Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Clive Betts and Roberta Blackman-Woods
Dr Blackman-Woods
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point and I shall come on to deal with that issue when discussing a later amendment.
Why do the Government not want to provide the information I referred to and to have this scrutiny? The lack of information on this policy is an issue that has been taken up by the Public Accounts Committee, too. The Minister will be aware that it said:
“It is not clear how this policy will be funded in practice, or what its financial impacts might be. The Department’s intention is for this policy to be fully funded by local authorities, but it was unable to provide any figures to demonstrate that this would be the case…More widely, an even bigger risk will fall on those local authorities required to sell housing stock to fund the policy, as those assets will in effect be transferred to central government. But the Department did not appear to have a good understanding of the size of these risks”.
The Committee went on to say:
“The commitment to replace homes sold under this policy on at least a one-for-one basis will not ensure that these will be like-for-like replacements as regards size, location or tenure. Experience of the reinvigorated Right to Buy for council tenants, introduced in 2012, shows that meeting such one-for-one replacement targets can be difficult…Moreover, replacement homes can be in different areas, be a different size, and cost more to rent. Neither do they need to be new homes”.
Mr Betts
The Minister has said on a number of occasions that the sale of the “higher-value council properties”, as this has now become, will pay for the replacement of the right-to-buy property sold by a housing association and this £1 billion remedial brownfield fund. The fact that he has said that with such assurance must imply that he has some figures and some workings out somewhere on which he has based those assertions. Would it not be helpful if he could produce those today?
Dr Blackman-Woods
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. If the Minister has those figures, we will give him an opportunity now to share them with us, as that would be extremely helpful in allowing us to know exactly what we are going to be voting on this evening.
Although more information is important, we need to remind ourselves that the whole policy of selling off higher value council housing to fund the right to buy is considered by almost everyone to be a very bad thing to do, and that replacement is absolutely essential.
Lords amendment 47, tabled by Lords Beecham, Kerslake and Kennedy, addresses the issue of replacement, and would require the Government to enter into an agreement with a local authority under clause 72 whereby a local authority could show the need for a type of social housing and the Secretary of State would then agree a hold-back sum, so that homes sold could be replaced by houses of the same tenure, type and rent. If the Government do not accept this one-for-one, like-for-like replacement, they need to explain why. The reason this amendment is so important is that few details are in the public domain about how the Government will meet their own commitment for one-for-one or two-for-one replacement in London.
It appears that Ministers could force the sale of a council house in Camden and count two other new homes built for open market sale in Croydon as meeting the so-called commitment to replace. Therefore, the like-for-like replacement in amendment 47 is vital to ensure that housing need is met across the range and that homes for social rent are not simply replaced by starter homes or homes at higher rents, which, as the Public Accounts Committee outlined in its statement, is a real risk.
Furthermore, figures from Shelter this morning outline a truly alarming picture of the impact of the sale of higher value council homes on local authority stock, and I will come on to that in a moment or two.
Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Clive Betts and Roberta Blackman-Woods
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
Is not the concern that we should see this in the overall context of Government policy? Not only will these council homes be sold off, with the opportunity to replace them on a like-for-like basis almost certainly not being available, but it will be very difficult for most housing associations to replace their sold properties on a like-for-like basis. As was confirmed in the Select Committee yesterday, there is no new money at all in the comprehensive spending review for any new social rented housing. At the end of this Parliament, there will almost certainly be fewer council homes to rent than there are now.
Dr Blackman-Woods
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, and one that we want to emphasise this afternoon. Most commentators are now saying that there is no additional money to provide the replacement affordable housing and there are no provisions in the Bill to allow a like-for-like replacement in the same local authority for homes that are sold off.
This chapter of the Bill is not only damaging to social housing but will have a negative knock-on effect in the private sector that will mean there is simply no respite for low income families and no housing that they will be able to rent at a level that they can afford. The Government must reconsider this part of the Bill and must take this chapter out of it.
