is even less enforcement. The prosecutions resulting from that in that one figure average one per council per year. With 4.4 million households in the private rented sector, surely we can provide some better basis for them to go to court and get their landlord to make repairs.
Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)
My Lords, Amendment 22, spoken to by my noble friend Lord Kennedy of Southwark, is on electrical safety in homes, a very important issue. Whereas on previous amendments, I have simply followed the debate and intervened during it, on this occasion I want to use more copious notes to deal with the issue. It just so happens that my son, Markus, a contracts manager for an electrical contracting company in the London area, is somewhat of an expert in this field. I asked him for a background note on the developing need for this particular reform and this is what he told me, in some detail. When he joined the industry in 2003,
“the market for electricians was polarised. Many larger contractors were signed up to self-regulation schemes like the NICEIC but often smaller contractors saw no benefit in doing so. Business customers often worked under strict procurement rules or had insurance companies insisting that NICEIC registered contractors were used. But the average landlord had little compelling them to do so. Landlords asking industry representatives what they must do to comply with the law were not given a simple answer. Contractors would explain that the Wiring Regulations were a non-statutory document, but that in the event of legal action they could be used to show that electrical works had been completed to a recognised standard. In other words you could ignore them if you could handle the risk.
There were also no rules saying when you should use a NICEIC-registered contractor. Contractors could explain that NICEIC regularly accessed the system, checked qualifications, provided technical support and advice and, importantly, helped customers who felt works were below standard. As reassuring as that should be, many customers would still choose not registered contractors. They were simply cheaper. There was little stopping a landlord employing anybody, qualified or not, registered or not, familiar with the regulations or not, cowboy or not. It was just a question of risk”.
So, in 2005, the Government introduced Part P of the Building Regulations—a very important development. The wiring regs, BS7671, while still a non-statutory document, are now referenced within those building regs. This means that some higher-risk works within domestic properties have to be completed to this recognised legal standard. Contractors now have two options. They can notify building control of works to be carried out or join a government-accredited domestic installer scheme. These schemes allow contractors to self-certify their work and provide retrospective notice to Building Control.
When Part P was initially introduced, it was simple for some companies to upgrade to domestic installer status. However, many self-employed electricians and small contractors found that they could not practically carry out work within domestic properties without breaking the law. So, many of them applied to domestic installer scheme providers to become registered. Assessors visited their premises to see their work. Electricians who had not updated their qualifications in years needed to prove that they knew the regulations. Contractors who had never issued certificates for their work were now asked to produce them and justify their contents. Contractors were asked to show examples of their work, calibration certificates and to demonstrate how to use test equipment. Ofsted had arrived and it wanted to know that the kids who were in training were safe.
Consumer expectations also changed after Part P. The legal responsibility was now far clearer. A decade later, the number of registered contractors has more than doubled. Many contractors are proud of their achievements, with the introduction of higher working standards. Many completed courses, such as the City & Guilds 2394 and 2395, which teach how to test installations for electrical safety. Both exams are more technical and beyond memorising of regulations. They require a technical understanding of safe electrical installation methods that underpin the regulations. The courses are a challenging process, particularly for trainee electricians, many of whom have only just left school at the age of 16. Some companies now exclusively advertise for engineers with a deeper understanding of the regulations. As many engineers working for larger firms are lone workers, these skills are useful for management to ensure and monitor the quality of work.
That is the background. If Amendment 22 is adopted, the industry would require appropriately trained electricians to carry out fixed electrical wiring tests, and demand for electricians who have completed City & Guilds 2394 and 2395 will inevitably increase. The adoption of my noble friend’s amendment would lead to a major upskilling in the training of electricians, in the same way that happened after the introduction of Part P in 2005, when many contractors were forced to upskill in order to legally work with domestic properties. Amendment 22 takes advantage of the huge increase in Part P-registered contractors seen over the past decade by using the existing method of notification to Building Control.
Ten years ago the industry thought this notification process would be burdensome, but online submissions have proved to be quick and easier than expected. Most contractors have moved away from handwritten certificates to online and mobile device-based software, with app store support where required. A typical test on a domestic property can take between two and four hours to complete, and the electrician can leave the site with an electronic document ready for the client. The market for tests and inspections is very competitive, with companies advertising flat rates for the work. These rates vary across the country and comparisons with property values probably provide a good insight into the variance.
The statistics on deaths due to electrical faults and electrical fires speak for themselves. The Committee has an obvious opportunity tonight to tackle this, but it must not underestimate the general lifting of standards that a step such as Amendment 22 can bring. The Wiring Regulations are complicated for many and, given a chance, even experienced contractors will neglect them at times. Introducing compulsory testing will give the Wiring Regulations the further gravitas they deserve.
