End of Eviction Moratorium

Lord Spellar Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd September 2020 Commons Chamber

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

I find it incomprehensible that the Minister has not taken the opportunity to cut the Gordian knot and deal with section 21 and the need to protect decent, honest tenants who are facing the loss of not only their job but their home. There is another, smaller group of antisocial tenants who are ruining the lives of their neighbours with their behaviour and seem to think that at the moment they are untouchable. Will the Minister ensure that councils and the courts have the power and capacity—and are fully aware of that—to take action against antisocial tenants, and fast?

[Christopher Pincher]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for the points he made, which are apposite. It is for the courts to determine the priority of their cases, but I am sure the House will be reassured to know that they will do so based on matters such as antisocial behaviour, fraud, domestic violence and the like. As a result of the statutory instrument that we laid on 29 August, landlords seeking possession of property because of the antisocial behaviour of their tenants will be able to move much more quickly than the former rules allowed: they will be able to seek possession of their properties in four weeks. I think that is the right balance of fairness between those tenants who fall into difficulty because of no fault of their own, and those tenants who abuse their rights and privileges and against whom the courts should act.

Financial and Social Emergency Support Package

Lord Spellar Excerpts

Wednesday 25th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. Yesterday, the Health Secretary held a very innovative press conference that was completely online. On Monday, I and many other Members held a very good meeting with the immigration Minister via Skype. Can there not be a reassurance that Ministers will undertake to hold briefings over telephone calls or online for Members—it does not have to be a sitting of Parliament—so that we can ask those questions directly, because often one gets a better or more nuanced response in person than through written correspondence? It would help resolve some of the issues if Members had access to Ministers directly after an announcement in that kind of mode.

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. This is deeply unfortunate. I fully understand the work that officials will be doing and the pressure on Ministers. Whatever Ministers say to us, time and again it seems that people in No. 10 are working without any regard for the House of Commons and treating it as an inconvenience. We saw that with the Chancellor’s statement, when he did the press conference in spite of explicit assurances, as we understand it, that he would address Parliament first. We therefore need a statement, even if it is an interim one. If the announcement is going to be made tomorrow, there may be final details in some areas where he has to say, “We haven’t finalised that,” but he should be able to outline the main points. Frankly, we have a Treasury Minister on the Bench now and we should be getting answers to some of these questions, so that there can be proper scrutiny and accountability.

Horizon Settlement: Future Governance of Post Office Ltd

Lord Spellar Excerpts

Thursday 19th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jones]

It was even worse than that: for many years the Post Office denied that that could ever be done. It was only in 2011, after campaigning by me and others, that the Post Office had the forensic accountants Second Sight take a look, and it discovered exactly what the hon. Gentleman has just outlined. But what does the Post Office do? It set up a mediation service, but still denied that there was any problem, even though the evidence was there.

As for the operator, Fujitsu, it knew that there were glitches. Indeed, I have to say that it is as guilty of the cover-up as the Post Office. I cannot comment on the judgment—I think the judge has possibly referred the case to the Crown Prosecution Service to get its involvement, so I do not really want to go into the detail—but Fujitsu has a lot to answer for.

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is outlining a litany of maladministration at the very least. Have any individuals at management level in either at Post Office Ltd or Fujitsu ever been held accountable for this?

[Mr Jones]

I shall come to that, which is a very good point. The complete opposite: most have been promoted or, in one case, appointed as a Government adviser when she left the Post Office.

That denial then led the postmasters to get the group action together, with 555 taking the Post Office to court. The Post Office was still denying that there was a problem when it went into court; indeed, its consistent approach has been to deny any type of liability.

Let me turn to the role of the Post Office and that of Government. The Post Office is an arm’s length body from Government, but the sole shareholder is the Government. They have a shareholder representative on the board. Despite that, millions of pounds of public money are spent every year. In fact, it is a nationalised company, whether we like it or not.

