Deregulation Bill

Lord Tope Excerpts

Thursday 30th October 2014 Grand Committee

I hope that the Minister will be able to give reassurances, because good progress has been made in achieving higher standards and setting them out clearly, by getting rid of a plethora of currently very varied standards. However, if this is a dumbing-down and it will be possible to wriggle out of the requirement which I know many local authorities want to put in place—that in all cases one can move to the middle tier of level 2 for accessibility—then it will have all been for nothing. This important exercise will not have been worth while.

[Lord Tope (LD)]

My Lords, I support with enthusiasm the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Best, to which I have added my name. He has moved his amendment with his customary thoroughness, leaving little more to be said, but I look forward very much to hearing the reassurances that I am sure the Minister will give us in a few moments.

The noble Lord, Lord Best, rightly stressed the importance of standards: in this case, the importance of maintaining the good work that has been done in many areas, not least in London, in building to lifetime homes standards. I am sure that the Minister will tell us that it is not the intention—it would be remarkable if he told us that it was—to reduce these standards. What I want is reassurance on how confident he is that there will not be unintended consequences. That is the fear not just from Leonard Cheshire Disability, which the noble Lord, Lord Best, mentioned and from which we have had some briefing, but from other organisations for which this is important.

It has been a long and quite a hard battle at times for local authorities and others to improve standards from the periods in the 1960s and 1970s when they virtually disappeared altogether. There is much greater recognition now of the importance of designing for accessibility for the future as well as the present. We are nowhere near meeting the demand that already exists, never mind the future demand that the noble Lord, Lord Best, apparently envisages for himself and for the rest of us. If the unintended consequence of subsection (4) of Clause 32 is such as to weaken or even remove that drive, I hope that the Government will consider further and perhaps feel that that subsection is not necessary to that clause. I hope that the Minister can reassure us that there will not be any unintended consequences and, not least, that there are no intended consequences.

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[Lord Tope]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, who tabled his amendments yesterday, thereby giving him the onerous task of explaining what this debate is all about.

During this Grand Committee, I have heard from London Councils that, while it regards the noble Lord’s amendments as moving in the right direction, it still prefers to go for the deletion of the clause as a whole. My noble friend Lord Clement-Jones—who unfortunately is in China on business today, leaving the task to me—and I have therefore given notice of our intention to oppose the clause standing part so as to enable a full and proper debate on this issue. As the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, rightly said, the issue is contentious—I think that he used that word. It is certainly controversial in London, where it is a growing issue.

We have received objections from London Councils. The Local Government Association, of which, I should perhaps mention, I am a vice-president, rightly sees this as a London issue, as it is relevant to the Greater London powers Act, and is therefore leaving it with London Councils. We have received representations from Westminster City Council, which understandably is probably the local authority in London most affected by these issues—although it is by no means the only one—from the Covent Garden Community Association, the British Hospitality Association, the Bed and Breakfast Association, Whitbread, which runs Premier Inn and Costa coffee, and a number of individuals who are personally affected.

That leads me to ask the Minister the following. Specifically, whom did the Government consult before deciding to insert this clause? When did they do that consultation? What was the response and has it been published? It may well be that I have missed it. Given the body of opinion that is outright opposed to this clause, one wonders what led the Government to go along with it. I should say, and will say again later, that since tabling what is effectively our intention to delete the clause we have received a number of representations which are not wholly in support of the clause but perhaps rather more positive towards it. I will try to deal with those as well, because we want to have a full debate on the issue.

It is easy to think that this is a provision that was put into a 1973 Act—coincidentally, that happened to be my one year as a London MP, so I remember these things reasonably well—and that since then, times have changed. Yes, of course they have. The internet has been invented and businesses are now doing a very good job with something that could not have existed then. However, something else has changed since 1973: the housing crisis in London is now even worse than it was at that time. I looked at the Explanatory Notes to understand more fully the Government’s thinking on this. Paragraph 193 states:

“The purpose behind the provision”—

that is, the original 1973 provision—

“was to protect London’s existing housing supply, for the benefit of permanent residents, by giving London boroughs greater and easier means of planning control to prevent the conversion of family homes into short term lets”.

The only thing that has changed since is that that is even more necessary now than it was then. Therefore, I contend that the purpose is still there, although the means of achieving it is open to debate.

London Councils, which represents all 32 London boroughs and the City of London, tells us that Westminster City Council has estimated that 3,000 properties in its borough are being used for short-term accommodation. In Camden, 923 flats are being offered by just one short-term let business, a rise of 37% in just over three months. On that scale, it is not simply people who want to offer their home for someone to live in while they go away, perhaps for a long holiday, in order to help finance that holiday. This is a business.