Tenant Fees Bill (First sitting)

Sarah Jones Excerpts

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 5th June 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Maria Caulfield]

Q So is there a need to have default fees within this Bill?

Richard Lambert: I think there is.

David Smith: Landlords are always entitled to recover their costs from a tenant’s breach of contract. A default fee is actually where the parties pre-agree what the level of that fee should be, creating a degree of certainty between them so that tenants are going to know that they will have to pay this amount and this amount only, whatever the actual cost of, say, a locksmith. There is a benefit to having a fixed tariff of fees for particular contractual breaches. It is a commonly used mechanism across a wide range of contracts.

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

Q May I just ask for information? Obviously we accept that the majority of landlords are good landlords and do the right thing. You talk about exploitation, variation and some egregious levels of charging, and some exploitation of people. Would you describe what evidence there is as to the numbers of good agents versus bad agents, and good landlords versus bad landlords? We talk about the bogus ones who are charging people but is there evidence of the number, or of where they tend to be? Do they tend to be the bigger ones or smaller ones? Are they in cities or in rural areas? What do we know?

Richard Lambert: It is almost impossible to identify that. Those kinds of landlords and agents do not self-identify, by definition. Somebody once said to me, “The worst tenants tend to gravitate towards the worst landlords.” Often, those kinds of landlords will be housing people with chaotic and vulnerable lives who find it difficult to go anywhere else, or people who may be on the verges of criminality. Quite often, you find that the actual accommodation provision is a sideline of a wider organised criminal activity, and it is a part of something that will involve people trafficking, prostitution, drugs, money laundering and so on. The letting of the property is simply a factor: they need somewhere to house the people.

David Smith: The only way to clarify that would be to look at the number of landlords prosecuted as a percentage of the overall number of landlords. However, the problem with that as a measure is that enforcement is so poor.

[Sarah Jones]

Q Yes. On the agent side, you said you could walk down a street and point the local authority to all the agents who are not displaying their fees at the right level. Do you have any sense of where and who those agents are? Are there any numbers to any of these assertions?

David Smith: Again, you have to distinguish between walking down the street and finding technical breaches of the Consumer Rights Act 2015, for which you could probably find 15-odd per cent of agents, depending on where you are, and agents who wilfully go out to break the law across a wide sweep of things. There are aspects on which some agents are just not very good at keeping up with what is, at the moment, a pretty fast-moving legislative picture.

[Sarah Jones]

Q My question is whether there are any numbers on any of that, or whether it is all just speculation.

Richard Lambert: The closest I can get is to flip the question around. We have regularly done tenant surveys over the past five years, and one question we ask is whether they have ever dealt with a rogue landlord, by which we mean someone who engages in criminal activity. The answer pretty consistently comes back as somewhere between 12% and 16% of tenants having at any time during their renting lives dealt with someone who they thought was acting in a criminal manner.

We always ask after that what the landlord was doing that made the tenants think that. Some of the stories we have heard shocked us, and we are used to hearing some real horror stories about landlords. For others it is low level management problems, such as not repainting a ceiling after a leak or taking three days to get a plumber when the boiler packed up. What people actually understand as criminal activity on the part of a landlord—

[Sarah Jones]

Might vary.

Richard Lambert: Might vary and indeed might not be accurate.

[Sarah Jones]

Q I have two other quick questions, if that is okay, Mr Bone. We have talked a lot about enforcement. Can you describe your ideal enforcement regime that would enable the Bill to be implemented?

David Smith: I would prefer a two-track option with a direct mechanism for tenants to enforce rights themselves, with local authority back-up. I am aware that Ms Onn has tabled an amendment that would allow tenants to enforce in a similar way to tenancy deposit protection. I am not sure I necessarily agree with the three-times-amount penalty, but there is certainly a logic in allowing tenants to have direct enforcement of their rights. That clearly makes sense and would certainly help in potential situations where a local authority is not adequately resourced or is unwilling to carry out enforcement activity itself.

