Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Bill

Lord Carlile of Berriew Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 23rd November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

My Lords, I too congratulate my noble friend Lord Best on bringing this Bill to the House and Karen Buck on all the work that she has done in another place. I referred in the previous debate to some of the singular peculiarities of your Lordships’ House. Perhaps I should have said the peculiar advantages, for we have had two Second Readings each presented by a true expert in the field that each Bill covers. I know that my noble friend has given a great part of his life to quality and safety of housing, and the issues covered in the Bill. He is highly regarded, particularly throughout the architecture profession and by housebuilders.

I declare an interest: I happen to be chairman of the not-for-profit company Design for Homes, which organises the housing design awards each year. One of the purposes of those awards is to reward not only the beautiful, but large-scale housing that provides safe spaces in good-quality environmental conditions for families, particularly in mixed communities, where people seem to flourish best.

I can say from my experience as a lawyer and sitting as a part-time judge as a recorder in county courts, and, indeed, in the criminal courts, that I have seen the dangers presented by bad housing. One can truly observe that crime, child abuse, respiratory disease and mental illness are all caused—I mean caused—by poor-quality housing and poor housing maintenance. Anybody who is in a caring profession, such as the right reverend Prelate, if he will forgive me for describing his calling as a caring profession, sees that on an everyday basis. I have been involved in some safeguarding inquiries relating to abused children. The effect of poor housing has been all too obvious.

May I be allowed one anecdote? My noble friend Lord Best referred to local authorities. He is absolutely right. Local authorities are sometimes just as much to blame as private landlords. On one occasion I was sitting as a recorder in a central London county court. A woman who had a disabled son of some 20 years had been living without any heating or hot water for two years in her council flat, which was owned by a south London council that I will not name. In the end, a solicitor came to court pro bono to try to get something done. The local authority’s housing director’s answer was that he or she was unavailable that day because they had meetings and could the case be adjourned. My reaction was, “Yes of course, I’ll adjourn the case until 2 o’clock and if he or she doesn’t turn up then there will be a warrant for their arrest”. Of course they turned up, but why should that mother and that disabled young man have had to have gone through months of difficulty and come to an intimidating county court, with wigs, gowns and the rest of it, to get their hot water and heating repaired—the ordinary requirements of life, particularly for that disabled young man? It just should not happen.

I echo something the right reverend Prelate said in this context. It is disgraceful that people who face low-quality housing conditions below fitness for human habitation cannot obtain legal aid to ensure that they get their rights. If they are given legal aid and the landlord has not provided the necessary facilities, the landlord has to pay the costs. I would have thought that this is an area in which legal aid should be glaringly and obviously available.

If I could stray on to the grass verge on the margin of this Bill, I will say something relating to my chairmanship of Design for Homes. We note that, under Sir Roger Scruton, the Government appointed what is called the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission. This Bill does exactly what it says on the tin, but one has to read that commission’s title with great caution. It seems that the Government have fallen into the trap of appointing “taste tsars” who seem to believe that the bypass variegated, as Osbert Lancaster called it, of old represents the best quality housing and that modernist architecture has no place. Some of the best housing we have seen in the housing design awards—I have been involved for several years now—has appeared in modern, contemporary-looking buildings, which have certain obvious advantages. They have large windows so that you can see what you are doing without having to turn the lights on; they have modern efficient heating systems which do not necessarily take up wall space; and so on. I invite the Minister and the Government to link with the purpose of the Bill: the need to be broadminded about architecture and not be lectured to by people who think they have a monopoly of good taste, particularly when they expressly and explicitly reject best modern practice.

There are many examples where one would not necessarily expect it of poor housing which is not kept in good repair by landlords. In rural areas, many small cottages are let by large estates which spend as little as possible on maintaining those properties. There are more cottages without inside lavatories in the rural areas of England and Wales, at least, than in the urban areas of England and Wales. That requires attention.

Many in this House have had children at universities and we have all seen, in some quite distinguished university cities, terrible accommodation in which landlords simply do not carry out the repairs. They are able to let the properties six months before the tenants move in because there is such demand for them, and if you deliver your student children to those properties you find despicable states of repair. On one occasion recently I had to go out to a supermarket to buy 24 lightbulbs so that one could see anything happening in the students’ accommodation. That was in one of our great university cities. This area needs attention.

As to young working singletons, there have been grants of planning permission, particularly in the London boroughs, in which office premises have been turned into small and inadequate flats and flatlets. One can almost predict what they will be like in five or 10 years’ time because they are plainly unsuited to that kind of conversion. I can understand the reasons why local planning authorities give consent in those cases—it brings properties quickly into residential use—but you are asking for trouble if you do that unless you impose, as a local authority, proper conditions so that those buildings are big enough, clean enough and properly serviced for the future, otherwise you are perpetuating the Rachmanism to which the noble Lord, Lord Horam, referred.

With those thoughts in mind, I strongly support the Bill. It is high time that it was enacted and I hope we will see strong government support for it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

We will come back to this on the Tenant Fees Bill. I thought compensation was for when you suffer some loss or injury and if you had money taken off you inappropriately for a prohibited payment. Why cannot there be compensation for that? We will come back to this on the Tenant Fees Bill, but I think it is for any sort of loss, potentially. The noble Lord, Lord Carlile, may want to intervene.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew]

If it helps the Minister, I did not immediately realise he was talking about exemplary damages because they are given in very restricted circumstances. It is pretty unlikely that they ever will be given in an ordinary landlord and tenant case.

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

I totally agree. We will perhaps come back to this but we are not debating it in this Bill.