Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 24th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, and the noble Lord, Lord Young, for explaining so very comprehensively what the issues are. The key question is whether the Government have done enough. I do not intend to go into all the detail but I have a couple of observations and a query, because I really do not know how to solve this crisis and I need to be convinced that what is being put forward is the solution.

One thing that has been very important is that so many categories of leaseholders were left out of previous arrangements. That has caused immense pain, hardship, a sense of unfairness and so on, as has been described. As we have heard, in the popular imagination this is all about solving the cladding crisis, but actually it goes far beyond cladding and covers a wide range of remediation work. Also, we have ended up in a ridiculous situation of people in the wrong size blocks of flats still having to pay but not being covered by protection and legislation.

I really appreciate all these different difficult dilemmas, and like everybody I had hoped that the work that had been done in the building safety legislation that many of us were involved in would be a great source of relief and excitement for leaseholders. It has not been. People are still absolutely in a very bad situation. The Government have to know that because I know they want to help. Therefore, we should consider our options.

These are my slight concerns. A lot of the problems that leaseholders face are based on the way that people are reacting to remediation work that will need to be done because of the building safety legislation that we passed. There is an atmosphere of risk aversion that means you cannot sell a leasehold flat now because of all the reasons that have been given. The lenders say, “Well, it’s leasehold; there may be future remediation work to be done”, and so on. It has become an absolute nightmare. It seems ridiculous, in the middle of a housing crisis, that people are unable to sell their flats, not because they are too expensive but because they cannot proceed. There is a kind of glut in the flat market at the moment: people cannot move on but people also cannot buy the flats that they urgently need to live in.

My concern is to make sure that we do not always describe this through the issue of critical safety work. Even during the building safety discussions, I was concerned that we would become too risk averse—that the whole process of building and construction would be so mired in fear of what might happen and the idea that fires would burst out at any moment that it would become impossible to build anything with the stipulations that were put forward. With the broader problem of housing supply and the housing crisis, I am terrified that we will end up with nobody building anything anymore because there will be too many risks in doing so because of the legislation that we have brought in. That is one problem.

The other thing that I am concerned about in relation to the polluter pays issue is that we might end up destroying the construction industry. I am more than aware of the fact that there are problems with parts of the construction industry. I do not doubt that there are what used to be described as cowboy builders and so on. I see serious problems when I look at all the work being done by the leaseholder groups to expose the terrible circumstances where people are living in flats that are not fit for purpose. I am not suggesting in any way that those things are not true but I am also very wary of demonising the construction industry and effectively destroying it at the very time when I want it to be hyperactively building houses all over the place to solve the problems of homelessness, the fact that people have nowhere to live, the affordability crisis and so on. Maybe the noble Lords could just answer how we deal with that.

So that we do not focus just on the construction industry as though it is solely the bad guys, I say that I am very frustrated about the fact that the banks are embroiled in holding things up. They will not lend to people who want to buy leasehold properties. That is a real problem; is it something we need to look at? As has already been discussed, and I have raised in past contributions, the role of the insurance industry has also been hugely problematic, with the cost of insurance. That all trickles down and the leaseholders end up being the people who suffer. As I said, I am very nervous about making our focus just on the construction industry.

The thing about the polluter pays model that I am concerned about is who gets labelled as the polluter. I have just walked past the demonstration in which the polluter in that instance apparently is the fossil fuel industry, the energy industry, or people who create cars. Those demonstrators say that the polluter should pay for all the problems in society. I am wary that this is oversimplistic as a solution. However, I say to the Government and to the Minister that saying that the status quo ante is sufficient is a betrayal of the promises that they, and in fact many of us, made to leaseholders last year.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 27th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I have been trying not to get into a lot of the groups on the Bill but I regret not getting into this one. Amendment 198 makes such good sense because politics is a fairly dire arrangement these days. A lot of voters have lost interest and do not trust us. Getting people involved at the local level is an excellent way of stimulating their appetite for more politics at different levels, so I very much support Amendment 198.

I quite like Amendment 209, but somehow “environmental issues” is just thrown in—you have to say it, do you not? I do not know what it means. I would like it to mean a lot but I am not sure that it means very much at all.

The noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, quotes to us the Conservative Party manifesto when the Government have broken so many promises and back-tracked on so many things. I hardly think it is a very good example for any of us to hold up as something we need to follow. Plus, his comments about the green belt were absolutely outrageous. It is not for people with gardens or people with country estates; it is for people who live in inner cities, who have no gardens or green space to walk about in. The green belt has a huge value for them, so please let us not forget that.

Amendment 211 is from the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, and the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, for whom I have huge respect, by the way. My telling him that the Conservative Party manifesto might as well be thrown in the bin—as it has been by the Conservative Party—does not mean that I do not have huge respect for him. Again, this amendment is about economic growth. We went through this in the Budget. Growth is not about well-being or prosperity; it is about grabbing more and more of the earth’s resources. It is not necessarily something that we want to keep promoting. If we are going to talk about growth, can we please talk about well-being, green spaces and environmental support, and not just constantly about businesses, inward investment and that sort of thing?

Let us please try to remember that we have a climate crisis. It does not matter whether you believe it or not; the fact is that the IPCC has published a report that was gone through by dozens of Governments and hundreds of scientists. They all quibbled over it, but they finally came to a report that is absolutely devastating. We really should be looking at that. Every time we put down an amendment, we should have that at the back of our minds, so that we say things that will help us in the future and help our children and grandchildren. At the moment, we are not doing that.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I was not going to speak, but the noble Lord, Lord Young, summed up one of the problems with this Bill in general: we have an important Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill that does not tackle the crisis of housing supply—something I talked about at Second Reading.

I want to clarify at this stage in the evening that, while the points made by the noble Lord about the green belt are not by any stretch of the imagination that every part of the green belt should be built on or concreted over, it is a misnomer to suggest that the green belt is a beautiful green area for people who do not have country homes, gardens or parks to go to. Lots of it is actually unusable by the public. What the noble Lord suggested was a review. If the review indicated that it was valuable for the well-being of the nation, that would be fine, but it would be able to show that huge swathes of the green belt are misnamed and could be productively used for housing for young people and people who are desperately in need of homes.

My final quick point is that economic growth has to be the solution for austerity and the cost of living crisis. You cannot tackle the fact that people are too poor unless you produce more. That is called economic growth. Austerity is unpleasant, nasty and brutish, even when dressed in eco clothes. We need more growth, not less, especially at this time. People’s well-being will not be tackled or helped if they do not have the proceeds of economic development and growth.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

This is utter nonsense—absolute nonsense.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I appreciate that we disagree. I thought the point was that we would disagree well in Committee. I have sat and listened to this debate for many hours. I just wanted to clarify why I think economic development is important: we will not be able to build any houses and nobody’s well-being will be helped if we stand still economically or go backwards. I do not relish austerity for the masses. Therefore, I think we need economic growth, mass housebuilding and the supply side to be tackled.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

It is with trepidation that I follow the last two speakers, the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones and Lady Fox. I will say just one small thing about the green belt. The green belt, as part of local plan making, is reviewed and, as appropriate, areas are taken out of the green belt for housebuilding and development. That is what happens. It happens at the right time and place when there is proper public consultation.

