Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation and Liability for Housing Standards) Bill

Lucy Allan Excerpts

Friday 19th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

I welcome the hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Mrs Wheeler) to her place on the Front Bench—a promotion richly deserved. May I say that I am looking forward to knocking on her door and having a conversation about the contents of my speech?

I fully support the Bill, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) for her absolute persistence in trying to see these changes put in place. It is a testament to her dedication and the dogged support of so many people and organisations across the country that the Government are, I understand, content to allow the Bill to proceed this afternoon.

I want to address quickly the development of the regulation of standards in the private rented sector that affects my constituency of West Ham. I know that hon. Members have noticed that my borough of Newham has been largely successful in its application for permission to renew its licensing scheme for private sector landlords. I am very grateful to the previous Minister, the hon. Member for Reading West (Alok Sharma), who took the time to listen properly to our case and acted positively on it. In fact, he was in his place earlier, and I had hoped he might stay so that I could thank him formally and publicly from the Labour Benches.

However, the permission excludes one area of my constituency—the E20 postcode, which includes much of Stratford. I think I understand why the previous Minister did that, but I believe it to be a mistake. Poor-quality housing and abuses by private sector landlords exist in E20, just as they do in every part of my constituency and, indeed, of our country. The exclusion of E20 will make it far easier for these abuses to continue, and I am worried that it may make E20 more of a draw for rogue landlords if it is the only place in which they can take advantage of Newham’s high housing demand while avoiding enhanced enforcement by the council. I will get in touch with the Minister at a later date to offer her a cup of tea and a bun, should she like it—or even something a little stronger, after dry January has finished—so that we can talk this through.

While I am talking to Members on the Conservative Benches, may I say to the hon. Member for Telford (Lucy Allan) that I would really like to invite her to come to West Ham? If she has a look at one of our enforcement visits and sees what a difference it makes, I may be able to persuade her, too, that this is a journey she might like to take with her Front Benchers and she might start to accept that this is possibly the way forward. We have decent cafés in West Ham, and I am happy to take her for a latte or a cappuccino, or whatever she might desire, in order to win her support.

[Lucy Allan]

It is excellent that we have this cross-party debate and that we are all working together, and I thank the hon. Lady for her invitation.

[Lyn Brown]

Excellent. My office will be in touch with the hon. Lady’s to see if we can get a date.

Enabling local authorities to take tough action against rogue landlords is very important and can be a real help in driving up standards. The Bill would tackle the problem at the root by clarifying, updating and strengthening the right of tenants to live in a rental property that is fit to be called a home. As we have heard, a minority of landlords make huge profits from their tenants, who sometimes live in appalling conditions.

Before Christmas, I mentioned the case of a man who was found living in a 1 metre by 2 metres space under some stairs, in a property with 11 other people and with electrical and fire hazards to boot. On the same day, that Newham enforcement team also found three people who were paying £200 a month for a space in an outside shed, and four other separate families who had been crammed into the main house. I believe that it will begin to solve the problem of abused tenants if all landlords, from the beginning of a tenancy, have a clear duty to provide those tenants with basic liveable conditions, and that should be enforced not just by our councils, but by the courts.