[Sarah Jones]

Q In terms of local authorities, what kind of enforcement do we need there? We talked earlier about needing more resources. What else do we need?

David Smith: It is not just about more resources. The RLA has consistently asked not just for resources, but for a fixed, clear, repeatable sum of money, year on year, that allows a genuine enforcement structure to be built. That is not just little bits of money left over at the end of the year in the budget of the Department for Communities and Local Government, as it was, but an actual fixed sum of money, so that—to flip it around—local authorities can have a clear and understandable plan to execute enforcement, but they need repeatable money that goes on for five years.

Richard Lambert: We would like the Ministry to make it clear to local authorities that enforcement is a priority and should be considered a priority within their budget-setting, and to argue to the Treasury that the resources for enforcement should be enabled through the support grant that goes to local authorities and that local authorities should have the wherewithal that they need. If this is as important as the debate seems to suggest it is—we would say that it is—they need the resources to actually make that happen.

David Smith: A great deal of enforcement interest is targeted towards things that appear to be important because they make the press. They are important issues, but bad housing wrecks lives again and again, every day, because tenants go home to it every day. I do not think it gets the interest and support it needs in that regard.

[Sarah Jones]

Q I completely agree. On the six-week cap on deposits, people have suggested that the majority of landlords charge four weeks’ rent, and that if this piece of legislation goes through as it is, they would automatically put it up to six weeks. What is your view on that?

Richard Lambert: I would say that we are ambivalent. It is true that if you impose a cap, there is always a tendency within the market to move toward the maximum of the cap. Having said that, certainly for the last five, six or seven years the advice that our advice line gives landlords has been, “If you are going to charge a deposit, charge six weeks, because what you want to do is to detach the sense that the deposit is equivalent to a month’s rent, so that the tenant does not get into the mindset that, ‘I can leave the tenancy early; the landlord’s got the last month’s rent in the deposit,’ so the tenancy does not end correctly.” Even so, the vast majority of people still charge one month’s rent, with some flexibility where they need to add some compensation for a tenant’s additional risk, as was described by my predecessors.

David Smith: We find that a lot of our members are charging six weeks for very much the same reasons that Richard has laid out, and that would be our advice to our members. We are concerned that by putting on a six-week cap, you will find that a lot of tenants with pets simply will not get property.

[Sarah Jones]

Q The question is whether people who are on four will put it up to six when this legislation is passed.

David Smith: That is possible, but I do not think a lot of landlords will, because why bother? Why go through the effort? Our bigger concern is that we surveyed some of our landlords towards the end of last year and around 50% of them said that they simply would not rent to tenants with pets if the deposit was capped in a way that they did not feel would allow them to recover the potential cost of that.

[The Chair]

Thank you. I am going to move to Richard Graham very briefly, and then I want the Minister to have some fun.

Tenant Fees Bill

Sarah Jones Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 21st May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

This has been an important debate, which has seen excellent contributions from across the House. I want to highlight in particular those made by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) as Chair of the Select Committee and my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff Central (Jo Stevens), who painted such a powerful picture of a student city and the arbitrary and unjustifiable fees to which those students are subjected.

As has already been said, it is always flattering for the Opposition when a Government steal our good ideas, but the serious point that all of us on the Opposition Benches want to make tonight is that we welcome the Bill, we welcome its intent and we want to work with the Government to get it right. Introducing an outright ban on up-front letting fees is absolutely right and, as the hon. Member for Carlisle (John Stevenson) said, it is right and proper that the Government should intervene.

As we know, the Bill has been some time coming. The Government voted down a private Member’s Bill on this topic in 2013. As my hon. Friend the Member for Reading East (Matt Rodda) said, the proposals to ban letting fees were put to the House in 2014 and the Conservative party, including the Prime Minister, voted them down. In 2016, my constituency predecessor and then Housing Minister dismissed this policy as a bad idea, just eight weeks before his Government briefed the policy as part of their autumn statement. That is all in the past, however, and we are delighted we won the argument in the end.