If anyone in the Chamber is worried about the cost of inspections, which I understand was the position the Government took when the matter was dealt with in the Commons, they should think about this frequent scenario. An electrician recently attended an emergency job. A tenanted flat had lost its power. A loose connection in the fuse-box arced and caused heat damage to the surrounding components. The unit installed was relatively new and the risks to the tenant were minimal, but had the installation been tested recently, the issue could have been identified before it occurred and the landlord could have saved a lot of money—the cost of an emergency callout and a new distribution board.
Testing is not just about finding faults; it is a method of maintaining an installation and preventing major issues from occurring, which can be very expensive to deal with. They teach 16 year-old kids this at colleges in London. In fact, if anyone in the Chamber was to ask me—a mere mortal in these matters—my advice on the electrics in their own home, the first thing I would ask is, “When was it last tested?”.
Lord Tope (LD)
My Lords, I, too, tabled Amendment 22 —the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, beat me to getting her name on it. As the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, said, this amendment is supported by a very wide range of organisations. That includes the Local Government Association, so I declare my interest as a vice-president of the LGA.
We have just heard a very well-informed and powerful speech from the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours. I am sure he is extremely grateful to his researcher—his son, as he says—who gave him that information. Indeed, he makes a powerful case. The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, spoke fully and very well on the information supplied, particularly by Electrical Safety First. I have the same information but will not repeat it.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)
My Lords, I support Amendments 20 and 22 and do so with a slightly sinking feeling because it should not be necessary.
We have in the recent past discussed issues around landlords not keeping their properties in a decent state of repair. I was pleased to speak to the retaliatory evictions amendments during the passage of the Deregulation Bill. These make it an offence for tenants to be served with a notice of eviction if they bring a fault with their home to the attention of the landlord. They quite rightly expect him or her to rectify the problem. It would appear that either tenants are unaware of their rights under this legislation or that the legislation is being flouted by landlords. At all events, many tenants are still paying rent and living in properties that are far from what you and I would call fit for human habitation.
We have heard a great deal of rhetoric today and, because I consider this such a serious issue, I am afraid that I will repeat some of it now. This morning I received a useful brief from a partner at Anthony Gold Solicitors who specialises in landlord and tenant law. Outside of the retaliatory evictions, the law on tenants’ complaints is currently enforced by local authorities, as other Members have said. Karen Buck MP from the other place commissioned a report, published last December, on the challenge of tackling unsafe and unhealthy housing. Local authorities were contacted across the country and asked a number of questions about complaints from private tenants.
The number of complaints received in 2011-12 was 52,820; in 2012-13 it had gone up to 62,818; and in 2013-14 it had gone down but only to 51,916. The numbers of inspections carried out by local authorities over the same three-year period were 25,867, 31,634 and 29,768 respectively. Only about half of the properties about which tenants had made complaints were inspected.
As my noble friend Lady Grender has said, the categories of hazards and faults identified were damp and mould, excess cold, crowding and space, falling hazards and fire. The number of improvement notices served in 2011-12 were 1,519; in 2012-13, 1,645; and in 2013-14, 1,958. If local authorities had the resources to inspect the properties of all the complaints then no doubt the number of improvement notices could have been doubled. However, the number of prosecutions undertaken was less than 100 in each of the three years.
Some people are living in really dreadful conditions, as my noble friend Lady Grender has said. Under the current out-of-date legislation, tenants can take action themselves only if their rent is less than £80 a year in London and £52 a year elsewhere. I would be very hard pressed to find a property with a rent of £52 a week in my area, never mind a year. Perhaps I might get a bedroom in an HMO with a kitchen and bathroom shared, but that would be about it.
We know from other sources that 11 million people live in private rented accommodation in England. Of these, one in four are in families. Local authority budgets are overstretched. They are doing the best they can with shrinking resources but it is time that more is done to raise awareness about tenants’ rights and the law strengthened to give them the power to do this for themselves. If we remove the rent limit, we free up people to take responsibility for themselves.
I turn to Amendment 22, which we have heard about so eloquently from the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours. The 11 million people in the private rented sector are spending 47% of their income on rent—they have the highest rents—compared with 23% of the income of people with a mortgage and 32% of the income for those in the social rented sector. However, 30% of private rented properties in England would fail the Government’s decent homes standard compared with 15% in the social rented sector.
Landlords are required to carry out annual checks on gas installations, as we have heard, and mercifully there are very few incidents involving gas, whereas 350,000 people are injured through electrical incidents. In 2013-14, 49 people were killed as a result of electrical fires in the home. The amendment is asking not for annual inspections, as is the case with gas, but for an electrical safety inspection every five years. This would not be overly onerous. Surely the Minister will agree that saving lives is important.
