Renters’ Rights Bill
Earl of Kinnoull Excerpts(1 week, 2 days ago)
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The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)
My Lords, Amendment 124 is in my name, and I declared relevant interests earlier. The amendment is very simple: it is about putting social housing tenants in the same place as those in the private rental sector after the Bill has become an Act.
I received a copy of a letter that the Dogs Trust sent to the Deputy Prime Minister in March this year in which it proposed exactly the same thing. Looking at the crib sheet for the answer that came back, I see that the first part is commendable in that it says: “The Government understands that pet ownership can be hugely beneficial, bringing joy to owners and supporting mental and physical health”. I can only agree with that. At Second Reading and in various parts of the process of this Bill, it has been eloquently and frequently said how important pets are and—speaking as a Scottish landlord, both personally and as a charitable trustee— I very much believe that and strongly support the concept of there being a rebuttable presumption that pets are allowed where people are renting properties.
The letter went on to make two points. The first point was that the Government did not feel that what amounted to Amendment 124 was correct, because social housing tenants was a separate policy area. Of course, it is all still MHCLG, and I do feel that someone standing at a bus stop in middle England would scratch their head about that particular one: why on earth should someone living in social housing be in a different place to someone living in the private rental sector? It is a distinction without a difference.
In the second part of the letter, it went on to give various reasons why it might be reasonable, within social housing, to say no to a tenant who wanted a pet. It all amounted to a series of reasons why it might not be reasonable for a pet to be allowed in a particular property, but of course that is already how the Bill is drafted: it is possible for a landlord to say that a particular pet or series of pets should not be allowed in rented accommodation, as long as that is reasonable. It is reasonable for a landlord to say no, so I do not quite see what the logical force of that is, because the social housing sector would retain that right to say no. I therefore urge the Minister to reach across the corridor at MHCLG and accept what has become a very popular amendment.
Baroness Fookes (Con)
My Lords, I declare an interest in that I have close connections with various animal charities, in particular as a vice-president of the RSPCA nationally and as president of one of its branches.
I too want to speak to Amendment 124, eloquently introduced by the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull. I see no logic whatever: to make a distinction in the way that apparently has been done is what I call Civil Service short-sightedness, and I strongly disapprove of it. I can see no logical reason whatever for treating people who are renting their properties differently simply because they live in a slightly different type of property. I hope that the Minister will look very carefully at this and come to a different conclusion.
I will broaden this out slightly to look at the various amendments in this group. It seems to me that while the heart is in the right place—and I give due credit to the Government for introducing this general right to have a pet, for which I have long campaigned—the Bill fails slightly in not laying down the circumstances clearly enough, so that it leaves the opportunity for some landlords to squeeze past what is clearly intended. On the other hand, it could make for some difficulties if the tenants themselves are unreasonable.
I suggest that the Minister look at bringing forward a code of conduct that would act as a guide for all the varying points which have been made hitherto—if you like, a “highway code”, not necessarily having the force of law, to which one could look for guidance where these tricky problems arise. I hope that this will commend itself to the Minister.
The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)
I am most grateful to the Minister for giving way. I would like to give her a bit more ammunition. I am looking at a website to do with MHCLG that talks about the “one team” approach in which MHCLG is very sensibly engaged. The first key principle in this approach is joined-up delivery. I feel there is a strong case here for a one-team approach and joined-up delivery.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I thank the noble Earl for those further comments. As I said, I will be happy to have further discussions with him and to take this important point back.
Amendment 124A would introduce specific grounds for landlords to refuse consent for a tenant to keep a cat where the property is located within, or within one mile of, a protected site under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. The Government fully recognise the importance of protecting biodiversity and environmentally sensitive wildlife areas. However, we do not believe that such a blanket provision is necessary or proportionate in the context of this legislation. Nor is it fair on tenants, given that there is no similar restriction imposed on home owners in such environmentally sensitive areas.
The framework set out in Clause 12 already allows landlords to refuse consent where it is reasonable to do so. The amendment of the noble Earl, Lord Leicester, would in effect create an automatic exemption covering a significant number of properties near protected sites across England and Wales, regardless of the tenant’s circumstances or willingness to act responsibly and, as I said, would not affect any private owners in that area. It risks introducing an overly rigid restriction, undermining the Bill’s aim of promoting fair and balanced access to pet ownership in rented homes.
Tracking devices, which are sometimes put on cats’ collars, show how extensive cats’ daily travel can be— I think the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, referred to the extent of cats’ wanderings. It would be very difficult to keep a track on that for different places in different areas. It also places an unreasonable burden on landlords, requiring them to assess environmental designations and the distances between a property and a protected site—matters which are outside their typical responsibilities. For these reasons, I do not believe the amendment is necessary, and I hope the noble Earl will consider not pressing it.
While I understand the intention behind Amendment 125 from the noble Lord, Lord Black of Brentwood, I do not believe it would be practical for the Government to specify every scenario in which a landlord could or could not reasonably refuse a request to keep a pet. There are simply too many variables to account for, including the type of property, the nature of the pet and the specific circumstances of both the tenant and the landlord. This amendment seeks to outline certain, though not all, circumstances that may be deemed unreasonable when a landlord refuses a tenant’s request to keep a pet. However, its inclusion could inadvertently lead to any circumstance not explicitly included on this list being presumed reasonable by landlords. This could create unintended consequences, limiting flexibility and making it more difficult to fairly assess individual cases.
The question of whether it is reasonable for a tenant to have a pet in a rented property is, as I said before, best determined on a case-by-case basis. In most instances, this will be agreed on between the landlord and the tenant. As I said, there will be guidance available on this. Where disputes arise, they can be appropriately resolved by the ombudsman or the courts, which will be better placed to consider the individual facts of each case. It is also important to note that landlords will always retain the ability to refuse permission where a superior lease prohibits pets. This ensures that landlords are not placed in a position where they are forced to breach their own legal obligations.
Given these safeguards, I do not believe it is necessary to introduce additional legislative provisions that could add unnecessary rigidity to what should remain a flexible, case-by-case approach. In light of this, I hope the noble Lord will consider not pressing his amendment.
Amendment 126 from the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, seeks to define specific circumstances in which it would be considered unreasonable for a superior landlord to refuse consent for a tenant to keep a pet, such as personal opinions, general fears about the risk of damage caused by pets, or past unrelated experiences. While I understand the intention behind this amendment, I must resist it on the grounds that it could complicate the existing proposals unnecessarily. The Government’s position is that superior landlords should retain the ability to refuse consent without needing to justify their decision, particularly given the practical challenges involved in engaging with them.
In many cases, superior landlords are not based in the UK or are part of complex ownership structures and that can make communication slow, difficult and costly. Requiring them to provide reasons for refusal risks drawing immediate landlords and their tenants into prolonged and expensive legal or administrative processes. The Bill is designed to improve fairness and clarity in the tenant-landlord relationship without overburdening parties with obligations that may be difficult or unrealistic to meet in practice. That is why I said I will look into the quantum that might be involved here and come back to the noble Baroness on that, if that is okay. For these reasons, I do not believe the amendment is proportionate or necessary, and I hope the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, will consider not pressing it.
