Non-Domestic Rating (Public Lavatories) Bill

Debate between Lord Kennedy of Southwark and Lord Greaves

Report stage & Lords Hansard
Wednesday 17th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, the amendment seeks to add a new clause. Its purpose is to require a report to be laid before both Houses of Parliament on the number of public lavatories and changing place facilities within 12 months of the passing of the Act, and every 12 months after that.

The report has to address a number of important points and consider whether the Act has increased the closure of public lavatories and, importantly, changing place facilities. We need to have proper conversations with the relevant stakeholders. Like the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, I was sorry that I was unable to get to the meeting with the British Toilet Association because I was here, considering the Domestic Abuse Bill at the time. However, I welcome the offer from the noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh, to talk further on these issues, along with stakeholders such as the British Toilet Association, which does invaluable work for us.

Proposed subsection (4) of the amendment refers to whether the relief should be extended. That is very important. How does one extend rate relief? If the legislation is working, if the number of toilets is increasing and they are not being lost, we may well need to extend that rate relief. I make the point about changing place facilities because they are important. As I mentioned previously, there is now a changing place facility in the Tower of London. It is good enough for one of our historic royal palaces, so we should ensure that many other public buildings provide such a facility.

In the previous debate, I was reminded by my noble friend Lady Andrews of the importance of public health. I love the London Borough of Southwark—Southwark is in my title. The old town hall has a sign saying:

“The health of the people is the highest law”.


It was put there in Victorian times by the old St Mary Newington Vestry Hall. It is absolutely right. Think about what was being done in those times in terms of public health, sanitation and all the important things that had to be addressed. That motto is relevant today in terms of moving forward and ensuring that we address public health by having enough proper toilets available.

If the amendment is agreed, the Government will be asked to bring reports back to this House every 12 months. I suppose that the Minister is not going to accept the amendment. I may be wrong, but I hope that he can respond positively and genuinely because the Government need to arm themselves with that sort of information in order to get this matter right and ensure that the situation is improved for all our citizens.

[Lord Greaves (LD)]

My Lords, I support the amendment. I do not need to say any more about it. It concerns a slightly different aspect of what we have been talking about. Apart from that, I have made the points that I wanted to make. All that I will say is that I will keep on making them until the Government wake up and understand the role of town and parish councils. Having said that, I will sit down.

Non-Domestic Rating (Public Lavatories) Bill

Debate between Lord Kennedy of Southwark and Lord Greaves

Wednesday 24th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, as this is my first contribution today, I draw the attention of the House to my relevant registered interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. Amendment 1 in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, seeks to amend Clause 1(3) of the Bill. The purpose of the amendment is to bring into the scope of the Bill those toilet facilities that are in community centres, libraries and other local authority buildings and are free of charge for use by members of the public.

There are clear and undeniable public health benefits to having toilets that are available for the public to use. This amendment seeks to increase that provision. I recognise that in some cases, libraries and other public buildings already make their toilet facilities available to the public. This amendment supports them for doing that, but goes further, as it provides a welcome encouragement for those facilities that do not have the same access provision to be made available to the public. There has been a noticeable decline in public facilities over recent years, and this amendment seeks to reverse that trend by providing rate relief as an encouragement either to continue with the access presently provided or to extend access to the public to take advantage of this rate relief.

The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, has tabled Amendment 9, which I am very happy to support, and the noble Lord will explain the effect of his amendment when he speaks shortly. I beg to move.

[Lord Greaves (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, for his support for my Amendment 9 in this group. I will speak to both my amendment and Amendment 1, which the noble Lord has just moved. I declare my interest as a member of Pendle Borough Council, which no longer has public lavatories but is the rating authority for those that exist. I thank the Government for scheduling this Committee fairly quickly after Second Reading so that we can progress this Bill; it gives us real hope that the Bill will manage to pass in this Session.

The amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, would follow up amendments moved in the Commons and comments made quite widely by people at Second Reading in your Lordships’ House. They pointed out that very many lavatories that people consider to be public lavatories and that operate as public lavatories are ancillary to other facilities provided by local authorities and other voluntary bodies, and so on. The problem is that, from a rating point of view, they are part of the same hereditament as the facility to which they are basically ancillary and therefore would not come under the provisions of this Bill as it stands. The Minister has kindly written to interested Members of the House putting forward the view that the Government put forward in the Commons that, to exempt these genuine public lavatories from business rates would be onerous—particularly on the Valuation Office Agency, which is responsible for doing all this— and that it would therefore not be practical to go ahead with it.

My Amendment 9 tackles some of the affected lavatories, which would probably not be a very large number. I believe that this could be done without any onerous burden being placed upon the VOA or anybody else. It reads that, for the purposes of subsection 4(I), which is what this is all about,

“a self-contained public lavatories facility which forms part of a larger hereditament and which may be accessed independently from outside that hereditament forms a separate hereditament.”

It is possible that it would have to be done technically in some other way: it might be that it could be done via secondary legislation. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, has amendments later on, to which I am not going to speak, but at this stage I will just say that I strongly support them; they provide an opportunity for the Government to tackle the technical details, and there are huge technical details in all this, because it is about rating. They would allow the Government to pick up a lot of the points that we are making in these probing amendments at this stage.

It seems to me that, when a lavatory is part of a council-owned building in the middle of a small town or village—it might be a library, market hall or any other council-owned building—and has an outside door so that, even if there is also an inside door that could be locked when the main building is not open, people would be able to access that from outside, sorting out the separate valuation for a limited number of instances like this would not be a great burden, and it could, and should, be done. In practice, the VOA will have done it anyway when it assesses the rates on the whole building, because here is a separate use from the main building and it will have a look at it and say, “What is the amount that that contributes?” Somewhere in the depths of its records, it probably has the information anyway. Even if it does not have it, however, it is not an onerous task for it to do. The number is relatively small compared with the great majority of lavatories in libraries and so on. I hope the Government will accept the principle of this—I do not expect them to accept my amendment as it is today—and go away and have a look at it. I invite the Minister to say that he will do that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, Amendment 3 in my name seeks to add the words

“which are free of charge for anyone to use”

to Clause 1(3). The Bill provides a financial benefit and the effect of my amendment would be to restrict that benefit to public lavatories that are free to use—a very reasonable aspiration and objective. I do not see why those public lavatories that you must pay to use should be a beneficiary of this relief. The purpose of the Bill is to provide encouragement in this area, and I think that this amendment strengthens the Bill in this regard and provides a clear focus on the free use of public lavatories.

Amendment 10 from the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, is very sensible and I fully support it. Why should we provide financial benefit when the lavatory is not open for extended parts of the day? But I will let the noble Lord explain his amendment to the Committee.

On a more general point, in resisting amendments in previous groups, the noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh, has relied on the argument that the Government do not want to place additional burdens on local authorities and that any savings would be outweighed by the cost of identifying these lavatories. When he replies to the debate, it would be useful if the Minister could evidence that. I have heard nothing from any local authority—the National Association of Local Councils, the District Councils’ Network, London Councils or the Local Government Association—to suggest that the argument that the Minister is relying on has any basis in fact. So it would be useful if he could explain that to the Committee. Or is it just the assertion of the department? I look forward to his response to the debate.

[Lord Greaves (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 10 in my name and Amendment 3, proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, which is fairly basic. I am old enough to remember one of the great hue and cry campaigns by women; it would be called a gender campaign nowadays. Not only did they have to spend an old penny—one of those great big things which people under 40 or 50 have never seen—but they had to go through a turnstile, which caused problems for pregnant women. That was a huge hue and cry at the time and was, I think, sorted out—but there are still plenty of supposedly public lavatories where you have to pay. The most disgraceful ones in my view were at mainline railway stations, which started charging considerably more than a penny, but that seems to be being changed now.

