Homelessness Reduction Bill

Lord Best Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 24th February 2017 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Best]

That the Bill be now read a second time.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, it is a great honour for me to pilot this ground-breaking Private Member’s Bill through your Lordships’ House. I declare my interests as on the register, including as chair of the council of the Property Ombudsman for the private sector, as a past president and vice-president of the Local Government Association, as a member of the Crisis external advisory board and from nearly 50 years of working with housing charities and housing associations.

The Bill, which has been guided so expertly through the other place by its sponsor, Bob Blackman MP, is indeed ground-breaking because of the fundamental change it brings to the way that homelessness is tackled in this country, but also because it has followed a unique route through Parliament. The story began two years ago with a report from an inquiry initiated by the well-respected housing charity Crisis, chaired by the leading academic in this field, Professor Suzanne Fitzpatrick. This report showed that very many of those becoming homeless were not receiving the help they needed and that some people were being treated very badly.

The Select Committee for Communities and Local Government in the other place, chaired by Clive Betts MP, took up the story and made proposals for action to stem the rising tide of homelessness. By great good fortune Bob Blackman, who as a London MP has a keen interest in this issue, secured second place in the ballot for a Private Member’s Bill and, working with Crisis, choose the homelessness theme. Most unusually, under Clive Betts’s leadership the CLG Select Committee then undertook full pre-legislative scrutiny of the draft Bill. Important changes to the original version were agreed on a cross-party basis. Next came the all-important decision of the Government to back the Bill in principle. All this was just the start because an extensive and robust Committee stage followed the lengthy debate at Second Reading, with its 39 Speeches. With its seven sittings and 15 hours of discussion, the Bill Committee agreed amendments which returned for a five-hour Report, with a further 21 amendments, and Third Reading with speeches by 20 honourable Members. I suspect that no Private Member’s Bill has ever had quite so much attention and scrutiny and, ultimately, so much cross-party support in the other place.

What was achieved was the reconciliation of the conflicting interests and concerns of all the key parties. The list of these different bodies is extensive. First, there were the charities representing the interests of the homeless people they serve: alongside Crisis, there was St Mungo’s, Shelter, Centrepoint, Homeless Link and others. Secondly, there were the vital local government interests, represented by the Local Government Association in particular. Local authorities will have responsibility for implementing the new legislation and, naturally, councils have been anxious about taking on new duties and the cost of paying for them. Thirdly, there were the interests of the organisations representing private landlords, since the private rented sector is now the source of homes for so many households, having doubled in size since 2000. Fourthly and finally, there were the interests of central government, which must find the funding for the extra burdens placed on local councils. Here the lead was taken by the DCLG Minister Marcus Jones, who has proved immensely skilful—not least, I feel sure, in difficult behind-the-scenes discussions with HM Treasury.

The end result of all the negotiations is a Bill which delicately balances the interests of these different parties. It has proved acceptable—this is pretty remarkable—to all the political parties, to central and local government, to the housing charities and to the landlords’ representative bodies. I congratulate Bob Blackman, Crisis and all involved in this mammoth effort. I believe that the Minister will shortly spell out the new measures in the Bill in more detail but perhaps I could briefly summarise what it aims to achieve.

Exactly 40 years on from the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977, a landmark in itself, the Homelessness Reduction Bill seeks to build on that foundation. It reaches out to the homeless people who have not been helped by the earlier Act because they have not been deemed as in “priority need”, mostly because they are single or in childless couples with no specialist problems. For these people, a new duty on councils is introduced to provide them with the advice and support that can get them off the streets or prevent them ending up there in the first place. For those families and vulnerable people who are regarded as in priority need, for whom the 1977 Act has been invaluable in requiring councils to find them somewhere to live, the Bill now goes further: it ensures the process of assisting them starts earlier, two months before they seem quite likely to become homeless, most often because they have been given notice to quit by their landlord. Again, the aim is to prevent homelessness rather than to pick up the pieces too late in the day.

In so far as prevention succeeds, the Bill will bring down the cost of homelessness in terms of human misery, as well as in hard cash. Costs follow directly from a priority household having to be found temporary accommodation and indirectly from a non-priority household being forced to sleep rough with all the attendant health and social costs that brings. These measures bolster the Government’s important homelessness prevention programme, for which extra funds have recently been found.

Some exemplary local authorities are already engaged in strenuous efforts to help potentially homeless households. I recently saw the work being done by the London Borough of Lambeth against almost insuperable odds. Lambeth has a big team dealing sensitively with heart-breaking cases, as I know from sitting in on interviews there. The caseworkers will refer those who are non-priority cases to specialist support services; they will mediate with landlords, maybe helping tenants with a deposit or organising discretionary housing payments to top up inadequate rental entitlements; sometimes they will even pay off some rent arears; and always they will treat people in trouble with respect.

