Baroness Gardner of Parkes
Main Page: Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Conservative - Life peer)Housing and Planning Bill
Baroness Gardner of Parkes Excerpts“( ) This section shall not come into force until at least one year after the publication of a draft of regulations to be made under subsection (3).”
Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)
My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, for covering so much of the explanation of what the wording of my amendment means. It looks a bit obscure to me, but I understand that it is the appropriate tool for bringing up the issue of the regulations. I consider that we cannot satisfactorily deal with the Bill in its present form without proper consideration of the proposed regulations. I am impressed by the comments already made by the noble Lords, Lord Shipley and Lord Foster of Bath, who have done a lot of explaining that I would otherwise have to do.
At Second Reading, of the 50 speakers, more than 20 drew attention to the need for us to have the detail, in the form of draft regulations, available for us to consider during this stage of the Bill. The noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, said:
“Vast swathes of policy are left to secondary legislation”,
and concluded:
“The Bill deserves, and I am sure will get, the most intense challenge and scrutiny in this House”.—[Official Report, 26/1/16; cols. 1188-90.]
The noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, ended his speech with the words:
“First, we urgently need to see the detail of what is proposed in the secondary legislation. Secondly, we need Ministers to be genuinely open to change”.—[Official Report, 26/1/16; col. 1195.]
I believe that Ministers are genuinely open to change but that there is some degree of obstruction within the department. When we have had our three meetings with the Minister on this issue, they have said that they feel they cannot get anything through in time and that all this could be looked at after the Bill receives Royal Assent. Of course, that is hopeless: if we look at things after Royal Assent, all we can do is have a statutory instrument come forward, to which we say yes or no. We are not then in a position to improve the legislation.
The noble Baroness, Lady Royall, said that,
“the regulation rot sets in at line 14 and continues throughout”.
Then she said:
“The details will be determined by regulation”.—[Official Report, 26/1/16; col. 1197.]
There it is again. The noble Lord, Lord Palmer, speaking about,
“the lack of published regulations relating to the Bill”,
said:
“I suspect that that is because they have not even been written yet”.—[Official Report, 26/1/16; col. 1239.]
That was a fairly appropriate remark, particularly in view of what had been said at our pre-meetings.
The noble Baroness, Lady Grender, wanted regulations now. Again, she is one of many of us who have said that. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, said that he was expecting,
“vast reams of secondary legislation. Many of the clauses have not been properly considered and received cursory—if any—scrutiny in the Commons”.
I think that is true. The Bill has been pushed on to us after the barest consideration in the Commons, which makes it doubly important that we carefully consider every aspect of it in this House. The noble Lord went on to say:
“This Bill gives 34 additional powers to the Secretary of State”.—[Official Report, 26/1/16; col. 1254.]
That is highly significant.
The noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, made a point, which the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, also made, about the report of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. I know its title well, because I served on that committee for almost 10 years —certainly for more than two terms—and I have never read a more scathing report than this one. I would not even have realised that it had been published, because it came out so close to time, had I not, at Questions earlier today, found myself sitting next to the chairman of that committee, who asked me whether I had seen the report. I left Question Time early to run out and get it, to see what it said. It affirms what we are saying: we need all this. We need the information so that we can deal with what is before us. As I said, once the Bill receives Royal Assent, it is too late for us to make any significant change. It is a very interesting and enormously powerful Bill, and it must be considered very carefully. Local authorities, too, have the right to know the detail of what is being considered, so that they can send their comments to Members of this House, and we can decide what we should be doing. I beg to move.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, I understand loud and clear the premise of the amendment of my noble friend Lady Gardner of Parkes, which proposes that the scheme for making the banning orders would not come into force until a year after the draft regulations setting out the nature and characteristics of banning order offences have been published. I understand the point about the laying of regulations and responding fully to the comments of the DPRR committee, which noble Lords have made loud and clear. However, I make it clear that people who have been convicted of offences that are in the nature of a banning order offence before the legislation comes into force cannot be subject to banning orders. That is quite important in the context of the discussion we are having. The legislation will therefore not apply retrospectively.
As I have said before, we have not included the specific offences in the Bill because we want the flexibility to add further. However, I can confirm that we will consult fully with interested partners on the matters that will constitute banning order offences before the regulations are laid in this House. I have set out the timetable for the consultation and for responding to the DPRRC. I hope to do that during Committee stage, but in any event we will definitely do it by Report.
I cannot remember which noble Lord—it may have been the noble Lord, Lord Foster—asked if we could have sight of what regulations there might be, when we might expect them and why we might not have them in a timely manner. I am more than keen to get what information I can to noble Lords to prevent some of the obvious concern that arises out of the Bill coming forward time and again, which it will—I cannot blame the House for doing that. The noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, is not in his place, but I point out that we are attempting to do that as fully as we can throughout the course of the Bill.
