Homelessness Reduction Bill (Sixth sitting)

Marcus Jones Excerpts

Committee Debate: 6th sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 18th January 2017 Public Bill Committees

[Mr Burrowes]

I concede that point. I am trying to encourage us to look at the wider duties in the Bill and its wider application to prevention duties that might assist. I accept my hon. Friend’s point.

This is an important clause and we want to hear from the Minister that we are making the best of what we can do here. I appreciate that we will come to implementation and costs, which must be proportionate. We want to ensure that they are not open-ended. I want to hear from the Minister that he is open to seeing how we can extend the checks to ensure that we do the best for vulnerable households and ensure that they receive suitable accommodation.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Marcus Jones)]

The Government welcome the introduction of greater protection for vulnerable persons placed in the private sector under the new homelessness prevention and relief duties. Existing legislation already requires local housing authorities to be satisfied that accommodation is suitable when exercising their part 7 functions on homelessness and the prevention of homelessness in relation to factors such as size of accommodation, affordability and accessibility. I hear what my hon. Friend said and I will certainly go into more depth on his important points. I feel under a little pressure from Conservative Members and get the impression that they have reflected on the comments of the hon. Member for Westminster North, who talked much the same language at our previous sitting.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East said, when making an offer in the private rented sector for those in priority need under the main homelessness duty, existing legislation also requires local housing authorities to make additional checks to ensure the property is in a reasonable physical condition, and is safe and well managed. The points to be considered are set out in the Homelessness (Suitability of Accommodation) (England) Order 2012. Local authorities are therefore already used to making those checks and reputable landlords should be readily able to provide the requisite documentation.

I heard the comments of my hon. Friends the Members for Colchester and for Chippenham. They are quite right to say that most landlords are extremely responsible and do the right thing by tenants, but we know that 3% of landlords are rogues and do not do the right thing by their tenants. Frankly, the Government want to drive them out of renting property, particularly to vulnerable people. We have taken significant steps to drive out those rogue landlords through the Housing and Planning Act 2016. I will not go into the detail of that Act.

[Michael Tomlinson]

Before the Minister moves on to what the Government are already doing, if I understood and heard him correctly, he said that they deem only 3% of landlords to be rogue landlords. Perhaps he could clarify where that evidence comes from, but if he is right, does he not agree that it is a matter of balance—of making sure that we are not punishing those landlords who are doing a perfectly good job already, and potentially deterring and putting off other people from becoming landlords and providing much-needed accommodation?

[Mr Jones]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. A number of studies have been done around this issue, and that is where the figure of 3% comes from. As Members of this House—I am not, personally, a residential landlord but I know other Members who are—it is easy for us not to understand the challenges of being a residential landlord. The last thing we want to do is drive residential landlords out of the market so that we have less rental property for the people who we are trying to help to access good accommodation.

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

I am concerned by the number of references Government Members have made to how small the number of rogue landlords is. The 3% refers to the definition of rogue landlords from the data that the Government have. My experience is that there are very many more landlords who, although they might not fall into that category—nevertheless, 3% is a lot of landlords—of the most unscrupulous, are not as responsible and rigorous as they might be and do not provide tenants with the right level of service. This requirement is about local authorities being able to check that repairs that should have been done, have been done and that the property is in a fit state to move in to. Consistently this morning, the comments from Government Members have undermined the nature of the problem and the extent of the challenge that my constituents face.

[Mr Jones]

I hear what the hon. Lady says, but my understanding of what I have heard this morning is that Government Members, including myself, are extremely concerned to make sure that people who are vulnerable have the right accommodation and are supported in accessing it. The hon. Lady was on the Housing and Planning Bill Committee in late 2015, before the Bill became an Act in 2016, so she will know that local authorities now have a real incentive to tackle rogue landlords. If that legislation leads to our identifying more rogue landlords because they are genuinely rogue, so be it. That is a good thing as far as I am concerned.

[Michael Tomlinson]

I do not disagree with what the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood said, save for this: 3% is a relatively small number. To my mind, one rogue landlord is one rogue landlord too many—I am very happy to put that on record. Perhaps the Minister has other evidence of a second tier of bad landlords that do not reach rogue status and therefore are not in that top 3% but may be below it. Either way, the point from this side—certainly, I speak for myself—is that one rogue landlord is one rogue landlord too many, but 3% is relatively small and there should be a balance in relation to this clause and the whole Bill.

[Mr Jones]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. The legislation in relation to rogue landlords means that civil penalties of up to £30,000 can be levied against them. Those civil penalties can be retained by the local authority to put towards the enforcement that they make in this regard. There are strong powers there, which is a good thing if there is a second division of rogue landlords that we need to uncover. However, my hon. Friend is right: we need to get a balance.