I am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Leicester, for bringing forward Amendments 126A and 124A. Amendment 126A would place a duty on the Secretary of State to issue guidance on what constitutes a “reasonable refusal” of a pet under Clause 12, and would require consultation with landlords before they do so. I recognise the intention behind this proposal, which is to provide greater clarity and assurance for landlords when they consider tenant requests. As I have said, the concept of reasonable refusal is, by design, flexible. It allows landlords to take account of the specific circumstances of each tenancy. What is reasonable in one case may not be reasonable in another.
That said, I can assure the Committee that we will publish guidance to help landlords and tenants understand how these provisions should operate in practice. However, guidance of this nature cannot and should not seek to cover every possible circumstance. It will provide helpful principles and examples, but it is vital that landlords retain the ability to exercise reasonable judgment based on individual cases. For these reasons, I do not believe the amendment is necessary, and I hope the noble Earl will consider not moving it.
The Earl of Kinnoull
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to remove a requirement on tenants to have pet damage insurance.
The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)
My Lords, in moving Amendment 127, I shall speak also to Amendments 128, 129 and 130. I remind the Committee of some different interests this time, in that I am a director of Alpha Insurance Analysts, which operates around £1 billion of premiums at Lloyd’s, and I have share ownership in Hiscox Group.
The thrust of everything in this bit of the Bill is all about pets. I am very keen on pets in general being in houses. As I pointed out, pets are usually allowed in my Scottish interest. When I looked at the insurance provisions, I was looking very carefully with a professional eye, and I wanted to try to tweak four separate areas that all needed something. First, there was the proposition that the tenant would buy insurance, then that would be all right. Secondly, there was the proposition that the landlord could buy insurance and bill that back to the tenant. Thirdly, there was the possibility of aligning the England and Wales law with what happens in Scotland, where, of course, I have a lot of experience. Fourthly, there was the knotty issue of the definition of “premium”, over which I have had many arguments in many jurisdictions over many years—and I apologise in advance for disagreeing with counsel on that.
Amendment 127 is on the first of those things in my list. There is no market today for insurance where a tenant goes out privately to buy insurance. There certainly will not have been a single cent of premium written in the UK market up to 31 December last year nor in any of the continental European non-life insurance markets, with which I am extremely familiar. One or two products have appeared on the market that provide some sort of partial cover—and I shall try to describe some of that.
I am very grateful, in saying this, to the department and the people supporting the Minister, because we have had a funny tour around this issue. We even had one exciting moment when an insurer that I had never heard of, which turned out to be an insurance company based in Anguilla, of recent formation, was keen to sell insurance to British people, although of course there would have been no protection under the Financial Services Compensation Scheme or from the insurance ombudsman, let alone all the tax and regulatory problems with an Anguilla insurer trying to settle a claim in the UK.
Leaving aside that exciting insurer, one or two insurers have come along, but they want to insure only against accidental damage, however it is dressed up. When talking about insurers, it is important to understand the difference between the insurance carrier, which takes the bet, and the insurance intermediary, which puts exciting things on the web to try to entice you. These are all insurance intermediaries, and there is only one carrier that is identified at the moment, which is under half the size of the legal minimum for an insurance carrier, if you are forming a new one, and does not appear at all on any of the lists of allowed insurers that major brokers have. It is exceptionally small and very weak.
The problem with the cover of the three policies that appear online at the moment is that they are limited to accidental damage. In one of them, accidental damage is defined as
“unexpected damage which happens suddenly and has not been caused on purpose or inevitably”.
I immediate think that that does not sound like very good cover. The other one goes a lot further. It says that the policy is
“not for damage caused by everyday wear and tear. For example, if a dog scratches at your door every day, this is not covered, while if a pet pulls down curtains that causes damage to a wall this would be covered”.
Of course, that is a vanishingly small percentage of the loss costs likely to be caused by a pet. Most of the losses from pets will be to do with chewing or infestations—I look at my noble friend Lord Trees in the hope that he will tell us all a bit more about infestations later on.
The difficulty of trying to legislate so that a landlord can say to someone, “You can have a pet as long as you buy an insurance policy”, and there being no actual policy of insurance that exists, or no reasonable one, is that it is what is sometimes called an Italian torpedo—a legal trick whereby you started a case in a different jurisdiction to slow everything down, and the initial case never gets decided. It would mean that the landlord could ask the tenant to find insurance that he knew did not exist and the pet would never be allowed into the property. That is not the intention of this Bill, so it would be quite wrong to let this option go forward. That is why Amendment 127 seeks to get rid of that option. It is not a probing amendment—it is a real amendment.
I turn to Amendment 129 next, only because the amendments have appeared a bit out of order. It is a probing amendment, and it covers the second issue on insurance, which is whether the landlord could buy insurance. Here I am much more hopeful. I should point out that this type of insurance also does not exist at the moment, but I have spoken to the underwriting managers of at least two of the big players in the UK markets and left those conversations feeling that it was quite possible that this type of insurance could come into existence—in fact, in reviewing the internet, there is some evidence that it might. It will start with this accidental damage problem, so it is not a complete cover; therefore, landlords might not choose to exercise that option because it does not really exist.
Therefore, I feel it is unfair to ask landlords to go to the market to buy insurance, and they might not want to. The insurance would therefore be a terrible situation, where a landlord is being asked about a pet and the tenant cannot buy the insurance because it does not exist—at least not in a reasonable form—and nor can the landlord because it is at a very early stage. But I felt that should stay on the statute book because I believe that something helpful might come along. I believe also that the type of insurance that will come along will be a small layer just above the deposit that people pay anyway; at the moment, it is a five-week deposit.
Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)
My Lords, when the Renters (Reform) Bill was originally proposed, Battersea asked landlords what policies or incentives would make them more likely to consider offering pet-friendly properties—that is an important point to bear in mind—and out of all the different policies and incentives, the two most popular were requiring tenants to hold insurance to cover any damage, or changing the Tenant Fees Act to allow the landlord to charge for a deep clean and fumigation at the end of the tenancy. I acknowledge that there are concerns regarding availability of insurance to cover pet damage in line with the requirements currently set out in the Bill. However, having talked to those with expertise in the sector, I believe the insurance market will adapt to new legislation, as it has in the past with cyberinsurance under the Data Protection Act 2018 and professional indemnity insurance for cladding remediation under the Building Safety Act 2022. I think there is already evidence of insurers responding to market demand, with the letting insurance providers Paymentshield and Addept Insurance updating their tenants’ content policies to include pet damage cover. I am aware of other providers that are in the process of—
The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)
One of the things I read was that Paymentshield is offering accidental damage only; I read out the definition of accidental damage and that is not really any cover at all. I am sorry; I do not know whether the noble Lord was talking to insurance underwriters or brokers, but I can tell him that the underwriting community in the insurance world is absolutely solid on this.
Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)
My Lords, my general point was that I believe the market would adapt in time, because that is the purpose of legislation—to push that market on. I know there are other insurers that are looking at pet damage insurance products to bring to the marketplace. We will have to see if it happens, but I very much hope that it would. I understand the fears from landlords that pets may damage their properties, but I also do not believe that pet deposits are the solution to this area, because they are unevenly applied and unaffordable to many.
Finally, I just want to make the general point that research has shown that fears around pet damage are often largely unfounded. Again, research that was commissioned by Battersea with the University of Huddersfield showed that more than three out of four landlords did not encounter any damage caused by pets in their rental properties. So there is very low risk, and, alongside evidence showing that pet owners tend to stay longer in their properties, this demonstrates that renting to pet owners can be financially beneficial to landlords in the long run.
The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)
I put to the noble Lord this point about the Italian torpedo. I hope he will accept that there is currently no reasonable insurance solution available for a tenant—there is none. So, if a landlord says, “I need you to go out and buy a tenants’ insurance policy”, thinking, sneakily, that as one does not exist, the tenant will look forever and will never be allowed a pet, would that be an acceptable solution for the noble Lord?
Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)
I go back to the point that the market may not exist at the moment but the legislation is designed to push this market along. I very much hope that by the time the Bill becomes law, that market will have adapted.
The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)
But if the market does not come into being—I made the point about insurance not being available for inevitabilities—we will have created through the Bill a route for landlords to quite simply prevent tenants having pets.
Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)
That is probably a bridge we ought to cross when we come to it.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I have already answered the noble Lord’s question: the idea of this specific pet insurance is to encourage landlords to accept tenants with pets. That is what the clause is there to do: to try to incentivise and encourage landlords to accept pets as part of the tenancy.
The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)
My Lords, it has been a very interesting debate. I thank those who have contributed to it all round, and I will try to mention everyone. I thought I should start by answering the question of the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, about whether there is a difference in the insurance policy between a pet and a human being. The answer is yes, because the provisions of a standard insurance policy in the UK would present two problems for the pet. The first is a total exclusion for infestation and insects—so the sort of problems the noble Lord, Lord Trees, was talking about would be taken out straight away. Secondly, there is usually a heavy exclusion for gradually operating causes, so that would take out chewing and other things pets might do. For centuries, or at least a century and a bit, there have been policies that are aware of pet damage issues. It is not just a landlord and tenant issue; it is a first-party issue that someone might start claiming for a dog chewing a Sheraton chair. Is that a thing you can claim for on insurance—yes or no? The answer has always been no.
This is the core of the problem, which I will finish on. I did not have the good grace to speak to Amendments 284 and 285, but they are in fact good ways of getting at the very problem I have been describing. I am not sure that I have been clear enough; it is not a question of the market eventually creating something, because it is not insurance if it is inevitable. The difficulty of “first dollar in” protection for a dog chewing something is that it is inevitable that there will be a loss. It is not something that any proper underwriting manager will ever say yes to. Lots of brokers will be very interested in saying yes, because they will see premium volumes and commissions to be earned as well, but underwriting managers will not, and I am therefore extremely negative on the prospects of there ever being a comprehensive policy for a tenant to insure against their pet damaging a flat. That is why I have been concentrating on trying to find other ways of doing this—that are going to be the enabler, which I want, of pets coming into flats.
On Amendment 130, what the Minister has just said is very helpful, in that that can at least be referred to. Although people in the insurance market will carry on knocking spots off each other about the definition of “premium”, the Minister’s helpful words at the Dispatch Box will settle that issue, and we can leave Amendment 130 to one side.
Amendment 129 tries to add something currently missing from the Bill, which is a better definition of what the landlord is able to buy and give the bill to the tenant for. It seems that, at the moment, the landlord could buy £5 million-worth of cover and ask the tenant to pay for it, which would be very expensive. There is more to be discussed on that, and I hope the Minister will agree to meet with me to carry on going through these various insurance issues.
On what the Minister said about the complexities of administering an eight-week deposit versus a five-week one, the great thing about having Scotland next door to us is that we can look over the border and see how complex that has proved to be. In fact, it is perfectly easy to handle. All the various agents who are active in Scotland—the big ones, anyway—are also active in England. I assume that they already have the systems to manage this. I do not feel that the deposit system, which is so successful in Scotland, could not be applied and be successful in England and Wales.
Finishing on Amendment 127, my advice to the House is that we will not get there by having this type of insurance. It would be very unfortunate if this went on to the statute book and it was possible for a landlord to use what I have described as an Italian torpedo approach to prevent people who want to have a pet in their home from doing so, simply by asking for the impossible. Therefore, I look forward to engaging with the Minister and her excellent team again, in the hope that we can find a way forward.
In the absence of anything else, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Renters’ Rights Bill
Earl of Kinnoull Excerpts(1 week, 2 days ago)
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Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)
My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendments 153, 201, 217 and 241, in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, who cannot attend the Committee today. I know the whole Committee will join me in wishing him well. These amendments seek to limit the financial penalty that local authorities can impose for offences under these clauses. In the absence of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, I will briefly set out my reasons for supporting his amendments in this group.
I should declare an interest that, as a practising solicitor for over 50 years, I am always concerned about penalties that are outside the judicial process, but my concern increases when the level of financial penalty is as high as is proposed. I agree with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, that the level of financial penalty set by the Bill is extremely high. A financial penalty of £40,000 would be ruinous for most landlords. According to the Government’s own Property Rental Income Statistics: 2024, the
“average income from UK property remained relatively stable at around £17,000 between 2018 to 2019 and 2022 to 2023”.
Therefore, a £40,000 penalty would, in effect, represent more than double the rental income of an average property.
In certain egregious cases, a penalty of that severity may seem appropriate, but those cases can be dealt with by the courts. We must ask ourselves what effect this new level of financial penalty that can be imposed by local authorities will have on landlords today. We have serious concerns that the risk of a large financial penalty being imposed may encourage existing landlords to leave the sector and discourage new landlords from entering it. A more reasonable level of financial penalty would prevent that chilling effect.
I have carefully heard the words of my noble friend Lord Jamieson on the Front Bench, and I know that my noble friend Lady Scott of Bybrook, also on the Front Bench, will surely agree with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, on this and consider the warning that we have given. Of course we accept that the Government will have their Bill, which should be effective in delivering its objectives, but we are seriously concerned and worried about the impact that these excessive financial penalties will have on the rental market.
The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)
My Lords, I am deeply grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for introducing the amendments of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, so well. I spoke to the noble and learned Lord about these amendments before his illness, and I was going to pass on only two or three comments that I recall he made to me.
