Non-commissioned Exempt Accommodation

Shabana Mahmood Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Eddie Hughes]

I appreciate that the hon. Gentleman is shaking his head, but I would just say that councils need to be encouraged to use the legislation already available to them to the max before we reach for a legislative answer to the problem.

[Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Lab)]

The Minister is well aware that, if councils make a decision not to provide housing benefit and they are challenged in a court of law, they will lose such cases because the law itself is not sufficiently tight to prevent the abuse that is occurring. I would like to push the Minister: he has implied that he does not want to move quickly on tightening up the regulations because he is concerned about the impact that would have on the good providers, which we all agree are trying to do the best they can in difficult circumstances, but what is it about tightening up the regulations that would be so onerous for the good providers and take out the bad providers? The way I see it, the good providers are doing what they should be doing anyway, and it is only the bad providers that would be targeted by tightening up the regulations. I really do want to hear from him what he thinks would be onerous on the good providers if he tightens up the regulations.

[Eddie Hughes]

I agree largely with what the hon. Lady says, but on what other burdens we may place on people to meet the barriers to entry or the conditions we set, we are talking about providers that work on very low margins, and any further legislative burden placed on them may just push them out of the market. On my reservation to act quickly, I am very keen to deal with this problem as quickly as we can, and I strongly suspect that she and I will be having many conversations in the coming weeks and months. I am hoping that progress will be made—so we will talk again.

It is interesting that the hon. Lady intervened at that point, because I was about to refer to the Westminster Hall debate she held recently. One of the things that struck me about that debate was that very well-tempered, very well-informed and very passionate contributions were made across the Chamber, and it feels to me as though the spirit of that debate will be extended today in the way we discuss this problem and tackle it in the future. I think we should continue in that tone, because this is not a political issue. It is something we all care about passionately, and we can all see that rogue landlords are taking money and using it inappropriately when we are talking about some of the most vulnerable people in society.

Finally, there are some exceptional providers out there that provide great-quality accommodation. They have very passionate and dedicated staff, and I would hate to think that they were in any way tarred with the brush of these rogue providers. As well as dealing with the rogue landlords, we should celebrate the success and the great work that is done by others for some of the most vulnerable in society. I look forward to the rest of the debate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Lab)]

I am pleased to contribute to such an important debate. The Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, the hon. Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes), is aware of my long-standing interest in this subject and I look forward to the further discussions he alluded to that will take place as the pilot reports are all completed and we think about the next steps, particularly in respect of the legislative framework.

We should be clear that we are talking about a situation unfolding throughout the country, as we all speak, in which rogue landlords, total cowboy operators and some with links to organised crime groups and established criminal enterprises, are getting their hands on taxpayers’ cash—our constituents’ money—and not using it for the purposes for which it was intended but simply lining their own pockets, and they are able to do so with absolute impunity. That situation is the subject matter of this debate: the fact that so many people can do such terrible abusive things, well within the rules, and totally get away with it. No criminal enterprise is going to get done for abusing taxpayers’ cash in this way, and that is a problem of the law.

I take issue with the Minister’s saying earlier in the debate that

“this is not a political issue”.

I agree with him in that I do not wish this to be a party political football with which we play knockabout in the Chamber, but this is a deeply political issue. It is full of political choices. We have talked a lot about local authorities, what local government can do or does not do and all this “he said, she said” about local government powers, but the fundamental problem and the failure in respect of the subject matter of this debate is one of the law itself, and only the Government have the power to change the law of this land. This is an arena of politics, but it is also the UK legislature. We are pushing the Government today not because of matters of party politics but because only they can act to prevent the abuses that we are all seeing unfold across our constituencies.

There is no point in my going to the chief constable of West Midlands police and saying, “I know that a drug dealer is basically setting up as a housing provider in my constituency, is going to get enhanced housing benefit payments, is going to line his own pockets and is probably going to abuse some of the poor, vulnerable constituents who end up in the property he manages,” because I know the chief constable can do nothing about it—not a single thing. That is the problem that I and all Members in this House with experience in this matter are desperate for the Government to fix. The problem is the law and only the Government can fix the law.

[Brendan Clarke-Smith]

I fully take the hon. Lady’s point about rogue landlords, whom we absolutely must tackle. Does she agree that the way to do so is through making sure that higher minimum standards are in place? For example, the national statement of expectations is there. Does the hon. Lady agree that is the best route to make sure that standards are adhered to?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I thank the hon. Member for that intervention. I accept that it is meant to be in the spirit of being helpful and adding to the debate, but the idea that criminal enterprises currently lining their pockets with our constituents’ money will be put off exploiting this business model because of a national statement of expectation is absolutely for the birds. I am sorry, but that will not work here. If it did, I would support it, because I want this problem fixed. I am desperate to see vulnerable people no longer being exploited and communities no longer being destroyed, but that measure will not cut it. These are proper operators and they have spotted a loophole in the law. They have calculated correctly that, instead of going further into the drugs business where they might have to do 20 years in prison, they can just get into the housing sector and no one will put them away for it—at all. In fact, they can do so in plain sight and nobody can do a thing about it. That is what I want the Government to take action on, because that is what I have seen in my own constituency of Birmingham, Ladywood. That is what my colleagues in Birmingham have seen in their constituencies, and some of them have truly horrific examples of abuse of vulnerable tenants.