Sadly we know there are also councils that seem to do as little as possible to assist people before a real crisis strikes. Bad practice too often takes the form of telling those tenants who have been served notice that they cannot be helped until that notice has expired, until court action against them has been taken, or even, in the worst cases, until the bailiffs are at the door. A family that has been forcibly evicted will find it virtually impossible ever to secure a new tenancy elsewhere. The trauma and disruption will stay with them, particularly for children, for years to come, and then follow the cost and distress of temporary accommodation, perhaps in an awful, unsafe bed-and-breakfast hotel.

Sometimes, moreover, it has seemed that certain local authorities have used the excuse that someone has failed to co-operate, even if they have only failed to attend an interview, maybe for very good reason, to refuse them any further help. For some councils, a whole cultural shift is needed to go from finding reasons for doing nothing to making efforts to help people pre-empt, prevent and avoid homelessness, with proper assessment of their requirements and a formal plan for their future. The Bill includes a provision for new codes of practice, which would be the subject of extensive consultation and parliamentary scrutiny, to up the game of everyone.

There is no denying that this Bill places extra burdens on local authorities. It will cost millions to implement even if, in the longer term, a reduction in homelessness leads to savings. I congratulate the Minister, Marcus Jones, on securing £61 million, which represents the Government’s estimate of costs over the next two years, but many in local government, while not wanting to avoid the new duties the legislation will bring, believe actual costs will be a lot more. Pressure from the Local Government Association and the Opposition Benches in the other place has led to the Government agreeing to a full-scale review before the initial two-year funding runs out. This is a very important commitment by the Minister. With councils suffering badly from inadequate resources, particularly for social care, it is extremely important that this funding is at the right level. If costs turn out to be more than the Government anticipate, I would certainly expect additional resources to be forthcoming, since that is the commitment which this Bill implies, but I realise the Treasury will make no promises for a period more than three years from today.

It is not for me to try to unpack or disturb the agreed content of the Bill after all that has gone before, but this is an opportunity to air some wider thoughts about homelessness in the UK, about the context for this new legislation and about the issues yet to be resolved alongside the implementation of the Bill. This brings me to two wider policy points, and I feel sure other noble Lords will add their broader comments on issues of homelessness.

It is obvious that problems of homelessness will continue so long as there are not enough homes to go round. Addressing the chronic housing shortages with which we are now all so familiar is clearly a prerequisite. I commend the Government’s determination to get far more homes built, and I think the housing White Paper takes us in the right direction, not least in its central recognition that new homes to rent are needed as well as new homes to buy.

Increasing supply to match demand is a five to 10-year project that calls for all hands on deck, no longer relying on a handful of big housebuilders but backing councils, housing associations and build-to-rent developers as well as smaller building firms, retirement housing providers, self-build, custom housebuilding and new garden villages and garden towns. We cannot conquer homelessness or even reverse its alarming growth while, year after year, we have more new households formed than new homes built. The Bill can give councils new responsibilities to guide, advise, help and support but, if there are not the homes available, we will still see families moved to other areas, people sleeping in doorways on our high streets and people impoverished by their housing costs. It will take every new measure in the housing White Paper and more to tackle this underlying, abject deficiency in this country’s housing system.

If my broader comment is one of encouragement for the direction being taken by the Department for Communities and Local Government, I am afraid that is not the case for the actions of the other key government department, the Department for Work and Pensions. In its understandable but unrealistic efforts to cut the cost of housing benefit, the DWP is busy undermining the efforts of the DCLG and local authorities and, indeed, of this new Bill.

Our Shelter briefing on this Bill says that:

“Housing Benefit is one of the best tools to improve affordability and prevent homelessness by allowing those on low incomes to house themselves without having to turn to their local authority”.


Cuts to housing support accelerate and exaggerate current homelessness problems because they block off opportunities for accommodation in the private rented sector. I must leave on one side the DWP’s unfortunate plans to limit rents charged for specialist supported and sheltered housing where, in theory, DWP funds via local authorities will top up local housing allowance payments. That issue is a big worry in the homelessness sector, but I have a bigger concern about rent ceilings, benefit caps and freezes on the local housing allowance. These cuts mean fewer and fewer landlords will take in anyone who relies on government help with housing. Increasingly, there is a widening shortfall between the rents which landlords can obtain from those not reliant on any housing benefit and the rents which housing benefit will cover. Shelter figures show that, by 2020, the local housing allowance will not cover rents for even the cheapest properties in over 80% of local authority areas.