Amendment 10 would prevent bodies benefiting from free rates when the lavatories are not open for a reasonable amount of time and at reasonable times. I am always told by lawyers and Governments that the word “reasonable” should never be put in legislation because all legislation has to be reasonable before you start. Nevertheless, this seems to me to be a reasonable thing to discuss in this Committee.

There may well be some public lavatories in tourist areas which are not needed, or not in such quantity, at some times of the year. There may be ones which are needed at some times of the week and not others. It may be perfectly reasonable to lock public lavatories overnight to prevent them being used for undesirable purposes. That was certainly done in my part of the world. There may, indeed, be public lavatories which are open only on special occasions because of where they are and what takes place there. We used to have one which was opened at various times of the year, particularly on Remembrance Day, because it was next to the cenotaph. What is reasonable ought to be up to local decision-making by the owners of the lavatories, but they ought to be stopped from keeping them shut when they ought to be open. That decision ought to be made by the rating authority.

I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, who referred earlier to some confusion in the Bill about what a public lavatory is, in terms of ownership. Does this Bill apply only to facilities owned by councils or by other public bodies, or to other voluntary bodies and charities as well? Does it apply to commercial enterprises that might provide a public lavatory at the entrance of their commercial facility—there might be a park, or whatever—which is open all the time for public use? Could the Minister clarify that? Is it use as a public lavatory, under the Minister’s terms, that matters, or, is it who owns it that matters? That would be a helpful clarification.

My amendment is about how the Government are going to stop people freeloading and getting rate relief when they are not providing the facility they ought to be.

Non-Domestic Rating (Public Lavatories) Bill

Debate between Lord Kennedy of Southwark and Lord Greaves

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 24th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)]

[Lord Greaves (LD)]

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

[Lord Greaves (LD)]

Neighbourhood Planning Bill

Debate between Lord Kennedy of Southwark and Lord Greaves

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 2nd February 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

My Lords, I agree with my noble friend Lord Judd in saying what a sensible amendment this is, as moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parks. The noble Baroness is very experienced in these matters: she is a former councillor in Westminster, she campaigns for leaseholders and she knows this area very well. She has come to the assistance of the House many times on these matters, and we are again grateful to her today. It is right that public holidays should be taken account of, particularly, as she mentioned, in August and at Christmas. They are not, and it is unfair that notices are slipped out when people are not around. I hope that the Government understand that and give a positive response to the issue raised by the noble Baroness.

I am sorry that the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, has had to leave the Grand Committee tonight. On her behalf, the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, made the sensible and important point that statutory consultees should be made to respond in an appropriately reasonable time. I suspect we all know who we are talking about when we talk about those who do not respond—it is the same all over the place, and we should do something about it.

We support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Goss Moor. It seems practical and sensible that the power to appoint members of boards on new town development corporations should be devolved to the local authority, along with matters of financial conduct. I hope that we can get that agreed.

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, I obviously support both the amendments from my noble friends, particularly the one from my noble friend Lord Taylor of Goss Moor, which deals with a very important issue. The other two amendments in the group raise what some noble Lords might consider to be fairly trivial issues, but they are actually very important.

I make one further point about the issue raised by my noble friend Lady Pinnock. If you are taking a major planning application to committee towards the end of the 16-week period in which the Government say it has to be determined—for a new housing estate or industry or whatever—and you have not received a response from important statutory undertakers such as the Environment Agency or the highways authority, or if you are a county district and you are waiting for the county to wake up and submit a consultation response, you have a choice. You can either delay it beyond the deadline and take it to the next committee, which might be three or four weeks later, or you can determine the application without the specific expert advice that you need but have not got within your own authority. You will certainly not have the statutory advice in your own authority. If you do that, it adds to the delays in determinations. As we know, planning authorities are in danger of being sanctioned by the Government and having their ability to determine applications taken away if they do not meet the Government’s deadlines. It is out of their hands.

So what do we do? Do we pass an application that we think is dodgy but for which we do not have the evidence to turn down until we get the advice from the county or wherever, or do we risk being sanctioned and delay it? There is a serious issue here; it is not at all trivial.

The noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parks, raised another issue. In all the years that I chaired committees with development control powers—what used to be the planning sub-committees, then the area committees—the greatest anger among members of the public came from their belief that they had not been consulted properly. They would be concerned and very worried about the planning application, but they would become angry because they had not been consulted. That is the way it is. They would say, “The notice you put up was too small”; “It was across the other side of the field”; “The bull came and removed it”; “Why did my neighbour get a letter and we did not get a letter?”; “The article in the local newspaper came after the deadline for sending in objections”, and so on. I used to say to them, “For heaven’s sake, you have got five minutes to tell us why you are against this—use your five minutes. You are here. You knew it happened. The consultation worked”. They would say, “No—you did not do this and you did not do that”.

This is a very sensible proposal because one of the things that people get most upset about is when a consultation happens over Christmas or Easter. They sometimes even say, “It happened in June when I was away on holiday and I couldn’t do anything about it”. As an authority, we are flexible. If objections come in after the deadline but before the committee, they all get reported to the committee anyway—we are not stupid like that—and people can come to the committee. Even so, people get upset about this issue. I do not think it needs primary legislation, it just needs a change to either the development order or the advice and guidance to planning authorities. The Government ought to say to authorities “Do not include bank holidays or holiday periods”.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, has reminded me, as a member of the planning committee in Lewisham, that we rarely refuse applications —we always get advice on what we can or cannot do—but on a couple of occasions we have deferred applications on the basis that people have not been consulted properly. Sometimes the worst offender can be the council itself, if the housing department has not consulted properly. Some people come to the meetings and they are very cross because, as the noble Baroness said, the notice has gone through the wrong doors. People find out by rumour but those who should have been told have not been told at all. If that is proved to our committee, we will certainly defer a decision and allow a proper period for public consultation on the application.

Housing and Planning Bill

Debate between Lord Kennedy of Southwark and Lord Greaves

Thursday 17th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)]

I am a councillor in Lewisham and Crofton Park. At the moment we are in the process of setting up our own neighbourhood plan, which is very good and I welcome it. Equally, though, it has not answered all the problems. We have some challenges in our area, such as ensuring that there is proper retail provision. We have sites of multiple occupation with no building taking place, and so on. So the plan is all very good and I am supportive of it, but my noble friend has raised some genuine points.

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, I am trying to think what on earth has ever existed or exists now that is the answer to all the problems. There are people in the world who think they have an answer to all the problems but they are usually—I am trying to think of a word I can use in your Lordships’ House—on the extremist fringe of ideas.

I thank everyone who has taken part in this debate, which has been extremely interesting. I particularly thank my noble friend Lord Foster of Bath for all the work he did in getting some oomph behind neighbourhood planning when he was a Minister in the DCLG. I also thank my noble friend Lord Stunell, who is in his place but has not spoken today, who was closely involved in the promotion of the Localism Act in the first place. I am not saying that it was all their work and no one else’s, but from these Benches it is quite stimulating and daunting in different ways to have them sitting behind me, ready to shoot me down when I say things that are not quite right.

I was fascinated by what became at one stage a mini-debate about the future of local governance in the former urban district of Gosforth in the north of what is now the city of Newcastle. I have to say that the comments from the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, reminded me of debates in my own authority in Pendle perhaps 30 years ago, when we were looking hard at what had been five former urban districts and at whether they should have parish councils. They now have town councils. The arguments that the noble Lord is putting forward are very similar to those put forward by members of this party in Pendle 30 years ago. We set up the town councils in the former urban districts, with the support and assistance of referendums and local people, and they have been an astonishing success. I have to say that they are now one of the reasons why we are able to preserve some of our local services, which the borough council can no longer afford to run. So I say, “Good on you, Gosforth—get on with it”.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, said that there would always be tensions. Local decision-making, however democratic or political it is and whoever is making the decisions, is always full of all kinds of local tensions. That is what it is all about. No one believes that neighbourhood planning is some miracle cure and that it is a perfect system that will take away all the differences of opinion among residents and other people in different parts of an area. Clearly it is not, but it is a means of involving a lot more people in the debates, the arguments and the issues. We will not necessarily get any more agreement at the end, although this process does tend to achieve more agreement than exists if it is not carried out.