We welcome the Bill, but we think it could go further and give private renters the rights they need. The Government have backtracked on their original plans to cap deposits at rates tenants want. They have put a major loophole in the Bill for a minority of unscrupulous landlords to exploit, they have kept costs for holding deposits at an unreasonable level and they have passed potentially high fees beyond year one for enforcing the Bill on to local councils.

It is right that we challenge the Government to go further, while welcoming the Bill’s overall aims. As the hon. Member for Rugby (Mark Pawsey) said, 21% of the market is now privately rented. It is no longer just young single people and students: England’s private rented sector is home to 1.6 million families with children. Average rents are now almost £1,500 a year higher than they were in 2010. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (Dr Williams) said, there is a link between paying more than a third of income on rent and one’s mental health. As my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) said, in her constituency people are increasingly fearful of the private rented sector, if they are able to access it at all. The hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) and my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle) painted a picture of the wider reforms that are needed if we are to really tackle the private rented sector. There is certainly much more to be done, but we welcome the Bill.

I want to press the Minister on a few small points. Security deposits are a barrier to entry for many people trying to access the private rented sector. The proposal to cap deposits is welcome and a long overdue admission by the Government that the current market price is just too high. The Department’s own consultation found that more than nine out of 10 tenants want to see a cap, but we do not believe that the proposals in their current form are fit for purpose, because the cap is above what the market has already settled on and will not make any difference to the majority of tenants. Shelter’s most recent private landlord survey found that 55% of landlords ask for four weeks’ rent as a deposit, while only 6% ask for more than six weeks.

Citizens Advice also found that the most common amount is four weeks. It argues that a six-week cap will just help 8% of private renters. The Government’s own consultation on the policy found that two thirds of tenants wanted a cap of four weeks or less. Instead of listening to tenants and experts, the Government have risked making a deposit of six weeks’ rent the norm, rather than the maximum. This is a particular concern in high-cost areas such as London, where a six weeks’ rent deposit will see tenants paying £2,000 based on medium rents.

The Mayor of London is calling for a three-week cap. Experts such as Shelter and Citizens Advice are saying it should be no higher than four weeks. As set out by the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee is calling for a five-week cap. Clearly, there are some different views. It is a shame that the Government have bowed to pressure from trade associations and backtracked on their original plans to cap deposits at four weeks’ rent. I really hope the Minister will be open to discussing this in more detail in Committee. We on the Labour Benches will thank the Government for that if they do so.

On default fees, although the majority of landlords and many agencies operate fairly and responsibly, excessive fees imposed on tenants for minuscule breaches are still far too common. Some examples highlighted by Shelter include: a £40 administration fee for every phone call or letter to chase overdue rent; a £40 charge for a late rent payment; and mystery shopper evidence that appears to show agents making up fees for things on the spot. The Government have allowed a potentially serious loophole in the Bill by not banning default fees.

There are several issues that we do not have time to go into tonight, but there are big question marks over the effectiveness of statutory guidance in such areas. In the energy sector, the continued use of back-billing by companies in defiance of Ofgem’s guidance meant a licence requirement was eventually needed.

It is important that we get this right and do not leave a loophole for unscrupulous landlords and letting agents at the heart of the Bill. As the hon. Member for Lanark and Hamilton East (Angela Crawley) said, the lettings industry admitted in evidence to the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee that some agents may seek to charge disproportionate default fees in order to recoup revenue that is lost as a result of the legislation.

Turning to the enforcement duties in clauses 6 to 8, as with any legislation of this sort, effective enforcement is key to its success. As we have heard today, the suggestion that the Bill should be completely funded through civil penalties jeopardises its chances of working effectively. Serious concerns have been raised about the ability of trading standards to enforce the measures properly, as no extra funding is earmarked beyond year one for enforcement—of course, we very much welcome the announcement of £500,000 in Government support in year one. Trading standards are under-resourced and overstretched to an unprecedented degree, and therefore, this proposal seems misguided. I hope that the Minister can offer us something during the Bill Committee to deal with that issue.