These real-term rent reductions come on top of the hazards for landlords from the difficulties poorer households face in finding deposits and rent in advance, as well as the DWP’s insistence on paying housing support to the tenant not the landlord. The result is not simply that, in seeking to prevent homelessness, councils and charities will find fewer and fewer landlords willing to accept the people they want to assist; the bigger problem is that, gradually, more and more existing tenants will find their landlords ending their current shorthold tenancies because reduced housing benefit support means those tenants can afford a rent only well below that available on the open market. As Shelter says:

“By far the largest cause of homelessness is people being unable to find somewhere else to live when their private tenancy ends”—


out goes the mother with two children; in goes the two-earner couple or even the three students. It seems quite likely that over the next couple of years, we could see a large proportion of the 800,000 or so households who are currently in the private rented sector and receiving housing help from the DWP being asked to leave. This will create a crisis indeed. I simply ask DWP Ministers to recognise that they cannot buck the market: if the least affluent are to be housed in the private rented sector—as they must be, because there is a woeful lack of available council and housing association accommodation—then the DWP must return to paying the same rent as the landlord can get from other tenants. The freeze on local housing allowances must go.

The Bill is not going to end homelessness. That will require, first, massive efforts to ease housing shortages—on which an important start is being made, I hope—and secondly, a better understanding by the Department for Work and Pensions that it is creating the problem, not the solution to homelessness. Nevertheless the Bill can, and I believe will, reduce homelessness, reduce the numbers suffering the horrors of living on our streets and reduce the far greater numbers of people who, in the absence of relatively inexpensive guidance and concrete support, are forced into hidden homelessness—sofa-surfing or living in ghastly conditions. Although this occasion brings the opportunity for us to put our wider concerns about the housing scene firmly on the record, I hope very much the Bill receives strong support from your Lordships. I warmly congratulate Bob Blackman and all those who have brought this ground-breaking Bill before us. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Best]

My Lords, I think I get two minutes to say a few closing words. I thank my colleagues all around the House for 14 enthusiastic and supportive speeches that are deeply appreciated, especially with the harsh discipline of no one being able to put down any amendments, for which I am deeply grateful as we must get this legislation through. I am especially grateful to the Front Benches.

Special thanks go to the Minister for his summing up, which has covered all the ground we have covered and has therefore saved me doing that. Having been a Minister for one day, so to speak, in handling this Private Member’s Bill, I have to say that Ministers have to work incredibly hard. Yesterday the Minister was being very helpful to me with an amendment on the Neighbourhood Planning Bill, and we are all going to be discussing the White Paper with him next Thursday. In handling this Bill I have also discovered that the civil servants do an incredible job, far more than one realises up front, and I am deeply grateful to them. The real credit for the Bill, though, goes to Bob Blackman in the other place, who has had God knows how many meetings with all the different factions and elements in this field and managed to hold things together, with helpful support from the Government.

We have come to the end of the road here. With grateful thanks to all the participants and to Crisis, which started the process and saw it through to the end, it remains only for me to say that I beg to move that the Bill be committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

Neighbourhood Planning Bill

Lord Best Excerpts

Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Thursday 23rd February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Parminter]

My Lords, with the leave of the House, in the unavoidable absence of my noble friend Lord Taylor of Goss Moor, I move the amendment standing in his name. The amendment introduces the principle of localism to the New Towns Act to enable the delivery of the highest quality new garden villages and towns by locally accountable elected local planning authorities rather than, as at present, any such development corporation being established on the initiative of a local authority and agreed by the Secretary of State.

Garden towns and villages are local solutions to the pressing need in so much of the country for homes, but by using the uplift in land values generated by development not purely to line the pockets of the few with fantastic wealth but to deliver great, thriving, 21st-century villages every bit as well served as the best historic communities. Already, 14 are being supported by Government, but the success of that programme will be greatly enhanced by the ability of local authorities to ensure quality by using the New Towns Act to guarantee that new garden villages and towns all meet the policy objectives of the Government. But local authorities will adopt this opportunity only if they know it is locally controlled. Local communities would accept no less. In the age of localism, why should they hand control of finances, planning, ownership of the land and its long-term value to the Secretary of State?

A similar amendment was moved by my noble friend Lord Taylor in Committee, where it received cross-party support. It also gained clear support and a positive response from the Minister at that time. Since then, we have had the Government’s White Paper, and the Government have made a clear and unambiguous commitment to localise the New Towns Act powers, exactly as proposed by this amendment. Mindful of the fact that this has cross-party support, I genuinely welcome that and beg to move.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I have not declared interests during the course of the Bill so far, so declare that I am a vice-president of the Town and Country Planning Association and a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

In the debates on what became the Housing and Planning Act 2016, the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, and I jointly proposed an amendment, which the Government supported, to make it easier for new corporations to be set up to establish new settlements, along the lines of the old new towns but probably rather smaller—garden villages or garden towns they are sometimes called. This takes the story to its next stage, as the White Paper from the Government promises to do. It would allow local authorities to have significant influence over the new corporations set up to create new communities. Local authorities would be able to appoint the board and approve their budgets.

Sadly, without this kind of measure, a lot of local authorities will not think it worth while establishing new corporations for this purpose. This amendment would take away a deterrent to local authorities embarking on this road, fearful that the Secretary of State will dictate what happens in their area. It would instead replace the Secretary of State with the local authority having considerable influence over the new corporation.