I start with Amendment 198 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage. I have lots of sympathy with the idea of deliberative democracy. It is always worth exploring new ways of engaging with local people, involving them in developing ideas and understanding about what is going on, and helping to inform decisions before decision-makers finalise plans. I am concerned that the plan the noble Baroness lays out in Amendment 198 will probably work okay in a district council, but in an area such as the one where I am a councillor, for 450,000 residents, it becomes more challenging.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 20th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise to speak only to Amendment 178B, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, in the interests of embracing an extraordinarily rare consensus. It would be ideal, for the Green group, for my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, former London Deputy Mayor and long-time London Assembly member, to be here, but unfortunately she is otherwise engaged, so you get me, a resident through many of the years that the noble Lord, Lord Tope, was talking about. I say “embracing a rare consensus” with enthusiasm, because I was buoyed last week by the fact that we saw the Government table their own amendment to the UK Infrastructure Bank Bill following a Report stage at which the noble Lord, Lord Vaux of Harrowden, had put down an amendment. The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, and I had both signed it, and that actually ended up in law. So, you never know; maybe the same kind of unusual consensus of the noble Lords, Lord Moylan and Lord Greenhalgh, the Greens, the Lib Dems and others all backing Amendment 178B might get to the same outcome. We can but hope.

I think the case has already been very strongly made for this: this is democracy. But I just want to make one additional point, which is that the London Assembly is, of course, elected through a proportional system, so the majority there reflects the views of the majority of the public. That is unlike local authorities, which are elected by first past the post systems yet need only a simple majority to overrule the administration’s budget.

We heard a lot in our debates on the Bill earlier today about tidying up and fixing up past inequities and infelicities; well, this would be a real democratic addition and a real tidying up. I entirely back the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, and all the others who have signed this amendment. Let us see where we can get with it.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I rise to support Amendment 176, in particular, in the name of the noble Lords, Lord Moylan and Lord Greenhalgh. Beyond the focus of the amendment on low emission zones, I think in this Bill—which promotes, after all, outsourcing a range of decisions to greater numbers of local and regional bodies—one area where local authority decisions are clashing not just with mayors but with local citizens, in terms of their needs and wants, is in restricting and controlling people’s car use and movement, in the name of tackling the supposed triple threats of air pollution, climate change and congestion.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 22nd February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 20 in this group, calling for the provision of safe and affordable homes for all. It references a definition of affordable homes that appears in Amendment 242, to which we will come in due course.

Mission 10 in the White Paper—although they are not actually numbered as such, but it is the 10th mission —sets a target that is only seven years away, focusing on creating a secure path to home ownership. According to the technical annexe to the White Paper, it aims to ensure that everyone has access to good-quality housing, with a particular focus on improving areas where quality is low—I underline that. That is a very big ambition and a very worthy one, and seven years is an awfully short time to deliver it.

It is very important because it is also going to be the gateway to tackling a whole set of other missions, which the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, set out in her speech on Amendment 7—which of course we support very much. Health and well-being are essentially connected to the housing quality of the people who are being measured, and that includes their overall capacity to participate properly in education. Is there somewhere for children to spread out their homework? Is there a bedroom that they can sleep in properly? There is no argument that this is a good idea, and indeed the Government have, within planning policies, an intention at least to make sure that affordable housing is provided.

However, what those non-governmental organisations, the homeless organisations and many local councils’ housing departments fret over is that affordability as defined in the planning regulations is actually unaffordability in real life. If we do not shift that definition of affordability and take a more realistic view about what it is, it is absolutely clear that, however much effort is put into housing and affordable housing, it will fail to deliver what the Government want to achieve by 2030. Homes will be simply too expensive for lower-income purchasers, while renters will remain trapped in overpriced and undermaintained property well beyond that seven-year target.

This amendment is designed to come to the rescue. It sets out clearly a route for the Government’s missions to deliver genuinely affordable and safe housing for everyone, creating enough space in the housing market for people with limited means to afford a roof over their head through either renting or buying or through shared ownership schemes. The amendment also requires homes to be safe. I have to say to noble Lords that 10 years ago it would not have been seen as necessary to include that point in a Bill, but the devastating revelations following the horrific Grenfell Tower fire have undermined that complacent view. Again, we know from Shelter and others working in the field that too many people are living in unsafe as well as unaffordable homes.

However, the substantive part of this amendment and the part I want to explore a little more is “an affordable home for all”. It is a great slogan, and of course it is at the heart of the housing debate currently running in our town halls and planning departments, and of course throughout the Government and particularly among their Back-Benchers, among many others. Every local planning authority has an affordable housing policy—and so do the Government. As I am sure the Minister will tell us, they are spending a lot of money on it. Why, then, does it turn out that so many affordable built under these carefully crafted policies are in fact unaffordable to those who need them most? The fact that undermined so many good intentions is that affordability in planning policy is being calculated by the Government by reference to house prices and not by reference to buyers’ income or spending capacity. Obviously, a home which is going on the market at 80% when the 100% figure is £1 million is a very different animal from one that is going at a time when the housing price is £500,000 or £250,000.

This amendment addresses the slippery word “affordable” head on and proposes a definition of affordable that is based on the income of those seeking a home and not, as at present, a notional discount on current market prices. That definition is set out in detail in Amendment 242, which obviously we shall come to in a different group in due course, which is referenced as “Meaning of ‘affordable home’” in Amendment 20. Briefly, we define affordable in terms of local housing allowance for units provided for renters and as a percentage of income in relation to the mortgage costs for buyers. It provides a fundamental reshaping of the term “affordable” so that there is an objective framework within which policies and funding can be deployed, with the knowledge that the homes delivered via that policy will be affordable to those in pressing need of them.

If we continue to misuse the term “affordable homes” in our public discourse and policy-making, we will continue to miss the targets and the Government will fail in their missions. Much worse than that, families across the country will continue to be left out and left behind, and the circle of deprivation will continue with it. I will add that many of the other missions which also have deadlines of 2030 will be compromised or fail completely. This amendment opens the door to a solution by reframing “affordable” in terms of the income of the family rather than the capital price of the home, and I beg to move.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, my Amendment 21 joins a queue to add, amend or clarify missions. This queue can feel a little like a fanciful—farcical, even—wish list, but the Government only have themselves to blame for the fact that some of us are just trying to pin down these missions rather than rely on guesswork.

My guess is that, as much as the Bill relates to planning, it is not unreasonable to assume that there will be a housing mission. Indeed, in the missions published in February 2022 we are told so. However, I was shocked when I read its content: increase home ownership and housing standards, tick; more first-time buyers in all geographical areas, tick; and a 50% reduction in non-decent rented homes, tick. But, extraordinarily, there is no mention of increasing the supply of houses or of targets to build more homes at a time when we need that to happen with missionary zeal if we are to stand a chance of making levelling up more than a slogan.

If the Government are serious about increasing home ownership, having more first-time buyers and ensuring that the rented sector expands and improves, we need more houses or the policy will run into the housing affordability road block. We heard a lot about affordability from the previous speaker, the noble Lord, Lord Stunell. At present, the average home costs over eight times average annual earnings, as against the historic norm of three to four times. Put bluntly, house prices and rents have risen beyond what any reasonable person would think it acceptable to spend on one of the most basic human needs. Those high prices and rents are responsible for many of the social ills that the Bill is allegedly designed to address—from worsening living conditions, falling home ownership, rising homelessness and the spiralling costs of housing benefit.

