Rating (Property in Common Occupation) and Council Tax (Empty Dwellings) Bill

Simon Hoare Excerpts

Tuesday 16th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention and for his support for the measures in this Bill. I also pay tribute to his local authority for the sterling work it has clearly done, as have so many others across the country, in tackling this blight of empty homes. I am particularly grateful to him, because I know he has another housing-related debate coming up in short order and so I am privileged that he has made time to speak in support of this measure. I wish him well in his further debate later this afternoon.

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is promoting a very welcome measure. Is he able to give the House any indication of the quantum of properties that lie vacant for more than two years and would therefore accrue this additional council tax? Will he add some indication of the potential uplift in revenue to our local authorities, which certainly need it?

[Rishi Sunak]

If my hon. Friend will bear with me, I will be grateful for that little bit of patience and I will go over all the facts and figures of the current policy later in my speech. I hope he will find what he is looking for in that section. If he wants to come back to me for more detail at that point, I would very much welcome a further intervention.

[Simon Hoare]

I am not known for my patience.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

You also should not test ours. [Laughter.]

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[Simon Hoare]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon). I draw the House’s attention to my interest, which I think is in my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. The hon. Gentleman and I served—I will not say with distinction, but we certainly served—on the Local Government Association resources panel for some years.

All Members will recognise that, as a result of our perfectly properly facing up to trying to repair the disastrous legacy that the Government inherited in 2010, the local government family has certainly faced a disproportionately heavy share of the burden. As we know, that has had an impact on our communities up and down the country. In my judgment, local authorities have acted perfectly properly. I served for 12 years as a district councillor, for seven of which I was running resources and the budget, and my then finance director, Frank Wilson, and I were always at great pains to find any way whatsoever to bring in extra money. We went down the back of every sofa, armchair and chaise longue to find coinage wherever it could possibly be hiding. When the Government presented us with an opportunity to raise perhaps a couple of extra quid, we grasped it like drowning men in a turbulent ocean.

I was interested to hear what my hon. Friend the Minister said about flexibility, which is of absolute importance. My understanding of both the Bill and indeed the Lords amendment is that this should not be viewed not as a revenue raiser for local authorities, but rather a spur to maximise housing stock accessibility. There cannot be a colleague in the House who does not meet people—at their advice surgeries or at other constituency engagements—raising the problems of accessibility to housing, the inability to get on to the housing ladder and the length of and delays in the planning process, all of which make a contribution to the difficulty of getting on to the housing ladder itself. Anything that can be done to increase access to existing housing stock has, in my judgment, to be welcomed very warmly.

If I may, I want to probe what the Minister said and to read into the record his very important comments about flexibility. Proposed new subsection (1A) in Lords amendment 1 reads:

“In subsection (1)(b)”—

if anybody wants to buy shares in the man who makes the keys for the bracket signs, I suggest they do so now, because there are an awful lot of brackets in this measure—

“(maximum percentage by which council tax may be increased)”.

The key word there is the conditional “may”. It does not have to be increased, and local authorities should view this as not merely a cash cow but, as I say, as a spur to increase accessibility. I hope that my hon. Friend will consider providing very clear guidance to local authorities—perhaps via the Local Government Association, but also directly to finance directors and leaders of councils—that they do have such flexibility.

My hon. Friend the Minister suggested one or two things. I am concerned about cases in which the clock is not reset when a property is sold. I appreciate entirely that there may be circumstances in which there is a paper transaction between brother and brother, or sister and sister, to try to dodge the additional tax, but I suggest that that is probably, given stamp duty and so on, a rather unlikely scenario.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

I understand what the hon. Gentleman says, but does he not accept that there are cases in which people do not have any intention of selling the property? It might be on the market at inflated price, but if not, when someone tries to buy it, every obstacle is put in their way to stop the purchase.

[Simon Hoare]

I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman, which is why I am rather pleased that the Minister may be writing guidance and setting out examples. The hon. Gentleman is entirely correct: whenever we create a system, someone somewhere will find a way of playing it. However, with the greatest respect, I do not think that that should preclude the authoring of guidance notes with examples and, indeed, the creation of those systems. However, he is right that we should always be alert to those who try to play the system.

I would like to give the House and my hon. Friend the Minister some examples to consider. If a building is in a conservation area or has listed building status, that can lead to a complicated planning process. If a house is incredibly run down and is not legally habitable, but someone buys it with a view to doing it up and putting it on the market, it would be perverse, if they were making an investment to make the house habitable but experience problems with listed planning consent and so on, for them to be double-clobbered with an expensive council tax bill.