I live in a rented property in London that has both gas and electricity supplied by the same company. Before Christmas I received a postcard saying that an engineer had cause to inspect the gas and electricity meters, and asking me to make an appointment for that to be done. I contacted the supplying company and fixed a date for when the House returned in January. I waited in and an engineer duly called and inspected both meters, making a couple of comments. He was required to do this quite separately from those who came to read the meters. He was satisfied with the state of the meters and showed me how to switch the gas off should I need to do so, which I was quite pleased about because I did not know how to do it before. However, he did not inspect the electrical cabling, nor did I expect him to. I am satisfied that the meters are safe and working properly, and that I am not paying more than I should for the energy I consume. What I do not know is the state of the wiring once it leaves the meter and goes into the rest of the flat.
Many people have fears about certain aspects of everyday life. For some it will be the fear of water and drowning, for others it will be being trapped in a dark and confined space, and for some it will be being caught in a fire. Whatever their fears, they are valid, and wherever possible we must do all that we can to ensure that such fears do not become reality. This is a simple and straightforward amendment that could save people’s lives and bring reassurance to thousands. I fully support both amendments.
Lord Beecham (Lab)
My Lords, I warmly endorse the first two amendments in this group. I find it inconceivable that the Government should stick to their position of declining to accept these basic amendments about the obvious need for properties to be fit for human habitation and electrically safe. It is not asking too much of landlords to ensure this; as we have just heard from the noble Baroness, a five-yearly inspection would hardly be costly, and in any event would no doubt be reflected in the rents charged over that period. At £150 or something like that, that would be only £30 a year. It is ridiculous to suggest that that would be too much of a burden for landlords to accept. And how anyone could resist a requirement for properties to be fit for human habitation escapes me.
However, I want to address the third amendment in this group, which is about property guardianship, and particularly about the condition of the properties that are dealt with in that fashion. I have to confess that I was entirely unfamiliar with the concept of property guardianship, or indeed the existence of property guardians, until I read an article in a newspaper—appropriately, the Guardian—in December. It seems that empty buildings, often large ones, are let out at low rents, but the renters have no security, with some companies—it tends to be companies which operate these properties—offering just two-week notice periods. Normal standards of safety and the condition of the property do not appear to apply or to be achieved.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken to the amendments, which have one aim: to support and protect those living in the private rented sector.
Amendment 20 would place a duty on landlords to ensure that their properties are fit for human habitation when let and that they remain fit during the tenancy. The amendment would also give legal rights to tenants to take action directly against their landlord through the courts when properties are in an unfit condition.
Clearly, all homes should be of a reasonable standard, and all tenants should have a safe place to live, regardless of tenure, particularly when they are vulnerable and living in unacceptable conditions. As noble Lords have already stated, an existing framework allows local authorities strong powers to require landlords to make necessary improvements to a property. Indeed, the last Labour Administration introduced the framework in 2004 as a replacement for the old fitness standard. The housing health and safety rating system assesses the health and safety risk in all residential properties, and under the Housing Act 2004, following a HHSRS inspection local authorities can issue an improvement notice or a hazard awareness notice. In extreme circumstances, the local authority may decide to make the repairs itself, or to prohibit that property from being rented out.
Local authorities have strong and effective powers to deal with poor-quality, unsafe accommodation, and we expect them to use these powers. However, this Government have gone further, to enable local authorities to take targeted action. Where rented housing in a particular area is characterised by poor property conditions, the local authority can now introduce a selective licensing scheme which enables it to target enforcement action. Last month we also announced a further £5 million funding for 48 local authorities to tackle rogue landlords, on top of the £6.7 million made available in the last Parliament. We have also consulted on extending mandatory licensing of houses in multiple occupation, again focusing regulation where it is needed. Finally, we are strengthening measures that local authorities already have by taking forward proposals through this Bill to enable local authorities to take further enforcement against rogue landlords, including through the database that we have talked about, the civil penalty notices and the extended rent repayment orders.
I support the aim of this amendment—raising standards for tenants—but it would lead to additional costs for good landlords, who are the ones that will pay for inspections and certificates to prove the condition of their property. I also have concerns that the amendment would give legal rights to tenants to take action themselves through the courts for the following reasons. We have issued guidance to make tenants aware of their rights, and to make landlords responsible, through the How to Rent and Renting a Safe Home guides, both of which are available on the gov.uk website. I have already mentioned that there is a system whereby tenants can raise concerns with their local authority and it will carry out an inspection, with strong powers and a duty to act if it finds a serious hazard. Civil penalties of up to £30,000 and rent repayment orders will give local authorities significantly more resources to ramp up inspection and enforcement. Noble Lords may consider that local authorities have limited resources to carry out inspections, but through the civil penalties measures outlined in the Bill they would be able to keep those penalties for housing-related activities.
