Clause 19
Housing and Regeneration Bill
5:00 pm
Alistair Burt (Shadow Minister, Communities and Local Government; North East Bedfordshire, Conservative)
These short amendments deal with the power to enter and survey land. Amendment No. 64 would provide a period of notice for people who may be expected to accept somebody from the Homes and Communities Agency coming on to their land to survey it or to represent the HCA. The other amendment is designed to protect those who may be subject to the powers being applied to them by officers from the HCA. These probing amendments are intended to elicit from the Minister some guidance on how these powers should be used.
The Minister will probably be aware that for a lengthy period, national periodicals such as The Mail on Sunday and other newspapers have run a series of stories concerned with inspectors’ powers to enter people’s property for various purposes, whether to follow up council tax demands, assess the size of houses, photograph bedrooms, toilets and so on, or to support claims being made by the customs and valuation authorities, all of which come from guidance issued by the Government that is available for people to read, and all of which have been rejected by the Government as scare stories, saying, “There is no truth in those things; they will never happen.” However, they have not been able to give a satisfactory explanation of why such wide-ranging powers have been given to officers. We are following up on the same lines today.
We have mentioned on a number of occasions that the agency is not simply a result of the happy merger of English Partnerships and the Housing Corporation: the combination of the two gives considerable powers to the new agency. The potential for conflict of interest for those who acquire, develop and sell on can be considerable. In each area of the agency’s work, there should be a belt-and-braces approach to ensure that the public are not being traduced in any way and that the powers will be used with the greatest sensitivity, whether they relate to inquiry proposals, to the matters we discussed this morning regarding easements for right of way, or whether they apply to the considerable powers given by the Government to those in authority to go on to other people’s property and do various things. There is a need to ensure that we have some idea, through guidance from the Minister, about how these powers are to be used. That is most important.
Amendment No. 66, the Minister will note, would remove the power of the criminal law to be used in relation to an individual who may not know why someone came on to their land if notice had not been given, and who objects to that individual. To invoke the criminal law in those circumstances might be to use a sledgehammer to crack a nut. I ask the Minister to think again about that.
That is the background to the amendments and our concerns. I am sure that the Minister will agree that he does not want to see any more stories in the national papers saying, “Why are this draconian Government taking so many heavy powers to crack down on the everyday citizen?” Here is a chance for him to respond and explain and, by amending the Bill, to give an opportunity for such stories relating to these powers not to appear.