Housing and Planning Bill (Sixteenth sitting)

Debate between Marcus Jones and Matthew Pennycook

Thursday 10th December 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Matthew Pennycook]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. If I was a housing association tenant, or if I ran a housing association, I would be worried by the implications of the new clause and new schedules for tenants and for the sector as a whole.

Turning to some of the specifics, I have a number of concerns about the consequences, intended or otherwise, of the proposals. The most important is that the new clauses are yet another example of the centralising nature of the Bill. Perhaps that is the weakest part of the Government’s argument. The Minister argued that the measures are intended to promote the more efficient use of council housing, and the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton said that they are designed to make better use of stock, but the Localism Act 2011 already allows local authorities to grant fixed-term tenancies.

Currently, it is left to local councils to decide whether to grant traditional secure tenancies or fixed-term tenancies. The Minister touched on the fact that there will be freedom and opportunity for local authorities. If that is the aim, why the need for legislation? They have that as things stand. More telling was his staggering comment that the measures are needed because local authorities are not taking advantage of the freedoms available to them. What kind of localism is it that says to a local authority, “Here is a power that you can use if you decide, as a democratically elected local authority, that the housing needs in your area demand it, but if you don’t use it, we are going to take it away, make you look at it again and force you to use it”? That is not localism. As the Conservative party has championed localism, I thought that the Government might have thought about this measure a little more carefully.

My hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham has already said that the provisions for recovery of possession at the end of the fixed term and against a successor are not workable. Where a local authority grants a fixed-term tenancy, possession proceedings operate by way of forfeiture, yet the Bill excludes forfeiture from the remedies available against fixed-term tenancies. That is unsurprising, because the provisions have been introduced so hastily that the drafting is flawed and will need to be reviewed at a later date.

Perhaps the most important point is the one made powerfully by my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood. The new clauses and new schedules will have implications for the building and maintaining of stable and secure communities. I return to a point that we have touched on several times previously, including in our discussion of the pay to stay clauses. When we look at social and public housing as a zero sum game, through the lens of dependency and economic subsidy, as Government Members clearly do, we are into a world where we are undermining mixed communities. I thought that the Government—the coalition Government certainly stated this—believed in sustainable, inclusive, mixed communities. How can we have mixed communities if anyone who does well, who saves and gets a better job, is encouraged to move on?

As my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead, who has actually experienced living in social housing, has said, if they have the opportunity and the security and stability on which to do it, most people will take the opportunity to buy their own home and move out at some point in the future. Coercing people or applying pressure on them to do so is not the way to encourage them to move on. That is what the provisions will do.

The new clauses do not, as the Minister said, strike the right balance; they will be deeply damaging to communities throughout England, including those I represent in Plumstead, Charlton, Woolwich and Greenwich. I encourage the Minister to visit some of the estates and talk to the people there, who will say exactly as my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood did: the people who hold these communities together—the glue, if you like—are those tenants who have perhaps done a little better than others but have stayed and are trusted and looked to as community figures.

The measures will increase transience and churn and undermine mixed communities. They are conclusive proof that the central thrust of the Bill is an attack on public housing and the families who rely on it. It is bad policy and, more important, it is bad policy making. The Government should go away and look again and at least, at a minimum, if they really believe in this, come back to us after a consultation when we can look at a proper impact assessment. They should not be introducing these new clauses in such a shabby way.

[Mr Jones]

rose—

Housing and Planning Bill (Twelfth sitting)

Debate between Marcus Jones and Matthew Pennycook

Thursday 3rd December 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Matthew Pennycook]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point, and I agree wholeheartedly. I served as a councillor before being elected to this place, and I give the Government credit for reforming the council house financing system. However, it is misleading and highly questionable to state that the rationale for the policy is an economic subsidy. That point needs to be made for the record. I will, for the reasons that I have stated, support the amendment, because the proposal represents bad policy making. There is a risk that it will lead to increased homelessness and increase the housing benefit bill. There is a risk that it will undermine the social mix on many estates, including those in my constituency.