I have recently been involved in huge planning applications—at least, huge by our standards; one of them involves 500 houses—over which there have been enormous disputes. A system of neighbourhood planning in that part of the borough, which is now being set up as a consequence of the decisions that have been made, would have helped to achieve sensible, even if still quite angry, engagement between people, instead of people just standing a long way apart and shouting at each other.

The system is not perfect—but nothing is perfect, and it is better than what happens if it is not there. On these Benches we are absolutely certain that that is the case. The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, is right to say that the people who most strongly oppose a new housing development are always those who are in the previous housing development. But that is just life, and part of life’s tensions. We have to bring people in and get them to talk about it. I am grateful for the Minister’s comments and the helpful information that she has provided, and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

I thank the noble Viscount. For a moment, I thought that he was going to mention regulation again.

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, I am grateful to everybody who has taken part in this short debate. One of the differences in the system in new Section 27 of the 2004 Act compared with the earlier legislation is that it will allow the Secretary of State to intervene on particular documents or in specific ways, rather than on the plan as a whole. As the Minister said, it might be more targeted.

I have not been able to get my mind around whether that will make the position more or less alarming—better or worse. However, the experience of some of us of the planning system is that actions taken by the Secretary of State or on behalf of the Secretary of State are not necessarily quicker or more efficient than actions taken by local planning authorities. We only have to look at the whole system of appeals, which, in the case of major appeals on the evidence that I have, is threatening to be snarled up. That is an indication that the Secretary of State may not have a huge resource available to him to step in and do things. I will just leave that.

I am aware that the whole plan-making system, of which this is just a part, needs review and I have tabled an amendment relating to that, which we will come to later in Committee. I was sent a document this morning that was issued yesterday by the Local Plans Expert Group, Report to the Communities Secretary and to the Minister of Housing and Planning. I look forward to having time to have a good look at it, because I believe that what we are talking about now is a detail and the sooner the Government can look at the local planning system as a whole and at ways of making it more streamlined, more effective and more efficient, the better. Having said that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Housing and Planning Bill

Debate between Lord Kennedy of Southwark and Lord Greaves

Tuesday 9th February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, the amendments put forward give rise to a very simple, brutal question—I speak as somebody who is wrestling with trying to produce a council budget at the moment, in very difficult circumstances—and that is: how much is this going to cost local authorities? I have looked at the impact assessment, and basically it talks about the cost to the private housing sector—to the providers of private-landlord accommodation. Unless I have completely missed it, I cannot find any assessment of the cost to the local authorities, who will have the responsibility of doing all this. My first question is: have the Government made an assessment of this and, if so, will they tell us what it is?

The second thing I have been trying to apply my mind to is, in my own authority, how we will deal with this. The point about local authorities, of course, is that they are very different: there are large unitary counties, there are large metropolitan and other unitary urban authorities, and there are small districts. It is the housing authorities as a whole which will have to deal with this, including the small districts. The way the small districts may be able to cope is perhaps very different to that of a large authority that employs a lot more specialist staff, such as solicitors and property management people. I have, therefore, been trying to get my mind round how local authorities will actually make the decisions about applying to the tribunal for a banning order—who will make those decisions, how it will be done, how much it will cost, how much work will go into it—and dealing with appeals, because it is quite clear that there will be a lot of appeals, assuming that a lot of people go through the banning process.

Then there is the second decision. Apart from the people who have gone through the tribunal and automatically go on the database, there is a decision about whether to put the other people who have been convicted of banning offences on the database. How much time and resource will that decision take? Again, there is the question of appeals, which are never cheap for local authorities, and then there is the cost of maintaining the database itself: whether or not that is onerous depends on how many people there are on the database. My second question is really linked to how much the Government think this is going to cost local authorities—any answer to that must be based on an idea of how many cases there are going to be over the period of a year, or whatever it might be. Do the Government have any answer at all to those questions?

