Localism Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 6:15 pm on 1 March 2011.
I am pleased to be serving under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Amess. These are the first Opposition amendments to the housing part of the Bill, about which we have significant concerns. I suspect that there will be less consensus than there has been thus far. That may be down to the fact that my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington is such a charming chap and extraordinarily persuasive. The Minister is obviously extremely amenable, but we may not find quite the same level of agreement.
Social housing is an integral part of the housing mix in this country. It provides secure and affordable accommodation for low-income families, for pensioners and for people who are unable to work or who cannot find a job and are vulnerable. Historically, it has been a safety net ensuring that the most disadvantaged in our community, as well as those in housing need for a very broad range of reasons, retained the human right to a roof over their head. Housing is a human right that was upheld by the Supreme Court in a ruling on Manchester City Council v. Pinnock, and more recently in the case of Hounslow LBC v. Powell, in which the judges who heard the appeal talked about “respecting a person’s home”.
Most importantly, social housing—I would prefer not to label it in that way—forms an essential part of many communities. They are homes, sometimes occupied by successive generations of the same family, which make up communities. Communities come in all shapes and sizes, but even those that may be seen by the outside world as difficult areas have a sense of strong community.
For example, there is a major regeneration under way in Swilly, or North Prospect, in my constituency. The residents want a strong say in how their community is shaped and they want to continue living there. A large number of those residents have lived there all their lives—through good times and bad, in employment and out of it.
The most recent statistics from the Department for Communities and Local Government show that 17% of households in England live in social rented housing; for pensioner households, the figure rises to more than a fifth. About a quarter of ethnic minority households live in social housing. The median household income in 2007-08 in social housing was just £10,900 a year. Those living in social housing are not in a land of milk and honey, as is sometimes suggested. Many are vulnerable, many are poor and any changes to the social housing system need to be approached carefully and with sensitivity.
If only the Government had taken such an approach. The Government did not approach their desire for change by producing a draft Bill, or by fully consulting prior to the publication of this Bill. They launched a consultation on their proposals on how social housing was allocated, managed and financed on 22 November, in the pre-Christmas period—with the closing date just eight weeks later, on the Bill’s Second Reading. The consultation ran in parallel with the Bill at a time when most people would not be considering responding to consultations. It was rushed, like so much of what we are being asked to consider. This rushed, slap-dash approach to reforming something so critical to people’s well-being is an affront to the normal procedures that we would expect Ministers to adhere to in the pursuit of good government.
We would expect a consultation to last 12 weeks. That is the normal run of things, but the Government set aside only eight weeks. They were concerned more with sticking to their delayed legislative programme than with ensuring the best possible response from the public, stakeholders and tenants. As it is, the Government have embarked on the most radical reforms to social housing in history, with the media observing that the cumulative effect of the reforms is, as Inside Housing put it,
“the death of social housing”.
We know that the proposals in the Bill did not feature in manifestos; they were either opposed or denied by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. The Minister repeatedly put his name to early-day motions in the previous Parliament on matters which now fall within his portfolio. We want to understand at which point he changed his mind on the importance of security of tenure and affordability. Was it before or after he was appointed to a position within a Government led by a Tory Prime Minister?
We seek to amend the Government’s proposals in order to increase protections, defend the long-held rights of those in social housing and those who expect to move into social housing, and provide safeguards for homeless families within the framework of the Bill.
Clause 121 and related clauses effectively establish two waiting lists. Will they support tenants who wish to move and make space in the sector for those who need a new home, as the Government clearly believe, or will they, like a jigsaw puzzle with an extra piece, simply move the problem around the board? As one piece is replaced, another pops up. Unfortunately, the pieces that keep popping up are the poorest and most vulnerable in our society. The Minister must explain whether this is really just smoke and mirrors.
I cannot understand why, before drafting the Bill, the Government did not try to understand waiting lists properly: who is on them, how many are on them—owing to duplication, there is a lot of confusion about the precise number—why they are on the list and what their aspirations and expectations are. We know from research on the impact of choice-based lettings that the number of people on lists rose by 79% over four years in authorities operating the new system, while in other areas the number rose by only 40%. Such inexplicable outcomes must be considered when new allocations policy is being developed.