The £40,000 is a life-changing amount of money—I think that was the way he put it. The reason I have my iPad here is that he referred to the civil penalties under the Housing and Planning Act 2016, on which the MHCLG has issued a very helpful note. It is so complex that local authorities needed a 20-page note to tell them how to implement this. The maximum under that Act is £30,000, and I do not see why we have suddenly gone to a £40,000 world. The £30,000 was reserved for a relatively small number of offences, and each involved knowingly doing something truly evil and wrong. I feel that that, as a principle, is conceded, as it were, even though £30,000 is a bit rich. Therefore, I agree on the £40,000; I do not understand why we have had to go up from £30,000. With the next group, we will come to the issue of knowing and recklessness, which is deeply serious as well.
I will pause briefly on some of the amendments. Amendment 153 refers to a schedule. This is one of the ones where it is up to £40,000 currently. It refers to a very complex schedule—yet there is a recklessness trigger for a fine of up to £40,000. It seemed to me that that was not as serious as some of the things that are a £30,000 offence under the Housing and Planning Act 2016. So I was dubious about whether that was truly worthy of a £30,000 lump. I therefore agree very much with the £7,000, which is where the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, had come to.
On Amendment 241, there are a couple of things here that trigger the £40,000. Again, recklessness is for mistakes made in giving data to the new database. When people give data to databases, it is inevitably quite boring, and things can go wrong. Recklessness is an incredibly difficult thing to cope with, as we will discuss next, no doubt. So I felt, again, that this was very different from the £30,000 triggers under the Housing and Planning Act 2016. I felt that there was a strong case for moving the maximum down to £7,000. I am going to stop there in the analysis, because it was better done by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, but that line of thinking—bringing it down to £7,000 from £40,000—was intended to improve standards of justice because, if people have been truly evil and truly wrong, the courts are there for that. They are made for that, and they can be a lot heavier with people. But, for local authorities, roughly £7,000 per offence—it could be multiple offences, of course—or 50% of an average year’s rental income, would be proportionate.
Renters’ Rights Bill
Earl of Kinnoull Excerpts(2 weeks, 3 days ago)
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Lord Cromwell (CB)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, has again spoken so much sense that it leaves me little to add. I should warn him that in our previous day’s debate I was described as “irritatingly persuasive”, so I hope not to damage his case by supporting it.
There is a real issue here and it does need some serious probing. I am not suggesting that we retain Section 21, but noble Lords have raised at Second Reading and today in Committee, as I am sure others will raise again, the courts simply not being ready to take on the burden that is coming to them. There is no credible timescale to transform the clogged courts and tribunals system. However, my main reason for speaking is to put on record and advise the House that I attended a meeting—with the Minister and other noble Lords, some of whom are present today—with those responsible for the court digitisation, which has been held out as the kind of techno magic that will transform the speed of court processes.
This was illuminating, but it left attendees, a good number of whom have very considerable experience of our legal system, very doubtful about this still-evolving IT system. The view from the people I spoke to was that it would take at least five years to bed in.
The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)
My Lords, Amendments 279 and 280 stand in the name of my friend, the noble and learned friend, Lord Etherton. I signed those amendments as well, not with a legal hat on but more with the hat of someone who has been there for the development of a large number of complex IT systems over the years, and has probably contributed to almost every mistake it is possible to make in doing that.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, unfortunately cannot be here today, so I am going to make some observations that follow on nicely from what the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, has just said. I refer the Committee to my register of interests. I am, in my own capacity and to a small extent, a landlord, but in Scotland. I am also trustee of a couple of trusts in Scotland that are renting properties out.
The problem was set out by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, at Second Reading. I am afraid that, because he is not here, I will use his words very briefly. He said:
“We all know that there will be many more contested possession proceedings by landlords following the enactment of the Bill and the abolition of Section 21 no-fault evictions. It would not be right to abolish no-fault evictions without adequate speed and resources for dealing with the increase in contested proceedings … The Government need to demonstrate that measures have been or will be put in place which will help to secure that court claims by landlords for possession of residential properties will be disposed of in a timely and efficient way”.—[Official Report, 4/2/25; cols. 623-24.]
The meeting to which the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, has just referred took place on 11 March. There were half a dozen Cross-Bench people there. I am holding the 30-page presentation that was handed out. There were officials there from the Ministry of Justice, in particular from HM Courts & Tribunals Service, and from MHCLG; the Minister was there as well. It was an extremely interesting presentation, and there were two things that came out that I feel I should speak to the Committee about today. The first was about the size of the problem. There is a slide that scopes out the size of the IT system that is involved. This IT system exists today. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, is very familiar with the IT systems that support the court services, as he was responsible for a large number of them for some years, and he was very much the driver for the half a dozen of us who were there.
That IT system has separate subsystems for case management, hearings management, work allocation, user registration and fee payment—there are others as well. Noble Lords can see just how complex this IT system is. In each of the things I have just mentioned, there would of course be major changes required to the IT system that would need to go through development and be dealt with in a proper way.
After considering the size of the problem, which I certainly assess as pretty big, we went on to discuss their approach to the design and build of the new system. This was in a slide that was extremely clear, and they were pleased to report that the prototype stage had arrived. The prototype stage sounds very hopeful, but in fact this comes before the fifth of the six stages, which is “prepare for build”; the sixth stage is “build and test”. The prototype is literally that—something which comes at a pretty early stage in the development of the IT system. All that comes, of course, before user acceptance testing and actually training up people involved in the court system to use this complex system in an efficient manner. The acid question that was put to the people advising us on this was how long they thought it would take to get to the end of the “build and test” stage. The answer on 11 March was two years.
The people who were briefing us universally gave a very good impression indeed. I have met a lot of IT people, but they seemed to me very steady in every way and have clearly been through this a lot before, so I have no reason to doubt their two-year estimate for getting to the end of the IT build. In speaking to colleagues afterwards, I think they also felt that the people who were presenting it—who were, after all, the people who were actually doing the programming—were of a very high quality.
With no IT system, the presentation explains that there are 110,000 cases a year, and this is without any uplift in the number of cases that one would expect. The uplift referred to earlier in this debate, and by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, in his Second Reading contribution, was 110,000 cases a year. Let us say that we had only a year and a half of it because things went on, but that would be 165,000 cases clogging up a system that is already under strain, producing delay and, because it is going into the county court system, affecting access to justice for the rest of the county court system as well, one assumes. The amendments that the noble and learned Lord prepared—and I was very much in consultation with him while he was doing it—were aimed at trying to prevent undesirable outcomes.
Can the Minister update us on the progress of the IT system that was presented to us on 11 March? Will she agree to meet further to discuss this issue after Committee?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
In response to the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, I say that I too have been involved with a number of IT projects over the years, and I understand his scepticism. However, having listened to the excellent presentation, I agree with the comments that the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, made about the nature of the team that came to present to us, which was outstanding in the straightforward way it presented to us both the challenges it faced and the success it had had in taking the project forward so far. We are making good progress on that project and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, said, the benefit of bringing Bills before this House is that we get the outside experience that people bring. But we will see in due time whether it will move forward as quickly as we hope. I do not think that is overly optimistic—we have had a presentation from the team that is doing the work.
