Housing and Planning Bill

Lord Shipley Excerpts

Monday 14th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords, I am very worried about this amendment and wish to speak briefly to it. I foresee some junior employee in one of these private companies sitting there with, on his or her desk, the most personal information about individual council tenants and their incomes. I find that utterly deplorable. I am astonished that Conservative Members of this House and the other place did not object to this. Historically, certainly when I was in the Commons, whenever there was an argument about the revealing by the Inland Revenue, as it was at the time, of information outside the government department, there was always a storm of protest. But people seem to presume that this is acceptable on this occasion. I wait to hear the Conservative Members of this House and government supporters challenge all the implications that lie behind this clause.

This is wrong. I would also like to know the detail. Will there be a regulation—I am sorry to have to ask for a regulation now—which defines precisely the nature of the details to be provided by HMRC? Where subsection (2)(d) refers to,

“a body with which the Secretary of State has made arrangements for the passing of information between HMRC and local housing authorities”,

are those bodies to be defined somewhere? We presume that they will be private companies, but are there other organisations which have not been mentioned which we might wish to consider when we come to Report?

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, my name is attached to Amendment 80A, but I fully subscribe to the points that have been made so far about Amendment 80. A range of issues is involved and the Government would do well to think very carefully about that. I will come back to that in a moment.

On the assumption that HMRC has a role, Amendment 80A simply says that,

“an arms-length management organisation, tenant management organisation or local housing company wholly owned by its local authority which is managing social housing”

should also be counted in terms of being bodies which can receive information from HMRC. It is not clear in the Bill so far that that is the case. I suspect that is an oversight, but I look forward to the Minister’s confirmation that that indeed is the case.

There is, however, a broader issue about the role of HMRC. There is the role of third parties getting access to private information and the control of that. That has been very well put by noble Lords in this grouping so far. However, there is another one which I think has to be looked at very carefully. That is how the information flows from HMRC in the first place, the reason being that with tax returns, for example, it may be straightforward for many individuals but for some, perhaps self-employed people, it may not be, and people have to file tax returns months after the tax year, so there could be significant levels of fluctuation in people’s income.

We have heard all the arguments around this, of peaks and troughs during the year and so on. A lot of thought needs to be given to this issue about the security of data and the bureaucracy that is being created. We heard in the last group about reimbursement of costs to local authorities for the work they have to undertake. Of course, there are ways of getting round this—a number have been suggested. I hope the Minister will take very seriously the fact that we do not want to create an enormous bureaucratic structure to deal with this when there are simpler methods to achieve the objective.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, I am sure that all noble Lords will be pleased that this is a smaller group than those we debated earlier. It concerns the role of HMRC in relation to data sharing on income.

The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, asked if we had consulted with HMRC and the Information Commission. I can confirm that we have.

I will start by outlining the purpose of Clause 81. The power has been taken to enable data sharing between Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and local authorities if it is necessary to verify the income details provided by tenants. This could be achieved directly between HMRC and local authorities, or the Government could choose to set up a body to make the transfer of data simpler. Noble Lords have raised concerns about private companies using income from tenants for purposes other than verification. I can reassure noble Lords that there is no intention to share the details of tenants directly between Government and private companies.

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[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

Can I check if I am yet again speaking to amendments that we have not got to? Amendment 82GAE is in this group. Would noble Lords like to discuss it or withdraw it?

[Lord Shipley]

Will the Minister be really clear about guidelines? This is about regulations and guidelines. I am now looking at the policy fact sheet, which the department published. It makes it clear that there is going to be a single set of regulations for these measures, that is, the phasing out of lifetime tenancies. However, the regulations will be subject to the affirmative not the negative procedure. Could the Minister confirm that fact? It then says that the regulations will be developed in discussion with local authorities and the regulations and provisions in the Bill will come into force early next year. That, therefore, is early 2017. It is therefore easy to share the guidelines that will be written because there is from now approximately 10 months for those guidelines to be shared.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

My Lords, to help noble Lords with this Amendment 82GAE, we are going to speak to it in its place, which obviously will not be tonight.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

Would noble Lords like to hear it tonight or on Thursday? I am not going to waste any more time on this; I will finish my comments where I should have finished them and say to the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, that when I have guidance, I will be happy to share it with him.

[Lord Shipley]

What I am trying to get at is that if the regulations have to come to your Lordships’ House under the affirmative procedure, will she explain the guidelines at that point rather than keeping them separate from the regulations?