Dangerous Drugs
Debate between Dan Poulter and Mark Garnier(7 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Dr Dan Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the SNP spokesperson, the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss). I do not disagree with much of what she said. I believe the Government will achieve very little through these measures, except perhaps to cause considerable disruption to industry and the medicinal use of nitrous oxide. I am far from convinced by the changing reassurances given by the Minister at the Dispatch Box in that respect.
I once again draw the attention of the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I am a practising NHS psychiatrist. Until recently, I was working as an acting addictions consultant psychiatrist and I have dealt with the misuse of drugs extensively throughout my medical career.
I believe in an evidence-based approach to policymaking. This issue has been examined by the ACMD at the request of the Government. The ACMD suggested very clearly that this was not the appropriate legislative vehicle to deal with nitrous oxide. It made that recommendation for two reasons. First, we already have the Psychoactive Substances Act 2016, so if we want to deal with the illegitimate sale and supply of nitrous oxide there is already legislation in place to do that. Secondly, we have other laws that can be used, for example to deal with the unacceptable littering that sometimes occurs with the canisters used in the recreational use of nitrous oxide.
Mark Garnier
Is my hon. Friend aware that the ACMD was asked many years ago to opine on exactly this point and it was chased up by two Home Secretaries to try to get a response? It was not until this statutory instrument was first talked about earlier this year that the ACMD got around to answering the Government’s request to make a judgment.
Dr Poulter
I am aware that it takes some time to compile ACMD reports. The reason is that the ACMD likes to look at the evidence in the round. There are a number of issues to look at here, such as harms of use. There is relatively limited evidence and data to suggest that nitrous oxide is substantially more harmful than many of the substances we use daily, such as caffeine. Using caffeine to great excess has very profound and immediate health consequences, as does alcohol. The point was made by the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle) about the Notting Hill carnival and the number of beer cans and other forms of rubbish left there. If we look at the social and health harms of alcohol, which is a legal drug and one that is misused legally, they are considerably more profound than what we are talking about or indeed many other street drugs.
Tackling Rogue Builders
Debate between Dan Poulter and Mark Garnier(10 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Mark Garnier
My hon. Friend raises the most important point. We have had six phoenix companies wind up; what we do not want is another six—another six victims who have to have their homes pulled down. That is why we are trying to come up with a system of regulation that can prevent that.
Most of us will only infrequently need the work of a builder or tradesman. When we do, most of us get lucky—it is important to say that. We hear stories of people who endorse workers and pass on their names, as their work is of good quality. However, when someone gets caught by a rogue builder, their life descends into a nightmare. I know what that is like. In the interests of full transparency, I declare my interest, having found myself in such a position a few years back. It is because of that experience that I am keen to help other victims find a way out of the problem and draw the issue to a close once and for all.
When a problem starts—from poor and potentially dangerous work, as we have heard, through to the other end of the scale, which is fictitious bills—ultimately the only recourse is expensive legal fees. My experience opened my eyes to just how many people are victims of those types of rogue traders in so many different ways.
Rogue builders do not just prey on their clients. Others who lose out are the subcontractors and suppliers who do not get paid, as well as the plant hirers who do not get paid and find their machinery is often stolen. Other building firms do not see business because rogue builders will undercut their prices only to hike them later. All of us lose out through tax fraud, as rogue builders take cash in hand to dodge VAT and corporation tax. Tax fraud distorts the market, with rogues undercutting legitimate builders, creating a false impression of costs. The wider economy also loses out; the Federation of Master Builders has estimated that billions of pounds of building work is not undertaken because consumers fear being ripped off.
After my presentation Bill had its Second Reading, I was contacted by a number of victims of rogue builders. I also appeared on an ITV programme talking about the issue, leading to more victims making contact with me. The Petitions Committee contacted me to let me know that there is not one but four petitions seeking a resolution to the problem. Between them, they have gathered over 4,000 signatures, and I urge anyone who hears this debate who has been a victim, or is interested in resolving the problem, to sign one of those petitions.
It is the stories of victims that crystalises the problem, as we heard earlier. I was contacted by a police officer married to a nurse—two fine public servants. They bought their dream home and engaged a builder to renovate it. The work turned out to be massively substandard: it failed building standards and was deemed so dangerous that they could not move back into their home without remedial work. They contacted trading standards, but the builder is refusing to engage and is hiding behind his solicitor.
Similarly, someone else who contacted me had wanted to improve her home so that her disabled sister could get access. She was so let down by the system that she was motived to get in touch with the FMB, and has now launched one of the petitions I referred to in order to seek a licensing regime. Again, I urge people to go on to the Parliament petitions page and add their name.
The problem is that there is actually little redress for victims of rogue builders. Trading standards will probably have a good go at trying to sort it out, but if the builder holds fast, it can do little more than give the builder a telling off and flag their name for future people. The reality is that the only recourse for everybody is the courts, but the legal process is hopeless. Those are not my words; they are the words of a number of solicitors and barristers who advised that, irrespective of the merits of the case, the risk of prosecuting was way too high, so people should cut their losses. “Cut your losses”—do we really think that is a way for 21st-century Britain to tackle a known problem that keeps repeating itself?
