Housing and Planning Bill (Seventh sitting)

Roberta Blackman-Woods Excerpts

Tuesday 24th November 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)]

I will be brief. I fully understand the need to be able to have exemptions in some circumstances. The law will need to take account of very different circumstances in different local authorities with very different levels of land supply and demand. The City of London comes to mind as an obvious example, although there will be other intensely urban areas where this is also an issue. Can the Minister give an assurance that this will be a tight test and that not only will the requirement for authorities to have regard to their obligations still obtain, but it will be within the Secretary of State’s power under the proposed regulations to make the granting of an exemption to a local authority conditional upon it satisfying certain conditions that the Secretary of State might lay down, such as a partnership with another local authority that has more land?

This is a slightly different example, but it is relevant. The City of London sponsors an academy in the London Borough of Southwark. The City, being a very small borough, does not have enough students for a high school of that kind, but it sends some of its students to the high school on land supplied by Southwark. Does the Minister think there is room for that kind of partnership and that conditions could be imposed on local authorities before the Secretary of State agrees to make an exemption?

[Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

I have a brief question for the Minister. Does he have any idea of how many local authorities are likely to be exempt and on what grounds? That would help us to make some sense of the clause.

[Brandon Lewis]

My hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk made a good point, and we will ensure that we take his comments forward when drawing up the regulations. When an authority finds itself exempt and the regulations detail an exemption process, we will require it to demonstrate how, if an exemption is granted, it will continue to support those on its register. That could be satisfied by it working in partnership with neighbouring or nearby authorities in the way my hon. Friend outlines.

Obviously, as it is an exemption policy, I would not want to prejudge who might or might not be looking for an exemption. I appreciate that there will be challenges in some areas, as the hon. Lady pointed out, and that places such as London might struggle to meet demand for self-build, as was pointed out by the hon. Member for Harrow West, who is not in his place at the moment. That is why we have included a power for the Secretary of State to make regulations specifying the circumstances in which an authority may apply for an exemption when the time comes.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 10 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 11

Further and consequential amendments

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

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[Grahame M. Morris]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I would not wish to argue with him, but the scale of the problem is considerable.

May I remind the Committee of Shelter’s written evidence, which indicates the scale of the problem? A third of privately rented homes do not meet the Government’s own decent homes standards and almost a fifth contain a hazard posing a serious danger to the health and safety of renters. More than six in 10 renters—61%—have experienced at least one of the following problems in their homes over the previous 12 months: damp and mould, which are hazardous to health; leaking roofs and windows; electrical hazards, which are dangerous for any renter, but in particular young children or elderly people; animal and insect infestations; and gas leaks.

The introduction of banning orders for rogue landlords is therefore important, and we should not underplay that importance. Having gone to the trouble of identifying them and their unsuitability, surely the next step is to make the information available and to ensure access to it for prospective tenants and not only local authorities, although I accept that it is possible to introduce some safeguards. Sharing the information would help to drive up standards and would benefit the majority of decent private landlords by helping them to maintain their properties. Those decent landlords need never appear on the database.

The provisions are of great importance to my constituents. I elicited no response from the Minister, but earlier I mentioned the problems we are having in east Durham in the village of Horden. Housing provider Accent recently withdrew from my constituency, and warnings were issued about the consequences at the time. Partially as a result of years of underinvestment, Accent began a process of leaving its properties empty as tenants left. We now have multiple properties, even entire streets—colliery rows such as you might be familiar with from your own area, Sir Alan—that are empty and boarded up, which itself generates huge problems. The worst fears of the community, which I raised in parliamentary questions and in a Westminster Hall debate, were of a fire sale and an influx of absentee private landlords. That is precisely what happened.

I am concerned that unless we take stronger measures and put something in the Bill, the problem that we have seen manifest in Horden in my constituency will spread to other villages, such as Blackhall, Easington Colliery and Dawdon, with similar numbers of former colliery housing. We have an opportunity to address that problem. My community put in its best efforts to establish a housing co-op—an initiative, which I support, advocated with great vigour and enthusiasm by the hon. Member for South Norfolk—but we have seen a lack of any meaningful activity, funding and support by the Homes and Communities Agency, although to be fair the Minister facilitated a meeting.

