Housing and Planning Bill (Ninth sitting)

Brandon Lewis Excerpts

Thursday 26th November 2015 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

I have reflected on Mr Thomas’s earlier point of order about information and its availability and, after liaising with the Department, I have been informed that the matter is one not for the Chair, but for the Government. I take note that the Minister drew attention to some information, but perhaps in the next couple of days he will reflect on what information is required and write to the members of the Committee. That would be helpful, Minister.

[The Minister for Housing and Planning (Brandon Lewis)]

Sir Alan, I will happily let the hon. Member for Harrow West have the website address of the National Housing Federation, where the information can be found.

[The Chair]

Whatever.

[Mr Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am very grateful to the Minister for the spirit of his response to my point of order this morning. I have been on the website and I can see information about the offer that was made to the Government in October, but no additional information appears to be there about the detail of further discussions or, specifically, of the arrangements with the five housing associations that are proceeding with the pilot. If the Minister were able to give us further information ahead of Tuesday’s sittings, that would be extremely helpful.

[Brandon Lewis]

Obviously we are now somewhat outside the scope of the Bill, but I am sure that there will be information over the next few months as we answer questions and make Government statements about what we are doing. The National Housing Federation and the housing associations themselves will also be publishing such information. I am pleased that, as of last night, the five pilots are in place and people may go and register for the right to buy their own home.

[The Chair]

We will move on.

Clause 51

Warning notices

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[Grahame M. Morris]

I agree. That was the point I was trying to make, albeit in a rather laboured and long-winded fashion. Let me conclude by reminding the Committee that Catriona Riddell, the strategic planning convenor for the Planning Officers Society, said that there is real concern about councils misinterpreting the new rules. She said that the change is

“almost like handing local authorities, which are reluctant to plan for travellers, an excuse not to do it.”

That warning should ring in our ears before we delete the provision in the Housing Act 2004.

[Brandon Lewis]

Before I touch on the amendments directly, may I say that I appreciate the opening remarks made by the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead? I was happy to accept the idea of debating the amendment today and, as I said to the hon. Member for City of Durham, I am happy to flex the agenda next week to suit their request for debates and time to be spent on certain parts of the Bill. I am particularly pleased that we are considering the amendment, because it has opened my mind to the whole new world of the talents of the hon. Member for Easington. My mind boggles at what those talents might be—[Interruption.] We are getting a short demonstration now—I look forward to popping into the Labour Whips Christmas party to see him in action.

On a more serious note, I support the intention of the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead in the amendment to retain a duty on local authorities to assess the accommodation needs of Gypsies and Travellers, so I want to be clear: the clause does not remove that duty. As hon. Members have said—and, in particular, in the light of the closing remarks of the hon. Member for Easington—it is right that planning authorities understand that the clause does not remove that duty. Rather, we seek to remove any possible perception that because Gypsies and Travellers have specific mentions in legislation, they somehow receive more favourable treatment.

Planning law and planning should treat everyone equally and fairly. The clause makes it clear that the needs of those persons who reside in or resort to the area with respect to the provision of caravan sites or moorings for houseboats are considered as part of the review of housing needs. That would include all those who are assessed at present and potentially those who simply choose to live in a caravan, irrespective of their cultural traditions or whether they have ever had a nomadic way of life.

We want local authorities to assess the needs of everyone in their communities. Our clause emphasises that Gypsies and Travellers are not separate members of our communities, and it takes on board the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough and the hon. Member for Easington: that local authorities must properly assess the needs of all in their community, with reference to their community. Local housing authorities will be able to consider how best to assess that need, whether as a whole or to provide individual assessments for specific groups of people. I hope that that deals with the point that was made. However, we do wish to assist local authorities in meeting their duties and will therefore be happy to consider incorporating any necessary elements of the current “Gypsy and Traveller Accommodation Needs Assessments Guidance” in wider planning guidance, to which local authorities must have regard.