I question whether a vulnerable tenant would prefer to go through a lengthy court process rather than to be in a position to get their landlord to carry out repairs or to seek redress. My concern is that such a measure would lead only to rogues avoiding their responsibilities and the sanctions that could lead to them being banned. In addition, the amendment provides, among other things, for the court to have regard to whether there is a category 1 hazard in the property. In order to establish whether there is a category 1 hazard, the local authority would need to have carried out an inspection using the HHSRS methodology. In such cases, therefore, the tenant would need to involve the local authority in the proceedings.
As has been made clear in the other place, there is an appetite to ensure that landlords have a legal duty to carry out electrical safety checks on behalf of their tenants. Amendment 22, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, and spoken to very eloquently by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, seeks to introduce this requirement for landlords to organise regular electrical safety tests in their rental properties. I understand the concerns that noble Lords have raised and the issue of safeguarding tenants. I hope to come back to the House in due course with further details on our next step but, as noble Lords have mentioned, research is being carried out with my officials to try to strike the balance between protecting tenants, and not overregulating and causing unnecessary burdens for landlords.
Lord Beecham
Does the Minister not acknowledge that it is more important to protect tenants’ safety than to protect against the modest financial cost that landlords might incur, which in any event would probably be translated into rent?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, I hope I have made it clear that tenants’ safety is of the utmost importance. In fact, amendments tabled in the other place led to that agreement by the Government to carry out research into whether legislative changes were needed regarding electrical safety. I will ensure that noble Lords are updated on the progress of this because I totally recognise that tenants’ safety is of the utmost importance.
Lord Beecham
On that point, if the Minister will forgive me, will we have that information by the time we reach Report? If it is after the Bill goes through, there will not be much point to it.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I am not getting any indications from the Box. However, I do not feel very switched-on at this hour of the night. Perhaps I could let the noble Lord know, because it would obviously be ideal if we could have it for Report. If we had it further in the future, perhaps secondary legislation could be introduced in due course.
Finally, Amendment 30 would require that the requirements concerning fitness for human habitation and repairing obligations set out in Sections 8 to 17 of the Landlord and Tenant Act are applied to contracts for guardianship schemes. I must at this point declare an interest because my son is a property guardian. I may ring him when I get out of here to make sure that he is still alive, given all the things that I have heard. These schemes are private arrangements between a building owner and one or more individuals. The Government do not support the schemes, as the guardians can be asked to live in conditions which do not meet the standards expected in residential properties. We do not therefore believe that it would be appropriate to require that Sections 8 to 17 of the Landlord and Tenant Act should apply to guardianship agreements. I hope that my responses provide reassurances—
Lord Beecham
The Minister is saying that she has every sympathy but that the Government are not going to do anything about conditions which, as she acknowledges, can be very unsatisfactory. I do not understand why the Government are reluctant to intervene here.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, if the noble Lord is talking about the property guardianship schemes, it is because they are arrangements between a building owner and one or more individuals, and the arrangement is temporary. They are not intended to provide stable alternative accommodation.
Lord Beecham
That may be the case but surely, as the Minister’s remarks implied, they need to be fit for people to stay there. There must be some basic standards to protect people from being exploited in these conditions. It is not a formal tenancy but if nothing is done, people will be exposed to risks to their health and possibly their safety. The Government must surely acknowledge that this matter is at least worth considering before we get to Report, rather than rejecting it.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, because of the nature of the arrangement—as the noble Lord said, there is no tenancy agreement in place—it is not a formal tenancy in that sense and we do not think that the Landlord and Tenant Act actually applies to it.
Lord Beecham
But provisions could be applied if the Government legislated to protect people in this position. Are the Government saying that they cannot find a way to protect people from the kind of circumstances which I have described, and which the Guardian report so clearly brought to light? It may not be a question of amending the Landlord and Tenant Act but surely it is possible to bring forward proposals which could be incorporated into this Bill.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I see the point, and as I say, my son is living in such accommodation, but the reason owners do it is to protect against squatting as opposed to provide for permanent accommodation. There is no tenancy agreement in place. However, I will go back and think further about this. It is a slightly anomalous situation in the general housing market, given that many of the properties are not housing. With those words, I hope that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate: the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, my noble friends Lord Beecham and Lord Campbell-Savours, the noble Lord, Lord Tope, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville. I very much agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, who said that, yes, local authorities have powers, but it is a cumbersome process, and a lack of budgets at present means they will not be effective. With this amendment we would empower only the tenants to seek redress themselves, which is a good thing, although I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford, does not necessarily agree with me on that.
The electrical safety amendment should not cause the Government any problems whatever. I am pleased that the Government are looking at this area of additional safety. My noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours made a powerful contribution to the reason why the Government should agree to these electrical safety tests in the private rented sector. We believe that these two amendments raise issues of paramount importance, and we will divide the House on both issues if we do not get the necessary movement from the Government on Report —we are very upfront about that straightaway.