Subsequently, the properties were auctioned off on the open market and the worst fears of the community were realised. I was hoping that the Bill would offer some comfort and protection from rogue landlords to future tenants and to communities such as the one in Horden. Will the Minister go further and support the amendment of my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead? Even if not directly, it would allow the public access to the database, in effect naming and shaming bad landlords—in my case absentee ones—in a way that is similar to the practice for businesses that flout the minimum wage regulations.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

I, too, strongly support the amendment that my hon. Friends the Members for Erith and Thamesmead and for Easington have spoken to. I want to ask the Minister some additional questions. I find it very curious that the Government have not sought to give our constituents access to the database so that they do not run the risk of taking a tenancy offered by a rogue landlord.

The Government have put forward a helpful measure. It is not the only measure needed to regulate the private rented sector, but at least it is something. Some effort will be made to create a database of rogue landlords, and that will be welcome. However, it is extraordinary that the only people with access to the database will be the local authority, because the local authority will not be the one taking on tenancies

[Mr Thomas]

Is the Government’s approach not indicative of the Conservative party’s nanny state tendency? Nanny knows best, so tenants should not have access to the information, but the housing authority should. It seems a classic example of the worst form of the nanny state in action.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

I agree: it is a breakdown in the desire to provide people with the information they need to decide whether they are being offered a tenancy from a bona fide source. The only justification that Ministers have given is, “We cannot open this up for public scrutiny because it will breach our data protection laws,” but that is not good enough. I want to know how it would breach the Data Protection Act 1998 and why the Government have not thought of ways to get round that and give our constituents access to information that is necessary to them.

I will give another example from my constituency to point out the limitations of clause 30. Durham County Council might carry out an investigation and decide to put a landlord in West Rainton on to the database of rogue landlords, perhaps while working up a case for a banning order. Meanwhile, the said rogue landlord could cross the road from West Rainton into East Rainton, moving from the Durham County Council area to the Sunderland City Council area. Without giving tenants an opportunity to ask Sunderland whether the landlord was on the database, it might never check. It might not be aware that Durham County Council was about to put out a banning order.

In the meantime, my constituents would not be protected at all, despite the fact that the information would be available to the local authority, while my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) would not be aware of a lurking constituency problem with a rogue landlord either. Indeed, her constituents could not know there was a problem. That seems to be a major weakness of clause 30, which is why the amendment is so important.

[Mr Thomas]

Would not another benefit of the amendment be that Members of Parliament and their researchers and caseworkers would be able to access the information? I suspect that all members of the Committee—certainly Opposition Members—hold regular surgeries and have large numbers of people coming to them who are concerned about the private rented sector. If our staff could access information on the database, Members might be able to provide even better advice to constituents on whether to approach a housing authority to take action against a landlord or to have a direct conversation with a landlord about how a problem with a property might be sorted out.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. When the Minister responds, will he explain to the Committee how making this information available to Members of Parliament would be a breach of data protection, especially if we used that information very carefully and limited its use to advising potential tenants that they might be about to take on board a tenancy provided by a rogue landlord?

What the amendment is asking for—protection for our constituents and for possible tenants—seems to me a really reasonable thing. It would show the public that the Government were serious about addressing the issue of rogue landlords. I am sure that none of us would dream of accusing the Government of not being reasonable in trying to do something about the significant problem of rogue landlords, but this clause perhaps suggests that the public are not being given all the information they could have.

Without a better rationale than the one we have heard, Opposition Members will have to think carefully about whether we will agree to clause 30 standing part of the Bill. It is interesting that protecting tenants or future tenants is not on the long list in clause 31 of all the things the information is supposed to do. That is extraordinary. Why would that be left off the list of uses of information in the database? On that basis, we need to hear more from the Minister.

[Mr Thomas]

Were the Government not to accept the amendment, is there not a further potential problem, related to freedom of information legislation? Presumably, freedom of information legislation would cover submissions to the relevant official in the housing authority who was drawing up or was responsible for putting information into the database, so a dedicated and disciplined Member of Parliament could put in FOI requests and get access to the information anyway. Why not save us all the trouble and accept the amendment in the first place?

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

My hon. Friend makes another excellent suggestion. It is interesting that the Government have not thought to exempt that information from the Freedom of Information Act—at least, there is nothing in the Bill that suggests they are thinking of ensuring that information cannot be released about the database through an FOI request. That could lead to an even worse situation than the one we have outlined, where some tenants or advocates working on behalf of tenants get access to the database because they have made freedom of information requests, while other tenants or future tenants find it difficult, if not impossible, to get such access. We seem to be dealing with a situation that is not only extraordinary, but totally unfair as well.

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[Mr Jackson]

I am interested in probing the hon. Lady’s argument. Perhaps this is a supposition, but is she saying that if, for instance, housing associations were reclassified by the Office for National Statistics as public bodies, she would therefore support the extension of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to tenants vis-à-vis housing associations? Is that Labour party policy?