But we are unable, as parliamentarians, to scrutinise the Post Office. For example, in spite of what it knew, it is estimated that the Post Office spent between £100 million and £120 million defending the indefensible in court. That was basically designed to whittle down the case, so that the other side ran out of money. Trying to scrutinise the Post Office and get it to account for that is virtually impossible. When I have asked parliamentary questions, they are referred to the Post Office. I will come on to the role of Ministers, but I am sorry that the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Sir Edward Davey) is no longer in his place, because I would have liked him to answer for his role—or lack of role—when he was the Minister.

The Post Office falls somewhere between a private company and a public company, but then there are the individuals involved, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley (John Spellar) said. Paula Vennells was the chief executive of the Post Office. She left last year. Obviously, as a board member she knew what was going on, including the strategy in the court case and the bugs in the system. What happened? She got a CBE in the new year’s honours list for services to the Post Office. That is just rubbing salt into the wounds of these innocent people. There is a case for her having that honour removed, and I would like to know how she got it in the first place when the court case is ongoing. Added to that, she is now chair of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. Again, I would like to know why and what due diligence was done on her as an individual.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jones]

I do not know whether the hon. Lady has read my speech, but I am just coming on to the Cabinet Office, because lo and behold, guess where Paula Vennells also ended up? She was a non-executive member of the Cabinet Office. I am told that she was removed from that post yesterday; I do not know whether it was because of this debate. I welcome that, but why is someone who has overseen this absolute scandal still allowed to hold public positions? Worse than that, she is a priest. I respect those who have religious faith, and she does, but the way that she has treated these people cannot be described as very Christian—she certainly would not pass the good Samaritan test, given the way she has ignored their pleas. I hope she thinks about people like Tom, who have lost their livelihoods and are now living in social housing because of her actions. It angers me that these individuals have gone scot-free, and they need to be answerable for their actions.

[John Spellar]

Maybe she fulfils the role of the Pharisee in that parable. Does this not also speak to a deeper problem in our society, where relentlessly, time after time, the great and the good look after each other and hand out these positions to each other, irrespective of whether they have been successful or a massive failure? We see that particularly in the health service, where people move from job to job, taking payments each time they go and leaving catastrophic failures. Is this not a deeper failure in the system?

[Mr Jones]

It is, but how could somebody be given a CBE when this scandal was out there? How could somebody be appointed to the non-executive board of the Cabinet Office and a healthcare trust, given what is coming out of this court case? I find that remarkable.

Then there is the role of Government. When the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton was the Minister, he said that the Post Office

“continues to express full confidence in the integrity and robustness of the Horizon system and also categorically states that there is no remote access to the system or to individual branch terminals which would allow accounting records to be manipulated in any way.”

That is despite a board minute of 2009 which said that remote access was possible. What his role in it was I do not know, but he clearly did not ask many searching questions of the Post Office.

I turn to how we scrutinise the Post Office. I have tabled numerous written parliamentary questions, but because the Post Office is an arm’s length body, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy shift them over to the Post Office—it is at arm’s length, and therefore it is nothing to do with the Department. There is a question here about how we can scrutinise the Post Office. This week, I asked a question about what the complex case review team in the Post Office is. My able assistant rang BEIS and asked, “What is it?” BEIS did not even know about it. The parliamentary question has now been given to the Ministry of Justice, but it does not know what that team is. I know that last week two cases were settled out of court, each for £300,000. This is public money we are talking about here, and we need full scrutiny. I would love to see whether the Minister can shed some light on what this organisation actually is.

Then we come to the role of Ministers. I have already mentioned the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton, but Jo Swinson, Claire Perry and the Minister’s immediate predecessor the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood (Kelly Tolhurst) were all involved. They all completely believed what they were being told by the Post Office, never asked any questions about how public money was being spent and allowed the Post Office to continue what it has been doing. The Government cannot say that they never knew about this, because when the new Government came to power in 2010, myself, James Arbuthnot and the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire went to see Oliver Letwin, then a Cabinet Office Minister, to put our case to him. He had sympathy for it, because he had a similar case in his constituency. What happened to that? Nothing happened at all. Clearly there is an issue that the Government cannot hide from it.

