Social Housing (Regulation) Bill [HL]

Baroness Hayman Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Tuesday 27th June 2023 Lords Chamber

There will be a cost and some disruption during the transitional period in implementing this new requirement for social landlords. These bodies currently face a whole range of other challenges: upgrading their “non-decent” properties, as I have mentioned, fixing building safety issues, grappling with costs rising higher than their rents and contending with higher interest rates and skills shortages. Social landlords might have been expected to resist the extra burden that will come from enhancing the professionalism of their workforce, but I am delighted that the National Housing Federation and senior figures in the sector have welcomed the new obligations and will engage very positively in shaping the new regime in due course. This will undoubtedly make for a more skilled and better-performing social housing sector. I hope the Grenfell team will be pleased that its input has proved so influential. I commend these amendments.

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as co-chair of Peers for the Planet and in that I have a family member currently working in the field of energy efficiency. I will respond to the Government’s Motion to agree with the Commons in its Amendment 16. It removes Clause 24, on energy efficiency, which was inserted with cross-party support on Report. Our amendment sought to ensure a comprehensive approach to energy efficiency for tenants in social housing, to reduce their costs and to improve living conditions. It would also have cut the costs to government—and the taxpayer—of subsidising energy bills and helped with energy security and achieving the Government’s target of reducing energy demand by 15% by 2030.

The importance of energy efficiency has been highlighted by numerous committees and reports from this and the other place, including one recently from the Public Accounts Committee which highlighted the problems so far with energy efficiency schemes, including the lack of coherence. It said they had been “fragmented” and that

“stop-go activity has hindered stable long-term progress towards government’s energy efficiency ambitions.”

It is important that real progress has been made during the passage of this Bill. We should remember that, at an earlier stage, energy efficiency was added to the objectives of the Regulator of Social Housing, with the support of the Government. I pay tribute to the work of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, in achieving that end.

The Minister and her officials have been generous with their time in discussions prior to today’s proceedings —I am very grateful for that—in which she stressed the centrality of consultation with the sector before imposing standards. We have made progress, as she said, with a commitment to publish a consultation within six months of Royal Assent. As the Minister has heard me say before, in the past, the Government have been rather better on publishing consultations than responding to them, and much better than on actioning the policy that was their original subject. Can she give any further reassurances about timelines for a government response to the consultation and the provision of a final plan to improve the energy efficiency of social housing within 12 months of Royal Assent?

While we have not made as much progress as I would have wished on this issue, we all understand that the priority of the Bill has been the urgent need for effective regulation of social housing, and I completely recognise any concerns about diverting from that central objective. I also recognise that energy efficiency is an issue not just for the social housing sector but across the whole of our housing stock. It arises mainly from the quality, or lack thereof, of that housing stock. As the Minister knows, I have tabled amendments to both the levelling-up Bill and the Energy Bill to try to address what we are talking about in this Bill: the need for a long-term strategic plan of action which would include but not be exclusive to the social housing sector.

This is an issue to which we will return, but I hope the Minister can give me some reassurance on the issues I have raised when she sums up.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, amazingly, it has been eight months since this House last discussed the Bill. At that time, I welcomed it and many of the details it provided to improve the regulation of social housing. However, across the House, noble Lords challenged the Government to think again on some of the detail of the Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Best, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, have outlined some of the ways in which the Bill was challenged and subsequently improved.

I am pleased to say that some of the government amendments in the Commons have indeed built on the amendments made on Report in this House. I particularly support Commons Amendment 13, which sets new professional standards for senior social housing managers, as I do the power for the ombudsman to provide best practice guidance. Those are two great improvements made to the Bill since it first started in this House.

The Commons also introduced into the Bill “Awaab’s law” in memory of the tragic death of two-year-old Awaab Ishak, which was caused by appallingly damp and mouldy conditions in the flat where he and his family lived. The response of the social housing landlord was shockingly neglectful—and, as it turned out, fatally neglectful for poor young Awaab. I congratulate the Government on introducing that new clause to address those responsibilities and to ensure that social landlords properly address what is described in the amendment as “prescribed hazards”. Let us hope that this is sufficient to ensure that no family lives in such dreadful conditions again—albeit it applies currently to social housing only.

Finally, although I am pleased that on Report the Government accepted my amendment to include energy efficiency as a core responsibility of the regulator, I am disappointed that they have not been able to be as positive about the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, agreed by this House, which contained a comprehensive approach to energy efficiency that my simple amendment failed to do. We have a challenge as a country, and the Government have a responsibility to make changes so that homes are warmer and less expensive to heat. There was an opportunity to do so; unfortunately, the Government failed to accept it.

However, I am pleased that the Government and the Minister have agreed to consult—although, as always, the caveat is the question of what that will lead to, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, alluded to. I am sure that the noble Baroness and many of us in this House will scrutinise closely the outcome of such a consultation. This is an important matter. We need to get it right. People should not be living in cold homes because they cannot afford to heat them. If the Government have the power to make a change, we will press them to do so.

I want to end on a positive note. We on these Benches support the Bill and trust that social housing tenants will see the benefits that it should bring.