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, at the start of the first day of Committee, and my first contribution at that stage, I should have declared that I am an elected councillor of the London Borough of Lewisham.

I join other noble Lords in concern about the lack of regulations available for noble Lords to see. Why does the Minister think that it is acceptable to bring forward a Bill in such a sorry state? Does she accept that it is wholly inadequate to suggest that the Government will consult fully and lay regulations months after the Bill has become law?

On Second Reading, and subsequently, I and other noble Lords from these Benches have welcomed the banning order proposals in the Bill. They will provide, we hope, an effective additional tool for local housing authorities to use against rogue landlords and persons engaging in letting agency or property management work who think that they can rip off tenants and treat them badly with impunity. With an ever-increasing number of people forced into the private rented sector, it is important that there are proper safeguards. Peter Rachman became synonymous with the rogue landlords of the 1960s. We want to ensure that we do not have any modern-day Rachmans, or, if we do, that they are dealt with effectively.

I also see the proposals in this part of the Bill as a first step to dealing with the issues in the private rented sector that make life difficult for tenants living at the poorer end of the market. The ward that I represent on Lewisham Council is typical of those that the Bill is aimed at: we have very little local authority housing other than a successful housing co-op, and until recently an overwhelming number of people there were owner-occupiers. However, there has been an explosion in the private rented sector in the last 10 years, for a variety of reasons. Most landlords are very good, with anything from one to a few properties. They often get into the market as a landlord because they have fallen into negative equity, have looked to move on but have been unable to cover their capital outlay. Many of those coming to my surgeries are now private sector tenants, invariably young people, both singles and couples, who cannot get any social housing because they are not in a priority group, cannot go on the housing list, cannot afford to buy and are left to seek refuge in the private rented sector.

When I was a member of Southwark Council in the 1980s, we had properties deemed hard to let—that nobody wanted to live in—and the council was able to let those to single people and couples who would not otherwise qualify for social housing. That category no longer exists. The amendment proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, in this group, has identified what is a significant omission from the Bill. The amendment has the full support of noble Lords on these Benches. After we have taken action against the rogue landlords, what happens to their tenants? These will be the very people who have suffered at the hands of the rogue landlord in the first place. It is right that the amendment should be in the Bill and not left to regulations, advice notes or any other procedure that does not involve it being clear in the Bill itself. If the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford, does not accept the amendments today, I hope that she will at least reflect on this proposal and meet with colleagues from your Lordships’ House to discuss this matter before we get to Report.

We also support Amendment 7, in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, and the noble Lord, Lord Palmer of Childs Hill. Following an enforcement action resulting in a financial penalty, it must be right that the money should be retained by the local authority and not be lost to the Consolidated Fund or some other place where money from these penalties goes and never returns.

The remaining amendments in this group are government amendments. Amendments 3 and 8 appear to correct drafting errors and make matters clearer. Amendment 4, to which my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours referred, seeks to deal with the situation where a person convicted of an offence continues with the breach after conviction. I have an issue with this amendment. Does it go far enough when dealing with people who, at this stage, have no respect for the law, or where the tenants are again in a difficult situation? We may need to look at that further.

My noble friend Lord Beecham will ask more questions of the Minister when she moves her amendments. At that point, we may need to look at the issue further and bring an amendment back on Report.

Localism Bill

Debate between Lord Kennedy of Southwark and Lord Greaves

Monday 10th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, I thank the Government for listening to the debate on this matter in Committee and for coming forward with amendments which, by and large, are very sensible. I particularly appreciate their picking up the ancillary use point that I raised in an amendment, a great deal of which makes sense. Furthermore, I think that we all owe a debt to the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, for the hard work that he put into this part of the Bill—not least because it meant that we could leave it to him and concentrate on other parts of the Bill.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

My Lords, we have had an interesting debate at this late hour on this group of amendments. I can offer the Government some measure of support tonight, as there is lots to welcome in their proposals here, and they have clearly listened to the concerns expressed in the House.