Why are we making such a fuss about this? Why do we need these new settlements? From the perspective of local communities, in order to make sufficient land available for a five-year supply of all the new homes that we are going to need, you sometimes get the choice between 25 homes in 100 or 200 different villages or small towns, and one major development of 5,000 homes—perhaps not quite as much or perhaps a bit more—in one place. Apart from anything else, this means that instead of the hassle of having 200 local community groups opposed to the 25 homes in their village, you have one group. That group probably is opposed to the very large development, but at least the opposition to the development is concentrated in one place, instead of the development disturbing an awful lot of local communities. Putting a number of the homes that we need in one place is in itself helpful to local authorities and to their communities.

That is a negative. The positive is that having a properly planned new settlement or community, where you have a master plan that ensures that all the facilities that you need—transport, schools and the rest—are all in one place, is itself a really good way to try to achieve this enormous number of new homes which we know the country desperately needs to end housing shortages.

I can speak with a bit of experience here because one of my duties for nearly 20 years at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation was looking after the model village of New Earswick, created by our founder, Joseph Rowntree, in 1904. We can look back over 100 and something years to see whether a garden village really works. I can tell your Lordships that this kind of planned community of more than 1,000 homes, with two schools, shops and a wonderful arts and crafts folk hall and community centre, 100 years on, is the way that you get all the things that you need to build a proper, strong community, rather than packing in 25 more homes at the end of the village, which causes nothing but disruption.

This amendment would put local authorities more in charge and would therefore make it much more likely that we will see these new settlements and communities created in the future. I strongly support it.

Homelessness

Lord Best Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, the noble Baroness is right about that mental health challenge, and it goes back to what I said about rough sleeping and homelessness being a complex issue. We discuss this with other government departments and with the charitable and voluntary sector, as part of a ministerial group chaired by my honourable friend Marcus Jones in another place. She is, however, right to highlight that issue and we are looking at it.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I have the honour of taking the Homelessness Reduction Bill—the Private Member’s Bill—through your Lordships’ House. I thank and congratulate the Government on giving this strenuous support, and the same goes for Her Majesty’s Opposition. Can the Minister, however, impress on his colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions that their attempts to reduce housing benefit and freeze the rents paid to private landlords is undermining efforts to place people in the private rented sector? As the right reverend Prelate says, there are already enough inhibitions on private landlords taking people on housing benefit, and some are now terminating their agreements. Unless we tackle this, the Homelessness Reduction Bill will not make much odds.

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, I first thank the noble Lord for his endeavours with regard to the Homelessness Reduction Bill and I pay tribute to all parties that are ensuring that this legislation passes, because it will make—notwithstanding what the noble Lord just said—an important contribution to this area. Again, the noble Lord has addressed an important issue and shows that it cuts across government. We talk to the Department for Work and Pensions. As he has indicated, there are issues. We have ensured, for example, that there is deferred application of the local housing allowance until 2019, and then we will ensure that we have a new funding model that delivers just as much at the same level, which will include hostels. He is, however, right to address that issue: it requires a concerted effort across government.

National Policy for the Built Environment

Lord Best Excerpts

Tuesday 24th January 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful indeed to the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, not just for introducing this excellent report but for initiating, alongside the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, the ad hoc Select Committee that produced it. Thanks go also to the noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, for chairing the committee and steering it through to its eminently sensible recommendations for easing the nation’s acute housing problems.

The special value of the more than 50 recommendations in the report is that they not only address problems of housing shortages and affordability but highlight the dangers of sacrificing quality—in relation to design, accessibility, and environmental, health and heritage factors—in the quest for quantity. On that theme, I note that last year’s report on quality in housebuilding from the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Excellence in the Built Environment drew attention to a recent deterioration in build quality and customer service and satisfaction. This is likely to be compounded by growing skills shortages, which of course could worsen after Brexit.

I see no reason why the Minister should not in principle welcome almost all of the committee’s recommendations. No doubt he will note that a number are already being pursued, including in the Neighbourhood Planning Bill. Tantalisingly, he may tell us that the committee will find more to approve in the forthcoming housing White Paper. Thanks to the significant changes of emphasis from Mrs May’s new team of Ministers, some of the least acceptable aspects of the Housing and Planning Act 2016 have now evaporated. Those of us who spent many long hours arguing about that legislation have happily overcome the frustration of thinking, “Why didn’t the Government get the point earlier?”.

In choosing from the committee’s cornucopia of important suggestions, time permits a brief word about just a couple. I declare my housing interests, as on the register, including as a vice-president and immediate past president of the Local Government Association, a vice-president of the Town and Country Planning Association, chair of the Property Ombudsman Council and co-chair of the APPG on Housing and Care for Older People.

My first issue concerns the committee’s call for new housing that will attract older people who want to downsize from bigger family homes. After a decade of promoting this issue, I hope very much that the White Paper will come up with some incentives to kick-start new building by the private and social sectors for our ageing population; for example, the stamp duty exemption advocated so persistently by the APPG on Housing and Care for Older People would actually benefit the Treasury by unlocking a chain of three other property sales on which stamp duty would be paid, if stamp duty is exempted for a pensioner downsizing.