Dr Blackman-Woods
As we did our best to explain to the hon. Gentleman in Committee, such housing is often not subsidised. The point that we are making is that councils already have the discretion to set higher rents for people with higher incomes if they choose to do so. What we are querying this afternoon is why the Government are introducing an element of compulsion and why this will apply to council tenants only.
Mr Betts
We should kill the myth of subsidised council housing. Under the rules that this Government changed following the proposals from the previous Government, housing revenue accounts are self-funding. There is no subsidy. The only subsidies that I can see are right to buy discounts and starter home discounts that the Government are proposing.
Dr Blackman-Woods
My hon. Friend has won that round of the debate.
So shocking is chapter 5 of part 4 that we have tabled amendments to remove all of it from the Bill. We have tabled amendments to leave out clauses 89 and 90 and the schedules relating to them. We saw no value in amending these elements of the Bill as the ending of security of tenure for council tenants would be one of the greatest travesties for the future of affordable housing in this country. The only position we can adopt is to ask for it to be removed from the Bill entirely.
Three decades from now, when our grandchildren look back on the decisions of our generation concerning housing, their social mobility will have declined compared with that of previous generations, despite what David Cameron may think, as a result of the instability that this Government’s policy creates. Having a stable home to grow up in is crucial for working families whose income barely affords them an adequate standard of living. Children should not be faced with the threat of having to change schools every two to five years when the council is forced to review the tenancy contracts of their parents. This could have disastrous effects on their education. Like a number of colleagues, I was brought up in a council house and thus was able to acquire better educational opportunities than my parents as a result of growing up in a stable home with security of tenure. We want to ensure that that option exists for families who need it today.
However, the Government are removing the most basic protection for tenants that has existed in our country for decades—that council housing would be provided by local authorities to secure rented homes for people on low incomes, and that those homes would be of good quality. The Government need to stop attacking council tenants. I thought that we had cross-party agreement not only that the council housing sector should be valued, but that measures should be put in place to enhance its attractiveness and availability, rather than it being attacked in the way that it is in this Bill.
In 1979, 42% of Britons lived in council houses. Now, that figure is less than 8%. Government investment in social rented housing was cut by two-thirds when the coalition Government came to power. While the Government pledged a one-to-one replacement for every home that was sold under the right to buy, the latest figures show that for every nine homes sold, only one is being replaced.
The Government are wrong in their assumption that council tenants with security of tenure can afford to buy a home or live elsewhere. A recent study found that 91% of homes in England and Wales were unaffordable to homebuyers even in some areas where they had the national average income of £26,500. Local authorities, under the Localism Act 2011, already have the ability to offer flexible tenancies if they so choose. Why are the Government introducing this degree of compulsion and why do they attack council housing tenants in this way?
Recently a woman living in a council house in London told The Guardian:
“In the long run, London needs us service workers more than we need London. Most of us will not be able to survive with the current rental prices. We are no longer children, to be able to share a flat with 10 other people. This is a shift of the goalposts and will leave people in desperate conditions.”
Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Clive Betts and Roberta Blackman-Woods
Mr Betts
That is true. I am pleased that the Government seem to want to increase the fine levels. I hope that eventually the banning orders will kick in, and a number of civil penalties will be imposed over a period. That is the intention of one of the amendments, and it, too, is welcome. I think that banning orders will have an impact if they are properly effective, along with other measures in the Bill that will help to deal with rogue landlords.
Before I say a few words about the ombudsman, I want to say something about new clause 5, which we heard about from the hon. Member for Hornchurch and Upminster (Dame Angela Watkinson). I think that it is an excellent measure, and the Government ought to think seriously about it. It is very simple, and would be very light on public sector resources. Indeed, it would probably save public money, because it would not be necessary to chase around finding out who owned properties when there was a problem with them. The information would be readily available, at little cost to the public purse. Local authorities would be able to do their jobs more effectively, as they would spend less time trying to find out who was the owner or the letting agent. Tenants often do not have that information, but by the time a problem occurs, authorities want to have it to hand so that they can take immediate action against those who are responsible.