To change allocations policies without a proper review of how they operate is extraordinary, but I am afraid that it is par for the course for this Government. Some local authorities have done detailed work on their lists and have, as a result, cut the numbers by ensuring that applicants have good advice and are given pathways to alternatives. Can the Minister explain why waiting list registrations vary so enormously around the country? Why does Sheffield alone contribute 97,000 to the total—more than the figure for the whole of Wales in 2009? If he does not know, that will reinforce our case that the clause and this area of the Bill have been produced without a full understanding of the beast that they seek to change.
We all support the idea of local authorities undertaking a detailed assessment of their list and housing needs in their area—during debate on the planning section of the Bill, the importance of understanding housing need was discussed—and an awful lot of work by the Chartered Institute of Housing and other organisations supports that position. The last Labour Government favoured a housing options approach, which enabled housing departments better to understand applicants’ circumstances and needs.
Hard-pressed housing departments will find it difficult to do such work effectively now, particularly given the introduction of affordable rents, flexible tenancies and the need to know whether a tenant’s income has increased, which will obviously be required as part of ongoing assessment due to the cuts to local government. With that in mind, I support the amendments.
Amendment 220 is designed to ensure that the rights of people already living in social housing are protected. The Government have said time and again that existing tenants’ rights will not be changed. We must ensure that they are held to that promise, not least because it appears less convincing when we read the small print. However, we believe that in order properly to protect people living in social housing, the Government must go further than protecting those whose names appear on the tenancy agreement; as we all know from our constituency surgeries, life is much more complicated than that. People and relationships do not fit neatly into compartments. We need flexibility and an extension of the criteria to ensure that the allocations policy meets a wider range of needs.
In the past, it was not necessary to ensure that all the relevant people’s names were on a tenancy, because no loss of rights was involved if, for example, cohabitation came to an end. The Government’s decision to embark on a model with two tiers of tenants—those with existing rights and those without—changes everything. Under the Government’s plans, for example, what protection will a woman have who lives with her partner or husband in a social rented home where only his name appears on the tenancy? None. If she is the victim of domestic violence or the relationship simply breaks down, she will not have what she believes to be her existing right to a secure tenancy.
Such a woman could be offered one of the Government’s proposed flexible tenancies. We think that that is wrong. She might be put either into the private rented sector or into a new affordable tenancy, with all the potential cost implications of that move for housing benefit. She might well have left home in a hurry, with no source of income and a lot of uncertainty about her future and any joint assets apart from the home that she and her partner might have had.
Amendment 220 would give meaning to the Government’s promise on existing tenants’ rights by extending that formal protection to an allocation to three extra groups. First, the amendment would extend protection to people living with their spouse, civil partner or someone in that capacity. The amendment uses the phrase “subsisting relationship” to cover all three areas, which is drawn from immigration legislation.
Secondly, the amendment would extend protection to family members who live together because one acts as the other’s carer and therefore deserves protection from what the Government are doing. Their name might not appear on the tenancy, but they would be living in social housing and giving their time to act as a carer for a loved one. We should support them and extend protection to them as well. The Minister may say that discretion is being given to housing authorities to deal with such cases, but we genuinely feel that the provision needs to be in the Bill.
Thirdly, there are many instances where siblings cohabit in social housing and only one of them is named on the tenancy. We want both siblings to be equally protected from any changes to tenancy rights. Why is it fair for one sibling to benefit from a social tenancy while the other may well have to pay a new affordable rent if for some reason the relationship falls apart and they fall out? These things do happen. Amendment 221 is consequential and arises from amendment 220, so I shall not spend time on that. These changes are fair and reflect the realities of many social housing households. They give credibility to the Government’s promise that the rights of existing social tenants will not be abridged by the reforms.
Amendment 222 comes with the full support of the National Housing Federation. It is designed to secure flexibility for local housing authorities, housing associations and their tenants in boosting mobility. The amendment would guarantee that social housing tenants would be able to seek a transfer through their local authority allocation scheme—or, indeed, outside it.
The current drafting of the Bill will prevent tenants with reasonable preference from transferring outside the allocation scheme and from using the allocation scheme. The Chartered Institute of Housing has also expressed concern about the running of these dual lists and would prefer there to be some reform of the existing framework. It would be helpful if the Minister explained the logic behind the clause. I am not clear about the Government’s reasoning on the matter or why they are pursuing such a course. It is clearly not a route that the housing associations want to go down, and I am sure that they did make representations to the Minister.
Will the Minister talk us through his thinking? Why has he chosen to go against the wishes of the sector and what benefit will the measure bring to tenants?
