Clause 5Exceptions
Homes Bill
3:15 pm
Mr David Curry (Skipton and Ripon, Conservative)
I assume that this is where the whole question of exemptions becomes central. My hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne is right to table the amendment as a probing one. Since our debate the other day, I have reflected on the issue and I now think that there is a strong argument in favour of seller's packs being provided by local authorities. In an earlier sitting, the Minister raised the possibility of an exemption for properties valued at £10,000 or less. Some local authority properties will be sold under the right to buy for less than £10,000, although there may not be many such properties left, their tenants will probably be of long standing and improvements are unlikely to have been made recently to such properties. That last point substantiates my argument—after all, improvements made over the last 10 years are likely to be reflected in the price. However, I can see no argument why a local authority selling a house valued at less than £10,000 should be exempt from the need to provide the seller's pack.
There are large landlords: the authority in Birmingham has 93,000 social houses, and other big metropolitan authorities have between 30,000 and 40,000 houses. Even where that housing has been transferred, it has been to registered social landlords who are in the same moral position as a local authority. Therefore, I would like the Minister to make it clear that local authorities would be able to sell properties without a seller's pack, whatever the value. There is no reason why the city councils of Birmingham, Leeds or Newcastle should be exempt from that requirement.
There is a further danger inherent in numerical exemptions—that is, setting a threshold of £10,000, for example. I shall not refer again to Acacia avenue or the eponymous pub, but it is possible to conceive of a person deciding to sell a property for £9,750, because a price of £10,000 or £10,001 would incur a cost of £500 to produce a seller's pack. The individual therefore decides to sell the property for slightly less than £10,000 and split the difference, enabling him to put £250 into his back pocket and sell it formally under the £10,000 threshold. It is perfectly possible to envisage such a case.
In a funny way, this is a sort of arse-over-tit Bill. [Laughter.] I am sorry to use that expression. The discussion on Second Reading was about the necessity for exemptions at the bottom end of the price range. In practice, cases for exemption lie almost entirely at the top end of the range. Anyone willing to shell out £500,000 without ascertaining the information in the seller's pack must be out of their tiny minds.
At a much lower level, the Bill makes most sense as a regeneration measure. Houses at the bottom end of the scale are particularly in need of regeneration and require the security provided by the certificate of viability that the Bill would create. I hope that the Minister will be extraordinarily miserly in considering exemptions for that reason. People enter the market for the first time without experience of house purchasing, and they may need some sort of security.
My sentiments are that it would be much more sensible to exempt everything from council tax band D upwards. I would concentrate the Bill on areas in which it will contribute to regeneration of neighbourhoods and help to bring properties into use that might otherwise be regarded as hopeless cases. I hope that the Minister will concentrate hard on that particular aspect of the proposal, which may be the right thing to do, if for different reasons to those that he may originally have envisaged.