Mr John Hayes (South Holland & The Deepings, Conservative)

I beg to move amendment No. 190, in

clause 12, page 9, line 42, leave out (b).

Mr Derek Conway (Old Bexley & Sidcup, Conservative)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments:

No. 191, in

clause 12, page 9, line 44, at end add—

'(6) An improvement notice shall be suspended where the occupier of the premises impedes or obstructs a landlord from complying with the notice. Such suspension shall continue until the tenant allows the necessary work to proceed unimpeded or the landlord acquires vacant possession.

(7) An improvement notice shall be suspended where following the service of the notice, the landlord has put in hand measures to cause the property to revert to single household occupancy'.

No. 192, in

clause 13, page 10, line 32, at end add—

'(9) An improvement notice shall be revoked in all cases where the HMO, in respect of which the notice was served, has reverted to single household occupancy'.

Mr John Hayes (South Holland & The Deepings, Conservative)

The amendments bring us back to the issues, debated a few moments ago, about proper protection for landlords, a much-maligned minority—although not by the Minister, who has previously given a balanced view on these matters. It is vital that we strike a balance between the proper expectations of tenants and the important role of landlords. As the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton said in relation to his amendment to an earlier clause, we must build into this legislation a range of measures to protect landlords from the behaviour of irresponsible tenants. We know the picture is mixed. Some elements of the Bill deal specifically with the repercussions of the irresponsible behaviour of tenants. All members of the Committee would acknowledge that tenants are not always perfect. My amendments, particularly those that would amend clause 12, go some way to ensure that landlords receive appropriate protection.

Amendment No. 191 is at the heart of the group. It is designed to clarify the position of landlords faced with obstructive or unco-operative tenants. The landlord would not be liable for incomplete work if they were prevented from undertaking it by the tenants. My hon. Friend the Member for Poole described a situation where tenants and landlord might be in dispute over a matter unrelated to the job in hand of work stipulated by the authority and the tenant might use that opportunity to pursue an unreasonable case against a landlord.

Proposed new subsection (7) in amendment No. 191 is an attempt to clarify the status of improvement notices should the property revert from multiple to single occupation. That is to ensure that if a notice were issued to complete improvement work, but the state of the property were to change in the interim—should the property change hands or, as is more specific to the amendment, should the landlord cease to rent out the property and decide to change it to single occupancy—the authority could issue a fresh notice that was applicable to the property under its new status, and the status of the original improvement notice would be revised. Both suggestions are not unhelpful, and they go some way to redress the balance in favour of landlords. That should be an important aspect of this clause.

I conclude my remarks in the expectation that the Minister will once again recognise the common sense of the amendments and embrace them. I am sure that had he thought of them first, he would have included them. If he will embrace them, we can move swiftly ahead with the whole Committee supporting the amendments.

Mr Keith Hill (Minister of State (Housing and Planning), Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; Streatham, Labour)

In response to the hon. Gentleman's invitation to embrace his amendments, in the immortal words of Evelyn Waugh:

''Up to a point, Lord Copper.''

Clause 12 would provide for an improvement notice to be suspended at the discretion of the local authority. For example, a notice may be suspended until such time as the current occupier ceases to occupy the premises. The notice may specify an event that will trigger the end of the suspension. Guidance on the use of suspended notices will be issued under clause 8.

I turn now to amendment No. 190 on the suspension of improvement notices, which was moved eloquently if not entirely persuasively by the hon. Gentleman. An ordinary unsuspended notice comes into operation 21 days after it is served by virtue of clause 14(2), and there are then seven further days before remedial works can be required to start by virtue of clause 11(3). The reason for the inclusion of clause 12(5)(b), which amendment No. 190 would leave out, is that in the case of a suspended notice the extra days can be dispensed with, because advance warning of the date on which suspension ends has already been given in the notice itself.

The first limb, as it were, of amendment No. 191 would relieve the person on whom an improvement notice is served of the responsibility to comply with it if he is obstructed in carrying out the necessary remedial works. Two issues are involved. The first is that the action required by the improvement notice is suspended for reasons that the local authority has already taken into account, following its assessment of the hazard and its likely impact on occupiers. It is not a reaction to an event occurring later. The second issue is that it cannot be in anyone's interest that enforcement action, which the authority will have

embarked on for good reason, should be deferred simply because the person on whom the notice is served has run into some difficulty.

Clause 28 makes it an offence to fail to comply with an improvement notice that has come into operation; but, of course, in any proceedings it is a defence if the person on whom the notice was served had reasonable excuse for failing to comply with it. In my view, that is the right balance. We need to bear in mind that the improvement notice is served to deal with a hazard from which people need protection.

Mr John Hayes (South Holland & The Deepings, Conservative)

I am surprised at the Minister. Earlier, he accused my hon. Friend the Member for Poole of being pedantic, but surely he is himself dancing on the head of a pin. The Minister is saying that, in law, it will be entirely possible for a landlord to use as a proper defence the fact that he could not reasonably comply with the notice because tenants were obstructing him and preventing him from doing so, yet he is not prepared to accept an amendment that anticipates that situation before it gets to law. Under the amendment, the local authority could say that it had properly served the notice because of the definition of the hazard, as the Minister described, but that it was impossible for the landlord to comply with its instructions because of his circumstance in respect of tenants. Surely that is simply a way of making the process fairer and easier, instead of causing the matter to go to law.

Mr Keith Hill (Minister of State (Housing and Planning), Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; Streatham, Labour)

I remind the hon. Gentleman that there are provisions in the Bill for appropriate action against those seeking to obstruct in those circumstances, but I also remind him—we must never forget this—that the central focus of this part of the Bill is the fact that we are in the business of removing threat and danger to the occupants of premises. Frankly, I would be very reluctant to put in the Bill any phraseology that would offer the opportunity for irresponsible landlords to delay that process. I reiterate my conviction that, in the Bill and in law, a landlord has sufficient recourse and can take appropriate action to defend himself against a charge that he had behaved unreasonably.

I now turn to the second limb of amendment No. 191 and to amendment No. 192. They would enable a landlord of a house in multiple occupation who is served with an improvement notice to avoid complying with the notice by reverting his property to a single household occupancy. I am genuinely shocked by those proposals. Clause 13 enables a local authority to revoke an improvement notice, although in the case of a category 1 hazard it may do so only if it is satisfied that there are special circumstances that make it appropriate to do so.

The amendments seem to assume that the reversion of a property from HMO to single occupancy household will make a hazard disappear. I accept that risks from fire, for example, are generally greater in HMOs than in single household premises, but dangerous stairs or exposed electrical wiring are still dangerous, however many people are in occupation. Those must be matters for the local authority's discretion. As I said, we give authorities that

discretion, and we trust them to apply it—primarily in the interests of those people who are at risk from hazards, but also with reasonable attention to the interests of landlords when those can safely be addressed.

Mr John Hayes (South Holland & The Deepings, Conservative)

I know that the Minister is a sensitive beast, and I do not want to shock him more than is necessary, but I made it clear that it would of course be open to the authority to issue a fresh notice, if appropriate, based on the property's new character. It seems entirely appropriate that, having issued a notice on the basis that the property is an HMO, we can look at the matter again if it ceases to be an HMO. After all, the whole basis of the Government's approach is to separate HMOs from other properties. However, since the guillotine is about to fall, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

It being twenty-five minutes past Eleven o'clock, The Chairman proceeded, pursuant to Sessional Order D [6 November 2003] and the Order of the Committee [20 January], to put forthwith the Questions necessary to dispose of the business to be concluded at that time.

Clause 12 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clauses 13 to 16 ordered to stand part of the Bill.