Social Housing (Regulation) Bill [Lords]

Matthew Pennycook Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 7th November 2022 Commons Chamber

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

It is a pleasure to close this debate for the Opposition. I thank all those who have contributed and echo the sentiments expressed at the outset by my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) about the other place. As they always do, their lordships brought a considerable amount of expertise to bear in scrutinising the Bill. As a result, it has already been improved in several important respects. I thank them, in particular our friend Baroness Hayman of Ullock, for their efforts and for the constructive, cross-party approach adopted throughout the proceedings.

It would be remiss of me if I did not also use this opportunity to pay tribute, on behalf of the Opposition, to the work of Grenfell United and the Grenfell Foundation, who have pushed at every turn for this legislation to come forward and to ensure it is made as robust as possible. Lastly, I commend the contribution of all those who have been a voice for social housing tenants over so many years, including campaigners such as Kwajo Tweneboa, ITV’s Daniel Hewitt and many hon. Members in the Chamber this evening.

There have been a number of excellent contributions in the debate. In total, I counted 10 speeches from Back Benchers, some of them incredibly powerful, and all of them in complete agreement that the Bill should proceed, and at pace. That such agreement exists across the House reflects a shared understanding that the lives of far too many social housing tenants are blighted by poor conditions, and far too many social landlords fail to treat their tenants with the dignity and respect that they deserve.

As the shadow Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan, made clear, given the scale of the problem, the Opposition regret how long it took the Government to bring this legislation forward. It is now more than five years since the horror of Grenfell, more than four since the Green Paper was issued, and nearly two since the White Paper was published. Surely, time could have been found earlier to pass what is, after all, a short and uncontroversial Bill, but one of real significance for millions of social housing tenants across the country.

That criticism aside, the Opposition welcome the Bill and what it contains. We are determined to see it strengthened in a number of areas, so that standards in social housing markedly and rapidly improve, tenants are able to pursue effective redress and we can better respond to pressing issues such as the problems of serious violence highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes). We will work with the Government to secure its passage today.

As we have heard, the Bill has three distinct aspects: first, it introduces a new consumer regulation regime; secondly, it overhauls the existing economic regulatory regime; and, thirdly, it provides the social housing regulator with new powers to enforce both. The second of those parts is entirely unproblematic, and as such I will only speak to the first and the third.

The provisions that relate to the new consumer regulatory regime comprise the bulk of the Bill, and they have understandably been the focus of many of the contributions in this debate. In general terms, we very much welcome the stronger and more proactive consumer regulations the Bill provides for. There are specific issues in relation to each that we intend to raise in Committee, but we welcome changes to the housing ombudsman powers, the introduction of new duties for social landlords relating to electrical safety checks, the requirement that registered providers nominate a designated person for health and safety issues, and the measures relating to the provision of information to both tenants and the regulator.

We support the expansion of the regulator’s current fundamental objectives to include those of safety, transparency and, following the well-deserved success of Baroness Hayman’s amendment on standards relating to energy demand, energy efficiency. There would, however, appear to be a difference of opinion between the Government and ourselves on whether it may be appropriate to add additional objectives, not least the monitoring of building safety remediation works, and we will seek to explore that matter in Committee.

We very much welcome the establishment of the advisory panel to provide independent and unbiased advice to the regulator and to proactively raise wider issues affecting social housing regulation. However, we are clear that the role of the panel should be enhanced, and we will press in Committee for its composition and functioning to be revised in order that it provides a more effective conduit for the voice of tenants and gives them a greater role in shaping national policy.

Lastly, we welcome the concession made by the Government in the other place in relation to professional training and qualifications, and the resulting inclusion of clause 21. However, and here I reference the very strong argument made by the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), we believe the Government need to go further if we are to be certain that the Bill will expedite the professionalisation of the sector, and we will be seeking in Committee to strengthen the Bill to that end.

The provisions that relate to the regulator’s enforcement powers and strengthening them are critical to ensuring both the consumer and the economic regulatory regimes function effectively. Again, while there are measures that we will press the Government to consider—for example, giving the regulator the power to order compensation to tenants—in general terms we very much welcome what is proposed in allowing for unlimited fines for non-compliance, the deregistration of social landlords, performance improvement plans, emergency repairs in instances where a tenant faces an imminent health and safety risk, and the removal of the serious detriment test.

We support the introduction of regular inspections, and I commend Lord Best on his work in the other place to strengthen the Bill in relation to them. However, the Bill still does not set out the scope of such inspections or how frequently they should take place. We are convinced it will need tightening in Committee if tenants are to have confidence that landlords will be monitored appropriately. We also remain concerned, and this is a point that several hon. Members made in the debate, about the very real risk that the regulator will struggle to discharge its new functions given the volume of individual tenant complaints it is likely to receive once its remit has been expanded. In particular, we are concerned it will not be adequately resourced to perform its new inspections role. That is why we are convinced that the Government must consider more carefully how they can help to ensure the regulator is not overburdened—for example, by doing more to enable tenants to enforce repairs themselves—and that it has the resources it will require to carry out its enhanced role, such as by allowing it to retain the proceeds of any fines levied to help fund its work.

Before I conclude, I want to touch very briefly on an issue rightly raised by the shadow Secretary of State in her remarks, and that is social housing supply. By means of reduced grant funding, the introduction of the so-called affordable rent tenure, increased right-to-buy discounts and numerous other policy interventions, the Government have engineered the decline of social housing over the past 12 years, presiding over an average net loss of 12,000 desperately needed, genuinely affordable homes each and every year throughout that period. We fully appreciate that this Bill is not the appropriate vehicle for reversing that decline, but we are also very clear that it cannot be silent on the issue. Provisions could be included in the Bill to help to identify the precise level of need that now exists across the country for social rented homes, and to make suggestions about how a Government serious about tackling the housing crisis can meet that need. We intend to explore that in Committee because, despite the fine words in the White Paper and the usual comforting but ultimately hollow rhetoric deployed by the Secretary of State, the Government are doing nowhere near enough to deliver the volume of social homes our country needs.

To conclude, the Bill is long overdue but wholly necessary and we are pleased it will progress today. Those currently living in poor-quality, badly managed social housing need a better deal. Just yesterday, I received an email from Nicola, a constituent living in Woolwich whose landlord is a member of the G15 group of London’s largest housing associations. She felt she had no other choice than to contact me as her MP because for nearly two weeks she has had water pouring down her walls and over her plug sockets, without any meaningful action on the part of her landlord. As we have heard in the debate, cases like Nicola’s are not a rarity, but an all too frequent occurrence. The Grenfell community know more than anyone that poorly managed and underregulated social housing can have fatal consequences. Only last week, as my hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles (Rebecca Long Bailey) mentioned, details were published about the death of two-year-old Awaab Ishak following prolonged exposure to damp and mould in the social home his family rented in Rochdale. We must overhaul the regulation of social housing to protect the health, safety and wellbeing of tenants across the country because everyone has a basic right to a decent, safe, secure and affordable home.

We will work constructively with the Government on the Bill, but we will also do everything in our power to further strengthen it because tenants deserve the most robust piece of legislation that this House can possibly deliver. For today, we welcome its progress in the hope that it will mark a turning point in the protection, empowerment and de-stigmatisation of those living in England’s 4 million social homes.