I hope that reassures my noble friend and other noble Lords that we do not intend to implement the banning order provisions in the Bill without fully considering the views of the interested parties on the nature and characteristics of such offences. We began that process last summer when we published our discussion paper on tackling rogue landlords, which noble Lords may or may not have seen, and we will develop them in further detail through further consultation later in the year. I therefore ask my noble friend to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
My Lords, I thank all those who have contributed very helpfully to the amendment and debated it. When the Minister says that she is more than keen to do things and make progress, I believe that. However, I feel there is a lack of willingness in the department. I do not say that just because she now happens to be the Minister. I had dealings with the Minister before her and with various Ministers before that. In all housing issues, I have found that there has been a reluctance to see any proper reform or progress. That is a great pity. We should probably have had a consolidation Act of all the property laws that have been passed. I have been involved in them myself since the early 1980s. All noble Lords know my registered interest, so I do not need to repeat it. Each time we pass another Act everyone working anywhere in the property world has to keep referring back to the previous Act and the Acts before that. I am told that consolidation Bills are not brought forward now because, in the past, the Law Commission used to finance them and bring them to Parliament. It will no longer do so unless Parliament agrees to finance the work that it does. This also needs a little bit of thought.
Something else that needs thought is the First-tier Tribunal. I opposed the removal of the leasehold valuation tribunal which could have dealt with the same sort of issue at a much lower cost. It is now extremely expensive. It used to be only £500. No matter what your case, more than £500 could not be awarded against you for most leasehold offences. Now, to bring your case at all, it is a minimum of £500 to walk in the door. It has changed into a much heavier legal procedure which I do not think works so well for simple cases. It has always been there and acknowledged to be necessary for the more important or serious cases. Certainly rogue landlords will come into that category. I did not speak earlier but, of course, the word “rogue” means something different to me as an Australian.
To return to the original point, I respect what the Minister has said. I hope she can persuade her department to bring these matters forward. I thank all those noble Lords who have participated and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)
My Lords, I support Amendments 2 and 7, and draw the Committee’s attention to my entry in the register of interests as a director of the Property Redress Scheme, one of the government recognised organisations.
Amendment 2, in the name of my noble friend Lady Grender, draws attention to the fact that this House and the other place do not consider legislation in a holistic fashion. We seem to consider one amendment to one piece of legislation without looking at the unintended consequences of that legislation, as identified by Amendment 2. Yes, we should address rogue landlords, however one describes them, but that will have an effect on the tenants of the relevant properties. The tenant who makes a complaint will have some protection in terms of getting rehoused, but the property may contain a number of tenants, including those who have not made a complaint against the landlord who is banned. If the property is no longer available for letting, those tenants will become homeless. My noble friend drew attention to the transfer of the relevant property to other people who are not specified in the Bill. What then happens to the tenants? We do not know that because we are not adopting a holistic approach to the legislation. The noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, said that we do not have consolidation Bills. We have unintentional effects because of that.
Amendment 7 was spoken to by my noble friend Lady Bakewell. The problem is that we pass legislation without considering sanctions. The sanctions are to be imposed by local authorities, which are having their grants reduced and are looking for ways not to spend money rather than to spend it. Amendment 7 proposes that local authorities which are proactive in implementing the legislation should retain the relevant financial penalty. When the Minister replies, will she say whether the Government have had discussions with trading standards departments, environmental health departments and housing departments on how they will implement this part of the legislation to ban rogue landlords? I know of only one London borough—Camden—that has a really active trading standards officer dealing with housing, but the rest do not have the finance to cover this area. Therefore, I hope that some research has been carried out with local authorities in England to determine whether these restrictions will bite where they need to.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
My Lords, I support Amendment 7. I appreciate what has just been said, but certainly my view is that one of the big problems with all these housing issues of overcrowding and everything else is that the local authorities cannot afford to implement the enforcement and inspection measures that are constantly necessary. Indeed, at a later stage in the Bill I intend to bring forward an amendment to enable them to charge more for planning applications for these enormously expensive huge underground developments which many people find very inconvenient. The person who applies for planning permission for a simple little underground development just to give their family more space pays the same amount as the person applying to build a multimillion pound development. That is very unfair. The proposed measure would enable local authorities to have a little more money to enforce their many obligations. This amendment is valuable in that respect.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
My Lords, this is an interesting proposal and if it is introduced, leaseholders too should be included. There are 6 million leaseholders, who in the past could have gone to a leasehold valuation tribunal for a very reasonable cost, but who now have to go to the First-tier Tribunal, which is much more expensive. There are many things that could be resolved by applying the ombudsman scheme. I would like to hear more about how this would work, and also—perhaps at a later stage in the Bill—to look at the possibility of including leasehold properties.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham (Lab)
My Lords, I support the amendment, because I think there is a real issue here. Speaking as a former local authority leader—many people in this House are either former or current local authority leaders—I had three ombudsman judgments against me, of which two were correct and one, in my view, was not. That was over about 25 years, and most were associated with planning issues.