[Mr Burrowes]

For clarification, the 3%—an upper tier that is not wholly relevant to the wider issue of the suitability of property and of landlords—deals with the number of rogue landlords, but does not account for the number of properties held by those landlords. If rogue landlords are particularly known for having large numbers of properties, the figure does not properly reflect the huge number of unsuitable properties under their control.

[Mr Jones]

That was why the civil penalty was raised to £30,000—to reflect that it needed to be a penalty that had teeth for the type of people that my hon. Friend is talking about. On the point about banning orders, that also relates to companies where a rogue landlord might be a director. There are many ways in which the legislation will help in that sense.

I must move on. As I said, local authorities already make some checks so they have significant experience. However, we should recognise that there is a cost to the providing and checking of relevant information that local authorities need to do. That is why the approach to the Bill is to extend that additional protection to where it is needed most, to protect those who are most vulnerable, as described by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East in his opening speech, which seems quite a long time ago.

This is a proportionate approach, which hon. Members have stressed is important. To require similar checks for all tenants would place additional burdens on local authorities and generally be unnecessary. Tenants who secure accommodation in the private rented sector already do so without the local authority’s carrying out additional checks on their behalf. Those who are themselves able to ensure suitability of property should do so.

However, I listened carefully to the hon. Member for Westminster North, who expressed concern that the group of people protected because they are defined as vulnerable is narrower than the group in priority need. She gave the example of pregnant women or those with children. I do not dismiss her comments and I hope I can reassure her that I share her concern that people do not live in homes that are unsafe or badly managed. I believe that all homes should be of reasonable standard and all tenants should have a safe place to live regardless of tenure.

The proportion of tenants in the private rented sector living in non-decent housing fell from 47% in 2006 to 28% in 2014 and 80% of private renters are satisfied with their accommodation and stay in their homes for an average of four years. I know that people will say that that is an average and may not be the case in London. That is why we have had to look in the Bill at the situation around 12-month tenancies and settle on a minimum of a six-month tenancy because of the challenges that certainly exist in London.

While I discuss the challenge raised by the hon. Lady about people who fall between the groups defined as vulnerable and in priority need, it is important to pick up points from other hon. Members. Several of my hon. Friends have thrown down the gauntlet on this issue. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole mentioned carbon monoxide. We all know that is a silent killer and it is extremely important that landlords keep their gas safety checks up to speed, to ensure that gas appliances such as a boiler, cooker or gas fire are not a threat to people who are in a commercial transaction with the landlord. They are paying a good rent and deserve a good and safe service.

[David Mackintosh]

Does the Minister agree that some local authorities would be better at this than others, and that when the measure is introduced we must make sure all authorities are acting in the same way and that training or information is provided when necessary?

[Mr Jones]

My hon. Friend has had significant experience as a councillor and at one point was a council leader, so he is well placed to speak on this matter. He is absolutely right. We have had a number of discussions on the same theme and part of the Government’s work is to bring forward from our Department a team of advisers. Local authorities do not often go out of their way to get something wrong or deliberately not follow guidance, but there are occasions when it is helpful to have someone working alongside to go through the guidance and to help develop local policy. That is certainly what we intend to do with our advisers. It is about assisting local authorities to get this right and I am sure all local authorities want that.

There is an existing framework that offers local authorities strong powers to make landlords improve a property. The health and safety rating system is used to assess health and safety risk in residential properties. Local authorities can issue an improvement notice or a hazard awareness notice if they find a defect in a property. In extreme circumstances, a local authority may even decide to make repairs themselves or to prohibit the property from being rented out. In the worst case scenario of an unsafe gas appliance, no member of the Committee would want that property to be rented out.

The Government are determined to crack down on rogue and criminal landlords. I mentioned the Government’s significant progress. I will not go into more detail, but in addition to the civil penalties I was talking about, we have provided £12 million to a number of local authorities. A significant amount has gone to London authorities to help tackle acute and complex problems with rogue landlords. More than 70,000 properties have been inspected and more than 5,000 landlords are facing further enforcement action or prosecution. We have also introduced protection for tenants against retaliatory eviction when they have a legitimate complaint. All members of the Committee will agree with that.

I want to pick up a couple of other points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate. He mentioned vulnerability and complex needs, and I think his concern was about this group of people who are not necessarily caught by the definition of “vulnerable” or “priority need”. I am not unsympathetic to what he was saying and will consider it and the comments by the hon. Member for Westminster North. I also noted the challenge from my other hon. Friends.

My hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate made a good point about temporary accommodation. We are absolutely clear that wherever practicable, local authorities should place people in their own area. Obviously, there are situations where that is not practicable and we are clear that factors such as where people work, where their children go to school and so on are taken on board. Local authorities should—we fully expect this—take those factors on board in meeting their statutory responsibility.

[Ms Buck]

As the Minister knows, Westminster is now reversing its practice of maintaining most temporary accommodation in-borough and announced last week that most homeless households will, in future, be discharged into the private rental sector outside the borough. Will he define “practicable” for this purpose and will he clarify whether that means “affordable”, given that Westminster is praying in aid Government policy and cuts to housing support as an explanation for that policy?

[Mr Jones]

We are being very clear: when we say that local authorities have got to take steps to house people in their borough unless it is not practicable, we mean that they must use every means and method at their disposal to ensure that they house people in their local area. If they do not, they have to take people’s circumstances into account. It is very difficult to see how any local authority could take an approach where, for example, a family with two children, both doing their GCSEs at a school in a particular borough, are sent to another part of the country at such a vital time, without it breaking the law. It would clearly not be taking that family’s situation into account.

I heard the earlier point made by the hon. Member for Westminster North. We are absolutely committed to replacing the temporary accommodation management fee with a flexible grant from this April. Funding of £616 million is available in that sense, and for the next three years. The grant will give local housing authorities far more flexibility on how they manage homelessness pressures. My officials are working with London authorities on temporary accommodation procurement. I am well aware that, in certain circumstances, London local authorities compete against one another for temporary accommodation. We need to look at all that can be done to try to avoid that situation.

As I mentioned, the Housing and Planning Act 2016 included measures to crack down on rogue landlords and we plan to implement those in 2017. That also includes the rogue landlords database for property agents, and banning orders for the most serious and prolific offenders.

In summary, we expect prevention and relief activity to increase following the implementation of the Bill. The provision seeks to ensure that those who are vulnerable are afforded the necessary protection. I believe it strikes the right balance, although I have listened carefully and heard what hon. Members on both sides of the Committee have said. I will take the concerns that they have raised about the way in which clause 12 will work back to the Department and will look at it further.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 12 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 13

Extent, commencement and short title

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

To conclude the debate on clause 12, the original intention, as I said in my speech last week, was rather broader. The concerns that colleagues—not least the hon. Member for Westminster North—have raised need to be looked at again. I am glad the Minister has agreed to do so to see what further action we can take to broaden the scope of clause 12.

Clause 13 is the final clause in the Bill, but this is not the final debate we will have. It is a relatively straightforward clause that obviously relates to the usual matters, namely the extent of the Bill, the provisions for commencing its clauses, the ability of the Secretary of State to lay regulations as necessary and the title.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bob Blackman]

Thank you, Mr Chope. I take your guidance. We do not want another Second Reading debate—we had one that was well attended and covered a wide range of contributions. It is fair to say that I have had representations from London Councils and the Local Government Association, including from its leadership, on the implications of enacting the Bill. There needs to be a discussion among the Committee so that we send a clear signal to the LGA and its membership about how the Bill will be enacted and delivered.

I hope the Minister sets out some of the Government’s proposals for delivering the Bill and the sort of support that will be available from the Department for Communities and Local Government. Following your guidance, Mr Chope, we will not discuss finances, but the resources, training and special assistance that may need to be provided to local authorities are vital. Homeless people and people threatened with homelessness need to know at that crisis point in their lives that they will get support and assistance, and that local authorities are geared up and ready to deliver them. Without that, many of the great aspects of the Bill may fall into disrepute, and as its promoter I am determined that we should not reach that position.

Ideally, we would not have to change the law in this way, but all parties are determined to change the culture by changing the law. We have already said in debates on other aspects of the Bill that further sticks will be applied if they are needed to ensure that local authorities deliver on the promises that we expect them to make. I look forward to the Minister setting out further details on how the Bill will be delivered, so that local authorities have certainty about what they will be expected to do and what support they can provide.

[Mr Jones]

I will not delay the Committee for too long on this clause. I hear your guidance on discussing cost, Mr Chope, and I welcome the fact that we can debate costs when we consider clause 1.

My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East is not making an unreasonable challenge on implementation. Given the questions he has asked, I hope the Committee will allow me a little time to provide reassurance. His questions were mainly concerned with the speed—or lack of it, as the case may be—of the Bill’s implementation, which other hon. Members also raised. In an ideal world, it would be great to see the Bill implemented as soon as Royal Assent takes place. However, my hon. Friend is experienced enough as a parliamentarian to be well aware that a Bill of this type takes time to be implemented because of the secondary legislation that will follow, the code of guidance that will have to be updated and the statutory code of practice that may need to be implemented if things do not go to plan. Those processes will certainly require consultation with local authorities. We will work closely with them to implement these important measures because we understand their concerns that they will be stepping into the unknown—they will be supporting a group of people to whom they have not hitherto had to provide such support.