I understand the comments on funding, but the way that our Government have set about working across departments to deliver objectives has been incredibly productive so far. We are working very well across government, led by the team in the Cabinet Office, and I hope that means that we will not have this shunting around of costs but will all sit down and decide what we need to prioritise. It all depends on the spending review, and this would be a lot easier if we had not been left with a £22 billion black hole.
The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)
I am sorry to put something else to the Minister, and I am very grateful to her for the offer of a meeting. I have here the latest possession statistics, which I printed off beforehand, so I thought I would merely inform the Committee what they say: claims to order is currently eight weeks, but claims to repossessions is 25 weeks. So everyone was saying something correct, but in fact they were looking at different bits of the statistics. But, of course, claims to repossessions is what a landlord would be thinking about. You cannot start the claim until various amounts of time have passed, so actually the median 25 weeks for claims to repossessions is quite a long time. Going on from that, I turn to item 7, on regional possession claims. In fact, there are quite big differences between the regions, and there are some regions where claims are quite slow.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I thank the noble Earl for clarifying that point. Indeed, I was talking about the claims to order median timeliness being eight weeks. It is difficult to take measures from different places—there are lies, damned lies and statistics, as we all know—but, as I mentioned, in the longer term we expect the reforms we are introducing to reduce the volume of possession claims. That is why the monitoring that I set out in response to the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, is really important, so that we can see where this is taking us. We expect that only those cases where there is a clear, well-evidenced ground for possession will be able to proceed, and that should, over time, reduce the volumes overall.
Renters’ Rights Bill
Earl of Kinnoull Excerpts(3 months, 1 week ago)
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The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)
What a genuine pleasure it is to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes. Oddly, in my decade here, I think it is the first time that I have followed her. I say those words warmly and very much hope that I will not disappoint her with what I am about to say, but I am directionally with her.
I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Sedgefield, on a very compelling, moving—I am going to borrow that word again—and thoroughly eloquent maiden speech. I am very grateful to him for sharing all those memories with us; it was a wonderful thing. I look forward to the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, which is coming up next—she should not worry, as there are about five minutes between me and her.
I remind the House of my entries in the register of interests, in particular as a trustee of various Scottish entities which are engaged in letting rural properties. I have, in a much smaller way, three rural properties that I let. Noble Lords should remember that, in Scotland, Section 21 has already been abolished, so I have some experience of life beyond this Bill, which may be helpful to the House later.
I will cover two brief subjects now. The first is the great importance of smooth judicial and administrative processes, both to the landlord and the tenant. Secondly, I will cover the topic of pets and pet insurance.
On the first area, I am very grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, who has done all the heavy lifting for me. I do not want to repeat things that he has said, but he underlined the challenges and the crucial importance of having clarity, efficiency and speed within the administrative and court processes. I note that almost everything contained in the Bill is a new process in some way.
When the Minister kindly came to the Cross-Bench meeting, I think she had more questions from us than almost any other Minister recently. She would have felt the interest in this particular area within that meeting. I am grateful in advance for her help in getting going a meeting with interested Cross-Benchers to discuss the detail of the court processes and the IT system that will support these, which I believe is in progress of booking at the moment.
The construction of the new processes for courts and the ombudsman, which will, I hope, provide clarity, efficiency and speed, is something that I do not feel will be particularly easy or can be done particularly quickly if, that is, we are to start in the new era smoothly. This inevitably means that the commencement provisions of the Bill will need to take account of this if Parliament is to be confident that it has done its part in making sure the new system is fully operational as it becomes live.
I turn to my second and final area: the provisions about pets and pet insurance. Here I am grateful again to the Minister for arranging a discussion with interested officials on the Bill team. I have also had the benefit of discussions with former colleagues and others within the insurance industry. The rural letting market in Scotland is one where you would expect a pet. The Scottish market, at least in my experience, copes with the problem of pet damage in a very simple way. Pets are discussed with the landlord, who therefore understands what pets are involved. Assuming that all are agreeable— I do not remember any instance where things were not agreeable—market standards are for deposits of up to two months’ rent. On leaving the property, the deposit is then used to deal with any pet damage. No insurance is involved, and the system has the benefit of being very simple. I think there may be lessons there, which I will come back to.
Insurance, generally, is against things that are unlikely; it is never against things which are inevitable. The puppy has not been born that does not chew, and it is inevitable that dogs will cause some damage to a home. Other pets will cause damage to homes—for instance, to fitted carpets. It is not surprising, therefore, that, to date, no comprehensive pet damage insurance policy exists in the UK market. I was responsible for many years for underwriting operations in continental European countries and I never came across any similar insurance there either.
Various UK insurance brokers, no doubt in response to the provisions of this Bill and spotting a potential opportunity, are attempting to interest insurers in providing some element of cover. The insurance risk carriers to date—that is, not the insurance broker intermediaries—have shown no interest. I spoke to the head of personal lines of a UK FTSE 250 insurance group, and they indicated to me that they would have no appetite to develop such a product. I was not surprised, having had a similar role in the past.
The one insurance product that is currently on the market is not available to tenants and covers only accidental damage. It gives an example of a covered event: a dog might tear down the curtains in a house, and that action might damage the wall in some way, and it is the wall which is then repaired. This is, as a percentage of the actual loss cost likely from pet damage, very small. The language of the Bill suggests that insurance will be available both to tenants and to property owners, and that the coverage of the products will extend to all risks of physical loss or damage to the property. However, this is not wholly clear, nor are the insurance limits that might be needed clear, in any of the Bill documentation.
Within the Bill, the landlord has the right to require the tenant to go and find such insurance before the tenant would be allowed to have the pet on their premises. Currently, neither the landlord nor the tenant would know exactly what to set out to buy, and there is no product available. I am all for the presumption that pets can be inside a rented home, for all the reasons contained in the Explanatory Memorandum and which were given again in the Minister’s excellent opening speech.
As things stand, I regret, the insurance provisions of the Bill do not work. I hope to continue working with the Bill team to explore the insurance options, remembering that risk transfer into the insurance markets is complex and expensive. I strongly think that we should take a look at the Scottish solution. Where people have asked for a pet, the landlord should have the ability to ask for the comfort of perhaps two additional weeks of rent deposit. I hope the Minister might agree to meet to talk through this potential option in the future.
European Union
Earl of Kinnoull Excerpts(7 months, 1 week ago)
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Baroness Twycross (Lab)
Absolutely. I would like to reassure my noble friend that we will do that. As we mark the anniversary of the despicable attacks by Hamas on Israelis, and when we also have war in Europe, a warm and close working relationship with our friends and neighbours is vital.
The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)
Left on the cutting room floor throughout the Brexit negotiations was a framework for security and foreign policy co-operation. It was not addressed in either of the big agreements. Can the Minister tell us what the Government’s attitude towards such a framework would be now and whether they are doing anything about it?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
European security is our foreign and defence priority, and that includes a commitment to Ukraine and NATO as an upholder of international law. The Government’s policy is to seek an ambitious new UK-EU security pact, which will strengthen co-operation on the threats we face and enshrine a new geopolitical partnership.