I noted in a report published just yesterday by the Council of Mortgage Lenders that there are still only half the number of home moves each year compared with the levels in the years before the banking crisis. The CML says that low housing market turnover is pushing up property prices and leading to inefficient occupation of housing, with more people in homes that are too small, or too big, for their needs.

A government-backed “help to move” package for older buyers—like Help to Buy for younger ones—plus financial advice akin to that available to those thinking about their pension pots, could achieve the tipping point for downsizing. Attractive, accessible, energy-efficient retirement accommodation, as the Select Committee’s report notes, could also mean huge savings to the public purse by preventing or delaying the need for residential care and by facilitating earlier discharge from hospital. It would mean fewer accidents at home, a reduction in premature winter deaths and, indeed, in many areas, in isolation and loneliness. At the same time as improving physical and financial well-being for our later years, incentivising new retirement housing would open up those much-needed opportunities for younger generations to upsize.

I think time permits a second dip into the Select Committee’s box of first-class recommendations, so, secondly, I note the committee’s call for,

“much greater co-ordination and integration across the multiple Government departments that effect and respond to the built environment”.

My anxiety is about the clash between housing policies from the Department for Communities and Local Government and welfare policies from the Department for Work and Pensions. I was delighted to see that the Select Committee covering the work of the DWP in the other place has just got together with the Select Committee that covers the DCLG to look at the constraints on rent levels that the former department is imposing on supported and sheltered housing. It is vital that the DWP’s measures do not undermine the work of those at the sharp end who are catering for older citizens and people with special needs. The DWP has already achieved savings to its housing benefit bill by requiring social landlords—housing associations and councils—to cut rents by 1% plus inflation for each of four consecutive years because 60% of these rents are paid by housing benefit. These social rents are already well below market rents, and this compulsory rent reduction is simply a tax on the resources of social landlords. The expected 12% rental loss over four years sucks money out of social housing, making it more difficult for these social landlords to create the high-quality built environments that the committee advocates. Is it too late to stop these rent cuts before the four years are up?

My greatest concern in this clash between the aims of these two government departments relates to the private rented sector, where the DWP has limited the rent it will cover—the local housing allowance—to a figure that is slipping further and further behind the open market rent. Already two-thirds of private landlords are not keen to take in anyone in receipt of housing benefit, and landlords terminating shorthold tenancies for those on the lowest incomes, principally those in receipt of some housing benefit, already constitutes the most common reason for people becoming homeless. Below-market caps on rental payments add another, very significant, deterrent to landlords accepting those who need help paying their rent. Such tenants already struggle with deposits and rent in advance, and payment of the housing benefit direct to the tenant rather than to the landlord is further increasing the risk of arrears.

There are something approaching 800,000 households in receipt of benefit in the PRS, yet in areas of shortages, which now means not just London but most of southern England and hotspots elsewhere, landlords seem very likely to replace all those whose rent is being covered by housing benefit—or, to be technical, increasingly by the housing element of universal credit—with tenants who are able to pay the full market rent. Out goes the single mother with young children to make way for the two-earner household or perhaps the three students. The DWP may be hoping, Canute-like, to turn the tide, buck the market and expect private landlords to accept rents that, in real terms, go down each year. This approach might have some effect in areas of very low demand, where tenants requiring housing benefit are a big part of the local market, although squeezing rents in these areas where properties are often of low quality could mean landlords cutting back on overdue repairs and maintenance. But mostly the DWP’s approach will simply mean landlords not accepting any tenant who relies on housing benefit, including of course many households in work but on the lowest wages. This means accelerating the numbers of those with nowhere to go in either the private or the social housing sector.

I am looking forward to piloting the excellent Homelessness Reduction Bill—the Private Member’s Bill supported by the Government that should be with us in a few weeks’ time—through your Lordships’ House, but I see a real need for DWP welfare policies to be better aligned with DCLG housing policies if we are not to see escalating homelessness and the massive cost that would bring. I congratulate the ad hoc Select Committee on this extremely good report, and I suggest we use its recommendations as the yardstick against which we can judge the merits of the eagerly anticipated housing White Paper next month.

Renters’ Rights Bill [HL]

Lord Best Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 18th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I extend strong support to my noble friend Lady Grender for this amendment and for her Bill as a whole. This amendment really matters, given the current state of housing supply. It was reported this week that in the last five years, local government spent £3.5 billion on temporary accommodation for homeless people. I declare my interest as vice-president of the Local Government Association. The main reason for that spending is the cost of accommodation. One of the contributors to it for individuals is the up-front costs they have to pay, which in very many cases have become too high. This creates a barrier to people moving into a home.