It is difficult to give exact timings. I am not going into finance, but what I can say to my hon. Friend is that the funding for the measure would be available now if we were in a position to implement now, and it will be available when we come to that point.

[Mr Burrowes]

Will the Minister be learning lessons from Wales, where there was a lead-in time before implementation? That helped to bring together a collaborative effort. Will he be relying on the trailblazers to be at the forefront, to ensure delivery as we transition to full implementation?

[Mr Jones]

My hon. Friend has brought me to where I wanted to be and prompted me on to my next two subjects.

First, we can look to the Welsh legislation to learn from its implementation. My officials are certainly doing that, and we have done it in relation to a number of areas in the Bill so far. My hon. Friend suggests an extremely sensible approach.

Secondly, I was about to come on to the prevention trailblazers. We have given £50 million to local authorities to undertake the rough sleeping work. Authorities across the country will already be gearing up for the legislative changes—testing new methods, gathering new data and working with external organisations to meet the aims we all want to achieve. I assure my hon. Friend that in that sense we are looking to what Wales has managed to achieve in a relatively short space of time, and we are also looking carefully at the prevention trailblazers. I have considerable hopes that those prevention trailblazers will really blaze a trail in creating the culture that we need to implement the legislation successfully and help people to get off the streets.

We are absolutely committed to the implementation of the Bill. We will be working closely with local housing authorities to ensure that the process takes no longer than it must, but it cannot be rushed. We have to get it right if we are to make a success of the Bill. On that basis of co-operation and in the spirit of how the Committee has worked, I will leave my comments there.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 13 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 7

Deliberate and unreasonable refusal to co-operate: duty upon giving of notice

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

[Bob Blackman]

As the Committee knows, we reordered the business because we anticipated amendments being tabled to this key clause. It is clear, however, that we do not have any amendments to discuss today. I know that many of us will be disappointed by that, and I want to update the Committee on the situation and the reasons why we have reached this position.

In our last sitting before Christmas, I reported that we had discovered a technical problem with clause 7 —specifically, that the clause was drafted too widely. At that time, we believed that a simple amendment would resolve the issue, tightening up the circumstances in which the provisions of the clause could be triggered. However, when drafting the amendments and the consequential amendments to other parts of the Bill, the local government sector and the charities that work day-to-day with homeless people—namely Shelter and Crisis—identified further issues with how the prevention and relief duties would be ended should an applicant refuse an offer of suitable accommodation. That is obviously a key part of how the Bill will work in incentivising applicants to work co-operatively with local housing authorities. If it did not work correctly, there would be a very real risk that the Bill would create an unacceptable new burden on local housing authorities and would fail to achieve the policy objectives.

I have been working with my hon. Friend the Minister and with Shelter, Crisis and the Local Government Association to address the issues that have been identified. The priority has been to ensure that we maintain protections for all applicants who co-operate with the new duties. That has involved working through the complex relationship between the Bill and the existing legal framework to ensure that the protections for those in priority need are not affected unacceptably. We want no reductions in how priority need households are assisted. We want to make it clear to new applicants that we are providing help and assistance, but it is not a one-way street.

We are now exploring potential solutions and hope to be in a position to resolve the situation on Report, with amendments tabled by Friday. I hope that if colleagues have concerns they will place them on the record so that I, as the Bill’s promoter, and the Minister can look at them in the round and make sure we deal with the issues that have rightly been raised by the charities and the LGA and in other representations we have received on this clause.

When we debated clause 3 in December, we discussed the new duty on local housing authorities to assess the applicant’s case and agree a personalised plan. Clause 7 outlines the important steps that must be followed in those hopefully rare cases where an applicant deliberately and unreasonably refuses to co-operate with the key required steps set out in the plan that they agreed with their local housing authority. This process is designed to include safeguards that will protect vulnerable applicants from abuse of the process.

When people who are threatened with homelessness or are actually homeless present themselves to the local authority, they might be in a state of difficulty not only from a mental health point of view, but in facing this problem for the first time in their lives. If that is the case and they are directed to do things by a housing authority, they may not appreciate and understand the plan. Throughout the development of the Bill, I have listened carefully to the views of the homelessness charities to ensure that vulnerable individuals are not unfairly penalised for non-co-operation on some of the very issues that caused them to seek assistance in the first place.

