Energy Bill [HL]

Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan Excerpts

Monday 24th January 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Smith of Basildon]

My Lords, that is exceptionally good advice. It will be crucial that information is available for tenants and for landlords. My point in moving the amendment was that the review should not be limited to the items listed in subsection (5) of Clause 36.

The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, suggested that my amendment is not clear on whether the Secretary of State or the reviewer would decide the criteria. I refer her to Clause 36(3)(a), which makes it clear that the matter is for the Secretary of State. All that I seek is not to limit the review to the four criteria listed in subsection (5). I hope that the Minister will take on board my point about information being available and how crucial that will be for the process being successful.

[Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan]

My Lords, before we leave this issue, I am not quite clear on the extent of the penetration of the membership of the British Property Federation and on whether it captures all landlords. If the BPF has not so far—as I imagine—captured the recalcitrant landlords, I suggest that we should not try to impose too much responsibility on the BPF. At the same time, if this legislation is to succeed, the Government’s role should be to show leadership by trying to inform the public of what could be available to them and what might be being denied them because of landlords who by and large—historically, sadly, there are all too many of these—are indifferent to the needs of many of their tenants.

It would seem that the more insecure the tenancy, the higher the rents and the less attractive the accommodation. Very often, individual metering and inadequate insulation are the hallmarks of such properties. While we have a responsibility towards those tenants who live under registered or trade association landlords, we have an important and even greater responsibility to those who live in wretched and dreadful conditions because of the force of very complex circumstances. Sometimes, such tenants are not in a position to make the right economic judgments—which, in many respects, lie at the heart of the Green Deal—because, sadly, they have too many other things to worry about. The fact that these folk may not be in these properties for long does not mean that their successors should be condemned to the same dreadful conditions as those in which the previous tenants had to stay. The Government must pay greater attention to this issue. It is to the shame of previous Governments that these situations have been allowed to prevail for so long.

[Lord Best]

My Lords, perhaps I may add a little factual information on the profile of the private rented sector. We know from Dr Julie Rugg at the University of York that there are some 1.2 million private landlords. Very few of these belong to the British Property Federation, for which I have a great deal of time and which is doing some very good work, including on this Bill. The vast majority of the 1.2 million private landlords do not belong to any kind of federation. The Residential Landlords Association and the National Landlords Association together have, I think, less than 5 per cent of the ownership from the private landlords sector. We will have to bypass some of those institutions and put in place mechanisms that will reach out to this huge mass of small-time private landlords.

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[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, I welcome this amendment from my noble friend. It is important that tenants are actually mentioned, which is the emphasis here. The broader point is that although tenants are not a homogenous group, because of the differences that arise in the sector, there certainly will be people who cannot and never will be able to afford their own homes as opposed to more transient people who have not bought a property perhaps, because they are seeking to move on. The group will be different in many ways. I therefore support the idea that the review should try to identify the particular hurdles faced by this group in asking their landlords to make the improvements through the providers of the scheme. It is an important area and one it would be useful to understand if and when the report is produced.

[Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan]

Short-term tenants who are in poor-quality houses and move on regularly are not normally the kind of people who will have the time, let alone the inclination, to enter into such an agreement. They may not actually be involved when it comes to the implementation of the scheme, because there is likely to be some time lag. The other side of that is that the kind of landlords who operate in these areas are often unscrupulous and indifferent. Particularly in big cities, we now have substantial numbers of an almost underclass of people who live on the national minimum wage, are in one job that is lowly paid and get moved on to another and, perforce of circumstance, keep moving. There does not seem to be much consciousness on the part of government that such a group of people exist. I am not certain whether they will really be touched by the Green Deal because of the indifference of the landlord, the difficulties facing the tenant, and the persistence of high energy bills due to the inadequacy of the insulation of the houses—that is the simplest form of improvement that such properties could have. No matter how much encouragement we give either to the tenant or to the landlord in these circumstances, I am not sure that much will happen. We might have to fall back on other forms of remedial action, which might not have the market finesse that the Green Deal is supposed to promise.

[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, I am a landlord—very much in the line that the noble Lord, Lord Best, described of one property, but I thought that I should declare that interest in this debate.

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[Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan]

I would like to ask the noble Baroness one further question. What will happen in the short tenancy housing market if landlords start increasing the rent on the basis that the house is now better insulated as a consequence of the Green Deal? That would mean that subsequent tenants would be paying twice—once for the improved property, and secondly for the improvement. Is there an ombudsperson who is going to take care of that?

[Baroness Northover]

I will resist the temptation to speculate about areas that I may be less than well briefed on. If the noble Lord wishes to bring that up again when my much better briefed noble friend Lord Marland is dealing with a suitable amendment, I would welcome that he does that. ECO will target households and presumably subsidise poorer ones. However, before I get myself into any more of a complicated mess, I invite the noble Baroness, having led me down various alleys, to withdraw the amendment.