Private Rented Sector
Debate between Jack Dromey and Mark Prisk(10 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Jack Dromey
Indeed. Some Labour councils have done precisely that, by using their compulsory purchase powers to renovate homes and transform the lives of those who live in them.
The shadow housing Minister is right about the need to bring all homes in the private rented sector up to a decent homes standard. She is also right to highlight the importance of a potential national register. I was surprised to hear the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr Prisk), whose contributions to debates on housing are usually thoughtful, pooh-pooh the notion of a register, because it would tell us who the landlords are; provide information on whether they pay their taxes, which is of benefit to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs; and communicate to landlords their rights, entitlements and obligations. If any landlord were found guilty of serious criminal behaviour, they could be deregistered, which would result in them not being able to operate as a landlord. A national register could make a significant contribution to what we are seeking to achieve.
Mr Prisk
I hate to recreate our old sparring moments, but I say to my former shadow Minister that the problem is that it is accreditation and standards that are needed. Registration—a set of names on a form—has not worked in Scotland, which has only got rid of less than half of 1% of agents after five years. It has not dealt with the rogues, but it has cost tenants more in rent.
Jack Dromey
A register would be a means to an end. It would not be sufficient in itself, but ultimately, this is about an effective approach to enforcement. I stress again that a register would be of benefit to good landlords because it would inform them of their rights and entitlements.
In conclusion, in my former being in the union, I used to say that, for all the problems, nothing is impossible. The scale of the housing crisis in this country is absolutely immense, but so too is the scale of our ambition. As our leader said last September, and as the shadow housing Minister has said so often since, it requires the kind of determination that characterised the 1945 Labour Government. The 2015 Labour Government will have exactly that determination—homes for all at a price they can afford.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Jack Dromey and Mark Prisk
Mr Prisk
My hon. Friend is absolutely right that the problem is concentrated in certain areas. For example, the numbers in temporary accommodation in the past 12 months halved in Leeds but rose in Birmingham. We need to focus on this. We are therefore putting £1.8 million into the bed-and-breakfast taskforce to really get under the skin of why there are these local variances and to make sure that we tackle the problem at source.
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
Mr Speaker, may I first echo your congratulations to the British and Irish Lions and to Andy Murray? They are remarkable sportsmen with their team at its very best.
On his appointment, the Housing Minister released a manifesto for housing entitled “Mark’s Manifesto”. In a gripping read, he said that it was wrong that tens of thousands of people should be without a home and that the Government had
“acted to cut the number of households in temporary accommodation.”
Yet only this morning a study for Centrepoint by Cambridge university has pointed to a “severe” shortage of affordable housing, leaving the most vulnerable in the cold, and said that the number of households in temporary accommodation has risen by 10% over the past year. Can the Minister explain why?
Mr Prisk
There has been a rise in temporary accommodation in the past 12 months, but the numbers as a whole show that the number of families in temporary accommodation is half what it was under the previous Labour Administration. We are trying to tackle this at its root source. That is why we need to be clear about what Labour would do. Labour has a poor record on this, but will not say what its prognosis is.
Jack Dromey
On facing up to one’s record, the truth is that the only thing that this Government have cut is the budget for affordable homes, as the National Housing Federation has said. Homelessness and rough sleeping are up by a third since the general election, eight times more families are living in bed and breakfasts than three years ago, and the number of affordable housing completions fell by 29% in the past year. Why does the Minister not accept responsibility for presiding over the biggest housing crisis in a generation, forcing thousands of decent families into temporary accommodation and costing the taxpayer £1.8 billion?
Mr Prisk
We got the lengthy rhetoric, as usual, but no analysis or thought. The reality is that we are building more affordable homes—170,000 in this Parliament, and we plan to build 200,000 in the next Parliament. Labour’s record is that it managed to oversee the loss of 420,000 social homes in 13 years; no wonder Labour Members do not want to talk about it.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Jack Dromey and Mark Prisk
Mr Prisk
The key issue is that by getting rid of regional spatial strategies and moving towards local plans, under this Government local people and their representatives will have the opportunity to set that agenda. I take my hon. Friend’s point. We want to ensure that planning permissions are used properly.