We are seeing that problem all across the country. I was very grateful to the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Julie Marson) for saying that this is national issue. It can become a little too easy for Members in this place to think that this is a problem for some cities—let us be honest, if we are to be party political about this, it is problem for some Labour-run cities. As my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) said, piecemeal action—a pilot here and a little bit of a change there—just creates a whack-a-mole system. A problem that starts in Birmingham will soon spread to Sandwell, to Stoke and then to Dudley, and to other places too, unless we have a national change in the law of our land that stops the problem dead for everybody. Then, a Member whose constituency is currently not afflicted by it would not have to worry about a proliferation of exempt accommodation taking place in their patch. If they do have it in their constituency already, they could at least see that there was an end in sight to this absolute abuse of the system, which, as Mr Deputy Speaker can tell, leaves most of us utterly impotent with rage because, unless the Government change the law, we can simply not fix this problem.

The first area of the law that requires change is the “more than minimal” test, which has been discussed today. The Minister made the point that the “more than minimal” requirement for the access to enhanced housing benefit regulations has come about as a matter of case law. He is, of course, right; that was done by a housing benefit tribunal. In this country, though, we do not distinguish between case law and Acts of Parliament or statutory instruments. The law is the law and if a judicial authority—a judge or a tribunal—comes to a clarification or a statement of the law that is against what the Government expect to happen, all that creates is a system that is open to abuse. It is the job of this legislature, this House of Commons, to put it right, and only the Government have the power to introduce that legislation to make it so. That rule—the “more than minimal” requirement—must be changed. It must be tightened up.

I do not buy the argument that, somehow, tightening up the access to enhanced housing benefit will somehow drive the good providers out of the sector. That is also for the birds. Those providers are already doing the things that are required in order to help vulnerable people turn their lives around. In the end, that is the thing in which we should all be interested. These are people who have escaped abusive relationships, who have come out of the prison system and are desperate to turn their lives around, and who have had addiction issues and need help to turn their lives around. They need good quality housing in order to do that. The hon. Member for Bury North (James Daly) was right when he said that people should be sentenced to a house so that they can have stability—the stability that is required to help them turn their life around and become a citizen able to play their full part in society once more. That is not possible if the rogue operators get their hands on these people first. The good providers, who have a moral and a social mission when it comes to supported housing, will already be doing the right thing. I do not buy the idea that they will be pushed out of the system if the regulations for access to the cash in the first place are tightened up.

The Government and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities in particular, rather than the Department for Work and Pensions, need to tighten up the broader regulatory framework. It should not be possible to be providing housing to some of the most vulnerable people in our country and to not even have to pass some sort of character test. The idea that the good providers who are operating will fail fit and proper persons tests is a joke. They will pass it because they have a social, moral mission and they can prove their track record in helping people to turn their lives around. If they do not pass it, they should not have access to vulnerable people in the first place. We know what happens when vulnerable people get into bad accommodation: they are ripe for further abuse, ripe for further grooming into drug activity, and ripe for further grooming into sexual exploitation. We should not allow any provider who cannot pass a fit and proper person’s test to get anywhere near some of these people because they will exacerbate the problem rather than alleviate it. Frankly, I have no sympathy with anyone who we currently think of as a good provider but who ends up failing that test, because it proves they were not a good provider in the first place.

We also need more powers for local authorities—a point that was also raised earlier in the debate—to prevent the dumping of problem people from one part of a country to another. I accept that there are some classes of vulnerable individuals who need to break the link with their local area if they are going to turn their lives around, but that is not the case for the vast majority of people who have ended up in exempt supported accommodation.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. She speaks from deep experience and her legal background stands her in good stead on these important matters. Does she agree that this is part of a series of problems where the Government have got the emphasis quite wrong in their housing policy? They have not given enough powers to local government, they have not regulated the system enough and they have allowed exactly the wrong type of landlords to drive a coach and horses through what limited regulation there is. In many ways, that reflects a bigger picture, not only of the poor vulnerable people who are being mistreated, but of a lack of emphasis on council housing and a lack of regulation of private rented accommodation. The whole system needs a complete rethink and Ministers need to listen to what my hon. Friend is saying.

[Shabana Mahmood]

I agree wholeheartedly with my hon. Friend that we need a system-wide approach. Local authorities need the power to reject applications for exempt accommodation on the grounds of saturation or oversupply. We must break the habit of putting huge amounts of need into already stretched areas and then wondering why those areas can never recover. We wonder why people who have raised their families and committed themselves to stable communities in modest properties that they are proud of, whether they are socially renting or have managed to become owner-occupiers, are so desperate to leave the areas that they were committed to, when we have loaded all sorts of high need into those areas and provided none of the services to support them.

People dumping has to stop, over-saturation has to stop and local authorities need the power to prevent an over-saturation of supply. We need community impact assessments before we get large numbers of exempt supported accommodation across our different communities, to ensure we are not loading more need into already difficult areas.

As I said earlier, the vast majority of tenants in exempt accommodation should be able to demonstrate some sort of local link to the area. Unless it is a requirement because of a prison or domestic violence-related issue, most people need some such link in order to have the stability to turn their lives around.

Finally, we need an inspections regime. We need to keep providers on their toes so that it is not the case that once someone has accessed the system, nobody will ever ask them questions again. There should be at least an annual check to ensure that people who have access to vulnerable tenants and taxpayer cash are doing the thing they said they would do and fulfilling the promises they made.

Only with Government action can we turn the dial on a huge problem that affects not only my constituency, but people all across this country. Our communities deserve nothing less. When the Minister stands to close this debate, I hope he will not simply say, “We’re watching, and we’re waiting and seeing, and we’re going to think about what we’re going to do,” but give us a legislative timetable for making the changes that are needed.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

If everybody takes 13 or 14 minutes, we will not get everybody in. If people could be mindful of their colleagues, we will try to squeeze everybody in.