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[Teresa Pearce]

I thank the Minister for his reassurances. I am still concerned about there not being a provision in the legislation to make local authorities do something. Not all local authorities act in the same way, but I am minded to accept the reassurances given. I look forward to seeing further evidence as we go forward, but I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 84 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 85

Licences for HMO and other rented accommodation: additional tests

[Brandon Lewis]

I beg to move amendment 127, in clause 85, page 34, line 26, leave out subsection (3) and insert—

“(3) In section 66 (tests for fitness and satisfactory management arrangements: houses in multiple occupation)—

(a) after subsection (1) insert—

‘(1A) A local housing authority in England must also have regard to any evidence within subsection (3A) or (3B).’;

(b) in subsection (2), in paragraph (c), after ‘tenant law’ insert ‘(including Part 3 of the Immigration Act 2014)’;

(c) after subsection (3) insert—

‘(3A) Evidence is within this subsection if it shows that P—

(a) requires leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom but does not have it; or

(b) is insolvent or an undischarged bankrupt.

(3B) Evidence is within this subsection if—

(a) it shows that any person associated or formerly associated with P (whether on a personal, work or other basis) is a person to whom subsection (3A)(a) or (b) applies; and

(b) it appears to the authority that the evidence is relevant to the question whether P is a fit and proper person to be the licence holder or (as the case may be) the manager of the house.’

(4) In section 70 (revocation of licences), in subsection (2), in the words after paragraph (c)—

(a) for ‘Section 66(1) applies’ substitute ‘Section 66(1) and (1A) apply’;

(b) for ‘it applies’ substitute ‘they apply’.”

This amendment, together with amendment 128, ensures that amendments made by clause 85 apply only to England.

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss Government amendment 128.

[Brandon Lewis]

Clause 85 amends the fitness test applied to persons who apply for licences to let a house in multiple occupation or subject to selective licensing. It adds criteria to those that local housing authorities must currently take into account under sections 66 and 89 of the Housing Act 2004. Amendments 127 and 128 are minor and technical amendments to ensure that the additional criteria apply only to England.

Amendment 127 agreed to.

[Teresa Pearce]

I beg to move amendment 137, in clause 85, page 34, line 37, at end insert—

“(g) has a current entry on the Database of Rogue Landlords and Letting Agents as set out in Part 2 of the Housing and Planning Act 2015.”

This amendment would deny those with an entry on the Database of Rogue Landlords and Letting Agents from being granted a licence for a HMO.

This amendment would ensure that those with an entry on the database of rogue landlords and letting agents are not granted a licence for a house in multiple occupation. Anybody subject to a banning order would not be allowed to be granted a licence for an HMO, but we would like that to apply also to those with an entry on the database of rogue landlords and letting agents. As we discussed at length on Tuesday, it is important that we crack down on rogue landlords, who drive down the whole private rented sector. We support measures to tackle those people, both to ensure the security and safety of tenants and to penalise criminal landlords. One way in which that could be furthered is by amending clause 85 to include those with an entry on the database of rogue landlords and letting agents, so that they would be denied a licence for an HMO.

Clause 85 currently amends previous legislation to include further measures in the fitness test for a landlord to be granted an HMO licence. We would like this further measure to be added to ensure that rogue landlords could not be granted HMO licences. I was encouraged to see the consultation document that the Government put out earlier this month on HMOs. No doubt I will respond to that in due course, but this amendment would assist in ensuring that those licensed to run an HMO were fit to do so.

As the Committee will be aware, a local housing authority may include other persons on the rogue landlords database, rather than applying for a banning order, in a case where a person’s offences are slightly less serious and the local authority considers monitoring of that person to be more appropriate than seeking a banning order. With this amendment, we seek an assurance that those people would not be considered for an HMO licence. It would have the added bonus of ensuring that the local housing authority checked with the rogue landlords and letting agents database to ensure that the applicant was allowed, which would ensure that nobody subject to a banning order slipped through.

If in future the database of rogue landlords and letting agents were to be expanded, it would provide further protection for tenants against such people. As discussed before, we are supportive of measures to tackle rogue landlords, both to ensure the security of tenants and to penalise criminal landlords. I believe that the amendment would help to drive up standards across the sector by protecting tenants in HMOs from such people. I therefore hope that the Committee will consider the amendment.

[Brandon Lewis]

I appreciate that the amendment would require a local authority to have regard to the fact that a landlord had been included in the database of rogue landlords and letting agents when considering an application from that landlord for a licence to operate a house in multiple occupation or for selective licensing.