Half of all first-time buyers—rising to two-thirds in the south-east—rely on the so-called “bank of mum and dad”, which is fine if you have parents who can do that for you, although, with more and more mums and dads suffering the brunt of the cost of living crisis, that might be on the wane, anyway. Those who cannot turn to their parents are not only left behind but, ironically, end up paying a lot more in rent each month than their peers with a mortgage. Meanwhile, renters in London spend 40% of their income on rent, which is simply unaffordable, and rental prices are being pushed up by supply not meeting demand. We therefore need to build more houses to bring prices into line with earnings, whether we are buying or renting.

The hugely impressive housing campaign group Priced Out, staffed by young people who are passionate about housing, explains this well. It says:

“The affordability of housing is a significant concern for millions of people. If we don’t fix the root cause of this problem, we will continue to ruin lives and futures”.


Priced Out has hopes that the Bill will tackle that root cause. So do I, and that is what my amendment is about.

Of course, there is more to this than a demand for paper targets. Just because something is written down, I do not necessarily trust it. Over the years, we have all heard endless pledges from Governments of all stripes included in all political parties’ election manifestos, yet we still have a supply problem. The UK remains one of the slowest and least prolific homebuilding countries among all 28 members of the OECD. Too often, under previous Administrations’ versions of housing missions, we have seen distractions from the core issue of increasing the supply side.

This Government in particular have tended to fall back on headline-grabbing demand-side quick fixes, such as help-to-buy schemes. However, this arguably makes things worse. Demand skyrockets by giving young, aspiring homeowners a state loan. But that means that prices go up, especially if we plod along with a fixed, stagnating supply of homes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I commend the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark, for keeping the issue of the problems facing leaseholders very much alive, to the point of nagging, repetition and maybe boring the Government into submission. It is so important that he has done that, and those who support him really deserve to be commended.

That is why I support Amendments 42 and 43, but they should not be controversial at all; they should be welcomed by the Government. I also commend recent announcements by the Secretary of State, Michael Gove, clarifying—I hope—that the Government are committed to abolishing leasehold and will bring that forward imminently. Hear, hear for that. On this issue at least, many of us across the House, regardless of political differences, will be keen and willing to work with the Government on what we can maybe call the 13th mission of abolishing leasehold.

I want to look at what this has to do with levelling up, because it is a key point. There are 4.6 million leaseholders in the UK and many are first-time buyers, which the Bill seeks to encourage more of. Many of them are from parts of the country that the Bill seeks to level up. We should remember that, in earlier iterations of regional development, the regeneration and gentrification of so-called neglected city and town centres across England and Wales took the form of building blocks of flats. One argument was that densifying areas by building on brownfield sites would allow new housing without urban sprawl or nimbyist objections. My goodness, we even saw such blocks spring up in towns such as Buckley—the place I am from. We joked at the time about the area going posh, with its apartments and café society, never imagining that this would be a source of problems for people rather than a dream come true.

It is tragic to see endless newspaper reports of how this has turned into a nightmare for so many. A recent Manchester Evening News report says that leaseholders in one of the city’s most eye-catching apartment blocks are

“‘pulling their hair out’ over what they claim are ‘obscene’ management fees”

and monthly service charges exceeding £500—for a service charge in Manchester. Think about it; that is a lot of money. It is often even more than mortgage payments.

We should also remember that Margaret Thatcher’s home-owning democracy project of right to buy meant that many former council tenants bought their own home. In fact, they became leaseholders. These former local authority properties are now in the general housing stock and they are relatively cheaper to purchase, especially in London and the south-east. That makes them popular, affordable options as they put home ownership within the grasp of those who otherwise would be priced out of the market. Indeed, when I bought my first house—well, the only house I have ever bought—at 40, it was in those circumstances: the only way I could afford it was to buy an ex-council flat. That was me declaring my interest as well.

Sadly, it has all been a bit of a con, which was only revealed because of Grenfell, as has been explained. It has become clear that leaseholders are not home owners at all. Yes, they have the huge debt in the form of a mortgage, but really leaseholders are a sort of glorified tenant. I will come back to this with my Amendment 210 later in the Bill. However, unlike renters, leaseholders not only have the mortgage but are saddled with maintenance costs, not just of their own property but of whole blocks in the local area. They have no control over expenditure. We should note that there is a new leasehold crisis on the horizon, with local authorities demanding ever-spiralling costs from their leaseholders for building repairs, as councils rush to renovate poor-quality housing to meet the Government’s decent homes standard and to remedy flats to comply with recent fire and building safety legislation.

Council renting tenants are rightly not liable for such maintenance and repair costs, but the bill for entire blocks is then divided between local authority freeholders and individual leaseholders, who have no right to decide the scope or timing of proposed works, or, in fact, to request comparative quotes for contracts. That means that leaseholders are footing the bill for years of underinvestment in council housing stock.

Growing numbers are getting demands for eye-wateringly unaffordable sums. Neil Hosken, a south London teacher, has received a bill for £44,000. In Lambeth, there have been shock bills of up to £98,000. Sebastian O’Kelly from the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership says that his organisation is contacted every week by residents—leaseholders in council blocks—facing financial ruin, and one local council has officials to deal with right-to-buy sales on one side of the desk and on the other officials dealing with buying back council flats from leaseholders who have been wiped out by major works bills. It will be a real problem if we have a Bill about levelling up and we do not tackle this. We will be fooling ourselves if we do not deal with it.

Meanwhile, leaseholders of private flats find themselves, to quote one, “Fighting off one money-making caper after another by landlords and managing agents”. I take the point that we are talking about rogue incidents of freeholders who rip people off, but leaseholders none the less feel that they are being overcharged for insurance, utilities and everything from window cleaning to major building works. The main thing is that they do not have any control.

I think the reason why the Government rightly and perfectly reasonably say that home ownership is something that many people should aspire to, and the reason why a lot of people do aspire to it, in particular many young people, is because people want to have the freedom, autonomy and control of owning their own little place—or big place—so that they will not be dependent on the landlord or anyone else. That is what you think you are getting, but instead leasehold robs you of that control, which instead often belongs to absentee or offshore freehold landlords or their agents, or councils. It is they who call the shots on what happens in your block and even in your own flat. That is why the issue of control of insurance costs is fast becoming a critical battlefield in excessive charges for leaseholders, who are forced to pay towards a group insurance policy but have no control to, as it were, “go compare” which is the best insurance policy to choose.

I do not know whether noble Lords have been following the heroic work of Angie Jezard from Canary Riverside, who spent three years of her life uncovering that she and her fellow leaseholders had spent £1.6 million in secret insurance commissions to a freehold-linked company. This is potentially corruption, and leasehold campaigners and their tireless volunteer legal reps, such as Liam Spender, estimate that excessive costs have been paid that run into thousands of millions across the UK. That is why the proposals in Amendment 42 from the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, on mandatory disclosure and so on, are important as a first step, but as I hope I have illustrated, and as he has regularly illustrated, the myriad problems associated with leasehold as a system mean that it has to be abolished. This is a Bill that suits that cause, because we can say that we believe in levelling up and that the whole system of leasehold is holding back that project when it comes to housing.

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my residential and commercial property interests as set out in the register. I am also proudly now a vice-president of the Local Government Association—finally.

I rise, as I naturally do, in support of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark, who is flanked by his formidable wife, the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, who sticks up just as doggedly for Generation Rent. I am very pleased to support this amendment. It is a grand coalition, if you like, of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, my noble friend Lord Young—who I used to describe as part of the awkward squad, but obviously I am on the Back Benches now so that is irrelevant—and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, who are poised to ensure that this is taken really seriously by the Government. That is why, as a former Leasehold Minister, I join and add my voice.