As my noble friend pointed out, because tenants in the private rented sector tend to move more frequently than in the public social housing sector, the costs can be more frequent and become increasingly unaffordable. Removing the up-front cost from the tenant is the right thing to do and I hope that whatever happens to this Private Member’s Bill, the Government will take on board how serious this issue has become. I understand there is to be a housing supply White Paper some time after the Autumn Statement next week. Whether that comes in December or January—perhaps the Minister can help us with that—who funds what in the private rented sector has to be addressed, and for that reason my noble friend Lady Grender has our full support.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, for her work on the Bill, which highlights a number of key issues affecting the private rented sector. She introduced her amendment with one or two rather broader points about the private rented sector, which enables me as well to say something of a slightly broader nature.

At present, there is a real fear that as shorthold assured tenancies within the private rented sector, to which the noble Baroness referred, gradually terminate, tenants in receipt of housing benefit or universal credit will be rejected by landlords who will find a gap between the amount the tenant can pay using their housing benefit or universal credit and the market rent which the landlord can easily obtain. While that gap exists, landlords will want to see tenants currently in receipt of housing benefit or who in future will be on universal credit out of their accommodation. This is not simply cruelty; this is the market. It will be unwise for a landlord to continue to let to people who have a big shortfall between the amount they receive to pay their rent and the actual rent they are being asked to pay. Even generous landlords who are prepared to go half way will still find that they are in a very uncomfortable position if they know that the people from whom they are asking the rent do not have the money to pay it. They know that there will be trouble over time, so how much better to take a couple, both working, who can afford the rent?

I see a position in which, gradually over a period, virtually all those in high-pressure areas such as London who are currently letting to tenants on housing benefit will wish to see those assured shorthold tenancies terminated, so those tenants will be outside the private rented sector. Sadly, I fear that the social housing sector will find it very difficult to cope with the pressure that that will bring as all those tenants are shed. We are sure to see homelessness grow. I am indulging in some broader comments before addressing some aspects of Amendment 1.

I declare my interest as chair of the Property Ombudsman Council as well as my other interests as set out in the register. I fear that chairing the ombudsman service, which looks after complaints about agents and therefore about fees and the transparency issue that is being debated, prohibits me from using this platform to comment today.

I shall draw attention to one way in which this issue may be taken forward, if the Government feel unable to accept Amendment 1 today. I am leaning on the precedent created by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, who, during the passage of the Housing and Planning Bill pressed for an amendment that would place a requirement on managing and letting agents to take out client money protection insurance—this being a proxy for being a respectable body in many cases. Her amendment to place a requirement on agents was not accepted in the context of the Housing and Planning Act 2016, but the Government agreed to take the issue away and create a working group to look in depth at the issue. I suggest that if the Government feel unable to accept Amendment 1, they might think that that excellent precedent, which has now been brought to fruition with DCLG civil servants hard at work looking at these issues under the chairmanship of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, might be repeated in this context—in which case I hope very much that the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, could play a leading role in such a working group and I ask the Minister to consider it.

Housing

Lord Best Excerpts

Tuesday 11th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, for introducing this important debate. I find myself echoing some of the points that were well made by the noble Lords, Lord Stoneham and Lord Starkey, in particular.

I welcome very much the Government’s renewed commitment to build 1 million more homes by 2020. But who is going to build these homes and address issues of quality and affordability? We know that the housebuilders will not deliver more than 50% or 60% of the new homes that are so badly needed. This is because they will not accelerate their output, even where they have the land and the planning consents, any faster than they can sell at a good profit. Some councils, as we have heard, are willing to become major housebuilders again, but few are ready and able to do more because of unnecessary public spending rules and the acute financial pressures on all their services. Private landlords have not actually built new homes for decades. I greatly welcome the emerging new sector of build-to-rent developers, funded by institutional investors and offering more security and good management, but I doubt they will produce more than 2% or 3% of the Government’s 1 million home target, and they are bound to concentrate on the more affluent tenant.

This all leads me to conclude that the best bet today to get enough decent homes built is to harness the resources and commitment of the housing associations. These can produce at least a third of all the new homes we so desperately need. Yet many of these bodies are looking less ambitious and less optimistic about increasing their output. First, this is because their income from rents has taken a battering from the welfare cuts that have directly and indirectly reduced their income, while making life harder for tenants. The Department for Work and Pensions must ensure that its measures to reduce housing benefit do not simply reduce supply.

Secondly, the Department for Communities and Local Government needs to adopt a more flexible approach to the tenures and types of new homes it supports. It is not helpful to insist that housebuilders cut out the quota of affordable rented homes that currently they are obliged to build and pass over to housing associations, instead requiring them just to build starter homes for sale. Direct funding for housing associations should not be tied slavishly to shared-ownership accommodation, when there is a desperate need in so many places for affordable rented and, indeed, retirement housing.

There have been encouraging comments on a change of emphasis from the new Housing Minister, Gavin Barwell. Can the Minister confirm that flexibility is indeed the new watchword in housing policy? Only then can there be a significant increase in the number of affordable, decent-quality homes, which the housing associations are ready and willing to provide.