Intergovernmental Relations Within the United Kingdom
Earl of Kinnoull Excerpts(1 year, 3 months ago)
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The Earl of Kinnoull
That this House takes note of intergovernmental relations within the United Kingdom.
The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)
My Lords, last Saturday, 13 January, was the second anniversary of the servicing of the new UK intergovernmental relationship regime, replacing the October 2013 arrangements that had been so overtaken by events. Today is therefore a good time for us to be here to debate this vital structural component of our union.
The past 25 years have seen huge changes in how we are governed, with the devolution of much power from Westminster in various stages. However, the job of creating the mechanics of how the UK’s resulting governmental bodies interact has struggled to keep step. This has contributed to the significant creaks and groans within the union that have been of such concern to so many here today, and certainly to me.
Before I make some remarks about this new regime, I think it worth briefly reviewing the history. In 1999, following the first round of devolution, the first of a succession of memoranda of understanding was agreed. It sought to promote and improve relations between the UK and the devolved Governments and was updated several times, including in 2012. That led to the draft MoU of October 2013, which, until January 2022, as a draft, was the documentary repository of the arrangements between the four Governments. The October 2013 MoU vested responsibility for the arrangements under it within the UK Government with the Deputy Prime Minister, a position vacant from May 2015 to September 2021: there was no captain of the ship.
The Scottish independence referendum was in September 2014. The resulting Smith commission agreement led to a substantial additional number of powers being devolved, as duly happened pursuant to the Scotland Act 2016 and the Wales Act 2017. These significant changes in the devolution settlements represented yet more things that the drafters of the October 2013 MoU had not sought to address at the time.
The Constitution Committee delivered an excellent report, The Union and Devolution, in May 2016. It concluded that the UK Government must
“devise and articulate a coherent vision for the shape and structure of the United Kingdom, without which there cannot be constitutional stability”.
The Brexit process kicked off in June 2016, just a month later, and exacerbated the situation. In the European Union Committee’s report of June 2017, Brexit: Devolution, we said:
“The devolved governments, and some of our witnesses, have also argued that fundamental reform is needed to give the devolved institutions a more formal role in UK decision-making post-Brexit, analogous to that of regions and states in federal systems”.
The start of 2018 was probably the low point, but in March 2018 a review of intergovernmental relations, the IGR review, was launched. This was, to quote GOV.UK, a
“joint review of the existing Memorandum of Understanding on Devolution”.
In July 2019, the noble Lord, Lord Dunlop, was asked to review the UK Government’s union capability, a task he very ably concluded in late November that year. Then, after a period of great silence, on 24 March 2021 the Dunlop review and an update on the IGR review were published. The Dunlop review is a seminal and well thought-through document, and it is a pity it had to wait in the wings for 16 months. It had a number of principal propositions, including the creation of a great new office of state in the Cabinet and the reorganisation of the devolved nation departments, with a single Permanent Secretary.
The 15-page update on the IGR review, by then three years in the making, appeared to be quite close to the finishing post and, as I said, the final document surfaced on 13 January 2022, about four years after the start of that review. What also appeared, on 24 March 2021, was the inaugural Intergovernmental Relations Quarterly Report, then a Cabinet Office document. This has now settled into a rhythm of quarterly reports, with a larger annual report into IGR activity. This transparency is as commendable as it is vital, and I will come back to it shortly. That, then, is the potted history. It demonstrates a woeful lack of focus on devolved matters over many years. Even if we have a better structure now, the challenge is how to use it to the advantage of us all and our union.
I turn therefore to the most recent intergovernmental relations quarterly report. As I said, the first iteration was a Cabinet Office document. Today, these responsibilities form only part of the portfolio of one of the busiest ministries, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Michael Gove is also the Minister for Intergovernmental Relations, but it seems that this vital task is not important enough to make it into the ministry name. The symbolism here is wrong, and we must do better.
On looking at the dashboard for the meetings in Q3, and for the rolling 12 months to Q3, I am struck by the asymmetric level of engagement. DLUHC had 28 IGR meetings in the rolling 12 months. The Ministry of Defence had one. The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology had none, albeit that it has been in existence for only six months. There is also a concern that IGR meetings are generally ad hoc, and not fully planned and diarised well ahead. Can the Minister describe to us how DLUHC tries to ensure full engagement by all Whitehall departments, and what constitutes an IGR meeting?
One of the reasons why the IGR mechanism took almost four years to surface was the negotiation of the dispute resolution mechanism among the parties. Two years in, can the Minister say how many disputes have been raised and how many have been resolved? On 20 December 2023, Shirley-Anne Somerville MSP spoke of the dispute over the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill in a formal Statement to the Scottish Parliament. She said:
“Before the Bill reached stage 3, we reached out to the UK Government, finally getting a meeting with the Equalities Minister the day before stage 3 started”.
Stage 3 is the final stage of the legislative process in Scotland. Minister Somerville and her team were clearly aware of the problem of the potential clash of the Scottish Bill with the UK’s equalities legislation, which is why they sought out the Whitehall Equalities Minister. However, I can find no mention of the IGR mechanism being engaged on the issue at all. Can the Minister confirm whether the IGR mechanism was engaged at any time over this debacle, whether a dispute was at any time raised and what lessons have been learned from this most difficult issue?
On 27 November last year, 20 months after the surfacing of the new IGR structure, DLUHC published a paper entitled the Intergovernmental Relations Secretariat. This was very helpful, if rather horribly late. Can the Minister tell us whether the secretariat is made up of full-time dedicated staff and includes staff members from all four Governments? In any event, the IGR mechanism is so important to our union that an annual and formal debate in both Houses on the state of intergovernmental relations is a necessity. Can she also comment on this?
In January 2020, I was in Canada at a conference of Commonwealth speakers representing the noble Lord, Lord Fowler. Our host had also invited the speakers of its many regional assemblies. Over the course of three days, I had the opportunity to speak to many of the Canadians. The consistent message was how much effort they put into their union, with a regular diet of meetings and gatherings and the consistent involvement of the Prime Minister. One especially experienced speaker told me that, after their Quebec tensions in the mid-1990s, “We not only had to talk the talk—we had to walk the walk”. The Canadian model includes its Ottawa Government, the 10 provinces and three territories. They have around 80 structured meetings a year. Its dedicated secretariat comes from the participants. It has its own informative website, albeit that the more sensitive meetings have no public documents. The secretariat is neutral and fully independent. Are the Government looking at the Canadian model for intergovernmental relations—or any other models—in what I hope is an unending search for the best?
In closing, I note that this House has spent a lot of the last year on the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act. This foresees, among much else, English devolution. Will the Minister comment on whether English devolved Administrations would be an equivalent part of the devolved intergovernmental structures within the United Kingdom? In any event, I very much look forward to this debate and its strong field of speakers. I beg to move.