The reality is that rogue builders hold all the cards: they can do whatever they like, and there is no recourse. Anyone can pick up a brick and call themselves a bricklayer, anyone can pick up a plank of wood and call themselves a carpenter, and anyone can pick up a pipe and call themselves a plumber. Ironically, they cannot pick up a gas hob and call themselves a gas fitter; that job requires compulsory certification, so there is an acceptance that regulation can be necessary. When a problem arises, however, the only redress is in the courts.
A consumer can be completely rolled over by a rogue trader, but in order to get redress, they need to put aside up to £150,000 to prosecute a legal case, securing barristers, surveyors, solicitors, court fees and all the rest of it. They may win—in fact, they probably will win—but they then need to recover their costs and damages from the builder, who closes their business and moves on to the next scam, having taken all the money out of the business so that there is no way to recover anything. The next victim is engaged and the circus goes on, but our successful litigant is left facing appalling, unrecoverable costs. Meanwhile, more suppliers, subcontractors, plant hirers and the wider building trade lose a little bit more.
However, the solution is simple. The problem lies in the imbalance of jeopardy between the victim and the perpetrator. The reason why there is so much rogue building going on is because it is an easy way to rip people off. In some ways, it is a basic level of fraud, although proving fraud is incredibly difficult. With no loss to the perpetrator, they can go on and on while the victim bears all the costs. How do we balance the jeopardy between the victim and the rogue builder? The answer must lie in regulation, with something such as a compulsory licence that the builder will lose if he or she falls foul of the rules—rules, by the way, that can and will save lives.
Dr Dan Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. Rogue builders will often go into liquidation to avoid potential litigation or paying out when they have been taken to court and successfully sued, so should we also look at potentially holding the individual responsible in a fiduciary manner, not just the company? That may be a much more effective mechanism for people to be able to chase potential assets that they can then charge against successful litigation.
Mark Garnier
My hon. Friend gets to the nub of the point. At the end of the day, individuals have to find some sort of personal liability if rogue builders perpetrate these endless infringements. The point is that they have nothing to lose at the moment. If they run the risk of losing their livelihood, they will think again before acting in such a way. It may be that they go on to another type of criminal activity, but we would at least get them out of the building market.
The Minister and I have had informal conversations about this issue, and I know that he and the Minister who replied to my Bill’s Second Reading in 2021—my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley)—are instinctively against licensing and overregulation. To a certain extent, I can see their point. Why burden an industry that gives opportunities to people who choose to work with their hands and avoid a life of form filling? Indeed, I can see from the Wikipedia page for the Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade, my hon. Friend for Thirsk and Malton—for whom this Minister is standing in—that he was a very successful estate agent. There is limited regulation around estate agents beyond the Estate Agents Act 1979 and the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008.
Conversely, I was an investment banker and investment manager, and I know what it is like to be regulated up to the eyeballs. Having been on the Treasury Committee during the passage of the Financial Services Act 2012, and on the banking commission for the Financial Services (Banking Reform) Act 2013, I can see why people might accuse me of being an instinctive regulator. However, even residential estate agents have to be members of a redress scheme. The estate agency of the Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade would have been required to be signed up to either the property ombudsman or the property redress scheme. Without membership, I understand that it would not have been allowed to trade under the Consumers, Estate Agents and Redress Act 2007.
When I, the two victims I referred to earlier or any of the millions of people who want to improve their home undertake this momentous challenge—as I have said, they might do that only once or twice in their lives—they start by approaching an architect. They may speak to surveyors, and they may go to their bank or mortgage broker to secure a loan to pay for the improvements. They will apply for planning permission from the local planning authority. They may even seek legal advice, and then they will engage a builder.
The architect is regulated by the Architects Registration Board, established by the Architects Act 1987. The surveyor is required to be a member of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, set up by royal charter and independent of the Government. The mortgage broker is required to be regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, which was set up by this Government, and cannot trade without that membership. The local planning authority is subject to the oversight of the local government and social care ombudsman. When our home improver starts to pay the builder, it is done from a bank regulated by both the FCA and the Prudential Regulation Authority, the latter of which is run by the Bank of England. Both were set up by the Financial Services Act 2012. Legal advice is regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.
Our home improver then pays the money—their hard-earned cash—having had to go through umpteen regulatory hoops, to someone with no meaningful regulation. That is ridiculous. Not only is the builder not subject to any meaningful regulation, but they could do something that results in someone being severely injured or even losing their life. It is all very well saying that the builder may then be subject to criminal proceedings, but that is small consolation to the relatives of a dead father or a mother with life-changing injuries.
The only outcome that would be satisfactory would be a scheme that honest and decent builders—the majority—would be both happy to sign up to and of which they would enjoy the benefit through being part of a system of excellence. Meanwhile, rogue builders who either game the system or care not one iota about their customers will have something to lose. Without membership of whatever scheme we come up with, they would never be able to trade again, either as individuals or as businesses.
My appeal to the Minister was originally going to be for a meeting, but I am delighted that he, or someone from his office, has got in touch with me. I have every confidence that nothing will get in the way in the diary to stop that meeting happening. I very much look forward to meeting the Minister in early July. However, this is the really important point: will his Department—I know that it has been working to a certain extent on this—work with us to find a solution to this problem and stop the scourge of rogue builders once and for all? Every one of us who comes to Parliament baulks at unnecessary regulation, but just how long are we prepared to knowingly allow people to be ripped off without any usable form of redress?