I end with the hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford, will hold discussions with noble Lords before we get to Report so that that will not be necessary and an agreement can be reached on both issues. We are very much willing to have those discussions. However, we think these are serious matters, which need looking at. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Meacher
“Rent arrears
The Secretary of State shall lay a report before Parliament annually about the impact of rent arrears on the health and wellbeing of men, women and children.”
Baroness Meacher (CB)
My Lords, requiring the Secretary of State to lay annually a report before Parliament about the impact of rent arrears on the health and well-being of men, women and children sounds like a rather academic point. However, every parent who finds themselves unable to pay their rent will feel an extraordinary sense of insecurity due to being unsure about keeping a roof over their children’s heads—along with the threat of eviction, homelessness and so forth. Therefore, this is a serious matter for each and every family affected.
Why is this happening? On the one hand, the housing shortage is causing rents to rise to levels never seen before. Council house tenants have seen their rents rise four times faster than average wages in the past five years, outstripping even the private sector. These rents are putting huge pressure on the welfare bill and on tenants themselves. The Government have redefined the word “affordable”, extraordinarily. For a council tenant, it used to mean half the open market rent. Now, the term “affordable” means 80% of market rents. In fact, such rents are of course utterly unaffordable in London, so they need to change the word.
The LGA estimates that 60,000 households will be forced into rent arrears in the next few years, and I imagine that that number will soar thereafter as all the welfare benefit cuts increase over time. The Bill will price social housing tenants out of their home areas. For families relying on grandparents to care for children, or relatives to look after disabled or elderly family members, moving from the local area has serious social consequences and may simply be completely impractical. Similarly, for some children, changing schools can have a devastating impact on their education. The RSA envisages that the numbers of children affected will grow. Instead of moving, many families will run the risk of moving into rent arrears.
Into this mix comes the Government’s decision to cut housing benefit while simultaneously freezing the annual increases in already very low benefit incomes, which are then subject to council tax payments. Paul Nicolson has made this point very strongly in the media. The consequences of these decisions are the development of rent arrears, the draconian enforcement of debt and the malnutrition of parents and maybe children.
The point of this amendment is that the impact on public health is simply not yet known and we need to have it measured. When the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, moved a similar amendment to the Welfare Reform and Work Bill, the noble Lord, Lord Freud, responded with references to the Government’s commitment to reduce health inequalities and to ensure that ill health does not hold our children back from fulfilling their potential. Does the Minister accept that, if parents have insufficient money to pay for food for their children, to heat the house and to keep a roof over their heads, this will surely, over time, impact seriously on their children’s health and well-being?
The noble Lord, Lord Freud, talked about tackling the root causes of poverty—worklessness and educational underattainment. The majority of those in poverty today are in work. A root cause of poverty in this country is not worklessness, but the ever-diminishing level of in-work and out-of-work benefits, combined with low pay. The Government are making things worse and risking an unnecessary hike in rent arrears because, under universal credit, the plan is to eliminate any possibility that housing benefit could be paid directly to landlords. Conscientious parents who want to secure the roof over their family’s head will no longer be able to ask for their housing benefit to be paid directly to landlords. There is no doubt in my mind—none at all—that rent arrears will be very much higher under this new regime than under the old.
In conclusion, this amendment only requires the Government to report to Parliament annually about the impact of rent arrears on the health and well-being of those affected. Only if the Government and Parliament have this information can we hope that remedial action will be taken to mitigate the consequences of government policy. I ask the Minister to give serious thought to this amendment, rather than simply dismissing the idea. I beg to move.
Lord Shipley (LD)
My Lords, although my name is not shown on this amendment, I should like to support it because, as the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, said, it is very important.
There are two reasons why it should be reasonably straightforward for the Government to fulfil the proposal in this amendment. The first is that local authorities have health and well-being boards that are charged with a duty to assess the general health and well-being of their area, so a structure exists. The second is that a wealth of research has been undertaken connecting well-being with poverty. The amendment talks about the impact of rent arrears, for perfectly good reasons. Of course, the issue is more generally debt and rent levels, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, has drawn attention; this is clearly an important contributory factor. However, it is not just a financial issue. Too often, Governments look at the question of well-being and think it relates to rents and to the financial issues surrounding the payment of rents. There is a huge wealth of evidence that suggests that it is a well-being issue. Governments have to address the matter from that perspective. Citizens Advice has produced statistics on payday loans and the rise in the work of loan sharks, which it says has gone up 10 times since 2008. This matters. Politicians and Governments have a duty to ensure that the population are not exposed to higher levels of mental and physical ill health, driven by poor diet because money does not exist in the household, to ensure that their health and well-being is being protected.
This is a perfectly reasonable amendment. Delivering it is the kind of thing Governments exist for. If Governments do not do it, I am not entirely sure who should. In my view, Parliament has a duty to examine this on an annual basis and to assess whether health and well-being is being impacted upon negatively by the fact that debt levels and rent arrears are rising.