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point, as always. We were making a slightly different point, which was that the Government and Ministers do not seem to have made it very clear that the information on the database may not be available through a freedom of information request. Unless that is made absolutely clear, we run the risk of some tenants, future tenants, possible tenants or their advocates getting access to the database, whereas other people who do not go down the route of making a freedom of information request will not have access. To us, that seems to be rather a ridiculous and unfair situation.

We need to hear very clearly from Ministers why access to the database is being restricted to local authorities. What is it specifically in the Data Protection Act that would prevent Members of Parliament or other approved agencies—I am sure we could all come up with list of them—from having access to that information in the database? What are the reasons? Potential use of that information could be prescribed to a large extent by Ministers. During our consideration of the Bill, the Committee has heard a lot about how much information will be put into regulations. I am sure it would be possible for Ministers to come up with regulations that set out who could have access to the database and in what circumstances, what the information could be used for, how it could be passed on to third parties and what caveats would be attached to it. If the information were to be used only in prescribed circumstances, that would protect the people it concerned under data protection law.

[Grahame M. Morris]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the hon. Member for Peterborough has launched a bit of a red herring, or perhaps a blue one? A straightforward question deserves a straightforward answer. Is there not a basic principle, supported by the Public Accounts Committee, that we should follow the public pound? When we are talking about housing benefit in particular, is it not right that information about rogue and criminal landlords should be available?

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

The point my hon. Friend made in that excellent intervention is that the information should be available as quickly as possible in order to give maximum protection to potential tenants. As it stands, the Opposition are not convinced that tenants are being given that maximum protection. Our argument is a reasonable one. I can see how Ministers might be concerned about the Data Protection Act, but it would be possible to address any concerns by prescribing who can access the information, in what circumstances, and what it can be used for, with some caveats. I therefore look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to the very specific points we have raised.

[Mr Thomas]

I am grateful to have caught your eye, Sir Alan. I welcome the intervention by the hon. Member for Peterborough and hope we might hear a little more from him about his concerns about freedom of information and housing associations. In answer to his question, I must confess that I have not yet made my mind up, but I am tempted to say yes when I wake up in the morning and think about the activities of A2Dominion. That organisation is a housing association in my constituency that has been very slow to sort out the problems at Bannister House, where a number of its tenants and leaseholders have been suffering over the past eight years from a consistent pattern of leaks. I have written to the chief executive seeking clarity on the association’s intentions but have yet to receive a coherent answer or have the courtesy of a meeting with the relevant decision maker.

If the hon. Gentleman was proposing that, now that housing associations are part of Government for the purposes of ONS stats, freedom of information legislation should apply to them, I would be tempted by that argument. He will, I am sure, be grateful to me for tabling amendment 99, which we will come to later in our considerations. It might provide a useful opportunity to have that discussion and a chance for him to set out his views one way or t’other.

The crucial point of amendment 106 is that if, as I suspect, hon. Members on both sides of the Committee have the capacity, through their experienced staff, to apply under FOI legislation to see which people are covered by the database—albeit it is intended to be used only for research—it would surely be better for the Minister to save housing authorities some time and simply accept the amendment. I could envisage a situation in a year’s time, when the Bill has gone through, in which my hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich is approached one Friday in his surgery by a constituent who is worried about the quality of accommodation that he is seeking to access. My hon. Friend might be tempted to put in a freedom of information request to see whether the landlord of that accommodation had in any way come to the notice of the Greenwich housing authority.

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[Mr Thomas]

I am very happy to have been the vehicle for the revelation that the hon. Gentleman has just provided. His intervention reminds me that I have not yet sent to him the membership form for the Co-op party. Perhaps I should also send him a Labour party membership form, although I do not want to fall out of order.

We were discussing whether the hon. Member for Peterborough, during one of the speeches by the hon. Member for South Norfolk, might put in a freedom of information request, and I was about to appeal to the Minister to prevent the hon. Member for Peterborough from being tempted to do so. Allow us to see that information as Members of Parliament. Allow us to help our constituents. I think of the caseworkers in my office. They are extremely experienced and effective. If they are concerned that a rogue landlord is operating in my constituency and there might be a way of teasing out confirmation of that fact through an FOI request to the local planning authority, they would be at me straightaway to suggest that I put that FOI request in. I suspect that that would be the case for all Opposition Members and even, I suspect, for one or two Government Members. I therefore say to the Minister: let us try to avoid that situation by accepting the amendment moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

My hon. Friend is making a very powerful point. Does he agree that an extraordinary thing is being asked of local authorities? They would have information on their database about a rogue landlord—someone who might inflict quite a lot of damage on a tenant—yet they would be prevented by the clause from passing that information to a potential tenant, even if the potential tenant asked specific questions about the landlord. Surely that cannot be right.