Draft Electrical Safety Standards in the Private Rented Sector (England) Regulations 2020

Lord Spellar Excerpts

Tuesday 17th March 2020 General Committees

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Nokes. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central, I warmly welcome the regulations. They are long overdue; it has taken a very long time to get here. It is shocking that in this country, tenants can still rent a property without any assurance about electrical safety.

My hon. Friend discussed the 400 fires that have occurred in private rented properties. I am particularly concerned about electric fan heaters. They are a major cause of fires, although they are not covered directly here. A few years ago, of 11 fires in the London area, three were down to fan heaters. That was not necessarily down to the landlord—I do not have the detail—but it goes to show what can happen if something goes badly wrong with an electrical appliance.

That brings me to the issue of PAT tests, which my hon. Friend raised. It is all very well having good wiring in a property—that is vital, of course—but if a single appliance has a problem, there can be a serious issue. In parts of the country where young professionals are passing through on short-term lets in single rooms in a property with shared electrical facilities, landlords are probably not checking every appliance. They are certainly not doing PAT tests; they are not required to. I urge the Minister—I know he is new in his post; I hope he stays a bit longer than any of his predecessors, which will not be difficult to achieve—to look at that issue and to respond to that serious point.

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

The missing part in this is who is actually doing the testing. There seems to be a serious gap in the regulations on the requirement for that person to be professionally competent. There is talk about issuing guidelines and all the rest of it, but there is precious little detail.

[Meg Hillier]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. He has read my mind—that is one of my other concerns. It is a really long-awaited measure and yet it is full of holes.

I am sorry, Ms Nokes—I should declare an interest. I let a property so I know a bit of what I speak. It is in the register of interests. I mentioned PAT tests. Good landlords should maintain high standards but, as my hon. Friend highlighted, finding someone with the right qualification to do this work and knowing that the recommendations they make are the right ones is a challenge. It is important. I hope the Minister, in guidance if not in the regulations at this late stage, will be able to look at the standards that electricians should be maintaining.

Even where someone has an electrician to visit a property or their home to have something done, standards change over time. Standards have changed even in the last decade or so. Perhaps the fuse box or other elements of electrical equipment may need to be altered. If that work is done piecemeal or by somebody with a lower qualification, there is a real concern.

The law did change—all electrical installations in any property, rented or otherwise, need to be done by a qualified electrician. For landlords, there is a public safety interest as well. It is not the same as in a private home. A landlord is acting to keep a place safe for a third party. It is important that we have slightly higher standards of inspection at that point.

The other issue I am concerned about is enforcement. In part 2, regulation 3(3)(c) says that the landlord is to

“supply a copy of the report”—

the one that my right hon. Friend and I were discussing—

“to the local housing authority within 7 days of receiving a request in writing for it from that authority”.

That is all very well, but given the squeeze on local authorities, highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central, and on environmental health, I cannot envisage that councils will have the resources to run around trying to find where landlords are and ask them whether their properties are safe. Of all the things that landlords do for tenants’ safety, electrical safety will be at the top of the list of importance.

Does the tenant therefore alert the local authority? In an ideal world, yes, but we all know that there are unscrupulous landlords who will inflict punishment on tenants for making a single complaint to the local authority—and anyway, that is reliant on the local authority having the resources to act in time and do something about it if it does not receive a report within seven days or considers it to be in some way inadequate. The enforcement element of the regulations is very light.

My hon. Friend also mentioned new burdens. I am sure the Minister will have done a new burdens assessment or required to see one on local government. This paragraph alone will provide a significant new burden, let alone the overall responsibility for ensuring that properties in an area are safe. At the same time, the Government have clamped down on local licensing regimes and refused to set in place even a basic national licensing programme.

