Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation and Liability for Housing Standards) Bill

Debate between Ed Davey and Karen Buck

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 19th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Ms Buck]

I join the hon. Lady unequivocally in paying tribute to Citizens Advice. It supports the Bill and has written a good briefing about it. I do not want to stray too far from the Bill, but there is a real concern about advice services across the piece, and we must continue to discuss and make representations on that.

One concern that underpins my motivation for the Bill is that it is often the poorest and most vulnerable people—those with the highest likelihood of having disabilities and sickness—who are trapped in the worst housing, and in my experience, very few people have adequate insurance. That is a much larger problem that we must seek to resolve. A number of different remedies may be available to some people, but the minority of people who are concentrated in very bad housing often do not have access to the remedies that are available to those who are better off.

[Sir Edward Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)]

The hon. Lady is being generous in giving way. I strongly support the Bill. She made an important point about enforcement. The House is good at making regulations, but often they are not enforced properly to help the most vulnerable people, and I believe that enforcement agencies and local authorities need more support. She made a point about retaliatory evictions when local authorities take action, and in my experience local authorities that take action often do not also help the tenant to ensure that the landlord does not behave badly. I would welcome the hon. Lady’s comments on that.

[Ms Buck]

There are a number of issues in respect of supporting tenants that are outwith the scope of the Bill and on which I will continue to make representations, including retaliatory eviction. The reality is that local authorities are increasingly cash-strapped. That is one of the reasons that environmental health departments are not able to enforce. In an ideal world, local authorities would be able to fund advice services and tenancy liaison officers. I have seen some very good practice by tenancy liaison workers, including in Westminster, across the parties—when work is good, I am happy to acknowledge that. I am in absolute agreement with the right hon. Gentleman, however, that it is inadequate and patchy, which is exactly why we need to make sure that individual tenants can exercise a direct remedy in law when the other services we would all like to be in place are not up to the job.