Housing and Planning Bill

Lord Kerslake Excerpts

Monday 18th April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I very much agree with the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley. Obviously, I welcome what my noble friend said: that there will be a good amount of time given to consider this rather new proposal. I understand the rationale in terms of the audit rules. However, I would like to make three points, one of which the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, has anticipated. It surely cannot be the case that a member of a local authority should be excluded by that from using his or her experience in the service of housing interests—although, clearly, under subsection (1)(b) of the proposed new clause they would not be able to exercise any voting right. Recent legislation dashed local authority members’ hopes when they were told that they were not allowed to have pensions any more because they were not employees of local authorities. In those circumstances, clearly they are not employees of the local authority. Therefore, I do not think that that should be used to exclude them from potential membership where that is judged useful by the housing association.

My second point is on the wording, which, again, is relatively new to all of us, and therefore I have not been able to take advice from my office, which I will when I have time. Subsection (5) of the proposed new clause states that appointing, in relation to an officer,

“includes nominating or otherwise influencing the selection of the officer”.

Local authorities that are responsible for housing individuals, and even those authorities that are not directly housing authorities, have a public responsibility to house effectively. In the course of that experience they will accumulate a great deal of knowledge about the local housing market, the capacity of individuals and, in some respects, the record of individuals. That wording—

“otherwise influencing the selection of the officer”—

could exclude the capacity of the local authority to offer advice on whether a person who has been put forward is an appropriate or effective person to carry out these very important functions.

That relates to my final point: accountability. A great deal in the Bill is about putting housing associations on one pedestal and local authorities and others on another. There has to be some recognition that the housing function is an important one for which local authorities have responsibility. I do not happen to think that putting councillors on boards is necessarily the best way of doing it. Indeed, I agreed to the removal of councillors from the board of our own major housing association. However, as we tease out what these proposals mean, particularly where there is a move from the local authority sector to the housing association sector, I hope we will not lose some thought as to the way in which relationships between housing associations and local authorities are sustained, and in which there is an element of mutual accountability between the two. Clearly, if this goes through, that may not be by appointment, but there must be some consideration of that point, in my submission.

[Lord Kerslake (CB)]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly in support of the amendment and in doing so repeat my interests as chair of Peabody and president of the LGA.

I am a passionate advocate of close links between housing associations and local authorities. There is a huge amount of close working that they can and should do together, not just on housing but on issues to do with employment and social care. I also agree with the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, about the need for housing associations to be open to review and scrutiny, and for debate with local authorities about what they are doing in their local area.

As I understand it, this is a very specific issue that relates to the classification of housing associations and how we move from the current—I think, by common consent—unsatisfactory position whereby they are classified as public bodies to one where they return to being classified as private bodies. The issue here is about nomination and therefore the implication of some level of control, rather than participation that might come through the normal routes of filling board membership of housing associations. Therefore, it is not an issue that should in any way prohibit housing associations having local authority members or officials on their boards, but the process by which they become board members would be more in line with those processes for other board members. It is unfortunate that the measure has come this late, but I think that it is an inevitable consequence of the negotiations that are going on with the ONS and it is the direction of travel we need to go in.

[Lord Porter of Spalding (Con)]

My Lords, perhaps I may seek clarification that we are talking only about nominations to boards of RSLs and not nomination rights over where the tenants who occupy their homes come from. All those homes that were transferred under LSVT were transferred on the basis that the host council which decided to transfer would maintain its nomination rights. I appreciate that the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, is slightly conflicted by having to take an LGA position and an RSL position which are completely opposed to one another on this issue, but sometimes we all have to be Janus-headed.

My concern is not about who sits on the boards, because I think the RSL experiment has failed and I am not sure how many councils would want to be associated with it, but about the loss of nomination rights. Those LSVT units were all taken out of council control; they are not private sector homes—or they were not when they left. The Labour Government who did the transfers assured everybody that they were not being transferred to the private sector. If we are now saying that they are, we must at least honour the agreements under which they transferred. While I will support the Government on this, because it is not an issue I would want to die in a ditch over, I think that it is a lost opportunity. We should take all social housing off the public sector debt book so that we can borrow money against it to provide the homes that we badly need. There are 4 million under-sweated assets out there and we should all be able to do the same thing.

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Moved by

[Lord Kerslake (CB)]

79: Clause 113, leave out Clause 113

[Lord Kerslake (CB)]

My Lords, the purpose of this amendment is to remove from the Bill the provision for mandatory fixed-term tenancies. I understand that later on in this debate we will get a constructive and helpful response from Ministers that I hope will go some considerable way to addressing the concerns I have about this issue. I am extremely grateful for that: it is another example of a Minister listening and responding to the issues we have raised.

Nevertheless, it is worth explaining why the amendment is so important and what it goes to the heart of. It effectively addresses the issue of whether we see council properties as genuine homes or as houses or even a temporary welfare provision, because that is the direction of travel that this policy takes us in. In the previous debate about the so-called pay-to-stay provisions, I used an example and I will use another to illustrate my point. This one is a little closer to home and involves my wife.

My wife lived until the age of five in rented rooms. It is important to say “rented rooms” because they were not a house or a flat. They were rooms in a house. There were two rooms to be precise. One was the living room and the other was the bedroom, which she shared with her parents. The other facilities—the bathroom, kitchen and so forth—were all shared. At the age of five, she moved into a three-bedroom council property. She still remembers that move, less because of the personal impact on her—she was too young to know—and more because of the incredible excitement of her parents. For the first time they had a permanent dwelling that met their needs. She lived in Nottingham. Why was it possible for her to move into that home? The answer is that this was 1962 and Nottingham had embarked on a massive council property construction programme. Her family was one of the lucky ones who moved into that property.

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[Lord Kerslake]

My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, I would like to understand what “in certain circumstances” might mean. I look forward to that conversation between now and Third Reading. That said, I am grateful for the movement that has been made.

I am also grateful for noble Lords’ contributions to this debate. The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, spoke powerfully about domestic violence issues, which must be at the front of our minds. The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, spoke—as I did—about the importance of seeing this as an issue about people’s homes, not simply housing units. That is at the core of this debate. The noble Lord, Lord Young, spoke about re-lets. I entirely agree about the importance of increasing re-lets but disagree about the method. My personal view is that the way to increase re-lets is to increase the supply of new social rented properties and ensure that we have a positive offer to make to those who might want to downsize their property, not by coercing them and creating greater uncertainty. The noble Lord, Lord O’Shaughnessy, spoke about the so-called insider/outsider problem and the voice of those inside in a social rented property being less than those outside aspiring to get a social rented property. Anybody who has worked in a local authority or been a councillor has no doubt about the voice of the outsiders—those who are homeless—as it is with them every single day of the week. Finally, the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, spoke about the research. I commend this research to every Member of this House because it gives a very clear understanding of the practical impact of this policy, which creates uncertainty and not value in the way that was originally envisaged.

I am grateful that we have seen movement on this issue and look forward to the conversations between now and Third Reading. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 79 withdrawn.