I want to summarise each of these individuals in one word, which is hard, but I have thought about it for about five minutes. The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, is dogged—I can remember that there was not a single week when I was a Minister when he would not pop up, and probe, and cajole, and gently swipe, to get stuff done on behalf of all those poor leaseholders when it came to leasehold reform, and to ensure that we got the Building Safety Bill that we needed; that is a truly great contribution and I recognise that.

But I am going to answer some of the points that he raised, because unfortunately I am a bit immersed in the policy detail. There was some action by this Government. When I was the Leasehold Minister, we brought in the first stage of leasehold reform that removed escalating ground rents from the equation, which was the fuel that generated the whole business of leaseholders being exploited by very tricky freeholders. It was the first part of the LKP model—the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership model—of reform, so we got stage 1 done. Now we are set for stage 2 that brings in very important measures for existing leaseholders to enfranchise and get a share of the freehold.

Equally, I chaired many a session of something called the Commonhold Council. I am a commonholder in France and I know that you can be a commonholder in Scotland. It is a tenure that I support and it is something that we want to see widespread adoption of. But we have got to recognise that we have to kill this exploitative business for the future, and that has been partly done by the first stage of leasehold reform. We have got to set a direction that encourages people to have a share in their freehold, and also do what Labour failed to do—I am sorry to be party-political here—under someone called Tony Blair and get it right this time to see the widespread adoption of commonhold.

So the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, is dogged, and I turn to my noble friend Lord Young, who for me is forensic. There is no element of parliamentary procedure that has not been read by my noble friend Lord Young: he reads everything. The message to the Government is, “Publish the Bill”—which is what the Law Commission advised as well. So I say to my noble my friend the Minister, “Publish the Bill”. We can then start the pre-legislative scrutiny in a constructive way, reaching across the aisle and working together to make this the best possible Bill before we run out of parliamentary time.

I am going to describe the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, as philosophical—we have got dogged, we have got forensic and we have got philosophical. What we have before us—a brilliantly crafted amendment —is the opportunity to level up home ownership, and that is why I am here in support of this grand coalition.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 17th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, rhetorically there is a lot to commend in this whopping piece of levelling-up legislation, but I stress rhetorically. For example, the Bill claims that it will increase living standards and pay in every area of the UK. Well hurrah to that, but a better guarantor of that outcome might be to join a trade union or to get involved in grassroots struggles, as alluded to by the noble Baroness, Lady Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent, in her punchily excellent maiden speech. Certainly, that would be a more than likely bet to improve standards of living than relying on 12 missions, the details and targets of which are left to Ministers to make up or tear up at whim.

A case in point is that, even before we got the Bill to scrutinise, the national housing targets were shredded. So it was apt when the shadow Secretary of State, Lisa Nandy, concluded the following at Third Reading in the other place:

“We started by saying that this was a levelling-up Bill with no levelling up in it—it was just a housing Bill. Then the Government stripped out the housing, and now we are left with just a Bill.”— [Official Report, Commons, 13/12/22; col. 1082.]


But if only it were just a housing Bill. We have a severe crisis of housing supply and affordability, as others have explained. People cannot afford to buy or to pay extortionate rents, so tackling housing shortages should be at the heart of levelling up. Yet that housebuilding heart has been ripped out of the legislation.

Of course, quantity is not the only metric. The Bill’s point that development should be accompanied by infrastructure is important, and Michael Gove’s enthusiasm for quality and beauty is admirable—although I am less keen on the ugly title, “office for place”, for the body in charge of architectural aesthetics. But in the end, it was spineless of the Government to allow the Bill to be weakened by Back-Bench Tory nimbys. Disingenuously, this has been wrapped up in the faux-democratic language of empowering residents in planning decisions with street votes, et cetera. I fear that this is the Government washing their hands of responsibility for fewer houses being built, and then pointing the finger and blaming the locals. This abdication of responsibility is one reason why I have qualms about one of the key missions: rolling out the devolution process to all areas of England.

Other noble Lords have mentioned problems of overcentralisation. Conversely, when Westminster seems to give power away, we should also worry. This appears to be based on a superficial, even a damage-limitation attempt to satisfy the democratic slogan from 2016, “take back control”. It has been mirrored in Keir Starmer’s recent promise to disperse power away from Whitehall through his proposed “take back control” Bill. Historically, I have been a fan of power to the people. But does delegating powers to super-devolved regional bodies, localist quangos and more mayors, with their attendant layers of publicly funded bureaucracy —all this devolution paraphernalia—really give more power to northern voters?

One concern is that outsourcing decisions away from parliamentary accountability can fragment the sovereign nation state. The dangers of parallel governance are well illustrated by the present constitutional challenge thrown up by the Scottish Government’s gender self-ID Bill, impacting on UK-wide equality laws. As an aside, well done to the Government on that one for responding with courage in invoking Section 35. The key point to note is that locating political power geographically closer to voters does not guarantee a better deal for local citizens.

Take the issue of transport. Michael Gove wants to enhance mayors’ powers to increase transport connectivity. Yet, here in London, the mayor is making connectivity harder and more expensive by expanding the ultra-low emission zone, despite 60% of Londoners opposing him. According to TfL’s own figures, the majority of non-compliant car owners are from lower socioeconomic groups. How does a ULEZ stealth tax on van drivers, care workers and NHS staff from outer London, who need their cars for work, equate to levelling up?

Meanwhile, low-traffic neighbourhood schemes are local but top-down policies to force residents to walk and cycle more and use their cars less, against their wishes, with local opposition ignored. Then there is Oxford’s Labour, Lib Dem and Green council leading the pack with its fashionable anti-driving initiative of dividing cities into local zones and restricting car journeys via permits, penalties and surveillance. This 15-minute city idea emanates from a network of 100 international mayors collaborating on ruses to deliver their climate and environmental pledges—no mind if those hinder economic growth, industrialisation or local mums driving their kids to school.

So, a devolved regional form of what is actually global governance that bypasses local representation is not the solution. Whatever this Bill offers, the promise of regeneration and levelling up via devolution is rather dodgy and invasive. It lets down, even betrays, red wall hopes for more control.

Voter Identification Regulations 2022

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I entirely agree with what my noble friend just said. Almost every word that has been uttered during this interesting debate underlines the feeling that I have had for a long time that it would be a really sensible thing for us to go back and re-examine the case for an identity card. It would have many other uses. We are bedevilled by immigration problems. An identity card would be one document that everyone could carry, and I commend it most warmly to the House.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, may well have done his side a disservice, in view of the fact that those of us who are opposed to voter ID warned that it was a slippery slope to the bringing in of national ID cards. I personally will oppose that. I actually did oppose, throughout the whole of Committee and Report stages, the introduction of voter ID. That side lost, and the policy is as such.

The one thing that I want to pick up on is that, after I argued and spoke many times on that issue, I was castigated by a lot of people outside of the House who told me that speaking on behalf of ordinary voters who might well be excluded from the franchise by having to show voter ID was patronising and that it treated those people as hapless and hopeless. Some of the comments about poor marginalised communities not being able to get access to photo IDs and the way that we have discussed the members of the BAME communities being unable to access or being unfairly discriminated against by photo IDs is in danger of being patronising.

