Lord Shipley
Main Page: Lord Shipley (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)Housing and Planning Bill
Lord Shipley Excerpts
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
We have spent a long time on starter homes, where we are not going to get the detail until after Royal Assent because the Government have only just started the consultation process and that will inform the regs, so outside bodies—discussion groups—will inform the regs, not this House. Now we are being told the same thing about all the detail on right to buy and the apportionment of how much money will go into replacing local authority housing and how much will go into housing association discounts.
We cannot make legislation on this basis, where all the detail is in the ether, awaiting consultations that should have started last September but which the Government have got round to only in the past few weeks—too late to inform discussions, but the Government are unwilling to delay parliamentary scrutiny until we have that information. Then, as and when we get the statutory instruments, we will not be able to amend them as we should if we feel we need to. This is a travesty of House of Lords scrutiny.
Lord Shipley (LD)
I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis of Heigham. It is a travesty of the House’s processes. I think I am right in saying that we have just heard for the first time that we will get further information only after Royal Assent. Prior to that, we have had a different form of words from the Minister, to the effect of “best endeavours”, “as soon as possible”, “hopefully by Report, maybe not everything”, “consultations are being undertaken”, and so on. Now we are talking about getting the information only after Royal Assent. The Minister owes a duty to the House to explain in detail—now—why, on the fifth day of Committee, we are told that we cannot have the information that we need to undertake a proper examination of the Bill until after the Bill has proceeded and has secured Royal Assent. It is a travesty, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis of Heigham, said.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
Perhaps I might add one further point. I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Young, would agree with my description, but certainly when I was taking Bills through, including the Bills I was responsible for within the department, I had to go to something called “LegCo”—the legislative sub-committee of the Cabinet—where 40 Bills were queuing up for, say, 25 slots in the programme. I would not have been allowed to bring a Bill before this House if I did not know the timetable for the regs and what the import of those regs was, so that I could take the Bill reasonably and appropriately through the stages of this House and my colleagues could do the same down the other end.
Who is failing here? Is it the fact that the Government are so anxious, having won an election, to proceed with legislation when it is not ready? In a previous Government, the Minister would not have been allowed to bring this Bill to either House, and now we are in a position where we cannot scrutinise it as a result of bad management and the failure, in my view, of LegCo, Bill teams and all the rest to do proper scrutiny.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I thank noble Lords for their words, particularly my noble friend, given that I have not been here for 11 of the past 13 years. This is a very complex Bill and how to proceed with or without some of the secondary legislation that goes with it is quite new territory for me. As the Bill is so necessarily complicated, I imagine that with it will go an awful lot of secondary legislation. I will definitely commit—I have already promised and I do not intend to break my promises—to the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, that that timetable will be with noble Lords in the next week or so. That is on the record now: the timetable of secondary legislation will be with noble Lords in the next week or so.
In defence of myself, in a sense, and certainly of officials, I make a plea to noble Lords to avail themselves of some of the technical briefings that are going on as the Bill proceeds. They are incredibly useful for getting some of the detail. I know most noble Lords here have attended the briefings, but please continue to do so.
Lord Shipley
My Lords, perhaps the Minister could tell me when the next set will be. I thought the technical briefings had come to an end. I attended at least three and, I have to say, they were profoundly unuseful for the very reason that we are aware of across your Lordships’ House: virtually no question we ask can be answered because nobody who is an official knows the answer to it.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, I have asked for additional briefings to be provided over the next week or so, until we come to the Recess, and I will be attending them. They might help me; I certainly hope they will help noble Lords. It is very helpful for me to be there and to understand what sort of issues noble Lords are bringing up. I totally accept that I committed to giving that timeline, and it will be with noble Lords in the next week or so.
I have met each political group within your Lordships’ House; I hope that noble Lords have found that helpful. Some points that noble Lords bring up in debate definitely inform government thinking, because this House has more local government leaders and representatives in it—and experts on the Cross Benches—than the other place. Therefore, this House will be very helpful in informing the Government.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, in that sort of situation, I would imagine that the local authority has a number of options available to it, including the use of capital reserves, or indeed borrowing if it wished to. Alternatively, of course, private sector developers could build housing. A number of options are open to councils in bringing forward more houses within the local authority area, including the retention of a portion of the receipts in order to deliver new homes.
Lord Shipley
A moment ago, the Minister talked about vacant homes, and I really would like to be clear whether the Minister is talking about vacant homes or surplus homes. Is there a clear definition that we can have on the record of what a vacant home is and what a surplus home is?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, when I talked about vacant as opposed to surplus, we were talking about assets that were surplus in terms of government but vacant in terms of local authority homes. Vacant, in my mind, means empty, but there will be more detail later defining at what point a property becomes empty.