In conclusion, unlike other sectors in which consumers can expect certain standards with clear redress, repair and replace provisions, in practice they have fewer consumer rights in renting a family home than they do in buying a fridge-freezer. Today’s Bill is a step in the right direction, but it is not yet perfect. Although it will give comfort to renters, it will not tackle their wider problems. The Conservatives have so far turned a blind eye to the pressures that England’s rapidly growing number of private renters are facing. We hope that the new Secretary of State will continue on his course of coming in and changing things that are not right and will work with us to make the Bill work. My hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn) called for a gold standard for renters and landlords and for us to take the Bill from good to great. I am sure that that is something the Government would support.

Grenfell Tower

Sarah Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 16th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

I am sorry that our debate has been cut short by the statement earlier, so Members did not get to speak for the length of time they wanted and our response has to be so short.

A little under a year ago, when we met in this place after the worst fire for over a century, Mr Speaker said:

“There will be no more tragic matter treated of in this House in this Parliament than that which is before us now”.—[Official Report, 26 June 2017; Vol. 626, c. 352.]

Time does not diminish the tragedy for those who lost their loved ones, but the time that has passed should have helped us to do right by those people and to do more to ensure that this does not happen again. As so many powerful and reflective contributions today and in Westminster Hall earlier this week have told us, the Government’s response on every point and at every turn has not been what it should it have been. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) so powerfully said, this has been “state failure”. The Secretary of State spoke with compassion in his wide-ranging speech and struck a different tone by accepting his Government’s failings, but he did not give us the commitments and answers that we and many watching this debate wanted to hear.

Eleven months ago, the Government promised that all survivors of the Grenfell Tower fire would be permanently rehoused within one year. As my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova) said, two thirds of survivors are still in hotels or temporary housing. We heard so powerfully from my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Emma Dent Coad) about the impact of that on the children who are falling into depression and dropping out of education. When will everyone be rehoused? As my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) said, when will the Government look at the wider problems of the under-supply of social and affordable housing? The Secretary of State said that he wanted to speed up this process. When he has finished looking at that, will he come back to the House and tell us what is to be done?

Eleven months ago, the Government promised that all tower blocks with dangerous cladding would be made safe. As the hon. Member for Clacton (Giles Watling) said, over 300 buildings so far have been identified as unsafe, but only seven of them have had their cladding removed. The Government have today announced £400 million to fully fund the removal and replacement of dangerous cladding, which is welcome but obviously questions remain. What is the £400 million based on? Where is that money coming from? Is something else to be cut? Will this pay for all 158 social housing blocks to have their cladding removed? What is the Minister’s definition of dangerous cladding? What about the private blocks? As my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North (Mr Reed) said, there is a complete lack of clarity about who is responsible for removing cladding in private blocks. Are the Government accepting, given the announcement today of that £400 million, that there are significant deficiencies in building regulations that need to be looked at?

Eleven months ago, the Government promised there would be significant reform of the current system of building regulations. It has been widely reported that the Hackitt review will not recommend bans on combustible material on tower blocks and nor will it abolish desktop studies. On the Labour Benches, and I think on all sides of the House, we pray that that is not true. If it is true, we pray that the Government go further than Hackitt and that that is the start and not the end of the process. I think there is unprecedented support across this Chamber for a ban on combustible cladding, a ban on desktop studies and a publicly accountable system of building control.

To use the lives of those who died as a vehicle for point-scoring would make us all monsters, but not to call out and hold to account the Government’s failure to act—to act well, to act quickly, to act now—would make us worthless to those survivors who need us now. I therefore say to the Government that it is not too late to put this right. As the hon. Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess) says, there is no point in saying there are lessons to be learned unless we take action.

Windrush

Sarah Jones Excerpts

Monday 30th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

I will continue to look at what further measures we can take to build confidence in the measures put in place, particularly the hotline and the taskforce. One thing we have made very clear, and I am happy to repeat it now, is that any information provided by anyone who comes forward—whether they call the hotline or come to one of the centres covered by the taskforce—will be used for no other purpose than that of helping them with the issues they face.