[Mr Thomas]

As my hon. Friend the Member for Easington said, surely this is, perhaps inadvertently, an opportunity to continue to name and shame rogue landlords who are guilty of poor practice. For prospective tenants who are looking for a new home to move into, looking at a register and being able to judge whether the person who owns the place that they are about to move into is a rogue landlord is a basic defence. The hon. Member for Peterborough, I believe, wanted to hear more about the rogue landlord Andreas Stavrou Antoniades. As I said, he illegally converted a house near Finsbury Park—

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[Dr Blackman-Woods]

On a point of order, Sir Alan. This is on the programme motion. When we had the meeting of the Programming Sub-Committee, a draft timetable was presented to us in advance of that meeting. It was firmly agreed at that Committee that it was simply advisory and that the Government were not signalling an intention to put knives into the process, and yet we are now being presented with—[Interruption.] Sorry, may I continue with my point of order? We are now being presented with a timetable that the Government are insisting that we stick to, regardless of whether that brings about good scrutiny of this legislation or not. I wish to seek clarification from you, Sir Alan, as to what status that document has, because we were led to believe that we were doing one thing, and if the Government are seeking to put knives into the process, they have to be very clear that that is what they are doing.

[The Chair]

That is not really a matter for the Chair. I can tell the hon. Lady that such a programme agreement, which is entered into by all parties subject to the membership of the Committee, is advisory, because ultimately, how the Committee operates is a matter for the Committee. However, when there is conflict with the rules of laying motions and amendments related to other matters that need to be heard, it gives you the opportunity to make a direct appeal elsewhere, beyond this Committee, via the normal channels, which you are aware of, to the Chairman of Ways and Means. It is not actually a matter for the Chair. The Chairman of Ways and Means may consider whether it is a valid request, whether extra time should be found, and whether the time should be amended accordingly.

Can we move on?

[Brandon Lewis]

Further to that point of order, Sir Alan. It is important to respond to the hon. Lady’s point of order, because it does not give a clear picture. We need to be very clear about this: we are very happy, and I am very keen, to see proper debate and scrutiny of the Bill, which is why we are happy to take the time to go through this properly. There are no knives, and, as far as I understand it, we even gave flexibility and moved on from the original agreement, as we did on Thursday—when we spent a whole session of an hour and a half discussing one line with no votes, if I remember it correctly—and I even suggested to the hon. Lady then that we would be willing to accept late amendments in order to facilitate helping the Opposition. So I think the hon. Lady is being very disingenuous, to be blunt, in making that point. It is important that we keep a good pace to make sure that we are able to stick, with flexibility, to what was agreed some time ago, bearing in mind that what was agreed was that we would work towards getting to clause 48. We are, indeed, still just on clause 30.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

Further to that point of order, Sir Alan. The Minister has just emphasised my need to make a point of order. That timetable was not discussed at the Programming Sub-Committee, and nor was it agreed to. In fact, we said the opposite: we asked for it to be very clear that we were not agreeing to the timetable set out by the Government Whip. My hon. Friend the Member for Easington asked for clarification of its status, and we were told that it is advisory. We also made it very clear that we did not agree to it and we did not consider it a formal part of the business of the Programming Sub-Committee. The Government responded by saying that they were not putting down knives, which we now seem to have before us. The reason for my point of order has been clarified.

[The Chair]

May I confirm for clarity that it is not for the Chair but the Chairman of Ways and Means or the usual channels to determine these matters? However, if it interferes with the due process of tabling amendments, which may not be tabled in adequate time to qualify—I appreciate that the Minister made some helpful suggestions—I have a helpful suggestion. I know that, a little later in the programme, there are two or three clauses that the Government want to change. Could we get to that point and then possibly have a review? It was proposed to me in the previous break that there are difficulties with the Opposition’s seeking decisions today that might determine that amendments may need to be tabled for Thursday and beyond for discussion the following Tuesday. It might be found to be reasonable to give them time to do that, although I am not the one who makes such a decision. I do not want people outside this Committee to make decisions about it one way or the other. I suggest that we move on to the changes that the Government want to progress with, and thereafter have a review to see whether we can move forward on this issue. Does that make sense? We have to think about it while we debate clause stand part.

Clause 30 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 31

Use of information in database

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.