Housing and Planning Bill (Seventh sitting)

Matthew Pennycook Excerpts

Tuesday 24th November 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Mr Thomas]

I am grateful to have caught your eye, Sir Alan. I welcome the intervention by the hon. Member for Peterborough and hope we might hear a little more from him about his concerns about freedom of information and housing associations. In answer to his question, I must confess that I have not yet made my mind up, but I am tempted to say yes when I wake up in the morning and think about the activities of A2Dominion. That organisation is a housing association in my constituency that has been very slow to sort out the problems at Bannister House, where a number of its tenants and leaseholders have been suffering over the past eight years from a consistent pattern of leaks. I have written to the chief executive seeking clarity on the association’s intentions but have yet to receive a coherent answer or have the courtesy of a meeting with the relevant decision maker.

If the hon. Gentleman was proposing that, now that housing associations are part of Government for the purposes of ONS stats, freedom of information legislation should apply to them, I would be tempted by that argument. He will, I am sure, be grateful to me for tabling amendment 99, which we will come to later in our considerations. It might provide a useful opportunity to have that discussion and a chance for him to set out his views one way or t’other.

The crucial point of amendment 106 is that if, as I suspect, hon. Members on both sides of the Committee have the capacity, through their experienced staff, to apply under FOI legislation to see which people are covered by the database—albeit it is intended to be used only for research—it would surely be better for the Minister to save housing authorities some time and simply accept the amendment. I could envisage a situation in a year’s time, when the Bill has gone through, in which my hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich is approached one Friday in his surgery by a constituent who is worried about the quality of accommodation that he is seeking to access. My hon. Friend might be tempted to put in a freedom of information request to see whether the landlord of that accommodation had in any way come to the notice of the Greenwich housing authority.

[Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a good speech. I hope the Minister will address this point, which has been made by my hon. Friends: barely a month ago the Government made great show of 113 employers. They were named and shamed—the names and addresses of their companies were listed—to highlight the enforcement action the Government were taking in that regard, and to drive behavioural change by frightening off other employers from making the same mistake. All were thoroughly investigated, as rogue landlords will be under the Bill, according to the Minister. Does my hon. Friend agree that we are struggling, and my constituents would struggle, to understand why the Data Protection Act allowed those employers to be named and shamed, but will not allow my constituents to take a look at landlords they should avoid?

[Mr Thomas]

That was an extremely good intervention and a further powerful point that I hope the Minister will take into account.

I can imagine the hon. Member for Peterborough seeing constituents turn up at his surgery in 2020. The next Labour Government will be introducing new housing legislation. The hon. Member for South Norfolk will have been drafted in on the housing Bill Committee for the new Opposition and he may be tempted to make a speech about self-build and custom house building. I am always excited to hear him speak, but the hon. Member for Peterborough may not be and he may use the opportunity, if he has been approached by a constituent who is worried about their landlord, to put in a request under the freedom of information legislation to see whether that landlord had in some way come to the notice of the housing authority and was therefore included in the database.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[The Chair]

Order. The matter is debated. Mr Pennycook, you can indicate that you want to speak by standing.

[Matthew Pennycook]

I am happy to leave it.

[Mr Thomas]

On a point of order, Sir Alan. I was seeking to intervene on the Minister, and it is a courtesy for the Minister to give way to Opposition Members. I hope that through the usual channels, Sir Alan, you might gently remind the Minister of his responsibilities in that respect.

--- Later in debate ---

[Teresa Pearce]

Thank you, Sir Alan. The Minister misunderstands what the amendment is meant to do. We are trying to establish a way for tenants and prospective tenants—someone who is about to enter into a legal lease—to check with the local authority whether the person offering the lease is a fit and proper person. Someone could call up their local housing authority and say, “This person has offered me a lease. Are they fit and proper, or are they a banned landlord?” If the answer is no, and the landlord is not on the list, the person could proceed, or remain silent if the landlord is on the list. The only other way of giving individual tenants such protection would be to give some sort of kitemark to all landlords except those who are not fit and proper, which would be onerous.

The amendment is quite simple, but I thought long and hard before tabling it. Many people contacted me to say they wanted a public database, which I think would be a step too far, because there could be misunderstandings if there are people with similar names. That would not be right.

[Matthew Pennycook]

I appreciate that the Minister did not want to take an intervention, but it is important the Committee gets some clarity on this. What is different in data protection terms about the rogue employers that are named, shamed and listed by the Government? Why can the deviation or derogation from the Data Protection Act in that respect not apply in this respect, to empower tenants?

[Teresa Pearce]

I completely agree. We should be protecting people from engaging in a legal lease with someone who the local authority knows should not be offering that because they have been banned. We would therefore like to press the amendment to a vote.

Question put, That the amendment be made.