Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Lord Beecham Excerpts

Wednesday 18th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Best]

I shall speak to Amendment 72 and make the case for legal aid in housing cases beyond those where someone faces imminent loss of their home.

The private rented sector has no regulator, in stark contrast to the social housing sector, nor is there an ombudsman to consider complaints against private landlords as there is for complaints against housing associations and council landlords. There is a voluntary ombudsman scheme for complaints about managing and letting agents, and I declare my interest as chair of the independent council of the Property Ombudsman. However, that redress scheme—

[Lord Beecham]

Is the noble Lord speaking to Amendment 72 or Amendment 72A? Amendment 72 is about debt.

[Lord Best]

I shall return to this later.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I confess to feeling very troubled by what I have heard in the Chamber during this debate. I will say a few words about my concerns in particular about vulnerable families in private accommodation. A few years ago I accompanied a health visitor in the borough of Redbridge in north-east London just north of West Ham. We visited a number of families living in very poor conditions in private property. In one such home the basement was flooded and the landlord had taken no action to remedy this. Another was overcrowded. A mother and her two young children shared one room with water almost running down the walls. The third, and most shocking, was a home in which the shower and the lavatory were somehow combined in one system. It may be a small proportion of landlords, but there seemed to be a lot of them in Redbridge, back then, at least. I declare my interest as a landlord. I hope that the Minister can offer some real reassurance in his reply that the most vulnerable individuals and families in society are not going to suffer significantly because of what the Government propose.

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, I come to this debate informed not only, as ever, by the noble Lord, Lord Best, whose expertise in matters of housing is second to none in your Lordships' House, but by my experience over many years representing an inner-city ward in Newcastle that has a mix of housing. It has owner-occupiers, a substantial number of council houses, houses owned by registered social landlords and a significant number of private rented properties, many of which are, I have to say, poorly managed and which present many problems to the tenants. It is certainly true that, as the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, has said, some landlords are exploitative. Others are simply incapable for one reason or another of managing their properties adequately. They do not have the resources or the skill, or they may not live locally. Whatever the reason, it is the tenants who suffer. In these circumstances, there has to be some redress.

I will be speaking to Amendment 81, which seeks to cut to the chase in terms of the overall issue. The amendment so ably moved by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, deals with a series of issues, but Amendment 81 simply seeks to restore legal aid across the piece in housing matters, which strikes my noble friends and me as probably the most efficacious way of dealing with the problem. That is not in any way to minimise the strength of the arguments put by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley. He and I have been opening and closing debates across the council chamber for about 35 years, and it is a pleasure to continue that long-standing tradition.

Housing is now becoming one of the critical areas of public policy. For those engaged in not only the policy but the daily life that is influenced by housing, it is obvious that matters are getting increasingly difficult. We have spiralling rents and a shortage of available accommodation exacerbated, as other noble Lords have said, by pending changes to housing benefits that are likely to lead to still greater pressure on the private rented sector. At the same time, councils are having increasing difficulty in maintaining their stock as capital programmes are reduced and repairs and investment in existing council properties become more difficult to achieve. It must be said that not all councils are wonderful managers of property. Council tenants also have their problems and need redress as, occasionally, do the tenants of registered social landlords. What will occur as a result of the changes that the Bill proposes is that 40 per cent of housing cases—52,000 cases—will lose legal help, often from organisations such as Shelter rather than from solicitors but sometimes from solicitors, and that will save the Exchequer some £10 million. There will be 1,200 cases where legal representation will no longer be available. That will save the Exchequer £3 million. These are not inordinately large sums one might think, and other noble Lords have pointed out that the potential on-cost to other services could be considerably greater. Under the provisions of the Bill, there will be exceptional case funding, up to 25 per cent for some proceedings. I do not know whether the Minister is able to indicate the likely take-up. Up to 25 per cent can, of course, mean from virtually nothing up to 25 per cent, and it is not entirely clear what proceedings are envisaged in the term “some proceedings”. A little enlightenment on that would be helpful.