Lord Judd (Lab)
My Lords, I warmly support Amendment 23, to which I have added my name. I hope your Lordships will forgive me for making this point but when I think of my formative political years in the late 1940s and early 1950s, when we had such clear aspirations for our society, I find it almost inconceivable that here we are, still one of the wealthiest nations in the world, having to discuss whether or not, as a result of policy, we are facing a deteriorating situation in the nutrition, health and mental health of people in this country. I find it appalling. I can hardly believe that this is happening and that this is the reality, when we had all those aspirations—which broadly went across political lines in those years. I think it is disgraceful and I hope the Government take seriously that, at the day of reckoning, they will have a lot to answer for.
I had an inner-city constituency when I was a Member of Parliament and I saw then the clear connection between poverty, educational attainment, health and mental stability. I also saw the impact as families—which we keep saying are so important in our priorities—with totally inadequate means tried to cope with mental breakdown and mental illness in their midst.
In policy-making we need to proceed on sound evidence. The anecdotal evidence, the evidence of practical experience, is overwhelming. I keep being disturbed by the reports I read about teachers seeing children coming to school hungry and undernourished—how can we possibly hope for advancement in educational achievement in this situation? Teachers are now out of their own pocket on occasion, financing breakfast for the children concerned. We need all the hard evidence we can find. As a society, we are increasingly concerned about mental illness, which seems to be increasing by disturbing dimensions. Of course, mental illness is related to the basic issue of the security of a decent home.
I have mentioned my experience as the MP for an inner-city area but I saw this issue arising in another context, when for nine years I had the privilege of being the president of the YMCA in England. The YMCA has a very big housing programme, and I could see that it was just ridiculous to regard administering a housing programme as just managing it. There were always huge social dimensions attached to that housing programme. Why were people there, needing our support? Why were people in the state they were in? These questions were constantly before us.
We need the maximum amount of real evidence of what is happening on the front line, and it is altogether sensible and encouraging that the noble Baroness—not for the first time, I might say—is challenging us to do something practical to see from the front-line evidence what the situation is.
Lord Campbell-Savours
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, and my noble friend Lord Judd have set out in graphic detail the nature of the problem. I want to say a few words on one of the tangential benefits of this annual report being produced. I suspect that the Minister will say at the Dispatch Box, “No way; you’re not going to have your annual report”. I presume that the Minister’s notes will contain the instruction “resist the amendment and say no”. But there is another benefit of all this that Ministers might wish to take into account. With all this talk about buy to let, people throughout the country are being led into a world where they believe that quick profits are to be made out of rental income. However, a lot of people are deluding themselves. As I said before, a lot of these buy-to-let tenancies have been let as a result of pressure from television programmes, friends at dinner parties or whatever. A lot of buy-to-let tenants are in arrears and are suffering.
I am sure many noble Lords will know of people who are in arrears. I know of two properties where people moved in only recently and received notice letters directed to the previous tenants. In both cases, the tenants were being referred to the courts for being in debt. There is a huge booming problem out there of rising debt arising out of rent arrears. This measure is one way of indicating to the world that there really is a problem. So this is not just about health in the way set out in the amendment; it is about providing a way of indicating that in the real world there are problems to do with arrears that people who are led mistakenly into this market have to recognise before they take foolish decisions which they can ill afford.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham (Lab)
My Lords, I also support this amendment. Earlier today we finished Third Reading of the Welfare Reform and Work Bill. I wonder whether the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, has talked to the noble Lord, Lord Freud, about the interlocking of this amendment with one of the issues that we were discussing on the Welfare Reform and Work Bill. I rather suspect that it may not have happened because of one of the two defeats of the Government on the Welfare Reform and Work Bill, as opposed to very welcome movements they made towards a common consensual ground around this House, which we very much appreciated, as, indeed, we did on kinship care, guardians, carers and so on. However, one of the two issues on which the Government were defeated fairly early on in the Welfare Reform and Work Bill was child poverty indicators. As the Minister may or may not know, the previous Labour Government had four poverty indicators: absolute poverty, relative poverty, persistent poverty and material deprivation. The Government proposed to replace this with indicators of life chances from the DWP. It is perfectly proper to track those life chances but we argued that that must include poverty as well.