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
With the toxic combination of the biggest housing crisis in a generation and a flatlining economy, Britain badly needs a Budget for jobs, homes and growth. We are now told that there is to be the fourth “get Britain building” launch. Will the Minister confirm that the third launch last September of a £10 billion guarantee fund has seen not one brick laid and not one house built? Will he explain why, if his policies are working, housing starts fell by 11% in 2012 to just 98,000? Has the time not come for the Government to stop talking and start building?
Mr Prisk
As always, the hon. Gentleman provides entertaining rhetoric, but the facts are wrong. The net addition to the housing stock, taking into account new homes and our work on empty homes, which we rarely hear about from the Labour party, is 11%. He needs to rehearse his rhetoric more often.
Letting Agents
Debate between Jack Dromey and Mark Prisk(11 years, 8 months ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
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Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mrs Brooke. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) on the excellent case that she put forward. It was a bravura performance, making a powerful case for change. She started by referring to the private rented sector and the fact that that is growing rapidly. Various contributions in the debate have made the point that it has now overtaken the social sector in size at a time when home ownership has fallen for the first time since the 1950s. The very powerful report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation talks about generation rent—a whole generation of young professionals who are now locked out of home ownership and end up in the private rented sector.
We heard very powerful contributions from my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) and my hon. Friends the Members for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) and for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield). They pointed to experience from their own constituencies of the problems that people face in the private rented sector. Undoubtedly, the sector will have an important role to play in the future, but absolutely not on the current terms. There are problems of security. Letting agents encourage churn, which leads to insecurity in the sector. There are problems of affordability. There are problems of quality: 37% of homes do not meet the decent homes standard. There are too many rogue landlords and too many rogue letting agents.
More generally, we need to transform the private rented sector into a sector that works for both tenants and landlords and in which there is no place for the disreputable, who undercut the reputable. Letting agents do perform an important role, because in a sector in which most landlords are small landlords, they depend on letting agents, but my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham was right, in her forensic exposition, to refer to the overwhelming body of evidence that suggests that the current situation is absolutely unacceptable and must change.
According to the CAB report, 73% of those who dealt with letting agents were expressing dissatisfaction. According to the Which? report, this market is second from bottom of 50 consumer markets. There is also the OFT report. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) was absolutely right about this. It goes beyond what it would normally say to be critical of the sector and is calling for change, as are many others, from Shelter to the Resolution Foundation. Why is that the case?
In this very powerful debate, we have heard testament from a series of right hon. and hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell). There is the problem of fees and lack of transparency. Often, exorbitant fees are charged. They vary wildly, and frequently there are exorbitant up-front fees. The hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) is to be congratulated on his mystery shop exposing that in his own constituency. There is the problem of no client money protection. As a consequence, all too often, both landlords and tenants lose out. There is also the problem of repairs often not being carried out.
It is extraordinary that someone can set themselves up as a letting agent with no qualifications whatever. They have no need to conform to requirements or to provide mandatory safeguards for consumers. It is a ludicrous anomaly that estate agents are regulated, but not letting agents. An excellent phrase was used by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. It pointed to the fact that 4,000 letting agents act entirely outside any form of regulation or self-regulation in what it calls the “Wild West”.
In government, my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne—I am proud to follow in his footsteps—took the initiative over the Rugg report to say then that this was a scandal that had to end. Sadly, when the current Government came to power, the then Housing Minister, who tends to get out the clove of garlic in one hand and the cross in the other at the very mention of regulation, dismissed what Rugg had recommended and what, in the consultative process, had been overwhelmingly supported. He called it red tape; we call it protection for tenants and landlords alike.
The Minister for Housing (Mr Mark Prisk)
I am interested to hear that. It has been mentioned that I put down a probing amendment on the question. If it was so important, why did the Labour Government not put the redress measure into law, which it would have been able to do, in Committee on the basis of the amendment that I presented?
Jack Dromey
We moved decisively down the path for comprehensive regulation of the sector under the last Government.
Mr Prisk
We have a long-standing issue with long-term empty homes, of which there are 278,000. I am pleased to say that we saw a drop of 22,000 in the past full year, which is encouraging. We have put specific funds into our programme to bring those empty homes back into use. With respect, if I may say, it is a programme that we had to put in place, because it was not there when we came into office. The hon. Gentleman is right to highlight empty homes, but we are taking steps to change that.
Boosting supply is not only about financial support. We need to be careful to avoid excessive regulation that can deter the investment in supply that we all agree we need. If supply is stifled and if we go back to the bad old days of rent controls, we would actually see a stifling of investment and a shrinking of supply. The net result would be that tenants would have fewer properties to choose from and higher rents as well.