If the Committee will bear with me for a few moments, I want to go into a bit of detail to give the hon. Lady a full answer. A local authority is already required to have regard to a range of factors when deciding whether to grant a licence. Those include whether the applicant has committed any offence involving fraud or other dishonesty, violence or drugs, practised unlawful discrimination, or contravened any provision relating to housing or landlord and tenant law.

That last factor—contravention of housing or landlord and tenant law—would include all the offences leading to inclusion in the database. The database will be a key source of information for local authorities when taking decisions on whether to grant a licence. Those safeguards are very important, as it is clearly essential that a local authority can be confident that a licence is granted only to a landlord who can demonstrate that they are a fit and proper person to operate a house in multiple occupation, or a property subject to selective licensing, and will not pose a risk to the health and safety of their tenants, many of whom may be vulnerable.

[Grahame M. Morris]

That is a very interesting point. Is the Minister effectively advising us that he considers someone who is a rogue landlord not to be a fit and proper person to hold a licence for a house in multiple occupation?

[Brandon Lewis]

As I have outlined, we want to ensure that the licence is granted only to a landlord who can demonstrate that they are a fit and proper person to operate a house in multiple occupation. To build on a good point raised by the hon. Member for Harrow West the other day, there was an example in my constituency over the summer when somebody contravened the law. I would make the case that that person should never have been allowed again to be a landlord in the first place, people having lost their lives when that person was previously a landlord. We all want to ensure that we do everything we can to stamp out the chance of that kind of individual ever being a landlord again.

If the hon. Member for Easington will bear with me, I want to go a bit further. Clause 85 includes two further safeguards by providing that in future a local authority would also be required to have regard to whether the landlord has leave to remain in the UK or is an undischarged bankrupt or is insolvent. The aim of the amendment is to ensure that local authorities fully consider the past behaviour of landlords and agents who apply for a licence.

The Government and I are extremely sympathetic to that aim. To do that, local authorities need access to information about the previous activities of the landlord and will need to share that information across local authority boundaries. The database will be an important step forward in sharing information about convictions for housing-related offences.

Having heard the strength of feeling in the Committee both today and previously, particularly on Tuesday, I want to look further at whether local authorities have access to the right information, beyond convictions, to enable them to make the right judgments about who is a fit and proper person to hold a licence. I hope that, with that assurance, the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead will agree to withdraw the amendment.

[Mr Jackson]

I would like to add briefly to the important point the Minister has made. Members of the Committee might have heard “World at One” a few weeks ago when it focused on high levels of immigration in the Peterborough constituency. They followed around a housing enforcement officer of 20 years’ experience, who found, in a two-bedroom house, a family comprising a mother on her own and eight children. That is pertinent because it is important to make the point that is no good for individual local authorities to collect those data if they do not cross-reference them with other regulatory and statutory bodies.

It is appalling not only that that mother was living with eight children in a slum, and a greedy, rapacious landlord was skimming money off the state and plunging them into misery; frankly, that lady should not have been in the country because she is a Slovak national. She was not exercising her EU free movement directive rights because she was not employed, self-employed, looking for work or a student. She should not have been in the UK accessing UK benefits. Over and above the housing issue, we need a much tougher and more robust regulatory framework to share information with organisations such as Border Force. I hope that we are able to do that in some way because, frankly, we want to drive some landlords out of the market, but we also want to ensure that the right people are in the country accessing the scarce public resources.

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[Mr Thomas]

I rise to support my hon. Friend’s amendment and to push the Minister gently for clarity about why, as the Bill stands, someone who was subject to a banning order could not be subject to a financial penalty as well. Given the significant costs that any housing authority will incur in taking action against one or other of the 10,500 rogue landlords that the Minister estimates there to be, why should not a financial penalty be imposed to help to recover some of the costs of taking action against them?

The hon. Member for Peterborough was a particular fan of the examples of rogue landlords in a recent article in the Conservative party newspaper The Guardian. I cannot think of any reason why any of those individuals who has already been convicted of being a bad landlord and who may or may not be subject to a banning order under this legislation should not also face a financial penalty. I hope that the Minister might, on this occasion, welcome my hon. Friend’s amendment and accept it for inclusion in the Bill.