I remind the Minister that the Government’s agenda on poverty was debated on the Welfare Reform and Work Bill. The Government wanted to assess life-chance risks, which would include a parent being unable to work, addiction and mental health problems, being unqualified, being without work and being unemployed. The other one was unmanageable personal debt, which was classified as being behind on rent, or needing alternative payment arrangements in universal credit. We know that both these things are happening. We know therefore that the Government recognise, or believe—I think, possibly, falsely—that this is a driver of poverty and not just a consequence of it. If the Government believe that it is a driver of poverty, they need to know what is happening if they are to know as a Government at what point they intervene and what levers to press to address it. Therefore, we need this information. The problem for all Governments, including my own, is that we tend to do the things that are easy. We do things we can count, not the things we need to assess. For example, you know, if you are doing key performance indicators in any measurement, that if you put in, “The telephone has to be answered in fewer than eight rings”, people will do that because it is easy. You count it and you can put the numbers in and you will get your 90% performance target. If you suggest something such as assessing what is happening to health and well-being, they will not touch it, because it is qualitative and therefore regarded as less real, being less quantifiable than telephone rings.
The DWP, in a parallel development, is seeking to address the issue of unmanageable personal debt as a driver of poverty. If there are implications for mental health and well-being, as this amendment suggests, it will be crucial for DCLG to investigate what is happening in this area, which is not about housing benefit but about housing policy, including rent arrears and all the other issues that the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, has raised tonight. I hope the Minister takes this very seriously, because if she does not, the two government departments will be pulling in diametrically opposed directions. I am sure the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, would not wish that to happen.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I understand where the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, is coming from in moving her amendment. It seems to me that the issue is not so much one of rent arrears as one of rent levels, which of course very often lead to rent arrears. It may well be the case that families go short, but they do so partly because they are fearful of eviction and will pay the rent first and look after other family needs second. It might have been better to think again—perhaps we will when we get to Report—about the terminology here. It is not just rent arrears that will cause problems but a combination of the income in the house and what other expenditure there may be, including for example, the impact of the bedroom tax on households. The noble Baroness is absolutely right, however, that whatever components one looks at, it is necessary to have regard to the impact on the health and well-being of people, particularly those in rented property, given the huge increase in rents in recent years.
I can give an example from my own family’s indirect experience. My son had a raised ground-floor flat in Islington comprising 286 square feet, which would fit relatively comfortably in the third of the ground-floor reception rooms in my house in Newcastle. The purchaser of the flat put it on the market at a rent, as far as I recall, of over £1,000 a month—roughly £4 a square foot. It is a tiny flat and only really suitable for one person, which I suspect is not untypical of housing in many parts of London these days. I would guess that is a huge proportion of the income of many people—certainly those who are not in well-paid jobs.
That may well exemplify the kind of problem that is all too often faced in the light of these absurdly high rent levels. It has to be recognised that they have gone up very markedly in the last few years, particularly, but not exclusively, in the capital. The amendment moved by the noble Baroness is very apposite to developing conditions, which may well have an impact on people’s health and well-being, as she suggests, and which therefore should be taken into account, with a view to doing something about these rent levels. That is the problem. I concede it is most acute where that leads to eviction, but it is there before you get to that point, very often for long periods.
My Amendment 32 calls, in perhaps not the most elegant drafting, for an examination of the different types of house tenure to see how this has affected the market and the levels of rent, and indeed the condition of properties. It is designed particularly to draw attention to the situation that can arise in the context of short-term lettings, such as those through Airbnb, which for other reasons has often been raised in your Lordships’ House, most notably by the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, who is not now in her place. There must be concern about how these properties are managed and their impact in other ways upon the local community. Particularly on an individual basis, there is no apparent way at the moment in which these short-term lettings can be monitored in terms of the condition of the property, its safety and the like.
I hope the Minister will not repeat what she said before about the other types of property that we were discussing. Logically, I suppose, she might be driven to that extreme, but I hope she will recognise that perhaps we need to look at whether it might be timely to consider applying some criteria by which the condition of properties let—maybe for a night or two, or maybe for a slightly longer period—can be monitored. Such criteria would need to be of a standard that ensured that basic conditions were maintained.
One reads of dreadful things going on in some places. There was a court case recently—in London, I think—involving a flat that had been let for what turned out to be a wild party and was significantly damaged. That would not necessarily be covered by legislation but it may be that, beginning with looking at a requirement for such lettings to be in properties that are at least fit for human habitation and safe in terms of their electrics and the rest of it, one might ultimately revisit the issue of whether planning permission might not be needed. I know that now it is not required in London anyway but that is a separate issue—or a further issue—from the condition of these places and what individuals going there for short periods might be exposed to. It is not just a question of Airbnb for one or two nights; there is also the issue of holiday lets up and down the country, which at the moment, as I understand it, are not really governed by any requirements as to the fitness of the accommodation. If we are looking at housing across the piece, it would be desirable, to put it mildly, to look at the condition of those properties as well as at the basic stock that is on the rental market.
I hope that, with our commitment this evening, the Minister will agree to look at this before Report with a view to possibly extending some of the protections that exist for regular tenancies to these short-term lets of either kind. I beg to move.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
Does the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, wish to mention waterways before I respond?
