Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Lord Shipley and Lord Campbell-Savours
Lord Campbell-Savours
My Lords, I am very worried about this amendment and wish to speak briefly to it. I foresee some junior employee in one of these private companies sitting there with, on his or her desk, the most personal information about individual council tenants and their incomes. I find that utterly deplorable. I am astonished that Conservative Members of this House and the other place did not object to this. Historically, certainly when I was in the Commons, whenever there was an argument about the revealing by the Inland Revenue, as it was at the time, of information outside the government department, there was always a storm of protest. But people seem to presume that this is acceptable on this occasion. I wait to hear the Conservative Members of this House and government supporters challenge all the implications that lie behind this clause.
This is wrong. I would also like to know the detail. Will there be a regulation—I am sorry to have to ask for a regulation now—which defines precisely the nature of the details to be provided by HMRC? Where subsection (2)(d) refers to,
“a body with which the Secretary of State has made arrangements for the passing of information between HMRC and local housing authorities”,
are those bodies to be defined somewhere? We presume that they will be private companies, but are there other organisations which have not been mentioned which we might wish to consider when we come to Report?
Lord Shipley (LD)
My Lords, my name is attached to Amendment 80A, but I fully subscribe to the points that have been made so far about Amendment 80. A range of issues is involved and the Government would do well to think very carefully about that. I will come back to that in a moment.
On the assumption that HMRC has a role, Amendment 80A simply says that,
“an arms-length management organisation, tenant management organisation or local housing company wholly owned by its local authority which is managing social housing”
should also be counted in terms of being bodies which can receive information from HMRC. It is not clear in the Bill so far that that is the case. I suspect that is an oversight, but I look forward to the Minister’s confirmation that that indeed is the case.
There is, however, a broader issue about the role of HMRC. There is the role of third parties getting access to private information and the control of that. That has been very well put by noble Lords in this grouping so far. However, there is another one which I think has to be looked at very carefully. That is how the information flows from HMRC in the first place, the reason being that with tax returns, for example, it may be straightforward for many individuals but for some, perhaps self-employed people, it may not be, and people have to file tax returns months after the tax year, so there could be significant levels of fluctuation in people’s income.
We have heard all the arguments around this, of peaks and troughs during the year and so on. A lot of thought needs to be given to this issue about the security of data and the bureaucracy that is being created. We heard in the last group about reimbursement of costs to local authorities for the work they have to undertake. Of course, there are ways of getting round this—a number have been suggested. I hope the Minister will take very seriously the fact that we do not want to create an enormous bureaucratic structure to deal with this when there are simpler methods to achieve the objective.
Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Lord Shipley and Lord Campbell-Savours
Lord Shipley (LD)
My Lords, I am a signatory to Amendment 46. I want to refer to the report from Generation Rent, which was published earlier this week and found that public subsidies proposed by the Government will help comparatively few people. That is because very few people in the private rented sector will be able to benefit from the scheme, and the 200,000 people who stand to benefit could receive a huge dividend if they sell up after the five-year discount period expires, with the potential for six-figure profits individually. We have heard a great deal about this but these are very large sums of money.
The consequence is that the scheme will increase inequalities between those who own property and those who do not, and there will be a lack of any sense of fairness between those who can afford a subsidised starter home and those who cannot, driving social inequalities wider and deeper. I wonder whether that is really what the Government want to achieve.
I should like to ask the Minister whether the Government are committed to the statement in the Conservative election manifesto that starter homes will be exclusively for first-time buyers. The point is that when the homes are sold on after five years or later, there is no guarantee from the Government that they will be bought by first-time buyers. So these are starter homes for first-time buyers but theoretically only for five years; after that, the benefit that had accrued from defining them as homes for first-time buyers will be lost.
I am still puzzled by the Minister’s statement before the lunch break to the effect that it may well be possible that starter homes will be sold as second homes. I keep thinking about those parts of the country that are short of housing and where starter homes may be important in providing additional opportunities for people. The prospect that they may be sold and lost to the next generation who could take up starter homes I find particularly disturbing.
We need clarity from the Minister. If housing affordability fails to improve, future first-time buyers will find it very difficult to get on to the housing ladder, so having a discount which carried on in perpetuity would help the Government to keep their promise.
Lord Campbell-Savours
I am sorry to intervene but I cannot understand how this would work. I am not trying to be critical in any way; I only want to know how it would work. Can the noble Lord give us an example of a property purchased at a discount under this scheme? What would happen at its first sale? How would the price be determined? What would be the position of the estate agent selling the property? Would a valuer be involved? I am trying to understand the mechanism here. If it worked then it would be reasonable to consider it but, like the noble Lord, Lord Horam, I cannot see any mechanism that would make it work. Can he please explain?
Lord Shipley
I agree with the noble Lord. I am as concerned as he is about these matters. Of course, I had assumed that there would be a role for the valuation system. There may be a role for local authorities, or there may be a role for both. That system exists in relation to council tax valuation, for example, but it seems to me that to prevent market abuse—the noble Lord, absolutely rightly, discussed that before the lunch break—we have to be clear about this, otherwise there could be a problem with how properties are valued. For that reason, in my view there has to be an independent valuer.
This would operate in exactly the same way if there were a taper, going down 1% a year over 20 years, or if the 20% discount applied in perpetuity, but there are ways in which that can be done by using local government and the valuation system. I do not wish to say much more. In this group—