Lord Shipley
If a vacant home is a home which is empty, for how long does it have to be empty and can a local authority say that that empty home is actually required but just happens temporarily to be empty?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
That is precisely the point I am making. We will be defining what empty—that is, vacant—means in due course in the dreaded regulations.
The Government will be able to ensure that under these agreements local authorities will, as I have said, use the receipts efficiently to deliver as many new homes as possible. Where they have an agreement, we want local authorities to have discretion about how the new housing can meet the needs of their local community, rather than being constrained in primary legislation to replacing the housing they sell with homes of the same tenure. Just to help my noble friend Lady Gardner of Parkes, tenure refers to the type of housing, such as shared ownership. I know people use the word differently in different contexts.
I have just received an answer to the vacant homes point. A home is vacant when a tenancy granted by the local authority has come to an end, as defined in Clause 77.
Lord Shipley
So it is clear that a vacant home simply means that a tenancy has been given up and that, as a consequence, there is a vacancy. However, it may never be empty, because a tenant might move out and another tenant might move in the very same day. In that case, of course, it may well be that that vacant home is not a surplus home.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
When I used the term surplus, I meant surplus assets that government might seek to dispose of, and I gave the example of King’s Cross. For local authorities, vacant referred very much to housing.
Lord Shipley
My Lords, I have put my name to Amendment 66E, which relates to the point made a moment ago by the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, about demand and whether a local housing authority would be required to sell off a high-value home which perhaps has a large number of bedrooms, even though that property could be in demand for rent. It also goes back to the discussion we had about the meanings of the words “vacant”, “empty” and “surplus” in the previous group, so I do not seek to go over that ground again.
I will emphasise two points, the first of which is that the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake—again, in a previous group—clarified something which we all know: there is no surplus of council and local authority housing in this country. Maybe there was a few years ago but today there is not. So it is very important that we understand what the impact of selling vacant high-value properties will be on those who are on social housing waiting lists—and, as we know, 1.6 million people are on those lists. This amendment simply says that the local housing authority should deem that there is no demand for that high-value property for rent. That is it, and it is a perfectly legitimate test to apply. If there is a waiting list in that area for that property, there should be no compulsion on a local authority to sell it.
Lord Kerslake
My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 67B and 67C, which are in my name. Both amendments relate to the exclusion of certain types of property from the forced sale programme, which would therefore be suitably amended with regard to the formula for the so-called levy.
The first category identified in Amendment 67B seeks to exclude properties that any reasonable authority or person would regard as sensible not to be included in a forced sale policy. I will not go through all of them but will give a few examples. A local authority would seek to achieve the maximum flexibility possible in the progression of a regeneration scheme. To be forced to sell off certain properties that are critical to the delivery of the regeneration would be a perverse outcome indeed. The exemption of properties that are themselves exempt from the right-to-buy policy would also seem absolutely logical, and this comes back to the formula that we might see. Again, the regulations may do this—but we have no regulations to fall back on.
Another area is vacancy, which we have spoken about. Under the bald definition of “vacancy” that we have had hitherto, if a property becomes vacant, it will be put up for sale. For the purposes of the Bill, it will be essential that it is regarded as being considered for sale, albeit that it is covered by a formula rather than an individual requirement. If, however, existing tenants wished to move into that property because they had already been identified as being in need, the property would be excluded. That sits alongside the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Best, which covers much the same point. At the very least, the amendment would cover high-value properties where there is clearly an existing tenant in another property in the authority who might move into it on a transfer basis.
I hope that noble Lords will see that the intention behind Amendment 67B is sensibly to exclude properties that any rational assessment would judge to be not appropriate to form part of a forced sale policy. I hope that the Minister will explain why any of these properties should be in contention for being expected to be sold or for being taken into account in the formula. I would be grateful for the Minister’s response on that point, given the nature of the properties involved.
My second amendment in this group, Amendment 67C, relates to the issue that we discussed this morning. If a local authority is fortunate enough to be in the position of the authority of the noble Lord, Lord True, who spoke earlier, and has transferred its stock, it will not be subject to the levy. If, on the other hand, for very good reason it decides at a subsequent date to transfer its stock, it will continue to be subject to the levy. As we heard from the Minister, this will be a levy in perpetuity and there will be no situation in which the authority can escape it. This will happen despite the fact that the authority transfers the stock to another organisation and therefore has no direct role in relation to the efficiency or otherwise of the management of that stock. That seems perverse, and it will be extremely difficult for the Government to deliver without some form of challenge. One local authority, through a sheer accident of timing, will be subject to a levy when another authority which takes very similar action is not subject to it. That seems perverse.