But the most important thing at this stage, it seems to me, is that I do not think the Government have done enough—and this is what I would like—to reassure us that there will be huge publicity so that this is known about. That seems reasonable. I liked the anecdotes from Northern Ireland of vans going round. We know that this Government are not shy when it comes to nudging, nannying and telling everybody what to do on other issues, so I would not mind them doing it on this one to mitigate any possibility that anyone anywhere in the country would not know that they need ID. Helping them get it would be a great help.

Building Safety Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Tuesday 26th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I have been living with this matter since we first debated the Fire Safety Bill in 2020. I declare an interest as chair of the Built Environment Committee. I believe that the building industry has an important part to play and has tried to rise to the table in the current circumstances. The Government, and my noble friend the Minister in particular, are to be congratulated on all they have done to find a way through on cladding, but the measures legislated for are inevitably costly and should not, in my view, be legislated for in respect of buildings under 11 metres, as proposed in Amendment D1.

I have some news for my noble friends. Since Michael Gove’s Statement on 10 January about proportionality and common sense, the logjam in buildings under 11 metres has eased. I have experience of this, relating to a family leaseholder in a nearby village, where there is now a less absolutist and more flexible approach to fire safety in a block of homes; this has become apparent in recent weeks since the changes were made. I believe, therefore, that there is a limit as to what we should provide on a contingency basis. I do not believe that taking the proposed powers, as now suggested, is justified. I think that the situation is improving in relation to buildings under 11 metres, and we should welcome that and see how that approach can be progressed.

I end by thanking my noble friend the Minister for the progress that has been made. Obviously, there are horrific problems, right across the board, in relation to taller buildings and cladding. Howeever, I urge people to be a little careful in bringing into the legislative framework, without looking at all the details, a very much larger number of homes.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, like everybody else, I think it has been refreshing to be in a situation whereby the debates in this place have been listened to and changes made. On a number of other Bills, one has not had that feeling—but in relation to this we definitely have.

I want to emphasise the key issue of buy-to-let leaseholders. They can be presented as big landlords, but I remind the Minister that many people were advised that investing in property would be an important way of being sensible and would provide them with an income or a pension and so on and so forth. So people did this in good faith. They are not landlords. They are leaseholders; they just have more leasehold flats. They are not big business. They are being treated differently if they have a small portfolio of four properties. This needs to be looked at, because it feels wrong that such people should be punished.

Secondly, I am very mixed about the 11-metre question. I agree that the danger of an unintended consequence here would be to say that, if you paid the remediation for under 11 metres, everybody would rush out and start remediating under 11 metres when it is not necessary. I am delighted to hear the Minister’s pledge, which I hope we will keep him to, that anyone having a problem with a building under 11 metres can get in touch if they are being charged. However, there is the problem of sales, and people feeling that they have unsellable flats; the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, mentioned this. That is the approach I want to feel that we leave this Bill with: that leaseholders can come to the Minister with these kinds of problems that are unintended consequences.

I was one of the people who was very enthusiastic about having some kind of ongoing review—although we did not go down that route. The unintended consequence of what has in the end been a bit of a risk-averse panic over the past few years—which I understand—is that everything is seen as a fire risk. This has led not to keeping people safe but to making people very poor and not solving the safety problem. Let us hope, therefore, that things such as consultations and these kinds of questions will be taken seriously, because one thing I have heard consistently from leaseholders is that, although there is a lot of talk about listening to leaseholders and tenants—we heard that post Grenfell; we all know that Grenfell residents had tried to raise issues but were ignored—they still do not quite feel that they have a way of having a voice. That is an important thing for the Minister to carry on with.

I support Motion H1, because I want to push the Government one last time on this question. Ultimately—this is a very important point—the number is small but, on principle, we just want to be in a situation where the leaseholders are not paying. That is really what is being argued here: leaseholders, who were always the innocent people in this, should not pay.

Finally, because I think this can get lost, I have tried to represent the voices of at least some leaseholders—particularly those from Tower Hamlets, where I know the Lib Dems in particular have been brilliant at raising all these issues. It is an area where there are more problems around the leaseholder question than anywhere else, but greater remediation; I have been really inspired by that.

I also remind noble Lords that I want more houses to be built. This is a huge, important part of levelling up or whatever it is. We just need more houses built. I have always been concerned that we do not do anything that ends up destroying the construction industry or having the outcome that no houses are built—risk aversion in housebuilding. Part of what has happened is that people now understand the downside of being a leaseholder. Even if you are building those houses, you now think, “Why would I buy a leasehold flat?” I can assure you that, if I ever buy a flat again, after I have sold my leasehold flat—I am going to get rid of it as quickly as possible—I will not then want to buy a leasehold flat. I just think it is too scary.

Building Safety Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

3rd reading
Monday 4th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his comments. I am glad to be associated with proportionality, especially in relation to safety and the unintended consequences of a zero-risk approach to any policy, actually. I thank everyone who has been involved—the Minister, the government team and all the people across the House far more experienced than I am—for making the discussions around this have a certain sense of a collegiate endeavour, trying to solve a problem that we all knew was there. I thank your Lordships for your encouragement and, often, your patience with my own inability to quite understand the process.

I particularly thank leaseholders. I got involved with this issue because I was lobbied, not by big business but by ordinary, grass-roots leaseholders. As a leaseholder myself, I found that there was a whole community out there. While we have done a huge amount to benefit their situation, going from where they were to where they are, we are not quite there yet. As much as I would like it to be the case that they are grateful for our endeavours, many of them still feel frustrated, fearful and nervous—and you cannot blame them, because they are just not sure what is going to happen; there are too many question marks. I do not think we should be disparaging of them or think that they are lacking in gratitude for what has happened.

I encourage the Government not only to give time in the other place to consider the amendments but not to wash their hands of the Bill, as it were, once it eventually fully goes through. I think we have all noted that there will be unintended consequences: hidden costs and service charges. While there might be a formal review, this will be an ongoing issue for many years to come. Therefore, I hope the Government will be open to those lobbying for leaseholders, even when we are not discussing a Bill in Parliament. I would like the department to still keep listening to them, as I certainly will. I will raise issues whenever I get the chance. Generally, this is far better than when we started, but I always want more.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, simply look at the Bill that came from the other place, then take a look at what we are sending back. It has changed beyond all recognition. I pay tribute to my noble friend the Minister and his boss, my right honourable friend Michael Gove, for that extraordinary transformation. I also thank my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham and noble Lords and noble Baronesses on all sides of the House, and the right reverend Prelate, for the many amendments they have made, many of which have been accepted by the Government. We are sending back some important amendments that the Government might not quite like as much as we would like them to. However, I appeal to the other place to accept them and not to remove them, especially the zero amendment proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock.

The Government, apparently, have had legal advice on the dangers of breaking the ECHR if we changed the cap figures, but we heard, I submit, even better legal advice that that is not so. In any case, as the noble Lord, Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames, said, some developers will challenge the figure in court no matter what level the Government set.

We also need to do more on enfranchised leaseholders. They were encouraged to purchase their freeholds, and they must not be treated like rapacious landlords. Nevertheless, this Bill now gives leaseholders infinitely better protection. With a few further tweaks it could give them full protection. When I see the contribution my noble friends have made to the Bill, I am reminded of the words of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, or almost his words:

“Antonius! … Yond”


noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham,

“has a lean and hungry look … Let me have men about me that are fat”.

I commend this Bill and hope the other place will improve it further.

