Clause 55 - Tests for fitness etc. and satisfactory management arrangements
Housing Bill
4:00 pm
Mr Robert Syms (Poole, Conservative)
We are testing the requirements in clause 55 to which the housing authority must pay regard. They include dishonesty, violence, drugs, and discrimination on the grounds of sex, colour, race and ethnic or national origins. The amendment states:
''(1A) On application for a licence, ''P'' will be required to make a full disclosure of any recorded convictions on the sex offenders' register to the licensing authority.''
Under the Bill, a drug offence might be a youthful indiscretion at university in the time of peace and love and the Vietnam war, which the Minister for Housing and Planning probably remembers very well. However, the Bill does not set out anything to do with sex offences, although most of them could be included under the general heading of violence. We all know that people who have responsibility for HMOs may have vulnerable people within their property. The Minister should be required to explain why such offences were not included in the list of subjects in the Bill.
Amendment No. 272 is a probing amendment about the grounds on which an authority has to pay regard to some of the things that I mentioned earlier. Will they have to be tested in court, or will an authority that refuses a licence be on firm ground?
Would someone who wanted to have a licence be able to go to court to overturn an authority's decision? How strong can a local authority be in refusing a licence?
Clause 55(2)(d) refers to a code of practice. I have not yet seen that code of practice. It is possible that the Minister will say that it has been produced and flash a document in front of the Committee; otherwise, we are concerned about the fact that we are debating the grounds on which a local authority can refuse a licence when we do not know the details of the code.
Amendment No. 271 flags up the fact that we consider sex offences to be an important thing for a local authority to take into account when they are thinking of giving somebody an HMO licence. We want the Minister to set out the situation in that regard, and to describe how the Government feel about this important issue.