Jack Dromey
I am surprised at the Minister’s assertion. I spoke earlier today at the British Property Federation’s conference, where the Minister will be speaking shortly. The unmistakable message from the federation, which represents institutional investors, is that it believes that the time has come for effective regulation of the sector, particularly regulation of letting agents. It does not believe for one moment that that will put future investment decisions at risk.
Jack Dromey
We are consulting right now on how we move to longer-term tenancies linked to more affordable and predictable rents. We are not convinced by the argument for rent controls, but all those who wish to make contributions can do so. It is to be regretted that the Government have set their face against that, which 1.1 million families badly need in the private rented sector, so that they can plan where they send their kids to school and plan how they manage their household budgets.
Mr Prisk
People will be encouraged if that is confirmation that the Labour party, were it to be elected in some strange manner in a couple of years’ time, will have rent controls. We will see how that develops, but perhaps I should persist, because other hon. Members have raised questions.
Targeted, effective regulation that is carefully thought through, of a statutory nature or otherwise, has a role to play. That is why we have made a particular effort to crack down on rogue landlords, for example, in the case of beds in sheds, which is a dreadful scourge. Frankly, too little has been done in the past. It is an area where people are genuinely exploited and where we want to use the law. That, in a sense, comes to the second question.
Various people have asserted in this debate that letting agents are completely unregulated, but that is not true. That is a myth, which it is important to dispel. We should not be telling tenants that they have no controls and that there is nothing there to protect them and no one to turn to to help them challenge someone who is behaving badly. Whatever our political perspective might be, there is a genuine interest in getting the message right.
Letting agents are subject to regulation. It is important to flag that up. The hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) highlighted a specific issue around students and the fact that they were being told incorrect things about market conditions. The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 offer protection against someone who is deliberately misleading and pulling the wool over people’s eyes, enabling individual tenants the opportunity to challenge them.
Also, the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999 protect tenants from unfair conditions. Several hon. Members mentioned the way in which tenants can find themselves facing unfair restrictions on the way in which they can use a property. We have seen—several hon. Members have mentioned this—that trading standards bodies can and will prosecute letting agents. I mentioned a case in West Bromwich in a previous debate and we have heard about a case in Rotherham. In Oxford, a letting agent had to pay £300,000 in fines and costs for consumer protection-related and money-laundering offences after failing to return tenants’ deposits—which several hon. Members have mentioned—letting properties without the authority of their owners, and not passing on rent. So action can be taken. There was a similar case in Plymouth, where the letting agent was jailed for two years for spending client money on foreign holidays—again, that was mentioned by one hon. Member—and propping up his business. That individual may yet face further action to seize his assets. So, serious sanctions are in place, which our constituents can now use. It is important to flag that up.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Jack Dromey and Mark Prisk(11 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
The Secretary of State told the BBC that on house building “signs are encouraging,” boasting of building 132,000 homes. “Encouraging”? Far from encouraging, housing completions have fallen in both financial years since Labour left office, and housing starts have fallen to 98,000. Does the Housing Minister recognise those figures? He should, because they come from his own Department. Will he take this opportunity of correcting the misleading impression given by the Secretary of State? Does he accept that no amount of massaging statistics can conceal the fact that this is a Government who are presiding over the biggest housing crisis in a generation?
Mr Prisk
Gosh! What a lot of rhetoric, but not a lot of facts. The reality is that the net addition to the housing stock is up 11% on the last four figures that we have, at 135,000. That is the highest level in four years. Is there more to do? Absolutely. Do we want to make sure that we reverse the trend on affordable homes? Yes, but carping from the Opposition Benches will not help that process or the people whom the Opposition claim to represent.
Private Rented Sector
Debate between Jack Dromey and Mark Prisk(11 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
The Minister for Housing (Mr Mark Prisk)
That final comment was slightly laboured. I did table a probing amendment—as all good Opposition spokesmen do—but will the hon. Gentleman explain why the Labour Government refused to act on it?
Jack Dromey
I welcome the hon. Member’s support, which I presume will read across into supporting the Opposition motion before the House today.