My hon. Friend alluded to natural disasters.

[Rachel Maclean]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Simon Hoare]

I give way with great pleasure to my hon. Friend, a fellow Home Office Parliamentary Private Secretary.

[Rachel Maclean]

My hon. Friend is making good points about flexibility and councils’ powers. The Minister referred to instances in which people were in care. Does my hon. Friend have any thoughts on that, because that can often be a fluid and flexible situation?

[Simon Hoare]

My hon. Friend makes a telling point.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. We are drifting.

[Simon Hoare]

I was about to talk about flooding, Mr Deputy Speaker. Drifting and flooding may be linked.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Some might suggest a filibuster, but do carry on.

[Simon Hoare]

If anyone, Mr Deputy Speaker, were to suggest a filibuster, they would be challenging your authority, because we look to you to ensure that all right hon. and hon. Members remain in order.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order. You are drifting. Get on with it—come on.

[Simon Hoare]

Mr Deputy Speaker, you are robust.

[Sir Roger Gale]

I am enjoying it.

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[Simon Hoare]

If I receive no other accolade in the House, to give enjoyment to my—

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order. We are not here to discuss accolades. We are going to discuss the Bill.

[Simon Hoare]

Mr Deputy Speaker, I was about to talk about natural disasters such as fire or flood. A house that has been significantly damaged by flood may have to be rewired and replastered, meaning that people cannot move back in.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Does that not reinforce the importance of local authorities using their discretion before levying extra charges on empty properties? They need to use their judgment.

[Simon Hoare]

My hon. Friend strikes at the beating heart of my argument and the importance of that three-letter word “may”. The word is not “shall”, not “would” and not “must”, but “may”.

What is entirely proper—this was implicit in my hon. Friend’s contribution—is the discretion that local authorities, with their local knowledge, will have. It is not for the Minister and his bowler-hatted officials—I see all the bowler hats in the official Box—to be absolutely prescriptive. Local authorities will know some of the rogues and chancers in their area, and they will know if there is a difficulty in the planning process. They should—I have little or no doubt that, with the exhortation of our hon. Friend the Minister, they will—understand the vital importance of the word “may”.

[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

I am very much enjoying my hon. Friend’s speech. A fire in Paignton on Thursday affected a number of residential properties, and does he agree that that is why the “may” is so vital? This cannot be just about people doing what they can to get the maximum revenue. It is about doing something to get a property back into use when someone is not taking the steps to do so, but not penalising those who clearly are making best efforts to ensure they get their property back into use.

[Simon Hoare]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. In drawing on his extensive local government experience, he hits upon the very salient phrase “best efforts”. Most people in a locality will be able to see through those who are not using their best endeavours but merely trying to play the system. He references properties damaged by fire, mentioning one in his constituency. I think that we will all have had properties in our constituencies damaged to varying degrees of intensity by fire. That can, of course, lead to incredibly delayed and complex insurance claims, with all the to-ing and fro-ing that cannot necessarily be dealt with particularly swiftly. I would hope that where there is a clear prima facie case that there were delays in the insurance process, those, too, will be taken into account.

The hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami) referred to people who are selling a house but deliberately set the bar too high so that they make it unaffordable. Of course, there are people who, because of historical claims for fire or flooding, will find it difficult to secure insurance and a mortgage so that they can buy a property. That is not a fault of the purchaser and it is certainly not a fault of the vendor. I recently saw a house for sale in my constituency on which, because of the materials with which it was built, a mortgage cannot be secured. That is not the fault of the vendor, who has been trying to sell it for a considerable period of time. It would, I suggest, be an entirely unforeseen and unjustified consequence if that person were saddled with an onerously high council tax bill at a time when they were legitimately trying to dispose of an asset, but could not do so because nobody could afford to buy because they could not arrange a mortgage for it.

I hope that local authorities will not put into the “too difficult to deal with” box the civil law matter of a family that is rowing among themselves about who actually inherits a house, who has the right to sell it and who wants to inhabit it. We all know that where there is a will there is an argument and that sometimes where there is no will there can be a real cause for concern. Those are the areas of flexibility that our local authority officers and councillors need to be alert to and flexible about. I hope that the Minister can assure me that guidance highlighting the “may” and the need for flexibility and discretion will be pointed out to our local authorities.

Lords amendment 1 agreed to, with Commons financial privileges waived.