The hon. Lady also put her finger on a very important point. In the case of the licensing scheme in Sheffield, I suddenly realised why landlords were so opposed to it. There was, of course, the possibility that local authorities would carry out more inspections of their properties, find faults and take action, but what most disturbed them, in my view, was that HMRC would know that a property was tenanted and rent was being paid to someone, and one or two further inquiries might follow. I think that is absolutely right: that should be done—the taxpayer ought to be paid their tax on rent that is collected. Very often in these properties there are not proper tenancy agreements, the rent is simply paid cash in hand and the taxpayer receives none of it. Having that information in the public domain that can be used for any proper purpose—I hope that would include being able to pass it on to the tax authorities—has another benefit to the public purse. That is a very sensible and simple measure, and I hope the Government will be prepared to support it.
Finally, I hope the Government will give further thought to the housing ombudsman covering the private rented sector. I know there may be the view that this is a private sector and therefore a public sector ombudsman should not be looking at these matters, but let us draw a comparison. The coalition Government extended the remit of the local authority ombudsman to cover social care homes even when the person in those homes was paying for themselves, so there was no direct public sector involvement. That remit was extended to social care homes because it was thought that it was somehow wrong that some people could not take an element of social care provision to the ombudsman for a decision while other people in the same care home could.
For example, if a local authority discharges its homelessness duty by allocating or placing someone in a private sector property and it all goes wrong, the local authority element of that, where it makes the placement, would presumably be under the jurisdiction of the local authority ombudsman. However, if it is the private landlord who does not deal with that tenancy properly, there would be no remit for the tenant to go to any ombudsman at all. Once the local authority discharges its duty and makes provision to have someone housed in the private sector, at some point in the transfer from someone being homeless to them receiving a private tenancy, there would be a switch from an individual having recourse to go to an ombudsman and their not having recourse to do so. There could be great dispute about whether the action of allocating someone a house in the private sector as part of a local authority’s homelessness responsibility was covered by an ombudsman or not. I therefore hope that the Government will reflect on the fact that this may be one of the gaps in the provision of the ombudsman’s service. I know that they are looking overall at reconfiguration of the service, and they might give some thought to this extension as a sensible way of covering one of the gaps.
Dr Blackman-Woods
I wish to make some comments about the Government new clauses on deregulation of housing associations and ask the Minister some questions.
In Committee we raised several probing amendments relating to clause 78, which covered reducing regulation but did not specify what measures the Government would be taking to deregulate the social housing sector. Of course, we understand that the Government are now seeking, under amendment 4, to leave out clause 78 and replace it with new clause 6 and new schedule 1. As the Minister said in Committee in response to probing amendments:
“I intend to introduce a package of measures on Report. The ONS announced the reclassification decision on 30 October, which has not yet given us the time to carefully work through a package in time for the Committee.”––[Official Report, Housing and Planning Public Bill Committee, 1 December 2015; c. 465.]
This is our first opportunity to see these new measures.
We welcome replacing the general with the specific. Removing clause 78 and replacing it with new clause 6 and new schedule 1 is primary legislation. Clause 78 gave Ministers a sweeping open power to repeal regulations affecting housing associations. At least new clause 6 and new schedule 1 have the merit of being precise—but they are very long. In total, the new clauses and schedules in this group amount to 34 pages of new legislation—almost a quarter as long as the Bill itself. They were tabled close to the deadline for debate on Report, and over the Christmas recess, so there is no way that this House, or the organisations and experts that have a direct interest in these provisions, can properly scrutinise or challenge the Government on the content of this newly introduced legislation. We can see that the new clauses and new schedule contain several elements that address some of the issues raised by the ONS as part of the reclassification of housing associations. They will address the issues through the removal of the Government’s consent power over how housing associations hold their assets.