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

Given the focus of Conservative Members on illegal immigration, does the Home Secretary wish to comment on the fact that under his Prime Minister’s “hostile environment”, which has seen so much injustice done to the Windrush generation, we have seen the Government’s total failure to achieve what they set out to achieve, with neither voluntary nor enforced removals having actually increased in recent years?

[Sajid Javid]

No, I do not wish to comment on that question, because it was just political point scoring and not serious in any way.

Secure Tenancies (Victims of Domestic Abuse) Bill [ Lords ] (Second sitting)

Sarah Jones Excerpts

Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 27th March 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ryan. The most common scenario in domestic violence cases is that of a woman fleeing her abuser. She escapes a harmful and dangerous situation and tries to find a place of safety—often a refuge. As we said this morning, for 68% of those women that is in another local authority area. The Minister said she does not think there is a problem with that in the Bill and decided not to accept amendment 5, which we withdrew following our discussion this morning, but we still hold that there may be a problem if the cross-boundary duty is not made explicit. The situations becomes even clearer if we think of people fleeing from another country in the UK—from Northern Ireland to England, from Scotland to Wales, from England to Wales, or from Scotland to Northern Ireland.

There are significantly fewer resources in towns than in cities. For those living in the more far-flung reaches of our country, access to support services, including housing, may be much more limited. The homelessness services provided by, for example, Crisis, are well known, but Crisis clearly operates somewhere where a significant amount of rough sleeping occurs—London. The excellent services it provides at its Crisis Skylight centre in central London are much harder to come by in, say, Norfolk or Wiltshire, although it now has an excellent service in South Yorkshire. The groundbreaking work and the centrepiece services tend to be in cities, and the same is true for domestic violence services. It stands to reason that the more people there are, the broader the range of support services catered for, and the greater the experience and knowledge base that is built up.

The anonymity of cities can be a draw for victims. If there are services to support those experiencing domestic violence, or if that is the nearest place where spaces are available, that is where victims will go. Complications may arise if someone who lives in a border town—for example, Wrexham—is directed to or heads to Manchester to seek sanctuary. Similarly, people from Northern Ireland may head to Birmingham, which my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley tells me contains the largest diaspora of Irish people in the country, to be supported by extended family members. Will the rights conferred by the Bill travel with them? Will the rights follow the victim? When the system differs among our devolved nations, will victims find that they do not receive the same treatment and housing opportunities as someone who straightforwardly moves from one council house in their local authority area to another in that same local authority area? I fear that the Government are looking at this matter far too simplistically and that down the line they will come a cropper as they realise that the Bill has not worked as intended.

Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth recognised the issue presented by the Bill and has committed to taking this particular matter to the Ministry’s devolved Administration roundtable, which I believe is due to convene in Cardiff in April. He has also committed to provide the Library with a copy of the letter that follows the outcome of that roundtable. I am unclear about what that might mean for the Bill, because the outcome of that roundtable will surely serve as some form of response to some of the issues that have been flagged up in debates so far.

I very much accept the difficulties and sensitivities involved, so the new clause will not force England-only duties on to the devolved nations. It strives to ensure that full collaboration is exercised and provided for to enable all victims to be treated fairly and equally, wherever in the country they come from and wherever they end up. To do that, there must be some method of reviewing the issue, and I personally prefer to understand the issue that we are trying to fix with the import of new legislation.

The new clause would recognise that there should be no detriment to anyone travelling between Northern Ireland, Scotland, England or Wales who requires security of tenure. At the moment, the Bill does not do that, despite the recognition of the problem. The new clause therefore proposes a review period of six months to establish where the problems lie in the legislation and to enable the Government to take steps to resolve them.

We do not want to see anyone dissuaded from getting themselves to a place of safety if that place is in one of the devolved nations. The matter was recognised in debate in the Lords. Rather than having to reflect on a missed opportunity, and in full understanding that this is an issue of a premise accepted by Lord Bourne, I urge the Minister to take the necessary steps to future-proof this Bill.