Regulating letting agents would protect tenants and landlords, and raise the reputation of an industry that Which? recently ranked second from bottom across 50 consumer markets. The Opposition hope that the Government will support the proposals and back our motion today, not least because the proposals have the support of the entire sector—the Association of Residential Letting Agents, the National Landlords Association and the British Property Federation. We also hope that the Government will recognise that the private rented sector simply does not provide the 1 million families with children, and other tenants in the sector, with the stability and security they need.
Jack Dromey
The Minister is citing the impact study produced at the time we made those proposals, but he fails to talk about the benefits that would accrue to the sector, which the study asserted would be up to £1 billion.
On the nature of the sector, the overwhelming majority of landlords are small landlords, and it would take them a matter of minutes to register who they are and the properties they own. Such a register would enable Government and local government to communicate with landlords about changes to the law or entitlements. Crucially, it would enable tenants to check that their landlord was registered and it would help local enforcement. With a licensing scheme or environmental health enforcement, if action is taken against a landlord who is found guilty of serious criminal behaviour, that landlord would no longer be registered, and rightly so.
Mr Prisk
We heard some details there, the most interesting of which was the admission that there would be a new cost of at least £300 million—all hon. Members will note that. Instead of having a national register that has the danger of being both toothless and highly expensive, we believe that enforcement can be closely focused and robustly applied using existing laws. We have heard about how local authorities have a number of powers to tackle these landlords, and I will give the hon. Gentleman a couple of examples.
In Southwark, 12 people were crammed into a flat above a café that had no fire protection and where the cooker was at the top of the only staircase out. Southwark council has used its powers, issued an emergency prohibition order, stopped the use of the flat as residential accommodation and brought in social services. In a similar case in Epsom and Ewell, someone was getting six tenants into an unsafe property, where he did not have the appropriate arrangements. He got a £20,000 fine and rightly so. I say to the hon. Gentleman that a national register sounds easy and simple, but he baulked at the thought last time around when in government—or his colleagues did. If we are really going to crack down on the rogues, we need to use the laws we have before trying to pass new legislation.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Jack Dromey and Mark Prisk(11 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Mr Prisk
My hon. Friend makes an eloquent point; it is about both supply and demand. If we get housing supply and demand right, that will start to deal with the huge problem we inherited. My hon. Friend is absolutely right on mortgages too. I am pleased to say that the Council of Mortgage Lenders pointed out that repossessions are at their lowest for five years.
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
With housing starts down and private rents up to record levels, England is now gripped by the biggest housing crisis in a generation. Homelessness, which fell under Labour, is once again soaring: homeless families in bed and breakfast, homeless young people in hostels and too many homeless sleeping on our streets. Does the Minister not accept that the most potent symbol of failure is the fact that 75,000 children will wake up on Christmas morning in temporary accommodation or bed and breakfast, without a roof over their head that they can call their own?
Mr Prisk
The hon. Gentleman refers to the Shelter campaign about 75,000 people not having a roof over their head at Christmas time. He is right to do so, because the campaign also says that the answer is more affordable homes. We are committed to doing that, and we are committed to making sure that we expand the private rental sector. This is a problem that has been around for two or three Governments and we want to make sure we deal with both the surface problem and the issues behind it.
Housing
Debate between Jack Dromey and Mark Prisk(12 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Jack Dromey
I am glad to answer: Labour is the party of aspiration. We support the right to buy, but the Government’s approach is fundamentally flawed, first because local authorities will not be able to retain all the receipts, and secondly because thus far it is inexplicable—perhaps the Minister can help—how the one-for-one promise will be delivered. Thirdly, there is absolutely no guarantee that if a home is sold in my constituency of Erdington, where there is a long waiting list, a new home will be built in Erdington. There are fundamental question marks about the Government’s approach.
Employment Law (Beecroft Report)
Debate between Jack Dromey and Mark PriskUrgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
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Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
Last week, the Secretary of State paid warm tribute to workers and their union, Unite, for their role in the transformation of the automotive industry. This week, the Prime Minister wants to make it easier to sack workers. With 1 million young people out of work, should not the Government concentrate on making it easier to hire workers, rather than to fire them?
Mr Prisk
Again, I appreciate that the hon. Gentleman is at a disadvantage because he has not read the report; the question that he raises shows that rather clearly. If I may, I would suggest that he has a look at it. He will see that we are focusing on how to make the market more flexible so that it is easier to hire people. That is important. He is right about the workers at Vauxhall; they have done a fantastic job and I respect that. That is the attitude of this Government.