It is good to be back under your chairmanship this evening, Mr Amess. The hon. Lady promised that this sitting would not be quite as consensual as the previous one, and it has certainly started off in that spirit.
May I just deal with the adequacy or otherwise of the consultation? I draw her attention to the fact that there were practically a record number consultee responses, as is reported fully in the summary of responses to the consultation that we published earlier this week. The subject is certainly important and I am not at all surprised that housing providers and many others found plenty of things to say and sufficient time to say them. We have taken careful stock of those responses in what we have supplied to the Committee in the final chapter—chapter 8 —of the summary of responses, which sets out the Government’s response to the information that we have received.
I say to the hon. Lady that social rented housing is a vital resource that is definitely in short supply. It is trying to make the most effective use of a very scarce commodity that has led the Government to introduce the proposals in this section of the Bill. In 1997, 4.386 million homes were available for social rent in the housing association and local authority sector; when the coalition Government took over last year, 3.966 million such homes were available in that sector. The number of socially rented homes available had fallen in that 13-year period by 420,000.
The hon. Gentleman is talking numbers, without talking quality. Will he now tell the Committee about the condition of that social housing stock in 1997, what proportion of those properties were substandard, unfit for human habitation or otherwise defective, and how many of them have been improved in the intervening period?
Quite a lot have been improved, but there are still more than 300,000 that are unimproved. As for eliminating the problem of homes below a decent-homes level, the right hon. Gentleman did not succeed with that objective either.
I will give way in a moment.
The hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View was right about the absence of consensus. I am simply making the point that what is a valuable resource is in short supply and we need to make sure that it is used properly. About 230,000 of the homes that we do have are officially overcrowded and in breach of the overcrowding standard. More than 400,000 homes are under-occupied to the extent of more than one spare bedroom.
The hon. Lady asked me when I changed my views. I did not change my views at all. I want to bring to the attention of the Committee one of many cases since I have served as an MP. During the past couple months, I have seen a lady in my constituency who lives in a two-bedroom council house with her partner and three teenage children of both sexes. It is an increasing unsatisfactory situation, with three teenagers sharing a bedroom in the two-bedroom house. They urgently need to find larger accommodation, but they have little chance of achieving sufficient priority to do so at the present moment. The hon. Lady might wonder what that has to do with anything. Well, on the same estate are many three-bedroom houses occupied by elderly widows whose families have grown up and left the area.
Let us take the argument a little further. When my constituent has the opportunity for a new tenancy, it is right and sensible for the housing authority to consider giving her a 10-year tenancy. In 10 years’ time, her youngest teenager will be in her 20s, and it will be the right moment to re-appraise whether the larger house into which that family had moved was still required by them. We are discussing an enabling provision. Nothing is compelling housing authorities to change their existing practice if they choose not to do so.
The hon. Gentleman will be aware that the Homes and Communities Agency has issued guidance on how it intends to allocate funds for the national affordable housing programme in future years. Will he now tell the Committee what conditions it intends to impose on those authorities and housing associations that decide not to allocate a substantial proportion of their re-let properties to the new affordable rent regime, which will not be affordable to large numbers of people along the lines that he has been talking about?
The right hon. Gentleman asks me to make the point that it is for local housing authorities to take a decision about what policies they employ for the letting of tenancies in the future. They can take account of advice or information that they receive from anyone, including himself or the Homes and Communities Agency. I say to Opposition Members that this is enabling legislation, and it permits local authorities to do things that many of them wish to do.
I draw the right hon. Gentleman’s attention to the responses that we have received, which show that two thirds of housing authorities would look to use at least some of the flexibilities that we have given them. They have also responded on particular aspects of those flexibilities—on which parts they would prefer to have presented as an open door, and on which parts they feel should still be constrained by legislation. We have responded to that in our feedback on the consultation, setting out what the Government intend to do.
The hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View, asked me a number of questions, which I will do my best to answer, and I am sure that she will let me know if I miss any of them. I do not accept that the consultation was rushed. I believe that by providing, with no compulsion, a power to local and housing authorities to have flexible tenancies in future, and by ensuring that every existing tenancy is protected—housing authorities cannot vary them, even if they want to—we have set a practical back-stop. When we debated that topic, I inadvertently became a little overheated, but I say to the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich that the literature that is being circulated implying that the Government intend to take away council tenants’ tenancies is completely wrong and misleading.