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

I want to speak in support of new clause 1 and the principle of co-operation, and to give a couple of examples. I used to work for Shelter, and I lobbied successfully for the Homelessness Act 2002. It was a groundbreaking piece of legislation because, for the first time, local authorities had to have a strategy in place to tackle homelessness. It also extended the definition of priority need to many different groups who had not fallen into that category before, including people fleeing domestic violence, as well as 16 and 17-year-olds and people leaving care, prison or the armed forces.

Shelter put a huge amount of resource into lobbying for the legislation. We worked during the passage of the Bill and lobbied civil servants on the guidance that followed. It was a good Bill and there was good guidance, but we knew that we could not necessarily guarantee that it would be implemented in the way that legislators had intended. As a charity, we funded about 15 full-time members of staff to work with every single local authority to help them understand the legislation and implement it.

My point is that even though we had a good Bill, good guidance and all this extra resource from Shelter, which was used widely by all local authorities, there were still differences in implementation, with pockets of good practice and pockets of bad practice. For example, the good practice was that a local authority should have a safe place—a safe room or a safe opportunity—for people once they came to the local authority and said that they were fleeing domestic violence. Not every local authority does that; there are differences in implementation. The implementation and what is written in the Bill are absolutely crucial.

We know that there are different definitions of priority need in different nations. If someone is fleeing domestic violence in England, the category of priority need is stronger than it would be for someone fleeing in Wales. If someone is fleeing in Wales, they have to have been the victim of domestic violence. In England, they have to be the victim or at risk of domestic violence. There is a slightly different way of interpreting that legislation, because it is different in the two nations. I would hate, as I am sure the Minister would, for us to introduce legislation that does not enable every single person we can possibly help to get the support that they need.

The new clause is a sensible addition to the legislation. Giving six months to look at this before anything has to be introduced is sensible. We can support those victims of domestic violence who need our support. Croydon, which I represent, has the highest number of applications by people fleeing domestic violence of any London borough. We have a fantastic service in Croydon. We have the only family justice centre in Europe, which brings together all the agencies that help to support people who are fleeing domestic violence, including housing and the police. We provide brilliant support, which I would like to see across the country and across the nations, but sadly that is not the case. I am supportive of co-operation and new clause 1.

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

Ms Ryan, this is the first time I have served under your chairship and it is a pleasure to do so.

In this morning’s sitting we had a long and interesting discussion on amendment 5. It was a shame we could not reach consensus. We ended up having a conversation about whether what the amendment said was already in the Bill and it became an almost semantic conversation about whether “a local authority” is the same as “any local authority”. That is what will happen when something is gone through line-by-line, and it is important that we get to that level, but it was a shame we were not able to establish consensus.

With new clause 1 we have basically the same principle, but grown out. We now know for a fact that “a local authority” falls once we get to the boundaries of England, but we also know that the need for refuges does not drop off that cliff as we meet that border.

We also spent a lot of this morning talking about not wanting to put up barriers. Our job is to remove whatever barriers there are to the survivor leaving that situation. Whether the barrier is money, housing, family or whatever, we should seek to remove it so that they can make that best decision for themselves. This is a pretty big barrier: it is a border. I almost hesitate to say that because we talk too much about borders, especially in the context of Northern Ireland, but mercifully we are not going in that direction today.

Nevertheless, we will clearly have to do something. As my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby said very eloquently, the need will be the same around border towns, but the facilities will be different. In a big city such as Nottingham, we might have things that they do not have in small border towns. From the perspective of people going from Scotland or from Wales to England, I should like to think that we would be there for them if that was best for them. I am sure that everybody would share that thought.

We have to be mindful of devolution and the devolution settlement, but it seems sensible, and to behove us, to accept the clause because it will give us a proportionate way of looking at how to get to something sensible. I suspect that it will be said that there are different arrangements in these countries. I am perfectly willing to accept that; nevertheless, how the arrangements marry up with our own is really important. It is important for English survivors, but it is also important for survivors in those nations.