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
The amendment on waterways came about because at a meeting of tenants from around London I met a group of people who live on the waterways. I mentioned the Second Reading of the Bill and they said they felt aggrieved as they had been totally ignored by most of their local authorities. They live on waterways such as the Thames, in the dock areas, and they feel that when it comes to services they are not involved or consulted. I know that this is not a major issue in the Bill, but I would be grateful if someone could meet some of these people before we get to the next stage. Perhaps there could be some regulations or guidance to point them in the right direction. They had a valid point and such a meeting might be helpful to them.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
I thank all noble Lords for their contributions, and I shall begin by addressing Amendment 23. The Government, too, support a better and more sustainable rented sector which offers all tenants quality and choice. Parts 2 and 3 of the Bill demonstrate our commitment to this. I have listened carefully to the arguments this evening, but I remind noble Lords that the Government already produce the English housing survey and the Measuring National Well-being: Life in the UK index annually. We believe these can achieve what noble Lords are suggesting.
The English housing survey includes narrative chapters and data on the financial circumstances, satisfaction and well-being of householders. This covers private and social renters, and owner-occupiers. Currently our analysts do not look directly at the link between rent arrears and well-being, but we will publish a housing and well-being report in the summer. The analysis for this is about to start. Our intention is to include the impact of rent arrears and housing insecurity more generally in this analysis. I trust this will help inform the House about the impact of arrears on well-being.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
Will the Minister ensure that a letter is sent to all those who have taken part in the discussion tonight, outlining the terms of reference of that working party and saying when it is due to report, what it will look at and when we can expect to see its findings?
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
Yes, I am happy to commit to do that. I can also reassure the noble Baroness that the DCLG and the DWP will communicate on the cross-departmental issues that she raised.
The other document I mentioned, Measuring National Well-being: Life in the UK, 2015, reports on well-being in relation to where people live and how they cope financially. As well as those two reports, the European Commission produces Quality of Life in Europe: Subjective Well-being. In that report, housing security is measured by the question,
“How likely or unlikely do you think it is that you will need to leave your accommodation within the next 6 months because you can no longer afford it?”
As a result of our debate today, we have asked the department whether it might be possible to pose a similar question in the English housing survey.
With regard to Amendment 32, proposed by the noble Lords, Lord Kennedy and Lord Beecham, I agree it should be easier for local authorities to identify the type of housing in their area, in order to exercise their housing functions better. However, we believe local authorities already have appropriate powers in existing and proposed legislation to seek information on housing tenure, and they can analyse that data to inform their local requirements. We believe that requiring the Government to commission and follow up a central collection and collation of this data would impose an unreasonable cost, in both time and resource, on taxpayers. We are taking the more effective approach of making tenancy deposit data available to local authorities through this Bill, for them to make use of as they see fit.
It also not clear what would be gained by collecting this information at national level. Local authorities, by definition, have localised issues, and housing statistics will only be relevant and meaningful in local areas. Schedule 2 to the Local Government Finance Act 1992 contains provisions for the Secretary of State to make legislation relating to the collection and administration of council tax, and regulations are already in place that give authorities the power to collect information which may include data on tenure in their area. The department has contacted local authorities to remind them of their existing powers. I would also add that the 2011 census provides a full tenure split at local authority level, and some local authorities have updated this record.
In connection with Amendment 33, my noble friend Lady Williams of Trafford and I would be happy to meet the organisations concerned. Perhaps we could have a further conversation following this debate, just to ensure that we invite the right people. With all that in mind, I hope that the noble Baroness will withdraw her amendment.
Lord Beecham
Before the noble Baroness sits down, I draw her attention to the precise wording of Amendment 32. Subsection (3)(b) of the proposed new clause goes beyond the general information to which she referred and talks specifically about,
“an assessment of the number of properties being let as short-term holiday lettings and the extent to which legislation relating to the condition of rented properties applies to short-term holiday lettings”.
That is not a local matter but a national matter with local implications. I invite the two noble Baronesses at least to say today that they will look at that issue and consider it before we get to Report. It is a discrete issue in a way.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
I will take it back. I would reiterate that it is a private matter, but we will have further conversations.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
I am happy not to press my amendment after the explanation the noble Baroness has given us.
Baroness Meacher
My Lords, I thank the noble Lords, Lord Shipley, Lord Judd, Lord Campbell-Savours and Lord Beecham, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, for their considered, well-informed and powerful contributions to this short debate. I am not at all convinced that the Government’s housing survey will provide the necessary focus on the soaring levels of rent and rent arrears and their impact on families and children and on the Government’s emphasis on health, well-being, educational attainment and so on.
The Government and Parliament really need to understand what is happening now and what will happen over the next few years in these regards. However, it is a late hour. We will have to come back to this issue, and I will no doubt have a conversation with the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, about precisely what the wording of the amendment should be. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.