The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)
It remains for me to thank everyone who has taken part in this extremely interesting and wide-ranging debate. There were a lot of things that were completely new to me, including everything that the noble Baroness, Lady Stuart, said, and I feel improved, so thank you very much. I was going to say that every fibre of my body felt that it was a good debate, but I cannot feel my toes, because of the temperature, so that would not have been truthful.
I must say that, as ever, the Minister gave a very thorough and helpful response, and I thank her for that. Time meant that she did not get to the English devolution point, and I hope she will not mind writing to everyone about that, because there was considerable interest. I also thank the Leader and the Whips’ Office who, for special reasons, made a big effort to help get this debate on, and I am very grateful for that.
I have two more thank yous. The first is to the Common Frameworks Scrutiny Committee and the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews. It has done this House a tremendous service over a long time, and I will not get the chance to express my personal thanks for that, but I have had an up-close and personal look at it over the years and it is really a work of tremendous quality and depth, so thank you. The other is to the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, and the Constitution Committee, which carries a proud flame on this issue. Rereading the two Constitution Committee reports, which I reread in preparation for this, you see how it keeps a watchful eye on this area, and I am grateful to both noble Baronesses for speaking in the debates so clearly.
I thought there were a few themes that came through. First, there was the theme of the two-way street: it is not just the Whitehall Government who need to work at this but all the Governments. Everyone benefits if it works properly. Secondly, we have quite a good structure at the moment, and it is important that we use it. Although we heard good words from the Minister about its use, there are things, such as the Prime Minister not really turning up to meetings that are planned once a year, that show that the use is not fully there yet, and we do need to use this structure. In fact, we need to work at our union, with, as the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, said, the occasional repair—I thought that was a very good way of putting it. We need to work at it, and that includes everyone in this Chamber, everyone who is in government and all the equivalent people in the devolved areas of our nation.
We desperately need to build the interpersonal relationships. The interesting thing is that in the Parliamentary Partnership Assembly—something that I had a lot to do with; I do not go to it any more, because I do other things—those have become extremely warm now and it can get things done, and that is simply by getting people into a room and getting the relationship going. I loved the expression “parity of esteem”, which the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, and the noble Lords, Lord Murphy and Lord Wallace, produced: I think that is a very good way of putting it. We need to work towards that, but thank you very much and I beg to move.
Devolved Administrations: Intergovernmental Relations
Earl of Kinnoull Excerpts(2 years, 6 months ago)
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The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)
My Lords, I do not think the Cross Bench has had a go yet. The first inter- governmental relations quarterly report came from the Cabinet Office. The latest one comes from the Department for Levelling Up. Can the Minister explain why that has moved and explain how the machinery of government works so that if a ministry is found not to be pulling its weight in this important aspect, it is encouraged to do so?
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
The area of inter- governmental relations was with the Department for Levelling Up prior to the last reshuffle. It then went to the Cabinet Office and it is now back with the Department for Levelling Up. That is the place—the communities area—where it should be.
Building Safety Bill
Earl of Kinnoull ExcerptsMonday 21st February 2022
(3 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Stunell (LD)
My Lords, I will try to do a little better than last time, when I completely ignored my noble friend Lord Shipley. I apologise to him.
I very much hope that the Minister will be able to dismiss this amendment with the same dispatch as he did on my previous amendment because it seeks to achieve that for each building there can be only one regulatory authority and there is no circumstance where a higher-risk building has another regulator at work—another person supervising and signing off completions. There seem to me to be two situations in which, as I understand it, the Bill is not absolutely decisive on that point, as set out in Amendments 5 and 10.
The first relates to a situation where comparatively minor works may be carried out in a higher-risk building which do not, of themselves, directly affect fire resilience. It would therefore seem quite possible for that application to be under the regulatory eye of somebody other than the building safety regulator. That might be a private regulator or a local authority building control body. There are circumstances, and we could examine them in more depth if we need to. The second is that there are currently a number of trades and businesses which are self-certified: electrical works and heating works are self-certified, as are drainage and plumbing works, to a significant degree, and rewiring, internet and IT networks are in the same situation. Those self-certified cases, including, incidentally, replacing windows and so on, may result in the piercing of firewalls, the cutting through of cavity barriers or a loss of airtightness. Of course, a loss of airtightness means a loss of smoke-tightness, which can be vital in a fire situation.
What I want to hear from the Minister is that this loophole—or area of concern—that I have briefly outlined to the Committee is in fact covered by yet another clause somewhere in the Bill that deals with the issue completely. I hope that the Minister can give us a very quick, simple and straightforward reply. It will all be worked out for him on his piece of paper, and I look forward to hearing that, but if it is not forthcoming, we will of course want to return to this later because it is of central importance that we do not have divided authority or, indeed, work sneaking through, if you like, under self-certification, which inadvertently contributes to a diminution of the safety of that building.
There are plenty of practical examples at the moment. The reports I have had from the Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service about fires in what used to be my constituency say that many residential fires of this sort are triggered by tradespeople who cause fires by their activities when they are carrying things out. Very often, they are the people who have cut through the cavity walls and the fire compartmentation, thus contributing to the damage that happens. This is not a hypothetical situation, and it is an important matter, which I hope the Minister will be able to satisfy us is covered by the drafting of the Bill. I beg to move.
The Principal Deputy Chairman of Committees (The Earl of Kinnoull) (CB)
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, will be participating remotely, and I invite her to speak now.
Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]
My Lords, just before I speak to the two amendments in this group, I ask the Minister whether I might be copied into the answer about permitted development rights on the previous group. We had an interesting case in Watford three years ago, where a small industrial unit was converted under permitted development rights into 15 tiny flats, and not one of the upstairs flats had windows. At the time, the planning inspector, who overruled the borough council, commented that it was within the rules and that planning permission was not required. Even the size of the flats was outside of the scope: normally, the minimum should have been 39 square metres; the largest flat was 22 square metres and the smallest was 16 square metres. I would be grateful if I could see the Minister’s written response.
I support both Amendments 5 and 10 laid by my noble friend Lord Stunell and signed by my noble friend Lady Pinnock. Dame Judith Hackitt talked about the importance of absolute clarity on who is responsible for which element of safety and control. The mistake in recent years has been to allow a multitude of different arrangements that have enabled a culture where matters of safety are somebody else’s problem; hence Dame Judith Hackitt’s focus in her report on the golden thread.
My noble friend Lord Stunell has talked eloquently about the issues thrown up by self-certification. I will not repeat his points, other than to say that destroying compartmentation by remediation works much reduces all other safety features, if not makes them redundant. I echo his concerns about that, and I would welcome the Minister’s response in order to see whether that is covered by the new arrangements. If it is not, these amendments should be given serious consideration.
Lord Stunell (LD)
With Amendment 6, we are in completely different territory. Second Reading produced many concerns felt by noble Lords about different aspects of the fire safety and building safety situation. Many arguments were advanced, with great strength, on what should be done about them. Some of those appear as one-off amendments which we shall debate subsequently; when we get to them, the Minister may say exactly what he has already said earlier today—that it is inappropriate to put into primary legislation some of the very specific matters people have been calling for.