The clause includes numerous safeguards that I will outline briefly. I can assure the Committee that, in the recent discussion of amendments, my key driver has been to protect those safeguards and to enhance them if possible, so that no one is placed in a position whereby they feel they have been fooled and tricked into accepting something that they do not want.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jones]

I am afraid that I must start with an apology to the Committee. I know that the Committee was expecting to see the amendments today. Indeed, I was fully expecting to be able to introduce the amendments for consideration. I am sorry that circumstances have meant that that has not been possible.

My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East has already provided a significant overview of the concerns we have been investigating over the past few weeks, so I will not go into too much detail in that regard. I simply say that we are addressing the two issues that have been identified with the clause. The first is that the clause is drafted too widely. While an applicant could be penalised for deliberately and unreasonably refusing to co-operate with the required actions as set out in the personal housing plan, as the clause is drafted they could also be penalised for deliberately and unreasonably refusing to co-operate with the authority in relation to the prevention or relief duties more generally. That is a broader formulation of the clause and is certainly not the one intended.

The second issue is that we are not confident that the balance between incentives and protections is right in cases where an applicant refuses a suitable offer of accommodation at the relief stage. We have been working closely with homelessness charities to resolve that and develop a way forward, and I hope to be in a position to say more before Report.

My hon. Friend has made it clear to the Committee this morning that we have spent significant time in the intervening period since the previous sitting and before then working with external stakeholders. We have been working with local authorities that have expressed concerns about what my first point may mean in relation to their duties, as well as with the charities that he mentioned, which obviously have significant concerns about the second point.

This is a very unusual situation. We have a private Member’s Bill, and the Select Committee has looked at it and proposed amendments. The Government have worked with the Member to come up with a form of Bill that works. Within that, we have also had significant engagement with local authorities, the LGA and stakeholders, including charities. My hon. Friend mentioned Crisis and Shelter. It is a complex situation, and I am determined to work with him to get the legislation right. I reiterate my disappointment that I have not been able to debate what I would have liked and expected to debate with the Committee, and again tender my apologies to the Committee.

A number of measures in the clause remain pertinent. Many times during our consideration of the Bill, Members have spoken about the importance of culture change in building a more co-operative relationship between the local housing authority and those who need their services. That is already the case in the best local authorities. We want to encourage those who are homeless or at risk of homelessness to work with their local housing authority to prevent or relieve their homelessness as soon as possible. We believe that such a co-operative approach is better for the individual or family, and is better for local housing authorities, too.

The clause sets out the actions a local housing authority may take if an individual who has made a homeless application subsequently deliberately and unreasonably refuses to follow the steps in the personalised plan agreed between themselves and the local housing authority. In most cases, the local housing authority and the individual will take the agreed steps and work co-operatively to resolve the situation before it becomes a crisis. However, if the local authority considers that an applicant has deliberately and unreasonably refused to co-operate with the required actions agreed in their personal housing plan, it must first issue a written warning explaining that that is the case, and that a failure to co-operate will result in the end of the duty to secure accommodation for the applicant. We will work with local housing authorities—this comes back to points that have been raised in the debate, on which I will now elaborate—to develop common-sense guidance on the meaning of “deliberate and unreasonable”.

To pick up on the points made by my hon. Friends the Members for Harrow East, for Enfield, Southgate and for Mid Dorset and North Poole on applicants deliberately and unreasonably refusing to co-operate, statutory guidance will set out the Government’s view on what that means. For example, it will include refusing to engage in negotiations with the landlord to prevent their tenancy from ending, or refusing to contact landlords or view properties. We have also talked about the definition of “suitable”, which is set out in existing legislation.

Several hon. Members have asked what a “reasonable period” is. Reasonableness is a well understood concept in law, which my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole will understand. When considering what is a reasonable period, local housing authorities will have to have regard to all surrounding circumstances, which brings me to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate. We can consider saying more in guidance about the factors we expect local authorities to take into account when making the judgment. In doing that, I will take on board the comments made by hon. Members.

My hon. Friend the Member for North the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole made a good point on the interplay with housing associations. Local housing authorities will work closely with a range of landlords as they deliver the Bill, as they are intended to do now. Housing associations are key partners in many respects, but the clause relates specifically to the applicant’s co-operation with the steps that they agree with the local housing authority for their personal plan, and not with third-party organisations. I hope that clarifies the point for my hon. Friend.

[The Chair]

Before adjourning the Committee, I remind hon. Members that there are two substantial amendments to clause 1 to be debated. I think it would be convenient for the Committee to debate those two amendments together with clause 1 stand part.