Clause 121 takes all social tenants seeking a transfer out of the statutory allocations framework, unless they have a reasonable preference—a priority for social housing. As a result, social tenants will find it easier to move within the social sector, and local authorities can better manage their stock and strike a balance between the needs of existing tenants and those with priority on the waiting list.
Amendment 220 would add to the list of people to whom the allocations legislation will no longer apply. As far as I can see, the intended effect of the amendment is to allow those people to move into another social property without having to queue on the housing waiting list. That is not sensible, and we do not believe that the drafting of the amendment works, either. We are trying to give back to local authorities the power to decide who should and should not qualify to go on the waiting list, and many of the local authorities—including, incidentally, the London borough of Greenwich—that responded to the consultation welcomed the flexibility and said that they would use it. The hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View, knows that, but if she has not had an opportunity to study the detail of the consultation, I hope that she will do so.
The amendment would restrict the flexibility, because it would allow certain people to get into social housing without having to meet the local authority’s qualification criteria. There does not seem to be any justification for allowing some people to circumvent the rules that determine who should access social housing simply because they live with someone who qualifies. The amendment would also mean that people living with a social housing tenant would be able to jump the housing queue and gain an allocation, ahead of others who could be in much greater housing need or might have been waiting for far longer.
Amendment 221 does not seem to work as drafted, because proposed new subsection (4B) applies only to transferring tenants and would not apply to people who live with a tenant, but who are not tenants themselves. It does not, therefore, achieve the objective that the hon. Lady set out.
I want to support what my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View, said about live-in carers. The Minister is not paying enough attention to that. It is not like the situation with teenagers. As people become more frail and more vulnerable, they may often need to have a family member move in with them. That is a special consideration. Such people often give up a career and a salary—their own lives—to take that on, and the words that the Minister has just used are not appropriate. A carer makes a very big sacrifice, and it is appropriate for that to be considered in some way in the allocation.
I go back to the point that I made at the beginning: the provision will apply to new tenancy arrangements only. If there is a new tenant under the new arrangements, and if a carer proposes moving in with them and that carer wants to register their interests, they can do so. Specifically, if that carer has come from another council home, having surrendered one tenancy and having moved in to help somebody else—I am sure the hon. Lady has many examples of that; I do, too—it is entirely right that there should be a lettings policy that recognises that. It will be in the hands—in the ownership—of the housing authority to be able to say, “Yes, you have surrendered a tenancy, you are doing that caring duty or job, and when and if that caring duty and that tenancy end, we will safeguard where you have come from.”
I am terribly sorry, but I am not reassured by the Minister’s line of argument. The Minister and the Front-Bench team should think about this. We do not want to give rise to a perverse disincentive for looking after members of one’s own family. Ultimately, if people are disinclined to look after their own family members because of the implied threat to their livelihood, the cost to the public purse could be an awful lot more, and it could create a much unhappier family situation. The Minister and his team should think about that a bit more.
Let me say a couple of things that may be relevant here. First, the situation that the hon. Gentleman described is, of course, already the case with registered social landlords. We are talking about those who have what have traditionally been called council house tenancies. We need to understand that there are already different situations applying to different sets of tenancies, if we are talking about carers moving in from outside, as opposed to spouses and direct family members. We will return to that in a subsequent clause that looks in more detail at the requirement on local authorities to have a transparent housing allocation policy. I am happy to return to the issue at that point, and to discuss it in more detail then. There is a broader context about the terms, which we are saying housing authorities have to be explicit about when a new tenancy policy is introduced.
I want to reassure Opposition Members that no existing tenant will have their tenancy interfered with in a way that would create the situation that they have described. A tenant would be moving into a tenancy where the situation was already known, so there are no surprises coming to existing tenants as a result of that particular element. I hope that on that basis the hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View, will agree to withdraw her amendment, but if she does not, I will encourage my hon. Friends to vote against it.
May I take the Minister back to his opening comments about his concern that there are fewer social housing tenancies and social housing properties available than there were in 1997? Would that be in part due to the take-up of the right to buy? Not everyone on the Labour Benches will agree with me on this, but I am sure that a significant number of Government Members will: I think that the right to buy was one of the most successful policies, allowing people a foot on the ladder. It gave them a way of having an asset, which nudged their behaviour when it came to work, ensuring that their kids got on, and getting on in future. The reduction is in part due to the right to buy, which I believe was a particularly successful policy.