Having that in mind, but not wishing to lose the importance of dealing with those concerns, we have tabled this amendment to set out a process whereby the building safety regulator will, in a timetabled review, look at each of those concerns raised at Second Reading and produce a report within two years with recommendations on what should happen. As the building safety regulator, it will also have the ability to give its views on other issues that merit investigation to improve building safety.
The list in proposed new paragraphs (a), (b), (c) and (d) is not necessarily exhaustive; we are trying to establish the principle that, for those matters which are clearly of public concern and in some cases the concern of authorities and regulators of systems themselves—chief fire officers being one example—there is a timetabled and formal way to take them forward and bring them back to the Minister and this Parliament for consideration.
I will also speak to Amendment 149 in this group, which refers to a regulatory audit from the building safety regulator, again to make sure that we hear in Parliament about the progress being made. We are very concerned to understand how the Government see that link between the regulator and the Secretary of State and between the Secretary of State and Parliament, to make sure that progress continues to be made in a measured but effective and rapid way to solve the problems we are tackling in this Bill.
Again, I look forward to hearing the Minister explain all the different reasons why it is not sensible to do this, but we will want to push the matter. I suggest that, if he is looking for a way to respond effectively to those advocating particular solutions, such as work on sprinklers, to be incorporated in the Bill, we have provided a process here which allows that to take place in an ordered, measured way. I beg to move.
The Principal Deputy Chairman of Committees (The Earl of Kinnoull) (CB)
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, is participating remotely, and I invite her to speak now.
Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]
My Lords, I shall speak specifically to Amendment 6 but I endorse the others, for reasons that will become apparent. One thing we have all become aware of, post Grenfell and the Hackitt review, is concerns about repeat problems emerging, whether they are systemic ones to do with the way a building has been built or newly emerging issues. They happen time and again, and yet the industry, councils and Parliament do not seem to learn from them. I shall give one brief illustration to explain.
In my role as health spokesperson for my group in the Lords, I know that we are increasingly concerned about some of the mould and damp issues increasingly found in more recent 1960s buildings, to which landlords have been very slow to respond. There is clearly a public health issue where especially children and the clinically vulnerable remain at risk and become ill, and yet there does not seem to be a mechanism to provide a review to make sure that there is learning from this, especially since it is happening across the country.
The other amendments in this group set out a swathe of mechanisms to ensure transparency and accountability for the BS regulator, the Secretary of State and Parliament. Returning to Dame Hackitt’s review, these amendments would be a strategic element to push the culture change that she sought, to make sure that those who have some responsibility have to look at a higher level to make sure that buildings are safe and are dealt with, and that the costs, both in building and in human experience, are monitored.
Queen’s Speech
Earl of Kinnoull Excerpts(3 years, 11 months ago)
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Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)
My Lords, I too join other noble Lords in welcoming the maiden speeches from the noble Lords, Lord Coaker and Lord Morse. I look forward to their participation in this House.
I am a novice in this area so feel slightly trepidatious in speaking about the environment and transport, but that is what I am going to do today. I express disappointment, along with other noble Lords who know a lot more about this, at the lack of a transport decarbonisation strategy. It is particularly disappointing to find the lack of a coherent strategy to tackle aviation emissions. I know this issue was close to the heart of the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, so I hope he will touch on it when he winds up.
CO2 has a lifespan measured in centuries. Today’s emissions will combine with those that have accumulated since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Yet, nearly a quarter of a century ago, Kyoto did not want to tackle it, instead leaving it to the UN agencies responsible for the aviation sector to attempt to find some sort of consensus. We know how difficult it is to get consensus at the UN—I would not look there if we really want to make progress. I understand that the only goal adopted by the UN aviation agency, ICAO, is to keep net emissions from international aviation at or below 2020 levels, mainly through the use of carbon offsetting and reduction, not through tackling the heart of the problem: excessive recreational and business flying and the overuse of distant supply chains.
Inexplicably, we have left international aviation and shipping emissions in the UK out of the five-yearly carbon budgets. One can only assume that that was because they fell into the “too difficult for now” category—and that is for a Government with an 81-seat majority. Given that technology has shown that we do not need to leave home to engage with a large part of commerce, that businesses have found that having executives jet over from London to New York for a three-hour meeting is not vital to success, and that consumers are discovering the merits of staycations, now would appear to be the ideal time to reduce aviation emissions permanently.
Tackling them in domestic legislation is important. We have left the EU emissions trading system, so an ambitious plan to set clear targets in law would be appropriate. I would call it a “levelling down” for the climate. I say this because in the UK we have a particular problem with overusing aviation as a means of transport. It is mainly people on higher than average incomes, who fly about 50% more than the average for other advanced economies. While emissions in many sectors are falling, UK aviation represents around 10% of total CO2 emissions, compared to 2% of global emissions. I urge the Government to come forward with a strategy to tackle this and to announce bold targets to reduce air travel and transport before COP 26.
Inevitably, one element of this issue is airport expansion and here, the greatest challenge is Heathrow, arguably the biggest emitter of CO2 in Europe. We have to ask ourselves why we should allow a never-ending expansion of this particular airport. The economic case for a third runway, which was always weak, has now become untenable. Even the Supreme Court ruling last year that the expansion strategy was legitimate was based on previous, less stringent climate targets and invites reconsideration. The noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, will know all about this; it is very much his interest area. When the courts point to Parliament and effectively say, “We cannot solve the problem; it is for the Government in Parliament to change the law”, the public rightly expect to see such action reflected in the Government’s programme—the one we are discussing here.
In 2009, when the Labour Government pushed through Heathrow’s third runway, our determination as a nation to tackle climate change was less developed. Now that we know about the damage to the environment caused by aviation, we need to tackle it through legislation. However, here, the chance to do so has been missed again. If, when the third runway’s inevitable public inquiry is concluded, it finds against expansion, will the Government act to stop it? They cannot avoid their responsibility. If we have to have “long grass”, let it grow over the north-west third runway at Heathrow.
The Deputy Speaker (The Earl of Kinnoull) (Non-Afl)
The noble Lord, Lord Deben, has withdrawn so I call the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
I am grateful for the reminder, but a Bishop was recently allowed to carry on for six minutes and 40 seconds, so may I finish?
Doug Oakervee has stated that pressure from the construction industry persuaded him to recommend that HS2 went ahead. This need could have been met equally well by regional upgrades in the Midlands and the north, so I suggest that HS2 be stopped now and the relevant officials and Ministers held to account for misleading Parliament.
The Deputy Speaker (The Earl of Kinnoull) (CB)
My Lords, the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, has withdrawn, so I call the noble Lord, Lord Haselhurst.
Housing Strategy
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The Deputy Chairman of Committees (The Earl of Kinnoull) (Non-Afl)
My Lords, that completes the business before the Grand Committee today. I remind Members to please sanitise their seats and their desks.