Home Ownership

Lord Best Excerpts

Thursday 15th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, the Help to Buy ISA is helping many people at the moment: more than half a million people are making use of the scheme and 26,000 have already received the bonus. The bonus of £3,000, which is a considerable amount towards a deposit, is paid at the end of the process so it means an adjustment in the way that finances are organised.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, would the Minister agree that we will never get to the 1 million homes if the Government insist that housing associations and others stick to home-ownership schemes rather than being allowed to do the affordable rented housing that they have traditionally done? Can we not get back to more of that, as well as the much-needed home-ownership schemes that we have heard about?

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, as I indicated, the Government are committed to home ownership. We are making sure that money is provided to encourage that. Also, we are certainly committed to homes to rent, and have committed money to rent-to-buy schemes as well. We committed £661 million to a build-to-rent fund which should, over the life of the Parliament, guarantee about 6,000 houses in addition.

Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Lord Best Excerpts

Wednesday 18th January 2012 Lords Chamber

The obvious solution to this problem is to retain legal aid in debt cases for remedies under Part 5 of the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007. Citizens Advice has established from its data that approximately 13 per cent of the Legal Services Commission-funded debt casework involves DROs—in other words, about £3 million of what the LSC currently spends on debt advice. We also think that there is a case for keeping within scope advice around other debtor protections and contractual rights under the Consumer Credit Act, unsecured lending, advice around remedies for creditor harassment, disputing liability for debts and court enforcement of debts by bailiffs who, it is alleged, often exceed their legal powers. We estimate that this would be between 20 per cent and 30 per cent of current work—that is, around £5 million of what is currently funded by the LSC on debt advice. We think that this is justified and ask the Government to think again about removing all debt from legal aid. I beg to move.

[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.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)]

I do not think the noble Lord should worry. At this time of night it becomes a bit of a blur for us all.

Amendments 72 and 82ZC would bring into scope debt matters that are not covered in Schedule 1 and which we intend no longer to fund. We are faced, as we have said before, with tough choices in this current fiscal climate, but this has allowed us to focus resources on those who need them most in the most serious cases where legal advice and representation are justified. We estimate that we will continue to spend around £50 million on social welfare law overall.

Amendment 72 relates to paragraph 28 of Part 1 of Schedule 1 and appears to be aimed at making legally aided advice, assistance and representation available where a person’s financial difficulties, such as debt problems, could potentially lead to the individual losing their home.

Amendment 82ZC would bring into scope all debt matters not covered in Schedule 1. In our consultation on legal aid reform, we proposed that funding should be prioritised on cases where the individual’s home is at immediate risk. We are therefore retaining legal aid in relation to court orders for possession or sale of the home and in relation to eviction. We generally consider that other debt matters are a lower priority and therefore do not justify public funding for legal advice and representation.

We recognise that early advice can be helpful in a range of contexts. However, what people often need is general advice, for example on welfare benefits, debt or housing, rather than legal advice. There are many alternative sources of help with debt issues, including Credit Action, the National Debtline, the Consumer Credit Counselling Service and local authorities, which also direct people to local sources of advice and assistance on debt matters. In addition, the Money Advice Trust has recently launched My Money Steps, an online tool for providing advice for people with debt problems. The Consumer Credit Counselling Service also offers a free online debt remedy service.

We also recognise the argument that withdrawal of legal aid for any issue could lead, by a chain of events, to serious consequences. We considered this point carefully when formulating our final proposals. However, our view is that the limited public funds for legal advice and representation should be focused on those cases where the client faces serious direct consequences. Therefore, we do not propose to devote these limited public funds to less important cases on the basis that they could indirectly lead to more serious consequences for that person.

It is also important to recognise that the Bill does not require legal proceedings to have been issued before legal aid can be made available. Legal aid will be available where action for repossession or eviction is contemplated—for example, where a person receives a letter threatening repossession action in the absence of payment. Therefore, legal aid will be available to a person threatened with repossession action for mortgage or rent arrears, for example to negotiate with the mortgage lenders. It should also be noted that we will retain funding for the housing possession court duty scheme. It offers free legal advice and representation to anyone in danger of eviction or having property repossessed, on the day of the hearing, regardless of their means. Research shows that 77 per cent of clients who receive this last-minute advice avoid the immediate loss of their home. Under the circumstances, I hope the noble Lord will consider withdrawing his amendment.

Amendment 82D appears to be aimed at bringing into scope debt relief remedies under Part 5 of the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007 and, in particular, as the noble Lord said, debt relief orders. As I have already said, we consider certain debt matters to be a high priority for funding. That is why we are retaining legal aid for debt cases where the individual’s home is at immediate risk of repossession because of rent or mortgage arrears or involuntary bankruptcy. We recognise that debt problems can be difficult for the individuals concerned. Nevertheless, we strongly believe that what is often required is practical advice to resolve issues, rather than advice of a legal nature.