[Brandon Lewis]

I appreciate what the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead has said about the amendment being a probing one, and I hope that I can satisfy her queries. While we are still considering this part of the Bill, I want to pick up on the points made by the hon. Member for Harrow West a few moments ago about how the information is spread and the databases. I am committed to looking at what we can do about that. Obviously, we have devolution and some of those matters are devolved. An amendment would be required to the Bill, but the details could be set out in a memorandum of understanding. That is part of what we are looking at now. We all share the desire to make it as difficult as possible for anybody who is not a fit and proper person ever to be able to be in a similar position again.

Amendment 138 would make a change to clause 86 to allow a local housing authority to impose a civil penalty in addition to, rather than as an alternative to, prosecuting a landlord, as the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead has quite rightly outlined. My hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough talked in the last few minutes about rapacious landlords. I will take his “rapacious” and raise him this: I want to make sure that we drive out avaricious landlords, as much as rapacious ones, so that they cannot act in the market again.

We have to make sure that we get the balance right, however. The Bill provides local housing authorities with a choice about whether to go down the civil penalty route or the prosecution route, depending on the seriousness of the offence. That is a matter for them to review in the light of their local circumstances. I think it would be disproportionate to use both regimes in relation to the same conduct, especially when local authorities will also benefit from other measures in the Bill. As we have outlined over the last few days, we are keen to look at going further and making this even harder on people. For instance, local authorities can apply for a rent repayment order where rent has been paid from housing benefit or universal credit and where certain housing offences have been committed, as set out in part 2 of the Bill. That is in addition to the powers already available through the Housing Act 2004, under which magistrates can rightly impose unlimited fines for the most serious housing offences. I hope that, given that short explanation, hon. Members will agree to withdraw their amendment.

[Mr Thomas]

I hear the Minister’s point about the need for proportionality. It seems eminently sensible. For a first offence, one clearly would not want to impose both a financial penalty and some other form of penalty. However, for the very worst sorts of landlord, I do not see why one could not add the option of a financial penalty as well, as part of the armoury of tools available to a first-tier tribunal in dealing with a rogue landlord.

[Brandon Lewis]

Obviously, it depends on the seriousness of the offence. It is for local authorities to decide whether to go down the civil or criminal route. If they do the latter and use the Housing Act 2004, of course, magistrates have an unlimited ability to fine for that kind of offence. It is absolutely covered in that sense; they can impose unlimited fines. For the most serious housing offences, it is right that they should have that freedom and flexibility. I hope that hon. Members will agree to withdraw the amendment.

[Teresa Pearce]

As I outlined earlier when moving the amendment, it was a probing amendment, so we do not wish to proceed to a vote. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 86 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Schedule 4

Financial penalty as alternative to prosecution under Housing Act 2004

--- Later in debate ---

[Brandon Lewis]

Amendments 139 to 142, as the hon. Lady has outlined, would remove the £5,000 limit for a civil penalty or, in the case of a contravention of an overcrowding notice, £2,000. Instead, they would allow the local housing authority to impose an unlimited fine where the landlord has: failed to comply with an improvement notice; not obtained a licence for a licensable HMO; failed to comply with licence conditions; not obtained a licence for a property subject to selective licensing; failed to comply with licence conditions; or contravened an overcrowding notice. To turn to our conversation a few moments ago, obviously, at a point where an offence is that serious, the local authority has the opportunity to take a view about which course of action to take. Under the Housing Act 2004, magistrates courts have the ability to bring forward unlimited fines. However, as we discussed on Tuesday, it is right that these breaches carry as strong a penalty as possible, so that they are strong enough as a deterrent that no one wants to breach them in the first place. That is the best way to drive out these disgraceful rogue landlords.

I heard the strength of feeling that the civil penalties set out in the Bill must be high enough to damage a rogue landlord’s business model and make it untenable, and that the current penalties may not be sufficient. If the Committee will bear with me, I would like to consider the points raised by the hon. Lady in more detail than I have had the opportunity to today. I will return to the topic on Report. With that in mind, I hope she will feel able to withdraw her amendment.

[Teresa Pearce]

I am pleased to hear what the Minister says, which is similar to what was stated on Tuesday when we talked about the level of fine. We do not want something that is revenue-raising; we want something that is truly a deterrent, and the Bill needs enough teeth to do that. I welcome his remarks, and I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Schedule 4 agreed to.

Clause 87

Tenancy deposit information

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.