Lord Whitty
Main Page: Lord Whitty (Labour - Life peer)
Lord Whitty
My Lords, I join the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Best, on presenting the Bill in this House in a very clear and cogent way. I also congratulate Peter Aldous and all those, such as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, himself and, above all, the noble Lord, Lord Graham of Edmonton, who have pursued this cause for many years.
The Bill will give park home owners—the 160,000 people who live in park homes—greater benefits and security. We have to remember that most of these home owners are elderly. The majority are over 60 and probably about 25% are over 75. I remind your Lordships that this is roughly the same demographic as the membership of the House of Lords. Therefore, we should particularly empathise with them. In the nature of things, they are in a difficult balance of power situation with the site owner and site manager, particularly on an individual basis, and are open to potential exploitation and abuse. As the noble Lord, Lord Cormack said, it is wrong that the law treats these people so much less favourably than other home owners and leaseholders. This Bill goes some way to rectify that.
We need to recognise that there are hundreds of good, effective, decent site owners and site managers around the country, but we also have to recognise that there is a minority of unscrupulous site owners. People such as the noble Lords, Lord Cormack and Lord Graham, who have been involved in this matter for some time, say that that minority is increasing and has recently increased significantly. The organisations involved in this area even give them the acronym USOs to try to define them.
There have been several reports on this issue. The report of the CLG Select Committee in another place has been cited, as has the TSI report. My interest in this matter was brought about by the reports produced by Consumer Focus, with which I was formerly connected, and Consumer Focus Wales. Incidentally, a parallel Bill is going through the Welsh Assembly. Those reports drew attention to the situation in which these home owners find themselves, which comprises a background of a mishmash of legislative and regulatory measures and differing and often inconsistent application and enforcement by different local authorities. The report that applies to England identifies how widespread these difficulties are and states that roughly 25% of all park home owners had experienced severe problems in relation to resale and an even higher proportion had concerns about safety, maintenance, security and the way in which they were treated by site owners.
I give just one example of the way in which site owners can hugely exploit park home owners and their beneficiaries when a sale occurs. A park home owner in east Sussex used his life savings to buy his home for £72,000. He then spent the rest of his savings on improving that home. When he died only four years later, he left his home to his two daughters, who wished to sell it. However, before they put it up for sale, the site owner approached them and said that he would take it away for them for £1,000. Less resilient inheritors might not have understood the position and gone along with that. However, the man’s daughters put the home on the market, initially for £60,000, as the market had obviously gone down in the interim, and were prepared to sell for £50,000. But even at that point when they had a buyer, the site owner stepped in, spoke directly to the buyer, told him that the recently renovated home was subject to dilapidation and was waterlogged, which was untrue, and that he would be foolish to pursue the sale. He clearly did that to a number of potential buyers but eventually one came forward and the home was sold several months later for £37,000, of which the site owner received 10%. Therefore, the home was sold for significantly less than half the purchase price that had been paid four years previously. That is a typical case, but there are worse examples where sales do not go ahead at all and where the site owner effectively obtains the home for a mere pittance for his own use and onward sale.
Some of these abuses, as the noble Lord, Lord Best, spelt out, will be dealt with by the Bill. Clauses 1 to 4 will improve the licensing system. It is important that local authorities take this seriously, as the noble Lord, Lord Best, said. Clause 10 will deal with a site owner’s ability to control and intimidate and Clause 12 will deal with harassment. Other clauses are equally important, such as Clause 9, which deals with site rules. The ability of local authorities to intervene and require a site to be improved is also important.
However, probably the most important clause—and one which could probably do with improvement, although we may not be able to do so within the timetable of this House—is Clause 8, which deals with the requirement to be a fit and proper person. The fact that this is going to have to be turned into reality by secondary legislation—and not immediate secondary legislation either—is a bit of a weakness in the Bill. Will there be an opportunity at some point for the Secretary of State to exclude the quasi-criminal elements that the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, described, and to improve the general standard of people who take on the ownership and management of sites? That will involve a test of competence as well as of criminality.
As I said, there are areas of the Bill which could be improved. I hope that the Minister will be able to say that her department will come forward with secondary legislation to turn those improvements into reality as soon as possible, as opposed to the timetable that has previously been indicated. There are other improvements that we could argue for. We could probably have done more about improving the RTP procedures, which many homeowners have found rather difficult. The noble Lord, Lord Best, also referred to the on-sale of water, gas and electricity, where there have been fairly horrendous stories, including in relation to LPG, and the applicability of energy-efficiency measures to mobile homes. However, we cannot have everything in a Private Member’s Bill and there may be other means of delivering some of those things.
For the moment, this is a good day. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Best, and all who have worked to get us this far, and I hope that the Government and the House will give the Bill good speed.