It is important to note that debt relief orders are relatively informal procedures. Advisers act as approved intermediaries and assist debtors in applying to the Insolvency Service for a debt relief order. I reiterate that individuals who have debt issues are able to seek advice from alternative routes. For example, the Insolvency Service website provides guidance and leaflets, and information is available through the insolvency inquiry line. Importantly, it should be noted that debt relief orders are used by people who owe limited amounts of money and have no assets. Therefore, they do not involve a person’s home being at immediate risk. They are clearly not analogous to cases in which a home owner is at immediate risk of losing their home as a result of involuntary bankruptcy. I hope that noble Lords will be reassured by what I have said and will not press these amendments.

--- Later in debate ---

I hope that my noble friend will see the amendments as intended to help the administration of justice and make it more effective, rather than to hinder it. I beg to move.

[Lord Best]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 72A and support the case made by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, for legal aid in housing cases to go beyond those where someone faces imminent loss of their home. I have made the case that the private rented sector has no regulator and no ombudsman. Therefore, private rented tenants are in a different position from consumers of other necessities such as electricity, gas, water, telephone or even financial services. If tenants are in dispute with their landlords, the only way of obtaining redress may well be to go to court.

That being so, legal advice can be of enormous help, not least in explaining to some tenants that they do not have a case and that it would be a waste of the time of the tenant and the courts to go down the route of litigation. Thanks to the current legal aid system, a publicly funded solicitor can advise tenants at an early stage that they should not pursue a hopeless case. If legal advice is not available, more tenants will try to proceed through the courts with ill advised cases as litigants in person, causing the courts and landlords—both private and public—to incur irrecoverable legal costs for wasted time litigating nonsense. My barrister colleague, Peter Marcus, who specialises in housing, tells me that he handles cases where, even if the landlord makes a successful application to have the tenant’s case struck out, the landlord none the less incurs significant irrecoverable legal fees.

Of course, the case for legal aid for housing matters goes much deeper than that. Justifiable cases against landlords, regrettably, are only too common in this sector. There are some 1.2 million private landlords and some are ignorant of their responsibilities, while a minority are deliberately exploitative. However, while legal aid is currently available to even the poorest tenant, the threat of litigation has teeth. Landlords know that, despite the absence of regulation or dispute resolution by an ombudsman, tenants advised by law centres or citizens advice bureaux can pursue them through the courts, with the landlord facing considerable costs when they lose the case. Without Amendment 72A, however, the disreputable landlord would see that threats from landlords of legal action would be empty, as tenants would not be able to take the matter forward unless the case concerned the likelihood of the imminent loss of their home.

Informing bad landlords that, however awful their behaviour, they will not be taken to court is like telling Somali pirates that they will never be held to account if they board ships and demand fantastic ransoms. It seems bound to lead to an escalation of criminality. Removing recourse to legal aid removes the capacity of tenants credibly to threaten litigation, leaving them with no way out of the misery of living in a property where the heating system does not work, where there is no management of anti-social neighbours, where disrepair is a major issue and where landlords simply refuse to answer letters or phone calls. As we all know, acute shortages mean that tenants, unlike consumers in other areas, do not have the luxury of being able to shop around and find a better property elsewhere.

The other way in which housing differs from other services lies in the legal complexities that surround it. Quite apart from the extensive body of landlord/tenant legislation, the ever changing entitlements to benefits—for example, to local housing allowances—are fiendishly complicated. Social landlords very often provide expert welfare benefits advice but private landlords, of course, do not. The ordinary consumer—the tenant—cannot be expected to have full knowledge of the legal niceties to deploy in a tribunal hearing; hence the need for professional advice, for which legal aid provides the funding mechanism. Take this away and not only will landlords be able to break the law with impunity but tenants who are ignorant of their entitlements or who are victims of incompetence at the hands of bureaucrats will never see justice.

The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, has made the case for legal aid housing advice preventing problems escalating to homelessness, and legal aid help for housing cases has to go much wider than stepping in at the last minute when possession of the home is imminent. Of course, many cases are not about eviction. Moreover, some of the cases where eviction has occurred may be about ancillary aspects of the actions of the landlord—it is not uncommon for tenants who are unlawfully evicted to have all their possessions thrown out of the property. If the landlord has previously exercised violence or harassment, the tenant may have no wish to get back their former home but merely to get back their belongings or obtain compensation for belongings destroyed. It would be perverse if a tenant could not get legal aid in such cases unless they declared that they wanted to go back into a property to which it would be unreasonable, if not unsafe, to return.

Regrettably, although we now depend on the private rented sector to house many poorer households, it is fraught with conflict that often requires a legal input to get sorted. With benefits advice being taken out of scope and the likely closure of many citizens advice bureaux as a result, housing is badly affected by the Bill. This surely is one area of our national life where legal aid is essential. Its withdrawal will not only cause misery but will cost central and local government money in picking up the pieces. I support the amendment.