Throughout all my ombudsman experience, both in this sector and in the health service, the issues were between the ombudsman service and a publicly accountable body, such as a local authority or a health authority, in which there were members concerned to maintain the reputation of that authority, and to respond, if not precisely to the ombudsman’s proposals—the ombudsman had no enforcement powers—at least in a positive way. The ombudsman had no powers to make us do anything, but people would respond positively by trying to address the problem and see whether it was largely procedural or whether policy needed to be changed in some substantial way. That was because the ombudsman was overseeing a public organisation that had a reputation, with trustees, councillors and so on, who were accountable for their decisions in public, in the press.
If the Minister cannot support an amendment like Amendment 17, I hope that she will tell us how she would apply that same degree of scrutiny and enforcement to rulings against rogue landlords. There is a real issue here. Local authorities will respond, even if they cannot go all the way, but a private individual, knowing that the ombudsman has no statutory powers of enforcing a decision, may decide to go in a different direction and weather hostile criticism. Can the Minister help us by telling us in what ways the Government would ensure that the naming and shaming effect of ombudsman practice could apply in the private sector?
Lord Foster of Bath
My Lords, we seem to be discussing two slightly separate issues in this group of amendments. The first is whether or not we need to have a register of all private sector rented landlords, and I certainly believe that we need to have that. As my noble friend Lord Greaves made very clear, if we do not know who owns a particular property or who is its landlord, it is very difficult to take enforcement action against them. It is also very difficult, as the noble Lord, Lord Flight, has pointed out, for a number of bits of government legislation to be effectively enforced without having such a register—for example, the requirement for landlords to vet the immigration status of their tenants.
Amendment 27 from the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, proposes a mandatory register and suggests that the way of filling the data in it is by requiring all landlords to sign up to it. As the noble Lord, Lord Flight, has pointed out, there are some difficulties with that: those landlords who are not particularly good, those who are on the border of being rogue landlords, are not likely to bother to provide the information. The noble Lord provides an alternative means of filling the data sets: using the form that is initially sent in for registering for council tax, although, as my noble friend Lord Greaves has pointed out, that is done by very many tenants only once in a blue moon.
So there are problems with how we fill the data set, but what is most important is that we hear from the Minister whether it is the Government’s view that we should be having a national database. Whether it is run at individual local authority level or nationally I am not that concerned about at this stage, but it is important to know what the Government’s thinking is about having a database of all private sector landlords. Then perhaps we could get together from all sides of the House to work out the details of how we could fill the data set and ensure that people registered appropriately.
The second issue is local authorities operating an accreditation or licensing scheme. There is a straightforward difference between Amendment 18 from the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, and my noble friend’s Amendment 33A. My noble friend suggests that this should be voluntary and local authorities can decide whether or not to do it, while the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, is suggesting that all local authorities must do it. I make it clear that I side entirely with my noble friend. It is right and proper that local authorities do this, but it is also important that we recognise that some local authorities have already found ways of doing it; across many parts of London there is already such a scheme, and other councils—for example, by using an Article 4 direction—have been able to do that.
Still, it is important that we treat these two issues as separate: first, with regard to the list of all private sector rented landlords so that we can ensure that legislation that we pass in your Lordships’ House will be enforced; and, secondly, that we allow discretion to local authorities to decide how best they wish to operate in the best interests of the people they seek to represent in local authority areas.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
My Lords, I remind noble Lords that this issue came up earlier under the Deregulation Bill. I was very opposed to the fact that they threw out all rights to register people who were living in these places. It came up, in particular, in relation to Airbnb. I divided the House and we lost the issue. Westminster Council had been prepared to register people even at 24 hours’ notice so that it could know who was occupying, not only as a landlord but who was living in the place. This was rejected. I found it extraordinary that, at a time when New York and Paris were bringing in this regulation, we were deregulating it. It went through on the Deregulation Bill and it should be drawn to the attention of noble Lords again. It seems to be in total conflict with what the House carried at that time, against what I was hoping, which was more like what the noble Lord, Lord Foster, has just suggested.