The origin of some of the proposals can, of course, be found in the previous Administration. Amendment 201A, moved by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville, is not an amendment that we on these Benches can support, although his Amendment 202A , requiring the Secretary of State to publish criteria by which an asset must be assessed in order to be defined as being of community value, could be of some merit, as is the proposal from the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington.

Localism Bill

Debate between Lord Kennedy of Southwark and Lord Greaves

Wednesday 7th September 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greaves]

Yes, I accept that and I think the noble Lord is quite right. All I would say is that I would expect that most Members of Parliament are used to dealing with that kind of sensitive information, and if they are not, they are not fit to be Members of Parliament. I think also that there are councillors who are prepared to help and are experienced in dealing with that kind of information. I do not entirely take the view of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, that they have to be skilled in the processes of assessment, conciliation and so on. All they have really got to do is say, “You have a reasonable case. I will sign this and you can send it on”.

The objections to going to a councillor can be overstated. As the noble Lord said, the legislation states that you can go to any member of the housing authority, so you will have a choice of 40, 50 or 60 people to approach. I would have thought someone could be found who would pass it on, and not necessarily knowing all the details. Sometimes people come to me as a councillor and say, “I want to tell you all about this”. I say, “Look, I am not an expert in this. It seems to be very personal and I really do not want to know. What I will do is put you in touch with the people who can help you and with the authorities who might be able to sort it out”. So I think that this can be overstated.

Nevertheless, we are absolutely clear that we would like to support an amendment along the lines of that tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty. We have a compromise amendment in an attempt to help the Government to resolve this in a way that is not as damaging as perhaps it otherwise would be, and perhaps not very damaging at all. However, we would really like an assurance from my noble friend the Minister that between now and Third Reading she will think seriously about this so that it can be considered again at that stage, either through a government amendment along the lines of our amendment or perhaps something a bit better. That is the assurance we are looking for and I hope that she will be able to give it. I should say that if we get it, I will not move my amendments when we get to them later on.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

My Lords, I am pleased to support my noble friend Lady Hayter of Kentish Town in the amendment she has moved in respect of the Housing Ombudsman. I have known my noble friend for many years and we have worked together on numerous matters. As usual, she has hit the nail on the head, identified the problem and provided us with a sensible and reasoned solution which I think should command widespread support across the House. The Housing Ombudsman provides a free, independent and impartial service to the tenants of social housing providers. It is a respected organisation which provides resolutions for problems as well as valuable advice and guidance to the providers of social housing on how to get it right by developing effective complaints procedures.

As noble Lords are aware, tenants currently have the right to complain to and deal directly with the Housing Ombudsman where a complaint has not been resolved to their satisfaction. The Government propose to take away a tenant’s right to make a direct complaint to the Housing Ombudsman. That is just wrong. It serves no purpose other than making matters more complicated for everyone concerned, and especially for tenants, who will feel that they have already suffered an injustice and are seeking independent redress for their complaint. If this amendment is not accepted, as we have heard today, tenants will in future have to go through their local Member of Parliament, a local councillor or a tenants’ panel. Again, that is wrong. If the tenant wants their MP or local councillor to be fully involved and to make the complaint or support them, that is absolutely fine. I would welcome that. But to take away an individual’s choice in this matter is bizarre in the extreme. Can the Minister tell the House why the Government think that this is the right approach? Also, what happens if the local MP or councillor refuses to take the matter to the Housing Ombudsman? Where can the tenant go then?

There is also a practicality issue in that, in more cases than not, the complaints the Housing Ombudsman deals with are complex issues, often evolving over many months or years. Local MPs or councillors, who are working hard for their constituents, may not have the capacity in their offices or the town hall to deal with these complex matters as effectively as the ombudsman could. No criticism of anyone is intended—it is just an observation. In conclusion, I congratulate my noble friend on bringing this matter forward and other noble Lords who have spoken in support of this amendment, and I ask the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, to think again and accept my noble friend’s proposal.