Licensing can be another burden on local government, but basic modern safety standards for private rented housing are long overdue. I urge the Minister, early in his career with responsibility for housing—hopefully his career will be longer than his predecessors’—to look seriously at this issue. We have individual licensing schemes around the country that vary greatly, with no basic minimum standards other than those required by other parts of the law. We keep adding bits to legislation, like on a Christmas tree, without seeing coherently what should be at front and centre. A private let property is a home for the tenant living there, and they should be safe and secure at all times in the home in which they live. There are so many holes in the system.

I turn to the fine of up to £30,000. Is that how local government is expected to fund this measure? That will require local government to find some very bad transgressors quite quickly to get the money in to pay for staff time alone to ensure its implementation. We can all talk warm words about how vital it is to have this measure on the statute book, but how will it be delivered?

Finally, we are in the grip of a deadly killer in coronavirus, where households will self-isolate and professionals—however well qualified—will struggle to manage their workload; indeed, they may not want to leave their own homes. In part 3, regulation 5(2), on the duty of a private landlord to comply with a remedial notice, says:

“A private landlord is not to be taken to be in breach of the duty under paragraph (1) if the private landlord can show they have taken all reasonable steps to comply with that duty.”

Nothing should let an irresponsible landlord off the hook. However, given the timeframe involved, with the regulations coming into force in June for all new tenancies from July, and the severe restrictions on British society because of the coronavirus situation, it might be challenging for some good landlords—possibly bad ones, too—to comply. Will the Minister be crystal clear about whether “reasonable steps” will cover the serious state we are in now? Will he also make clear how he will ensure that unscrupulous landlords do not use that as a get-out clause for doing what is proper and right in the interests of private tenants?

[John Spellar]

May I probe the Minister a bit further about who will do inspections? I hope he may intervene to satisfy me on that. The regulations talk about a “qualified person” but the explanatory memorandum says that the Department decided

“not to introduce a mandatory competent person scheme”.

I would not argue that the Department should set up its own mandatory competence scheme, but they are already out there in the industry, in the same way as they are in the gas industry. It is not necessarily for the Department and the Minister to identify one particular qualifying organisation, but what I find slightly odd is the fact that they are not requiring that someone qualified under part P must have a qualification from the National Inspection Council for Electrical Installation Contracting or whoever in order to be able to undertake such work—as far as I recall, it is already required for certifying a new electrical installation. That is also a protection for the landlord against people who might purport to have such qualifications—unless they produce a fraudulent certificate, but that is a different danger and another issue. It would surely benefit the tenants and local authorities to have somebody sign off and give their registration number, which can be checked if there are subsequent problems.

[Meg Hillier]

My right hon. Friend raises a really important point. If we are trying to reduce the burden on local authorities while protecting tenants, a trusted trader scheme or a trusted inspection scheme can cut through some of the bureaucracy that local government may otherwise feel the need to introduce. Actually, local government does not have the resources to do that. Surely he would agree that that would be cost-effective to the taxpayer all round.

[John Spellar]

Very much so; it makes the local authorities’ job much easier. We already have a well-regulated scheme for training and for testing the competence of people working in the industry—for very good reasons, given the inherent dangers of electricity. As I said, I understand that people might produce fraudulent certificates and so on, but that can be dealt with in a different way. This approach would make it much easier for local authorities to say to a landlord, “Where’s your certificate?” and, if they have their suspicions, to check back on that or even to check on the individual. It cuts out a huge amount and does not require the Department, local authorities or consortiums of local authorities to pull that together.

If I may say bluntly to the Minister, this process seems to have a bit of a feel of, “We’re against the big state and bureaucracy.” This would cut bureaucracy, but we still have to cut through to the idea that having proper qualifications, regulation and checking is enormously important. It facilitates commerce, rather than inhibits it, but it also provides a lot of reassurance to all the parties involved.