I do not want to rehash everything from this morning, but I thought it regrettable that we did not push forward on the question of training in amendment 1. This is exactly the sort of situation that will be very complicated for a housing officer. We ask housing officers to understand an awful lot of things about an awful lot of different needs, and this is yet another one. We need them to understand that, if they are talking about people moving to different communities, that will need to be in England. We would not want people to be advised that their secure tenancy will apply somewhere else if those are not arrangements that we have been able to secure. I do not think that that is asking for much, but it will certainly give us more confidence that down the line we will get to a point where we will have a stitched-up nationwide look at the issue laid before Parliament, which would be desirable.

Fire Safety and Cladding

Sarah Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 6th March 2018 Westminster Hall

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend and neighbour the Member for Croydon North (Mr Reed) on his speech and on securing the debate. I welcome the contributions that have been made so far. Many thousands of residents face huge legal fees and potentially thousands of pounds of costs to remove ACM cladding from their buildings. Freeholders, developers and insurers will not take responsibility, nor will the Government. We are here today because the buck stops with the Government to sort the mess out.

In my constituency, there is a block of flats built nine years ago with ACM cladding. At least, we are as sure of that as we can be; residents were told that one set of cladding was ACM, and then that another set was ACM. They have been confused and let down from the start. The cladding needs to be replaced. There is a 24-hour waking watch, but residents are understandably nervous and of course anyone who wants to sell their flat clearly has no hope of doing that. The freeholder—Wallace Estates —has washed its hands of responsibility. The director told me in a letter that

“it is the case that the building is now deemed to be unsafe because of a belated recognition by those in authority that the standards governing building safety at the time of the development were inadequate”

and that those with

“responsibility for setting the standards should be liable”.

The developers, Durkin, have also washed their hands. I wrote to them but have not received a reply. They rang my office—I am not sure, but perhaps they were being careful not to put anything in writing—and said they had not done anything wrong. The insurers, NHBC, are considering the claim, but it has been with them for months and nothing has been forthcoming.

The Minister, in a letter to me today, has also washed his hands of responsibility, saying:

“I am clear that the morally right thing for building owners to do is take responsibility for meeting the costs of remediation and interim safety measures”.

So my constituents, living in an unsafe block, are left to sit in it and pay the bill for the cladding removal and replacement. They have already been asked to pay thousands of pounds and have been told that they will face a bill for thousands more. They are having to club together to pay legal bills. They have all the tea and sympathy in the world from everybody, but they still have to pay. The system has failed, and when that happens it must be the responsibility of the Government to step in and provide clarity or resources, or both, to resolve the issue.

There are big policy questions: how can Government let the legal system take over when their own testing process has been shown to be insufficient? If leaseholders are found liable, are the Government really content that residents should be made homeless—something the LGA has warned about? What about desktop studies? They have already been mentioned, so I will not go into detail.

I want briefly to suggest some things that the Minister might this afternoon commit to doing. Will he meet my constituents to learn about the pressures they face? Will he start a proper dialogue with freeholders? I thank him for his response to my letter and his agreement to arrange a phone call with Wallace Estates. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North that the Government should take the lead, but if they feel that the moral responsibility sits with landlords, they have to act to ensure that action is taken on behalf of residents.

The Government should sit down with insurers to find out what is going on. There are many claims in play, and that is leading to months of uncertainty and legal wrangling, which does not help anyone.

The Government should look at ownership rules for property. As the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) said, there should be no more hiding behind offshore entities. One of the problems that we have had is working out who owns buildings and freeholds. There are shell companies and offshore companies that are impenetrable. Details cannot be obtained from the website. It is complicated to get through to them.

The Prime Minister yesterday addressed the issue of land banking, opening up the possibility that developers who sit on land might face restrictions in getting planning permissions. Will the Minister take a similar approach to developers, stopping planning permission being given to them if they sit on their hands and leave dangerous cladding in place?

The buck stops with the Government. If they believe that other people are responsible, they have to make sure action is taken. My constituents, who are the least able to pay and the least to blame, are in the firing line. The Minister must surely accept that that is not fair.