I am not sure whether the coalition is split on the issue, and whether the Liberals are opposed to the move. My concern about a lot of the clauses on housing is that they do not so much nudge people as head-butt them in the opposite direction to working, looking after their family and getting their kids to university. We will have opportunities to discuss some of those clauses later on.
Often, it is people who buy their homes or stay for a long time—sometimes when it is not necessarily in their financial interests to do so—who are the anchor in our estates. Those people are families that others look up to, saying, “Gosh, you know, Mr and Mrs Smith down the road have put a new porch on. They are going to work and their kids are doing well. I want to be like them.” The downside of two-year tenancies is that we will move those people out, and there will be no role models or anyone who is getting on, taking a chance or giving an opportunity. I desperately want those people to stay in their communities.
We have heard some passion from Opposition Members, and passion with knowledge from my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden and my right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich, whose history of working in the housing sector before coming to this place is well known. I am sorry if Government Members begrudge him that passion; I certainly do not.
Part of the reason why there was a good turnout—I am pleased that there was, given the short consultation period—is that Opposition Members did everything they could to encourage people such as tenants groups, housing associations and local authorities to participate. We highlighted the importance of contributing to the consultation. Just imagine how many people might have contributed if the consultation had run for 12 weeks instead of just eight.
My hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden talked about the right to buy, and the fact that a significant proportion of those who left the system did so as a result of the right to buy and, in part, our decision to improve properties and make up the £19-billion backlog in the repairs programme that was left to us by the Conservative Government.
The Minister raised an important issue about over and under-occupation. It is something that we all struggle with. We all know people in our constituencies who are under-occupying, and we also know that there are people who are attached to their houses, having put 30 years or so of commitment into them, repairing and improving them. They are not easy to move. A number of local authorities have historically tried to move people, including by offering incentives, and there are all sorts of things that can be done under the current system. However, unless we have good-quality housing stock to move them to, there is no reason why a lot of them would go. They do not want to move to one-bedroom flats; they want at least two bedrooms, because they know that in six months or a year, they might have a caring need themselves. I appreciate that the Government are also struggling with the issue, but I do not think that the clause is the way to go.
The Chartered Institute of Housing and others are concerned that the clauses will have unintended consequences because of the way that they are set up, and will damage the good work that has gone into mixing communities. Interestingly, the right to buy was part of that process; as it was taken up, people with different targets and aspirations lifted the area.
There is an unfortunate downside to the right to buy. When residents who bought their council houses sold them on to the private rented sector, it led not to a mixture of tenures on council estates, but to a mixture of one type of tenure—private rented and local authority rented properties. In areas where local authority properties have been improved through the decent homes programme, private rented accommodation often stands out like a sore thumb, as it has not been improved to the same standards.
My hon. Friend flags up a matter that we will come to later: the general state of the private rented sector. He is right that that is one of the knock-on effects of the right to buy—perhaps a negative one.
The Minister said that the amendment was not perfectly drafted. I wish that I had access to Government draftsmen and lawyers; it would certainly help, but we are doing our very best. He can be critical, but I think that everyone understands the reasoning behind the amendment. The wording may not be perfect, but the principles are thoroughly laudable.
My hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South mentioned the importance of carers. People often move in with an elderly parent, perhaps from the private rented sector. They could live there for a considerable time looking after that person. They will not necessarily think, “Oh my God, I’ve got to put my name on the tenancy,” or “I’ve got to set up a joint tenancy,” because they are busy caring. Then the parent dies, and they discover that they should have done that, and find that they have no entitlement. A number of people in my constituency have approached me with concerns about some of the Government’s proposals on caring, but they themselves have problems and are in need of support. Those people will not always understand their rights in such circumstances. That is why we want this protection in the Bill.
We appreciate the need for flexibility, and we understand what the waiting lists mean in fact, rather than simply from making assumptions, as the Government do. We believe that there should be transparency in the system. It is important that people should have good access to advice from officers, and free housing advice—things that have been desperately hit by Government cuts. We believe that the proposals will not be to the benefit of social housing, and there is a risk that social housing will become housing of last resort and that, over a long period, ghettoisation will happen. What the Government propose is nothing more than an exercise to close the housing register to certain groups. It will not create more options or free up more homes, and I urge my colleagues to support the amendment.