Building Safety Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Report stage
Tuesday 29th March 2022 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Fox of Buckley]

26: After Clause 74, insert the following new Clause—
“Review of provisions relating to accountable persons
(1) By the end of the period of two years beginning with the day on which section 71 comes into force, the Secretary of State must undertake a review of the financial impact of accountable persons on leaseholders in higher-risk buildings.(2) The review under subsection (1) may consider any matter appearing to the Secretary of State to be relevant, but must identify and quantify—(a) all costs passed on to leaseholders in relation to any function of any accountable person under Part 4 of this Act; and(b) any other costs passed on to leaseholders by any accountable persons.(3) A Minister of the Crown must, as soon as practicable on completion of the review, lay a statement on its findings before Parliament.(4) This section comes into force on the day this Act is passed.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment requires the government to identify and quantify all costs passed on to leaseholders under the accountable person regime, for example to check if Building Safety Manager costs have been rebadged and passed on.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I thought we were going to have a vote.

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

We surprised the noble Baroness.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I am not ready.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

Your Lordships need to calm yourselves.

On Saturday, I went to visit my home in Wood Green. It looks like a bomb site: there is no roof and there are huge amounts of scaffolding and barbed-wire fences surrounding the block of 25 two-floor maisonettes. When you arrive, you see a huge multicoloured fluorescent sign with the words “Zero tolerance” and then a list of prohibited activities, all relating to safety: “Safety helmets must be worn”; “Safety footwear must be worn”; “No smoking”; “Danger: tripping hazards”; “Danger: men working ahead”; “Danger: no children on the site”. We are told that “Safety signs and procedures must be observed.” I therefore know, having visited my home in Wood Green, that Haringey Council is definitely keen on promoting safety.

Let us consider this. My home is in this state because, two years ago, there was a fridge fire in one maisonette. The roof of the block caught fire and the other flats, including mine, were drenched by the fire brigade in putting out the fire. It was not too bad and, to be honest, we were so glad that no one was hurt and we were relieved to get out safely. But that was two years ago this month—two years in which 25 families have been effectively homeless. As a leaseholder, the council, which is my freeholder, took my front door key off me—it is not a glamorous house, by the way, but it is mine, or so I thought—and basically said that I would get it back when the block had been made safe. It is now two years later and I am still not back, and I have no idea when I can go home.

I have mentioned this story before. My retelling it is not therapy but to show how what starts as an unremarkable but unpleasant event—a fire, albeit in lockdown—can escalate and turn into a nightmarish, never-ending misery for so many people. At every turn, as leaseholders and tenants, we have been faced with layers of bureaucracy getting in our way, more and more people to deal with, more and more issues being raised to explain why we are not returning home, and dwindling effectiveness in getting our homes back to us. We leaseholders and council tenants have been shown a certain indifference to our plight. If I am honest, all that has been much worse than the original fire, but it is okay because Haringey Council has put up lots of safety signs. Safety trumps all, and is used to say to us, “Shut up and put up.”

I arrived at this place during the time of my eviction from the house and was inspired by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans and the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, whom I heard speak on what was happening to leaseholders. I thought, “I’m going to join that debate.” I was inspired by their dedication and what they said, and that is how I ended up here.

The moral of this tale is that I want to make sure that the Bill, which is well-intentioned on safety, does not in the name of safety end up with the unintended escalation of a whole new set of problems for leaseholders, which was the point of the analogy with my flat fire. The amendment—I actually prefer a similar but better amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, who is trying to do the same thing—would require the Government to commit to review the impact of the legislation in a couple of years. It says to the Government, “Can you just check in all instances that the legislation doesn’t cause more problems and is actually doing what you want it to do, or what we in the House have been told you want it to do?”

We are rather rushing through the Bill. Whole swathes of new amendments have emerged. These have been put in not necessarily by noble Lords but by the Government. I was happy to hear the Minister explain that there are so many amendments because he, the Secretary of State and the department are listening. But whatever way you look at it, we, as people scrutinising the Bill, are being presented with hundreds of amendments that have been quite hard to get one’s head round in the time. In many ways, the Bill is not being fully scrutinised line by line. As the noble Lord, Lord Jordan, put it, it really is a legislative quagmire to wade through and it is very difficult.

It has been almost impossible to read the amendments, assess what their nuances mean and look for what the consequences might be. I appreciate that that is for me and that I am a lay person on technicalities, but luckily, as has been mentioned, leaseholders have a few important voluntary heroes who have helped the rest of us through. I know that the lawyer and leaseholder Liam Spender has already been name checked for his multicoloured sheet, which has already been shown, but if noble Lord have not seen it is well worth studying because it really does explain things. There are also all sorts of reporters for the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership and intrepid leaseholders doing their own work, trying to get to grips with what all these new amendments and the Bill mean.

I mention that because it would be irresponsible if we passed this Bill and then let it sail off into the distance without any idea that it will be looked at again. I worry that the Government think that all will be solved once the Bill has passed. I do not want hostages to fortune. We have had lots of reassurances today, we have been told not to worry and have had great rhetoric from the Government on proportionality and common sense, but we therefore need to be able to check that that rhetoric will be fulfilled.

Finally, this is not all about leaseholders. My hunch is that the Bill has a range of problems because it has gone along uncritically with the picture painted by Dame Judith Hackitt that somehow every aspect of living in a flat should be seen as a potential hazard and a dangerous fire risk. For the last few years—understandably because of Grenfell—there has been a sort of hyperactive “something must be done” mentality that has led to the EWS1 crisis and caused many of the issues that informed the discussion on the previous group of amendments on innocent victims paying for excessive remediation.

All I ask is that this review checks that an overzealousness does not emerge from the legislation that skews priorities and means the Government’s valiant efforts at common sense and proportionality somehow end up in a proliferation of chunky formalised procedures.

I will also reflect on the other people we should bear in mind. I have emphasised leaseholders throughout this contribution, but in my Second Reading speech I also talked about the construction industry. I want to make sure we do not end up stymying the house-building programme through overregulation. There is a danger that, as we have heard in some of the contributions, we describe the construction business as though they are all cowboy builders, which is a rather insulting caricature. With another hat on, at another time, I would be saying the big crisis in this country is a lack of housing and we need to “Build, build, build”, so I get worried when the Home Builders Federation says that it is concerned that there will be difficulties with housing delivery if too much of a burden is put on housebuilders. You might say, “I am not going to feel sorry for them,” but we do not want to get ourselves into a situation where the extraction of funds from the construction industry means that the UK home building industry—which is important to many parts of levelling up, social equality and so on—is stymied.

One way or another, I can think of nothing more sensible for a common-sense Minister than to say, “In a couple of years, we’ll review all this and check that your hunches are wrong, Lady Fox.” That will be fine. The Minister referred to me earlier as Oliver Twist—always wanting more. This is only a little bit more, but you cannot change the world unless you want more, and I intend to demand a lot more, but only a little more in this Bill. I beg to move.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to my Amendment 264A in this group. I thank my noble friend the Minister, as others have done, for all he has done to make this Bill a reality.

The object of the Bill, as I see it, is to get defects remediated to a proportionate extent as quickly as possibly—mainly cladding, sometimes installed, ironically, to improve insulation in the interests of carbon reduction, but also other unsafe matters. There have turned out to be more defects than anticipated and we have witnessed an unfortunate record by builders and others of not doing enough to put matters right. The Bill seeks to get things remedied quickly. However, it is costing an eye-watering amount to home owners, leaseholders and the Exchequer, and the Bill therefore also seeks to establish an equitable share-out of the costs including appropriate contributions by the supply chain.