The Government, incidentally, acknowledged that the discretionary threshold of £60,000 would have an impact on the income mix in areas but said the impact would be minor because of the threshold level. Bringing that threshold down would have a far bigger impact. Knowing the estates in my constituency and the problems they have as I do, I know that the last thing they need is for pressure to be put on people who do well, who aspire to get on and who get a better job to move out of those communities. This is bad policy making. For those reasons, I oppose the measure and support my hon. Friend’s amendment.

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. This has been a wide-ranging debate, and a number of points have been raised that I am confident will be covered when we consider other amendments to the clause. I will therefore keep narrowly to the amendments in question, which seek to include a substantial amount of detail in the Bill on who the policy should and should not apply to. That is unnecessary as we have the power to make regulations for that purpose if they are required.

I assure the hon. Member for City of Durham that we are giving careful thought to how the policy should treat certain benefits, including the state pension, housing benefit, and employment and support allowance. With regard to carers, as I said before, exemptions can be made and we will consider carers carefully. We recognise that, in certain circumstances, exemptions may well be needed, and we are thinking through that process carefully. We will provide more detail as we approach the making of the regulations and will continue to engage with the sector as we develop the policy.

Housing and Planning Bill (Seventh sitting)

Debate between Marcus Jones and Matthew Pennycook

Tuesday 24th November 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Mr Thomas]

rose—

[Matthew Pennycook]

rose—

[Mr Jones]

On a point of order, Sir Alan. I did not give way because I had finished my comments.

Housing and Planning Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Marcus Jones and Matthew Pennycook

Tuesday 10th November 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Mr Jones]

Q 171 In relation to this point about reclassification, Mr Pinder and Mrs Chalkley, you mentioned that you would rather see the right to buy firmly in legislation and the whole thing legislated for. Do you not think that that would pose a significant risk of the ONS continuing to classify as they have done?

Sue Chalkley: My understanding is that in deciding the ONS takes into account whether there is a certain level of Government control, regulation and legislation, so I am not sure whether it would have made a lot of difference whether it was in one or the other; it is still Government control and that is what they take into account. That is my understanding.

Tim Pinder: As far as we are concerned, just to be clear, we absolutely accept the democratic vote of the sector. Our position was that our board was not comfortable accepting the voluntary deal but we respected that the majority of the sector did and at that point, therefore, we were happy to accept the voluntary deal rather than legislative provision.

[Matthew Pennycook]

Q 172 Some 1.3 million housing association tenants expect, I think, on the basis of this Bill, the right to acquire or buy their own home. I would assume that you would not be able to cope with that level of take-up; I wondered what level of demand you think you can cope with annually, say next year. Are you concerned that there are not any measures in the Bill to help you to cope with the demand of people accessing that right?

David Montague: Our estimate is that 10% of our tenants will be eligible and will be able to afford the right to buy. That estimate is supported by the National Housing Federation, which also estimates that 35% of housing association tenants in the midlands and the north will be eligible and able to afford the right to buy. We expect our 10% to exercise their right to buy over probably a five- to 10-year period and we think that we can manage that level of demand. The average L&Q tenant has an income of £13,000, so even with a discount of £100,000, the vast majority of L&Q tenants will not be able to exercise their right to buy.

Sue Chalkley: We have some older stock in suburban areas but the vast majority of our schemes are in 250 rural villages. I know that this sounds really counterintuitive but we have had hardly any inquiries—fewer than five—from our tenants. Twice a year I do chief executive’s free-phone day, when people can ring me about anything. On my previous free-phone day in August, I only had one inquiry. I really do not know how you interpret that, but we do not have a sense that we will be overwhelmed.

Tim Pinder: Nor do we. We are a stock transfer housing association, so any tenant that was a tenant of Macclesfield Borough Council in 2006 retained their right to buy when they transferred across to us. Obviously that number has diminished each year as new tenants move in, but we have always managed to cope with the demand from that group. The new tenants who will be entitled to this right to buy do not represent such a significant challenge for us, so we are quite confident. I was interested to read the Minister’s comments about the potential for phasing in right to buy. We would be interested to understand whether that is a geography-based phase-in or whether it is about particular groups of tenants. How would that work? I am not so sure that we need that to manage the demand but gaining an understanding of those proposals would be welcome.