Localism Bill

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Wednesday 18th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I endorse what my hon. Friend is saying. Is he also aware that those of us who cycle face a danger from unthinking motorists who open their window and throw rubbish out, and that is an assault on cyclists?

[Ian Mearns]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point, with which I wholeheartedly concur. I was going to come on to that. It is mainly cyclists, pedestrians and local residents who have to negotiate their way through the mess that is left. This selfish, antisocial and irresponsible activity must be curtailed.

In London, the power to tackle littering from vehicles was recently introduced by the London Local Authorities Act 2007. Section 24 gives a London borough council the power to serve a penalty charge notice on the registered keeper of a vehicle if any passenger throws litter from it. In that case, the use of a penalty charge notice rather than a fixed penalty notice means that that is a civil offence rather than a criminal one. Furthermore, due to defective drafting, the 2007 Act is not active until amending legislation has been given Royal Assent. I propose that the enforcement section of the Localism Bill should be amended to include a reference to vehicle related litter. That would follow on from the commitment to finding a solution to the problem made by Lord Henley, the Minister responsible for local environmental quality, at the national litter convention in December last year.

New clause 23 has legislative precedent and is in line with the legislation on other road traffic investigation and fly-tipping offences and the approach taken to littering from vehicles in the 2007 Act. The Government have a chance today to do something about the problem and I hope that they will do so. I am convinced that the vast majority of the public whom we serve would not regard new clause 23 as contentious in any respect whatsoever.

[Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

I shall be very brief, as I wish my colleagues to have time to make their quite important contributions. We have some concerns about the issues raised this afternoon.

Let me start with new clause 26, tabled in my name and those of my hon. Friends. I was pleased with the Minister’s response. The clause aims to free small fully mutual housing co-operatives from burdensome regulation and significant costs that they cannot and really should not have to shoulder in the same way as private landlords. This would obviously help to provide a more conducive environment for new housing co-operatives and would not cost the Government much money. I know it fits in well with the coalition Government’s agenda for community self help and a mutual approach. That and other innovative schemes will, I hope, emerge from the Bill.

I also want to endorse the amendments on arm’s length management organisations. I, too, urge the Minister to consider a ballot if there is a question of bringing things in house, whatever the circumstances. Poole Housing Partnership, which is an excellent and outstanding ALMO, has provided a lot for our local communities over and beyond good housing stock. I want to put that on the record.

Let me turn now to the key issues we have discussed this afternoon. Is there a place for flexible tenancies? We must ask that question. I think there is a place for flexible tenancies, but is there a case for two-year flexible tenancies? That question really needs to be addressed in the other place. I would hate to see the churn that might happen. I also think that the idea of a mix of tenancies, from a minimum of, say, five years through to secure tenancies, probably has quite a lot to offer. We should not need to be prescriptive from the centre. We ought to be enabling local authorities, but obviously some alarming information has been put before us today and that means that the regulatory side will have to be very secure.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Annette Brooke]

If the hon. Gentleman does not mind, I would like to be brief so that my colleagues can get in.

I want to put on record my concern about the two-year tenancies. True, it is said that they will be exceptions but there is a big “but” once we start using the term “exceptions”. The Liberal Democrats want this issue to be revisited in the House of Lords. It is incredibly important to get it right.

Let me briefly address the homelessness issue. Having a roof over one’s head by having something in the private sector might be a good option. However, the point has been made—and I have to go along with it—that we must look at all the individual circumstances such as whether there has been domestic violence and whether there are children in the family who have to be able to access their current school. If they have experienced trauma, it is important that they stay in their school.

As yesterday, time is incredibly short and we are left with very important issues to address, which will affect people’s lives, and we have no time to get to the bottom of them. That is why it is so important that as we pass this Bill to the other place, we do so with a lot of questions.

[Mr Betts]

May I begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck) on her effective criticism of the Government’s proposals on security of tenure? Her comments were excellent and I thoroughly support them.

I also give credit to the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), who made some very perceptive comments. The reality is that people will be dragged out of their homes at the end of a flexible tenancy and told, “That is no longer your home.” If people resist, they will be dragged in front of the courts and evicted. That is what is going to happen; there is no getting away from that. He was absolutely right to say that it changes the status of the offer that is made to someone at the beginning of a tenancy from offering them a home that will be theirs for as long as they want it, as long as they abide by the tenancy rules, to offering them a temporary residence. With that temporary residence comes the risk of temporary schooling, temporary communities and all the problems that the hon. Gentleman rightly identified, such as lack of community stability and the possibility of simply creating estates of people on benefits who are moved out as soon as they get off benefits and get a job because their tenancy is then brought to an end. That is not the sort of arrangement that I want to see.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I absolutely endorse what my hon. Friend is saying. Is there not a strange contrast here in that Parliament is apparently about to vote to take away permanent tenancies for new council tenants but the Government would not dream of doing the same thing for owner-occupiers or others in our society? Why should we demote council tenants to this level of insecurity?

[Mr Betts]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. These measures are changing the status of council tenants, downgrading them almost to second-class citizens. That is what this effectively means, and it is creating a form of welfare housing. There will be people who are so desperate for security that they will over-extend themselves in trying to become owner-occupiers, which could lead to real problems. I say to the Liberal Democrats that they should not hide behind the idea that the measures are all right because existing tenants will not be affected or because local authorities will have to choose whether to go for these forms of tenancies. The reality is that, currently, as long as people abide by the rules, they cannot be evicted from council or housing association properties—they cannot have their tenancy ended by their landlord—but under the Bill that will be possible, and if Liberal Democrats vote for the provisions, they will be allowing that to happen.

Let me say one thing about the homelessness provisions. It might surprise some to hear that I am not, in principle, against local authorities being able to discharge their homelessness responsibilities by making an offer in the private rented sector, but I do want to see clear safeguards. If a house becomes available in my constituency, where some areas have very limited social housing, it is by no means apparent to me that someone who has just become homeless should get that property as opposed to someone who has been in the private rented sector waiting on a housing list for six years. However, if an offer is made, it has to be made with the standards of the private rented property being approved by the local authority, with the landlord or their agent being part of an accredited scheme—probably with regular inspections to make sure that the property is kept to a reasonable standard—and with a minimum tenancy length. I would certainly want those conditions to be included.

Finally, let me address new clause 3, which is in my name. I heard the Minister’s comments but I still feel that a ballot is the best way of ensuring that the views of ALMO tenants are really taken into account and that we do not simply have consultations in which the tenants say one thing and the local authority does another, which are already happening. A ballot is the best way forward, but if the Minister is saying that the same process that was used to set up an ALMO should be used to dismantle it, he must firm up the guidance and make it a statutory obligation for local authorities to comply with that. I see him nodding, and that is very good.