It is a long saga and some of us in this House have been seeking solutions for a very long time and welcome the principle of legislation. However, unusually, the Bill has been changed completely by government amendments tabled since it left the House of Commons, yet we have not had an updated impact assessment to help us assess the costs and benefits of the revised proposals. This is poor, given the financial and other burdens on different stakeholders, as the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, has just explained. However, as the chair of the Built Environment Committee I welcome today’s concession from the Minister on social housing, which I hope will be less costly, as it will give welcome clarity.

I have a great deal of respect for the Health and Safety Executive, as I have said before, and for the Minister who has fought so hard to present credible, effective and sensible proposals. However, it has been a rush, and I believe we must have a review clause in the Bill beyond the five-year independent review in Clause 152, and with more teeth. The noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, has constructively proposed one option; I hope my version may recommend itself to colleagues across the House and to my noble friend. I believe that agreeing to this could help to narrow current, very real, differences on the Bill particularly in the next group of amendments.

I will explain why. I am proposing a review within two years. It would look at the impact of the provisions of the Act. If the review found that there were serious problems for leaseholders, for home owners who could not buy or sell property, or for any other group, it would make recommendations.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, and my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe for this insightful debate.

Amendment 26 from the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, would require a review of the financial impact of the new regime. I reassure the noble Baroness that a review is already required by Clause 152, which provides that:

“The Secretary of State must appoint an independent person to carry out a review of”


the system of regulation of building safety and standards and the system of regulation for construction products. Importantly, the reviewer is not limited and may choose to review connected matters, including the matters mentioned in the noble Baronesses’ amendments.

Similarly, Amendment 246A in the name my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe would require a review of the impact of the Act. I apologise for the mix-up that resulted in my addressing this amendment in an earlier group. I will repeat for the record that we believe that this further replicates Clause 152 in the Bill and therefore we believe this is unnecessary.

What I do say to my noble friend is that the Secretary of State has to appoint someone to carry out the review within five years, so that is a long-stop date. I am very happy to meet my noble friend to ensure that we get going with this review at the very earliest opportunity to make sure that that long-stop date is comfortably met. We also need to make sure that this review is substantive and learns the lessons of a new regime in the broadest possible sense and addresses the points raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, as well those raised by my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe, who has had tremendous Front-Bench experience as well as experience as a distinguished civil servant.

With those explanations, I kindly ask the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, to withdraw her amendment and my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe not to press her amendment.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I will withdraw but I will come back to the Minister. I think it is important to come back to the Minister and say if it is within five years, I would like it to be brought forward sooner. I do not know why he does not just accept the two years but let us have the meeting to discuss it. At this point, I will not press the amendment and beg leave to withdraw.

Amendment 26 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra. In relation to Amendment 115, the noble Lord discussed the 11-metre question. The emphasis is often on whether there is less risk in safety terms under or over 11 metres. For me, that slightly misses the point—which is that, regardless of whether you have resolved that, the problem is that freeholders are still charging and doing remediation work on buildings under 11 metres. Therefore, there are costs that those people who live in buildings under 11 metres have to pick up. The lecture that it is less risky over 11 metres really needs to be given to the freeholders not, necessarily, to the leaseholders—but that does not really help us, I think.

More generally, this is such an important group of amendments. The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, passionately reminded us of the context. It is true that being a leaseholder today is no longer just a description—it has almost become a full-time job in terms of fending off more and more financial demands and getting on top of the law. If you go and meet a group of leaseholders, they are having the kind of discussion about the ECHR that we have just heard from noble Lords, because they are trying to get on top of all these details and technicalities. It has become an overriding source of worry and anxiety, and genuinely—rather than just being about the status of home ownership—it has become a hellish state of affairs. So they need anything that can resolve that, and that is why this Bill is so important and this group of amendments matters.

My amendment in this group is a tiny, modest amendment that relates to evaluations. Amendment 165A in my name asks that any evaluations used to decide on caps for those still being charged for remediation should be looked at in a slightly different way. I do not want anything to be paid—I would go with peppercorn or nil—but if there are caps deployed and evaluations used, I remind noble Lords that we need to rectify a different kind of injustice.

The amendment asks that those valuations take into account that the leaseholder’s ability to pay will have been affected by the fact that their main wealth may be in the form of their asset—their home—and that their asset’s value may well be devalued hugely due to fire safety and building safety policies. The amendment notes that the properties may well be in negative equity as a consequence of government measures.

Building Safety Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Report stage
Tuesday 29th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 36 and 46. I was pleased to hear the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, be so kind about my previous comments, but then I remembered that it was not him speaking. I thank whoever said something nice about the points that I was making.

I feel slightly awkward because, in some ways, I should be saying that I had a win in Committee, but here I am again. Amendment 36 seeks to insert a clause that would mean that

“an accountable person must take … steps to achieve best financial value”

for leaseholders. It would require the Secretary of State to issue guidance to ensure that this duty is taken seriously. This is to focus the mind on the danger that we have seen throughout this Bill where, in the name of safety in a Bill taking on the grave injustice suffered by leaseholders of having to pay for building safety remediations, sometimes the solution inadvertently creates even more layers of disproportionate, overly cautious and risk-averse regulation and bureaucracy, which result in spiralling and never-ending sets of additional costs for leaseholders.

After Committee, when announcing the changes that the Government were making to the Bill, the Secretary of State, Michael Gove, said that they had listened to leaseholders’ concerns and were

“removing the requirement for a separate building safety charge and scrapping compulsory building safety managers, to help avoid unnecessary costs.”

Brilliant, I thought. When the Minister then told me that there would now be no building safety managers, I must confess that I was delighted. My amendment to abolish the building safety manager role was the first amendment that I had ever tabled and I had had a win. However, before I got the bunting out and allowed myself to indulge in any backslapping, I was brought to a pause by leaseholders, who noted:

“Small gains towards fairness, decency & common sense do not equal an overall ‘win’, the battle is v much ongoing!”


It is important that the Government have listened. A little like the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, I should say that any caveats that I raise now are not intended to be churlish. However, it is precisely because I accept the assurances of the Minister and Michael Gove that they want to ensure that there are no unintended outcomes from the Bill in terms of avoidable unnecessary costs that I have tabled this amendment, which gives guidance a chance to push home the point that value for money for leaseholders is a very important thing.

This is not just about my fears around what might happen or leaseholders being paranoid. At a sector conference—Leasehold London 2022—Shaun Lundy, a chartered health and safety practitioner and a supporter of building safety managers, reflected on what removing that role would mean. He said that what worries him a bit is that some of the onerous duties are still there so, even if you get rid of the role, it still leaves a void over who will do the work. He worried out loud about the danger of creating “a disproportionate industry” and “another layer of bureaucracy”, especially in relation to the new duty to create safety case reports. He noted that, although some reports he had seen were sensible, others were completely over the top; he gave the example of a 50-page report costing £50,000 but with no tangible benefit. The building safety manager may therefore be dead but, for some, it is “Long live the building safety manager and their duties”. Dame Judith Hackitt’s call soon after Grenfell that it was not good enough to wait for a change in the law and that freeholders had to act has led to something of a panic reaction and has often been taken literally.