--- Later in debate ---

[Luke Hall]

I cannot give the hon. Member a specific date, but I will respond to her in writing on a number of the issues that she and others have raised. I will do my best to provide a date as soon as possible.

The right hon. Member for Warley mentioned the idea of competent person schemes and the principle of trusted trader schemes. We will be encouraging industry to establish competent person schemes but membership of them will not be compulsory, to ensure that there is no further pressure placed on industry nor burdens placed on inspectors or customers.

[John Spellar]

That is not necessary. Electricians are already highly regulated under all sorts of electrical legislation. They also have to be trained and to pass competency tests. They get certificates indicating their level of competency: some are competent to install, some to supervise and some to test. The industry already has this, and there is no need to create a new structure. Why does the Minister not just say that there are long-established regulatory bodies, and we will use their certification and schemes to establish competency? I honestly do not see the logical problem he is facing.

[Luke Hall]

As I say, before the regulations come into force we will be publishing guidance. I will look closely at the issues, but the guidance can be used before employing inspectors and testers to ensure that the person is competent. Of course, I will take the right hon. Gentleman’s point away.

A number of Members raised the issue of PAT testing. They are right to point out that that has not been included in the draft regulations because of the variety of electrical appliances and because the use of one single mandated approach has not been considered practical. The Chair of the Public Accounts Committee has asked to me to look at that issue, which I am happy to do. I will report back to her on that point.

The Opposition Front-Bench spokesperson talked about the importance of not only considering the private rented sector in our work, but considering the social sector as well. She is right to make that point. We all acknowledge that the standards in the private rented sectors are significantly lower in some incidences than in the social sector, so the draft regulations target that sector, but we will be separately considering measures for social rented properties. I am happy to work with the hon. Lady and continue discussions as we move through this Parliament about how we can best achieve that.

Hon. Members also talked about how the regulations will be funded. Local authority environmental health departments are already responsible for enforcing electrical safety standards in the private rented sector. The new regulations will make it simpler for local authorities to do this because landlords will now have to provide them with proof that their electrics are safe. Local authorities will also be able to keep any money raised from financial penalties to fund those activities.

There was also a question about the first-tier tribunal, instead of enforcement, and about the system in Scotland and the number of cases. I do not have that information to hand, but I will find it and make sure it is reported back to the hon. Member for Croydon Central after the debate.

I am pleased that we have general support for the regulations and for our work to improve the private rented sector. I think we all agree that this is timely and overdue, and it is right we are bringing it forward this morning. We rightly heard that 871 people were injured in England in electrical fires in the home in 2016-17, and 16 people died. In a five-year period, the London Fire Brigade dealt with 748 fires caused by electrics. In the same period, only 97 fires it dealt with in London were caused by gas.

We have heard the discrepancies and disparities between the social rented sector and the private rented sector. Although there is a compelling case for change, it is right that we put on record the important contribution that private landlords make to the housing market. The majority of landlords in England provide well-maintained and safe accommodation for their tenants, allowing them to put down roots and thrive in their communities. However, we must ensure that all landlords, not just the good ones, are meeting standards of electrical safety. We want irresponsible and unscrupulous landlords who wilfully disregard their responsibilities and rent out dangerous properties to change their behaviour or leave the business. That will help level the playing field and helps support good landlords to deliver the homes that our country needs. The regulations are an important part of our wider reform programme, which seeks to level up the private rented sector, making it fairer, safer and more secure.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Spellar Excerpts

Monday 13th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

Across the country, children’s care is in crisis. The Secretary of State made welcome reference to the funding settlement, which provides some relief, but that is for the next financial year. Can the Minister confirm that the extra funding will be provided in every year of this Parliament? Will the Government also continue to work with councils to ensure that funding settlements reflect the escalating demand for, and cost of, these services?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Luke Hall)]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his question; I know how important this issue is in his constituency. I can certainly confirm that the social care grant will continue every year, including the additional £9.2 million for his local authority into the next year. I am very happy to meet him to discuss this further.