Just to give you an example, I will tell you the story of Aviva leaseholder Sarah from the Quadrant in Salford. With no law passed, her managing agent, Contour Property Services, has charged her and her fellow leaseholders for a building safety manager. What is more, it has appointed an additional building safety co-ordinator. In correspondence with the lease-holders, Contour writes of balancing “value for money” against taking

“appropriate measures to meet new safety requirements”.

Then the killer line tells them, almost casually as an afterthought:

“As a result of these appointments, there will be an increase in your service charges.”


There they are, in the small print, for the forthcoming year from April 2022 to March 2023. If you look at the small print in the bill, as I have, the building safety manager is there at £21,249.50. The cost of the part-time safety co-ordinator is £11,702.56 and this is charged to the leaseholders.

This might be blatant but, even if there is no direct mention of the building safety manager, it seems that they are lurking in the shadows, rebadged or slightly in disguise, but ever present none the less. The heavily administrative substance of the duties that they were meant to take part in remains in the Bill. Many of these duties are based on the precautionary principle, sadly interpreted through the prism of zero risk and often disproportionately focused on myriad possible risks rather than clearly defined dangers. In Sarah’s case, one of the listed duties is writing and maintaining the building safety case for the building, which shows that all the potential risks have been considered and mitigated. Never mind the cost of the building safety case itself, who will pay to resolve all the potential risks?

The question is whether the removal of the legal requirement to appoint building safety managers is strong enough to, in effect, stop them being imposed. This amendment asks the Government to note that the genie is out of the bottle, but the Secretary of State has the opportunity to ensure, in guidance, that the sector should not just rush to risk-averse costly solutions because they have once been suggested, but should instead focus on whether costs are proportionate to real risks and ensure that value for money is a barrier to costs just being dumped on leaseholders via service charges or other nefarious routes.

Of course, it is not all about money. We have to consider human costs, too. There is no point in knowing the cost of everything but ignoring the non-monetary value of homes for people, discussed so eloquently in the group beginning with Amendment 1.

Amendment 46 focuses on tightening the ability of freeholders, landlords and managing agents to force entry into leaseholders’ homes. When I raised this in Committee, there was understandable concern. People wanted to say, “What if there is an emergency? You need to be able to enter.” We can all think of such instances. I know that that happened with a burst pipe in a flat above mine, with water pouring into the flat below. You need to be able to get in to turn the water off, but this should be a last resort. This modest amendment simply aims to reinforce that point and to give leaseholders some power in that decision.

At present, despite limited rights for leaseholders, which have become increasingly clear since building safety issues came into the public realm, landlords have been under an implied obligation—as the ideal—to give the tenant or leaseholder “quiet enjoyment” of the property and they should not interfere with that. If you read the literature around building safety, you will discover an increasing clamour to challenge the idea that leaseholders have any rights to stop entry into their homes, presenting leaseholders as obstacles to safety.

For example, in the Safer People, Safer Homes: Building Safety Management report of a couple of years ago, there are complaints of

“Leasehold … units … purchased by their owners, who are not culturally accustomed to the notion that the owner … has any jurisdiction over their home.”

The landlords complain that access for owners and their agents is just too difficult. Extraordinarily and insultingly, the assumption is that, behind leaseholders’ front doors, they all behaving as fire hazards, irresponsibly ignorant of risks. Leaseholders are painted as ill-informed problems:

“Most will have no comprehension as to fire (or other safety) principles and their place in the matter.”


The report demands:

“Timely intervention on a statutory basis is needed to enable prompt access”


in order to

“monitor or assess risk and condition.”

My concern is that all these checks, monitoring and assessment will mean demands for entry beyond any reasonable bounds of common sense. Leaseholders themselves are anxious that the Government press home that this is not encouraged, and that the Government ask key questions of landlords.

Amendments 46 and 47 would restrict the power to enter people’s homes unless it was essential and would make it clear that the court must be satisfied that it was necessary to grant entry only in extreme circumstances, not just because an accountable person had sent a notice demanding entry for building safety purposes so vaguely defined that they could include anything from the overuse of scented candles to fridge inspections. I am just waiting for smoking in one’s home to become a listed fire risk, although I do not want to give that idea to the Government.

I make a final plea that leaseholders’ property rights are not just to be shooed away and a final reminder—one that I will return to later—that we should avoid pushing a narrative that assumes that all blocks of flats are inherently dangerous and at high risk of fires, creating a climate of fear that then justifies the surveillance and monitoring of leaseholders in their homes and the reorganisation of everyone’s lives around hypersafety and zero risk at great cost, both financially and in the human sense of civil liberties and privacy rights, to those homeowners who are unfortunate enough to be leaseholders as well.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I shall say a few words on behalf of my noble friend Lady Grey-Thompson in respect of Amendments 13, 20 and 35, to which her name is attached. As the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, explained, my noble friend sends her apologies; she is attending the thanksgiving service for His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh in her capacity as chair of the wonderful Duke of Edinburgh’s Award scheme. I think we all agree that that event should take priority.

She wanted her thanks to the Minister and his officials to be recorded for the new amendment, which will require the regulator to report regularly on engagement with residents who are disabled. She has greatly welcomed constructive talks outside the Chamber and is keen to keep working with the Minister on personal emergency evacuation plans to meet the needs of people with disabilities so that they have correct and useful information and can feel safe where they live.

Amendment 86 in this group is in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe. I will also comment on government Amendments 73, 85 and 263. In Committee, I raised the issue of leaseholders managing their own blocks of flats who would be given onerous new responsibilities for safety issues by this Bill. These new duties and liabilities could deter many from acting as the voluntary unpaid directors of their resident management companies and right-to-manage companies. These self-managed blocks depend on their volunteer directors to give up their time—and, indeed, risk falling out with their neighbours since not all their decisions will be popular with everyone—but who wants to risk a criminal prosecution and a criminal record for failing to carry out all the correct safety actions required of an accountable person by the Bill? Recruiting and retaining volunteers to be directors of resident-run companies is already difficult yet there is widespread agreement that more, not less, leaseholder control should be strongly encouraged.

The Minister has recognised the issue and brought forward government Amendment 73 to enable lease-holder-controlled companies to take on board a paid expert building safety director to provide this service to the company if, and only if, the leaseholders wish to delegate the job. Amendment 85 means that the cost of engaging that professional as the person responsible for building safety can be included in the service charges for all residents. These government amendments are very welcome; I thank the Minister very much for listening to the arguments and acting accordingly.

However, the Institute of Residential Property Management and the Association of Residential Managing Agents—they are now becoming a single entity, to be known as the Property Institute—noticed one obstacle to the Government’s otherwise excellent solution: quite a few resident-controlled companies prohibit the appointment of any director who is not themselves a leaseholder in the block. My amendment would address that point and enable an external expert safety director to be appointed in such circumstances, with necessary protections on costs and the ability to get rid of the building safety director if the arrangement does not work out.

--- Later in debate ---

I now turn to Amendment 264A tabled by my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe. Unfortunately, the Government again cannot accept this amendment, which would require a review of the impact of the Act. I reassure my noble friend that a review is already required by Clause 152, which provides that the Secretary of State must—

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

That amendment has been degrouped; we are coming to it later, where I have a similar amendment. The Minister might want to wait until then.

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

I am addressing my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe’s amendment; we will come specifically to group 6 from the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, in due course.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

It is just that it has been degrouped to be with my amendment on the review. I was just explaining.